I thought i'd share an amusing story from a previous night's Shadowrun. I included dice rolls for fellow GMs / Players to see how I usually run these types of encounters in Shadowrun. I'd be curious to hear from other GMs if they would have run it differently.
The group was doing some legwork on a missing person. Mr. Johnson was able to give them her address, but no way to actually access her apartment. She lived on a Horizon compound in Renton.
The Runners procured themselves a few Rank 1 SiNs that are registered Horizon employees. This lets them walk onto the compound without causing any issues. They take a cab onto the campus, and make their way into the building. They only have TWO SiNs, so the Muscle / Skill guy and the Face are the only ones who can go. They make their way to the apartment.
Now, they discover that unfortunately the doors are protected by a RFID scanners, so Muscle's Sequencer that he has with him isn't going to be any help. They do some Matrix scanning with an Agent they have on them, and identify a few security cameras scattered about the hallway.
At this stage, the muscle is a little frustrated his Key Sequencer is useless. The Face decides for reasons unknown to the GM (me) that he wants the Agent to hack into the nearby security camera. I think his idea was to disable the camera so that it wouldn't catch them breaking into the apartment.
I gave the Face an Intuition + Logic test for the "Wait... is this really a good idea? A security camera is likely to have pretty good security on it...". The player passes the test... but glitches. I decide that his character will realize it's not a good idea... AFTER he hits the button to send the Agent against the Security Camera. It should be noted that the character and the player are not experienced hackers, and the players were NOT doing a very good job communicating with the Rigger who was waiting outside the compound, and could have told them not to do this.
The Agent obliges and brute-force hacks its way into the Security Camera. The Agent is Rating 6 but is running on a System 3 Commlink (Agent is on loan from the Rigger, who has a better Commlink) so its dice are capped at 3. Agent is running Rating 3 Stealth and Rating 4 Exploit. The Security Camera has Rating 4 Firewall and is running Analyze 4. The player gets 4 successes and brute-force hacks its way to User access on the first try! Unfortunately the Security Camera gets 4 hits in return, more than the Stealth of the Agent. The Agent immediately reports back to the player that it is successful, however the Node is on Alert. The Face realizes his mistake, and promptly has the Agent log-out.
Well, things aren't looking good right now. The Face tells the Muscle what happened, who growls to himself and starts trying to take apart the Mag-Lock on the door so that he can re-wire it and get access to the apartment. He needs 6 hits on an extended Hardware + Logic test to make it. Muscle only has 3 Logic and 1 Hardware, so he's rolling 4 dice. His first roll only gets him 1 hit.
Meanwhile, a security spider has been alerted to the breech on the Security Camera. He takes a look at the two people who are standing by a doorway, looking like they're fiddling around with a lock. He notifies Security, who send a Guard up to investigate. The players aren't obviously armed, and they haven't exactly done anything threatening, so a huge security response isn't really warranted at this point.
The Muscle keeps trying to break into the lock. 1 more hit. Another hit. A glitch, which subtracts one of his hits.
Face succeeds in making a Perception check with -2 dice. He notices that the elevator is approaching their floor. A quick search of the hallway reveals nowhere to hide, so the players prepare themselves for whatever comes out of the door.
The elevator opens, and the Guard steps out, and immediately asks the players what they're doing. The Face goes into a long diatribe about how their friend is out of town, and they were supposed to come by and water her plants and generally keep an eye on her apartment. A successful Con + Charisma test later has the Guard buying their story. The Guard then asks them why they were trying to break into the door, and what was the deal with the security camera? The Face makes another successful Con + Charisma check to persuade the Guard that they didn't want to ask for help cause they were too embarrassed they'd lost the key to the apartment they were given. The security camera break in was explained by "Well, I was just fooling around with my Commlink on a hidden node... I didn't know it was the security camera".
The Face is the Face for a reason... The Guard was an average Guard so he had 3 Charisma dice and 3 Con dice. It was close on a few rolls, but the Face was able to succeed on all his rolls. Of course, the Guard isn't going to simply take this all at face value. The Guard runs the players' SiNs through a check. Now THIS was rough. They only have a Rating 1 SiN... and I judge that this Guard is going to give the players' SiNs a Rating 3 check. Rolloff between the SiN... and the check. 3 dice to 1. The player rolls a success for his SiN... and the Guard only gets 1 success in return! The Guard asks a bit of verifying information, "What was your last known address", which the player is able to successfully answer with an easy Con + Charisma check yet again.
Well, at this point the Guard is slightly annoyed but doesn't believe any shenanigans are going on. He starts to tell the players to "Move along." They don't have permission to get into this person's room, and if they lost the key, well that's just too bad. Mentally, I'm prepared at this point for the Guard to accept a bribe to allow the two players access to the room. The players decide to keep relying on the Face though.
The Face produces another sob story - if they don't water her plants, they'll die, and then the person will know they lost the key, and they haven't been able to get in touch with her and have her call the main building and grant them permission to enter. Can't he just let them in? The Face proceeds to make another Con + Charisma test... and tosses EDGE into the roll. I gave them a very very steep threshold of 6 successes for this (anything less and the Guard still would have done it... for the right price). However, EDGE tips the scales, and the Guard relents. "Well, since you're such a nice guy, I'll do it JUST THIS ONCE." and proceeds to swipe them into the room.
The two players are now free to begin their investigation and figure out what happened to the girl they've been hired to track down.
I thought this scene played out really well. Fortunately they didn't come into the building armed, or none of this would have really worked. They made a lot of rolls, and there were a lot of places where it almost went wrong and they would have had to resort to brute force... but just goes to show you sometimes the players can actually get things right!
