Uhmm, I am sort of new to the whole GM thing. Not the game, been playing SR since '97 and I'm bitten by it.
I play SR3 and got pretty much everything there is.

But one thing is to be a player and ruin the GM's plot and make him/her improvise, adapt and overcome. Another is when one is the GM in question who needs to improvise, adapt and overcome. So far my players aren't complaining but scrabbling to hold on for dear life. Just the way I like it.
But I need some info on how to really plan a run.

I put weight on ROLEplay, not the rules per see. So if it looks good on paper and the character isn't too much munchkin, fine with me.
But how in the nine hells do one plan a session?? How do you do it? So far I've scribbled down ideas and I've pretty much winged it through sessions and furiously taken notes. But I want a bit more preplanning than just that. I want to play with corps, but so far I've kept out of it and kept it to mom and pop corps, but I want to mix S&K and some Fuchi and some Aztechnology into it.
I am not strong when it comes to rules and I need to do some more homework besides the main rulebook. But what kind of homework??

Hit me with your astounding knowledge when it comes to be a gm.

Is this, by the by, the correct forum to discuss odd ideas when it comes to runs etc?? Because I could use some help with some of the circles within circles concept. Not that my group are complaining, they think I am evil enough as is. But being more evil, devious, convoluted is always better.

Domo arrigato, omaes...

No double-"r"s on 有り難う, this isn't… hm. What language has a lot of double-"r"s? Anyway, Japanese isn't one of them.

For planning a session, my advice is that most of your effort should go into constructing a world rather than a plot as such; if you construct a world, the characters can then move around and interact within it rather than a plot that requires the players stick to a fairly narrow area around where the plot is intended to go. Plot can be a good spice to liven things up, but it's a spice; don't make it your main ingredient.

~J

Yep.

Think up... characters and their motivations and what they plan to do. What resources do they have at their disposal (don't overdo it on that part).

Doesn't need to be superdetailed, just a rough sketch to help you with your improvisations.

Then think up how the PCs enter the scene (what job do they get).

If possible get some fancy maps or pics from the internet to spice up the information you can hand them during the "job interview".

Then things should really resolve pretty much on their own. The players start going into a certain direction, you react to it, while your NPCs secretly follow their own plans/motivations (if it is important, you could even make a small time table what steps are achieved when, as long as noone - namely the PCs - intervenes). How do they react, once the PCs plans start to take fruit and work against the NPCs plans. Etc.

A good foundation (i.e. characters and motivations and resources) is always a good thing.



There is good preparation and bad preparation. Bad preparation is, when whatever you prepare only works, if the PCs take one (out of many possible) routes, which leads you to pushing them into that direction, which leads to railroading, which is bad.

Good preparation is flexible preparation, stuff that is useful (pretty much) regardless of what the PCs do (like characters and their motivations).

Bye
Thanee

I find it best to set the scenario (aka the run's objective).
Then note information regarding the objective.
Then note any "complications".
Then design the NPC's..
Then Design the defenses/opposition (and make it an appropriate challenge).

Case in point-when on the last run (difficulty of run fo the group was pretty hard), they could find the following information:
Easy: to find:Facility is a school/orphanage in Lagos run by Horizon.
Hard: All of the students are Technos.
Very hard: They are running experiments on the Technos to find out how they tick.

Complications: Well fortified with over 40 guards, 2 Wage mages, and to LT's (street sams), hacker, and rigger support.
Players had limited gear. No knowledge of the interior.

Helpful siuation:When they infiltrated, it was raining heavily giving all the security a -1 to their perception/sensor tests.

The PC solution: They scouted the compound first to get the layout. During the infiltration (under concealment of a spirit and invisibility and using infitration), they were detected briefly and set the facility to yellow alert (They did not confirm the alert until later). The result was that they started launching drones out of the facility. During this, one of the mages had a spirit jam the doors open, and conceal that it was with a trid phantasm spell. The players then used a phsical barrier as a ramp to the roof. And proceeded to assault the compound from that unexpected direction. Once they pwned the secutiry control room, the guards surrendered. They let the group sack the place as they ran off.


