My Shadowrun game has been on rocky footing for a few months, due to scheduling and the loss of a player due to work. Currently the group is only 3 players. All of the characters are mundane, and none of them has hacking skills (the Technomancer is the one who got a new job and stopped being able to attend).

It is in this environment that I sent them on the run in question. Combat-wise, they're actually quite competent, so I thought it would be fun to put them up against a magical foe: in this case, an evil Free Spirit. The problem, it seems, was with my execution.

The fixer hooked them up with a Johnson, but made it clear he knew little/nothing about what the Johnson wanted. They met in a park; the Johnson was an Asian woman who claimed that the government had taken her children away and given them to foster parents, and was refusing her visitation. She wanted the kids to be stolen back. The kids were still young, and were assumed to have been taken early enough that they might not recognize her, or even realize that they were adopted.

Footwork turned up nothing of interest on the parents. Corp workers, nothing special, living in a middle-class part of Renton. Records of adoption aren't going to be accessible by a Data Search check (at least, that's what I figured), and the TM left around this time, so their vague plans to hack into the records to check never materialized. I did let them gain access to some street-level surveillance photos of the area around the park where they met the lady - she never emerged from the park. They asked a hacker contact to look her up, but the hacker found absolutely nothing. They seemed to just assume that either their hacker friend sucked, or this person was super-connected; no suspicion of anything supernatural.

The kidnapping happened. They noticed that the kids were wearing biomonitors, but didn't remove them. They used tranq patches and left the house....I figured it was reasonable that exiting the house at 2am with wired-up kids would set off an alarm, so they were attacked by some drones. Very little came of it: they got to the van, the drones tried to shoot at the side of the van a little (mainly to mark it) but couldn't keep up for long, and the players easily disposed of them.

The next session was kind of fun, since we got to use the chase rules after the police started a pursuit. During the chase, one of the players wanted to fire on the patrol cars with his LMG, but it was an armored rigger van, so I was like "dude, you can't just stick that thing out of a window...I don't even think there are windows in the back". So he opened the side door and fired, but nearly got thrown off when the van was rammed. One of the kids almost flew out of the open door, but he caught them. I think it's reasonable to say that the patrol car's dash-cam would have caught him though.

The thing is they didn't seem to have a great idea of where they wanted to run to, and they ended up going to Redmond. None of the players are from Redmond, or have contacts there, so when they asked for a safehouse there, I was like "uh...wait, what?" The van had been pretty badly damaged during the case (they got rammed by a patrol car and lost half of the damage boxes on the van), so I let them find an abandoned service station. I had a police drone following them from afar after the end of the chase, and it took a pot-shot at one of them. They bailed soon after, and shot up the drone. They spent the night in an abandoned lot, with the rigger doing some basic repairs on the van.

Next morning, they made contact with a smuggler contact to try to find a route back to Puyallup, since going through the city didn't seem safe. They also heard a news report about the kidnapping, including a note that there had been other disappearances in previous months. At various times during this op, by the way, the kids would wake up, scream, beg to be taken home, and were usually tranq'd again or gagged. Anyway, the smuggler agrees to help and gives them a route that will take them briefly into Salish territory, in exchange for them delivering a small package. The delivery goes fine. I tried to spice things up with some random encounters, but the players avoided them.

At some point the players buy some food from a service station, and it occurs to all of us that the kids haven't been fed or allowed to use a bathroom. They feed the kids some snake jerky that they bought in Salish, and when they arrive in Puyallup they get some fresh, cheap clothes and wipes for the kids to clean themselves up with (looking back on it, the oldest kid was like 7, so this seems kind of ridiculous). Anyway, the brief time with the kids ungagged gives the kids another chance to ask what's going on, but no info is given. At the meet with the Johnson, one of the kids looks at the woman (by this time, the kids had been told they were being given to their mother), turns to one player, and says "that isn't my mother".

The woman comes over, hugs the kids, and soon after both kids claim to recognize her as their mother. She pays the group, gets in her car, and drives off. A day or so later, the players hear on the news that the kids' bodies were found, mostly eaten. Tests for HMHVV on the remains were negative, so it wasn't ghouls.

