[This session happened on December 29, 2014. Murdock’s player missed the session but told us to put his character to use as necessary. We had his character sheet, so that worked.]
Player Characters
The Fin – female human con artist and gambler from India, by way of Russia (low level physical adept), posh and elegant
Bookie – male elf alcoholic hacker, favors whiskey with a whiskey chaser
Killroy – male human street samurai, specializes in hand-to-hand combat
Void – female human physical adept B&E specialist, a shadow that blends in easily
Sin – male human rigger, knows exactly the wrong thing to say and says it
NPC’d Characters
Murdock – male elf kilt-wearing street mage, at home with the hobos
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm
Thursday, November 14, 2075
Prometheus spent this day in the Redmond Barrens practicing with his brand new grapple gun. He located two points representative of the shot he was going to make in order to practice. After a day of doing so, he felt confident he would be able to make the shot the next morning.
Sin contacted Kaylee, a mechanic he works with, to see if she could find him a vehicle for the run. She asked for the specifics and when he needed it and then told him she’d get back with him. While waiting, Sin spent the morning doing a few time trials to get a feel for the traffic he would be driving through to make the delivery. He was confident that there would be enough time to make the delivery time with time to spare. He also scouted out a few places to park the getaway vehicle that would not draw attention.
Kaylee called Sin back and said she could not get a vehicle for purchase in time. She then asked how long he’ll need the vehicle. Sin told her he just needed it for a couple of hours. She indicated she might be able to work with that and needed to make a few more calls.
At Noon, Kaylee called with good news and bad news. Sin asked for the bad news first and Kaylee said the vehicle is Cherry Red and covered in easily identifiable marketing images. The good news is that she can get it spray-painted matte black in time and she can guarantee it won’t be reported stolen any earlier than 1:00 PM on Friday. She also recommended avoiding pulling up next to any police vehicles as the paint might not be completely dry yet. Sin said he could accept that and they made arrangements for the vehicle to be available for him to jump into at 7:00 AM on Friday. Sin contacted The Fin and let her know the vehicle was arranged.
Friday, November 15, 2075
4:30 AM
Void, Murdock, and Killroy arrived at the back door to the cathedral across the street from the high school a little early, but did not find Prometheus there. They were wearing the agreed-on jumpsuits with their equipment in backpacks. They waited a bit and at exactly 4:30, Prometheus opened the door from the inside, pushing a wheeled trash barrel. He was dressed as custodial staff, wearing a similar jumpsuit to the others and had an ID badge that opened the door. Prometheus emptied the trash from the barrel into the dumpster and then had the others follow him back into the cathedral. Inside, he left the barrel by the door and led the others to a set of stairs that went all the way up to the top of one of the bell towers. Meanwhile, Bookie hacked into the school’s computer system and quietly placed enough marks to control it. He then jacked out to avoid gaining too much attention.
5:00 AM
Prometheus fired the grapple gun, anchoring the stealth line onto the roof of the high school across the street. Void, Murdock, and Killroy ziplined down to the roof of the school. There they applied the catalyst stick to the line, starting it dissolving. They then set up a tarp as a low tent adjacent to the roof access hatch. Murdock magically disguised the tarp as part of the roof and the three of them crawled underneath it to wait. Bookie was online and kept them off camera. Prometheus, after verifying the stealth line had completely dissolved, left the cathedral and moved to a different vantage point on the opposite side of the high school.
6:00 AM
O’Dea High School faculty started arriving for work.
6:45 AM
O’Dea High School students started arriving for classes.
7:00 AM
Kaylee contacted Sin and gave him the access codes and identification for the painted GMC Bulldog. Sin jacked in and then jumped into the painted Bulldog. After a quick systems check, he drove it to a waiting point he had selected the previous day. Once the painted Bulldog was in position, he jumped over to his Fly-Spy drones and moved them into positions around the school for additional surveillance. Sin’s body (along with Bookie’s) was in Sin’s personal Bulldog near the drop-off point, with The Fin keeping them safe and watching the monitors.
8:45 AM
Sin moved the painted Bulldog from the waiting point to a location one block away from the school. The vehicle was more exposed here, but for the relatively short time it would be here, he felt it should be OK.
