Shadowrun
Shadowrun Missions Living Campaign => Living Campaign Discussion => Topic started by: jamesfirecat on <07-03-13/1209:28>
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Here we go again folks! Last year I took the time to write up my feelings on all of the runs I went on and this year proves to be no different. Hopefully next year will be the same, it'll depend somewhat on how fond my group of friends is of 5th edition when all is said and done. But that's a problem for the future, and right now I want to talk about the past.
Mission : Jailbreak Rock
Mission Quote: Mr. Plow, that's my name, that name again is Mr. Plow.
Meta Quote: Wow, that is powerfully uncool man, I think it is about time for you to take a nice long sit down in the runner's van to think about what you've done!
Plot: This was my first “real run” (welcome to the sixth world had a small touch and go run but nothing big enough to be worth discussing) using 5th edition. My original intentions was that as Longshot 2 (my previous 4th edition character) finished up season three with like 145 Karma, and I'm not supposed to take him to prime runner till he hits 150 AND ends a season with more than 150 I was probably going to play him through season four as well.
After that I was going to designed something new other than a street samurai, like a voodoo possession mage who used spirit channeling to get tough and very good at shooting people (hey it's sort of different!). That plan however went out the window as we got a new edition.
Thus, cheesy as it may sound, I decided to make Longshot Pie (its written as the “Pie” symbol rather than the word) who was yet another of Aztechnology's attempts to create reliable killer cyborgs that ended up getting released from the facility he was held in a vat when not being asked to kill people right after he was taught how to kill but before he could be fully brainwashed when said facility was attacked by a group of Shadowrunners, (Aztechnology looses more of their killer cyborgs that way) inspiring him to become a runner himself.
Longshot Pie was a troll who was quite weak (for a troll) but sturdy and QUITE fast (for a troll). He had both of his legs replaced for armored cyber limb ones (in case anyone reading this cares about the “crunch” cyberlimb armor remains just as awesome as it was in 4th edition if you have the essence and the money you want to load yourself up with the stuff) and carried an Ares Alpha.
He was called in along with the rest of his team to meet up with their next Johnson at a private airport in Chicago to where evidently he does most of his work because characters have not really been all that defined yet. The Mr. Johnson in question is Mrs. Johnson who is frankly dressed like its time to do a lot of Neo-Coke and vote for Dragon Reagan and eventually introduces herself as Kat-O-Ninetails.
Kat lets us know that there's someone in Denver who she wants us to rescue. We sell her on the platinum package of rescuing people from foreign cities (IE making an opposed negotiation rule that the face uses edge on) and she raises the pay from 10K to 12.5K New Yen.
Once we agree to do the job she tells us who it is.
There's a dragon who for the ease of my spell check and my Love of Scrubs I will refer to as Perry. I don't believe that in character he talks like Doctor Cox but once again for my own amusement I will imagine that he does while insisting on referring to all runners by girly riffs on their runner names.
So needless to say, the idea of taking on anyone who could leave a dragon in need of rescuing is a little disconcerting, before she explicitly says that it's Ghostwalker, or another even bigger dragon. The good news is that despite being a huge dragon who could basically defeat me and the rest of the running team by landing on us, Ghostwalker till suffers from the Superman Dilemma of only being in one place at a time.
Thus Kat has planned for us to spring Perry during a great big speech that Mayor Top Hat & Scales (Ghostwalker) will be giving, so he won't be able to show up and wreck our shit. There is however a major storm going on in Denver (and a heat wave in Chicago but hell if I know anything about how the weather works) and getting into the city will be tricky.
Luckily Kat is good friends with a ace pilot named Cane, who will be flying us to Denver in the shadowrun equivalent of a Thunder Hawk. We load ourselves up into the vehicle and head off. Most of the flight is fairly decent but as we start to get into about an hour of Denver the weather becomes distinctly spirity with a chance of drones.
Four drones start pulling up alongside the plane and so Cane has some mounted heavy machine guns fold out to give us something to work with.... if any of us had the gunnery skill. Before we worry about that however a spirit materializes.
