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Message no. 1
From: "A.R.Gay" <cs6004@***.AC.UK>
Subject: Nasty Tricks & Booby Traps
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 12:29:16 +0100
I do so much like putting problems infront of my Players. My
favourite kind are those of missdirection. One that I pulled
just the other day went a bit like this.

Background. Company A contracts Company B to make something for
them, which must be delivered on/by a certain day, if the
consinment is not delevered the entire contract is void, and
company B do not get paid.

Adventure. A couple of days before the consinment is due to be
shipped out to company A, Company A hires the players to steal
one of the devices from the warehouse where it is stored and
destroy all the rest of the consinment. If they do not have the
sample thay will not be paid, if they do not destroy the rest
they get paid less.

What is realy going on. Company A has decided that they do not
want to pay for the device that they have had company B design
and build, so they plan to steal a copy of the finished product
and reverse enginere it, this will in the long run work out
cheaper. The confusion starts when the players find out the
relation ship between the two companies involved and can not
understand what is going on. This is good fun for the GM and
the players enjoy it because the puzzle keeps coming back to
them.


A nother tricky one is the set up! I said that Fuchi had a
professor who was going to defect to Ares. So they approched
the runners about assasinating the old man and destroying his
files, but they said that they were from Ares and that the old
man had defected from them. When the players done their
scouting they were allowed to get in and out without drawing
attention and any decos thay set up appeared to work.
Unfortunatly, when the decker tried to access the guys computer
he came up aginst what appeared to be, from the us of standard
matrix icons and signature, a blaster ice. It was in reality a
black ice.

Once they had killed the old man, the party were young and
didn't bother to ask any questions of him, especialy as he tried
to run, they leave the builing are making their escape when they
are ambushed by a unit of heavily armed/armoured security
gaurds. The corp has decided that it is cheaper to kill them
than to pay them.

These are just a couple of examples, of course you can not use
this sort of plot all the time or even too frequently, but when
you do, they are great fun, and the look on your players faces
is an absoloute peach.

Yours with much evilness

JackFrost (and the Hooded Crow.)
cs6004@***.ac.uk
Message no. 2
From: Christopher Church <cchurch@*******.SCRI.FSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Nasty Tricks & Booby Traps
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 15:06:32 18000
>
> I do so much like putting problems infront of my Players. My
> favourite kind are those of missdirection.
...
> they are ambushed by a unit of heavily armed/armoured security
> gaurds. The corp has decided that it is cheaper to kill them
> than to pay them.
>
> JackFrost (and the Hooded Crow.)

Somehow, traps of intrigue like that are more believable than
a lot of the stuff that's flying around out there right now. It seems
more realistic to me that a corp give some runners the screw job with
a high threat security squad than with ripper rays from behind
bulletproof glass (not that I haven't seen variations of that
before).
Sure, everybody loves a clever booby trap, but I always try to
balance them out with the fact that if somebody rigs a deadman switch
in a lab, what's to stop renowned (and absentminded) prof X from
accidently throwing that switch and blowing himself and his work to
kingdom come? Whoops! Call the insurance company. Traps are
sometimes tripped by accident, so unless there is really, absolutely
no reason for anyone to be there (i.e. a corp facility picket line vs.
the lobby of Wee, Cheatum & Howe, Inc. :)), is lethal response on the
first level of defense the most logical, realistic (or fair?) solution?
On a different but related note, how do you handle the fact
that corps would want to maximize their profit margin, vs. the fact
that keeping large, strapping lads in the form of a standing army
(especially when they are all mondo badasses) is probably real
expensive? I suppose it would just make the corps sleazier money
grubbers, but does anyone consider this as a game balance, or just say
to hell with the profit margin, Assault Cannons all around? Ladies
and Gents?
--
"In the immortal words of Socrates-- 'I drank what?'"
-Chris Knight (Real Genius)
Message no. 3
From: Chaos Manager <jstawarz@******.GMU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Nasty Tricks & Booby Traps
Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 16:13:04 -0400
> Sure, everybody loves a clever booby trap, but I always try to
> balance them out with the fact that if somebody rigs a deadman switch
> in a lab, what's to stop renowned (and absentminded) prof X from
> accidently throwing that switch and blowing himself and his work to
> kingdom come? Whoops! Call the insurance company. Traps are
> sometimes tripped by accident, so unless there is really, absolutely
> no reason for anyone to be there (i.e. a corp facility picket line vs.
> the lobby of Wee, Cheatum & Howe, Inc. :)), is lethal response on the
> first level of defense the most logical, realistic (or fair?) solution?

Well, I was looking more for stuff that was SECOND line of defense. You
know, they've gotten through the guards at the gate and the guards
roaming the hall way, and are in the ultra-secret part of the base that
NOBODY is supposed to be in with a security escort. Said escort would
know all the traps and the proper ways to temporarily disable them to
pass them by.

> --
> "In the immortal words of Socrates-- 'I drank what?'"
> -Chris Knight (Real Genius)
>


--
*****************************************************************
* John Stawarz aka Chaos Manager *
* jstawarz@******.gmu.edu jstawarz@***.edu *
*****************************************************************
* Proudly attending Groucho Marx University since 1992. *
*****************************************************************

Geek Code (1.0.1) GCS/O -d+ p c++(c---) l u+ e+ m+(*) s+/++ n---(!n) h--
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Message no. 4
From: Marc A Renouf <jormung@*****.UMICH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Nasty Tricks & Booby Traps
Date: Tue, 6 Sep 1994 08:48:21 -0400
On Mon, 5 Sep 1994, Christopher Church wrote:

> Somehow, traps of intrigue like that are more believable than
> a lot of the stuff that's flying around out there right now.

And how. A sneaky corp sleazebucket doesn't need traps to make a
runner's life sheer hell. This type of nastiness runs the full range
from "forgetting" to pay the runners to "accidentally" tipping off the
authorities to their nefarious deeds to ratting them out to another
corp. All of which are just great. >:)

> Sure, everybody loves a clever booby trap, but I always try to
> balance them out with the fact that if somebody rigs a deadman switch
> in a lab, what's to stop renowned (and absentminded) prof X from
> accidently throwing that switch and blowing himself and his work to
> kingdom come? Whoops! Call the insurance company. Traps are
> sometimes tripped by accident, so unless there is really, absolutely
> no reason for anyone to be there (i.e. a corp facility picket line vs.
> the lobby of Wee, Cheatum & Howe, Inc. :)), is lethal response on the
> first level of defense the most logical, realistic (or fair?) solution?

No. Which is why in my first example it was a combination of
entrapment (seal off the doors) and capture (flood the room with
NeuroStun VIII). Keep in mind that the only time a corp will destroy
something of their own is if they a) don't give a rat's ass about it or b)
don't want anyone to know about it.

> I suppose it would just make the corps sleazier money
> grubbers, but does anyone consider this as a game balance, or just say
> to hell with the profit margin, Assault Cannons all around? Ladies
> and Gents?

No way. Fiscal concerns are real, in my game at least. Nobody
does anything that's that expensive unless they need to. Most of the
people that my players run up against from corps are armed with SMG's.
It is an economically viable weapon, easy to maintain, and ammo is
cheap. Hell, even the military rarely uses anything heavier than an
assault rifle. There are what, eight guys in a platoon with some sort of
heavy weapon? Maybe an LMG or MMG? And maybe a few will have undermount
grenade launchers, but still, the main weapon is an assault rifle, even
for the freakin' military. Keep your players' opponents within the
realms of plausability.

Marc

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