Monday 18 March 2013

Shadowrun: Off The Rails - 07/03/2013




Okay, remember that last example of the plot getting out of hand due to having no plan? Well here’s an actual example of the plot going off the rails because we managed to somehow not follow what the GM had planned.

Yeah this is actually a first.

And just how did we accomplish this feat? Being sensible to a certain degree.

Following directly on from the last time, the shadowrunners headed off in Amoral’s van (now an APC disguised as a van via holographic emitters due to a sudden sheet change approved by the GM) to deal with the Halloweeners. On the one side: A group of freelance corporate espionage agents with enough firepower to take on police units if need be. On the other: A cell of a not overly powerful gang whose assassination squad had been armed with pistols and had barely been able to put up a fight.

Going from our last encounter the GM was expecting us to go in guns blazing, either ramming down the door and coming in firing or reacting that one scene from Looper. Killbo’s paranoia had other ideas. Thinking of our situation and considering the possible number of people inside, he eventually reconsidered his position on the whole “run in and kill everyone” thing and their time-limit. With nowhere near enough research put into actually contacting some of the scientists he spent a few minutes speaking with Amoral and Leona formulating a plan.
Convincing Amoral to do a few minutes research into how to contact one scientist they needed to speak to via an MMO and Leona to wait in reserve for a few minutes, they began talking of a more stealthy approach. Mostly with Killbo sneaking in and scouting out the place before they did anything else.

Grappling his way onto the roof (Leona sneakily commenting upon how he’d forgotten to have her turn him invisible first) Killbo began sneaking about before realising there was no way he could see through the iron roof tiling. Contacting Amoral before he even started his research, the two began to work together with the technomancer using his hovering drone to scan the interior. You know, the one he’d used  last time to spray the bar with bullets and then sent skywards.

Well it didn’t take long and the scans eventually picked up people moving about, mostly milling in groups with only a handful patrolling the area along with one man lurking outside the warehouse’s side entrance. A good number, anywhere between a dozen to twenty people and one object which looked unusually like a safe.
Cue Killbo coming up with a really bad plan.

Killbo was going to remove large sections of the roof with plastic explosives. One large hole to distract the majority of the Halloweeners and a smaller one directly atop of the room where the safe was being stored. Using the twenty meters of “rope” his grappling gun had been loaded with, they were going to use the drone to lift the safe out of the building with Amoral directly controlling it. To give it extra power and lift to help move the safe out of the building, Leona’s fire spirit was going to possess it. With her climbing up onto the roof and then providing covering fire as Killbo tied the safe onto the drone.

The one problem was all of this was more or less being based upon the assumption that Killbo was assuming that what was in the safe was going to explain who had been hiring these people to kill them. A few minutes later the GM revealed it wasn’t. Unfortunately we didn’t know that until this plan was well underway.

Well the explosives went off, blowing holes several meters wide into the armoured rooftop and setting fires. Cue total anarchy, with the gangers scrambling to figure out what on earth was going on and why a lot of their stuff was on fire. In his office the Halloweeners' lieutenant looked up in time to see everything over his head go missing before he was promptly shot through the head by Killbo before he dropped into the room. The GM’s entire plan had hinged upon us taking him alive and interrogating him. Oops.

As Killbo smashed the remains of a desk aside and began tying the rope to the safe, the drone lit up like a fiery winged hawk and Amoral decided he was going to get in on the action. Having his van roll up to the side entrance, the APC’s MINIGUN proceeded to open up and shredded the first few people preparing to run outside. A few lucky ones managed to take cover as Amoral the destroyer of masonry proceeded to lay down suppressive fire and demolish a corner of the warehouse.

As he finished up with the safe, Killbo was interrupted by gangers rushing to his location. Very incompetent individuals, one of who tripped up and fell face first onto the floor as he rushed to the office. The other two meanwhile, were quickly dispensed by what was quickly becoming Killbo’s favourite tactic: “Call shot: Ares Predator to the face!” Standing atop the safe as it was lifted out, Leona promptly running back to the APC, Killbo blew up the office behind him with a jury-rigged bomb and shoved it into the back of the vehicle. Said vehicle still putting out a good ninety bullets a second as it blew apart everything within the ganger’s general direction. It was at this exact point that the GM outlined much of his original plan for this area, and wondered why the hell none of us had gone after the weapons cache he’d dropped into a casual conversation we’d overheard.

At this point the group began to follow the plot in its own roundabout way, going after the crates full of guns.

Legging it from the APC, Killbo ran into the shadows of a nearby alleyway as the front entrance of the warehouse opened up. One of Amoral’s smaller drones accompanying him for additional firepower. Revving the engine, Amoral sped the APC away as it was pursued by a good four or five gangers in a car. One car with an RPG and a few machine pistols versus a supped up tank with miniguns and being driven by a technomancer and someone who can magically nuke things. I’m sure you can do the maths.

If you can’t, in a 100KPM battle across a few roads, the APC proceeded to shrug off everything the gangers threw at it. In response Amoral holographically flipped off the criminals, pulled a few stunts involving tight turns and proceeded to turn the car into a pin-wheeling wreck of burning metal within about two minutes driving. Officially giving not a single fuck, the two circled back to the warehouse.

Inside said warehouse Killbo, having taken out the one remaining sentry they had left, proceeded to stroll about unseen. Due to a mixture of smoke and the camouflaging capabilities of his stealthsuit no ganger could detect him. First checking the crates to see what weapons they were about to loot, a mixture of one shot rocket launchers and AK-97s, he proceeded to casually kill every remaining man in the building with a shotgun.

And for the third session running the supposedly stealthy shadowrunners had set off explosions, murdered dozens of individuals and set part of Seattle on-fire with massed firepower. I get the feeling we're not quite getting the whole silent espionage aspect of this game.


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