Luckily just like in 4th edition spirits typically need to spend one.... I'll call it a “Round” of a combat turn materializing before they can start to use the really “fuck your shit up powers” on people and vehicles, which gives us a chance to deal with it. For those who are interested this spirit looks like an angry lump of snow.
Those runners who can take shots at or try to punch it but without doing much in the way of damage. Longshot having been on a plane at the time had his gun loaded with S&S ammo (because unless I am mistaken it no longer does anything to vehicles making it the “travel safe” ammo of choice) so he draws his gun and then fires off a long burst (a long wide bursts all bursts are wide now) thanks to a point of edge (for the reroll I only got like 3 hits on 18 dice) lands a good solid hit which blows away good sized chunk of it.
While we do this the drones shoot at our ride and we can hear the “WUNKITA WUNKITA” of bits and pieces of the plane no longer being physically connected to the plane anymore.
That problem will have to wait till after the spirit is dealt with however, as we're doing our second pass through the initiative order and it gets a turn and uses it to fire off a blast of snowballs which luckily its target (another runner) manages to dodge. Then it goes down right before Longshot goes, so he switches to explosive rounds to deal with the drones (once again you can longer use electrical rounds to cause a short in a vehicle /drone as I understood the rules) and manages to land a hit which blows one away.
Cane destroys another with his vehicle's built in weaponry, one of our runners gets lucky (using predeclared edge) with previously mentioned built in machine guns (he's incompetent with automatics but not gunnery!) and destroys a third drone.
Another spirit materializes but it goes down when we all effectively dogpile/shoot it into submission while Cane shoots down the last drone.
With those threats dealt with we manage to land at an out of the way barn where we meet up with some more friends of Kat's. They're lead by a pair of shadowrunners named Blitz and Krieg who explain that Perry is being kept in what used to be an old garage for storing military equipment and they're offering to help create a distraction for us.
We decide that the best way to use this “distraction” is that when people from the prison get called out to provide extra security for Mayor Top Hat & Scales speech, we have them get ambushed on the way there, making sure they are closer to the base than to the speech location, insuring that the place that we're going to attack is the closest source of reinforcements.
So while the speech is at around 2:00 we show up at around noon to do have our mage do an astral flyby. The place looks pretty heavily defended (like 40 guys) with drones, a spider operating some drones and a security mage as well.
It goes down to around 24 when the convoy for the speech goes out, and in turn becomes nine guys once the original convoy gets ambushed. There are four guards inside, four guards outside, and the security mage left. We have our mage summon up a spirit to conceal us all, and then we sneak onto the base.
We find two guards taking care one of the entrances that we want to use.
A quick sneak attack with an axe and katana to one and fist and pistol in the face to the other and they go down. The drones turn to look at us but as they are now running only on their own none too impressive AI they can't quite figure out what to do if they see guards go down without any enemies in sight, so they go back to paroling.
We sneak in and our two mages attempt to take down the security mage who is behind some glass which we suspect to be bullet resilient. The mage more or less shrugs off the our mages hurl at him spells, but then get shot up by the other runners.
He drops out of view (he's up in a security booth) while nursing a couple of flesh wounds. Luckily Longshot had yet to go, and decided that when in doubt, explosive rounds, long bursts and edge can get anything done.
After the roll is made it turns out that the metal floor of the security booth is actually less heavily armored than the glass my fellow runners had been firing at him through. So yeah... that ends up rather poorly for him.
Our face goes up to the security booth and manages to convince the four guys downstairs that there is some kind of tiger attack going on up here and they need to send more people up.
They come up and go down in a hail of gunfire.
Then we get on the comm system again and this time explain to the two remaining guys that now would be a great time for them to come up with their hands raised, armor and helmets off, and unarmed.
The guards drop their rifles think ahead enough to also toss aside their side arms and then come up to surrender to us.
The face thanks them for their cooperation, then shoots one of them in the face with regular bullets.
The rest of the team is reasonably unhappy about this.