The players seemed a bit unsatisfied, and I definitely was. Suddenly they cared that they handed the kids over to a child-eating abomination, but various times during the op when I dropped hints that there was an odd lack of info about this woman, and no reason why the family would be a target of corporate espionage, nobody was suspicious or thought to question their Johnson's motives.

I'm taking responsibility for this, though. I think I just ran a crappy game, and the gaps in play sessions didn't help at all.

Not really sure what the problem is.

They did a job, they got paid.

What's the issue ??

That they didn't realise something was "suspicious" ??
That it was children ??

Based on what you've said, I don't see anything wrong with the sessions.

@JonathanC
Sounds like a great plot to me. A bit dark for my taste, but well though out.

Thats the hard thing if you play, sometimes you loose.

I do not know your players, but depending on the character I would like a possibility to repend. Meaning a (very) hard way to track this abonimation and scatter her spiritual energy to the end of the universe and beyond. (So R&R repend and revenge)

Eh, I don't think they really got the feeling of making a moral choice. During the op, they were cool professionals, one player was like "man, f--- those kids, I don't care what they have to say". After the op, he was super-pissed at the fixer, like "what the hell?! You sent us to work for a goddamn flesh-eater!".

I feel like I failed to elicit the responses that I was looking for (either they would get moral and try to protect the kids, or remain immoral, accept what they'd done, and would be targeted for reprisal later). Instead, it just feels like they made decisions based on bad information, or info I didn't convey to them completely/correctly. The most obvious hint was at the end, but they said that by then, it was "too late", and the lady would have just mind-controlled them too.

But hey, maybe they're just trying to justify a game that ended with them assisting a cannibal. It just wasn't fun, and having made my players feel bad for what they did (even if their characters might not), I just feel like I failed as a game master. Plus, now it just casts a pall on things. I want some closure for the story, but I'm not even sure how I'd do that. The Free Spirit is out in the world, has no reason to re-hire the same Runners, and really the main link for the authorities would be the smuggler contact (who didn't know the details, but knew the group was on the run from something, and was driving a van) and while he's only Loyalty 2, I'd feel like kind of a jerk if I made him flip on the players.

Your players weren't thinking on their toes and they got the "Bad Ending" to your adventure. They missed the twist ending, so it wasn't an entirely satisfying conclusion.

Why not come up with another adventure for them to get to the bottom of the child murders? Maybe their fixer knows what happened, and keeps his eyes out for another job dealing with finding missing children. At some point this Free Spirit is going to target someone with the Nuyen to hire Shadowrunners when her kids suddenly go missing, or worse, end up as half eaten corpses. She's going to want to get to the bottom of it, and needs Shadowrunners to do it. The Fixer can get the Runners signed up for that job, as a way to get revenge on whomever manipulated them into a plot dealing with killing kids.

There's always the possibility that the players would want to go on that adventure ANYWAYS just because they're "Good Guys" and realized their mistake... but in my experience Shadowrunners are rarely of that high moral character. You're gonna have to dangle some Nuyen in front of them.

I think their responses are great.

The scenario is exactly the sort of thing that takes characters from being thugs with guns to being characters.
Now they've been shocked out of their thugs with guns world and realise there's more to life.

As others have mentioned, this is a great lead for monster hunting games or just games where they think more and do things for better reasons than just for money.

In many ways, I think the sessions were a great win.

I think the obvious "fix" here is to channel that frustration and outrage, and offer them a gig going after that child-eating monster-bitch. Maybe Knight Errant contacts them (complete with some footage of their kidnapping), and offers to wipe that crime away if they can go "take care of" this situation. They're in a unique position to track down whatever is stealing and eating kids, cops in the setting have a long history of sending murderous shadowrunners on jobs that the cops themselves can't/shouldn't do...your players get some emotional closure, you get a couple more adventures out of it, everyone wins.

Could try hitting them in the reputation. Was going to do that with one group after they delivered a smuggler back to his boss (which ended with said smuggler's death) rather than just delivering the lost goods & helping the smuggler skip town. Just casual remarks from Johnsons and such about it in later jobs, and give them harder times when dealing with coyotes as well ("yeah, heard about you guys. it's gonna cost extra for you.") kind of thing. But two players moved out of state and the whole thing fell apart, and I never got to do it.

