I'm seriously considering putting together some Datafiles for Rescue, Misty Knight and a few other characters from the comics that are either hinted at in the MCU or will likely be showing up due to association with the various characters and running a kind of B-Team Avengers game set in the same universe for my local group.
If anyone wants to get in on some Ashen Stars online via Roll20 from 9:00 PM to 12:00 PM EST every Thursday, I can set that up for you - we're doing recruitment right now.
Ashen Stars is a GUMSHOE game, so it's mystery focused. Think of it like Star Trek but someone recently exploded the Federation and now things have gone a bit Battlestar Galactica.
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Mostlyjoe13Evil, Evil, Jump for joy!Registered Userregular
I won't be seeing Avengers till next weekend. But if I ran a Marvel game I wouldn't do it using MHR. Yick. The mechanic just turns me off. I've never liked it. That or Cortex. Just...no. Narrative dice pool games just never flowed for me.
No if I did it I'd pull out ICONS Revised and go to town!
PSN ID - Mostlyjoe Steam ID -TheNotoriusRNG
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
Give me a few days to figure out what the story is I want to (start) tell(ing) and I'll have a thread up. I might do something that leads into the Fear Itself event on Marvel Plot Points.
You'll notice that I'm talking to Grunt's Ghosts in those posts. He wasn't on board yet.
Also, those two post have always been in my OPs for every MHR games because of their awesomeness. They explain the system better then the books.
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Mostlyjoe13Evil, Evil, Jump for joy!Registered Userregular
Ah. Excellent! I have a Thursday Night Numenera game now on Roll20. And I have a member of one of my college days gaming crew on board. This should be good. Nice and creative player and it appears a mature mix of other folks. I'm excited about this.
Had the first session of Star Wars game yesterday. It was entertaining to say the least.
Starts with me and the mechanic in our ship being contracted to get 2 Jedi who would fill us in on the mission. Mechanic plots the course and I hit the engines. I took the moment to say that whenever the ship goes into hyperspace a random song plays. So imagine the stars getting all stretched out, the ship shooting off and this playing over the ship PA
The GM's exact words were "I love and hate you so much right now." The ship lands at the Jedi academy where I hash out the contract details with Luke (who speaks fluent ewok because why wouldn't he?) Kyle Katarn was also there though he didn't do much (too busy trying not to laugh at an ewok smuggler/privateer). The job turns out to be to find a Jedi who went missing on Dathomir. The next trip was mostly uneventful. Mechanic spent time most of his time fixing things, Jedi were meditating, I took this opportunity to say that there were crawlspaces big enough for me throughout the ship. So one Jedi would be meditating in his room, a panel on the wall would swing open, I walk out and go over to the opposite wall, open another panel and walk in but pop back out to say dinner would be ready in 5.
We landed on the planet and after a little searching, it looks like our first encounter will be up next week. This should be fun.
I think I've finally decided on a project; converting L5R to a hacked up version of the Cortex Action (Leverage) rules, using a bunch of the stuff from the hacker's guide.
I really love the setting, but the mechanics available in the books themselves aren't really my style. And the "raising the stakes" methodology in Cortex fits so many of the classic types of L5R scenes so well.
I know I don't have a use for them but I wamt some.
I saw that Kickstarter about a week ago, and it's taken absolutely all of my willpower not to go all-in on that. I have literally no use for those coins, but they look so good. I especially like the triangular dwarven coins - I feel like you don't usually see triangular coins like that, which is super-neat.
I know I don't have a use for them but I wamt some.
I saw that Kickstarter about a week ago, and it's taken absolutely all of my willpower not to go all-in on that. I have literally no use for those coins, but they look so good. I especially like the triangular dwarven coins - I feel like you don't usually see triangular coins like that, which is super-neat.
Historically, it was easier to detect "clipping" and "shaving" on perfectly circular coins. Clipping/shaving is a form of coin debasement where precious metals were removed from a coin's edge. It's easier to do on straight edges without being detected, as opposed to perfect circles on milled coins. Ridges on the outer edges of coins were also designed to combat this form of coin debasement, and these countermeasures persist today, even though our modern coins are no longer made of precious metals. You could probably weigh the precious currency, but that introduces different problems (you need accurate and precise methods of weighing and measuring, for one thing, and it is trivial to do a quick swap after the weighing).
I know I don't have a use for them but I wamt some.
I saw that Kickstarter about a week ago, and it's taken absolutely all of my willpower not to go all-in on that. I have literally no use for those coins, but they look so good. I especially like the triangular dwarven coins - I feel like you don't usually see triangular coins like that, which is super-neat.
Historically, it was easier to detect "clipping" and "shaving" on perfectly circular coins. Clipping/shaving is a form of coin debasement where precious metals were removed from a coin's edge. It's easier to do on straight edges without being detected, as opposed to perfect circles on milled coins. Ridges on the outer edges of coins were also designed to combat this form of coin debasement, and these countermeasures persist today, even though our modern coins are no longer made of precious metals. You could probably weigh the precious currency, but that introduces different problems (you need accurate and precise methods of weighing and measuring, for one thing, and it is trivial to do a quick swap after the weighing).
Milled edges would fix the issue though it is much more difficult to do to triangular coins than round coins. Roundness makes a great number of machining/forming operations much easier than other shapes.
Yeah, but this is fantasy. Every coin has an embedded etherite shard that's imprinted with the platonic ideal of a coin; if the coin has been altered in any way to deviate from the imprinted coin-soul, the etherite emits a purple glow that's impossible to disguise.
Also, all dwarves have natural metalsense that allows them to feel when a piece of metal that they're touching was last altered, and in what way.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
Finally, this is Dwarven "home" currency; ousiders barely know of its existence, much less get to handle it, and no Dwarf would ever consider jumping so high¹ as to debase a coin.
¹ Dwarves are natural stoopers, it's jumping they find weird and unsettling.
In my games, dwarf coins* are also deadly weapons, and not just in aggregate when dumped into a sack or in rolls of coins held in the fist. The edges are honed to not only create perfect stacks, but to serve as an arrowhead or sharpened weapon blade in a pinch. Their value is determined by how many elves they can kill before they are dulled.
* Also applies to dwarf bread, dwarf mine rations, and dwarf lingerie.
I like in 13th Age that Dwarven coins were called Towers since they stack and link together so resist being knocked down. But if you knock down a tower, Gods help you and your newly shorten life.
I've been poking around Feng Shui 2 (because I need another system I'm not running or playing bouncing around my head) and it seems right up my alley.
I haven't found any a la carte character creation options yet. Is that just something that doesn't exist with this system? It's probably fine if that's the case, since there are a ton of templates to pick from.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds.2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Trail of Cthulhu, Masks of the Dreamer: The Cult Strikes Back
Right now, we're roughly at the halfway point of this campaign in many ways and how long it goes will heavily depend on what the players do from here. Numerous plot threads are starting to come together and I feel the investigators are starting to get a good grasp on the big overall picture of what is happening. Of course, it's worth bringing up that we're also getting to a point where some of these investigators are seriously broken people.
If anyone needs to know what truly makes a game like Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu unique, it's that knowledge plus experience doesn't directly equal an increase in power like Dungeons and Dragons. Most of my players investigators are far more capable now than they were at the very start of the game sure, but they're also starting to suffer having permanently lost rating points in stability and most importantly: Sanity.