PS: I am terrible with names though (but 90% of them are mooks anyway..

There are a few sides to this I try to keep in mind.

First is, what do the players want? If the players want smash and grab, I keep it there. If you have an educated, intelligent, experienced group of players, though, you can play Shadowrun properly.

Balancing that, what are the characters capable of? It's important that your plots pull on each and every character, but don't hinge on skills no one has.

With Shadowrun, you're right, circles within circles. Usually that means, as GM, you're going to be making your complex plot on your own, like you're playing a one-person politics game, and the PCs are just interrupting. For me, that takes a lot of notework. I write down all of the players, their goals, inter-relations and knowledge (or false beliefs), and keep a running timeline of events. With each event, I update the notes for all the actors. Obviously, you need a sufficiently complex web of inter-relations early on, and a sufficiently driving goal to pull people together. And of course, you're allowed to add players later on, as the story unfolds. Add into this interesting locales, and you have the setting for a run. If you can pull in runs they've already done, adding in a motivation or result the players were not aware of, that's even better.

Once you have your three or four basic plot threads properly intertwined, from beginning to some spot in the future, you choose the point when it would be most interesting (i.e. explosive) to introduce a group of players. You can choose to shift them a bit earlier, so they can watch things explode, or just toss them straight into the pot. Create your Johnson and different low-level locales and players they'll meet.

Keep in mind the Johnson's job is to encapsulate the runners so they don't see or interfere with the greater plot, except as directed. The runners getting other information, or the Johnson disappearing or dying, will force runners to engage the greater plot if they want to get paid. Alternatively, if a point in the greater plot takes notice and actively pursues them, they may realize (but may not) that they need to research and understand to tie up those lose ends.

Once you have all of that together, keep copious notes on what happens. I like google docs, because it lets me cut and paste easily, and is accessible anywhere, but you use what you like.

One of the downsides of Shadowrun, as the PCs aren't world-changing heroes as much as little fish in a big pond is it requires a LOT more world-management/world-building than simpler games. So Kage is right - for what you're doing, 90% of your job will be establishing the world. A "plot" suggests it's pre-determined. The most I plot is what happens if the PCs don't interfere (and perhaps the likely courses if they do). But it's my straight line so I can measure my tangent. If you know the world well enough, you should be able to adjust to that tangent without much trouble.

Yeah, I plot major events occurring but keep it as a bullet point list. A date and a sentence or two of what happened. I keep that in front of me so the world does feel like its alive and moving regardless of what the PCs are doing.

Outside of that, I try to stay wary of the PCs desires and what the players enjoy doing in the game. And then I just piece together scenarios to accomplish that. Now, some scenarios may be connected together, but I try to keep those story arcs very limited.

Everything else, I just let the players explore and run on the fly. Seeing they like combat, I always try to have some combat stats available for a fight. My weakest point is mapping, so if you are like me, I'd keep a bunch of stock maps of buildings, alleys, et cetera. That way, when a fight does break out, you are pretty well prepared.

I also keep notes when something a player says or does intrigues me. I list all of those, whether it is a contact, an adventure seed or just a cool scenario that would be fun for all. And then from time to time, I revisit those and see what I want to flesh out.

I am beginning to feel that I need to make sure every scenario (combat or social) has an endgame. Something that finishes it and allows the group to move onto the next scenario or have some limited free time before something else happens.

For a couple examples on how I plan a run, check out the threads linked in my signature.

Personally I try to run the world as a sandbox and have a general outline of what would happen without the character's involvement. I also try to guess at the most likely course of events the players are likely to make although you know what they say about battle plans surviving first contact and all.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=28676 this is how I am currently doing it. That said I prefer off the cuff but its been soo long since I ran Shadowrun I have to relearn the rules. Normally I would just write down a very general outline of some events I want to have happen and a few npc descriptions and wing it from there. As to learning the rules I am starting with just the core book then moving to the Magic book because I have a Shaman, a Sorcerer and an Adept in the group. The Rigger and Decker are just going to have to wait.

