When starting a new SR campaign, one player mentioned he liked the setting but didn’t like the unconnected feel of most of our previous campaign where we’d just drift from runs to runs without an over-arching plot. Most of the other players were supportive of this POV.

It took the comment to heart and tried to come up with something. I need advice and feedback.

Some (Simplified) background :

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Based on the Threats 2 entry bout Ares and bug spirit.

Ares captures queens spirits in 56, studied them in a secret base in a ghost town near Edmonton in Amerind territory. Few people knew of this project. A guy named James Violett was put in charge and a mage named Lydia Harrington was head scientist. Called it Project Extermination.

They developped and perfected Strain III bacteria thanks in large part to the project and Ares cleaned out Chicago. Then they made a fortune selling their extermination services and benefitting from positive PR.

Then the rational people at Ares said ; let’s shut the project down. We got what we needed out of it, now it’s just a liability that could destroy what we’ve built. This was around 2060.

But James Violett wasn’t happy ; this secret project didn’t lead to better and bigger opportunities for him so he decided to hang on. He pitched the idea to develop security critter possessed by fleshfrom spirit and 100% under control. Some people listened to him, the project continued.

Then the runner you read about in Threat 2 stumble on the project. I dated that incident as 2063. The files goes out on Shadowland. Ares Intelligence hears of it, the word trickles down to the few people aware of Project Extermination and they get into a hissy fit ; Those who wanted the project shut down back in 60 get to say ‘I told you so’. The cost / benefit crowd get their way and the project is shut down

But James Violett anticipated that turn of event and had started working on Plan B as soon as he felt the project could eventually be shut down in late 58. He recruited Erin Caroll, an elven genius hacker and accountant who was criminally underused elsewhere in Ares. He transferred him on the project and got him to funnel away part of the budget in secret accounts. In 5 years, Caroll defrauded Ares for over 250 millions. He and Violett, with Harrington onboard as well as a few key collaborator, set up a second lab in secret in Albany, New Hampshire, under the cover of a second string rehab clinic for drug users.

As the personnel of the base was evacuated, one of the personnel transport blew up and 16 people, including Carroll, Harrington and Violett, were presumed dead, their body impossible to ID.

Of course, the secret inner circle at Ares responsible for authorizing the secret project and now shutting it down are not by nature naive people. They assumed the worst and felt this was an extraction and that Violett would turn up somewhere.

In truth, Violett and Caroll had accessed the RAD at Ares and tracked down one of the very best Shadowrunner operating in Boston ; An Ork named Tony Falcone. He orchestrated the extraction and then joined Violett as his chief of security.

The experiments then continued in Albany and started to focus as more on humans then on critters. The cybernetic control on the fleshforms becomes far more refined. They decided to field test their creation by using Falcone’s contact in the Boston shadows. They’d take on runs, usually bloody affairs.

Late in 2068 the money is running out but the product is ready so Violett is trying to find customers for his creatures, focusing on African and Chiense warlords.

But that’s where things go wrong. A mage with the power to pierce the masking of Violett’s pets and the credibility to have his warning taken seriously is a witness of one of the last field test.

Boston authorities call in… Ares. KE sends Firewatch teams in Boston and an investigation begins. But the Inner Circle hear of this, suspect Violett and lauch their own parallel investigation, with the knowledge that Violett and Carroll are involved and the intuition that whatever assets Violett has in Boston must have been lifted from Ares own database. Thanks to that headstart they eventually track down Violett’s lair in Albany before the KE investigation can get anywhere.

They send a ‘Dark Team’. In my campaign, that would be a commando team that isn’t officially afiliated to Ares but inf act work exclusively for them

The Dark team gets in position in Albany and begins their assault on the clinic. But somehow, Violett knew of the attack minutes before it was launched and he unleashed all his creature while fleeing with his teams in tunnels.

The Fleshform were somehow rendered berserk and overwhelm the dark team, killing everybody, before descending into town and killing everyone they can. The Sheriff call KE. They quarantine the town, flood it with Strain III and move in. It takes 36 hours. Every fleshform is killed, and so are 787 citizens albany (out of abou1100). Firewatch discovers the bodies of the dark team but not knowing who they are they turn them over to the UCAS when asked. Smelling a fish, a UCAS investigator decide against protocol to go immediately to the press for help in ID the dark team corpse, feeling that he needs to take an eventual cover up by speed.

