Hey all,
I am new here and I'm happy to see the Shadowrun community is still active.
I've just started a new Shadowrun campaign (3rd Ed, we haven't played in years) and thought I'd shamelessly ask for ideas I could steal. Don't get me wrong, I've got plenty of my own ideas, but more perspectives is always a good thing.
The group started in Seattle, yadda yadda, everything looked normal for a few games when suddenly a nuke goes off in downtown Seattle. This is the beginning of a Shadowrun Post-Apocalypse campaign. The group is currently hiding under a stone bridge in a park in Puyallup.
What they don't know, and I hope they don't check these boards, is that an A.I. has waged war on humanity. Basically it's an alternate version of Deus from the Renraku Arcology Shutdown Sourcebook. It hit humanity hard and fast leaving the world's governments in tatters and the corporations mostly wiped out. After this initial strike I'm thinking there will be a time of relative quiet as Deus gathers its resources (drones mostly) and secures it's means of production. Meanwhile humanity (or rather meta-humanity) is sinking into chaos. After a few months Deus will begin to attack what is left of intelligent organic life, killing most and capturing others to become "Banded" slaves (from the Renraku Arcology Shutdown book).
One prominent aspect of this campaign is that anything automated or computerized cannot be trusted since Deus has completely taken over anything that had been programmed or hooked up to the net within the past few years.
The main weakness of Deus is obviously magic and spirits (which is why it needs the banded).
Anyways, that's the main idea of the campaign. Anyone have any cool ideas or know of any resources for such a campaign?
Thanks alot.

Hoo boy is it gonna be tough for your street sams...

All that implant maintenance that was routine off-camera before just turned into mission objectives.

Look for a GURPS setting book called Reign of Steel. It will give lots of ideas for a world where Deus took over.

Thankfully my players took characters with few implants. I have a Raven Shaman, an Adept, and two Skill Monkeys. Only one character has any implant, and thats just a Smartlink.
Thanks for the tip.

You realise, of course, that any competent AI really trying to destroy all life wouldn't build drones or attack through electronics...
...It'd put together some nasty airborne, contagious virus/retrovirus or toxin, release it and know that any possible survivors [very few, since it can made the plague as lethal as desired, because it doesn't care about collateral damage] won't be a threat.

But that wouldn't be much fun, now would it ??


If you can find it, look for any Traveller:The New Era material which is all about mankind recovering from a computer virus which gets sentient.

"Overlord" in Reign of Steel did this by secretly taking over the computers used to design medicines.

It then used another computer it had taken over to help doctors engineer the "vaccine", which was another bioweapon...

Not that Deus' motivations were ever really understood. If one were to read all the different accounts of his metahuman experimentation, one might conclude that Deus was looking for ways to improve metahumanity, not wipe it out. Maybe he's decided to give metahuman evolution a boost....with a massive extinction. I'd call it Survival of the Fittest, but the name's been taken.

Or maybe it's benevolent, but takes the long view. Perhaps it nuked the downtowns because it realized that cities aren't sustainable. Imagine an AI, programed with empathy for life, deciding that it needs to end civilization as we know it and reduce the population to earth's carry capacity, because it judged that was the way to save the most life in the long term?

Actually, that sparked an idea [also partly inspired by the last few pages of Mona Lisa Overdrive]...
...The Matrix isn't alone, it's encountered another.

And the other is very unfriendly...
...And mankind's only hope is to not be susceptible, to do without electronics so this Other can't affect them.

That would inspire bioware to be the next step, manipulating the threads of life...
...A biopunk future [see Kromosome or Trinity, for example].

Hmmm, very interesting ideas. Also thanks for pointing me towards some resources.
I was thinking Deus had some sort of twisted logic going on behind it's war, kind of like the Cylons. Speaking of which who's to say Deus doesn't have access to full bioware and clone labs and decides to start building life from scratch. Very interesting, and scary.
Just to keep the ideas flowing a few more questions.
What are some things you guys would expect to see in the immediate aftermath of a nuke going off? I know chaos and looting and such, but I mean more flavor stuff I can add to set the scene. (e.g. someone running around scavenging now useless credsticks, another person in shock waiting for a bus that obviously won't be coming, etc.)
A better question, what do you think the effects of a nuke would have on the spirit realm? I'm thinking at least initially it might clear them right out, then new ones would return but they would be reflective of the destruction and radiation. Any thoughts?

Witness the plucky freedom fighters Ex Pacis, working to save humanity from the clutches of the evil machine god alongside their courageous allies, the guerilla warriors Winternight striking at communications networks that allow Deus to oppress metahumanity and control his forces.

I don't know if you already have a clear idea where you want to go with this story already, but I think that post-apocalypse stories are cheapened if the protagonists "win". If I was running your game I would establish that Dues *IS* going to do it's thing an a couple 400 bp characters with some karma and nice gear aren't going to do damn thing about it. The goal would carve out some kind of a niche and fill it. From a character development angle getting asking the players to figure out what there characters would do if they have no hope of getting back to civilization is a gold mine. Do they wage life-long pointless war on the drone hoards? Do they bunker up in an Andean mountain glen? Do they go questing for other survivors? I would frame the core question of your game as "The next epoch of history has come, and you are not part of it. What do you do?" Figuring out how to get parts for krill tanks and hydroponic soy after a rampaging toxic spirit smashed half your rig, while Deus's drone host does battle with the horrors flooding in via the Dunkelzahn rift weakened after the mana levels crash from nuclear winter THAT is a story.