RukiTanuki
2010-07-01, 02:49 PM
While it's been awhile since I've posted due to Life And Such, one nice thing is that I'm back with a regular gaming group, albeit GMing as always. The current game du jour is Shadowrun 4th Edition, which we're all still relatively new at. I'm making strong use of SR4's improv difficulty values and stock characters, try out one new part of the rule system each adventure, and generally find ways to let the characters try (and occasionally fail spectacularly) at anything their players come up with.
Setting briefing:
My setting's a modified version of the base setting, taking place in 2070 San Francisco. The fantasy elements are a bit toned down, due to player preference. There are people with strange abilities (including one PC) and freakish creatures, but their place in the world is akin to what you'd expect in a Marvel comic (minus the tights). Pop culture calls the pointy-ear people "elves" and considers the people with strange abilities to have "magic," but we approach those elements of the universe from a sci-fi perspective. The character are as likely to get help with their magical problems from students at Berkeley as they are from a musty shop in the Mission.
The game has been a great chance for me to break away from running preconceived adventures and creating a more living world that reacts to the players. To that end, I've written (and acted) myself into a corner that is going to require a bit of open-world preparation -- one of my NPCs now has to work as hard as the PCs do to oppose them.
The PC's fixer Liam -- as well as a primary Johnson we'll call Jane -- have gotten themselves into an escalating situation. The summary: Jane, a corporate manager of moderate import, had a relationship with a roughly equal-level coworker... let's call him Bob. It went bad, bad enough for Jane to leave the company. For reasons I haven't set in stone yet (either this is personal or Jane took something important with her as she left work), this upset Bob enough to attempt a hit on Jane. It's escalated from there as the PCs have gotten involved.
His hired mooks botched the job (they blew up her car after she entered the 7-11), and were thwarted by our PCs -- their first encounter with Jane, actually, involved protecting her and her infant son as the mooks tried to finish the job. Through Liam, Jane later hired the PCs to send a clear message to Bob by destroying his latest project.
They detonated an automated facility in Marin, guarded by light security in a remote location. It appeared to manufacture medikits, but was a cover part of a larger operation. A file copied by the PCs, but not yet decrypted, paints a bigger picture involving drug runners, local gangs, and some viral BTL software infecting the VR-training-software scene... in effect, the overall plot arc beyond what I'm planning now.
Bob was in hot water at work when his project was destroyed. While the act was intended as a warning to leave Jane alone, Bob took it as more of a threat; thus, he decided to end said threat permanently, and as far down the chain of actors as he needed. He rushed his next move, though, and tipped his hand a bit. Bribing the local gang of Halloweeners with psychotic meds (or threatening to cut them off), he convinced them to attack Liam and Jane (who've spent a lot of time together lately) and pass it off as a random act of senseless violence. Neither the gang nor Bob anticipated a team of runners darting through downtown traffic in short order and shutting the hit squad down.
Bob has lost the element of surprise, he's used up his easy-access resources, and he's assuming the worst -- that this team of runners, who backhanded the gang he uses to push around his typical rivals, is going straight for him. He's right, of course: Liam immediately made plans to make himself and Jane scarce, and he offered the PCs several times their going rate to end this problem permanently.
So, the scenario is this: A mid-to-high-level manager at an A-rank (not AAA) corporation is about to pull out every stop he can, and call in every favor imaginable, in order to pursue three goals:
* Guard his life for the next few weeks while he tries to salvage his project.
* Find Liam and Jane and eliminate them.
* Kill Liam's Runners or coerce them into his employ by any means necessary.
The players, to their credit, have brainstormed several plans of attack, all of which provide delicious plot-hook goodness:
* Humiliate Bob's rep and make him a liability to anyone
* Infiltrate his contacts and sever any connections
* Get his corp upset at him, possibly repudiate him
* Decrypt/descramble the file they copied and learn his plans
* Break up the Halloweeners, or at least their connection to Bob
So, my question to anyone who's got more experience running this kind of game: What precautions and offensive measures does Bob take, and what kind of resistance should the runners expect?
Setting briefing:
My setting's a modified version of the base setting, taking place in 2070 San Francisco. The fantasy elements are a bit toned down, due to player preference. There are people with strange abilities (including one PC) and freakish creatures, but their place in the world is akin to what you'd expect in a Marvel comic (minus the tights). Pop culture calls the pointy-ear people "elves" and considers the people with strange abilities to have "magic," but we approach those elements of the universe from a sci-fi perspective. The character are as likely to get help with their magical problems from students at Berkeley as they are from a musty shop in the Mission.
The game has been a great chance for me to break away from running preconceived adventures and creating a more living world that reacts to the players. To that end, I've written (and acted) myself into a corner that is going to require a bit of open-world preparation -- one of my NPCs now has to work as hard as the PCs do to oppose them.
The PC's fixer Liam -- as well as a primary Johnson we'll call Jane -- have gotten themselves into an escalating situation. The summary: Jane, a corporate manager of moderate import, had a relationship with a roughly equal-level coworker... let's call him Bob. It went bad, bad enough for Jane to leave the company. For reasons I haven't set in stone yet (either this is personal or Jane took something important with her as she left work), this upset Bob enough to attempt a hit on Jane. It's escalated from there as the PCs have gotten involved.
His hired mooks botched the job (they blew up her car after she entered the 7-11), and were thwarted by our PCs -- their first encounter with Jane, actually, involved protecting her and her infant son as the mooks tried to finish the job. Through Liam, Jane later hired the PCs to send a clear message to Bob by destroying his latest project.
They detonated an automated facility in Marin, guarded by light security in a remote location. It appeared to manufacture medikits, but was a cover part of a larger operation. A file copied by the PCs, but not yet decrypted, paints a bigger picture involving drug runners, local gangs, and some viral BTL software infecting the VR-training-software scene... in effect, the overall plot arc beyond what I'm planning now.
Bob was in hot water at work when his project was destroyed. While the act was intended as a warning to leave Jane alone, Bob took it as more of a threat; thus, he decided to end said threat permanently, and as far down the chain of actors as he needed. He rushed his next move, though, and tipped his hand a bit. Bribing the local gang of Halloweeners with psychotic meds (or threatening to cut them off), he convinced them to attack Liam and Jane (who've spent a lot of time together lately) and pass it off as a random act of senseless violence. Neither the gang nor Bob anticipated a team of runners darting through downtown traffic in short order and shutting the hit squad down.
Bob has lost the element of surprise, he's used up his easy-access resources, and he's assuming the worst -- that this team of runners, who backhanded the gang he uses to push around his typical rivals, is going straight for him. He's right, of course: Liam immediately made plans to make himself and Jane scarce, and he offered the PCs several times their going rate to end this problem permanently.
So, the scenario is this: A mid-to-high-level manager at an A-rank (not AAA) corporation is about to pull out every stop he can, and call in every favor imaginable, in order to pursue three goals:
* Guard his life for the next few weeks while he tries to salvage his project.
* Find Liam and Jane and eliminate them.
* Kill Liam's Runners or coerce them into his employ by any means necessary.
The players, to their credit, have brainstormed several plans of attack, all of which provide delicious plot-hook goodness:
* Humiliate Bob's rep and make him a liability to anyone
* Infiltrate his contacts and sever any connections
* Get his corp upset at him, possibly repudiate him
* Decrypt/descramble the file they copied and learn his plans
* Break up the Halloweeners, or at least their connection to Bob
So, my question to anyone who's got more experience running this kind of game: What precautions and offensive measures does Bob take, and what kind of resistance should the runners expect?