So my players have gotten themselves in a relatively bad spot. The situation isn't hopeless but honestly extracting their fat from the fire is going to be a pretty solid test of not only their characters abilities, but their own ability to think tactically. I mostly post up here because I like to hear myself think, and because it gives me a chance to double check myself. Also i'll fess up that i previously posted this on the other board because it gets patronized by my players less, and have gotten no feedback. Maybe it's perfect, maybe it's just TLDR. But dumpshock seldom disappoints when it comes to feedback. Anyway since they saw the thread anyway I figured I might as well post here.

The Setting: New York, allowing me to contrast the relatively normal area of the surrounding burroughs and the lawlessness of the terminal and some of the worse sections of the city with the surveillance state "safe" society of the island itself. Basically we get to cater to multiple different mission types and playstyles relatively seamlessly.

The History: I have a shadowrun campaign that's been going somewhere between 2 and 3 months now. The characters have just started to get enough rep and karma going to start to receive jobs from the corporate sector where as previously they were doing business primarily for independents and the syndicates. Over the course of their exploits the Mafia came to believe that they were affiliated with some branch of law enforcement. This is based mostly on some factor or wrong time, wrong place, and their own propensity for impersonating police.

In a mission a few weeks ago they were hired to recover an item that was laying dormant and forgotten in a bank vault. Getting the item to the surface they took it to a pre-arranged location to pop it open so their Johnson could inspect the contents remotely. Their Johnson was thorough and provided them a basic biocontainment setup to open the case within and hazmat suits. They opted to suit up and have the case be opened withint he containment tent by a spirit of man, who was promptly eaten "alive". Then the stuff inside the tent breached the tent and got out into the surrounding atmosphere. Because it was relatively near downtown Manhattan NBC detectors pretty much immediately started going off. Their J commed them to let them know the deal was still on, but that they were very hot right now and needed to get rid of the other canisters of biocontaminant within the case and then deliver the artifact to him. He offered a bonus as a blow softener for this additional work.

Meanwhile as all this was happening two gentlemen with distinct irish accents attempted to path their shit and drive out of the area at high speed froma storage unit nearby. While the teams initial intent was to carjack them they instead decided to pitch the cannisters into those guys storage unit (a bolthole type setup upon further examination) and then run. They stole a boat and through various means slipped the net. They saw the Irishmen getting picked up by the cops on the highway that runs parallel to the shore.

In the intervening time they did a mission that got one fo their members a 60 second light copy spot on various new channels as he attempted to run from a flock of NYPDinc drones dragging them behind him like a cape. All's well that end's well as his crimes he was being chased for were mostly in relation to a otherwise legal fugitive apprehension so while he did get taken in by the cops no criminal charges were pressed once he paid restitution and fines.

Unfortunately, those Irishmen? They were Knights of the Red Branch, and their brothers and sisters took the whole thing kind of personal, and since the IR...err KoRB and the Mafia have a fairly good working relationship they'd already been sharing notes on the the runners. The Mob had adopted a live and let live policy, the Knights however are out for blood. The troll that was picked up in jail was arranged to be handed into Knights custody. They doped him with stuff to make him complacent while still in jail and then took him to a pub and got him too hammered to stand. They then arranged for a very conspicuous box to be visible under the riggers van when she and the rest of the team were going to go pick him up.

The full details of some of the teams previous adventures can be found at my wikia: Lurker's Shadowrun Wikia Revel in the lack of articles and long winded poorly written mission synopsis. Marvel at how only half my gaming group has done character bios even when bribed with karma.

To make things simple the team got brought to a neutral meeting spot to have a chat with the Knights with their team mates life in the balance. The Knights for their part were very straight forward, normally they kill people for getting their own picked up by the cops, but they were inclined to let bygones be bygones if the runners undid what they'd done.

