>DEAD MAN
agent hangman approves

Ask three Shadowrun players what the core character roles of Shadowrun are, ESPECIALLY Shadowrun 4th Edition, and you’ll get four answers. However, I’ve got a little exercise from you, /tg/, for more storytelling “oomph,” which requires a basic consensus on the character roles. Hence, for said exercise, we will assume that there are four core roles: Street Samurai, Hacker, Mage, and Infiltrator. Though the team had both a Rigger and a Face as well, these were both half-roles and thus are irrelevant in this particular instance.

In brief summary:

A Street Samurai is a combat monster who fucks shit up, and usually figures prominently in backup plans.

A Hacker is a nerd who runs everything computer-related.

A Mage is your dude who does magic. No fucking shit.

An Infiltrator is a guy who either ninjas or bluffs his way in to gather intel or complete mission objectives.

If anyone could confirm that they're in the thread, I can move on to the next part of said exercise. Basically, we're going to play a little game, and I need someone to answer questions for this game.

I'm here.
Waiting

Sure, keep going.

A game you say?

>>18228382
>>18228395

Excellent, here's your part: I’m going to describe each of our player characters in order. You are going to guess what role they filled. That way, when you hit That Guy, you can properly appreciate the dawning horror that filled the hearts of the GM and all of the other players. Sound good?

>>18228401
I Like it

>>18228401
Hit us.

>>18228401

CHARACTER ONE:
>Real Name: John Doe?
>Street Name: Dervish, formerly "Featherstep"
>Metatype: Orc

Dervish was a genengineered super-soldier who woke up in an alleyway in Everett with a pair of pants, a room key to a coffin hotel, 20 bucks, and a host of comically illegal cyber bits. Experimental cybereyes? Check. Implanted blades all throughout the body? Check. Wolverine skeleton? Check. Rocket feet? Check motherfucking check. Dude is like a hoverbike on legs. Whatever he was before his memory got erased, Dervish apparently wasn’t very nice. Well, assuming he wasn’t, like, in a tube up until 15 minutes before the start of the campaign.

His positive qualities were mostly stuff like biocompatibility and a type O system, which makes it easier to put bioengineered parts in him, and his negative qualities involved him being an amnesiac (amnesia rank 1) and having no contacts (hung out to dry), what with probably being a brainless tube baby prior to the campaign.

I'm sorry if this is insultingly obvious, but it's for good reason to emphasize the terribleness of the last character. Which role did Dervish fill?

>Mage
>Hacker
>Street Samurai
>Infiltrator

>>18228434
street samurai

>>18228448
Too simpe. Infiltrator.

>>18228448

Correct!

CHARACTER TWO
>Real Name: Malcolm McWilliams
>Street Name: 2D
>Metatype: Human

2D was a teenage member of the criminal hacking group Chaos Engine (fluffed as /b/ but more murderous) and an all around directionless loser when the Crash 2.0 rendered him comatose at his computer. Waking up in the hospital to find his immediate family deceased and his pockets empty, he was swiftly placated by his mind’s quasi-mystical connection to the new Wireless Matrix. After a shits-and-giggles crime spree, he was pinched by Evo Biomedical Seattle and only saved from a swift trip to the dissection table by the timely intervention of a bunch of novacoked-up Halloweeners blowing up the warehouse he was being temporarily held in. At the time of the start of this story, he is known by the media as the 2D Bomber, a terrorist wanted for using matrix-connected RC cars and walking dolls loaded up with nitro and hand grenades to blast Evo medical clinics.

Negative Qualities:
Enemy: Evo Biomedical Seattle
Vendetta: Evo Biomedical Seattle
Signature: leaves a databomb on hacked nodes, with an old-timey-gunpowder-bomb icon.
Paranoid: EVO IS AFTER ME YOU GUYS

Positive Qualities:
>Technomancer
>Paragon: Daedalus (Basically he's like the hardware tech support guy from hell)
>Erased: When he shows up in video feeds, an old-timey bomb appears over his face, Laughing Man style.
>Made Man: Chaos Engine

2D was a...

>Mage
>Hacker
>Infiltrator

>>18228498

Whoops, forgot to greentext his negative qualities.

>>18228498
>name: 2d
hacker.

