The campaign model most supported in Shadowrun is, naturally, the professional shadowrunning team. Get your jobs from a Mr Johnson, do the job, get paid, upgrade gear, do it all over again.

But there are variants out there, and also entirely different models altogether. A traditional campaign could be based around working for a particular employer, or one run can lead naturally to the next (or both: see Harlequin). The group might have a particular enemy (taking down Mitsuhama, one onion-layer at a time).

My game is based around gang life in Redmond. A more civilised, neighbourhood defence-oriented gang. The shadowrunning aspects come in with regard to occasionally earning some extra nuyen. Later on, the PCs will be driven out of their home and need to unravel the conspiracy, which will involve much shadowrunning action. However, most of the 'runs' will be self-motivated, with few Mr Johnsons present.

In the past, I ran a cop game, based around Lone Star. That was fun too.

So what are your campaign models? Are your characters mercenaries for hire, sailing where the nuyen blows them? Do they find targets, hit them themselves, then fence the goods afterwards? Do they have an aim? Are they shadowrunners at all?

Tell us all about it.

We tried a gang level game, but having just come off a game where we had been ex-special forces, we just couldn't get into the right mindset. Our gang operated far to smoothly and efficiently.

Otherwise it's mostly just the usual SR oriented game.

My preferred model is building the entire "campaign" around the characters.

I have the players make characters, and then I get them working together. Now, unlike a lot of GMs, when I say "working together" I don't mean "with no problems and they love each other, and they function perfectly", I mean "I get them all working on a job together". Then, I let them feel each other out, get to know each other, and we go from there.

To make this work, I make heavy use of NPCs. What I mean, is I have the players build plenty of possible story tidbits into their characters through who they have as contacts. Also, during the game, the way I run contacts is much looser, and in my opinion more realistic, than the "pay 5000¥ and call once a week. Anyone they meet and spend more than a few seconds talking to is a potential contact, if they choose to follow it up, just like in RL. These things help take what normally might be a "mage and a sammy" and turn them into real people, and in my experience, the more like real people you can make the characters, the more likely that the story will write itself.

Also, since my approach is to make the characters as realistic (as people) as possible, it precludes everyone being a "professional" shadowrunner. In my games, semantically everyone that chooses to run the shadows to the exclusion or in place of getting a "real job" is a "professional shadowrunner", because running the shadows is indeed their profession. For example, a "runner bar" isn't where "hard core professional awesome dudes that are totally hyper successful runners hang out", it's where you can go and expect that you'll have a higher than average chance of finding a fixer, other runners, etc.

Shadowrunner isn't some moniker that you aspire to, it's just what you are by default. So a character might say "hey, I hear a bunch of runners hang out at X", but they certainly wouldn't have any awe in their voice. Rep is rep, and there are different levels (not mechanical or codified) of how "professional" any given runner might be, but there's nothing like "ganger -> amatuer -> shadowrunner" or anything.

Other than this heavy focus on the player/character wants and desires, and the taking the reverence away from the label "shadowrunner", it's really not all that different than any SR game. They still get jobs from fixers, do them, and get paid. There's just a lot more "hey, my buddy needs us to do him a favor, and he can't pay much, are any of you interested" and a lot less "get job, run, get paid, buy gear, get job, run, get paid, buy gear". Jobs come from everywhere, from anyone, and at any time.

Also, I have campaign in quotes because with this style of game, usually if there's an overarching plot at all, it's very loose, and the players may or may not ever become involved with it, based on character choices.

On saturday we played our first session of a new campaign using what you would probably class as non-tradition. It was actually our second session getting together. The first session was for creating characters. Basically I put it on the players to define the campaign. I got them to write down 3 core motivations or beliefs that they wanted their characters to be about. Then we jostled and worked on those till we had a common thread. We also narrowed down where in the world we'd be playing.

The result was a bunch of PCs with a vengance against Ares playing in Hong Kong. I don't know if you've read Runner's Havens but in 2070 (we're playing SR4) their is a loose anti-corp/government reform movement called 9x9.

At the start of this last session a player volunteered their character to be basically a defacto 9x9 operator. They might not actually see themselves as 9x9, or call themselves that yet. But from the outside people would likely apply that label to them. Play kicked off with a feeler I just made up on the spot calling him and tipping him off to a clandestine Ares shipment happening later that day that the PC might be interested in disrupting and asking for payment for supplying info. Payment was to have a frank and open discussion with the feeler's sister's landlord about tenent's rights.

So their first run has no fixer, no Johnson, and no budget. This is likely to be the norm, we'll see. I'm currently working on getting the session logs ready for putting up on a blog, hopefully for tonight.

I'm also using a system of rules I worked out to replace tracking explicit nuyen balances, Contact rules, and Lifestyle costs. A lot of it is loosely adapted from the Circles and Resources in Burning Wheel, but with changes to bring it down to just one Attribute (Clout) and have it fit better with Shadowrun, obviously using a different dice system. If you are familiar with the game at all you'll also notice that we're using campaign creation concepts from there as well. This provides rules for, among other things, adhoc contacts.