8:50 AM
Bookie jacked back in and entered the school’s computer system.
8:55 AM
Murdock made Void, Killroy, and himself invisible. Void and Killroy dis-assembled the tarp-tent and packed it away, allowing Murdock to drop that spell. Maintaining the three invisibility spells would be effort enough for this run. At the same time, Bookie started a tape loop for the security camera covering the access hatch. Shortly after the loop was in place someone else removed it! Bookie spotted another person also running on silent mode. Bookie unlocked the access hatch maglock and then went after the other decker. Void, Murdock, and Killroy knew something was happening as they heard the maglock unlock early, but received no confirmation that the library was clear. Bookie tussled with the other decker, hacked that person’s deck, and shut down the deck, forcing dump shock on that person. He then checked the library cameras and gave Void, Murdock, and Killroy the all clear.
9:00 AM
Killroy opened the roof access hatch on schedule and a bell immediately rang! Oh – it was the class bell, not an alarm. [Just the GM being evil here – nearly gave the players heart attacks.] Void, Murdock, and Killroy quietly entered the hatch and climbed down the access ladder. They were now in the 4th floor library of the school. The only other person in the library was the librarian [no, not The Librarian], so they slowly made their way over to the elevator. They could hear the noise of students moving between classes in the stairwells
9:01 AM
After moving the empty elevator to the 4th floor and setting it to wait there for Void, Murdock, and Killroy, Bookie decided to check his Overwatch Score. It was 31! He rebooted his deck to clear it.
9:03 AM
Bookie got back online just as Void, Murdock, and Killroy were ready for the elevator. Bookie opened it for them and sent it down to the third floor. While this happened Bookie was suddenly tagged in the Matrix – the other decker had returned! After a tense sub hunt for each other, Bookie gained control of the other decker’s deck and shut down the other deck again. Dump-shock Mark 2!
9:04 AM
While Bookie was busy in the matrix, the (very slow) elevator finally arrived on the 3rd floor. Two students were waiting to get in, trapping Void, Murdock, and Killroy in the elevator. Killroy thought quickly, slid to the side, and tripped the first kid to enter the elevator. The kid’s friend immediately broke into laughter. While the two students argued, Void, Murdock, and Killroy slipped out of the elevator.
9:05 AM
The runners arrived at the door to Room 305 just as the teacher was pulling it closed. Void and Killroy, operating on the same impulse, both rolled a Neuro-Stun IX grenade into the room. Due to the noise of the students inside, no one noticed the quiet sounds of the grenades dispersing the Neuro-Stun. Void pulled the door closed and held it closed for one minute and 15 seconds. During this time, Void, Murdock, and Killroy heard the sounds of the students succumbing to the gas and slumping to the floor asleep.
9:06 AM
Void, Murdock, and Killroy entered Room 305. They found that the gas had indeed dispersed and they were able to quickly find their target and bag him. At the same time, Sin put the painted Bulldog into motion, heading to the rendezvous point at the back door.
9:08 AM
Three things happen: Sin put the painted Bulldog into position at the back door of the high school, right next to the elevator lobby; Void, Murdock, and Killroy finished bagging the target into the extraction bag and were ready to leave; and the school’s computer system suddenly went off line, dumping Bookie.
9:09 AM
School alarm system went off, signally intruders in the school. Void, Murdock, and Killroy were in the elevator, luckily just exiting at the ground floor.
9:10 AM
Void, Murdock, and Killroy loaded the target into the back of the waiting painted Bulldog and then piled in themselves. Killroy heard the distinctive whine of a rapidly approaching AV and told the others. Murdock dropped the three invisibility spells and used physical mask to make the GMC Bulldog look like a SMART car. Sin drove away along the backside of the school, which blocked line-of-sight with the AV long enough for the team to escape the area. Prometheus observed the AV land and a HRT team exit. They were wearing Gentry Astronetics patches on their shoulders. Prometheus decided to leave before they spotted him.
