Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Ganggreenkhan on <10-03-15/2303:44>
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This is my first campaign, first time playing Shadowrun even. Gonna start tomorrow morning. It's the story of a gang of street kids from Puyallup. They are all Awakened, it's the reason they have banded together. They are all homeless and the campaign is going to start off after their squat has burned down and they need to find a new place to live. They have less than 1,000 nuyen between them and nothing but the clothes on their backs and their weapons. All of them are moderately addicted to one drug or another. They are druggie street kids after all. I'm gonna run the addiction rules different than in the book. It's just silly that you havta get high every two weeks or face withdraw. I'm gonna run it so that if it's "been" two weeks since last to you got high you gotta make a withdrawal role. The team is going to specialize in extractions starting at the street level kidnapping.
First the face/shaman. The leader of the gang is a face/shaman from Hell's Kitchen. His name is Medium Smoke. He has an older brother Big Smoke and a younger brother Little Smoke (6 point dependents). He also has an moderate alcohol addiction. This shamans totem is Raven and he has mind control and mob mind. These are his main spells. He uses them to abduct and carjack people then sells them to the Dissasemblers and their cars to the junk yard. The player says he is only gonna do this to assholes and pricks who deserve it. Like people who roll down the window and spit on him while he's panhandling. Bah stupid morals, we'll see how he feels when he's hungry and broke. He has two fixer contacts, a guy at the junk yard and a Dissasembler gang leader who buys his "meat". I'm gonna give Medium Smoke 2 bonus karma if he can pull off a mission with no shooting using his manipulation spells and social skills.
Then there is Gunshow. Gunshow is a gun adept who specializes in automatics. He's got something like 17 dice in it and level 3 improved reflexes. Gunshow is a Wolf aspect adept which means he can never leave a fight unfinished. If something threatens Gunshow he must establish dominance over it, then piss on it. He terminates with extreme prejudice. This is going to create problems for an extraction team, we'll see how long he last before the team abandons him to his death when things go south. Gunshow is a BTL addict and will soon aquire the Scorched quality if he doesn't give it up and pay some karma. His contacts are a BTL Producer who gives them contracts to acquire "talent" and a black market gun dealer. Gunshow gets 2 bonus karma for initiating gun play on a mission.
Now lets talk about Gunshows girlfriend Cypher. Cypher is a technomancer. Another street kid who got her start at an early age hacking vending machines for food. She and Gunshow met on the streets of Loveland and she quickly attached herself to him on account of his gun skills. They've been a couple for two years. Two lifetimes in street years. Cypher doesn't like Gunshows need to establish dominance over everything and gets two bonus Karma for stopping Gunshow from killing someone on a mission. I'm not sure of a mechanic to use for her to defuse him though.
This trio is the main team and composes the primary members of the gang. There is a recent addition to the team an unarmed combat adept of the invisible way straight from Japan. They call him NInja, cause he fricken is one, and a good one at that. Ninja is a soldier in the Kenran-Kai, though none of the team knows this. His boss has his eye on the team and feeds them jobs through Ninja. They have no idea where these jobs come from. Ninja fled Japan when he awakened and lucked his way into a job with the Yakuza. HIs current job is to work with the group and manipulate them to the Kenran-Kai's ends. In fact Ninja is the one who burned down the squat on orders of his boss cause the bossman wants the team to move out of Loveland and into Redmond for reasons unknown to NInja. Ninja has orders to convince the team to move to Redmond.
So basicly these 4 are gonna start out at the Stuffer Shack after the fire and will havta plan their next move. It should be interesting if they decide to investigate the cause of the fire. Might short circuit some steps in the plot. Should be interesting to see what happens.
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Forgot. Ninja is a shark adept, so he goes berserk if he takes damage. Ninja gets 2 bonus karma if he can get through a mission without killing anyone.
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I'm not sure if there's an open question here or if you're just posting your plans.
This sounds like an awesome campaign to me - or, at least, one that I would enjoy personally. The bonus karma for taking certain approaches is interesting. Do the players know about the other players' motivations or are the bonuses secret? Is Ninja a PC or an NPC? It sounds fun to have him secretly manipulating the group into the Yakuza's hands.
I might suggest that the player builds don't sound very "street". An adept with Increased Reflexes 3 and 17 dice in automatics is a terrifying badass, BTL-addicted or not. Those are the kind of dice pools you would find on elite corporate security forces (see p. 384 of SR5). This team sounds capable of corporate extractions and professional shadowruns, not just street-level kidnapping and panhandling. I mention this because it might be difficult to provide them challenges that are realistic at a street level, unless all the other urchins are balling with a dozen and a half dice of their own. Otherwise, you might find yourself having to challenge them with waves and waves of cannon fodder, which can slow down play significantly with all the rolling required. Just a thought.
I've run a couple street-level campaigns. Try to have fun with the Lifestyle rules, if you can. Provide bonuses or other motivation to upgrade their standard of living to help replicate the IC desire to move up in the world. (Everything has a price, and can be interesting to put them in a situation where they either have to pay rent, or replenish their ammunition, or feed their addictions.) Karma is one incentive, since they'll all be karma-fiends due to being Awakened. Alternatively you can change the Edge refresh rate based on their living conditions. I told my players that their Edge wouldn't refresh at Street or Squatter lifestyles, which gave them plenty of motivation to get a roof over their heads. Shared lifestyles can be fun too for a team, especially if you have some competing addictions and/or lifestyles.
Good luck with it and let us know how it goes.
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Looks like no one's interested, oh well this is where I'mma keep my notes....
SO the first game started off at the Stuffer Shack after a fire that burned the squat down. I told everyone they were awoken by Ninja and told the building was on fire. No one thought to investigate this, they just took it to be another day in The Barrens. Which was kinda funny. Guess I don't know what skills to use for fire investigation anyway so just as well. I would have allowed them to know it was arson with three perception hits.
None of the team suspects Ninja is a Yakuza plant yet, not that they have shared with me anyway. I dropped a subtle hint by telling everyone to take off after the game so I could talk to him. Maybe passing him notes in play. Course all the players with mentor spirits get notes in play so they don't know if it's a text from a Yakuza boss or just the light chiding of Shark. I don't wanna do anything to obvious cause he is a Ninja after all, so he's good at this sorta thing. He's about to get a very nice Commlink from his boss and several burners. No one on the team has the resources for this so I'mma try to RP a situation where the players notice he's got a new commlink, like a Fairlight Caliban. Maybe make the team take a perception test to notice the new commlink. Then he's gonna havta make up a story to explain where he got it. Hilarity should in-sue.
So first things first the team decided on finding a new squat. After deciding it was a bad idea to jack a car and drive around in it all day looking for a squat they decided to do a Matrix search and look for a driver on "bobslist.org". They rolled and hit three successes so I decided they found one. They called him, he told them it was $200 a day, there were some dice thrown, they agreed on $200 a day and "Mike the Uberdriver" would be there in an hour to pick them up. It was noonish by the time Mike showed up.
The first words outta Mikes mouth after looking at the four in matching Ares Globetrotter trench coats, it's a gang thing, he told them "I've got friends who will fuck you up if you fuck with me." The players took this at face value and believed it. No analyze truth, and mind probe. Just ok this guy says he has friends so lets not fuck him. Turns out latter that he really does have "friends". Like the Finnegan crime family. This is gonna come into play later.They agreed on half up front and half at the end of the day.
On orders from his boss Ninja suggest the group head to Redmond to look for a squat. Again no questions, just ok lets do that. They really aren't making this Ninja work for his money. So off to Redmond they go with Uberdriver Mike. For this I used Sprawl Life teamwork test. The Technomancer has the highest dice so she sat in the front seat and everyone else assisted from the back. I gave them one test an hour and decided they needed ten hits to find something nice. They finally rolled six hits on the eighth try and spent and edge to reroll misses and made 9 hits. This isn't quite 10 so I gave it the caveought that it has no exit. It's and apartment building in the middle of other apartment buildings whose walls touch each other. Like the way they are in New York or Amsterdam or London or the French Quarter. They setup on the top floor. They are trapped like rats. This is gonna make what happens next week go down easier.
Once they find the squat they continue driving around for another hour to throw off Mike. Then have him drop them off st one of the previous locations. They discuss Con to get out of paying the second half of their tab then I remind them the guy will never drive for them again and he did mention some friends. They decide to pay him the other $100 and a $20 tip. I give the Technomancer a 1/1 contact "mike the Uberdriver"
I decided it was 11pm by the time they got back to the squat. I'm getting the players usta keeping track of the time so they don't know when something bad is coming. Like if I just all of a sudden start tracking time by the hour.
Once at the squat Ninja decides he'll take the first watch and everyone elso goes to sleep. A van pulls up about three in the morning and four guys get out and start unloading equipment into the biggest apartment on the first floor. It's a three story building. Ninja wakes everyone up, except the Technomancer cause she's regaining edge. Then sneaks down stairs and observes. He realizes the guys are setting up a Betameth lab. So he goes back up stairs and reports. The team decides the Gun Adept will maintain watch and they will confront the Meth cooks in the morning.
In the morning the team goes down and talks to the cooks. The cooks tell them the building was empty earlier in the day. They come to an agreement that they will help out the cooks if drek hits the fan and the cooks will be "appreciative". They tried to get regular security jobs but were flatly denied.
The team spends the rest of the day scavenging the sprawl for materials to build a door on the stair well. I set the threshold at ten successes to have enough scrap to build it and the team set about rolling once an hour till they hit the ten. It took them most of the day so they decided to finish the day building their door. I decided it took them all of ther next day to build the door.
Here we are day 4 the team has a secure squat and less than $1000 between them. They decide, I nodge them, that they need work. After going through their contacts they decided on a carjacking. They have a 3/1 contact with Debo the Dissasembler and a 4/1 contact with One Eye the scrapyard guy.
I inform them that Touristville is the only place in Redmond with enough traffic to panhandle. They head out to Touristville Face sets up on the street with his :hungry please help" sign, sans his distinctive and expensive ares trechcoat. The Technomancer and the Gun Adept lean against a walk on one side of the street and Ninja sits down on the other side of the street. I roll one d6 for a 3 and decide they sit out there for 3 hours before some guy rolls down his window and yells "Get a fuckin job scumbag." this is Face's oppurtunity to mind control the guy. He throws a force 6 Mind Control and scores 5 hits against the mooks 1 success. So he orders the guy to move over to the passenger seat. The rest of the team gets in while the Technomancer hacks the car against device rating 4 to turn off the wireless. They immediately zip tie the mans hands and feet and duct tape his mouth. They make a area knowledge test to find a secluded spot. They get one success so I decide all they can find is a street with no traffic. They pull over and transfer the guy into the trunk. They also hack the car and turn off the wireless.
At this point they call Debo and tell him they've got some meat. He arranges for them to meet one of his people behind a Starbucks in touristville. In our game Starbucks is a corporate whore house. It is the only corportion in Redmond other than Stuffer Shack. They had twenty minutes till the meet and instead of getting frappacinnos they drove around until the van got there. They parked in the back and unloaded the body into the van. They Dissasembler hooked the meat up to a biomonitor and offered $500 for it, bad liver he said. The Face glitched the negotiation roll and the Dissasembler threatened to not take the meat. SO Face relented and took the $500.
Now at this point they have sold this guy I described as a corporate suit for meat and are driving around in his car. No one has searched the car, or the mook for that matter. Didn't take his commlink or his wallet. I'm gonna uses this. Lets just say the DIssasemblers had the better sense to do this and they let the guy go. The players don't know this yet of course.
So now they call old One Eye and head over to the scrapyard. Old One Eye specifically mentions the car better not be broadcasting cause he just had some mook do that to him and didn't appreciate it. They thought they were cool cause they turned off the wireless, but as I said they didn't search the car. So they get to the Scrap yard, meet old One Eye throw some dice and get $5200 for the car. Two successes so they got an extra $200. Now this car was described as a mdsized family car valued at $75k new. As they were walking off Ninja thinks to search the trunk. I roll a few dice and get two successes so I decide two things are in the trunk and case of grocery store brand whiskey and a metal briefcase that is broadcasting a wireless signature. The Technomancer hacks the case with 4 device and gets in she turns off the wireless but the lock is mechanical. They do all this standing in front of the scrapyard waiting for MIke. Ninja is a physical adept with 5 strength killing hands and critical strike, I just give it to him and let him tear open the briefcase. Inside they find 10 hits of what I describe as novacoke and some papers and an optical chip.
They decided to dump the case in Hell's Kitchen on the way back to Redmond. Then they had Mike drop them off in the vicinity of the squat. This is where we left off.
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thanks for the interest Techumseh. I was just posting this to see what people thought and to keep notes. Hopefully the players don't find this :-\ After a very long conversation with The Wyrm Ouroboros last night I have the hook how this turns into real shadowrunning. The group is just gonna do street crap to get the creds to buy the things they need to do real running. Don't have time to post now, I'll do it tonight. You can check out the Help With Carjacking thread in Rules ans Such to see what me and The Wyrm Ouroboros talked about. Ninja is a PC who really wants to punch things. The PC's know each others karma bonuses.
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Love the campaign so far, Ganggreenkhan. I look forward to updates.
I'm also pretty jealous. I tried running a street level campaign once long ago but I under-estimated my players willingness to try something different. They said, "surprise us" with the campaign and were expecting me to just make them play different genders or all dwarves or orks or something as they had all played human males in the previous campaign (which had run up around 200 Karma in total awards and everyone felt their characters with high-grade badasses by the end) and instead they were handed 12-14 year old characters. I was planning on doing something like a major event a year per game session and over the course of a month see what gangs they join or make enemies of, options to become magically active, and so on but it was a flat out no-go as soon as they looked over the character sheets. Everyone made "standard" runners instead.
And I don't like the addiction rules either.
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After talking to The Wyrm Ouroboros here's what I've decided for next week. The "Novacoke" isn't Novacoke, it's concentrated samples of a new street drug. The papers deal with its mass production. The optical chip contains the drug formula. The suit wasn't a suit he was a Mob courier. And the case of grocery store brand whiskey is Tir Na nOg (Irish) whiskey. Belonging to Rowena O'Malley, the Dona of the Finnegan Family, herself. This is all The Wyrm Ouroboros, I really can't thank him enough for it, it's great stuff.
