Now in example #2 here, our team (I keep crucifying your name dude, sorry!) is fresh off their successful stuffer shack job, and looking for something juicey to sink their teeth into now. So after getting in touch with their fixer (We'll assume our team is just starting out and still doing it this way, instead of making their own biz!) she hooks them up with a pretty decent piece of work-they need to extract a research/patents lawyer from a local Transys Neuronet subsidiary.

Again our team is on the ball and decides to do some leg work. after some basic checking on the matrix, and public grids they are able to easily find a few articles on their target, and his employeer. After reviewing these they decide to have their Decker take a virtual crack at it.

After a lucky run on the joint, their Decker manages to dig up some good scoop for them. The local subsidiary is pretty small potatoes operation in the grand scheme of things, but still enough to make them sweat a little.

The target works at a fifteen story building that basically archives patents, and records for various Transys affiliates and subsidiarys. Security is three pronged this time-Magic, Matrix and Physical.

On the Physical Front this time they have to worry about alot more. The stuffer shack had a pretty easily subverted security system that consisted of a single camera that was suppoed to have a good view of the place, some windows (In the vain hopes that maybe being visible from the street would stop somebody from committing whatever crime it was they wanted to commit.), low shelving with few obstacles and good but cheap lighting.

Not this time. The building is constructed solidly, with a smart layout. Windows are polarized to prevent anybody from snooping and pooping, an discreet barriers prevent anybody from just walking up to the place. (Besides the fence, which looks decorative, but is really a barrier too.) Plus our team finds out from their virtual incursion that the building uses alarms ont he windows, doors and throughout the building in conjunction with a CCTV system that is monitored. During the day guards man the single entry point(Also a security measure) and a few are on standby just in case. (2) At night however guards patrol the building. One guard for every three floor, patrolling randomly.

Matrix security is extremely tight, especially given the contents of our building. Our team decides not to even bother with this for now, as they hoping not to even step a foot in the building.

Magical security is sort of lax, which is a stroke of luck for our team. As none of the security staff are magically active, and few of the staff are either, it's an area that's overlooked often. A single spirit is bound for back up, in case of emergencies, and they have a few areas protected by couple of types of specially altered ivy and wards.

Our team however hopes to avoid this nest of death, and bad juju completely. The target commutes, with a small security detail. After looking at his home, and deciding security was too tight there as well, they decide the best bet is tohit him in transit, or as he is exiting/entering work. (As a last resort that last bit.)

Our team manages to subvert a local traffic grid, reroutes the Targets car to a spot they choose, and hit. After a brief fire fight they make off with the target and leave his security detail maimed and dead.

Enough to make you as the GM pull your hair out right? I mean they avoided your carefully built dungeon of doom, right?

That's where we as Game Masters have to start thinking about the totality of circumstance. I mean would you hav walked in there? No, right? So why would you expect them to?

Well if you're like I was, because damnit that's the run I wrote, and by the gawds we'll be playing that if we want to game here! Right?C'mon now, some of you are definitely chuckling in agreement right? Not all, this isn't for everyone obviously, but some of us needed help getting started right?

What I hope to cover here is some loose guidelines, ideas and concepts that will help you free form your games a little easier, and deal with those little loop holes or unexpected NPC deaths that will almost certainly arise.

It's my fervent hope that those of you with experience will chip in here, and cover what I miss, or even teach me what I never knew, or would never have thought of. It's my hope this thread will benefit those of you eho might need this kind of asisstance.

Why would that make me pull my hair out? First run I ever GMed was a delivery job. The runners had to take an attaché case from an observed meet at a McHughes and bring it to a location across town without being followed there. I planned for a lot of circumstances, but because I was new I neglected to think of one of them going in separately (I thought of that half of it) and then them doing a swap in the bathroom. I was overjoyed and gave them extra karma for outwitting me. I had a deathtrap like the above one with people inside the runners needed to kill, and my current Saturday group just set the place on fire and waited for people to come out. Admittedly I was expecting them to use explosives, but hey. After a while, though, you just start knowing what sorts of things will be difficult without having to specifically plan on the runners going that way. Target moves? Unmarked security car nearby. Stuff like that.

