I am running a SR4 campaign set around 2070. There is no magic, and no metahumans. CalFree is separate but still overseen by the Japanese military. Also, the existence of technomancers is not anywhere near public knowledge... yet.

This is the first time I've ever played or run a Shadowrun game. One of the players asked for the game to have a bit of a film-noir feel to it, so I'm trying to keep things mysterious and shady.

The premise is that the PCs were part of a potential team put together in (rebuilt, post-quake) Los Angeles by a former well-known decker-turned-fixer named Sundown. The team is not quite complete. There is a rigger, a hacker (Sundown's apprentice), and a covert ops specialist.

Before she had finished putting together the team, she disappeared. A week passed before anyone heard anything. Rumors began to spread. Had she been captured (or worse) by one of the many enemies she's accumulated over the years? The PCs did not find her at her safehouse; did she go to ground? Other runners at their usual hangouts are treating them with suspicion, and a man who claims to be Sunny's old flame of keeps showing up unexpectedly, leaving them only with vague clues.


So far, through a combination of their own research and limited information gathered from people who've sought them out to help find Sundown, the players have gathered that the situation has something to do with Shiawase, the corp Sunny most frequently came into conflict with. They know it has something to do with the Crash of '64, that something called the Resonance is involved, and that Sundown was one the mysterious otaku. She had some connection to Megaera prior to the Crash. They know, too, that Evo is looking for her.

I should also mention that the PCs are currently running a capture mission on behalf of the COS's Johnson. They're acquiring a fugitive gang member from a local warehouse where he's being guarded by some armed Shiawase men in suits... but curiously he's tied up along with another man they do not recognize. I want to work this into the main plot somehow.

Other places they've been include a VR club for hackers (where the hacker's contact usually spends time), a local dance bar and club with clandestine meeting rooms, the rigger's repair shop, an empty building near Sundown's safehouse that contained only hardware for a nexus mainframe set up by Shiawase, and her safehouse itself (an "abandoned" loft above a scrap/used electronics shop).

My original plan was to have Sunny, who is a hacker-turned-technomancer, be captured by Shiawase, in order for them to study her (as is part of the canon history of corps kidnapping and studying technomancers). The PCs would need to do a break-in and rescue her. That's still a possibility but I'd like to give the story a bit of a twist. I'm just not sure what, yet. This is where you come in.

I have about two sessions left before I promised my players we'd get back to the D&D game I'm also running that I paused to wait for a new source book to come out. I'd appreciate any help in tweaking their minds a bit and then wrapping everything up (more or less) smoothly.

Ummm no magic or metahumans? At all? That's the thing that makes the Shadowrun different from say Cyberpunk 2020 or similar games. Why not play one of those systems instead?
Having said that though, your story line seems interesting enough. How about having Sunny not so much captured as a willing volunteer in the study. Or you could even throw Latent Technomancer on one of your players and have Sunny as lure to bring them into the corp without a fight. "Join the dark side Luke" kind of thing.
Your captured ganger could be technomancer or maybe he knows something. Could just be bait for the PCs to lure them in as well. Not everything in a Shadowrun needs to wrap up nicely at the end. You can leave questions unanswered and maybe this will make the players want to play more Shadowrun in the future.

Well, if you're doing it noir style, then their questions should peg them as loose ends. The corp then sets them up for the law to get them out of the picture and so on.

So, they have to be on the run from the cops while they try to figure how to get out from under the frame job and find their friend. Gotta put some heat under the sucker to keep them on message.

I'm running Shadowrun because it was the system recommended to me when I told my player I wanted to run a short cyberpunk game. I'm leaving out the magic because a) watching a lot of Ghost in the Shell (woo, streaming on Netflix!) and reading through William Gibson's works simultaneously is what inspired me to want to run something and b) the Matrix system is complicated enough without trying to also learn the magic system at the same time and run it properly for my players.

I love the setting and intend to run a more full-featured game at some point.



Thanks!



Hm. I like the idea, but she'd have to have a good reason for joining up with/selling out to her long-time rivals. I'd want to have her return to the "light side", too, so it would need to be something the PCs could fix or change to bring her back.



The captured ganger they're sent after will, I think, just be an ordinary guy who they can turn in for the commission, but the other one with him... I could see giving him the Latent Technomancer thing and having him seed a few more clues to them.

Not a bad idea, leaving them wanting more, too.

I was planning to have them face off with some Lone Star goons and maybe another team of runners, compliments of Shiawase, in the next session.



It might be too late to set them up for a fall. I had planned to send a couple of LS troops out to the rigger's place because he was driving his car remotely around downtown L.A. and that got noticed when they were at the club. Maybe I can work something in there? Maybe the LS guys can plant some evidence at the rigger's shop... hmm.

