New Shadowrun Game(s)

So while browsing the interweb this morning I come across this interesting article on Kotaku. Its about a Kickstarter funded Shadowrun video game that isn't the the browser based one. (BTW, the browser based one doesn't do anything for me for reasons I have yet to discover...)


What truly intrigues me about the project is who is helming it. Jordan Weisman (one of the creators to Shadowrun way back in the day). This in some way could be considered to be a coup of sorts. It embraces a very old school mentality and if they are using the old Data East made Shadowrun SNES game for inspiration I will be a very happy boy.


So happy in fact I think I may kick some money to the project just so it can happen.

Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter


I wish them well on this and I hope this game truly does kick some serious arse.

Shadowrun: Operation Denver Jockstrap.

Where we last left off we were in a T-bird en route to Denver after our run in with a cyber zombie and the now nefarious 'Train Incident'. So what do we do now? Do we finally catch a break? No....no we don't.

Jess - Aki (female elf physical adept/ ronin samurai / has family issues)

Brian - Grey (human shaman/party band aid (healer) / elf poseur in training)

Evil Brian - Sanzo (male elf ranged adept/gun slinger/ shoots stuff)

Jack - Jumpstart (orc rigger/wheel man / master of being uncouth/unavailable this game)

Thya - Dot (ogre brawler/fashion diva / cybered out troll chick/unavailable this game)

Me - 8-Bit (human technomancer/squatter with no I.D. in the system / hates Denver)

Matt - GM (guy behind the screen making our lives difficult/ Shadowrun weenie)

Well after a day or two of laying low in a safe house provided to us by our Mr. Johnson we eventually was contacted by another person looking to have us work a job out here in Denver. This time it was via a letter delivered by 'bump and drop' when Aki was leaving a tattoo parlor. The letter was written in the elven tongue with a time and location set in the Denver barrens. Joy. More shady meeting places. The life of a shadowrunner is oh so glamorous.


Jump ahead to the meeting spot deep in the barrens of Denver. We meet the Johnson who turns out to be NetCat and she wants to hire us to liberate a person from a corp who has info regarding the location of her missing friend Puck. Grey negotiates the rate for our assistance and shortly afterwards we agree to head out to do the job. While negotiations were going on 8-Bit was chatting up NetCat's hubby, Slamm-O!, and found out he has been the one scrubbing 8-Bit's identity and also Captain Chaos is around and he can arrange a meeting if he wants. Of course he 'can haz meeetng'.


We head out to scout out the building our target is staying at. While doing surveillance and planning to strike tomorrow Grey says off the cuff "Its night time. If he knows he's being rescued why don't we call him and tell him to come outside?" Brilliant. We do just that. Firstly we hack the security systems and cameras in the building to not show what is happening. Then we call him to tell him his ride is here. He then sneaks out the front doors in plain view of a sleeping guard. NetCat begins to get info and we take the mark to his drop off. Of course, even after scrubbing him for RFID tags, we're followed. Combat ensues, bad guy vehicles disabled, predator drone destroyed, mark delivered safely.


Naturally the info NetCat gets about the location of Puck makes our lives more difficult. He is being held in a medical facility that caters to the wealthy in a secret lab in that buildings basement. While scanning the matrix for info about the place it is rumored a pop star is there for secret plastic surgery. That is our door buster. We flood the matrix with faux confirmation of her being there (thanks to a guard who chose his words poorly when approached) and within hours a mob of screaming fans was swarming the building. Borderline riot level. Aki sexed up a employee out back on a smoke break and pilfered his id tag. NetCat and I were hacking into the security system and even after some complications I unlocked ALL the security doors in the complex which allowed the mob to rush into the building and overwhelmed security. The rest snuck into the building and liberated Puck from a lab that is experimenting on technomancers by slicing them open. There were also a few technomancers who were mobile and they were rescued too.


Puck then tells us about how technomancers are being stolen right off the streets and taken to another facility. We gain the location of the facility and agree to help Puck and NetCat assault the base. NetCat and I hijack the automated turrets around the building so we won't get gunned down and can use them against the people inside. The rest make a run for the building and all out war erupts. Mass combat ensues, lots of baddies die, T-800 looking cyborg technomancer/hybrids arrive and we put them down too. It was a rough battle. Inside the base NetCat expunges all the info of the research from the data nodes and e-nukes the nodes afterwards. Puck rushes off to the offices inside with Aki close behind and Puck shoots a female scientist in the head for some reason.