The deniability factor of a dark team isn’t as deep as that of runners ; faced with the horror of the situation, two wives of the deceased dark team come forward and before long it is known that somehow Ares sent an irregular commando instead of calling on their own Firewatch team.

Scandal. A closed audience commission is set up. DA Zayra Melendez represents the governement and she uncovers basically what I just typed.

Ares is fined heftily for its role in the affair but the full truth is never disclosed. UCAS needs Ares too much. Ares apologize publicly for erring in their judgement, sets up a fund for the Albany victims. As for Violett ; his role is never made public. It is demonstrated during the hearing that his organization is likely out of money and definitely out of the country. No longer an immediate threat, arrest warrants are issued discreetly but a massive manhunt isn’t undertaken. Months pass, businessman and politician have moved on.

Except Zayra lost a cousin in the Albany incident. And she isn’t the only one not willing to let matter rests. In her investigation she found many person who contributed to bringling light to the affair. Every PC in the campaign has been hurt, deeply and personnally, by Violett’s action. They are willing top do whatever it takes to get justice. Or vengeance.

As the campaign start, a contact of Zayra in Seattle, a fixer names Smiley, has a picture of Violett taken at Dante’s Inferno talking with an unknown dwarf. The team moves on this lead. Trouble is they don’t have enough money to press the investigation so they’ll also need to fin work to finance their vendetta.


Paralel to this vendetta, most of the runs the PC will do for purely monetary gain will involve the election race or the upcoming mob war. So for personal reasons, the PC will tackle a world where everything is just business and for professional reasons they will be involved in worlds where everything is personal.

Okay, so that’s basics

PCs :

1 - A gaelic adepts from Boston. He was a hang around of a Irish street gang where his brother and girl friend lived full time. The gang was wiped out in a conflict with real estate developper ; But those who did the job in a very gruesome way were Violett's creatures. It was one of their test run.

The PC is a jack of all trade, only really an expert with his weapon focus, but he can fight, lie, infiltrate... Aside from hacking and magic, there isn't many common SR activities for which he can't muster at least 6 dice and he has a good edge to back it up. The player knows enough gaelic to occasionnaly swear in that language. Funny.

2 - There is a mage who worked on the project prior to 63 (Violett first disappearance). He his disgusted with his contribution on the project. On top of that, when Violett fled in 63, it casts doubts on the rest of the team who remained behind. It broke his career, he was eventually fired and his family disintegrated as a result, ending with the death of his daughter who suffered froma rare genetic disease just a few months ago.

He is a scientist ; Medecine, biology, Cybertechnolgy... He has passing to expert familiarity with all domains involved in the experiments.

3 - Number 3 is the only survivor from the dark team that was slaughtered in Albany. He was wounded and didn't participate. He learned of the death of all his brother in arms while in the hospital. He quickly offered his services to Zayra.

He's the combat specialist. Top notch with pistols, very good with long arms, very fast and reasonably tough. Just enough social not to be an hindrance. He can do an okay job as the wheelman with 10 dice or so in a car.

There is a fourth player who will be pack from Peru soon. Hoping for a hacker.

Pretty cool, actually. But you're putting a lot of detail into what's already happened, and in my opinion, that's what you can gloss over. "A team of Ares scientists experimenting with controlling flesh-form insect spirits as guard animals go renegade, steal a bunch of money and the data, and are now loose in the world, experimenting away." That's enough backstory.

What you need to concentrate on is what's happening now, what's happening to the PCs.

Also, between psychometry, implanted tags, DNA, dental records, etc., etc., the idea that the transport blew up and made the bodies impossible to identify isn't washing. It's easier to say that Violet's group hacked in and editing the data regarding the identifications, so that the computer record reads that it was their bodies.

But really, if a transport carrying sixteen valuable scientists suddenly blew up so completely as to kill all sixteen of them, the investigation would be extremely thorough. Ares counterintelligence is not going to believe that that transport, carrying exactly the guys who knew the most about this super-secret black-bag project, just sorta exploded real good on accident. In fact, Ares counterintel probably wouldn't even put those sixteen guys on the same transport, just to avoid precisely this situation.

Good back story. Now what you need to do is sketch out where the campaign is going to go from there. Looks like your setting up for Violett to be your main villain so you should plan out how your PC's are going to thwart his plot(s) and close in on him for their revenge.

1st session :

Professionally : After establishing credentials, they got a job to sink a smal cargo befor it unload. Did so.

