The concept is to have encounters that players might stumble across during a run. These aren't story seeds or anything close to that indepth, but instead useful pieces that can be dropped into place. It should have several components:
ENCOUNTER: The actual description of the event; the core idea.
SETTING: Where the encounter takes place; sights, sounds, smells, and feel of the area. Place any notes here for modifers (positive or negative) that characters might have to deal with.
STATS: The stats for the various characters, creatures, gear, spirits, and/or machines.
GETTING BACK ON TRACK: A brief idea for the GM on what to do should the players fail the encounter. No runner moves in the shadows flawlessly. We all stumble sometime and have to get back up.
If anyone uses any ideas here, make sure to send a PM to the author thanking them--we all love to be acknowledged for our work!
To help give everyone an idea, I'll go first:
DEAD MAN CALLING
ENCOUNTER: An ex-runner lays dead, clutching a still functioning commlink in his hand. It's been connected to a power supply and a satellite uplink feed. Bullet have torn through him and the cable that the commlink uses to the feed.
It's still transmitting a distress code to Crash CartTM. Should any player pick it up and not turn it off, it'll contact the company and send paramedics to help once in range of a proper Matrix feed. The Crash CartTM contract is good for another 4 months. The blood-type is O-negative so there'd be no change of donor rejection based off of blood-type.
There is also an old, Ares Predator in his other hand. It has not been maintained and is out of ammunition, but might be useful to the group if they need another gun.
All other gear is too damaged from bullets and neglect to be of any use.
SETTING: An event to be placed in an area where there is little to no matrix activity. An encounter mainly for the decker/technomancer that has nothing to do.
STATS: The commlink is Device Rating 2. It has an encryption feed and a basic agent program to help find things on the Matrix. There is also a fake SIN for the former runner on the device which relates to the Crash CartTM contract. It's for a human. Players may want to change that to fit their character but that won't change the data back at the hospital of the former client. A dwarf might go in for a new cyber leg only to come out with something for a human.
The Ares Predator is in much needed repair. While functional, it is barely. For starters, the smartlink system is down. Any miss (no success rolled, not net successes) will cause the gun to jam. This can be undone with a Simple Action. A glitch requires a Complex Action. A Critical Glitch will cause to gun to misfire and explode. The character will have to resist base damage of the weapon with what armor the GM deems appropriate. The weapon can be brought back to a proper level of maintenance by making a Hardware check (2, 1 day).
GETTING BACK ON TRACK: The only way this encounter could go wrong is if the players start to obsess over whom this John Doe was (it literally says that's his name on his ID). The GM should remind them of the time frame or have the area where the corpse is starts to become unstable. Nothing should fall down until after they leave. The cause of the bullets can be something else from the main plot, or related directly to it. Whichever, the players will only know if they continue on with their journey.