One big piece of advice, though: unless its absence makes no sense, never add a counter to a specific method the runners are using after the run starts. It just frustrates people.

~J

The problem I see so far is that your team is smart.

They did everything the "right" way. They should be rewarded for pulling off the runs so smoothly. That's the point, right?

Mebbe I'm not understanding something here...

So when I am designing a run the first question I ask myself is what? What is going to happen here. (Don't get me wrong here, I ask the five W's and H right off the back, but we'll take this slowly.)

I take my ideas and write a synopsis:

For example one it would have read like this:

What's there to design? With the Stuffer Shack, add a Panicbutton™ to the guards and the cashier, and maybe a biomonitor if you really want to get fancy (I remember them being pretty cheap).

~J

So far, nothing challenging actually posted.

This is a challenge:

You're group is attacking an Ares gun production plant. This is the place where they make the toys you so love to have. This place is considered highly classified, so naturally everyone and their brother on the Matrix knows about it. If they know about it, ten to one someone's tried to hit it and quite possibly someone's succeeded.

Now, considering it's cheaper to steal guns and bullets than to pay for them, you know Ares is going to have tight security. If hooked up to the Matrix at all, it's a Red 14 or even an Ultraviolet and probably only uses black ice with about two or three dozen security deckers. There's also at least three security riggers and four riggers running drone patrol, maybe more, and they've got the best drones on the market, and maybe a few that the market doesn't know about. For the magical, you can expect two groups of magicians, with one group using spirits and astral projection to patrol the astral while another stays meat and uses spells and ritual magic to help maintain a series of magical defenses throughout the compound. For internal security, expect a combination of gun bunnies and people with enough cyberwear to come close to being zombies on patrol, with them being the best of the best and trained better than most UCAS military divisions, and possibly those groups having magicians as well, depending on the mood of the GM.

That, of course, is ignoring the fact the drones working the production line are likely controlled by an SK from a system completely isolated from the Matrix and said drones having weapons just in case a thief does get in. And also ignoring the possibility the compound has twice as many of everything listed in the previous paragraph on standby in case of an emergency, while the facility itself would be designed to take a nuclear explosion right beside it and only have the paint chipped.

Now, why so much security? This is Ares's lifeblood. The profits of selling these weapons and having so much security would, to any megacorp, outweigh the other option, in which they could become known as having lax security and having every John with a gun or a spell to cast trying to steal weapons from them.

Sometimes, not having the place capable of withstanding a military attack isn't feasible.

No need to get bent out of shape. You did ask for input.

Sabosect: The problem is the believability of that. Perhaps you have players that have a higher suspension of disbelief for such things. You might want 50 guys for that factory of yours (your deckers are already 24- 36). Ares has about 20 similar facilities and another 10 research facilities with higher priority. So you'll need about 1500 elite guys. There are about 10 megacorps. So there needs at least 15000 elite guys worldwide. Not counting all the assorted AAs and GDs and countries that offer top dollar for talent.

You live in a world with a lot of talent.

No Paul I'm sure Dumpshock has its newbie GM's or experienced players who are about to try their hand at GMing , and although I've been Gming for a couple years now it is nice to get some tips now and again . It's good to hear how others run their games so keep up the good work

There is a lot of talent in the world we live in now.

at a wild, totally random guess, i'd put the number of 'talented' individuals in the SR world at about a million, minimum. probably more. i'd say 1% is way, way to high, though. knock that down by a factor of at least 5,000.

nah, even with VITAS, the world pop would be 8 billion+ by the 2060s.

Since when does somebody have to be "Olympic Class" to be elite?

Since elite troops are often rated Superior to runners. And runners have a usual skill rating of 6 in their area of expertise. Superior is +2, therefore 6+2=8, a skill rating of 8 is World Class. If world class isn't Olympic(ok, given the screwy Olympics in 2060s, maybe not), I don't know what is.

Being elite doesn't have to have anything to do with being a one-man wrecking crew.

