So this game was insanely fun to play; and it is our first split session in this new campaign. This was played last Saturday.

As always let's start with the behind the curtains stuff-again if you're a player in my game please wait untilt he game is over to read this:

Synopsis: Griggs will contact the PC’s and offer them a chance to help blackmail a powerful UCAS Senator who has links to Humanis and a cabal of Winterknight magicians.

Situation: UCAS Senator Robert “Big Bob” Morton is a rich and powerful lawyer, and once a skilled engineer for Federated Boeing. He has now held office for 30 years, and thanks to a recent lionization treatment he stands poised to take office for several more decades. He maintains an office in Seattle, and the Federal District of Columbia. Over the years he’s faced numerous allegations over potential links to various Humanis organizations, but has eluded prosecution or serious political repercussions.

Recently Aleksander Bilotkiy had elements approach the Senator to try and make an arrangement with him-to help facilitate various Vory operations. But because of Bilotkiy’s friendly stance towards metahumans he was rebuffed. Deciding to circumvent the Senator he has retained Griggs to send a team onto the Senator’s compound and find something they can leverage to blackmail him.

Senator Morton maintains a compound next to 3 lakes in north eastern Snohomish-this compound serves as a residence for several humanis friendly terrorist cells, and as a training camp for various direct action groups. Three Lakes is located in the north eastern portion of Snohomish, near the border with the Salish.

Currently three four man teams are training on site, with a 6 man training cadre and a permanent staff of about 10. (Groundskeepers, cooks, etc…) They have the equipment to provide military style training-rappelling, boating, weapons, etc… One team is currently gearing up to make a strike against the Salish capital city with a magically powered fuel air bomb.

Orientation: Located at 47°55′9″N 122°5′28″W Snohomish sits at 500 feet above sea level. This game will commence on Thursday November 30th, 2073. Weather at this time will range from 39° to 43° Fahrenheit, with showers during the day and light snow during the nights, with temperatures dropping down into the mid-twenties. The three lakes area is heavily wooded, with a wide range of natural wildlife and fauna.

The main compound is a four story rustic looking log sided building that can comfortably house about 50 people. The Garage houses several ATV’s, SUV’s, and a number of dirt bikes and drones. Next to it is a small armory building that holds a variety of munitions and weaponry of all types. The last building is a Magical Lodge.

Security starts with an initial electrified fence, and a controlled access point that is manned by armed personnel. A secondary fence line is monitored by drones, cameras and also has an manned access point with armed sentries. Inside the main encampment there is CCTV and CCSS monitoring but the atmosphere is much more relaxed, based on the assumption that if you're there you belong. They also make use of summoned and bound spirits to both patrol and monitor the area. Each member of the encampment is encoded with some sort of RFID identification, and the compound is connected to the greater Seattle Metroplex wireless matrix. it does however keep all essential information on a separate system that is not accessible wirelessly.

There are several possible security exploits for the players: there is a series of secret subterranean caves under a portion of the north eastern portion of the fence that can allow access to average sized metahumans. However wildlife concerns as well as portions of it being submerged present unique challenges. The site is fairly independent however does require certain supplies to be regularly delivered. Chief among these are foodstuffs, and propane. They subcontract to a local company. Also the drones that monitor the facility aloft, are unarmed.

Mission: Griggs will pay the players to infiltrate the compound, and to locate material that Bilotkiy can use to blackmail the senator. It is Mission Critical that they do this quietly because Morton will quickly close down the operation if he suspects it’s been compromised.

Execution: Grigg’s will provide an initial 10k¥ for the player characters to use as an expense account. Beyond that he can provide only peripheral assistance. There are no operational time limits or requirements beyond retrieving salvageable data that Morton can be blackmailed by.

Administration and Logistics: There are no supporting teams working in the area, however there is a potentially hostile team from the Salish Rangers operating a surveillance operation in the area. They have a 4 man team-2 Shamans, and 2 Communication Specialists with a small menagerie of summoned spirits.

Griggs can provide the players with access to a small camp site on Flowering Lake. This is a fifth wheel on an improved site, that is relatively private this time of the year.

Command and Signal: Griggs will provide them with a disposable contact number for them, and they can make arrangements for other pre-coordinated signals.

Okay so the players were damned smart in this game. So here's our Dramatis personæ:

• Buck-a once homeless veteran, who now thanks to his ill gotten gains has a new home in a crappy neighborhood, but hey it's his. Also keep in mind due to some very bad experiences with native American's he has a prejudicial attitude towards native American's.
• Jason Greywolf-Native American Shaman; played by the guy who was playing the Face. Jason has a problem with the white man, and is a younger man who tends to be a little anti-establishment.
• Django: Our white trash, trailer park dwelling whiskey swilling Elven weapons adept.
• Rowdy: The Elven Rigger whose good nature is only offset by his need to find the next thrill.

We started by dealing with some background stuff, devoting a few minutes to where people are and introducing the new shaman. There was great interplay between all the players in character. Very funny, very true to character interactions. Watching Buck and Greywolf needle each other through out the meet was great. We also handle that the their Fixer announces a member of his organization was compromised, and that the players should be aware that the UCAS FBI is investigating his patron-and may have a witness that has flipped on the Patron. He lets them in on his plans to eliminate the witness, but cautions them to be careful.

The players quickly realize this ins't their average job, and that the Senator is a powerful man. After researching him thoroughly they realize this guy has built his platform on antimetahuman rhetoric. It's unlikely some pictures snapped of him goose-stepping to the Humanis beat will be the kind of leverage they've been hired to locate. After negotiating a an open ended payment deal; they accept the offer from Grigg's for usage of his improved camp site; and agree an extract and evasion plan is a good idea.

