[wolfrider66]

 I wanted to ask if any of you have or know of beginner runs in the DeeCee area and then thought "well I better tell 'em why". One of my group of players is my best friend. It was important, he said , that we start our adventures in the Sixth World right here at home in Prince Georges County, Maryland, where we grew up. Then I got to remembering life growing up here....not the safest, kindest place in the USA. Hell even the PG cops had criminal records lol. And as I was not an angel why not play out one of my own real life runs as a mission for my group.
 Here's what happened in real life:
I had found out from a friend, whose father was a member of a local Veterans club, that they kept beer, candy and some cash locked up at their neighborhood swimming pool. The property was a simple rectangle lot sitting east - west longways about 120 meters and north- south  about 70 meters. There was a building in the NW corner with two small locker rooms for men and women respectively and a bathroom on the lower level. Up the stairs was the small bar, pool table and staff office with a small refrigerator. The pool was in a residential neighborhood backed up against the local power lines. It had a six foot fence with barbed wire around the perimeter.
  So the next night Me and an accomplice cut the chain locking the gate and then jimmied a window open into the mens locker room. We were focused on the beer,candy and maybe the cash as all our mission was, was to get out and have a good night later with our dates, who were waiting at my house, so we ignored the lockers. I should mention we were all underage. Well, we sneak all professional like up the stairs and find the candy behind the bar....SCORE#1! Then we open the door, without checking for wires or lasers etc., to enter the office when an alarm starts screaming! My buddy, man that he is, peed his pants while fumbling with the second story window till he got it open and dove through. I heard a loud thump from outside and ran to the window expecting to see him dead with a broken neck. He was already up and climbing the back fence heedless of the barbed wire and just messing himself up in his terror. I figured I had enough time to run down the stairs and though the gate to escape and had already given up on getting the beer. I mean the alarm just went off, the police would take at least 10 minutes to get there right? Wrong. I get to the bottom of the stairs as the front door opens and a policemen shining the all powerful HOLY LIGHT OF JUDGEMENT, or just a flashlight, came into the building. Well 'I' almost peed then, but instead I turned and ran up to the same window my lacky had jumped through and out I went with maybe a little more grace. The policeman was hot on my heals but stopped short of a heroic jump to catch the super criminal mastermind. With a few minor cuts I got over the fence and into the power lines that ran all the way back to our neighborhood. We got new pants for  my buddy and had our fun night with our dates and ate candy.
Well, as you can see with a little tweaking here and there I got myself a short introductory run. What I would like help with is experienced GMs to help me with suggestions for tweaks that are good "game mechanic" encounters suitable for brand new players. (And don't forget I'm new to Shadowrun too   )

Thanks folks,
wolfrider66

EDIT: Man I got so into my memory that I forgot to ask if anyone knew where a map of the DeeCee area is and what has been happening in the Sixth World around the city, if anything?

[Crimsondude]

There's a 40-odd page chapter on DeeCee in Conspiracy Theories. No map, however. That's on me. I didn't get the geographic/route changes to Jason and the art director in time because ... Because. And the map from NAGNA has too many errors. However, the descriptions should be enough for a local to figure out where what is.


One thing that didn't make it into CT but is mentioned in the Street Legends Supplement is Kingdom Seven. It's a seven-story club at the top of an 80-story extraterritorial (there's a story to go behind that I won't get into) tower in Columbia, PGC.

[Wakshaani]

Conspiracy Theories? I thought it was in Spy Games.

Ack.

I have an edit to do in the near future.

[wolfrider66]

Hey thanks Mr. Meiers, I just picked that volume up. 

[Crimsondude]

Excellent. I hope you enjoy it. It was one of my dream projects.

[wolfrider66]

OK here's where I'm at, Instead of beer and candy, my player characters will be hired to get illegal contraband disguised as beer and candy that is going to be stored over night at the VA swimming pool building which is owned by a local gang/Cartel/somebody until the morning. Then it will be shipped to its destination. I have yet to get the final copies of my player character record sheets so I don't have their contact lists yet. But I do know that there is a troll street sam, an elven mystic adept and a dwarf technomancer who really wishes he was born an elf but does not qualify for the elf poseur trait. ( I think there is a negative quality that would fit this obsession but I can't remember where I saw it.). The Troll & Elf are both ex military from the same regiment. They live in Langley Park, Maryland which is a few miles north and a little west of NW DeeCee. The dwarf has some Rigger skills, but really is trying to be a spider.

