This week we all got together and decided to kick off a Shadowrun game, and I've been elected GM. I've run and played Shadowrun many times with my crew in the past and I've been thinking about a different kind of Shadowrun game this time around.

Basically, I want to turn Shadowrun over on it's head for these guys.

Instead of being a motley crew of any-dirty-job-there-is criminals, i.e. the usual Shadowrun party, these characters will be members of a government agency devoted to tracking and apprehending the most dangerous Shadowrunners in the world. My questions to you long time Shadowrun fans are the following: is there such an organization already in existence within the setting, or would I be better off creating such an agency on my own? Would I be better off just running Spycraft? Do you think the world of Shadowrun would be well suited to a game like this?

Talk to me. I'm gonna put on my thinking cap while I wait.

I'd say COMA. But given the turmoil in Geneva... I am not sure.

COMA? Tell me about them!

I created my own (Searchlight for the UCAS Goverment) and did pretty much the same thing for our last homebrew campaign in 3rd edition (since I knew I was going to end up running system failure and jump to 4e). My players had a blast raiding the old hangouts, targeting allies and adversaries to older characters, and getting to see a few played out locales leveled/compromised. And I got to poke a little fun with them too (we're supposed to apprehend the OTHER Shadowrunner named raven...in seattle.&*%$#%!). If your players are game,go for it.

Sounds like a ton of fun, I'd love to play in a game like that.

If you're going global, they could be working for interpol.

Or they might think they work for interpol...


Or you could just create your own agency, which would give you more control.

It would also mean that the players might not have any idea who they're actually working for.



Somethings to consider would be stricter guidelines for creating characters, possibly some mandatory negative & positive qualities to help shape the concept(none of which cost or give BPs, or count against their normal limits), supplied gear, or even a free gear allotment.

Sounds like a great concept to me. I'd actually have it work for the Corporate Court; possibly attempting to tie specific courts to runs as well as go after runners. The one thing I'd do, is make sure that your players are okay with playing outside of the normal setting (aka, not being runners themselves).

Theme games like this are very easy to get excited over. Although the game didn't get off the ground, I remember making a SR3 decker for an all decker game. We were going to be Lone Star to boot.

Hmm, some kind of Interpol special-branch? Yeah, that could work. Shadowrunners have no jurisdiction, so a group that investigates the best of them shouldn't have one either.

And I do enjoy the idea of making them wonder exactly who they're working for.

Making them a part of an agency also gives me a better grip on the sort of gear and services they will have access to. Restricted gear could become Requisitioned gear, given the clout of the agent in question. Not to mention the ease of filling in roles that the players don't choose.

You could come up with a system of security clearance levels, which would allow (and disallow) requisition access to certain levels of gear, as well as possibly manpower.

Attaining higher ranks, through successful operations, loyalty and time serving the agency would effectively unlock their ability to requisition gear of higher levels than 12 (the starting level), and could even possibly unlock forbidden gear.

The characters could also try to locate that gear on their own through outside contacts, but would it probably be extremely risky to do so.

Restricting gear that way would give the players something to look forward to, but instead of buying it with nuyen, they get access to it through other means.

I also think a Magic Group, perhaps similar to MCT Unit 13 (street magic pg.73), would also be good to have as part of the agency. You'd be providing both a benefit, and a restricting effect on any awakened characters at the same time.

100% awesome.

I just though of another fun twist. Check this out.

The agency recruits exclusively from the ranks of Shadowrunners already out there working in the world. These people get taken in and 'remade' by the agency. In exchange for a new life and a new body, they have only to give their loyalty to the agency and say goodbye to everything that made them what they were. Or you could say no, and your former self gets buried anyway.

I could even tie their 'Shadowrunner back stories' together in a way that would cause them to shit a brick if they ever discovered just who they all used to be!

*Runs off to read plot synopses of all the James Bond movies*

Sounds like your creative mojo is working.

You might also look to stuff like "La Femme Nikita" and "Alias" for more inspiration.




And provide a material link, and receive several "mysterious implants".

Lone Star, Knight's Errant, Texas Rangers, Firewatch, Interpol, Europol, GOD, NSA, ONI, DIA, CIA, UCAS Marshall's Service, FBI HRT, Delta Force, Vympel, SBS, SAS, GSG9, 777, MI6, GRU.

I personally would like that they are bail bondsmen. Although Grid Overwatch Division (GOD) would also be fun.

Basically any anti-terrorist organization, what country/region?