LOL. The matrix system is waaaaay more complicated than the magic system. That's one of the ironies of Shadowrun, that a system on arcane power and magic is more straight forward and easier to run and understand than one based on supposedly real world items like computers and wireless networks.
I'm glad you plan to run a full campaign in the future. I've been playing this since 1st ed. and generally prefer it to DnD, which I've also played since 1st ed.

Perhaps they have some sort of blackmail material on her? Or a child of hers held against her good behavior? Or it could be something as simple as revealing her to be a technomancer will also open her up to being hunted by others. In your timeline has the AI Pulsar announced his presence yet? If not, then there is still going to be fear of technomancers and blame for them causing crash 2.0. There is a general sort of manhunt on for technomancers because of this and so outing Sunny as one would make it open season on her. This could be enough to convince her to work for her rivals. Better a gilded cage than a life on the run forever. If your team could discover evidence showing technomancers weren't to blame for crash 2.0 this sort of news would remove the threat over Sunny. Or whatever. Depends on how deep in the mythos you want to delve.

Heh. Figures.



I still like D&D, just for different reasons.



Ah ha! This, I like. Yeah, very, very few people are aware technmancers exist. Mostly corp-funded researchers and a handful of hackers. Maybe Sunny and her old flame had a kid... though I like the threat of exposure, too. Maybe a bit of both...

Glad I could help. Hope you fun with it.

So, framing this as a proper detective story, let's break it into acts.

Act 1: Sunny hires the runners and promptly disappears. The runners, out of a sense of (monetary) obligation start to track her down. Shiawase agents attempt to scare them off. One of Sunny's more important friends whom the runners had questioned ends up dead.

Act 2: Cops show up to question the runners about the dead guy since they were recently seen in his/her company. The runners try to find Sunny to help them clear their involvement with the dead contact. By the end of act two, they find her, and she either blows them off or betrays them to Shiawase in a suspicious way which sets them back.

Act 3: The runners need to find out why she wouldn't want to get free of Shiawase (all that blackmail biz) and try and resolve that. Meanwhile the events at the end of act 2 set the runners on the run from the police and some Shiawase hit squads. So, the finale sees them try to free Sunny from Shiawase, their blackmail/mind control/whatevs and turn the cops towards the Shiawase hit squad who actually offed Sunny's important upscale contact. At that point the cops shrug, say "it's an extra-territorial matter" and walk off.

If you choose to go with brainwashing, that's definately a common SR thing. Programable Asist Biofeedback. It's in Unwired, if you've got access to that book.

Just for the record, you're all awesome for your help.



They're also tracking her because she was mentor to the party's hacker. This actualyl works really well as I've been having Shiawase leave (unsigned... maybe they're from Sunny, trying to secretly keep the PCs safe w/o the corp noticing) messages for them, telling them drop their investigation. And I have just the NPC in mind to kill off...



I'm not sure how finding Sunny would help them clear their name with the police... unless she was involved with the hit somehow? Hmm. I like the idea of using Sunny as the (un)willing bait for an ambush that they have to escape.



Woo, hit squads!



Sounds perfect. Excellent.



I was actually wondering how that would work. I'll look it up, thanks!

There's also the Influence spell, though, with a Technomancer, you're going to have a lot of Willpower for regular resistance rolls. One of the benefits of the PAB brainwashing is that it takes time for full effects, so it puts a ticking clock on things. That kind of impetus is crucial in detective style stories. If she's leaving messages, there can even be a progression from shying them away to straight up telling them off to setting them up which mirrors her mental state as they overwrite more and more of her memories.

However, since Willpower is once again an issue here, it's likely Shiawase has her drugged to the gills with Gamma-Scopolamine and cut off from the Matrix. Actually, using PAB on a 'Mancer has got to be one of the least studied things in the SR world. Would the TM naturally twist the input signals so that the reality she's being bombarded with is a combination of what Shiawase wants her to believe and what she wants to believe? How would the TM's bionode be affected by direct hotsim, ASIST bombardment? Plenty to consider here..

No magic in this game, so that's not a problem.



This (and the rest) sounds perfect! Where can I find info on Gamma-Scopolamine?

It's in the Toxin section of the core book. Under the Running the Shadows section.

Gamma-Scopolamine
Vector: Injection
Speed: Immediate
Penetration: 0
Power: 8
Effect: Paralysis, Truth Serum (see Description).
Description: This neuromuscular blocking agent renders a target
unable to move. It is derived from the natural toxin found in
Atropa Belladonna, commonly known as nightshade. Gammascopolamine
takes effect immediately, causing dizziness, dilation
of the pupils, speech loss, delirium, and paralysis. The full
effects last for one hour. After the hour has passed, the residue
remaining in the body acts as a “truth serum” for an additional
hour. Reduce the target’s Willpower by 3 (to a minimum of 1)
for the duration of the chemical’s effect.

Excellent. Thank you.