Sanity as a stat basically puts a defined, known shelf-life on your investigators and how long they are going to last. The more monsters, magic and strange things they encounter, the lower their potential time in the game. Likewise, players who invest heavily into mythos knowledge, magic and similar are equally likely to reach a potential breaking point sooner than later. Mechanics like this reinforce the hopelessness and inevitable defeat the fight against mythos is, with how those who face it inevitably go insane, become a tool of what they fought against or even worse fates.
It does have a notable consequence on the overall way I write the game: It means that over an extended period, it's hard to think that all investigators will make it to the end. After a while of running this game, I have become rather fond of many of my players investigators, with the plot deeply woven around these characters and their actions. Due to the amount of sanity damage around it is invariable as we get into deeper conspiracies, more ferocious monsters and even more bizarre situations that one, or more, will go insane (or meet a tragic end). As a result, I've begun to try and deliberately move some of these points onwards a bit.
In this session I decided to take a distinctly different tone and write the entire thing like a soap opera: Just with cultists. Instead of drama and tension coming from monsters or magic, I have an overarching plot about a potential attack from one of the investigators numerous enemies on the wedding, but then focused entirely on inter-character drama. This meant there wasn't a lot of need for stability checks, which could run the risk of damaging an investigators dwindling sanity if it came about due to a monster or spell. Another advantage was that it gave me plenty of time to characterize different NPCs at the wedding, throwing in numerous potential candidates for "Who might be threatening the bride and groom?" and also adding some intrigue to Damian's mysterious mafia family to explore.
And perhaps some highly uncomfortable truths for Damian to discover along the way...
I decided to allow some time at the start of this session for the investigators to resolve any out of game shenanigans that had been going on. Given this game has a lot of things happen in secret between me and the players, plus sometimes with one another, it's worth taking a while to make sure those things were resolved. After doing this, I decided to move on with an unusual encounter from a new (and strange) fellow to the store. He asked Jasmin where certain members of the group were, notably Maggie, Anastasia, Keith or Damian (I concluded this NPC would not know about Eva). Eventually Anastasia had a chat to him, given that he came late at night while only Keith and her were in the store other than Jasmine.
Here after a brief conversation, where he made clear his "mistress" was disappointed Anastasia hadn't heeded her warnings, I had him give a tome to the party, which will later become very important in the context of the game. Written by Dr. Phillipa Orson, it claims to be a "Deep study of the magiks of the mythos and the strange inhabitants of the outer dimensions" and if I have my way, will be an actual physical thing that the players can read. This is the result of my planning and the "Arts and Crafts" post from a while back, where I intend to put the full language of magic into this book - then give it to the PCs to figure out what is happening. Notably at the time I made sure to reinforce some points on this before they were done.
Firstly, just because I give them something directly doesn't mean it will always be the literal truth. Other tomes, NPCs or sources might contradict quite a lot of the book. Secondly, I also emphasized that it's a tome written by an inherently crazy person (as they all are), so it might be a bit tricky to read or even follow in the first place. Figuring out where bits of the text went or how they fit together is a natural piece of the "puzzle" in using the book.
I was really pleased with the excited reaction to having an actual physical "tome" in the game and so it's made all the effort put into it (so far) all the more worthwhile. Don't worry readers, there will be copious pictures of the finished tome to come on the guild once I am done with it! Hopefully this adds an interesting new dimension to the latter half of this campaign and how the players start to use (and hopefully experiment) more with magic in order to gain any advantage they can. Of course at what terrible cost that advantage might come at.... Well, we will have to see!
In any event after this it was time for the investigators to organize themselves for the upcoming wedding of Damian's brother, Romero. Here if I had a bit of a failing this investigation it was by far in the set up here. This wedding isn't just important to the investigators because it's Damian's brother, it's also very important because of who Romero is marrying and the current situation. If you recall from the events in Nepal, the investigators learned that a sunken U-Boat near the coast of Iceland held the key to finding the hidden location of R'leyh (the Germans had figured it out). Here's the problem, the submarine is thousands of feet below the surface of the Atlantic and basically inaccessible to the investigators currently.
Enter this wedding and the importance of Romero's wife, Joleen. Joleen is an extremely powerful woman, who owns numerous shipping companies and most importantly is a massive advocate for the exploration of the deepest parts of the ocean. In the version of earth Trail occupies for me, she's actually responsible for many important undersea finds and works closely with "in game" James Cameron. She helped him discover the Titanic, explore the ship and then subsequently retrieve the entire wreck. Right now she's developed new submersible craft and special equipment to allow divers to explore the deepest parts of the ocean, which they are mastering in the Mariana trench.
Unfortunately for her and Romero, someone else is well aware of this and intends to use her resources for their own gain. A mysterious threat was made against the wedding when Romero received a coin - depicting the Esoteric Order of Dagon's symbol - covered in someones blood. Naturally Romero became concerned and knowing his brother's friends have a habit of solving tough problems, paid a visit to the shop before the start of the wedding. An analysis of the blood type confirmed it to be from the bride to be, but there was no obvious indication of how they got it (and she was distinctly *not* abducted or anything). Either way the investigators interpreted this as some kind of threat, especially given what they've seen other spellcasters and cultists do with blood in the past.
Of course before I continue, writing this down now it's pretty clear what I was intending from this investigation but at the time I didn't strongly emphasize those two paragraphs. Especially the sheer inaccessibility of the wreck and where it is located, which is something I should have dedicated a few scenes to exploring in a previous investigation to emphasize the importance of this event going smoothly for the investigators. So later on there is a moment where one of my players asked, "Wait, why are we not just leaving this place again?" when it becomes quite clear something terrible *is* going to happen and the answer wasn't immediately justified by the previous narrative (as I hadn't emphasized it to my players!).
Oops!
Either way I asked the investigators who they were going to bring along with them to the wedding. Damian, as Romero's brother and very close to him (Romero is Damian's source of stability) was the best man so would be at different positions in the wedding to the other investigators. Splitting up the investigators this way is a very deliberate plot and will make more sense in the second part of the investigation. Damian named Eva (the new investigator) as his "date" and hence the two of them were in the frontal groom party or bridal table. Maggie took Torvald, the man who was helping Melissa all the way back in "As above, so below" and is now formally the characters boyfriend. Keith took his source of stability and occultist friend Sarah, while Anastasia brought along a new character to the game Yakov (her "childhood friend").
With dates in tow, the investigators packed up and attended the wedding at a wonderful old castle some 35 miles outside of Dorset along the English coast. With an in built church and a large hall, it was the perfect place for the reclusive couple and family to have both the wedding, with the reception following after. Security at the venue was tight and keenly aware of the threats made to the event. Most guests were expected to spend the night at the estate, with accommodation paid for and nobody being let in (or off) the property after 6pm that night for security purposes. Unfortunately, like a couple of things this session, I didn't emphasize this point enough but it will become relevant later!
Initially the wedding was going well and entirely to plan, if long and very religious (Roman Catholic style). About half-way through I decided to spice things up by the first introduction of genuine drama into the investigation: The arrival of the estranged bastard half-brother and his date! Joseph and Aroha barged in, with Joseph immediately making a considerable scene of how "offended" he was that he hadn't been invited to the wedding! Then he dropped the startling revelation that he was Damian and Romero's half brother, to gasps around the church! This caused considerable consternation amongst the Wolfe family, who decided to avoid further embarrassment by allowing Joseph and Aroha to stay.