They decide to recon the area, and while they do that they also begin research into the public persona of the encampment. Discovering that the place is definitely not metahuman friendly, and that despite some fatalities in the area clearly perpetrated by Humanis members the encampment has traditionally enjoyed tacit approval from the Lone Star officers that once patrolled the district. At this point they also start looking for methods of socially engineering their way into the encampment.

There's a fun scene here while they're performing physical recon in which the Shaman comes across one of the Salish Shaman's who shares a totem type. He agrees to keep them in the loop because frankly he doesn't trust his team-who are all white, and one of whom (Buck) is clearly very anti Native American. they give him a method of contacting them if he needs to.

The players start at several local watering holes, and eventually manage to discover several things: the Senator is definitely visiting the encampment; they discover the camp uses some outside distributors to bring in food, and propane-and in a funny scene Rowdy manages to turn a dart game with a delivery driver into a street race going title for title. Great characterization by all of them.

Buck is sent by the team to the place that is clearly a Humanis watering hole and he manages to socially engineer an introduction to several recruiters who are from the camp, who after some discussion decide he is their kind of racist. They give him a card that allows him to present himself for consideration as a recruit.

The players meet up, and discuss their plans. They settle on a three fold approach. Rowdy, the rigger will begin trying to subvert the drone network while also working on getting a surveillance drone, or two, into the camp on the next delivery truck. Django and Greywolf-who thanks to the Salish in the area-now know about the tunnels are checking them out. Buck has been sent to infiltrate the camp as a recruit. Leaving most of his gear behind, he enters the camp and that's where we ran out of time for the night.

The players were awesome-asking lots of questions, and driving the game forward with great ideas, and characterization! Can't wait to finish this one!

As soon as we play the second half of this I'll update the results.

Today we're finishing this up!

I'll get a real play report up tomorrow, but this game ended with the death of two PC's; the near death of two others-who are now on the run, and hung out to dry...A lot of fun!

So last's night game saw the wrap up of our latest story arc-a campaign dealing with the player characters furthering the interest's of the Vor v. Zakone. The players were hired on as irregular asset's to perform a variety of tasks: kidnapping's, extortion, destruction of physical asset's and their final job was a black mail attempt.

Hired to black mail a UCAS senator, who had extensive contacts with the Humanis policlub. Utilizing his extensive political power to support direct action against metahumans and causes he supports. The Vor tried to utilize this information to blackmail him, but he wasn't budging. So they decide to have the players try and infiltrate a humanis camp, where the Senator is spending his break from Congress at the camp.

The PC's do a great job of infiltration-taking the time to not only get gauge the communities reaction to the compound; doing extensive research and surveillance. After settling on a plan they begin their infiltration and that's where things kind of start getting rough. First their Shaman sells them out to a Salish group, who outlines hat they plan on committing the resources to an airstrike if the PC's discover anything worth while in the compound.

In the mean time they use the one white male human character to infiltrate by actually joining the policlub. Because this club does direct action, and they're a laittle paranoid to begin with they mind probe "Buck" discovering that he's a Shadowrunner, paid by the Vor to infiltrate the compound. (Buck failed his will power roll miserably!) They then begin a quick series of mind control magics that Buck also fails to resist. So now unknown to the rest of the group their Street Samurai is playing for the other side.

To add to this the Shaman, who sold them out, and the Street Sam don't get along very well. At all. (Tensions in this group are half the fun!)

As the group manages to get some some drones inside-and they manage to get eyes on the target. As the Rigger discovers that the Street Sam has possibly been flipped, he cuts the feed to the Shaman who decides he needs to take a walk....and make contact with the people he sold out the team to. He gives them the data the team has recovered. He rewards the Shaman by shooting him in the back of the head. Leaving the Shaman for dead is arrogance on his part, and Greywolf manages to hit him with several spells dropping him. But simultaneously the NAN strike team hits the compound with a cruise missile (So long Buck), and a 4 man fire team tries to eliminate the other team members who are holed up in a fifth wheel. Django the gun adept dies in the first barrage-but Rowdy the rigger manages to survive both barrages, and the grenade that hits the trailer. (But just barely)

As gray Wolf and Rowdy meet they finally decide maybe we should contact Buck? Then the Cruise Missile hits and they figure-correctly-it's time to get the hell out of dodge. They make contact with their Fixer, and are offered a chance to come in, and "discuss" things. They correctly figure that the Fixer is probably going to tie up some loose ends and our game ends with them wounded, and on the run and hung out to dry.

Great game-great interplay between all of the characters-and a lot of loose ends were wrapped up; and their death was a great finale-in which everyone had a lot of fun. My campaign notes are posted at Dumpshock and more than anything thanks to my players who did a great job of making this a fun, hilarious and awesome time!

For those who haven't seen it, the convenient all-in-one-thread log is on RPG Haven.

I'd really like to read more logs like this. [Not bluebooks, but general play reports.] I always find it fascinating, because even after playing Shadowrun with Paul for 23 years, the things he's thinking when he GMs are completely different from the things I'm thinking [on the rare occasion] when I GM. Are there other play reports around?

Thanks as always for your reports, Paul. Like them a lot, I can see you are a good GM and can tell you and your players had a great time! Credit to your players for RPing their intra-party rivalry so well and handling their intra-party backstabbing so maturely.

One question - how did you handle your shaman's betrayl and your sammie's turning? Were other players present at the time, or did you do these scenes in private?

The scene where Buck is flipped-and his brain magically opened was set up in game at the table, but handled via email in between the sessions. So the group knew he went into the compound. They knew he'd spent several days there-but beyond that since they were not in constant communication they knew nothing.

Graywolf's betrayal was d completely at the table, with everyone else watching and chuckling. The players knew something was going on, but no one even as much as hinted at it in character.