How much of your workplace, or area of study (if you're a student) shows up in your game? This may be an obvious question to you army guys, but is there a zookeeper who likes to make up funky critters or a maintenance guy who knows if you really can sneak down ventilation shafts or something?

Oh, and if you are neither employed nor a student....

Well, somewhat often as I work for a bank. It kind of sucks, as I get to see how pathetic bank security really is.

Funny, same thing here Tarantula

We throw in elements from our school every now and then, just for kicks. Usually when it involves MIT&T or something. I also live in an area with a lot of old steel mills. Great places to give me ideas for corp facilities for runners to break into.

LOL, this gives me ideas.
Having the runners break into the dept store at night trying to steal the latest hot market toy, the Tickle-Me Dunky doll, only to have to wait, holding the overnight crew hostage, and keep the whole thing on the low, while they unload the 3,000+ piece shipment to get to the Dunky's all the way at the back of the truck.

Heh, my wife worked for a bank. I hear all about it

Hell, my workplace and "area of study" used to come into just about every run we did. Eventually I got tired of doing it at work and at home, so now our runs favor topics that I am blissfully ignorant of...

Never. I haven't found an "in" for graphic design or illustration yet.

All the time. Doing markups on hospital blueprints just lends itself to the game, you know?

~J

I was a civil engineer by training. So having scores and scores of floorplans are no problem for me.

One of these days, I'm going to send a group of PCs to retrieve something from the 963 raised floor at IBM's BTV site...

I work in a bio reasearch lab - definitely useful for certain kinds of runs, even if the reality isn't very cinematic...

You know, I think working at any job lets you see just how weak security is. As a theatrical technician, I've walked through so many security checkpoints at big concerts without having to actually prove who I am, just by saying the name of the Union. Heck, I remember having one gig where the security was tight, so they searched everyone's bags. They searched my toolbag, which was fully of knives, saws, hammers, and every other close combat thing you could imagine smuggling in, and let me go by... I had to wonder what they were searching for!

JaronK

Not directly - I'm an ESL teacher - but I really bring in the linguistics stuff for all those language skills. People who want to (for example) default to Chinese from Japanese get a raised eyebrow and no chance at all. Plus I get to contemplate just how likely it would be to bring back a near-dead language like Sperethiel or Irish-Sperethiel, as well as all those NAN langs that are suddenly a lot bigger in the statistics.

As I'm a locksmith I know how bad everyone's security is and the ways around it. Conversly, I've seen high end security that is terrifying to think about.

Step 1. Burglar sets off alarm.

Step 2. Building locks down.

Step 3. Heavy equipment is brought in to cut hole in door so building can be brought out of lockdown. No I'm not kidding.

There are whole building wings like that. You call in the professionals and they cut their way in. When you have millions of dollars in data and research a few grand for a door is chump change.

How dose that interact with fire codes.

I was under the impression that in the event of a fire it was required that people be able to get out. In witch case you could get out of a locked down building by setting of eth fire alarm, even if you have to light a small fire to do it.

Edward

I have worked at a few hospitals, right now I am working in a lab. It seems like a nice place to have runners go, because:

1)They smell...+1 target modifier or more in certain areas

2)They are built like mazes, and in a fire fight, runners tend to forget where they are heading

3)There are a lot of hazards, that most runners dont think of, like battles in the lab (AIDS or HMHVV blood to be spilled), sharps containers, TB and other airborne yummies, plus its fun to have players slip and catch chlamydia (jk-im not that mean)

4)Lots of bystanders, including ambulatory patients and old people using walkers in the hall ways. This leads to entertaining exchanges, either as the runners try to protect the patients, or dont give a shit and start lobbing grenades.

Anything biological or chemical based the nasty the better, if i had my way i would have nasty viruses everywhere!

torz x

Only once, and then only for harrassment purposes. I used to work in insurance (FREE! FREE AT LAST! HAHAHAHA!) and I used a screwed up case to add to the rigger's stress load

Although, house insurance is pretty educational in terms of the stupidity of human beings in general and the protection of their property in specific.