Of course Aroha caught the investigators eye, because she had some interesting additions to the traditional Moko she had on her person: Various mythos symbols of power were weaved into many of the designs. Given Joseph's agitation and the particular threats that were made... could this be the attackers? Either way, the rest of the wedding proceeded to plan and Joseph managed to restrain himself at the "And if there is any reason these two should not be married" part. On the other hand at the front Eva noticed that one of the bridesmaids was acting strangely. She seemed to be very sick and was looking at Romero angrily and trying to catch his eye, which he continually kept avoiding. Meanwhile in the back rows, Keith noticed that someone with what looked to be a wire was sitting a few rows from the back. She was nervously looking around and taking note of the other people in the church. A lot of notes it turned out, from the pad and paper she also had.
It looks like not everything was harmonious at this wedding at all and a list of suspects was developing...
Eventually the ceremony finally came to a conclusion, after being entirely done in both Italian and English. With the conclusion of the wedding, guests were moved to the reception hall and shown to their seats. Most of the investigators got put on a guest table near the back, but they were then accompanied by Joseph and Aroha (as the family didn't know where else to put them). Damian and Eva were at the front of the reception hall, at the bridal table. The lucky Bridge and Groom were getting redressed and having some time to themselves before the start of dinner after 6:30pm. This gave the investigators some time to do other things and figure out what was going on with the other guests.
It was also the perfect time for me to insert a ton of random drama into the game! Like any good soap, I decided to introduce several possible scandals. The bridesmaid that Eva noticed was ill? She wasn't just ill, but she had morning sickness! After Anastasia visited the bridesmaid in the bathroom after Eva caught her going in there, the investigators discovered that the baby was... the grooms! SCANDAL! Of course, the bridesmaid (Olivia) didn't know what to do and that Romero wasn't even remotely trying to talk to her. So she took the chance to vent to Anastasia, who soon sent a text telling the rest of the investigators about this.
Meanwhile, Keith was learning a bit more about Joseph and Aroha, who both seemed to be incredibly sketchy (at best). Especially when Aroha said to Keith that they had both come to witness a fantastic "show" and "Can't wait for it to start". Ominous indeed, but he couldn't determine if they were a part of it or if they knew something about it. Either way, they probably warranted some further investigation in future...
Damian and Eva overheard some of the family at the bridal table talking about the security and threats. Most importantly, they both learned that there were other coins sent to the venue. Coins covered in blood and that the family had brought these here in case there was a match to anyone at the venue. Sure enough, Eva and Damian went to break into the security office and grab them, with Eva notably distracting a guard away before an uncomfortable situation developed.
The biggest two sources of drama here were Anastasia catching up with her sister, Yellonova and when Maggie recognized Yellonova's date Dernis as the man she got in contact with for Loki to sell the sextant. Naturally when Anastasia and her date Yakov noticed this and went to chat, this made for a tense situation. Understandably so as well, given that Anastasia had almost been killed by this fellows boss and so she was most upset to see her sister with him. Some awkward conversations later, Yakov and Keith followed Dernis into the bathroom when he went to check on his "injured" shoulder (just a friendly squeeze from Yakov). Keith and Dernis came back out, but there wasn't any immediate sign of Yakov at this point.
Finally to cap off the session and really amp up the drama, was when Romero called Damian into the grooms quarters to have a private chat. Without entirely ruining the surprise, let's just say that morals and convictions were tested as Romero needed Damian to do a particularly awful thing.
Which by far was the perfect cliff hanger to end this Soap Opera like "Bold and the Tentacles" episode. Although it was largely a very slow and entirely roleplaying driven session, it has set up the story elements for the next session absolutely perfectly.
In my current setting, Dwarves invented fiat currency while the other races were still in the bronze age. Even soft metals are too useful, in their metallurgy-based magic system, to waste on symbolic tokens like that.
Eventually, their mastery of Thaumaturgical Engineering will allow them to break the last barriers that currently sequester true reality-warping Deific Sorcery to certain human bloodlines, by constructing an Alchemical Computing system that can hack write-access to the True Name of God, editing the universe by retroactively altering its creator. Or... they'll accidentally BSOD the Laws of Physics as they are presently known. They won't know for sure until someone's brave enough to turn the damn thing on for the first time.
Desert Leviathan on
Realizing lately that I don't really trust or respect basically any of the moderators here. So, good luck with life, friends! Hit me up on Twitter @DesertLeviathan
Finally, this is Dwarven "home" currency; ousiders barely know of its existence, much less get to handle it, and no Dwarf would ever consider jumping so high¹ as to debase a coin.
¹ Dwarves are natural stoopers, it's jumping they find weird and unsettling.
In my games, dwarf coins* are also deadly weapons, and not just in aggregate when dumped into a sack or in rolls of coins held in the fist. The edges are honed to not only create perfect stacks, but to serve as an arrowhead or sharpened weapon blade in a pinch. Their value is determined by how many elves they can kill before they are dulled.
* Also applies to dwarf bread, dwarf mine rations, and dwarf lingerie.
These two quotes read like something from a Discworld book...
Finally, this is Dwarven "home" currency; ousiders barely know of its existence, much less get to handle it, and no Dwarf would ever consider jumping so high¹ as to debase a coin.
¹ Dwarves are natural stoopers, it's jumping they find weird and unsettling.
In my games, dwarf coins* are also deadly weapons, and not just in aggregate when dumped into a sack or in rolls of coins held in the fist. The edges are honed to not only create perfect stacks, but to serve as an arrowhead or sharpened weapon blade in a pinch. Their value is determined by how many elves they can kill before they are dulled.
* Also applies to dwarf bread, dwarf mine rations, and dwarf lingerie.
These two quotes read like something from a Discworld book...
I would hope so! I think it's the footnotes, personally. We all miss Sir Terry.
Finally, this is Dwarven "home" currency; ousiders barely know of its existence, much less get to handle it, and no Dwarf would ever consider jumping so high¹ as to debase a coin.
¹ Dwarves are natural stoopers, it's jumping they find weird and unsettling.
In my games, dwarf coins* are also deadly weapons, and not just in aggregate when dumped into a sack or in rolls of coins held in the fist. The edges are honed to not only create perfect stacks, but to serve as an arrowhead or sharpened weapon blade in a pinch. Their value is determined by how many elves they can kill before they are dulled.
* Also applies to dwarf bread, dwarf mine rations, and dwarf lingerie.
These two quotes read like something from a Discworld book...
I would hope so! I think it's the footnotes, personally. We all miss Sir Terry.
Ok, so I might put up my MHR game Thursday. I'd like to run a post-Civil War timeline, where Heroes are few, and the players are young heroes. Or do like an Ultimate Spider-man like thing were the players are young heroes in a new SHIELD project to train promising recruits, requiring the players to deal with being both a hero and later being a normal teen.
All we've considered currency-wise in Ars Magica is that if we keep on making silver, we're going to crash the economy of England.
In the fiction there are rules put in place by the Order of Hermes to prevent this. We're playing in a time period a few years before this, and are playing like we're the reason the rules had to be drawn up.
[Muffled sounds of gorilla violence]
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited May 2015
Shadowrun, Mostly Flesh and Steel: I, Spy.
