Lonestar Campaign Options

[Aravanna]

Hi there everyone, I've recently broke down and had a couple of players convince me to try to run a SR4 game, I've always dodged this in the past by pointing out the absurdities inherent in the setting and mentioning that it's MUCH easier to make an easy living by going legit. (Okay, I was lying about them, but it got me off the hook for running the game) But then disaster struck! While watching the Shield it was mentioned that playing as cops could be fun in SR4... so here it is, either made of win, or a trainwreck of epic proportions!

The players will be starting as rookie lonestar cops, on probation of course. They'll have to screw up REALLY bad not to get past probation, but hey, players can do things you'd never think of. I mean to go fairly gritty for the first few sessions. Emergency calls scripted to run at various times, events going down in Seattle. But I'm rather curious what a couple of straight cops can do in Shadowrun. One is a technomancer who has 'accidentally' neglected to tell anyone of the fact, it should be an asset in his line of work, though it did eat into his build points. The other is a troll, ex-mil who lost his arms to some explosion or the like, now cybered up at Lonestar's expense, with a very nasty contract that should keep him their virtual slave for at least twenty years.

I'm not an experienced gamemaster with the system, so I thought I might seek advice here, maybe even post game logs so you can laugh at my failures as the campaign progresses. I've got all sorts of things for the players to deal with, from basic, beat cop work, to dealing with organized crime. The players should enjoy manning a security checkpoint, only to be called out to an emergency callout as shadowrunners hit a nearby corp.

I'd LOVE to hear other gamemaster's take on the idea, particularly if anyone's tried it themselves.

[Naysayer]

The only problem I could see is that the life of beat cops isn't necessarily great campaign material.
- Dispatch calls, Troll McKlusky is thrashing the wife, roll up, pacify, done. Donuts.
- Dispatch calls, junkie OD'd on BTL at a StufferShack, is yelling at customers, roll up, pacify, done. Donuts.
- Dispatch calls, Thrillgang #332 is thrashing a local mall, roll up, wait for SWAT team, done. Donuts.
You can see where that might get repetitive.

If they are a detective unit, it gets better, then there's at least some investigation, maybe they can uncover some nefarious plot to then watch it get buried in bribery and corruption.

If you plan on really doing a Shield-type campaign, where your cops are all corrupt and everyone has a little dirty business on the side, then SR is indeed quite apt for that.
That's pretty player-drivem stuff though, so you gotta know how your party rolls.

And even then, the other big problem with a police campaign that I see is beaurocracy. Even a corrupt, capitalistic nightmare like the 'Star has a DIA of some sort, and even if they're often made of spandex, there are rules.

So yeah, what I'm saying is, go for it, there's stuff in there that can be a ton of fun, if maybe only for a shorter campaign.
But be prepared that a lot of the really fun Shadowrun stuff - sneaking through high-security arcologies, blowing up research labs, going toe to toe with insane insect shamans, causing mayhem and taking names - isn't really part of regular police work. Filing a shit-ton of reports, however, is.

[Ravor]

Something to remember is that Lonestar doesn't pay their officers enough to live on so by necessity all cops are gonig to be dirty to one extent or another to pay the bills.

[The Jake]

The Negotiator
Street Kings
Training Day
The Shield.

All are must watch if you are running this sort of campaign.

- J.

[Stahlseele]

Don't forget to Jam the radar.

[Mercer]

The Shield is a pretty good template for the campaign, due to the diversity of the Strike Team's duties. In the course of a given day, they were expected to:

1) Make cases. They were supposed to go out, find criminals and arrest them.

2) Damage Control. When something high profile came into The Barn, something that because of politics or the media needed to get resolved quickly, the Strike Team was expected to make it a top priority.

3) High Risk Warrants. Track down and serve highly dangerous warrants, kicking down doors and bringing the most dangerous people in.

4) Keep tabs on the gangs, develop confidential sources, flip lower level drug dealers.

Now, in addition to this varied list of difficult and dangerous assignments, they take on even more as a sideline. Running their own street ops, protecting their pet drug dealers and gangs from enemies in return for a cut of the profits. Coming up with their own schemes, like ripping off money launderers. Basically, they have all the problems associated with being cops, and all the problems associated with being criminals.

To the list of source materials I would add:

LA Confidential
The Big Easy
Dark Blue

All are good examples of cops that are somewhat corrupt; bad cop vs worse cop if you will.

