The Third Forumised Shadowrun Adventure!

Post by **deject** » June 24th, 2009, 2:38

Are we going to RP a whole drunken night?

The Shutting Downs · Post by **The Shutting Downs** » June 24th, 2009, 6:49

We can call it there if you want

Post by **Dog Pants** » June 24th, 2009, 7:30

Can we has debrief then please Joose?

A few bits and pieces from me, since I'd like feedback when I GM. I liked the Yakuza angle, it gave me lots of stuff to go and research, an environment Al is comfortable in, and seemingly lots of stuff to do early on. The weird thing is, though, that it worked out the opposite to how I expected it to. I thought I'd be doing a lot of stuff with contacts and face work, then leaving the extraction to Chopper and Frank, when in fact I was beaten to everything I thought I might find out by N-Zo, and ended up infiltrating the end piece. Halfway through I was ready to give up in frustration because I thought that I was redundant. Not blaming anyone, sometimes characters clash like that. However, what happened at the end showed me that maybe I should be branching out a little into more of an infiltrator role.

I've taken something from this as a GM too. I throw BPNs together as a simulation of a situation, a story for the players to unpick as they choose with a few hints thrown in. What I might start doing is making a note of each character's strengths and making an effort to put bits in for them so that nobody feels left out. It's not that hard to do, I think, and it's so much more involving.

The Shutting Downs · Post by **The Shutting Downs** » June 24th, 2009, 7:37

Dog Pants wrote:when in fact I was beaten to everything I thought I might find out by N-Zo,

Nads

I'm sorry I trod on what you wanted to do mate, my plan was to narrow down the searches you guys needed to make, so you could go in, talk to people that woul actually get us a result.

When Al got his talk on, he did indeed rule the floor, and the bluff to get into the facility was brilliant.

Anyhoo, on to other business...

N-zo will message the guys when the hangover is cleared, and the offer will be to Encrypt all comlinks, cyberware and drone links, if you guys are happy to pay 2k each for the programmes (they is slightly illegal).

Also, if you choose the OS and firewall you want, N-zo will source it and do the upgrades.

Post by **Dog Pants** » June 24th, 2009, 10:26

No apologies necessary, it's just the way things happen. It's more effective to get some information from the Matrix. I'm quite liking the idea of becoming more infiltraty anyway after the end of the run.

I'm perfectly happy to pay the 2k for the upgrades. I have a Renraku Sensei commlink already running (if you haven't already hacked it and found out) Renraku Ichi OS.

Post by **HereComesPete** » June 24th, 2009, 10:45

Sounds good to me. Money will be wired to account of your choice.

Post by **fabyak** » June 24th, 2009, 11:19

Yep, me too.

I got a contact named Furious, I wasn't sure if I was meant to go balistic at you guys first (wondered if it might be a spell of some kind!)

Post by **deject** » June 24th, 2009, 12:34

Yeah encryption sounds OK with me. I am guessing even though I don't use my comm for much it can still get hacked and compromise us all, so I should get it as well. Also, I'm just going to assume that I got the SIN from you TSD, as we do have a week and there is the extra die on the test.

I thought the run went reasonably well. We had some flub-ups, but they weren't fan-shitting bad and we were able to recover. I definitely didn't have much to do besides taking out the spirits but I guess I should be thankful it didn't go much beyond that.

Post by **Roman Totale** » June 24th, 2009, 17:18

Unrapping the little red package, you find inside a rather ugly wooden statue, roughly calved into the shape of a ghoul. It looks wierdly familiar.

I'm waiting on Jooses to see if I can get any more information on it or if Leland can pick up any weird juju.

Post by **deject** » June 24th, 2009, 17:31

I did pick up some stuff for you. First, there's a note on the bottom you apparently missed, it says "Sleep on it." Second, it is magically active, but only very slightly. It's not a focus or anything like that, so I am not sure what it is really.

Post by **Roman Totale** » June 24th, 2009, 17:48

Right then, tonight that fucker is going under my pillow!

Post by **Joose** » June 24th, 2009, 18:09

Dog Pants wrote:A few bits and pieces from me, since I'd like feedback when I GM.

Good idea, im learning as I go here so any feedback you guys give me will definately help. Ultimately, if you guys are not enjoying it, im doin it rong, and no-one wants that.

