Shadowrun 4E CMP 2010-02 Copycat Killer.pdf

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Writing

Steven “Bull” Ratkovich

Art

Doug Chaffee

Maps

Adam Large

Prooing

A.A. Salati, Jean-Marc

Comeau, Jeremy

Weyand, Matt

Manganaro

Shadowrun Missions Logo

Brent Evans &

Matt Heerdt

Layout & Design

Matt Heerdt

Shadowrun Missions

Coordinator

Steven “Bull” Ratkovich

Shadowrun Line Developer

Jason Hardy

In Memoriam, Doug Chaffee 1936-2011

CONVENTION MISSION PACK 2010-02 COPyCAT KIllEr

. . . EMERALD CITY HEARTBREAK . . .

T h e o r k g r o a n e d a s h e s a t u p i n b e d , p u s h i n g t h e

h e a v y c o v e r s o f f o f h i m s e l f. S u n s t r e a m e d t h r o u g h t h e w i n -

d o w s , a n d h e f u m b l e d o n t h e n e a r b y n i g h t s t a n d n e a r b y

f o r h i s g l a s s e s . H e n e e d e d t o g e t c o r r e c t i v e s u r g e r y , b u t

h a d j u s t n e v e r m a d e t h e t i m e . S li p p i n g t h e w i r e f r a m e s o n

h e s q u i n t e d a t t h e b e d s i d e c l o c k . 0 8 : 5 5 . H e m u m b l e d t o

h i m s e l f a n d s t a g g e r e d o u t o f b e d . I n h i s f o r t y y e a r s h e ’ d

n e v e r b e e n a m o r n i n g p e r s o n , a n d h e d i d n ’ t f e e l li k e h e w a s

e v e r g o i n g t o a d j u s t t o i t n o w . W h il e m a k i n g h i s w a y t o

t h e b a t h r o o m , h i s c o m m li n k c h i r p e d , a n d t h e i c o n s h o w e d

a l a u g h i n g c o y o t e . W i t h a g r i m a c e , h e a n s w e r e d t h e c a ll.

“ J o h n n y . ” T h e o r k s a i d l a t l y . “ L e m m e g u e s s . Y o u a i n ’ t

b e e n t o b e d y e t . ”

“ Y o u k n o w i t ! ” T h e v o i c e o n t h e o t h e r e n d s a i d c h e e r -

f u ll y . “ W a s h e a d i n g t h e r e s o o n , b u t w a n t e d t o t o u c h b a s e

a n d s e e h o w t h i n g s w e r e g o i n g f o r y o u o u t t h e r e . M y o f f e r

s t ill s t a n d s , y o u k n o w . ”

“ I k n o w , a n d I a p p r e c i a t e i t . B u t t h i n g s a r e i n e . B ill y ’ s

s e t t l e d i n , s t a r t i n g r u n n i n g w i t h h i s o w n c r e w . R e b e c c a ’ s

d o i n g f a n t a s t i c i n s c h o o l. A n d h e ll, b e i n g a i x e r i s c a k e . I

s i t b a c k , m a k e a f e w p h o n e c a ll s , m e e t w i t h a f e w u p p i t y

y o u n g r u n n e r s t o o b i g f o r t h e i r b r i t c h e s , a n d l e t t h e m o n e y

r o ll i n . I t s u r e b e a t s t h e d r e k o u t t a g e t t i n g s h o t . ”

“ O r b e i n g h o u n d e d b y a d r a g o n . ” J o h n n y r e p li e d . E v e n

w i t h n o v i d - f e e d o n t h e c o m m c a ll, t h e o r k c o u l d s e e h i m

g r i n n i n g . “ O r b e i n g h u n t e d b y b u g s p i r i t s . O r — “

“ O k , o k , e n o u g h . Y e s . I t ’ s m u c h b e t t e r. I a l r e a d y s a i d

t h a t . ” I r r i t a t i o n l o o d e d h i s v o i c e . “ I t ’ s e a r l y a n d I j u s t w o k e

u p , c h u m n m e r. W h a t d i d y o u n e e d ? ”

“ I’ m g o n n a b e i n t o w n i n a c o u p l e d a y s o n b i z . F i g u r e d

I’ d c r a s h o n y o u r c o u c h , l e t y o u b u y m e s o m e b e e r. ”

“ Y e a h , s u r e . X u x a g o i n g t o b e … H o l d u p . I g o t a n o t h e r

c a ll, I s h o u l d t a k e i t . B e r i g h t b a c k . ” T h e o r k m e n t a ll y p u t

J o h n n y ’ s c o m m c a ll o n h o l d , a n d a n s w e r e d t h e o t h e r li n e .