Sure there's gonna be some that don't care they're kidnappers who deliver to cannibals, but there will be others who won't like dealing with those who do.

As a GM who tends to run Bad End/Dystopian type games, you have to learn to accept that your players will at times be completely oblivious, or worse, willing collaborators to the evil things that power players try to pull off. It doesn't really faze me anymore when players fail to pick up on subtle hints or willingly carry out horrible acts for a quick buck. As long as you make it obvious somewhere down the line, they'll enjoy it (provided everybody's on board with the People Are Terrible campaign from the beginning). The big reveal at the end is what keeps people interested, whether it's a Shadowrun game or a TV series. Heck, in Los Angeles it's both!

Except the imaginary children that were eaten. Won't SOMEONE please think of the imaginary children!!!

Aside from that, Critias has it right. You didn't do anything wrong, the players just weren't being paranoid enough. In a sense, you got lucky as an SR GM, as your players probably aren't going to take what your NPC's say at face value anymore.

The problem with dropping hints is that sometimes they players just don't get them. Even if you had included something blatant like a news report about other kids turning up dead might be missed, ignored or just plain forgotten between sessions.

However, as others have mentioned, you now have a perfect opportunity for a follow-up run that the players will want to do, rather than you having to convence them to do it. That's the dream of every GM.

The thing is, they often don't trust NPCs (usually when they're playing semi-straight) and seem paranoid about all sorts of things. Anyway, I'm taking the advice in this thread to heart.


Detective Hal Pedroni is an Awakened Knight-Errant detective who has been investigating the kidnapping/murder and is link to a possible supernatural beast. He has dash-cam footage indicating one of the PCs, and claims to have a witness who can tie them to the van and the kidnapping (should put some paranoia into them over whether the smuggler betrayed them, or they were seen by someone else; they handed over the kids in an empty parking lot near the Crime Mall in Puyallup). He uses this to coerce/convince the PCs to agree to hunt this thing. None of them have leads yet though, until the next disappearance...


During the downtime, I was going to let them "relax" with a simpler run. Their fixer (none of them took a fixer contact, so I gave them Smiley from the On The Run adventure) has gone to ground after the blowback from their last job, so their only lead on work is the smuggler who helped them escape last time. He offers them a similar job to the "favor" they did for him before: delivering boxes of an unknown substance to rural parts of NAN territory. In this case, it's a run of four villages/towns. Opposing them will be a Salish narco unit (they don't know the PCs, but will be watching the folks they're delivering to), a go-gang that likes to hijack random shipments out of Seattle, various wildlife (if they ever get out of the van to camp), and I plan to have their third meetup interrupted by an attack from a rival NAN syndicate (the attack has little to do with them, but they'll be caught in the middle).

When they return to Seattle, dusty and tired from their delivery run, they'll have a message from the detective waiting for them.

JohnathanC, I don't see a single thing wrong with the outcome of the run. That is actually exactly how I would run that adventure if the players played it that way, and I actually ran a very similar scenario where the runners turned over a "liberated" child to the person who was actually the kidnapper. The kid died, and the players learned a lot of valuable lessons about legwork and background checks.

Lessons learned this way are lessons *actually* learned. I think it does the whole table a lot of good when you've run games in the past that make them think about their actions and the consequences afterward.

There's actually been a few times when I've been running a straight forward adventure that I felt the players caught on and started to play it loose and lazy. When that happens I'll add a twist on the fly that could have been avoided with some simple legwork and that gets everybody back into the game. Make them pay for being lazy and reward them for being diligent and you'll see the players get more engaged into the game as a whole. At least in my experience.

I get the feeling that you haven't been GMing for all that many years (if I'm wrong I apologize), so trust me when I say you're doing it right. Just the fact that you say "I think it seems reasonable that..." means that you're looking at the game from the right perspective in my opinion.

I've been running for a while, but it's been a little spotty in recent years, and I wasn't at my best when I was running this adventure, to be certain. I think a lot of my dissatisfaction is from a lack of preparation/laziness on my part that I intend to correct. I definitely appreciate the advice I'm getting here; I went from being kind of unsure that I should still be running this campaign to having a reinvigorated interest.

