I'm running my (NEW) Sr group through the bug scenario's

I haven't figured out which to run them trough yet though. Any thoughts?

Queen Euphoria, Missing Blood, or Double Exposure?

Each one of these kinda kills it for running any of the others, but I need a precursor to me running them as companions of Kyle Teller in Burning Bright for Chicago. (I know he was alone in the book, but it's a GREAT scenario and I want to stash them in chicago for a year to get them toughened up.)

How did your players react to each of the scenarios?

Which do YOU think is the scariest?

I'm playing with two women who HATE bugs.. if that helps any.

Slightly off topic, but I just want to say, if you're running a campaign featuring insect spirits, don't neglect mundane bugs. After a tough run-in with some flesh forms, a simple cockroach problem at home becomes horrific. A fly on someone's arm is terrifying. And that cicada noise is a siren of doom. Especially if they're bug-hating women to begin with.
Keep the bug theme, even when they're not going up against insect spirits. I'm reminded of the Temple of Doom.
My .02 of evil.

If you have Missing Blood (aka The Universal Brotherhood "sourcebook") I'd recommend it. But that may be because it is the only one of the three I have run before.

BTW, http://www.universalbrotherhood.org/ . Just one more thing Shadowrun has ruined for me

I recommend Queen E. for the beginning of an campaign you sketched out. (Its tough on beginners imo, so you have to tone down the OpFor stats a bit)
It introduces bugs but leaves out the UB.

I always thought idea of bugs is scary, but infiltrating, secret society, sect bugs is even scarier and the real kicker to the whole bug plot.

If you want to run them along Teller its makes even more sense as you can build up the expectations of your players from "oh, its another looney shaman and a bug hive" to "their everywhere, they could be everyone".

Missing Blood?

Missing Blood is the adventure packaged in the Universal Brotherhood book.

I would run them in the order Queen Euphoria, Missing Blood, Double Exposure. Each adventure in this order presents something new.

You should also run other adventures of some sort between them, so they don't know its another Bug Hunt.

Ah, that's one I have never gotten my mitts on. Thanks

yeah, I plan on running a series of games before running into Bug City.

Personally, I'd run one or two normal games, then Queen Euphoria. A normal run or two, then Universal Brotherhood. A few normal runs, to let them settle, then Double Exposure.

Finally, they get involved with the events of Bug City. Keep in mind that, during "Burning Bright," there was a group of runners involved with the Cermak part of the story. Just make your players part of that.

Then, you've got a nice, long stretch of survival stories punctuated by the occasional hired run from outside.

Insect Spirits, one of the coolest threats in the SR universe....

I agree with the other posters: Euphoria, then later Missing Blood (that you can make more interesting by reading the novel 2XS which has a rather parallel plot) then later Double Exposure.

I recommend keeping a very tight lid ont he existence of the Bugs. When my players first encoutered the bugs in Euphoria, they thought they knew all there was to know about spirits...big shock.
Things went on for several months before they went on "Missing Blood". second shock. Especiallt because I had intorduced the Universal Brotherhood has a discreet background element in the campaign. At the end of Missing Blood, the team decker got his mitts on the UB file compiled by the journalists (basically I gave them the sourcebook)..they tried to pass the info and several contacts died...then they became very paranoid about the whole thing, feeling utterly powerless...years went on until the "Double Exposure" affair. because they had try to warn the gouvernment about the threat, it gave perfect reason fior the introduction. At the end the Ub falls and the players felt they had finally managed to get rid of the threat...
a few years later, the Chicago crisis came as a nasty shock...

in a way you are lucky: you have all the adventures and plenty of time to set the stage and introduce the elements...
I bought "Bug City " when it came out and waited for 3 years before using it...
I introduced the Chicago crisis as a background element on TriD and my players bought the epidemic story fed in the media...a few runs went on and finally they were paid to go into the CZ to reach the Ares compound in order to establish a satellite uplink connecting the Ares host to the Ares PLTG. As a side bonus, I used it as the perfect way to introduce the latest Ares weapons: Ares Alpha, HV weapons and the Ares Firelance...the run was grueling, and they were completely taken aback when they discovered that what they thought was going to be a run in a contagious environment was in fact a run into the depth of the worst insect hive in the world...
too cool

Great Ideas guys, thanks alot.

