Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: mtfeeney = Baron on <05-12-13/0019:33>
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Ok, I'll run my very first game next weekend. I'm going to post my ideas for the run, and I'd really like some feedback as to whether it's stupid, boring/exciting, and I'd love to hear suggestions. This thread is NOT for my runners. That means you, Madwand, Bookworm, and Vinnmun! Seriously, you shouldn't read this, it'll spoil the fun.
The team:
Madwand/Raven - Human Chaos Mage/Hacker
Bookworm/Quark - Ork Street Samurai
Vinnmun/??? - A luck-based physical fighter of some sort... unsure
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The general idea I have is that a new upstart gang(anti-tech) has commandeered a neighborhood in a slum. They killed a few people and kicked everyone else out. Then they went around the place and wiped out all electronics. Now that they've solidified their hold over this meager area, they've spread themselves around... pretty thinly.
The former residents are hiring the group for a pest extermination run. A lump sum for clearing the area, a bonus for doing as little damage to the area as possible, another bonus if they can do it quietly(they want to spread a rumor that the area is haunted to deter future incursions). The leader of the gang also took some items of personal attachment from the neighborhood council's leaders when he killed them, so there's a bonus for retrieving them. Non-lethal is NOT an option, because the community worries that the gang will just come back with more people if they're allowed to live. Since there are no non-combatants remaining in the area, this should mean it's a pretty straight-forward assault.
Possible plans of attack for me to prepare for:
They go in, guns blazing: This sounds like a bad idea. They're going to be swarmed by the whole gang.
They go in stealth mode, creeping along slowly: This should work well, but it'll be slow. Will the players grow bored? How can I keep tension high?
They go in stealth mode, but moving quickly: This would be the best, I think.
Plans they might have that won't work and why:
Driving a truck into the buildings with explosives to destroy area - There is no payment and possible bounty on them if they destroy the area.
Bombs - Same
Non-lethal - Already talked about that.
Hacking - Completely not an option. The area is clear, there aren't even commlinks or RFID tags. The gang EMP'd the area just to make sure. Repeatedly.
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For a 2-5 hour run, how many gang members should I plant throughout the area? Should they always be grouped together or hanging solo? There will be some mages mixed in, so how should I handle magical security? Is my group screwed if they don't check for spirits roaming constantly?
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Guns blazing can actually work. A quick enough shock and awe assault has a good chance of scattering a gang to the four winds and making them rethink their lives, especially if the leader is killed in the assault.
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They would just run away and not come back to get revenge on the people living there afterward?
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I think a lot of runners will go with the assassination of the leader(s) followed by some shock and awe. Without their leader, the gang should cave fairly quickly.
Shadowrunners are generally fairly powerful compared to most gangs, so unless they have some serious firepower or magic, the runners should be able to outmanuever the gang and certainly out fight them.
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They would just run away and not come back to get revenge on the people living there afterward?
When held together by a strong leader, a gang can be a formidable force, but once the leadership falls, they're basically cowardly bullies.
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More than likely the surviviors will join other gangs.
Could be an idea not to be obvious about who hired you, maybe look like a rival group taking the turf.
Nature does abhore a vacumn, and this being the barrens, so gang/org crime group will take control of the turf eventually.
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Yeah, good chance they'll join other gangs eventually, but it would be after they "scattered to the four winds". :P
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That all depends on the scale of the area the Wiz-gang controls, and what Johnson considers "as little damage as possible".
For a single Tenement Project building sans explosives, quite is better. A pair of gangers on each door, with 4 or 5 doors. Another pair on each floor at the stair well (if 3 or fewer floors) or bank of elevators (for buildings with more than 3 floors). Sprinkle in a weak PhysAdept every 2 or 3 floors, along with a few roving Watcher Spirits. Then have the final confrontation at one end of the top floor with a middling strength PhysAdept as the chief guard, any possible spirit back-up, and main Wiz-bang of your chosen tradition.
An apartment complex sized neighborhood is another matter. With a Complex consisting of no more than 10 apartment buildings there should be just enough sneaking to suit most groups. A pair of gangers on each of the Complex's gates/entries, 2 or 3 should do. With another pair chilling on each building's front stoop. Sprinkle in a weak PhysAdept every 2 or 3 buildings, with 1 watcher spirit per 3 buildings in the complex. Then have the final confrontation at the Managers office (converted to serve as the leader's residence) with a middling strength PhysAdept as the chief guard, any possible spirit back-up, and main Wiz-bang of your chosen tradition.