Shadowrunners are not nice people, and Longshot Version 2 back in Season Three once blew up a rather heavily trafficked (and historic) bridge for money. But even a purely pragmatic vat grown killer cyborg doesn't put up with hinky shit like trying to kill the people who have surrendered to you because once you get a reputation like that people don't surrender to you, and that just makes life harder in general.
Sadly the face wins the dex off and shoots, but then Longshot gets to go and switch out his explosive bullets for S&S to give his fellow runner a chance to do the Taser Tango. It fills up about 3/4ths of his stun track and then one of our mages uses control actions on him which forces him to go back and sit in the van we used to drive here in the first place.
After that we heal up the guy who got shot while Longshot apologizes profusely (and rather ineffectively) to the unshot guard though we manage to insure that the shot guard will in fact live through this.
Then we head down into the area where the prisoners are kept.
There are three people currently locked up down here in three seperate cells, one of them is an unconscious elf, another is a human looking guy who matches (more or less he looks a lot more roughed up and disheveled in person) picture of Perry's human form, and the third is an ork.
The ork seems to be in the best shape and claims that he was just some random file clerk in city hall who Ghostwalker had arrested for no particular reason. Perry wants to let them all out so we do. Though as we get back outside the base a “detect enemies spell” (or something along those lines) that the mage had been sustaining suddenly goes off in the direction of the ork.
He asks us why we're looking at him funny and then explodes into a weird ball of light thingy which was probably some kind of spirit. But who the hell knows since spirits don't usually inside of people to recreate the scene where Neo leaps into Agent Smith.
Our elf shoots it, then manages to dodge out of the way of the line of flame that it shoots at him. Longshot and the other runners work together to shoot the hell out of this spirit and it goes down before it can get off a second action. With that done we get Perry back into our van, drive that vehicle back to where we landed, get Perry into the plane, and then we fly off back to Chicago where he and Kat exchange a heartfelt hug, followed up by more of Kat's money having a heartfelt reunion with thousand or so New Yen she paid us in advance.
Pros/The Things I liked: This was the first convention mission I played and it was played on Thursday. So long story short I somewhat view this mission as a more extended “Welcome to the Sixth World” experience. For one thing the very first fight that we took part in managed to feel very dramatic and dangerous even with the runners needing to do nothing more than shoot spirits for the most part.
Also despite the fact that Longshot was not at all amused by the fact that a surrendering guard got shot, found it a positive moment over all because it gave him a chance to better establish who he was by pointing out who he was not.
Also it helped be a positive bonding experience among the rest of the team who worked together to save the lives of the surrendered guards. Also luckily the guy who did the shooting was not being the biggest f**ker he could be, since technically he was only controlled into going to the van, in theory he could have driven off the van leaving us to have no choice but to walk Perry back to the hidden airport we landed in.
Also it was nice to once again be running in missions where the base pay was 10K New Yen which was Longshot 2's preferred base amount. Though of course the previous statement is somewhat up in the air based on the fact that I'm still not sure if 10K New Yen buys as much in the way of goodies as it did back in 4th.
The Cons/Things I didn't like: Thanks to the wonders of spirit power concealment, we really did just sort of skate through the infiltration portion of this mission. It felt weird that the base had a mage, but the mage had not summoned any spirits/was not perceiving astrally since it seems like this is a great way to get your head blown off from the astral before you have a clue what is going on.
I don't mind the fact that the GM was soft-balling the mission to us, but the threat levels felt skewed, possibly because I have yet to read the rules on magic/spirits I felt considerably more threatened about the idea of being in a plane with an angry spirit than breaking into a base with a spirit of own protecting me, no enemy spirits in sight and the guards split up into easily ambush-able groups.
Based on the GM's words we evidently came up with more or less best plan possible for how to set up an ambush but the fact remains it screwed up the mission's difficulty curve. It would have been a better mission overall if we had been able to fly into Denver without problems, broken Perry out of the base, then fought spirits and drones as we flew out of Denver.
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Thanks for the rundown.