And we get paid and get thanks from those involved and the game ended. I know I glossed over some of the finer points of this game session but after thinking about it for a week I will say that this was a very rushed game. We started around 1pm and was done before 630pm (and that included a 45min dinner break). I believe this was a module to run at a con but even then there was hardly any roleplaying that night as we were bounced from set piece to set piece. That alone diminished a large chunk of the fun being had. I know I said when the session ended it was fun but after some time to think about it....it wasn't very good. I think the goose egg was that this was a module of some kind and it really stunk for a non-convention game that goes for about 8 hours. With luck the next time we assemble for this the session will be slower paced and give us opportunity to role play some more.

The 12 Days of Blogs-mas: Part Deux

On the announcement via that Facey-Page website that I was going to take requests I did indeed receive one from a long time friend of mine. He wanted me to write more about a particular table top RPG that I'm currently involved with. What one is that you ask?

Well for those not up to date on what Shadowrun is please go to this website and read up on it a bit. Also if you decide to check out the forums (which are generally friendly and full of helpful shadow geeks) tell the moderator FastJack I sent you.

Now that you have a general grasp of the game and setting I will say that its a cool concept. A high fantasy/high technology future earth. Its something that can inspire some very interesting stories to tell, characters to create, new dialects to bring into being, etc., and so on. And did I forget to mention you are playing a criminal.

There is no way around this. It doesn't matter what you're character history is, it doesn't matter what your own personal moral code is when you play Shadowrun you are playing as a criminal. The term 'shadowrunner' is a person who is hired because of special skills they posses to perform jobs that bend or flat out break the rules of society. Yeah, you could be doing some kind of run that the end result of is for the greater good. Lets say retrieving an artifact of immense magical power from a group of known eco-terrorists who will use that to cause a catastrophic event on one of the major cities. To get that back you may have to do reconnaissance by hacking into a private corporations data base ( a crime), kidnap and interrogate a known accomplice (crime), purchase black market firearms because your guns don't make big enough boom (crime)....see what I mean? If you want further proof go back and read some of my posts from the game I play in.

This notion of being a criminal though is pushed aside as this is only a fantasy game and these incidents are not actually happening. I don't see cybernetic trolls beating the crap out of corporate hit men in my own personal slice of America (yet). Its for that reason why the game is fun. We're letting go of normal conventions of morality and doing whatever it takes to complete the run. It's a freeing feeling. I actually like forming plans for our team's capers. I want to see how far I can push the envelope and do it without a body count (if possible) and without being caught. And hearing about those exploits of the runners is quite enjoyable and probably more relate-able than ones from a strict fantasy setting. We all know what a car chase ensues, we've seen shoot-out between the cops and criminals on TV. Nobody here has stopped an demi-lich from obtaining the soul of a fallen angel to help it become a dark deity. We all know what hacking is though.

A nice collection of more well known lurkers in the shadows came out by Catalyst Game Labs back around August of this year. It highlights some of the background history of quite a few of the more well known and infamous NPC characters in the setting. It also has stats for them as well if you need them for your game. Heck its got stats on some of the great dragons running around.

Its an appropriately named title for this book.

 Street Legends is a good read, a fun read. It gives you some interesting ideas for your own foray into the world of Shadowrun as well as how people that have been doing it for years and..well...how they survived. Its not all heroic either. Some stories are down right tragic. Read the entry on Bull "The Best Ork Decker" and tell me that living this life is glamorous. Its downright suck-tastic.

But it doesn't matter how bad things get in Shadowrun cause in the end its a game and if you have a good group of people playing and a good GM running for you even the worst case scenarios will be fun for you and all around. Yes, even the ones when you're dealing with a cyber-zombie brother of one of your own crew. It was fun.


Was this what you wanted Scott? Hope you liked it. Any other requests for blog entries for the 12 Days of Blogs-mas? Leave them in the comments and I'll do what I can.

So another Shadowrun game happened....