The game left off at the squat returning from the run, it's around 5PM. I've decided that it's gonna take the Mob 6 hours to find them, so around 11pm. Here are my reasons. First off Uberdriver Mike knows all the spots they stopped to look at for squats. Even tough he has never dropped them off or picked them up at the squat it shouldn't be to hard for him to figure it's the closet spot to the drop off point. Second Debo and One Eye are loyalty 1 contacts. They won't have any problem giving up some street kids who brought the Mob down on them. Third and most important when the Mob looks at the tapes from the scrapyard they are going to see their good friend Mike the Uberdriver.
The players are going to have 6 hours to realize what they have and do something with it. If they find out what is going on, and they should, Ninja will report things to his boss and the Yakuza will immediately buy all the drugs and data for $20k. Assuming they make the 11pm deadline the Yak's will have the drugs and the gang will have an angry Mafia on their hands. If the players realize the gravity of the situation and flee the squat then the next time they call Debo or One Eye they are going to be ambushed by the Mafia extraction team.
Weither they sell the drugs or not, flee or not, the outcome will me the same. The gang will end up in indentured servitude to the Finnegan Family. If they take the papers to the cooks downstairs to decipher them the cooks will immediately offer them $10k for everything. The cooks will just read the papers and make the offer, they refuse to tell the players what the paper says. If they don't take the offer the cooks will call a Triad hit team who will get there in an hour. So depending on when the triads get involved they may have a Mafia extraction team and a Triad hit team all at the same time.
I really want them to sell the stuff to the Triads so imma try to make that happen. They don't have a horse in the Triad race.
So 11PM. At 11pm Luca Brasi, the personal enforcer to Rowena O'Malley will pull up in front of the squat with two SUV's, seven Mafia enforcers, and a Mage with counter spell. At 10pm if they have anyone on watch he will get a perception test to notice an Eye Spy drone casing the building. The mafioso are going to rush in guns blazing SnS and flash bangs. They are going to kidnap both the cooks and the players and bring them to a warehouse at the docks. Mob's love docks I hear. Here the players will be interrogated by a Capo as to the whereabouts of the drugs. The Capo is going to explain the situation to them, namely that he now owns them and they are going to do him a favor immediately. Like by favor I mean gunning someone down very publicly and openly getting lots of notoriety. This will be the first of many such favors. Maybe one day the players can look to getting out from under the Mafia's thumb but not today. Just for shits and jiggles the Capo is gonna make the players execute the cooks.
If the players sold the drugs to the Yak's it is very likely that Ninja will be tortured into giving up his employer. Losing his standing in the Yakuza or becoming a double agent for the Mob. If somehow they manage to not give up the Yakuza boss then Ninja could be a double agent against the mob. Like I've said hopefully they have sold the stuff to the Triad so they don't havta cross the Yakuza. I've got a mission from them planned for as soon as we find a rigger. Maybe they could get the same mission from the Mob but I'd havta go against fluff and it wouldn't make as much sense.
A word about Luca Brasi. I opened up CHummer and started with the sum of 10. 4 in attributes, 4 in resources, 2 in skills and completely ignored all the rules. He has over 1.5 million in deltaware including lvl 3 wired reflexes. Level 5 skill group in anything he needs. A Yamaha Raiden with level 3 gas vent, a pair of shock gloves, and some flash bangs. If the players can take down this guy and his posse, hey who knows. Then the Mob will send a Face to negotiate them in. I doubt this will happen. Their apartment is fairly defensible, having their backs to a wall, so maybe.
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Forgot the best part. Their new boss in the mob is the guy they carjacked. He's gonna be real pleased about his new territory, Redmond and his new charges. He will do his utmost to get them killed. Skim off the already discount rate they will be receiving for the favors they do get paid for. And in general offer them as little support and resources as possible and still give them what they need to get a job done.
@ Fizzygoo. That's the reason I didn't make street level characters. Used Standard rules and made them alittle economicly challenges and lower down the food chain. This is mostly cause every one is new to the game so I nerfed it.
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Definitely did right in the character builds if the players are having fun and coming back for more ;)
Great stuff from Wyrm Ouroboros! (Though not surprised given the totality of his contributions here.)
Looking forward to how this all goes down! :)
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Yes it should be interesting. The players primary money earners were gonna be carjacking and meat. Now they've burned them both. Their Yakuza contact is gonna jump all over this and offer them a job kidnapping ten assorted metahumans for a new Benraku parlor. I was gonna wait to offer them this job till we found a rigger.... guess the job can come with the rigger, NPC Bad reputation (lone survivor) Cram addiction, Lives in her van.
This of course is assuming they don't burn their Yakuza contact in this next session. If they do burn their Yakuza contact then the only contact they'll have left is their new "friends" in the Finnegan crime family. At which point they'll be more or less fucked.
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Hehe, nice.
Too bad it's not 2053 cause if they burned all their contacts back then, well, they could always seek shelter with those nice philanthropists of the Universal Brotherhood.
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If the UB was still around they'd already have a contact with them and the shaman would be having dreams about insects.... oh well
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Just got a rigger. I'm gonna introduce him to the game when the players try to steal his van while he's getting high inside. So as long as they don't fuck up their Yakuza contact they'll get a sweat job grabbing people with at least 5 charisma off the street. They'll need to grab ten people in a week. I'm still thinking about giving the rigger a Doc-Wagon ambulance. Could be useful latter in their carrier. Course if they just grab people off the street with it and don't do any leg work with the people then there might be a news story about a gang using a Doc-Wagon to abduct people. Guess maybe I could be nice and give them magnetic Doc-Wagon stuff and chameleon paint. Course that won't pass to close an inspection.
So far what I've got about the rigger is that he is descendant from corporate parents. His parents bought him his implants so he could drive trucks for the company. He did that for awhile till he was approached by a Johnson to help highjack the truck he was driving. So he did it. Made enough nuyen to burn his corporate SIN and get all his drones and such. He is currently estranged from his parents cause he ruined their careers.
He has a bad reputation cause he is the sole survivor of his last crew. He is currently homeless, addicted to Cram, and getting high in his van. He's desperate for a crew so he can get some work but no one will work with him anymore. Then he sees a gang of particularly though street kids approach his van and start trying to hack his wireless.
To work this in before the next weeks Mafia extraction team they are gonna havta go out looking for him before they analyze last weeks paydata. Which is fine cause if they don't have time to analyze the paydata they don't have time to sell it to the Yakuza or the Triads and it will make more sense them getting indentured to the Mob if the Mob gets its drugs back.
They don't necessarily havta get the rigger in the party before they are indentured to the Mob. Though I don't see the RIgger having much of a choice in who he works with he still wouldn't work with a bunch of unpaid indentured servants.
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Ok just talked to Face and Ninja. Ninja can't make it next week so I told him about the new drug and asked if he tells Yoshi Yakamori about it. He said yes. He tells his boss about it immediately. The boss tells him he is sending over a courier with $20k in Ares corporate script and to procure the data at all cost, even killing his team. Ninja already has the drugs. If the team refuses the offer and wants a better offer Ninja will inform them that his contact is willing to kill them for it and present it as he gave away to much information. So now we know how Ninja will handle the discovery of the drugs. Now it's just a matter of when they find out what they've got. The Yakuza courier will take 30 minutes to arrive.
So now we have the potential for Mafia extraction team, Triad hit team, and Yakuza couriers potentially all arriving at the same time.
Face is an moderate alcoholic so i decided he's already into the whiskey.So I told him. The bottle is his brand. This stuff is defiantly miss labeled. It's better stuff than he's ever drank so he can't identify it. He asked how it feels going down. I tell him it's warm and smooth, doesn't burn going down like his brand, kinda warms the belly. He goes"oh the good stuff."
After talking to Face about the fact that he jacked a $75k car in the ghetto and the briefcase has a satlink on it, he like who does that. He understands he hit a "somebody". So he knows the heat is coming. That makes me glad. He's smarter than I gave him credit for.
So if they successfully sell the drugs to the Yakuza Ninja is getting tortured by the Mob and will have no choice but to give up his employer. Then he says he will lie and agree to snitch on his boss then not do it. That's gonna work out well for him I'm sure. I don't know how I'm gonna handle Ninja giving up who they sold the drugs to. It's gonna shit fuck their relationship with the Yakuza. Unless the Mob doesn't be overt about it and wants him to spy for them. But he can offer no info about his boss. He is a disposable asset of the boss. Maybe he will tell them he sold the drugs to the Yakuza but doesn't work for them, he's independent. Or better yet they sold the drug to Ares, the mob can't do nothin about that and they found the script. That oughta be it. This is the only way I can see the Mob letting him live. It'll be easy cause he's an NPC next week. If the Mob finds out he works for the Yak's he's a dead man. I'll give him a pass and say he blamed it on Ares.
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Ok so i got it if they sell to the Yakuza the courier will tell them, "If anyone ask tell them you sold it this to Ares." Just to make sure the players understand that the Yakuza pays in corporate script to avoid blow back. The Yakuza boss' commlink with Ninja can be traced to a middle manager at Ares. The courier will tell Ninja that the next time he contacts the boss he is to report to the restaurant in Puyallop in person. The Yakuza wants the players to get caught and frame up Ares so they don't suggest the players move or heighten security. We'll see if they think of it. Yoshi Yakamori would be disappointed if the players were killed, but protected by their deaths, and can see opportunity if they are not killed. So either way he wins.
Even though this heist was last minute and random Yakamori is prepared to act so fast because he already knows of the drugs existence and has a team looking for it. This is the team that will arrive to make the pickup. He is prepared to burn his commlink with Ninja cause it already traces back to an Ares middle manager, that's why he's paying in Ares script.
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Ok so here is the important stuff. Like why doesn't the Mob just kill them. Please feel free to chime in with any suggestions. The main reason the Mob doesn't kill them is because the campaign would be over and that's no fun. So the important question is why is the Mob interested in them. The Kenran-Kai is interested in them because part of their upcoming power play in the city is a new chain of Benraku parlors around the city. They need an independent deniable asset to stock these parlors with Benraku. This is why Yoshi Yakamori, a Yakuza Lieutenant, has charged Ninja with infiltrating the gang.
So here's what I've got for why the mob is interested in them. After reading the Mafia section in Seattle 2072 I've decided the Finnigan family has plenty need for disposable assets for use in Mob politics. They wanna use the team to block Kenran-Kai expansion into Redmond. What this means is the players will be hitting Ninja's boss, and of course Ninja's boss is gonna wanna meddle in this as well. They may also hit other Mob families.
The Mob Lieutenant who is going to interrogate them is James Micheal "Jimmy Mac" Finnigan. The players won't know this, he will never tell them anything about himself or who he is. I'm gonna havta make a call as to weither you can use mind probe hanging upside down from a meat hook, wet, in a deep freezer. Maybe throw some modifiers on it. Course there should be a mage on hand with counterspell.
After the extraction the players are gonna wake up naked in a meat locker hanging upside down from meat hooks with their hands handcuffed behind their backs with plas-steel cuffs. They are gonna be waken up with a fire hose. You know in a deep freezer. If they have the drugs this will go much easier for them. If they still have the drugs the Mob will just wanna know who they were working for, it'll come out that it was just a random robbery, the Mob boss will laugh and explain their new life of indentured servitude.
If they sold the drugs this is gonna be a little rougher, like thugs with baseball bats rougher. If all goes well they will convince the Mob they sold the drugs to Ares. As far as the team knows they did in fact sell the drugs to Ares, Ninja is the only member of the team who knows it was infact sold to the Yakuza. I suppose that means the Mob is gonna torture him cause it's his contact. When they check out his commlink they'll find he called an Ares middle manager before the sale of the stuff. Plus they'll have $20k in Ares script on them. This week Ninja can't make it so he's gonna be a NPC so I can just hand wave it. If I let the Mob discover the Yakuza connection then it'll smash my plan for how the gang is gonna earn to buy their Fake SIN's. So NInja isn't gonna break.
If the gang sold the drugs to the Betameth cooks who work for the Triads, they flee the squat as soon as they obtain the drugs. Then the Mob will track them down and get their drugs back.
Whoever they sold the drugs to they will wait in the meat freezer, wet, waiting for the Mob to verify their story.
So after Jimmy Mac finds out who the gang is working for to his satisfaction he is not going to entrust the gang with retrieving the drugs, he has his own people for that. What he is going to do is introduce the gang to their new boss Giovani. Giovani is the man they carjacked to get the drugs in the first place. Jimmy Mac will explain that Giovani usta be a courier and that he is receiving a "promotion", he is getting a crew and a territory. The players are now said crew. The territory is Redmond. This should be some great role playing. I'mma give them -4 dice on all negotiation rolls with this guy and I'm not just gonna let them roll dice they are gonna havta make good reasons for negotiating with him.
If the team sold the drugs to the Yak's then the cooks were kidnapped with the team and the teams first job will be to kill the cooks and dispose of their bodies.
The gangs first job from the Finnigan Family will be to blow up a small biker bar in Redmond that is the hang out of a local biker gang. Not a big named gang in the books just a small time gang.They won't know why they are blowing it up unless they do some legwork. If they do some legwork they will find out the gang has divided loyalties between the Mob and the Yak's and does work for both. This should be a bit of foreshadowing for the players.
Ninja will tell his boss about the job. His boss will have an interest in certain parties in the biker gang surviving the attack, parties that don't oppose closer ties with the Kenran-Kai.
That's all I got for now any idea's or suggestions are welcome.
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Here are some ideas for next-layer complications, since you seem to be into those.
The Kenran-kai operate out of Puyallup, which includes Loveland, where the PCs originated. The Kenran-kai are the dregs of the yakuza and, as a result, are the most progressive. They would certainly be interested in working with Awakened gangers, knowing the edge that their Magic would provide.
The Kanaga-gumi operate out of Redmond and are very conservative. They wouldn't want anything to do with Awakened scum. As such, Ninja's Kenran-kai contact could be interested inserting the gangers as undercover operatives of sorts into the Redmond Barrens. This could be part of a internal yakuza struggle for territory and vengence, as the Kenran-kai attempt to emerge from the ashes and revenge themselves on the Kanaga-gumi. (The Kenran-kai is populated by refugees from the former Shigeda-gumi, which was replaced/supplanted by the Kanaga-gumi.) The PCs could be part of those maneuverings and politics.
