Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Omnibobatron on <04-22-13/1945:32>
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I was thinking about making a kind of "horror" campaign. I had a few ideas but I don't know how to make something bigger out of it. Some of my ideas are:
1) Mutation - Cyberware related: The drugs used to help ones body accept cyberlimbs has a side effect that mutates the person horribly
2) Malfunctions - Cyberware stops responding to commands. Not in everyone, and not all at once, but slowly more and more people begin to lose control of their 'ware. Perhaps the 'ware gets commands from somewhere else or something else, im not sure.
3) The runners are contracted to check up on a "secret" facility that has gone dark. (Almost any Corp). Upon arriving the somehow get sealed in to this underground facility while an outbreak of something is occurring. Perhaps test creatures got out or an AI got control of all the drones or something, I'm not entirely sure yet. But the "go check up on these people" becomes a "survive and get out". They'd have the choice of working with any survivors or abandoning them or straight up murdering them for any kind of passcodes/data/keys that would help them get out. (I'm thinking something like a bio-engineered virus broke out and is turning people into monsters)
What do you guys think of these ideas? Do you have any other ideas or ways I could make an adventure/campaign out of them?
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It seems like you're unduly focusing on screwing things up for people with augmentations.
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Oh I should have been clearer - it wouldn't affect the PCs (at least right away). it would be a race against time to stop it before they suffer that fate.
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If you want to do a horror-style shadowrun campaign, scrap points 1&2 entirely, hit yourself with a phonebook, and then pick up Universal Brotherhood - Missing Blood, Bug City, and Renraku Arcology - Shutdown those are the quintessential horror stories for Shadowrun, so base it off something like that, instead of intentionally screwing one set of players under the pretense of horror. There's a difference between horror and "HA! Sucks to be you!"
Hell, you could just string together a few missions from the last season, including Brothers United and Romero and Juliet, and have a solid horror campaign. Also remember that what makes horror hit hard is when it is limited in scope. The Ravenloft setting ceases to have that much of a horror aspect when you've been there for a while, and are used to it. But going through a normal campaign, and then you stumble upon this little place called Barovia...
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I'll second that. The runs Mirikon listed are basically your point #3 in premise. Go in an do something, bad stuff happens so now you have to get out alive. Renraku Shutdown is especially this.
Something you can try out is a facility that shedim have infested. They are trapped in there now for some reason (Wards perhaps? Something special about the location?) and they want out. The PCs are sent in to find out why the place has gone dark and now have to deal with the shedim hopping from body to body while making sure they don't get out. It becomes the classic who can you trust sort of situation. Watch Fallen for an example of how you could play this.
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I like the facility idea, like in Shutdown, I still get chills from that and bug spirits still get me too. I was GMing recently and got lazy and stole the shedim filled hospital from Romero and Juliet but in a much larger facility and during it I slammed my hand down on the table and everyone jumped. It was funny and great until I got hit with a Mountain Dew bottle.
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Or you could get caught up in a battle between shedim and bug spirits.
/looks away innocently
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If you want to do a horror-style shadowrun campaign, scrap points 1&2 entirely, hit yourself with a phonebook, and then pick up Universal Brotherhood - Missing Blood, Bug City, and Renraku Arcology - Shutdown those are the quintessential horror stories for Shadowrun, so base it off something like that, instead of intentionally screwing one set of players under the pretense of horror. There's a difference between horror and "HA! Sucks to be you!"
I actually did hit myself with a phonebook. I did some research and will be picking up Renraku Arcology. Thanks for setting me straight :3
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Or you could get caught up in a battle between shedim and bug spirits.
/looks away innocently
Didn't that already a happen in... oh, right.
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Or you could get caught up in a battle between shedim and bug spirits.
/looks away innocently
Blood-Invoked bug spirits possessing Nosferatu. 8)
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Or you could get caught up in a battle between shedim and bug spirits.
/looks away innocently
Blood-Invoked bug spirits possessing Nosferatu. 8)
Now that's orginal... and wrong, so very wrong. Feel it might well for a misquito spirit though...
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Or you could get caught up in a battle between shedim and bug spirits.
/looks away innocently
Blood-Invoked bug spirits possessing Nosferatu. 8)
No, Blood-invoked bug spirits possessing dragons.
EDIT: Now I'm picturing a Dragon Wasp Shaman with the Sacrifice metamagic...
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Or you could get caught up in a battle between shedim and bug spirits.
/looks away innocently
Blood-Invoked bug spirits possessing Nosferatu. 8)
No, Blood-invoked bug spirits possessing dragons.
Nah, at least the Nosferatu possessed ones would be feasible to defeat.
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Or you could get caught up in a battle between shedim and bug spirits.
/looks away innocently
Blood-Invoked bug spirits possessing Nosferatu. 8)
Tried it out in Herolab. Herolab said No. It then took out a ePhone Book and swotted me several times in the end. Now all I get is a PEBKAC error, whatever that means...
No, Blood-invoked bug spirits possessing dragons.
EDIT: Now I'm picturing a Dragon Wasp Shaman with the Sacrifice metamagic...
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While on topic: I really want to try out the Shutdown too, but I lack any knowledge of the 3rd Ed. Is there any translation doc out there, 3rd to 4thA?
Thanks in advance!
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Oh, and read Lovecraft until you realize that strange whimpering sound is you.
Then pass the favor on to your players. ;D
Always remember, open the door just a crack...whatever they imagine is worse for them than anything you can describe.
-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist
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Oh, and read Lovecraft until you realize that strange whimpering sound is you.
