Save the Planet.. ...blow up Toronto. I suppose it's the same....

[TheTSKoala]

So, my last few play sessions have been more or less by the books.  My players now have a fully operational Aquarium which they use as an HQ.  The Le' Resistance Cannon is happy and alive in the back of the wheelman's Ford F-150 that has been modified to have self-sealing tires, a V-10 block engine, ...and ejection seats. lol. 

The soldier is all about.. and let me put this in happy terms.. bashing people in the face with chairs. lol.

Faceman is coming into his own.  Forgery, false IDs, diplomacy. 

The Intruder is a handful.  She wants to steal anything that isn't tied down.  LOL.

Hacker loves playing with traffic signals.  ...she has a habit of creating car accidents just to keep her skills tuned.

So, I decide to advance the story a little, and give the players a little insight to the BIG picture.  ...And that's when it all goes down hill.

NPC contact comes to my group with a mission.  To plant a "surveillance box" inside the first completed 'black spire' that's in the Super-Metropolis that is the former Toronto, Canada.  The NPC tells the team that their pay will a cache of ammo, a weapons lab to install in their aquarium, and a gear lab to install in their aquarium.  At which point my Hacker, who is probably going to turn Inventor or of the such, is drooling.  ...as is the Intruder and Wheelman.  So, they all agree.  No Sense Motives, no bluffs, nothing.  They agree. 

NPC tells them to meet at the border crossing just inside Canada for the delivery of the box.  Everything goes as planned.  They enter Canada "for pleasure and tourism", and drive on through.  They meet the NPC's delivery gang.  The 'box' is about 3 feet high, 5 feet long and about 4 feet deep.  And when they pick it up, it's easily 200 pounds.  First thing I hear is.. "How do they expect us to smuggle that thing?!"

The NPCs chuckle, shrug and instruct the team not to open the package, because the equipment is sensitive and is rigged with explosives incase it gets found after being planted.  Wheelman nods, and they load it up.  They hatch a plan, become construction workers / maintenance for the 'black spire', and bring the box inside as 'supplies' for work.  I nod.. we make all the rolls.. no problem. 

So, the faceman, wheelman and soldier are carrying the box up about 173 flights of stairs.  (The elevators weren't running yet.)  Hacker and Intruder, or as I call them "Miss and Mrs. Trouble", decide to poke around.  They explore, bi-pass some security, get to some computer terminals.  Hacker decides to steal some data, which is encrypted, but she'll "deal with that later at home".  Okay, fine.

This is possibly their best infiltration mission, ever.  No fails, no oops.  They keep their cover and get out.  They get home to see 3 large containers at their aquarium loading dock.  They crack it open, and it's the payment, as promised.  In the jubilation, they start installing everything, inventory, etc.  Then... the soldier, who's reply is, "To hell with this hi-tech mambo-jambo, I'm watching TV." and turns on the local news in their HQ. 

"Breaking News!  Reports have come in of a massive catastrophe in the Toronto Habitat.  An official commenting on the condition of non-disclosure has been quoted as saying the Toronto area was rocked by an unknown explosion which was felt for 2 territories away.  More as it comes in!"

My soldier's jaw drops.. ..and the rest of the team stop and they all slowly turn their heads at me.  So, not to keep them in too much suspension...

"Live from CNMSNBC-Fox.  Reports have now come in, that a detonation of unimaginable proportion has devistated the Habitat Toronto.  Early reports are of a crater 40 meters deep and 80 meters wide and an apparent 1,500 kilometers area that has been burned down to the ground in seconds.  Suspected Death Tolls hover at around 5 million.  The Joint Earth Government is calling this event 'highly suspicious' and possible acts of terrorism."  Military fly-overs have shown images of a charred and smoldering crater where the metroplex habitat once stood.  ...no survivors are thought to exist at this time.  More when we have it."

...and that's where I left my players.  What really happened?  The NPC contact was part of a clandestine sect of an Apocalypse cult.  They believe it is better to destroy our planet and the invaders with it, than let them conquer another planet.  So, this cult has learned the 'big bad aliens' who have yet to be seen's enviroment is highly reactive to radiation.  So, they decided to expose the Black Spires as what they expected.  Terraforming stations to transform the planet to their enviroment. 

...the players smuggled in a nuclear warhead which had a timer.  When it blew, the enviromental storage facility and the equipment which created the new enviromental gases went up like that laser beam in ID4.  Chain reaction down the 180 floor spire, until it hit the enviromental storage area in the basement, and leveled a good 1,500 kilometer radius of land.  All that's left.. is a crater. Hahah!  Oooh... they never suspected anything.  My poor players. 

**Editted for the destruction radius.  I had skipped a sentance.  Oops!*

[Krensky]

Wow.  As the GM in an old cyberpunk (homebrew) game I played used to say.