As for the Mafia, I don't think Seattle 2072 specifies which family controls the Redmond Barrens. The Finnegan family controls the highly valuable markets of Downtown Seattle and Bellevue. The Gianellis are down south (Tacoma, Puyallup, and Auburn) and the Ciarniellos up north (Everett, Snohomish). I would probably make the mobster the gang abducted a Ciarniello or a Gianelli instead of a Finnegan, since the Finnegans probably disdain the Barrens (and probably frown on drug-smuggling too, preferring white collar crime instead). The Ciarniellos could be there because Redmond is further north, or the Gianellis could be there if they're trying to climb out of Auburn and Puyallup (perhaps pushed north by pressure from the yakuza down south, which Seattle 2072 alludes to). I can imagine the Gianellis being desperate enough for manpower that they're willing to overlook the disrespect of kidnapping out of their couriers and robbing him of his drugs.
Nobody wants to geek talent, especially if said talent is poor, addicted, and easily manipulated.
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Thanks Tecumseh that' helps alot. The Kenran-Kai had them move to Redmond just to get them outta Puyallup. The fact that that is Kanaga-gumi territory gives me something to work with. I gotta go back and read more of the Seattle book but I'm studying rules for the fight scene next week. Me and face are doing some test combat tonight to prep.
So the Kenran-Kai Lieutenant is former Shigeda-gumi. He is interested in using the players new position with the Mob to punish the Kanaga-gumi.
Now here's the most important question. What kind of legwork can the players do to uncover all this behind the scenes goings ons. Maybe taping some commlinks or going out on the street asking some questions about gang politics? I don't like the latter idea at all and don't think the players will do that. They all have knowledge skill Seattle Street gangs, but I see the Yakuza and Mafia are seperate knowledge skills. So I don't think that will work.
Any ideas?
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Yeah, what Tecumseh said about "not wanting to geek talent."
It's all about maintaining rep/face, so I would tackle it from the side of "how much is known on the street about what the PCs did" angle.
Like, Jimmy Mac and Giovani...Giovani is getting a promotion after he let some street punks carjack him? And Giovani is a courier...that's the big part of the job description "don't lose your package" but the PCs got his car and the drugs and the whiskey. So I would insert tension between Mac and Giovani...like Giovani is related to someone else in a higher position than Mac so Mac can't kill him but he still has to make an example of Giovani so why not put him in charge of the crew that made him look bad. Giovani hates the PCs as they made him look bad among the made men, but because of them he's risen in power so he feels he owes them...but they owe him...Giovani, depending on his personality, is going to go through some inner conflicts along the way.
Then, on the next level up, what did Giovani do after he got carjacked? Did he go straight to Mac and tell him or did Giovani go down to a bar and open his big mouth, spinning it like he was a regular ant being attacked by an Ares Firewatch team? In other words...how far has word spread of Giovani's getting carjacked and losing the drugs and the PCs identities as the carjackers? If word spreads outside Mafia circles, then the Mafia will be more inclined to make extreme and life-ending examples of the PCs, "this is what happens if you mess with the Mafia." But if word hasn't spread, then the Mafia has lost less face, and will be more inclined to "make a deal" with the PCs (...that they can't refuse).
On the flip side. If the Mafia finds out that the PCs have sold the drugs to the betameth cooks then the Mob might figure, "great. We'll talk with the cooks, let them know it's our product. They can cook it, we'll collect it and sell it, and the cooks and cook location will not be on Knight Errant's radar because these guys aren't mob affiliated (well, they weren't until the Mafia makes them affiliated). The PCs and Giovani have to babysit the cooks to make sure they don't do something stupid, Giovani want's more rep in the Mafia so he makes the PCs into his pawns and sends them out on jobs, etc.
One thing I wouldn't count on is the meatlocker scene. Plan for it, but players man....the fuck up the best laid schemes! So have the Mafia go for the extraction/kidnapping of the PCs...but the PCs could win/survive. The Mafia may then either throw more soldiers after them or they might decide to try and negotiate with the PCs for information. If the PCs come across as "professionals" in their actions the Mafia may just approach them as such in the first place too.
As for legwork for the behind the scenes...check out the Using Contacts section (SR5 pg 387), specifically "Networking" section. PCs use their contacts and knowledge Street Gangs to find gangers that can put them in touch with some low level Mafia or Yak snitches who can then give them some bits and pieces of info for them the work with to find out more.
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I've meddled with the idea of doing a street gang/street level game for Shadowrun. It fits with my approach of keeping things somewhat grounded, keeping the game in a Crime Noir kind of setting instead of a Mission: Impossible kind of thing where the PCs are always doing capers and such, stealing some prototype device or novahot data from a megacorp. My players and I love crime dramas like Breaking Bad, Carlito's Way, Goodfellas, Snatch, and so on, and we've kept things relatively low-key in spite of running standard characters that are a few cuts above your typical criminal.
The hard part, in my approach, is integrating magic and the technology to the setting without it driving the game. I try to keep them present, but as tools, and not to be too much of a MacGuffin to drive my plots. All my plots involve people primarily getting into trouble of some kind, having to deal with the hard realities of the streets of the Sixth World. I really do not like plots involving too much magic to where it becomes a matter that only a trained mage could fathom it all, or too technical that it overwhelms the low-key approach I'm after.
One of the problems I've been wrestling with about running a street-level campaign is power creep affecting the overall flavor of a campaign like that. Over time, if a PC survives long enough, he'll move onto bigger and better things than to be wasting his life on the streets for so long. This is a problem in my own campaign as it is, but at least they have a place to go and they can still have plenty of adventures in my sandbox to tide them over before they decide to retire (or go into hiding from the big bad Lofwyr for running off with a girl he had the hots for ::)). It doesn't take much to get a street-level ganger to the point where he can leave it all behind, no matter how many people are depending on him for various things.
But your game sounds like a lot of fun.
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Thanks for the imput Fizzygoo. I'm definitely using the Giovani being related to someone thing. That's good stuff, Fills in a hole. I was thinking he gets it cause the team already knows him and the Mob wants the team knowing as little as possible about the Mob and giving them another handler would mean they know more Mobsters. As far as Giovani getting a 'promotion" i was kinda being sarcastic. Though running your own crew is probably a promotion from courier, it's like you said the way he came about it makes it.... unusual. Then the fact that he was a high level courier so that's probably better than having your own crew. So the Mob boss can't kill Giovani cause he's blood related and needs to find something he can do without fucking up. He is always fucking up, stupid shit like rolling down the window to yell at a homeless guy while he's hauling an million dollars in dope and his bosses liquor stash for the year. The boss figures this is a good spot for Giovani where he can't fuck shit up cause all he is doing is relaying jobs to the team or maybe babysitting a lab if the team doesn't sell the drugs. Down the line I'mma havta put some thought into how he can fuck even this up. Like maybe he's going down to the bar everynight and blabbing team/Mob business. An expensive bar populated with influential people.....
After the carjacking Giovani was handcuffed and gagged in the back of a Dissasembler van. The Dissasembler checked the guys wallet and commlink. Discovered several thousand dollars and the fact that the guys last name was the same as the Don of his family (family yet to be decided). The ganger called his boss and told him who he had and the fact that the people selling him mustn't have known cause they didn't check his commlink and wallet. Not to mention that the wallet had several thousand dollars in it, they only paid $500 for the meat. This way the Mob doesn't havta look bad. Also they are finding the players within eight hours of it happening so there's that. You've brought up an interesting point. If they sell the drugs then there will havta be some blowback for the Mob.
The Dissasembler boss, being a man who sells people meat for a living, finds all this hilarious. Couldn't stop laughing about it. He seized this opportunity to bring Giovani directly back to his Father/Mother's restaurant, around back of course. All Mob Don's have restaurants or clubs, it's how they do business. Some have several. He does this so the Mob owes him a favor, so now because of the players the Mob owes a street gang a favor. The players also owe this man a favor. If the players ever try to sell him meat again he will rib them mercilessly about what they did and give them some fatherly advice about the meat business. I'm gonna bump his loyalty rating form 1 to 2.
The way I was going to run it was that the Mob is trying to extend it's influence into Redmond just to keep the growing Yakuza out, they aren't really interested in the territory and have little in the way of resources there. This gives the team a chance to prove to the Mob that you can make money in the slums.
As far as the cooks getting pulled in. If the players inform the cooks about the dope then I'm gonna play it like they were already in with the Triads. If the cooks get picked up as innocent bystanders and the team still has the dope then I'mma use your idea about how the team hasta babysit the cooks. They won't even havta move. The Mob thinks their squat is the perfect spot for cooking. It's already in the Redmond, it's only approachable from one direction, there is an empty second floor for the lab, comes with both security (PC's) and lab workers (the cooks). Perfect. Only problem is they would havta move product to transport in front of the buildg and they need to bring alot of raw materials in so that's bad. Probably make the players scout a new spot or just give them a spot the Mafia already picked out.
I like the idea about the players and the cooks both getting drafted into the Mafia cause that's just how the Mafia does things. Get small time criminals to take all the risk while the Mafia pulls the puppet strings and makes all the money. This is all sizing up to be very Mafiaesque.
We did a test combat against the Face and Luca Brasi last night. His Wired Reflexes 3 ate the Face for lunch. Those were the only character sheets we had printed up cause the rest of the team has their folders, so we just used those. Course the Gun Adept has level three Improved Reflexes so he might balance things out at the big show.
Lets assume the team defeats the extraction team. Then they will be approached by a Mob "Little Man" and he will tell them this visit is a matter of professional curtesy and that the next visit won't be so polite if they don't get in the car and come with him now. The Mob will be very impressed if the gang takes down the extraction team and will offer them a better deal and more information about what is going on. They will also be expected to have more direct dealings with Mob business to pick up the slack left by the death of Luca Brasi. If they do kill Luca Brasi they will even get a proper introduction to the Mob Lieutenant, in the meat locker he doesn't tell them who he is. If they get taken in by the extraction team then they will be told little to nothing and havta work their contacts to find out what is going on.
If they end up guarding a lab how much should the Mafia be paying them a week?
@TheWayfinder Since no ones played before im focusing on story if the players want more game mechanics they better gets some of the books and read them cause I don't have time with developing the story. Anyway I'm starting Noir type base level in a desolate free fire zone cause it's less rules and more need driven so it moves the story along. We'll get to mission impossible eventually but not now. I'm making street level crime easy for the players so they can get the things they need to move up in the world. Starting with their fake SIN's. Everyones new and I just kinda wanna tell a story so I'm not worried about powercreep yet.
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Just finished making up the rigger here's he background
Twitch looks like what you would expect a guy called Twitch to look like. Average height and skinny. He twitches alot too cause he does lots of Cram. Blond haired and blue eyed he is also fair skinned. He drives around in his Doc-Wagon ambulance loaded full of all his belongings. The Ambulance currently cannot function as one because of all the stuff. The van has chamelon paint so it can mimic any color or brand name but he needs a shop to take off the emergncy light bar. Twitch also has some of the Doc-Wagon accessories like wrist bands, body bags, and a gurney. He doesn't have the advanced medical equiptment carried by a Doc-Wagon.
Twitch has a internal Fairlight Caliban comlink he only uses for tactical communicatiion. For other communication he uses his Transys Avalon or one of his burner phones.
Born into a Mitsuhama wage-slave family in Seattle, Twitch has been OUT FOR HIMSELFf since the beginning. He recieved poor marks for sharing in the Mitsuhama schools. Though he did well acidemicly. Ever the intrepid mercanary and trouble maker Twitch gambled on Matrix racing games with his classmates and became a skilled driver. Winning many simulated races. It was in highschool Twitch developed his Prejudice against dwarfs. There was a dwarve kid name Jimmy O'Connel who alway beat him in the races. Lost alot of money to Jimmy. Dirty midget bastards stealin all the truckin jobs.
When he got out of highschool he obtained a position as a truck driver with Mitsuhama, with his parents help. His supervisor ended up being a dwarf, typical as the dwarves dominate the trucking industry. The two never got along. He only drove the truck for six months when he was aproached by a Johnson to help hyjack a truckload of valuable Mitsuhama magical goods. Of course this involved killing the other MItsuhama employees on the run. The price was right, enough to burn his Mitsuhama SIN, upgrade his control rig to Alphaware and get all the rest of the Alphaware he currently has. He didn't give a second thaught to how thi would affect his parents career's and they would turn him in if they knew his whereabouts.
After the hiest he started doing freelance work for whoever could pay. He has developed a bad reputation for cutting and running on his team mates when things go south and no well informed runner will work with him.
A down and out rigger desperate for work who no one will work with. Living in his stolen ambulance in the hood getting high waiting to get caught and go to jail or get killed by a gang.
Twitch is currently parked behind an abandoned building in an alley living in his van. He just took a hit of Cram and see's a gang of four 16-18 year olds wearing Ares Globetrotter trench coats aproach the Ambulance. They begin to hack the vans wireless. There is no way Twitch can take all of them, but apparently they need a ride. Maybe they need a driver to.
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Here's the background for the Technomancer
Cypher is a petitt young women of almost negligible physical strength though she is very agile and athletic from a life suviving on the streets. From a life on the streets Cypher can easily pass for her early twenties.
Born some time in the late 2050's Cypher's exact date of birth is unknown. She was a feral child her entire life. Roaming Hell's Kitchen and Loveland looking for scraps. Avoiding ghouls at night. Her Technomancer powers manifested early when she learned how to hack vending machines for food. As a child she ran with a pack of other feral children. Most of them are dead now. Take by the attrition of living on the streets of Hell's Kitchen.
In her early teens Cypher was almost abducted by a Mitsuhama extraction team. She was lucky to escape with her life. She discovered rumors on the Matrix about Mitsuhama abducting and experimenting on Technomancers. To this day Cypher holds a grudge against Mitsuhama and its employees.
Cypher met Gunshow on a run two years ago. He saved her life when the run went bad buy shooting all the security guards dead with his trusty Yamaha Raiden assult rifle. The two quickly formed an attachment and began living together. Every Technomancer needs someone with a gun to watch over her back while she's on the Matrix. So Cypher is willing to overlook Gunshows blood thrist and habit of pissing on his defeated foes.
