How Hard To Make It

Whoops. this was supposed to go up at 12 am not 12pm. Sorry about that.

Today is my Shadowrun game. For those of you that remember, last session we had fun with a critical glitch that left one player fleeing a gunfight in a now-stolen van and one player unconscious, critically injured, and a prisoner of a pretty bad ass group. Today I find out if my players will even attempt to go and save their comrade or focus on the potential 800k payday in front of them. Only, one of my players has already told me that their top priority is going to be on saving the captured PC. This leaves me with a number of issues to sort through before game begins today.

Issue #1: How Hard Do I Make It?
This is the first and most serious issue. See, the group that the players stumbled upon arent slouches. They're not shadowrunners - or at least not highly skilled runners - but they do have some power to them. Especially when it comes to funding. At least 2 members of the group have enhanced reflexes giving them a second initiative pass (for the record, 2 of the 5 PCs also have 2 initiative passes) and they also have the funding for decent arms and armor.

In short, this is going to be a tough group to crack most likely. Especially considering that the group's biggest combat monster is currently the one who is critically injured and bound to a steel chair. Sadly, this is one of the areas I may just have to bite the bullet on. After all, this is Shadowrun and sometimes the world is just out to kick you in the teeth. Besides, making it hard may lead to epic PC shenanigans and I should open the door to that.

Issue #2: Difficulty Modifiers...
There are a couple of things that could modify the difficulty. For one thing, the "bad guys" have no way of knowing that the PCs didn't deliberately interfere in their kidnapping. All they know is that someone drove in front of their van, a gun fight ensued, and their hostage was stolen but they managed to capture one member of the team. The injured PC is in too injured a state for me to think he can talk, let alone be questioned, and so the bad guys are left with one of a number of assumptions. The most likely? One, the PCs are a shadowrun extraction/protection team hired to keep their hostage safe. It was only a 2 man team, and they caught one, so they're only dealing with one person. Two, it was a staged action by the police. Three, like number one but a larger group that has backup.

Further complicating this is the fact of what was reported versus what happened. I, as the GM, know that 2 PCs stumbled onto the scene, an NPC over-reacted and pulled a gun, and a gunfight ensued ending up with a KO'd PC, a dead NPC, a KOd NPC, and a stolen van. However, the guys who had their prize jacked from under them may not report it like that. Who wants to admit that their 5 man team got rolled by a 2 man group using gel rounds, one of the members of that group being a little girl? Optical recordings may help with this, but its hard to tell.

Also, the PCs are currently working with a 3 man exfiltration specialist NPC team that they made friends with before. But that's an issue on its own...

Issue #3: Brennan, Lance, and Brick
Brennan, Lance, and Brick are a three man shadow runner team that work as exfiltration specialists. With the current job being a potential 800k+ payday the PCs enlisted their help for the job. With that resource available, the PCs who go to help the captured friend will likely try to enlist the help. This leaves me with the position of not wanting to over-shadow the PCs with the NPCs but also needing to stay true to what has been presented as fact in the game already. If I do have B.L.B. go along it will be a serious difficulty modifier in the PCs favor, but the question then comes in on how to play that out.

For instance, to B.L.B. charge for their help? After all, it means going into danger, using weapons, and spending costly ammo. On the other hand, if they do it for free (they have been included in a big pay day) the group would owe them one and it lets me develop them as friends, comrades, and sometimes rivals on jobs. The potential is here for a lot of fun and depth being given to the world. The question is, how should I go about doing it?

And more...
There are other issues besides these, but these are the big ones I think. Hopefully today will be quiet enough that I can noodle my way through them and get things all set for game tonight. Either way, I think it will be a fun session. Hopefully that pans out.