This is going to be long, but please bear with me. I feel like giving an accurate background will lead to receiving better advice.
This is my first post here, but I've been reading threads for a few weeks now. I've gone through the entire errata thread, the entire rules clarification thread, and several other threads related to running a campaign and some of the history threads. I've spent some time on /r/Shadowrun, and I've read the history of the 6th world on the Shadowrun Tabletop website. Aside from that I've also been listening to The Arcology Podcast, starting from the very beginning. This has all been very helpful and is definitely contributing to the future success of the campaign I plan to run. Still I feel like no matter how prepared I am, there will be things I'm not even aware I need to be prepared for. So that's why I'm here, hoping that others can help check my blind spots.
First, some background info. I originally got into Shadowrun in high school, over 25 years ago. I read the original novels, the one named "Never Deal with a Dragon" and the others in that series (trilogy? I forget, they are buried in a box somewhere). A friend with some RPG experience and lots of sourcebooks offered to run some stuff for another friend and I. We played a few sessions of first edition, and I even tried to come up with my own "missions" to run. Mostly though, we pored over the sourcebooks and soaked up the material, falling in love with the Shadowrun world. Before we could move on to 2nd edition, we graduated and life took us in separate directions.
Over the years my friend and I (the other player, not the DM) dabbled in some other games, like Battletech, Robotech, Middle Earth Role Playing, with of course some 2nd edition AD&D. But always as players, until D&D 3.5 where I took a stab at DM'ing something in the Eberron campaign setting. Our group wasn't close knit, and I'm sure my DM'ing attempt was a bit flat, so it fell apart after a session or two.
Fast forward to a couple years ago and that same friend invites me to join a D&D 5e campaign with some other friends of his. I took over an NPC Cleric, and played him until the end. This began my re-education as a RPG player. Having gotten into this in my teenage years, as a heavy PC gamer, I never fully understood the importance of the story or a character's depth to making the game fun. But the start of our next campaign changed all that.
One player left, the DM became a player, and another player tried his hand at DM'ing for the first time. We, the players, ended up with an odd combo of a Monk (me), and two Bards. Almost immediately we formed a band, a travelling band at that, and whatever story the DM had intended became secondary to the goofy whims of our band. We would obsess over things like finding a cool mask on a villian and then wanting to get more, only pursuing leads that could result in us getting more masks. We would roll into hostile territory and play completely stupid like we were just there to do a show, because we really just wanted to be the most popular travelling band in all the lands. Villagers would tell us about problems and we would help since there seemed to be nobody else that could help, but we weren't seeking the problems by default. The DM made it all work, he did really well for a first timer.
This experience changed me from caring about a min/max character and being pivotal in combat, to caring about what my character was, and how he/she would act based on their background. It's sad that it took this long to reach that epiphany, but I'm here now and much happier. That lead to my character in our next campaign being designed in a much more entertaining way. A Gnome Sorcerer who was basically the chosen one (like Harry Potter) but who finds out after magic school that saving the world is really hard and being the chosen one isn't all it's cracked up to be when you are a wussy little squish. Needless to say, he drinks A LOT while simultaneously complaining that "nobody ever lets him save the world" and that "saving the world is actually really hard." And he's not even the most interesting character in the group, but I digress.
Recently I got the itch to try running something again. D&D doesn't make sense though, I just don't know the world like I know Shadowrun. Not that I'm that up to date since 1st edition, but I've played Shadowrun Returns and Darkfall in recent years. Also, I own Johnny Mnemonic on Laserdisc, and that has to count for something...
Initially I started with an idea for NPC that would be a primary contact for the players. A sort of quasi-NPC because with smaller groups we find having the GM run a character can be helpful at times. That initial NPC's story ended up leading me down a road to a much larger campaign idea, which I'm still developing. The NPC wouldn't be run as a player by default, but could be utilized by the players if they include her in their plans. I'd simply be executing what they want to the best of her ability, if that is needed. She's a Face/Rigger, and also kind of a Johnson, so it's possible she could just end up being a chauffeur, but who knows.
Luckily I started reading threads around here before I got too far in planning. I've scrapped the entire idea of having a planned campaign with a specific end goal. Now I'm focusing on planning who is in conflict with who, how others could be involved, and what kind of runs could be needed to advance the conflict. Because of that, my method of preparation has shifted from determining what to plan and write up, to learning as much about the elements involved as possible. My goal is to be able to make things up on the fly that support the direction the players want to go in, without constantly contradicting myself or the canon of the game. Simple things, like knowing where you should expect to see ash from Mt. Rainier, and where you should not. Obviously I'm shooting for more important details than that, but the idea is to know the content without having to look every little thing up to keep a story flowing.
Initially I was more worried about having to look up rules, but those will get memorized over time as they are used. There is a lot more to "know" about the world of Shadowrun than there is to know about the rules. Seattle alone is a lot to learn in detail, as I found out yesterday when I picked up a used copy of Seattle 2072. For this campaign, the most recent printing of the SR5 CRB and Seattle 2072 will be my primary references. As much of that as I can cram into my head for quick reference the better.
At this point, I've read most of the CRB, except for the Magic section, which will be next. I think I have a pretty good understanding of how the world functions in the 2070's. The new Matrix seems much easier to grasp, no more designing something for the Decker to run on paper. Now it's just hosts and devices, AR and VR, and of course Technomancers, but they don't seem too bad conceptually. My next major challenge is memorizing the districts of Seattle and their general compositions, mainly for maintaining consistency when going off the cuff.
I could probably go on for a while, I'm pretty good at tangents. But this is the point where I come to the original request in the subject. How can I be as prepared as possible to "know" the world well at a glance? Like I know that 2011 was the year metahuman babies started showing up, and 2021 is when people started changing outright, but I know almost nothing about Crash 2.0 (I assume there's a 1.0 I don't know about) or the Ghost Walker Dance stuff (probably not the right name for that).
Realistically I'm not going to be buying any more books in the near future, and I only have so much time to consume them and retain the content. So more books isn't necessarily an immediate solution anyway. What do I need to know as a GM to avoid being caught off-guard as often as possible? Are there other major events that even the lowest Barrens resident would know about, that I should certainly know about before going down this rabbit hole?
Please help me fill in the holes in my knowledge, especially the ones I don't know I have. Thanks