It sounds like the spirits could have been tougher, but they could also have been holding back. I think the SR5 rules have a double-edged effect on spirits at 4≥ and ≤8 so, yeah ...
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Good to see your reviews again James! Look forward to the next one.
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Thanks for the review. :)
Quick question... Did you have any magic on your team? I ask mainly to see if the GM was actually softballing or not.
Immunity to Normal Weapons has been clarified now so that it's explicit that non-magical attacks do not bypass it. So mundane elemental effects, such as STick n Shock, are still effected. The spirits weren't that big and SnS has enough Armor Pen to effect the spirits, plus they're air spirits so their natural Body isn't that high. But Hardened armor/Immunity has been tweaked so that it's tough and solid, but not the all or nothing propostion that it once was. The spirits should have been able to stand up a little better, so it's possible the GM didn't realize the clarification (Since a lot of people assumed that electrical from SnS bypassed ItNW in 4th, even though it wasn't supposed to).
Also possible that if you were low on magic, he softballed it a bit :)
Overall, sounds like you planned and played it well. Sometijmes good planning makes the job easy. And easy can be a bit boring ;)
Hopefully you got to play in the rest of the story arc, or will get to if you make it to Gen Con or whatever. I think it ened up a fun set of adventures.
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Thanks for the review. :)
Quick question... Did you have any magic on your team? I ask mainly to see if the GM was actually softballing or not.
Immunity to Normal Weapons has been clarified now so that it's explicit that non-magical attacks do not bypass it. So mundane elemental effects, such as STick n Shock, are still effected. The spirits weren't that big and SnS has enough Armor Pen to effect the spirits, plus they're air spirits so their natural Body isn't that high. But Hardened armor/Immunity has been tweaked so that it's tough and solid, but not the all or nothing propostion that it once was. The spirits should have been able to stand up a little better, so it's possible the GM didn't realize the clarification (Since a lot of people assumed that electrical from SnS bypassed ItNW in 4th, even though it wasn't supposed to).
Also possible that if you were low on magic, he softballed it a bit :)
Overall, sounds like you planned and played it well. Sometijmes good planning makes the job easy. And easy can be a bit boring ;)
Hopefully you got to play in the rest of the story arc, or will get to if you make it to Gen Con or whatever. I think it ened up a fun set of adventures.
We had a Mage on the team (otherwise we could not have had a spirit to conceal us when we snuck in) I think we even had a Mage and an adept.
It was my understanding in 4th that S&S did not bypass ItNW in and of itself because it was some kind of lightning based attack, it was just the fact that it was resisted with 1/2 impact meant that it was much easier for your attack to do more damage than the armor it was resisted with, thus being a powerful enough attack to defeat the "immunity" in question.
And yes the GM admitted more or less that our "have the distraction team ambush convoy on the way to the leech" plan was just about the best one possible and gave back a point of edge to the guy who came up with it.
I played all 4 and have reviews of them, I think they were very interesting premise, but could have used more polish (especially Neo-Tokoyo Drift)
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Yeah. SOme of the stuff for Origins ended up a bit of a rush job. My apologies for that. I wrote the Denver one (Jailbreak Rock) and the Seattle one (Ballroom Blitz), and two of our other GMs stepped in to help me get the Berlin (Berlin Waltz) and Neo-Tokyo (Neo-Tokyo Fusion) one done in time. They were not, however, as polished as they could be, and my deepest apologies that it showed through.
The intention was primarily to let the players be involved with something that was a part of the major metaplot and to allow them to interact with (and even fight against!) a few of the Street Legendes/Jackpointers, without needing to be uberpowerful nor worrying too much about being overpowered/overwhelmed by the bad guys.
For the Air Spirits... Like I said, yeah, they end up a little weak against Stick n Shock. By the adventure they're Force 5 (Though GMs can adjust that as needed), and there's supposed to be 2 of them (Sounds like the GM only used 1?). Their Immunity gives them 10 Hardened Armor. Stick n Shock has -5 AP, so that knocks it down to 5 Hardened, which means even with the -2 AP that SnS applies to weapon DV now, most weapons with SnS will still hurt them (shy of LIght or Hold outs). However, they do have 14 dice to dodge (Reaction 9, INtuition 5), so barring crap dice rolls that will help mitigate attackers successes. They only have 8 dice to soak damage with (3 Body, 5 Armor after the AP penalty), but their remaining 5 Hardened Armor also gives them half of it's value in automatic soak successes, rounded up. So it automatically soaks 3 damage.
