Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Shanfara on <09-27-10/1832:35>
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Long story short:
The party is in a foreign country searching for some telekinetics who have been snatched from city A and dragged to city B.
While the players enter said foreign country, some of the characters elect to enter through customs, some choose to sneak through airport security.
Player A, awakened, while going through the regular customs interview is identified as awakened. This precipitates another more in depth interview. During the interview Player A adds a wholly unnecessary lie and fails his con(fast talk roll). Part of failing the con roll, besides defaulting, is that the lie was completely unbelievable by anyone who knew anything about said foreign country.
He is then deported after telling the authorities where the rest of the characters are staying while in country.
The characterss are armed with illegal weaponry, are travelling on rating 6 fake SINs, the party includes a less than sexy ork, a high magic adept and a technomancer.
Besides being under fairly close surveillance, how screwed would you say my players are currently?
I imagine the authorities are watching them closely waiting from them to do something clearly illegal. I would think the run is scrubbed and they should beat feet.
How would you play it?
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They already have done something illegal. They have entered the borders illegally. Not a big deal, but in association with a ganked awakened might be worth the warrant to bring them in. Especially if one is an unregistered magic user of decent power. Because now your troublesome immigration/customs problem just brought off the books mojo in. Imagine if they knew you had smuggle din an assualt cannon, AT missile, and foridden chrome. An unregistered mage = that. And god forbid they know the other guy is a technomancer. An unregistered technomancer illegally entering the border...people still have anti-technomancer riots because they fear them so much. You can imagine the gov is working the pick up plan right now.
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They already have done something illegal. They have entered the borders illegally. Not a big deal, but in association with a ganked awakened might be worth the warrant to bring them in. Especially if one is an unregistered magic user of decent power. Because now your troublesome immigration/customs problem just brought off the books mojo in. Imagine if they knew you had smuggle din an assualt cannon, AT missile, and foridden chrome. An unregistered mage = that. And god forbid they know the other guy is a technomancer. An unregistered technomancer illegally entering the border...people still have anti-technomancer riots because they fear them so much. You can imagine the gov is working the pick up plan right now.
what really cheeses me as the GM (sorry for the cheese pun :)) is that any degree of research on the player's part might have avoided this. They all could have sneaked into the country, no one needed to go through customs, but some of them did.
Heck, the lie might, stress might here, have gotten any traction if it weren't so poorly thought out/executed.
Now how do I drop the idea that they might have completely screwed the run and exposed themselves without giving it away/ruining the fun.
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By chance what would happen to them exactly if they were...caught?
That might prove to be an interesting game. Have them break out of prison of something. Imagine if one of them had something on their record that would give them the death penalty in that country but not in their country of origin? Granted I think I would drop a heavy suggestion to the other player's to rescue him. I mean, they are already breaking the law, what's a few more laws broken compared to serving time?
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Give them a hint. Have them all roll perception. If they hit then let them know they are being watched. They notice an obvious surveillance truck, drone, undercover cop etc. They won't know for sure who is watching them but it ought to spook them. If that don't work just make the arrest from the authorities rather lax to give at least some of them an escape.
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I like the idea of sending them to jail. But don't make it easy on them, make them earn it and make them learn a lesson. Of course, if the game tanks too far, but you really like the group, you could always just hit reset. Scrub everything and either act like the whole thing didn't happen or start it over. That's what I do.
Then again, if they're screwing it up on purpose or because they're lazy or not thinking things through then by all means drop the hammer on them. Like Cheese said, they already broke the law. They're fugitives, make them go to prison. And make it hard. I don't know what country they're in, but don't make it easy on them. There's plenty of manatech that can make the Awakened's life hell, cut the techno off from all EM, etc. Teach them a hard lesson. Force them to think it through and do a little research.
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It sucks that the offender (the mage) basically gets off scott free while the rest of the team, who didn't get caught is going to get screwed. Such is life I guess, I agree give them hints and a way out, maybe even a way to find out they had been set up and by who. Or just have the strike team break in while they are sleeping and take them alive, they then wake up receiving an offer they can't refuse and can win their freedom in that way.
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Do any of them have a well connected Fixer or Mob connection. Getting a call from said contact back in the states saying "What the hell did you do? Word on the street is the Feds are closing in on you just looking for the right moment. Listen you did good by me on X, so let me do you a favor you can pay me back later. I can hook you up with a smuggler a friend of a friend knows, they'll get you out of the country."
Sometimes you just hit them with the obvious. Contacts can be useful for telling them they've been noticed.
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Wow, I see this as an opportunity for the Country in question. One trained deniable spec ops team.....Hmmmm what could we do with them, maybe send them on a high risk mission for free, if they succeed then they are allowed to stay inside the country as long as they make no move against government assets. if they fail, well no prob. nothing gained nothing lost!
