I'm fine with that.

Ditto

Me three

Sure, he'll try to straight up negotiate I guess. Not sure if you want anything else from me at this point.
Cha 5 + Neg 5 = 10 dice
10d6.hits(5)=2

Well.. slightly better than last time at least

So, Switch is searching the house and area immediately surrounding it - purely out of habit rather than any real notion someone is following him. If you need me to roll dice, just let me know what

Oh - not a big deal - but your signature is still on in the IC thread - not sure if you wanted to turn that off.

Forgot to uncheck the box. Fixed now, thanks for the heads up .

Astral space in the area is pretty normal. The only thing that's remotely close to interesting is the cat, which gives your astral form the patented cat disdainful look whenever you pass through the room. Checking out the local neighborhood shows no signs of astral activity since the last storm, so either the local mages are REALLY good at covering their tracks or this is a neighborhood full of mundanes.

You're just heading back when you notice the glow of an astral form in a tree in the local park. doubling back to get a better look you see what appears to be a teddy bear asleep in the upper branches.

Roll your paranormal threats knowledge, threshold 2 (It's not obscure, but it's a local thing so your character might not be familiar with it.)

Here you go:

6d6.hits(5)=2

You remember a thread on Shadowsea back in Seattle where a Runner was talking about his experiences in Australia. He mentioned Drop Bears, vampiric koalas that drops out of trees to attack their victims. The Seattle shadows got a good laugh out of the idea and the thread was very popular, but now seeing the aura of one of the beasties up close you can't help but feel they're a lot less funny.

Hawk
What does Hawk know about the neighborhood?
Area Knowledge(3) + Int(4) [5,4,5,5,4,2,4] = 3 hits

Security assessment
Physical Security(4) +Logic(3) [3,1,6,2,1,3,5] = 2 hits

It's a quiet neighborhood. A quick check on the matrix reveals that the biggest news event in the last year was one of the kids winning the school science fair, there has been a total of one burglary in the last two years, it won third place in the tidiest neighborhood competition last year, and no known shadowrunners are said to hang out here.

Security wise the street you're on has several exits so you're hard to pen in and in the worst case scenario you could run or drive through the park at the end to evade pursuers. The house itself is on a slight rise and is constructed primarily of rock and cement, a fairly common combination around here due to mining unearthing a lot of rocks that are suitable for building. It's two stories tall and faces north, with too much glass on the front for your taste. There's a Lone Star security system with motion sensors in every room, a motion sensor activated security floodlight out the back and key locks on the front and back doors, with one set of keys left under the welcome mat for you and a spare key in the external fuse box.

Just letting everyone know, even though they're not official SR 5 yet Carcerands (from SR4 arsenal and other books long before) are still available to you at the price listed for SR 4 (50 nuyen per dose). They are a bit harder to get your hands on at short notice than the listed availability, (around availability 8 instead of 3, due to the lack of immediate demand locally and the hazards of getting supplies of them out quickly) but they are there for use in game if you so wish it.

Since the IC thread was looking at that as an option, I figured I'd let you know the right tools are available

I reread the Bruce's instructions to make sure I didn't miss something. This is Offenbach's taking creative liberties to add some flare and drama to the game, right?

Hmm no. Sorry if I misunderstand. I'm basing his comment on this:

"As to what constitutes an excellent performance on this job, a game that appears to be in the Coles team's favor until the last quarter would be ideal."

Well shit. I read three times and skimmed over that each freaking time. Ughh.

No worries, just roll with it in game.

Yepper. Hawk some crow in my last post.

Sorry guys, broke up with my girlfriend on Thursday evening so as you can imagine my head hasn't quite been in the game of late.

Back on top of things now, though may not be at 100%. Sorry.

Oh, that sucks for you, I'm really sorry. Take your time to figure things out or whatever. Real life comes first, this is just an internet game.

I'll be okay. The game is a nice distraction.

My condolences, Fueldrop.

So, do we want to proceed with planning some kind of data steal on Coles for the team data? Or do we want to continue discussing other alternatives first?

Either way, Io is going to need to call his fixer after the discussion is done and try to get some necessary equipment, and then "fix" the alarm system in the house so that it calls him instead of Lone Star if the alarm is tripped.

I think that we can't do anything without proper information - so next step would be to hack the files out of either a local supermarket or the local branch office.

Either way, that sounds like something for Io to take care of.

That was the datasteal to which I was referring. Maybe it could be done entirely via the matrix, but that was not the impression I had.

That's up to the GM. I'm not sure what he means by "keeping the files locally".

Does that mean:

1) They are hardcopies and not on computer at all.
2) They are in a computer that is inside a Faraday cage and so only accessible by physical penetration.
3) Using the 5e concept of "Archives" they are not accessible unless someone accesses them.
4) None of those, and Io can just hack them remotely.

They're basically on the internal system of the relevant corporation. They can be hacked remotely, but expect to be going up against some pretty hard-core defenses trying to get onto their grid without permission. Getting on site and jacking in circumvents most of their defenses leaving only a couple of wandering IC to deal with.