“ H o i T o s h , w h a t ’ s u p ? ” H e li s t e n e d t o t h e v o i c e o n t h e o t h e r

e n d f o r s e v e r a l m i n u t e s , t h e n h u n g u p n u m b l y . H i s l e g s

r u b b e r y , h e s t u m b l e d b a c k t o s i t o n t h e e d g e o f t h e b e d .

“ B u ll ? ” J o h n n y ’ s v o i c e c a m e t h r o u g h t h e c o m m . “ Y o u

t h e r e ? I t h i n k w e g o t c u t o f f. ”

“ I’ m h e r e J o h n n y . ” B u ll r e p li e d , h i s v o i c e d e v o i d o f e m o -

t i o n . “ I … I n e e d t o c a ll M a r i e . T h a t w a s a f r i e n d a t K n i g h t

E r r a n t . I t … S h e … ”

B u ll’ s v o i c e c r a c k e d a n d t e a r s r o ll e d d o w n h i s f a c e .

“ R e b e c c a ’ s d e a d . ”

Copycat Killer

INTRoDUCTIoN

CMP–02 Copycat Killer is a Shadowrun Missions campaign

adventure. Full information on the Shadowrun Missions campaign

is available at shadowrun4.com/missions and includes a guide to

creating Missions characters and a regularly updated FAQ. All

maps, player handouts, and other playing aids are found at the

end of this document.

RUNNING THE ADVENTURE

Gamemastering is more of an art than a science, and every

gamemaster does things a bit diferently. Use your own style when

it comes to preparing and running the adventure and do whatever

you feel is best to provide the best Shadowrun game you can for

your players. Shadowrun Missions adventures are designed to run

in a standard four-hour convention time slot.

Please keep this in mind when running the adventure. You

should leave at least 15–20 minutes at the end of the time slot

to complete any necessary paperwork and pass out the players’

Debrieing Logs. (Make sure that you have enough copies of the

Debrieing Log for this adventure to give one copy to each player

ater running the adventure.) his section ofers some guidelines

you may ind useful in preparing to run CMP–02 Copycat Killer

(or any Shadowrun Missions adventure).

PREPARING THE ADVENTURE

CMP–02 Copycat Killer is intended for use with Shadowrun,

Fourth Edition, and all character and rules information refers to

the fourth edition of the Shadowrun rules.

ADVENTURE STRUCTURE

CMP–02 Copycat Killer consists of several scenes. hese

scenes form the basis of the adventure, which should be completed

in approximately four hours. If you are running short on time, you

should streamline each and be a little more generous with clues,

target numbers, and other requirements to aid in guiding the

players through the adventure.

Each scene outlines the most likely sequence of events, as

well as how to handle unexpected twists and turns that inevitably

crop up. Each one contains the following subsections, providing

gamemasters with all the information necessary to run it.

STEP 1: READ THE ADVENTURE

Carefully read the adventure from beginning to end. Get a

feel for the overall plot and what happens in each scene. hat way, if

something diferent happens, you won’t be caught of guard and you

can adapt things smoothly.

STEP 2: TAkE NoTES

Take notes for yourself while reading through the adventure

that you can refer to later on. Possible things to note include:

major plot points (so you can see them all at a glance), the names of

various non-player characters, possible problems you notice, situ-

ations where you think a particular character can shine and other

things you’ll want to keep in mind while running the adventure.

Scan his provides a quick synopsis of the scene’s action,

allowing you to get a feel for the encounter at a glance.

Tell It to hem Straight is written to be read aloud to the

players, describing what their characters experience upon entering

the scene. You should feel free to modify the narrative as much as

desired to suit the group and the situation, since the characters

may arrive at the scene by different means or under different

circumstances than the text assumes.

STEP 3: kNoW THE CHARACTERS

Prior to the start of the adventure, examine the PCs’ record

sheets and Debrieing Logs for your reference and have basic infor-

mation about their important abilities handy so you can refer to

it during play. Also go over the characters and keep their previous

events listed on the Debrieing Logs in mind when determining

non-player character actions in various scenes if such a dynamic

has been included.

Behind the Scenes covers the bulk of the scene, describing

what’s happening, what the non-player characters are doing, how

they will react to the player characters’ actions and so forth. It

also covers the setting of the encounter, going over environmental

conditions and other properties of the location as well as providing

any descriptions of important items.

STEP 4: DoN’T PANIC!

Gamemastering involves juggling a lot of diferent things.

Sometimes you drop the ball and forget something or you just

make a mistake. It happens, don’t worry about it. Nobody is

perfect all of the time and everybody makes mistakes. Just pick up

from there and move on. Your players will understand and forget

about it once you get back into the action.

Pushing the Envelope looks at ways to make the encounter

more challenging for experienced or powerful characters and other

ways you can add some “extra spice” to the scene. his subsection

should usually only be used for home games, or games where time

is not a factor. At most convention and Open Play events, game-

masters should omit this information. It adds to the scene, but

does not contain important information.

