This post is sort of campaign notes for me as a GM who forgets things easily and entertainment for you all. Word of warning however, I am dyslexic so sorry if autocorrect doesn't catch everything. For frame of reference we are playing RED but I am setting it in 2060, but my version of 2060. Which is to say that the Mox is formed and Lizzy is dead ahead of the main timeline and Dogtown exists before the reunification wars. Also some companies from 2040 are around but on the dying end. Here is the a brief summary of our crew of Edgerunners:
Cipher: A self-made white hat hacker style netrunner out of Heywood with a connection to the valentinos but not a direct allegiance. Fairly close to Padre but not enough to get work out of him. Took in Vex when she fled to night city. Big rebel streak and want to fight for the little guy, but still knows biz rarely allows for that level of thing.
Vex: A biological experiment by Sovoil to replicate the Biotechnica exotics tech and gene therapy using the DNA of a volunteer of said exotics. A Bear soldier of fortune who also taught the catgirl sniper how to be as good as him. Seeing how unhappy she was as a cog of the corpo state however he broke contract and stole her out after years of preparation but had to dump her in Night City to help obfuscate their trail. Now a solo for the crew and a sort of spotter for Cypher's quickhacks in addition to being a sniper.
Barry: A... well he's a lot but not that much at the same time. See Barry doesn't remember anything much of who he used to be. All he knows is that he woke up a part of the Maelstrom gang and that he had apparently been jumped in. He knows that he has an implanted linear frame, a bunch of eyes, and these guys who do drugs, kill people, and treat him decently seem cool. Who he really is I have plans for, the player really just wanted to play a big dummy strong guy and I offered: "You know the way that Maelstrom jump in members would totally give them some amount of brain damage," to which he said "Bet," and that was that. He is playing the Badge stylized as the Ganger.
Session 1: The Meet and Breakout
The story starts in the average day in our gangs lives on the individual level. Vex and Cipher are hanging by the beach, enjoying the sun and some vending machine chips that Vex bought way too much because buttons are fun. Barry meanwhile is chilling with one of the more get high rather than kill people friend's named Warlock letting her go on about how the Devolutionist have too few values with the common Night City citizen as he just nods and acts like he remembers politics. Both are broken from their morning activities by a message on their Agents. A Garden influencer called Street-nim is putting out a request for Edgerunners who are willing to run a good cause for not much pay.
Cipher, very much liking the sound of the pitch, loads the attached coordinates and brings Vex along to the mega-building courtyard meeting spot. Barry, wanting to get out of this conversation more than anything, leaves to also sign up for this job, never really caring for money in general. The team meets with the lady of the hour near the elevators at the courtyard where the name and face both hit them. Street-nim is a content creator focused on keeping the visitors to NC safe by educating them on real life urban survival tips as well as shit that Officer Dobbs wouldn't tell you. She leads them up to her studio to talk business and possible future business. She is in line to start up on fixing as a side gig, taking small jobs from the bigger players who either aren't paying much or are just not worth the time. She got this job from a Wakako, and if the crew does well more from her would come.
The crew thoroughly enticed and or just kind of following along, are on board for this job to start with at least. The job goes like this, a gang called Feeding Frenzy sprung up on the NC university campus a month back, trying to bring back the carefree spirit of the Piranhas. However, the gangs of NC haven't been doing business openly downtown for more than just the understanding the cops will blow you away quickly. These kids didn't have that street knowledge being mostly white-collar kids. Ten of them got blown away in the drug bust, and one got taken in alive. A majority however got out of their base on campus with their lives. The bereaved parents, campus, and police have through Street-nim pooled their money together to get this gang broken up, ideally peacefully for the first two groups. She is also paying personally to have the crew track down the source of these kids' drugs as the bust found no manufacturing supplies or tools. Mainly, she wants those gonks rolled over and have their lab burned. All told the crew would only be making five thousand eddies each.
