Line of the Night: Shadowrun FDC

Our online Shadowrun campaign ended recently due to the gamemaster needing to work weird hours for a couple of months. It was a sort of sandbox game set in the Federal District of Columbia, with the team taking care of personal business and trying to keep hidden from the authorities alongside finding jobs and trying their best to accomplish them (and not always succeeding).

Our cast of characters include:

Josh, the gamemaster;

Spencer as Boombox, ex-military demolitionist rigger and music buff who owes a massive debt to Doctor Feelgood, a chop shop doc who is more sinister than he first appears;

Brett as Woden, elf shaman of wolf and summoner of beefy spirits;

Kevin as Nitro, the team’s driver and secondary infiltrator/gunman;

Nick as Erebus, an ork gangster magician with ties to a criminal organization;

Peter as Smoke, a technomancer who couldn’t actually hack anything;

Peter again as Jekyll/Hyde (after taking a break from the campaign and retiring Smoke), an albino dwarf who used custom combat drugs to modify his brain to suit whatever situation was at hand;

And me as Le Chasseur, a reclusive elf bow hunter from Quebec with inexplicably huge muscle implants.

Le Chasseur was a character that I’d been tweaking and fine-tuning for years because I wanted to see if it was possible to make a character who used a bow and arrows stack up against characters who use machine guns. Turns out you can, if you minmax hard enough. In a game where a high ability score is 6-10, he had 13 Agility and 10 Strength, and could shoot arrows up to half a kilometer with 24 dice.

This is the same crew from my Real Chrome post a while back, when I wrote up an epilogue to one of our runs.

Here are the best quotes from a year of running the capitol shadows, mostly recorded by Brett:

Session 1: Five Shadowrunners Walk Into A Bar

Smoke: “What did you say to call you?”

Nitro: “Oh, finally, you’re here.”

Woden: “You got a shorter version of that?”

Boombox: “I don’t have any weapons in my bag, just all the drones.”

Smoke, looking around the bar as various potential muggers pretend to not be eavesdropping: “He whispers, VERY QUIETLY.”

Smoke: “The sprite decompiles. I don’t need it sitting there waiting for GOD to show up.”

Boombox: “I think there are books about that.”

Session 2: The Groovy Mutaqua

Nitro: “How are you talking to us? Are we having a conference call here?”

Smoke: “Oh, I was just listening in through Boombox’s commlink.”

Boombox: “Wait, what?”

Smoke: “So you’re staying outside? Shame, I would have liked to see our mage in action.”

Woden, astrally projecting: “I’ll with you in…spirit.”

Le Chasseur: “Yeah, I got nothing on the roof. Are you sure you weren’t just seeing things, Woden?”

Woden: I manifest in front of him, shoot him a disapproving look, then un-manifest.

Smoke: “It could be the HMVHVMHMVVHVVMHV thing.”

Erebus: “I’m not going to try and fast talk the police. I’m not the most persuasive ork wizard.”

Boombox: “Come on! You wouldn’t even be lying to them!”

Erebus: “They’re gonna ghost arrest me!”

Erebus: “I cast Slow Vehicle.”

Boombox: “That’s a spell? That’s…specific.”

Slow Vehicle doesn’t work super well, so Erebus tried Physical Barrier instead.

GM: The front of the car absolutely crumples as it hits the barrier. It stops dead, smoke pouring out of the hood.

Erebus: “Now THAT’s the Slow Vehicle spell.”

Session 3: Gang Escalation

GM: You hear steady thudding from behind the door, like music playing. It sounds like dubstep.

Boombox: “YES.”

Boombox: “I’m gonna keep my grenade launcher, because it’s built into my arm.”

Le Chasseur: “You could make a show of unloading it for them, maybe?”

Woden: “You expect him to walk into an unknown situation…unarmed?”

NPC Bouncer at the Oasis, secret shadowrunner hangout: “I don’t remember any new invites going out. Who told you about this place?”

Woden: “Well, it was a guy we did a job for. Do you know a ‘Mr. Johnson?'”

Smoke: “In my list of how I rank these four people I just met, Woden just went up a notch.”

Smoke: “Wow, Boombox has a lot of Edge.”

Boombox: “Boombox is a lucky fella.”

Smoke: “That explains why he’s fucking alive.”

Le Chasseur: “I really hope every underworld organization in the city has a different colored chip for Oasis.”

Woden: “I want to collect them all.”

Le Chasseur: “Gotta catch em all! Shadowrun!”

Boombox: “So what should we do?”

Mr. Johnson: “I’m glad you asked, Mr. Box.”

Boombox: “Please, call me Boom. Mr. Box was my father.”

Le Chasseur: “We should have brought Erebus with us. Would’ve made us look way more racially diverse.”

Session 4: All Orks Know Each Other

Le Chasseur: “The first shot I fire with the skill my entire character is built around, and it’s to hit a fucking raccoon.”

Boombox: “Erebus, how do you know them? Were you a ganger?”

Nitro: “He’s an ork.”

Smoke: “No racism please.”

Woden: “Erebus, you know this guy right? You’re…urban.”

Erebus: “…Wow.“

Smoke: “Seriously though, how do you know these True Patriot gangers?”

Erebus: “Don’t worry about it.”

Smoke: “I’m worrying about it.”

Erebus: “Look, orks talk, guys.”

Smoke: “This is where we met to discuss our very first job. Of our two jobs.”
Woden: “I remember it like it was last week.”

Le Chasseur, realizing for the first time the bad optics of the team’s past actions: “You know, now that you mention it, we were a pack of mostly elves, gunning down a gang of mostly orks.”
Erebus: “Yeah, they didn’t take it well.”

Negotiating with Atlas, the massive troll who leads the True Patriots, a heavily-armed gang who we’ve enormously pissed off

Nitro: “Can you give him a handshake and see if he’s really there?”
Smoke: “It’s a hologram!”
Erebus: “Yeah, I don’t think now’s the time.”
Woden: “How about a high five?”
Erebus, sarcastically: “I’ll give him the secret ork handshake that we all know.”

Boombox: “I didn’t shoot any of them! Well, I did shoot one. With a grenade.”

GM: For successfully de-escalating, you all get two nuyen. I mean-
Woden: YES!
Smoke: WOO!
GM: I meant karma, but fuck it, you all find two nuyen.

Session 5: Beer Run

Woden: “I guess we’d better go buy a cooler. Roll for that availability.”
GM: You can’t find any.
Erebus: “No! They’re all out of coolers!”

NPC manager of the brewery we’re infiltrating: “Are you part of the Carveyal group that we’re meeting next week?”
Smoke: “…Yes.”
Woden, over radio: “Ha! That group doesn’t exist!”

Le Chasseur: “Qu’est-ce qui vient de se passer?”
Woden: “I don’t know what that means, let’s go down the hatch.”

Boombox: “I was about to say that I’m pretty strong with cyberarms. But then I remembered you’re actually strong.”
Le Chasseur: “You gotta put your back into it. Can’t do that with cyberarms.”

Erebus: “I’m from Georgia, apparently. I forgot. I didn’t think it would be important.”

Smoke: “I want to find somewhere to prop him up in a corner, or something.”
GM: Well, you’re outside. There are the dumpsters.
Smoke: “…..Whelp!”

Smoke: rolls 0 for composure in the face of taunts from a racist Aztechnology elf
Smoke: “I do at least message an apology to Erebus. Before I pull my gun.”
Boombox: “That escalated quickly. And not my fault for once!”

Smoke: “How many pockets does he have?”
GM: Four. But not where you’d think.
Le Chasseur: “Ankle pockets are really in right now.”

GM: How precise are you trying to be with these explosives?
Boombox: “I wanna destroy the enzyme tank, but if more than that explodes too, I’m fine with that.”
Nitro: “My man.”

Le Chasseur: “Using the crowbar doubles my strength, for the purposes of opening things.”
Smoke: “Yeah, we know. You mention that every time.”
Le Chasseur: “Next time I’m gonna bump it up to triple and see if anyone notices.”

Woden: “I go back to my body.”
GM: All right. You wake up in Boombox’s arms.
Woden: “Aww.”
Le Chasseur, singing: “In the aaaaarms oooof an angeeeel…”

Boombox: “If I want to drive up and shoot a grenade at the window, should I roll initiative?”
Smoke: “Maybe give Le Chasseur a chance to get off of it first.”

Boombox: “It hasn’t been five minutes yet, right? My explosives shouldn’t have gone off yet.”
Erebus: “You’re gonna kill some first responders.”

Le Chasseur: “I don’t have a lot of context here, so my perception is that Smoke just ran downstairs in an exploding building to steal some booze.”
Erebus: “Alcoholics, man.”

Session 6: Fly By Night

Erebus: “What do technomancers eat, anyways?”
Smoke: “What do we…eat?”
Erebus: “Yeah. You’re like robots, right?”

GM: No dubstep this time. Just general rock music.
Boombox: “Hey, I’m alright with that.”
Woden: “Yeah, didn’t you serve with General Rockmusic?”

Mr. Johnson: “Are you all still chasing barrens tales?”
Boombox: “I, uh…would say we probably…are? Not? Maybe. What was the question?”

Mr. Johnson: “Right, there was a sixth guy. He’s still working with you?”
Le Chasseur: Cut to Johnny Nitro in a Mexican standoff with three guys on a burning airplane.
Smoke: “Yeah, he couldn’t make it today.”

