Advice for a first time GM. Options

[zombieneighbours]

So...

Our groups GM is a real artist, one of the grand masters of roleplaying game narration, but he has a history of burning out faster than Case left to his own devices in chiba city. It is my job as the alternate DM to ever have something ready to run at the drop of a hat, should our next session unexpectedly be the end of the campaign.

I recently picked up my own copy of both neuromancer and mona lisa overdrive(couldn't get count zero at the time, i will be trying again soon.) and frankly it has put me in the mood for a game with guns and cybernetics.

So I have started preparing a Shadowrun game of the group. To my knowledge only one of the group has played Shadowrun before. However, I have never before run shadowrun, and it has been a while since i have run any cyberpunk at all. As such, i was hoping i might get some feed back on my campaign ideas and some general advice from some veterans.


Campaign Outline: The Locke and Key chronicle.

Act 1:
The campaign opens with small group of shadow runners who brought together by a fixer called Shadow, he initially sets them up with a couple of basic runs. One on a custom cyber optics manifacturer, and the second on a data courier. However, things are a little of as the characters are not introduced to the Mr. Johnson in either case.

The reason for this soon becomes clear, when it comes to light that both runs where merely leg work for a more serious run. Shadow himself is the Mr. Johnson, and he has been using the two missions to forge the PCs into a team. He has gathered them to perform a run on a french super-computer, called the Emporer Napoleon, which has specifically been designed by the french government, in partnership with Saeder-Krupp for number crunching on cutting edge metaphysics. The aim is to crack a magically active alchemical cypher on a ritual, that has come into Shadows possession.

Behind the scenes, Shadow is a Cell head for an intelligence network run by the NSA. Shadow's Cell is one of three which operates within the Sigil Initiative, the agencies wing tasked with collecting intelligences on arcane and Meta-realm based threats.

The ritual was passed to Shadow by his apprentice and former lover Liberty Jones, a chaos mage in deep cover with a french group of arcanoterrorists and arms dealer called L'Etrangers. She scanned a copy and sent it to shadow and then set about keeping an eye on the grimoire as L'Etranger tried to find a buyer.

However, in the wake of the run on the Emporer Napoleon, Shadow gets a email from Liberty, telling him that her cover is blown. He hires the characters to extract her from a safe house in paris. However they arive to late, finding that Liberty has already fled and L'Etrangers members swarming the safe house and french police after them and Shadow, seemingly with inside infomation about the raid on the Emporer Napoleon. All the evidence points towards the operation having been sold out, with only Liberty herself having been in possession of the details needed to endanger the opperation.

The First act concludes as the PCs flee mainland europe, following Liberty's trail into the east anglian mushfens, where they must deal with a number of toxic shamen togather the infomation needed to track Liberty to a small safe house in the remains of orford ness. They confront liberty in the remains of the old research base, a Special forces unit closing in as she tries to win their trust, explaining that one other person was aware of the Cells activities, the Sigil initiatives head.


Act 2: Returning state side the PCs are confronted with the challange of finding out why the head of the Sigil Initiative sold out one of his own networks. Their ownly clue, the ritual they decoded in paris. The reminants of shadows cell gather, along with the PCs, to discover why the government has tried to wipe them out.

The group forms a plan to extract successful arcane researcher, who specialises in meta plane analysis from Ares. The expert reports that the ritual will open a path to an as yet unexpored region further out even than the have, and summon something that is very likely to be unpleasant.

That is about as far as i have loosely detailed, but the idea is that the PCs go on to take down the sigil initiative, which has been corrupted by its head, into the service of a powerful, mythos type monsterosity.

Thoughts, advice and so on.