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Wow, I see this as an opportunity for the Country in question. One trained deniable spec ops team.....Hmmmm what could we do with them, maybe send them on a high risk mission for free, if the succeed then they are allowed to stay inside the country as long as they make no move against government assets. if they fail, well no prob. nothing gained nothing lost!
I like this idea a lot. Sort of an alternative to prison time? It would be good to give them a choice and prepare a few different scenarios. If they don't choose one, you can always use it again later for another run.
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I think that a lot of countries/megacorps would rather use the runners as a disposable team rather than send them off to jail. If you lock them up, you're paying for their food & comfort. Instead, send them off to god knows where to do the company business. Sorta like Snake Plisken (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Plissken). The question is how far do you wanna take it.
Do you want the corp to try and "own" the team? Putting cranial bombs in them and such to keep them in line? Or is it drop them in the jungle, and their only way to civilization is if they go through this outpost here and destroy it - after that, they're free.
Personally, I'd set it up so they are sent on a dangerous mission with a liaison officer from the corp to keep an eye on them so they don't escape. Gives them a chance to make buddy-buddy with the LO so that when the mission's over, the LO "looks the other way" and gives them a day's head start on their escape attempt. ;)
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What's the country involved, anyways?
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Snake Plisken is the man. He's the reason I got into this business.
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Player A, awakened, while going through the regular customs interview is identified as awakened. This precipitates another more in depth interview. During the interview Player A adds a wholly unnecessary lie and fails his con(fast talk roll). Part of failing the con roll, besides defaulting, is that the lie was completely unbelievable by anyone who knew anything about said foreign country.
He is then deported after telling the authorities where the rest of the characters are staying while in country.
The characterss are armed with illegal weaponry, are travelling on rating 6 fake SINs, the party includes a less than sexy ork, a high magic adept and a technomancer.
Besides being under fairly close surveillance, how screwed would you say my players are currently?
I missed something, how do they know that the Mage is with the other characters?
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Given that he said the players didn't think things through very well, I would have to assume that they were all hanging out together chatting and generally acting like they knew each other.
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First, thank you everyone for the suggestions
What's the country involved, anyways?
They're in Kitimat, in Tsimshian, Fall 2070.
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In history, the term protectorate has two different meanings. In its earliest inception, which has been adopted by modern international law, it is an autonomous territory that is protected diplomatically or militarily against third parties by a stronger state or entity. In exchange for this, the protectorate usually accepts specified obligations, which may vary greatly, depending on the real nature of their relationship. However, it retains sufficient measure of sovereignty and remains a state under international law.
All I have is the 6WA that has Tismshian as a protectorate of Salish, but if they use this as a general guideline then maybe the local Government would want the PC's to strike against the Salish, I really doubt that they are happy with the situation as of now. If on the flip side and Salish runs everything from government to military then they could use the PC to hunt down nationalists, maybe even make them seem like the good guys and leave a nasty tate in the runners mouth as they gun them down!!!!
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Really, I'd say it's wholly up to you how to proceed. Canonically, the Tsimshian would be in crazy flux right now, and since some details haven't been fleshed out yet, it's really all in your hands. I could see explanation A being that the country's been so rocked by turbulent times that the new government that's only been set up for a few years is still in the mood to "make examples" of folks who border-jump, so they could go in hard and ugly. Likewise, explanation B could be that they know how fragile and exposed they are, the Haida who only recently gained power have a soft spot for underdogs and criminals who aren't actively damaging/killing anything, and maybe they'll just politely ask the team to leave (politely inasmuch that they'll offer them a ride and an armed escort, instead of just going right in guns blazing for a kill/arrest)...along with a stern warning.
Personally, I'd go for (b) right now, because it's a way to get the group back together (and nothing irks me like a split party, in a traditional face-to-face RPG). Show up with overwhelming firepower -- a bunch of guys, a bunch of drones, the skies swarming with attack helicopters and spirits, a few obvious shaman-types, a couple "advisors" standing there with Sioux Wildcat patches on ready to commit horrible atrocities against them -- and a single nattily-dressed government Face who is their way out. Show the party that resistance would be a bad idea, and give them a ride off to where ever their teammate got dumped/deported (after a few guns get confiscated, or some similar slap on the wrist)...
...then have 'em act like Shadowrunners to get back into the country and complete their mission. They'll be appropriately aware of just what sort of overwhelming firepower a government (especially one that still has strong diplomatic and perhaps military ties to the Salish and Sioux) can bring to bear when it's properly riled up, and hopefully they'll be a little more covert about all this. When that government has to wake up like a sleeping bear and can't -- hopefully! -- find them so easily the next time, they'll have a chance to sneak around and do their job...but with an appropriate level of tension/fear/wariness in the air.