For more of a residential neighborhood put 2-4 gangers at each road entering the neighborhood, and spread the gangers out more. I'd say have them chilling on all of the front stoops with 2 in the front of the largest/most central house in the neighborhood. Then have the final confrontation at the largest/most central house with a middling strength PhysAdept as the chief guard, any possible spirit back-up, and main Wiz-bang of your chosen tradition.
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I'm glad I came here... I would've never considered that a valid solution. If I was in a gang and the leader was killed, I'd see it as a promotion for me... and I'd certainly not let a group of civies get away with putting a hit on my gang. They'd all die, for sure. On the other hand, community consensus is that wiping out a leader gets rid of the gang, who am I to argue? I see it wrong, apparently. :)
So, we've added a possible solution. Anything else? Does it sound like a fun/interesting run? Too cookie cutter boring? I know it's generally bad to railroad the group into a specific action, but we've spent 2 months of gaming doing our best to avoid any combat. The whole point of this run is to force them into a few fights, to some degree or another. In my best case scenario, they would go through the compound(I'm thinking multiple buildings that share a common area with a fountain in the middle) quietly and wipe out everyone they find, a la Splinter Cell. Kill everyone, loot everyone, everyone is happy.
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I'm glad I came here... I would've never considered that a valid solution. If I was in a gang and the leader was killed, I'd see it as a promotion for me... and I'd certainly not let a group of civies get away with putting a hit on my gang. They'd all die, for sure. On the other hand, community consensus is that wiping out a leader gets rid of the gang, who am I to argue? I see it wrong, apparently. :)
So, we've added a possible solution. Anything else? Does it sound like a fun/interesting run? Too cookie cutter boring? I know it's generally bad to railroad the group into a specific action, but we've spent 2 months of gaming doing our best to avoid any combat. The whole point of this run is to force them into a few fights, to some degree or another. In my best case scenario, they would go through the compound(I'm thinking multiple buildings that share a common area with a fountain in the middle) quietly and wipe out everyone they find, a la Splinter Cell. Kill everyone, loot everyone, everyone is happy.
Have a think about what to do if it doesn't go smoothly. Chances are that the gang will become alert at some point in time. Someone will get a shot off, or scream or maybe someone just stumbles on their bodies.
If the gang has magic, then they have watch spirits which could also add complications.
Have a twist, at least one simple twist. Why are they anti-tech? Perhaps they have a spirit mentor? Or maybe a rival gang chooses to raid the complex at the same time? Or something else? Something simple that throws a spanner in the works. Heck, throw some domesticated hell hounds in the mix.
A lot of ideas will depend on how your group plays. This scenario appears to be a combonation of shooter/dungeon crawl style.
Think about how to keep the game tense and exciting. Think of challenges they they may need to deal with. Any traps, trip wires etc? A bridge joining to building across a wide open space, connected basement area, tight and narrow and filled with steam pipes, dripping water, barrackaded, mined, corridors, etc, etc.
Put some thought into giving the gangers some character. Not too much, likely chances are your runners will kill them pretty quick, but maybe one of the girls has a pink mohawk, one the trolls thinks his niel the barbarian, the shaman is a rat shaman and keeps a swarm of rats patrolling the complex. So that rat they just killed? His buddy went and warned his master.
Anyway, just a few thoughts.
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I'm glad I came here... I would've never considered that a valid solution. If I was in a gang and the leader was killed, I'd see it as a promotion for me... and I'd certainly not let a group of civies get away with putting a hit on my gang. They'd all die, for sure. On the other hand, community consensus is that wiping out a leader gets rid of the gang, who am I to argue? I see it wrong, apparently. :)
So, we've added a possible solution. Anything else? Does it sound like a fun/interesting run? Too cookie cutter boring? I know it's generally bad to railroad the group into a specific action, but we've spent 2 months of gaming doing our best to avoid any combat. The whole point of this run is to force them into a few fights, to some degree or another. In my best case scenario, they would go through the compound(I'm thinking multiple buildings that share a common area with a fountain in the middle) quietly and wipe out everyone they find, a la Splinter Cell. Kill everyone, loot everyone, everyone is happy.
Have a think about what to do if it doesn't go smoothly. Chances are that the gang will become alert at some point in time. Someone will get a shot off, or scream or maybe someone just stumbles on their bodies.
If the gang has magic, then they have watch spirits which could also add complications.
Have a twist, at least one simple twist. Why are they anti-tech? Perhaps they have a spirit mentor? Or maybe a rival gang chooses to raid the complex at the same time? Or something else? Something simple that throws a spanner in the works. Heck, throw some domesticated hell hounds in the mix.
A lot of ideas will depend on how your group plays. This scenario appears to be a combonation of shooter/dungeon crawl style.
