So, today was the second session of our new folks campaign. Since the last session, several of the players had tweaked their characters to make them a bit more sensible compared to how they were before. Dawg, the Dwarven mage, was now Low lifestyle instead of Street and had a Commlink. Kane, the Elf hacker type, was essentially unchanged. The fellow who I gave the name "Third" in the last post was actually named Zod (and his fake SIM's name is "Neil Before"), and he had also gotten himself a car (an armored car with two machine gun turrets, to be precise), a cheap Commlink, and a Medium lifestyle. Finally, we had a new player join us who's an intermittent visitor to our (RL) area. He was loaned a character that was made up by Kane's player while he was learning Chummer: a Troll combat generalist called "Mr. Happy Punch".
Before I start with the narrative, two rules questions came up:
- Arsenal has some rules for how Miniguns fire, and specifies the types of gun that can be made into Miniguns. However there appear to be no rules for actually making or buying a Minigun - there's no weapons with that description, nor a modification. So how do they work?
- The rules say that you can spend a point of Edge to "reroll all dice on one test that did not score a hit". We weren't sure if this should be read as "reroll (all dice (on one test) that did not score a hit)" - ie, on any test, reroll all the dice that didn't score hits; or "(reroll all dice on (one test that did not score a hit))" - ie, you reroll all the dice but can only do it if you rolled exactly 0 hits on the test. Which is it?
So, we finished the last session with the players finding a lead to Zipper. They head out to the Cathode Glow in Zod's car, parking it a while away. Zod turns off his cheap Commlink to stop it getting attacked, while the others are confident in their Firewalls. They leave the heavy firepower in the car this time, although they still decide for some reason to turn Dawg invisible and cast Reaction buffs on Kane and Zod before heading in. Kane easily enough spots Zipper in AR, and they head over to her table to ask her about the disk. Zod decides to increase the persuasion factor by drawing his ceramic pistol from his cyber slide mount and holding it to the head of Zipper's friend at her table. She tries to lie, fails, and coughs up Loomis' name and location - as the other group members are getting suspicious looks from the surrounding tables, and the robots are watching them carefully, but nobody really wants to get involved. Oddly, Kane doesn't try to hack anything while he's there, and although Zod was apparently considering trying to hide a small amount of plastic explosive under the table to blow the bar up after they left, he decided not to. This meant that Zipper was able to call through to Loomis and warn him about the group's approach.
The group drives past the Coda with Dawg having Detect Enemies up. Loomis has done a runner and the Trashers are hanging around in the doorway of the Coda. As soon as they see the heavily armored and turreted car they immediately figure that this is who they're looking for, and Dawg's Detect Enemies goes off. Initiatives are rolled. Zod wins first initiative and fires a long burst from one of the turret guns at one of the Trashers, killing him. (The car was being driven by Pilot software.)
Now I did make a mistake here. Namely, I didn't realize I needed to add Body to the Armor ratings for the NPCs - I thought they were already fully calculated. However, in practice, it didn't matter. The skill values the PCs were rolling were so high - and the Trashers only had reaction 3 - that, most of the time, even if the NPC had rolled all hits on the Armor test, they would have died.
Mr. Happy Punch decides he wants to get involved, and jumps out of the car, walking towards the Coda door (since it was a "drive-by" I figured he'd get there that pass) while shooting at a Trasher with his SMG. This seriously wounds him but doesn't kill him, leaving Kane to finish him off with the other turret. Dawg casts another Reaction buff. The Trashers run inside the bar to take cover behind the pool tables, and G-Man - who had been waiting in the bar - moves forward, takes cover behind the door frame, and fires a burst from his cyber machine pistol at Mr. Happy Punch, but misses him.
Next pass: Zod decides that the turret is "too weak" because it takes a Complex Action to fire, and thus sticks his Assault Rifle through the gun port on the car, blowing away G-Man with another burst (yes, even after his Good Cover. I wasn't sure if Zod should get the penalty for firing from cover, but he argued that gun ports were explicitly designed to make it easy to fire from a protected position, and that seems reasonable). Mr. Happy Punch runs into the bar and knocks out one of the two remaining Trashers. The second Trasher surrenders - although technically he shouldn't have had an action in that pass, but I figured better that than having him beaten to death by the other characters who'd assume he was still a threat.
