Wik
First Post
So, I had another one of my d6 nights tonight, and I have to say - it was the most "movie-esque" scene we've run so far. It wasn't as high-action as the high-speed chase over the Tokyo train lines, and it wasn't as explosive as the fight in the Kenzer Arcology (in which the PCs blew out an entire section of the arcology during their escape), but this was the most dangerous, "cool" combat I felt I've run in a while.
And the great thing is, I made the whole thing up on the top of my head.
The PCs had some downtime, and so Taint (an acrobatic knife-fighter addicted to a drug called "dex"), Julianna (a 16 year old japanese hacker girl who refuses to engage in combat), and "Jeff" (a hitman who changes his name every few months out of paranoid fear) walked into "The Sprawl" - a nightclub managed by the local Yakuza (the PCs are friends with this branch of the Yaks). They had decided that they were going to pump some people about the location of Mendar, an investigator/hitman who had been hired to kill the PCs.
I should mention now that my game world is a lot like the shadowrun games, except that it's set in tokyo, and there's a heavy dose of the movie "The Fifth Element". Meaning: Lots of aliens, high technology, and mile-high skyscrapers.
Anyways, the PCs begin their usual snooping around, and notice that the club is filled with rich 20-something girls. Seems like the Sprawl is "the place to be" this month, as the place is PUMPING. Taint pops a few dex and begins dancing spastically with identical twins; Julianna tries to buy herself a drink while asking around for Mendar; and Jeff pokes around. He bumps into a sweaty, shaved addict, who stumbles off into the backrooms. It's obvious to the group at this point that the addict is my "hook", but the player of Jeff stays in character, and just lets the addict lurk off.
Eventually, after throwing a few hooks at the group (and I knew the group wanted to follow the hooks, it was just that the hooks weren't engaging enough for them to break character to pursue), I was able to get Mulligan (a twelve-foot high "reaver" alien that acts as the club's bouncer) to bump into Taint on his path to the back, and so Taint and Mulligan enter the backrooms.
The addict is "tweaking out" with a machine pistol. He's already shot one guard in the arm, and is threatening the rest of the yaks nearby. He's in the back rooms that are reserved for Yakuza business dealings (The Sprawl is one of the business "hot spots" for those in the running business, and the backrooms rent out quite frequently). The Yakuza want this guy killed, but they don't want it done on their business grounds, because business is good. Finally, Taint rushes in, dodges a few bullets, and tackles the gunman.
And the group is amused.
As the yakuza start beating the tar out of this dirty drug addict, Taint discovers a bag the addict was carrying, filled up with what look like computer chips. But Taint doesn't recognize what they are.
Around this point, a bunch of people wearing black trenchcoats, mirror shades, and carrying submachine guns burst into the nightclub, and make their way to the back. Julianna, nearby, watches as they start questioning a yakuza guard about the drug addict, and when the Yakuza refurses to answer, they start getting rowdy. Soon, they attack the guard, who is injected with SOMETHING that causes him to go into Seizures. They burst into the back room, and a standoff occurs.
This breaks down quickly, and the intruders open fire on Mulligan and the other Yakuza in the back room, while Taint is pretty much a bystander. Mulligan takes a good thirty rounds in the chest while he rips through their ranks, although he soon crumples to the ground as a bloody pulp (Mulligan, by the way, is the group's favourite NPC). The Yakuza in the room are outgunned, and they know it, but they keep on shooting until they are destroyed by the Gunmen.
Taint now has three gunmen in an otherwise empty room, so he spends a fate point (like action points in d20 modern, except you only get one of them and you don't get them back too often) to throw a bunch of knives and two grenades at the group of them, which quickly destroys the whole group of gunmen (but also knocks out his hearing, and nearly kills Mulligan).
The crows in the nightclub doesn't hear any of this, but they start getting riled up when more gunmen burst into the club a few seconds later, firing. The whole nightclub is going nuts now, as people panic for the exits. A few of the Yakuza guards scattered over the dancefloor (most had already gone to the back, where they were destroyed by the first wave of gunmen) shot back, only to be met with autofire. Jeff, the hitman, crouched down and started firing back, taking a few gunmen down.
Julianna and Taint find themselves in the backroom. Taint runs off into the women's washroom to hide this bag of computer chips, and the comes back to help Julianna lift the 1,000 pound Mulligan to his feet. The reaver keeps muttering "I'll be fine, you should get out of here" but the two refuse and try to get him out of here.
"Do you know where Jeff is?" Taint asks Julianna, who shakes her head.
So, the two PCs escape the building, while Jeff and a dying crew of Yakuza guards do their best to hold off a wave of gunmen.
Julianna then picks Mulligan's communicator from his ear, and listens in on the Yakuza comm channel: There are more gunmen coming, and the Yakuza special response squads are on their way. Not to mention the cops. The second Julianna tries to tell Taint this, though, the Yakuza pick up an intruder on their comm line and cut her access to the channel.
