I'm probably infamous for my admittedly insane campaign threads. In a departure that I should have made long ago, I'd like to hear what everyone else has made up for their own games. I have no idea what a normal run goes like without being stereotypical and boring.

For my group, I created a North American, Magic-focused AA Corporation, which publically, it is a corporation that uses its magical talent and skill for bettering society for both humans and metahumans (ie, it builds schools, it builds hospitals, it rebuilds neighborhoods), but beneath its public fascade, it is a runner for hire agency. We've ran three teams, and it has proven to be a rich source of material. The runners have encountered their own enemies, have encountered the corporation's enemies, (ie, th Illuminate of the New Dawn, Sader Krup, Wuxing), have encountered many magcical threats, and have been allowed to change things about the shadowrun universe. Right nw, we're dealing with a potiential mob war with the various Seattle families, as we're going into 2064, and System Failure. I wil soon be taking the AA Corporation and using the runners to help it expand, execute its plans, and to become a brand new AAA corporation.

Wow... that is so awesomely not street level.

I've personally spent a year or so running ninja-centric campaigns. I've had Ashida Kim, Frank Dux, and Stephen Hayes appear as grotesque charictatures. If I were still GMing today I'd probably have started a Bryce Dallas campaign after Bryce Dallas went and sued e-budo for making him look fraudulent and foolish. (I wonder what came of that, after all...)

Yeah, I do tend to run high level campaigns. The first team had a bear shapeshifter...need I say more?

The longest-running Forum game I was in was Cage Fight, a game with characters built on 40 build points. Low-powered, but fun. Rat was one of my favorite characters.

I started a post-Crash campaign several months ago, and started posting the actual game play with the first PC exactly four months ago today (well, technically yesterday) with a grand total of 28 dice rolls in four months - most of which were done in two points several months apart by different PCs - and I'm having a blast. To say it is heavily RP-based is an understatement. Eventually the dice will come out. I await that day with excitement and terror (excitement because people will die, terror because it will take forever).

Each PC has had a name for his/her own track (The game's called "There's Nothing Free In This World"). For example, one's called What A Week It Has Been. Another is To Live and Die in Seattle. A third is simply called, Gone to Ground.

The one where everything all comes together is called Armageddon.

A campaign I really enjoyed running was the "13th Platoon" campaign. I bunch of experienced, hard asses acting as Lofwyr's personel expeditors. Going all over the world kicking ass in the name of Saeder Krupp. The run I enjoyed most was taking back a nuclear launch facility from Winternight. Great fun...

best campaign i've ever been in, hands down, is Tropical Connection. we tracked a talismuggling route back to the Indonesian island of Wetar, just in time to get caught up in the revolution of the island's high Awakened population against the anti-Awakened regime. we escaped a cloud of high-force blood spirits, made it into the jungle, fought off an assault by three attack choppers, swam across the channel to the next island, defended that island for an hour or so from an assault by thousands of shedim, fought off a force 12 shedim with 7 spirit energy, and finally managed to escape the entire area. and the campaign's not over yet.

and we did all of the above while sustaining no injuries, with the exception of two of our mages losing banishing contests against the badass shedim.

I still can't believe it. I've seen it with my own eyes, and I still can't effing believe it.

Given its even more impressive scope (albeit not in a geographical sense) and with far less magic, if There's Nothing Free doesn't at least challenge them like TC did, my reputation and self-respect as a GM will be shit.

I loved the Earths Dawn game over on the WttS boards. Pity that one died, tragic loss it really was.

I find it funny that for someone who has been involved in Sr for the length of time I have been, I cant really say I have played (or even run) many good story lines.

Really? I find it utterly unremarkable.

But then again, if you knew how long TC took to play to this point you might understand my overwhelming lack of surprise. I've seen maybe a half-dozen? Dozen? In 14 years of gaming with too many players to remember. Of those, TC's the only great one. And like I said, it took a long damn time to run.

We're running a National Geographic campaign in real life. They play a team of national geographic photographers who explore the natural wonders of the world, and along the way find themselves in all sorts of situations.