>>18228523

Correctamundo!

CHARACTER THREE
>Real Name: Damien Sanitiere
>Street Name: Geppetto
>Metatype: Elf

Although an unassuming suburban Italian-American white-collar Ares middle management man by day, Damien hides a terrible secret: he is actually a serial killer obsessed with ritual suicide, using mind-and-body-puppeting magic to orchestrate a spat of suicides and murder-suicides across Seattle. He keeps his dual life well-hidden, carefully concealing his magical talent. His magic in and of itself is perverse and sinister, reflecting his nihilist beliefs: his spirits are cruel, spiteful things, taking the forms of mysterious men in black, mocking fey, and whirlwinds of infernal fire. However, on the surface, he is just Mister Sanitiere, shipping manager and neighborhood watch member, and he likes it that way.

Positive qualities were mostly magic related except for a variant on the Assassin's Creed Oath, which basically swears him to secrecy. Negative qualities were mostly obsessive-compulsive stuff of the type that serial killers are prone to.

Geppetto was our (herp derp)...

>Mage
>Infiltrator

>>18228549
infiltr-MAGE

>>18228571

Ayep!

CHARACTER FOUR
>Real Name: Jo Sekigahara
>Street Name: DeadMan, later Trout
>Metatype: Elf

Jo Sekigahara was a Japanese national who was also a member of the Texan Lone Star PMC and also a Yakuza member at the same time. He became a wanted man when he did something totally more grimdark and hardcore than 2D or Geppetto’s silly players could have thought up, namely shooting up an orphanage. But it was okay, the orphans’ parents were Mafia members, and all is fair in the secret war of the Yakuza. Sekigahara has not been found by his former employers at Lone Star because he is a ninja. In addition to being super stealthy, he is a master of guns, like Mami Tomoe from Madoka Magica. He took the name of “DeadMan” because he knows that, like all honorable Japanese, he must die someday.

>cont

>>18228624

Negative Qualities:
>Wanted: DeadMan had a gigantic bounty on his head for geeking a bunch of orphans.
>Records on File: Lone Star, the same corp that wanted him, had a complete dossier on his behavior, psychology, safehouses, and contacts.
>Criminal SIN: DeadMan was implanted with a chip that broadcast his location to the cops (who know everything about him and have a gigantic bounty on his head) every time he passed or entered any gridlinked municipal area, namely all of Seattle.
>Braggart: DeadMan had to make a composure check to avoid interrupting conversations to talk about how he geeked all those orphans, resulting in an alert which called the cops who had a gigantic bounty on his head and knew everything about him.

"Positive Qualities": DeadMan thought ninjas were really cool so he blew all of his money and a Restricted Gear quality on a freaking tactical ops suit, to the point where he didn't have any money left for a lifestyle and thus was a homeless guy in tactical gear. However, he didn't like the idea of "playing an ugly character" (his words), so he minmaxed for social infiltration, including blowing at least half his karma on facial sculpt adept powers.

He had the power to be anyone and anything, so long as that anyone and anything had an implant that identified him to everyone who ever looked at him as Jo Sekigahara, wanted fugitive.

What role did DeadMan fill?
>Infiltrator

That’s right, it’s this kind of story.

>>18228644

CHAPTER 1: THE START OF DARKNESS

Our GM has a very specific style, in the sense that he likes using modules, but will then completely warp them to his own ends and just adapt, adapt, adapt. Basically, it allows him to not have to make up shit like statblocks on the fly, but he also effectively heads off metagaming because people who think they’re going the direction of the original module often end up driving their snazzy Mercury Westwind off a cliff. However, there is one module that he will always use, gleefully unironically, in every Shadowrun game, because it is awesome.

That module is Food Fight. I have no idea how many Runners have met during a Stuffer Shack shootout, but hot damn, it’s gotta be a lot of them.

>>18228675

Our first session opened up on Dervish, at the time known as…well, he didn’t have a name, so I’m just going to stick with Dervish even though it’s anachronistic. He awoke in an alleyway in Everett with naught but pants, a room key, and 20 bucks. His legs weak, he used a dumpster as leverage to stand, and then tottered into the streets, nearly missing a few speeding cars. Remember at the start of Terminator, with a confused-but-purposeful-looking muscle robot walking naked through the street? Yeah, basically that, but give Arnold tusks and grey-green skin. Eventually Dervish managed to ask a few terrified and baffled bystanders where his key came from, and started on a 7-block walk to the hotel.

