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Message no. 1
From: korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject: Using Enemies... (long)
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 14:31:36 -0800 (PST)
> I guess my driving question is how do you bring
> enemies into play that
> shouldn't logically be anywhere near the character,
> given that character's
> background?
>
> Epilogue

My counter questions would be:

How did the character make this Enemy?
What makes this person worthy of being an Enemy, and
not just some chump who dislikes the PC?
How does the PC have an Enemy who is no where near
them?

Just making Enemies up and trying to figure out how to
link them to the PCs is a waste of your efforts as a
GM. You will burn hours of creativity trying to force
an circumstance that makes no logical sense. Enemies
don't just happen, any more than Contacts do. A good
character story explains how they met their contacts,
and what kept them in touch with the contact long
enough to build a relationship. You should be able to
derive similar information from a character background
to make believable enemies. I'll give you an example
from one of my table top games.

The group were all happily employed as a DocWagon HRT,
but a botched extraction led to their getting hug out
to dry by their employers. One character, the group's
spell slinger (a combat oriented Dog shaman), had
created a backstory that involved a deceased loved
one. His character was an orc, and the loved one had
been a human, an Amerindian Bear shaman and trauma doc
on the team. He also chose an enemy, and, when
pressed for details, said it was some other DocWagon
employee who had been in love with the woman as well.
She died in the botch pickup that started the story.
Now, this enemy was only a 1 point flaw, so at the
start the enemy was not much of a threat. So, our
team of intrepid ex-DocWagon employees leave the
comforts of corporate life in Bellevue behind,
becoming down and out runners in Puyallup gang land.
Seems like that enemy has not got much chance of doing
anything to hurt our Dog shaman any time soon, right?.

Nope. I am evil.

Jeremy Stiles was employed in the Locations division
of DW. When a client's bracelet goes dead, but they
are paying for a really good contract, DW has their
Locations boys whip up a ritual divination using
tissue samples on file. Find the body and then lead
the HRT in. Now, Stiles is a lowly boy at DW (low
power enemy), and has no access to tissue samples for
a team that is officially KIA. So he bides his time.
Now, Jeremy is a nice enough guy on the surface, but
underneath, he's not doing so well. Seams he is
unhealthy in the mental category. He's got issues. A
bunch. See, he knows that shamans are basically
lesser mages. He had to room with one back in
college. Stinking Coyote shaman never studied, always
partied, messed withpoor hard working Jeremy. And
still got decent enough grades to pass. The bastard.
So Jeremy knows that the Dog shaman must have duped
his lady love into turning her affection to him.
Instead of Jeremy. And the Dog shaman...an orc! That
is just wrong. Now...Jeremy was no racist. Orcs were
fine, and he even knew a few he got on well with. But
orcs and humans in bed! Disgusting! (He knew about
the two of them...divination being his specialty.) It
was just filthy. And so on...you see the downward
trend already.

Now, months tick by. Good ole Jeremy is getting less
and less sane every day. Meanwhile the PCs are doing
fine. Getting good runs, new contacts, and some nice
nuyen. One contact decides to go digging on the Dog
shaman's behalf, to find out what happened at DW that
made it all go bad. Our Dog shaman had unwisely
indicated that he and the team still bore DW a big
grudge over it all: the bad intel, the lost teammates,
the coverup, and the balme game. This contact was a
Level 2, and wanted to do her friend a favor.
Hmmm...someone at DW, who long ago thought he'd
burried the issue of the PCs, is now a bit worried.
He engineered the death of a client as he'd been paid
to do, but the HRT fall guys had to stay "dead" if he
was to stay clean. So he gives ole Jeremy access to
some tissue samples from the "lost agents" archive.
hey are old, and mostly useless, but it is somewhere
for Jeremy to start. Jeremy of course, has no
convinced himself of even darker things, thanks to his
crumbling psyche.

That bear shaman had been toying with him. Yea...no
one could have taken her away from Jeremy, no shaman
anyway. Jeremy was the better mage and a superior
person. No...she'd gone of her own accord! Why? A
human, choosing an orc!? Wait a minute...! Of
course. She'd been an orc too! Sure. Stinking
shaman had used illusions to hide it from him, to toy
with him. Why, maybe other people were too. They
could be everywhere, posing as waitresses and touching
your silverware. Drawing the same pay. Argh! Jeremy
starts losing it, even as he gains the ability to
chase after our protagonist in the shadows. He gets
fired, losing his main backers, but gaining an
obsession to find a destroy our Dog shaman. Thereby
maintaining the low enemy value, but changing
dynamically with the story.

