What is your SR Game like? Options

[Gomez]

So what is your Shadowrun game like? Is it just a string of unconnected runs or a layered game with several plots running at the same time? What kind of 'flavor' does your game have? Military? Corp Espionage? Heavy Magical Influence?

I would like to know!

[Kagetenshi]

Layered, typically, but with frequent disconnected runs sprinkled about.

~J

[Velocity]

A continuous, layered game with three major plotlines and recurring NPCs. There will occasionally be an unrelated run (they are freelancers, after all) but 90% of what the PCs do ties into one of the aforementioned storylines.

Regarding flavour, I'm inspired by movies like Ronin: there a long periods of tension, planning and surveillance punctuated by short bursts of intense violence.

[Nyxll]

My games basically have the same team, or relative players kicking around. They are usually unrelated runs, with a bunch of familiar npc and villans that managed to plague them, so they have familiar elements that tie the atmosphere together ... but the runs are usually unrelated. Sometimes I will have parallel plots that tie things together.

There was a corp sponsored cyber modified gang called the lords of electric that plagued us for about a month.

[Fox1]

Large and mythic over-arching theme in the background that will cover over a decade of game time before it's done. I'm about 2 years game time into it.

The players are of course key in the outcome, but have yet to realized much of the big picture. In the meantime they are trying to get-by and do as much good as they can.

[Conskill]

Depends on my mood when I design the campaign, though I've found intricately layered plots take too long and rarely see fruition. Currently running a pretty linear, plot-dominated campaign.

I prefer corporate stealthers punctuated by the occasional run of extreme violence as my happy medium. For my current campaign, it's been an even mix of play styles connected by the theme of moral ambiguity. Their Johnson has been placing them in screwed-up situations to see if they can make "a Human decision." As of last night, she's satisified.

Aimming for "reasonably epic" -- no Immortal Elves, no Horrors, Deus isn't paying them a visit and Great Dragons aren't stopping at their doorstep. But they are in the heart of their own little screwed-up war between two forces bigger than them.

[Mugzug]

Right now it is multi-layered right in the middle of the Corp Wars. I have thrown in about 5 'big' plots their way that my group is involved in to mostly a small to medium degree. Of course the majority of the plots involve dragons, corporations, and even criminal organizations. I used the Supernova module in 'First Run' as their 'break' into the big time. If they mess up it is back to those street level runs!

They have gone from Space, to the Jungle, to dark swamps, prisons, Downtown Seattle Urban Runs, the park, parachuting out of airplanes, abandoned subway stations in the barrens, and that list is going to keep growing. I find changing the environments a lot and introducing unexpected elements keep my players on their toes and keeps it exciting.

Also playing the aspects of each area into combat is interesting. For example Kingsgate in the Barrens is full of 'dot-com' busted office buildings. One of my players had the 6 point hunted flaw, by Renraku. When the Red Samurai ambushed them from office buildings (after being tipped off by a Bum who saw the said player) it was nuts. It was like downtown Iraq with the players having little to no clue where the gunfire was coming from.

[pragma]

When I run games it tends to be a intense, short, single-plot campaign with occasional side runs and very occasional hooks into future campaigns (though players tend to provide those themselves -- gotta love the hunted flaw).

Themes tend to include the underworld, the interaction between man and machine (just who is in control of what) and occasional heavy magic. Just haven't gotten much mileage out of military and corporate campaigns.

[Grinder]

A campaign with multiple threads the group is trying to follow. Right now we are chasing a blood mage, try to convince a free spirit to do us a favor and avoid the attention of the triads. And still have some runs for different Mr.Js.

The characters are a wild mix of ex-cops, gangers, ex-conmen and one ork who is tied to his huge family, so he tries to balance between being a criminal and daddys good boy.

It's a lot of fun everytime we play. :)

[Wintermancer]

[Synner]

[Sharaloth]

Hmm, very high power, very heavy magic game. Currently my PC's are in the middle of the second of three major plot arcs that connect and lead into each other. For instance the driving events behind arc 2 were instigated by some side events from arc 1, and arc 3 will bring all of the elements of both preceeding arcs into one huge climactic endgame.