Sure, you will be good at what you do, that goes without saying. But that alone doesn't make one elite.

It could mean many different things.
A security team that regularly trains at a location they are assigned to protect could be considered elite due to the fact that they know the layout like the back of their hand, know the ins and outs of the security plan, or even being accustomed to the environment (like if it was an arctic research station).

Hell, in the 6th world, you can take a well-trained individual (primary skills of 5 : professional per SR3), slap a few inexpensive implants in him (boosted 1, smartlink, etc..) and he becomes a formidable fighter. Take a couple of those guys, train them as a unit protecting their own back yard, and you have a great security team.

This is unbelieveable how? For the facilities hypothetical personnel, "Ares takes training and equipping their high end security elements seriously. Members of the 'Ares Family security division' who prove their capabilities are pushed to undertake this path."

All they have to be is good, not world class, and if you have someone who already has a proclivity, training alone will easily get them to good.

In this case, even if it's just one of several like Ares facilities, they still take it seriously enough that they have the guards who are good at shooting guns and wearing armor, or icing intruding deckers, or whatever.

Even today, elite troops aren't that way because they are supermen. More often they are elite because they train together, think outside the box, have sound tactics, and most importantly, have the proper mindset and mental endurance to continue the fight when others would give up, while still keeping a cool head.

If you translated a delta-force soldier into SR stats, he wouldn't have very many skills in the 8's. More likely, if he did, they would be in his area of expertise. He would, however, have a ton of relevant knowledge skills, and a quite high small unit tactics skill.

Take a look at Canon elite troops. I'll take the Leopard Guards of Aztechnology (p128 Corp Download) as an example. Superior and Professional. Even if I take Superior to be only +1, that's a lot of experts. And you have not taken into consideration the troops that are rated Superhuman.

That is today. The PCs do not know about today. They know about 2064. IRL is OOC, in game logic is IC. And IC disbelief is what I talking about.

Toturi- You find it unbelievable that 15,000 elite people can exist and work for corps? Having it below that I find unbelievable.

Simple case: Today there is, I would say, 40,000 elite soldiers, 6,000 elite computer experts, 5,000 elite scientists, and a few elites in other areas currently employed. My numbers are way off, and I suspect way too low to even be close, but they show how easily such people can exist. If only 15,000 of that 51,000 is in corp control, that means the majority is still outside, possibly in military or on their own. The number is low enough that they are rare enough to be legends, while high enough to actually make canon material feasible.

mfb- Considering the way it is written and the number of corporations that would have magical security and the numbers required, I would say magicians alone have to be 0.5% of the total human population. Cyberwear being very common means you can expect at least double that in sams alone, plus double the sams in riggers and deckers. So, I would say 3.5% of the human population are runners or equal to. But keep in mind that number is scattered across the entire planet and even in certain portions above it. The numbers are still far, far lower than enough to even count as anything but a minority.

What I meant was, following the rules of SR, elite soldiers have Expert to World Class skills. I can see each AAA as having at most about 2 battalions of these guys. I think that a AAA have important areas than 2 battalions can cover.

I am simply using "elite troops" as used in the books. If elite can be used to describe people with Equal stats, then yes, there are considerably more.

i'm almost positive that it states, somewhere in SR, that the Awakened make up 0.01% of the population.

1 person out of every 100 being some kind of elite asskicker is way, way insane; that'd mean that 20-50 people out of every hundred are non-elite asskickers. now, if you want to say that 1 person out of every 100 is an asskicker of some variety--mostly non-elite--i can get with that. 1 guy out of 100 is a ganger, or a Lone Star beat cop, or a bouncer at some strip club, or whatever.

i have to disagree, toturi. in SR, the entire planet is a low-intensity conflict zone; i don't think two battallions per megacorp is enough.

