Ok, I'm starting in a few weeks, max 2 month, a runners group of 4 to 6 players that never played Shadowrun. I'm going with 3rd edition because that's the one I know and love most.

My question now : In many RPG, the way it goes is with a campaign, something grandiose with fireworks and dragon killing at the end. In Shadowrun, it's mostly run, job, etc. So, I'm asking GM or even players here. In your Shadowrun game, do you play only mission to mission or the missions are all part of a bigger campaign, running into the background and culminating at tne end of like 2-3 years of gameplay ?

I ask that because I'm not sure the way to go. Shadowrun tend to be mostly about the run, but I think creating a campaign is very possible and very intriguing with the fluff Shadow is all about. At the same time, the fluff is a 'obstacle because of is complexity ...

So, how do you play Shadowrun ?

I do a few runs, maybe one or two are related. Introduce some names and faces let people meet their contacts and then I'll spin a campaign up, something that isn't just "runs" but events that involve characters and link together. For new players I'd go with a few simple runs that introduces the rulesets that effect their characters.

Yeah, for starting I'm gonna do the First Run book to introduce them to the game and gameplay.

But, after that, after the players know the rules and etc. how do you play ?

@Moirdryd : So, meeting the contacts and after, with character + contact, a campaign ?

I find the hardest part of being a GM - after managing the bookkeeping - is coming up with compelling, coherent adventures.

I always set out to do a campaign, but my players have a way of exploring the setting and I'm kind of lenient in letting them explore wild tangents, so we never get around to the full campaigns before the players have a fresh batch of character ideas they want to try in a secondary "campaign". So we mostly play mini-stories and one offs, although they like switching back to their "original team" every now and again.

I guess this is just my table's "acclimation" to SR, as they were all tabletop newbs before I got them playing. Your mileable may vary.

Addendum: All that said, I'm beginning to think I ought to just "borrow" a story structure from some other game or film or book or something and rework it to make it my own. I'm not here to write an award winning novel, I'm here to make a fun game campaign.

~Umi

When I DMed D&D I used to start newbs off with a few unrelated adventures, linked together by some elaborate hand-waiving, to get a foundation for a long-term campaign.

For my current (first) attempt at GMing SR, I will be starting off with a quickie "learner" story involving my characters as children. I will then fast-forward a few years and send them on an adventure I found in an old blog (from like '96), a basic extraction of a scientist from Cal State University Sacramento, with the dropoff to be made in Emigrant Gap. I don't have much else set up yet, but I figure another two other runs should give me enough to weave them together in a coherent campaign. I do intend, after I get the "weave" going, to send them on a run through a town we used to live in on the Salish/Tir border called Umatilla. If, by some chance, they don't like their characters or how the game is going, I will postpone some of the more grandiose plans. I found that, at least for D&D, this practice of "testing the water" leads to a smoother transition into a more formalized campaign, as players unhappy with a character will make life miserable for everyone if we don't get that dreck ironed out before "diving in".

I like to have an idea for a campaign, but I also use the first few sessions to see what pushes my players characters buttons. I get a feel for what they're likely to initiate in game and what roads they'll try and explore. Then I put together the campaign story. For Shadowrun that means several mini arcs instead of one sweeping one built around some causality of the Runs and personal desires of the characters.

For example: One character may have a backstory or generated in play vendetta (or if from in play the team may have a vendetta) the resolution of which would make a nice campaign arc, another may have dependants or a lost sibling/love/mentor/friend thing and that's another arc there, meanwhile the team may be getting lots of work from the same corp/johnson that's trying to duplicate the creation of something like Deus and the team gets sucked into an internal war. All the while they're doing other Runs just to keep the nuyen flowing or as favours for the contacts they need to keep happy. By the end they should have a bunch of names in their heads of contacts and allies without having to look anything up on their game notes/char sheets and ideally some new people to settle scores with. That's when you're ready for campaign 2

I've done a bit of everything: unrelated one-shot missions, one-shots missions that gradually built some kind of common campaign setting, campaigns that were made of mostly unrelated missions, campaigns that were just about one big mission, or that dealt with something completely different than shadowruns.

