Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Session Report – Under the Mountain – Session 5

[This session happened January 16th, 2017.  The Other GM was running.]

[Most of this play session was flashback to Tuesday and the three mages casting the ward at the safe house and nearly killing themselves by overdoing it.  That action is covered in the notes for Sessions 2 and 3.  We missed the sentence in the Ritual Magic section where you can spend reagents to soak the drain.  The critical sentence is in the casting paragraph, NOT the resisting drain paragraph where we were looking for it, which is damn poor organization of your rules.  There should have been at least a cross-reference to tell us to look for the rule.  This is one of the standing issues I have with the 5th edition Shadowrun rules – they edited for brevity and not clarity.]



PCs
Void – female night elf physical adept B&E specialist, a shadow that blends in easily
Moondance – male street samurai with an Ares fetish and a sniper specialization [new character]
Sin – male human rigger, knows exactly the wrong thing to say and says it
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm
Wasabi – young male human mage with more than a touch of ADHD [new character]
Ezekiel Tee – male human mage of the Zoroastrian tradition

NPC’d
Killroy – male human street samurai, specializes in hand-to-hand combat (and apparently machineguns)
The Fin – female human con artist and gambler from India, by way of Russia, posh and elegant
Bookie – male elf alcoholic hacker, favors whiskey with a whiskey chaser


Saturday, May 30, 2076
Afternoon
Baelthor and Ezekiel Tee, recovered from the overcasting back on Tuesday, ritually casted a [Force 7] Ward circle in the safe house.  The circle was large enough to hold the entire team, the target, and some defensive barricades in case the worst happened and Aztechnology found and attacked the safe house.  Once we grabbed the target, got back to the safe house, and eased the target in the warded mage bag inside this ward, the target would be behind two major wards [both Force 7], making her virtually unfindable magically.  Add a [Strength 7] jammer to block any homing signals and it should be nigh impossible for Aztechnology to find her.

As long as they don’t have a way to bypass “virtually unfindable” or “nigh impossible”, hence the defensive barricades.  [We just weren't certain what the GM was going to throw at us.]

The rest of the team, while reviewing the plan ONE LAST TIME, decide to get some supplemental equipment: four dirt boards, to speed up movement through the air vents, and a hardware toolkit for Void.  [I don’t remember why she wanted the toolkit and my notes don’t indicate the reason.]

Evening
Wasabi finished summoning the last of his three helper spirits for the run.  The plan didn’t have a specific need for them, but up against heavy magic foes it’s better to be prepared than wanting.

Sunday, June 1, 2076
Wasabi and Baelthor summoned up some watcher spirits for the safe house and then went to sleep, being exhausted.  [Both PCs were also running short on Edge and wanted to get back a point before the run started.]

With the planning done and the equipment secured, the team had to wait for “Go” time.  This gave the team [Prometheus, mostly] time to realize the audacity of what they had planned, the level of danger they were accepting, how long they were going to have to be targets before they could turn over the target, and how small the cut from the pay was going to be for team member.  The team decided [again, mostly Prometheus, channeling Sam from the movie RONIN] the numbers didn’t add up and sent Moondance back to Mr. Johnson for a raise in pay.  The team wanted Mr. Johnson’s organization to accept delivery as soon as we had the target (around 3:00 AM Monday morning) or we got paid double for adding the all-day babysitting gig and the fat bull’s eyes on our foreheads.  We also wanted 25% up front before we started the run.  Otherwise, we would walk away and Mr. Johnson could hire someone not as good as us at the last minute for a run that was highest stakes dangerous.

Then we waited.

Eventually Moondance called back, after meeting with Mr. Johnson.  Mr. Johnson insisted the delivery could not happen before 8:00 PM Monday evening, at the agreed upon location.  Mr. Johnson also would not pay double for the job, but he would increase the pay by another 150,000¥ with 35% paid by sundown.  He also stated that if the job was not successfully completed, the balance would be posted as a bounty on each of us.  We found his terms acceptable and reasonable.

Sundown
210,000¥ was deposited in the Pleiades Group’s Pay Receivables account.  The run was “Go”.

Monday, June 2, 2076, 2:00 AM
The team arrived at their respective trigger points for the run, ready to start the run.

End of Session

[This is the first and only time the PCs have ever re-negotiated the fee mid-run.  The players felt justified due to the immense danger we were going to face while sitting on the target for 18 hours.  We would have accepted lots more money or immediate delivery.  We were kind of hoping they’d cheap out and go for immediate delivery of the hot potato, but that’s not how things played out.]

[Philosophically, Shadowrunners need to know when a job is too dangerous and be willing to bail on the job.  Players can get tunnel vision and locked in on the pay at the end, but if your character doesn’t survive to get paid, what good is the promise of a payday?  This run wasn’t that situation, but you could see it from where we were standing.  If there was no inside man (Hercules Mulligan!) or we didn’t have access to enough mages, we would have needed to bail on this one.]

Session 1
Sessions 2 and 3
Session 4

Session 6
Session 7 [Not Yet Written]


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