[Grynder]

Hoi chummers

So a couple of weeks ago I got my campaign under run and recently it blew up in my face like an articulated truck carrying a mix of napalm and uranium and it came to a vicious end, due to lack of ideas, know how and PC actions.

What I think my problem is I don't know what kind of things can make up your standard shadowrun campaign. Sure the book gives two brief examples of "shadowy conspiracy" and "race against time" but what else is there to make an overarching story plot for Joe Average hired criminal?

If any synopsis examples can be given for a campaign that you have run from you fine folks would be muchly appreciated. I like the ideas and premise of the game and don't want to have to call it a right off for myself.

Thanks in advance guys
Grynder

[ScytheKnight]

If you've got the cash you can buy the Missions series, you can break this up with books like Sprawl Wilds and London Falling.

Basically for my campaign we're doing Chicago based runners who've had to get out of town due to a FUBARed run, so they're laying low in Seattle and doing Plots and Paydata leading straight into Sprawl Wilds. From there the heat catches up a bit and they move to London where we go through London Falling by the time that's settled the heat has died down enough in Chicago for them to travel back and get started on the Missions series.

Outside of that I'm also starting up a second Street Scum campaign... this is using Street Level tables, the Street Scum campaign rules and a bunch of house rules to really scale down the power level. The focus of this campaign isn't doing runs and getting reach and powerful... it's surviving week to week in Redmond Barrens.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Understand that most of the best overarching story plots are the ones your players hand to you, via their backgrounds, negative qualities, and actions in-game.  Someone is Uncouth?  Wait for them to piss off somebody they think is unimportant (that cute clubbing girl in the nightclub, for instance), then make that person someone important - or related to someone important.  Someone is a SINner?  Start working on how their deeds in the dark are catching up to their 'good name' in the light.  Someone writes a mentor into their background?  The mentor needs help - or one of their fellow apprentices, even if they never met them, calls on them for assistance in something.  Overarching story plots are 'merely' situations that can't be handled in one sitting.  There isn't one person to kill, or even if there is, she's so well protected it's going to take weeks and months and years of hard work just to get close enough to them to pull the trigger - not to mention getting clear of the aftermath, if they ever manage that.

And here's the thing: this is just for one character, and with only three possible issues they may have.  It's a safe bet each of your PCs have more than that, and that you have more than just one PC, eh?  The overarching campaign takes all these issues, and deals with one of these things after every two or three runs.  It might wind up taking fifty runs just to clear up the 'Hunted' background of your razorgrrl - and everyone else is still on the burner.

It works especially well - and lets you involve everyone - if you link these things together, across players.  The mob-ties girl your uncouth rigger thug brushed off manages to link up with the guy that razorgrrl has hunting her, whose corporate division has started putting pressure on the neighborhood watch run by the mage's mentor's other apprentice ... hilarity ensues.

[Glyph]

Also, there doesn't have to be an overarching plot - it can just be a group of criminals doing jobs and working towards their individual goals or dealing with their individual problems.  If you decide to have one, The Wyrm Ouroboros has the right approach - have things happen based on the plot hooks already in the character backgrounds.  That's better than sticking them in some epic plot that they might have zero interest in.

[Ganggreenkhan]

     My players and I are in a similar situation. None of us have ever played Shadowrun before so we're starting small. A gang of awakens street thugs in the Barrens. No fake SINS, no money. All they have are a set of contacts between them that are good for selling people to. Kidnapping people off the street using mind control spells and a physical adept then selling them to perspective parties like benraku parlors, organ leggers, and BTL producers. Plus selling the cars to the junkyard when they carjack somebody.
     We just played for the first time today. To start they used sprawl life skill to find a new squat. Then they went off and did a carjacking to make some money. Managed to bring a tracking device to both the organ legger fixer and the junkyard cause they failed to do a proper search of the car. This is gonna create "issues" for the group. This is gonna end bad for them.
     The way I figure it is you gotta decide a game concept. Flesh out a set of characters who can accomplish that concept. Then give then a set of contacts they can use to make money with that concept. For my concept I chose extraction team.

[Fizzygoo]

Yeah, pretty much what everyone else has said.

There was a campaign I tried starting years ago and dived in for the big overarching campaign with mutiple levels of conspiracies and backstabbings and all that. 20 minutes in one of the players calls the opposing team with info they got...unraveled it all. A week's worth of prep and flow charts and stat blocks wasn't needed as through basic logic and reasoning the players cut through it all, hehe.

So I try to start small, mostly to see what i'm dealing with in both characters and players. Figure out how to include the non-combat types in combat, the combat types in non-combat, and so on. It never works as smoothly as that last sentence makes it seem, but that's what I go for. Maybe add some behind the scenes stuff for myself, but mostly just "here's a simple run...go." And Ganggreenkhan's last post reads like a perfect way to start things to me.

Then, as I figure out the PCs, their backgrounds, and how those backgrounds manifest in-game, then I start working on the layered conspiracy, whirlwind missions of chaos and confusion, drek-hitting-fan stuff.