9:30 AM
The team arrived at in Joseph Foster Memorial Park for the drop off. Sin backed the painted Bulldog next to the waiting Swift Wind Deliveries truck in the parking lot and the exchange was made. Killroy heard a woman’s voice inside the truck asking what was wrong with her son, but then the door to that truck was closed and it drove off. Sin drove the team to his Bulldog, where they transferred vehicles. Sin then drove the painted Bulldog to the agreed upon abandonment location and left it there.
10:00 AM
Payment for the job was deposited into Void’s account. She dispersed 9000¥ to each member of the team.
End of Session
The Pickup - Session 1
The Pickup - Session 2
Friday, January 16, 2015
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Shadowrun Session Report – The Pickup – Session 02
[This session happened on December 22, 2014. Two of the players missed the session due to work (they work retail and it was the week before Christmas, so they were crazy busy) but we decided to play anyways as it was a planning session for the run and the missing players were not heavily involved in the planning.
Bookie’s player and I continued learning how the matrix part of the rules worked. As we played, we discovered what areas we still needed to learn better and read up on. I winged a few areas and decided I needed to diagram out how things work as the rules are not very search friendly on the spur of the moment. It is clear that they were written to conserve space, which can cause issues when looking for a particular sentence or phrase in a dense paragraph.]
Player Characters
The Fin – female human con artist and gambler from India, by way of Russia (low level physical adept), posh and elegant
Void – female human physical adept B&E specialist, a shadow that blends in easily
Murdock – male elf kilt-wearing street mage, at home with the hobos
Bookie – male elf alcoholic hacker, favors whiskey with a whiskey chaser
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm
NPC’d Player Characters
Sin – male human rigger, knows exactly the wrong thing to say and says it
Killroy – male human street samurai, specializes in hand-to-hand combat
[Still] Wednesday, November 13, 2075 – 4:00 pm in Ebey’s Bar in Exile
Deciding that more information was needed before planning the run, several things were done at the same time. Bookie started a net search for information on the target (Perry Fuller) and the target’s parents. Sin sent some Fly-Spies to the high school to get closer looks at parts of the school’s security, particularly the windows and skylights, at Void’s request.
Bookie learned that the target’s parents both work for Gentry Astronetics, a leading research firm in orbital sciences, but his parents divorced several years ago. Perry’s father died four days ago in an accident and now Perry was living with his mother. Insider business-news sources speculated that Zenith AstroTech (ZAT), a Gentry Astronetics competitor, might be planning a hostile takeover of, or be employee poaching from, Gentry Astronetics. This news calmed some of the team's nerves about all the corporate bodyguards with the parents visiting the school and seemed to explain what the run was about – The Fin decided that Perry was being grabbed to put pressure on his mother to leave Gentry and go to ZAT.
Sin’s Fly-Spies allowed Void to get close views of the school’s windows and skylights, allowing her to evaluate the school’s physical security. The skylights were bullet-proof materials and both the skylights and the roof-access hatch had R4 maglocks. The classroom windows (including those on Room 305) were also bullet-proof, but had manual locks instead of maglocks.
Feeling they had enough data, Void and The Fin started planning the actual run. After discussing all the possible ways to enter and exit the school, they decided a roof entry was best. With the low level of security on the roof, they decided a team could use a zipline to get to the roof from a neighboring building. Asking Prometheus what he had seen while investigating sniper positions in the area, Prometheus presented three different access points and what issues each came with. Taking that data into account, Void and The Fin selected the bell tower from the adjacent cathedral as the best option. They thought to ask Prometheus if he could use a grapple gun and Prometheus said he could.
[Actually, he couldn't as he didn't have the necessary skill, so he lied about it, thinking, “How hard could it be?” Once Killroy secured a grapple gun through a contact, Prometheus took the next day (Thursday) to find a location in the Redmond Barrens with similar relative altitudes and practiced with the grapple gun until he had basic proficiency (spent the necessary Karma and time to purchase the skill).]
Void and The Fin next discussed various ways to get to, grab, and move the target. They decided that a Neuro-Stun grenade to knockout the classroom would be the simplest way to make grabbing the target easy. That said, they needed to know if there were cameras in the classroom, so they sent Bookie back into the school’s computer system.
