[MWillner]

I may be over thinking this but...

I am planning to start a campaign with the Splintered State adventure and have a couple of concerns.

1. In the zoo.

Where does the sniper set up? The text says "to the southwest midway to the Hummingbird exhibit (which isn't on the map)". Looking at the map on page 31, the only reasonable place to set up is the path where the mountain area and the rainforest area meet (above the reptile tunnel). This would be extremely close to target (I suppose. There is no scale.) Any other place with an angle to a target in the tunnel is close to a building, where you would expect the most traffic.

What is the escape route? Getting over the outer perimeter wall requires going into an exhibit, or the public entrance.

2. The run on Brackhaven Investments.

The plan seems to be:
land on the roof,
open the door to the southwest stairwell (the one with roof access),
go down 45 floors, spoofing all the cameras and other sensors in the stairwell and avoiding all the workers running around,
break into the room with the special server (the text says room 8, which is identified as a conference room),
get the magguffin,
go back up 45 floors, avoiding sensors and people (if they are undetected) or if detected, fighting their way through the 27 guards already above them (3 per 5 floor) plus what ever reinforcements sent up via the elevators,
get back to the roof before the helicopter arrives, but without having to wait too long so they don't get detected and get the helicopter re-routed.

This seems like a recipe for a TPK,

Has anyone else run this scenario? How did you handle this? Should I just hand-wave some of this?

[OneofSorrow]

The GM that ran this for me had the sniper set up where he normally was.  During the zoo run players should mainly be concerned with escape, I know my team was because the snipers can really reign hell.  How we escaped is we went through one of the exhibits running full tilt through it until we made it to the GMC Bulldog that our rigger was still sitting in.  As for the public entrance that wasn't even in our mind because we had to smuggle in our weapon using concealed holsters and using armored jackets and dusters to look normal.  You might also want to hint at the number of CAMERAs in this place if they stop and fight. 

As for Brackhaven what my team did it under Mitsuhama and we used our money to invest in chameleon suits and performed a stealth op using a jammer to mess with the camera and having our decker knock out key cameras, like the one in the elevators and on the level we wanted to use a grenade with neurostun X to knock out the guards in the server room and got the data before stealthing out. 

After having read it, I found out our GM pushed the enveloped alot because we were playing characters that had +40 plus karma.  This all comes down to what type of players you think they have, are they the type that like to get in and get out fast with little noise or are they the kick down the door and mow down the guards type?  To be honest the brackhaven place is a tough nut to crack but the corporating or sponsor they picked is going to tell them that they are going to need to go to a server room on the 10th floor to get the data so they have a clear objective and if they cause to much trouble they have a dragon to deal with, I know I did. @_@   

[Kincaid]

Hopefully, the PCs will be smart enough to take cover when confronted with a Chimera hit squad.  Once they do, Chimera withdraws and it's pretty obviously set up to not allow the PCs to pursue, so I'm find with handwaving that part.  If the PCs decide to fight...well, good luck to them.

Yikes!  That's a near-suicidal plan, even if they know about the roof gun.  Running down (and then up) 45 flights of stairs is going to be tiring.  They can't override an elevator (or elevators)?  The building is ripe for a hacker using direct connection to start taking it over--there are literally hundreds of things to connect to.  I might call up some friends in O.R.C. to stage a protest outside.  That should get the attention of a decent chunk of the racist guards.

[OneofSorrow]

We hacked the elevator using a decker.  Our team had a pretty solid combat decker. 

[Gripper]

When I ran through this with my group, they decided to go in through the front door. One got a tech job interview, another signed on with the janitorial staff. Oddly enough, the face stayed outside to wreck havok with the riot.

Good times.

[Reiper]

I recently concluded the run, but did some tweaks to it.

On the Zoo, I made my own map for it, basically had the Basilisk exhibit near a T and set up the Sniper south (entrance was west, and additional path to the east), Chimera evacced to the South hopped a fence and vanished. My team actually handled it well, one of them was able to sneak in a gun and the technomance immediately began working on spoofing him as an undercover KE officer once the guards arrived, but they didn't need to because they bailed out of there as soon as the basilisks made it through the cage (although they did try to get the civillians out of the area).

And I made my own maps for the building too, and the team basically hacked the stair well cameras and alarm system and rappelled down and climbed back up. Ended up going without a snag and they even had time to break into Brackhaven's personal office (even with the level 10 ward and serious matrix security). Made me think on the fly on some things that could be found there (they ended up finding one cred stick on his desk 1d6x10k and then they broke into a safe with some paper files that they copied, and a cred stick with 1d6.10k x2.

[MWillner]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Hacking the elevators is a possibility, though someone might see them opening with no-one in there, or skipping a floor if they pressed the call button. There are lots of people still in the building (from the description the company works 24 hours a day).

I guess the zoo can be hand-waved a bit since the main emphasis is to escape without getting hit by Chimera or picked up by UCAS SPs.