"Ok, everyone roll Stability - 75.  Everyone failed?  Ok, you just nuked Toronto and killed five million more or less innocent civilians whose only crime was to live withing two klicks of the base.... How does that make you feel?"

Of course, "How does that make you feel?" was his only response to a Stability roll.  No matter what you actually rolled.

[TheTSKoala]

LOL. If I asked my players "How does that make you feel?" ..I fear one .. or all 3.. of the military members may try to get me into a rear-naked chokehold. LOL.  Spycraft RPG turned MMA Fight Night wouldn't exactly go well with my wife. LOL.

[famine]

That is awesome, Koala!  I bet they start asking for sense motive checks with every contact from now on!  We got burned by a contact one time, and now we treat every one of them like they're guilty as hell and trying to double-cross us.  Alternately gives our GC fits and sends him into hysterical laughing.  And we've interrogated so many people that ended up being on our side that we can officially be classified as paranoid.  Keep it up!

[glimmerrat]

1500 kilometers?! That's the whole of Ontario and the surrounding area, not just Toronto!! Do you mean 1500 meters? A 100 gigaton nuclear weapon would (in theory) cause burns out to 1500km, but the total destruction area would be closer to 300km...

Damn! That was one hell of a blast - they'd have felt the shockwaves on the other side of the planet! Kraktoa wasn't that powerful and the flash was seen all over the same hemisphere!

[TheTSKoala]

1,500 kilometers is approx. the size of the new 'established' Mega-tropolis.  There are 8 in the game..er... make that 7.

Paris.  Toronto. (Well, it used to exist anyway.)  New Beijing.  Seattle.  Boston.  Dallas.  Mexico City.  Brazil. 

The blast was more exothermic, than kinetic.  (Think like a atmospheric, large scale Backdraft.)  But yes, most of what modern day Ontario is today, is now a charred, wastleland with a giant crater at the Flash Point. 

**I editted the original post.  I re-read it and noticed a GLARING error. LOL.  I had skipped half the desciption in the post for some reason**

[glimmerrat]

Wow! Well i guess if you're gonna blow stuff up, you may as well do it properly! 

[Merxiless]

For Dramatic reasons, I think this is blatantly unfair to the players.

Sure they screwed up, but it is my understanding that the players are supposed to be competent heroes.

Yeah they missed the checks, or didn't ask for them, yeah they trusted the admin saying that it was a simple job, yeah 200 lbs of gear is more than surveillance.

However, the point that it derailed was missing:

"...I'm watching TV." and turns on the local news in their HQ.

As sirens outside begin to blare, the TV watching PC observes:

"Local authorities have recently intercepted intelligence that indicates that a large scale nuclear device is  located somewhere within the regional area... Martial law has been declared in preparation for a possible terrorist attack."

Give the players a chance to stop this thing in the nick of time, and then work their way out of how they know and how they delivered it, and by giving themselves up, end up as heroes.

Yeah, their characters are burned, outed, jailed, perhaps executed for unwitting treason, but they have at least a moral victory.   Maybe they can spin it around and in the last second defuse the bomb, and lead the assault on the bad guys.




 

[Krensky]

Actually, for dramatic reasons it's perfectly fair to the players, and not just in a 1st edition they didn't check for traps kind of way.

Actions have consequences.  Even before this they were terrorists.  From the both authorities' and perspective and from the street's.  They considered themselves freedom fighters and probably hadn't targeted civilians or carried out attacks specifically to generate terror, but this reinforces the concept that the many times the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is time, place, and perspective.  There were even terrorist actions in the American War of Independence.  This was foreshadowed with the nuclear artillery shells they recovered and then turned over to the people who drafted them via kidnapping.  There have been plenty of hints leading to something like this.  Also to give them a chance to make it right and win a moral victory is very... simplistic.  There's far more drama in what he's set up.  They're completely alone now.  The group that suborned them are apparently just another form of evil and apparently considers them expendable.  They're also the only group that will deal with the PCs now.  They have to face almost timeless questions: What price freedom?  What would you do to survive?  How do you choose between sacrificing millions (or even billions) and the extinction of humanity?  Can you?

Drama can, and in a campaign it should, be a long term thing.  A slow burn of tension and emotional involvement.  Giving them the warning and letting them stop the bomb would be find for a purely episodic campaign or a one shot or a LSpy game.  He's not doing that, he's running a continuing drama.  A hero isn't a perfect ubermensch who wins all the time.  It's someone who's flawed, who fails, who falls down and gets back up.  It's someone who perseveres.  His heroes have fallen down and are surrounded by darkness.  The question is, will they pick themselves back up, push the darkness back, and save the world from the invaders and their own bosses?

I'm almost curious what campaign qualities he's using.