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Best Served Cold (SRM 02-02)

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Crash_00

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« on: <08-26-11/1505:00> »
I'm preparing to run this for my group this upcoming Tuesday and after a couple reads through, I've found a few spots that are likely to cause a little stress.

Problem A: From the mission before, I strongly believe that my group will react to the Black Cats in a overly violent way. To be prepared, I was copying down their stats to an NPC cheatsheet that I prepared and I realized that they have no gear. No armor, no weapons, no commlinks, nothing. Now I know that they should have some gear, but I don't really know how well I should trick them out. It's looking like I'll have six to eight players so I don't feel worried about giving them good gear for a challenge, but whatever I do equip them with will likely fall into the player's hands after the fight so I was wondering if there were general guidelines for this so that I don't give the players too much loot.

Problem B: Our group has one hacker who I am absolutely positive will attempt to hack into Ares for the paydata (Thrill Seeker and Compulsion: Hacking into Corporate Databases) when given the chance. However, she is also one hundred percent self serving and greedy. Its likely that no one else in the group will even know about paydata until she fences it at the end and I'm filling out the debriefing logs. Is it normal for this to happen and one character to get a large chunk of money more than the rest (If she gets all paydata and the same players are playing it would be 45,000¥).

Neurosis

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« Reply #1 on: <08-26-11/1939:51> »
Problem B:

Presumably she's going to probe the target, right? I mean, doing that as 'hack on the fly' seems like a recipe for fail. If she does probe the target, that means she will be spending several hours conked out in VR. Hopefully with 5-7 other players, one of them will think to ask why. Saying "oh nothing" at that point should require at the very least a Con test.
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Stockbrokers ain't no heroes!"~

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Crash_00

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« Reply #2 on: <08-26-11/2044:19> »
I could see it going either way. Based on the play I've seen so far, I'd be willing to bet she'll spend edge either way. If she probes she'll probably manage it in about three hours if she rolls like normal, less if she spends edge (she hit 19 successes on a edged hack on the fly attempt last session). Being a thrill seeker though, I could definitely see her attempting the hack on the fly though.

I don't know all her stats, but I know she rolls:
Hacking 4 + Exploit 6 + Codeslinger (Hack on the Fly) 2 + Specialization 2 = 14
I think she has another +1 somewhere, but I can't remember from what, maybe some sort of optimization (I don't actually play hackers usually). With an edge of five that puts her close to or at the 20 die cap.

Looking through it again, her "habit" can actually also cause the whole team to lose faction with the Cosquilho Mafia if she messes up without any of the others knowing why.

Sentinemodo

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« Reply #3 on: <09-09-11/0609:31> »
I could see it going either way. Based on the play I've seen so far, I'd be willing to bet she'll spend edge either way. If she probes she'll probably manage it in about three hours if she rolls like normal, less if she spends edge (she hit 19 successes on a edged hack on the fly attempt last session). Being a thrill seeker though, I could definitely see her attempting the hack on the fly though.

I don't know all her stats, but I know she rolls:
Hacking 4 + Exploit 6 + Codeslinger (Hack on the Fly) 2 + Specialization 2 = 14
I think she has another +1 somewhere, but I can't remember from what, maybe some sort of optimization (I don't actually play hackers usually). With an edge of five that puts her close to or at the 20 die cap.

Looking through it again, her "habit" can actually also cause the whole team to lose faction with the Cosquilho Mafia if she messes up without any of the others knowing why.

There will be probably a +2 for fullVR making it 16
Sorry for a small delay ;)

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Sentinemodo

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« Reply #4 on: <09-09-11/0610:09> »
you ran the game already? How it went?
Sorry for a small delay ;)

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Crash_00

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« Reply #5 on: <09-10-11/0050:04> »
Ran it a bit ago and it went alright. The hacker managed to pull off a VR hack on the fly against the Ares Host in one roll. It almost caught her (had one success short of triggering an alert on her). She didn't have any contacts to fence it really, so she split it with another player, keeping 73k for herself and giving the other character 7k. The rest of the group wasn't too happy as players, but they had no clue about the data in character.

As for the other issue, I equipped the Black Cats with gear slightly better than my players (I have 7, so even with slightly better gear, odds were against the black cats). I barely managed to hurt the players at all (I think three of them took 1-3 points of stun damage), but I managed to keep them entertained for a while.

Turns out the biggest issue was a completely unforseen one. The group handed Belenky back to Falcone well before Void ever was supposed to contact them and they killed the Black Cats without questioning them. The group never figured out any of the plot behind it or that the Black Cats weren't the ransomers. As far as their concerned, Aztechnology ordered the kidnapping of a high priority Ares scientist and they stopped it.  ;D

Sentinemodo

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« Reply #6 on: <09-15-11/0656:28> »
My group on the other side went without a single bullet, but I had to develop almost the double in the material presented in the mission as they digged deep to find Void.
Sorry for a small delay ;)

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Greenknight001

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« Reply #7 on: <11-29-11/1410:06> »
I noticed a third flaw to this Mission...
3) After going through all the trouble to discredit Falcone and set the Black Cats up for the fall, the whole plot falls apart unless the party chooses to betray Falcone (which they will never do).  The fact of the matter is that Belenkiy needs to be dead by morning if the Void's plan is to succeed.  To this end it makes sense for the Void to send a strikeforce out to kill Belenkiy at the Cat's hideout... and who would convieniently show up just as the party arrives. 

If the party managed to gain the Cat's trust (which shouldn't be hard if the party points out that the Mob is gunning for them (for kidnapping their asset Belenkiy), Falcone will be after them (for ruining his reputation), and an Ares Firewatch team will be gunning for them (for going rogue and ransoming their employee)... basically they're in the middle of a cluster-frak) then both teams can join up and easily fight off the Void's team, if not then the party (possibly wounded from the fight with the Cat's) will have to deal with them on their own.

Just my 2 cents.

JustADude

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« Reply #8 on: <11-29-11/1429:59> »
As for the other issue, I equipped the Black Cats with gear slightly better than my players (I have 7, so even with slightly better gear, odds were against the black cats). I barely managed to hurt the players at all (I think three of them took 1-3 points of stun damage), but I managed to keep them entertained for a while.

I still get a chuckle thinking about Mr. Soft coming out that window and breaking his fall on one of them, then the Earth Spirit doing the same to him.
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