Following the path that I took with Icarus Protocol, I decided that the strings were going to increasingly come off with this run and my players were to have far more say in how the run is planned and how they handled things. Of course the advantage of giving your players more freedom RP wise is that it makes them feel like they have much more control over the game. However, it does mean I have to be prepared for a wider array of situations and think on my feet more. A challenge that I quite enjoy by this point!
Of course there is some complication to this game, where two of my players who were behind both of the combat orientated Street Samurai unfortunately had to leave the game for other reasons. This is always disappointing, but thankfully I have enough interest that I could quickly call in a couple of other players in a pinch. Unlike the previous run, I had deliberately made this run more combat orientated and in a very lawless area of Shanghai called the Vertical Desolation Zone (VDZ). Then both front line fighty types left and so I needed to call in a couple of other players, who fit so well I actually invited them formally into the game!
This meant with Candy (Street Samurai) and Tiny (Street Samurai) leaving the game, I needed to come up with a bit of a backup plan and thankfully I had access to the Shadowrun Boxed set. Using the pregenerated Coydog and Sledge gave the party the extra combat grit and utility required to get through the rather tough first encounter I had made. It was also the simplest and fastest way to get a couple of new players into the game in a sudden pinch. Overall this worked pretty well, but I did discover that these pregens aren't exactly intuitive to play for a player unfamiliar with shadowrun. Thankfully it didn't take very long to get into the game using these and they were a huge asset.
For this run I wanted to get a bit of a spy or technothriller feel, so to assist with this I wanted the meeting with the Mr. Wong in this Run to feel kind of sketchy and out of the way. When the Runners heard of the job it came through several of Raijin's Yakuza gang contacts, who suggested that a "securities" company might be interested in acquiring the services of some Shadowrunners. After organizing a meeting, the Runners met them in an ominous location: The ruins of the bombed Shiawase Coregrid building in a nearby abandoned parking lot. Even though the area was regularly patrolled by security drones, the runners were told not to worry about them and come at 6pm that night.
Here a tense negotiation with the black coated and leather clad, while also heavily armed security team took place. Their leader, a bald man with a bad disposition, explained the situation to the Runners. Another suspected terrorist had been caught out planning an attack and had gone into hiding. Unfortunately, the people she was hiding with were a rather infamous gang called the Iron Hands in Shanghai and they had closed ranks. The security forces had been unable to get any meaningful information and the gangs heavily armed fortress like buildings made a direct assault impossible. As a result individuals who wouldn't be immediately seen as "outsiders" were required for the job. Particularly individuals who could be as <em>discreet</em> as the Runners had proven themselves in the past.
The terrorist they needed hunting down was a woman called Sasha "Saberfyre" Shu, who was a known rigger and noted for using different drones. Apparently one of these drones, a Lockheed Optic-X2 had key information about an operation that the terrorists were about to commence. Security forces apparently damaged it and they suspect the difficulty in sourcing parts to repair the drone is what is keeping her from enacting whatever their plan is. So speed would be of the essence here, especially considering the denizens of the VDZ were busily heavily arming themselves for a fight to protect this potential terrorist. Taking out Saberfyre and destroying or recovering her drone was thus of the utmost importance to the future security of Shanghai.
With the jobs general conditions understood, the Runners pumped the Mr. Wong for some more information and decided to try to get some more funding, which they actually did. Most importantly, they were able to reduce the time penalty imposed on the actual Run. This time penalty I felt made this Run stand out a bit, because with every day that would pass after the first it would impose a penalty of -1000 Nuyen to the total and thus pressure them for a result. There wouldn't be a lot of time to go looking for floorplans and as Sasha could go further underground if she got wind of them, the Runners needed a careful but quick approach.
Here is where my players had some great thinking, with a suggestion to go and talk to their previous Mrs. Wong, Jade Snake. Jade Snake had a lot of connections and sure enough, knew a fair amount of useful information about Saberfyre - much of it contradictory to the Mr. Wong's claims. For one the players learned that Saberfyre usually did a lot of bribery or blackmail type jobs. Usually recording individuals in compromising positions and then selling the footage back at an exorbitant price (or threatening to throw up the trideo right onto the matrix). She was also generally a go between for Jade Snake and BTL (Better than life) chips, which the Iron Hands were infamous for producing. Interestingly, Jade Snake described Saberfyre as a complete wuss when it came to gore or blood, with the rigger refusing any job that might potentially hurt or kill someone.
Something wasn't quite adding up about this "terrorist". Especially as Radical Edward had been looking up who their potential employers were on the matrix and figured out they were potentially linked with Miltech - a securities company for one of the megacorporations.
Either way it was time to go and have an investigation of the VDZ, which was originally a group of five megatowers constructed to house corporate wage slaves. Unfortunately flooding damage, poor conditions and general expenses due to the locations caused them to be abandoned for better accommodations later. The Iron Hands decided to move in, fortify the place and then turn them into huge vertical fortresses and gang houses. Now the collection of fortified buildings, which has been walled off from most of the rest of Shanghai and firmly patrolled, is known as the Vertical Desolation Zone or "The Hanging Garden of Drek" by the locals. It's one of the best zones in the city to score either black market weapons or BTL chips.
Getting in would ordinarily be rather hard, but I had forgot that the pregen character Coydog (who entered into this game rather impromptu style) had levitate and with an amazing roll, was easily able to get nearly 1200kg of stuff over the wall. That meant a pretty easy infiltration for the group, who were a shade lighter than that total to say the least. After getting into the building they found their first destination: A bar where most of the leadership and people of importance within the Iron Hands tends to hang out, the Pelican Isle. Being a dive bar on the top of a 80 story building it was not an easy trip up and I emphasized the broken down bridges, wires and similar criss-crossing the zone between each of the five towers.
The dive bar itself had a few gangers outside, who were firmly distracted by Radical Edward and Nanna with the ever present "poisoned" cookies (which did lead to an interesting discussion on how she knew what cookies were or weren't poisoned). I allowed the Runners to develop some personalities and roleplaying, most notably by the obnoxious AR stripper pop-ups that appear when patrons enter the bar. These ARO's decide to tempt customers by producing scantily clad dancers of different genders, fetishes and sometimes the odd... other thing. Sure you could pay to get rid of them on your AR overlays, or you could hack them and turn them all into entirely adorable puppies, which was Radical Edward's solution and it was the best.
Asking around the bar for Sasha and dropping the name Jade Snake got the bartender to at least listen to the Runners, before directing them to Tier. She told them to keep their mouths shut and to follow her, as "corporates" had been asking around for Sasha previously. Tier was excessively paranoid and didn't want to give the Runners any information about where she could be in a crowded space, leading them outside of the bar and across one of the bridges to another building. Here I emphasized that these bridges were fairly crowded as well, with merchants literally standing with their backs to drops hundreds of feet down below in an attempt to sell things to those crossing between them.
Raijin, Coydog and Sledge went across the bridge, but Nanna jumped into a doberman drone and sent it across, while Radical Edward also stayed in the bar (whose matrix host resembled a decadent Roman palace). Eventually we came to the main reason for Tier taking them from the bar: To lure them into a fairly dangerous ambush. This ambush involved a couple of elements: One a large toxic spirit of earth hiding in the remains of an old dead tree (Tier is a toxic shaman). Meanwhile, several gangers armed with pistols hiding up above the Shadowrunners, while a fifth one carried an AK-98 with underslung grenade launcher. Although the characters did try to convince Tier they were friendly, she was having absolutely none of it and decided to initiate the ambush - but decided not to stick around trying to bolt for an exit.
