Ben's Players Should Not Read This



For my upcoming campaign, I'm planning on having an insect spirit invasion going on among the crime community.

I plan on having the PCs hear a Cicada terrify a girl at a bunraku parlor that they will more than likely end up at and have it jump out the window with the girl before anyone can see anything.

I also plan on having a Mantis who came ahead as a scout and decided they enjoy our world, but is hunting the other other insects as they arrive and trying to reproduce as much as possible. This Mantis would probably become a contact of the PCs shortly before they actually witness an insect spirit.

How would you have an Insect Invasion happen, post-Chicago?

I'd say that it'd depend on how your group likes their game. You can set it up slow and steady, like a body snatchers flick where as the PC's uncover more and more the scarier it gets. In this scenario the bugs play it smart: they start by finding a couple of local faces, and set up small cells that start with the things that Bug Spirits can provide: cheap food and shelter. As they manage to subvert the poor and SINless no one notices because who cares about those poor SINless peoples? From there they start to cast their net wider-subsuming city officials, low level corporate types, etc...Obviously they'd have to be careful because if they were too obvious then people might ask the wrong or right questions-depending on what side of that equation you were on. Stick to discrediting possible witnesses, or blackmailing them into silence.

I'd suggest watching a few body snatcher style flicks for inspiration. I'd also hit Google Earth to find some good terrain for them to make use of. Minnesota is damned cold int he winter, so something they can keep warm or underground?

If that's too slow for your style then you can adjust and say the Hive has already established itself and now the PC's need to stop them.

Yeah, I've decided that in my version of the Minneapolis Metroplex, Neonet (who ate 3M) has funded the extension of the Skyway throughout the entire city due to completely unpredictable weather patterns brought on by global warming (you can see it happening already, we were still at 70 degrees in October, but we were in the 30s-50s in September). Also the lightrail has been extended through the entire city. (The Metroplex is Minneapolis and St. Paul combined.)

So, heated travel and living conditions are not an issue. Minnesota has always been a pretty eco-minded state, though, so I imagine lots of buildings have vertical forests, and are built with eco-friendly materials.

And... I just kind of went off on a tangent about how cool I think my version of Minneapolis is, lol. M'bad.

My party is a Maori-tradition stealth Mage, an 18 year-old technomancer orphan who has a SINner little sister, a really skeezy Elf drug-dealer (face) who uses his sister's job with Aztechnology Pharmaceuticals to get supply with no real interest in how she does it or whether she gets caught.

And then there's our combat-role character who just recently joined the game and hasn't finished making a character yet.


However, I do think a darkened light rail or skyway encounter with a Roach spirit in the North Barrens is kind of fun.

Sounds like a fun team.

Another fun twist could be that they work for the Bugs. Their fixer is actually a bug, and hires them out to do jobs that benefit the hive. Small ones at first, but increasingly they notice small details that add to something strange. Suddenly they realize what's been going and CRAP! we helped them out!

Should be. 50/50 Male/Female, and only two of them have experience roleplaying. One has only played like 2 sessions of Pathfinder.

And despite coming up with ideas all the time for games, I never actually end up GMing. So, should be interesting. I'm also kind of interested in seeing what happens when we try out something like D&D or Pathfinder after this game is inevitably over, considering they didn't really start on it.

I also wrote up a big list of secret 'Achievements' that net them bonus Karma, Nuyen, Contacts and Fame.

And if anyone would like a Shadowrun-ized map of the Minneapolis Metroplex, including light rail/street map, here you go.
http://www.megaupload(dot)com/?d=YWPMNBGC

Note: the Downtown Minneapolis and Downtown St. Paul portions of the map are not completed yet.

