Hey there fellow GMs and Runnerz!

I wanted to reach out in the hope that you could help me brainstorm some run ideas. I keep looping myself into the same old monty haul stuff and save the world stuff

But, I imagine a world more gritty. Still, Cyberpunk drug deals and turf wars just dont feel, well, REAL!

Am I just delusional?

Anyway what are some runs that you've crafted or performed?

All help is appreciated!

What do you want in your runs? What problems do you have with cyberpunk drug deals and turf wars?

I'll better make my own Thread

HougH!
Medicineman

Begin with an idea...

Corporation X wants to get into the AAA arena

to achieve this they need a succession of things to happen over time of years, and a lot of other bad things to happen to other corps to make room for them.

So you decide what these break points are. and build a basic timeline, giving breathing space in between pivotal events.

Then you decide who would be interested parties in these activities and who would be the opponents.

Decide upon scenarios that would benefit the corp .. and what other jobs are on offer from the competition to counter their plans.

throw into the mix, other jobs that might seem counter productive to the corps intentions,
(maybe even make it very personal to the runners so they must decide over a massive payday or their own beliefs and personal code of honour)

eventually you end up with a series of events that are pivotal to the overarching plot but are not world ending events.

and you can do them in sequence or out of sequence, if the runners fail, have some other group succeed or make it a minor set back in the grand scheme.

Very rarely will the corp SOLELY depend on the actions of a single team ... multiple fingers in myriad pies!

and don't forget, at some point the runners will ALWAYS be looking to make a fast buck.
so there is a chance that the paydata that they get hold of could burn them instantly with anyone of the above players and instantly get them into the good graces of someone else

Sounds fun and complicated right ? Welcome to the shadows

If you're playing 5th, I wrote up an office with corp sec and such you can use for whatever really. And 9 run ideas to hit the office.

Runners shoot people in the face for money, and the players could feel bad about that already. One kind of grit is the general world, were wageslaves don´t get ahead, harrassed by gangs on the way home and threatened by unemployment at work. The other kind is the effect the runs have - just play up what went wrong for whom because of the run.

Try an organised crime campaign were the runners steal things from corps (often for other corps using a syndicate fixer), and if they do really well the damaged party takes it out on the syndicate, hitting their favourite connections.

Might I recommend looking through the Redneck Runs for some off the wall but still usable ideas for a run?

What do you want?

Are you looking for mission ideas, or a change of style?
If you are looking for a change try a company man setting.

The group is all magic. I want a gritty, drug dealing, turf war slinging, kidnappings victim gritty style game. I keep coming up with ideas I think are both unrealistic and cliche.

Then maybe you should check out Ghost Cartels for a starting point and flesh it out from there.

Awakened Drug running and battles between various powers to wrest control of it. what more can you want?

Try a change of location.

The majority of our characters too are adepts or mages. I started another campaign in Chicago, containment zone, and suddenly I have only 1 mage in the team.

That might work.

My team had a majority of mages and adepts. But we also had an Astral Hazing Technomancer. We learnt to work with and exploit BC.

At least in 4th Edition, if you designed a Mage to be effective in BGC, it was generally not hat big of a deal. Not sure how it works out in SR5, since the system is a bit different.

Theres a new drug on the streets, your hired to get it to stop. Some possible ways to spin it are
Cops are hiring, Concerned Citizen hiring (perhaps with an addicted kid), Yaks or Mafia are hiring (cutting into their profits), Gang hiring (again cutting into profits)
Some drug names ive used Jazz Hands, Blitzkrieg, K9
Its a combat drug guys use it to win a bar fight and one taste your hooked. It makes you irritable and paranoid over time making you take more and more to defend yourself.
Other possible spin, the drug actually comes from a bug hive, you start not trusting anyone who isnt part of the hive
No one knows who makes it (bug shaman?, doc who lost his license? maybe go walter white with a former chemistry teacher)
To get a hit you just call a number and an hour later they will call the number back and tell you where to pick it up. The number is on the bathroom stalls in the Barrens.
they don't seem to be charging... making it even creepier. Or if they charge its drop the money at a location and the kid that picks it up is wacked out of his gord doesnt know anything other than carry the cash from one location to another. brainwashed?
The main thing to get from this is theres a new player in town and hes very careful, hes after power not money so much and hes building a junkie army. The drug makes you crazy strong but at what cost?