Sounds great, to be honest!

I'm in with the rest saying that the first run was good, and your plan to include the detective to bring them into part two sounds good as well. Give the players a fair opportunity for some revenge, and you can always bring them into further work using someone threatening to spill the beans on their involvement in the child-killings.

If the campaign runs on, I suggest having things related to the first run pop up now and again, as long as the players seem to enjoy it (a bit of frustration is desireable here, just make sure it doesn't go too far).

Having an arch-nemesis for your group can be great fun!

One shot thing: I would NOT Blackmail them with anything. If they kill the beast, let them be the heros. And only they knew their dark secret.
A Blackmail is an other source of frustration. And beeing tricked by a child eating monster, could have filled their frustration-meter for good...


I would advice against it.
Two reasons:
First: Could add sour feelings of beeing tricked by the GM.
Second: Does not at to the dramaturgie. Would actually reduce the dramaturgie if they are not after that beast out of their own interest.

The ending of them beeing even cheered at for bring down this child killer and the characters knowing that they did it partly to cover up their own tracks, asking themself how far the differ from the beast they killed is, in my humble opinion, much better.

I don't think the problem is your GMing or the story but rather, you have obtuse players. It could be that your clues were too vague but I doubt it.

- J.

It's exceedingly difficult for mundanes to interact with powerful spirits and not get screwed. You can't tell that they are not what they appear to be and even if they somehow suspect anything influence can fix that. On the entire group at once. Spirit has 12+ dice (plus edge), players have 3, tell me who wins that one?

Which, btw, is an out for why the players/characters suspected nothing.

Honestly, I like the run. It was well thought out and is what I would consider a classic "Mirrored Shades" run. It's not your fault the players didn't do their homework and got screwed. I pull the same trick on my group during the technomancer scare (we started during the events in Emergence). They broke in, captured a secretary that turned out to be a TM who was then dissected for her brain. It was a pretty polarizing run for our group; it was especially shocking for our own TM. She realized that by selling someone else, they weren't going to come after her and it made an impact on both the player and the character. Sadly, I never revisited it and I really regret that now. The fact you're giving them a follow up and a way to redeem themselves is great.

The only thing that I maybe would have done differently is what I call "gut feeling checks." I'll have members of the group who IRL seem a bit unsure about what they're doing roll a Logic + Intuition test and I'll give them a gut reaction. (As a side note, my players are pretty good at not meta-gaming, but some tables would require you to roll this behind the screen.) To me this represents that odd feeling at the back of your mind telling you something isn't quite right. When used correctly, it can be used as a soft-prod to make players consider avenues they wouldn't otherwise. Right at the end, I would have allowed any players that were unsure to make the check and used that as a final frying-pan-to-the-face hint that something might be up.

The same way Call of Cthulhu characters handle it.

That's a good idea that. I like it. Nobody EVER takes Common Sense as a quality, especially the ones that need it...

- J.

Sounds like the players dropped the ball here, with their lack of legwork and lack of following-up on legwork that went south.

That said, a Free Spirit isn't really a good encounter for a group of mundanes. There's pretty much no way they can hurt it, short of busting out heavy artillery from Arsenal or going full-auto with Stick n' Shock cheese. And, of course, it can just mindfuck them all.

Might I suggest that instead of blackmailing them, the Knight Errant Detective gets that they genuinely believed they were reuniting lost children with their genuine mother? Maybe he did the same thing - took a side job, off-the-books, to help this sweet Asian lady get her kid back, only to find out after-the-fact that he'd been mindfucked into handing innocent kids over to a kid-eating monster.

He goes from being a blackmailer to being a contact and an ally. Their problem then is that they're a bunch of mundanes on a mission to take down a nasty Free Spirit, and Mundanes are generally unequipped to do that. Then the goal becomes twofold: (1) track the bitch down, and (2) figure out how in the hell to kill the goddamn thing, or at least seal it up so it's never gonna hurt anyone ever again.


It also sounds like they're going to need to make some wizzer contacts. That, and/or recruit some new players, at least one of whom can hack, and one of whom is wizzer.

