Backdrop

• district built out of containers and neglected housing blocks. Container corridors, walls and floors, leaking pipes, gang laws

Context

• in order to be shown the way to the secret lab in the heart of container district characters have to infiltrate, they need to do something for one of three local gangs. I want this to be a kind of Mexican standoff where they have to choose which faction to support
• Their arcs/previous deeds are making spirit of that city to "wake up". They will need its help and I need a way to point them to something like that existing
• Since we are going to play sometime soon, Krampus is a nice idea

Background

• unrest in the city is making people start believing there has to exist some vengeful force of justice. Hence in container district a Krampus started to operate. It randomly appears to flail to death most naughty (adults). So far, mostly without credible witnesses nor survivors. Flees the scene on foot, but can cover impossible distances when not observed by anyone. I don't intend to fully define what this Krampus is
• few days ago a VTOL with shipment of MCT genetically un-modified chickens has been shot down and crashed somewhere in the disctrict. Everyone who knows how to get to the lab wants them
  • Anarchist commune wants them as food source (un-modified means those don't require patented seeds)
  • Wizgang wants them for signing their deals (un-modified means pure auras - mcguffin, just roll with it)
  • small-fry Yakuza officer wants them to return them to MCT for clout (MCT is one of our campaign villains)
  • not many chickens survived, they can't share
  • there was a fourth faction in the area but it got wiped by Krampus. Only a BTL hard user has seen something, but is half terrified, half not completely awake
• Wizgang and Yakuza sent their forces to retrieve the cargo. No-one returned. Unknown to the groups, both parties were wiped by Krampus. But they of course blame each other and maybe even the commune too? Commune doesn't really have strike-force, but definitely has clout in the neighborhood
• Area around the VTOL has become a two-sided conflict zone (Wiz and Yak)

Plan

My idea is that whatever my players decide to do, they will in some way observe the Krampus. Mostly killing both sides of conflict. I want them to later start asking around what could that have been to get to some know-it-all saying "well, maybe it's the spirit of the city"

Do you see some flaws in this idea? Some cool idea came to your mind?

I don't want to spoil, so won't say much about the plot etc. To me it was a good read. Well written, I went from 16% to 100% in one day. The mystery was delivered nicely, well paced and interesting idea. And I liked the exploration of corp environment at high positions. I think it's not done often at this POV

I guess it might interest someone and haven't seen it mentioned

Year Zero Engine post-apo. Mutants, cyborgs and wasteland

I'm not involved, just got an email about it

I'm always on the lookout for run inspirations. But many Shadowrun missions were hit or miss

Has anyone looked at it? How streamlined it really is? Is this overhaul cohesive?

Alien RPG Starter Set has a discount currently. I think I've heard somewhere that it's doing some things well but I don't remember what & where. And I very rarely can get answers to my questions from description or reviews.
Does anyone have experience with it?

• How the system works? (d20/d6 pool/special dice/similar to X/etc)
• Rather crunchy or narrative?
• Are there some system elements that play into the feel of the setting?

Cthulhu Hack, the simple and accessible Mythos tabletop roleplaying game from Just Crunch Games. This fast-playing standalone investigative game, based on David Black's minimalist fantasy RPG The Black Hack, pits ordinary people against the sanity-shattering horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. With simple Save die-rolls and three resources (Flashlights, Smokes, and Sanity), Cthulhu Hack deftly supports published Investigations and campaigns for any Mythos RPG. Learn the whole system in 20 minutes, teach it to your players in five minutes more, and in another five their characters will be ready for a slow spiral into self-destruction.

That piqued my interest, so I thought I'd share

I was very excited to see that open hardware seems to be happening, despite my perception

But it seems that OpenTitan is somehow connected to Google. And now I'm conflicted

I know that eventually the answer is "whatever I want" but I would like to hear what others think.

There's an MCT oil rig on Baltic Sea. Anarchists from Kronstadt noticed peculiar data transfer some time ago going there and managed to hijack the place. Then they transmitted message that they are an eco terrorist group (I did not specify which one to my players) and demand MCT to stop polluting. After that, folded the satellite dish to buy some time for the decker and rigger to look around the host.

Now, from a point of, for example, TerraFist. An oil rig nearby is in disarray, none of their contacts in other groups say they're doing it. And MCT HTR is definitely on its way.
Does it make sense for them to come to the rig and make contact/make sure it gets disabled/make trouble for HTR?

I think their appearance has potential to turn this job into a nice chaotic clusterfuck and opportunity to show my players some variety of the world (they would definitely come on a yacht going superspeed with help of a spirit).
But does it make any sense at all for anyone besides me?

I might be wrong but I'm 90% sure the Shadowrun (ttrpg) community was on this instance. Now I can't find it anywhere (cross-instance community search doesn't find it too) and I can see in my profile that my posts sent there disappeared too.
Was the community closed? I couldn't find this info in the modlog

cross-post: https://lemmy.world/post/2220151

Blades' "skip to the action"+retrospective+stress mechanics worked really well for my table.

I'm looking for other systems and homebrews that would allow us to "plan" the heists later, during the actual action.