When he got there, and managed to locate his cubicle, he found a full set of clothes and a briefcase with a commlink and a gun in it, answering absolutely NO questions whatsoever. Drained, confused, and a little bit scared, Dervish dressed, pocketed the gun and commlink, and decided to reflect upon his situation over a shitty soy burger, as he set his commlink to search for the nearest Stuffer Shack, two blocks away.

>>18228733

Meanwhile, in a Halloweener block about seven streets down, 2D woke to his belligerent hung-over orc juggalo girlfriend yelling at him about a distinct lack of beer in the apartment. He was casually informed that, if there was no beer in the apartment within the next hour, one or more of these things would happen:

>His knees would be caved in with a baseball bat
>No sex for a month
>He'd be out of the apartment
>She'd break those computers to teach him to love them more than her
>She'd break his toys.

The last threat there involved toys filled with nitroglycerin, so 2D hastily threw on his best white-text-on-black ironic t-shirt and did a skinny white boy jog downstairs to his pickup truck, avoiding the burly orcs in clown makeup that haunted his apartment building. Considering he was running to the Shadowrun equivalent of a 7-11, he didn't think to bring his drones. This was probably a mistake.

>>18228644
I like where this story is going

please continue sir

>>18228814

Deadman, for his part, was walking down the street in Everett, using his tactical suit to be totally inconspicuous as shit. Sensing an easy mark (after all, some idiot was walking down the street in a six-digit-cost-suit), a mugger jumped out of an alleyway, sidled up alongside DeadMan with a gun, and demanded his money. Without hesitating, but also without waiting for any demands, DeadMan drew his Ares Alpha, a loud-as-fuck heavy pistol, and shot the guy in the face. Note that, though Everett is not a good part of town by any stretch of the imagination, shooting someone in the face in broad daylight in the middle of the street is a different thing entirely. Our GM warned DeadMan that he should probably get going.

DeadMan: "No, I loot him first."
GM: "You...loot him?"
DeadMan: "Uh, yeah. This is an RPG, right? I loot him."
GM: "Okay, you take his gun. It's a Ruger--"
DeadMan: "Not just his gun. His gear."
GM: "He's a mugger, he doesn't have any gear."
DeadMan: "He's wearing armor, right?"
GM: "You mean clothes?"
DeadMan: "Yeah. I loot that."
GM: "You take his clothes."
DeadMan: "Yes."
GM: "You strip the grungy-ass mugger with a hole in his face naked."
DeadMan: "I can't sell his loot if I don't."
GM: "What?"
DeadMan: "The party is meeting up at a shop, right? I'll sell the loot there."

>>18228946
I shall now attempt to stretch through time and space and slap him over the head

>>18228946

In case you're wondering, we'd actually played a game with this guy before. It was in the Song of Ice and Fire RPG, and he'd played a Maester who didn't know heraldry and didn't heal. Although that was kind of a dumb character, it was at the very least believable. The fact that he had regressed into JRPG logic for Shadowrun was a completely new phenomenon.

All things considered, it was probably lucky for Geppetto that he joined the campaign late.

So Dervish arrives first, and enters the Stuffer Shack. A bell rings. The cashier boredly announces, "welcome to Stuffer Shack, stuff your face on half the cash..." Dervish instinctively grunts and makes for the soy-burger aisle. Considering that, to his knowledge, he did not exist before 30 minutes ago, he briefly wonders how the hell he knew what a soy burger was, and begins pondering this while zoning the hell out, staring at the burger packaging.

2D arrives shortly thereafter, grumbling about his relationship and "never enough beer in the apartment." He stomps over to the drinks aisle in his clunky combat boots that he thinks are totally badass, but mostly make him look like a tool since he's 5'4 and weighs about 130 pounds.

Trout, in his bloodstained tactical ops gear, marches right the fuck up to the cashier, deposits a worn, stained set of clothes and an armed handgun on the counter, and prepares to ask how much money the vendor will give him.

The GM wisely decided to launch the module at this point.