I don't want to post these updates here if this is not where mission ideas go, so please tell me where to post the updates and I will slowly but surely have a short intro mission completed for our community to use complete with google earth top down maps and such of the adventure areas.

Oh yeah, I freaked when I read about Dunkelzahn as President! even though he is dead......

I gotta go tuck my wife in so I'm out chummers 

[wolfrider66]

As I read Conspiracy Theories, I came to the DeeCee section and got to the Rail paragraph. who are the HEADmen and what does HEAD stand for? The way this reads, my group is going to have a hard time keeping a low profile.

[Crimsondude]

The acronym is written out in the box on page 122, but it stands for Homeland Enforcement and Defense. It's a paramilitary conglomeration of ICE, Customs, FPS, and some other agencies under the general rubric of "Homeland Security" agents and uniformed officers.

It's as tough as you want it to be. After all, there's a lot of people with guns, but they also all hate and distrust each other.

[wolfrider66]

I think I 'F'ed up. While talking to one of my players about his 'erased' quality (my Dwarf Technomancer), I was struggling to think of who might be doing the erasing for him and the only name to come to my head was Deuce. Afterward I remembered where I had read that name. It was in my Street Legends book under Pucks description. I vaguely remembered Deuce was an AI but it seems that 'it' (he/she?) might be dead or very bad for humanity's, and Boxter's (the Dwarf's alias) health. Ah well, no reason there can't be two of 'em. It is Deuce ya know lol. I guess I better find out who the original is/was.

[Critias]

Just for clarity's sake, but if you told your player that it was a hacker/technomancer named "Deuce" (like the slang term for "two"), you're totally in the clear.

The monstrous AI that experimented on an arcology full of people and caused the latest Matrix crash and tried to blah blah blah all that evil stuff?  That's "Deus."  Like "God."

[JustADude]

I think I 'F'ed up. While talking to one of my players about his 'erased' quality (my Dwarf Technomancer), I was struggling to think of who might be doing the erasing for him and the only name to come to my head was Deuce. Afterward I remembered where I had read that name. It was in my Street Legends book under Pucks description. I vaguely remembered Deuce was an AI but it seems that 'it' (he/she?) might be dead or very bad for humanity's, and Boxter's (the Dwarf's alias) health. Ah well, no reason there can't be two of 'em. It is Deuce ya know lol. I guess I better find out who the original is/was.

The name you're thinking of is Deus (as in Deus Ex Machina, "God From The Machine"), which is, roughly, pronounced "DAY-oos". So Deuce ("Doo-se") would be just fine for a totally different, unrelated A.I.

Deus, though, was one BMF. One of the first Super-AIs, and the one responsible for holding an entire Arcology hostage for an entire year. Check out "Shutdown" and other stuff about the Renraku Arcology. That was his doing.

[Black]

His as close to a comic book like supervillian as you can get in the grey world of Shadowrun. Between him taking over the Renraku Arcology (with its 100,000+ residents) and slowly reducing the number down significantly while performing all sorts of bizarre and horrible experiments, and then his role in the 2nd Matrix Crash... well, if you really want your Dwarf friend to have erased by Deus, then his in for a heck of a ride.  If Deus has plans for him, then its going to get... messy. 

That said, it would be a cool storyline to have a mysterious eraser who also acted as a Johnson and sent the runners on all sorts of missions which seem harmless but actually facilitate the rebirth of Deus.  Epic potential.

[wolfrider66]

aw man, what a relief. I did not want to go epic right out of the gate. That was one of the things that was killing our AD&D campaigns, We've been playing together for 30+ years and simply put 'been there done that'. So we moved to Shadowrun. I am the only one of us that knows anything about the historic timeline, and what I know is from 3 nights of lore cram sessions that have lead to the purchase of every book I see referenced. BTW what a huge 'F'ing universe it is!  But I have to point out that Shadowrun has rekindled something I had thought lost or at least jaded beyond recovery....my imagination!  I literally sit down and rub my hands together while giggling like a mad scientist to work again, it's awesome.

Anyway thanks for the clarifications folks.

[Crimsondude]

what I know is from 3 nights of lore cram sessions that have lead to the purchase of every book I see referenced.

The ideal Shadowrun consumer.

[Wolfboy]

my only suggestion would be to get a modern map of the DC metro area and mark it up using the books for references. I did this both with a map of Seatle, my SR books, and carted in the house from "Rose Red"