Shadowrun CLUE Files

[DigoDragon]

I was recently reminded of the Shadowrun Clue Files (Clueless Legions Unearthed and Exposed), where GMs related their stories of Runner teams who botched their jobs due to having little to no common sense.
These stories are of course, insanely funny.

I wanted to share one of my own stories of a run gone bad ~
(Shadowrun 4e in case you're curious)

The "Clueless" Team:

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• Blade - Ork (M) Melee Adept
• Lupina - Human (F) Wiccan
• Hack - Human (F) StreetSam
• Dwarf - Dwarf (M) Rigger
• Bandaid - Human (M) Combat Mage
• Jules - Human (M) Face
• Eli - Ork (M) StreetSam

The Job:
Covertly protect the citizens holding a protest rally outside an Omni-Consumer Products building during an important board meeting (the GM likes Robocop). The protest was held in a fictional city in Colorado with an underground subway system (the GM likes drawing maps).

It was a strange job, but paid well and didn't seem difficult.

The Setup for Failure~

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The Johnson didn't want the protest erupting into violence, and the OCP security on the scene were only there for OCP's benefit. Seemed like we could do this.
Well, minus the "covert" part... and the "doing" part...

We did a little legwork and found out two things:
1. Among the protesters was the daughter of a prominant OCP vice-president.
2. This VP had enemies who already made one failed attempt at kidnapping his daughter.

Okay, the job got a bit tougher. First on the scene of the protest was Lupina, Jules, and Dwarf by way of Dwarf's Hummer H6 (compensating like a boss). Lupina locates the VP's daughter and sets up a counterspelling action to protect her. Jules makes friends with the protest leader.
Dwarf... gets drunk...

The rest of the team managed to buy off a Lone Star police detective to get info on the case of the failed kidnapping. They find out the 'nappers are a local Runner team and rumor has it they'll make a second attempt soon. The "Clueless" team sets up a lookout at subway stops around the protest area and the streets above using blurry photos of the enemy Runners as reference.

The NonExistant Plan Falls Apart~

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Blade spots the enemy Runners on the subway heading toward the protest. He shadows them onto the subway train and overhears that yes, this is their second chance at kidnapping the VP's daughter. Blade sends a few pics of them to the rest of the team.
Eli, Bandaid, and Hack head down to intercept at the next stop, smuggling their weapons past security (Darn those import MAD scanners).

Dwarf is pretty buzzed at this point, but he monitors the police band (and a garage band). Lupina remains hidden with the VP's daughter and Jules heads to the subway (running into what may have been the city's only working MAD scanner). Jules is now being questioned by an officer.

Blade makes his way to the front subway car with the intent of taking control as it reaches the target station. The door to the control room is locked and he has no lockpick. So he takes out his Predator (on a crowded public subway, mind you) and blows off the lock. The lock unsurprisingly does not dodge.
The driver stops the subway train and Blade orders him out at gunpoint. Passengers freak the drek out and start to bail out the emergency exits.

The enemy runner team tries to mingle with the escaping crowd at the station, but Eli, Bandaid, and Hack open fire at them (A silencer on an SMG counts as covert, right?). Team Clueless is smoking the competition with bullets and grenades (You know, the 'stealthy' kind).

Lonestar is not happy and the first cops to arrive are two plain-clothes officers. Team Clueless mistakes them for "Enemy Backup" and Eli drops one of them instantly with a headshot. Oops.

The Karma Cashes Out~

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The firefight below was enough to warrent a S.W.A.T. Team to get called in.

The enemy team is dead (with the consistancy of roast beef). Blade, Bandaid, and Hack escape, but are severely wounded and now the stars of their very own APB manhunt. Eli attempts to escape, but is struck by an oncoming ambulence when he runs out in the street between parked cars (Irony knows no bounds). Eli is apprehended with a broken arm and collar bone.

Dwarf panicks and burns rubber out of there. Due to drinking, the GM calls for a moderate driving test. Dwarf critically glitches and drives headlong into the arriving SWAT Road Master. His Hummer is compacted into a Ford Explorer and he into a halfling. No, he doesn't survive.
Jules is questioned by Lonestar if he has any ties to the gunmen at the scene. Jules replies, "No, I'm with the other stupid team that gunned down the first group."

He's promptly arrested.

What Happened to the Mouse?

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This leaves Lupina, the only player who decided to keep low and spend most of this session sitting quietly at the far end of the gaming table, while her team set themselves on fire (figuratively).