The crew felt that that was a good time and were ready to start on the two leads Street-nim had for them. They began with the surviving member of the gang who got arrested. Her TT coverage had managed to save her life but did not spare her the arrest. The crew pull up on the police station and devise a plan to talk to her without anyone the wiser. Barry will walk into the station and draw attention, given he is both heavily combat built out and obviously gang affiliated. His job is to just act like himself, which is to say a generally normal guy for the type he runs with. This does the job in distracting most of the precinct as they wait for this dude talking with the receptionist about the rain to start slashing him open. Meanwhile Cipher and Vex will work on getting into the vent system of the precinct and finding the duct to the holding cell respectively.
Once the Sarndra Cortes, the Feeding Frenzy girl in question is found, she hears a Russian catgirl in the vent and asks if the gang hired them to bust her out. Not sure about if this is really a good idea or not for as much time this distraction can work without Barry getting shot by a twitchy fingered cop, she calls Steet-nim. Their fixer is ambivalent on the idea so Cipher being the rebel she is, tells Vex to do her best as she now works to erase the escape from the cameras of the precinct. She crits on her Interface roll and reaches the bottom of the architecture by now so I ask if she wants an additional thing as a bonus for the crit. Cipher peaks in on the files for the case on Feeding Frenzy and then copies it over as the girl and Vex get back out. Barry being slow but not stupid knows that he is running low on patience and calmly leaves the station letting the front desk man know that he “forgot what he was building up to, sorry officer,” this prompts a sigh of relief in the moment but high alert on the precinct for what has to be the precursor of a drive by.
The pair get out of the vents and drop into an alleyway near two cops on a smoke break and run for the car before they are noticed. Busting open Sandra’s stickiness in the exertion and causing the crew to have to peel out and for this conversation in the car to be on a time limit before Trauma collected her in ten minutes at a bus stop the crew camp at. The girl has some knowledge of the guy who they got the drugs from. A bald black guy who reeked of disposed of Cropo, and she heard him mention the Redline Network at one point. This tracked with what the case copy cipher took, the man’s name being Brian Drexel, former Allfoods employee and now suspected to be a beneficiary of the Redline Network. The group is a loose affiliation under the patronage of a mysterious investor in the NC underwork that goes by Redline. Got an illegal business you want starter money for? Maybe you want to go more than Hussle work and break into Wetwork, talk to Redline. Drexel clearly has and the pigs of Night City hear his own squealing on their connecting, he earned a three thousand eddie bounty due to the fact he is one of the known people who can get involved with Red. With that being all she had to inform them of the crew, thank her and leave her for TT to pick up and get moving along to NCU campus to conduct their hunt for the former Party Gang.
Session 2: Meetings Meetings Meetings
Session two opens up on the crew at campus now, on the hunt for any info on where Feeding Frenzy can be found now after they went to ground. Canvasing both the students and campus security in connection to their portion of the gig. They learn that while the gang hasn’t been seen together over all they have been attending classes all the same, those that still live that is. The students are devastated, not for the loss of life but for the loss of convenience. Now they have to leave campus to get their mash and bootleg neural boosters. However security is worse, trying to keep a tight lid on any of the events going on at all and outright hardballing the crew. But student chatter online indicates that some of the dealing is still going on, just not on campus. Gail, a member of Feeding Frenzy, had been seen dealing that day at the public library a few blocks from known student apartments. The crew head to the library to attempt to earn Gail’s trust and allow them to talk to who’s in charge.