Boombox: “So we’re going to just live at this airport for six days?”
Smoke: “We do know a pretty good hunter.”
Boombox: “Do we?”
Woden: “No.”
Le Chasseur:”Hey!”

Woden: “Might as well check while we’ve got a data search handy.”
Erebus: “Data Search is my favorite party member.”
Smoke: “It’s me, Doctor Data Search.”

GM: Where are you learning how to pick locks?
Le Chasseur: “In a shack in the woods.”
GM: Perfect. You hear a knock on your door.
Erebus: “It’s the cops! We know what you’re doing in there!”

Le Chasseur: “I step back out of the gate.”
GM: The spirits disappear.
Boombox: “Now put your foot back in. And shake it all about.”
Woden: “Eventually, they’ll run out of services.”

GM: You don’t get a mark.
Smoke: “I take out my gun and shoot myself. This guy’s got some kind of experimental comm link, guys. It’s a slippery fuckin’ firewall, I don’t know what to tell you.”

Session 7: Mistakes On A Plane

Erebus: “Is Le Chasseur good at pickpocketing?”
Le Chasseur: “I can fake it pretty well.”
Erebus: “So, no.”

GM: You see the sinister figures in power armor go up to the guards, and the two of them use the butts of their guns to knock them out.
Erebus: “I take off my high-vis vest.”

Le Chasseur, looking at the glowing runes on the crates the team is trying to steal: “Maybe I shouldn’t open these.”
GM: But Mr. Crowbar was ready.
Le Chasseur: “I know! And it gives me 5x strength!”

GM: It’s a Renault-Theon Fawker Tundra 9.
Le Chasseur: “Did you Fucker-Thunder 9?”

GM: You said 7 successes on the roll? She…dodges it.
Nitro: “Good joke. What really happens?”

Le Chasseur: “The tablet she’s holding is milspec and so it’s really durable, right? It could take a hit if I threw something nasty in there?”
Erebus: “Yes, and so is her POWER ARMOR! STOP HOLDING BACK!”

Le Chasseur discovers for the first time that he can’t do shit about magical enemies.

Erebus: “I’m trying to not let the spirit kill my buddy.”
Le Chasseur: “I appreciate it.”
Boombox: “I’m just going to bust in there shooting grenades everywhere.”
Le Chasseur: “Do not let Boombox through that door.”

Erebus: “It was calculated. It looks cowardly.”

Le Chasseur, unconscious: “I do have a trauma patch in my pocket.”
Nitro: “Yeah, but would I know that?”
Woden: “Take advantage of the situation, Nitro. He’s unconscious, look for his wallet.”

Woden: “I tell my spirit to just push the crate off the plane.”
Le Chasseur: “And have the air spirit catch it?”
Woden: “Ehh, whatever.”

The team does not get the bonus reward for bringing in an intact crate.

Session 8: Plague Doctors and Leeches

Le Chasseur, roping Boombox into an alibi he’s giving the police: “Yeah, his name’s…”

Le Chasseur: “…Uh, Boombox, what was your alias?”

Boombox: “Oh, give him the name Edward Val Hallen.”

Le Chasseur: “God damn it.”

Le Chasseur: “I can come over whenever is convenient.”

Doctor Feelgood: “Well I’m busy with…”

GM: You hear some rapid beeping and then what sounds like an EKG machine flatlining.

Doctor Feelgood: “Actually, I’m free now.”

Le Chasseur: “I hang up, call Erebus, and tell him to stick with his goddamn DocWagon contract.”

The team gets hired to fix an Urban Brawl match.

Nitro: “I’m concerned that you jumped straight to ‘blow up a bridge.'”

Woden: “So Josh, what are the names, races, and descriptions of all 19 of these targets?”
GM: Motherfucker, I have a roster.

Erebus: “I was thinking we would just lure them into Boombox’s van. And not let them out.”

Erebus: “Can we search for how late they have to be before they forfeit?”
Woden: “If they don’t show up in 15 minutes, the other team is legally allowed to win.”

Doctor Feelgood: “Boombox, there you are. Good to see you.”

Boombox: “Hey, Feelgood. I was hoping I could buy a few things from you. I need some painkillers, trauma patches, some jazz…”

Doctor Feelgood: “Great. Could you come over here for a minute?”

Boombox: “Uh…sure?”

Doctor Feelgood: “I need you to help me with this surgery.”

Boombox: “I don’t know how to do that!”

Doctor Feelgood: “What?”

Boombox: “I’m not a doctor!”

Doctor Feelgood: “Then why are you here?”

Boombox: “I’m asking for drugs. I want to buy drugs!”

Le Chasseur is having some problems at his isolated swamp shack.

Le Chasseur: “Goddammit, if two cops come to my place and get eaten by river vampires…”
Boombox: “I can’t believe this a problem you’re having.”

Le Chasseur: “Holy fuck. Please tell me you’re recording this. I’m going to need to prove to the cops that this wasn’t my fault.”

Nitro: “Oh, I’m recording all of this. I’m getting evidence.

GM: The boat capsizes. You see Officer Gonzales get sucked into the water by whatever is down there.

Woden: “This is going to get so many hits on YouTube.”

GM: You are face-to-face with…this. Shows a picture of a massive, terrifying lamprey-like creature.
Woden: “Can you really be face-to-face with something that doesn’t have a face?”
Erebus: “We’ll have time to get philosophical later, Woden.”

Session 9: Tailgating

GM: So you’re just taking the day to sit around and watch Urban Brawl?
Erebus: “Someone’s gotta.”
GM: Yeah, you’re heroes.

GM: It’s in a place called Kansai Village.
Woden: “Kansai I know the place.”

Nitro: “Yeah, I’ve got a lot of money on the game.”
Urban Brawler: “Hah. Thanks for the support.”
Boombox, aside: “He didn’t say it was on them.”

Nitro: “I attempt to pull over a chair.”
GM: You…you make it. Do you wanna make a roll?

Le Chasseur: “We could get him out of the game just by bumping into him the wrong way. And by ‘the wrong way’ I mean ‘with a truck.'”

GM: You follow them to a shitty, shitty shitty–
Woden: “You cut out there, after three shitties.”
GM: Bar. There were a few more shitties in there but we don’t need to go over that.

GM: There’s a sign on the door that says “Elf Vodka.”
Le Chasseur: “So is that vodka made of elves?”
Boombox: “Made by elves, for elves, from elves.”

GM: You are immediately accosted by flashing lights and loud house music.
Erebus: “Of course. House music never dies.”

Le Chasseur: “We’re basically running a Discord server in Smoke’s brain.”
Smoke: “Nothing could go wrong.”

Le Chasseur: “It’d be nice to have a plan that also shuts down the bunraku parlor.”
Erebus: “We get paid and we get to be ethical.”
Woden: “That’s a rare opportunity for us.”

NPC: “Grande? Of the Grande family?”
Smoke: “I…think so? I mean, my parents were Grandes. One of their parents was a Grande.”
Nitro: “One of them.”
Smoke: “Look man, my family tree’s not a circle.”

Erebus: “That wouldn’t be cranial bombs, right?”
Smoke: “‘It couldn’t be bombs,’ he said, as everyone exploded.”

Woden: “I go back home to my body.”
Erebus: “Same.”
Woden: “You can’t have my body, it’s mine.”

Session 10: Interception

Smoke: “I will tell you that I’m weak as shit, so if I have to make rolls to move bodies, I won’t be able to.”
Nitro: “It’s okay, just bring a crowbar.”

Nitro: “Wait. Before you call Feelgood, what question would you ask?”
Boombox: “I guess I’d ask ‘How many neurostun grenades would it take to knock out a team of Urban Brawlers?'”
Nitro: “NO. Okay, I’m glad we practiced this.”

Smoke: “Man, faking SINs has gotten way easier,” I say out loud.
GM: Six guns get pointed at you.

GM: Or you could use a crowbar. Those give like 30x strength.

Smoke, as the team drives an Urban Brawl player off the highway in broad daylight: “Hey, follow Boombox’s example and put your hazard lights on. Let’s be safe about this.”

Smoke: “Boombox is doing the same thing I do. Where you work alongside a mage, then the mage does all the work, then you say ‘Yeah, the two of us did it!'”

Le Chasseur has to talk to the cops at his swamp shack again.

Boombox: “Thank god they didn’t look in the back of the van. I’ve got the Steel Lynx in there.”

Le Chasseur: “I could pass a combat bot off as hunting equipment.”

Smoke: “He’s going after some REALLY BIG game.”

Le Chasseur: “You see, when I hunt deer, I don’t like to give them a chance.”

Session 11: Stone Cold Runner

Woden: “Do you need to heal up some physical damage boxes?”
Boombox: “I did not actually take any dam- I did not take any physical damage.”

Boombox is recruited by Doctor Feelgood to participate in a monthly “Meat Sweep,” which he discovers means locking down a poor apartment building and stealing the cyberware, organs, and body parts of everyone inside for use by various street docs, unethical bioresearchers, and undead monstrosities.

Boombox: “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Woden: “But you give this doctor a recommendation?”

Boombox: “I……….”

Nitro: “That’s a NO!”

Boombox: “It’s just that how it gets his wares is a little unsavory.”

Smoke: “Are you saying it’s stolen? Or that it’s ‘used cyberware?'”

Boombox: “Yes.”

After absorbing the horror of the Meat Sweep, the team almost immediately begins making fun of the code names used by the other people participating in it.