P.S. This isn't entirely unlike what eidolon is talking about. Very PC driven, and as such requires a lot of flexibility.

I like getting a new group of either brand new or barely used characters together in to a group and have them do a few regular runs before I start tying them together. Introduce a number of NPC contacts ,build up the folks they know, get some locations in there, and then start building.

As an example, in our current game , started with a group of characters that had been on separate runs before (avg was 3), then brought them all in together in the same city. A few were from Seattle on the run, one from Boston, had pissed up a few vamps, and one lived in New Orleans where the new game is based.

I think an important part of a game is the things that happen between the shadowruns. Build up plot points off of npc's that they know, conflicts, old enemies, or that good ol' entrepreneurial spirit. Let the characters do some self motivated things, and just wing it. It makes for a fuller game IMO.

heck, while you're at it, could you explain a few thigns about Burning Wheel, perhaps just the few things you've brought over. I know for example there's a system for spells gone wrong, but that's about it, and it seems to have some interesting things for bringing in to SR.

As a player in Blakkies game, I'll pipe in my 2 . So far I quite like the setup. my character is an elvin face/mage who works as a company man for the reminants of CATco.

My only real concern with the alternet nuyen system is it can make larger purchaces VERY difficult. With a clout of 3 I can buy anything under 500 without batting an eye but if I want something that's 520 there is a very real possibility that I could semipermenantly loose a point of clout. Havn't had any big purchaces to make yet though so perhaps my concern is overstated. I'll know better when it comes time to actually roll the dice.

On the other hand I love the idea of using clout for contacts. Especially as a face it lets me hunt for contacts as I need them on a case by case basis. It was made more interesting by the fact that when I was doing some legwork I botched the roll and the guy I met up with tried to report my intrest in the shipment to his boss. Fortunatly I passed my perception roll, kidnapped him, and managed to disuade him from ratting us out but it adds an interesting double edged element to any meeting. Right now it's obvious that my character is fairly new to the shadow scene in HK by the fact that he's looking for information from some pretty poor sources but hopefully after I manage a few reliable connections I'll be able to go to my meets without quite as much paranoia.

could you explain "clout" a bit?

So basically clout replaces charisma for getting items or legwork to find people then?

I did leave out a few details in that short synopsis.

For example Clout can also be used for other legwork activities such as trying track down someone that might not want to talk to you. Such as finding who it was that keyed your car outside the Dante's Inferno. Someone could be looking for you for similar reasons. In both cases you roll an Opposed Clout Test with modifiers and potentially Helping dice from other tests such as Shadowing or Knowledge Tests. There are also options for using Skills other than Etiquette for that. But if you are using say Intimidate there could be some blowback, especially if you fail.

But how freaking S.L.Jackson/Dirty Harry cool is that that you use Intimidate+Clout to go around kicking in doors and teeth till you find the mutha' that did you wrong.

It's interesting, I like it. Now you said that the build goes up to 3 at chargen. Can it be raised the same as normal attributes? Different cost perhaps, or do you jsut factor in street cred after chargen? I'm interested in trying this out so I'm just looking for some details.

Some of the very high levels might not be appropriate for the tone of some campaigns, so the GM might have a ceiling set for tone. But generally it goes basically as high as you are willing to pay. But it gets very costly because of the triangular series. For example Clout 4 cost 5+10+15+20= 50BP. That's a really big chunk for a standard 400BP character. But if you were playing 500BP characters it's fairly feasible for a specialized face character, you might even be willing to lay out the 75 BP for Clout 5.

Sorry, what I meant was, after character creation, once play has begun, can clout be raised, and if so, what is the cost? Or do you just add in street cred after char gen?

which is why, dispite being the team face my character only has a clout of 3. I had it at 4 but it was too big a sacrifice to make, and I needed the BP's for other stuff. Though if I end up tweaking the character (due to the issues surrounding trying to boss around and archangel and not getting turned into a piller of salt) and lowering my summoning skills I might just scrape together an extra 20 BP if blakkie will allow it.

As for raising clout, it's really difficult. You can only raise clout with the bonus dice you recive for completeing a run and it has to be a pretty substancial number to permanently affect your clout, sorta like permanently buying a lifestyle I guess. I think blakkie is still trying to work out the specifics himself so I'm not sure if he can give you an answer. In short though, no, you can't raise clout with Karma like other attributes.

1 - 20,000
2 - 100,000
3 - 1/2 million
4 - 2 million

Or as a special longterm goal accomplished. Conditions may vary, talk to your GM for details.

Keep in mind that Clout 5 is the equivalent of a permanent Luxury Lifestyle and for him a 2000 suit is like buying a pack of gum. Clout 6 can be used for a new Lifestyle level I added, Opulent. Batman has roughly a Clout 6.

