Hello All,

I am just doing this for fun. I have a new group and we are playing every Saturday night. Despite my best efforts this group will make an easy run, very hard. I will post this weeks high lights below.

11-13-04
First game, two of the 5 players are old school shadowrunners, the other three are moving over from AD&D 2nd. I let them run free with my books and they ended up with the following for characters (also I am listing the characters from most experienced player to the least exspearenced player)

Kain-Human/Drake-Physical Adept
Speaks to Own-Werebear-Full Shaman of Bear
Ghost-NightOne(elf)-Physical Adept
Locker-Human(chagling)-Fast Sam
Tank-Troll-Hard Sam

Now for there first game I am running the free story off ShadowrunRPG.com called Family Jewls. The run is suposed to go like this: Meet Jap Mr Johnson, scope out the location of the item, do a little B&E, kill a few security guards, and run with the goods. Its an easy first run.

Now this is what happened: They met with the Jap Johnson and took the job. They Drove around in a Van all day long passing the location to get some ideas of how to get in and out. They called a fixer and ordered maintainice uniforms, a rating 8 White noise Generator, Rating 6 Com links (don't you think the White noise generator might be a problem now?), and a place to crash for a day or two. They do to meet with the fixer to get the stuff, funny but they are being followed by a simple two man crew because they have been driving around all day doing circles. Ghost stays in the Van and the rest go to meet the fixer unarmed. One of the people following them starts walking around the building, when it becomes obvius that he is trying to find a way in that is not the front entrance Ghost kicks open the back doors to the Van and takes a shot at the target with a rifle. He puts 6 dice of combat pool into this shoot and rolls 12 dice with a TN of 2...you can guess that the guy went splat in one shoot and Ghost closes the Van doors and is greatful for the silencer he has...

He calls the other players and tells them what just happened. They all split and two of the players grab the body, one starts going for his stuff and the other pulls out a med kit and a big knife so he can take the guys head because it looks like he has a good amount of headwear. So now, covered in blood, with a corpes, they are back to driving around in circles. They deside they need to do there run quick. They get cleaned up and go to do the B&E job. Ghost goes in the building next to the one the players are going into so he can cover them with a rilfe. The other 4 players knock out a girl who lives in the building and head up. They get inside and Kain goes for the jewl they came for. Tank goes for every thing that looks shinny...The Speaks to Own and Locker are Duled Natured and can not enter the apartment because it is warded. They wait in the hall. Kain takes the jewl and then jumps out the window, changes into a drake and flys away. The thee players go down the elevator to the lobby. (the bad part is the silent alarm has been tripped and 10 guards are waiting for the elevator so they can go up to the floor the players are coming from.)

That is were we ended the game.

Any thoughts?

I think that, once again, you posted in the wrong forum. Welcome To The Shadows is for role playing PBP games. This thread should be in the main Shadowrun forum.

I don't think he was doing a PBP but more like. "Hey guess what we did last week."

I don't mind reading about the others gaming highlights, its good ammusement to know I'm not the only one that deals with goof ball runners. My players still haven't figured that the shadow part means hidden and silent, not blow big ass holes in things racing through the city in moving gun fights with security forces.

The new Big D

Could be worse my first group had a decker who specialized in low level credit forgery. Tha menat he could swipe 25 at time from any credsticks we found. Now when you got a a deck doing that about 50 times a second life gets fun.

Allowed it? He was the one who pointed out it could be done.

Slash, our decker, set up a phony ID as vending machine and then made the back end trace so complicated I shuddered at the target numbers when I helped his player set it up. Sure we got only 17 yen per 25 with the other eight going to taxes, but hey money is money. GM was just very careful to only leave around sticks that were not too offensive.

My one comment is that the party are very unual, the rarity of the first three character types makes a runner team made up of Elvis, an alien, Lord Lucan and Michael Jackson look likely. The rest sounds like classic mistakes.

The best part is the Troll is obsessed with Elvis.

As for the rarity, I told the party, try what ever you want...Once. The deal is any one can try anything the books aloue once. One shot as a shifter, one shot as a Drake, One shot as what ever. If they die, they don't get to try it again. I thought it would be fun and give every one some creative freedome. Really, None of them are that powerful. It all evens out in the end.