Just for the record? Normally, I'm not a fan of blackmail (because to a PC it often feels like just getting yanked around by the nose, and that sucks). But remember, in this case, these people are on video as (a) kidnapping a couple little kids to hand them over to something that ate them, and (b) shooting at a cop car with a machinegun, then nailing a police drone, too.

I think starting off the conversation with "boy, did you guys fuck up. You want a way out of it?" is pretty fair, given the circumstances. Over time their Knight Errant guy can turn into a regular contact, sure. But it's an instance where I think it's perfectly kosher for them to be starting out in a big hole, and have to try digging their way out of it.

This isn't even blackmail, really. It's negotiation and making deals and tying up loose ends.

Don't want to work with the police? It's cool. But they did leave a lot of evidence that could cause them trouble later.

Work with the police? Then they get a chance to "right the wrongs" and maybe have some goodwill / contacts with the police for later.

And don't get placed in general population as baby killers. ...

I too will second what everyone is saying, great run. The fact the PCs feel remorse for what they have done (and are probably kicking themselves for missing all the clues you gave them) is great, and you are right to give them this awakened detective to help them follow up and achieve closure.

Might be difficult to pull off, but I might have the detective close in on them as the perps at the beginning. Det Pedroni has been working this case since the beginning, knows or strongly suspects there is awakened evil at work, so when he pulls in a bunch of mundanes things just aren't adding up. Should they submit to a voluntary Mind Probe, he will realize they were duped and decide to enlist their (unpaid or underpaid) help to catch the spirit.

As others have pointed out, mundanes against magic doesn't always go well, so perhaps Pedroni could go along with them for magical support (as well as to keep his eye on them). Beware the pitfalls of the GMPC (another thread here), so be sure to make it a one-off, but like others are suggesting, if it goes well he can become a recurring contact for the group.

Good luck!

Not your fault. If they all got the bright idea to roll street sams instead of a balanced team, it's their fault. Somehow, my usual RPG crew (Blue Oni, Artoo, me and optionally Ryu) always manages to roll a versatile team without any nagging. I usually play as the sneaky git and/or the shootist, Artoo is the party tank, Ryu goes for social character and Blue Oni is either a mage or a healer. Even funnier, once we rolled a completely different party for a L5R campaign and got a setup similar to our usual one, just with players swapped. Hell, even the players I GM my Shadowrun game for went for completely different characters, they have a B&E guy, a hacker, a shaman and a rigger.

I don't think so. If there was any problem on your side, it was the fact that you sent three mundanes after a spirit. First, they can't know what they're dealing with, second, once they figure out, they have no sure-shot way of taking it out.

Most important question: were the kids Asian? If not, strike one. No data on the Johnson? Strike two (never underestimate your contacts). Odd behavior (cams didn't pick her leaving the park even once)? Strike three, your players suck.

...they kidnap kids wearing biomonitors and don't even try to check if they're not connected to the home security system? Their own fault of not having a versatile team with ANY hacking capability. You should have turned the van into a van-sized colander right then and there, added a siren loud enough to wake up everyone in the radius of four-five blocks AND dispatch the local cops with "urgent" code. Your players got criminally lazy or criminally stupid, or both.

Of course it caught him, and pretty clearly, I'd say. Every street surveillance camera and drone should recognize him on sight and cause every cop in the radius of four-five blocks to drop his donut and apprehend the guy in seconds.

Nice going. You should have forced them deep into the Barrens and throw anything living there at them. You get a clear signal they have no idea what they're doing - you're free to royally fuck them up.

OK, here's where your GMing starts limping. If you want a random encounter to happen, you make it happen. Players try to avoid it, you make them regret it. A highway duel between Ancients and Halloweeners? Your players help one side, they get some help, and they don't get any trouble from the other side. If they don't help, they get a horde of really, really mad Ancients or Halloweeners coming right at them, ready to wreck their shit (reinforcements). But still, if your players can't connect the simple facts that there's a streak of kidnappings and their job gets chalked up as a part of it, there's something wrong with them.

Jesus fucking Christ, are your players retarded. They got three clues that something doesn't add up: surveillance cams didn't catch the Johnson leaving the park and she's a blank, clue one. Streak of kidnappings, clue two. "That's not my mommy", clue three. My usual crew, even if they happen to catch an Idiot Ball from time to time, would most probably whip out their guns and demand explanations.