Okay, allowing that in a moment of enthusiasm Sabosect overstated the competency of these guards, and that they are merely well trained and equipped, rather than being elite, is there any believability issue with having guys like these staffing Ares' production facilities?

the believability issue is having that many badasses guarding a single facility. the basic guards should be good, but not great, and heavily supported with automated security features such as drones and cameras. elementals, spirits, and wards should play a large factor in the magical side.

in time of dire need, the facility--and every other Ares facility in the city--should have a PANICBUTTON that summons the Ares Firewatch: Seattle team. that allows you to have serious asskickers for the opposition, without the headache of figuring out where they found fifty such asskickers per facility. not only is it easier to believe, it's more economical; serious asskickers, as Blackwater and other consulting firms can tell you (but won't!), pull down serious dough, and they often have serious life insurance plans.

A fast response team of elite troops is believable IC.

By the books anyway, there is only one battalion of Jaguar Guards.

As far as security goes, I wrote up a list of attributes a location's security could have and then defined exactly what those attributes are. It took some time, but now, instead of having to build a sites security from scratch (and feeling obligated to make the runners go there hehe), I just let the runner's decide whether or not it is worth their time on hitting a place. I can easily assign an attribute rating for each of the various security types (magical, personnel, matrix, physical, etc) depending on what I feel the place would logically have. Since everything is already written up, viola, I have a security plan in about 2 minutes. Also, I usually don't go into detailed maps about a site. Just a couple bits of text about what is there. If the players come up with a good plan on getting intel about the site, then I just have them avoid the nasty stuff and get from A to B much quicker. Like I said, pre writing a bunch of Security plans was a real chore, but, now I can focus more on the story/run ideas than on where the Laser trip wires should go.

Back on topic...

Consider an computer and electronics type warehouse. One that in the present day would be a distributor for Radio shack or Best Buy type outlets. A lot of relatively expensive, easily portable, merchandise.

The building is concrete block construction, with a metal roof, say 100 by 200 meters and 10 meters high. It is in an industrial warehousing subdivision across from the docks and port, with a fully paved lot completely fenced with chain link and razor wire, sitting between two clones to either side and a couple of railroad tracks on the other side of the back fence.

Inside the building are about a dozen rows of pallet shelving with a metal cage down the center isle holding the real expensive stuff. (Just drool over those 2 or 3 Fairlight Excaliburs they keep stocked.) The cage is in direct view of the warehouse supervisors desk. Over each row of stock are several tinted bubbles that could house camaras, in fact not all do, had to cut costs and didn't want to pay to have to have them all monitored.

There is a small cafeteria area in one of the front corners as well as bathroom facilities. Dock doors run along the front wall, with a people size door in the middle. Inside this door is a "pen" where drivers can exchange paperwork, there is a maglocked door that is 'buzzed' from the adjacent supervisors area. A magically acyive driver could perceive an elemental watching over the cage down the center row, they should have probably set it out of LOS.

A dozen to a dozen and a half employees work in three shifts around the clock, M-F, unloading the incoming trucks and putting together the outbound shipments. Security has heard how deckers like to forge shipping papers and have their loot delivered, since they have highly desired loot, this avenue is highly secure.

A track runs around the perimeter of the building near the ceiling with cubic meter or so boxlike affairs in the corners. A similar track cuts through the exterior corners of the building and runs around the outside near the top of the building. A smart runner would surmise there are some drones there.

There are two emergency exits on the back wall near the corners. There are no exterior door handles on these doors or keypads. One of the three guard dogs is stationed beside the 3 steps leading to each of these doors.

Knight Errant handles the security. They have a guard house situated between the truck entrance and the gate for the fenced in employee parking. Employees need to pass through the guard house coming and going by going through a hallway with a turnstyle in center. there are arches housing scanners in the hallway as well as a half glassed wall bordering the guards room. The guard house has windows (yes one-way tinted) around its entire perimeter. There is a central core that is not visible which contains a bathroom and room for a decker or security rigger. There are three guards assigned around the clock, 7 days a week. One will make circuits around the building with a security animal. The other two guards monitor cameras, employees, entering and leaving, and allowing trucks to enter and leave. The guard house is elevated about a meter above ground level, so that a person sitting in the office would be at eye level with a semi truck driver in his rig.