In the end, Jeremy, a wreck of man, thoroughly tainted
by everyone's favorite bogeyman Darke, did catch up
with the runners. By then, he was powerfully
initiated, but half burned out from useless cyberware
of his own design. He had spent countless hours of
wasted magic developing both spells and cyberware to
detect the "fake" humans who were taking over a la pod
people. He had become convinced that metahumanity was
contagious, and had various (mostly useless) spells
and cyber to protect him form infection. He was a
tough customer, though absolutely insane and
irrational. He was homocidal in the extreme. He was
wanted by various law enforcement groups. He found
our Dog shaman at last, tracking him down while he was
running astral overwatch for a critical run. He
injected an unpleasant but mostly harmless poison into
the Dog shaman, a special "virul cleanser" that would
destroy the "contagious meta parasite" that was
infecting him (by now Jeremy thought the plot was
bigger than the Dog shaman, becoming convinced that
our protagonist had once been his friend until "that
toxic bear shaman" had "infected" him). The rough
treatment by Jeremy to inject the poison brought the
shaman back to his body right quick (yes, leaving the
team with no overwatch). Slightly impaired by the
equivalent of inebriation and stomach flu combined,
our protagonist fought with Jeremy, a rather epic
battle full of surreal ranting speaches and impressive
arcane pyrtechnics. In the end, the Dog shaman is
holding his sobbing, dying enemy while the mage begs
to be killed before the "infection" can set in. And
the team was most thoroughly peeved at the added
complications that arose due to the absence of their
astral/magical support.

The enemy was barely memorable to the PC for most of
the game, but managed to surface at a very inopportune
moment, hampering some important busines, and doing
some psychological damage to the PC (maybe the player
too) that lasted for the rest of the game. That Dog
shaman started seeing flashbacks of his lost love and
the dying mage, and got very addicted to astral space
and some drugs. Nothing dangerous or anything that
affected his work. Just some unpleasant memories and
dreams.

That is an example of how I use an enemy that cannot
reasonably get to the PC for a while.