Smoke: “Doctor Sergeant Pepper?”
Woden: “Sergeant Doctor Pepper.”
Boombox: “There’s also a Doctor Joan Jett.”
GM: She works with necrotic cardiology.
Boombox: “She works with black hearts.”
GM: I worked hard on that pun, dammit.

Woden gets petrified by the racist Aztec wizard that Smoke pissed off back in session five.

Smoke: “Look out for a stepvan. We’ll be the guys with a big statue of Woden.”

GM: Do you all turn around?
Smoke: “…Yes.”
Boombox: “No, I just stand there and let him hit me again.”

Smoke: I message to Boombox that, even though I just said “Don’t blow up my whole apartment,” we just established that I’m moving. So…

Boombox: “I’m going to shoot burst…”
Smoke: “And ask questions later.”

Smoke: “Remember how I said I was 1 stun damage away from passing out? Well, summoning a sprite so big that it causes physical damage is the workaround. Josh, roll resistance for this Force 7 sprite…”

GM: You’d have to be able to get into the car first.
Boombox: “Well then I pull out my crowbar.”
GM: Oh, you had a crowbar! Well why didn’t you say so!

Boombox: “I line their heads up before we leave, so it’s a straight shot to run them over.”
GM: Jesus.
Smoke: “That’s worth extra karma, right?”

vehicular manslaughter occurs
Nitro: “You gonna change the color of your van again? Because now it’s red.”

Either a ghost is stalking Boombox, or he’s hallucinating.

Smoke: “I’m trying to have a ‘disappointed’ moment but you’re too busy running from the thing only you can see, dammit!”

Woden: “He’s not drugged, and I don’t see any new cyberware.”
Nitro: “He’s just going crazy. Just what I want in the guy holding my dynamite.”

Session 12: Gone Fishin’

Le Chasseur: “Huh. Because of my Strength score, I actually do significantly more damage throwing the harpoons than I would shooting them from the launcher I just bought.”
GM: Even more, if you use a crowbar to throw them.

Le Chasseur: “I am going to stuff this pig full of so many drugs.”

Doctor Feelgood: “Boombox, is that you?”
Boombox: “Yeah. Feelgood?”
Doctor Feelgood: “Not great.”

GM: Your wheels are spinning into mud.
Le Chasseur: “You’ll hit bedrock eventually, keep going.”

GM: You’re showed in viscera as the sea leech explodes.
Le Chasseur: “WOOO!”
Boombox: “Was that a sneeze, or the sound of it exploding?”
Le Chasseur: “That was the redneck rebel yell that I am obligated to give, as a victory cry, for–“
Erebus: “That was a sneeze.”

Le Chasseur: “We’re gonna start having sea leeches coming out of our shower heads or something.”
Woden: “That’s a mental image I didn’t need.”
Josh: No, keep going Adam. I’ve got more room in my notes.

Session 13: Power Play

The team infiltrates a power plant to figure out why its output has gone up by 300% recently

Le Chasseur: “I could float down the river with some binoculars and see what I see.”
Erebus: “Yeah, do it. These rivers are safe.”
Le Chasseur: “…Fuck.”

Woden: “Man, it’d be great if we had someone in the party who was both adept at social infiltration to get inside, and also good at Matrix stuff to figure out what this is.”
Boombox: “Yeah, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Smoke isn’t at this session unfortunately.

speaking with an invisible man
GM: You hear a snap, but you don’t see it, and you assume somebody is pointing at you.

Reboot (hacker NPC we hired): “I don’t want to jump into that host right now. Don’t feel like bleeding all over the place here.”
Woden: “Don’t worry, we’ll get you somewhere with a tarp.”

Le Chasseur: “I’ll go in disguised as the security detail too.”
Woden: “What are you gonna be bringing in?”
Le Chasseur: “A knife.”
Woden: “You should…probably have a gun for that disguise.”
Erebus: “This is your security guy? He brought one knife.”

Boombox: “You’d be bringing in a spare gun for Nitro! This is genius!”
Le Chasseur: “Can you retrieve your gun after I throw it at someone’s head? Because that’s really all I can do with a firearm.”
Woden: “Just make that someone Nitro.”

GM: How much of a bio are you all giving to Reboot?
Boombox: “I was born in a small cabin in the woods…”
Erebus: “Confirmed kill count only.”

Erebus: “We gotta get this guy’s name at some point.”
Boombox: “No, we don’t.” Yelling at the Oasis bartender: “Hey! You!”

Nitro and Woden are disguised as safety inspectors.

Nitro: “We gotta inspect how the trains work.”
Boombox: “I think we could do that from the inside…”
Nitro: “Hey, hey, hey. Let the inspectors do the inspecting here.”

GM: He swipes Le Chasseur’s badge and a yellow light appears. He puts that one off to the side. Then he swipes Boombox’s…
Boombox: “And it fucking blows up, or something?”

Reboot impresses the team.

Boombox: “Damn, this guy’s good.”
GM: You get the impression that this is not this guy’s first run.
Le Chasseur: “I mean, it isn’t our first run either. And we’re not this good.”

GM: You think you could get it open. Like with a crowbar…
Boombox: “Your whole life has been leading up to this moment.”
GM: …with some kind of 40x modifier.
Le Chasseur: “Well, since the crowbar gives me 45x…”

Woden: “As the party shaman, I will inform you that if you free a spirit, it will owe you wishes.”
Le Chasseur: “…What?”
Boombox: “You heard him. That’s how it works.”

Le Chasseur: “You now see the power of this fully armed and operational crowbar!”

Le Chasseur steals a magic gem from the center of the power plant.

Le Chasseur: “They made the plant out of fucking spiders! I can see the exoskeleton in the walls!”
Boombox: “And I thought I was the crazy one.”
Woden: “Oh, you still are.”

Boombox: “On the plus side, I didn’t see any more of that ghost thing following me in there.”
Le Chasseur: “Well don’t fucking remind Josh!”

Boombox: “We would never meet the evil antagonist of the campaign as the Johnson of the first run.”
Woden: “That definitely hasn’t happened in all our previous campaigns. Or in all the trids.”
Erebus: “That’s not a trope. I don’t know why you even brought that up.”

Le Chasseur: “Holy shit, are we stashing literally everything we steal and every person we kidnap in my shed?”

The gem we stole from the power plant seems to be a magical focus of some kind.

Woden: “Yeah, but it would take 24 karma to bond to it. And that’s assuming it wouldn’t just drive you crazy. We have no idea what magic shit could be riding inside this. And I just ordered myself a normal focus; not this strong, but good enough for me. I’m not interested.”

long pause

Erebus: “I would give it a go.”

Session 14: Shadows Over Oasis
or, How We Lost 15,000 Nuyen By Thinking We Were Smarter Than Multiple Black Ops Teams

at the negotiation table with Mr. Tanaka
Nitro: “All right, so we’re three edge points in already. This is going well.”

Boombox: “Uh, two spirits just materialized outside the car.”
Nitro: “Well, good luck! We might only be splitting this money five ways.”

Nitro: “Wait, no. I forgot I have the grenade launcher. I use the grenade launcher.”
GM: Are you still running right up to it? I just want to make that clear.

NPC: “Wow, every single window shattered. Who did you piss off?”
Boombox: “A really good opera singer.”

Boombox: “Yeah, the ghost is just staring at me, doing its thing. Not reacting.”
Woden: “It’d be nice if it would give us a thumbs up or something.”
Boombox: “I don’t think it has thumbs.”
Nitro: “Is that because the street docs took them off of it?”

Boombox: “I thought Feelgood was a fun one, too. Then the whole Meat Sweep happened. Also, he shot Chasseur.”
GM: I’m not sure which way that moves him for me, honestly.

Discussing the first Mr. Johnson we worked with in the campaign.

NPC: “We don’t work with him anymore, because we don’t work with insect shamans.”
Boombox: “Wait, his name was Anansi, and you guys didn’t fucking” – I’m not gonna say that.

GM: So, 4 successes?
Woden: Actually, I’ll push that.
rolls 0
Woden: Yeah, 4 successes, like I said.

GM: You recall that trolls are the only metatype that can read and write cursive.
Boombox: ….What?
GM: Yeah, that’s canon.

Nitro: “All right, time to break out the hang glider and fly around the FedPol building!”
Boombox: “Do you wanna get sniped? Because that’s how you get sniped.”

Session 15: Graveyard Shift

GM: Yeah, he immigrated from Neo-Tokyo.
Woden: “We gotta start our investigation where it all began. Let’s buy some tickets to Japan, gang.”

Woden: “What do technomancers have to do with anything? You’re a decker, right Smoke?”
Smoke: “Uh…yeah. If you’re that slow, I’m still a decker.”

Return to the site of the Meat Sweep.

GM: You know where they’re living, Boombox, because you’ve been there before.
Boombox: “Well, I can tell you that it’s definitely available. Nobody’s living there.”
Nitro: “I hate you. So much.”

GM: Roll a strength check. Against this fourteen-year-old girl.
Nitro: “Hey, just call me if you need help with this. In case you can’t handle it.”

Boombox: “It’s either A, a dead body, or B, a vampire.”
Nitro: “Or C, a number of other things.”

Boombox: “Can you use Edge for it?”
Smoke: “Nope. Sprites are worse than spirits.”
Boombox: “Does it have its own Edge?”
Smoke: “Nope. Sprites are worse than spirits.”
Boombox: “Holy shit. Why would anyone play technomancers? No offense.”