[Mirilion]

Maybe a sleazy Star Johnson can send the team to threaten/hurt/kill those who are against the city renewing it's contract with Lone Star, such as politicians and others beurocrats. After all, even though plausible deniability is harder to achieve, the team can have Johnson's resources behind them, and they'll really make an effort in order to support their jobs. Buying equipment in such a scenario is almost irrelevant. They can fight against teams of runners or cops sent by Knight Errant to make Lone Star look bad, and get involved in a corporate shadow war. Basically look for campaign ideas in the Lone Star game book.

Corporations are fun. Lets say the team are sent to find a rich suit's vanished daughter. It's something a team of detectives might get involved in. They track her to a banraku parlor, where she is used as a "hostess", leaving a trail of people with broken knees behind them. Then they find out she's being used by a Lone Star high exec who is unaware of her identity (and doesn't care). Then they find out that the anonymous tip about the daughter came from that exec's arch enemy in the corp, and in fact she was kidnapped by the same man's orders - he manipulated the entire thing. Hilarity ensues. Players shout "RAILROAD" as the GM laughs. Many people are hurt and maimed. Explosions. What's not to like ?

Movies :
American Gangster
Heat

[Ravor]

Also remember that Company Men can and will be ordered to run against their own corp at times.

[Mirilion]

Also remember that Company Men can and will be ordered to run against their own corp at times.

Indeed. Corporations are made out of people who may be enemies personally, or departments that may be opposed. The most obvious department wars are between the DIA and everyone else, but jurisdictions may overlap and tempers flare in many other cases.

Lone Star has contracts not just as city police, but as security for other facilities. It can lead to convulted situations where a run against some mobsters in a harbor pits the team against harbor security, also Lone Star. Only these guards are payed by the mobsters and are in on the entire thing. And their corporate boss, who may be related to the team's own boss, may be in on it also.

[Aravanna]

Hi all, thanks for the advice, I'm about to start the first session in a few mins. A bit of probing of the players has found that they have even less SR4 experience than me, which is good. Lets see them power-game an unfamiliar system. I'm planning on a high-powered weapon fight for them first game, a relatively inept shadowrunner team they can go up against, I'll break them in with an easy victory after having their sergeant go all drill-sergeant on them of course. I don't know how canon the game will be, but the players have access only to the core book for now. I intend to have the quasi-military ranks of the police running alongside Lonestar Corporate, their first real enemy. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I can't imagine that the players will take too well to have some suit ruling them like a despotic tyrant, particularly if he's an 80's type evil yuppie, and he will be. The other cops will be slightly seedy, the more experienced they are, the more cynical. Then some suit will be all over the players to keep their paper-work neat, maintain a good corporate image. (The players will just LOVE that if they haul in some murderous thug after a big, messy fight, only to be written up for getting muddy and portraying a bad image. Bwahahaha!)

One last thing, if I want to write up a journal of my campaign, where would be the correct place to put it? I'm new to the forums here, and don't wanna end up with my first thread being moved due to my own idiocy.

[AngelisStorm]

I can't imagine that the players will take too well to have some suit ruling them like a despotic tyrant, particularly if he's an 80's type evil yuppie, and he will be. The other cops will be slightly seedy, the more experienced they are, the more cynical. Then some suit will be all over the players to keep their paper-work neat, maintain a good corporate image. (The players will just LOVE that if they haul in some murderous thug after a big, messy fight, only to be written up for getting muddy and portraying a bad image. Bwahahaha!)

It might actually be kinda fun to not have a choice on what jobs to take (since that's technically the Shadowrunner M.O.). It's fun watching Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, Warehouse 13, Eureka, and other shows where the character is an employee, and has to deal with what comes his way.

Good luck.

[Petrie_SMG]

You could create a blog to record the adventure, or put it on a Website, or Wiki, or whatever... Knasser puts some up on this forum, but I'm not sure if the mods really want everyone's stories.

[Eugene]

You could create a blog to record the adventure, or put it on a Website, or Wiki, or whatever... Knasser puts some up on this forum, but I'm not sure if the mods really want everyone's stories.

Why not? GMs can mine them for ideas, and it's not like you have to read them if you don't want.

[Eugene]

But be prepared that a lot of the really fun Shadowrun stuff - sneaking through high-security arcologies, blowing up research labs, going toe to toe with insane insect shamans, causing mayhem and taking names - isn't really part of regular police work. Filing a shit-ton of reports, however, is.

Oh, I don't know. There's plenty of mayhem in most cop shows and movies. I could easily see cops having to deal with insect shamans. And raids are similar enough to sneaking through high-security arcologies, especially once the shooting starts.