It just so happened that one of the enemy runners (their mage) escaped the slaughter and made a desparation attack on the VP's daughter. Lupina managed to counterspell both his attempts and take him down with a lucky stunbolt shot.
Although Lupina was taken in for questioning by OCP security, the VP saw the whole thing and got her released on the technicality of self defense. He paid Lupina for the job (and since the rest of the team was MIA/Compacted/Ambulance Mishap, Lupina kept all of it).

The insult to injury was that the surviving team regrouped a week later in another town, but no one asked Lupina where she was during their gunfight. Or why she was now able to afford food not made completely out of soy...

[OverdrivePrime]

I love these fraggin' CLUE files. :D

Keep 'em comin'!

[TheCountAlucard]

This one didn't result in any PC deaths, but it's still pretty damn hilarious.

The team is sneaking backstage into a Nabo concert, and we spot a guard long before he can spot us. "I'll take care of him," says Chip, our Adept. He is specialized in throwing things, and has pretty good odds against a SWAT team if he's got cover and a roll of quarters.

So, his player tells the GM, "I'll do stun damage." He THROWS a coin…

The GM rolls some dice.

"Okay, his head explodes; your quarter is embedded a foot into the concrete, glistening wetly with blood and brain matter."

"What?" Chip's player splutters, "But I said I was gonna do stun damage!"

"Even with stun, you did more damage than an anti-tank rifle." He showed us the guard's health track, and how the damage of the attack had been enough to fill up his Stun condition box completely, spill over into Physical, and still enough to kill him outright.

"Whoops."

[Asheram]

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This one didn't result in any PC deaths, but it's still pretty damn hilarious.

The team is sneaking backstage into a Nabo concert, and we spot a guard long before he can spot us. "I'll take care of him," says Chip, our Adept. He is specialized in throwing things, and has pretty good odds against a SWAT team if he's got cover and a roll of quarters.

So, his player tells the GM, "I'll do stun damage." He THROWS a coin…

The GM rolls some dice.

"Okay, his head explodes; your quarter is embedded a foot into the concrete, glistening wetly with blood and brain matter."

"What?" Chip's player splutters, "But I said I was gonna do stun damage!"

"Even with stun, you did more damage than an anti-tank rifle." He showed us the guard's health track, and how the damage of the attack had been enough to fill up his Stun condition box completely, spill over into Physical, and still enough to kill him outright.

"Whoops."

Hahaha! So Shadowrun is the perfect system to build Gambit in then?

[SaurOps]

My old group was actually responsible for the invisible tree in the road. Not much hilarity-meat on that one, I suppose, but boredom, apathy and fatigue will do that.

[TheCountAlucard]

Hahaha! So Shadowrun is the perfect system to build Gambit in then?

It's a good system to build Gambit in. There's lots that can handle that, though, and Shadowrun's a good few decades into the future. The Southern US he's from seceded from the rest of it after the Native Americans took most of the western half of the continent, so the world around him would be… pretty different.

[DigoDragon]

He showed us the guard's health track, and how the damage of the attack had been enough to fill up his Stun condition box completely, spill over into Physical, and still enough to kill him outright.

Yikes!
Some characters just don't know their own strength.


Deckers tend to be the archtype that screw up missions the most in my group~
The team was escaping a secret research facility in the middle of some cornfield in Nebraska. The job was to steal a specific item, but the team tripped the alarm getting it. Their escape vehicle was a helicopter and the team Rigger had the engine running and door open for the runners to hop in.

Well, the last group of security chucked a couple grenades in a hail mary to blow up the Runners in hopes that some don't get away. The StreetSam uses his riot shield to deflect one grenade away from the group. The team Decker, feeling pretty smug about wanting to outshine the Sam, uses his deck like a bat to deflect the second grenade.

It's an improvised weapon and the Decker completely botches his roll. I randomly check where the grenade goes and it happens to land right in their escape helicopter.

It was a looooong walk home.

[TheCountAlucard]

Even if he DID deflect the grenade, the deck would likely be smashed; a cyberdeck is a pretty sensitive, expensive piece of equipment. Heck, in the fifth edition, a cyberdeck is also pretty darn small, about like two cell phones taped together.

Our Matrix specialist derailed a mission, too, but in a good way: the module was like, "You can't run a trace on this old decker NPC," and when the GM says that to us, the player said, "The HELL I can't!" Sure enough, he dices it out, and soon our team is paying the guy a visit… the old guy's in a train station, seems to be doing something in VR, so our Face walks up to him and yanks on the guy's datajack, and while the NPC's dealing with all that dumpshock damage, he very directly tells him not to mess with us.