Cypher and Gunshow have know Medium Smoke for about a year. They met on the streets of Hell's Kitchen when they ended up squatting in the same building. Gunshow had got shot up by a cyber samuri and Medium Smoke patched him up. Cypher and Gunshow have been running with Medium Smoke ever since.
A street kid who can interact with computers without any equiptment using the power of her mind.
Cypher is happy living in a gang. She has been living in gangs her entire life. She enjoys the safety in numbers and it's the only family she knows. She is particuarly happ with he current gang. She see's her fellow gang members as competent and capable of earning some serious cash.
Cypher feels that Medium Smoke doesn't use his mind control majic to its full effect and is always pushing him to do more extreme things with it and use it more often.
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Here's Ninja's background. I'm just cutting and pasting these off of chummer.
Born in Imperial Japan. The child of Renraku employees. His father was an engineer and his mother was a corporate assistant to a VP of Marketing. From an early age Ninja was obsessed with the mythical ninja warrior. He started the study of jujitsu at the age of five in his corporate after school program. He read everything he could find about ninjas. .
NInja had to escape Imperial Japan when his majical powers manifested at the age of 15. After his parents paid to have his Renraku corporate SIN burned Ninja escaped Imperial Japan. Using his new found majic powers he snuck onto a freighter bound for Seattle. When he arived in Seattle he found his way to Puyallup, the only district an immigrate with no money, no english, and no SIN can go. He's had no contact with his parents since leaving Japan.
Once in Puyallup Ninja quickly came to the attention of the the Kenran-Kai mostly due to him being native Japanesse and Ninjas dealings with Kenran-Kai merchants in Puyallup. After sucesfully defending the Kenran-Kai drug dealer Fastback from a robbery attempt, single handedly killing 4 attackers with guns, unarmed, This was the first time he had ever killed anyone and he has since developed ocasional insomnia.
Ninja came to the attention of Yoshi Yakamori, a Kenran-Kai Leutenant. After an extensive interview over an extravigant Japanesse meal Yakamori offered Ninja a deal. Ninja would become a soldier for the Kenran-Kai. A secret assasin discretly dispatching enemies of the Kenran-Kai.
For the next two years Ninja served with consummate professionalism to Yakamori as a stealthy enforcer. In this time he developed an addiction to Kamakazi that started as a means to enhance his combat performance but this has progressed into a recreational addiction. He also developed a spiritual connection to Shark because he sees himself as a preditor and a machine of destruction.
This character literally willed himself into majic powers. He believed in ninjas so hard and practiced jujitsu so long that his thrid eye opened up and he began to do the things he had only read about in myth. Becoming the mystic warrior of old.
His current mission is to infitrate a small group of independent oporaters in the Kenran-Kai's home turf of Puyallup and feed them jobs from the Kenran-Kai without them knowing who they are working for.
Yakamori had his eye on an awakened three man team in Puyallup who had been abducting people off the street for various reasons and selling them to various thrid parties. Yakamori would like to bring these people into the Kenran-Kai fold but feels they weren't quite ready. Yakamori proposed a classic peice of ninja work to Ninja. Ninja would infiltrate this band and help them develope their skills, whilst keeping tabs on them, and giving them jobs for the Kenran-Kai.
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Maybe I'll get a chance to actually write down the Face's background next week. As for the Gun Adept he is a self published author so i told him he can read the books and write his own background.
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Jimmy Mac is not a low-level lieutenant, Gang. Make something up. 'Fenton O'Connell', for all you Castle fans out there. Be aware, though, that most of your already-named people from the books are not street operators.
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Jimmy Mac is not a low-level lieutenant, Gang. Make something up. 'Fenton O'Connell', for all you Castle fans out there. Be aware, though, that most of your already-named people from the books are not street operators.
Ok I'mma change all that. Just kind crunched for time with work. Might have time Saturday to sit down and finalize everything. Game time is Sunday.
I know a Mob lieutenant isn't a street level kinda guy but he's just making a cameo cause Giovani is his bosses child and the gravity of everthing else involved. The players will only even find out who he is if they defeat the extraction team. If they defeat the extraction team he's gonna ask the team to keep an eye on Giovani and make sure he don't fuck up again. If the extraction team brings them in he's just gonna treat them as disposable assets and keep them in the dark.
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Ok it's not the Finnigan family it's the Gianelli. They are branching out into drug production and want to use Redmond for it cause they don't operate there. So the players will be helping to build the business from the ground up. They are also interested in recruiting Awakened soldiers. . Giovani is the illegitimate son of Don Joseph Gianelli. The lieutenant is his underling Vincent Cabrini.
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I just read the section in the clutches of dragons about Urubia. Oh man is she getting involved in this campaign somehow. She collects Awakened like shiny bobbles then lays on the floor and wiggles in them.... and it's a five man crew with four Awakened. AND they are a street gang and Urubia collects those too. They would have called it cheese if I camne up with this. But it's in the book. Awesome. the PC's are so gonna end up at the "funhouse" at some point. I already told Face about this place and he like "I aint goin' there I'll send somebody else. '
The character is prejudice against dragons (biased) and blames dragons (Urubia in particular) for his parents being eaten by ghouls.
Just think I thought I was gonna havta work or stretch something to bring the the prejudice against dragons into play.
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HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK!!!
SO to start off with I asked the players where they had MIke the Uberdrive drop them off at. They said about four blocks away from home. He diffidently knows where they live. Walking back to the squat they pass an alley and Raven tells Face to walk down the alley. He's a Raven shaman. They walk down the alley and see a Doc-Wagon. So they decide to jack it. I tell the Rigger he sees a gang of four street kids wearing matching trench coats and spiked collars walk into the alley and he gets an alert from his van that they are trying to hack the wireless. The Rigger rolls down his window and starts talking to them. He ask if they need a rigger. Face jumps at this and introductions are made. I let the Technomancer take a memory test to see if she remembers reading about a guy named Twitch driving a Doc-Wagon on the Matrix. She gets three hits so i tell them about his bad reputation for abandoning teams and his Cram addiction. There is some discussion about this and Face tells the Rigger that they will kill him if he abandons them on a run.
They all pile in the back of the van and go back to the squat. Once there they decide to analyze last weeks pay data. The Technomancer gets to work on the optical chip. I decide it takes her three hours cause we aren't clear on how that works yet. The Face gets to work on the paperwork, make one success on a logic test, he can't understand it. This takes him an hour. Ninja was a NPC this week and had the drugs so I decided that he didn't take any of the drugs. After the Technomancer decodes the optical chip I have her make a logic test to see if she understands the data. She gets two successes so i tell her that it is a chemical formula for a drug but she can't tell which drug. After they discover this Ninja pulls out his phone and leaves the room. At this point it's been three hours since they stole the drugs and the Mob finds them after 5 hours and hits them after 6. At this point they remember that there are meth cooks on the first floor and decide to take them the formula and the papers to see if they are interested. I decide it takes the guy an hour to look over the data. So now we're at 4 hours. In this time Ninja informs Face that he has informed his contact about the situation and has an offer for $20k in Ares script. Face ask for more. Ninja make a call, fails the rolls and doesn't get any more money. At this point the Rigger gets the idea to copy the data and sell it to both parties. I say sure why not.The cook offers them $10k for the data after looking at it, he doesn't know about the drug samples, they didn't tell him. Face tells the cook that he already has a better offer for $20k. Cook tells face he doesn't have that much on him and will havta make a phone call. Cook doesn't tell the players what the drug is. In the mean time a mixed bag of runners pulls up out front in an SUV . Face and Ninja get in. Inside there are a dwarf rigger, a troll Street Sam, a Elf face and a human decker. They inspect the goods, including the drug samples, and hand Face a metal case with the Ares logo on the latch and tells him the combination is 666. They drive off as soon as Face and Ninja are in the car and do the transaction in motion and drop them off several blocks away when it is done.
At this point i decide it is 5 hours out and he Mob has found the squat. The rigger setup his surveillance drones out front so I let him make a electronic warfare test to see if he spots the Mafia surveillance drone. He get 2 successes so I say he doesn't spot it. At this point they decide to unload the Ambulance and GUnshow and Ninja help Twitch. The cooks comes back with an offer of $15k cash and $10k in Betameth. The team sells them the original data they had shown them. The cooks immediately leave. This is when a SUV pulls up in front the squat and stops oppostie the Ambulance out front and the Mafia Mage cast a detect life spell, gets one success so I decide the mafia only knows how many people are in the building. The players don't make anything of a car stopping for thirty seconds out front and continue unloading the AMbulance. I had the mage try to summon a water spirit to conceal the SUV's for the approach but he failed and took two hits.
For the mob I gave them a Rating 2 mage out SR5, Luca Brasi a street sam with wired reflexes 3 and alot of deltaware , and ten rating 4 organized crime goons outta SR5. In three SUV's. I just wanna say I sorely underestimated the PC's. This combat lasted 2 turns. All the gangers managed to do was knock out Ninja cause he caught a full auto burst from Luca Brasi's Yamaha Raiden. The Mob was using Stick and Shock. Unfortunately i just copied the goons outta the book with whatever they came with and their 6p wasn't enough to penetrate the PC's 12 armor. The Mafia Mage got pasted by the riggers machine sprite enhanced drones before he could even act. Luca Brasi only took two blast from the Gunshows Yahama Raiden with APDS.
In two combat turns they pasted half the Mob and the leaders so the rest of the Mob got back in their SUV's and ran. This didn't stop the blood thirsty players from trying to kill them though.
The players decided to loot the bodies, load up all their stuff and run. They went to an all night dinner and started hacking the comlinks. They hacked Luca Brasi's comlink and found the conact he called right before the hit was Don Gianelli himself. This took about an hour. I asked the players if they call him . They said no. They decided to get a real apartment this time since they had money and started looking for a three bedroom with a garage on Bobslist.org. They can do this cause the Rigger has two level 5 fake SIN's. After three hours and a 7 hit roll they used edge on. I decided they found a three bedroom third story corner apartment in a ten story building with underground parking. The rental office doesn't open till 9am. They decide to sit in the diner till it's time. Since they didn't discard the commlinks I decide the Mob tracks them to the diner.
Around 7am a limo pulls up out front and a man in an Armani suit steps out. He walks into the diner with his driver, a large Italian man, and looks around. He spots the players and walks over to their table. He tells them his employer would like to speak with them and ask them to get into the limo. They flatly refuse and offer that he relay his bosses message. The "little man" explains that there is currently a job offer on the table if they get into the limo and that the offer will be retracted otherwise. He suggest that they view their last encounter as a misunderstanding and that their next "misunderstanding" won't be quite so haphazard.
The "little man" paid the characters tab and they all got in the limo except the rigger who followed in the Ambulance with an unconscious Ninja. Twitch sent an eye-spy drone into the limo so he could interact with the party. In the Limo the "little man" asked the players about themselves and their backgrounds. They told him more or less everything, except for Twitch who said he just worked with them and didn't get into his background. What they didn't know is that conversation was being broadcast to Vincent Cabrini the Gianelli Lieutenant whose house they were on the way to.
The limo pulls into a gated community, gotta look up the name in the Seattle book, and they pull up to a modest two story mansion that takes up the entire parcell of land it is on. They get out and the "little man" who doesn't introduce himself. Escorts them into an office. There are many guards around the mansion. Behind the desk they see a fat Italian man with black hair. The "little man" introduces him as Vincent Cabrini, no mention of rank. Vincent come from around his desk and shakes each of the players hands. Then he says "so you are the street urchins who cost me millions of potential profits and several good men." To which only Gunshow responds and says somethin about the millions they can make him, his retort is that is the only reason they are having this conversation.
Vincent immediately ask "Where is my product." Face says they sold it to the cooks. To which Vincent replies, "they have the data but where is my product". At which point Face explains that he sold the dope to Ares.
This is where we ran outta time. Vincent Cabrini isn't to bent outta shape about everything. He lost his mage, a few goons, and his drug samples, but retrieved the formula and production data when he picked up the cooks after they left the squat. Luca Brasi was his bosses enforcer and VIncent is glad the man is dead. Might get some blowback from his boss but he'd rather deal with that and not havta deal with Luca Brasi. He is excited to get his hands on the team because he wants a group of Awakened soldiers and considers the loss of his mediocre mage a fair trade.
As always any ideas welcome.
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So hears what I got for next week. Next week Vincent Cabrini is gonna explain to the team that he is looking for a team of Awakened soldiers to be more competitive with other crime syndicates. He is going to tell the team the first thing he needs them to do is blow up the head quarters of a small biker gang in Redmond. He needs this done within the next week. The job is gonna pay $25k. He will tell them that if they do well then there will be a bright future for them in the 'family."
Then Cabrini is gonna explain to them that the guy they carjacked is one of his couriers who happens to be "blood" so he can't punish him. He will not explain that Giovani is the illegitimate son of his boss Don Gianelli. If the players work their contacts they will discover this, it is an open secret in the underworld. He will continue to explain that he is making this "mook", as he calls Giovani, their new boss and contact with the family. He will also tell them that the guy is a moron and if he tries to interfere with the specific of operations to just humor him then to do what the characters think is best. He gives the players his personal number to call only if they have any trouble with Giovani and he tries to make them do something stupid. So basically he is their boss but they have full latitude in operations.
The last thing that Cabrini will tell them is that the cooks they sold the data to will be the families new cooks and that they will cook at a preselected site in Redmond and that the PC's will be on call to respond to any attacks against the lab. Then he will call in Giovani and get a good laugh at his expense in front of the players. Hilarity should ensue.
He will tell them Giovani is their new contact and grant them their leave. Giovani isn't gonna confront the players in his bosses mansion but it will come up at some point. He will however make arrangements to give the players the explosives they need for their task.
I'm gonna throw two other jobs at the players next week. One job is going to be from a BTL Prodcer, GUnshow called him looking for work as soon as they got the Ambulance. The BTL producer is going to tell them he needs some male troll "talent" and offer the PC's $10k to obtain it. He will give them one week.
The other job will be from the Yakuza Lieutenant Yoshi Yakamori, as soon as Ninja reestablishes contact with Yakamori . He will task the team with obtaining 3 males and 7 females with a charisma of 5 or higher of any race. The job pays $50k and they have one month.