>>18229062

Sorry, DeadMan. He was Trout later.

>>18229062

The bell rings once as a scared-looking elf girl, huddling a child to her chest, sprints through the doors and makes for the maintenance door of the stuffer shack. The baby is in absolute conniptions, having evidently been recently disturbed. The girl looks tired but also alert, and tries to melt behind the aisles as visual cover.

Not one to ever help a clearly desperate situation, 2D accesses the store's speakers (which he had previously hacked, on instinct as he entered the store) and announces, in his best saccharine fake-public-service voice,

"Would the mother of the child in aisle six please shut him the fuck up, lest the staff shut him up for you?"

The girl whimpers and shrinks behind the snack stand just before four dudes in balaclavas, each wielding shitty barrens guns and dressed in torn, second-hand combat fatigues, burst through the door and yell,

"NOBODY MOVE!"

>>18229062
>Trout, in his bloodstained tactical ops gear, marches right the fuck up to the cashier, deposits a worn, stained set of clothes and an armed handgun on the counter, and prepares to ask how much money the vendor will give him.

Clearly a masterful deconstruction of conventional RPG tropes. This man is a genius, how do you not see that?

>>18229130

Trout rolled extremely well in initiative and went first. Skipping any of the silly steps like "taking cover" or "finding out what they want," he defaults to picking the mugger's gun back up off the counter and shooting at the thugs. His shot goes wild, striking one of the arcade machines.

Dervish, operating on instinct and spurred by gunshots, boosted right over the burger isle. The thugs didn't realize what the fuck had happened until the guy who had yelled "nobody move" fell apart in three chunks, arterial spray coating the plexiglass of the slidey doors.

2D did the thing that a channer would do, namely booking it out back with the girl, where they both hid behind the Stuffer Shack's delivery van and made awkward eye contact. His eyes unfocuses as he switches his vision to that of the interior cameras.

Girl: "Did you hack the speakers?"
2D: "Shh. I also hacked the cameras. I'll let you know when it's clear. Just keep that baby fucking quiet."

>>18229132
PIGDOG detected.

Keep going, OP, this sum good shit.

>>18229236

*his eyes unfocus, whoops

By this point the Stuffer Shack has turned into a punk music video, with shoppers running around knocking over stands and smacking into each other, Trout firing wildly and hitting windows, displays, and the odd bystander (he had about 5 dice to pistols, 7 with automatics but he was using the mugger's revolver), and Dervish killing a dude per initiative pass. 2D watches, giggling, through the security camera, as Dervish systematically tears the terrified thugs into their constituent parts with his cyberblades and bare hands. You know those extremely brutal two-dude lethal finishers from the new Deus Ex? Think that, but about twice as fast and with four guys.

By the time the fourth guy's head pops off, 2D announces, "Oh SHIT!" and uploads the whole vidfeed to 4Chan.

>>18229286
>By the time the fourth guy's head pops off, 2D announces, "Oh SHIT!" and uploads the whole vidfeed to 4Chan.
Runners with a strong connection to some internet communities are great and all. But oh shit, this is the type of behaviour will get you wanted like no other, and wash away any potential jobs.
To upload run related incidents is a big no no.

>>18229286

In a chipper mood now that his day has been lightened with some seriously hardcore gore (and OC to boot!), 2D steps out of the back of the store clapping and cheering for the rocket-powered murderorc at the front of the store. The girl slowly follows him, holding the baby tight and eyeing the ragu sauce dripping from the walls nervously. Dervish exits kill-mode to see that everyone is more or less unharmed, except for a random elf poseur who took a bullet from DeadMan and the fact that everyone in the front half of the store is covered in thug bits.

2D: "Dude! You are the fucking BOMB! Where'd you learn moves like that?"
Dervish: "I don't really know."
2D: "Oh, so it's the ware then? Where'd you get the hook-up?"
Dervish: "I don't know that either."
2D: "...do you have a name?"
Dervish: "...I don't know."

2D gave him a long, confused look.

2D: "Do you have a commlink?"
Dervish produced his commlink.
"One of these things?"
2D grabbed his commlink from his hands, quickly unlocking it and looking through his files.
"It's registered to a Garrett Jordan."
Dervish: "I guess that's me, then."
2D: "Well, look, Garrett, I'ma put my name in your contacts, considering you evidently don't have many friends, judging by your contacts list. I feel like you'd be a useful guy to know."