Here's a list of RL intelligence agencies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_intelligence_agencies

I'm going global with this idea.

Sessions will take place in different locations. I'm imaging that the agents will need to travel to one or two different places around the world every session. If I run it right, it will create a sense of urgency and also in so doing I can play with all sorts of neat environments and flavorful NPCs. It would go something like this.

The characters go to meet a potential new informant in Dubai in a big flashy casino. Just as the meeting goes down, the informant is cacked and a firefight ensues.

Picking up the remains, we discover a link to a mob boss/terrorist leader in Neo Tokyo. Off we go, to infiltrate the fortress of a Yakuza oyabun in the middle of a sleazy overpopulated Tokyo neighborhood.

When we reach the top level of the fortress, what do we find? He's boarding his private VTOL jet with a beautiful assistant. Quick, shoot it with a tracer round or something.

Getting back to base, we track the aircraft to a... Hotel. A hotel in Rio De Janeiro. We find the beautiful assistant and pump her for information, but our oyabun is nowhere to be found. Where on earth could he be?

And so on and so forth.

I kind of like this idea. It's a further departure from your regular Shadorwun game in that it's not all based in one particular city.

I would recommend you give your team strong reasons to go around and track this man.

The idea also does not have *much* to do with hunting Shadowrunners. Maybe instead you could have the team shutdown the Shadowrun BBS or some other international network?

You wanna have 'em work for these guys: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Frequency

Trust me on this one

I've always liked The Company and The Agency... you know, have everyone refer to them by those names, b/c no one officially knows who or what they actually are, or that they are so big / depp / powerful that they don't need any other name.

I wonder why the government should hunt Runners with a special forces unit? AAA Corps normally don't and most of them are much more powerful than a singel staate. There seem to be much more interesting targets like the crime lord you mentioned. Normaly Runners are no terrorists but mercs. However hunting a Runner team to stage a case against a Mr. J and his Corp might be interesting. The Corp might start active counteropperations. *eg*

Sorry, just an example I came up with on the fly.



What I'm imagining is a government initiative to covertly strike at the corporations to reduce their power and influence, in order to swing the balance of power back in favor of the governments of the world...

More on this after I get some sleep!

I've run a game that also took the approach of turning the tables. The team was a special task force for Lone Star that reported directly to the Police Chief, and their job was to keep the peace in Toronto by any means necessary. Sometimes they played it like straight detectives leveraging their clout in the force, and sometimes they went off the books with less than legal means. The team couldn't pick and choose their cases, but they got a lot of flexibility in how they cleaned things up as long as Lone Star came out smelling like roses. I also stuck them with a comptroller who could get the players just about anything if they could successfully argue why it was good for the company. Accountants make for great leashes.

It was more Miami Vice than the James Bond thing you seem to be aiming for.

That's COMA.

The Corporate Commission on Megacorporate Affairs is a secret initiative launched in 2060 by the UN Secretary General to prevent megacorporations involvement in political and diplomatic matters. It showed up in Loose Alliances, but I'm not sure they've been mentioned since.

The only other global enforcement organization I can think of is the Corporate Court Matrix Authority's Grid Overwatch Division. They're agents from all the AAA prime megacorporations keeping the Matrix secure and functionnal to conduct business, hunting AI, world-class hackers and technomancers, virus designers and the like (yeah, that was one big failure for them in 2065).

I recently resurrected an old campaign of mine where the PC are working for a mix of COMA and GOD in the 2057-2060 Corporate War era, hunting for Matrix threats and stepping on megacorporate toes while doing so. The funny part is, I started this campaign before these two organizations appeared in Target: Matrix and Loose Alliances. It turned out to give me a good and consistent idea as to how will the campaign and the PC career will end at the end of the Corporate War.

Sounds similar to my current campaign. The "runners" are executive levels working for Horizon Group. I've given them free High lifestyle, some bonus skills and contacts and the only limits to gear is time. Meaning, if they have a week to plan, they only have available gear that can be gotten in a week, per Availability rules. Granted, the gear is only available per mission, so its not like they are hording things or can use it as personal gear.

Nuyen awards are basically just for personal upgrades, as they don't need it for mundane or even everyday stuff.

Missions are mainly comprised of jetsetting to other countries and doing typical shadowrunner jobs, its just they have inside connections, legit backgrounds and most importantly, legitimate access to the places they are running against. The catch is they can't be caught or identified, otherwise their cover is blown, the corp turns on them and they are out a lot of goodies...which may be pretty fun for them after a few more runs...