All in all, good times were had.

[DigoDragon]

Another CLUE File I remembered.

The Team~

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• Blade - Ork (M) Melee Adept
• Lupina - Human (F) Wiccan
• Bandaid - Human (M) Combat Mage
• Angel - Elf (F) StreetSam
• Ghost - Human (M) Drone Rigger

The Mission~

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The team was hired to infiltrate a shiny office party and steal corp data off the CEO's personal office computer. Ghost wasn't a professional hacker, but he wasn't unskilled at it either. We took the job on the account that beggers can't be choosy.

Party Like it's 2069~

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Legwork reveals that our target office party is on the 30th floor of a bank office building. Moderate security with the standard electronics. We managed to replace one of the two catering services with ourselves and set to work on eating the food getting to the data.

Bandaid screened for spirits while Blade kept the one security mage distracted with booze and banter. Angel used her charms to keep mundane security personnel looking the other way (all too easy). Lupina used an invisibility spell on Ghost to get him out to a side exit.
Once Ghost was out and no longer invisible, he looped several security cameras and broke past the one maglock into the CEO's office.

Too easy? Of course! We knew there would be a stumbling block somewhere to screw up our mission. If only we had a mirror, then we would have noticed what that block was...

Not a Party Until Something Gets Broken~

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Ghost decides it's easier to just steal the entire hard drive rather than hack the PC for the data. He uses one of his repair drones to cut out the hard drive with a welding torch.

Meanwhile, the CEO is opening a few gifts he received at the party. One is an empty box from a "Frienemy" at a rival corp as a token that at least no bomb was sent to ruin his day.
Blade opens his mouth (before turning on his brain) and cuts loose with an insultive comment that could have dealt a light wound. The CEO is pissed and tells security to throw Blade out. Blade resists and security finds that he's packing heat.

Speaking of heat, Ghost manages to cut the hard drive out. And set fire to some paperwork on the desk. Which triggers the fire alarm.

Angel takes this cue to open fire at security (Because... why not?) and now we have a gunfight on our hands. Blade takes down the enemy mage first (Finally, his brain came online) and Bandaid banishes the one spirit that showed up to defend the CEO.
Ghost rejoins to give us his best "Captain Obvious" impression that we'll probably be seeing Lone Star show up in 10-15 minutes.

It's definitely a party now.

Last One's Stuck with the Check~

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Angel shoots out a window. She and Blade then proceed to break out base jumping parachutes. No, they didn't tell the rest of the team this idea.

Lupina doesn't argue and is the first one out the window with both a levitation and invisibility spell to get her down safely. Ghost and Bandaid hit the stairwell, but run in opposite directions. Ghost runs downstairs, Bandaid upstairs.

Running down 30 flights of stairs is not for the faint of heart. Running down 30 flights of stairs while being shot at? That's a heart attack, which is what Ghost would have prefered to what actually happened when he stumbled out to the street and tried remote-driving the getaway van over to himself.
The fatigue penalties made Ghost fail his skill check. He loses control of the van. Our rigger ends up taking the driver-side mirror of the van to the face. He's now on the ground pondering his options for reconstructive nose surgery.

Angel manages a perfect base jump from the building to the street below. Then the uncontrolled getaway van snags her chute and takes her for a drag across the parking lot.

Blade realizes that he doesn't have a base jumping skill, about one complex action too late. Glitches his jump, glitches his landing, and ends up in a salt-water fountain with several cracked ribs.
Oh, and he's very allergic to salt-water.

What's left of the team limps together and into the van (Which came to an abrupt stop when it collided with someone's BMW in the parking lot. good thing the front end was armored). This is when Blade realizes he's missing his grenades and Lupina realizes the team is missing Bandaid.

An explosion on the building roof answers both questions, and delivers Bandaid's severed left hand slapped into the van's front windshield. Good enough, the team takes it and bails before the police arrive.

So, Did We Win?

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Sort of. While the data was on the hard drive, it was encrypted and that was another adventure in itself to get through...

[comicshorse]

Would I be correct in assuming you're GM doesn't give the standard 'are you sure you want to do that ?' warning ?

[Autolykos]

Some of our classics:

Our Sammy had the trunk of his car filled to the brim with explosives (don't ask me why, the run didn't even involve blowing stuff up), and drives into a LoneStar checkpoint. The cop sees his cyber, decides to check him out more closely and orders him to get out of the car. His fake ID checks out, but the cop is still suspicious (mainly because the Sammy acts way more like a street rat than a security guard), and asks him if he can look inside the trunk. The GM reminds the player that his fake ID does not cover 100+ pounds of home-made explosives and he gets the clever idea of chucking his keys into the sewer. Then the cop decides to shoot open the lock...