At this point Dervish was thoroughly confused, and was almost thankful for the sound of Lone Star sirens (in GM's world, when KE picked up LS' Seattle contract, they also ate up the local LS branch).

DeadMan was less thankful for the sound of Lone Star Sirens, and booked it out the back at top speed.

>>18229398

At this point 2D wasn't a runner. He cleaned up his act a little bit as the game went on, but was always the loosest cannon on the team. He retired after about a year and a half of Shadowrunning to a cushy Ares spider job, but that's WAY later in the story, probably later than I'll get to today.

>>18229422
don't stop

>>18229401

2D and Dervish sat on the curb and prepared to give their testimony to the Star. Right as one of the cops sidled over to the two of them to ask for a statement, though, the other took a look at the vidfeed from the Stuffer Shack.

"Hoh...lee...shit."

His partner spoke up.

"What is it?"

"SEKIGAHARA IS LIKE TWO BLOCKS AWAY FROM HERE."

"NO FUCKING WAY."

Both cops promptly ran back to their car to chase after our erstwhile weeaboo, and 2D and Dervish quietly split to their respective homes.

The next morning, 2D and Dervish got a conference call from one Danny McReary, a fixer in the Irish Mafia. He thanked the two burgeoning young criminals for their service in saving his niece's life, and offered for them to come down to his runner bar to see if they were the right material he was looking for. Figuring that, as a broke channer and an amnesiac, they had nothing to lose, they both headed down to the bar.

Trout went down there independently because, as he informed us, "I am already a professional and proficient runner, unlike 2D and Dervish."

>>18229488

Danny: "Alright. First things first, you boys will need street names. As of this little job, you two are officially deniable. So come up with something. Alright, white bread, you're up first."
2D: "2D."
Danny: "Well, everyone and their mother will know you're a hacker, but it works. Big guy?"
Dervish: "Featherfoot."
Danny: "What?"
2D: "Gay."
Danny: "No."
Dervish: "Okay, Featherstep. You know, 'cause I have hover feet--"
2D: "REALLY gay."
Danny: "Have to agree with 2D here."
Dervish: "Alright, you bastards, what do you suggest
Danny: "Considering how you carved those thugs into mincemeat, I'd go with 'Dervish.' "
2D: "Not gay."
Dervish: "Okay, fine. I'll be Dervish."

Following this little bit of improv comedy, Danny explained the nature of the job. His niece had made the mistake of being the mistress of a Department of Water and Power official. See, this official had been rerouting water out of the North side and into more profitable developing areas, areas in which he'd bought property. Think the plot of Chinatown with Jack Nicholson. When Brianna, his niece, had a kid, this official decided he was getting too tied down and tried to...get rid of her.

So 2D and Dervish were going to get rid of his other mistress. Right on his wife's doorstep.

The GM had realized that the party was leaning pretty black-hat from the start, and BOY did he deliver.

Now, onto DeadMan...

>>18229606
Rather, when Brianna, Danny's niece, had a kid...

I worded that confusingly.

>>18229606

I will forever hold a special place for my GM in the rotten apple core that is my heart over this encounter. He had expected DeadMan to hook up with the main team and, you know, not be terrible, so he had to quickly ad-lib a milk run for DeadMan, basically as a way of gauging if the player could do ANYTHING in Shadowrun right.

So he introduced "Mr. Jackson."

Mr. Jackson was a frat boy. An orc frat boy. He had a baseball cap on and his white polo shirt had its collar popped. He had earrings on the back of one ear. He was wearing overexpensive AR shades, and they were running a porn vid. He was on his fifth Keystone Light by the time he approached Trout.

He was called Mr. Jackson because he forgot what the name that a runner's employer was called was supposed to be.

Jackson: "Yo, wassup homeboyee? You look like a Shadowrunner, and I be needin' a runner for real, dawg."
Trout: "Greetings, employer. Watashi wa Shadowrunner."
Jackson: "Watoshi-what? Dudebro, I don't need no fancy asian shit, I just gots a job that I needs a stone cold killin-ass motherfucker to do, knawmsayin? That you, bruh?"
Trout: "I am indeed a stone-cold killing-ass motherfucker. What is the job?"
Jackson: "I'ma pay you five hundred bucks to totally beat the shit outta this nerdlinger in my econ class."
Trout: "...go on."

