So I've got a new game planned and I'd like help putting it together. I'd like to touch on some history of SR before the campaign starts. The original idea was to convert some key adventures and run the group through those. But I think it might be too long of a lead up before the "actua;" campaign starts.

So my thought is to break the campaign into 3 stages:

Stage 1, History: For this, I may run them through Renraku Arcology: Shutdown or Brainscan and maybe something else before.

The runners they use for this are used just for this History stage and they are told so before hand. The Arcology will be last bit and we don't play out their exit.

Stage 2, Corp Sec: I want to develop the idea that CorpSec are people too, most of the time, so after Stage 1, I'm going to alternate between playing security guards in Stage 2 and Stage 3 (below). While playing the guards they'll fend off runner attacks and other site security tasks ... fun fun fun.

Stage 3: The real campaign. Don't really have a them or recurring villain in mind, I'm probably going to use the free adventures online and see what works. At chargen, I'll have some system for granting extra BPs for karma earned at Stage 1. Or maybe just transfer a portion of the karma.

The Twist: After several sessions, Stage 3 runners hit the facility guarded by Stage 2 guards. Hopefully the Stage 2 time will give them the inclination to disable rather than kill the Sec team. Either way, as part of their run, they discover the facility is a cyborg research facility - The guards are actually cloned biodrones (yes, I know what Augmentation says about humans and CAST) controlled by brain-in-a-boxes. So, who're the tissue donors? The Stage 1 runners, of course. This facility is a Renraku subsidiary and is continuing some of Deus' research. The runners never made it out and became research rats. The group my not discover this last twist.

Post Twist: Business as usual once thrown objects die down.

So, what do you think? Good Idea? Bad Idea? Cheesy? Obvious? Also, any suggestions for the history review?

...You would deserve the Blunt Force Trauma that such a setup would inspire me to inflict upon you.

If you're gonna run it I'd like to play in it.

With suprise plot twists and such, I can't really run this by the group. So, I'd really appreciate it if you (the collective forums) could take their place and tell me what seems like a fun idea, what's a recipe for disaster, etc.

In addition, I'd like some suggestions on what would be good adventures to highlight SR history.

I think it could work, but of course it depends what aspects of SR history you want to highlight; some of the adventures from Shadows of the Underworld and Super Tuesday are good for the UCAS Presidential Election of 2057, some from Wake of the Comet are good for the 2061/62 madness, and then there's Survival of the Fittest and Brainscan, too (although a lot of these are after the Arcology).

The real question is how will the revelation that the Phase One characters are controlling the Phase Two characters and opposing the Phase Three characters actually work?

I ran a (broadly) similar set-up for a Bug City campaign once; I got the team to play a bunch of (pregen) Seattle-based runners in the early '50s, and put them through Queen Euphoria and Missing Blood (from Universal Brotherhood), mixed in with various other modules (including Harlequin, Dragon Hunt and a few others). One of the characters in this group was actually a CIA plant, a deep-cover sleeper operative with cybereyes, cyberears and a recorder implant.

When the action shifted to Bug City, with totally different characters, the PCs found an FBI agent (Juarez, from Double Exposure) with little memory (he was being taken over by a Wasp spirit that had been put into him) but a file in his headware of all of the debriefs from the first team's missions, and one from Double Exposure too. This gave them a lot more context on Bug City, and also Harlequin's Back when they started playing through it.

The point of me saying all that is, that your idea is a really good one if it impacts on play in a positive way (e.g. the interaction between the Phase Two and Three characters I think works brilliantly, or at least could do), but if it doesn't have much of an effect on the players/characters then it just seems a bit wasted.

One thing I could do is merge Stage 1 and Stage 3 so the characters are running from history lesson through current events but that means the campaign's theoretical "ground zero" involves established and experienced characters.

Is there a reference somewhere of the SR adventures in chronological order (setting time not publish time)?

If the phase 1 characters are kind of just meat (I don't have aug yet so I don't know about biodrones or CAST). You may not want to get them too attached to those characters.

I do like the idea quite a bit, my only concern is that either characters will get too attached to their other characters, or that the campaign arcs will be so short that they don't get attached at all.