Here comes one of my dreaded moral choices: The runners could break into the Roosevelt Island, then break into the max security prison there (really really hard) and rescue the guys they'd framed. Or they could break into the biohazard containment unit the coroners office in Brooklyn and steal the canisters from there (comparatively easy) and turn it over to the Knights, were were pretty gleeful about the fact that they'd love to see what happens when they dump the stuff on the shroud in Tir Na Nog. Once they agreed to the job Torkian was released by the Knights as a sign of good faith and the runners were given a deadline of three days to complete their assignment as that's when there's be an evidential hearing in the Knights case. No evidence, minimal problems.

Wanting to be out from under the Knights crosshairs in the shortest amount of time possible the runners after some initial debate set off for the Coroners office. Other then a stop by their favorite ID forger for a few ID's from his collection they opt to dress up like docwagon doing a body drop at the coroners office. Two of the team will go in as docwagon, two of the team will go in as bodies. I say sure why not. Their technomancer gets access to the buildings internals and puts them on the schedule to get them past the loading dock checkpoint with barely more then a fuss. She confirms she can't access the containment facilities network so it must be completely sequestered and accessed through hard lines or other means. The team forges ahead and triggers an alarm in the complex proper to BS their way into the containment lab. After a humorous moment where their depressurized in the airlock (so guys, make me a breath holding test!) they make it through into the containment facility proper. A tech and two guards escort them into the body storage area where the dead rise. Unfortunately their ambush isn't as quick or complete as they'd like. Turns out SR bodybags are pretty solid, something about shedim. In any case they disable the guards and the tech but the gunfire gets other guard and tech attention who trigger an alert. They make it to the vault disabling a couple guards to do so and start to work on the vault, but because of poor planing they were without proper tools having to rely on what they scrounged in the lab.

Where we broke for the night is the rigger about to disable some follow on forces, a pair of detectives rolling up and gearing up in the parking lot. It's going to take them a minimum of 10 minuets to breach the vault, quite possibly more.

So at this point i'm thinking if they don't cut and run (mission failure, but preferable to mission death) their in a bad but not completely unwinnable spot. The biggest question will be if they can retain control of the buildings matrix systems and keep the astral space clear of onlookers to deny the enemy information. The biggest thing working in their favor other then their current control of the building position and a dug in position is that NYPDinc supressed information on what was under containment, and would like to keep it that way to avoid some awkward questions. So they can't just throw tactical teams at the problem until it goes away. Current plan on my part is the block gets cordoned off under cover of "a gas leak" while NYPD sends in a single tactical team to try and ascertain the situation and infiltrate the facility. If that team fails or if they are able to determine that the runners are about to breach the vault they'll likely call for a full on multilevel response and damn the publicity. Fortunately if the runners play their cards right they should be gone or at least running from the position before the murder machine kicks into high gear.

Final stuff: I'm a hard ass GM, i reward the runners well and make them work for it. I believe at a certain level the rest of the game world is staffed by competent people, who while not necessarily on the same raw caliber as the runners individually have a fair amount of information at their fingertips and resources at their disposal. There will be no easy outs from the mission, no conspiracies of enemy of my enemy to save them. The counter to that is i seldom if ever do "oh look random happinstance to screw you" everything in my game world happens for a reason, even if that reason isn't directly related to the runners.

If their apprehended it's game over for any characters who are caught. Breaking in to a police lab to steal a WMD is not something you get out on bail on. Nor are the cops going to be in a catch and release or deal cutting mood. The smartest actual choice at this point is to run right now and not look back and get out before the response team arrives, in fact I plan on putting that to a vote at the start of the session. But presuming they commit, which I think they will, they'll ride this train through to the very end and hopefully the survivors have learned a valuable lesson about recon.

So the question is, am I being reasonable? Is there something i'm over looking that might dramaticly change the game?

Also anyone have an idea for something that could be in the lab to be looted as a door prize, something relatively portable that they could turn into some ready cash when all is said and done?

TLDR: My players really stuck their foot in it this time, any thing I should keep in mind while applying lube to the drill? And valid non fiat reason I shouldn't just do my utmost to kill them all?