I'm an engineer who designs RF equipment. I had to look into RFID technology a while back and it gave me some great ideas.

RFID is a technology that runners fear in my games. Even with today's technology you can insert a small RFID transmitter right into the plastic housiong of something as its being injection molded, making it difficult to detect as its built directly into the plastic with no exposed parts. Without destroying the housing completely you can't find it with a visual inspection. Detecting the metal its made of is difficult as the rest of the device usually has other electronics in it that have larger masses of metal than the RFID transceiver.

You could conceivably make a scanner to detect it when its transmitting, but if the RFID transceiver is coded only to transmit when it gets the right coded signal, detecting it with a scanner wouldn't work unless the scanner put out the correct coded signal at the correct frequency, or the scanner happened to be on when the thing transmitted. The technology makes tracing goods much easier.

RFID is like an electronic barcode. It can store a decent amount of information on it, and requires no batteries and is very small. It doesn't require direct line of sight to a scanner, so it can be molded into the product. When it receives an RF signal from an RFID scanner, it uses the energy it receives to turn itself on and reply with its unique identifier. Large retailers like Wal-Mart are interested in the technology as it can save them an enormous amount of money in inventory management and control. An employee could walk down the aisle of the store with a hand held scanner and do an inventory of what is on the shelves, deciding what needs to be re-stocked very quickly.

It hasn't been adopted by retailers much yet for a variety of reasons, mainly due to opposition by people worried about the privacy implications.

I work in Law Enforcement. My job comes up all the time .....

cool i want one!

they would notice if i took one from work!

torz x

They might also notice if you started reading as a Terrier of pedigree.

~J

But we don't want her getting taken to the yard (sorry, bad american attempt at brittish humor) by someone if they find her wandering about without a leash, now do we?

I work in government as a web monkey. Mostly my job comes up when dealing with either the number of forms you need to fill out to do something legally, or whenever you're talking with an office worker : P

Being a computer geek means NORMALLY I'd bring in a lot of my techy knowledge, but since SR runs in a world where computers are actually run by tiny gnomes, I've sort of lost some of my edge. I do Information Security, though, so some issues still come up (like having a DMZ, etc.) Occaisionally I use some of my old work experience (entymology) to bring in something really freaky.

As a sys-admin for EDS I'm thrown into all sorts of companies. While working at Boston Scientifc I remember I was remoted into a end users computer. On his desktop he had a folder marked clearly "BLACKMAIL". I was sooooooo curious but I figured the less I know the more secure my job was.

What would happen if during a routine maintence a sysadmin eeerrr decker came across some files he shouldn't have...Then what. What do you do? Sell it? What would happen if they found out from logs that you viewed the contents and made a copy.......That could make a fun run.....What happens if that server's backup tape happens to go missing?

One hazzard from the early 90's Heyline gas (msp?). Sucks all the 02 out of the air during a fire in a server room. It's a hazard now but with the power of megacorps have it could come back into fashion.

Even better what if you caught an high level executive looking at kiddie porn.....That could make a for a fun game as well.

Sysadmins - they see everything that goes on, and are the first to get canned.....Funny thing was that during a security review 4 dummy accounts were found at my last site before leaving. Who knows if they're any more.....Luckily I don't have any grudges.......Although I know folks who did.

In college I heard a rumor about a kid who was getting thrown off a project he worked on for the last 3 or so years. He warned his boss that there would be repricussions. He had been the UNIX power user for the project. University lab somewhere. Well when they removed his account the system crashed. And kept crashing. They had to finally restore from a 5 year backup before getting it back up and running....Be carefull who you trust.

Halon gas.

Me, I just started keeping track of where nice improvised weapons like fire extinguishers and stuff are in my office...

I'm a linguist and technical writer, so I don't bring work into SR much. Most of my players would kill me for wrecking their brains if I did.


Edit: My kung-fu is weak. Foreigner beat me to it.