So yeah, it won;t stand up to sustained fire, but each should withstand a couple rounds of combat.
However, this was also not supposed to be a crippling fight, so it wasn't designed to be hard. Just something a bit different. After all, how often do runners get to hang out of the side of a GMC Banshee firing pintel mounted machine guns at drones and fight off spirits who are trying to disable the pilot? :) In this case, it was more about a cool set-piece and a cool action scene than it was about trying to stop the players.
You managed to detect the spirit early (WHich is actually an optional encounter anyway, something for the GM to use if the adventure runs short), dodge the minimal security on the base, and sounds like you avoided another surprise that could have occured on the way back.
The other fun thing is that if you've read Lightning in Denver from Storm Front, this adventure takes place at the same time that both Harlequin and (in a seperate attack) the Azzies are attacking Ghostwalker and Denver. In a Blizzard. Fun stuff. :)
Oh, one other question... the third prisoner. Did you rescue her as well?
Bull
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Yeah. SOme of the stuff for Origins ended up a bit of a rush job. My apologies for that. I wrote the Denver one (Jailbreak Rock) and the Seattle one (Ballroom Blitz), and two of our other GMs stepped in to help me get the Berlin (Berlin Waltz) and Neo-Tokyo (Neo-Tokyo Fusion) one done in time. They were not, however, as polished as they could be, and my deepest apologies that it showed through.
The intention was primarily to let the players be involved with something that was a part of the major metaplot and to allow them to interact with (and even fight against!) a few of the Street Legendes/Jackpointers, without needing to be uberpowerful nor worrying too much about being overpowered/overwhelmed by the bad guys.
For the Air Spirits... Like I said, yeah, they end up a little weak against Stick n Shock. By the adventure they're Force 5 (Though GMs can adjust that as needed), and there's supposed to be 2 of them (Sounds like the GM only used 1?). Their Immunity gives them 10 Hardened Armor. Stick n Shock has -5 AP, so that knocks it down to 5 Hardened, which means even with the -2 AP that SnS applies to weapon DV now, most weapons with SnS will still hurt them (shy of LIght or Hold outs). However, they do have 14 dice to dodge (Reaction 9, INtuition 5), so barring crap dice rolls that will help mitigate attackers successes. They only have 8 dice to soak damage with (3 Body, 5 Armor after the AP penalty), but their remaining 5 Hardened Armor also gives them half of it's value in automatic soak successes, rounded up. So it automatically soaks 3 damage.
So yeah, it won;t stand up to sustained fire, but each should withstand a couple rounds of combat.
However, this was also not supposed to be a crippling fight, so it wasn't designed to be hard. Just something a bit different. After all, how often do runners get to hang out of the side of a GMC Banshee firing pintel mounted machine guns at drones and fight off spirits who are trying to disable the pilot? :) In this case, it was more about a cool set-piece and a cool action scene than it was about trying to stop the players.
You managed to detect the spirit early (WHich is actually an optional encounter anyway, something for the GM to use if the adventure runs short), dodge the minimal security on the base, and sounds like you avoided another surprise that could have occured on the way back.
The other fun thing is that if you've read Lightning in Denver from Storm Front, this adventure takes place at the same time that both Harlequin and (in a seperate attack) the Azzies are attacking Ghostwalker and Denver. In a Blizzard. Fun stuff. :)
Oh, one other question... the third prisoner. Did you rescue her as well?
Bull
There were two spirits on the plane, it was just that the second seemed to only show up right as we finished dealing with the first.
Also yes we rescued the third prisoner because Perry asked us to and we didn't want to have to extract an unhappy dragon.
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Cool. Just curious ;)