Hello, everyone.
I am newcomer to Shadowrun and this is my first brush with the forum. I've recently begun running a Shadowrun game with friends after deciding to move to something new after several years of Pathfinder, I'm still very much learning how the system runs. My primary concern here is in dealing with the upcoming fallout from where I left off this evening's game. Forgive my ignorance of both crunch and fluff.
The premise of tonight's game was a side run. They needed a favour from one of their contacts in Lone Star and he offered them a deal: in one of the less blooming parts of Renton a trashy restaurant serves as a front for a narco lab, they have more than sufficient proof they're there but nothing to allow for a warrant. So they are sent to cause just big enough a mess for his patrol to have enough excuse to crash inside and accidentally stumble upon the lab in doing so.
Things were coming along rather nicely. They did some legwork on the place. Our face, mage, and street sammy got inside as customers and drew some attention to themselves innocently while our ninja snuck his way in and the technomancer probed after what little systems there were for her to use.
The problem is the rigger. He was scouting out the place with a FlySpy drone only to be rudely interrupted as one of the chefs, with a good roll and a display worthy of forewarning that this guy is not to be messed with, slashed the irritating fly in half with a kitchen knife. This funny little occurrence is what brought all hell down upon the game. It made our rigger (whom was also very much a demolitions expert) so pissed that he marched out of the car, said something about "blowing that fragger up" ignoring all comm hails asking what the drek was going on, went through the backdoor where our infiltrator had cleared through... then a very hasty command to take cover.
"IT IS BOOM TIME!"
He threw a high explosive grenade toward the guy at the counter, right between one of the workers and half of our team. Barely knowing how to react they did not move anywhere near fast enough to clear out of the way sufficiently. They were only rescued from being exposed to a bad part of the blast by our mage who did some quick thinking and used Control Actions on the stunned food worker/drug runner and made him curl down and absorb the blast with his body (with an edge point).
Not a pretty sight. The restaurant cleared in a panic. Street sammy got shooting, took down another of the guys inside. The face and mage were trapped in the crossfire. Finding that they had caused a sufficient amount of mess to draw Lone Star at that point the infiltrator made a run for it through the backdoor and urged the rigger to do the same. He was still out for blood. Threw another grenade he was packing into the kitchen and the chef (and big tuff guy) rushed out, met the street sammy head on and went on to give him a whopping with a large kitchen knife.
Badly hurting and with Lone Star no doubt showing up soon enough as planned they're making a run for it. A panic switch was kicked and the doors were automatically locked so they're about to make a rough exit through the windows to the waiting escape vehicle. Issue is, the rigger severely screwed himself by not running out and is trapped in a storage room with a locked door behind him and frenzied ork chef ahead of himself. They're unlikely to take him down and he's got another guy incoming. Decker glitched out trying to wrench control of the doors.
He's screwed himself over big time, and his team. While the others have a solid chance of escaping and staggering out of there he's trapped and the others do not feel much obligation to get him out at this point. I know the player is not going to take it well at all if he gets killed, but that seems what is most likely right now. I'm not sure if he just thought the whole thing would be funny or he was genuinely pissed over losing his drone but the player also seemed to very much protect his actions. We're an RP heavy group.
Regardless, he is now cut off with a team that is pissed off at him. The player likely won't take it well if he dies and I've been a generally 'merciful' DM throughout my PF career but I've still got a few kills under my belt especially for wanton suicidal moves like this. But I feel bad killing him on the fourth game when he seems so into the character.
And the issue is, further, even if I don't kill him I see no reason how or why I should force the team to keep him around. He nearly killed half of them, went AWOL over a crappy drone, had a civvie killed in his rampage, and generally exposed the whole team to mortal danger whether by his own fire or theirs.
I'm not sure what would be a happy ending to this issue.
TL;DR: One of my players rushed in on impulse, blew the plan away and nearly half our team, is cut off and likely about to die, and is alienated by the entire gang. No happy ending in sight.
Or is there?
This could've likely been made a lot shorter and comprehensive, just rattling it off late at night. Its bugging me. Feels like bad group dynamics or drama is inevitable and will make a sour beginning to our Shadowrun careers.