I've been a PC in a shadowrun game for about a year now. I enjoy it more than any video game, but I've recently relocated and can't play with my group any longer.

Fortunately, I've convinced a group of 5 over here to play. A couple have played D&D before, one has played an earlier edition of Shadowrun and Earthdawn, and two have no role-playing experience at all. Since I'm the only one with a decent handle of the setting and the rules, I've been elected as GM.

Buuuut I've never GM'd anything before.

I have a couple of goals for my first campaign. First, I want to give them a good example of the setting. I'll be running a semi-mirrorshades campaign in the city of Neo-Tokyo, focusing on the questionable morality of shadowrunners, dystopia and the terrifying powers-that-be. My second goal is to give them a good handle of the rules by putting them up against a variety of threats and allowing them to explore what their characters' abilities and limitations are. My ultimate goal is to port the Renraku Arcology: Shutdown to SR4 and have them run that (There are no Technomancers in my game, but one character is playing an AI. I allow this because he's an experienced RPer, everybody else is using the standard metavariants). I've already sat down and reviewed all of the characters, we've got a team of a hacker, an AI, a combat rigger, a troll face (Brilliant!), and a mage.

So, what are some fairly newbie-friendly missions that won't kill my runners outright? What are some GM-newbie friendly missions that will be manageable but still provide good flavor?

Are there any resources on Neo-Tokyo? I'm willing to houserule most of it, but it'd require a lot of work. Are there any resources for Arcology: Shutdown ports to SR4a?

*Starting* with an AI might be challenging, regardless.

Are you asking about pre-made missions, or just general run ideas?

Only played one and started the next, but the Shadowrun Missions freebie downloads seem pretty well set out for novice GMs and Players.

Either or would be nice. I was kind of hesitant at letting him play an AI, but I just love the matrix so much. He's one of the first non-godly AIs, and I know it doesn't make sense because the matrix crash caused AIs to happen and blah blah blah. Argh, timelines not agreeing with the stories I want to run.

Johnny, great to see that you found a group over there and you're going to give the GM'n a try. If you want any of the material that I made during our adventures just let me know. Also, I still have a few of the modules you guys ran through as well (remember the river rapids?), several on PDF.

If you ever need any advice from me never hesitate to ask.

I'd say you should definitely give them a milk run or two just to give them a chance to test their characters and the system out. Something that should be fairly easy challenge wise but still interesting to play.

I don't think there will be anything wrong with having an AI character, but since you have both a hacker and an AI you'll have a game that's fairly Matrix involved. You may have trouble with the flow between the Matrix and the physical characters and actions. I think that will be one of your biggest challenges: keeping the one group occupied while the other does their thing. An age old dilemma.

Three Matrix characters: don't forget the Rigger.

I smell a lot of chess between the Face and the Mage.

Johnny B,

Glad you were able to find a group. Sorry I wasn't any help there.

-D

I was about to say the same thing: with a new GM and players new to the system, something dead-simple is the first thing I'd run.

Allow for some story-elements: Get your PC's introduced to each-other, have them meet some of the major NPC's you want to have in your campaign, introduce some of the major theme's you'd like to incorporate, etc.

Allow PLENTY of time for rule-lookups and the like during play - I'd plan for a simple, 1-fight sort of adventure, something where the PC's should be able to out-fight the opposition, and that can be easily played-through in whatever time you have allotted.

And probably most importantly, allow the players to tweak their characters a bit after seeing the system in-action.

We'll try some of the missions-you could probably convert the New York missions over with little adjustment-the missions are fairly straightforward and are completable in one four hour session. You can create your own too, but you might want to wait until you have had time to get used to being the GM.




There a whole section on it in the Corporate Enclaves book. I'd als warn the troll face that Tokyo and Japan in general is pretty rascist (if you play it that way).

http://www.battlecorps.com/catalog/product...roducts_id=2009