The Story So Far...
Mission Summary (For Your Own Reference Only)
After pulling a job trading from the South Old Malayan City Docks, the money the crew got are stolen from them by a gang of suspected nomad rivals. The crew is lured into a trap to snip them off as loose ends by the same gang, who have kidnapped and tortured their Fixer, Morrison, to set the snare.
Adventure Starts Here! Hook: The Phone Call
Fixer Morrison Liao
You are tasked by the higher ranking family members to complete a job for fixer known as Morrison Liao to escort a shipment out of Singapore. The job was simple and you encountered no complications. Once the shipment is out, you call Morrison to tell him the job is done so you can collect your payment. Morrison fails to pick the call so you drop him a message to call you back.
After returning from a job, the Player Characters (PCs) receive a call to their burner phone which they received from Morrison, their Fixer. The Fixer’s message is simple: “We’ve got to change the pickup point for your payment to an Woodlands industrial park in Singapore.” Why? He won’t say and assures them that nothing is wrong.
However, your tone should hint that something IS indeed wrong, because Morrison is being held at gunpoint, and is being forced to lure the PCs into a trap. If someone starts to catch on, or questions Morrison more, call for a Human Perception Check. If they beat the DV of 17, they learn for sure that something is up and that their Fixer, and by extension their payday, is in danger.
Of course, even if they fail, they can still suspect whatever they want. Whatever happens, soon thereafter, their Fixer hangs up before answering any questions they may ask
Development: Woodlands Industrial Park
The PCs can approach the meeting in Woodlands Industrial Park either knowing it’s a trap or being ignorant of it. Either way, when they arrive, ask your players how they want to approach the situation.
Any approach that incorporates a Skill Check of 17 or higher will lead them immediately to a beneficial situation. You get to adjudicate what this beneficial situation looks like, but showing them the positions of some of the enemies in the upcoming ambush or having them discover the location their Fixer is being held early is a good idea.
At the center of some alleys is a hooded man handcuffed to a briefcase. He offers it to the PCs, and will fumble around with the key far too long before handing it to them, dropping it in the process. This should be suspect. Take a note of which specific character takes the briefcase. The briefcase takes an Action to open.
Inside is 10,000eb, however, a DV 17 Forgery Check will reveal that it is counterfeit. The hooded man is a disguised rival nomad named William Ang who is cunning, and the hand-off is the signal for his equally cunning friends to close off the exits to these alleys and try to kill the PCs.
Cliff hanger: Alleyway Ambush
When the ambush starts, there are a total number of rival nomads equal to the PCs plus 2, including William, and each new rival nomad appears from either end of an alley on the map.
As combat begins, have one yell “they’ve got a gun!”. Here are some names of other nomads at the scene: Amanda Ong, Brian En Keng, Khalil Uzman, Rex Boo, Annis Ow, Matteo Feng, and Enrique Duterte. Make sure they get speaking lines, or your players will feel like they are shooting bags of HP. We need to make sure they remember they are shooting people, to get the gritty feeling we want.
The rival nomads each attempt to flee when they reach ½ HP or suffer a Critical Injury, by running across the edge of the map, unless their situation doesn’t permit it, in which case, they fight to the death.
Keep track of the number of rival nomads who escape. Questioning a captured rival nomad is a DV 17 Interrogation check, which reveals the location of their hideout if successful, and reveals nothing if failed. A sufficiently violent interrogation that fails is liable to kill the rival nomad. Once the shooting has ended, Morrison the Fixer, who has been tied up in a nearby storage room, finally manages to get their gag off and shouts out to the PCs for rescue.
Development: Saving the Fixer
Morrison is suffering the Crushed Fingers Critical Injury on his right organic hand and his left cyberhand has been Dismembered and dismantled with some cotton wool in his mouth as a gag.
When discovered, he has only 5 HP. For his condition, he's doing surprisingly well, and is happy to see that the team survived the ambush. He's done for this adventure, of course. If one of your players is playing a Medtech, he requests that they Quick Fix his crushed fingers Critical Injury.
Quick Fixing his Crushed Fingers is a DV 13 Paramedic Check. If the Quick Fix is successful, Morrison will offer to owe them a favor: “the good kind”, he says. If there isn't a Medtech in the group, the Fixer instead requests you call him a Combat Cabb, as his phone was destroyed during the scuffle.
Either way, the Fixer tells the crew that these nomads, who roughed him up and stole the crew’s eddies and belongings probably caught wind of their scheme through an informant (Great time to bring in a PC’s Lifepath Enemy) they have close to the South City docks.
Morrison knows where they are keeping the money they stole from the crew-in a warehouse not too far from the docks that they raided during the job the crew just pulled. He's also pretty sure the money in the suitcase is fake, given the circumstances, but makes a joke about being unable to flip through it at the moment. Charitably, the Fixer recommends they go visit death upon the nomads quickly, before they are able to recuperate from the battle and are able to hide the real money they stole.
Development: Freezer Box
During the alleyway ambush, one of the PC realizes that the Freezer Box got destroyed in the process. The techies aren't going to be happy about this. They can choose to store the parts that remain.
Climax: The Warehouse at Woodlands
The Warehouse is the PCs opportunity to go on the offensive, to end the session by exercising agency. Toward this end, there are many ways the PCs can approach the warehouse, but briefly, they break down into three camps: Violence, Stealth, and Diplomacy, or the secret fourth camp: whatever wild idea they come up with.