Ninja is going to havta find out about the new alliance with the Mafia second hand. He is passed out in the ambulance during the meeting. He will also havta travel to Yakamori's restaurant in person. Yakamori told him not to call him again on the old line. When he does he will tell Yoshi Yakamori about the teams new position with the Gianelli family and the up coming demolition job. Yakamori will tell Ninja he wants the biker gangs leader killed but wants his second in command to survive the blast. We'll see how the players get the guy outta or if they just wait it out, or even how Ninja will infulence the team to make this happen. If he doesn't show up next week I'mma kill him off cause I don't wanna havta play all this myself. Maybe He can offer the team a bonus from his employer, like $10k if the second in command lives.
Yakamori wants the second in command to live cause he is already courting the guy and uses him to influence the biker gang.
My long term goal to have the mission in the runners tool kit "anatomy of a shadowrun" except they will be running the mission for the Kenran-Kia against the Mob and they will be shipped off to Hong Kong and become Yakuza enforcers in Hong Kong. This is much farther down the line and neglecting the influence the dragon Urubia is gonna have on the game. Unless the players fuck up so bad they havta leave Seattle and I gotta run the relocation early. Which is a distinct possibility since the players are working for he Yakuza and the Mob.
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Small clarification. Vincent Cabrini doesn't tell the PC's about their first job for the mob. He just introduces them to Giovani and Giovani tells them about the job after they leave the presence of the mob Lieutenant.
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Ok so here's some more specifics about the mobsters. I found this http://the-mafia.weebly.com/structure-of-the-mafia.html. I'm gonna modify the rank structure. There is going to be an underboss, or Soto Capo, for every area of the city the Gianelli's operate in and each Soto Capo is gonna have several Caporegime with their own crews. Vincent Cabrini is the Soto Capo of Tacoma and answers directly to Don Gianelli. Giovani is being "promoted" to Caporegime. He is only gonna be a rating 3 contact because he has no mademen in his crew, only associates, the PC's. He will not beable to offer the PC's any soldier's as support cause he doesn't have any. He won't be respected by the other Caporegime who view his promotion as nepotism. There will be rumors that he fucked something up as a courier and that's why he was put in charge of a crew of outsiders. So the other Caporegime will reject him and not afford him the respect due him station.
The way I'm working contacts is that a Don is a rating 6 contact, an underboss is a rating 5, a Caporegime is rating 4, a mademan is a rating 3, a Picciotto is rating 2, and an associate is rating 1. Conversly a ganger with his own crew is only rating 3, a ganger 2, and a gang associate is rating 1 the same as a mob associate. The disparity of the ratings represents the political connections the Mob has that gangers don't.
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That ... is very nicely done.
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Thanks Wyrm that means alot coming from you. Again I'd like to thank you for being my muse. I was gonna have Giovani being a corporate guy slumin it. This way is much better.
Some other points of clarification. The drug lab is going to be in Bargain Basement and the new apartment the players found is also going to be in Bargain Basement.
Here is the background I've got for Vincent Cabrini so far
At six foot one and three hundred and fifty pounds Vincent Cabrini is a large man. Olive complected and dark haired he is a very hairy man. He wears one of his many Evo: Executive Suits when in public.
A Soto Capo in the Ganelli crime family of Seattle. He answers directly to Don Joseph Gianelli himself. Cabrini lives in a modest two story mansion in the gated community of Rolling Patures in Tacoma. The house is oversized for the lot. There is no yard to speak of in the back or sides with only fifteen feet to the fence. The front yard has a cresent driveway big enough for a limo and little else.
Vincent Cabrini has recently come into possesion of a process by which double strength Novacoke can be produced. Stolen from a Ghost Cartel. He see's this as his stepping stone to Don and has plans to begin mass production from a warehouse in bargian basement.
A ambitious middle aged Mafia Capo who looks to be the Don one day.
He see's his recent "misunderstanding" with the players as lucky happenstance. Even though a thrid party has aquired the drug formula he is setup for immediate production now that he has aquired some chemist through happenstance. He is hoping that being the one in charge of expanding the Family business into drug production will put him in a good possition to become Don when the time comes.
I'm still working on Giovani's background. I'm using Life Modules to make all the NPC's.
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Future Plot Points
1. The Ghost Cartel the Gianelli's stole the 2XNovacoke formula from will allow the Gianelli's to setup a facility and begin production. Then they will attempt to blow it up and kill the cooks.
2. Because Debo, the Dissasembler gang leader, personally delivered Giovani to the back door of Gianelli's word will spread within the family of his abduction. After several months, when the Kenran-Kia version of the 2XNovacoke hits the street, several of the Caporegime will put two and two together and realize that this is related to Giovani's abduction and his subsequent "promotion" to Caporegime. Once the Caporegime investigate they will uncover the PC's role in this foul up.
The reaction of the Caporegimes to this will be dependent on how the players perform in their duties to the Gianelli's over this period of time. If the players do not perform their duties well, or if one of the Caporegime rolls real well and discovers Ninja's link to the Kenran-Kia, these Caporegime will take action to cleanse the Family of the PC's. If the PC's perform their duties well and are not discovered to be Yakuza plants then the Caporegime will decide to let bygones be bygones and nothing will come of it.
3. Yoshi Yakamori, Ninja's Yakuza boss, a Koydai or Big Brother. Will use his limited resources to influence the PC's mob missions to the Kenran-Kai favor, and the Kanaga-gumi's misfortune if at all possible. He will leak the players involvement with the Gianelli's and their involvement in drug production on Kenaga-gumi territory to the Kenaga-gumi. He will not ask the PC's for to many bonus objectives on their Mob missions cause he wants them to advance in the Mob and is playing the long con. He will however use the PC's involvement with the Mob to start an Gianelli/Kenaga-gumi war.
Eventually if the players do well for Yakamori he will have the opportunity to use the players in a hit against a yet to be decided Mafia Family, probably not the Gianelli, maybe though. This run will be the run out of "Anatomy of a Shadowrun" and the players will be wisked away to Hong Kong for a new career as Yakuza enforcers.
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Found this about the Yakuza Structure.
http://forum.ls-rp.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=387560
Yoshi Yakamori's background
He is a 47 year old second generation Japanese. 5'6" brown eyes long black hair.
So after reading this I've decided that Yoshi Yakimori is a Koydai sworn directly to Kenran-Kai Oyban Kosuke Tomizawa. This means he has the right to form his own Family. If I'm reading things right. He owns a Chinese Restaurant in the Puyallup neighborhood proper. He has his restaurant crew of 50 (this includes his administrative staff), 5 ten man street crews (Organized Crime Rating 4 SR5),and a crew of shadowrunners (the ones who made the pickup from the players).
His main money maker is the gambling casino in the basement of his restaurant. Due to his underground casino he has moderate amounts of various currencies from national to corporate script. He sells some of this script to other Koydai at better than market exchange rates. For their clandestine dealings. After surviving the destruction of the Shigeda-gumi he is a firm believer in the "New Way".
Yakamori is fiercely loyal to Tomizawa. Yakamori isn't going to get into the drug production business, instead he is going to gift the data and the drugs to his Oyban. Yakimori is happy with his position in life and his little kingdom, he doesn't wish the risk involved in larger operations, and is content to serve his Oyban well.
He views Ninja as a relic of a bygone era and his refusal to use guns as a critical weakness in-spite of his Adept abilities. He is undecided as to weither Ninja is a disposable asset or not. Only time will tell. He would prefer Ninja keep his identity secret from the team but questions Ninja's ability to do this. In the event that this happens he will not press the team for loyalty over the Mafia, he will simply attempt to cash incentivize the PC's into sabotaging their Mafia operations. Though he does not have the resources of a Soto Capo (he is more like a Caporegime) he doesn't have to compete with the Capo's entire warchest. He only has to beat what the Capo is paying the PC's. If the Capo finds out Yakamori was responsible for stealing his drugs then he will have to go to his Oyban for help. An Oyban who will happily come to his Koydai assistance.
Also when the Soto Capo asked the players what they called themselves they responded with "The Redmond Party Patrol" so there is that. I imagine they'll use their chameleon paint to do something festive with that.
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Here's Giovani's background
Average hieght and average build. Olive complected with short black hair.
Giovani is the illegitimate love child of Don Joseph Gianelli and a caberet girl named Rosa Pectori. Rosa is from the old country and met the Don working in one of the Gianelli families strip clubs in Seattle. Of course Joseph Gianelli wasn't a Don when Giovani was born. The senior Gianelli has always paid the bills for Giovani his whole life. Though he refuses to agknowledge him as a son publicly.
The senior Gianelli has always doted on his bastard. Sending Giovani to prepshool for highschool. And state university for business afterwards. Don Gianelli provides a rating 2 trustfund for Giovani's living exspenses. Giovani is outspoken against the poor. This is on top of the negative -4 negotiation dice i'm giving the characters against him because of the carjacking. Giovani could never grasp Italian growing up so he got a skillware for it after highschool.
When Giovani came of age he was given a possition as courier, under Soto Capo Vincent Cabrini, a position he has held since graduating college. He has shown little ambition and is happy to just drive around in his exspensive car running errands for the Mob. He even enjoys that he occationally gets to shoot someone. Preferably someone poor.
Ever the incompotent Giovani is know in the Mob for always being late and drunk on the job.
After getting carjacked by the Players and becoming their new boss he goes out and gets reaction boosters, expands his skill ware, gets skillwires, tailored pheromones, and gets a Deltaware internal comlink implanted.
The spoiled rich child of a mafia Don and his concubine. Giovani is perpetually drunk or high on Novacoke or both. Irresponsible and undependable.
Giovani is not pleased at all with his promotion to Caporegime. Though the fact that he is just relaying orders to the players and has no real responsibility now free's him up for Novacoke and Hookers, he fears the fallout from failure at his new job.
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Just found a new Ninja. SO Ninja should be a PC again this week. We're playing sunday night this time so expect play update early Monday morning.
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The job from the mob.
The Gianelli's want the "Redmond Party Patrol" to blow up a small biker bar, named "Redds" in The Verge. There is a proxy war between the Mafia and Yakuza in The Verge, being fought by various gangs. A small biker gang, called the "Toxic Rangers", of about 50 members, is playing both sides against each other. Their clubhouse is a bar on the ground floor of a six story residential building. Many of the bikers live in the apartments above. It is on a corner. The bar takes up the entire ground floor. The Mob wants the players to plant the explosives in the bar and blow it up when the most gangers are there. We'll say they have a gang meeting on Monday mornings when the bar is closed. The bar will be closed between 5am and 3pm. It is a public bar, the Toxic Rangers can't afford a private clubhouse. They do attack people they don't like in the bar, so it's public but dangerous for the unaffiliated. Anyone, who isn't a regular, without business with the Toxic Rangers is hassled and at the least interrogated. There is no cleaning crew during off hours, this isn't the kind of bar that gets cleaned.
The owner is to afraid to kick the gang out and lets them have their run of the place. If the players approach the owner, Bob Newman, for help against the gang he will be hesitant to aid them unless they can intimidate him into giving up information about the gang. If they tell him they want to blow up his bar to kill the gang he will tell the Toxic Rangers of this to try and stop it. If the owner is convinced the players want to hurt the gang and has no idea they are going to blow up his bar he will help the players however he can, once sufficiently intimidated. He lives in a corner top floor apartment of the building. He spends most of his day drinking at the bar.
The day shift bartender is an elf named Lisa and she is sleeping with the leader of the Toxic Rangers, Spike. She was sleeping with Bob before the Toxic Rangers arrived and rubs it in Bob's face that she is shacked up with Spike now and Bob can't fire her. She will subtly alert Spike to anything she over hears that could hurt the gang or if the players start asking questions about the gangers. She is very flirty and friendly. Her shift is from 2pm-10pm. She lives with Spike in one of the apartments.
The night shift bartender is a troll named Decklan. He despises the gang and longs for the better days of before the Toxic Rangers found the bar. He's not stupid and will only aid the PC's for cold hard cash and not at all if he finds out they want to blow up the bar. He works from 10pm-close. Decklan live across the street.
On the weekends Bob works the bar during the day and both bartenders are there Friday and Saturday night. Bob pulls a double on Sunday.
Various members of the Toxic Rangers are in and out of the apartment building at all hours. Their bikes block half the street and they have setup road blocks to stop anything bigger than a motor cycle from traversing the street. Between 10pm-12pm is when the bikers start filtering into Redd's from their days "work". On any given night about half the gang is in the bar. The leader Spike holds court at the corner booth in back of the bar. Past the pool tables. The second in command, Slash, hangs around the bar area when he is in the bar. Slash usually comes in after 2am cause he is busy with gang business. Spike comes in around 10pm and sets up court in the back booth.
Now once Yoshi Yakamori hears about this he will offer Ninja a $10k bonus if he can save Slash from the slaughter. It should be interesting to see how Ninja tackles offering this to the team. If she (yes Ninja had a sex change whilst passed out in the Ambulance:) approaches the team with this offer they will become aware that Ninja is snitching on them to her contact. It should be fun to see how she tackles this.
The Mob will tell the PC's that they don't havta take down the entire building but if they do there will be a bonus in it for them. This bonus will take the form of rating 5 fake SIN's and all the necessary licenses for the PC's. I decided the Mob will give them two weeks to accomplish the mission. It is Monday now and the Mob wants Redd's to blow up by 2 Mondays from now.
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Almost forgot. Security at Redd's during closing hours is limited to a rating 4 maglock on the doors, bars on all the windows and doors, and cheap rating 1 camera's with low light. There is also a sensor on the door that calls Bob when the door opens
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I just talked to face about why he threw Ninja under the bus with Vincent Cabrini. He seems to feel Ninja's loyalties are divided between the team and his contact. He says he's happy to give Ninja to the Mafia if it come to that. He is all bent outta shape about Ninja's contact threatening to kill them if they didn't except the offer of $20k Ares script. I explained to him that they are a band of homeless carjackers sitting on multimillion dollar paydata. He is lucky they offered him anything. Much less afforded him the knowledge that they would kill him for it instead of just killing him.
