[Shane Granger]

So I got a game coming up tomorrow and i've been kicking around a few ideas for it. I want it to be something different, lately I've been doing a lot of basic data grabs and wet work. Above all else I want this run to be very open ended, all my runs so far have been pretty linear and my group hasn't had much chance to improvise.

My first Idea is to have the faces mafia contact ask her to start a gang war between two of the families rivals that have teamed up against them and been putting some pressure on them. There won't be much more than that for them to go on, they will have to make a plan and gather most information on their own. the reward will mostly just be favors owed, which is actually a pretty good deal, the mafia boss is very well connected and has a lot of pull with lone star. The gangs in question will be a troll biker gang stationed in back alleys and dive bars, the other gang will be elves stationed in a popular night club. Bonuses will be given depending on how badly the gangs are set back, and how discreet the runners are.

My other Idea is a job a bartender contact will give the group, at first glance it will seem Like a simple escort mission, the client being a business man looking for some protection while he makes some shady deals in the bad part of town. But really it will be a set up, last session the same bartender lined up a job for the group, long story short they ended up botching the mission and killing and looting the corpse of their partner, who happened to be a close friend of the bartenders. So the fake client will lead them down an alley where an ambush will be patiently waiting for them. haven't decided on the specifics of this one yet, I want it to be an almost un-winable fight, sending them running for their lives. the rest of the run will be trying to lose tails and tracking down the bartender all with a group of shadow runners hunting them down. There won't be any reward, this would be more of a punishment for screwing over a good contact. plus if the group is stupid enough to accept another job from a contact they just screwed over hard, then I figure they got it coming.

Any ideas or suggestions at all would be much appreciated.

[Chaosa]

One of the most interesting session we had was being tasked to destroy a company so that another company could buy them out cheaply. It was up to us how.
We ended up using spirits to block toliets, planted BLT chips on managers, used a spirit to stack all of the employee cars on top of each other etc..... they kept bringing in extra security...
Good times.

[Crimsondude]

I'm a fan of tailchasers. Though I think it would be good for the bartender to start poisoning all of their other contacts so that the runners have no one to turn towards.

[The Big Peat]

I like your ideas.

The bartender - my initial reaction was 'how much swing can one bartender have?' I mean, he seems to be sticking some pretty major mojo on their arse.

But really, that's question of who else the bartender knows. If he's got some good mob friends, then possibly quite a lot. If he's the estranged member of a major corporate family who nevertheless still pay the trust fund, that's a lot of money as well...

... and in both cases it also means someone won't be pleased when they geek him. Oh no.

Also, depending on how they interact with the Runners hunting them, they should make some enemies/acquaintances there.

[Greenknight001]

I've run a number of campaigns over the years, and I like writing up the slow-build-up-to-Oh-Sh*t moments shadowruns.  For example:

1) The runners are investigating a spat of increased gang violence.  Tracking the guns that one of the gangs were using (very high-powered Russian guns), the group discovers the guns were purchased and sent to Seattle by the owners of a small ambulance service... a company that has a city contract to pick up the dead bodies at crime scenes.  Investigating the ambulance company, the group spies the owners (a group of intelligent ghouls) tasting the bodies of the dead gangers, labling them as "NO" and "Yes, it's another one".  Asking "Another one of WHAT?" the group steals the body and has the toughest mage they could find assess it... and discover from black streaks in it's rapidly fading aura that the body is of a cannibal (an eater of human flesh).  Confronting the ghouls, the group learns that their leader (a ghoul voodoo priest) is at war with a wendigo that is working to take over the city (I had the house rule that wendigos can only eat the flesh of other cannibals, and that their Influence power is magnified greatly when used against cannibals, so wendigos work very hard to trick or force others into eating human flesh).  The wendigo had been spreading it's influence through the street gangs of the city, and was now preparing to host a dinner party for the movers and shakers of Seattle society.  The party, backed by the ghouls, had to crash the biggest social event in Seattle and kill it's host before the entire city fell under the wendigo's sway.

2) Group is hired by a Yakuza boss to sneak into a Mallplex (a low-end archology in which several corp-owned tenement buildings are attached to an enclosed mall, and the comings and goings of the residents are controlled by implanted Rfid chips and security gates) in order to break out the family of an up-and-coming singer that is under contract to one of his rivals.  The Yak tells them that if he can get the family out of the Mallplex's control he would break his rival's hold on the singer, and she would be free to sign with his label.  What the party doesn't know is that the Yak already has support in his fight against his rival... a corp strike team (that the party had crossed before) which is supporting the Yak in order to have leaverage over him when he gains more power.  The party is the strike team's payment for their latest assistance... they asked the Yak to send the party into a high-security zone, unarmed, where the striketeam could handle them at their leisure.  Fortunately, two things happened in the party's favor... the party's cat shaman got bored and hung out invisibly under the Yak's table after the party had left, and heard the Yak call his corp contact, and the Yak's rival (another Yak) kidnapped the kid sister of another party member in order to blackmail him into betraying his rival.  Things got interesting after that...

[Reaver]

I like building on my players exploits/failures as well as their character's fears.

Currently, the troll adept in the group is being stalked by.... Emotitoys! (yes, those silly cheap drones that are being sold as "child friendly". They are being controlled/used by a technomancer (turned quadriplegic by the troll) to make his life a living hell Since they are cheap (and everywhere!) the techno just hacks into them to spy on the troll, and uses them to taunt him where ever he goes! Not to mention he mods them in a variety to ways (razor fingers, internal explosives/gas bombs, mono whips, etc) while they can't REALLY do much damage to him, they can provide a level tension and laughter to the game! (nothing like a 400kg troll snapping in the middle of a park and crushing little suzie's doll cause it "looked at him funny" to bring chuckle to the group! Or having a bunch of emotitoys all stop, point, and say "BAD MAN" while displaying a KE "wanted of questioning" profile of said troll for child abduction while he is tailing a mark at the mall to make the group's day a little more eventful!

Sometimes, it isn't about a current run for a game.... But the concequinces of a past run! Pissed off lovers of former marks, that wage slave that lost their job, other runners the team slotted off... The list goes on and on!

Be creative! Be interesting! Be different! But most of all, have fun!