The ship is owned by the Ghost Cartel and the client was to be either Mafia or Vory (Decision still pending).

Johnson wwas forking for : Still undecided. Yaks, if the issue is pressed before I can make another choice.

Vendetta : IDed the guy that Violett was talking to in the picture. Thanks to a rat's nest contact, found his old commlink. Name is Sammuel Holstein

2nd session :

Professionally : Sabotaged a elven policlub ability to lead rally for the next few weeks (Destroyed servers, database and current inventory).

Johnson was working for Brackhaven

Vendetta : Tracked down Sammuel Holstein. Info obtained ; Violett was trying to track down a small business whose tech was use in his project prior to 2063. That business (4 engineers) was financed by Novatech. It disappeared from the map just before the 2064 crash.

Investigating the business, located in a part of the Barrens that used to be in Touristville but was reclaimed by the Barrens as Touristville shrank back after the crash.

Ghouls were killed, daughter of one of the engineer was located : turns out all the engineers disappeared just before the crash.

They were working on brain / cyber interfacing and tried to improve it to the point where you could efficiently and subtly reprogram the brain (ostensibly to cure various phobia and mental ill ness but...). At the time it was cutting edge though hardly new territory. But their systems worked very well for Violett's project.

They 3 clients ; Ares (obviously Violett), Novatech (their financer) and a third mysterious outfit : Ghost In the Machine.

They'll find out that GITM was a front operated by Pax. Initially oin the behalf of Deus, in the end on her own behalf.

They need to track down these guys to pick up the track of Violett.

They had 3 main clients ; Novatech (financer)

What about now?

Violett and co are based in Hong Kong and Chinese mainland right now. That’s right, I want to maxmize Runner Havens!

They had indeed run out of fund at the end of 2068 so now they need a patron. They are using a chinese warlord.

How does he stand toward Lung ? Puppet or antagonist? Still undefined.

Current plans ? Developping an army for his Sponsor. But he’s looking into using his technology to take control of key people in the warlords entourage and eventually the warlord himself.

Queen Spirit ? I’m waiting for Street Magic to ID the specific Queen or Queens and how his control is working over them. At this point Violett is still in control or at least think he is. In the future… Undecided.

Now that the engineer ot Inferon are missing, Violett will bypass them and go straight to the genius mathematician who developped ‘Math of the brain’ theories and is behind most of Inferon applied discoveries.

That guy is Freddy Huang, brother to Sherman Huang. Enter Renreku.

By investigating on the Ghost In the Machine trail, the PC will get knee deep in technomancers and eventually learn of Freddy Huang.

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Obviously there is some tie into Deus and Pax. Both are dead, right? Still skimming through System Failure. But some sort fall out from the Crash ought to figure in that segment.

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Brackhaven is going to send the PC in some more anti-elven run. Eventually it's gonna blow in the PCs face and some elves will launch a vendetta of their own against the PC, an irony that hopefully won't be lost on them.

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I don't have much of a clue of in what direction the mob war will take the PCs.

Just know I want to involve the triads somewhere because the PC are eventually going to Hong Kong and so obviously enough I want that element to carry over.

My campaigns have always been, start out with some basic missions, with no underlying "major plot" and see where the players take it...I have put a lot of work, in the past, of some grand plots and whatnot and know several GMs that do the same...but then when the players stray, you get to a point the the GM tries to railroad them back in...

A decent GM will be able to come up with some storylines for a new group after a couple of "stock" sessions...so, don't think so hard on all this stuff before the players actually start playing...at least that is the way I would go.

Taking this route, really makes the GMing role more fulfilling, because you get to delve into a story being created by the players, instead of having everything figured out before the start of a campaign...I mean, you can have the backdrop and whatnot, but I would let the players decide by their in-game stuff, just where you are going to take them.

My bad, I misunderstood, then. It sounded like you were gearing towards more of a 90% developed plot, then run the players through it. I am more of a develop plot points and keep the players 95% in those, but everything else around it is 95% freeform...

Granted, I really don't plan anything, plot-wise, until after a few sessions to see where the players are going, but after that, about everything is intertwined with the underlying plot, except on the occaisional fluff run that's just about fun...

It sounds like you have a lot of background you want to work into the campaign...it sounds like your players are already on a chase and you have several points where sabatoging Violett and Co. could happen...besides just fleshing that out into runs, I am not sure what other kind of help you want.