Boombox: “How much Charisma did you give me?”
Woden: “Four.”
Boombox: “All right. So I have five Charisma.”
GM: Jesus Christ.

Erebus: “You should do one of those ‘party favors’ Feelgood gave you, see what they do.”
Boombox: “I was thinking about getting an auto-injector, actually.”
Erebus: “Ah. So if it senses a party…”

Smoke: “My problem with this is that I’m at the point where I am almost never willing to count on myself to do things. Like, I made a hacking character who apparently can’t succeed on hacking rolls.”

Smoke left the campaign shortly after this session.

Woden: “I’d like to be prepared for the possibility that they take the pizza and don’t give us any information.”
Nitro: “Especially now that you put that idea in the GM’s head.”
GM: I’m just taking notes here, motherfucker.

Smoke: “We can’t go to one pizza place and say, ‘Hey, can you send a pizza to each of these four schools, for the same person?’ Without them asking, like, ‘Are you sure she goes to all four schools?'”

Erebus: “We’ll just put this off for three years until she can be tried as an adult.”

Session 16: Good Cop, Bad Cop

Le Chasseur: “So we need the head of FedPol to leave his post? Would he retire if he won a ten million nuyen lottery?”
Woden: “You gonna donate ten million nuyen for this run?”
Le Chasseur: “We could hack the lottery, or something.”
Nitro: “If we could do that, we could all retire!”

Le Chasseur: “When I asked what happened during the session I missed, I was told we were doing a free run for orphans or something.”
Boombox: “Well, we are doing it for free.”
Nitro: “And I’m an orphan, so…in a way…”

Woden: “There’s no time limit on this run. But how many months of rent can you afford?”

Le Chasseur: “Six months, easy.”

Boombox: “I can afford none more months. Actually, I owe money.”

Woden: “Do I know any weaknesses or vulnerabilities of hellhounds?”
GM: Not exactly. You do know they can spit fire and are immune to fire damage.
Boombox: “That’s not a weakness or a vulnerability!”

Nitro: “You thought this would get better by assensing him?”
Boombox: “I thought we would get more information. And we did, but it’s bad!”

GM: Isaac walks away, and Sergeant Chung starts to browse some raisin bagels.
Woden: “I hate this man.”

GM: Boombox, go ahead and roll a Matrix Search to learn more about Isaac.
Boombox: rolls 0
GM: Man there’s a lot of Isaacs who work at FedPol, holy shit.

GM: He looks like he’s been crying.
Woden: I try to look sympathetic. Do I need to roll Con?

Le Chasseur: “We are not stashing a cop in my shed.”
Boombox: “He’s not a cop, he’s FedPol. It’s totally different.”
Le Chasseur: “…No it’s not! It’s literally the cops!”
Boombox: “They’re not even spelled the same.”

Session 17: Black Chip Blackmail

GM: They sometimes bring tours through here. Educational stuff.
Boombox: “Okay, so we hack back into the school and arrange a field trip. Then we pose as, uh…”
Woden: “Middle schoolers.”
Boombox: “I was gonna say chaperones.”
Woden: “I dunno, I kinda like this middle schooler plan. ‘Hello, Mr. FBI. I’m lil’ Woden!'”

Nitro: “What are we paying Reboot?”
Woden: “The data from that server.”
Le Chasseur: “We’re paying him in exposure.”

Our inside man is not used to helping shadowrunners.

GM: He’s very uncomfortable. Looks like he’s sweating bullets.
Woden: “Maybe I should have buffed his charisma, instead of mine.”
Le Chasseur: “Yeah, that’d have gone over well. ‘We’re going to have a stranger cast a spell on you to make you less nervous.'”

GM: You also see some middle schoolers being led on a tour.
Woden: How many of them look like shadowrunners?
GM: Two.

Le Chasseur: “Should I distract him?”
Woden: “Yeah, probably.”
Le Chasseur: “All right. I firebomb–“
Woden: “Wait, do you still have a drone here Boombox? Do not finish that sentence Adam.”

GM: You see an oni crouching down and talking to some kids on the tour.
Woden: “‘And that, kids, is how I killed Dunkelzahn.'”
Le Chasseur: “I really hope Reboot is more professional in disguise than he is out of it.”

Le Chasseur: “He’s got an oni head tattoo on his back? Isn’t that just his face? Does he have his own face on his back?”
Woden: “All oni don’t look the same, Chasseur.”
Boombox: “That’s kinda racist, man.”
Woden: “It’s 2080, you can’t go around saying things like that.”

Le Chasseur: “We can’t leave the burner link the river, it’ll get eaten by a sea leech.”
Boombox: “What if…we leave the burner in the sea leach? Then we get FedPol on that case!”

Boombox finally learns the name of the bartender at Oasis.

Boombox: “I go to the bar to talk to Bruce.”
GM: Bruce actually isn’t there.
Boombox: “What?!”
Le Chasseur: “What if the missing persons job on the board is to find Bruce?”
Boombox: “And it was posted by a foodstuffs company! Because they’re looking for the bartender!”

NPC: “Tara Pierceson is the POC for that job.”
Le Chasseur: “POC?”
Woden: “Point of contact.”
Le Chasseur: “Oh, okay. I was wondering if every job had a designated person of color.”
Woden and GM: “…What?”

Turns out half the group has only ever heard the acronym POC used to mean Point of Contact, and the other half has only ever heard it used to mean Person of Color.

Nitro: “This place is for shadowrunners. They have a decker corner.”
GM: Yeah, there’s a stand where you can drop off your decker and take a ticket, then come back and give them your ticket to pick your decker back up. They’ve got a little playpen and everything.

GM: All the missing persons you’ve been hired to look for were Matrix specialists.
Nitro: “Well we don’t have one of those, so we’ll be good.”
Boombox: “Oh shit, maybe that’s where he went…”

GM: When Reboot responds, it’s with a manifesto about how technomancers don’t have to work for their decking abilities and haven’t earned their cred.
Woden: “Those technos are taking our jobs.”
GM: They’re taking your decker jerbs.

Boombox: “I did make a backup character that’s entirely luck-based.”
GM: That’s not this one?

Session 18: Up Drek Creek

Erebus: “So I’m your ork friend.”
Le Chasseur: “I don’t want to reduce you to just your race. But I also don’t want to get jumped in the barrens for my pointy ears.”

Le Chasseur: “One elf with a bow and one elf with magic. We are the most stereotypical fantasy elves.”

Erebus: “Is this a risk you wanna take?”
Le Chasseur: “To be honest, it sounds dangerous and I don’t really know what we would gain from it.”
Erebus: “Sounds good to me, let’s do it.”

Nitro: “If you get chewed to pieces, we’ll all…attend the funeral.”
Erebus: “In disguises.”

Le Chasseur: “We could still go ask around.”
Erebus: “There’s a hellhound after you there.”
Le Chasseur: “Not a hellhound. It’s a barghest.”
GM: Which is much worse.

Le Chasseur: “We could hang out at Smoke’s apartment and set a trap for whoever’s hunting technomancers.”
Nitro: “Uhh, that’s also my apartment? And I like my apartment. Besides, a lot of people have died there already, during the Meat Sweep before I moved in. We don’t really need any more.”

Bruce: “Why would I know where they live? You guys come to Oasis all the time, and I don’t know where you live.”
Le Chasseur: “You don’t? But I sent you that invitation to my birthday party…”

Le Chasseur: “Why do we care about this gang war if we aren’t getting paid for it? I know Erebus has connections with another gang, but I’m really not sure why Woden wants to keep the Patriots out of that area.”
Erebus: “Because he lives there and they hate elves?”
Woden: “Yeah, I don’t understand how this is so confusing.”

Woden: “Chase and I both took the Forest specialization for Tracking.”
GM: Well, you’re not in a Forest.
Le Chasseur: “We could be. Plant some seeds, wait twenty years, then come back.”

Woden: “Can I see which sewer passage they went down?”
GM: You’ll need to make a new Tracking roll, since you’re looking at different shit now.
Le Chasseur: “Heh.”

GM: I’m just writing all these theories down.
Le Chasseur: “If there’s a sea leech in these sewers, I’m gonna be pissed.”
Nitro: “Shut up!”

Session 19: Up Drek Creek, Part Deuce

Woden: “Actually, if you could watch the car…”
Boombox: “Did you guys park in the Barrens without any security on the car?”
Le Chasseur: “With you there, we have a guy with a grenade launcher.”

Nitro: “Oh yeah, there’s also some kind of snake things in here. But you’ll figure that out, don’t worry.”

Boombox: “I’m gonna put this lid back on [this explosive-rigged barrel full of nasty stuff].”
GM: How quickly?
Boombox: “Quickly. No, wait-“
Nitro: “Haha, baited!”

Le Chasseur: “Were we planning on handing over this corpse right here in the parking lot?”
Nitro: “I assume she had a plan for that. Let’s ask how she wanted it delivered.”
Boombox: “So did you want this paper or plastic?”

Woden: “Maybe your Steel Lynx caught the edge of that blessing and became holy. There’s a little God in the machine.”
Le Chasseur: “Nice.”

Session 20: Up Drek Creek, Part Three: Still More Sewers

GM: You hear talking from up ahead, as well as occasional barking.
Le Chasseur: “Can we tell what they’re talking about?”
Woden: “I’m not sure. I don’t speak Dog very well.”