How could I misspell arigato?! D'oh!

Bully for me that I wanted pretty much well written, properly fleshed out background stories from them and the 20 Questions too, because it gives me some buttons to push! And I do. Push their buttons. It should be fun for my gamers and the more real their characters get, the more fun it is. Thus my job gets easier too.
They've built in so many hooks, lines and sinkers in their backgrounds and in their characters, that it is soo much fun just to see them play downtime and intercharacterplay. Not to mention that I've got a run or two in mind with some of them as a catalyst/instigator/initiator.

All your advice is taken into account. Excellent, excellent indeed!
I can see what I've missed so far.
In depth characterization of the world from my pov, not the books.
Some more detailed background work, behind the scenes, plotlines, a lot more work than what I've done at the moment. Oohhh, I got ideas teeming already!! Excellent!!
I haven't given the bigger world, IE the shadowrun world, any thought at all, since my players are still babies when it comes to SR. I am still new to being a GM, so it balances out. For now.
This will be taken into account as well.

What I've done so far, is that I've made some one shot scenarios and then let my group run them/ruin them. Great fun to be had by all. But lately I've missed a dimension in it. Simply put, it is too one sided. My players do not mind, but I do. I want more, I want a feel to it, other than what I've got so far. One shots scenarios are fun to play, but I want to run a campaign. This will give me a very firm push in the right direction. My players may not thank you, but I do!

As NPC's I've used old characters and their contacts from my stint as a player. I've got plenty to mix in and then some. Some of my NPC's are played by friends, which is even more fun for me to watch and act upon. I basically give them directions on how to play the NPC and then let it unroll. Much more fun and I can herd my players as I see fit. NO railroading. I am not very fond of it. Not unless it can be done with exquisite subtlety.

But how would you, for instance, build S&K or Mitsu or any big player in the SR world in to your campaign? How would you mix it with what you know is canon with what you imagine the world to be?

How do you plan a confrontation in advance?? Rules about the atual confrontation isn't a problem. Easy as pi.
It is the planning ahead that is. Those things I need to get a grip on as well. So far it's been off the cuff, with not very satisfactory results from my pov.
How do you do it?
Any thing else I should know? Besides having fun ruining it for my players??

That's another thing you can do: I generally like to start "campaigns" by just running one-off or two-off runs, then tossing in hooks here and there. When the players start to bite one, then I do the work to build something around it.

What do you mean by "plan a confrontation in advance"? If it has unusual opposition you may need to stat them out, otherwise just get used to pulling out stock characters—pick how far you want their statline to deviate from average, pick a weapon skill and level and maybe a few other skills if you think they'll have a chance to show them, and then let them loose.

Also, when I saw your post I briefly confused you with Bitten by the Bug and wondered why you were acting like a new GM (I hadn't focused on your username in the first post).

~J

I write at least seven scenes from beginning to end on how I want the game to go, with three or so endings - sometimes, more. For each scene I then scribble out a quick few lines for how it'll go, possibly alternate scenes and future story hooks, anything that has to happen, numbers of combats that could occur and how, how they could screw it up, how they could make it diverge and possible player encounters (Character has Wanted: France. French bounty hunter, with really bad accent, snotty and uses grenades that look like cheese. (Target has Astral Beacon. Paranormal ape kidnaps him and thinks the character is her baby. Refuses to let go. Has immunity to normal weapons and is the size of a troll, with a strength of 25.) and usually just wing it beyond that.

I plan my adventures a lot like how i learned to plan recon patrols in the Marine Corps.


Orientation: Most of this is for me, but I also lay out basic information for the players-weather, wind, date, which way on the map is north.