As a side note (for any adventures that you might want in bug city)

I plan on having them there for a bit. But I also want them out for a later date so that they can be hired to go BACK in.

This is what I had for an old group... AFTER they got out, they were hired over the vid by a Johnson which they could not make out. They were hired to go in, and plant a chip into a renraku mainframe, then activate it from inside the host. (Decker area) They got this job because of their expertise in Bug City.

The building it's self was guarded by a small loyal contingent of renraku guards, and of course, bugs. But the big thing that got them was when the decker slotted the chip, then went in to activate it.

Imidiately he got a picture of the Johnson, then the Host system turned black with a piercing red light (Ala HAL 2000). Feedback from something was slowly burning the decker so he dumped out, and just before he did, he got something etched into his mind..the word Duce.

Later on they find out that the AI program had been setting things in motion for a very long time, and that it was going to need resources and other things from outside it's current environment. Some of the data that it needed was in this mainframe. The cred that comes through is good, and the AI kept it's word. (At this point it wasn't totally melevolent)

(If I got time I'll write up the adventure into word, it's nothing but hand written notes and stuff right now) The players loved it, especially the decker. This was an adventure that hinged on him.

Bugs...... I hate bugs.... unless Im GMing, then they are the shiznit. Its the idea of rampently combining cyber, magic, sprits, and flesh in one nice neat nasty as hell package.
To whom mentioned they hadent gotten ther MitS (pun, Im sorry) on the UB book, dont feel bad, its on SRs most wanted list. Expect copys to run for a lot of money. And expect to trade souls for them, firstborn at least.

Hi. Newb Kid on the Block.

I've been reading dumpshock for a while, and a question came to my mind.
The Bug Metaplot is probably the greatest, immediate and horryfying threat to humanity in the SR world. (and my favorite also )

And, since the Strain 3 thing, it seems to have vanished. Where did it goes ?
I know there are still isolate hives, and that Ares is testing the Dog/Insect fun stuff with Hard Cops...
But... HEY ! There more to do with a material that fantastic !
Is there something I missed or can I go back to my corner and wheep ?



PS : My apologies if my english isn't great...

Remember that the sourcebooks are there for YOU to devlope YOUR campaign. If you dont want bug city to go away, It's not.. maybey the Strain III never was developed. Maybe the bug problem in chicago..(or wherever you decide to put bug city) was too big to be dealt with, so that entire area will forever be like that.

The biggest thing to remember is that it's YOUR campaign. you dont have to go with what the books say, thats Fanpro's story line. Create your own.

That will also keep your players in line.. they cant read the books and say.. "HEY, What do you mean Big D lost the election? It says right here....."

Yeah, I'm aware of that, and doing it actively in my storyline (for example, Bug City take place in N.Y. in the year 54, etc..), but I think it's a pity to just abandon a plot like that and continue like it never happened...
It seems that the insects just disappear (or close) from the surface of Earth.
The biggest hive in North Americe has been destroy, yes. And the world know now about them, yes.
But What happened in the rest of the world ? In South America, where they come from ?
They could have developped some good materials with that.

But it's only IMO.

The scary thing IMO, about the bugs is that your never find them until they are already ingrained into the area. Ever find just one roach in your house? No, there are always more in the walls where you can't get to them.

Bug spirits should be the same. Say your runners find out about a shaman out there summoning spirits and kidnapping sick kids from a local clinic. Only one or two kids have been snatched, but as they dive into the sewers to geek the guy and burn out the small hive, they find the hive is bigger then expected, or that most of the kidnappings have been keep secret.

Now they have to decide if they run away, leaving the hive to move and continue on in another secret place, or commit themselves to the job fully, and possibly die for the greater good.

Think of Ripley running around the ducts of her ship in the dark. Except instead of the one alien they know about, there are dozens running around.

Someone asked about what the bugs are up to at the GenCon seminar this year. The gist of the response was -- "We've done the bugs. We won't be doing anything more with them any time soon." Basically, I think the higher ups are a bit burnt out on bugs, and wanted to do otehr stuff.

Given the amount of resources now available on 'em, that seems pretty reasonable to me. Of course, the fact that many of those resources are OOP, does make it a touch more challenging.

