Hi guys, I'm in the process of getting back into this Shadowrun thing, and wanted to get your thoughts on my plan so far. I'm having issues finding an existing group, so I'm going to try my hand at running a game, and see where that gets me.

Here is what I'm thinking:

I'll be running 3rd edition since I have a bunch of the books from waaaaaaay back (FASA vintage). I currently don't have any funds available to upgrade to 4th right now, but I'd like to down the road.

I don't have a group yet, but I want to get a framework laid so when I do find some people, we can get started fairly quickly. I'm thinking of running 2-3 stand-alone adventures to get us all familiar with the rules, and if someone's not happy with their character, they can make changes. After that, and I have a group of players that want to play together, I'll get a short campaign going.

Any gaping holes in this plan? I'm open to any and all advice and criticism on this.

Thanks,
Argentis

Makes sense.
Now all you need are players. What kind of campaign are you preparing?

I don't have too many details yet, but I'm thinking to steal the plot from the Incredibles movie where the evil guy is trying to "tame" insect spirits and testing it on Shadowrunners. That's the idea anyways, and I'm not sure how long I can drag it out. Is there anywhere that has campaign ideas that I can use/borrow?

Thanks,
Argentis

Here is a link to the old Third Edition Missions downloads - you might be able to get some ideas from there, or at least snag some of the stuff to have some ready-made maps and NPCs. The Community Projects subforum here also has a number of helpful aids.

Thanks Glyph, that will give me some stuff to get started.

Another thing to look at, and this is probably for after you've got a stable-ish group, is to ask them what kind of campaign style they're looking for. It's no use coming up with a action-oriented campaign if they like intrigue and vice versa. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't have elements of each in the campaign, I'm talking over-all theme, here.

In short, give players what they want (or what you think they may enjoy; no harm in broadening horizons)

Yeah, I'm trying to not get too dead-set in my campaign ideas until I find a group, but I want to get some ideas down so I have an overall idea where things can go, and then tweak it based on the players that I get.

Also, I'm looking to have a semi-fleshed out list of contacts to work with. What would be a good number of these to have, so players can pick their contacts based on what they've chosen at chargen?

n+1.
there's NEVER enough contacts around . .
just too much work to actually think about names and a little bit of history/backstory for each of them . <.<
i have 20 contects in one of my character concepts alone . . and he's not even the facey/charisma type x.x

I'm in something of the same boat with the campaign I'm running. What I do is work up 2-3 basic runs/adventures/whatever until a campaign idea presents itself, either from me, or the players, or a combination. As far as contacts go, I put the onus squarely on my players. If they want to flush out a contact, awesome, if not, I don't worry about it unless the contact will be involved in physical interactions and even then I tend to make non-fleshed out contacts akin to Deus et al (i.e. I make them as shiny as I need them to be for the game)