The tone is epic, and the players know it. Powerful NPC's recur constantly, GD's stop by regularly (though of all the GD's the players have thus far encountered, only one has been a welcome sight, and the others tend to be at the very best moderately antagonistic), I only just introduced IE's to the game, but the players have been dealing with beings in the same power bracket for a while now, so they don't mind too much. The characters are now extremely important to the fate of the world, but they're only just now discovering the depths of that importance. The characters themselves range from a Deltaware laden Street Sam (with one peice of ware beyond Delta) with 6 Essence to a Drake Adept who once owned a Force 12 Weapon Focus to a Free Spirit.

Plots are always interconnected, and EVERYTHING comes back to the single driving force behind the entire campaign, which is a large and VERY powerful magical artifact that has a kind of One Ring effect on everyone and jacks the Mana Level up by centuries every time it's used.

Yeah, we play big, but that's the way we like it.

[DocMortand]

I tend to have various arcs where stuff is happening and they get involved in the big time - currently the group is enormous (available pool of some 15-16 characters, 3 per person - they cycle as they learn abilities/stats) So far they've shut down a bug hive and got trapped in the Shutdown just as it happened - and rescued Peregrine, which started the Resistance. So they're heavy into the Deus storyline.

I tend to follow the existing timeline to a certain extent, and have major events happen around the characters that may or may not affect them. 2061 is coming up...joy :)

My campaign is high powered, but more on the cyber end than magic (although that will change soon, as the shaman/mages in the party are initiate 5 and getting higher).

NPCs range from a force 12 Free Spirit Johnson, to the forces of Deus, to upper echelon chars such as Dodger...and down to simple cult members and gang members.

[Patrick Goodman]

I guess I'm really not too typical of a Shadowrun player since my games tend to look like this.

[Clyde]

I run games in the middle ground. There are big events involving immortal elves, AIs and Great Dragons (oh my) but the PC's aren't involved directly. Instead, the PCs are involved in the little consequences - like the ripples in a pond when you throw in a stone. The PCs generally don't know what's going on, and runs can seem totally disconnected, but there's a logical purpose behind it all somewhere. PCs tend to be of middling power levels - not too hard and not too weak.

[Sicarius]

I haven't had a actually runner team in awhile, so I play alot of one on one games with one player. Which means that I have more control since he's running with NPC team mates, making the player more paranoid, since he really can't trust whose on his team.

Generally the games are low magic, saved for show-downs, or important story elements. The Dragons and other high powered NPCs from canon exist, but are rarely directly involved, although they may be backing the johnson, or more likely backing the group backing the Johnson.

[hahnsoo]

Our games vary between campaigns... some campaigns are street-level, some are high-level power-fests. Some involve world-spanning conspiracies, and others involve just the machinations of mom-and-pop low-rated corps. Most of them are retired by the time the group earns 200 Karma (although one particular campaign spawned three sequel campaigns, one of which involved the adopted or real children of the original runners as high school-age gangers). The roster of players changes all the time, depending on who is busy and who is in school and general scheduling mayhem.

A few things are consistent, though:
1) Individual runs typically go as long as 1 to 2 six-hour sessions, and if we go 2 sessions, it's considered "dragged out and too long". Our gaming time is limited, and we like to keep it short and sweet.
2) Much of the time before we actually start playing is filled with Real Life anecdotes about how idiotic we were in Middle School/High School/College, or something stupid happening in the World/City/Workplace/Neighborhood/Stargate/Battlestar.
3) A song will be sung at one point, much to the dismay of a certain player (right now, we like to annoy her with Journey's "Don't Stop Believin').
4) Awful quotes, both IC and OOC, will be made (Last night had one of the guys saying something about our female PC's "wide, childbearing hips". If she ever gets within striking range, he's SO dead).
5) The whiteboard will be abused at some point (either a physical whiteboard or a digital one).

All in all, it's a fun time to be had.