In the first game we did a survivor/lost style game in which their plane was shot down over the Costa Rican mountains, and they had to make their way out of the jungle alive. they lost all of their aequipment, and soon found one of the passengers that survived with them was being hunted by Aztechnology forces.

In the end they managed to survive, and get good footage of some Aztechnology troopers massacring a village.

Nor is your "street" mine.

I had a character who started life as a street punk trying to break into the big time. He eventually did get recruited by Ares corporate security and worked his way up to Knight Errant. He ended up leaving the corporation to become a grunt in Black Sands, a mercenary outfit working out of eastern Europe. During this time he went from grunt with a VCR (fire support specialist essentially) to the unit's primary Command and Control rigger. The company grew and developed transient bases in Vladivostok, Istanbul, Prague, and Seattle.

Unfortunately, this growth was brought to tragic end as a contract with Russia disolved in the most violent way possible. The character spent some time in a Russian gulag before escaping to Vladivistok only to face an old rival now working for Ares special assets. The battle on the docks left much of the remaining merc group dead but the few that survived were able to disappear. Leaving much of the assets of Black Sands buried and under lock, my character took up work running talisma, acting as a guide, and other such activites with a group of nationalist mountain men in Siberia.

Eventually he returned to Seattle to work up a base for revenge on the Ares operative who had initially caused the trouble with Russia and then attacked the team after the escape. He had to stay low and adopted a new street name (the entire time before he just went by his actual name). He worke as a Command and Control rigger for mid-level shadowrunners and developed his hacking skills from moderate to elite.

He moved up to a new group after the disolution of his first team. The second team ran significantly higher-end work in the Seattle region with occasional work in other states. This group was also soon to disolve when they attempted an infiltration of the Arc. Only two members emerged.

At this point my character had the rep and resources of a well-connected information warrior with a reputation to back it up. He was ready to start making actual moves towards his original goal, at least he was near ready. This all happened before the campaign I liked the most. At this point I started posting him on Shadowland as a solo hacker.

He worked for a time establishing reputation with the various other players and characters of the RL board www.shadowland.org. During this time he worked with another hacker apprentice and came into contact with a young otaku who was something like his adopted daughter. The ambition of the apprentice ended up pulling him away to his own solo work and the otaku was caught up in the unreasoning insanity of a free AI (or sophisticated SK) that culminated in the suicide bombing of a local club in which the otaku was nearly killed and then disappeared by the AI.

After the disappearance of his daughter, the character began reactivating some of the old Black Sands assets and becoming more pro-active in disruptive events in the Seattle area. His information-awareness work brought him into frequent contact with an operative doing the same thing from a different angle. The two found that my character's technological investigation and the other character's magical investigation overlapped in many game plots and scenarios. Eventually they decided that by combining their overwhelming abilites in each field they could operate each of their long-term goals more efficiently. This duo played a couple cameo parts in the Tropical Connection run mfb mentioned.

The character continues to become involved in events throughout Seattle but has maintained a fairly effective information block on the extent of this. He operates both above and below the board. Above, he or his front company has had official contact and work with the metroplex government and even worked security contracts during the revolution that James is running. Black Sands is once again operationg, though no one can say how many people it currently employs. The real answer is that it consists almost entirely of expert systems and control networks. The character hires supplimental magical support and even works with a few mages regularly, but the company carries out mid-scale mercenary work often with no real person in theatre and top-level operations being controlled by the character and his expert systems in Seattle. He appears ready to make his move on the man in Ares and has started letting his information screen down, alerting the Ares man (now a Colonel in Ares Arms operations) of his presence and that he survived.

With the disapointment of SR4, I'm afraid the campaign of Telnet may be coming to an end, however.

Ritter's only a Lt. Colonel. However, when he single-handedly defeated Saito in Robert DeNiro elf to Jap racist Hand-to-Hand, he probably earned himself a promotion to at least Colonel, or maybe even earning himself a star or two.