I liked the Yakuza angle, it gave me lots of stuff to go and research, an environment Al is comfortable in, and seemingly lots of stuff to do early on. The weird thing is, though, that it worked out the opposite to how I expected it to. I thought I'd be doing a lot of stuff with contacts and face work, then leaving the extraction to Chopper and Frank, when in fact I was beaten to everything I thought I might find out by N-Zo, and ended up infiltrating the end piece. Halfway through I was ready to give up in frustration because I thought that I was redundant. Not blaming anyone, sometimes characters clash like that. However, what happened at the end showed me that maybe I should be branching out a little into more of an infiltrator role.

Glad you liked the Yaks, its probably not the last time you will run into them, and certainly not the last time you run into big criminal organisations. As for the information gathering stuff, the way I picture it is the hackers get the hard data (who, when, where) and the face gets all the background, what you might call the soft data (the why of things, the rumours, what people are "really like"). Both are equally important, but I dont think I quite got that impression across in this run, its something for me to sort out in the future.

As for the infiltration stuff, definately something worth using. I always describe face characters as a bit like Face out of A Team (funnily enough). He's the guy who knows people, but he is also the guy who can con his way into places.

I've taken something from this as a GM too. I throw BPNs together as a simulation of a situation, a story for the players to unpick as they choose with a few hints thrown in. What I might start doing is making a note of each character's strengths and making an effort to put bits in for them so that nobody feels left out. It's not that hard to do, I think, and it's so much more involving.

Totally agree. I do think its a bit more of a challenge when a group gets too big though: in order to give everyone something to do, it can become EPIC COMPLICATED.

I'll put the finishing touches to the debrief tonight, expect it soon™!

Post by **Joose** » June 24th, 2009, 18:39

Righto, Debrief Tiem! First off:

What's really happening?

For those of you that don't know, the Yakuza have quite a strict hierarchical organisation. Individual members are part of a Gumi, a bit like the Mafia is organised into "families". These Gumi are then organised into Ringu's, usually lead by the head of the largest/most powerful Gumi. In the case of Seattle, the biggest Gumi (Shotozumi-gumi, Shigeda-gumi etc) are part of the Shotozumi-ringu, lead (unsurprisingly) by Hanzo Shotozumi. He is the Big Bad in Seattle, as far as Yakuza goes. Although there are still some vague ties back to the motherland, for all intents and purposes, the Shotozumi-ringu are a separate entity.

Lately, Hanzo has been putting the rather unruly Shigeda-gumi on a rather short leash. Maybe he is fed up with their unorthodox, untraditional methods, or maybe he is trying to tighten things up for some upcoming event, no one at street level is really sure. What *has* happened though, is the Shigeda-gumi have got a bit peeved at his interfering with their everyday work, and there has been subtle threats and hints that maybe Shigeda is going to try and shift the seat of power his way. Although this is fairly unlikely to succeed, its also exactly the opposite of what Shotozumi is aiming for. After exhausting his normal techniques, Hanzo pulls in some favours with people back in the motherland, and they send the legendary Yakuza figure Sensei Kitsune to straighten things out.

Kitsune quickly realises that the reason the situation is escalating so badly is there are elements within the Shotozumi-gumi that want to bring things to a head, so they can take this opportunity for personal betterment within the organisation. He decides that leverage is needed, something that holds dear to the necessary parties in both organisations. He finds that in the girl. She is the daughter of a mid-level Shigeda Bakuto, not overly high in the organisation, but influential. Also, she is the rough equivalent of Hanzo Shotozumi's god-daughter. As she is quite the party animal, she has spent the last few years getting herself into increasingly dodgy situations, which she has been bailed out of by one influential Yakuza protector or another. She has had her name changed and her identity rewritten more times than she can count, and has been moved literally all around the world, but as long as she has a club to go to, people to hang out with and some interesting new narcotic to enjoy, she is happy.

Kitsune decided that she was the perfect pawn for this game. The rebellious Shotozumi-gumi would be brought into line: They might risk inciting a civil war to their own ends, but they would not risk the personal wrath of Shotozumi, something they would certainly face if they put a girl he treats like his own daughter at risk. The Shigeda-gumi would also face massive internal pressures from the Bakutos many contacts to solve this issue peacefully. The girl would stay in a secure location, her safety personally ensured by Kitsune. Of course, she is all but a prisoner to him, and certainly wont be going to any parties any time soon.