And it helps having two GMs, at least for me, as our other GM takes the team to Chicago, running season 5 missions that gives me a few weeks to prep for the next non-canon run i'm planning. On that same note, running published missions/adventures also gives a buffer to your plans as GM while letting you see how the PCS deal with things.

As for mission ideas, my group's current campaign has gone with:
Missing person search and "rescue"
Black market goods deliveries/protection
Season 5, mission 1
Splintered State
Season 5, mission 2 (just started)

Googling "Shadowrun Mission Ideas" came up with some stuff, including a pdf, that looks to me edition irrelevant of plot ideas at savevsdm.com (not affiliated with them).

[Ganggreenkhan]

     Along the lines of what Fizzygoo said you should familiarize yourself with the missions in the campaign books. If your stuck for what to do pull a job out the campaign book and poof you've got something going on that can cause a plot device while you try to think of a way to get the characters back on track. We've only played one session so they haven't gone off the rails yet. Basicly gave them unlimited options within a very narrow set of parameters. Like first your squat has burned down and you need a new one, you don't have a car, what do you do? Then they hired an uber driver for the day to drive them around Redmond looking for a squat. Made a bunch of sprawl life rolls and when they got nine successes I described to them something decent that would work. Gave them one roll and hour, used teamwork. Took'em 9 hours.
     I've only GM'ed D&D and Battletech before, this is my first Shadowrun. I've been keeping track of time cause I feel time is very important. Not so much in the other games. I'm not tracking time hour by hour in D&D or BT. For instance im giving the players a six hour window next week until their actions catch up with them so to speak. SO they have six hours to figure out an extraction team is coming for them. Then they get extracted lolz it's gonna be grand. They might throw a monkey wrench in my plan by moving before it hits and depending on how they move they may or may not be located again. Right now if they spend six more hours in their squat there is a big giant X on their heads and they are fucked. If they make successful rolls and analyze the paydata they should be smart enough to move so I've gotta plan on that.
     The backup plan is that if they move the next time they go to meet either of the two fixers they exsposed through their improper actions they will get extracted when they go to meet the fixers. This is only if they are smart about moving. If tey move and aren't smart about it they are getting hit anyway irreguardless.
     The trick to running a sandbox game is creating situational need for the characters so you can steer them within the sandbox and kinda keep them on track so to speak. If you just make up some awesome characters with no needs they can absolutely go right off the rails. Like say feeding their drug habit, finding a home, or in severe need of money so they just havta go do a run.  This is probably harder to do if your not doing a street campaign cause the characters are less wanting. More importantly players like structure. For a sandbox campaign to really work you need a framework, or MO so to speak, otherwise the players go off and do something you are completely unprepared for and it ends up sucking cause you gotta GM "on the fly". Remember set no paramiters on how your players achieve in a sandbox, that lets them feel in control and like they contributed to the story while keeping it within your carefully definded boundries.
     I feel like I just did a whole lotta talking and said very little, like a politician or some thing, hope it helps.
     

[Grynder]

I find that one issue that I come across as a GM for my group is that they prefer to do "whatever the game is good for". I have GMed quite a few (World of Darkness, Exalted, DnD/Pathfinder, Eclipse Phase and a few others) but this one has been my Goliath. Was looking into making the game have an "end date" so to speak so that it wouldnt fizzle out, but I think the idea of starting it at a lower level would prove useful for my players.
With regards to my failed campaign it was all neatly laid out in front of me (something I never normally do at all, prefer the as it comes approach) but that just made me question a lot of things anyway.

As a new GM to Shadowrun with a bunch of players new to it too, how would you introduce them to:
1) The Setting; ins and outs of the world, the who's, whys, whats and whens?
2) The activity of Shadowrunning; why most people would (this ones more character creation help)
and 3) Some basic need-to-knows.

I know initially I asked for campaign synopsis of what you guys have done but I think its more character immersion that would prove to be helpful. Also as a side question, what is the longest your Shadowrun games have gone on for if you have only used the "standard run templates"? Does it pay off to break the norm? (eg; go from breaking, entering and stealing, to paranormal activity investigations on behest of a research professor?)

[Beta]

I can't answer most of your questions (just not enough diverse experience running SR), but I have a question back your way.  Your subject line says you fragged up.  My question is, are your players still interested in ShadowRun?  If so, then all is good. 

Personally I've found that a lot of people's first SR character is not the character they end up wanting to play in the long run.  Either they are too extreme (completely psychotic killer, socially vile, etc) or they tried to do too many things and don't do any of them very well.  So if your players are willing to give it another shot, now that they know a little bit and you know a little bit, you might get easier to work with characters and everyone better able to deal with the world.

Maybe.  No guarantees.

As for player immersion, I started playing in 1st/2nd edition, and the writing in those books was very compelling and immersive, so the way to sell the game to people was to flip open to the character archetype section and let them read the character quotes. By the time they'd done that they probably had a good idea of what they wanted to play and what they wanted to do (although, as I said, a lot were looking to change characters after the first bit).  The fifth edition rules do not seem nearly so evocative to me.  This thread (from another forum) has a few classic 2nd edition pics http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?708821-Shadowrun-2nd-edition-one-of-the-best-products-ever-in-terms-of-powerful-and-evocative-imagery

I've not read all of the material out for 5th edition, but perhaps others could comment if any of it might be useful to hand around to players? 