A variation on all that would be the Tsimshian military (and some Salish and Sioux allies) swooping down on them like the fist of an angry god...but then -- after reuniting them with the wayward team member, again just to get "the band back together" -- demanding a job from them in exchange for _____ number of days to do their job. Make 'em go on a 'run in order to get to go on a 'run. Extra hassle (and karma) for everyone!
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Does anybody here recall the Schwarzenegger 80's flick 'Commando'? Military guy blackmailed into doing a dirty job with baddies holding his daughter hostage...and he goes completely off the rails, ignoring the job, and whacking his way back against the blackmailing baddies. The suggested awesomeness of this thread sounds like the beginnings of this movie.
Not that just going nutso against a whole GOVERNMENT is a good idea, but if the 'runners were instead captured and pressured by some lower-level, ambitious govt. agent fella who wants some job done on the sly...
Yeah, okay, this is getting complicated for the group, perhaps, and for the GM definitely, and may take the original campaign direction in weird directions, but it sounds like plot-filled awesome fun!
Man, you folks give me awesome ideas.
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Really, I'd say it's wholly up to you how to proceed. Canonically, the Tsimshian would be in crazy flux right now, and since some details haven't been fleshed out yet, it's really all in your hands. I could see explanation A being that the country's been so rocked by turbulent times that the new government that's only been set up for a few years is still in the mood to "make examples" of folks who border-jump, so they could go in hard and ugly. Likewise, explanation B could be that they know how fragile and exposed they are, the Haida who only recently gained power have a soft spot for underdogs and criminals who aren't actively damaging/killing anything, and maybe they'll just politely ask the team to leave (politely inasmuch that they'll offer them a ride and an armed escort, instead of just going right in guns blazing for a kill/arrest)...along with a stern warning.
To be fair, I think I'll go with option B with a twist. Overwhelming show of force>drugged>wake up sans equipment in the barrens, just on the Seattle side (instead of the Salish side) with a "shoot on sight" status in Tsimshian. From there the players can decide to sneak back into Tsimshian to finish the run (made harder by their earlier screw up) OR scrub the run, take the loss of reputation, and 1)learn that you must have the skill to use the skill and 2) a simple data search or two does wonders.
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Players grease a few palms.
Problems go away.
I don't understand why you would punish a player (much less the rest of the team,) for not knowing things that his character should know. Does his character have some sort of flaw which would have inspired him to behave like an idiot? If not, it's better to assume that the player, as he is not a criminal mage working covert operations in a balkanized world of weak governments and totalitarian corporations, just doesn't have the kind of information that his character would need to survive. Therefore, you as the GM provide him with the information his character should have so that these things don't happen.
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@Kontact
I see what you're saying but it doesn't completely agree. I would look at this differently if this was a new player or if there were other circumstances. In this case, the players made a series of severe missteps culminating with one character essentially telling the authorities where the other characters were hiding out while being obviously dishonest with said authority figure, passing a fake SIN, and being an unregistered awakened going through customs. In other words, player(s) screwed up and there must be negative repercussions. My language of punishing them makes it seem a bit more personal and sinister than it is)
To make an analogy, players buy equipment in character because they need various tools for the adventure. They need weapons, armor, directional jammers, etc.
If the players don't have the foresight to buy the appropriate equipment, their characters get into sticky situations and deal with the consequences. The GM generally lays out what the players need. Usually this info reaches the players from the GM OOC ("you guys really shouldn't do fight a troll with a lint roller") and from player investigation ("I ask my contacts/do a data search to learn how people fight trolls. do they use lint rollers?") If the players fail to do either of these things; ask the GM OOC or do any role playing, as the GM, to keep my game enjoyable in the long run for me and the players, to keep the challenge level up, a hammer has to fall.
The players, one player in particular, went into a situation without giving any thought to the repercussions of his words or actions, not unlike choosing to fight a troll with a lint roller. He could have asked me OOC "what's going on here?" or he could have used several IC means to gain knowledge and didn't.
I'm not the sort of GM to purposely kill characters or really punish players, but this is a game and the GM is a kind of referee/story teller. I wouldn't be true to myself or my game if there weren't negative repercussions to the players for this blunder. The trick is making the negative repercussions such that they're enjoyable for all.
As for greasing a few palms, I think that's possible, but its going to be a lot of grease, applied judiciously.
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Greasing Palms doesn't make a good adventure. It gets your original adventure back on track and that's it. Where is the drama in that? Shouldn't the players believe that their mistakes can actually impact the course of the game? If you take away this, then they are going to start feeling that this is a linear game adventure. "Gee...I screwed up big time, but no matter the GM will let me buy my way out."
He didn't have the knowledge of proper procedures for entering foreign countries, but now he does. The player learned something about the game and you should roll with it. Seriously, what better way to make the game feel nonlinear than to completely derail the story because of some player mistakes?
