[pariah3j]

Hi everyone - So I'm a first time poster but been lurking and reading for some time.

Just a little backstory, I'm a long time pen and paper player, use to play 2nd ed shadowrun back in highschool w/ a group of friends. Always enjoyed it but my current group for the most part, tends to likes fantasy more then sci-fi. I've convinced them to give SR 4th ed a try and I'm going to give my hand at GM'ing it. Our current GM wants a break so its the perfect chance for us to try something new. Thought I'd run my first campaign idea by everyone, see what things I could possibly expand on or ideas ya'll might have, I always enjoy reading the feed back on the forum in other posts.

First off I think I'm going to run the Food Fight scenario, A) to give us a good chance to get us use to combat, B) I'm going to use it as a jumping off point to bring the group together. After the events at the Stuffer Shack, the PC's will get a small bit of notoriety on the local news trid. This will prompt a new fixer to contact the PCs and offer them a job.

The job will be for a sleazy lawyer (think saul goodman from breaking bad) He's hoping to poach a new corporate client who's been arrested for murder but claims he's innocent. Mr. Johnson will want the players to gather evidence(good or bad) so he can attempt to plan a defense. The players will be given a copy of the security footage from the client's apartment that shows him receiving a call in the middle of the night, hurriedly leaves, they see him drive off in his car. He believes this person that called has something to do with it and wants answers.

Thoughts ? I've got alot more written out and whatnot just that's the premise of my idea.

[Doom Unicorn]

Here's a hook for a scenario in this adventure: maybe Mr. J got the security video by bribing a beat cop working the case, but he can't just have the cop walk out of the station with the client's commlink, since that's in evidence. The players need to find a way to get to that commlink to track down the source of the call. Depending on the character's skills and your comfort with the various rules, you can give them free reign to try to get to the commlink, or you can design the police station to railroad them into mostly hacking or mostly conning or mostly bribing their way to it, or maybe a precise military strike (oh golly would that be fun). Make sure the corporate client isn't too big a deal, or the case too big, so the runners aren't dealing with breaking into some major police station.

[pariah3j]

Great idea, one of the things I had thought about having Mr. J mention to the players was to find out what the prosecution has on his client. In order to make things a little easier, I had planned on using the Knight Errant take over as an excuse for the evidence to be stored in a makeshift evidence lockup at the county clerk's office.  It will be guarded and not a cake walk, but much less secure then I'd imagine a police station's security would be. Of course my thought was I might have that more as a follow up run if the evidence makes him look guilty. He is in fact innocent but won't actively help his defense/the players because his daughter is being threatened. So I have sprinkled evidence here and there the players will have to find to prove his innocence. But if they don't my backup plan was to have them hired to destroy/tamper with said evidence.

[Doom Unicorn]

How about the victim is the citizen of corporation A, the suspect is the citizen of corporation B, and the scene of the crime is in UCAS jurisdiction. Each jurisdiction, coincidentally, is covered by a different corp (Lone Star, Knight Errant, and pick a third like NYPD Inc.), and part of the reason the runners are getting involved is that Mr. J wants doesn't have the time or the connections to cut through all the overlapping bullshit.

The evidence could be getting boxed up and passed around between jurisdictions, or even split up between them all, and there's plenty of reason for it to have to be sent back and forth in armored cars in case you want to have a scene like the climactic battle in "Heat".

[GiraffeShaman]

Better call Saul!

Good starting point for a campaign, as a sleazy lawywer will have tons of clients that will potentially hire shadowrunners.

What exactly does Mr. Corporate do? Answering that, if you haven't already, might tell you who should be behind framing him. One good possibility is that some other corp likes his work and is trying to get him on their team. Their strategy might be to cause lots of tension between him and his current employer, so that they can then make a lowball offer. Or they may be causing chaos in preparation for an extraction run. It might be an interesting shadowrun to have the player characters have to work to stop a rival team of runners from extracting Mr. Corporate.

Also, if Mr. Corporate works for a major corp, he might be safe if he is broken out of jail and brought on corporate grounds to live. (Or bailed out) UCAS or local authorities can file for extradition, but the corp can refuse if it's a AA or AAA. Depends on how bad the publicity involved is and how much they value Mr. Corporate.

[pariah3j]

Better call Saul!

Good starting point for a campaign, as a sleazy lawywer will have tons of clients that will potentially hire shadowrunners.

What exactly does Mr. Corporate do? Answering that, if you haven't already, might tell you who should be behind framing him. One good possibility is that some other corp likes his work and is trying to get him on their team. Their strategy might be to cause lots of tension between him and his current employer, so that they can then make a lowball offer. Or they may be causing chaos in preparation for an extraction run. It might be an interesting shadowrun to have the player characters have to work to stop a rival team of runners from extracting Mr. Corporate.