You need a 10,000,000 payout in game to raise your Clout to a 5, or raising the Clout to a 5 can be a special BIG arc goal from your GM. The chart I have in the document currently doesn't even list the price for Clout 6, but if you extrapolated the chart it would be 50,000,000. That's like taking over a small company to get that.

As you can see a lot of these would likely require the team to work together to get that sort of Clout for the one of them.

Clout sounds interesting, but it also sounds like the complete opposite of how I handle a lot of the stuff you use it for.

I dump a lot of mechanics when it comes to running contacts, people in general (I don't use the enemy rules at all, for example), etc., so using clout would just be replacing one set of mechanics that I don't use with another.

Well, my bread and butter stuff I usually do is try to set up a tactical challenge for the PCs and not tailor the content of the game to the character backgrounds at all. I believe that the world is more believable if it exists independently of the PCs rather than if everything seems tailored specifically to help them out or challenge them or seem important to them. And usually I throw in lots of ninjas to the point of annoyance after a few years. I can't help it. It's a medical condition.

I've experienced some truly wonderful custom campaigns, though. Some friends of mine ran a few military campaigns and we had fun with those. We've done a couple of Steampunk campaigns set in the 1800s so I busted out my modern Chinese history l33t skills and helped set up a British-in-Shanghai-treaty-port-pwnage style campaign. Victorian steampunk was always a lot of fun...one time I ran an angsty ninja with a short kimono and a ratty loincloth in such a campaign and always had him doing retarded ninja-ey things, like hiding on principle even at inappropriate times (clinging prone to the top of the train instead of riding inside like a normal person) and standing around angsting in the moonlight like a manga character.

Once I ran a 1960s spy campaign but it didn't work out so well. I thought of a lot of amusing shtick, like all pistols being light pistols, a "sexual harassment" adept superpower that broke the game, and an amusing combination of everyone having bigass battle rifles with Sport Rifle damage codes (i.e. M14) while there not being any ballistic armor. Heh, and I said all physads must be asian, and all magicians must be irritating wishy washy hippie psychics. So, yeah, that campaign got broken very quickly but at least it was silly.

Definitely with you on not letting the world seem like it exists to cater to the PCs. They only affect their immediate surroundings, at most. Stuff they do might have repurcussions in the larger world, but I rarely ever run the old "the King wants you to do this cause, um, you're adventurers" style game.

Nah, Realism doesn't suck, if it did, guys would not be complaining,

On another note, I too have the campaign world progress with or without the input of the player chars. I usually send an email the day after the run, with the news headlines and one liners (like all the news websites now). There may or may not be something related to the run, but there is always several things that are not related to the run, some of them can be followed up by the chars, or may cause a run in the futur, with the players clueing in at some point.

Anothing note on my campaign style. I do not limit the job offers that the PCs receive to things that they can handle, and that they should just take based on meta-thinking "well, it's a job and we're playing Shadowrun".

I do and have let them take jobs that more legwork would have shown to be way out of their league.

I'm currently writing a smuggling campaign set in the Gulf of Mexico (... I mean Aztlan...) in the year of the comet. So far, I just have some linear smuggling jobs that are somewhat connected by a chain of contacts, and I haven't applied any YOTC stuff yet.
The next thing to do is get characters made up, then prepare for stuff that I expect the characters are going to want to run off and try. Then I'll probably look through skill, gear and stuff and contrive little instances so they get to use the more obscure stuff.
Not how I usually develop a game, but I'll try it and see how it works.

YotC is great as a way to have the world going on around the PCs regardless of what they're doing. I'd love to see more book like that one.

You would have loved taking the job to boost a space-plane prototype from it's disguised-as-an-offshore-oil-rig-southeast-of-Australia hangar then. Which they took. Even though it should have been perfectly obvious to decline it.

Right now I'm GMing a traditional game. My PCs are newbie runners (standard 400 BPs) with complimentary abilities (1 mage, 1 hacker, 1 sammy, 1 face). I've been trying to introduce different elements of the Shadowrun universe in every run, but so far the only connection runs have with each other is the reputation the PCs are building and the money and karma they're gathering. I've left several open ends though, and I'd like to form it into an overarching storyline, though I'm not sure how yet. It's tough when my PCs' only real motivation is "make lots of money and live an exciting life;" and while there's nothing wrong with that, it's not much to work with to form into a storyline

My campaign had the players start with mafia runs. They were beginning shadowrunners that got jobs that the mafia provided. They just climbed up the ladder and now get direct jobs from a mega (Aztech in this case). There may be several Johnsons, but few sources of deploment. I always found the notion that everyone knows what you´ve done laughable.

The game world can be realistic without spoon-feeding the runners. If they got a job over their heads, Mr. J was either overestimating them or accomplished his goals by their failure.

You are correct sir! The not-quite-omniscient fixer can not only overestimate the characters, but also underestimate the run.