He just texted me that he thinks Ninja works for the Yakuza and can't wait to throw him under the bus. Stupid players I want them to go with the Yakuza so we can go to Hong Kong. It's ok I'll work around this. He's trying to kill Ninja so his girlfriend can play Cleopatra Brown with a purple afro..... ack ok I can salvage this. If they kill Ninja Yakamori will just havta send an emissary. Ok so this isn't so bad. Yakamori already thinks Ninja a relic of questionable use. No problem calm down ok
Ok so they wanna kill Ninja cause they think he is Yakuza and they wanna play Cleopatra Brown. So they already told Vincent Cabrini that they sold the stuff to Ninja's contact. Ninja is passed out in the Ambulance. Vincent is gonna ask how good a friend this guy is, Medium Smoke is gonna say "you can have him.' And so ends the ignoble career of the Yakuza plant.
This is gonna change Yakamori's roll. He is going to setup a meet with the players and offer them hard cash to betray the Mafia and stress his organizations much larger global footprint. So the players will be aware that they are betraying the Mafia. They should bite at this cause Face already realizes he will never pay his Mafia debt and wishes to get out from under their thumb and he hasn't even done the first job yet.
So next week Ninja will be handed over to Vincent Cabrini, giving him a plus one loyalty boost with the players, and cleopatra brown will be their new neighbor in the Freindly Arm's apartment building.
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Ok so here is Cleopatra Brown's background. Very similar to Ninja, made some adjustments to adept powers, made her more impersonation oriented than combat oriented but still almost as good as Ninja at combat.
A 5'11", 21 year old african-American women of above average build. She has the powers of Melanin Control and Facial Sculpt. She is rarely seen in her true visage.
Born on a peanut farm in Missisippi. The fifth of seven children. She has always had a photographic memory. She developed an attachement to the Mentor Spirit Snake on the farm. She learned to Speed Read at night in the limited hours between farm work and bed time. And most importantly she learned Jujitsu from her older brothers. Her younger sister followed her off the farm and latter to Seattle.
She moved to New Orleans as a teenager when she ran away from home, after she developed her powers. Cleopatra and her little sister quickly fell into hustling tourist on the streets of the Frech Quarter. Performing for money, selling drugs, selling fake drugs, confidence games. Whatever she could do to make a buck. Especially confidence games. Eventually making a burlesque act out of her face changing and skin color changing abilities and joining a burlesque troop. She became a Creature of Comfort during this time, now she will settle for nothing less than a middleclass life style.
This is also whenCleopatra developed a mild addiction to both Novacoke and Cram.
Once in Seattle Cleopatra went straight to Urubia's Funhouse. Even in New Orleans the street urchins talk of how Urubia aids homeless Awakened. She had heard the rumor about Awakened who squat in the abandoned towers of Urubia's complex get a hand up from the benevolent dragon. So that's just what Cleopatra Brown did. She sneaked into one of the empty towers and bed down for the night.
True to rumor Cleopatra, and her little sister, were awoken by a patrol and brought into the Funhouse and feed and bathed. this is when she met Urubia's "friend" Clive Baker, a mage. Clive explained to Cleopatra that Urubia is friend to all Awakened. She was given a luxery apartment and given the run of the Funhouse for a week. She had lots of fun and even got to dance ontop of the dragon herself. After a week Clive told Cleopatra that Urubia was going to extend her a loan to get a fake SIN and an apartment and that she was welcome back to the Funhouse anytime, her color changing burlesque routine on top of the dragon was a big hit. Clive told her there was no rush on paying back the loan.
Then she ventured out into Redmond to find an apartment. She found one that meets her standards on the third floor of the Friendly Arm's, second apartment from the corner, in Bargain Basement.
On the bottom corner of the Freindly Arm's is a small dive bar Cocktails. Maybe ten people can fit inside. Cleopatra has befriended the owner Al and gotten her sister a job there. Cocktails is also the place she meets her drug dealer Mason.
A master of infiltration and impersonation. Uses her Killing Hands instead of weapons.
In Seattle less than two weeks and she's already indebted to a Dragon, has an apartment and a job for her sister. Cleopatra feels like she is off to a good start in her new town.
EDIT BIG EDIT CHANGED indebted 4 quality!!!!!!!!!
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Face's is really aggravating me with with his going on and on about how the Ninja's contact threatened to kill him over multi millions of dollars. I've been all come on your homeless and it's a loyalty 2 contact. I'm gonna havta explain to him that he's gonna get that alot in my game when multimullion dollar proprietary processes are being hawked to street level contacts. If he wants to kill of a character everytime one of their rating 4 loyalty 2 contacts threatens to kill the team this isn't gonna work. Face thinks he's a badass. I had a migrain when we ran the fight seen and that's the only reason I read the rules wrong and he won. Now he thinks he's a gansta cause he took out some goons and the Organisized crime syndicates should respect his homeless street urchin ass. He doesn't even have any street cred yet. We are going to have a long talk about this game day and how if he kills a character everytime their contacts does something that offends him this game isn't gonna work.
He also stupid enough to think that since the mob failed at a last minute haphazrd short notice attempt to abduct them that he can take on the entire mob now...... I really might just kill the whole lot of them to make a point. It's ok next time people come gunning for them they are gonna have ADPS not SnS. Face has an over inflated ego and an under appreciation for the power of organized crime. I'm gonna havta fix this some how. Can't let them have anymore success just cause Vincent Cabrini is being nice to him he thinks he's a mademan now.
He's not a mademan, he's a fucking associate who's one step above a homeless bum..... I really wish I'd have read the Stick n Chock rules right and they woke up in a meat locker.
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I forgot the worst part is he threatened Twitch with death if he abandons them on a run. So he's killing one character and has threated to kill another character. I'm putting alot of work into these characters. I understand he wants to kill Ninja so his girlfriend can play Cleopatra Brown. This is the only reason I'm giving him a comparable charcter. If he gets any more characters killed I'm not giving him a carbon copy replacement. If he gets anyone else killed he'll be lucky if I give him a replacement at all.
He wants every character to be perfect and not have any flaws he's already talked about abandoning Gunshow if his Wolf mentor spirit kicks in and he refuses to retreat from a fight. Guess this is what I get for giving a spoiled college boy a street character and expecting him to know how to act on the streets...... I'm gonna explain to him that if he tries to sell Multi-million dollar paydata to loyalty 2 street level contacts in the future he will again have this problem. They shouldn't be in this possition again though so not that it matters.
I have a feeling it's gonna be hard to keep these fuckers into contacts. Going around threatening and killing his fellow players.... I really expected more out of someone with a law degree..... or maybe I should have expected such unreasonable behavior out of him because he has a law degree. As usual he feels laws apply to others but not himself. Maybe he's just doing a good job of playing a ruthless street level gang leader..... all I know is if he starts looking for reasons to kill characters because they are flawed I'm just gonna havta replace them with even more flawed characters.
For instance Ninja was a road for them to join the Kenran-Kai. Now Cleopatra brown is indebted to a fucking dragon.. Everytime he wants to kill a character I'm gonna make it worse for the group. For the sake of the story I'm still gonna have the Kenran-Kai extend a job offer, and they won't know it's Ninja's contact contacting them so it won't matter if they are pissed at him, cause they won't know it's him who threatened to kill him.
Killing Ninja is actually a good thing for their long term prospects with the Mafia, the Mafia was going to eventually sniff out his Yakuza ties. So now the Mob won't have an automatic reason to find they are Yakuza plants. I really want them to work with the Yakuza cause I wanna end up in Hong Kong in a couple of months, the Mob can't send them to Hong Kong. If they stick with the Mob they are going to send them to Chicago. Being a gang of awakend they really don't wanna go to Chicago, we've already discussed this and they want to stay away from Chicago.
Whatever organization they go with they are going to havta get out of Seattle and lay low for awhile. Chicago is just gonna happen to be where the Mob sends people to do such things.
Must punish these PC's... must punish.... I let them get the better of me last week and I can already feel things spiraling out of control......
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I sit hear rereading this stuff all day looking for plot holes and inspiration. And I've found it.
Ok rewrite. Medium Smoke has messes up his chance to Join the Kenran-kai through Ninja. They'll approach him at a latter date now (as yet to be determined).
So Medium Smoke hates dragons, Urubia in particular. Cleopatra Brown isn't indebted to the Kenaga-gumi.... she is indebted to the dragon Urubia.... lolz this is great imma edit her background right now go back up and reread it if you've already read it.
This didn't work out so bad, now a dragon has her hooks in them. lolz good stuff. These little bastards don't fear organized crime they WILL fear a dragon, I already explained to them that dragons can take on nation states. They better fear the dragon anyway.
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So Medium Smoke is a dragon hater, I'm gonna make his GF a dragon groupie. Cleopatra Brown is gonna be all about serving a dragon and living at the Funhouse one day.
After they do the mob job they are going to be invited to the Funhouse to meet Urubia's mage friend Clive Baker. He is going to start offering them very high paying jobs to extract Awakened children from various places around Seattle. These won't be to hard. Will range from snatch and grabs at the park to fighting through street gangs to abduct children. Urubia is gonna pay $20k per child.
This is what I've come up with to replace the Benraku abduction job for the Yakuza.
What the players don't know is that the Friendly Arm's apartment building they live in is owned by one of Urubia's corporations. Next week after we finish the meeting with Vincent Cabrini then they'll go to the rental office to rent the apartment. I'm gonna try to make them curious about the place. Like how the guy is goning to ask them who's name to put on the lease and not ask for all of them to be on the lease. They are going to except cash and not require a direct bank transfer. I'm just gonna try to make it seem as shady as possible and maybe they will ask some questions. Though if their behavior to this point is any indication they won't.
All the other occupants of the building they see will always be armed and wearing armored clothing. When they park the car there will be suspiciously large numbers of vehicles that are the same make and model of various corporate vehicles. Also a large percentage of vans. Everyone knows you're not a proper shadowrun crew if you don't have a black van with a red stripe down the side.
I've decided that after the mob job we might do one mission for Urubia and then we are going to jump into Splintered State. It walks us through alot of mechanics. The groups allegiance with the Gianellis could very well come into play in Splintered State. I'm gonna havta think about how that could alter the plot. Like if they call Vincent Cabrini and tell him they have Dietrich's commlink. Obviously he is gonna want it and isn't gonna send the goons out against his new pets, like hte first faction you contact does in the proper story. Stuff to think about.
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Note about Ninja. He not only survives Mob torture, he escapes. I'm gonna make him initiate grade and he is now out to kill the PC's. He has melanin control and facial sculpt and like 17 dice in hand to hand when all his powers are active....... yeasssss excelent.... the characters have made their first enemy........
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After Medium Smoke betrays Ninja to the Gianelli Family he is tortured in a meat locker for the whereabouts of his employer. In this ordeal he developes the power Pain Resistance. He had a vision from Shark under the intense pain. His vision was simple. A vision of a great white devowering a pod of dolphins. When he came to he sommoned the strength to break free of his bonds and preceeded to murder his Mafia captors.
Ninja escapes and returns to the restaurant of his employer where he informs Yakamori that a Mafia extraction team showed up at the squat and he was disabled by stick n shock. When he awoke he was being tortured in a meat locker with no sign of the rest of the team. He assumes the rest of the team was captured as well and has no idea of thier fate. If Ninja ever finds out what Medium Smoke did the dictates of Shark will be very clear and simple on how to respond to such betrayal.
Yakamori will task Ninja with reestablishing contact with the team. Ninja has no idea where they can be and assumes they are in Mafia custody.
Yakamori will task his shadowrunner team to assist Ninja.
It should be funny in a couple of weeks when he shows up on their front door step.
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HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK.
SO we left off last week and Medium Smoke had just told Vincent Cabrini that it was Ninja's contact they sold his dope to. So this week Cabrini asked them if this friend of their had a name. They said Ninja and Cabrini asked if this guy was Japanese. The said yes. Cabrini says "Japanese paying in Ares script huh." "How good of friend is this guy. Medium Smoke says "we just met him." Cabrini's goons handcuff the unconcious Ninja and put him into a burlap sack. then they put him in the trunk of a car and the car leaves. Twitch also takes this opportunity to rob passed-out-mafia-sacrifice Ninja. He gets 10k and doesn't share this with the rest of the gang waiting inside with Vincent Cabrini.
None of the players suspects that Ninja is going to escape and come back. They all assume the Mob is going to kill him. It should be funny when, ignorant of their betrayal, he knocks on their door in a couple of weeks. Maybe he will die just cause I don't feel like dealing with him. As of now he is going to escape and track down the team cause he thinks their still friends. If they accept him back this will make trouble with the mob. As in end their relationship and put them on a hit list.
After this "unpleasantness" was handled Cabrini asked for his whiskey back without telling the players who's whiskey it was and told them he was going to take the bottle they drank outta their pay. He's not really but they think that. He told the players they could consider the money they made selling the dope as an advance. He then tells them that the players are going to work of their debt to the Mafia. He doesn't mention his rank or which family he represents. He proceeds to tell the players that the guy they carjacked is blood so he can't have him killed. He then tells the players that he is a fucking idiot and he hates the guy. He tells the players that Giovani will just be relaying orders and gives Medium Smoke his commlink. He tells him to only call if Giovani gives them ridiculous orders that jeopardize the mission and only then. He will deal with it.
Cabrini tells them he is a busy man and has business to attend to and that Giovani is waiting for them in the hall. They go out into the hall and see the man they carjacked yesterday, still wearing the same clothes. Giovani stairs at them like he wants to kill them and says "You muther fuckers...you's got any idea what you have cost me.....you muther fuckers.. give me your commlinks, all of you..... I'll call you to setup a meet latter."
It's about 11am, they just sold out a member of the gang to the Mafia, and the rental office at the Friendly Arm's is open. They drive to the ten story apartment building in Bargain basement. There is a small strip of parking spots labeled rental office right in front of the office on the ground floor. On the corner of the building is a small dive bar called Cocktails. Immediately upon parking the players are assaulted by a swarm of eyespy drones. They realise this swarm of drones patrols the building. They examine the drones and realize they all belong to different people.