Debugging ofers solutions to potential problems that may

crop up during the encounter. While it’s impossible to foresee

everything that a group of player characters might do, this section

tries to anticipate common problems and other suggestions for

dealing with them.

Copycat Killer

GENERAL ADVENTURE RULES

Shadowrun Missions adventures use the rules presented in

Shadowrun, Twentieth Anniversary Edition ( SR4A ). Standard

rules such as success tests, the Rules of One and Six, and other

common mechanics are described in SR4A and are not repeated

in this adventure.

Please keep in mind when preparing for the adventure, that

the PCs will not necessarily comprise a balanced party. It’s entirely

possible that the party will be made up entirely of technomancers

or back-to-nature shamans. If the characters run into a brick wall

because of such complications, show lexibility and use your best

judgment in how you lead them back to the plot.

MISSIoN SyNoPSIS

Six months ago Edmund Jefries, Governor Brackhaven’s

press secretary, had lunch with a friend of his from college, George

Mathers, a mid-level bureaucrat at Knight Errant. Both had pretty

strong anti-metahuman leanings, though Jefries had to be more

circumspect about it due to his political oice. As the conversa-

tion proceeded, Jefries expressed to his friend his frustration over

what he referred to as the “underground problem”. Metahuman

rights groups were pushing to have the Ork Underground declared

an oicial district of Seattle, granting it access to tax money, law

enforcement, and all the legal beneits that the other districts

enjoyed. Meanwhile, the Governor’s Office was interested in

shutting the Underground down as much as possible, viewing it

primarily as a haven for criminals and a source of many of the city’s

problems.

During the conversation, Jefries made an of-hand comment

about how it was a shame that the Mayan Cutter had been killed

and that the cutter could have solved a lot of the city’s problems if

he’d killed a few of the leaders of these groups. Mathers, wanting

to impress his friend, decided ater the meeting that maybe he

could do something about this, even if Jefries’ hands were tied

due to his political position. He had a lot of contacts in Humanis,

the Human League, and a number of other hate groups, and

proceeded to make some rather discreet phone calls.

A couple of months ago, George Mathers finally started

putting his plan into place. He found a disgruntled ex-UCAS

Army Ranger named Shawn Walker, a man whose racism

bordered on the psychotic. He coached Walker in the Cutter’s

killing techniques, and provided him with targets, all members of

organizations such as the Ork Rights Committee and Mothers of

Metahuman or their close friends and family. Walker was to mix in

some random metahuman kills in with the targets to make it less

obvious that there were the speciic targets for the kills.

he runners are hired by William MacCallister when his

daughter Rebecca is killed by the new Mayan Cutter. He wants the

runners to ind the Cutter and stop him, and bring him in alive.

his run is personal to him. He can give the runners two starting

points, a contact he knows at Knight Errant who’s involved in the

investigation, Detective Tosh Athack, and some information on

what his daughter was doing in the Ork Underground when she

was killed.

he runners have to untangle a web of rumors and specula-

tion surrounding the Mayan Cutter and discover who was the

Mayan Cutter and if the reappearance of the Cutter is due to a

copycat or not. hey quickly realize that while the copycat knows

the Cutter’s methods well, his targets are more varied. he real

Cutter is indeed dead, and on the surface the new Cutter’s targets

are more random than the original, who targeted mainly poor,

SINless, metahumans.

Doing some digging, research, and putting two and two

together, the runners eventually figure out that the Cutter is

targeting immediate family and the close friends of affluent

members of the metahuman activist groups Mothers of

Metahumans and the Ork Rights Comittee. During the investi-

gation, they get jumped by members of the Troll Killers, a racist

street gang that was hired by George Mathers in an attempt to

stop the runners.

NoN-PLAyER CHARACTERS

Non-player characters (NPCs) are essential to any adventure.

hey are the allies, antagonists, and background characters in the

adventure that interact with the player characters. NPCs in this

adventure have already been created and can be found throughout

the adventure.

Minor NPCs are found in the individual scene that they

appear in, and generally have a brief write up, noting only their

important skills and the gear they are carrying. Note that their dice

pools are pre-calculated to save the gamemaster time.

Major NPCs can be found in the Cast of Shadows at the end

of the adventure, and have more detailed write ups, and include

most of the skills and the gear they have access to.

he NPCs in this adventure should generally stand up to the

average player character but may need some adjustment to suit a

particular group of characters, especially a more experienced and

powerful group. he scenes and NPC descriptions ofer tips on

adjusting the NPCs to suit the abilities of the characters in your

group. To adjust the power level of an NPC, refer to the Prime

Runner Creation and Advancement Table (p. 285, SR4A ). Take

the player characters’ abilities into consideration when assessing

the NPCs in this adventure and modify them accordingly.

