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Tonight's Shadowrun tested the concept of splitting our 8-person gaming group into 4-person squads easier for the GM to handle. The runners were hired to drop cash as part of a stock scam, simultaneously in Bellevue and in downtown Seattle. The Bellevue team faced off against gang members and the Seattle team encountered an Ares Firewatch team - the sort of scary bastards usually off committing atrocities in Third World countries, and part of why we were able to survive this encounter was one of runners was carrying atrocity-in-Third-World grade weaponry.
I also discovered one of the weird catches to being a magician in Shadowrun. One of the most useful things you can do as a magician is provide Heal spells since that's spontaneous, really vital when people go from penalized for wounds to dead very quickly. Shadowrun is d6 based, and how many d6s you can roll are reduced by the amount of Essence lost by the person you're trying to heal - which is really dramatic for the sort of heavily cybered character who takes the most damage in firefights. The good news is that drain for a Heal spell is based on how much you actually heal. For instance, if I could roll 10 dice to heal a troll who has 2.6 Essence, I only roll 10 - 4 = 6 dice, but that means I probably won't have to soak much drain and might not need to soak any at all!
My crowning moment the entire game was probably when we stole a van to acquire a second, untraceable vehicle, and set off the car alarm. My suggestion for what to do if stopped by Knight Errant (future Seattle's privatized police force, now that Lone Star no longer has that duty) was that we could play music really loudly with the car alarm as a constantly looping background, and claim that we were simply fans of "alarmcore."
I also discovered one of the weird catches to being a magician in Shadowrun. One of the most useful things you can do as a magician is provide Heal spells since that's spontaneous, really vital when people go from penalized for wounds to dead very quickly. Shadowrun is d6 based, and how many d6s you can roll are reduced by the amount of Essence lost by the person you're trying to heal - which is really dramatic for the sort of heavily cybered character who takes the most damage in firefights. The good news is that drain for a Heal spell is based on how much you actually heal. For instance, if I could roll 10 dice to heal a troll who has 2.6 Essence, I only roll 10 - 4 = 6 dice, but that means I probably won't have to soak much drain and might not need to soak any at all!
My crowning moment the entire game was probably when we stole a van to acquire a second, untraceable vehicle, and set off the car alarm. My suggestion for what to do if stopped by Knight Errant (future Seattle's privatized police force, now that Lone Star no longer has that duty) was that we could play music really loudly with the car alarm as a constantly looping background, and claim that we were simply fans of "alarmcore."