My gaming group has convinced me to run Shadowrun again. This time we’re doing Shadowrun 5th edition, but then we playtested it too, so that’s not too far of a stretch. I just have to remember the rules (and reread the book to find all the fixes from when we play tested). We all need a refresher on the various bits and pieces, so we planned on the first few sessions being a slow ramp up. Unfortunately RL (sickness, overtime at work, other writing assignments) have “intruded” on my so-called free time. I just didn’t have a whole lot of time to actually build a whole mission from scratch. Fortunately, Shadowrun 5th edition has this wonderful random run generator in the back of the book (page 478).
As the group finalized their characters, I pulled out my “dice” and rolled the following:
Meet Locations: 2 – At a warehouse, loading dock, or other underused location
Employers: 5–6 – A minor corporation
Job Type: 1 – A data steal
McGuffin: 4 – A bioengineered life form
Twist: 5 – Target has been moved or is being moved
With these rolls, I ran into my first problem. The group had already decided pre-game that they were an unlicensed “private security” team. They didn’t do data steals and we didn’t have a decker (hopefully that problem will be solved in a week or two). So time for some quick thinking.
I decided that the data steal and the bioengineered life form were the same thing. I once read an article about scientists encoding the junk DNA of cockroaches with the works of Shakespeare (can’t find the original, but another reference is here), which provided the impetus for this adventure. The cockroaches were the data steal (junk DNA stuff), and then I threw in a little Easter Egg from Sacrificial Limb that will come back to haunt the team when I run that campaign for them. Nobody caught on to that so… (insert Evil GameMaster Laugh Here).
I had the original meet at an abandoned restaurant, and though the rigger managed to record Mr. Johnson’s face (and the faces of his body guards), none of the team ever thought to follow up on their employers. So that was a semi-useless roll. On the other hand, I can use this to haunt them later anyway.
I decided since we were talking bioegineered critters that the target would be megacorp Evo. I opened the book to the NPC pages (pp 381-384) and used professional levels 3 & 4. The Evo facility in question was a 2-story building in the front of a business park (surrounded mostly by landscaping), with a guard booth and a simple arm gate for in-and-out vehicle traffic. The building itself requires dermal RFIDs to get past security (if you don’t have a decker or technomancer), has about 9 LoneStar officers on staff, and Mr. Johnson provided the team with a general location of the McGuffin (a wooden box), a description of the box, and a known-employee list (including security) to the PCs.
Well, they didn’t have anyone with a good Computer skill, so I had to throw them a bone. They were warned, however, to do some research and verify all this data. And then they glitched the roll. So I had the rigger “accidentally” hack into LoneStar’s system and basically he had to toss his commlink as it started smoking and being tracked. To be honest, I didn’t bother with GOD rolls or marks or anything at this point. I was just trying to get the ball rolling.
The team decided the best way to get into the building was to kidnap a security guard and threaten his family. They managed to convince him to play ball and then turned around and offered him a couple of grand if he escorted them into the building. Mac Ceasre (a LoneStar employee with two kids and a dead wife) decided to go along with them because he didn’t want to leave his kids as orphans. As the PCs got to the facility, they found the box was being moved from the facility into an unmarked courier truck.
Facing 2 LoneStar security guards (a phys-ad and a mundane), a mundane scientist, and a fighting-trained courier, the team managed to take them out but broke the box in the process. Cockroaches flew everywhere.
The team spent several minutes chasing after little black bugs, putting them back in the box, then ransacking the building for other tech & such to cover up the box theft. They paid Mac his two grand, stole the van (which had about eight packages in it according to the 2D6 I rolled), and delivered the box to Mr. Johnson. Because of a glitch in negotiations, Mr. Johnson ended up paying them an early-delivery bonus so they each ended up with seven grand and 5 Karma out of the whole deal. And a potential new contact / pain-in-the-butt in the form of Mac.
Tonight I have finished my rolling and ended up with Mr. Johnson being a megacorp this time around. I’m leaning toward having Evo show up again, this time as the employer. Only… Well, bad things happen to those who steal from megas, don’t they? And the team didn’t bother to wipe the security feed in the last session because they didn’t think of it and didn’t have a decker.
Am I that evil?
Oh, dear. I think I am.