[Emeraldknite]

Years ago when the Lonestar book came out I had decided to run a Lonestar game. The players were part of Homicide and crossed over in to Vice occaisionally. It was pretty easy to come up with stuff for them. They were the ones most likely to be tracking down Gangers and Yakuza. They even ran into the occaisional Runner when the corps deemed tthem worthy of helping them take care of business. But mostly it ran as what I like to call, a Street level game. Where the players are dealing more with the common man and not the juiced up cybernut-jobs that runners can be.

My game had:
An Orc Phys-adept (With a Weapon focus Nightstick)
A Mage with a little cyber(Eyes FTW)
A human with some Cyber (I really limited them on how much cyber and what kind they could take)
A Troll (Yup, That was it, No Cyber or magic, just pure Scary)
And a Part time Decker (The player couldn't make it to every game)

Nice group mix with some very funny quirks. The Cybered human had a girlfriend that he put to work as a hooker. The Troll did mean to Extort anyone but simply his presence got him a lot of kickbacks and free stuff. The mage was all business and was looking to move up in the company. The Orc kept getting police brutality complaints levied against him. (No Footy=Fiction)

Tho over all metaplot I had was a Serial Killer Shark Shaman was going around killing certain people for some reason. It has been years since I ran that game. But the other adventures revolved around dealing with gangs and gang wars, Yakuza and syndicate wars. Their personal lives, Ferreting out Flesh trade rings, Ghouls and other beasties. There was one point in the game when there rep got kinda up their and a fixer came to them with some extracurricular jobs to pull. Nothing too ridiculous like megacorp stuff just street level crime and punishment. The tough part was as GM was trying to keep the lid on things so that it didn't just turn into just another bunch of Shadowrunners. One thing I took to doing in the game was have a news report. Since when ever I asked them 'okay you you wake up, what do you do?' They would always say turn on the news so I would write a news report script and read it (Good morning this is the news with your anchors Richard Dickerson III and Maria Alonzo Rodriguez DeLa Cruz) Dick and Mary gave them some laughs as well as informed them of plot threads in my game and how the media spun their shenanigans. Heck I still use the news thing today with my game.

It was a lot of fun, the players loved looking at Shadowrun from a different standpoint. They were always the badasses in black, cybered and magicked out the yahoo. Though the damn near killed me when they went against their Shadowrunners as NPC. They loved it and hated it. Mostly they hid and ran. That was when I pointed out to them. You see how rep works now? You recognized them and you knew their M.O. and you ran like little bitches because you knew you were outclassed.

But over all it was fun. I hope this helps you in your planning. If you have any questions, just ask I have a million and one tips for gaming.

[nezumi]

Keep in mind...

1) Yes, your pay is not enough, unmodified, to support yourself. Your PCs may be straight, but they need to find a way to augment their income.
2) Lone Star is basically the biggest gang on the block. Responding to calls is generally going to be the distraction compared to the real conflict, and that conflict is dealing with the sarge who is jockeying for a promotion by trying to dump slime on the captain, the other squad who has a vendetta against your ork partner, the Bellevue crew who has better support by Corp, and comes by now and again to piss on your head... Plus of course all the competition with KE, Wolverine and the like, who are struggling to do the same job as you, but better, and don't mind sabotaging you to get there.
3) Moral questions. Your boss gives you a picture and says 'find an ork who looks like this so we can charge him with this crime that was reported last week'. Do the PCs try to solve the crime themselves (basically working for free) or do they do what was asked? When they're asked to knock one street gang down a peg so their competitor can get back to killing woman and children, do you do that, or try to sabotage your own mission?

[TBRMInsanity]

I've run several campaigns around non-traditional SR activity, including a Lone Star team (my favourite is still the Doc Wagon Campaign I ran). The problem is not having to change the rules per say but getting around the concept that now your trying to stop the people breaking the law. Here are some adventure hooks you can use:
* There is a SR in progress, there is an unknown number of runners inside, you guess that they have magical assets but your not sure. The site is a mega-corp property and you have permission to remove the SR but any damages will be billed to LS (which means a lot more paperwork for you later on).
* A SR team has head into the Barrens with some milspec gear. The mega-corp that owns the gear wants it back, like yesterday. If you can get it back in one piece there will be a bonus in it for you.
* There has been death threats against <fill in name and position here>. Looks like your pulling guard duty again.
* Street crime is up in sector #, your chief states that the source is tension between to rival gangs. Your tasked with solving the situation.
* There is a riot in progress in sector #! Looks like I will be making hazard pay today...
* A crime boss needs to be transfered from the courthouse to the jail in Fort Worth. You know his buddies are going to try and break him out.

And so forth, be creative. If you get stuck for ideas, think of what activities you do on typical runs that LS show up to and now write up the run from LS POV.