Situation: A brief two or three sentence synopsis. Sometimes I'll go in depth for my own benefit, who's doing what to whom, and why.

Mission: I generally lay out two or three goals per game for the PC's.

Execution: This part is on the players for the most part, but I do for instance jot down basic notes that will affect this. I divide my security sheaths into physical, magical and matrix. I generally outline how many shifts, how many people on a shift, any flaws they may have (For instance if any guards, or employees have gambling debts, unacceptable sexual practices, weird connections or bad apple relatives.), basic security devices (And if any of them are scheduled for maintenance, down time, or are just plain broke), any special events that may occur (Natural events like tornadoes, or floods; or Media events, like the arrival of Concrete Dreams, or Shield Wall; etc...)

Command and Signals: Again most of this falls on the PC's, but I will detail any preplanned signals security may have, if and when they'll call 911, or for reinforcements. How they'll react to various things (Bomb threats, kidnappings, etc...)

It works well for me, but obviously we all have to find our own style.

If you players have lifestyles above "squatter" they most likely have a landlord of some sort. This can be hilarious. For you.

I make a point of planning the location, not the Run. I find a map for or visit a real world building for ease sometimes. Add a few security check points for a sencitive site. Name the guards. Seriously. Name the guards and other personel, even a few of the unimportant ones, having names and a quick idea of the personalities is awesome (Gary will fight to the death to cover the rest of the guards trying to run from nut jobs, he knows the rest of them are family men but he is all alone and they are the only family he's had for the last 5 years, hes especially fond of the new kid Jake an young Orc who working for money to send to his mom... and I'd just keep writing from here and suddenly everyone the runners are killing is a PERSON and its far easier to figure out the fall out of "why did you do that?" from there). Set up security you believe in OR that will offer a challange to your team - rare is the place that will do both.

Past that? have fun and don't get too attached to the "plot"

When in doubt, rip off the movies.

For example begin a series of runs where the characters go to meet their new Johnson who insists on a public place. Have them meet him at a shopping mall where there would be MAD scanners and plenty of witness/bystanders to make sure things go down smoothly. The PCs show up for the meet, prepared as they can be for trouble, but before they can make it to the designated spot, a sizable group of terrorists burst in on the scene, taking the whole place hostage. From there on out, it's Die Hard. Was the Johnson even there, or did he just want to make sure the characters where there to mess things up? It's a wacky situation that they're under-prepared for and easily enough of an instant cock-up to put them on the road to somewhere else. And when they're mobile, you can put together plots with places to really fill out the world.

As far as NPC stats, all it really boils down to is "how many dice do I want to throw for this?" Just decide. The actual stats are unimportant and the players will never know them anyway. You can wing any roll.

My favorite way to plan a session is to decide on what thing I'm going to have the players go after, and then give myself a budget to defend it with. This makes for far more realistic scenarios. Having creative defenses (like making all my guards immune to something, then filling the area with it) makes things a lot more fun. For example, in a recent scenario a group of Aztechknology guards were protecting a scientist, but were under orders to kill him if it looked like someone was going to extract him. They didn't have any electronics types or mages, so they knew they could easily be jammed and that enemies coming at them could easily be invisible. As such, their strategy if anything went wrong was to throw superflash grenades as signals (might take out an enemy, definitely would alert their group) and then retreat to a specific area while dropping grenades around any area they weren't, in hopes of hitting enemies they couldn't see. They then filled the area they were in with smoke and nerve gas (Green Ring 3) because they were wearing chemically sealed security armor and they had the atropine to cure the scientist later. This meant that the shadowrunner team hitting them would be in serious trouble if they weren't likewise protected, and even if the guards were defeated the nerve gas might finish off the scientist anyway. It scared the hell out of the players to have enemies behaving like that. They also did Kamakaze and Jazz immediately when the fight started, meaning a bunch of guards with Smartlink IIs, Knowsoft Links with DNI linked optical chips, and security armor were actually a threat.

