Way back in the way back of 2002, I got my first exposure to Shadowrun. Not sitting down for a game or getting to hear a war story from a player. No, that was when I first stumbled upon
the Shadowrun C.L.U.E. Files: a collection of stories about the weird and clueless things we do when playing Shadowrun.
Since that site is dead and gone, but still a part of Shadowrun I feel near and dear to, here is my own story of things that likely should have not happened if someone had just stopped and thought things through.
The job was easy enough. Hell, it was something most Shadowrunners excelled at: cause some property damage! See, there was this Johnson who wanted to buy the land this hotel sat on, but the owners wouldn’t budge. A few million in damages, however, would surely change their mind.
We were dutifully scoping the place out, testing security reactions to different events and had a good thing going, causing just severe enough reactions where the police were called out, but so minor that a few more calls and the police would think of the staff as the Boy Who Cried Wolf and get to things “with all due haste.”
That was when the minotaur checked in (this is an NPC). It seemed the staff was quite racist (befitting upper middle-class humans) and took exception to the minotaur. When the minotaur finally intimidated the manager into checking in, the police were called back in. When the first (of four) officers came flying out the window of the minotaur’s room, we felt the perfect situation to cause some havoc (and claim responsibility for the damage the minotaur was causing to up our bill to the Johnson). We talked before hand, so we were thinking things like burst some water pipes, cause a small fire, cut an elevator cable, etc.: little things that would never the less cause damage an need quite a bit of money to fix. Little did we know one of our teammates had something else in mind.
Speeding over the hotel parking garage from his position three blocks away in his GMC Bulldog, the Infiltrator (to keep from naming names) parked his van on the incline of the underground parking structure, blocking the entrance, and snuck out of the back of the van hauling a conspicuously hefty duffle bag.
The guard immediately spotted the barely hiding Infiltrator and activated the garage’s automatic turrets. One shot and the Infiltrator was down and bleeding out. BUT he would not stand to go down alone and spent Edge to Dead Man’s Trigger to activate his detonator and blow his entire duffle bag of explosives.
With a DV of somewhere between 50 and 75, the guard, the Infiltrator, and nearby cars were vaporized. And so was the hotel’s support structure. To call the next few moments as the team attempted to flee the building as it collapsed upon itself stressful would be an understatement.
While the in-character actions were bad enough, the belly laughter of the Infiltrator’s player as his character died and took everyone with him was frankly disturbing. Needless to say, we don’t play with the Infiltrator’s player any more.
And that's my tale. Anyone else have crazy stories of runners who probably should have thought things through a bit more before they rushed headlong into destruction?
