Ideas for a Yakuza focused story? Options

[God45]

A friend of mine is planning on running a campaign where the shadowrunners are all members of the Yakuza.

He is keeping it as basic rules, with provisions such as must speak Japanese, be of Mid lifestyle, and spend approximately 10,000Y on clothes. Also, he is not allowing the players to have any Magic.

Whilst the GM and the players know that traditionally the Yakuza are human males, two of the players are Orks, two are Elves, and one is undecided.

I know that he has got plans for there to be a coup within his House, and for the current leader to be replaced by a more headstrong lieutenant. However, the exact means of this happening are still in the air.

This will be the second campaign any of them have ever played for Shadowrun, with the first one being a 300BP ganger game with no metahumans, no magic, and lower caps on skills, availability, and so forth. That may be the reason why they all have picked metahumans for this game.

Now, I was wondering if anyone else has done a game where you play as members of a criminal syndicate. What kind of runs do you have them do? How do they spend their personal time? Any advice or suggestions you can offer for the game in general?

[Slash_Thompson]

depending on how 'in' the players are with the local oyabun and the rest of his power structure, the game could run as loose as a standard shadowrun team, just with the runs coming primarily from one source (their immediate superior in the yakuza structure). you could also run it as a very tightly related campaign, where they live in the home of one of the bosses, are basically always on call, and spend what free time they have in the locally operated bunraku parlor, etc.

as for runs, I'd do mostly bodyguarding, protection rackets, and turf warfare with rival gangs/syndicates if it was a smaller house, and bodyguarding, assassination, (large scale) protection rackets and local political espionage if it was a larger house. for the *largest* houses and highest players, this could extend even into corporate or international espionage. This could of course, include traditional shadowrun style corporate asset 'retrieval'. pretty much whatever the oyabun feels is good for business. courier work (including sensor sweeps of meets) would probably also be fairly common (whether goods or people. most organized crime would still be done 'face to face' with scrip rather than electronically with bits.)

remember: small houses will go after local interests and small fish (the local stuffer shack, the district mayor, local law enforcement, rival syndicates, etc.) large houses operate in higher society circles (AA+ corps, state/national politicians, etc.)