No, they screwed up. If they didn't take notes or even remember the most important things happening in the game, it's all their fault and theirs only. Now you have all the plot hooks to kill them double-dead if they don't allow themselves to get arrested and interrogated by that cop mage. Do it.

Dude that's a great story. Don't feel bad. They've learned that this ain't D&D so now they'll hopefully be more cautious....

Or start the descent into madness that leads to death by SWAT assault. Bring it pigs!

Here is the only part I'm a little confused on. Why did the kids suddenly change their minds about her being their mom?

Probably some sort of mindwarping magic. It was a spirit, after all, and the runners were all mundanes, so they might not have any way to tell.




-k

Influence.

She's have done the same thing to the entire team had they decided to back out. From the point where they met her they were hosed.

Not if they were smart and prepared themselves. Well assuming the GM is not running a railroad.

All mundanes, without a clue that she was a free spirit? No, you are hosed. She thinks "why would you suspicious of me, everything I'm asking you to do is all perfectly reasonable" and (unless you beat her 12+ dice with your 3 or so) you are not suspicious of her. EVER, as there is no duration on influence.

Well, ok, she can't start munching on a kid in front of you, but you'll ignore any of clues she might drop or any doubts people would express, etc.

I did something like this once for a Halloween Run... my players still get cagey when I mention kids now, and that was 3 years ago.


Honestly, I don't see your dilemma. They thought to hire a decker to check her out, but never thought to check for magic-esk stuff. They missed something. Did you make sure to give them opportunities to make related skill checks (if they are applicable)? If you did, seriously the pressure is off. SR isnt a happy game.

SR should be a happy game. It might not be about happy stuff, but you should have fun playing it. JonathanC, I think you're on the right track. Not just plot-wise, but because you're trying to keep the game enjoyable and engaging for the players.

I wasn't going to post here because all the important things have been said. But... some seriously fucked up shit in this post, so sorry.

@JohnathanC: Mistakes were made, by you and by your players. But do not listen to this guy:


That's just plain stupid. A GM can direct and voice concerns, but if the players don't want to play what you want them to play, then you either adapt or step down. Adapting means giving them runs that are suited to their team - a team of sams will just get muscle runs, or somethign else mainly to take them out of their element.

Of course making them feel the deficiencies of their team isn't bad - they will find out quickly that you absolutely need some utility. There are just fun ways and unfun ways to to do this.

For a mundane to connect those dots to her being a free spirit is just metagaming.

That is stupid. So obviously they are still learnign the game. Let them learn without frustrating them. I do believe they got off too easily, too.


Uh... you don't GM much, do you? And if you do, your players must be real masochists.

Railroad much? that's easily the most retarted advice I've read in a long time.

You want them to metagame and then screw with the J. Much good that would do them. The ONLY thing they could have done was call off the deal right there and leave with the kids and without money. That would have resulted in being mind-fucked, with the best outcome they don't get paid and she takes the kids. There are many worse outcomes I can think of.


Seriously, how do you keep players? They must really enjoy being railroaded and stand in awe of your great schemes and mad GM skillz.

Again, good advice was given on this thread. Just not in the quoted post.

So, JohnathanC, what're you gonna do with your players? I'd love to hear an update to this one.



My personal suggestion, regardless of whatever else you do, is don't turn the screws on them. They already feel crappy about it, in-character and out-of-character. They done stepped in it big time and they probably realize that now. Hell, if you want to give them a break-away from it, move 'em to another city with new faces and give them this little incident as a Dark Secret negative quality. Alternatively, have your Knight Errant detective be sympathetic to the fact that they got mindfucked into it (whether or not you actually had that be the case at the time, have him assume it - if he does, that will let them feel better about the fact that they may well have been mindfucked into it. Who's to say they weren't? Metagaming? Maybe you're just a really good GM and you set things up so that they'd see what they should see if she were using Influence to make everything seem kosher,) and be more "we need to get this thing, before it kills again," and less "I own your asses now, bitches."

I've loved reading this thread and, just to re-iterate what everyone else has said, it sounds like a really good story and a (semi) successful run.