....and for the first half of it (by my estimation) I was barely paying attention due to lack of sleep for two days prior. Lets recap the runners and I'll try my best to recollect the finer points of the criminal activities in the elven nation.

Jess - Aki (female elf physical adept/ ronin samurai / has family issues)

Brian - Grey (human shaman/party band aid (healer) / no fan of the elves)

Evil Brian - Sanzo (male elf ranged adept/gun slinger/ shoots stuff)

Jack - Jumpstart (orc rigger/wheel man / master of being uncouth)

Thya - Dot (ogre brawler/fashion diva / cybered out troll chick)

Me - 8-Bit (human technomancer/squatter with no I.D. in the system / can hack a cyber-zombie)

Matt - GM (guy behind the screen making our lives difficult/alpha Shadowrun weenie/ wings the adventures old school style)

So I had only gotten a grand total of 5 hours of sleep in a two day span and was practically dead to the world while the game was going on. We played last sunday and I wanted to go especially after attending a wedding for one of my wife's co-workers and having almost no fun at all. Not because I was anti-social but because I knew three people there (including Jess) and was bored to tears. Shadowrun was the 'fun' I needed to salvage the weekend.

Anyhow I wasn't paying attention for about the first half of the game. I got the impression we were going to liberate (read: kidnap) a target out of Tir Tairngire (the elvish nation in the pacific northwest....used to be Portland, Oregon). I knew I was playing a tourist. I knew Grey doesn't care for elves. I also knew Aki has family there.

And then I played Angry Birds on my phone for the next hour. Not to the fault of Matt who does run an interesting game but because sleep deprivation turns my attention span into that of a goldfish. I just couldn't pay attention to the other players role-playing. I had nothing to add on the subjects at hand so I zoned out sending green piglets to their demise.

Next thing I remember was the players asking 'So 8-Bit, any ideas on how to get the mark away from this corp?'.

Huh? What? Not able to brain today.....come back later. I think I rattled off something lame and not worthwhile while I struggled to get caught up on the situation and tried to focus. 8-Bit would have the plan. Phil the player had shit. So we kind of winged it.

It started with recon of the corp building our mark was working in. I hacked into the system and got all the floor plans, staff, etc. After that Aki asked me to check into something else linked to this corp. I checked into the family name and its link (with an extended test....took two hours....rolled 9 hits hour one & 7 hour two...my target was 16....I got all sorts of info...and my dice betrayed me for the rest of the evening after two awesome rolls).

I report back to Aki in private with my findings and I have my suspicions I just located her father and also was looking for info about her brother's disappearance. She would not confirm that but said she owed me a huge favor and I could name my price. Let's see: hot elf female with tattoos saying I could name my own price for this favor....well....

Giggidy Giggidy Giggidy...

No not really. In fact I have no idea what 8-Bit will ask for in return but its not 'teh secks'. Probably I'm going to need protection or need to have someone killed. I'll know when I need it.



Well we started to set into motion a newer plan. One revolving around picking up our mark from her hotel an hour early  than usual with us in the corporate security vehicle (read: van). Using my admin clearance in the corp computer system I authorized Jumpstart to pick up a van for 'general maintence' so we got that free and clear. I also emailed the mark through the corp mail service that our meeting start begins at 8am instead of 9am so we'll be there to pick you up at 7am. She said good to go & I then deleted all records of that conversation from the system so nobody else could see it.

I'm also becoming more focused and active in the game by this point. Caffeine kicked in finally.

While this was going on Aki ran into her father and exchanged 'pleasantries' and ended on a hug good bye. The rest of the gang what checking out the hotel. Through astral perception they noticed a void of mana on the upper floors of the building across the street. An investigation turned up nothing but they were looking out for this anomaly if it showed again.

The next morning the plan goes into effect. We show up, Sanzo goes up to fetch the mark....and all hell breaks loose. The anomaly returns and it turns out to be a Aki's brother who is the leader of the security detail to protect the mark.

Also he's a cyber-zombie. A being augmented to the point of death with cybernetics that after death they graft the soul back into the body with magic. Its a model T-800 for all intensive purposes. And its coming after us. Frack. And he has back-up as well. Double frack.