So, that's what that was all about. What about the SINsmith? I think some of you have maybe already figured this one out. He's a hacker who specialises in creating fake ID's, and a good one, albeit a bit of an arrogant bastard with it. He also lies like a motherfucker: There was no combat drone ready to blow Frank into tiny bits, and there was no explosives buried in the house either. He was just stringing you on. He had recently been hired by the Shigeda-gumi to create a new identity for the woman, but due to them messing it up for him, he is jumping ship to work for Kitsune. Hence the message he wanted you to deliver for him. For those of you that don't know now, the other distinguishing feature of SINsmith is that he used to be my character, when I used to play SR way back when. And yes, I played him as a bit irritating then too. In those days he was a Decker (yep, he is *that* old) called Spike. After his group went badly tits-up, he legged it north of the border (north of several borders actually), and has been spending the intervening years hiding from Very Bad Men. Don't know whether I will use him in any further runs, just thought it would be fun

Actual Run Debrief to follow!

The Shutting Downs · Post by **The Shutting Downs** » June 24th, 2009, 18:50

deject wrote:Also, I'm just going to assume that I got the SIN from you TSD, as we do have a week and there is the extra die on the test.

Thats in my Downtime and in hand, don't worry

You will all end up with a rank 6 encryption and a rank 6 databomb should anyone get past that, it's as secure as non-military wares can make it.

Post by **Joose** » June 24th, 2009, 19:02

Righto, I wont go into a step by step analysis or anything like that, as we would be here all week. I'll just go through the things that struck me:

You did good with the information gathering. There wasn't an awful lot you didn't uncover that could have reasonably been uncovered. Sources were worked and leads followed up on pretty much as expected.

The negotiations bits could have been better. I think Doggers summed it up well as Al: Shooty guys should shoot. Talky guys should talk. By all means help out where you can, but getting in the way causes problems.

It all went a mildly to cock when you actually tracked the girl down. Although a couple of ideas for plans were suggested, no one really took the lead on the situation, so there was a lot of standing around pondering the best plan of action. This lead to Chopper almost being turned into soup by an earth spirit (he only survived through lucky rolls. Or unlucky, as far as the spirit was concerned). When you did finally make a move, it was a bit of a half arsed plan: people running about doing their own thing with no sort of co-ordination, and although some skilful talking got you in ok, you didn't seem to have any extraction plan beyond "fucking leg it".

Don't get me wrong, it worked out ok in the end and each of you were having good ideas, but I think you would have benefited from someone taking the lead on the thing.

Finally, although I think you are getting the idea with the (il)legality of Shadowrunning, you are still leaving a bit of a trail at times. Not a major problem, and you were mostly ok in this run, but a couple of things you need to take care with, but I will put together a bit of a guide thingy on the wiki.

Overall though: you got the job done, nobody died, you got paid and (as far as you know) didn't massively piss off anyone important. That's a pretty good score really!

Post by **Roman Totale** » June 24th, 2009, 19:08

Joose wrote:but I think you would have benefited from someone taking the lead on the thing.

This is partly why Chopper decided to jump the fence and go in. That and the fact he's a massive twat.

I love him like a brother, but I will make him do stupid things if I think it fits in with the RP

I think that during downtime Chopper will be offering Al what he sees as "motivational talking techniques" and "assertive leadership" (Chopper looks to Al as the boss type person because he can speak proper).

Post by **Dog Pants** » June 24th, 2009, 19:52

Roman Totale wrote:
This is partly why Chopper decided to jump the fence and go in. That and the fact he's a massive twat.

I love him like a brother, but I will make him do stupid things if I think it fits in with the RP

I think that during downtime Chopper will be offering Al what he sees as "motivational talking techniques" and "assertive leadership" (Chopper looks to Al as the boss type person because he can speak proper).

Normally I would have done, but after feeling distinctly useless for much of the run, and having a couple of ideas either ignored or shot down, I (by which I mean Al) had pretty much lost interest. And I still ended up taking the lead.

Post by **fabyak** » June 25th, 2009, 15:05

I'll give Furious a call (not for a whole week though, that'd be a bit wierd)