Freelance Blogging

Cassus tells his story to his new ‘runner team:

Sideways

The next job from Mr. Johnson sent us to Seattle, the Hollywood for Shadowrunners, we’ve hit the big time! The teams operational funds got us a pretty decent apartment in Tacoma and we spent a week doing the regular research and prep for the run. We’ve even made a new StreetDoc contact in Redmond near the facility, just in case someone falls and scrapes a knee! This shouldn’t be any more difficult than the rest of the jobs we’ve done so far.
Stealth is always best but it takes prep, so the hacker would research the facility by getting inside the security cameras and capturing guard behavior and finding the best routes to the data port. I would case the facility from the outside and the Faceman would try to buddy up with an employee or guard to squeeze a little more info about the place.
Once we felt comfortable with what we had, I would run the actual B&E with everyone in camouflage and the mages spells to keep us quiet and distract guards with phantom sounds. Soon we’d be in the room with the shining network portal and the hacker would crack any IC and grab the paydata the Johnson was asking for plus any extra that looked juicy and might sell on the black market.
The location is an Ares Arms facility called Monohan Vehicles. They manufacture military and police vehicles in a remote and forested area south of Glow City. We walked into the facility without any problems; locked doors were opened, cameras and security hardware were spoofed, guards looked the other way at just the right time. We stood guard while the decker jacked into the data port.
The decker died ten seconds later with a quiet little pop, and the smell of burning electronics. Black IC wasn’t supposed to be part of the set up but the scorching around her datajack made it apparent that we were all in some serious shit. Then the auto-turrets popped out and the drones came and the whole thing turned into a screaming chaos of blood and death.
I remember hearing the mage scream something about an astral presence before his eyes rolled back and he crashed to the floor. Me and the Faceman made a last stand against the well trained corp-mercs that showed up but they were too good and too many. The mental snap shot of his warm brain matter splattered across the side of my face will haunt my nightmares.
The explosion that opened a jagged hole in the wall next to me was nearly the end but I was able to crawl through it onto a lower level rooftop. The meds were gone by that time and my wounds were severe but somehow I limped through the night, headed to the only place that came to mind, the new StreetDoc contact “Patches”.

Shadowrun campaign in progress!

The Butcher’s Bill

Cassus woke up in a StreetDoc’s clinic in the Glow City area of Redmond after having survived a run that went very badly, the rest of his team appears to have been killed. He was pretty sure that his SIN had been compromised and he needed a new one. His dead ‘runner team had rented an apartment in Tacoma and he knows that there is a lot of gear and credit lying around there. The team had paid for the first and last month’s rent so he still has at least four weeks before the land lord confiscates the contents of the room.

Cassus paid off the doc and got his gear back and the doc connected him with Roscoe the fixer. When Cassus walked out of the doc’s office he was jumped by two Halloweener gang members who were hanging out on the front porch. He killed them and made his way to meet with Roscoe.

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The time between adventures can be a lot of fun for players especially when they see the effect that their good work has on the world and their reputations. They have time to celebrate, spend their hard earned coin and find a new direction in which to head.
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One of my favorite game worlds, by far, is the classic Traveller universe. Traveller is a table-top role playing game set in the far future, approximately 3600 years from now and the game world is truly gigantic.

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From the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book:

As Cormyr’s recent troubles prove, the Heartlands of Faerun are not always stable or safe. Incursions of monstrous hordes of orcs, ogres, or giants can easily overrun even stoutly defended cities. Would-be kings continually challenge the powers of the land from within, seeking to unseat the ruler. Proud and arrogant foreign powers watch warily for any sign of weakness, always ready to annex a province or sack a city. Magical disasters, plagues, and flights of raging dragons can lay low even the most peaceful and secure lands.

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From the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book:

Clerics of Chauntea, Selune, and Shar tell of the following legend.

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With most of the heavy lifting of world building already done for me by using The Forgotten Realms campaign setting, the next task is to lay out possibilities. These possibilities are the available paths that the characters can take in the world. I want them to feel like they are in a “sand box” without there truly being a “sand box”. For me this means that I need to have several “railroads” for the characters to follow and to present these “railroads” to the players in an organic fashion.

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From the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book:

Almost every people or race of Faerun marks the passage of days, seasons, and years in some fashion. In Cormyr and a dozen other kingdoms, royal astrologers carefully tend to the Roll of Years. Even the war-heralds of the unlettered orc-tribes compose harsh chants that record the days and deeds of their fierce chieftains.

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From the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book:

Toril is steeped in magic. It permeates the entire world. Fallen empires thousands of years old left portals and wrecked towers scattered across the landscape that are still filled with potent enchantments. Haughty wizards whose spells can lay low entire armies plot against each other as they pursue their studies into ever more powerful – and more dangerous – fields of arcane lore. Deities channel divine energy through their mortal agents to advance the causes that interest them. Adventurers of all types, evil and good, wield mighty spells seemingly at will.

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From the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book:

Faerun is home to hundreds of intelligent creatures, ranging from the teeming kingdoms of humankind to the secret fastnesses of terrible creatures whose entire species numbers a score or less. Like humans, these peoples run the gamut from grotesque to beautiful, from murderous to beatific.

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