>>18229711

Jackson: "There's this douche-fag named Simon Berckiwitz in my econ class, bruh. Econ 104 was s'pose ta be tight solid, knawmsayin? Just coast on the fuck through and getcha GPA up. But this fucker, he goes to every class and aces every test and it ain't FAIR, yo, the way he be bringin' the bell curve up! The only curve I like is dem tittays, knawmsayin', bruh?"
The GM at this point was pantomiming Jackson's overly macho body language, and clapped DeadMan's player on the back loudly.
DeadMan: "You said it would be 500 nuyen to rough this Simon Berckiwitz up? How much violence constitutes roughed-up?"
The GM made a point to snigger sophomorically at the word "tit" in "constitutes."
Jackson: "He needs to be black and blue and all shades of red, yo. Once he can't walk no more, I wantcha to take a picture of him and send it to my number. I'ma hit you up with my digits now, dawg. No homo. Just send me the pit-tchures when you done goin' down on that guy. No homo. I wire you yer money when you do your services, right, dawg? No homo, cuz I don't take no services from dudes, knawmsayin? This dawg likes the PUSSAY!"
DeadMan: "Kōi ga okonawa remasu. The deed will be done, Johnson-san."

>>18229711
>hires a shadowrunner to beat up a nerd
who the hell does tha- ...wait...is 2D the nerd?

>>18229812

Nope, although in retrospect it would have been funny.

The GM just wanted to send DeadMan on the milkiest of all milk runs to see if he could get it right.

Incidentally, Jackson had good reason to hire a runner to beat up the nerd. If he beat up one more kid he'd get suspended, yo.

>>18229834
aye.

still, for any self-respecting shadowrunner to take this job...
>implying shadowrunners have any self-respect beyond the paycheck
... ok, good point me...

this story is developing more curves than a girl scouts summer camp...tickle me interested
also it's a shame this group had no face, i love playing a face

>>18229811

Back to 2D and Dervish's run. They looked up the executive, did some digging, found the mistress' house. 2D waited outside with his pickup and hacked the street lights to direct traffic (except the mistress herself) away from the block while Dervish B&E'd his way into her garage. She parked her Americar in the garage, stepped outside, and Dervish promptly popped out from behind her storage shelf and snapped her neck in one twist. He covered her in a tarp, hucked her in the pickup truck, and the two of them made carefully for downtown.

DeadMan spent his day shadowing the nerd. Man, was Simon Berckiwitz a nerd. Pocket protectors and bowl cuts, dude. Like the polar opposite of Mr. Jackson.

And, at the last moment, inexplicably, he got cold feet and decided that Simon was an innocent man and he would not harm him.

The GM, the other players, and I all have our own pet theories for what the hell happened. I figure he thought playing a morally ambiguous--hell, EVIL--character would be easy, and was having problems with it now. Maybe he thought the job was a trick. There's another hypothesis, that his unwashed player saw a little too much of himself in the nerd.

Point being, a be-tac-suited DeadMan ran up to the nerd and began squealing on the whole plan to him in broken Weeaboo Japanenglish. Try to imagine how you would feel if, walking around campus, a Japanese dude ran up to you in illegal military gear and started screaming about "SIMON-SAN! A FURATTU BOY IS GOING TO BEAT YOU UP!" Yeah, it was kind of surreal. He explained that the evil Mr. Jackson all but DEMANDED that he perform this dishonorable task, but luckily, DeadMan had a devious idea to cheat Mr. Jackson and get out ahead, while not wronging Berckiwitz.

>>18229866

Geppetto was our face, but he didn't show up till our third run. Which I may or may not get to today since I gotta book it in like an hour, but you can bet I'll keep telling this story on further dates.

>>18229980

You see, he would go buy some cosmetics (which incidentally cost pretty much the whole reward) and then make Simon up to look like he'd been beaten black and blue. Simon, not wanting to be beaten up by a clearly mentally unstable man, relented.

