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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: loneeagle@********.co.uk (Lone Eagle)
Subject: Random Encounters (Contains spoilers for Harlequin)
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 19:06:41 +0000
At 08:44 PM 29/1/2003, John wrote:
> [Valeu John EMFA]
> You mean your players actually plan and stake out the site
>beforehand instead of figuring every job has to be done within 24 hours (or
>less) of the contract signing?
>
> Anyone have any idea on how I can drive the point home about NOT
>rushing into the job and taking your time and planing ahead?

Find some players who actually get more out of the planning and the legwork
and make it interesting for them :D

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However for those who find the legwork boring (yes I have players like
that) give them jobs where they go straight from the meet to the job with
the limited equipment provided by the Johnson or (and I loved doing this)
build up the 'run severely. I started my group on Hates from Harlequin, as
written; when three of the players decided they didn't want to do legwork I
went home at the end of the session and put my brain to work.
I wrote dossiers (whassername's data on the big 6) going into detail on
certain aspects of the characters, I tried to stick reasonably close to the
descriptions in the book but changed bits where they occurred. For example,
I looked at Thiran and Erendahl, both use the "Former tribal warrior"
template so I looked at that and listed Thiran as ex-Wildcats, adjusted him
to suit it in the conversion to 3rd Ed and noted it in the dossier knowing
that the combatative players would immediately fixate on the fact that he
was ex-special forces and decide he needed to be taken down a peg or two.
(before anyone asks I ignored my ex-special forces minimums)
I then decided that Erendahl would be a tactically minded guy so I noted in
the dossier that he'd been DHDed but had reached the NCO ranks (deciding
that if they checked further they'd find he'd been a staff sergeant) and
gave hime some tactical knowledge.
I looked at the rumours and noted that the APN had some corp backing (IIRC,
I might have simply added that) and looked at their equipment. I upgraded
their machine pistols to Steyr TMPs, loaded them with tracers, gave them a
couple of GPMGs and some other equipment, all of it simple (flashpacks,
smoke grenades..etc) plus some extra explosives.

I then looked at the map and thought... "Right, this is what I've got, how
would I defend it against heavily armed motherfraggers?"

I ended up setting the basement up with loopholes (for the GPMGs) fallback
positions, and other stuff and putting APN members throughout the rest of
the building with table and chair or bunk and mattress forts and radios.

Having set it all up as a death trap I seeded the legwork with info which
could point it out to them if they looked...

They walked into the deathtrap with no intel and some of them (the ones who
don't like legwork) complained bitterly that I'd put in people it was
impossible for them to beat. They all made it out alive (but the ones who
don't like legwork had to make body rolls to avoid disfigurement and test
for magic loss) thanks to our other GM's NPC (playing as a character) and
one other character who was sensible and actually managed to spot the
probable problems with the basement before they went down there and
formulated a plan, if it weren't for the fact that noone listened they
might have avoided it.
Despite their protests I did not boost the power of any of the bad guys
from the book I simply used them at a level of intelligence greater than
they'd ever experienced before. I even handed the character sheets of the
six out at the end to prove it.
However it was the first time they'd faced concerted searching, suppressive
and clever fire. (Even Pistols 3 can be really effective if searching fire
is used.)


--
Lone Eagle
"Hold up lads, I got an idea."

www.wyrmtalk.co.uk - Please be patient, this site is under construction

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Further Reading

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