[World]

I’m pretty new the forms but I’ve been GMing shadowrun games for a long time now… around 7 years (probably longer), it’s hard to remember.

I wonder if we as GM’s could share some the more interesting or clever tricks/stories that we have played on our players.  At any rate I hope the story I share will help my GM brethren to be more creative (although that’s likely hoping for too much).

One of the things that players don’t seem to realize when they join my games is that NPC’s lie… even the ones that send you on the missions (often times finding the truth amidst the lies leads to massive rewards, but not the point of my current story).  So I now make sure that my players learn this lesson once and never forget it.

I had an completely new team with zero veteran players on it (I was making the game more popular ) and so I decided that after a few games to let them get there feet wet it was time to hit back… up the difficulty if you will.  The team was breaking into/assaulting a gang safe house.  The team’s sharp shooter was not hiding… and was also alone while having a shootout with gangers in inside the safe house.

I decided this was a perfect time to teach the team 2 lessons.  4 gangers (none of whom were anything special) had flanked the team and the first member they came across was the sharp shooter.  They were trying to sneak up behind the sharp shooter but they were noticed and the player (sharp shooter) fired at and hit one of the gangers… this is what happens immediately after that shot.

•   Ganger one goes down
•   Ganger two – throws his arms up in the air and yells at the player “What the frag are you doing!  We’re on your side!” (and in the players defense they were hired by a rival gang, in the dark of night and the heat of the moment they would have looked the part)
•   Player (sharp shooter) – yells “OH MY GOD I DIDN’T THINK WE WOULD HAVE BACK UP!  Here let me help him I have first aid supplies and then we can call the doc wagon”
•   ***the player walks straight over to the gangers (gun holstered).
•   When he takes a knee to help fallen ganger the other three gangers beat the snot out of him

The moral of the story was this… going solo is rarely a good idea and trusting my NPC’s is a horrible idea (it’s very hard to get bonus points from me if you do).  I wish I could tell you the rest of the mission because I thought it was quite classic, but this post is getting too long.

I would be very happy if anyone who reads this could be as brutal a critic as possible.

[Zilfer]

Heh, i'll have to save that in my repritor(sp?) of things gangers might do. XD

[Walks Through Walls]

World,

Great story. It sounds like it worked really well, and hopefully they will learn from it (at least one if not both of the lessons).

One thing I like to do to help increase the paranoia and uncertainty of situations is whenever I call for a perception roll if they don't find anything (or there was nothing to find) I answer them with the following description, "Everything appears normal."
To increase this tension I also will call for perception checks from time to time when there is nothing to see just so they don't get used to I made a perception check something is about to happen.

It doesn't help my current group's feeling of ease that the NPC that has caused them the most trouble so far is a troll physical adept (stealth and throwing specialist) with a chameleon suit. In the last mission the groups mage thought he had him when he astrally perceived to look for him then proceeded to critically glitch his assensing roll which ended up with him impaled and unconscious.

[nakano]

A technique I have used extensively over the years is to actually play through "milk runs".  You know, those easy runs where everything goes exactly as planned and there is no screwjob.  I have found that it does several things:

• It sometimes leads to the players lowering the guard.  Never a bad thing as a GM.
• Barring that, it is funny as hell to watch your players go batshit crazy trying to find the screwjob that does not exist.
• These runs are much easier to put together.  Much less prep time.  That is how I started running the "milk runs".  I didn't have time to prep our weekly session, and ran an easy mission, and OMFG, my players went out of their minds trying to figure out what the hell I was up to.
• Runs like this represent great places to get contacts, and also provide fantastic "downtime" oppurtunities.  They are also great when you are down players due to that curse known as real life.
• The Milk Runs are also a great way to introduce new:  NPCs/Locations/Groups etc.  They are also a great way to foreshadow events in a campaign.  I ran a series of runs in my game years ago where an AAA planned to take over a AA that was based in the city I use as a setting.  The PCs participated in a number of these "unrelated runs" and discovered that in doing so, they had
  helped Novatech take over the company where most of their corp contacts worked.  LOL.

