Shadowrun Pub
General => General => Topic started by: Gilliam on October 11, 2006, 07:48:42 PM
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okay, I'm running an IRL tabletop game with only two players. I haven't really run anything for a group of 'runners this small before. I'm looking for some bare-bones plot ideas, something interesting, challenging, but not something so big that Mr. Johnson should really be hiring another team (I don't like to bring NPC's along for the ride).
I'm having trouble thinking of decent combats for two characters.
for the record, I'm using 4th edition
my players are: Shifty, the Combat Hacker. (2 init passes, with a drone), Running wolf, (once a few spells are cast, he's the amazing invisible super wolf) also a generally capable mage.
one player is relatively new to the game, although he's almost done teething (shifty). The other player is experienced and imaginitive.
Please, help, I'm a capable GM once I get the core of a good plot down, but I'm really having trouble getting appropriate scale missions for a team this small (my usual group is 6-8 players, but everyone's off at school).
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I would suggest 'tech goodness gone wrong,' which is a fairly simple plotline.
Mr. Johnson needs some information- specs on a top secret project. He's basically doing background for another (bigger) run, and needs someone to get the particulars of the information for him.
So he hires two runners- newbies, and gives them the "easy" job of walking in, stealing the blueprints, schematics, or information (or whatever- just something for the tech guy to have to stretch his legs). Something that requires physical intrusion, and then on the way out, something goes wrong. A security guard coming back from his break walks right into the runners. The techs they're impersonating come in to fix a different air duct... anything.
So suddenly they have someone breathing down thier necks.
Of course, a hacker/mage combo isn't the easiest to write for. Maybe a spirit to follow/fight the two of them? That way Mr. Bad Assed Wolf will be invisible to the naked eye, but glowing like a "GirlsGirlsGirls" on the astral.
-kv
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First of all, mr. J could be just plain too stingy to hire 5 runners, when 2 could do, especially if they have enough of a rep that he thinks they might be able to pull it off, but not enough to just name their own fees.
As for the plotline and general playstyle, I'd probably go with stealth/social.
If you want into a building, you dont have to blow a big hole in one side and wlk in, usually there are already openings, so you can just sneak or scam your way in. Either are usually easier with small groups. Leave the drone outside, it can presumably be remote controlled, and as such is simply on call.
Tone down combat, from the characters they've made, I'd hazard that's not really what you players want to do all day anyway, and you can easily arange fights for them if you need/want to. Simply arrange them in situations where they can tailor things to their benefit (darkness/plenty of cover/whateverhaveyou). Remeber that most sec guards are rather poorly trained compared to your average runner, and thus are very vulnerable to penalties.
And they don't have to go up against leopard guards everytime.
Also, since they have a magician, you might want to tailor things a bit to that, by including sec.mages (or specifically choosing not to, to make things easier on the runners), or spirits, like K_V suggested.
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I wrote a few runs for a 2-player group a while back, but one was a shaman and the other a general sammie/survielance/light combat guy. I'm not sure how appropriate they would be for your, but I would be happy to see if I could dig them out and send them along to you.
The first is a theft from a upper middle class medical clinic. The runners are going in to steel medical supplies for a local street doc. They have disguises, timetables, and the like. And since this is a 24 hour clinic that sees very little business at night, security is light. Unfortunately, a pack of ghouls attack the clinic shortly after the runners start thier busniess. The ghoul leeder thinks they can help cure him, but of course is just deluding himself. Throw in a bit of a plot twist at the end, and it was a fairly successful run that got them an ongoing villian.
The second run is a simple one where the runners are blackmailed by the mob (see first scenario) to go steel some files from the house of a triad mage. The runners aslo have to leave a "package" in the oven when they leave. This one wasn't really very intense, but served as a plot-device for an ongoing mafia sub-plot. With some tweaking, it might work for a bit more high-risk 2-player run.
Just let me know if you want the paydata, Gilliam.