Working in an architectural office gives me loads of plans. I got to run food fight with a real convience store. And I even knew where things where located. And yes, someone shot up the slushy machine.

Demosthenes:

Speaking of improvised weapons...

I saw a film once-- I don't recall the title, but it was another one of those "terrorists/criminals take over a school" flickss, like TOY SOLDIERS, but not as well-made--in which a student took out a baddie using the following--

he put a fistful of nib-style fountain pens (the kind that are usually seen in a holder atop a wooden block) into the funnel-shaped discharge nozzle of a CO2 fire extinguisher, and waited; when the terrorist got close enough (about 6 feet), he pressed the plunger. Said terrorist ended up looking like a human pincushion, with about a dozen pens embedded in her lower chest and abdomen.

As is usual in such films, she started to swear (something nasty in Spanish, IIRC), then collapsed in mid-insult.

--Foreigner

They used to use Halon in server rooms but I heard the practice was considered too dangerous. I wouldn't be surprised if OSHA considered it an unexceptable risk. At the last site I worked at they didn't invest in a chemical based fire restardent like foam or something in there server room. The sprinklers just shot out straight water. I don't know if that's industry norm. Anyone here work in a bank server room or at a Iron Mountain facility? I figured chemical sprayers that were non conductive would be friendlier to the servers. With the amount of water droplets and the large number of fans in a standard server rack your going to get a rather crispy server farm after all the boards start shorting out.

Holy… water?!? They really like replacing servers.

~J

That just sounds like someone being a cheapscate. Even dry fire supression would work, but water? Sheesh...

We have both Water and gas suppression. Depends on the situation. The water is in there because of how the fire codes are written, but it has to be activated, fire won't set it off that I am aware of.

Yeah. They were pretty cheap. They'd spend $100,000 for a load balancer for 20 to 40 users but wouldn't upgrade they're routers. They're a funky company. Case in point, in back of one of the server rooms they had some systems over heat. They have a huge AC system but didn't bother to do any engineering on how to get flow through the room. So they bought a mobile AC system with a blow out hose that goes into the basement or somewhere and a 2 dollar thermometer from radio schack. When it starts to over heat they turn on the AC.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I was happy to leave that place. REAL happy. They also spent God only know's how much money on a Diesel backup generator. They ummm forgot to fire it up once a month for just basic maintence. So when we did have a power outage the engine hadn't been fired up for like 18 months and the puppy wouldn't turn over......Yeah never give folks who consider themselves "computer illiterate" or "not technically savy" (to be nice), oversight of you IT budget.

Reminds me of a King of the Hill moment, "Bobby...You can bring an ass to water but you can't make him drink".......

We have no fire supression for our server room other than a small 15lb fire extinguisher (rated for electrical). So, basically, unless only one board randomly sparks and catches fire, its done.

I think some companies work like that because they have no idea how to budget money -- they'll say yes to the $100,000 load balancer, then have no money left the next week when someone asks them for (insert item here), so they get a cheap (instert item here). Then, the next year, they'll sink a hojillion dollars into a backup generator, but have no money left to hire someone that knows how to use it right (so it's worthless). Etc, etc. Peaks and valleys of budgeting and knowledge tends to cause it; throw money at an issue by buying better than you can possibly need for one thing, then they're out of money so end up with a wholly substandard other thing.

Which could easily spill over into Shadowrun by having a group of security guards with no appreciable skill or training (but a billion nuyen each of hardened armor and top of the line weaponry), or a group of security guards with 8's across the board, but nothing but flak vests and light pistols, or something.

SOTA CCSS network run by a non-rigger in captain's-chair mode.

Ares Sentinel-P with bad track layout.

Massive, comprehensive track layout with a single lone Sentinel-P.

Red-Hard host with little IC and no security deckers.

~J

Heh I tend to work in churches and have visited many a cathedral's innards. They too are maze like (especially the big ones) and can be creepy when you're alone in it.

Of course most runners never end up in churches, so the knowledge isn't very useful. *sigh*

If Runners don't end up in churches, the GM is the only one to blame.

~J