Generally speaking, single and unrelated runs won't get you very far. They're fine to get the PC together at the beginning, to get the players used to the tone, but in most cases, the campaigns really hit off once things are starting to get personal. This can be because of relationships inside the team, or with recurring NPCs, or because of a common cause or enemy...

I think you can compare that to the way most TV shows go: all the police shows are about a group of people solving cases, but after a few episodes, the real focus isn't the cases, but the various plots about each of the main characters, or the relationships between them. The cases are still entertaining and a way to add some external elements, but they aren't what people look forward to when watching a new episode.

I'm going for a long campaign and I use every story arc shadowrun has to offer.

My part one is *Harlequin* : it will introduce a force in the background with Immortal elves. i play unrelated scenarios in between. To forecast next events, I've added the apparition of an horror.

My second arc will be the bugs with UB and Chicago. To create the rupture between post-bug Chicago and pre-bug chicago, I currently ad a few missions in Chicago.

Then I'll follow with Harlequin's arc, and use the thing I've planted before.


In short, I think that it can be a mission game but with a long term plot, like some US series actually.

Oh boy, gay elves. I'm sure they can't wait.

Hmmm so, independent run, all interweaved into a big campaign (Corp want to destroy world, Dragon eat too much = Europe at risk of being destroyed, etc.) seem the best way to go.

1. Start with 2-3 run, to make them learn the way of the shadowrun, their character but more important, their relationship (@Blade).
2. Use the backstory + relation to build more dedicated run for the character
2.1 Hop them at the same time into a bigger campaign
3. ????
4. Make more nuyen or TPK

Something like that ? I tried to mix mostly all that was said.

PS. : I was thinking of using Survival of the Fittest or Wake the Comet as a campaign, but adding some things to them and more run.

Looks good to me. Start with the intent to use your campaign, but pull up some run ideas and lead in. Don't try to start an established campaign and lead to another, it will cause the same problems as just jumping into a campaign, unless you can make the first one unimportant, but lead into the second. I would just google RPG mission ideas.

And what do you do if the players want to deviate too much from the plan ? I'm not for railroading, but Shadowrun universe can be pretty fast accessible (car, train (oh ... idea for a run here), plane, etc.)

I've always kept enough side material to wing it. For instance, when mapping out a warehouse to be robbed, map enough surrounding area for some leeway, and make sure you've enough of a general idea of the entire compound to fake it if they veer. Also keep a second run in reserve in case they decline a Johnson.

Why would they?

I don't know, if you've been engaged to find Mrs A. who disappeared in Seattle Downtown, why would they wander elsewhere?

I find that SR's scenario structure avoids such problems. They're guided toward a clear goal.

They might have no reason to go to the wrong side of town, but there's no guarantee they'll stick to the right side of the mansion she's holed-up in (or wherever she is).

Just yesterday my kid decided to find out what it would be like to use holographic tools to murder a holographic blacksmith at Sutter's Fort. I had to either wing it or chastise him for playing. I chose in stead to make it alert security, who chastised him instead of me. Now he gets to feel that he was just playing a game still, while I got to focus him away from treating it like a video game.

Why would they not in fact ?

DM : ''Find Mr. A''

Players : ''Ok, but before we go to X, Y and Z''

DM : ''He's not there, why would you go there ?''

Players : ''Because we can and want because of X, Y and Z something''

The only way to make them not deviate would be timers (you have 16 hours before it explode) or treatening or vehicule (you are struck in the van, you don't drive it). Seem like kind of railroading.

No. Allow them to fail. "You didn't go find Mr. A like we said. We will not do business with you or your team mates again."

And at what degree of failure would you do something like ''You fail, no business, we hired people to get you because you can't be trusted anymore''.

Because, metagaming speaking, the DM need to run players. If the players say ''Ok, no more business from you, don't give a crap. DM, what's the next run ?'' You can't possibly say ''DM : No more run, nobody trust you now'', so it's as little impact if there is no coercive measure with it.

