I've started up a new SR4 "campaign" with a brand new roup of players, and I'd like some help.

Here's the Premise:
The game uses normal SR4 rules, setting, all that jazz. The setup is that the characters are all fairly new to the "crime scene" and have been doing various illegal jobs for a handful of months now. They are all connected through a run-down low-budjet filmhouse in the Redmond Barrens, each character in their own way frequenting or influencing this esatblishment. They all have similar criminal interests, and are al fairly green.

The focus of the campaign is ultimately a metaplot-free series of unconnected adventures, much like the Ghost in the Shell "Standalone Complex" series of anime, or the old Aeon Flux shorts. My goal is to have each session be a self-contained adventure, with an increased focus on Task-Completion and Information Gathering over character development and storytelling. As the game is set to be run only once or twice a month, I want to keep it free from metaplot and long-term conspiracies.

Anyway, I would greatly appreciate any help in designing one-shot single-session adventures for a group of new SR4 players.

Suggestions?

The GM Screen comes with a bunch of one-shot ideas, in case you want printed suggestions rather than those from us. Alternatively, I need to pimp my runs on the fly generator in situations like these. It uses the rules from the companion book to the GM Screen to generate runs using random numbers and tables of events. It might help you out a little.

Anyway, my favorite one-shot is something I term an embarassment run. The sponsor wants a specific public official or celebrity publically embarassed. The sponsor knows this person will be in town in the near future but doesn't know his or her schedule. Thus, the players have to (a) get the schedule, (b) determine which event to crash and © determine how best to embarass the person without getting arrested by the event staff.

The hard part about running this little adventure is covering the bases on the target's schedule. If you leave too many options for the players to choose from, you'll almost have to improvise some of the details about each event. Alternatively, if you leave the schedule a little sparse, it may seem like you're restricting things a little too much and not representing a true-to-life celebrity's day-to-day life.

Last time I ran this adventure, the team made sure that the target ended up having to drive himself from one event to another by hijacking the original driver. Then, they slipped the SR3 drug that simulates alcohol (burn?) into his drink and let him drive away. One DUI later and some juciy photos annonymously taken and delivered to local media outlets by the team's contacts and we had one embarassed public official.

It's a nice run to break the pace of the normal high risk action/adventure style runs that so often end up being the bread and butter of a shadowrun game.

You can get pdfs of the older adventures pretty cheap, and almost all of them are unconnected one shots.

At the risk of tooting my own proverbial horn, my Shadowrun resources page is at your disposal. It includes program cards for hackers and a number of cheat sheets to make various procedures easy for new players.

The late 3rd Ed book. Mr Johnsons black book had a run generation table near the back of it.

I've found it useful to start rolling up a run then my brain takes over and I tinker until I get somthing good.

Hell, the thing can trigger ideas just by rolling on it.