MISSIoN DIffICULTy

GMs are encouraged to use their own judgment, and to

adjust the diiculty of the encounter to take into account the abili-

ties of the players. If the players have no magical support, replace

magical defenses with mundane ones. If the players are weak on

combat, reduce the number of enemies by one or two. Conversely,

if they’re steam-rolling the opposition, add one or two enemies to

the ight. Missions should be a challenge to the party, but should

never be insurmountable for a team playing it smart.

Copycat Killer

Following up clues they’ve found, they eventually track down

the copycat and have a confrontation with him. Depending on the

investigation and if they take the copycat alive, they can ind out

about George Mathers, which they can turn over to MacCallister

or to Tosh. here is no way to trace things back to Edmund Jefries.

BEHIND THE SCENES

his scene’s primary goal is to set the runners in Seattle if

they’re not normally from that city (Usually running in New

York or Denver, for example). he runners have access to all their

normal gear and riggers have access to their drones and a “loaner”

for their primary vehicles.

Play up the ambiance of Seattle, and the history for a shad-

owrunner. his is a town where everything can and does happen,

and many of the pivotal moments in history have taken place here.

Almost everyone involved in the shadows considers Seattle to be

the “big time”. It’s a rough town with a ton of competition, and

almost every player in the biz has a stake in Seattle. For runners

outside of Seattle, there’s an almost mythical quality to the place.

It’s like Mecca or Graceland for many shadowrunners, a holy place

for them. Fastjack, Kid Stealth, Dirk Montgomery, Jack Skater,

Zapper Weisman, Hatchetman. he cream of the shadowrunning

crop has done their biz there. he runners are likely to be disap-

pointed, of course, because Seattle’s dirty, grimy, illed with crime,

and pretty much just like any other city. But still, it’s Seattle.

If the player or character is new to Missions, talk to them and

ind out where they plan to set up their “home base”, and let them

know that New York ends ater Mission 12. If they are planning

to play in New York still, assume they’re from there and read the

above accordingly. Otherwise, have them settle into Seattle as their

home town and skip to A Fixer’s Call.

SCENE 0: THE NEW kIDS IN ToWN

SCAN THIS

his scene gives the gamemaster options for introducing the

adventure to runners who may not be from Seattle, or who may

not have run for Mr. MacCallister before.

TELL IT To THEM STRAIGHT

If the runners are not native to Seattle and their last run

wasn’t set there, read the following:

Two days ago, your ixer set you up on an out-of-town job.

It sounded simple, a bodyguard mission for some high-ranking

corp sarariman. Your travel was arranged and they even managed

to smuggle your gear here. It’s never that simple though and by

the time your plane touched down at Sea-Tac Airport, your mark

had already been taken out. Without a job to do, you picked up

your gear, grabbed a hotel, and decided to see the sites, blowing

the meager retainer you’d been given for making the trip. Ater all,

you’re shadowrunners, this is Seattle, and this town gave birth to

the shadowrun.

So for the last couple days, you’ve been on vacation. You’ve

visited Underworld 93 and Club Penumbra, stopped to check out

the ACHE, cruised by the Redmond Barrens (wearing full body

armor and guns irmly in hand), beat up a few Halloweeners, and

even visited the infamous Crime Mall. You were out late last night

ater bribing the doorman to let you into the 3 rd level of Hell at

Dante’s Inferno, and had planned to sleep in and sleep it of before

heading back home today.

However, it’s barely noon when your commlink buzzes. You

lip it on, and see the face of your friendly neighborhood ixer on

the other end.

“Looks like you had a good night.” He says with a grin.

“Listen, since your last job was a washout and you’re already in

town, I have a friend who needs some help. Meet a Mr. William

MacCallister at the Big Rhino at one o’clock. Ask for him at the

door. And play nice, this guy’s got a lot of connections and, well,

this job’s personal. He’ll pay well if you play straight with him.”

Once the runners accept the meet, head to A Daughter Lost.

DEBUGGING

The only real problem here is if a player doesn’t want to

accept the meet. If they seem hesitant, their ixer very reluctantly

ofers them a 100¥ bonus just to attend the meeting. He tries to

talk them into it irst without the cash ofer, since he was given

that by MacCallister and he gets to keep it if they go without it.

If the runners have been in Seattle recently but are not

native, read the following:

You just wrapped up a job, you’re tired and you’re ready to go

home, relax, and spend some of your hard earned nuyen. It’s noon

and you’re just inishing packing when your commlink beeps and

on the other end is your ixer.

“Hey, great job with that last run. he client was very happy

with your performance. But listen, since you’re still in Seattle,

I have a proposition for you. I have a friend there who needs

some help. his guy’s got a lot of connections and, well, this job’s

personal. He’ll pay well if you play straight with him. Meet him

at the Big Rhino at one o’clock. His name’s William MacCallister,

ask for him at the door.”

Copycat Killer

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