As long as they didn't leave bugs to add in more ED stuff, that's cool.

I wouldn't mind seeing some kind of mini-campaign on sports, either some upcoming Olympic games, or just related to sports in general. That area needs some new love.

What's the plot of Double Exposure, anyone? I've never read through that one. Does it have something to do with that compound in Colorado or whatever that Ravenheart mentions to Teller in Burning Bright?

The bugs are great -- and keep in mind that it's repeated over and over again that Ares may not have exactly done the job so great in Chicago, and that the CZ is still a real big mess. I'm pretty sure in the more recent sourcebooks, including SoNA, it's stated that the CZ is a giant Z-zone in the heart of Chicago, and not a lot has changed since before Operation Extermination (other than there's less bugs, and the ones that are still there are keepinga much lower profile). Nothing keeping you from using that....

WARNING, SPOILER!!!




Double Exposure blackmails the characters into infiltrating a UB renewal project, on the surface everything is okay, but as the characters dig deeper, more things come crawling out of the wood work...litterally, It ends with a run into the middle of a hive of ants, and the subsequent of the runners getting the heck outa there before they die. The adventure actually takes place in Seattle, but could be reworked. It's a very good adventure.

Ah, okay. So does that "Project Hope" thing (I think that's what it was called) that Ravenheart or the FBI guy was telling Teller about show up in anything?

It is Project Hope.

ARGH.. I was going to bid on that LOL I need a new copy as mine is THRASHED...

The following home-made bug additions have been added in various campaigns I've been in. Credit goes to 'Otter' on these boards:

Metaplane quest to a plane where the bugs have thrashed a world, it's dying, almost nothing is left. Characters encounter a 'good' bug (butterfly) in a still-green part of a forest that is dying, and learn that it'll die too when the forest finishes dying. Later they see Ant spirits marching one-by-one (the little one stops to play a drum) or two-by-two (the little one stops to tie his shoe) toward something that is clearly a portal of some sort. The ants enter a glowing circle and 'pop' out of existance. There are thousands of ants in the line. Characters get to kill one or two bugs, talk to a butterfly, and see ants leaving the dying world. You can have the other end of the ant's metaplane gateway be in Chicago if you want. The Johnson for this trip is a powerful free spirit who keeps her own metaplane gateway open for the characters to go through. She says she has to stay on Earth, in order to reopen the gateway for them 6 hours later, while they investigate the situation on that other world and report back to her.

A run within Seattle, to the main metroplex water supply plant, to destroy a device that is adding low doses of some sort of toxin to Seattle's drinking water. Only much later do they learn that the toxin was an insecticide, the Johnson was a Bug, and and the insecticide was making bums and other Seattle people taste bad to the bugs.

This brings quite an evil idea to my mind, especially if one wishes to modify the timeline and to surprise the polayers. Sure, WizKids are done with bugs, but as a GM, you are free to use them in later parts of the timeline.

Now, imagine the shock of the players when a second bug city errupts in Seattle...

(or, to recall an old thread, probably in the previous Forum version, when they enter the Arcology expecting Deus and find Bugs instead! )

After everything that I'm going to put my players through, if I trap them in one more bug hive a couple years after they get out of chicago... they'll have me hanging from the tree outside.

I'll stick with duce.. It's the unknown that gets you in the end in the archology. After hunting bugs for so long, the reaction will be "Oh, more bugs.." But when a bunch of little kids start messing with them for no apparent reason.. we'll see where their morals lie.

Grrr bugs I have seen my fair share but they are always cool as you can over whelm the PC's

Cyber-bugs! Controlled by Deus as a weapons project of last resort...

-Siege

One more point about Bugs: They're intelligent; they could climb up walls (atleast in True Form, also in certain Flesh Forms in certain house rules); they know their turf VERY WELL; they have a hive mind. In short, they fight smart, fight dirty, and could be used to scare the hell out of players, even the more bug-experienced ones. A good bug run, IMHO, should be 70% atmosphere/story, 20% tactics and only 10% combat - and VERY intense combat at that. Bugs rarely work alone (except for Mantids, that is) - when you finally DO confront them, this should be the action-climax of the adventure. Other than that, the only combat the players should get would be small, mostly used by the Hive to test their strength and/or achieve specific goals.