Considering some of the stuff I've done in NYC, RL I mean, the idea of going ANYwhere near Riker's Island on a run just seems to be handing myself over- are you sure about the islands? RL Riker's is the prison. Roosevelt near by it luxery apartments reached by a cable car-ever see the Spider man movie that's where they got the idea.

What I would do is get the guys out of lock up with a decker hacking not rikers but the prosecutors office- weaker security than a prison, and have the Irish guys downgraded in their security class form heavy to medium- sets off fewer bells and whistles and to be transfered to Ossining about 20 miles up the Hudson river Yeah that is "the big house" aka "Sing sing" but once they are being transfered AND down graded in their threat level they are set up as much easier to break out by a well set team, either by boat on the Hudsion or a bus on the Taconic.

You could just transfer the prisoners- that would be easier, but downgrading the level of sucrutiy needed on them will mean less sec on the transfer- I mean a minor thug is not going to get the same level of coverage as a major terrorist. Once into Westchester county-out of the city you can melt into the local communities, push furtehr up the Hudson until NY levels out into farm land or even swing west into Jersey.

I've only been to new york twice. I am aware that Rykers island is the prison and I believe the prison is still there but supposedly according to the Manhattan e-book Roosevelt is now a cluster of 3 prisons that make a joint policing of the island. So yea I pulled that out of existing material. It seems somewhat counter intuitive to me as well, but then i thought about it. The prisons position isn't about making the island or it's residents safe, it's about making the prisons as inaccessable as possible. It's about keeping people the corps want to lock up locked up. Anyone trying to get to people in and out of Roosevelt by land/bridge must cross froma highly fortified area into a moderately fortified area and then can finally think about getting off Manhattan.

I figure they use Rikers still for the more mundane non-white collar, non-capital stuff.

yerah nad if you think about it, Roosevelt is designed to house lots of people,so they are just less comfortable than they are now BUT the rest of my idea still holds.Why strom the prison walls guns blazing etc etc etc when it is easier to trick the state to load the targets out of cells and on to buses themselves?

Well my first thought is if it were easy it would happen all the time. Since it doesn't happen all the time it wouldn't be easy.

I guess part of me just sees any kind of system that could effect a change of prison to be at least as well protected matrix wise as the prison would be. Plus it's 2070+ hackers are a big problem so I kind of doubt transfer from a max security prison to a minimum security prison happens without someone making a phone call. Is it impossible? Certainly not, but would it be just a matter of making a matrix hack? Eh, not really.

sure that's why you make small changes- sing sing is not an easy place to be either. You're not suddenly having Jeffrey Dahmer transfered to a fenceless mniimum sec. and if it looks like an official transfer from the AG's office they are less likely to question it. I didn't say it was easy, just easy- er.

so am i understanding correctly that the evidence is being stored in a separate, more secure portion of the facility?

or, to phrase it another way... do the police have any way of telling precisely what evidence they're after?

if the police have no way of knowing what they're after specifically (ie that they could be simply trying to grab, say, guns or drugs from another case), they wouldn't be inclined to go in. if those other things are also stored in the super-secure vault, even if the police find out they're after the vault i don't see that being an automatic panic-button (also depends on whether it's common knowledge in the police force that there's an extremely dangerous WMD in that lockup, or if it was taken care of very quietly).

as to stuff they could grab, probably all kinds of stuff if they're locking up evidence. as i already mentioned, there could be drugs or guns, there could even be cash/certified credsticks, there could be commlinks with all kinds of useful software (hacking and otherwise), and scads of blackmail material, as well as potentially pieces of evidence that the cops "forgot about" that could ruin a case against an important target. there could be second-hand 'ware as well, depending on whether or not you feel tamanous has someone there, though that seems less likely.

if it's an evidence locker they're breaking in to, there could easily be many different kinds of things of value to every sort of criminal. if it's the super-secure special mega-heavy-duty lockup, the stuff that is in there should be of extra interest. large quantities of explosives, tricked-out vehicles and drones with lots of weapons, copies of software viruses that could shut down a city... i mean, it's a locker full of stuff that was presumably deemed too dangerous to go in regular lockup, right?