Getting back in was easy for Bookie and it took very little time to locate the files he was looking for. He grabbed the school security system file, the student medical records file, and the faculty personnel files. Unfortunately, he failed to disable the data bomb on the security system file and it went off. Working through the feedback, Bookie was just able to squelch the alarm triggered by the data bomb. Deciding to cover his tracks as best he could, Bookie triggered a system reboot of the school’s computer system. Doing so set off another alarm, but Bookie caught that alarm signal as well and the whole event ended up looking like an unscheduled, but normal, system reboot. [Bookie spent an Edge on the roll to squelch each alarm, but felt they were points well spent.]
With the layout of the school’s entire security system now available, Void studied the schematics and noticed something unusual: there were hidden layers in the file. Triggering them to display, she found there were hidden cameras in all of the classrooms, each centered over the teacher’s desk.
With this new data, Void identified all of the cameras that Bookie would need to loop to keep the intrusion team off camera. She and The Fin also decided that Murdock would need to go along to make the infiltration group invisible. Void would need to lead the infiltration team to deal with any security issues that might crop up and Killroy would need to go as he was the only one strong enough to lug around an unconscious body, even with an extraction bag. [Sort of a body-bag with air holes and various straps for easy carrying.]
The Fin had Killroy track down a grapple gun with stealth line and a catalyst stick through his contacts. While Killroy was doing that, The Fin placed a call to Svetlana, a fixer contact of hers who specialized in wetwork. The Fin asked Svetlana for some Nero-Stun IX grenades. [Neuro-Stun IX disperses one minute after deployment but is very difficult to get, whereas Neuro-Stun VII is fairly easy to get but persists for 10 minutes.] Both Killroy and The Fin were able to find what they were looking for and arrange delivery by dawn on Thursday.
Once the necessary gear was ordered, the plan was formalized. The team spent another couple hours going over it and looking for gaps. Finding none, they went home to get sleep. Thursday would be for final preparations.
End of Session
[At the end of the session I had the players tell me the plan one last time, from start to finish, and wrote it down as they told me. This way I knew what they were expecting to do in the next session. Also, this put us all on the same page so no one would be blind-sided by anything and we would be able to remember what the plan was the following week. Several of the players also wrote it down so they wouldn’t forget and could tell it correctly to the players who missed this session. I planned when the complicating incidents would happen when I originally wrote up this run, so now I had the PC plan to match up to my own timeline and I wouldn’t miss any events as I ran.]
The Pickup:
Session 01
Session 03
Bookie’s player and I continued learning how the matrix part of the rules worked. As we played, we discovered what areas we still needed to learn better and read up on. I winged a few areas and decided I needed to diagram out how things work as the rules are not very search friendly on the spur of the moment. It is clear that they were written to conserve space, which can cause issues when looking for a particular sentence or phrase in a dense paragraph.]
Player Characters
The Fin – female human con artist and gambler from India, by way of Russia (low level physical adept), posh and elegant
Void – female human physical adept B&E specialist, a shadow that blends in easily
Murdock – male elf kilt-wearing street mage, at home with the hobos
Bookie – male elf alcoholic hacker, favors whiskey with a whiskey chaser
Prometheus – male human street samurai, handy with any firearm
NPC’d Player Characters
Sin – male human rigger, knows exactly the wrong thing to say and says it
Killroy – male human street samurai, specializes in hand-to-hand combat
[Still] Wednesday, November 13, 2075 – 4:00 pm in Ebey’s Bar in Exile
Deciding that more information was needed before planning the run, several things were done at the same time. Bookie started a net search for information on the target (Perry Fuller) and the target’s parents. Sin sent some Fly-Spies to the high school to get closer looks at parts of the school’s security, particularly the windows and skylights, at Void’s request.
Bookie learned that the target’s parents both work for Gentry Astronetics, a leading research firm in orbital sciences, but his parents divorced several years ago. Perry’s father died four days ago in an accident and now Perry was living with his mother. Insider business-news sources speculated that Zenith AstroTech (ZAT), a Gentry Astronetics competitor, might be planning a hostile takeover of, or be employee poaching from, Gentry Astronetics. This news calmed some of the team's nerves about all the corporate bodyguards with the parents visiting the school and seemed to explain what the run was about – The Fin decided that Perry was being grabbed to put pressure on his mother to leave Gentry and go to ZAT.