[COLOR=green][FONT=Courier] i'm currently in a game where we're up against the Enemy. kind of a spinoff of worlds without end. The campaign includes dragons and field trips to australia. pretty high level, but keeping with the major storylines. one fire oriented mage, one phys adept who can punch through steel, and one jack-of-all-trades inventor.

As a GM my favorite campaign (called "The Red Bandit")was centered around a Russian Arms Dealer who had been framed for the death of Patrick O'Malley in 2057. In 2063, when the game took place the Russian was planning to return to Seattle and clear his names and had the PCs pave his way. I enjoyed it because it mixed the street flavor of Seattle with some reasonably high powered players and also had a compelling backstory, logical evolution, memorable cast of characters and a pair of awesome climactic runs. (The players, mostly successfully, broke into the O'Malley estate in the first and then got to confront a long-hated enemy in the second.)

My players insist that a campaign I called "The Judas Cyberarm" was the best. In the campaign three members of the network living within a Yamatetsu arcology attempted to develop and bring to market a very high quality consumer cyberarm and datajack which, when installed on the same person, allowed the network to communicate with them. The real twist was that one of the PCs got this set of cyber installed and served as the opposition for half of the run. It was successful because they deciphered the backstory from well hidden clues and had a great time interacting with some of the top deckers in the game and the Yamatetsu employee whose house they took over as a staging area.

Hmm. I remember a one-shot I ran. The night before I had been frantically playing the Shadowrun SNES game in order to come up with an idea for the game I needed to run the next day and I'd gotten to the place where you kill the kraken in the warehouse which is disguised as your girlfriend.

Using that as inspiration I had the PCs hired to go and battle large hentai anime tentacle monsters in a warehouse. The twist was that they were gay tentacle monsters.

Vader?

yeah, who's that guy? he sounds familiar, was he in a movie or something?

I thought that was a vB command or something.

My favorite campaign is the one that I last more than three months in.

I'll let you know when that actually happens.

There are campaigns that lasts less than three, hell, six months?

Wow.

HAHAHA

I've had runs still in the planning stage after 3 months. Actuall... hahaha... I've seen a run last more than a year before they actually saw action, and then it died just as it was about to start. God... Good times.

Lag. The bitch-whore of online gaming.

You must be talking about online games. There is no way that real life games should take this long. we used to play once a week ... mind you we never ran anything published, but things usually took 3 3-4 hour sessions to run to completion.

So, did you think I wrote "Lag. The bitch-whore of online gaming" for my health?

Jesus effing god...

"Rhapsody in Shadow" was by far the most detailed campaign arc I had developed. For those who have not seen assorted posts relating to it, the campaign revolved around a young woman (a virtuoso performer and technical genius).

Abbreviated background:

In the campaign setting, Serbia had become a dictatorship after the Euro War and barged into neighbouring Croatia one August afternoon. The resulting occupation was a decade old at the time the runners entered the scene.

The young woman (Leela Groznek) had witnessed her family's deaths at the age of only eight, shortly after performing a phenomenal concert which was attended by several reps from some of Europe's most prestigious conservatories. In the initial blitz, she too was severely wounded and underwent implantation surgery (Mostly headware & some bio) to save her life & aid her with her recovery.

Saddened and angry at the loss of her family & so many friends, Leela sided with the resistance and became an expert at demolitions in her teens (She is descended from a long line of Pyrotechnicians that dates back to the 19th century) She was eventually extracted by a band of mercenaries who took her to the UCAS, from where she eventually ended up in the UK. After overcoming a severe performance block, Leela returned to the concert stage where once again she amazed audiences in the UK and on the continent

The campaign

The story picked up with her being abducted by an officer of Serbia's SSID midway through her Concert tour of the Continent. The runners were of course hired to find and get her back. Of course, the entire operation had to be kept very quiet for several reasons. It involved getting dropped into the Balkan region, the team having to slip across the Serbian border and make it to Belgrade where she was being held prisoner. This was more than a simple extraction however, for there were also political games afoot as well that the team became embroiled in afterwards. Of course in the end (no spoilers here) there were some very "interesting" revelations regarding Leela and one of the NPCs.