JaronK

here's a few things I use:

-A long list of names, usually in catagories based on "type"(e.g. gangers, hackers, Native Americans)

-Locations in detail, A map, notes about asteral space, Matrix nodes, These are the places the group needs to go to get paid.

-random encounters, I like to have something to throw them off their game or make the world seem more alive(drunk troll picking a fight, traffic violation, that kind of thing)

-quick refrence "cheet sheets" for perception mods, Range and visibility mods etc.

-short write ups for NPC's and vehicles(a lot of which can be renamed and reused)

Might Note Starts out like this:

One line Summary

Johnson

Mission in detail including special paramters:

Objective:

Notable NPC's the runners might encounter and interact with as part of the mission

Junk names for random joes

Possible complications and stat blocks for load bearing bosses as well as notes about different tests to be performed

I tend to flowchart runs, just like a lot of the SR1 adventures. I find it helps me keep all my balls in the air at-a-glance. First I come up with the reason for the run, what the objectives are, and then start writing my flowchart, which often jogs my memory as I go and I end up adding possible red herrings, varying endings, etc, that way. And of course I make other notes as well, so that in the highly likely event my players screw up my careful planning, I can wing it

That would be because Bitten by the Bug is me. I can't remember the old password and the emailadress to Bitten has fallen out of disuse. Hotmail. Life sort of happened around me and I kinda forgot this place existed for a couple of years. You know, Life, Kids, Getting Married, getting a degree... Stuff.
Hrmm... But it's me. One and only. Meaner than ever and plenty of runs made when it comes to the Invae, Mantis and Spider...

I've played a lot of SR, but I've been GM only once before for six months or so. And since I am not sure if I've asked for help before... Yeah, back to square one. Again.

As for planned confrontation, I am thinking along the lines of: Sec guards, Ms. J's bodyguards, company security (what level is a mom and pop and what level is a mega?), matrix (and I am such a dweeb when it comes to 'puter stuff), bartender, cabdriver, joyboy/girl etc. Mundane things, that the runners do not think much of. Nor me. I can handle the big end game, because it is planned in advance (sort of), but my runners taking down the bartender because he looked at her oddly (I didn't see that one coming from a guy playing a girl) or a ganger because he is a ganger.. Sec ratings on mom and pop corps too. Never really thought about it until now where I want to incorporate S&K, Mitsu and big Y into my mix. Behind the scenes, of course. My players are still babies.

Random encounters. How my players hate them. Need I say more??

JaronK: You just gave me a whole new idea for a run. In the sewers. Sweet!

I am pretty much covered in leading my players by the noose. Lots of runs and plots and circles within circles. I am not that much attached to a scenario and it depends on what they do. Some times you wing it, sometimes you do not.
Most of all, I want the roleplay and see my story unfold with unexpected detours here and there.

But all of this. Man, I can't wait until the littlest munchkin is tucked in and I can bury myself in my books! YAY!!

IF I haven't said it: Thank you all!

Bug as far the oposition goes I wouldn't focus so much on whos a mega and whose not I would instead focus ont he impoirtancfe of what their guarding. Even a mom and pop corporation would have some extremely tight security around something that may spell the doom for their company if it was lost or stolen.

As to NPC's I keep a spreadsheet of NPC most are jsut one or two lines unless their regtular contacts for the characters or significant in some ways. I jot a few notes about where they might be found, their race (both metahuman and otherwise) and a few things about their personality. If stats are needed I make them up on the fly. This gives me a constant resource to draw on obver the course of the campaign and helps keeps my notes organized. If i think i need a NPC for a run i put them into this pile, that way even if the NPC' never talks to the players or as happens occasionally, is shot through the door before the players can interact with them. I will still have that template ready to go for later.

You might find THIS helpful.

Good luck!