Mileage with this will vary based on group, as milk runs tend to have terrible karma awards IMO.

[World]

Great story. It sounds like it worked really well, and hopefully they will learn from it (at least one if not both of the lessons).

It doesn't help my current group's feeling of ease that the NPC that has caused them the most trouble so far is a troll physical adept (stealth and throwing specialist) with a chameleon suit.

In fact they did not learn from this mistake and had to suffer it a few more times... my funniest team ever.

I like your "Everything appears normal" move.  Could make the game a little more edgy.

It doesn't help my current group's feeling of ease that the NPC that has caused them the most trouble so far is a troll physical adept (stealth and throwing specialist) with a chameleon suit.

That is... unkind of you.



And as far as "Milk Runs" go... I agree they can be a lot of fun and the team gets a chance to workout lose ends (down time campaign, or maybe I misunderstood you)

[JustADude]

• Barring that, it is funny as hell to watch your players go batshit crazy trying to find the screwjob that does not exist.

Reminds me of my Missions team doing that one where you have to go put a factory out of business. We happened to have one hell of an optimized Hacker, a good Face, and a Street-Sam sniper/demolitions-expert that had the Engineering knowledge skill, to better place charges on buildings, vehicles and such.

While the Face's contact was getting us fake "OSHA-Equivalent" IDs the Hacker went in and started screwing with their computers, rerouting every single one of the shipments that would hurt them financially to a warehouse we'd rented under a totally bogus "Numbered Holding Corporation". The Street Sam then used his/her (male player, female character) Engineering Knowledge to make subtle changes (a few hundredths of an inch here, a few thousandths there) to the blueprints so that the assembly line would be creating defective stock.

Then, when the ID came in, the Face bluffed his way into the factory with our Hacker, pretending to be an OSHA inspector on a surprise visit. Face caused all sorts of ruckus and kept everyone's attention while the Hacker played personal assistant while hacking the assembly line and inspection systems, uploading the altered blueprints, and tweaking the electronic inventory system so that all the current stock was scrapped out as defective. Meanwhile, the Heavy Weapons Troll (yours truly) and our Rigger were standing by outside in the Big Black SUV we were using as a ride, ready for an armed extraction if their cover got blown and things went south... we'd take a pay cut if we wrecked the place up, but it was better than blowing the job entirely... but it went off without a hitch

Once that encounter was over we looked towards the GM, waiting to hear how quickly our attacks had been neutralized and ready to re-group for Round Two... only to find out that we'd forced the company completely under, days ahead of schedule. Not only did we obliterate them financially, but we were told any one of our attack vectors would have done the job. We were totally floored, or at least I was.

Just shows what happens when a group of Runners goes in expecting to be screwed with and gets pitched a softball.

...

As for the stuff we rerouted, we ended up with so much loot that we had to RE-reroute some of the shipments to our various Fixer contacts, even though they didn't have enough money to pay us for all of it, getting us +1 Loyalty to the contacts we gifted the stuff to, and netted something like 40,000¥ each for the goods we could find cash-money buyers for.

[Wolfboy]

thats histerical, but i have whats probably a stupid question, is there anywhere on the forums for posting game idea blurbs, you know what i'm talking about, the seeds like they give in feral cities and other books? The reason i ask is that i have a few. Some to go with particular books, some just off the wall ideas because a movie made me come up with a run.

[Mirikon]

This would be a good place: http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?board=27.0

[Lethe]

We were totally floored, or at least I was.