Le Chasseur: “They might be checking up on their safehouses because someone just broke into one and stole the guy inside.”
Woden: “Wait, what? They didn’t steal the body, they just killed hioooooh you’re talking about us.”

Boombox: “Oh, if we’re not trying to kill them, I can switch out my ammo…”
Nitro: “I’m not not trying to kill them.”

Nitro: “I shove him into the sewage.”
rolls 3
GM: He doesn’t budge.
Le Chasseur, with 10 Strength: “Let me show you how it’s done.”
rolls 3

Session 21: The Lost Woods

Woden: “But I don’t think that has anything to do with the Techno Killers. Which, incidentally, is a sick band name.”

Le Chasseur: “I am prepared for this venture into the woods. I may have brought s’mores.”

GM: The sign says to stay on the trail, not to feed the wildlife, and that the park rangers are trained to deal with the predators.

Woden: “Well we’re not supposed to feed the wildlife. And letting a killdeer eat us would be feeding the wildlife. So that means we’re legally allowed to defend ourselves.”

Nitro: “Best logic.”

Le Chasseur, rolling a critical glitch: “So…do I just get lost?”

Boombox: “We’re not even moving! We’re just standing here looking at this cave.”

Le Chasseur: “Guys, I found another cave!” You hear from far away.

GM: Have any of you heard the sound a deer makes? It’s pretty awful. Anyway, you all hear that, but carnivorous.

Le Chasseur: “I have my bow on me.”

Nitro: “In a nature conservation.”

Woden: “Not looking like a poacher at all.”

Le Chasseur: “I carry it concealed in a fishing bag.”

Woden: “So a different kind of poacher.”

Le Chasseur: “Fishing is illegal here too?!”

Woden: “…Yeah, man. It’s a nature conservation.”

Le Chasseur: “What’s the point of having a wilderness like this if you can’t hunt in it? Fucking government.”

Le Chasseur: “So you’re worried about a killdeer finding me?”

Nitro: “Oh, no. Not you.”

Le Chasseur: “Because you know I can handle myself if one shows up, right?”

Nitro: “Sure.”

Boombox: “Hey Chasseur, do you know if a loud noise would scare or agitate a killdeer?”

Le Chasseur: “Uhhhhhh…”

Nitro: “Exactly the answer I’d want to hear.”

Le Chasseur: I rolled a 1 on the knowledge check. I say, “Killdeer can hear loud noises” and hang up.

Boombox: “Hey Le Chasseur, get out of the Twilight Zone and get over here!”

Woden: “Let me guess – Volt Guru?”

Volt Guru, surprised: “Uh. Yeah, actually.”

Nitro: “Haha! We’re smarter than we look!”

Boombox: “I’m walking off in a trance with your commlinks, aren’t I? Sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing at that, but that’s fucking funny.”

Nitro: “I don’t find it funny!”

Le Chasseur: “The Fair Folk are here to steal your goddamn phones!”

Le Chasseur: “As an elf, I don’t think it’s racist to immediately assume fairy involvement.”

Woden: “You know, I don’t think that checks out.”

Le Chasseur: “What? Back me up on this, fellow elf.”

Woden: “We were in there for like five minutes. He can’t have gotten far.”

Boombox: “I just start sprinting.”

Le Chasseur: “Well if I can take only take one person out of the enchantment, I would guess Woden knows best how to deal with this wizard shit, so I choose Boombox.”

Nitro: “And thus Woden learned why I left them.”

Woden: “If we take that extraction job, we could ask the professor about the morbi haunting Boombox. We’d have a…captive audience.”

Le Chasseur: “He’s a parageologist. I don’t think he’d know anything about a morbi, unless it’s a rock spirit.”

Woden: “And under ordinary circumstances, Boombox would be happy to be haunted by a rock spirit.”

Boombox: “I’ve got the spirit of rock within me.”

Session 22: The Fast and the Curious

Le Chasseur: “I’ll hide my bow inside my coat and disguise my arrows as a bouquet.”

Woden: “A lovely bouquet of arrows.”

Le Chasseur: “Yes. I’ll paint them different colors.”

Le Chasseur: “Or I could just wander through campus and have people assense me and see that all my muscles are fake.”

Le Chasseur: “We could detonate a FAB III bomb, and while everyone’s distracted, bag the professor.”

Nitro: “Wait, is Boombox here all of a sudden?”

GM: Upon arriving, you see that the location appears to be a scrapyard.

Roll20 transitions to black page

Woden: “Man, it gets really dark out here.”

Le Chasseur: “I assume that car belongs to suit guy, because none of the others would drive something that pretentious.”

Nitro: “Is it just that picture, or is the back open? Like a carriage?”

Woden: “Can I…assense that car?”

Le Chasseur: “Could we turn an empty warehouse into a trendy brunch spot for, like, an afternoon?”

GM: You could do it as easily as you could turn one into a nightclub, like the last time you had that plan.

Nitro: “You know how to cook the meat of all kinds of crazy monsters, but you don’t know how to poach a damn egg?”

GM: It’s not big game.

Le Chasseur: “I’m just saying, if we don’t have Eggs Benedict on the menu, our ruse will be shattered immediately.

GM: This has been Shadowrun: Iron Chef.

Woden: “If we could sneak up and throw a mage hood on him, that would be the end of it.”

Nitro: “I assume that does what it sounds like it does?”

Le Chasseur: “Turns you into a mage, yeah.”

Receptionist: “There’s nobody by that name at the hospital. Are you looking for a doctor at the college? For that you’ll want to try the Healy Building.”

Woden: “Looks like we were asking around in the wrong healy building.”

Session 23: The Third Degree

Le Chasseur: “Magical secret society, like I said.”

Woden: “If by ‘secret society’ you mean ‘open political party.'”

Le Chasseur: “If you think political parties aren’t secret societies, I have bad news for you.”

Le Chasseur goes undercover to stalk the professor the team was hired to kidnap.

Professor: “While you’re here, would you like to tell us anything about the alchemical properties of abyssinite?”

Le Chasseur: “It’s…alphabetically early. I’m in the wrong class. I’m gonna leave.”

GM: Judging by your spirit’s description, it looks like he went to the cave where you told him the orichalcum was. The place you were planning on luring him to so you could jump him.

Woden: “Oh, that bastard.”

Nitro: “Motherfucker!”

Le Chasseur: “Claim jumping son of a bitch!”

Woden: “So probably a troll.”

Nitro: “I thought our target was the big guy?”

Le Chasseur: “He’s just fat, man. He’s not a troll.”

GM: Kevin and Adam, go ahead and argue amongst yourselves about who’s even or odd, then roll a d6.

Nitro: “I’m even.”

Le Chasseur: “‘kay.”

Erebus: “He said argue!”

Le Chasseur: “So I took seven stun damage there. Not ideal, but what can you do.”

Nitro: “Not run directly into their suppressive fire?”

Le Chasseur: “Anansi wouldn’t send two teams.”

Nitro: “Really? You wouldn’t put that past him?”

Le Chasseur: “Yeah. I like Anansi.”

Nitro: “What? Okay, never mind the rescue mission. We’re leaving Chasseur behind.”

Le Chasseur one-shots a car with an arrow.

Rival Shadowrunner: “Do you know how much this car cost?!”

Le Chasseur: “Do you know how much these arrows cost?”

Rival Shadowrunner: “Twenty?”

Le Chasseur: “No, no no no no. Hah. No. Please. These are Ares Wild Hunt X titanium-beryllium high-explosive arrows. They’re a fair fucking bit more than twenty nuyen.”

Nitro: “Looking it up, that car costs 28,000 nuyen. So unless they’re that expensive…”

Le Chasseur: “Well, yeah, but I’m not about to admit that these arrows cost thirty-five.”

Erebus: “I assense Chasseur to make sure he’s alright.”

Rolls a 1

GM: He’s mundane, and his emotional state is “knocked the fuck out.”

Le Chasseur: “Every time I’ve been downed during this entire campaign, it’s because some mage one-shot me.”

Erebus: “Didn’t that one lady shoot you?”

Le Chasseur: “That was different.”

Session 24: Casting Call

Also known as: Real Chrome

Le Chasseur: “I dunno, if Bruce doesn’t know this guy…”

Nitro: “It’s an infiltration job. You should shut up, you want this.”

Mr. Johnson: “You guys are shadowrunners, right? I thought you were good with crates.”

Boombox: “Oh yeah. Box is my middle name.”

Le Chasseur: “Wait. Did it look like this crate?” I show a picture of what we found on the plane.

Mr. Johnson: “Yeah, that looks like it. Did you guys see it already?”

Erebus: “Yeah. We work fast.”

Le Chasseur: “Who the fuck hires a C-list celebrity to act as their Mr. Johnson and then picks him up in a car that costs over a quarter mil? What the fuck is going on.”

Nitro: “Chasseur’s also pretty strong, he could probably just throw you over the wall.”

Boombox: “Especially with a crowbar.”

Woden: “Ah, the old crowbar catapult.”

GM: Anyone have any corporate knowledge that might help you break in here?

Woden: “I just have knowledge of Talismongers, Paracritters, Arcana…”

Nitro: “I’ve got Architecture, but I don’t think that’s gonna be much use.”

Erebus: “All I’ve got is Magical Security, Security Procedures…”

Woden: “Wait, that all sounds incredibly helpful.”

Nitro: “Yeah, you’re only telling us this now?”