Yeah... SMEAC is where it is at... I tend to go that route myself

Keep the Faith

One thing I like to do is make sure there are at least three completely different ways to complete the mission. Some DMs will fall in to the trap of assuming the players will think just like they do, but that doesn't always happen. For example, in my last mission magical stealth could have been very effective, or social engineering, or run and gun. Maybe one is better than the others, but there shouldn't be only one way to solve it.

JaronK

Agreed...

Keep the Faith

I was reading through some of my GM's posts here (he never spent a lot of time here, but what time he spent produced some gems) and found this thread which might be helpful.

Or you could just search for user Taran's posts.

~J

I usually set out my runs in one of two ways, it was either an events web - (a series of 'set piece' scenes, including description of location/time, major players present, etc.) or as a static large location. the former tended to work better for 'dynamic' missions - ones where you were tracking someone down, or on the run, or trying to untangle a large plot. etc, the latter worked well for installation in-place missions like structural hits, or snatch and grabs, etc.

in both cases the security is based on what I consider logical and not what I think would best thwart my players (save that for zero-zones). In the event that players approached a scene or facility in a manner I hadn't previously anticipated generally I would try to consider on the fly what would make sense. (i.e. most large facilities *would* have sewer access; they may not always have cameras and only the most paranoid would actually have guards on the manholes, etc.)

For actual adversaries I tend to go with a hyper-minimalist approach. in sr3 this meant they were frequently a bod score, a dex or str score (whichever they needed for their weapon of choice), a wil score (for magic resistance), a combat pool, an init roll and 10 boxes of damage. in sr4 this typically just a pair of dice pools (combat and non-combat checks, resp.) and a body, reaction, Wil and Init score. (and usually 10 boxes of damage.. although you could adjust up or down now that they're variable.)

goons are almost *always* 8 dice combat, 6 dice non-combat, 3 bod, 3 rea, 3 wil, and init 6/2passes. (my goons tend to shoot up or have minor amounts of cyber). a real punk would be 6/5, 3,3,2 6/1. metahumans get their metahuman bonuses but in the case of *my* goons that kind of works out to elves being 8/8, 3,3,3 7/2 and trolls/orks being 8/6, 8,3,2 6/2 with dwarves having good will but otherwise regular stats etc.) If its a magician it gets a magic score and 2-5 spells depending on how much I'm expecting them to stay on scene.

more significant oppo. gets custom stat lines. a 'rival' running team gets full stats/partial skills/partial cyber/limited contacts but otherwise I don't pay attention to legal build restrictions.

I work out a quick idea. Use a random run generator script that I wrote for the Omnihedron a few years ago, if I cannot drum up ideas.

Then use a random NPC generator script to generate the cast. Often I will hit random 20 or so times till I get a mix of what I want.

Then I make or grab some maps and let the players have at it. I do the minimum because my players will NEVER EVER do what I expect them too.

Oh and yes, I fudge dice all the time to make things spicy.

Here is what I do. Come up with an idea for a run (Say . . . Group breaks into an Ares facility to steal some data.) Then come up with a few twists in the mission. Something plausable, but unforseeable. It doesn't HAVE to be the Johnson double-crossing you (and I wouldn't recommend doing that too often) but plenty of other things you can do. Maybe the data is hashed by an AI, and the runners need to convince it to 'un-hash' it. Maybe the data isn't on the mainframe, but is stored on hardcopy, or on someone's de-activated comlink, or on a chip. Maybe security has gotten wind of the run and they have sent people to stop them.

Then, think of two or three solutions per problem, and come up with rules for it. Mage wants to astrally project in? Maybe there are watcher spirits, or mages on duty, or the area is encased in a magic barrier. There is a lvl 4 maglock on the door, talking your way past security requires X successes.

Try to cover the major ways something can be done, Magic, Matrix, and Meatbody (those are the main three ways to do stuff in Shadowrun.) Then, if a player throws a curve, it's ususally covered by the general rules. So if the Mage just banishes the Watcher spirits, Poof, the mage who summoned them notices, and wakes up and gives a call to the office.