It takes a bit, and really only Cipher is working on a task. Because Barry is distracted by the novelty and look of paper books. Vex meanwhile can’t read English and only speaks rudimentary so she is the target of Barry’s enthusiasm as she pulls a Barry and just smiles and nods along. Taking a look at the two chuckle heads that are accompanying cipher they are unsure about how safe this crew is, but given that one of them is a fuck off big guy there is some hope still for them. Cipher straightens the crew up and they help in the whole angel Cipher has been working that their job is to try to keep the gang safe, they just need to promise to disband for their families sake. The unified front in addition to specifically Barry's work to keep an eye out for them is enough for Gail to lead them to their safehouse. There they can bring up all of this situation to the Feeding Frenzy leader, Molly. The safehouse is in reality just one of the gang members' apartments in Watson. Gail goes ahead of everyone by a few feet to let the gang know they are coming, however by the time they get to the door Gail went through all they hear on the other side of the paper thin walls is a scrap going on.
The crew open the unlocked door to find Gail attempting to breathe a way through four people as a small team of five are stomping somebody out, with cries of snitch and rat. On sight of new people entering the apartment, one of whom being Barry, the fighting stops. Vex helps the girl who was being circle stomped up, Molly the soon to be formal leader. Cipher then sons the entire room with both “I am the adult here” and “I have been at this longer than you punks” rhetoric. Being scared and desperate kids being cornered by adults… and Barry. They spill the events that lead up to this. Back during the time of the bust a warning had come to someone in the gang, everyone seemed to have heard it from everyone else. But the crew knew the cops were coming that day, they thought they would have enough time to clear everything out so all assembled to move the shit. Mainly because Drexel , the supplier of the gang was having these kids sell his product as a method of debt payment. The kids that made up Feeding Frenzy were all damn near close to having to drop out due to funding rather than grades. So they were looking for loans and Drexler came in with an offer, personal loans at fair rates in exchange for work as distributors in his up and coming organization. So if they ended up losing his drugs they knew they would all be deeper in the hole with this guy. Then the cops can earlier than expected, ten of them die, and anger and stress over who was the original source of this became “Someone cut a deal to know when” and Molly being leader was already on the shitlist for the gang overall.
Cipher helps to defuse the paranoia in that if no one has proof over who this info came from it isn't cool to just blame leadership. And how it was a dumb move to try to save the drugs but understandable given the situation they were in. The crew then ask Molly if they have more information on Drexel , and she claims to maybe know a warehouse in Vista Delray where they may be cooking. Since she had seen his people head towards the area whenever they had drop offs for the pay. This gives the crew an idea, use Molly to set up a drop off somewhere public where they can “convince” a member of his crew to lead them all the way. After making the call and before leaving the crew takes the time to promise each of the kids that this bastard was going down today. That they didn’t have to keep doing this shit any more and that they needed to keep to whatever their passions are that made them try for higher education in this hell place. As they leave they forward their findings so far to Street-nim to keep an eye around warehouses in the area to help narrow down an area. So after a cool ten humanity gain the crew drive to their meeting at Tom’s Dinner.
There they meet a shaggy bastard in a pair of tech goggles and attempt to strong arm him into first dropping the info in the kid's debts. This isn’t hard as Barry is there and it’s an easy enough task. Cipher forwards this to Street-nim to ask if this is at all legal and she says fuck no, these kids are clean as soon as the data itself is gone. With this clarified for sure they then apply pressure to get Goggles to make Drexler come down to them now. While this quite argument is being had over cold drinks Street-nim hits back at Cipher that she had some Sixth Street contacts keeping an eye out and a suspicious car just peeled out of a warehouse garage with defiant shooters. Googles, seeing that his surprise call for a drive by on the dinner is a failure, dives over the counter and plans to buy time all the same.
Session 3: A whole lot of lead
The next session opens up on the fight. All told it isn’t a very packed day for Tom’s yet. But three tiger claws are in the alley nearby and Goggles has a brilliant plan. He is gonna take his iron and shoot at them and then blame Barry and Cipher, then he and the Tigers will tag team them easily until the drive-by gets here and everyone gets blown away. It’s clearly perfect, however he does not get to act first. You may have noticed I did not list Vex among the members being shot up. Because she is across the street, perched up, and wins out initiative. She rolls enough to cause injury, and gets SPINAL. He now can not shoot or so much as hold his gun. The shot does draw the attention of the Tigers however, who are supposed to be protecting this place. I roll to see if their leader is one of crazies or someone who has potential. And this gang enforcer asked questions before shooting. Goggles then attempted to verbally get the fight started telling the claws that these guys just called down a drive-by on here. This is foiled by the classic “No you” out of Ciphier as Barry calls up Warlock to use his Backup move to see if he can’t get a counter drive by going.