I laughed so hard I nearly choked.

Well this particular lockup serves to store only two things, bodies, and the vault itself stores biohazards of a particularly troublesome nature. I was thinking since it's collocated with the morgue there might be a secret stash of second hand ware or something similar but that was the most ready thing I could actually think of that would "make sense" to be in the building.

Did they bring explosives?

Every plan is better with explosives.

No they did not, that's another way in which they kind of planned poorly.

They... didn't bring explosives. They had body bags that they could fill up with all kinds of contraband, including enough things that go boom to flatten the building and leave no trace for forensics to find, yet they brought... nothing.

My faith in metahumanity is taking a serious dive right now.

(BTW I don't believe that explosions should take place on all runs... but in any run that includes both shooting and bypassing a door, plan B should be plan BOOM!)

Actually one of the players pointed out to me they do have a breaching charge from the same run that got them into this mess, that character with the charge evidently knows he has and has forgotten or opted not to use up until this point, it would be their best chance of gettting the vault open quickly. In fact he even mentioned that if he was stuck inside a cooling unit it was how he planned on getting out, never mind it was designed to blast into a bank vault and he'd likely kill himself that way. This isssue will probably be raised at next game session. I had planned for them having the charge when i designed the scenario but figured in their poor prep they forgot it/forgot to bring it.

But yea poor prep was one of the ways they kind of messed this one, they kept thinking smash and grab and kinda just ignored the security I was describing.

so wait, he's got the charge, but would rather let the police have all the time in the world to figure out what they're doing and call in the cavalry???


....


yeah, if they decide to give the police 10 minutes to secure the area, and die as a result... well... i wouldn't feel too bad for them. frankly, after giving the police that much time, i have a hard time seeing how they could get out of there while driving anything smaller than a main battle tank. sure, the police aren't going to pull out all the stops unless they realise what the runners are there for, but 10 minutes of setup time... i would expect them to have at least a decent sized fleet of drones, including several that fly, and a rigger to run overwatch. as well as at least 4-5 squad cars, and potentially a SWAT team equivalent if the police realize this is a runner team as opposed to just being a few thugs (although sometimes, the difference can be hard to spot).

edit: oh, and once the police start getting totally shut down in terms of trying to figure out what's going on, i would say they should assume it's worthy of at least a SWAT team equivalent. especially if, for example, they take out a decently strong spirit or have managed to take over the facility's matrix presence and control all the cameras etc.

'Breaching charge' and 'biohazard' doesn't exactly sound like an healthy mix - Depnding on how the vault is designed and what exactly is stored inside the result can easily get messy. Up to spanish flu level problems.

Well they knew they were going in to steal a biological weapon, and they had plenty of room in the body bags to hide some hazmat suits on their way in...
Oh, that would require thinking, wouldn't it?
Ah, i can see this being a problem.

Some of them are hazmated up, the ones who came in the body bags, not so much as it was pointed out that would be kind of suspicious.

Suspicious... infected with bioweapon... which was your choice again?
anyway, I was thinking along the lines of 'bring the hazmat suits in one of the body bags then pull them on just before we break into the vault full of bioweapons' more than 'walk into the building in hazmat'

So, they tried to pull the Persephone Hospital Job from Firefly...


Only they completely bollocksed it up by going in Pink Mohawk instead of Black Hat.

If they do have the breaching charge (and he probably has it on him, don't assume the character's an idiot just because the player's a little forgetful,) just remind him, point-blank, that this place is literally going to be swarming with more cops than God in very short order, and using the breaching charge is their only hope to get into the vault in a hurry.


