Solo Campaign, 1 gm 1 player game advice please. Options

[sunnyside]

I've very much enjoyed the solo games I've GMed. It really lets you shift from a "run of the week" approach to a more epic novel/movie esque plotline because the spotlight is just on them.

Is your wife new to SR? If so I've had success with starting people out in the barrens. This allows them to start off ignoring the matrix and magic aspects of the game for a while, more or less, and build up to them. It also makes it so the player doesn't have to be an expert in the world or ways of Shadowrun and can learn.

In one game I had the character be an almost spoiled college kid that had never known anything outside their very nice corporate enclave. Their father was involved in...certain things, and so they had expended funds to get the kid some cyber upgrades for their personal safety (note skillwires are popular in the corps and let you turn an up and coming wageslave into a pretty able combatant very easily). The game started with the character getting grabbed in an extraction and the plane going down over the barrens. Throwing them into a wold of coffin motels and fighting for a cheap comlink in the Rats Nest.

From there they were able to build up NPC relations and engage in some runs while interfacing with the "main" plot.

I wouldn't be shy about having an "ending" for the campaign, with the idea of taking a break for a bit afterwards and considering anything after a sequel. I find this tightens up your writing very nicely.


In the other it was an Amerindian adept driven away from his tribe into the barrens. In this one the high level plot had to do with the Horrer that leg to them being driven away, but again initially they were dealing with more immediate concerns and learning about the shadowrun world so they can be competent in runs.