[blackperoxide]

Hello all, I'm posting because I'm pretty new to Shadowrun overall, just starting with 5th edition. I've got only 3 sessions under my belt, but am experienced with rpg's in general. My question is are there any pre-made campaigns or missions that are truly newbie friendly? I looked at the Shattered State campaign, and pretty much every review stated that while alright, it was not newbie GM/Player friendly.

My goal is to give my current GM who has been running for my small group a chance to play some, and right now drumming up NPC's/Story arc's is not that easy. There is a lot of crunch in this game, and the amount of actual rules is kinda staggering. I guess I'm just looking for tools or means to make jumping in at the helm easy for a chummer like me.

[MijRai]

As far as pre-mades go, have you looked at the Living Campaign going on currently?  I haven't played it, but it might be what you're looking for.

My suggestion if you continue trying to create your own (as someone who just started GMing his first 5th Ed game last week), is to ignore crunch when writing up the plot.  Figure out what you want to happen, and from there assign stats to whatever needs it.  My personal method for planning things out is a skeleton set-up; I have the gist of a scene as the title, followed by an idea of what should happen, with the various options for what could go down beneath, and the ensuing reactions/options from there.  So, an example:

1.  Introduction/Being Hired!
-Talk to Fixer
-Fixer Sets Meet
--Meet at Option 1
--Meet at Option 2
--Etc.
-Johnson There?
--Yes, ready
--Yes, needs saving
--Yes, but dead (uh oh)
--No, delayed
--No, IT'S A TRAP!
--No, but dead somewhere else
-Job Talk
--Yes?
--No?
--Details?
2.  We're Hired!
...

And from there, it goes on. 

[Timothy M. Patrick]

Check out SRM 5A-01 Chasin' the Wind and SRM 5A-02 Critic's Choice both are $5.95 on sale on Drive through RPG for $4.46 right now. They are the first two published living campaign missions for Chicago and designed to help easy new people into the game.

[rookie01]

I just started running chasin' with a big group of folks new to the game. I'm also new to gming 5th. The only suggestion I would make is to try to push the group into doing legwork, it makes for a much better experience. its something unique to shadowrun so sometimes players from other systems take it for granted. I made that mistake, and a few failed rolls in scene 2 almost lead to everyone getting smoked... I think the facemage is still picking buckshot out of her chest.

[Reiper]

Splintered state is a pretty good run I think to start them out with.

It does quite a few things:

Introduces paranoia to the group.
Introduces the fact that you shouldn't try to shoot your way out of every scene (IE, Chimera encounter)
Gives them a chance to start making contacts (my team did Splintered state on the 2nd or 3rd run, and got introduced to quite a few big wigs that they have been schmoozing with ever since, treating them well)
Lots of legwork
Moral choices (take the big bucks, or side with the good guys)
Introduces plot twists (like the entire run(s).

And if they go along with the second part, it can set up an interesting sub plot (for example, a sub plot I'm running throughout the entire campaign is Brackhaven's upcoming impeachment proceedings). And that lets me do all kinds of side runs. For example, I had Dana Oaks kidnapped, and sent me team looking all over for them). I've had my team blackmailed for a gruesome murder that may or may not have been related to the impeachment.

Another fairly simple run that is a bit more straight forward is this:

Johnson hired a courier to transport and item, courier was bribed and then killed upon handing the item over. Johnson wants the team item back.

Scene 1 Johnson intro, team needs to get to the crime scene and deal with KE (Johnson can pull some strings if the team seems a bit reluctant to talk to them to get them through the crime scene).

They can get various security footage from the surrounding buildings, they can search the crime scene (being smart), Sweet talk the officers (great way to get a low end KE officer as a contact).

Eventually they found an Urban Brawl championship ring from a local team. This led them to digging into the fact that only 3 of the team is left, the rest have died.

This leads them to the guy on the video that stole the item for whatever nefarious purposes.

It wasn't overly complicated, it can get new players accustomed to role playing their characters, there is time for the face to shine, time for the decker to shine (getting the security camera feeds), time for some knowledge skills to work out (ie knowledge of the urban brawler league), and some combat with the guy and his henchmen when encountered. I kept a lot of the encounters in fairly nice neighborhoods so the teams had to be careful and couldn't go all pink mohawk without attracting a ton of attention, so they kept the strike surgical.