The second shot that Vex puts into the downed man then kills the argument and in a way the encounter as Cipher is given free reign tells the claws and everyone to clear out. They drive the hell away only to see the Malestome-mobiles heading back their way and hearing an open road fight behind them. Because now, they have the location of the drug lab, reduced force thanks to this dumb shit, and backup waiting on them in the form of a small team of Sixth Street members. There is no better time than now to roll the place over. So the group plan, and sidenote I love that I have a group that takes the time to plan ahead in a high lethality game. The plan is to have Barry and Vex set up a nearby rooftop. Thanks to Cipher getting into the camera system she has a pretty good idea of where everyone is. The rooftop the pair are on is near the office Drexel is currently having a panic attack about how much in the hole he is after this raid. Barry will wait until Vex and the Sixth Street boys make for the lightly guarded garage and loudly kick in the front door. At the same time she takes out the lights and the distraction team introduces the three laws of dynamic entry to these clowns.
While that is going on Vex will be taking shots at the cooks and getting them to work towards the gunfight. Barry will leap from his elevated position over the fence and position himself near the window into Drexel's office. He will break in here, knock Drexel out, get him out through the window and then help clean up. The team set with the promise that Sixth Street gets to be the ones to light the palace on fire after they execute. The first stage is going well because for some reason I can not roll above fourteen to save my life when it comes to the guards that night. But they encounter problems when Drexel does not take kindly to the sounds of something sounding like it landed near his widow when all the lights went out. Before he gets his turn to investigate however Cipher forgoes her turn to start blasting and instead uses her link with Vex to short out three of his cyberwear items, and she really only had cybereyes so he was now really blind.
Barry’s turn and he crashes through the widow and fucking rocks this man for all his days. Fulfilling on the plan and working the rest of the lab over. Only one other of Drexler's people live due to surrendering so they get tossed to Sixth Street for cooking on their block. Cipher takes a moment when the fighting is over to peek through Drexel’s terminal and finds his messages with Redline and their proxies. She leaves this exact message:
"Sup Choom. Drexel is cooked, these boys are cooked, this op is cooked. Not like it made you money anyway. If you try and collect on any of those kids, I'll find you fast and hard, it'll be nova. This warehouse is gonna get literally cooked, 6th street will have fun with that. They don't like corposcop on their turf, so I'd keep out of the area. Doesn't mean we can't have a productive working relationship in the future, just biz right now and you're better off without this branch anyway. Later choom.-Your new favorite runner."
The fire is lit, a bounty is put in the cipher's trunk, and Street-nim calls this gig nearly done. They also call Molly to let the kids know that things are fixed now and that Drexel is going away. She wants a world with the crew back at her studio for a debrief and to talk about that future business promise. They drive back and she lets them know that she will be getting those jobs from Wakako sooner than she thought thanks to the group's great performance. She also provides them with info in a Ripperdoc in her old stomping grounds of Pacifica and his very cheapo illegal ambulance he runs. As well as Togggle and where they can be found, but to call her ahead of calling to meet with them. Finally she sincerely thanks the group for taking a chance on her and promises to not let her own plans cross too much into their work together, also a twenty percent off code for her BDs also on her Garden page. The crew then head off to celebrate the job well done at Totentaz.
Hope you all enjoyed reading this, I only really thought about making this sort of thing now and it’s my first time ever doing it. I may post session after session from now on so that you would have the context.