Its always a nice change of pace to turn the tables...and at some point I want to run my group as a team of DocWagon responders.

I've played multiple characters in the past that were undercover Lone Star officers, trying to infiltrate different SR groups to bring them to justice. The idea works our very well and is fun to play. It would be that hard to modify the idea to a group level. Heck you could even go as far as being a part of a group (COMA maybe) trying to infiltrate Shadownet and shut it down (thus taking out the source of most shadow activity between the megacorps). I would even go as far as reference different runs in recent history as reasons why the group is doing what they are doing and use it to build the motivation on stopping all shadow activity.

It is defiantly an interesting twist on the SR game and I would be interested to hear how it works out for you.

I know you want to do this James Bond style, but dear god man - the whole team!?!?!

Perhaps she is .... enhanced .... and requires the whole team.

*winge*

Anyways I am running a game which involves intelligence agencies and shadowrunners. Send me a message if you want to hear some ideas.

-Chrysalis

Jeez, it was just an example! Unless, well, she happens to like it family style. Anyways.

I have to make sure that I go with a very 'we're the good guys' feel to the missions. Every group of runners our team is sent after are very clearly the 'bad guys'. This is really, really easy to set up - Shadowrunners are ALWAYS doing really sketchy things, so you can ALWAYS put material to justify their termination into the briefing. It will need those little... extras (this group is responsible for throwing hand grenades into a crowd. That one has killed over fifty civilians...)

Second, I have to make sure I emphasize how HARD it is to track these guys down. From the corporation's point of view, a groups of shadowrunners shows up on the radar exactly two of three times for each job. To meet with the Johnson and then during the run. Sometimes there's a second meeting with the Johnson. That's it. They don't give out their home addresses, and the Coprs don't ask for them (and if a corp EVER asked a runner for their home address, that was probably cause to shoot the Johnson right there).

Last idea, for the REALLY tough missions, go after the ex-runners who have gone legit. Most of them have their own small corps that do 'security' jobs. Most of them are also still runners on the side. On this kind of mission, not only does your team have to penetrate the insanely overbuilt fortress-headquarters buildings that ex-runners tend to make, they ALSO have to get proof of the illegal operations that these 'corporate' runners are doing. So you'll end up with a double-reversal.

These guys are fun since you're working for an organisation that even the megacorporations have to (at the least grudgingly) co-operate with, plus since the organisation is made up of seconded corporate employees there's scope for some subtle backstabbing and differing agendas.

Oh man. Reminds me of the idea I had for a game where the players are superheros. Albeit more "super" like Batman than like Superman.

What was it that was going on around me at the time that made me think that up?

Oh, I remember. Handcock. Or some tangential thought brought upon by the movie due to the players being "vigilante crime fighters who cause massive collateral damage" being so very ShadowRun-esque.

UPDATE:

I've been throwing more items into the GM stewpot today while working, stirring them around and sniffing the results. I think I've begun to establish what will hopefully become the principal antagonist of this game.

I considered all the obvious choices, from greedy corp tyrants to radical anarchist terrorist leaders. Those are all NPC's I plan to make in time. For my Big Bad Evil guy though, I wanted to go with someone who I can red herring at least a few times without cheapening the experience, and when I had that thought it hit me. This person needs to be an ally of the agency.

As I've said, this agency is going to be all about restoring the balance of power. The megacorps are the all encompassing 'bad guy' and the Shadowrunners of the world are their jackbooted thugs. The agency's creator is someone who is well placed politically, and longs for the good old days. His ally (our antagonist)'s goals are very similar, though the antagonist is after something just a little bit different.

Worldwide Marxist communism.

This antagonist is more than willing to aid our agents every step of the way, because if the goal is achieved and governments regain all the power over their peoples, he/she is that many steps closer to their goal.

Is any of this making sense? I can't tell anymore.

Communism is a red herring.

Now that I got the Clue reference out of the way, how is that really a bad thing? The communism I mean, compared to the system it's replacing commies seem kinda tame. Not saying it sbould be run by horrors or bugs or anything like that. How about giving them a gutshot? Like say they find out down the line that the runners were all Robin Hood types. Maybe some weren't runners at all but people who the powers that be deemed to be threats. Or a corp is behind the whole thimg and taking out rivals assets.

Thanks for making me read the comics and watch the series pilot once again

I was going to suggest runners working for the Draco Foundation. Not sure if that has been suggested...

- J.