After learning that the Shiawase facility that Ares bought is being guarded by Red Samurai:

GM: You remember that the Red Samurai aren’t a Shiawase unit, they’re Renraku.

Boombox: “Ah, that makes more sense.”

Woden and Le Chasseur, simultaneously: “DOES IT?!”

Le Chasseur: “I don’t want to be racist or anything, but there is no fucking way that a guy named Brian is a real Red Samurai.”

Nitro: “We should wear Casey Glass merch when we infiltrate the warehouse. Really lean into it.”

GM: The fire spirit materializes in the back of the van.

Boombox: “You know what else is in the van? The steel lynx. With the Stoner-Ares M202 medium machine gun.”

Le Chasseur: “Your van is gonna have some holes in it.”

Boombox: “…It can take it.”

Session 25: Death Race Appalachia

Boombox: “You guys keep saying tank. Is there a tank in this race?”

Woden: “It’s an APC…”

Le Chasseur: “It has a main gun. It’s a tank.”

GM: A shot misses you, Woden. Sounded like a sniper rifle.

Woden: “I hate it when people try to geek the mage.”

Boombox: “Now let’s get back to geeking their mage.”

Boombox: “I wanna get some chunky salsa in that car.”

GM: They can catch the grenade and throw it back.

Boombox: “It’s set to explode on impact.”

Nitro: “Pleeeeeeease catch it!”

GM: The troll tries to leap onto your car, but doesn’t make it and just eats asphalt.

Le Chasseur: “If he was close enough to try jumping, maybe I could jump over onto their car.”

Woden: “Is that the same car that you just failed to shoot with a 9 hit attack?”

Le Chasseur: “Yeah.”

Woden: “How do you feel about eating asphalt?”

GM: Your explosive arrow misses, bouncing up and exploding behind the Jeep.

Woden: “All you did was make them look badass.”

Boombox: “Whose side are you on?!”

Session 26: Cybereye of the Tiger

Or, Jekyll joins the party.

Le Chasseur: “I call up the rest of the group. And, based on who else is at the session today, I guess I only reach Woden.”

Woden: “Hello, it’s me, the rest of the group.”

Jekyll: “Are either of you feeling particularly stealthy?”

Woden: Points to Chasseur.

Le Chasseur: “Let’s fucking do this!”

Woden: “He likes to yell when he’s getting stealthy.”

Jekyll: “So…one of us, then.”

Le Chasseur: You look back over to Chasseur, and he’s just gone.

GM: In the Matrix, it looks a lot like a drone. If you had a rig and control of this thing, you think you could jump into it.

Jekyll: “That’s horrifying.”

Le Chasseur: “You just badly mispronounced ‘dope as shit.'”

Jekyll: “No plan survives contact with the cyber tigers.”

Woden: “Don’t take your dog to a deathrace if you don’t want it to get flashbanged.”

Le Chasseur: “Hey, at least it wasn’t high explosive. I think we came out on the side of animal rights on that one.”

Session 27: Train Chase
(Alternate title: The One Where Adam Forgot To Record Quotes and Brett Wasn’t There)

Jekyll: “Erebus, we’re going to need you to pull out the thiccest heal spell of your life.”

Jekyll: “Wow, Jekell, you’re so fast when you’re on drugs!” “That’s my secret, cap: I’m always on drugs.”

Session 28: Pains, Trains, and Automobiles

Le Chasseur: “I would appreciate if somebody could go astral and check the other train cars.”

Erebus: “Yeah, I could do some…ghost recon.”

GM: Yeah, it hits your mana barrier, and the barrier breaks.

Erebus: “It was worth a shot.”

Woden: “It was, in fact, worth one shot.”

Le Chasseur: “I gotta say, if you’re gonna get into a knife fight, going in with two mages as backup is the way to do it.”

Le Chasseur: “In addition to the fireproofing, my armor also has rating six nonconductivity.”

Woden: “…That is a lot of resistances.”

Nitro: “Just for my own knowledge, what are you vulnerable to?”

GM: Spirits.

Le Chasseur: “Based on previous sessions, literally any kind of magic.”

Session 29: Ghost Panther Bone Mask – On Tour

Le Chasseur: “I’m on WebMD searching for ‘symptoms of being stalked by a ghost.'”

GM: It’s ghost cancer.

Le Chasseur: “While we’re at Oasis, maybe we can find some news about what happened at the church.”

Nitro: “I think we’ll find what we’re looking for behind the bar.”

Woden: “This is no time for alcoholism, Nitro.”

Le Chasseur: “Six minutes of raccoon mugging? This is the best plan ever. Can we record this and put this on the matrix?”

Woden: “Is there anything you’re leaving unprotected at your shack that he might steal?”

Le Chasseur: “Some shadowrunning gear, my trid screen, my slow cooker, my recipe book…”

Woden: “He’s probably after your recipes, you’re right.”

Le Chasseur: “He wants that venison poutine.”

Jekyll: “‘Take advantage of the racial tensions to underpay an ork to kill an elf.’ You’ve found a way to underpay a minority to do the same job you’d pay more for.”

Session 30: Who Rescues The Rescuers

Jekyll: “Do you want to spend 12,000 nuyen so that Feelgood can put an unidentified symbiote in you?”

Boombox: “I mean, when you put it that way…”

Le Chasseur, discussing someone who attacked the group last session, and was super difficult to kill: “We also can’t hear him. He creates silence over the whole area.”

Boombox: “This is a travesty. How am I going to listen to my music while fighting him?”

Woden: “Yes, truly that is the greatest problem we face.”

Le Chasseur: “Your morbi is just fucking with your food now?”

Woden: “Have you just been struggling to eat for the past two months?”

Boombox: “I’ve lost a lot of weight.”

Nitro: “I don’t know who on that couch should be more nervous. The explosives guy haunted by a ghost, or the guy who panic-throws knives when he wakes up.”

Le Chasseur: “Is there a fucking secret underground mage war going on for my skull?”

Jekyll: “Oh shit, Woden, he knows!”

Woden: “How do you do, fellow racists?”

Le Chasseur: “Look, we’ve established that Woden and Chasseur are the most stereotypical elves, being a wizard and an archer. Infiltrating these elf supremacists should be easy.”

Boombox: “There are crows outside my apartment.”

Le Chasseur: “They know Boombox has been kidnapped.”

Boombox: “But hopefully not murdered!”

Jekyll: “We’re rescuing the first guy who went to rescue you. Then we’ll rescue you after.”

Le Chasseur: “We’re actually three rescues deep here. They already rescued me after I tried to rescue the first guy who tried to rescue you.”

Jekyll: “See, that’s the rule. If you don’t come to my birthday dinner, you get kidnapped.”

Session 31: Metal Health

Le Chasseur: “Yeah, it’s good they’re attacking me. These devil rats could reach Jekyll’s face.”

Jekyll: “But it’s hard dwarven skin, not your weak elven flesh!”

Jekyll: “Is he trying to run away?”

GM: Oh yeah.

Jekyll: “Man, I want to grab him, but it’s almost not worth bringing in the grapple rules.”

Jekyll fails a willpower save against mind control.

GM: Woden and Chasseur, you two see Jekyll leveling his gun at Nitro.

Le Chasseur: “Well, I guess I’m gonna make an unarmed called shot to disarm.”

Woden: “I hope that works, because Jekyll’s gonna like my plan B a lot less.”

Boombox does not remember being kidnapped.

Le Chasseur: “The only other explanation is that you decided to walk out of your apartment, knock down a wall from the outside-in, and then take yourself off the grid for hours.”

Boombox: “I feel like I would remember that…”

Le Chasseur: “No! That was sarcasm!”

GM: What are your sensors set to alert on?

Le Chasseur: “Motion. And silence.”

Woden: “But if somebody’s standing still in there and yelling, they’re invisible to it.”

GM: Sure enough, inside the HVAC you see scratch marks.

Woden: “HVAC = HMHVV Vampire Access Corridor.”

Boombox: “But why did a vampire come to my house and fix my wall?!?”

GM: So you’re trolling through Matrix boards?

Jekyll: “I’m dwarfing through Matrix boards.”

Le Chasseur: “Remind me how much edge comes back per day?”

GM: One.

Le Chasseur: “And there’s only been one day since yesterday?”

Jekyll: “You have vampires in your vents. You have ventpires.”

Le Chasseur: “Yeah, I guess I’ll crash at your place. Though at this point, I might rather take my chances with the dream wizard…”

Nitro: “Geez, if you didn’t want to stay with me, you could just say so.”

Session 32: Atlas Mugged

Woden: “Is Feelgood even a real doctor? I don’t think he’s certified.”

Boombox: “We have proof. He’s following the Hippocratic Oath.”

Woden: “That’s not really proof…”

Boombox: “Doctor until proven guilty!”

Boombox: “I’m gonna cover the balcony this time.”

Le Chasseur: “You are gonna get thrown from that balcony.”

GM: Making a note…throw…Boombox…from…balcony.

Erebus: “I’m ready to rock. And probably also do my job.”

Le Chasseur: “Maybe he’s actually here to do a demon-summoning ritual and is taking advantage of the chaotic background count of the concert to boost his power.”

Woden: “Goddamn, I want to do that run.”

GM: I’m taking notes right now.

Woden: “Wait. No. Wait.”

GM: Who all has eyes on the stage?

Le Chasseur: “I have sort of blurred vision on the stage, obscured by several incoming troll fists.”