Then pass the favor on to your players. ;D
Always remember, open the door just a crack...whatever they imagine is worse for them than anything you can describe.
-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist
Truer words have been spoken before, but rarely... Want to scare them? Don't explain anything, just throw random creepy shit at them. They're leaving a building, they hear footsteps behind them. They turn, nothing. No matter how much they search, nothing. Don't add anything else linked to this in the game. Next session, they see a girl run by at a hallway intersection. She's looking behind herself at whatever she is fleeing, but you never see it following, and you never see her again. I'm creeped out just typing this.
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While on topic: I really want to try out the Shutdown too, but I lack any knowledge of the 3rd Ed. Is there any translation doc out there, 3rd to 4thA?
Thanks in advance!
I've gotten the character changes figured out and built a Google Sheet to handle most of that from SR1->SR2->SR3->SR4. The Change in Target number did a real number on the system though. The best I can do for translating the Variable TN from SR1, SR2, & SR3 is draw corollaries between these:
[quote author SR3 pg. 92]
DIFFICULTY NUMBER TABLE
| Difficulty | Target Number |
| Simple | 2 |
| Routine | 3 |
| Average | 4 |
| Challenging | 5 |
| Difficult | 6-7 |
| Strenuous | 8 |
| Extreme | 9 |
| Nearly Impossible | 10+ |
[/quote]
&
SUCCESS TEST DIFFICULTIES TABLE
| Difficulty | Threshold |
| Easy | 1 |
| Average | 2 |
| Hard | 4 |
| Extreme | 6 |
The first table from SR3 the number is the chance of getting that on a single die(or exploded die) [1d6, on a 6 add an additional d6]. I've tried boiling them both down to probabilities but they don't match statistically speaking.
both SR3 and SR4 use the same test nomenclature in their published adventures, Skill (#) Test. But in SR3 the number was the single die target number, where as in SR4 it is the number of hits threshold.
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Truer words have been spoken before, but rarely... Want to scare them? Don't explain anything, just throw random creepy shit at them. They're leaving a building, they hear footsteps behind them. They turn, nothing. No matter how much they search, nothing. Don't add anything else linked to this in the game. Next session, they see a girl run by at a hallway intersection. She's looking behind herself at whatever she is fleeing, but you never see it following, and you never see her again. I'm creeped out just typing this.
I love this idea
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I used an insane AI nested in an emotitoy factory which a love crush on one of my player's contacts to drive them nuts/creep them out.....
While never really a big threat to the players, having emititoys all over the sprawl spew 'random' bits of info about the player while entertaining their owners REALLY creeped them out in a big way...
What started off as a way to introduce hacking and the matrix (with its total interconnectivity) eventually turned into an epic 12 game sessions trying to figure out just what and why these simple toys for kids 'hated' the player so much!!
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As one of his players I'm already scared
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I like the facility idea, like in Shutdown, I still get chills from that and bug spirits still get me too. I was GMing recently and got lazy and stole the shedim filled hospital from Romero and Juliet but in a much larger facility and during it I slammed my hand down on the table and everyone jumped. It was funny and great until I got hit with a Mountain Dew bottle.
I recently ran the Ghost Ship framework from Ghost Cartels' Hong Kong section and was playing up the creep/horror factor of the abandoned vessel on the ocean. When one of my players stepped over the body of one of the 'dead' sailors, I grabbed his arm as the sailor grabbed his leg and had to kick in my reaction enhancers to duck the reflex flailing.
Horror does work better in small doses, but establishing a horror vibe through storytelling technique (no distractions/background tv, speak slightly lower so the players need to devote a touch more focus to listening, buildup of tension through lift and release, etc) is far more important than enforcing a 'you're screwed' rule set. It'd been 12-13 years since I ran my long-term Ravenloft campaign, but as soon as they boarded that ghost ship, I could see the past years of psychological trauma begin to bubble to the surface. Gamer PTSD, make it work for you.
- Wailer
* - Also, use what you know about your players to your advantage. If something freaks them out irl, it's usually an easy scene setter. Less is often more, though. If a player is afraid of spiders, fighting a giant spider might gross them out - but descriptions of packets of scuttling spiders slipping through cracks in the walls will give them background jeebies that can work you you - and if a spider just happens to land on the arm of that player as he takes a simple action to steady his aim in the next combat, be prepared to /popcorn.
- Wailer
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theres really two ways to translate,
1: the old "upgrade" option that came out at the very beginning of fourth, not that good an idea but free
2: use SR2050 to take everyone back to that earlier version and work from there
the other option which my GM did was make us sneak into the ACHE and liberate some data from an isolated node on an unpopulated but sealed floor
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3) The runners are contracted to check up on a "secret" facility that has gone dark. (Almost any Corp). Upon arriving the somehow get sealed in to this underground facility while an outbreak of something is occurring. Perhaps test creatures got out or an AI got control of all the drones or something, I'm not entirely sure yet. But the "go check up on these people" becomes a "survive and get out". They'd have the choice of working with any survivors or abandoning them or straight up murdering them for any kind of passcodes/data/keys that would help them get out. (I'm thinking something like a bio-engineered virus broke out and is turning people into monsters)
This sounds similar to the very first Shadowrun module I ever ran, DNA/DOA (which was written by Dave Arneson). If memory serves me correctly, you can get a .pdf of it from drivethrurpg and it was updated to work with 4th Ed.
*Edit* Also, the old Renraku(sp?) Arcology shutdown campaign had a good horror element to it.