Also, if Mr. Corporate works for a major corp, he might be safe if he is broken out of jail and brought on corporate grounds to live. (Or bailed out) UCAS or local authorities can file for extradition, but the corp can refuse if it's a AA or AAA. Depends on how bad the publicity involved is and how much they value Mr. Corporate.

Yep, my thoughts exactly! Mr. Corp will work for Renraku in its R&D department. He's been working on a tech that would allow them to enslave AI and control them. My thought is the person who's framing him is another corp. My current thought is its a new corp that is being secretly run by an AI or at least AI friendly(haven't decided yet) who doesn't want his work to succeed. Or at the very least they want to control it. So the frame job is them setting up the stage for them to steal him and his work. I'm currently thinking they will be the ones Mr. Johnson is working for, but even he doesn't know it.

[GiraffeShaman]

Yep, my thoughts exactly! Mr. Corp will work for Renraku in its R&D department. He's been working on a tech that would allow them to enslave AI and control them. My thought is the person who's framing him is another corp.

What year is this campaign set? Are you familiar with the events of the Renraku Arcology shutdown? I'm not saying this isn't a viable concept, but you should be aware of the events revolving around the Shutdown since it involved both Renraku and the major AI Deux.

[pariah3j]

On the year I'm leaving that somewhat vague, sometime after the 2.0 crash approx around the year 2070(or whatever the current year is suppose to be). I'm vaguely familiar with Deux events, I know he took over the facility and just about killed everyone inside. That's actually what gave me the idea, Renraku is reeling from that being done to them by the AI, and are trying a way to make sure it doesn't happen again. Thus the research into capturing and controlling them.

[GiraffeShaman]

On the year I'm leaving that somewhat vague, sometime after the 2.0 crash approx around the year 2070(or whatever the current year is suppose to be). I'm vaguely familiar with Deux events, I know he took over the facility and just about killed everyone inside. That's actually what gave me the idea, Renraku is reeling from that being done to them by the AI, and are trying a way to make sure it doesn't happen again. Thus the research into capturing and controlling them.

Sounds good. Just making sure you were aware of those events due to the relation. Perhaps the AI behind the framejob thinks it's getting revenge on Renraku for Deux or some such?

[pariah3j]

I've considered the revenge aspect. Though I was thinking more of the fact that they hadn't learned their lesson and were trying to enslave AIs as being the motivation behind it. I'm thinking I might use Deux as a npc that is aligned with my new corp of AIs.

What I'm unsure of is who to make the secret ceo/backer of my new Corp I'm making.... I thought about maybe making it a AI/Ghost in the machine/Otoku, such as someone who got stuck in the matrix after the crash, possibly a dragon. Thoughts ? Anything I'm not aware of that might make that weird/impossible ?

[GiraffeShaman]

What I'm unsure of is who to make the secret ceo/backer of my new Corp I'm making.... I thought about maybe making it a AI/Ghost in the machine/Otoku, such as someone who got stuck in the matrix after the crash, possibly a dragon. Thoughts ? Anything I'm not aware of that might make that weird/impossible ?

I don't know what the canon answer is. Everything I've read treats ghosts in the machine as somewhere between a possibility and an urban myth. It seems much more possible with the Resonance in 4th edition. But who is to say a ghost in the machine isn't just an AI pretending to be one, what with so many AIs running around  now? Definitely weird, but maybe possible. There's a ton of stories about people that were on the matrix when the matrix crash during the Renraku Shutdown happened becoming matrix ghosts.

Deux I believe has officially vanished in current times. However, nothing is stopping you from using him. He'd probaly work behind a very good disguise if he's active in the world. I think I've read on this forum that some suspect the AI Pulsar is him.

[Michael Chandra]

Dunkelzahn will'd Captain Chaos a file he couldn't decrypt, or so he said. Its encryption got shredded in the Crash and the program then 'saved' Captain Chaos and others, but froze the files. Some, like the Captain, got out and are wandering about now. The actual ghosts in the machine are likely to have been caused by that program.

[GiraffeShaman]

Dunkelzahn will'd Captain Chaos a file he couldn't decrypt, or so he said. Its encryption got shredded in the Crash and the program then 'saved' Captain Chaos and others, but froze the files. Some, like the Captain, got out and are wandering about now. The actual ghosts in the machine are likely to hsve been caused by that program.

Interesting. That explains that incident, sort of.  However, the stories of ghosts in the machine have been around since Shadowrun's early days. It's still not clear how many of the stories were true and what caused them. Of course some of it had to be just stories. In some cases it was an AI, such as Magiera. Probaly answers to this in the conspiracy area, if you can wade through all the conspiracy madmen and great dragon acolytes there.

[pariah3j]

Hrrm, thanks for the replies guys. Gives me some things to work with at least.