When combat began Radical Edward noticed in the matrix that the grenades the orc leader carried were mini-grenades, with a setting that usually prevented them from going off early being disabled (meaning he could use them in close quarters under 5m). A quick hack on the fly to shove 3 marks on the grenades and a quick trigger ensured a massive and sudden kaboom. In many ways, I did allow things to happen this way because I wanted to show my players one very important thing about grenades: The Chunky Salsa effect! In the confined space of the second level of the building the grenades detonation bounced off the nearby walls multiple times. This resulted in a shower of orc bits and fine misty red particles as the inevitable result.
An important lesson had been learned about running silent with your weapons and grenades in the matrix, plus I got to basically demonstrate reasonably safely to the players why grenades are utterly terrifying. Either way, the resulting shootout was tough with Raijin and Coydog both being injured, but ultimately coming out the other side in one piece. The same couldn't be said for one of the orc ganger jobbers, who was eviscerated by Sledge's assault rifle. Even the toxic spirit copped a major fireball and didn't last long under subsequent sustained fire, leaving Tier attempting to escape: But a bullet through the knee* saw to that and the rest of the ganger jobbers decided they were going to get out of there before the Shadowrunners paid all their attention to them.
Next session, it's time to find out what Tier really knows and if she's going to tell them where Sasha is .... or not.
Ok, so I might put up my MHR game Thursday. I'd like to run a post-Civil War timeline, where Heroes are few, and the players are young heroes. Or do like an Ultimate Spider-man like thing were the players are young heroes in a new SHIELD project to train promising recruits, requiring the players to deal with being both a hero and later being a normal teen.
Anything you guys would want to play?
I have no experience with the system but I would play either of those settings.
Ok, so I might put up my MHR game Thursday. I'd like to run a post-Civil War timeline, where Heroes are few, and the players are young heroes. Or do like an Ultimate Spider-man like thing were the players are young heroes in a new SHIELD project to train promising recruits, requiring the players to deal with being both a hero and later being a normal teen.
Finally, this is Dwarven "home" currency; ousiders barely know of its existence, much less get to handle it, and no Dwarf would ever consider jumping so high¹ as to debase a coin.
¹ Dwarves are natural stoopers, it's jumping they find weird and unsettling.
In my games, dwarf coins* are also deadly weapons, and not just in aggregate when dumped into a sack or in rolls of coins held in the fist. The edges are honed to not only create perfect stacks, but to serve as an arrowhead or sharpened weapon blade in a pinch. Their value is determined by how many elves they can kill before they are dulled.
* Also applies to dwarf bread, dwarf mine rations, and dwarf lingerie.
These two quotes read like something from a Discworld book...
I would hope so! I think it's the footnotes, personally. We all miss Sir Terry.
someone run a Discworld game! I've had a concept for someone who tried to start a Guild of Bodyguards in Uberwald kicking around for months now, just waiting to join the Watch.
Ok, so I might put up my MHR game Thursday. I'd like to run a post-Civil War timeline, where Heroes are few, and the players are young heroes. Or do like an Ultimate Spider-man like thing were the players are young heroes in a new SHIELD project to train promising recruits, requiring the players to deal with being both a hero and later being a normal teen.
Anything you guys would want to play?
Both sound good, as long as the latter isn't Glee-style melodrama.
Finally, this is Dwarven "home" currency; ousiders barely know of its existence, much less get to handle it, and no Dwarf would ever consider jumping so high¹ as to debase a coin.
¹ Dwarves are natural stoopers, it's jumping they find weird and unsettling.
In my games, dwarf coins* are also deadly weapons, and not just in aggregate when dumped into a sack or in rolls of coins held in the fist. The edges are honed to not only create perfect stacks, but to serve as an arrowhead or sharpened weapon blade in a pinch. Their value is determined by how many elves they can kill before they are dulled.
* Also applies to dwarf bread, dwarf mine rations, and dwarf lingerie.
These two quotes read like something from a Discworld book...
I would hope so! I think it's the footnotes, personally. We all miss Sir Terry.
someone run a Discworld game! I've had a concept for someone who tried to start a Guild of Bodyguards in Uberwald kicking around for months now, just waiting to join the Watch.
Finally, this is Dwarven "home" currency; ousiders barely know of its existence, much less get to handle it, and no Dwarf would ever consider jumping so high¹ as to debase a coin.
¹ Dwarves are natural stoopers, it's jumping they find weird and unsettling.
In my games, dwarf coins* are also deadly weapons, and not just in aggregate when dumped into a sack or in rolls of coins held in the fist. The edges are honed to not only create perfect stacks, but to serve as an arrowhead or sharpened weapon blade in a pinch. Their value is determined by how many elves they can kill before they are dulled.
* Also applies to dwarf bread, dwarf mine rations, and dwarf lingerie.
These two quotes read like something from a Discworld book...
I would hope so! I think it's the footnotes, personally. We all miss Sir Terry.
someone run a Discworld game! I've had a concept for someone who tried to start a Guild of Bodyguards in Uberwald kicking around for months now, just waiting to join the Watch.
Thought Process:
Discworld would be cool
Wait...that'd mean GURPS.
Fuck That.
How about....Cortex?
FATE?
What would a Discworld game even look like?
Toon.
The Discworld GURPS books are worth getting, imo, but certainly not for the system. Actually, a lot of GURPS books are like that.
Posts
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
edit: I have the EotE book and will likely be running it, but I don't have anything else
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Ashen Stars is a GUMSHOE game, so it's mystery focused. Think of it like Star Trek but someone recently exploded the Federation and now things have gone a bit Battlestar Galactica.
No if I did it I'd pull out ICONS Revised and go to town!
The HWK-290 is in the Far Horizons (Colonist) sourcebook, pages 56 and 57.
Also, those two post have always been in my OPs for every MHR games because of their awesomeness. They explain the system better then the books.
Starts with me and the mechanic in our ship being contracted to get 2 Jedi who would fill us in on the mission. Mechanic plots the course and I hit the engines. I took the moment to say that whenever the ship goes into hyperspace a random song plays. So imagine the stars getting all stretched out, the ship shooting off and this playing over the ship PA
The GM's exact words were "I love and hate you so much right now." The ship lands at the Jedi academy where I hash out the contract details with Luke (who speaks fluent ewok because why wouldn't he?) Kyle Katarn was also there though he didn't do much (too busy trying not to laugh at an ewok smuggler/privateer). The job turns out to be to find a Jedi who went missing on Dathomir. The next trip was mostly uneventful. Mechanic spent time most of his time fixing things, Jedi were meditating, I took this opportunity to say that there were crawlspaces big enough for me throughout the ship. So one Jedi would be meditating in his room, a panel on the wall would swing open, I walk out and go over to the opposite wall, open another panel and walk in but pop back out to say dinner would be ready in 5.
We landed on the planet and after a little searching, it looks like our first encounter will be up next week. This should be fun.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Nerdist website.
I know I don't have a use for them but I wamt some.
I really love the setting, but the mechanics available in the books themselves aren't really my style. And the "raising the stakes" methodology in Cortex fits so many of the classic types of L5R scenes so well.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Milled edges would fix the issue though it is much more difficult to do to triangular coins than round coins. Roundness makes a great number of machining/forming operations much easier than other shapes.
Also, all dwarves have natural metalsense that allows them to feel when a piece of metal that they're touching was last altered, and in what way.