Now, every group is different and you know how yours will react much better than anyone on here can. What I would follow it up with would be a session starting with them being hunted by the police for kidnapping, firing at an officer and numerous other crimes. Assuming (we've established they have no qualms about shooting at police) they put up a fight then it becomes a man hunt. They have to vanish, need new SINs and new faces.

This may be just me, but in our group we love survivalist missions. They're very character building. I always think characters should have a strong self preservation instinct, and it's good to play out. We never actively try to run manhunts, but it (too) often ends up that way and we have a great time roleplaying it. Only 50% of the characters will survive, but they'll be grateful to have done so and they'll learn from their mistakes.

This article has some pretty good advice for running games where there are mysteries to be solved. It's not quite as relevant to SR as it is to some other games, as this thread shows, sometimes the players messing things up can lead to some great fun^^, but it's a good set of guidelines regardless.

Seconded, the methods described there are absolutely great. I've been using them to great success for the past few runs.

And sorry you will be.

I wasn't saying that as a GM, I was saying it as a player. GM has nothing to say about the sort of PCs he wants in his adventure - it's up to the players to come up with a team where everyone has some unique talent. I didn't say a thing to the players in my SR campaign, and yet they managed to come up with four completely different characters that allow me to give them varied jobs. They don't have a street sam, so I'm not going to throw waves of mooks against them, but considering they're all WOD players, they're more used to being a sneaky git.

Did I fucking say ONCE that they should have figured out she's a free spirit? NO. All I said was that there was something very odd with her that should have set off any paranoia alarm they had. They got their three clues and ignored them.

Well, if they're playing for at least a few months, and probably use biomonitors themselves, they should already know what they are and how are they used. I would give my players some really obvious hints they've just stumbled upon a security risk ("So, guys, you're in a high-security zone, with shitloads of alarms and armed guard drones everywhere, and the kids you're kidnapping are wired to biomonitors. What do you do?").

Masochists? No, no, you're getting it wrong. First, they escaped to the Barrens, with two corporate kids. Gangers think "RANSOM!", ghouls think "FOOD!", Tammyknockers think "SPARE PARTS!", players should at this point see what's brewing (I'm not advocating dropping a bridge on them, but scaring them is a nice idea) and leg it. Plus, having the kids kidnapped from them at gunpoint by a horde of gangers would be a nice plot point. They allow the kids to get kidnapped, retrieval is a mission and they can pick up some goodies from the gang's hideout. They resist, let's say the gangers overestimated themselves and now word on the street is there are three badasses out there and the locals should tread lightly. Even hinting at this course of action and making the situation tense is enough.

It's not railroading if players can earn something from it. I surely didn't tell my players they HAVE TO fix the shot-up Ancient, especially if there's a black clinic in the back of the bar they're in. But now the Ancients have heard of that elf shaman who helped one of them for no reason at all and might see the team a little differently. The racist hacker didn't want to race with an Ancient half an hour before, no problem.

For the second fucking time, I'm not metagaming. Players see something is wrong, they either pressure the J or call off the deal. This way or the other, things get ugly and they should already know it. The GM was throwing three clues after three clues at them, for fuck's sake! Are you "retarted" not to see this?!

It's the only logical course of action, so if they don't change IDs and faces quickly, that's what is going to happen: they'll get apprehended and should get all the hints in the world that either they give up and get a shot at revenge, or they resist and they're dead.

That would be going head to head with the spirit, which I would not consider to be smart or well prepared. If the enemy has a chance to use an ability, you have not prepared well. By your method no one would ever have a successful CoC game.

@Daylen
Well, you they would have had NO Chance to know or to prevent. So...

@Brainpiercing7.62mm

Here I actually totally disagree. If your group is giving you a break by playing all mundane, you do not need to kick them for it.
It ain't a problem to change the world to "low-magic" (like it SHOULD BE).
@Seriously Mike

It is one thing to see clues written down and an other thing to get them ingame.
(If you start reading a book, of which you know already the ending, you will probably see the "clues" which tell you how it will end...

It changes the nature of the confrontation, but maybe not in a good way.