Team gets a point of Notoriety for not being trustworthy. Does not mean no one will hire then, but enough Notoriety and eventually all they (the team) will be good for is distraction runs, which tend to have a high mortality rate.

I've never played Shadowrun, but I've read the rules, and I plan to run my own game soon. My players will be a mix of newbies and hard-core veterans. I have been running other games for 2/3 of my life now, so I have some experience in general. That experience tells me that the players will probably spend a lot of game time devising a plan, and while they do that, the GM should be taking notes. Nothing will go exactly according to their plan, but it'll give you an idea of what you need to prepare.

On the other hand, if they are the sort to go in guns blazing with no exit strategy (or worse, make a half-assed sketch of their ideas), you may need to work on your improvisational skills.

Or just make them regret not planning enough.

That's generally what I do. Some players tend to surprise with well thought-out, poorly executed plans though.

This.

As both player and GM I like a mix of linked storyline and strait up mission runs. Best case is actually a series of larger plots that are sort of advancing simultaneously, letting the group bounce between them.

A fun one is to use a newbie Johnson as well. A young exec who is hungry to advance and trying to score a few points, but has not yet quite developed that full pencilneck attitude toward the runners, maybe romanticizing them a bit in his mind, so tends to give them their fair shake.

Don't use him/her all the time, but as the Johnson progresses (sometimes based on the runners work ) they can offer better jobs/gear/favors and can pave the way for all sorts of plotlines....

Wait. Erm, there are 2 cases :

Case 1 : Players deviate from the story because they are not interested into it: Something's wrong. Exemple: You play a med-fan, they're supposed to free Mr X but instead they leave or search a magician to acquiere artifacts or whatever: this kind of deviation is problematic because it highlights a problem between the players and GM and that should be treated.

Case 2: They go X,Y and Z and the players believes it makes sense considering the scenario. To me the GM must deal with it. It's normal and ok and improvisation should belong to the GM's skills.

Wait. Erm, there are 2 cases :

Case 1 : Players deviate from the story because they are not interested into it: Something's wrong. Exemple: You play a med-fan, they're supposed to free Mr X but instead they leave or search a magician to acquiere artifacts or whatever: this kind of deviation is problematic because it highlights a problem between the players and GM and that should be treated.

Case 2: They go X,Y and Z and the players believes it makes sense considering the scenario. To me the GM must deal with it. It's normal and ok and improvisation should belong to the GM's skills.

Regarding Case 1: I've had plenty of players who habitually use game time for things like this; things that can easily be hand-waved in downtime or role-played while everyone else takes a break. It's usually a player who has trouble staying entertained with a particular game. Some people can't handle the thinking and investigating required by Call of Cthulhu, and others can't make themselves sit still for a D&D dungeon crawl. It's the GM's job to serve up a game for everyone, but there are times when play styles just don't mesh.

On a side note, I really do love players who take it upon themselves to add to the story. I absolutely hate dragging PCs around by the nose, and I pride myself on my ability to improvise. When a player helps me out by doing something he or she knows is going to provide plenty of story potential, I appreciate it.

When I GM, my games are usually individual missions, sometimes they relate or something will come up and haunt the characters from their past, but most missions are stand-alone. I’m pretty good at telling short stories, but not so good at novels. Campaigns are novels; missions are either chapters in a novel or are short stories in themselves.

Our current GM is good at doing campaigns. We have related missions and unrelated missions. Usually the team will handle one or two unrelated missions for every campaign mission. Sometimes the seemingly unrelated missions end up being related but that doesn’t happen too often.

I think it really comes down to what you as a GM are most comfortable with. If you are good at setting up a campaign then you should go for it. In “the other system” the end of a campaign might be “kill the dragon” or “remove the evil king” or something of the sort. In Shadowrun, those are both also valid endings; you also have things like “remove (organized crime family) from the area”, “clean up the crime in an area”, “overthrow/remove a major (or minor) corporation”, or the opposite of any of the above. The same basic plot lines you’d use in a fantasy game will work in SR by tweaking the ending to be more Sci-fi + Fantasy. Don’t forget that Shadowrun is alignment-less, so “good” and “evil” are relative.