This is Shadowrun

Well since the last section ran so long this section actually runs fairly short. It handles the (fairly tame actually) interrogation of the ‘Angles of Torment’ prisoners. I thought things were handled fairly cleverly on both the player and GM side. I sure didn’t expect the players to act as they did. This encounter leaves some minor plot hooks that I can pick up later. I find half the job of being a GM is setting up for developments in your next run(s) seamlessly during a different run.

All in all this session went very well I thought. And although we stayed late actually time wise it isn’t that much longer than most of my runs, a little shorter actually. We’ll pick up with this one tomorrow, though Smash Brothers Brawl came out, so that will probably eat into our playtime somewhat.

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Sorry this part is so long delayed in going up.  This is last Monday’s run.  We are running through some of the later elements of Emergence combined with some stuff from an old GURPS cyber-punk adventure book.  I thought Monday’s session went excellent.  It had some excellent moments, like when Wolf took out a manifested spirit in one round with a full-auto burst from his Ares Alpha, or when my last two gangers smashed Punn’s Doberman drone into a wreck with their clubs then escaped.

The only downside of all this that the run ran considerably longer than usual.  I didn’t expect the fire-fight to take as long as it did and so I didn’t cut this up into the smaller sections I usually do.  So tomorrows will actually be pretty short.  We didn’t finish it either, so this will be our first two-parter on This-is-Shadowrun.  Stay tuned to see how it turns out and give me some feedback!

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For a change of pace we decided to start our run off by talking about some of our favorite runs of old. We’ve been playing this campaign for several months now and some of our best moments (unfortunately) were not caught on tape. Heck, some of our favorite Shadowrun memories are from years ago. Like most groups we generally enjoy reminiscing about our old games from time to time. Except this time we decided to recored our musings so our listeners might a better clue about some of the stuff we talk about. We of course didn’t know about Gary Gygax’s death when we recorded this, but it also seems like a bit of a fitting tribute to a man who made all this fun possible.

John picked Bubba’s truck powered massacre on the door steps of Ares NYC headquarters. This happened just before the campaign started and the repercussions of it are dealt with in our first recorded session. I have to say this was probably the most memorable moment in the campaign so far. And the rest of us would have probably picked it if he hadn’t.

Aron picked one of Thralls (Trevor’s old character) exploits, though his recollection of it and mine differ in some respects. All the PCs had received unmarked packages at their domiciles. Most of the PCs took reasonable precautions against these unknown packages (paying a hobo to open it for example). Thrall took some fairly unreasonable precautions, which some how involved the post-office. Hilarity ensued. Some how (probably through my good graces) he escaped. The packages turned out to contain gear they had been looking for delivered by Ares/Dorothy as a kind of subtle message (we know where you live, but we like you a bit).

Trevor also picked one of Bubba’s escapades. Some how John managed to land his troll in jail before the campaign really even began. Before the first meet even. I put a pretty detailed post about it up on dumpshock. It was not an auspicious beginning of our campaign. Though maybe listening to Bubba’s 20 Questions, can give you a better idea of his mentality.

Travis, who has not been playing as long as the rest of us, choose the most recent event. His recent drive-by swording of a DocWagon paramedic. Though as I think about it now it may have actually been just some random doc-wagon guy who’s uniform he wanted. Or maybe there was more than one drive-by-swording in that session. Either way we recorded that incident, so you can check out the details yourself and correct our recollection if you like.

Going last I (Austin) picked an event from WAY back in my SR history. One that happened back in SR2 ed, before any of my current players joined my group. Still its one of my favorite stories that Carey and Kelly (to of my players currently out of town) loved to retell so I though I would throw it out there for you guys as well. It also involves a troll, they seem to be the source of all trouble/entertainment in SR.

Anyways let us know what you think! Reminiscing about Shadowrun seems to be half the fun!

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Gary Gygax, co-founder of D&D and pretty much the founder of Role-Playing Games in general died today.  I’d just like to take a brief moment to give tribute to a man who gave so much to us all.  Without Mr. Gygax there would be no D&D, no Final Fantasy, and no Shadowrun.  And this podcast certianly would not exists.  My life, and those of my friends, would be a much emptier place.

We all stand on the shoulders of giants.  But Mr. Gygax stands taller than most.  I salute you sir, and give you my thanks.

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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Bad news for those of you who look forward to our weekly podcast.  I suffered a recorder malfuction late into last night’s (Monday 2/18/08) game, which render the recording unusable.  Which is a bummer because last nights game was pretty good, if unusual.  In fact we didn’t run Shadowrun at all, but instead tried out the new WH40K RPG, Dark Heresy.  It was pretty fun, and good for a change of pace.  We tend to take short breaks like this from time to time.  As even Shadowrun gets old after a half-year or so (or at least it does to us).

So instead of the usual podcast updates I’ll focus on updating the site (such as it is) with more details on the remaining players (Aron), the GM (me Austin), and some other stuff.  If there was something you were curious about in terms of our campaign and wanted to know more about, this would be a good time to let me know.  Post a comment here or at dumpshock, PM me, or even e-mail me (MaxMahem@cablone.net).  I’ll try and fill in all the gaps this week.  Next Mondays run should be on as scheduled.  Tune in then!

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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