So, the remaining runners enter the bar. The Trasher explains that Loomis ran out the back, and told them to mess with anyone who came for him. Zod shoots the knocked-out Trasher, knocks out the remaining conscious one, ties him to the winch on the back of his car and uses it to slam his body into the wall of the bar. They then proceed to loot the bodies, and the bar, including chopping off G-Man's cyberarm and - when one of the runners noticed something unusual about the hands of the Trashers - hacking off their fingers to extract their hand razors. They dump their grim haul in the smuggling pocket in the car.
The group then announced they were driving their car through the fence surrounding the junkyard. Now, since they had been messing around mutilating the Trashers for quite a while, I decide to go with the first scenario suggested in the book - Loomis has a good start, but he's fallen over and injured himself in the junkyard, so he's not actually gone yet. Meanwhile, the Shangri-La team is moving into position. (By the way, I couldn't find a "Shangri-La Corporation" in the books - is it one that's changed since? I randomly guessed it might be Horizon, but I'm not sure..)
So, the car smashes down the fence, and the runners start to circle the junkyard looking for Loomis. Sure enough, they see him. Zod announces that he wants to run Loomis over, but a quick check reveals that his car is on Slicks which wouldn't run well on the messy, bumpy floor in the junkyard. With some grumbles from the player, he instead decides to continue circling the Junkyard, while Dawg casts Improved Invisibility on Kane and Kane walks over to Loomis and decides to start whispering his name in his ears while invisible, followed by "Come with me if you want to live". This, naturally, freaks the hell out of Loomis, who assumes it's a spirit or some other nasty astral thingy.
Meanwhile, the rest of the time is still circling when they happen to spot the Shangri-La team headed into position. Zod commands the Pilot program to stop, surprises the grunts in the party (although not the Mage or Lieutenant), and fires a burst at the Shangri-La mage, killing him. The lieutenant responds by skinning his AK-47 and firing at Zod in the car. After some confusion about the rules for doing this, he manages to hit the correct area, but the car's armor soaks all the damage. The grunts fire at the car too, but most miss, except for one who shoots out one of the tires. Unfortunately, when I check the rules, it seems that shooting a tire gives a penalty to Handling Tests but does not actually force one to be made, so the runners aren't bothered. Zod blows away the lieutenant and one of the grunts on his next pass, and commands the other two grunts to throw down their guns and surrender, which they do.
Meanwhile, Dawg - during the battle - for some reason stopped sustaining the Improved Invisibility to cast another Reaction buff, so Kane appears in front of Loomis and offers to help him up. This suddenly puts a new spin on the whole thing - it seems like, played right, the runners will be able to make it look like the Shangri-La team were the group "coming to get the disk" that Zipper warned him about, and the runners have come to his aid. Kane helps Loomis over to the car, where Dawg is now interrogating the surrendered grunts - one of whom has had Mob Mind cast on him (the other one resisted) and both of whom have been tied up. They find out about the corporation and what the grunts were after. As soon as they see Loomis, they shout out for him not to trust the runners, as they attacked the strike team unprovoked. Zod reacts by grabbing the pistol from the dead grunt and shooting one of the tied-up ones in the head. He then asks the other grunt "Do you like cyberlimbs?". When the grunt replies that he doesn't have any cyber limbs, Zod shoots off all his muscle joints and says "You've got plenty of space for them now."
Loomis is now thoroughly terrified, and hands over the disk on condition he won't be harmed. He also gets Mob Minded, and told to tell the truth about the disk, and he pours out the story about K-Dop and how he obtained the disk. The team decides to throw Loomis IN THE TRUNK OF THEIR CAR (!) and then to hack up the bodies of the Shangri-La troopers for their cyberware (including asking if they can extract the Wired Reflexes from the lieutenant). They throw the mangled bodies of the Trashers and the troopers into the Coda bar, and then set the bar on fire. They then decide to head off to Carrion Studios, and I end the session for the week.
So... yea. I'm just worried at this point. First of all, I'm bothered about the whole business about Zod killing everyone in a single pass. Honestly, the problem more seems to be that Zod wins fights far too easily, yet if I force him into non-combat situations the player will (quite correctly) object that I'm pushing him to do things that I know he doesn't enjoy. Even he said that he felt Shadowrun was "broken" and wouldn't play properly.
Secondly, it seems like it's come to a rather harsh choice. Basically, either I decide they get away with all this stuff - which seems a bit unreasonable - or they'll basically get hunted down and killed. I wasn't sure people were enjoying the session, either.