And combat ensues. Jumpstart runs over two security personnel with the van. Aki jumps out to start slicing and dicing but is promptly stunned by a stun bolt from a corp mage. Grey goes after the mage with stunning spells of his own. Dot stays in the van to help give cover to Sanzo and our mark when they come out.

I should also mention that the mark arranged this 'kidnapping' to reset the time limit on a corporate merger/take-over. So she was compliant with coming with us.

Now 8-Bit (me) was in the matrix searching for a wireless signal for all the cyberware on this guy coming for us. I find it, jump into its matrix nodes, realize its all machine and no man, and try to disable it from the inside. While I'm doing that he's currently trying to bust into the van that Sanzo, our mark, and the rest of us are in. Dot grabbed Aki and pulled her inside before Arnold got to us. We sped off and he was still gripping the back doors and pulling himself in. I locate his shut-down mode (sleep mode) and put him in it. Night night. He lets go and we speed off to the trainstation to GTFO of Tir.

We board a bullet train for Denver and go thinking we're safe. Naturally we are not. We find this out when Aki called her dad from the phone and she hears a phone ring in the seats behind her. He followed us. How? Well he tagged Aki with an RF I.D. tag when he hugged her. He was the head of that corp security and his son (The Terminator) was his prized piece of work. He had his men in the car and brought Aki's cyber-zombie brother along as insurance.

Well he marched Aki into the next car where Sanzo and Dot were (Jumpstart, our mark named Mercedes and I were two cars up from that and didn't see this part), Aki then plainly in japanese stated to kill everyone behind her to Sanzo. Fortunately her father and other security personnel didn't speak japanese...or pick up on the fact their lives were fucked.

She let the security guards make the first move. They shoved her forward. She then responded by, in one motion, drawing her blade and lopping off her father's head (he was right behind her). Jess rolled so many hits on the attack that when added to the damage rating of her sword and minus his armor she filled all of his physical wound boxes killing him outright. Total Kill Bill style decapatition. And the poor guards were doubly fucked as Sanzo unloaded his hollow points into their skulls and Dot started beating the hell out of the others.

The gunfire alerted Jumpstart and Mercedes to trouble. I was in the matrix at the time and didn't go into the cars to see what the hell was happening. I found out through message that her brother was on the train. I frantically searched for his signal to jump into his cyberwear to shut him down again but couldn't find it. So I went into the trains controls to slow then stop the train (trying to keep collateral damage to a minimum).

Now Aki, Sanzo, Dot and Grey are fending off the cyber zombie. And after more massive combat he finally falls. Aki scoring the killing blow. It was her brother after all. It was an honor thing.

Our mark, Mercedes, had her corp fly out a T-Bird for us on get on and GTFO. And now we're on our way to Denver. 8-Bit isn't happy. *His* family is in Denver. And that was it for the night.

I just wished I was more alert so I could have been a bigger help with the planning stage. I kind of feel I let the group down a bit but I just wasn't able to fall asleep at all. I promise next time I'll be well rested and the Shadowrun journal will be better written and with more detail.

Shadowrunning in the neon-lights of Neo Tokyo and other stuff.

On saturday we got our monthly game in so I'll just give my thoughts on it and what we did. But first lets start with a recap of the party.

Jess - Aki (female elf physical adept/ ronin samurai / elemental fire spirit slayer)

Brian - Grey (human shaman/party band aid (healer) / master of the stun-ball spell)

Evil Brian - Sanzo (male elf ranged adept/gun slinger/ has warrants out for him in Japan)

Jack - Jumpstart (orc rigger/wheel man / has alot of drones)

Thya - Dot (ogre brawler/fashion diva / super bodyguard)

Me - 8-Bit (human technomancer/squatter with no I.D. in the system / apparently the man with the plans)

Matt - GM (guy behind the screen making our lives difficult/alpha Shadowrun weenie/ hater of the stun-ball)

So our favorite Johnson contacted us for a 'apology' mission. He apparently recognized our talent and that we are valuable assets to have around and to keep 'happy'. After the screw jobs we've been doing he offered up a trip to Japan as his bodyguards. Our job descriptions were to enjoy ourselves, drink, have fun, and stay at a 5 star hotel while he is at a conference. Upon arrival and check in we split up to do what ever. Aki went shopping, Sanzo went to the movies to watch anime (though some other players were claiming it was hentai....it wasn't but that didn't stop the tentacle jokes for the evening), Jumpstart went drinking, Grey went to a meta human bathhouse for a traditional bath (happy ending jokes abound), Dot did something (Thya couldn't make it so she was off doing stuff), and I disappeared into the orgasmic bliss of Akihabara district to play video games. This was like letting Charlie Sheen into a Colombian cocaine field. And I stayed there for a few days. I blew off offers to hang out with the Johnson at nice restaurants so I could hang with the otakus, eat real ramen, play games and party in the digital bliss.

