Adventures in Glow City - Part One

 You are woken from a broken slumber by the incessant ringing of your bonephone (you have a phone surgically implanted in your skull). As you struggle to open your eyes after the excesses of last night you see a message on your HUD from the local fixer Deke NoLegs - a fixer is someone who arranges jobs for runners like yourself - inviting you to meet him at the Get Lucky club on the border between the Block and Neon Quarters at 6pm (2 hours time) As you look around the squalid apartment you are currently forced to call home, you realise that no power in Glow City is going to prevent you from making that meeting.

 

Yesterday I started running a new Cyberpunk RPG with Joel, Matt and Lee acting as my guinea pigs.  Inspired by the write up on Matakishi’s Tea House I decided to use a very simple set of rules called Wired Neon Cities by Scott Malthouse that I picked up from DriveThruRPG.  The entire set of rules including background is only 5 pages so it’s very much a set that puts the emphasis on the players and actual role playing rather than playing the mechanics of the game.

 

With the message above our three players Stein the Doc (Matt), Nut the Gunner (Lee) and Pi the Cyberblade (Joel) were summoned to meet Deke and the adventure began.

 

After the usual pleasantries Deke said that he had been watching the 3 of them for a little while and thought they were ready to step up to the next level. However, he had a job for them to carry out so that they could prove that the rep they were building was not just the idle chat of bar drunks.  

 

The mission was to collect a package from a specified location at a specified time and then move it to a second location for delivery.  Payment would be 300 bits each and a bonus of 500 bits between them if the package was delivered undamaged.  Simple.  They were given both the pickup and drop off locations as well as a code that would enable them to track the package via GLOWNet.

 

Some judicious hacking by Stein indicated that the package pickup was a noodle bar in the Sushi Quarter a couple of miles away from the Get Lucky Club.   They had to deliver the package to the Randy Bar.  Stein also discovered the tracker was not online yet.

 

Making their way to the Noodle Bar on foot the team arrived around 20:00 hours and took up positions to stake out the specified location.   Over the next 4 hours they spotted a very large man obviously bulked out with implanted vat grown muscle, a tall pale skinned skeletal man, dressed identically to big boy and Nut spotted a sniper in a high position covering the entire market.

 

More GLOWNet hacking ensued to check that the package was on the move and at around 23:45 a man with a silver briefcase chained to his wrist entered the market and took a seat at the noodle bar.  Stein confirmed that this was the package though he was unsure if it was the person or the case.  To be safe the party decided to take both and booked a Johnny Cab to pick them up at the corner.  

 

As midnight rolled around the team sprang into action with Nut firing indiscriminately into the air, Stein killing the power to the market, so the lights went out and Pi taking control of the package, forcing him at gunpoint into the Johnny cab where they were quickly joined by Nut.  Stein didn’t seem in a hurry however and sauntered across the market without a care in the world before finally entering the cab.

 

Once in the cab heading for the Randy Club the team were gripped by self-doubt and decided to abandon the original plan and switch Johnny Cabs, getting out in the middle of an open industrial zone.  

 

Whilst bickering about what to do next they were assaulted by another group of Runners and a fight broke out.  Nut proved his worth to the team as he dropped 3 of the four attacked whilst Pi matched her arm blade against a Katana wielding wannabe.  She eventually managed to separate his head from his shoulders but took some serious damage to her cybernetic body.  Fortunately, Stein had his soldering iron on hand and was able to carry out some running repairs.   Nut and Stein both questioned the man with the briefcase who told them his name was Jing Hu, he was a low-level employee for Pineapple Corp and that he made a delivery of a briefcase to another Pineapple facility every week.  He didn’t know what was in the case and had no way to open it or remove the chain from his wrist.

 

At the same time as the fight had broken out a message had come in from Deke Nolegs changing the drop-off point to a location within the Hive (you only go in there if you really really have to) so the team decided to take the L-Train to the location.  It was only 10 stops away! 

 

After the first stop the team stopped on the platform and decided to check the Net Runner job bulletin board to see if they had been posted as a job.  They had, with a reward of 1000 bits for a photo of their heads separated from their bodies.  Stein hacked into the BB and with some excellent cyberskills managed to mark the listing as closed.  Unfortunately the listing was immediately reposted with the Bounty increased to 2000 Bits.  Nuts was concerned that the message redirecting them to the Hive wasn’t a valid message from Deke but Stein knew that hacking the phone company was beyond his skills and he would most likely end up flatlining due to the Black Ice surrounding it.

 

Getting back on the train they went several more stops before another group of Runners entered the carriage and another fight broke out.  Our hero’s triumphed yet again but poor Jing Hu took a shotgun blast the chest, killing him just as the train pulled into their final destination.  Upon his death the cuff around his wrist automatically unlocked.

 

The team moved onto the platform as the case started to beep faster and faster as if it was some sort of countdown.  Pi picked it up and placed the cuff on her own wrist where it locked.  The beeping intensified!!  At the same time gangers from the Sick Boy gang entered the platform from both ends and started to walk towards the now slightly worried team who prepared themselves for what would probably be their last fight.

 

And then, just like that the gangers were dead as a hidden sniper took out the leader and the two suited men from the noodle bar appeared and moving faster than you would have thought possible decimate the gangers without breaking a sweat.  They then invited our shocked trio into a Corpo limousine which took them to The Randy Club.  Once there they were greeted by Deke Nolegs who explained that the whole mission had been a test and that they had passed and would be considered for more work in the future.  He introduced their two saviours as Mr Sinister and Mr Grimm and said that he would be in contact within the next few days with another job.  Giving the team feedback on how they had done he suggested that if they were transporting something with a tracker in the future that disabling the tracker might be a good idea to prevent other interested parties from using the same method to find them.  Oh, and if you get a message changing a meeting point at least check that it’s from the person who it is purporting to be from – spoofing a number is very simple with the right set of skills.

 

With bits in their pocket, better prospects than they had when they woke up and an open bar, our protagonists settled back and thought to themselves that they had finally made the big time.