¹ Dwarves are natural stoopers, it's jumping they find weird and unsettling.
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
* Also applies to dwarf bread, dwarf mine rations, and dwarf lingerie.
I haven't found any a la carte character creation options yet. Is that just something that doesn't exist with this system? It's probably fine if that's the case, since there are a ton of templates to pick from.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Right now, we're roughly at the halfway point of this campaign in many ways and how long it goes will heavily depend on what the players do from here. Numerous plot threads are starting to come together and I feel the investigators are starting to get a good grasp on the big overall picture of what is happening. Of course, it's worth bringing up that we're also getting to a point where some of these investigators are seriously broken people.
If anyone needs to know what truly makes a game like Call of Cthulhu or Trail of Cthulhu unique, it's that knowledge plus experience doesn't directly equal an increase in power like Dungeons and Dragons. Most of my players investigators are far more capable now than they were at the very start of the game sure, but they're also starting to suffer having permanently lost rating points in stability and most importantly: Sanity.
Sanity as a stat basically puts a defined, known shelf-life on your investigators and how long they are going to last. The more monsters, magic and strange things they encounter, the lower their potential time in the game. Likewise, players who invest heavily into mythos knowledge, magic and similar are equally likely to reach a potential breaking point sooner than later. Mechanics like this reinforce the hopelessness and inevitable defeat the fight against mythos is, with how those who face it inevitably go insane, become a tool of what they fought against or even worse fates.
It does have a notable consequence on the overall way I write the game: It means that over an extended period, it's hard to think that all investigators will make it to the end. After a while of running this game, I have become rather fond of many of my players investigators, with the plot deeply woven around these characters and their actions. Due to the amount of sanity damage around it is invariable as we get into deeper conspiracies, more ferocious monsters and even more bizarre situations that one, or more, will go insane (or meet a tragic end). As a result, I've begun to try and deliberately move some of these points onwards a bit.
In this session I decided to take a distinctly different tone and write the entire thing like a soap opera: Just with cultists. Instead of drama and tension coming from monsters or magic, I have an overarching plot about a potential attack from one of the investigators numerous enemies on the wedding, but then focused entirely on inter-character drama. This meant there wasn't a lot of need for stability checks, which could run the risk of damaging an investigators dwindling sanity if it came about due to a monster or spell. Another advantage was that it gave me plenty of time to characterize different NPCs at the wedding, throwing in numerous potential candidates for "Who might be threatening the bride and groom?" and also adding some intrigue to Damian's mysterious mafia family to explore.
And perhaps some highly uncomfortable truths for Damian to discover along the way...
I decided to allow some time at the start of this session for the investigators to resolve any out of game shenanigans that had been going on. Given this game has a lot of things happen in secret between me and the players, plus sometimes with one another, it's worth taking a while to make sure those things were resolved. After doing this, I decided to move on with an unusual encounter from a new (and strange) fellow to the store. He asked Jasmin where certain members of the group were, notably Maggie, Anastasia, Keith or Damian (I concluded this NPC would not know about Eva). Eventually Anastasia had a chat to him, given that he came late at night while only Keith and her were in the store other than Jasmine.
Here after a brief conversation, where he made clear his "mistress" was disappointed Anastasia hadn't heeded her warnings, I had him give a tome to the party, which will later become very important in the context of the game. Written by Dr. Phillipa Orson, it claims to be a "Deep study of the magiks of the mythos and the strange inhabitants of the outer dimensions" and if I have my way, will be an actual physical thing that the players can read. This is the result of my planning and the "Arts and Crafts" post from a while back, where I intend to put the full language of magic into this book - then give it to the PCs to figure out what is happening. Notably at the time I made sure to reinforce some points on this before they were done.
Firstly, just because I give them something directly doesn't mean it will always be the literal truth. Other tomes, NPCs or sources might contradict quite a lot of the book. Secondly, I also emphasized that it's a tome written by an inherently crazy person (as they all are), so it might be a bit tricky to read or even follow in the first place. Figuring out where bits of the text went or how they fit together is a natural piece of the "puzzle" in using the book.
I was really pleased with the excited reaction to having an actual physical "tome" in the game and so it's made all the effort put into it (so far) all the more worthwhile. Don't worry readers, there will be copious pictures of the finished tome to come on the guild once I am done with it! Hopefully this adds an interesting new dimension to the latter half of this campaign and how the players start to use (and hopefully experiment) more with magic in order to gain any advantage they can. Of course at what terrible cost that advantage might come at.... Well, we will have to see!
In any event after this it was time for the investigators to organize themselves for the upcoming wedding of Damian's brother, Romero. Here if I had a bit of a failing this investigation it was by far in the set up here. This wedding isn't just important to the investigators because it's Damian's brother, it's also very important because of who Romero is marrying and the current situation. If you recall from the events in Nepal, the investigators learned that a sunken U-Boat near the coast of Iceland held the key to finding the hidden location of R'leyh (the Germans had figured it out). Here's the problem, the submarine is thousands of feet below the surface of the Atlantic and basically inaccessible to the investigators currently.
Enter this wedding and the importance of Romero's wife, Joleen. Joleen is an extremely powerful woman, who owns numerous shipping companies and most importantly is a massive advocate for the exploration of the deepest parts of the ocean. In the version of earth Trail occupies for me, she's actually responsible for many important undersea finds and works closely with "in game" James Cameron. She helped him discover the Titanic, explore the ship and then subsequently retrieve the entire wreck. Right now she's developed new submersible craft and special equipment to allow divers to explore the deepest parts of the ocean, which they are mastering in the Mariana trench.
Unfortunately for her and Romero, someone else is well aware of this and intends to use her resources for their own gain. A mysterious threat was made against the wedding when Romero received a coin - depicting the Esoteric Order of Dagon's symbol - covered in someones blood. Naturally Romero became concerned and knowing his brother's friends have a habit of solving tough problems, paid a visit to the shop before the start of the wedding. An analysis of the blood type confirmed it to be from the bride to be, but there was no obvious indication of how they got it (and she was distinctly *not* abducted or anything). Either way the investigators interpreted this as some kind of threat, especially given what they've seen other spellcasters and cultists do with blood in the past.
Of course before I continue, writing this down now it's pretty clear what I was intending from this investigation but at the time I didn't strongly emphasize those two paragraphs. Especially the sheer inaccessibility of the wreck and where it is located, which is something I should have dedicated a few scenes to exploring in a previous investigation to emphasize the importance of this event going smoothly for the investigators. So later on there is a moment where one of my players asked, "Wait, why are we not just leaving this place again?" when it becomes quite clear something terrible *is* going to happen and the answer wasn't immediately justified by the previous narrative (as I hadn't emphasized it to my players!).
Oops!
Either way I asked the investigators who they were going to bring along with them to the wedding. Damian, as Romero's brother and very close to him (Romero is Damian's source of stability) was the best man so would be at different positions in the wedding to the other investigators. Splitting up the investigators this way is a very deliberate plot and will make more sense in the second part of the investigation. Damian named Eva (the new investigator) as his "date" and hence the two of them were in the frontal groom party or bridal table. Maggie took Torvald, the man who was helping Melissa all the way back in "As above, so below" and is now formally the characters boyfriend. Keith took his source of stability and occultist friend Sarah, while Anastasia brought along a new character to the game Yakov (her "childhood friend").