Instead of saying “what do you want to do” to start the scene, go with “How do you want to approach this? Stealth? Violence? Diplomacy? Anything is fair game”. This will hopefully get the players into a creative mindset, perhaps even one creative enough to take the secret fourth option. Here's how to run the warehouse in whatever way they go.
▶ Diplomacy◀
Diplomacy involves starting a dialogue, which implies giving away your position. Make sure you know which person will be doing the talking, and who else will be appearing alongside them for backup. There's no reason everyone in the party has to give up their positions, but make sure everyone knows that anyone who chooses to hide will be unable to hop into the negotiation once it's started without causing it to fail.
Once the negotiating PCs reveal themselves, have the negotiator from the rival nomads side appear. If you used a Lifepath Enemy for the informant in Saving The Fixer, have this character be them. Otherwise, this is a great time to tie in an entirely new Lifepath Friend or Enemy into the plot, or you can use a rival nomad who survived the ambush. The opposition starts with an offer to return half of the money, and drop all hostilities. They'll be keeping half of it, to pay for medical expenses and the cost of the entire operation. Should the PCs take the offer, no Skill Check is required, and everyone walks away. A DV13 Forgery Check can confirm the Eurobucks are real.
If the PCs counteroffer, they'll have to make a DV15 Persuasion Check (but if it's a wild counteroffer, this goes up to DV17), and failing means triggering a Facedown (page 21), Negotiator vs.Negotiator.
The opposing negotiator adds 8 to their ten-sided die for this roll. If the rival nomads win the Facedown, they'll change the offer to: we'll give you back 30% of the cash, and unless you accept right now, we'll kill you (see Violence, below). If instead the PC negotiator wins the Facedown, the rival nomads will accept the counteroffer. Succeeding the initial counteroffer Persuasion check also causes the rival nomads to accept the counteroffer. Should a Rockerboy be in the group, the opposing negotiator is a fan of their music.
▶ Violence◀
Violence is simple, but we want to make sure the combat encounter is spicy enough to sizzle and excite. First off, listen to your players to learn about how they want to tackle the building. The opposition inside the warehouse should appear at first to be a number of rival nomads equal to the number of PCs plus two, and should include all of the rival nomads that escaped the ambush, at the HP they escaped at (any Critical Injuries will have been Quick Fixed by now). At the beginning of the second round of combat, introduce a new rival nomad to the encounter at initiative count 20 (or even better, a Lifepath Enemy), crashing through the skylight on a motorbike. Use the Dirty rival nomad statblock, but give them 11 SP Armor, an Assault Rifle, 20 MOVE, and the ability to drive without using their hands. In other words, they’re driving with their mind and using their hands to shoot their Assault Rifle. This will dial up the spice, and make the cramped warehouse a violent bullet playground, just like we want. Unlike before, here the rival nomads will fight to the death.
▶ Stealth◀
Stealing the money silently and getting away safely is no mean feat, but it is possible. However, do the players a favor and remind them what the LUCK Stat is for beforehand. Breaking in silently takes a DC17 Stealth Check, and once inside, they immediately find the money. Getting it is the hard part. The money is in a safe that requires a DC15 Electronics/Security Tech or DC17 Pick Lock check to open. You could also steal the key from an unaware rival nomad with a DC15 Pick Pocket Check. Once the money is in hand, sneaking out is a DC15 Stealth Check. Assuming that all goes well, you walk away.
But something is probably going to go wrong, and when it does, begin combat as if the PCs had chosen violence instead, but skip the rival nomad on a roadbike part, unless you are feeling frisky.
▶ Wild Ideas◀
Your players may come up with something so wild and off the wall that neither of us could have possibly prepared for it. The good part is this option is actually the easiest to GM, ruleswise, and in doing this, your players have made your job much simpler. Just go with it. Go with their half-baked plan. Your players will love you for it. But, inject some roadblocks as they go. Find a way to challenge them with a DV15 Skill Check that makes sense for the situation, then, just as they feel like they are about to win, challenge them with a DV17 Skill Check that makes sense to provide a final challenge that feels like an escalation.
Bonus points if you can tie this Skill Check to one of their Lifepath Enemies. If combat is a part of their plan, go with the fight spelled out in the Violence option above, but skip the roadbike rival nomad part. However their wild idea ends up, they will feel fulfilled in their choice, having made their own ending to their story.
Resolution: Consequences
Whatever happens, your PCs will have gotten paid. The only question is, what will be the consequences of their actions. First off, unless they negotiated with the rival nomads, if they left any rival nomads alive, everyone is ending up with a 1,000eb bounty on their head.
The exception is the person who accepted the suitcase from William Ang at the Woodlands Industrial complex: they're getting a 2,000eb bounty. A Rockerboy who receives a bounty in this manner is likely to receive a bump in album sales, and you should award them a level of Reputation to go along with the great publicity and street cred. Give two levels of Reputation to any Media that receives a bounty, because it's a well-known badge of trustworthiness in the news community to be wanted by the state. The Medtech likely now has a favor to spend with Morrison, and you should make sure that they feel its worth in any future adventure they run with the character. Any Lifepath Friends or Enemies that were in the plot that survived to the end should be given their chance to either thank someone in the crew or vow revenge before slinking back into the shadows.
Alleyway Ambush
Warehouse