In our early days the team had to infiltrate a secret para-military installation somewhere in the desert. The best plan they could come up with was landing their chopper right in front of the biggest bunker, knocking at the door and yelling "Has someone in here ordered a pizza?!?". In the next round they had enough ordnance headed their way to obliterate a small European country and got their chopper blown to smithereens. They still managed to get into cover and fight their way out, though (but mainly because the GM didn't want to TPK them in the first five minutes of the run).

[Beacon of Chaos]

Never played Shadowrun, but I fondly remember the CLUE files for getting me into it in the first place.

Looking forward to seeing what comes from this topic.

[Telok]

I've told this one before but I'll tell it again because it really, really, fits.

Background

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This was back in 3rd edition SR, the group was myself, the GM, and four other guys. I've played before, 1st and 2nd editions, and run a couple one-shots for people. The GM is an ex-Marine who had run SR for other Marines while he was in the service, he's good. The other guys were totally new to SR, one or two had read one of the books and gotten excited about it.

The Cast

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We made characters. I just read a bit more of the books and waited until everyone else was done. The guys were as follows. Physical Adept ninja, stealth and a massive dice pool with his katana. Sniper, stocked up on bronze core bullets because APDS was too high for starting characters. Laser Boy, double laser pistol zap action. "Drone" Rigger, he had a stock van and two drones (one tank type and one VTOL) with machine guns on them.

They had no charsima skills, no medical skills, no computer skills, the PhysAd could hotwire a car and the Rigger could drive it but that was the sum total of vehicular and electronic skills. And of course there were no contacts beyond fixers, johnsons, and bartenders.

"Give me fifteen minutes and then thier bartenders tell them to hire me."
I came out with an elven hermetic summoner, magic five plus a two point summoning focus, and skillwires 6. I had lots of skillsofts to cover everything that they couldn't do. I liked to pass myself off as a decker until I would call forth an elemental to screw people up.

Everything went OK for the first couple of runs. We did a little recon/decon work for an environmental activist in the Barrens. Busted an Ant shaman/hive thing as a favor to someone. Then we got our first run with a good cash payout.

That Mission...

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Election time was coming up for the city council. We were hired to kneecap some people in one candidate's campaign, just put them in the hospital until after the election to send a message to this guy.

The first guy took the bus to work. We jacked a van and rolled up at his bus stop where he got a full auto shotgun burst to one leg, an APDS sniper rifle round to the other leg, and laser burns to cauterize the stumps. He wasn't kneecapped, he was knee-gone.

The second guy we got outside a political rally. We had a bunch of hot handguns, those a case of ammo, and a grand convinced a motorcycle gang to do a drive by shooting when the rally let out. While the gang out holes in cars and any citizens who didn't duck fast enough the Sniper passed another APDS round through this guy's shoulder. Luckily DocWagon got there in time to revive him and get him to a hospital. Also luckily a police vectored thrust light tank took out the motorcycle gang. I think that was a warning to us to tone it down.

Toning it "Down"

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Two down and two to go, but the targets were getting scared by now. We tracked the third guy to his apartment building and a little bit of recon convinced us that going in through the front doors was a bad idea. I figured the guys probably wouldn't be able to pull off the "cleaning crew" bluff. Then someone noticed that the Rigger's VTOL drone had a 120 kg lifting capacity... They bought some base jumping parachutes and sent the ninja in first, I stayed in the van with the Rigger and advised them through a throw-away cellphone.

The ninja got through the dog and the electronic lock by the helipad while everyone else and the parachutes were ferried up. They got down a few floors and into the right apartment without being seen and then tasered, shock gloved, and beat the guy into unconsciousness. Then they stole his computer, stabbed the victim through the heart with a katana, threw the body out the window, dropped a few thermite grenades to erase evidence, and jumped out. They made it out but... we weren't gonna get a bonus on this run.

I wasn't there for this one.

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I had to miss a game. When I came back we were playing D&D.

WTF?

They went after the last guy at a hotdog lunch. On a Saturday afternoon in a park in the AAA security zone. They timed thier attack to coincide with a speech the candidate gave to the crowd, they were going to shoot the guy standing next to the candidate.