The campaign pretty much had the flavour of both a mystery and espionage novel, with hidden clues and surprises at nearly every turn. Lots of fun. Looking to run it again and possibly find some way to get it published. definitely SR3 though for the SR4 timeline and tech advancements don't fit well at all.

[Addendum]

As part of the preparation I did an historical study on the ethnic conflict culminating with the 1990s war. Some of the works I read were pretty eye opening particularly where the reactions of the US and UK were concerned. I also bought detailed maps of the region which were used during in campaign. Though not ethnically related myself, I was particularly moved by the writings of one physician who spent time in Croatia at the height of conflict. The atrocities committed on the Croatian people were beyond barbaric and really set the tone for the latter part of the campaign.

...

wrong thread.

I'd have to see my "favorite campaign" is the one we're in now. But please take note, we run a completely Dynamic Gameverse, so our campaign includes/encompasses the "System Failure" storyline.

I don't know what game was "the best" or "the funnest".

The game where the Street Samurai was told to "not touch the magical sword" and the first thing he did was exactly that. (Lifestealer)

The incident where the shamaness was left controlling the pirateer orbiter because she couldn't use magic in a void and saved everyone's ass as one of the softdocks suffered explosive decompression. (Tailchaser: Revisited)

The one where two characters road out the super-satellite and booster engines in the shadow of the polarized plating during the micro-meteor shower on the outside of the vehicles. (Tailchaser: Revisited)

One where the decker and the shamaness get into a shouting match because of "unspoken sexual tensions" between them that ended in the phrase "your needs? what about my needs?!?" Problem was the decker was 14, shamaness was 19 ... the troll who broke in the door for the decker put the door back into the frame and let them finish their "tension explosion" in privacy. ("Elven Assassin, You Killed My Father, Prepare to Die!")

The one where the entire group of characters pursues the kidnapped Oak Shamaness, Otaku Decker and Gnome Decker while the otaku's trucks autopilot is triggered to "pursue owner" where the kidnappers were forced to abduct them using a public bus and everyone else joins pursuit in/along Black Canyon Highway on the East-West branch on the south side of downtown Phoenix PCC and make the mistake of attempting to merge into a pre-existing traffic jam where the Oak Shamaness uses (for the first time ever) the heavy pistol the mercenary had given her as "back up" on the driver of the bus and sends everyone on-board over the on-ramps guard rail and into the Salt River's dusty-as-white-bone riverbed. Stupid moment was the Mercenary in pursuit followed the street samurai down the median and leaped the on-ramp entirely. Street Samurai was using a bike. The mercenary was using the bounty hunter's truck. Street Samurai made it. The Merc (with the cat shamaness mentioned previously, and the dwarven rigger thrown literally into the back at the last minute) didn't and the cat shamaness was forced to try and "Levitate" the truck (with all included) safely and not crash-n-die (over 100' fall at over 120 game speed prior to "launch").

-That one scene by the way ended in the ultimate psychological stand-off between one of the abductors and the oak shamaness (who were inside the remains of the bus which had been "accordianized" nose-end up-and-over bus upside down) while the Merc and the Street Samurai were stealthing around the bus to get to the one remaining live abductor. Everyone else was still trying to get around/by the traffic jam just to get to the others and help. Needless to say, all survivors were detained by PCC police and it took literally every corporate/governmental favor the group had in possession to get out of that scrap afterwards. ("Tailchaser")

Of course there is always the one where the first SR group I was with got involved somehow in the partial collapse of the Euro-Tunnel from England to France ... and after my mage passed out from drain trying to help ... the group sprawled him across the hood of the groups Limousine and took a picture labeled "Look What We Bagged". My character was a Tiger Shapeshifter who upon passing out, reverted to his natural tiger form and was thus the brunt of the photographic joke. I think somewhere that picture is still roaming around ...............