Problem (in addition to all of the problems inherent in this whole retarded plan, like how it was costing him what he would get back): Trout relied on facial sculpt, melanin control, voice control, and so on to do his disguising for him, so he hadn't actually bought any ranks in disguise. He had 3 dice to it, 1 because he was defaulting.

He rolled a 1. Critical glitch. Simon came out looking like pic related.

Bafflingly, Trout uploaded the pic to Mr. Jackson anyway, figuring that it would "have to do."

What followed was, over the phone, a 19-year-old frat boy explaining runner ethics to a 28-year-old Japanese man.

"Dude, so look. Runnin' ain't about ethics an' bein' good an' evil an' sheeit, it's about doin' the job, yahearme? An' sometimes that job's gunna suck dick, like Tracey in the sorority down the street, yo. Sometimes it's even gunna come back to bite ya ass, like Tracey's herpes. She gave head like a fuckin' angel though, mang, you shoulda been there. Point bein', as a Shadowrunner you don't gots tha chops to turn down a job, homie! Sho you can pick and choose yo jobs comin' in, but once you says "it's on mothafucka," then shit IS on! You gotta do the job, dude! Still, it's not a complete loss cuz I'm sendin' this pittchure to e'ry girl in econ class, but it's the principle of the thing, knawmsayin? You don't get cash if you don't beat up no nerds. Peace out."

>>18230161

Meanwhile, 2D and Dervish had dumped the girl squarely at the foot of the W&P official's doorstep. 2D failed his signature check and blew out the entire building's node with a databomb, causing emergency services to come running. The two newbie runners cheesed it out of there, heading back to the runner bar.

When there, they ran into a dejected DeadMan. Or rather, he ran into them, because he had since changed his face and even though he could recognize them, they couldn't recognize him. 2D had not by this point become paranoid enough to start checking prospective teammates for active criminal SINs.

DeadMan asked the other two if they were runners, too, and what kind of job they'd done today. Did they beat a guy up? Maybe take his things?

2D and Dervish promptly enlightened DeadMan as to that they had, in fact, killed an innocent woman for a paltry sum and mafia goodwill. DeadMan was amazed that two souls could be so truly ruthless, and gave them his comm code in case they ever needed an infiltrator.

It probably isn't a surprise that the next job came through to 2D and Dervish, not DeadMan.

>>18230266

The job was simple. The Johnson was a blustery, pink-faced mafioso, and he explained that a small gang called the PH34RM0NG3RS were muscling in on his turf. The gang consisted of Bojack, a burly rastafarian orc who was a cybered-up veteran of the Amazonia conflict, Rager, an elf spellknack with a video game addiction, Gears, an orc rigger with a sexy custom Harley-Davidson, and four hangers-on, one of whom was a gigantic troll named Bunny. So long as we could kill Bojack, Rager, and Gears, the others would probably split, but we needed to kill those three before Mr. Johnson would give us our money.

Mostly for metagame reasons, we called up Deadman and promptly invited him into the job. Okay, entirely for metagame reasons.

First came the legwork. We discovered fairly early on that Gears kept a regular schedule each morning, and it would be easy to hit him while he was out and about. Rager had a bad habit of playing games in hotsim when he felt he could get away with it, which would make him easy pickings for technomancer toasting. Bojack was pretty tough, but with Bunny at his side, he was basically unstoppable.

Lucky for us, we discovered that Bunny was actually the brother of another one of the hangers-on, Raj. Weak link, here we go. Since no one else had any infiltration skills, we made the terrible mistake of sending DeadMan to scope out Raj.

>>18230357
Dis gon be gud.

>>18230357

As Raj walked through an alley in the slums, he was assaulted by a rival ganger, and it turned into a quick hand-to-hand scuffle before Raj finally put the other ganger down. He looked out into the street, making sure that no one had seen the fight.

DeadMan used this opportunity to begin stripping the unconscious ganger naked to "sell his gear at the next vendor."

While in the tacsuit.

So basically, it looked like the Ghost of the Alleyway (tm) was molesting the guy.

Raj promptly walked over, eyes on DeadMan. DeadMan did nothing because "he can't see me!"

Raj drew a pistol and placed it against DeadMan's temple. DeadMan suddenly realized that he had a pair of pants slung over the shoulder of his tacsuit, to say nothing of the wallet he was leafing through.