Julianna helps Mulligan get away, while Taint decides to go back and pick up Jeff, who, by now, has been hit twice in the arm and is bleeding pretty bad. Jeff tries to make a burst for the door, but is hit by a few rounds of autofire, and is almost killed. He fakes being dead while the gunmen finish off the rest of the Yakuza.
Taint doesn't know this, and by the time he gets back to the club, the gunmen are busy tearing the place apart looking for the computer chips. They see Taint, and chase him into one of the empty back business rooms. After this, they throw a grenade in. Rather than try to dodge, Taint quickly decides to throw the grenade back, and I let him - with a high DC. Remarkably, he suceeds, and he throws a corrosive gas grenade back at the gunmen, incapacitating them.
At the same moment, Jeff gets up and tries to escape through the back hallway.... running into the cloud of gas. This incapacitates Jeff (and I insist on his making stablizing checks to stave off death) and Taint is forced to throw the hitman over his shoulders while making his way to the hospital.
The two conscious PCs then meet at the hospital while Jeff undergoes emergency surgery, and Julianna investigates a few of the computer chips that Taint kept on him - they're BTL, a drug computer program. Like "Real" drugs, only without the physical side-effects... and a thousand times more addictive. What's new, is that these BTL chips are a new program - no one's ever seen them before. Julianna quickly does some calculating and realizes that the bag currently in the Sprawl is worth over six million dollars.
And thus the session ends.
****
Now, I post all this for two reasons - 1) Because it was an awesome session, and I just feel like sharing, and 2) Since I made the whole thing up on the top of my head, I don't have too many details.
Where should I go with this?
I was thinking having the next session start with Mendar finding the PCs and trying to finish off Jeff while he's incapacitated. That would be a logical thing for him to do, and it could be a fun scene to play out. But that doesn't really involve the actual scenario at hand; more of a subplot.
Who are these trench-coated gun men? Obviously, they're related to the BTL somehow, but are they a crime syndicate, or are they related to one of the corporations? I was thinking of making them a german crime syndicate trying to break into the Tokyo drug trade with a new crop of BTL.... I'd want to have some information on how this might be incorporated into the game.
Also, I realize I've made a HUGE mistake - I've given the PCs an opportunity to make a LOT of money. If they can get their hands on this BTL and give it to the right people, they could make a fortune - I can easily see them making over a million bucks... and they're not a moral group, so they're not going to feel bad for the people that die because of their actions. How do I get the BTL out of the picture, while keeping the PCs involved? My original intention was to have the BTL stay in the PCs hands while the German gunmen searched high and low for the PCs, but with Taint having left the stuff in the nightclub, things are getting muddied up.
So, how do I keep the group involved here?
And the great thing is, I made the whole thing up on the top of my head.
The PCs had some downtime, and so Taint (an acrobatic knife-fighter addicted to a drug called "dex"), Julianna (a 16 year old japanese hacker girl who refuses to engage in combat), and "Jeff" (a hitman who changes his name every few months out of paranoid fear) walked into "The Sprawl" - a nightclub managed by the local Yakuza (the PCs are friends with this branch of the Yaks). They had decided that they were going to pump some people about the location of Mendar, an investigator/hitman who had been hired to kill the PCs.
I should mention now that my game world is a lot like the shadowrun games, except that it's set in tokyo, and there's a heavy dose of the movie "The Fifth Element". Meaning: Lots of aliens, high technology, and mile-high skyscrapers.
Anyways, the PCs begin their usual snooping around, and notice that the club is filled with rich 20-something girls. Seems like the Sprawl is "the place to be" this month, as the place is PUMPING. Taint pops a few dex and begins dancing spastically with identical twins; Julianna tries to buy herself a drink while asking around for Mendar; and Jeff pokes around. He bumps into a sweaty, shaved addict, who stumbles off into the backrooms. It's obvious to the group at this point that the addict is my "hook", but the player of Jeff stays in character, and just lets the addict lurk off.
Eventually, after throwing a few hooks at the group (and I knew the group wanted to follow the hooks, it was just that the hooks weren't engaging enough for them to break character to pursue), I was able to get Mulligan (a twelve-foot high "reaver" alien that acts as the club's bouncer) to bump into Taint on his path to the back, and so Taint and Mulligan enter the backrooms.
The addict is "tweaking out" with a machine pistol. He's already shot one guard in the arm, and is threatening the rest of the yaks nearby. He's in the back rooms that are reserved for Yakuza business dealings (The Sprawl is one of the business "hot spots" for those in the running business, and the backrooms rent out quite frequently). The Yakuza want this guy killed, but they don't want it done on their business grounds, because business is good. Finally, Taint rushes in, dodges a few bullets, and tackles the gunman.
And the group is amused.
As the yakuza start beating the tar out of this dirty drug addict, Taint discovers a bag the addict was carrying, filled up with what look like computer chips. But Taint doesn't recognize what they are.
