[Leevizer]

so, I have a group of inexperienced roleplayers, myself as a gm and it's our first time with SR. I tried to come up with a scene, and the idea is this:

the group is hired to do a simple B&E by Renraku to extract some data from a smaller corp. The job is marketed as simple and easy by the Johnson. After the meeting, the group do the heist and it should be pretty easy. After the group get back to the meeting place, they get ambushed by a group of Yakuza. They either fight or escape, after which they should try to do some legwork to find out what's going on. They find out that the Jihnson was not Renraku, but an Yakuza as well, and confront him.

So basically, five sections.

1) meeting in an oriental bar somewhere in Seattle, where the Johnson (japanese-american elf) tells the group the details of the job and the group begins the op.

2) the B&E. Should be pretty straightforward.

3) new meeting at the bar. The place is atracked by yakuza. The group escapes or fights...(If they are losing too badly, a local troll gang leader might help out a bit...)

4) the group needs to do legwork to trace mr. Johnson down. (I need help with this section, I have no idea how to help my players or guide them at all or what they should find.)

5) Showdown with Yakuza led by Mr. Johnson. Straightforward stuff again.

So, the main problem is part 4 and how to give the players hints that the Johnson is actually Yakuza. Also, I need to think of WHY they want the runners dead with the data, and why the runners agree to re-meet instead of just sending it via matrix?

[Eugene]

What about coming at the story a little differently?  The Johnson's on the level, but maybe the Yakuza find the Johnson while the runners are out committing crimes, and when they get the info out of him, they're the ones waiting for the drop off, not the Johnson. 

So you get the Yakuza angle and now the mission becomes to find the Johnson (clues on the Yaks, of course) if they want to get paid.  Of course, you can also play it that the Yaks are willing to pay (its just biz, after all) and see whether the runners will betray their employer.  That choice can provide lots of interesting consequences for future jobs!

[OFTHEHILLPEOPLE]

I like Eugene's idea.  But I think you have a good story outline as it is.  I'm a huge fan of letting the players figure things out by themselves so in this case they would have been tipped off that the Johnson wasn't at the meeting site.  They're going to want to be paid so they'll be motivated to find the Johnson so let them figure out how to do that, don't railroad them.  If they have a hacker the Hacker could hack a slain Yakuza commlink and trace the location of where they made their last call, or perhaps they break a few thumbs from surviving Yakuza.  Maybe have these options available if your players come to a wall in their investigations but keep your story ambiguous so they have to actually think.

[Medicineman]

I really don't like the Idea of a double Crossing J.
Yeah, its kinda tradition, but its a bad tradition. Especially for a beginners Group. This may set their Mind to " The last  Johnson betrayed us, the next Johnson will surely do this to"
Don't "seal " their Point of View and save the Doublecrossing J for a later / another Run
I'd rather prefer Eugenes Idea
The Johnsons Straight but he gets kidnapped by the Yakuza because they want the Plans for Mitsuhama and the Players have to find him and resue him If they want to get their Money.
And when they save him you can turn the J into a contact for the Chars

with no set Dance
Medicineman

[OFTHEHILLPEOPLE]

I like that idea too.  More contacts are always fun.

[Xzylvador]

ˆ Seconded or thirded.
The first game will give your players an idea of what the game and the game-world is like.
While the possibility of being betrayed by a J is part of the game, you'll be giving the message that it'll always be team vs. J.
By having the Johnson be a victim of a third party instead, you give the message that it's a complicated world out there, where the team is just a small pawn in a game with lots of dangers and rivaly between different groups on different levels and that things rarely work out as expected.
And if they get the J as contact for rescuing him, they learn that they can work their way up if they play their part right, making allies as well as enemies.
(And heck, he can always betray them later Sorry pals, thanks for saving my life, but this is just business. )

[Hsere]

and why the runners agree to re-meet instead of just sending it via matrix?

That part's easy -- in the Matrix, the walls don't so much "have eyes" as "don't exist," and a good hacker can easily eavesdrop with no one the wiser.  You *can* have secure Matrix communication, of course, but it takes some serious technological know-how, which Mr. J may not have.  For this and other reasons, insisting on a face-to-face meet is pretty Standard Operating Procedure for Shadowruns, so there's not really a need to explain it.

Another interesting angle for the "Johnson is straight but the Yaks interfere" approach is that the players might assume or suspect that he's crooked, but then find that they're wrong.  Which means that whenever it seems like they've been doublecrossed by a Johnson in the future, they'll always have at least a little doubt.

As for why the Yaks might want the Runners dead, there are any number of reasons that might be the case.  Off the top of my head:

Mr. J is a liaison between Renraku and Yakuza Family A, and is sending the Runners on the current mission as a favor to Yakuza Family A.  The mission is disguised as a standard Renraku op so Family A can keep their involvement in it a secret and the Runners won't know who they're really working for.  Yakuza Family B, a rival to Family A, somehow finds out that this is occurring, and tries to intercept the paydata and kill off Mr. J to get an edge on Family A and damage their reputation with Renraku.  The Runners are only targeted (a) because they happen to have the paydata, and (b) because they're loose ends who might be able to piece together what actually happened.  Mr. J survives the assassination attempt, but has to go underground and out of contact with the Runners, leaving the Runners high and dry until they've realized what's happened and can track him down.

It's a pretty basic premise, but it should work just fine.  If you want further inspiration, Shadowrun fiction pieces are full of stuff like that.

As for how the players find out what's going on, I like to "plan out" one or two methods by which they might get the info in case they get stuck.  But otherwise, I like to just let them try and figure out how to do it.  If the Yaks are handling the hit themselves, the fact that all the assailants are Asian or Asian-American (or whatever nationality) will probably be a pretty major tipoff, and if they get photographs of the attackers (or their corpses), they can pass them around to their contacts and see if any of them recognize them, or know anyone who might recognize them.  Then, if the Runners are smart, they'll see if Mr. J had any dealings, friendly or otherwise, with any of the local Yakuza families.  Once they realize that Mr. J regularly dealt with Family A, while all the attackers were from Family B, they should figure it out pretty quickly.

Of course, finding out any of these pieces of information might involve more than just asking their contacts for info.  They could have to shake a street snitch down for information, or steal/hack the comm of a local Yak lieutenant.

Man, now I want to go write a Shadowrun.