Gabriel
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thanks guys, these all seem like good ideas. I tend not to concentrate too much on combat, usually trying to have most of my runs over with only 1 long drawn-out dice-rolling sessions. I enjoy talking it out a little bit more (although sometimes its just one of those gun-toting days).
Gabriel: the characters you are describing sound very similar to the ones I'm trying to write for. The ghoul thing sounds good, I had them save a squatter colony from a small group of them last week, but they missed encountering their leader (he was out setting a new trap). The NPC I'm using has embraced his new identity, and wants to convert the world. I should probably mention that he's also a twisted adept.
thanks for the plotlines. I tend to be fine once I have something believable, that can just take weeks for me to get to.
any other ideas would be welcome.
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I had an idea a shile back for a new group that never really got off of the ground. Have your guys get contacted by a Johnson who wants them to go after some slag in a corporate compound. Now, the corporate cobber commited some sort of crime (and not a REALLY major one or there would be extradition procedings) while he was out and about in Seattle one day. Well, the cops trace the crime back to him, but he's back at the compound and thus on soverign corporate soil. The cops who were investigating slotted off the corporate liason who promptly shut the extradition down. Since it is nothing like serial killing or bombing public places, the cops don't really have the leverage to force the issue so the runners are hired to get the guy out of the compound.
The runners don't have to capture the guy or even kill or extract him, they just have to get him out of the compound and onto UCAS soil, the Star will do the rest. Complications could be actually getting the guy to go along with stepping out, the Star arresting the runners too, the guy leaving for Japan/Amazonia/[insert distant and permanent destination here] etc.
Gabriel
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That's actually a pretty cool idea- I might do that myself.
-kv
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Yeah, but you'd have to scale it up a bit.
Gabriel
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Yeah, but a run as odd as that wouldn't be hard to scale up- have it be several people, rather than just the one- and have them coming out of the corp territory to rape, loot, burn, and beat people up, and then go and hide on corp property until they get moved.
So it needs to happen fast, and all of the people doing it need to be brought in.
I was wondering where you were going with the 'Lonestar arrests the runners too' angle- just being dirty cops? Not wanting to pay out?
-kv
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Well, runners ARE criminals you know. So bringing in the rapist AND a gang of SINless runners would look really nice to the cop's seargeant. But I still think you need it to be only one guy. If not, it would get too much media coverage for the corp to just ignore it. The one-guy angle makes it a bounty hunt. And no't you have a bounty hunter in your group????????
Gabriel
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I haven't played Shadowrun in a while, so technically, aside from participation here on the board, and a few other instances, I haven't played in a couple months.
We'll see if we can't clear that up before Christmastime, but I have my doubts. With Ruski having new additions to the family, and my other brother not wanting to drive to and from Arizona two or three times a month, it looks like my family game is on indefinite hiatus.
I was picturing, though, one old Lonestar officer- maybe one of the first. He has all these old casefiles in his locker- 'unsolved' cases, because a certain corp refused to extradite employees. So he now has a list of three employees- one is a new hellraiser, who likes to come out, start a fight or riot, and then run back to employee parking. But with a couple of old cases, you're pretty much promising that they'll have to change buildings, or at least floors to get the people they need.
I wouldn't go more than five, and I'd probably keep it around two or three- just to keep things as simple as possible.
-kv
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that sounds like a good finale-level run. My guys are going to have to work up to that kind of thing. My hacker's player isn't really used to the kinds of strings that can be pulled in the sixth world, and the mage isn't nearly strong enought to try to take on a whole compound yet...
but I'll file that one away in the idea part of my brain, that is, if you don't mind, gabriel.
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Hey chummer, all ideas are free around here. Don't you know how Shaodwland works??? ;)
Gabriel
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I thought on Shadowland you had to upload as much as you download?
That's why I come here- talk is cheap, but it's usually pretty good. ;D
-kv
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Exactly what I've been looking around for.