There are camara bubbles along the exterior of the ware house at the upper corners and spaced down each side. There is an unbubbled camara pointed toward the employee parking area, and another toward where the trucks await entry. There is a bubble for a camara on the end of the guard house facing toward the warehouse.

The guards are armed with submachine guns and wear biomonitors. [edit] I'd find the KE templates and use them, or randomly assign attributes and relevant skills in the 4-6 range. Throw in some headware radios, smartlinks and maybe a little reaction/initiative enhancement here and there. [/edit] The guard checking the truck traffic has a mirror on a stick to check under and over the truck and trailer and will have the driver open the rear doors for inspection. He will put a seal on the truck and most truck companies require these type loads to be locked, so they will likely put a padlock on at this time.

A panic button connects to the rest of Knight Errant forces. The warehouse is not extraterritorial, so Lone Star could become involved, and would like to show up KE. There is parking along the street, but there is a definite lack of cars using it.

A few things about guards:
The non-elite, barely worth calling professional, had a weekend of training and were given a gun type:
1> Are a psychologocal deterent to amateur and would-be thieves, both inside the company and out.

2> Are professional witnesses, their main goal is to get a description of at least one perp and get the hell under cover and hit the Panicbutton.

3> Only in extreme cases should they stick their neck out to enter into a firefight, unless their or someone else's life is in direct jepardy.

I used to work in a building housed the nerve center for the ATM's on the eastern coast for a major bank. we had, at most 6 guards at all times, one at each entrance. Only three were ever armed that I saw. Funny thing is, there wasn't a guard assigned to watch the security system.

Mega-corps can get away with military style guards at the high risk facilities because the items or research stored/manufactured/developed there could conceivably pose a risk to the population at large should they fall into criminal hands. They will not garrison a battalion for each and every warehouse. Likely one HTR team per district, perhaps two if there are multiple campuses that warrant the protection. The guards on site are to make the insurance companies happy, kinda like why 24-hour restaurants must have locks on the doors.

I see most security teams on normal sites relying more on drones for the heavy deterent on site and the panicbutton to summon the big boys when the drek hits the fan. It is infinitely easier on the accountants for the drones to be in service as they don't need to take days off, never go on strike and rarely take it upon themselves to rob the company and they litterly log everything they do. 1 or 2 riggers per shift can cover a lot of ground for a small complex. Human guards have medical needs, biological needs, take vacation and are open to bribery (so are the security riggers, but that's why all commands are logged).

just my thoughts on the matter.

Not entirely, just an odd assortment of people that likely took up GMing for love of the game and in the hopes that someone else would as well intheir circle of friends. There are so many varied backgrounds on this board that you can find someone that knows something about almost any topic and possibly even have a qualified and backed up with facts opinion on the matter (if you're extremely lucky). besides, i know I always learn something new in these kinds of threads, because the more ways you look at something, the better the end result will be.

edit ::ROFL algcs

I guess I should clear something up:

When I said "best of the best," I was assuming that the average Ares guard is likely to have a flashlight, maybe a pistol, and have the job of walking around looking touch but running towards the panic button like a little girl running from the boogeyman the moment anything actually happened. That automatically makes anyone they have with stats equal to the group as being damned good. The best of what Ares has doesn't necessarily mean the best in the world, though they may have a few of those.

I really need to work on actually stating these things instead of making an ass out of you and me.

The only reason I have Ares as having that much security is what they have to protect. They're protecting their weapons plant. Anyone with enough balls to attack that place probably can more than handle your average set of guards with an HRT team for backup. Considering the amount of thefts that happens in your typical SR game and the high desireability factor of what Ares produces, Ares will probably need more security than your average military base before the insurance company feels comfortable.

Keep in mind that military equipment is much more common in SR, as shown by your typical runner team. Any place important enough to protect from the serious runners probably needs a huge and very expensive set of defenses just to be viable.

For an Ares weapons plant, I would probably use average stats (3s) and add 1D3. I would equip them with excellent Ares weapons (any mod I feel like) and security armor.



Anyone interested in playing the above scenario, PM me. I tried running it in the Welcome to the Shadows forum, but everyone bailed.