AWESOME. I'd love to see the rest of your writeup, and thanks for the map. I grew up in St. Paul and did a MSP campaign once. Here's my writeup if you want to scour it for ideas; that's definitely what I'll be doing to yours given the chance.

https://rapidshare.com/files/2551321938/MSPMetroplexD3.pdf

Unfortunately, a lot of my write-up is on paper, as I have a lot of free time at work and it's a secure call center, so no laptops or cell phones. :/

Pretty much just going to possibly introduce Ghost Cartels influence in the underworld and hint toward insect spirits. Vietnamese and Somali/African-American street gangs have organized and merged to create the Stateless Fraternity and take over the human-trafficking and drug trafficking (with a specialty in Awakened narcotics) in the Mplsplex. This created a fierce rivalry with the Ghost Cartels, and crippled an already weak Mafia-presence. However, the Fraternity offered the Mafia a sizable portion of the prostitution trade as an olive branch. The Stateless Fraternity has both strong ties to the Triads and the Vory V Zakone.

North Minneapolis and East St. Paul are homes to the Barrens of the Mplsplex, the Skyway paths in these places are vandalized and in poor shape, and in some places, destroyed. This is the home of the street gangs and go-gangs, but a few hip restaurants and bars have setup out there for street cred, with the appropriate level of security, of course.

I love your idea for Little Caesar's, I might adapt it to Pizza Luce, though, since it's kind of a punk rock place, maybe picked up by Evo? I figure it's spread to all of the major neighborhoods, and it's just kind of an underworld secret that it's corp. territory and friendly to the grittier elements, but has the security to quell any trouble if necessary.

These two ideas make for a fun combination in my mind. Have the PCs working for the Mantis without even realizing it. This puts them in a position where they are helping a bug that is intent on taking over, but is working against most of the other bugs. So, they could feel like they are doing good work by stopping things like fly's and such, but the horror sets in when they realize that they were only doing that to make things easier for the Mantis invasion.

In fact, this is an idea I was already toying with for my next campaign. I am going to set the game just post crash 2.0 in the Chicago Containment Zone. The goal is to do a Fallout style/feel game in the wastelands, but within Shadowrun while dealing with Shadowrun elements and threats.

Greetings Gentleman, I am an associate of Keyser Mantidae.

That's a... that's a good idea, I like that!
Sadly, in Turkish the word for "mantis" is long and means something like "prophet camel" literally, and Google Translate doesn't offer transliteration for Arabic. However, there is a real Russian surname that fits: "Bogomolov" (literally: Mantisov).

I wish using Mantisov wouldn't be such a dead giveaway, such an awesome name. Bogolov might work, there is a Vory presence in Mpls, maybe a trafficked, young chiphead woman from Russia, tempted with strength by the Mantis spirit. Would explain the initial spread into underworld types. Maybe hunts Vory almost exclusively at first as some sort of bleedthrough from the girl's psyche.

QUOTE (Paul @ Nov 6 2011, 04:58 PM)
Another fun twist could be that they work for the Bugs. Their fixer is actually a bug, and hires them out to do jobs that benefit the hive. Small ones at first, but increasingly they notice small details that add to something strange. Suddenly they realize what's been going and CRAP! we helped them out!



One of my PC's has a background where he hailed from Chicago, and got into running when his mage teacher/father figure found bug spirits had started infiltrating a local church. The PC was "the kid" in an experienced runner group, and although they ultimately foiled the bug invasion the bug spirits took revenge by killing his teacher at which point the PC upped and fled to Seattle, unsure whether his hacker brother had gotten out alive or not ...

Paul and Caadium have some good ideas here, I feel. It is always good when the PC's think they are doing Good Things, only to find they have opened the doors of hell and hopefully feel bad enough about it to try and set things right ...

Or deal with the consequences of not setting things right...

You could throw in the Desolation Angels sooner or later, though that might as well be very obvious to one or more players (especially to the guy from Chicago). Those girls are not really conquering cities they established themselves in, though, at least not until now...

Okay, I haven't picked up some of the newer books, what are Desolation Angeles, & what book(s) are they in?

Burning Bright (Novel) and Bug City (Sourcebook) cover them the best, although I think they're some where else too.

Thank you. I inherited an old copy of Bug City, but haven't had a chance to read thru it yet. Given the next campaign I plan to run I will be reading it first.

Bug City is a great book, I seriously suggest reading Burning Bright first. It totally pays off.