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You know not too long back i was actually working on a run that could be done with as few as 2 people or as many as you wanted.....
It involved aquiring a prototype gun who's specs i am still working on..
johnson wanted the gun to keep it out of corperate hands....
everyone else wants it as well
the mission i was working on was a mission for a combat mage and any other runner willing....
it was designed that the triad is who hired the mage and mage is givin the ok to hire whoever he wants at a certain price....
if you want the details i came with so far on the weapon i can post them here and everyone can throw ideas into the gun...
it is a very powerfull gun and really should never have been designed in the first place but since it was it is needed by everyone who wants to have power...or who already has power....
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Actually i did find that run i was working on and the weapon is complete but it is like i mentioned before only a (proto)
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i defently want the stats :mercy: :luna:
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when i have time to start the run everyone involved in it will get the stats but not till then
i gotta be stingy with this one
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A paranoid GM??? Who ever heard of such a thing? ;)
Gabriel
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not paranoid
just savin the good stuff
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Hey, nothing wrong with paranoia, especially in this game.
Gabriel
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lol gabriel if i was paranoid i would not have even mentioned it till the run was ready to launch but call it what you want we all do anyway
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Well if you were truely paranoid, you might have mentioned it to see who would respond, thus revealing your enemies.
Gabriel
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lol good point but here at the pup thus far i have no enemies
if i do please do tell
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but here at the pup thus far i have no enemies
And through this statement, you prove your absence of paranoia.
Either that, or you're trying to be clever.
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Hehehehe... I knew ROOTless would jump on that.
Gabriel
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Ofcourse you did.
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haha now no one will ever know for sure just gonna keep you tkhinkin
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well, KV is going AWOL on my next run, and it's a very scaleable event, so I'll share it here.
Runners get paydirt (via your decker if you feel so inclined) that other runners have just hit megacorp X and have gotten away with the goodies. unfortunatly for them they didn't pay their decker contact, and as a sort of cheap revenge, he's putting up information on their ware-abouts for a fraction of what he was suppose to be paid. (make this number be something the runners can afford, if they've been even on one other run, they'll have enough to get the goods)
So, you've got some nice tech, normally well secured, instead in the hands of some cheap rival runners on the lam.
I was going to have it be the latest version of VITAS, but you could make it whatever you want.
if it's a one or two chummer run: you just have them jump the runners and get away with the goods. shouldn't be too tough to find a buyer and make it into a decent payday.
if you have their friends come allong, or if you've got extra time: the runners try to get their stuff back, or: our previously mentoned decker that got stiffed is selling the goods to multiple parties. so you've got more than one set of runners gunning for the goods.
if they don't mind going through a couple of sets of charichter sheets: the star gets wise to the fact that bioweapons are now in the hands of terrorists. (can you think of a better way to describe runners)
if you've got the heavy hitting group with a dozen cyber-trolls: the UCAS army just found out that the new version of VITAS they developed is on the loose. expect firewatch, armed with nukes to be tracking them down.
at any rate: you can have the run start off simple enough, hit the runners in a safe house. a coffin motel, or other apartment complex. depending on the capabilities of your runners, you can have the original gangsters asleep at the wheel or on the warpath.
then, you can push it anywhere you want it to go. through a mall, through the orc underground, through bellview. whatever. I was planning on cornering them and making them run through the sewers and fight a small horde of ghouls.
(nothing like regenerating cannonfodder to keep the street-sams happy)
anyways, that's my current run. another time, I'll tell ya' about the fun times they had dressing up in red capes on the last run I put them through.
-RuskiFace the Pirate
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Actually, I already wrote up that post- spent an hour writing it up, and then the Pub hiccupped and ate it whole. I was so irritated that I didn't feel like writing it again.
Sometime soon though.
-KV
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it was a pretty straightforward affair at any rate.
shouldn't take much baseline text to lay it out.
flavor text always makes it more exciting.
-RuskiFace the pirate