We had a run once where we had to exterminate drug dealers in Oakland (for another drug dealer to grab more power) and came across Mr. Happy the Troll and his meth lab.

Now, one of the runners had the bright idea of tossing a gren into his window. Remind you this is a METH LAB he has thrown it in to. possessing no gas mask, I run like hell only to find that Mr. Happy is chunkafied but not his house.

Would this be a time that would would implement collateral damage? If so, would you also do it if the runners kicked down the door and started firing SMG bursts into the room (which could possibly hit vials and bottles of who-knows-what?)

The rule for when to apply collateral damage is "early and often".

~J

Heh, that reminds me that one time I was running a premade D&D module and there came a point where the PCs were in a huge room with a shaft going down in the middle. In the huge room at the bottom of the shaft, there was a gigantic room filled with compost. The PCs were chasing some kobolds where were descending, so one of them had the bright idea to fling a fire spell down the shaft...

In other words, I like collateral damage when it's obvious that it should be used

Absolutely. The lab should've exploded muchly. Even if you hadn't gone with grenades and instead opted for a dynamic entry with SMGs blazing, the muzzle flashes could certainly have set the place off. The entire block could go like that. There's a reason meth labs are almost always set a decent distance away from everything.

When the people operating them have any clue what they're doing, that is.

~J

Generally if you're putting out crystal meth, your last concern is for public saftey

Though if you can easily blow yourself up when you know what's dangerous and what's not, I'd say firing indiscriminately into one would likely cause mcuh the same effect.

Was this one of my runs, by any chance?

And if yes, http://dec.co.riverside.ca.us/Images/drugPhoto1.jpg is what'll happen next time.

To make matters worse, the smoke is corrosive. Gotta love cyber getting melted, and mages needing magic-reducing reconstructive surgery. That's why so many meth labs are in parks or forests or other outdoor locations.

Or trailer parks. Can't get worse!

Ahh, meth labs. Reminds me of something odd thathappened awhile back. Some neighbors of my uncle (who lives in a good part of town mind you) had some horrible neighbors and not too long ago it was found out they were running a meth lab in the basement of their house, along with a day care center!

I can't remember if it was next door or down a house or two though. Obviously those people had no regard for public saftey in their operation though.

I had a player dive off his bike one time. the bike was going the wrong way down I-5 at about 200kph. It was that or get munched by the semi.

Lots, and lots of collateral damage. It was a fuel tanker

In general, if you're smart, you build it away from things not because of public safety. You do it because you don't want some wandering teenager to duck in, light a cigarette, and toast your operation.

My group uses machine guns, grenades, large explosive devices, LAWs, etc liberally. I make a point of trying to be as realistic as possible about the damages caused by that sort of thing. They almost hit each other with a LAW through 3 brick walls once. They have hit each other with automatic weapons through walls several times. They have leveled a number of buildings, small and large.

Geeze, what kind of game are you guys playing? Desert wars?

They did a few (botched) extractions, a few assassinations (using more money to kill the guy than they were paid) and a few (botched) B&Es before they had to skip the country, losing all their contacts and most gear. Now they're in the middle of a civil war in eastern Europe.

They are playing regular Shadowrun, I think.

Collatoral damage?

Oh yes. We enjoy it a lot.

We've taken out convoys before by collapsing canyons onto them with a couple hundred pounds of explosives.

Unintentionally blown up sky scrapers(100 kgs of explosives + 1 detonator = FUN!)

Umm...Thrown a handful of minigrenades at a lone star van during a chase. Got at least one in through the wind shield, lots of explosions and lots of fire due to some being White Phosphorous, others being incendiary, some just high explosive, some AP. Was great cover for our get away.

Heh, "regular" Shadowrun doesn't exactly include "liberal" use of things which level city blocks

Though it does expalin why the word "botched" appeared in most of the mission descriptions

It does have its place, just generally not once (or more) per game session

Now I guess that depends on your game. I say if they have fun, so what?

My own players are a pretty cautious lot-the lethality level in my own games are quite high. Cause and effect, everything is cause and effect.

I never said it was wrong. Just not what I typicly expect in an average week-to-week shadowrun game. There are certain types of games where I would expect to see it (mercs, desert wars, etc.).

They're obviously having fun, because they're not making any money from their exploits There's got to be some reason they're doing it.

From the fact that Austere is apparently enforcing consequences for their actions and not rewarding them in-game for those antics, it's clear that he knows what he's doing, at least.

I've told the story many times on here of the Demolitions Decker who decided, when invading an office building in broad daylight, to start throwing clumps of C12 down the hallway with remote detonitors instead of his Preditor to take care of the security guards. They ended up bringing the 4 story building down around their heads.

The Abstruse One

Yeah, that sounds like a really idealistic version of my (more recent) runs. Plan something nice, recruit players who don't seem to have any outward personality problems, find out they all want to find the quickest way between Point A and Point Explode.

Oh well, buildings are easier to make if you know they'll just blow them up instead of going inside.

Heh