Shadowrun - Bug City

[Quasqueton]

I used to play Shadowrun (2nd edition?), and I loved the game. I beleive there was an adventure called "Bug City" about the bugs taking over, what, Chicago? I remember one of my game group bought the module (we rotated DMing SR), and was going to run it for us. But the campaign kind of died out before we got to it. I was excited at the prospect of finally being able to just go crazy with firepower in SR, and I was disappointed that I never got to play in that adventure.

If you ran/played that adventure, please tell me what it was like. My main character in the game was an orc mercenary with an assault cannon. I didn't often get to really turn it loose in a shadowrun. Would my orc have been happy in a target-rich environment in Bug City?

Quasqueton

 

[GlassJaw]

I haven't read it (I've looked at it a couple of times) but from what I've heard, it's very good. It's also one of the more difficult SR books to track down (check ebay).

Bug City was really nasty. Insect spirits and shaman are brutal opponents. The SR group I'm in now has some players with more SR experience than me and they talk about "bugs" a lot. Honestly, a bug hunt SR campaign sounds like a lot of fun.

 

[Umbran]

An orc had an assault cannon, and didn't get around to using it? Call that an orc?! Ha! A real orc would use an assault cannon to light his cigars...

My group did a couple of the other "bug" adventures, the second one of which was actually pretty darned scary, because our GM did a job and we didn't know it was bugs when we started.

However, the assault cannon wouldn't be the way to go. One of the supplements had this wonderful little handgun, essentially a narcoject pistol without the dart. Worked off compressed air (so it was reasonably quiet). After a while, my rigger took to carrying one around loaded with insecticide. I think I downed more bugs with the thing than our gun-toting troll...

 

[cincinnati reds]

Ah, the Universal Brotherhood.

The adventure was more of a mini-campaign. The gist of it is that the UB, this "humanitarian" charity group that operated soup kitchens and provided services to the poor and dispossessed was a front for insect shamans that needed (meta)human bodies (or souls, can't remember which) to gestate their insect monsters in.

Anyway. Bug City was after the cover got blown off the UB and, basically, things got so bad in there that the entire city was walled off (thing Escape From New York). The Runners would go in there and... well, it could go in whichever direction the GM wanted to take it.

I have the book, but never actually ran it; we quit SR for V:tM before I got around to it.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

We ran two adventures before our game imploded.

The problem was that bug spirts are, as mentioned above, nasty. The main problem was that the spirits were spirits first and foremost. Sure, you'd have some hapless humans transformed into bug things and you could shoot those guys up with an Ingram Smartgun, but the spirts were only vulnerable to magic and I'm using the term "vulnerable" in its' very looest sense. Basically, you absolutely couldn't kill these things with normal weapons and you had to use magic.

You really had to be very, very careful when you made up your runner group. Now at this point the elite Shadowrun people usually pipe up with phrases like "Ah! But you see, your group should be in the SHADOWS! You should never delve into combat!" Which may or may not be a valid point (how do you hide in astral space and how do you detect a bug spirit if you aren't astrally active?) but it still means your group has to be built with the utmost care.

So my personal evaluation was great concept, poor execution.

IMHO.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

As far as I recall (without digging it back up right now), Bug City was more intended as some kind of city book for SR, similar to Seattle Sourcebook, only much nastier. It was placed after they A-bombed Chicago's center and walled it off, and did a great job describing what was left of the city, who was in power, and what else had changed. It updated insect spirits, and gave a lot of information on what was going on beneath the facade of Chicago. Of course, it also held dozens of adventure hooks for the GM to send his runners for. Somehow, my groups always managed to avoid Chicago so far...I wonder why.

Oh, and whoever those elite Shadowrun players are...if we didn't get into a nice firefight at least once per game session, we were deeply disappointed. What was all the hardware for after all?

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I feel your pain. It's difficult to get the chance to use the really big guns in shadowrun mostly cause they're hard to conceal. Assualt cannons can also only shoot one shot per turn (single-shot weapon at least in 3rd). They're good against vehicles and against really tough opponents, but my personal favorite heavy weapons are really big heavy machine guns. My current character doesn't use anything much bigger than a heavy pistol.

 

[IcyCool]

Bug City and the Universal Brotherhood.

This was indeed a sort of mini-campaign. As cincinnati reds said, the UB was a front for the bugs. When things hit the fan, Chicago was infested and walled off. I believe they even tried nuking it once.

At any rate, you Orc with an assault cannon would have had fun, but you would have been hard pressed to take down some of the tougher bug spirits. Using a weapon they were allergic to (like insecticide), or magic would probably have to be the way to go.

I never played in Chicago myself, but we did have a little bug hunt in Seattle. Wound up killing a few player-characters too (*sigh* My poor physad).

As a side note, if you are interested in more about shadowrun, check out the Dumpshock Forums.

 

[Karl Green]

There is a 1st ed adventure where "bugs" where first introduced in, even before UB and BC... but for the life of me I can not remember what it was called... I have it back at home on my book shelf but I have not looked at it for years and can’t remember the title (I remember the cover though). Basically some crazy mage almost dies in the Amazon and the 'insect' spirits come to him and save him. He returns to Seattle and becomes obsessed with a female rock-star and kidnaps her to make her his 'queen'. It was a brutal little adventure, also due to...

SPOILER ALERT **
[sblock]There is nothing you can do to save the rock star you are hired to save. Her transformation has already started and the best thing you can do it put a bullet in her head[/sblock]

I ran a REALLY long Shadowrun game back in the day. We started with 1st ed, then I transferred it all over to 2nd and play more or less solid for about 2 and a half years of nothing but that game. The group went through all 3 'Bug' adventures. In Bug City, they were hired to sneak into the city, find some scientist and a bunch of his work and get him back out (past the barriers, etc). It was pretty cool and I ran it VERY much like "Escape from New York" and the party had a great time (only one party member died, the Troll when he basically stayed behind to stop a bug swarm and was swarmed!!! They had a bunch of grenades that they had tapped insecticide to and he set them all off at once, killing himself and most of the bugs).

One of the best times against the "bugs" though was in Universal Brotherhood, when the party split into two group to assault the Seattle headquarters to look for the girl they were hired to find… one coming in from the roof and one the basement… so of course the basement assault team runs into all kinds of bugs AND they start yelling for the roof team to come down and save them… and the roof team was hearing all the crap that was coming down on the basement team and almost ran away… that was funny

Gawd I LOVED Shadowrun a lot back in the day BUT I just got tired of dice pools and the weird rule sets. IF they ever came out with a really good and true conversion to something else I would be all over it again. I MIGHT pick up 4th ed… it sounds interesting but I am a bit worried that it is not going to be all that great…

 

[Umbran]

Basically, you absolutely couldn't kill these things with normal weapons and you had to use magic.

I believe each and every bug spirit had a weakness - vulnerability to insecticides. Of course, if you didn't know that you were dealing with bugs, you weren't likely to have a can of Raid on hand. But, having figured out what the UB were, if you thought to strap some huge cannisters of pesticides from the local crop dusters onto your party trolls before delving into the depths of their complex, you were good to go

The trick for the shadowrunner is not necessarily staying in the shadows. It was finding the right tool for the job.