What a lazy ass GM. I would have been floored.. was the mission designed like this?

screwing with their computers, rerouting every single one of the shipments that would hurt them financially to a warehouse we'd rented

As soon as they are missing a shipment, there will be calls.
1. Checking their own system, if the orders changed
2. Checking with the manufacturer, if they sent it somewhere else.
3. Checking with the shipping company, if they got changed orders.
4. Interrogating the captain, where he brought the goods.
5. Interrogating the dock workers, where they put the goods.
A few days later Knight Errant would have knocked at your warehouse and reclaimed the goods. In your case probably the next day, since you only decided for option one. -> No loss, increased security now.

Engineering Knowledge to make subtle changes (a few hundredths of an inch here, a few thousandths there) to the blueprints so that the assembly line would be creating defective stock.

A week later, after some clients sent their goods back and denied payment, they'll verify the defects, check their own systems, correct the blueprints.
-> Slight loss, increased security now.

tweaking the electronic inventory system so that all the current stock was scrapped out as defective.

Manual scrapping and the people would have asked questions at some point. Even if automatic scrapping, at least the supervisor would have noticed. -> At most a weeks loss, depending on the stock.

Even keeping this up for a few weeks, hacking their systems again and again, the company wouldn't have been ruined. Each time they would have noticed earlier. So yes, i would have stared at the GM in disbelief.

On the other hand, maybe the company manager had a critical glitch and was in a coma for a couple of weeks.....

[JustADude]

We were totally floored, or at least I was.

What a lazy ass GM. I would have been floored.. was the mission designed like this?

Ayup, it was a Missions: Season 2 module, one of the early ones. Wish I could remember the name. The point of the mission was to cause enough trouble for the company, who was already having cash-flow issues, to force them to sell out to a bigger company.

Apparently we were supposed to enlist some local street-gangs for help and go pull some old-school mafia strongarm tactics, then spend the whole week hassling security and employees and vandalizing the place to disrupt things enough that they decided to sell... which was so low-brow it never occurred to us.

As for the rest of it; firstly we hit not only their system but the systems of all their suppliers, rerouting stuff to not just our warehouse but to all sorts of other places. The point was to get rid of it, not steal it, after all. We skimmed as much as we could, passed on as much as we could to people who we wanted to owe us a solid, and just had the rest go to random places.

Second, speaking as an engineer, it's a lot easier to cause a problem than fix it. Since the QA scanners all along the line were compromised and every copy of the original blueprints altered that could be found, they'd lose several days to a week worth of product, because it would take them that long to notice the problem, then god-knows-how-many man-hours to fix all the tiny little tweaks that rendered their product (electric motors) unusable, all while their machines are standing idle.

As for the inventory; mostly we were aiming to just clear out enough of the "good" stock so they didn't have anything between the defects and their customers.

I don't blame the GM, who is the best kind of sadistic bastard when it comes to creative mayhem and treachery, but the guys who wrote the module. There was apparently less than an entire column on what would happen if we played things the smart way.

[Sichr]

Trash the body Electric

We did almost the same, 5 days ahead of shedule, Blueprints stolen, Prototype sentry drones hacked and stolen...
Finaly, we hacked heavy crane they had inside the factory floor, our infiltrator linked its hook to assembly line, finally it ended up with Crane falling down and Assembly line heavy damaged. Some taser shots from our side, well Blue shft never knew what hit them

[Henker]

As a GM I usually use 2 things to reinforce the atmosphere in my games:
- people who loves you can be a pain (dwatching you or digging your past ,etc...)
- people can be irrational (they lie, follow their emotions rather than thinking, etc...)

and this can makes "normal" situation a lot more interesting and funny in a game

[CitizenJoe]

While the Face's contact was getting us fake "OSHA-Equivalent" IDs

OSHA has no juice on corp extraterritorial factory.  Note that there are lots of ways that doesn't apply.

[Lysanderz]

While the Face's contact was getting us fake "OSHA-Equivalent" IDs

OSHA has no juice on corp extraterritorial factory.  Note that there are lots of ways that doesn't apply.

You're assuming the corp they hit had Extraterritoriality rights.

[Sichr]

RMD. local Nissan supplier. Nothing even close to AA status