The Caffeinated Penguin

Posted By matt on October 25, 2008

(Hat tip to )

Write about your first RPG session. If you can't remember your first time, write about the earliest campaign you can remember. What system and setting was it? What character did you play? What happened? Don't be shy; we were all stupid “back then”.

I was the GM. We were playing Shadowrun, Third Edition. I think it was 1999. (Yes, I was a latecomer to gaming).

We ran the typical “First Run”, where it's 3am, you're hungry, and you need to go to the Stuffer Shack. Problem is, it gets hit by gangers. It introduces people to the combat system and allows them to get a handle on things.

In this one, they wasted the gangers, and this one dude (combat mage with an oricalcum cyberarm with cyber spur which just also happens to be a weapon focus… for the curious, this guy should not exist) decides that he's going to waste the manager and clerk behind the counter so as to not leave any witnesses (not like either of those would care – the runners saved their lives).

What the team didn't know was that this guy was also a sociopath who recorded everything which went on and sold the combat flicks on the black market – a decent side business. So, all his stuff was one big power trip.

So, the combat mage (no competition for alpha male there at all) takes a hit out on him.

I'm not going to just whack a player, so the sniper shoots at him as he's sitting in their favorite runner bar (Skinny Dick's halfway inn) and the round thuds into the bar. Firefight breaks out, and in the confusion the combat mage who took out the hit gets behind the cybered combat mage and cuts his head off with a dikoted katana.

The player was pissed and walked out of the game, never to return.

The rest of the crew was like “what the hell just happened”, and the guy doing the killing had to explain himself. He convinced the crew that what he did was in their best interest, and they had some pretty grand adventures after that.

Category: LJ Import
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