[Ganggreenkhan]

     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.

[Ganggreenkhan]

      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.

[Tecumseh]

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.

[Ganggreenkhan]

     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.

[Ganggreenkhan]

   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.

[Fizzygoo]

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.

[Ganggreenkhan]

     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.
     

[Ganggreenkhan]

     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.

[Fizzygoo]

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!

[Ganggreenkhan]

     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.

[Fizzygoo]

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.

[Ganggreenkhan]

    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

[Ganggreenkhan]

      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.

[Ganggreenkhan]

     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.

[Ganggreenkhan]

     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.