Medium Smoke and Twitch ,cause Twitch is the only one with ID, go in the rental office and there is a fat women sitting behind a computer, she hardly looks up from her computer. She ask them if she can help them, they say they're looking for a three bedroom apartment. She tells them there's a 3rd floor corner penthouse available and it's $5000 a month, $5500 with parking, comes with a grid subscription, and the rents due on the first. Doesn't offer to show them the apartment, doesn't ask them to sign a lease, in fact she ask them who's name is the apartment gonna be under, they say Twitch. She ask them how many keys they need and they ask for 5 keys. She takes their $5500 cash and Twitches SIN and that's that.
At this point they are suspicious, they think they are in the right place. They all drive into the underground garage and I tell them to make perception rolls. Twitch scores seven hits so I tell him that almost every vehicle to a car in this garage is some type of model used by a corporation. Over half the vehicles are vans, most the same model he's got. They see a few people in the garage and they are all armed and wearing armored clothing. The players now realize they are in the right place and this is the perfect apartment building. It should be hilarious when we run Splintered State in the opening scene where the cops show up to arrest the players. In our game the cops don't go into Redmond or Puyallup except in force. I can't wait to run that scene :) But i digress.
They go upstairs and see their neighbor Cleopatra Brown. She's on her way to Cocktails to watch her little sister, who's bar-tending. Medium Smoke decides to join her. They chat and he offers her a job. Says he's expecting one soon and that he will call her when it's time.
In the mean time Cypher is searching the Matrix looking for information on Vincent Cabrini. She scores three hits on her second try, so an hour later she discovers that Vincent Cabrini is the Soto Capo of Tacoma for the Gianelli Family. This is all she finds out on the Matrix. With this information they start working their criminal contacts to find out about Giovani now that they know who he works for.
Medium Smoke calls up Debo first off, on speaker phone for the team, and Debo tells him "If you ever do that to me again let me know first." He tells them about the $5k in Giovani's wallet, Medium Smoke ask if he took the money, he says hell know he drove the guy straight to Gianelli's Restaurant and delivered the kid straight to Don GIanelli himself. He tells Medium Smoke that he owes him a favor now. Then he tells him to start doing his own background checks when he abducts somebody. But he's welcome to drop someone like this in his lap anytime he wants. I boosted the loyalty from 1 to 2 for the contact.
EDIT: Debo informs them Giovani is DOn GIanelli's bastard love child.
The team decides to get some sleep. Around 10pm Giovani calls Medium Smoke and tells him to meet him at 'The Blue Lagoon" Downtown. The group goes and realizes it's a finer establishment and they will need SIN's to get in. They call Giovani and tell him, he says "you fuckin mooks don't even have ID, Jesus Crist. I'm coming outside. SO he goes outside and climbs in the van. At this point they are crammed in an ambulance, six people now. He doesn't bother to ask who the new person is. He is cursing the characters the entire time.
He tells them they are to blow up a biker gang meeting in the Verge. The gang is the Toxic Rangers. They don't have to take the entire building down but there is a bonus in it for them if they do. The job pays $25k. It's monday now and he wants the meeting bombed two Mondays from now. He tells them to take him to his car and he will give them one plot portion of explosives.
The Medium Smoke decides to call Scarecow, his Haloweener contact, and ask him what he knows about the Toxic Rangers. Scarecrow scores three hits so I decide he knows that they are working for both the Yakuza and the Mafia. The players decide this is a good reason for why the Mafia is having them kill these guys.
EDIT: Scarecrow has the knowledge skill Gang's specialized in the Haloweeners at much higher pool than the players limited Seattle Street Gangs skill.
Cypher does a Matrix search on the Toxic Rangers and scores a bunch of hits so I decide she hinds a comprehensive gang watch site that says the gang is an all male biker gang of about fifty members. They are based outta "Redd's" bar in the Verge. They ask if this corresponds to the address that Giovani gave them. I tell them it does.
Twitch sends an eyespy to the bar to do recon. It's 1am before the drone gets there. It see's about 40 bikes parked out front in the street and that the streets in front of the bar are only accessible why bike. They see bikers milling around, the bar empties out around 4AM and at 5AM a Male troll locks up and leaves on a bike. There are about 25 bikes left out front. There are bikers coming and going this entire time.
They decide the next day that Medium Smoke, Gunshow, and Cleopatra Brown will go to the bar and pretend to be pitching a burlesque act. Twitch sends drone with them and waits in the van while Cypher does Matrix Perception to look for wireless security. After two attempts she discovers two wireless camera's and sensor on the door.
They park around the corner from the bar around 1pm and watch on the drones for it to open. Around 2:30 a redheaded elf comes out of the apartments upstairs and goes into the bar, locking the doors behind her. They wait for her to put on the open sign and unlock the doors. There are bikers coming and going during this time.
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I roll a bunch of hits for the bikers and decide a group of bikers is leaving when the trio is walking up. The bikers cat call at Cleopatra and she wiggles her ass. They tell her to ditch the pussies and come ride with them, the team decides to ignore them. I roll some dice for the bikers and get a bunch of 1's so they just drive off. When they walk in the bar they see the redheaded female elf standing behind the bar. She just stairs at them and they walk up to her. She ask them what they want and medium Smoke says a round of drinks. Annoyed she ask "What kind of drinks?". Twitch got less hits on his jumped in stealth roll then Ginger got on her perception roll and spots the eyespy. She ask "What's up[ with the drone." Medium smoke ties on his con check when he says "What drone." Ginger says "fuck it. Whatever." Fully intent on telling Spike about the strangers who walked in with a surveillance drone. The Cleopatra orders a mohito and Ginger gives her a dirty look.
Medium Smoke Says they are there to pitch a burlesque dancer. Ginger gives them a funny look and says "here?" The bar is an open floor plan with the bar along two sides, 4 pool tables in the middle, and 9 12inch cement coloums that hold up the center of the building with a drop ceiling. He says Cleopatra is gonna jump between the pool tables for a stage. Ginger tells them they havta talk to Bob. They pay for their drinks tip 25% she thanks them and says they musn't be from around here. I forget what was said but she pumps them for information and makes small talk.
6 bikers walk in and demand to know what the players are doing here. Medium Smoke is evasive but when pressed he admits they are there to pitch a burlesque act. The bikers attitude immediately changes and he says "Why didn't you just say so." He buys Cleopatra a drink and begins to hit on her relentlessly. About 5pm Bob walks in, drunk, and orders a drink. He motions for Medium Smoke to come over and says "You wanna what now hear?" He makes his pitch Bob tells him he isn't interested and the Biker tells him he damn well is interested. Bob relents and tells the players they havta provide their own security and he won't pay them. The biker offers "security" and a ride on the back of his bike after the show. Cleopatra says this is why she needs security They agree on Friday night. They have no intention of showing up they just wanted to recon the building.
It was painful trying to explain to them that they just havta wrap explosives around the coloums above the drop ceiling.... I wanted them to figure it out but it took so long and I finally had to explain it to them. Twitch was the only member of the team not interested in taking down the building and collecting the bonus. He was all worried about the children he was gonna kill. I told him that the people of the building breed prodigiously and there were many children of various ages running around all hours of the day and night. They probably argued about this for an hour. It ate up alot of game time cause we only had three hours. It was fun though and taking out the entire building will cost them in noteriety but none of them realizes this. I don't even think they know about the stat and I want them to blow up the building so what better way to learn.
They leave and decide to lay low while they spend the next week watching the bar with the drones and observe the meeting monday between 11am-1pm. The bikers meet every monday to discuss business for the week. I gave them the schedule posted at the end of page three. I made a point of mentioning that Bob works a double on sunday, closes the bar early around three or four and locks up alone. Then the next morning at 10am Ginger opens up the bar for the meeting. None of them picked up on the fact they could just jump Bob with mind control to gain access to the bar and poof their in, bypasses the alarms and the locks and kill Bob, plant the explosives. He's dead anyway cause he lives on the top floor and will be sleeping off his double when they boom. So no bonus Karma for taking the easy route.
The overly complicated way they came up with is that Medium Smoke will put on his hobo outfit and go sit across the street from 'Redd's" with a forty. Then after Bob locks up Cypher is going to approach at which point Medium Smoke will cast Improved Invisibility on her so she can defeat the locks, the door sensor, and the two camera's inside the bar. At which point she will retreat and Gunshow will come up with the explosives. Also under Improved Invisibility. He will go into the bar and plant the explosives. There are nine columns and I decided it will take fifteen minutes a column. So 2 hours and 15 minutes give or take 15 minutes. This should give them plenty of time. Between 4am and 9am.
This will havta wait till next week cause we ran outta time and Cypher and Gunshow might not be able to make it next week.
So a couple of things. Ginger is going to tell Spike about the people in the fancy coats with the surveillance drone and how they wanted to do a burlesque show. The biker from the bar is going to tell all the other bikers about it. The bar will be packed on that Friday night. After no burlesque dancer materialized Spike gets suspicious and sets up a watch. So maybe they got lucky with how they are planning it cause the Invisibility will actually be against look outs in the building windows. Maybe I'll stick a gang in front the door but then how will they get past them to plant the explosives. a firefight will ruin any chance of sneaking into the bar. They do have Mob Mind so maybe they could subdue them. Yeah I think I'm gonna throw 4 bikers at the door at all times after they flake on the burlesque show. That sounds good.
There was gonna be a fight anyway if they did show up for the show but it had no chance of ruining the run. They have decided to wait till the last minute to plant the explosives, the sunday before the meeting so they don't have any second chances.
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There is so much to keep track of. I forgot which Friday they scheduled the show for. Medium SMoke says the Friday before the blast. SO they are discussing heightened security at the meeting when it blows up. So no heightened security. For plots sake I'm gonna say the Mafia gave them rating 20 plastic explosive foam and since it cuts the barrier rating in half for wrapping it around the object I'm just gonna say they take the building down.
They are going to kill many innocents and it'll be on the evening news. They are going to get 1 street cred, 2 notoriety and 1 public awareness. The Haloweeners are gonna know it was them cause they called Scarecrow askin about the Toxic Rangers. This is why they are getting street cred. Word on the street will spread that the "Redmond Party Patrol" will level your entire building to get you, ignoring collateral damage. Movin on up from being know as simple carjackers and organ leggers. Now their mad bombers too.
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After the session Medium Smoke, Twitch, and Cleopatra were hanging out. The question came up, "What's going on with the gangs in the Verge." Medium Smoke has the knowledge skill Street Gangs of Seattle. He got 3 success so I told them about the proxy war between the Mafia ans the Yakuza in the Verge. Twitch was smart enough to realize that they are now proxies in this war and are taking a side in a major way. He realizes that weither or not the Yakuza knows the gang is working for the Mafia too, they might not care and see it as The Redmond Party Patrol blowing up a Yakuza asset.
On that note they work with the Kenran-Kai and they aren't gonna be to bent outta shape about the low level gang being destroyed. They know they also work for the Mafia and were using that for their own ends. If they don't remember to erase their astral signatures the Kenran-Kai will discover they are still alive and working for the Mafia. At this point Yoshi Yakamori will decide to reestablish contact with a different operative than Ninja, cause he will realize the gang sold Ninja out. Ninja will now have a vendetta against Medium Smoke. Yakamori's operative will setup a meet, at some undetermined point, before they do another Mob job.
There will be no mention of Ninja and Yakamori will tell the gang about "The New Way", the large amount of non-Japanese in the Kenran-Kai, the fact that as non-Italians they will never become 'mademen" in the mob, and then he will offer to match what the mob is paying them for a job just to inform Yakamori of the mob mission, he will then offer even more money to alter their mission objectives to suit his ends.
I think the players understand that they will never pay off their debt to the mob and have no opportunity for advancement. Medium SMoke has talked to them alittle about this. They are already talking about getting out from under the Mobs thumb. So Yakamori will make them that offer. The Yakuza will pay more than the Mob cause they will be full partners, not indentured servants.
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Couple more loose thoughts.
They are going to need a telescoping shadowrun ladder to reach the top of the pillars. I didn't see this piece of equipment in the book so I'mma make it up, if they have nanites they should have collapsible ladders. The ladder collapses into a one foot pipe about 2 inches diamiter. If you use it as a club it won't extend. It extends up to twenty five feet. Each section of pipe has a foot peg that folds down on one side. It has some kind of spaceage foot that stops it from turning while you climb.
They will have to go to the Criminal Mall in Puyallup and track down one of these ladders. It will cost $1k and be hard to find. Gotta go read the rules on availability and finding stuff and decide how hard it is to find one of these. Failing that they will havta get an 8foot ladder from the hardware store and sneak it into the bar. Should be funny. Though with Improved Invisibility I guess it really doesn't matter. Maybe R12.
When they are doing the job imma roll six dice for the bikers every hour. Three hits and they draw the bikers attention. More than three hits and they draw hostile attention. On the night of the raid I'mma roll for Bob to see if he passes out drunk behind the bar. If he does Medium Smoke will be waiting out on the street and he just doesn't come out. We'll see how long this delays entry before they decide to go in and investigate. If they just walk through the door and discover Bob passed out behind the bar I'mma remind them that they have rating six tranq patches and see if they can figure it out from there. As long as Bob Doesn't glitch he should lockup the bar around 3:30am and go upstairs.
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Almost forgot. When they called Debo he informed them that Giovani is Don GIanelli's bastard love child.
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Another note. Medium Smoke is now lording it over the other players that he isn't afraid to kill PC's. Just thought I'd mention that.
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Another note. Medium smoke called up Giovanni and asked for a double helping of explosives. I informed him he was at negative 8 dice on the roll and he only has 8 dice in negotiations.
He mentioned explosives on the phone so I let him make a etiquette roll. He passed and knew better. He routinely discusses business on the phone with his other contacts and I'm going to punish him for this.
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Just got Medium Smokes background from him..... looks like he's gonna fight me tooth and nail on this "Urubia is friend to ALL Awakened" spiel I'm gonna have his GF throw at him next week. Should be good fun. SO here's what the player wrote for his background.
Medium Smoke was born into what might be called a working-class family.
His parents were low-wage, mediocre-skilled workers in the local box factory. They sang anti-dragon union songs about how the dragons were the embodiment of the elite class and needed to be overthrown. Medium Smoke went to the local public school. When he was thirteen, all the kids he went to school with started dropping out.
When he was fourteen, the local box factory closed due to massive toxic pollution from a neighboring town's box factory. Everyone knew it was some fuckin' dragon's fault. Of course, this was a simpler time, when everyone was blaming dragons for absolutely everything, and it may or may not have been true.