Having the data kept locally means that it is physically in BK, rather than stored away in Sydney or the like. This means that if you jack into the right system then you shouldn't encounter any meaningful resistance on the matrix at all, and if necessary you could just steal the hard-drives and hack it at your convenience. Naturally, going that route will have more defenses in the meat.

In summary, your options include:
1) Remote hack (Hardest matrix resistance, no Meat or astral resistance)
2) Hack at outlet (Middle matrix resistance, A couple of security guards and some token astral defenses)
3) Hack at source (Negligible matrix resistance, dedicated security in both meat and astral)
4) Something completely out of left field that blindsides me and is completely awesome.

Here's the general layout of a shopping center for option 2

Here's the layout of the local corporate HQ. it's on the 3rd floor of a Evo office complex (5 floors total. Regular massive storms and high buildings don't really mix that well.)

An outlet under the guise of a robbery? Failing that, the source as the fallback target.

Since it seems that the data could really make things a lot easier, I think we should attempt one of the options.

Of course, the most desirable route would be to just have an employee with the necessary security access go in and get that data for us, i.e. option 4 - the easy way. It might be a lot easier than anything else, if we can grease the palm of the right person. Otherwise, I'd go for option 2 which seems the most doable.

I agree with option 2

Yes, either 2 or 4 seem like the best bets.

If we could fool them into sending that information somewhere (or find out if they are already sending it for some reason), Snooping it directly from the transmission could be easier (requires less marks) and quieter than a full break-in.

So Switch will head over to the area astrally to check out the place. Are there any warded areas, spirits, any other magical security.

Just a patrolling watcher spirit, you'd guess force 1-3 with three as the absolute max. Could I get an astral perception check?

Sure

Assensing + Intuition'

7d6.hits(5)=1

You don't notice anything else out of the ordinary.

Meaning that we are three blocks from the shopping center?

Yes.

This may sound a little off the wall, but I figure it's worth a shot Io is going to call the fixer Dee (C4/L1). I'm not very familiar with how buying stuff through a fixer works, but if it's possible he'd like to get his hands on a Transys Avalon commlink (Rating 6, Availability 12, 5000 ); however as he doesn't have the full amount a, he'd like to arrange a short term loan until after the run (and the remainder of the payout is made): something along the lines of 3000 (and Io covering the remainder of the cost), with 4000 paid back after the run (~5 days), and the commlink itself as collateral.

Couple of questions:

1) What time is it in game?
2) Is the mall that the store in open?
3) When I observed the place astrally, how many living auras did I see outside the mall?
4) Were there any wards?

okay. roll 18 dice for your fixer, against 1 hit. If you don't fail the roll entirely (0 hits) you should have the link within a few days tops (the better you roll the quicker you get it).

1) I'd say it's getting to early evening, maybe around 5pm ish. It's summer, so it won't be dark for another two hours or so.
2) The mall is open through till 6, primarily because it's a relatively small affair. Larger centers are open 24 hours.
3) Did you go inside? If not then you only saw a couple of people hanging out in the carpark and maybe a half-dozen entering and leaving. Remember that you can't see through glass in astral. There area about 20 vehicles in staff parking around the back and another 25-30 in the main lots.
4) You did not observe any wards from outside. If you went inside that may change.

Rolling 18 dice for the Fixer: [1,3,3,1,3,5,4,2,6,6,4,2,6,2,1,6,3,5] = 6 hits.

would you like that delivered or would you prefer to swing by and pick it up yourself?

I guess I'll have to meet with Dee in any case since we're dealing with credsticks, and I also need to pick up a Hardware kit (500 ) which I figure I can find/assemble in a local store (not Coles ) on the way without problems. I'll also make sure to wipe/brick any RFIDs on the hardware kit.

Yeah, you run into no problems getting yourself a hardware toolkit and getting rid of any annoying tracking devices, though unfortunately that also voids their warranty.

Okay, are we ready to get this party started?

Let's rock it.

Ok - summoning Force 5 spirit of Water - Optional Power Concealment

Summoning Test

12d6.hits(5)=5

Spirit (Lorelei) Resists

5d6.hits(5)=2

So 3 services

Resist Drain

10d6.hits (5)=6

So no Drain

Fantastic, good backup plan. Sunset for today will be in around two hours, plenty of time to pull off the dry run.

Just to clarify, this is taking place while Io is out?

My understanding was that Io was upstairs on his commlink.

Hey guys, I need perception and when appropriate matrix and astral perception checks, along with Disguise checks for everyone and a Con check from Offenbach. Also, Edge checks for all to see if anyone stumbles onto something useful by sheer luck.
I'd also like to know where on the floor plans you guys are heading. Final note: Coles and Target are managed locally by the same corp so you may be able to get the intel out of target's systems.

IC is down right now.

Out of curiosity, why do we need the Disguise checks?