Boombox: invokes the chunky salsa rule by way of vehicular manslaughter

Woden: “I tell my spirit that I’m sorry it had to see that.”

GM: That spirit is gonna need therapy.

Boombox: I point my Ares Alpha right into his face and say, “Ride the lightning, dick.”

GM: Your air spirit is puking air out of its…air.

Erebus: “It’s like a tiny tornado.”

Session 33: The Lesser Of Ten Evils

We discover that the former leader of the True Patriots was named Helios. Nitro has some suspicions as to where he is now.

Nitro: “Is this Helios?” Shows a picture of the mutaqua (undead troll monster) that we met in session one.

Ganger: “Yeah, that’s him.”

Nitro: “Well. Dead end.”

Boombox: “Boo.”

GM: The guys are cute too. Shadowrunners are a good-looking community.

Jekyll: “I do not think that’s true. There are some ugly beat-up motherfuckers in here.”

Jekyll: “Are there any third parties we could introduce to this war who could seize enough influence to stop the Patriots and Ancients from splitting up the city?”

Woden: “So, hear me out. Insect spirits.”

Woden: “Yeah, the Draco Foundation is generally a humanitarian organization. But they were also working with Feelgood on invisible combat biodrone tigers.”

Boombox: “Wait, what?”

Jekyll: “They were working on invisible combat biodrone tigers with Feelgood. He said it all.”

Jekyll: “At least if the Mafia ends up in charge, Feelgood isn’t just going to roll back into town, cap the head of the Mafia, and take over.”

Woden: “I’m gonna put that in the quotes, and we’ll come back to it later.”

Woden: I levitate down the side of the building.

Nitro: “Showoff.”

GM: There are a couple of 12 year old kids down there staring at you. They say, “That was awesome!”

Woden: I nod to them and say, uh… “Stay in school.”

Jekyll: “Eat your vegetables!”

Boombox: “I did beat the Composure test…but looking at the Daredevil quality, I do get Edge back for performing daring stunts, so if I jump off the roof…”

Jekyll: “Just walk! We can just walk!”

Nitro: “Take the stairs, Boombox!”

GM: Caruso’s Gun & Grocery is set up as a market. You can get, you know, all things Italian.

Woden: “Meatballs…firearms…”

Jekyll: “Meatball firearms.”

Nitro: “Hand grenades. Meatball grenades.”

Jekyll: “That’s just a meatball.”

GM: It explodes with flavor in your mouth.

Jekyll has apparently been working for the Mafia this entire time. He gets us a job working for them as well.

Jekyll: “Anything else we want to ask?”

Boombox: “Will you be providing any explosives for this, or will we, uh, bring our own…”

Jekyll: “You will be bringing your own explosives, Boombox.”

Mafia Don: “Thank you, Jekyll. Anything else?”

Woden: “Do you have any bound spirits I could borrow, then, or…?”

Boombox: “Unless you want to be carrying ten thousand pounds of force’s worth of bombs in your bag.”

Nitro: “Don’t you walk around with that many explosives in your bag all the time?”

Boombox: “Well yeah…”

simultaneously:

Jekyll: “…but those probably aren’t armed.”

Boombox: “…but I’m crazy.”

Session 34: Rock the Boat

Jekyll: “We had to go pick up an anti-vehicle rocket to load it with.”

Le Chasseur: “Ah, okay. Those are gonna be much better against vehicles.”

Jekyll: “Thank you for that info, Chase.”

Le Chasseur: “They might damage our boat before we can get away. I don’t want to be dead in the water.”

Woden: “I don’t want to be dead anywhere, honestly.”

Le Chasseur: “I’m gonna feel really bad about sinking this ship. This thing’s so nice.”

Woden, sarcastically: “When I signed up to be a shadowrunner, they never told me I’d have to commit property damage!”

Le Chasseur: “Property damage against beautiful things is different!”

Jekyll: “This [side-job I’m doing between actual game sessions] is specifically for no pay.”

Le Chasseur: “Woah woah woah. Can we negotiate that?”

Woden: “We demand at least 50% more.”

GM: So you all get in the boat. Which direction do you cast off?

Jekyll: “Away from the shore.”

Nitro: “But we’re smart enough to break the magic barrier with other weapons before firing our only rocket.”

Le Chasseur: “I don’t know if we are, Nitro.”

Jekyll: “We start with the rocket, then we send in the stealth guy. They won’t expect it.”

Woden: “…Is this is a submersible yacht?”

Le Chasseur: “That is not a standard feature.”

Jekyll: “If they’re already underwater it’s even easier to sink them!”

Session 35: Tip The Boat Over

Clerk at Mark’s Tactical Boat Shack: “Can I interest you in one of our watercraft bayonets? If you add one to your order, I can throw in a tactical laser scope for free.”

Woden: “A scope for the bayonet?”

Clerk: “How else are you gonna make sure you stab your target?”

Boombox: “That’s a band name. ‘Robo-Squid With A Knife.'”

Boombox: “If we get all the way out of the Chesapeake and into the ocean, then maybe there won’t be any sea leeches to deal with.”

Erebus: “They’re called sea leeches…”

Erebus: “I’m just trying to keep in mind ecological disruption. Which we seem to do a lot.”

Woden: “This will only be short-term ecological disruption.”

Erebus: “Oh, okay.”

Boombox, strolling back into Mark’s Tactical Boat Shack: “Hey Mark, do you happen to have any Evo Water Striders?”

Clerk: “My name is Rico.”

Boombox: “WHAT?!”

Rico: “Yeah, we have Evo Water Striders. Do you want the standard option or the tactical option?”

Boombox: “What’s the tactical option got?”

Rico: “The tactical one can go underwater, and has ruthenium polymer coating.”

Boombox: “WHAT.”

Le Chasseur: “Holy SHIT. ‘Hey Rico, do you have EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED on hand?’ ‘Fuck yes I do, good buddy!'”

Woden: “I should take some notes from that driver from the race, and summon a spirit that is also a boat.”

Boombox: “I think that’s a little out of our wheelhouse.”

Woden: “It doesn’t need wheels, Boombox. It’s a boat.”

Woden: “Those 129 dice are just the first six rolls of my spirit’s extended test. If it exhausted its search, it would roll 300. By the way, have I mentioned how much I appreciate playing Shadowrun on Roll20 rather than in person?”

GM: How long did you set the bomb timer for, Chasseur?

Le Chasseur: “I don’t know, I just punched random numbers.”

Session 36: Road Rage

Jekyll: “Please do not say anything embarrassing like last time.”

Woden: “We’ll just tell them we did the job. We sank the ship, destroyed the crops, stole some samples, badabing badaboom.”

Jekyll: “…I would not recommend you end with badabing badaboom.”

Jekyll: “Turns out torturing robots is real simple. You don’t even have to hurt them. You just download the pain into them. Run pain.exe.”

Jekyll: “We killed a lot of Yakuza, yes. But the question is, were they really people?”

GM: Yes. You murdered a bunch of people.

Nitro: “I would really like to have a second mage if we do this job.”

Woden: “Well, Tir will be there. Do we know what Tir’s deal is?”

GM: You know he’s huge, with a cyberarm and a giant axe.

Woden and Le Chasseur, simultaneously: “So probably not a mage.”

Tir: “What are you drinking?”

Jekyll: I name an Italian wine.

GM: He produces it. Out of nowhere.

Woden: “He IS a mage!”

Nitro: “I’m checking with Spencer to see if I can borrow Boombox’s van.”

Nitro: “He texted me back. He said sure, keys are in the visor.”

Le Chasseur: “Rigger security, ladies and gentlemen.”

Le Chasseur: “I like how about a third of the setting details we get are you complaining about what it’s like to live in DC.”

GM: Great place to visit. Hated living there.

GM: Roadmasters gonna roadmast. It bobs and weaves out of the way.

Jekyll: “I would actually not associate those two things with roadmasting.”

Nitro: “Well, we have one lead for sure.”

Le Chasseur: “Vulcan?”

Nitro: “No. Tir just threw him out of a truck into oncoming traffic. Vulcan’s a dead end. Literally.”

Session 37: New Management

Nitro: “Anything else we should fill you in on, Erebus? Oh, here’s a good one–did you know Hyde is in the mafia?”

Jekyll: “…I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Jekyll: “Oh, and we found out that the magic opals we’ve been seeing everywhere have a direct occult connection to Spider.”

Le Chasseur: “Huh. Maybe that’s why I keep seeing spiders everywhere whenever I pick one up.”

Nitro: “Can we at least go in with that cover story and see if we notice anything?”

Jekyll: “I’m willing to start with dishonesty, yeah.”

Nitro: “I mean, I’ll finish with dishonesty. Just checking.”

GM: You hear rythmic speaking on the other side of the door. It sounds like Latin. Hyde, roll Memory.

Woden: “It’s the Mafia National Anthem.”

Nitro: “Unless anyone else has anything going on?”

Erebus: “Nah, I got nobody clawing at my door.”

Nitro: “That’s probably good, because the last thing that clawed at one of our doors was a mutaqua.”

Le Chasseur: “But then we’d have to suck up to Sekhmet, and she’s an asshole. She thinks she’s smart, but she keeps doing dumb shit.”

Nitro: “I don’t know, she seems pretty smart so far. It’s all been working out for her.”

Le Chasseur: “Stop ruining my griping with your facts!”

Erebus: “Look, he’s getting a head start on sucking up to Sekhmet.”