That... is damn creepy.

What's that number again?

um.. for research purposes.. yeah, that's it.

Sounds like the Snack food from Queen Euphoria.

Yeah I think there is only about 20-30 original runs, everything else is recycled in some way. Generally what I do is come up with 6 or so generic starting runs and try to identify 3 opposing factions that will end up in the mix then just let it grow organically from there. My Shadowrun claim to fame is having a side pyscho dr (Sorta Hannibal crossed with Frankenstein but possibly a pedophile and obsessed with bringing his sister back to life, I never said he was a pedophile but he was obsessed with kids and left it open to the PCs imagination) Anyways he was beat but the building burned down so the PCs were not sure he actually died. Occasionally I'd drop a hint that he might be out there somewhere. Eventually after the PCs had a fair amount of nuyen they went off script and decided to hunt this guy down and put a bullet in him, sparing no expense. I always figured he had died and it was either a copy cat or not related at all but since they wanted to hunt him down I didnt want to let them down so he suddenly became the ring leader of this gang of mages and they had a cyberzombie child army. They still high five each other and said the PCs lost was worth it. I'm hoping to one up that campaign some day.

[edit] For the game I'm running now I totally ripped off Sam Becker from Farcry 3 as an NPC but hes an Ork. I havent introduced him yet but I'm sure they will love him and when he eventually either sacrifices himself or betrays them or whatever I come up with I'm sure it will be memorable. I wont know how to spin his eventual death until I see how the PCs interact with him for several sessions.

Rip off Taxi Driver.

Playing on the drug idea - one of the effects could be that it temporarily grants magic power. Using it either allows the person to see the astral plane, cast a single spell, or summon a single spirit. It also grants temporary magic resistance.

This has resulted in random violence as drug addicts run around town using their spell randomly. One of the local gangs that has never had magical talent is using it to try to expand their territory by taking it away from magically powerful gangs (like the Ancients). Corporations are trying to research, control and improve the drug, because developing a drug that grants permanent magical ability is worth a fortune. Certain magical groups want to destroy the drug because the more mages running around, the less important they are.

Many many Shadowrun authors had/have a very hard time putting the grit into the magic. Most of the time, they do it with things that go bump in the night (insect spirits, shedims, etc.) but there's a lot you can do with just regular Awakeneds:

• Cultural differences: Some traditions are old, and they've got very old customs or outlooks that are no longer socially accepted. When you need horse penises for your rituals, you'll probably soon be known in the whole hood as the "horse penis fetishist".
• Black magic: In many magic traditions, using power for hurting people is "black magic" or "the dark side". In these cases, the Awakened following these traditions and using powers in these ways should consider themselves as "evil mages" with all it entails.
• Power hunger: Awakeneds need karma. A lot of it. This is in line with many folk stories about mages consumed with hunger for power. Many awakeneds should be lured by promises of bigger powers. Spirit pacts, strange artifact with unknown properties and darksidy-paths that are quicker, easier and more seductive.
• Super powers!: When you've got powers like Influence or Improved Invisibility, it's very tempting to use them for not very nice purposes. And generally speaking, being Awakened is likely to make you feel superior.

With this, I'd go for a campaign surrounding a strange artifact found in the Barrens that's said to hold great power. The campaign would see powerful mages and mage cabals fighting for it in the shadows. They're making gang fights each others, they're destroying whole blocks and wasting many people's lives to get it. The runners would get dragged into this, and might soon start to do the exact same things.
It could be tempting to finish in a climax with the artifact turning out to hold a Shadow Spirit who fed on the violence of the fights and the despair of people, but for a really gritty campaign, it's be better to end with it being just a weird artifact that'll take ages to study, or to be something completely not magical: the rumors were started by a media cult that misinterpreted a corporate ad and it snowballed and went out of control.

Alrighty guys these are all amazing suggestions thank you! I think I'm cooking something up. Now, one last question. Any ideas on how to incorporate the end result of my last campaign arc?
A small nuclear device was detonated deep within the ACHE.

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