Put them in individual small rooms. Send in your Agent Smith character and give them an offer, "Go into this jungle and retrieve this person and package from John Doe. If you don't you can kiss your freedom goodbye." When they enter the jungle, they find more than they bargained for, plus a nice juicy bit of info that can be used against the people who forced them into this situation. Now if the player's kept their mouths shut, it is possible they could still run into telekinetic that was snatched from City A and dragged to City B. Perhaps the authorities of City B haven't quite acquired the telekinetic yet and it is these same authorities that have hired the PCs to snatch and grab the target, the same target that the player's are already trying to get! ::)
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Greasing Palms doesn't make a good adventure.
It can, but much like your interrogation example its much more out of the box. I played in a Vampire game where we all were stuck in prison for 6 sessions, we still talk about how awesome it was. The GM has to be enthusiastic about it and think of ways to keep interest though, its not an easy task.
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Greasing Palms doesn't make a good adventure.
It can, but much like your interrogation example its much more out of the box. I played in a Vampire game where we all were stuck in prison for 6 sessions, we still talk about how awesome it was. The GM has to be enthusiastic about it and think of ways to keep interest though, its not an easy task.
Well that is a lot more than greasing palms. When I read greasing palms, I pictures the characters dropping some Nuyen in the port authorities pockets so they could continue with their adventure.
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All good points. I just usually think of corruption as a central part of a dystopian setting. I guess it's harder to do when you're caught with lights flashing and lots of witnesses at a boarder check. That really is a bonehead move. Then letting a paranoid government know that there's a team of, frankly, international terrorists and thieves in their country to do some work, is a double bonehead maneuver. Something is warranted.
Typically though, I would warn a player that his character should know better. Unless he has Uneducated, he should know enough to think that walking through a heavy security checkpoint glowing like an astral beacon is just a terrible idea.
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I wanted to let everyone know how it went.
Last we left the players the mage had been deported to Seattle while the rest of the party did what they could in Kitimat. As the deported mage had drawn the Tsimshian defense forces attention to the party during a bungled pass through customs, it was only a matter of time before the government moved against the runners.
While out scrounging for a few pieces of equipment that the runner's had forgotten in Seattle, The party's pistol adept noticed he was being followed by a drone and got suspicious. A quick scan and some hamfisted hacking on the fly by the party's technomancer led to an extended fight within the drone's node with a Tsimshian security consultant(read: tank sprite summoning technomancer) for control of the drone. After determining the origin of the drone and scrubbing its mission, our technomancer logged out.
This led to our technomancer fleeing the hotel where the runners were staying and moving to one coffin hotel, then another a few hours later. The Pistol adept and the party's driver (the one who scanned the drone) hid in crowds in the mall until bars opened up. Using the pistol adept's kinesics and social skills they arranged escape from Kitimat on a freighter (with the help of the Dogmen) bound for Bellingham, then back to Seattle.
Long and short of it: The run was scrubbed and the character's escaped with their skin.
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And they learned a valuable lesson. ;D
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Boy did my admonition work well.
We had our next run last weekend.
Very simple:
1-Go to LA
2-Find some Aztec Operatives consulting a shell company
3-kill them all
I should add that this was the last run for one of our players who is moving away, so I wanted it to be fairly violent, straight forward, and completeable in one session.
The players got to LA and did a ton of research. The players were bouncing many different ideas off of each other as to 1)what they needed to know and 2)how they needed to approach the attack. I was very happy to see them planning and researching such that the run went off without a hitch, the Aztec operatives all being killed in one pass of gunfire/spirits of man with manaballs. I almost feel like I should have given the Azteccies more of a chance, but I think it all worked out in the end.
So, yay for letting the players fail so they'll do better next time.
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Boy did my admonition work well.
We had our next run last weekend.
Very simple:
1-Go to LA
2-Find some Aztec Operatives consulting a shell company
3-kill them all
I should add that this was the last run for one of our players who is moving away, so I wanted it to be fairly violent, straight forward, and completeable in one session.
The players got to LA and did a ton of research. The players were bouncing many different ideas off of each other as to 1)what they needed to know and 2)how they needed to approach the attack. I was very happy to see them planning and researching such that the run went off without a hitch, the Aztec operatives all being killed in one pass of gunfire/spirits of man with manaballs. I almost feel like I should have given the Azteccies more of a chance, but I think it all worked out in the end.
So, yay for letting the players fail so they'll do better next time.
Sometimes that failure is required to get them in the right frame of mind for Shadowrun. Too often, they are used to the D&D "charge in and kill 'em all" routine. Or even worse, the video-game "there's no retreating!" mentality as well. What I usually tell players to do before getting a campaign going is to sit down and watch some A-Team/Leverage/Ocean's Eleven to get an idea of how to think through the adventure.