A free spirit is dual natured, but many can hide it with aura masking, this one certainly had realistic form, if not mutable form. A mage who decided to asense her becomes dual natured, which the spirt will certainly notice. This means the spirit knows she is being asenssed and can respond if the mage's eyes suddenly get wide etc if he manages to somehow penetrate her masking.

What happens after that is up to the spirit and the mage. High force spirits with full magical ability are really dangerous and often have completely non-human motivations and reactions.

But he was hinting at things getting weird with the Johnson and the job time after time. Of course they could come to a wrong conclusion, like the J being some secret government or corporate project member (probably Aztech, because who else would be so evil to kidnap dozens of kids), insect shaman or Tamanous, but when we (me and my team) get a clue thrown at us, there's always a brainstorm over it. These guys acted like "get in, get the goods, get out, get paid, get drunk". In a world where Johnsons often like to fuck you over for the sheer hell of it (see: "Buzzkill"). OK, maybe I play mostly backstab-heavy systems like WOD and L5R, but Shadowrun was never light on backstabs either.

@Seriously Mike
Sorry, but negative clues are very often "the GM did not think about it" and are ingame ignored.

Yes, you can take a jump at the GM whenever the shadows he is describing do not fit the time of day...

The "Thats not my mom"-part sounds like a decent give away, but again I was not in the room. I do not know how this turned out in play.

No way to know? Other than ignored clues? Its called investigation. They should have found out more about their client before handing over the kids. Perhaps setting up a fake meet where the person meeting her is a dumby and the party is hiding to better observe where she goes after the meet. Even a completely mundane group should have some idea of how to hide from and observe magic users successfully, otherwise they are just fodder. Drones, hidden cameras, hiding in large groups of people to throw off detection spells etc. Pink Mohawk is not the only way.

@Daylen
We were talking about the influance power. Or at least I was talking about it.
There is no way you may stop a force 10 spirit alias johnson from using that on you.
This thing will probably have aura masking, it may possibly appear in any form it likes. So the only thing you may get up front is the fact, that the guy you will meet with has no "background".

This all really depends on how much RP is in your RPG. If you are used to getting to know everything about your NPCs down to the name of any pet animal they had since they were born, it is easy for the players to get behind it. And in such a game there will be hundreds of occasions to make a will roll against the influance power. If you don't...

Yes, and I've done that, too. I've even gone to no-magic worlds for completely mundane groups. So... alright, if you have a group of Sams you had better tune up the 'hawk. But NO investigative skills? I mean, seriously, even a bunch of sams need SOMEONE to who can get a some info. And if its just a contact. (Maybe they did that? Don't remember right now.)

@Seriously Mike:
Your earlier comments were harsh, and your advice borderline unfun. That's all I was getting at. Even with all the investigations in the world they would not have been able to stop the deal the moment they met the J in the park, because at that moment they would have been officially dead, or worse. Their investigations would have had to produce precise info that they are dealing with a spirit, and also precise info as to how to deal with her.

Personally, the run could really not have gone any other way. I would have said an F8 spirit is PLENTY to make a group of mundane runner piss their pants; depending on their hardware I would have used F7 or 8, personally. I am currently GMing a run not unlike this one, and I'm still debating with myself how high to go with the force. And we DO have a perfectly capable mage. The spirit still has the edge in each individual DP.

@JonathanC--A suggestion for next time could have been to have the runners make a Perception Test when the spirit used the Influence power (presuming that was in fact what she did). At a Threshold of (6-Force) it becomes pretty easy to see the magic. Even if they don't catch that she's a free spirit, they'll get the vibe of the Johnson just brain-locked two kids which generally ends badly.

Good luck and I heartily agree with the others that this is recoverable--give them a chance to wallow in anger for the time between sessions and offer them the carrot of hunting down the chica. Since they know she can mess with people's minds and they don't have an Awakened talent, maybe offer them drugs to send them tripping through the metaplanes to find her home and true name. Or break out the folklore and give it some kind of effect--turning your clothes inside out will help protect your from fey magic for example. Toss them something to balance the playing field a little, or the spirit could suffer from Evanescence and require the children to rebuild her strength. If they see a pattern of new kidnappings every three weeks, she is probably weaker in weeks 2 & 3, then right after feeding.