Naturally as a player (and to some degree as 8-Bit) I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Where is the danger part of this mission. That came on day 5 when Mr. Johnson got a call from a friend who needed help for another friend and we got recommended. Dot stayed behind to guard Mr. J while we set the meeting with the new client.

A holo-feed displayed a woman asking us to track down a person broadcasting into the web as a long departed friend of hers. Jokingly I blurted out "Who are we looking for? Captain Chaos?" and the new Ms. Johnson replied 'Yes'. Captain Chaos is a legend in the Shadowrun universe. A unbelievable hacker (possibly better than FastJack). He died during Crash 2.0 and is buried yet someone has been going onto Jackpoint and other boards as him. He's also a personal hero to people of the hacking persuasion including 8-Bit.

Then another realization happened. We were getting a job from NetCat. Another hacker of renown (and fellow technomancer). So with these two parts of the equation now out in the open I definitely wanted to take this detective work. Hell I told NetCat (via private message) to keep the fee. If Captain Chaos was alive I get to meet a personal hero. If someone is pretending to be him though.....then I'm going to dumpshock that frakking jackhole into being permanently brain dead. NetCat sent us the last known location of the most recent transmission and a dead drop for us to keep her posted through.

We rented some vehicles (a van and 2 motorcycles....damn elves and their need to look fashionable) and off we went on the trek. The town we needed to hit was a suburb of Neo-Tokyo so it was easy to get there and after some net scans we determined a strange RV was parked outside of a warehouse for a while before going on its way. Good as any place to start.

When we got there the place was now inhabited by some gangers that belonged to a very notorious gang. Psycho thrill kill addicts is a good way to describe them. So we came up with a plan to take them on, incapacitate them, question one, trash their rides so they can't follow and go about our way. That was the plan until Aki decided to use some kind of magical sensing on one of the bikes and saw a vision of all kinds of atrocities the gangers have done....especially to elves.

Now on the count of 3, Grey lobbed a stun-ball and knocked out 4 of the 6 gangers and then put down the other 2 on his next turn. They were searched, bound up, and then while Aki & Sanzo still had their full bike helmets on they woke one up and the 'questioning' began. I was outside with Jumpstart watching his Doberman drone tear the bikes apart.

Aki finds out that they chased off the RV with a bunch of kids in it two days back and they were heading to the next town. Dammit! It was poseurs after all! Dumpshock ahoy in their futures. As Aki was leaving the building she tells Sanzo what she saw in her vision and lets him know to do what he has to. Sanzo puts down all the gangers in a fit of cold rage (he's a Japanese elf) then leaves. Off to the next town where we find out that they already drove through but were heading 'that-a-way'. Following a few more clues we tracked the RV to a fleabag motel. We rented some rooms to make it look like we were passing through then set up surveillance. I hacked into the security cameras and focused on seeing who was coming & going out of the van. Saving the pics I sent them to NetCat via the dead drop. And then while in the motel's network I noticed another hacker within. And he didn't notice me.

So I snuck up on him and asked "What are you doing?" and scared the crap out of him. I also checked him out and noticed he also was a child of the Resonance like myself. And the conversation with this kid began. I plainly laid out what was going on. I'm looking for Captain Chaos. Good friends of his hired myself and my associates to track them down and see if its the real deal or they are pretending. And if its pretend those same people are coming to stomp them out. It seemed to rattle the kid a bit but I was giving him time to explain before I reacted. Then he asked "So...you want to meet him?". Wait....HIM? Captain Chaos? Who is dead?!?!?? I think I said Yes faster than Matt was expecting and so off I followed this kid back to the node he came from to find a total of 7 others just like me and a graphical overlay waiting to be accessed. That changed the scene into a idyllic meditation garden and at its center, surrounded by the 7, was him.