Additionally, any explosives going off in, around, or near the Vault will probably make the authorities decide to seal the whole area rather than risk whatever-that-shit-is getting airborne, which will create a window of opportunity for your players (assuming they survive) to escape the building. Cops and security guards ain't getting paid enough to tangle with something that can eat a Spirit alive in their bare skin.


Whether or not the Runners survive, is another matter. That said, I should point out that, near any "biohazard" vault, there's unquestionably going to be lockers with hazmat suits in them, you might want to point that out to them.

The problem is there already on the "hot" side of the airlock. Fortunately unless something like a glitch happens on the demo roll breaching the canisters in the vault shouldn't be an issue. I've thought about them having to make a roll for random stuff that was rolling around in the lab, but for the moment I've tabled that.

Maybe i'm not drawing the mental picture correctly for folks, hopefully i'll be able to show actual pictures. Basically this building has three parts. There's the body storage where bodies are brought in, usually by the police or docwagon and stored until an autopsy can be performed if appropriate or they can be released to the families or cremated. There's the coroner's lab where autopsies and other tests are performed. Next to the Coroners lab you have the Level 4 Containment facility this facility is pretty big, the same size as the autopsy lab and about half the size of the body storage.

The clean lab is done up to a level 4 standard which in my technobabel sort of way means it's designed to store things that are dangerous and infectuous but not world ending threats like Ebola, VIITAS, or smallpox. There is a "clean corridor" designed to get bodies being processed in from the outside of the building down to the lower level lab with minimal risk but it's presumed most of the protection will be handled by the delivering units. Inside there's a place to store suspicious bodies until they can be checked out, other laboratories for working with various biological agents and a vault for storing any research material that is confirmed dangerous in the extreme. There is also a REALLLY good incinerator, not that that's really plot relevant.

At the entrance to the hot lab there's a guard checkpoint and an airlock. That guard is the only one that has not left the building yet as he's the senior guard for the 5 person hot lab team. He's figured out the whole building network has been compriomised, he's rolled out a drone in voice only mode to help and set up his gun emplacement and is just kind of waiting. He has also called in a status update to "the powers that be" via his comlink. Before the feeds went dead when the hacker got the internal system and shut him out he saw that his last two guards within the hot lab were getting engaged by the runners, since they called in the all clear he's presuming the runners are currently trying to breach the vault.

At the start of session since the first responders are presumably getting whacked the opposition response will be to seal off the area under auspices of a a gas leak. They will send a tactical team to to the site bringing their transport up to the cordon in a bulldog and having them leg it in under cover of ruthenium polymer. They will also have fairly decent overwatch outside the building. This teams initial goal will be to get matrix access re-established at the site (i'm presuming my players cut that access ASAP) and based on the assesment that that allows they will make a tactical determination on whether to try a takedown on their own or how to proceed. If that team fails or it looks to them like it's non feasable the doom clock starts as additional tactical teams will head to the site via transport and helicopter with the intention of clearing it with prejudice. Basically this should happen around the 15-16 minuete mark.

I'm going to start next session out with a simple vote on staying on site or not. Since they already rolled for the extended test to get the vault open i'm going to find out what everyone else is doing while the B&E specialist is getting the vault open. That's going to decide a lot on how salvageable this situation is.

actually, i could totally see the incinerator coming into play.

they don't have to steal the evidence, necessarily. they could also destroy it, could they not? their main objective is making sure the evidence is not usable in the trial, stealing it is a bonus and may actually earn them a bit of favor whereas they presently are on the list of people to kill painfully if they don't get this job done... but not a requirement.