I don't think the team is that unusual. In fact I think the team looks pretty standard. The more experienced guys made more complex characters--b/c they could. The "Other Game" players made what they thought would be simplistic rulewise (no deckers/mages/riggers) and fill the spots left by the experienced characters. Specifically, "Fighter," "Thief (Rogue)", and "Barbarian."

Thier behavior demonstrates a basic concept of the game. Yes, they quickly resorted to kiling and looting but hey--at least it occured to them to actually do a little recon.

All in all, pretty amusing. Especially since it sounds like everyone had fun. Your group could turn into a pretty good shadow crew given enough practice. Let us know how it goes!

I was refering to the rarity in reality, considering mages/adepts make 1 in 1000 people and shapeshifters and dracoforms maybe 1 in 100 million and runners probably about 1 in 10,000 people do the maths of that lot making a team.

As far as ooc people wanting to play with what they want if the players and gm are happy anything goes.

Thanks a lot. I think it will work out really well. They have been bugging me to Run Shadowrun for them for months. (I never give in right away, Have to make sure they really want it). This first game every one had a good time, I just hope they live through the little fire fight ahead.

As for the coments on the classes. You are so right, Ghost-The NightOne, Was the theif in the AD&D game. LOL. The other two played fighter and thought that Street Sams would be easy. LOL.

The funny part is that they spent weeks looking over the books and made "The Perfect Charectors" LOL. It was quite funny to see. After kicking the charectos back a few times (items above starting avalibility and stuff like that) they ended up with ok Charectors. The Troll has 21 body for taking damage...but cant do much more than that. LOL

Anyways, thanks for the kind words. I will post this Saturdays adventures on Monday.

I ran that mission to introduce some newer players as well. The only person they killed though was by accident. We had a GOOD amnesia character, Guy (he didnt even know his name...he woke up to his fixer's call), and an Irish shaman, Puck(complete with funny, but poor accent) who went into the building and ate at the restaurant on the bottom floor, scoping for drunk residence. After locating a good target the mage cast control emotion and the amnesiac (who also had urban spirit bane so that was fun to add in a couple time and he has a phobia of spirits) went and pretended to be an old friend from school. Another teammate joined as the wife of the amnesiac, and they all went up to dudes apartment. There, the other teammate, a "jewel thief" (she didnt know that was the mission before hand) who was a semi pacifist, hit the drunken man with a stun baton but rolled almost all sixes so it hurt him pretty bad. The rest of the team werent expecting that, but they covered it up by pouring beer on the floor around him and messing up the house. They emptied beer bottles and tossed them around the house, and then for added effect pissed on his groin area so he would think he was very wasted. Finally in they make it to the right place and after urban spirit appearance and a scream form Guy the neighbor called security. The fourth team member is a sniper waiting outside, and he is deaf (creative bunch, huh). He shoots the neighbor, but not before the old lady made the call. Security arrives but Puck casts confuse and they wonder aimlessly and they run out the front door. hooray

Now that is a funny run. Sounds like you had a real creative bunch. These guys should be fun to play with, they have no clue what they are in for.

Damn, I can't wait till Saturday to play...I need a fix bad.

Now that was a fun game, the players did really well. We finished up the last run. We left off with three of the players getting shot at by 10 security guards when the elevator doors opened. The mage wanted to talk there way out using a hostage. The troll poped out two cyber guns on mounts and drew his shot gun. the doors opened and a fire fight insued. The Troll took every hit from the 5 security guards who were shooting at them. He did not even take a light damage. Then the mage cast powerball at deadly. Caused himself some good stun but killed the 5 due to his high sucsess. The other 5 ran after the exsplotion of body parts. They were picked off by the sniper in the next building (Ghost). All and all, the game went well.

We moved to the next run, "The Shoot Wild Horses" Smooth meet, and they were all more than willing to help. The problem I ran into was that they paid 22,000 for proximity sensors to set around the area. The made sure they knew were the bad guys were coming from and due to the sight rules for magic and the sniper. Half the enemy team was dead before They know what happened. I got a few good shoots and got the Drake with a serius wound. To spice things up I shoot a pathercannon round at the grove. The troll dove in front of it and took the blast. The funny part is he lived. Not becuase of some great amount of sucsess, but because of one peace of biowear. Thats right, Platlet factories kick ass. He ended up one away from deadly. The killed the remaining bad guys and we ended the game there.