Captain Chaos is alive.....only on the Matrix though. When talking to him he kinda explained that he got left behind from his body somehow and his students are children he helped liberate from MCT corps 'experiments' with Technomancers. Some real deranged things. And he tells me to let his friends know its about time he makes himself known and he'll be contacting them shortly.

I give him my contact info & tell the Captain to get in contact with me if he needs my help. Anytime. Then he sighs and says that MCT is sending a clean-up crew to apprehend them now. They are about 20 minutes away and they need to escape. I say we'll do it and to get going. The Captain asks if I want to go with them but I decline for now as my comrades may need me for this. And before I go I ask if I should call him Captain or (because we're in Japan) Sensei? Chaos bursts out laughing and tells me he likes me and will be in touch. I say goodbye to my 7 resonence brothers and jack out of the matrix.

Now I prep the team for an assault. I give them the skinny via private messaging and start to formulate an ambush to stop this squad from going further. I say that these corp assassins just need to be put down. No captives. No one lives. We're stopping them and leaving. And with that I jack back into the matrix and loop the security camera feeds so this fight wont be recoreded and then go onto overwatch looking for matrix signals to access and disable/hack.

Aki & Sanzo take up hiding spots outside, Jumpstart stays in his room (as do I) and has some drones to airial surveillence. Grey gets ready to stun people. And then a hitch in the play happens. Two summoned fire spirits show up first. Aki sees them on the magical plane with her special sensing sight and enters the fray with her sword. She battles both spirits while two vehicles pull into range. Grey releases a stun ball at them and knocks out both drivers causing the cars to crash. The lead car all the passangers got knocked out & Sanzo advanced and triple tapped each in the skull. When going to the second car the passangers in the back opend up with assault rifles. Sanzo fought back guns blazing, Jumpstart coded his drones to group fire and started spraying the car with lead. After a few more seconds the second car was a smoking wreck, Sanzo was hurt pretty damn bad, and Aki was finishing off the last of the spirits with Grey's help.

I was in my room. Unable to do anything as I didn't get time to before the death and carnage ended. We then disabled their comlinks, took anything we could that we could sell, yelled at the motel owner that he saw nothing (when he stepped outside after the firefight and freaked out). I think he browned his shorts after Sanzo bellowed at him while waving his gun in his direction.

And we raced back to Tokyo. Told Mr. J what went down and that we need to leave now....for safety's sake. He agreed and we were winging it back to Seattle the next morning. I also send NetCat a  message saying it IS HIM! And we need to meet cause I got a message for them. (I also found out earlier in the game that the 'smiley icon' who harrasses me online was NetCat's husband/father of her uber child Slamm-O!...and he's a total a-hole that just harasses people for shits and grins)

And thats where we ended. I can't wait to see how this wraps up as Matt needs to prep this meeting and conversation with 8-Bit and some well know JackPoint all-stars. I also want to see where this will go in the future. And now I want to see what he has in store for the other PC's as it was apparent that while Sanzo's story is deeply connected with Japan.....this was for 8-Bit. Arcades, Otakus, Captain Chaos the deus ex machina.

I also want to say this was needed too. I had a major family emergency involving my grandfather on friday. He's in the ICU at a very good hospital near where he lives and there wasn't a whole lot I could do for him while he was inabated and recooperating. I did ask my folks if they wanted me there on saturday and they said no (cause we would be sitting around doing nothing). So I was on stand-by if they needed me for anything. And this was a good stress reliever for me. On a brighter note, as of this writing he is awake and talking but he's got a long way to go before he's out of the woods. Its a day by day thing. If I vanish for awhile you'll at least know why.

Adventure Path-ing on the weekends.

In addition to the Shadowrun game I play in once a month, I run two separate monthly games with two very different groups. Both games use the Pathfinder RPG rules (boo all you want grognards) and both games I'm using the Adventure Paths just because its simpler and faster than me trying to write up a whole world from scratch again like I did when I ran my 2nd Ed D&D game back in the mid-90's.