of course, that doesn't really help them all that much, unless for example they manage to incinerate the evidence and the police don't figure out that's what they're doing... in the meanwhile, they could leave with canisters that *appear* to be full of the really nasty disease. this would give them all the benefits (in terms of the police possibly being slightly less willing to risk shooting them with armor piercing rounds, for example) of carrying the canisters, but only some of the drawbacks (the police may still decide to use high-powered incendiaries rather than conventional explosives, for example, but are at least more likely to decide to switch to something like flechette rounds, which armor can help against by quite a bit, to avoid breaking the seal on the canisters... which would be bad, to say the least)

but then, that all depends on the police not figuring out that the evidence is in the incinerator. still, if the evidence is in the incinerator, well... would *you* risk turning it off and opening it up when the seal on the canisters may have been melted away? it won't help them survive any police hostility, but whoever gets away should at least not have to worry about their irish friends... if i understand the situation correctly, that is.

sadly, regardless of how they play it out, the incinerator isn't going to get them into the vault any quicker. but it may still come in handy =P

No that part was made abundantly clear, turning over the canisters to the Red Branch is the inconvenience task, them getting destroyed is essentially mission failure as far as the KoRB is concerned. Not that my players didn't consider it.

After action report.

The team disabled Sam and Twitch (the detectives first on scene) by hacking their car and backing it over them while they were getting their heavy gear out of the trunk. Twich dodged once only to be then love tapped by the teams roadmaster. Sam had to be thrown into the teams Valkyrie module to stabilize him. He was later dumped out in the road to delay some of the pursuers.

The team disabled the last guard in the building having to come under fire from the turret mounted redlines that were setup in the chokepoint area off the buildings regular grid.. In order to keep enemy hackers at bay the hacker/technomancer threw a machine sprite into the building node to oversee it and then they systematically took the node off line. The mage defeated an astrally recon opposing mage. (humorous astral combat slap fight, followed by humorous spell battle that the mage finally came out on top.)

They drove their getaway vehicle a short ways away and tried to park it in a subtle spot. That didn't work out so well for them as even in 2070 a road master isn't as subtle as a bulldog. Fortunately it didn't matter as just as some of the tac team was coming up to try and get them out of the vehicle the bomb went off so they left team girl power (the people in the van were the mage, the rigger, and the hacker, all members of the fairer sex) without them ever being aware they were present.

At 10 minuetes the team elected to abort the careful approach and blow the vault. At 1 minuetes after that (about 16 minuetes since alarm was triggered) the tac team got on site, they snuck up on and knocked out the runner trying to stake out on the roof. They then bypassed the maglock on the loading door to get in. The sprite really didn't have much chance to see them as he was only a rating 4. The team ran into the safe and snagged the canisters before running upstairs. Simultanious to the bomb going off the roadmaster moved into position in the process getting spotted and hacked into by an NYPDinc hacker. He got into cybercombat with the teams rigger and hacker and eventually was beaten down and ejected off the system but not before putting a pretty decent hurting on the teams rigger.

Team came upstairs and ran into the tactical team, a short but tense standoff ensued where the team threatened to release the bio agent. The tac team responded by calling shots specifically not to hit the canisters and a fire fight/melee broke out. The runners were getting their butts handed to them before the teams mage finally decided it was safe to get out of the van and came in and wiped them. Unable to not hit one of her team mates with an AOE stunball she opted not to give him counterspelling after recalling his "blood rage" problem and reasoning she would rather have him out cold then thinking she was the enemy. She and the remaining standing teammate hauled him to the van. Since the rest of the tac team had left their compatriot on the roof they sent a spirit to get him.

All taking off off they had to evade pursuit a bit but eventually made it into upstate new york and loosing their pursuit. They ditched their vehicle, grabed the canisters and hiked into town. They contacted the Knights and handed off the canisters without a fuss. They got some pay data off the system which they were able to fence for ok cash to offset expenses and go into the team kitty.

On the whole I felt pretty good about this session. The players knowledge of the rule system has come a long way so all the combats tonight went fairly quickly. The players seemed to have fun and are already discussing changes and improvements they could make after they take a little vacation out of town. There were a couple times I made some missteps with the opposition that probably would have killed or incapacitated more of the party, but on the balance I was ok with that as an outcome as the team was suitably threatened and beat up by the time all was said and done.