[Mercer]

It also depends on where the PC's are working. If their precinct covers a decent part of town (B or higher), they'll have top gear, support on a moment's notice, HTR on-call, and so on. If they're in a bad part of town (Rating C or D), then they won't be a top priority. They'll have street units on backup, but even these might take some time (depending on how many people need what that day), and they'll have to be monumentally screwed before HQ is even going to consider sending in HTR to bail them out. (Stealing police vehicles in GTA3:SA has a good example of this kind of random police chatter, like: "Officer down! I need an ambulance right away!" "Relax, a**hole, people die every day.")

The Shield I think is a good example of a unit operating in a C/D (or "seedy") neighborhood, so the Strike Team was often called in to be the HTR or SWAT unit because The Barn just didn't have those resources available.

How could I forget this one:

Robocop

[deek]

I'm currently running a campaign where the players are part of a corp's Advanced Research and Marketing department. They run espionage missions against other corps or do some internal cleanup, when the need arises.

One of the GM benefits of this, and the LoneStar campaign if you give the PCs jobs to run, is that you don't have to worry about them saying no. This is what they are paid to do, so they just run the job they are assigned to. You can even make their job pay for their lifestyle, so PCs don't have to worry about money.

Now, the upper level stuff, which I am running, pays for high lifestyle and gives them a budget for each mission that they get to plan resources and the like. Its a fun twist, as the player don't really get paid any nuyen, unless there is something residual in a mission.

For a GM, these types of campaigns are nice, because you don't have to worry about the players trying to accumulate nuyen and you can reward them with training, implants and promotions from within...change of pace, but quite fun.

[kzt]

I can't imagine that the players will take too well to have some suit ruling them like a despotic tyrant, particularly if he's an 80's type evil yuppie, and he will be. The other cops will be slightly seedy, the more experienced they are, the more cynical. Then some suit will be all over the players to keep their paper-work neat, maintain a good corporate image. (The players will just LOVE that if they haul in some murderous thug after a big, messy fight, only to be written up for getting muddy and portraying a bad image. Bwahahaha!)

Lt. Martin Castillo from Miami Vice is an interesting version of this.

[Naysayer]

Oh, I don't know. There's plenty of mayhem in most cop shows and movies. I could easily see cops having to deal with insect shamans. And raids are similar enough to sneaking through high-security arcologies, especially once the shooting starts.

Oh yeah, absolutely, but a) I was mostly talking about regular grunt-work; and b) there's still two facts to consider: Regular cops, and for that matter, homicide detectives or CSI labcoats or other popular cop-show protagonists don't regularly go on raids. SWAT teams do that. But, SWAT teams are a poor choice for a campaign, because, even in the effed up sprawl, most of THEIR jobs consists of twiddling their thumbs and waiting for shit to hit the fan (plus I don't know how many hours daily on the range etc, also not a thrilling campaign motive IMO).
And even then, your SWAT team will hardly ever go and raid an arc, because the guys running that arc have their own SWAT teams and will never allow a bunch of heavily armed goons from another corporation waltzing all over their turf.

Don't get me wrong, there can be plenty of soymeat to a Lonestar campaign, there are simply some "realities" of police work, and the Sixth World to be considered which put a limit on certain things you can do with the game, and which we usually consider a given in "regular" games.

[Bull]

Not sure it's been mentioned, but I'd also add "The WIre" to that list. Also, "The Unusuals" was pretty good, especially if you want slightly quirky. It got cancelled though, so there's only like 10 episodes of it floating around.

All in all, the way to do a Law Enforcement game is to only pay a little attention to "real life" law enforcement, and run the game wuth "TV and Movie" cops in mind. Cause in those, the PC's of the show end up involved in ever major case, can almost freely break the rules to one extent or another, always are in the right place at the right time, etc. RL police work if boring as shit 99% of the time (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Something to remember is that Lonestar doesn't pay their officers enough to live on so by necessity all cops are gonig to be dirty to one extent or another to pay the bills.

What?

[Method]

... Donuts.
... Donuts.
... Donuts.

Ahem... thats "Crime Fighting Pastries", if you please. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Aravanna: There are two good "Police Station" maps floating around that you might find useful. Here is mine and here is Knasser's (his has more crunchy bitz...)

[Ravor]

Yeah, if I remember correctly the printed salaries for Lonestar was less then it took to buy a Low Lifestyle, ala Third Edition.

Remember people Lonestar is not even close to what First World Nations considers "police", they are nothing more than a legalized gang who can and probably will beat you bloody for "dissing" them ... provided that you don't look rich that is.