Then his parents were eaten by ghouls, which no doubt came from all the radioactive fallout from the neighboring box factory, which was caused by a dragon. That's what all the grownups were saying. Then some dragon named Urubia showed up and started demanding that specific children be surrendered to her, and the Smoke brothers were shoved out of sight into the underground.
Big Smoke was hired as a lookout by a local H gang, and quickly got Medium and Lil hired as well.
At fifteen, Medium Smoke first discovered and developed his magical powers when he was serving, and able to sometimes make fiends twice his size turn their asses around and walk away, in front of everyone. "Something" told him that he should keep his abilities under wraps, lest the dragons find him.
Raven revealed himself one day to a sixteen year old Medium Smoke as a literal, talking raven, which calmly explained Medium Smoke's destiny as a glorious leader and overthrower of dragons, as befitting a chosen of Raven. Medium Smoke would rise farther than his destiny would otherwise permit, and the dragons' ruined empires would pay testament to his strength. Raven even spelled out "IN THIS SIGN, YOU SHALL CONQUER" in the sky. And the sign was a silhouette of a dragon with a universal "NO" symbol over it. Like Ghostbusters, but for dragons.
Raven was very convincing.
By this time Medium was hitting the bottle everyday on account of missing his parents.
Debo got acquired by the Disassemblers simply by virtue of the neighborhood he was in when a gang treaty got finalized. He and Medium met in middle school, and developed a business relationship when Medium was tasked with disposing of some witnesses to a gang hit; Medium just mind controlled the witnesses into cuffs and sold them to the Disassemblers.
Scarecrow was muscle on a neighboring H crew that shared a supplier with Medium's crew, so they shared a lot of product and labor. Scarecrow became a Halloweener in a "reorganization" that left Medium's crew with no corner. Scarecrow couldn't do anything for Medium when the deal went down, but they've got a history of helping each other out.
One Eye was almost a totally random pickup. Medium met him at four AM in a bar, while One Eye was complaining about a drop in carjackings. Economics were discussed, and Medium walked away with a business card.
Little Tim is a kid that Medium met on the streets of Loveland. He has a mohawk, plays guitar, and sings for money on the street corner.
Medium met cypher and Gunshow in a squat after his crew got run off their corner and dispersed for the last time.
Medium Smoke is dedicated to forming alliances, and is used to seeing people die. He's used to bodies being worth money.
And he knows that he's going to need AT LEAST an army to take the dragons on.
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Any comments are welcome. Especially now that the story is pretty much laid out for two weeks on account of skipping this week. I see I got some lurkers. Give me some feedback. Let me know if you like it or if you think I'm missing something.
Thanks for reading
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Specifically what I'm looking for is a hook other than "you don't get any other job offers" to get the characters working for Urubia. Medium SMoke has made it clear in the background he has written for himself that he is gonna fight me on this pretty hard. What I am relying on is for Cleopatra Brown to really sell Urubia to the other players, and the fact that she will offer the easiest and best paying job. Hopefully they will take pleasure in overriding their paranoid, megalomaniacal Face who brags about killing PC's and tells the other players to shut up and let the face talk. They should have fun making him work for a dragon :)
Anybody got any ideas how to get a dragon hater to work for a dragon? What I've got so far is that Urubia just straight out tries to buy him off.
He already lives in an apartment building she owns, he doesn't know this yet.
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Originally his character was supposed to be Biased against Dragons. He just submitted his finalized version and didn't add the qualities. After reading the background I upped it to Outspoken, but the more I read it, half the background is a rant about dragons..... and that bit about crumbling their empires...... yeah I'm gonna make him Radical and then I'm gonna have a talk with the team in private, highlight some of the bad judgement calls he's made and point out that the Dragon pays double for one abduction than the BTL guy pays for "talent". And half Urubia's runs will just be a bag men exchanging a sack of money for a kid.... maybe havta fight somebody to make it happen, gangers who heard about the exchange trying to rob them or some such.
Yeah I'm gonna talk to the team and watch them all turn on him as they see his refusal to work with the Dragon as yet another of one of his bad judgement calls. Can't wait to see his face.
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THIS WEEKS GAME
This week picked up the Monday after the biker gang meeting. Gunshow got a call from his BTL guy asking for male troll "talent". He'll pay $10k and needs it within the next two weeks. The players realize there is a male troll working in the bar they are about to blow up. There is some discussion about shiting where you sleep and messing up the Mafia job. They settle on tagging him with a stealth RFID tag and following him home. To accomplish this Cleopatra Brown goes into the bar when it is slow, disguised as a man. When he serves her drink she touches his hand and tags him. Saying some such to him like thanks buddy or something. She's got stupid high palming. He freaks out over her touching him and tells her to get out.The team decides to lay low and not pick the troll bartender up till after they blow up Redd's and the accompanying building
. There is a trip to the criminal mall in Puyallup to get a telescoping ladder poll described somewhere around the end of page 4. I decide this is a $1,000 12R item cause it has no legitimate use. When they get to the Criminal mall they see a sprawling mass off stalls and vendors, almost all with very obvious security, just a chaotic mass of SINless swarming about the place. There are old no firearms signs from when this was a legitimate mall riddled with bullet holes.
They park the van and start walking up. They see two men approaching them who start arguing and one man sneaks the other man in the jaw and knocks him out. The winner approaches them and says "What jew need maan. You need it I know who sells it." They tell the man what they are looking for, I make Medium Smoke roll his dice according to the rules for acquiring stuff. He got more hits than me so the street hustler tells him he can find it and that he wants $100 for his time. They agree that he will get paid once they have the ladder.
While half the group was looking for the ladder Cypher and Gunshow went off and bought a bunch of stuff Cypher need's to bypass locks and what not. It was all money I spent for her when I redesigned the Technomancer after getting a better grasp on the rules so I didn't make them roll for it.
After six hours and several stops they find the ladder, make sure it works and pay $1000 yen to the vendor and $100 to the hustler. They got the hustlers number and I gave them a 1/1 contact. Gotta make this guys name and Stats.
It's Wednesday now and they decide to just wait for the job Sunday morning since they have everything they need. Sunday around midnight they drive out to the bar and park as close as they can get. Which is a block down cause the Toxic Rangers have blocked the road to anything bigger than a bike. They sit in the van watching on drones till about 3:30 am when Bob the bar owner locks up and goes upstairs. I rolled six dice for Bob and decided on a critical glitch he passes out behind the bar. Bob rolled fine and made it to bed.
At this point Medium Smoke gets out the van, in his best bum outfit and a 40oz, and walks down to be caddy corner from the bar. I roll six dice for the bikers and on 3 successes they'll make trouble. No luck for the bikers they don't notice him. The cyber security for the bar consist of two level one camera's and a door sensor PAN'ed into Bob's rating 3 comlink. From the van Cypher hacks on the fly to get three marks so she can turn off the door sensor and loop the camera's for three hours. RAW says that looping camera's has to be done continuously and you can only loop three seconds. I decided that this is ridiculous, what happens when need to hack more than one camera. So I let her put the one camera on a three hour loop with one edit action. The other camera just looks at the register from above so they didn't havta hack that. With three marks on the PAN they just turned off the door sensor.
Cypher had to get out of the van and physically pick the gate and the door, rating 3 and 2 respectively. Medium Smoke made her Improved Invisible for this, then she returned to the van. Gunshow then approached with the explosives and the ladder in a dufflebag. Medium Smoke again made him invisible at force 3. Gunshow had to setup the ladder nine times and spray rating 20 foam explosives around each pillar above the drop ceiling. I made him make nine separate demolitions rolls. He only needed 1 success each to put the detonators right, he's got 6 dice in demolitions. The explosives are military grade but the detonators are 9 identical black burner phones modified with electrodes and one red burner setup to mass text the black phones. It takes him about 2 1/2 hours. He leaves the bar under Improved Invisibility. Cypher comes back, again invisible, and relocks the door. She then rehacks Bob's commlink and turns the door sensor back on. For his conscience Twitch asked Gunshow not to rig the explosives to take down the whole building. Gunshow said yeah sure whatever and rigged the entire building to go down.
It's about 6:30 and everyone gets back in the van and waits for the bikers to start their meeting at 11am. Around 9am some kids come up and start to take the tires off the van. They roll down the window and stick the end of a silencer out the window and yell somethin at the kids. The kids freak out and run off. So at 10am Ginger comes down from upstairs and opens the bar but doesn't turn on the open sign. Bikers begin to mill about out front. By 10:30 most of the gang is there milling about then at 11 sharp they all go inside and lock the doors.
The rigger proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions cause he was watching everything with his eye-spy. Wanted to call Ginger and tell her to get out. I reminded him that from the surveillance it looks like Ginger is fucking the gang leader. then he wanted to draw the children out of the building. Luckily for him he decided to not do any of this and informed Gunshow the gang was in place and it was time to blow the building.
The whole ground floor of the building blew out with a flash and a shockwave and within miliseconds the rest of the building had collapsed on the first floor. Then the rest of the building collapsed into a pile of rubble. The shockwave was felt for six blocks and every car alarm was going off, including the team's van. Their ears were ringing and they could physically feel the explosion. As is tradition the team decided to go to Stuffer Shack across from the apartment.
They attempted to call Giovani to tell him it was done but he didn't answer. Driving through downtown on their way to Bargain Basement from the Verge Cypher starts seeing breaking news of the building that was just blown up in the Verge. The news drone shows an image of a mother in the street hysterical holding an infant missing half its head oozing brain onto the ground. The flash banner says "Mafia vs Yakuza violence heats up in the Verge, 200-300 estimated dead."
They take this in stride and don't bat an eyelash. They park the van at home and go across the street to stuffer shack. While they are eating Giovani calls and ask Medium Smoke if he has seen the news. Medium Smoke says "gO Seahawks" and giovani tells them to meet him at a bar called Johnsons in Touristville at 7 pm. They wait and go to the bar. It's a medium grade place where Giovani's Armani Suit stands out, he is sitting in a both in the back of the bar and is the only person in a suit there.
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Giovani is short and gruff with the players. He hands them five credsticks with $5k each and an ARO with an address. He tells them they can pick up their bonuses at this address and to tell them "The family sent us" and to ask for Doc Wilson. Giovani is secretly pleased the players took the building down and got their bonus cause he knows it means more heat on the players and their lives will get harder. He believes he can personally avoid any fallout from this cause he is the Don's son. He is also happy they will have SIN's now so he can meet them in the higher end downtown establishments he is used to, like the Blue Lagoon.
They go to the address in Bargain basement and it is a ramien shop with a black orc working the counter. They walk up and tell him "the family sent us" and he tells them to go down the dead end ally and some1 will let them in the back. They're all nervous at this point and the alley raps around the back of the building. They go back there and after a few moments the door opens. A green skinned male troll with worn scrubs lets them into a dingy waiting room full of old paper magazines. All weird niche pre-awakening stuff. The troll ask them who is going first and Medium Smoke volunteers.
The troll takes him to a room with a finger print scanner and retinal scanner and various other things to take biometrics. He immediately starts to throw a fit and ask the troll if he is going to give him money. The troll says no. He ask if he is going to give him his bonus. The troll says he doesn't know what he is talking about, he is just supposed to get their biometrics. Medium Smoke acts like a baby and throws a fit and storms out of the clinic, being a complete dick to the troll. No one else follows him. They all stay. I ask them if they wanna roll some logic dice. Cypher bust out with maybe they wanna give us SIN's, like good SIN's. Smart cookie that one, cause they do, but MS is right to be concerned cause now the Mafia has all of their biometrics. So they all let the troll take their biometrics and MS is not happy.
What the group doesn't know is that they are about to get rating 5 Fake SIN's with all the nessicary licenses. For Gunshows gear it's like a $20k package, the others not so much. Though the mafia is giving all of them Military Weapons licenses. The Mafia now has all of their biometrics of course and only Medium Smoke realizes how bad this is. This will come back to bite them if they ever betray the Gionelli's.
So this is done and now they go back to the flat. Cleopatra Brown gets a call from her friend at Urubia's Funhouse Clive Baker. CLive ask Cleopatra how she is settling in he new apartment that he helped her find and ask if she has found a crew yet. She tells him about the mostly awakened crew that she has found, how Urubia would be proud, except that the gang leader seems to be an anti-dragon fanatic and hates Urubia in particular. He says that's a shame cause of course Urubia is friend to all awakened. He tells her that he has a job for her team. Simple bagman job. All they have to do is come to the Fun House, pick up a cred stick, deliver it to an address, pick up a "package", and return to the Fun House with the package. A milkrun. This milkrun pays $20k and there is a $10k hazard pay bonus. Though he says there shouldn't be any trouble.
Cleopatra brown presents this to the group and everyone agrees it sounds like a good run. Medium Smoke wasn't here for this. When he gets here Cleopatra tells him about the run, he is skeptical. She lets it slip that the job if for Urubia. He played it cool and agreed to the run if he didn't have to go into the Fun House. He is afraid that Urubia will probe his mind and find his prejudice and eat him. He didn't try to fight the entire group on making the run.
That's pretty much where we left off. So behind the scenes the troll bartender from Redd's is the only person left alive who knows they went in there pitching the burlesque show before the bar blew up. Because they didn't abduct him before they blew up the bar he is going to be interrogated by the Yakuza, by Ninja in particular. Medium Smoke wore the gangs signature Ares Globetrotter trench coat and sub vocal microphone dog collar. Now the troll never actually saw them so I guess he can't describe this to Ninja. Anyway Ninja is going to be the Yakuza's lead investigator on who blew up the gang who was working for them. Ninja is going to be interrogating the bartender on the second day after the bombing at his project block. So depending on when they abduct the troll, they are still planning on selling him to the BTL producer, they may or may not run into Ninja and his new crew.
The BTL producer is putting on a BTL where a pack of Desolation Angels beat a male troll to death. When they drop off the troll he will tell them this and invite Cleopatra Brown and Cypher to join in on this. Cypher is a Desolation Angels groupie, her gang knowledge specializes in them, so she should jump at the chance to actually play with some of them. Twitch finds the whole BTL thing abhorrent and doesn't wanna let them use his van. So they may let a witness slip through their fingers, this will be bad for them.