GM: You remember that this chemical was likely responsible for creating the sea leeches you’ve been seeing.

Jekyll: “So you’re saying that if we set off this chemical bomb on land, it’ll create land leeches.”

Erebus: “Street leeches.”

GM: No, I’m saying that if you set it off on land, you’ll kill a lot of people.

Jekyll, racistly: “Josh, we’ve been over this.”

Le Chasseur: “Are the cops doing a random sweep for shadowrunners or something today?”

Erebus: “They’re sweeping for orks.”

Woden, getting arrested: “Yeah, orks like Woden.”

Session 38: The Princess and the Puppets

Le Chasseur: “We’re just going to be piling up K-10 in my shed, aren’t we?”

Nitro: “You could always destroy it.”

Le Chasseur: “Oh yeah, let’s dump it in the river and feed it to the sea leeches. What could go wrong with that?”

Nitro: “So I’ll leave my big weapons behind, but conceal my submachine gun in my sleeve holster.”

Le Chasseur: “You’re hiding a…how big is that submachine gun?”

Boombox: “How big are your sleeves?”

Le Chasseur: “They don’t realize that they’re up against professional shadowrunners.”

Woden: “Professionals. Walking in blind, unarmed, with no plan.”

Le Chasseur: “Excuse me, I have a knife.”

GM: You notice spots in the ceiling here and here, where it looks like turrets are installed.

Nitro: “I was just about to ask if there were any armed guards, so that answers that.”

Jekyll: “They’re armless guards.”

Boombox: “I think they’re guardless arms.”

As Woden fistfights a martial artist in the middle of a crowded dance floor:

Le Chasseur: This is the most John Wick we’ve ever gotten.

Woden, almost missing with 8 hits: “Yeah, that’s because I think I’m fighting John Wick.”

Boombox, committing multiple vehicular homicide: “Shucks, I did it again.”

Jekyll: “Who are all these shadowrunners not taking the Perception skill?”

In the Facebook chat after the session:

War crimes tally from this session:

Ran two dudes over
Gassed a nightclub (for the second time in the campaign! With different gas!)
Staged a terrorist attack in downtown DC involving an extremely dangerous bioweapon
Executed a man in cold blood
Accidentally killed at least eight but, if the numbers on the other floors were repeated on the ones we didn’t visit, probably closer to seventeen innocent bunraku puppets
Accepted 6000 nuyen so that a Mafia guy could execute his daughter’s fiance in front of her

All in all, I want to say at least 26 people died, depending on how many were on the floors of the nightclub that we didn’t visit. Most of them were killed horribly.

Session 39: The Spider And The Fly

Boombox: “You’ve been questioning my loyalty since day one! It’s always ‘Boombox can wait out here,’ ‘Boombox stay in the car.'”

Nitro: “That wasn’t questioning loyalties. That was questioning potential stupid use of explosives.”

Boombox: “Well…yeah, that’s actually fair.”

Woden: “What do we know about Helios resources?”

Le Chasseur: “We know that he has an army of vampires, because one of them repaired Boombox’s wall.”

Boombox: “And that was very nice of him. I’m still confused about it.”

Woden: I get back out of the car and go back in. “Hey Anansi, quick update, Atlas is gonna be there and also it’s not gonna be coyotes it’s vampires.”

Anansi: “…What?”

Boombox: “I kinda want to see a nosferatu with a machine gun.”

Jekyll: “Yeah, but I don’t want the machine gun to be pointed at me.”

Boombox: “Honestly, Helios seems like a decent guy. He just got turned into a monster, and now he’s gotta feed that monster. It’s a metaphor of drug addiction.”

Jekyll: “I didn’t realize this was A Very Special Episode of Shadowrun.”

Woden: “Brought to you by DARE.”

GM: Welcome to the after-school special edition.

Nitro: “What route would they have to take?”

GM: There are bridges to the south here and here, and one to the north up here.

Le Chasseur: “So we limit their choices by blowing two of the bridges.”

Nitro: “No.”

Boombox: “We blow three of the bridges.”

Woden: “Yes.”

Nitro: “Looks like we’re splitting into two teams, then.”

Erebus: “Team 1 and Team A.”

GM: Just…sure. However you want to call yourselves.

Jekyll: “Look, we are a running team of equals.”

Nitro: “I’m glad I’ve got Woden in my car, he got 8 hits!”

Woden: “That’s the spirit, actually.”

Boombox: “Yeah, that is the spirit!”

Session 40: Into The Spider-Verse

Boombox: “When we last left our heroes…”

Woden: “Let’s put some big quotes around ‘heroes’ and reevaluate that later.”

Le Chasseur: “Uh, if anyone sees my bow, I’d appreciate if you could pick it up.”

Woden: “That’s…not a concern to me right now.”

Le Chasseur: “Could it make it a concern? That thing’s like 10,000 nuyen.”

Nitro: “Hmm. Getting turned into a spider monster by a power-mad Anansi, versus 10,000 nuyen. I’m gonna say ‘buy a new one!'”

GM: Boombox, you feel yourself getting lifted up by a massive, clawed hand.

Boombox: “Is this feeling familiar?”

GM: Yeah, it’s pretty comfortable at this point.

Boombox: “We’re in the van, getting out of here. I don’t think we got your bow back.”

Le Chasseur: “How fast is this vehicle going?”

Boombox: Before answering that, I lock the doors.

Jekyll: “He’s got a crowbar dude, he’ll tear your van apart.”

Le Chasseur: “You’re gonna drive your Steel Lynx straight up New York Boulevard?”

Boombox: “That was the plan…”

Woden: “If it’s being chased by a spider-centaur, I think his drone is going to be the lesser of the two questions.”

Boombox: “The only thing I’m worried about, if we go to Sekhmet for help against the spider apocalypse, is that she’ll definitely say ‘I told you so.'”

Woden: “That’s fine.”

Le Chasseur: “No, no, he’s right. We can’t tell her.”

Boombox: “Are we gonna mention that we were there to interfere with a drug deal between orcs and vampires?”

Jekyll: “That makes us sound like badasses, so yeah.”

Jekyll: “I want to check recent online discussion, social media and stuff, for any talk of spider…stuff.”

Woden: “Any trending hashtags?”

Boombox: “#spiderapocalypse”

Woden: I”‘m going to beseech Wolf for aid, in the form of bonding to this spirit focus.”

Jekyll: “We might need a lot of Wolf’s aid. Wolf aids?”

GM: No, that’s a different thing.

Le Chasseur: “If I have a melee weapon in my hand, I can parry, which would add a substantial amount of dice.”

Woden: “Do you have a melee weapon in your hand?”

Le Chasseur: “No.”

GM: I’m so glad we went on this journey together.

Jekyll: As a free action, I spend 20 karma and buy a point of Edge.

Session 41: Spiderpocalypse Now
(or, I Should Have Saved “Into The Spider-Verse” For This One)

Le Chasseur: “Is Nick joining this combat [that we started without him last session]?”

GM: Yeah, he’ll come through the door or something.
Woden: “Vigil (the masked dream wizard assassin we’ve been fighting) takes off his mask. It’s Erebus.”

Le Chasseur: “This guy’s gonna start showing up in your dreams or something.”

Boombox: “I don’t think I dream anymore, right?”

GM: No.

Le Chasseur: “What?”

GM: He knows what I mean.

Jekyll: “What?!”

Boombox: “Is he standing in my foam explosives?”

GM: He’s next to you, so he is if you’re standing in them.

Le Chasseur: “Boombox is always standing in foam explosives.”

Boombox: “It’s what I pad my shoes with.”

Le Chasseur: “Don’t apologize for the strobe lights, Boombox, they were super helpful.”

Jekyll: “The only person who has to apologize for noizquitos is the person who put them in Rigger 5.”

Mafia Don: “We were just discussing the…what did you call it? Spiderpocalypse?”

Boombox: “We’re trying to get the hashtag going.”

GM: The headstone on the grave says Edward Val Hallen. Once you did down deep enough, you find a coffin.

Nitro: “And in the coffin…”

GM: Boombox’s body. Looks like he’s been dead for a few months. Since that time he got kidnapped.

Nitro: “…I cut my feed to Boombox.”

“Boombox:” “Hey Jekyll, I just lost my connection to Nitro. Is yours gone too, or…?”

Jekyll: “Oh, yeah. Just dropped. He’s probably taking a shower or something.”

“Boombox:” “He was just digging a hole a second ago.”

Jekyll: “Yeah, he got dirty.”

Boombox: “Are we about to end this campaign by becoming ecoterrorists?”

Le Chasseur: “Ending? We started this campaign as ecoterrorists!”

Le Chasseur: “So, in summary: we’re going to another dimension to hunt down a spider god.”

Jekyll: “Boombox, your van can change what the outside looks like, right?”

Boombox: “Yeah, why?”

Jekyll: “You wanna put the Ghostbusters logo on it?”

We meet a terrified man being chased by a spider monster.

Woden: I yell to him, “Wait! Where are we?”

Le Chasseur: “Can you give us directions to Arby’s?”

Le Chasseur: “Time to dose these motherfuckers with a barrel of antimagic drugs.”

Jekyll: “Don’t you also have a FAB–“

Le Chasseur: “A crowbar? Yes.”

Bruce: “Yeah, I finally saved up and got to retire.”

Erebus: “Son of a bitch, somebody actually did it.”

And that’s the campaign.

Goddamn, I love Shadowrun.