This is Shadowrun

And this is the final part of this weeks run, in which everything is resolved. I’m not happy with how this last part of the run went. After some awkwardness is discovering the bodies location the players final discovered it and decended back into the sewers where they began. The awkwardness mainly came because the players basically skirted all the major routs I thought they might take to find the body. Which greatly extended the length of this run.

Thus I was pretty tired when we got to this part. I wanted to call it a night before this began, but they convinced me to continue. My tiredness shows and the trip over to the Ghoul HQ and the confrontation there-in were not handled well IMO. The only cool thing I got to try out was the new spell I designed, “Sluge Lightsource” which the Ghoul leader used to blow out the parties lights, which had the intended effect of freaking them out. Still I was to tired to run this encounter right and kind of let them off easy.

Now the PCs have possession of a mysterious magical artifact, the Jade Dragon. What is it? What can it do? All this shall (probably) be eventually revealed in a later episodes. That is, after I make up my mind, feel free to send me your (preferable evil) suggestions. Also I think I am going to develope the Ghouls into a full-blown crime syndicate, lead by a fearsome character, probably a vampire. Stayed tuned and hit me back with some feedback!

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Hey this is the third of four parts of our last run. I think I intimidated the players a bit to much here, I was hoping they would have at least made an attempt to force the truth out of Lady Jades parents. Alas, the run on the hotel was not to be. Lucky for them, they had happened upon the correct location of her body at the funneral parlor, so the run could still continue. Looking back on it, I maybe should have moved changed the location of the body and made them at least hit the Memorial service. Not sure why they have never thought of the idea of disgusing themselves, but I won’t suggest it to them.

Next part up tomorrow.

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Okay here is part two of our run. This is where the players started to loose focus. Maybe I made things to difficult. Their goal was to find Lady Jades body. The actually came up with a number of good plans but for some reason really failed to take action on any of them. They (or at least Wolf) went to the funeral parlor, but then backed down. Then they kind of spun their wheels for a bit until I used my Deus-Ex-Machina (quite litteraly in fact) to drop a hint in their lap. Then they final started to take some sort of action…

Or so I thought. Check out next time for their actions at the NYC fanciest Hotel. Also, this weeks run will be chopped into 4 parts instead of 3, as we ran kind of long this week. Let me know what you think.

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Wohoo! And welcome back to the next installment of This is Shadowrun. After taking a quick break we returned to the game we love. This weeks run went smoothly, but I didn’t plan it out as well as I should. Or rather I over planned parts of it, and over planned others. This run also sets up a major plot hook for later development. Though I haven’t fully quite decided what it is yet! More on that in the later segments when it become more obvious.

This segment of it was awesome I thought though. The runners travel deep beneath the NYC sewers/subway system to meet up with one of the campaigns major NPCs, Pamela. I was expecting a big fire-fight, but was pleasantly supprised when that didn’t happen. That made this section shorter than expected, but I thought it was still enjoyable. Tell me what you think!

Oh, and updates to the campaign setting should continue to happen spread throughout the week. John’s new character should go up at some point as well. I’ve updated the sight with a new theme which is possibly not as cool, but more readable. Tell me if it doesn’t render right on your browser or something.

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And here is the dramatic conclusion to this weeks ‘This is Shadowrun.’  Since I let the last section run over, this part is a bit short in comparision.  As would be expected things ended with a bang and the shadows of NYC were seriously changed by the fallout from this run.  I think I succeeded in building up the tension in this third half of the run.  Possibly not as easy to here it over the audio, but I could see the tension in their faces.

Looking back on it though, I made the escape much to easy for them.  After the hit the PCs are able to pretty much throw down the rifle and leave.  Not that I think that it was terribly unrealistic on my part.  I’m not sure what the polices response would be to a sniper at a big game, but I am pretty sure that unrestricted (or barely restricted) chaos would result, so just walking out might very well be possible.  However that was a bit to easy for my players on there current level.

If I had it to do over again I would have had the secound half of the guns program call some spotlights or something up on the snipers position.  Sounds like just the sort of double cross Lady Jade would have done, security would then lock that part of the building down fairly quickly.  This would have been even more exciting, but knowing the other players they simply would have abandoned Go to his fate, instead of trying to rescue him.  Building team loyalty has not been very successful this go around at least.

In any case enjoy and tell me what you think!

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So this is the second of the the halves of our last run. I let this section run a bit longer then I wanted to, it crosses over from leg-work into the actual set up for the run. I’m still getting used to this whole chop it into sections bit, and not entirely sure if I will continue my current pattern (not every run splits neatly into meet, legwork, and throw-down). Anyways this part of the run went well, but looking back on it I had two issues with it.

Firstly I felt I railroaded them into the back-stabbing their Johnson deal a bit to much. I am ambivalently about this. When I planned this run I out I felt fairly certain that they would immediately start looking for ways to back-stab the Johnson (the players hate the Triad for some reason). When they didn’t jump at this at the start, my main intent was to inform them that their might possibly be other options available to them, though I feel I was a bit overbearing on this. On the other hand, I was willing to let them go forward with the assassination of Putin if thats what they really wanted to do, and I feel that all they needed was some reassurance that a betrayal was possible.