Around this point, a bunch of people wearing black trenchcoats, mirror shades, and carrying submachine guns burst into the nightclub, and make their way to the back. Julianna, nearby, watches as they start questioning a yakuza guard about the drug addict, and when the Yakuza refurses to answer, they start getting rowdy. Soon, they attack the guard, who is injected with SOMETHING that causes him to go into Seizures. They burst into the back room, and a standoff occurs.
This breaks down quickly, and the intruders open fire on Mulligan and the other Yakuza in the back room, while Taint is pretty much a bystander. Mulligan takes a good thirty rounds in the chest while he rips through their ranks, although he soon crumples to the ground as a bloody pulp (Mulligan, by the way, is the group's favourite NPC). The Yakuza in the room are outgunned, and they know it, but they keep on shooting until they are destroyed by the Gunmen.
Taint now has three gunmen in an otherwise empty room, so he spends a fate point (like action points in d20 modern, except you only get one of them and you don't get them back too often) to throw a bunch of knives and two grenades at the group of them, which quickly destroys the whole group of gunmen (but also knocks out his hearing, and nearly kills Mulligan).
The crows in the nightclub doesn't hear any of this, but they start getting riled up when more gunmen burst into the club a few seconds later, firing. The whole nightclub is going nuts now, as people panic for the exits. A few of the Yakuza guards scattered over the dancefloor (most had already gone to the back, where they were destroyed by the first wave of gunmen) shot back, only to be met with autofire. Jeff, the hitman, crouched down and started firing back, taking a few gunmen down.
Julianna and Taint find themselves in the backroom. Taint runs off into the women's washroom to hide this bag of computer chips, and the comes back to help Julianna lift the 1,000 pound Mulligan to his feet. The reaver keeps muttering "I'll be fine, you should get out of here" but the two refuse and try to get him out of here.
"Do you know where Jeff is?" Taint asks Julianna, who shakes her head.
So, the two PCs escape the building, while Jeff and a dying crew of Yakuza guards do their best to hold off a wave of gunmen.
Julianna then picks Mulligan's communicator from his ear, and listens in on the Yakuza comm channel: There are more gunmen coming, and the Yakuza special response squads are on their way. Not to mention the cops. The second Julianna tries to tell Taint this, though, the Yakuza pick up an intruder on their comm line and cut her access to the channel.
Julianna helps Mulligan get away, while Taint decides to go back and pick up Jeff, who, by now, has been hit twice in the arm and is bleeding pretty bad. Jeff tries to make a burst for the door, but is hit by a few rounds of autofire, and is almost killed. He fakes being dead while the gunmen finish off the rest of the Yakuza.
Taint doesn't know this, and by the time he gets back to the club, the gunmen are busy tearing the place apart looking for the computer chips. They see Taint, and chase him into one of the empty back business rooms. After this, they throw a grenade in. Rather than try to dodge, Taint quickly decides to throw the grenade back, and I let him - with a high DC. Remarkably, he suceeds, and he throws a corrosive gas grenade back at the gunmen, incapacitating them.
At the same moment, Jeff gets up and tries to escape through the back hallway.... running into the cloud of gas. This incapacitates Jeff (and I insist on his making stablizing checks to stave off death) and Taint is forced to throw the hitman over his shoulders while making his way to the hospital.
The two conscious PCs then meet at the hospital while Jeff undergoes emergency surgery, and Julianna investigates a few of the computer chips that Taint kept on him - they're BTL, a drug computer program. Like "Real" drugs, only without the physical side-effects... and a thousand times more addictive. What's new, is that these BTL chips are a new program - no one's ever seen them before. Julianna quickly does some calculating and realizes that the bag currently in the Sprawl is worth over six million dollars.
And thus the session ends.
****
Now, I post all this for two reasons - 1) Because it was an awesome session, and I just feel like sharing, and 2) Since I made the whole thing up on the top of my head, I don't have too many details.
Where should I go with this?
I was thinking having the next session start with Mendar finding the PCs and trying to finish off Jeff while he's incapacitated. That would be a logical thing for him to do, and it could be a fun scene to play out. But that doesn't really involve the actual scenario at hand; more of a subplot.
Who are these trench-coated gun men? Obviously, they're related to the BTL somehow, but are they a crime syndicate, or are they related to one of the corporations? I was thinking of making them a german crime syndicate trying to break into the Tokyo drug trade with a new crop of BTL.... I'd want to have some information on how this might be incorporated into the game.
Also, I realize I've made a HUGE mistake - I've given the PCs an opportunity to make a LOT of money. If they can get their hands on this BTL and give it to the right people, they could make a fortune - I can easily see them making over a million bucks... and they're not a moral group, so they're not going to feel bad for the people that die because of their actions. How do I get the BTL out of the picture, while keeping the PCs involved? My original intention was to have the BTL stay in the PCs hands while the German gunmen searched high and low for the PCs, but with Taint having left the stuff in the nightclub, things are getting muddied up.
So, how do I keep the group involved here?