With dates in tow, the investigators packed up and attended the wedding at a wonderful old castle some 35 miles outside of Dorset along the English coast. With an in built church and a large hall, it was the perfect place for the reclusive couple and family to have both the wedding, with the reception following after. Security at the venue was tight and keenly aware of the threats made to the event. Most guests were expected to spend the night at the estate, with accommodation paid for and nobody being let in (or off) the property after 6pm that night for security purposes. Unfortunately, like a couple of things this session, I didn't emphasize this point enough but it will become relevant later!
Initially the wedding was going well and entirely to plan, if long and very religious (Roman Catholic style). About half-way through I decided to spice things up by the first introduction of genuine drama into the investigation: The arrival of the estranged bastard half-brother and his date! Joseph and Aroha barged in, with Joseph immediately making a considerable scene of how "offended" he was that he hadn't been invited to the wedding! Then he dropped the startling revelation that he was Damian and Romero's half brother, to gasps around the church! This caused considerable consternation amongst the Wolfe family, who decided to avoid further embarrassment by allowing Joseph and Aroha to stay.
Of course Aroha caught the investigators eye, because she had some interesting additions to the traditional Moko she had on her person: Various mythos symbols of power were weaved into many of the designs. Given Joseph's agitation and the particular threats that were made... could this be the attackers? Either way, the rest of the wedding proceeded to plan and Joseph managed to restrain himself at the "And if there is any reason these two should not be married" part. On the other hand at the front Eva noticed that one of the bridesmaids was acting strangely. She seemed to be very sick and was looking at Romero angrily and trying to catch his eye, which he continually kept avoiding. Meanwhile in the back rows, Keith noticed that someone with what looked to be a wire was sitting a few rows from the back. She was nervously looking around and taking note of the other people in the church. A lot of notes it turned out, from the pad and paper she also had.
It looks like not everything was harmonious at this wedding at all and a list of suspects was developing...
Eventually the ceremony finally came to a conclusion, after being entirely done in both Italian and English. With the conclusion of the wedding, guests were moved to the reception hall and shown to their seats. Most of the investigators got put on a guest table near the back, but they were then accompanied by Joseph and Aroha (as the family didn't know where else to put them). Damian and Eva were at the front of the reception hall, at the bridal table. The lucky Bridge and Groom were getting redressed and having some time to themselves before the start of dinner after 6:30pm. This gave the investigators some time to do other things and figure out what was going on with the other guests.
It was also the perfect time for me to insert a ton of random drama into the game! Like any good soap, I decided to introduce several possible scandals. The bridesmaid that Eva noticed was ill? She wasn't just ill, but she had morning sickness! After Anastasia visited the bridesmaid in the bathroom after Eva caught her going in there, the investigators discovered that the baby was... the grooms! SCANDAL! Of course, the bridesmaid (Olivia) didn't know what to do and that Romero wasn't even remotely trying to talk to her. So she took the chance to vent to Anastasia, who soon sent a text telling the rest of the investigators about this.
Meanwhile, Keith was learning a bit more about Joseph and Aroha, who both seemed to be incredibly sketchy (at best). Especially when Aroha said to Keith that they had both come to witness a fantastic "show" and "Can't wait for it to start". Ominous indeed, but he couldn't determine if they were a part of it or if they knew something about it. Either way, they probably warranted some further investigation in future...
Damian and Eva overheard some of the family at the bridal table talking about the security and threats. Most importantly, they both learned that there were other coins sent to the venue. Coins covered in blood and that the family had brought these here in case there was a match to anyone at the venue. Sure enough, Eva and Damian went to break into the security office and grab them, with Eva notably distracting a guard away before an uncomfortable situation developed.
The biggest two sources of drama here were Anastasia catching up with her sister, Yellonova and when Maggie recognized Yellonova's date Dernis as the man she got in contact with for Loki to sell the sextant. Naturally when Anastasia and her date Yakov noticed this and went to chat, this made for a tense situation. Understandably so as well, given that Anastasia had almost been killed by this fellows boss and so she was most upset to see her sister with him. Some awkward conversations later, Yakov and Keith followed Dernis into the bathroom when he went to check on his "injured" shoulder (just a friendly squeeze from Yakov). Keith and Dernis came back out, but there wasn't any immediate sign of Yakov at this point.
Finally to cap off the session and really amp up the drama, was when Romero called Damian into the grooms quarters to have a private chat. Without entirely ruining the surprise, let's just say that morals and convictions were tested as Romero needed Damian to do a particularly awful thing.
Which by far was the perfect cliff hanger to end this Soap Opera like "Bold and the Tentacles" episode. Although it was largely a very slow and entirely roleplaying driven session, it has set up the story elements for the next session absolutely perfectly.
Eventually, their mastery of Thaumaturgical Engineering will allow them to break the last barriers that currently sequester true reality-warping Deific Sorcery to certain human bloodlines, by constructing an Alchemical Computing system that can hack write-access to the True Name of God, editing the universe by retroactively altering its creator. Or... they'll accidentally BSOD the Laws of Physics as they are presently known. They won't know for sure until someone's brave enough to turn the damn thing on for the first time.
These two quotes read like something from a Discworld book...
Anything you guys would want to play?
In the fiction there are rules put in place by the Order of Hermes to prevent this. We're playing in a time period a few years before this, and are playing like we're the reason the rules had to be drawn up.
Following the path that I took with Icarus Protocol, I decided that the strings were going to increasingly come off with this run and my players were to have far more say in how the run is planned and how they handled things. Of course the advantage of giving your players more freedom RP wise is that it makes them feel like they have much more control over the game. However, it does mean I have to be prepared for a wider array of situations and think on my feet more. A challenge that I quite enjoy by this point!
Of course there is some complication to this game, where two of my players who were behind both of the combat orientated Street Samurai unfortunately had to leave the game for other reasons. This is always disappointing, but thankfully I have enough interest that I could quickly call in a couple of other players in a pinch. Unlike the previous run, I had deliberately made this run more combat orientated and in a very lawless area of Shanghai called the Vertical Desolation Zone (VDZ). Then both front line fighty types left and so I needed to call in a couple of other players, who fit so well I actually invited them formally into the game!
This meant with Candy (Street Samurai) and Tiny (Street Samurai) leaving the game, I needed to come up with a bit of a backup plan and thankfully I had access to the Shadowrun Boxed set. Using the pregenerated Coydog and Sledge gave the party the extra combat grit and utility required to get through the rather tough first encounter I had made. It was also the simplest and fastest way to get a couple of new players into the game in a sudden pinch. Overall this worked pretty well, but I did discover that these pregens aren't exactly intuitive to play for a player unfamiliar with shadowrun. Thankfully it didn't take very long to get into the game using these and they were a huge asset.
For this run I wanted to get a bit of a spy or technothriller feel, so to assist with this I wanted the meeting with the Mr. Wong in this Run to feel kind of sketchy and out of the way. When the Runners heard of the job it came through several of Raijin's Yakuza gang contacts, who suggested that a "securities" company might be interested in acquiring the services of some Shadowrunners. After organizing a meeting, the Runners met them in an ominous location: The ruins of the bombed Shiawase Coregrid building in a nearby abandoned parking lot. Even though the area was regularly patrolled by security drones, the runners were told not to worry about them and come at 6pm that night.