If I had it to do over again, I would have both made them hold a vote on their feelings, and possibly had a contact or somebody contact them with a leading sort of counteroffer (something vague that lead them to believe a betayal might be possible). I had plans for what to do if they contacted the other organized crime syndicates, but nothing came of them, as the players didn’t think of this option (maybe I should have had the exchange drop their numbers in their lap, that would have worked well I think).

Secoundly I again think I went to easy on them. The encounter at the Jade Dragon should have been scaled way up (though Wolf rolled insanely well), and I should have made inflintrating Madison Square gardens much more difficult. I kind of hand-waved that bit, a bit to much I think. I should have made them plan out exactly how and what they were inflitrating with and had some more consiquences come of it. Maybe I should have had Putin only able to get them uniforms not passkeys, or some other speed-bumps. I’m usually pretty good a speed-bumps not sure why I had trouble with them this time (poor planning I guess).

But the run was still fun for all involved, the third half will bring us to our conclusions, and it will be up by Saturday. Its fairly short however. Enjoy and hit me back with some feedback with your thoughts, good or bad!

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Sorry for the delay in getting this episode up, real life intervenes. This was a fun run, which ended pretty well. My only complaints with it is that I should have thrown in a couple more complications for them (I think it was a bit easy) and possibly I railroaded them a bit. I’ll address the points when they come up later.

The meet part of the run went off without a hitch due to my careful consideration as to where to place is (during an NYPD) parade. Or else the players surely would have attacked the Johnson the first chance they got. I haven’t done one of these ‘get the players to betray there contacts/johnson’ style runs in a while, so I though we were about due. I got the inspiration from SR Mission 2-24 ‘Hubris and Humility’ but thats about it, the run is pretty much all mine.

I thought Go’s and the rest of the players hatred for the Triad (rather irrational, they were simply the first foes I set them against) and affection for Putin (their first Johnson), would make the betrayal a snap, alas it was not to be that simple. Audio quality is decent, but I made the mistake of putting the mike to close to me, it appears I am rather loud. I was hopping to get Travis’s voice to come in clearer, but I neglected to realize that he was sitting next to me. I’ve also included a little cut down song-intro from the Sarcastic gamers or someplace. Let me know if you like it, or have any better songs for an intro, we might try our karaoke talents out on them. As always enjoy and hit me back with some feedback.

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This is the third and final ‘half’ of our run.  Where the drek hits the fan (again in this case) or the throw down.  The players arrive at their apparent objective and deal with the opposition.  Actually however things went rather smoothly, though one character was seriously injured in this fire-fight. The opposition early in the run was much more difficult so I decided to have things go a little bit easier this time around, though their opponents still gave them a tough time. I am also going to have to begin taking measures to control Wolf’s access to his assault rifle.  He is entirely to lethal with it for common use.  Which makes sense since its freaking assault rifle.  I was much to merciful in letting him convince me that he had it just ‘laying around in the floorboard of his car.’  I have defiantly decided to ratchet up the level of police opposition on future runs and increase the ruthlessness and effectiveness of their tactics.  Also some magical opposition is in the works (cause nothing scares my runners like magic).  Though I do believe this run ultimately did serve its purpose of shacking the runners up a bit.

As all ways enjoy and hit me back with some feedback.  Our next session is on Monday with the first half of the recording going up late Tuesday, which should start a regular schedule for the site.  Session Monday, recordings up Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.  Other sections of the site may be updated on the off days but I don’t promise to keep to that.  NPCs did start to go up today however.

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This is the second of the three ‘half’s’ of our run. The legwork part. It’s fairly short and uneventful. The players were feeling the heat from their actions in a bit of a panicky mood. Which means my mission for the initial ‘meet’ part of the run went well. I did a lot of hand waving here on the part of equipment John’s character ‘Poon’ had as his character creation was not totally finished. Evidently neither was Travis’s character ‘Ichi’ who is lacking in contacts. We’ll work this out before next run though for sure, and get the Arsenal vehicle rules strained out (somewhat, probably).

This session is nice because it introduces (indirectly at least) most of the Major NPCs in my campaign. I hope to have a page up on the tommorow. Anyways, enjoy. The last half of this run should be up on Saturday. Feedback is always appreciated.

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Hey in case any of you are wondering, no were not dead. Last session didn’t go as planned, as I had to make a trip to Florida. I had scheduled a post stating that to go up, but evidently it didn’t happen. Disney World was great, but no Shadowrun happened (you don’t take your little sisters on shadowruns… at least I hope you don’t). But we played again this week and I’ve got the recording for you.

As a change from the last couple weeks sessions this one was pretty much a success. Though it didn’t start of as one in your traditional sense. Given the players increasing public displays of violence in the last couple runs and their continued run-ins with the law (and other powers that be) I thought it would be appropriate to go with a ‘backlash’ style run. Which is exactly what I did. Heavily adapting this weeks run from SRM02-22 ‘Backlash’. Though the players overpowered the NYPD in this inital ‘meet’ sceen, and I was not able to drop all the Horizion related plot hooks I wanted, I still thought things went well enough. I think I put a little fear of the powers that be into them, but if I had to do over again I would have kicked it up a notch maybe (though the opposition was pretty stiff). I still need to work on my descriptions of the scenes however. Also John’s new character ‘Poon’ makes his first appearance here.

I think I’m getting the hang of mastering this audio recordings, and this one turned out pretty well I thought. The audio quality is the best yet. We did have a rather, unusual interruption about half way in, but I have clipped that part out. Anyways, enjoy and give feedback!

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