Think about how to keep the game tense and exciting. Think of challenges they they may need to deal with. Any traps, trip wires etc? A bridge joining to building across a wide open space, connected basement area, tight and narrow and filled with steam pipes, dripping water, barrackaded, mined, corridors, etc, etc.
Put some thought into giving the gangers some character. Not too much, likely chances are your runners will kill them pretty quick, but maybe one of the girls has a pink mohawk, one the trolls thinks his niel the barbarian, the shaman is a rat shaman and keeps a swarm of rats patrolling the complex. So that rat they just killed? His buddy went and warned his master.
Anyway, just a few thoughts.
All excellent suggestions, thank you. I was thinking of having them overhear casual conversations as they came upon groups, and the feel I'm shooting for is 100% dungeon crawl. I'd like to inject a tiny bit of D&D into my plan-too-much-sometimes group. Variety is the spice of life, after all. Thanks to you guys, I think I'll be a lot more prepared, and the run itself should be better since I won't be forcing them to kill everyone if they resist the idea. Of course, I'd still prefer for them to go on a murder spree, but that's up to them. I've given plenty of incentives to do that, like the huge amounts of loot they could get from wiping everyone out and cleaning up afterward. If the people hiring the group say "Kill these people." and instead the group drives them away, how do you think the people would react? Would it be a-OK? Would they reduce the promised payment? Would they refuse to pay, citing the original agreement and fear of future revenge from the newly displaced bandit-types?
As for twists, I had 2 different ideas. I thought about it maybe being a union of 2 tiny gangs that were trying to play nice. This would add an option of breaking the gang ties so they would kill each other or just leave. OR I thought maybe the gang has a big bomb they're planning to set of to make a statement or something, and if they discover they're being attacked, they set it to detonate in 10 or 30 minutes or something.
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A potential complication - some other organization with an interest in the neighborhood in question decides to act at the same time, and with considerably less concern for loss of life or property damage (possibly because they are Sending A Message). Any of the organized crime groups could fill this role pretty well, I'd think. Depending on how you play this, the locals could ask the runners to speed up the process of taking out the gangers, making it a race against time before the yaks/Mafia/Vory send in the pack of drones.
Externally-driven time limits are great ways to force players to resort to plan C, or D, or X... :D
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I'll consider that, but I think it might push the players into doing the opposite of what I hope they do. As this is just a one-shot, and our 2 other GMs are pretty combat-light, I want to give them an outlet for any fighting urges they've built up. Of course, if they decide to not fight everyone, that's their choice and I'm fine with it. Hell, they could refuse the run for all I know.
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A potential complication - some other organization with an interest in the neighborhood in question decides to act at the same time, and with considerably less concern for loss of life or property damage (possibly because they are Sending A Message). Any of the organized crime groups could fill this role pretty well, I'd think
I agree with this because it's a good way to meet your goal of causing combat. If they run smack into this new org's enforcers, there is no way to avoid it. Also the worry with using low level gangs on shadowrunner parties is always that it will be too easy for the runners.
Also, is there anything important somehow about this neighborhood? Something corps or larger gangs might want? If there is, the area might be tussled over longer and spin off more runs. If an area is of interest to a corp, it might put some major hardware into the hands of a gang, making them a larger threat.
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That's kind of what I want to avoid, and I'm not too worried about it being too easy. Right now, they're looking at roughly 30 people in this 4-building block, including 6 mages and an adept. I don't want it to spin off into another run, because this is just a filler since the other 2 that normally GM are going to be absent this weekend.
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That's kind of what I want to avoid, and I'm not too worried about it being too easy. Right now, they're looking at roughly 30 people in this 4-building block, including 6 mages and an adept. I don't want it to spin off into another run, because this is just a filler since the other 2 that normally GM are going to be absent this weekend.
Depends on if they are spread out or not and what the tactical layout is. Are these full BP mages, runner caliber? Seems a bit much if so for a low level gang. Many wizzer gangs are just idiots with a few magic points.
You could throw in a developer Johnson who wants the direct opposite of the residents: to flatten the entire area, so he can swoop in and build somethere there. He could attempt to hire the party. If they bite, then the run is them both fighting the gangers, but also destroing the buildings in the place. If they refuse, they may have to fight off the developer's thugs in order to avoid the area's buildings being decimated. (In addition to the gangers)
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Nah, the mages aren't full bp(except either the boss or his sidekick, I haven't decided). Most are mooks, but a horde of mooks is still scary if not handled carefully. I love the idea of getting counter-proposals... Not sure if I have time to write up that much extra stuff in time, though. Cross my fingers, me!