======Korishinzo
--that player doesn't take enemies anymore :(

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Message no. 2
From: SteveG@***********.co.za (Steve Garrard)
Subject: Using Enemies... (long)
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 2002 13:24:17 +0200
Ice Heart wrote:
> The group were all happily employed as a DocWagon HRT,
> but a botched extraction led to their getting hug out
> to dry by their employers. One character, the group's
> spell slinger (a combat oriented Dog shaman), had
> created a backstory that involved a deceased loved
> one. His character was an orc, and the loved one had
> been a human, an Amerindian Bear shaman and trauma doc
> on the team. He also chose an enemy, and, when
> pressed for details, said it was some other DocWagon
> employee who had been in love with the woman as well.
> She died in the botch pickup that started the story.
> Now, this enemy was only a 1 point flaw, so at the
> start the enemy was not much of a threat. So, our
> team of intrepid ex-DocWagon employees leave the
> comforts of corporate life in Bellevue behind,
> becoming down and out runners in Puyallup gang land.
> Seems like that enemy has not got much chance of doing
> anything to hurt our Dog shaman any time soon, right?.
>
> Nope. I am evil.
>
> Jeremy Stiles was employed in the Locations division
> of DW. When a client's bracelet goes dead, but they
> are paying for a really good contract, DW has their
> Locations boys whip up a ritual divination using
> tissue samples on file. Find the body and then lead
> the HRT in. Now, Stiles is a lowly boy at DW (low
> power enemy), and has no access to tissue samples for
> a team that is officially KIA. So he bides his time.
> Now, Jeremy is a nice enough guy on the surface, but
> underneath, he's not doing so well. Seams he is unhealthy in
> the mental category. He's got issues. A bunch. See, he
> knows that shamans are basically lesser mages. He had to
> room with one back in college. Stinking Coyote shaman never
> studied, always partied, messed withpoor hard working Jeremy.
> And still got decent enough grades to pass. The bastard.
> So Jeremy knows that the Dog shaman must have duped
> his lady love into turning her affection to him.
> Instead of Jeremy. And the Dog shaman...an orc! That
> is just wrong. Now...Jeremy was no racist. Orcs were
> fine, and he even knew a few he got on well with. But
> orcs and humans in bed! Disgusting! (He knew about
> the two of them...divination being his specialty.) It
> was just filthy. And so on...you see the downward
> trend already.
>
> Now, months tick by. Good ole Jeremy is getting less
> and less sane every day. Meanwhile the PCs are doing
> fine. Getting good runs, new contacts, and some nice
> nuyen. One contact decides to go digging on the Dog
> shaman's behalf, to find out what happened at DW that
> made it all go bad. Our Dog shaman had unwisely
> indicated that he and the team still bore DW a big
> grudge over it all: the bad intel, the lost teammates,
> the coverup, and the balme game. This contact was a
> Level 2, and wanted to do her friend a favor.
> Hmmm...someone at DW, who long ago thought he'd
> burried the issue of the PCs, is now a bit worried.
> He engineered the death of a client as he'd been paid
> to do, but the HRT fall guys had to stay "dead" if he
> was to stay clean. So he gives ole Jeremy access to
> some tissue samples from the "lost agents" archive.
> hey are old, and mostly useless, but it is somewhere
> for Jeremy to start. Jeremy of course, has no
> convinced himself of even darker things, thanks to his
> crumbling psyche.
>
> That bear shaman had been toying with him. Yea...no
> one could have taken her away from Jeremy, no shaman
> anyway. Jeremy was the better mage and a superior
> person. No...she'd gone of her own accord! Why? A
> human, choosing an orc!? Wait a minute...! Of
> course. She'd been an orc too! Sure. Stinking
> shaman had used illusions to hide it from him, to toy
> with him. Why, maybe other people were too. They
> could be everywhere, posing as waitresses and touching
> your silverware. Drawing the same pay. Argh! Jeremy
> starts losing it, even as he gains the ability to
> chase after our protagonist in the shadows. He gets
> fired, losing his main backers, but gaining an
> obsession to find a destroy our Dog shaman. Thereby
> maintaining the low enemy value, but changing dynamically
> with the story.
>
> In the end, Jeremy, a wreck of man, thoroughly tainted
> by everyone's favorite bogeyman Darke, did catch up
> with the runners. By then, he was powerfully
> initiated, but half burned out from useless cyberware
> of his own design. He had spent countless hours of
> wasted magic developing both spells and cyberware to
> detect the "fake" humans who were taking over a la pod
> people. He had become convinced that metahumanity was
> contagious, and had various (mostly useless) spells and cyber
> to protect him form infection. He was a tough customer,
> though absolutely insane and irrational. He was homocidal in
> the extreme. He was wanted by various law enforcement
> groups. He found our Dog shaman at last, tracking him down
> while he was running astral overwatch for a critical run. He
> injected an unpleasant but mostly harmless poison into the
> Dog shaman, a special "virul cleanser" that would destroy the
> "contagious meta parasite" that was infecting him (by now
> Jeremy thought the plot was bigger than the Dog shaman,
> becoming convinced that our protagonist had once been his
> friend until "that toxic bear shaman" had "infected" him).
> The rough treatment by Jeremy to inject the poison brought
> the shaman back to his body right quick (yes, leaving the
> team with no overwatch). Slightly impaired by the equivalent
> of inebriation and stomach flu combined, our protagonist
> fought with Jeremy, a rather epic battle full of surreal
> ranting speaches and impressive arcane pyrtechnics. In the
> end, the Dog shaman is holding his sobbing, dying enemy while
> the mage begs to be killed before the "infection" can set in.
> And the team was most thoroughly peeved at the added
> complications that arose due to the absence of their
> astral/magical support.
>
> The enemy was barely memorable to the PC for most of
> the game, but managed to surface at a very inopportune
> moment, hampering some important busines, and doing
> some psychological damage to the PC (maybe the player
> too) that lasted for the rest of the game. That Dog
> shaman started seeing flashbacks of his lost love and
> the dying mage, and got very addicted to astral space
> and some drugs. Nothing dangerous or anything that
> affected his work. Just some unpleasant memories and
> dreams.
>
> That is an example of how I use an enemy that cannot
> reasonably get to the PC for a while.

Damn fine work if I do say so myself.


Slayer

"Beware my wrath, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
- Unknown Dragon


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Message no. 3
From: davidb@****.imcprint.com (Graht)
Subject: Using Enemies... (long)
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2002 09:18:51 -0700
At 01:24 PM 11/8/2002 +0200, Steve Garrard wrote:

>Ice Heart wrote:

[big snip]

> > That is an example of how I use an enemy that cannot
> > reasonably get to the PC for a while.
>
>Damn fine work if I do say so myself.

[Admin]

Steve,

Please take the time to trim down posts you are replying to, per the
ShadowRN posting guidelines.

Thank you.

[/Admin]

--
To Life,
-Graht
ShadowRN Assistant Fearless Leader II
http://www.graht.com

Further Reading

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