So now I need to find a better chalenge for the group. They are a little to smart for there own good. I need something that can not be sniped or planed for. Guess I have some work to do.

Funny story, thanks. Reminds of my second team, only your players learn from their mistakes.

Ya, its a pain in the butt, the first game they proved they were stupid, the second run they proved they were quick learners....exsept the troll. He keeps jumping in front of weapon fire. One point (I forgot this part) some one tossed a granad at the group...the troll belly flopped on it. He took a serius wound when all was said and done.

Well I guess this game went well. Next week I will try something a little more difacult.

Well to stop the troll for doing that again you could bring the optional rule on pg119 in SR3 and the deadly over damage rule a few pages later.

Well I forgot about last week and will include the last two weeks worth of games in this update. Hope you enjoy, feel free to give me some advice.

First the group gets contacted by a Johnson. The Johnson has them go to a club for the meeting but only a computer screen and some files are there to great the members. The team is offered a job, go destroy 5 subjects that are in some cyro like tubs and torch the building. Also kill the 5 scientist that are there. They are given security passes and given a time window that the passes will work.

They arive and take out the doctors with great easy. They then move onto the tubs. the thought this one out and brought some nasty poision and just injected it into the system so they would not have to set them free to kill them. During this they relize that one of the 6 tubs is empty. The computer said he escaped a few weeks again and the team figures that this is why the project is being scratched.

as for what theses guys are, cybered out, chip controled killers. Home made for a megacorp. Sure enough when they are destroying the ones in the tubs the elevator digs and the owner of the 6th tub arives fully armed. He gives an altamadum, he is only here for one of the subjects and if aloud to leave with her in peace he will have no problem letting them all live. Being that he is in light securtiy armor and havs a LMG hooked onto a gyro mount the bear noods his head in agrement. The cyber nut walks for the tub and the Troll opens fire.

Now to skip all the crap, the guy makes in out of the building with one over moderate and the girl is at 3 over deadly. (The bear thought it would be better to shoot her) They blow up the building and take off.

Now they each call at least one person (buddy or friedn for life) and tell this story to the NPC's. Two days later they meet with the Johnson at a really nice restorant and tell the Johnson that the guy got the other person out before they got there. They also say that they have not told any one about this. The Johnson puts Natonites in there food (the ones that can kill) and tells them that there phones have been tapped and they are liying. They have the chose to work with them to kill the two escaped projects or die. With this....the Physical Adept Drake Punches the Johnson with killing hands. Does a Moderate wound. Securtiy is on them and the mage that was with the Johnson hits them with dealy stun ball. Knocks every one out including the mage. The team wakes with Linked crainial bombs in there head and a deal, they can work for the corp and go take these two guys out, or they can die. They chose to work with them.

After a short amount of time, the shifter goes off and shifts so he can get the bomb out of his head. The bomb blows up, he is fine because he is a shifter and he got it out of his head. The rest of the party members all die because the bomb was linked.

After that, the company sends a team to hunt and kill the remaining party member. He is attacked and killed, he then uses hand of god rule and is still the only member to surives.

Thats the long and short of it. What do you all think?

amusing. But sucky too. This is a good reason why you don't let shifter's have dangerous toys. They can survive things that no one has a right surviving.

Yeah that's pretty funny. I hope the players are Ok with all having died. I think you mentionned this was a pretty "light" game so I guess everyone had fun. The drake breaking the Johnson's face was pretty funny.

One thing though: shapeshifter simply cannot be implanted, at any time, with cyberware. They would never have been able to implant the bomb in the first place. They don't just reject cyberware when in animal form, it's always It's kind of a big screw-up on your part considering it's the only reason he's still alive. Oh well. The J would have taken alternative precautions, and the shifter would be dead like the rest.

Still, since everyone else is dead so there isn't really a campaign anymore, just send a big old ritual sorcery 12D Manabolt his way to end it. Or have an elemental pummel his dual-natured ass to oblivion.

Well, I can tell you. I thought about the crainial bomb, I installed it because they said that it could be installed but would fall be painfully ejected from the body on the next change. That was as per the book so I figured let it go. I should have thought of something better but, oh well. The Party blamed the death of the group on The Drake, the group would have been fine if the drake would not have hit the Johnson and they knew it. Second, they have learned that shifters are just animals who can become human, they need a babysitter 24/7 if they are going to work with a team.