Group 1 is currently deep into book 4 or 6 in the Rise of the Runelords AP. I have 6 players and its going along swimmingly from what I can tell and people are having fun.

Group 2 is at the last act of book 2 of 6 of The Carrion Crown AP. There are 3 players and myself running the NPC/PC cleric. Group 2 meets on sunday and this past sunday was alot of fun (more on that in another post).

As games happen I'll start blathering on a bit about the sessions and whatnot mostly just to share the stupidity that I enjoy with the rest of the interweb. I'll post up the adventuring party rosters and give an overview of what they did from the DM's perspective. In the event that a TPK occurred you'll probably won't hear from me again as one of the players may try to kill me for letting their beloved PC bite the big one. Of course I let the dice fall where they may and *never* fudge rolls.......

Stop laughing.

So prepare yourselves. I'm going even further full-on geek when I decide to update this blog again and its not 1235am and I have to get some sleep before work in the morning.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Saturday the wife and I headed out to our friends (Matt & Brian) place to play in our 1 per month Shadowrun game. For those not familiar with Shadowrun its a tabletop RPG set in a future version of earth full of sci-fi technology, magic, monsters and megacorporations who damn near control everything. And the players get to play Shadowrunners.....essentially hired criminals. Each with their own special abilities.

Here's the quick rundown of the runners on our team.

Jess - Aki (female elf physical adept/ ronin samurai)

Brian - Grey (human shaman/party band aid (healer))

Evil Brian - Sanzo (male elf ranged adept/gun slinger)

Jack - Jumpstart (orc rigger/wheel man)

Thya - Dot (ogre brawler/fashion diva)

Me - 8-Bit (human technomancer/squatter with no I.D. in the system)

Matt - GM (guy behind the screen making our lives difficult/alpha Shadowrun weenie)

This was the second part of a job we were doing for a client. Basically we were going to 'borrow' an executive for a major mega-corp for a few days so he would miss a critical shareholders vote. Well much like the last session (pre-A.E. bloggery) it was just Aki, Sanzo, Grey & 8-Bit (Jack & Thya couldn't make it so Matt just kinda had them do things on the side while we planned). Oh and we planned. We planned to get into the hotel, hijack the mark & then hold him in the same mega-lux hotel he was staying at....just on floor up and on the other side of the building.

8-bit cracked the hotel's admin functionality and had free reign access to security etc. I then (after a few tests to see if I could crack this system) checked Aki & Sanzo into the hotel as a married couple on vacation. Grey and 8-bit went in as maintenance workers. Once the room was acquired we planned the heist. And folks this went down smooth...for the folk taking the mark. 8-bit almost got caught mucking with the security cameras but dumped a rival user out of the net so I could finish.

So when the mark showed up at night the rest of the crew was ready (with Jumpstart & Dot as the getaway van/distraction). Grey used magic to stun all the bodyguards and the mark. Aki & Sanzo pulled him out of the limo and threw him into the van. Then I paused the video feed (after I dumped the other user who saw I was on but didn't expect me to full on attack him & kicking him out of VR....unconscious). They pulled the mark out of his clothes (to make sure he didn't have any tracers on him), placed him in a laundry cart, Aki & Sanzo got back into formal attire and strolled into the building while Grey pushed the laundry cart into an elevator I had waiting. I kept the cameras off of him until he got into the room then resumed "normal" viewing. With the vid recording again (and after I altered the timestamp) Jumpstart and Dot raced off and I called the cops (we have to make it look like a heist after all). And even after the hiccup of we had to keep him there for 2 more days than needed, the prying from security, intrusions from housekeeping, and one nasty wasp spirit (which was our only fatality....but we had no choice...) we pulled it off. It was Ocean's 11 slick. Cops had no friggin' clue we had the target hidden at the crime scene the whole damn time. It was ballsy move but paid off big. This is the 'short short' version of the night but you got a good idea of the crap we pulled off. And I'm so very proud of the party for being able to pull this off.

And I do have to thank Matt for letting us put this rope around our PC's necks and seeing if we can make it go smoothly.....even though he had a wasp spirit show up....and extended the job by 2 days cause we were making the game really REALLY short by how well prepared we were.

What a total pecker head.

But it was a blast and I can't wait to hear what new job is in store for this crew.