Sin’s Fly-Spies allowed Void to get close views of the school’s windows and skylights, allowing her to evaluate the school’s physical security. The skylights were bullet-proof materials and both the skylights and the roof-access hatch had R4 maglocks. The classroom windows (including those on Room 305) were also bullet-proof, but had manual locks instead of maglocks.
Feeling they had enough data, Void and The Fin started planning the actual run. After discussing all the possible ways to enter and exit the school, they decided a roof entry was best. With the low level of security on the roof, they decided a team could use a zipline to get to the roof from a neighboring building. Asking Prometheus what he had seen while investigating sniper positions in the area, Prometheus presented three different access points and what issues each came with. Taking that data into account, Void and The Fin selected the bell tower from the adjacent cathedral as the best option. They thought to ask Prometheus if he could use a grapple gun and Prometheus said he could.
[Actually, he couldn't as he didn't have the necessary skill, so he lied about it, thinking, “How hard could it be?” Once Killroy secured a grapple gun through a contact, Prometheus took the next day (Thursday) to find a location in the Redmond Barrens with similar relative altitudes and practiced with the grapple gun until he had basic proficiency (spent the necessary Karma and time to purchase the skill).]
Void and The Fin next discussed various ways to get to, grab, and move the target. They decided that a Neuro-Stun grenade to knockout the classroom would be the simplest way to make grabbing the target easy. That said, they needed to know if there were cameras in the classroom, so they sent Bookie back into the school’s computer system.
Getting back in was easy for Bookie and it took very little time to locate the files he was looking for. He grabbed the school security system file, the student medical records file, and the faculty personnel files. Unfortunately, he failed to disable the data bomb on the security system file and it went off. Working through the feedback, Bookie was just able to squelch the alarm triggered by the data bomb. Deciding to cover his tracks as best he could, Bookie triggered a system reboot of the school’s computer system. Doing so set off another alarm, but Bookie caught that alarm signal as well and the whole event ended up looking like an unscheduled, but normal, system reboot. [Bookie spent an Edge on the roll to squelch each alarm, but felt they were points well spent.]
With the layout of the school’s entire security system now available, Void studied the schematics and noticed something unusual: there were hidden layers in the file. Triggering them to display, she found there were hidden cameras in all of the classrooms, each centered over the teacher’s desk.
With this new data, Void identified all of the cameras that Bookie would need to loop to keep the intrusion team off camera. She and The Fin also decided that Murdock would need to go along to make the infiltration group invisible. Void would need to lead the infiltration team to deal with any security issues that might crop up and Killroy would need to go as he was the only one strong enough to lug around an unconscious body, even with an extraction bag. [Sort of a body-bag with air holes and various straps for easy carrying.]
The Fin had Killroy track down a grapple gun with stealth line and a catalyst stick through his contacts. While Killroy was doing that, The Fin placed a call to Svetlana, a fixer contact of hers who specialized in wetwork. The Fin asked Svetlana for some Nero-Stun IX grenades. [Neuro-Stun IX disperses one minute after deployment but is very difficult to get, whereas Neuro-Stun VII is fairly easy to get but persists for 10 minutes.] Both Killroy and The Fin were able to find what they were looking for and arrange delivery by dawn on Thursday.
Once the necessary gear was ordered, the plan was formalized. The team spent another couple hours going over it and looking for gaps. Finding none, they went home to get sleep. Thursday would be for final preparations.
End of Session
[At the end of the session I had the players tell me the plan one last time, from start to finish, and wrote it down as they told me. This way I knew what they were expecting to do in the next session. Also, this put us all on the same page so no one would be blind-sided by anything and we would be able to remember what the plan was the following week. Several of the players also wrote it down so they wouldn’t forget and could tell it correctly to the players who missed this session. I planned when the complicating incidents would happen when I originally wrote up this run, so now I had the PC plan to match up to my own timeline and I wouldn’t miss any events as I ran.]
The Pickup:
Session 01
Session 03
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