Raj: "Tacsuit off, motherfucker."
DeadMan: "WAIT! I'LL TELL YOU EVERYTHING! I'M A SHADOWRUNNER! LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY TEAMMATES!"
Raj: "...Go on."

And on that cliffhangery note, I need to bounce. I can probably get back before the thread times out, but in case I don't, I'll toss the thread onto the archives to reference back to it when I pick up the story. The story is far from over, and I hope to return to it later today or tomorrow.

In the meantime, I'll keep the page up on my phone. I'd love to hear some Shadowrun stories from you guys!

>>18230541
THIS FUCKING GUY!

>>18230541
Wow, fuck this guy. He squeals on EVERYONE, and the last thing you want to be known as is an easily-scared rat. Shadowrun, at least most of the time, is not a dungeon-crawl.

>>18230672

I'm honestly surprised that players don't routinely cap players that pull this crap. Granted they have to find out that he ratted them out "in character" before they can. But if I found out a very new "associate" of mine flipped on me, he would be dead before breakfast.

is this a wrong mentality to play with?

>>18231714

Not especially. Incidentally, I'm back. More Shadowrun incoming.

>>18231714
Of course not. When you're a deniable asset like a shadowrunner, some people assume there's no such thing as accountability and will try to get away with some heinous shit, assuming they're not already pretty evil to begin with.

>>18231847

Delightful, Cannot wait for more

>>18230541

So, in his hurry to squeal, DeadMan had forgotten that 2D was running comms, and he was speaking while wearing a subvocal mic.

2D's icon, with its little bomb-head, popped into DeadMan and Raj's AR.

"So, our infiltrator is an idiot. Look, what will it take to get you and Bunny the fuck out of Dodge by this time tomorrow?"

Raj made his check to identify the 2D bomber by his iconography, and frowned.

"Shit. Well, you're gonna have to pay me an awful lot."

2D laughed dryly. "How does 2,000 nuyen and not dying sound?"

Raj's eyes widened. "You're offering me 2,000 nuyen?"

2D responded, "Yes. By which I mean you will be stealing every appliance worth more than 100 nuyen in your apartment. I tallied up the costs. If you don't count Rager's computer gear, you probably got 4 grand worth of shit in there."

Raj thought the proposition over.

"And what if I decide to screw you over, kill your infiltrator?"

2D laughed outright at this. "You mean the infiltrator who just tried to sell us out?"

"Point. Okay, gimme till noon tomorrow."

"You screw us and you die by inches, Raj."

"I don't doubt it."

Most of the rest of the day was spent with 2D and Dervish violently berating DeadMan, since for metagame reasons we couldn't just kill him.

Don't worry, we got fed up enough eventually. Just not yet.

>>18231934

The rest of the plan--the part without DeadMan--went like greased clockwork. We started off with Gears. Gears made his rounds early in the morning, so 2D and Dervish hopped into the truck and followed him onto the freeway. With Dervish at the wheel, 2D hacked his Harley and activated the emergency break, sending Gears careening into oncoming traffic. One ganger down.

2D pulled the hacked bike over onto the shoulder, with the intent of dressing Dervish up in leathers and then having him appear to be "Gears" on the way back. What neither teammate expected was the fact that the bike was the pimpingest thing since gangsta rap. It was covered in gold studs, sported flame decals in both real and AR space, and had a martini shaker affixed to the back. It had a custom horn and colored brights. It had a doberman drone with a gun in the sidecar. It was, in fact, the least subtle bike ever made.

Dervish loved it, and promptly claimed it as his own. 2D, for his part, stuck a machine sprite in the drone before logging on to cap Rager.

Rager was playing a fantasy game when 2D struck. He had a brief moment to recognize that bomb-headed dudes were not part of the Dungeon of the Dragon King before lethal biofeedback boiled his brain out of his nose.

Bunny and Raj made off with a fridge filled with small appliances and commlinks, escaping out the back.

And, finally, Bojack and his two remaining thugs were taken very much by surprise when "Gears" rammed his motorbike into Bojack, and then he and the drone proceeded to butcher everyone present.

Against the better judgment of everyone involved, but trying to be nice to the player, DeadMan was given a full share of the cash afterwards.