This primer https://s3.amazonaws.com/www.harebrained-schemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/shadowrun_primer.pdf was writen for 2063, and isn't the most evocative thing ever written, but does give a decent view of the world, better IMO than the intro in 5th (although.... ignore the part about all the hover vehicles, they dropped that idea at some point)

[Ganggreenkhan]

1+2) To get my players familiar with the ins and out, and to learn them myself, I'm starting at a very base level of the game. You are homeless and have no choice but to do nasty things to survive because you are SINless. So for them right now "Why" is easy, cause your hungry. This is to properly acclimate them to the Shadowrun universe. It's like the leader told me when I said I had found two new players who wanna play do gooder anarchist and have a problem with doing Shadowrunny things. He said "maybe they can play when we can afford to have morals." I feel in Shadowrun you can never truly afford to have morals. I'm gonna make them pay for this next week cause well, it just aint proper to Shadowrun with morals, that sorta thing gets you killed. Or in their case indentured to the Mob. you can read about it more indepth here: http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=22209.0 To help with player immersion I spent alot of time working on background for the characters, I handed them complete charcters with stories, not just a list of numbers.

3) Can't help you there still learning myself. The work I've put into this game since we decided to play makes me feel like I should be getting a degree in it or something. Alot of reading and many expensive books, I gave up on trying to have deadwood copies of everything.
 
     Here's what I'm doing with your questions.
    I usta be a terrible game master. The video games have helped me immensely, especially the Shadowrun:Hong Kong which I have four or five characters in. I try to make decision trees to give the players some set options. Then reaction trees to decide what comes of their choices and how it affects the grand politics of their choices. Sometimes I just give the players a decision tree and it all leads back to one outcome so it's easier on me making a story and they feel like they were'nt railroaded by fate.
    For instance my players highjacked a Mob drug shipment. They think they just jacked some salaryman outta his novacoke. They now have a free range sand box of choices on what they are going to do with the drug shipment. They have six hours to figure out what they jacked. They have two potential buyers with in their circle of contacts to sell the dope to. If they sell it to the one who offers $10k it will have no serious long term effects for them. If they discover and sell it to the organization offering $20k this will affect their immediate earning potential after the set in stone event they can't avoid nomatter what they do. As a direct consequence of their previous actions. It is set in stone that they are going to be indentured to the Mob, their first lesson in the Shadowrun universe. A very harsh lesson. If the extraction team fails to get them through force, i.e. they defeat them. Then the Mob will send a face to bring them to a meet. Failing that they are just going to be murdered by the Mob and the game will be over or moved to a place like Hong Kong or Chicago. They don't have the cred yet to get to Hong Kong, and a magic user gang doesn't wanna be in Chicago. If they refuse to come into the Mob life is going to get very hard for them with no way out.
      Then the actual meet with the Capo is gonna have several flavors depending on how they were brought in. So there is some variability in the set in stone event.
     Now as you see there is an event set in stone and then several round about ways to get there. Every game isn't necessarily gonna have set in stone events. What is did for this game was sandbox it and then develop the next session based on the events of the sandbox.

[Grynder]

@Beta: As far as I am aware, most of my players will attempt Shadowrun again so yeah I think that is a good start.

In regards to what I think I'm going to attempt is a "coming of age" style of game. Start the players off on the Street Level for character creation as if they have only just taken up Shadowrunning, with next to no workable contacts for the good jobs coz they just don't have the rep. Give them a few runs, and tie in some character background for a bit of a plot (Thanks Wyrm, seems the best approach) before the start getting the bigger, better paid runs.

As to location, I'm torn between Seattle (because its the base in the book), Sioux Nation (because I own the PDF for that and Cheyenne) or a European/Asian country (because). Hopefully the players will appreciate a slower learning curve and I can ease off when it comes to antagonists just in case a player gets cut to bits because of the lower level in power.

If I come up with anything else, Ill post it into this thread and see what kind of feedback I get.

[Glyph]

I would recommend standard character creation - the problem with the street level rules is that they dramatically favor awakened characters, while other, resource-dependent types like deckers, riggers, and street samurai, just don't work at street level because they are so gear-dependent, and that gear is so expensive that it would take forever to acquire it, even when the group starts getting paid better.

Don't worry so much about the power level.  Even mouthbreathing thugs can be a threat if there are enough of them, and they use some elementary tactics.  It's probably better for the PC's to have a bit of a dice pool advantage, anyways - it will help compensate for their newbie mistakes.

[Beta]

I did it pretty much how glyph said.  Standard rules, but after the first session (where I underestimated how powerful spirits were, and would have probably killed everyone were it not for our first use of edge, to banish the thing) I went with fairly low level opposition for a while. 

What I did do was put weak foes in good positions, so the challenge was more "what do we do about a guard in a booth with one-way glass+shooting ports" while the actual guards were not especially dangerous.  Forced getting creative and using a variety of abilities, which was good to have figured out when the opposition got tougher.