I'm a bit fuzzy on what happened next. Apparently they drove up nearby and opened the van doors then opened up with everything. Including the two drone with machine guns. The target was unscathed, the candidate down, the candidate's wife swiss cheesed by machine gun fire, and a hotdog vendor cart exploded. It all ended with the last survivor throwing grenades at a police helicopter (said grenedes missing and landing in what was left of the crown) and being mowed down by machine gun, sniper, and plain clothed police fire.

I never even bothered to try and collect payment. It was too embarassing.

[DigoDragon]

Would I be correct in assuming you're GM doesn't give the standard 'are you sure you want to do that ?' warning ?

You would be correct yes. In fact, the less sure we are to execute a bad idea, the more encouraging he is.

I never even bothered to try and collect payment. It was too embarassing.

I don't blame ya.


There was a hilarious epic fail moment in an adventure I ran. A secretive mental ward stopped communicating with the outside world and the Johnson hired the team to figure out what happened and retrieve as much data as they could from the mainframe.

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The place turned out to be a lab where scientists experimented on the mentally handicap and what happened was that a prior runner team broke into steal the data when they got into a fight that killed off the team and all the staff. So the mentally ill were left to their own vices.

The mission was meant to just play out like the place was haunted with a murder mystery, but my players apparently took it so seriously that they swore someone was still there pulling strings from behind a curtain. One of the handicap patients put on a uniform of one of the staff and was living a strange fantasy that he was in charge. When the players found him, he was very willing to tell them everything about the secret rooms and strange aliens hidden away in the basement.

Of course there weren't any, but the basement stored lots of oxygen tanks that were leaking due to being neglected. So when A player thought there was an awakened snake attacking so he open fired...

[TheCountAlucard]

I wouldn't say it's CLUE-worthy, but I was definitely amused by the results of this recent mishap. Basically the group's stuck in traffic when a half-dozen Triads walk up to their van. The Face checks to see if they're carrying, so I call for a Perception test. The player glitches, so I say that the Triads look to be carrying, and then she sees one going for something in her coat.

"One's reaching! Gun!" The Face and the Rigger throw themselves down to avoid a hail of gunfire, only for it to turn out the Triad was going for a pack of cigarettes.

Clearly the runners don't appreciate secondhand smoke.

[Kaun]

I had a couple clusterf*$Ks happen in an SR4 game i ran last year but i can't remember enough of the details to put them into a complete story.

I do remember the Arcane Investigator and the Street Sam having an argument about a few street gangers they had captured while raiding a back yard drug lab.

The gang members were unconscious and hog tied and the arcane investigator wanted to put a bullet into there skulls then dump them in a shallow grave in the bad lands and be done with it. The Sam how ever was a pacifist and the idea of killing these people in cold blood went against his personal code.

Long story short after a couple of hours of argument they agreed to dump the still unconscious but alive and hog tied gang members into an area of the sewers known to be inhabited by ghouls, Reasoning that it was the more humane approach.

[TheCountAlucard]

…?

[Kaun]

To this day i still can't divine the logic

[Sith_Happens]

To this day i still can't divine the logic

What is this "logic" and what does it have to do with Shadowrun?

[Lord Torath]

What is this "logic" and what does it have to do with Shadowrun?

More proof of lack-of-logic: A Pacifist Street Samurai?

[Kaun]

More proof of lack-of-logic: A Pacifist Street Samurai?

Ehh that wasn't so bad. He had no issue with hurting people, just "supposedly" wasn't big on killing them.

The group all so had a rigger who wrote himself up as a Wiz mechanic but his dice pool for most skills relating to fixing vehicles or drones was generally 4 or less.

They also infiltrated a city docks customs area once because the figured it would help them locate a package they were hired to steal only to realize once they were inside that the idea made no sense and they had no notion of what to do now that they were in.

So they installed a backdoor in the LAN in case they ever needed it and left.

[comicshorse]

More proof of lack-of-logic: A Pacifist Street Samurai?

Thats what Narco Jets and stun rounds are for. We ran a game where the teams Shaman was a pacifist and so the rest of the team pretty much became pacifists to keep him around. It did help that we got more work when we went pacifists, employers liked us not living bodies in our wake.

[Autolykos]

Thats what Narco Jets and stun rounds are for. We ran a game where the teams Shaman was a pacifist and so the rest of the team pretty much became pacifists to keep him around. It did help that we got more work when we went pacifists, employers liked us not living bodies in our wake.

Well, my raccoon shaman was also pacifist. But the team only got real good at not letting me see any bodies :)