Here a tense negotiation with the black coated and leather clad, while also heavily armed security team took place. Their leader, a bald man with a bad disposition, explained the situation to the Runners. Another suspected terrorist had been caught out planning an attack and had gone into hiding. Unfortunately, the people she was hiding with were a rather infamous gang called the Iron Hands in Shanghai and they had closed ranks. The security forces had been unable to get any meaningful information and the gangs heavily armed fortress like buildings made a direct assault impossible. As a result individuals who wouldn't be immediately seen as "outsiders" were required for the job. Particularly individuals who could be as <em>discreet</em> as the Runners had proven themselves in the past.
The terrorist they needed hunting down was a woman called Sasha "Saberfyre" Shu, who was a known rigger and noted for using different drones. Apparently one of these drones, a Lockheed Optic-X2 had key information about an operation that the terrorists were about to commence. Security forces apparently damaged it and they suspect the difficulty in sourcing parts to repair the drone is what is keeping her from enacting whatever their plan is. So speed would be of the essence here, especially considering the denizens of the VDZ were busily heavily arming themselves for a fight to protect this potential terrorist. Taking out Saberfyre and destroying or recovering her drone was thus of the utmost importance to the future security of Shanghai.
With the jobs general conditions understood, the Runners pumped the Mr. Wong for some more information and decided to try to get some more funding, which they actually did. Most importantly, they were able to reduce the time penalty imposed on the actual Run. This time penalty I felt made this Run stand out a bit, because with every day that would pass after the first it would impose a penalty of -1000 Nuyen to the total and thus pressure them for a result. There wouldn't be a lot of time to go looking for floorplans and as Sasha could go further underground if she got wind of them, the Runners needed a careful but quick approach.
Here is where my players had some great thinking, with a suggestion to go and talk to their previous Mrs. Wong, Jade Snake. Jade Snake had a lot of connections and sure enough, knew a fair amount of useful information about Saberfyre - much of it contradictory to the Mr. Wong's claims. For one the players learned that Saberfyre usually did a lot of bribery or blackmail type jobs. Usually recording individuals in compromising positions and then selling the footage back at an exorbitant price (or threatening to throw up the trideo right onto the matrix). She was also generally a go between for Jade Snake and BTL (Better than life) chips, which the Iron Hands were infamous for producing. Interestingly, Jade Snake described Saberfyre as a complete wuss when it came to gore or blood, with the rigger refusing any job that might potentially hurt or kill someone.
Something wasn't quite adding up about this "terrorist". Especially as Radical Edward had been looking up who their potential employers were on the matrix and figured out they were potentially linked with Miltech - a securities company for one of the megacorporations.
Either way it was time to go and have an investigation of the VDZ, which was originally a group of five megatowers constructed to house corporate wage slaves. Unfortunately flooding damage, poor conditions and general expenses due to the locations caused them to be abandoned for better accommodations later. The Iron Hands decided to move in, fortify the place and then turn them into huge vertical fortresses and gang houses. Now the collection of fortified buildings, which has been walled off from most of the rest of Shanghai and firmly patrolled, is known as the Vertical Desolation Zone or "The Hanging Garden of Drek" by the locals. It's one of the best zones in the city to score either black market weapons or BTL chips.
Getting in would ordinarily be rather hard, but I had forgot that the pregen character Coydog (who entered into this game rather impromptu style) had levitate and with an amazing roll, was easily able to get nearly 1200kg of stuff over the wall. That meant a pretty easy infiltration for the group, who were a shade lighter than that total to say the least. After getting into the building they found their first destination: A bar where most of the leadership and people of importance within the Iron Hands tends to hang out, the Pelican Isle. Being a dive bar on the top of a 80 story building it was not an easy trip up and I emphasized the broken down bridges, wires and similar criss-crossing the zone between each of the five towers.
The dive bar itself had a few gangers outside, who were firmly distracted by Radical Edward and Nanna with the ever present "poisoned" cookies (which did lead to an interesting discussion on how she knew what cookies were or weren't poisoned). I allowed the Runners to develop some personalities and roleplaying, most notably by the obnoxious AR stripper pop-ups that appear when patrons enter the bar. These ARO's decide to tempt customers by producing scantily clad dancers of different genders, fetishes and sometimes the odd... other thing. Sure you could pay to get rid of them on your AR overlays, or you could hack them and turn them all into entirely adorable puppies, which was Radical Edward's solution and it was the best.
Asking around the bar for Sasha and dropping the name Jade Snake got the bartender to at least listen to the Runners, before directing them to Tier. She told them to keep their mouths shut and to follow her, as "corporates" had been asking around for Sasha previously. Tier was excessively paranoid and didn't want to give the Runners any information about where she could be in a crowded space, leading them outside of the bar and across one of the bridges to another building. Here I emphasized that these bridges were fairly crowded as well, with merchants literally standing with their backs to drops hundreds of feet down below in an attempt to sell things to those crossing between them.
Raijin, Coydog and Sledge went across the bridge, but Nanna jumped into a doberman drone and sent it across, while Radical Edward also stayed in the bar (whose matrix host resembled a decadent Roman palace). Eventually we came to the main reason for Tier taking them from the bar: To lure them into a fairly dangerous ambush. This ambush involved a couple of elements: One a large toxic spirit of earth hiding in the remains of an old dead tree (Tier is a toxic shaman). Meanwhile, several gangers armed with pistols hiding up above the Shadowrunners, while a fifth one carried an AK-98 with underslung grenade launcher. Although the characters did try to convince Tier they were friendly, she was having absolutely none of it and decided to initiate the ambush - but decided not to stick around trying to bolt for an exit.
When combat began Radical Edward noticed in the matrix that the grenades the orc leader carried were mini-grenades, with a setting that usually prevented them from going off early being disabled (meaning he could use them in close quarters under 5m). A quick hack on the fly to shove 3 marks on the grenades and a quick trigger ensured a massive and sudden kaboom. In many ways, I did allow things to happen this way because I wanted to show my players one very important thing about grenades: The Chunky Salsa effect! In the confined space of the second level of the building the grenades detonation bounced off the nearby walls multiple times. This resulted in a shower of orc bits and fine misty red particles as the inevitable result.
An important lesson had been learned about running silent with your weapons and grenades in the matrix, plus I got to basically demonstrate reasonably safely to the players why grenades are utterly terrifying. Either way, the resulting shootout was tough with Raijin and Coydog both being injured, but ultimately coming out the other side in one piece. The same couldn't be said for one of the orc ganger jobbers, who was eviscerated by Sledge's assault rifle. Even the toxic spirit copped a major fireball and didn't last long under subsequent sustained fire, leaving Tier attempting to escape: But a bullet through the knee* saw to that and the rest of the ganger jobbers decided they were going to get out of there before the Shadowrunners paid all their attention to them.
Next session, it's time to find out what Tier really knows and if she's going to tell them where Sasha is .... or not.
*[Insert skyrim reference here]
I have no experience with the system but I would play either of those settings.
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They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
So Spawn the RPG is pretty much your dream then?
Either of those sound fine to me.
someone run a Discworld game! I've had a concept for someone who tried to start a Guild of Bodyguards in Uberwald kicking around for months now, just waiting to join the Watch. Both sound good, as long as the latter isn't Glee-style melodrama.
But if we practice hard we could make Regionals.
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Thought Process:
Toon.
The Discworld GURPS books are worth getting, imo, but certainly not for the system. Actually, a lot of GURPS books are like that.