[Gmanjkd]

Hello all,

I am finally going to take the plunge and run a SR game starting with SR6.  I have a couple of dumb questions.

1) Can i Run the Assassins Night campaign and then the 30 Nights Campaign followed by the Kechibi Code OR are these books designed to be ran in the order they were released?

2) Is the Plot Sourcebook Cutting Black tied to 30 Nights like a companion book?  If so then are all campaign books tied to a Plot Sourcebooks?

Thanks for any clarification

[Michael Chandra]

30 Nights basically takes place in a part of the plot covered by Cutting Black, but I don't think all plotbooks are. As for Assassin, while it seems to take place in 2081, I don't think there's anything in the plot that explicitly ties into being after the blackouts. So storywise you can just run it sooner and pretend it's 2080.

[MercilessMing]

You don't need Cutting Black to play 30 Nights, but it gives a little bit of context to the events.  I've read Assassin's Night, and its events do not depend on Cutting black/30 nights to have already happened.  You only need to do them in order if you are extremely picky about aligning your game to official canon timeline. 

30 Nights and Assassin's Night are both campaign books in the traditional adventure book sense.  Cutting Black and Kechibi Code are both plot sourcebooks, they just tell you what's happening in the world and give you elements you can introduce in your game.

And hey, since you're new to SR, let me give you some advice - don't dive in with 30 Nights.  It is a weird book, very nonstandard, and really locks you in to a location and a certain play style.  It certainly can be fun, but it is NOT typical Shadowrun and it can really mess with your players' expectations about the game.  I mean, on page 1  your group's vehicles, drones, and other electronics are disabled and it's some time before you get anything back.  There's no downtime - the 30 adventures are literally 30 nights, back to back.  No natural breaks to do character advancements and stuff. 

Instead, for a published adventure, try Free Seattle.  It's a pdf only adventure.  https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/294048/Shadowrun-Free-Seattle-Adventure
It's a handful of short jobs that all have to do with deciding whether Seattle becomes an independent city-state or stays with the UCAS.  It has a lot of page references that refer back to the core rulebook so you can look things up easy.  And, the jobs are like a buffet of different concepts in the game and the core Seattle setting.

30 Nights is set in Toronto.  Assassin's Night is set in Barcelona.

[Beta]

Agreed that 30 Nights is an odd campaign.  Also agree that I would not start off with it, with the expectation that it is normal shadowrun.

My personal take is that 30 Nights is easiest to play with "not-shadowrunners".  That is, a lot of shadowrunners are quite mercenary, very capable, and without deep roots in their community.  So really the sane response of a lot of shadowrunners would be to either a) start hiking out of town, or b) bunker up and start looting everything they can.  On the other hand if you have some moderately capable people who are maybe a little shady, but not really professional shadowrunners yet, who happen to get caught in that situation, by the end of it they might be pulled a fair way into the shadows.  (one tip, do a mission-zero which takes the player characters well out of the core of the city, where their electronics won't be fried, but give them good reason to head back to the heart of things.  Like run the fan created adventure "The Delian Data Tombs", placing the data tombs up in Markham, and they are persuaded to do this as a favor for a friend, the black-out hits just after they finish the job, but they need to find the friend to get paid for their work, pulling them back into the heart of things).

Having one of the NPC from 30 Nights send them to Barcelona for Assassin's Night would work well.

If you want to do it the other way around that is fine, but maybe consider compressing 30 Nights somewhat, and add a good reason for them to stick around in the dark and do some 'hooding' (shadowrun term for when runners do something mostly to help the community, as opposed to for personal gain). 

[MercilessMing]

Personally (and my group is about halfway through this campaign right now) I think getting PC electronics fried is absolutely essential to this campaign.  But you have to treat it as a temporary disabling.  The reason is simple - everyone else in the city has had their electronics fried.  99% of your opposition will be hopelessly outmatched if you don't.  Just having a working vehicle is a godly advantage in this campaign.  The PCs need to start off balance, or there will be no challenge.  Hackers and riggers will be fine without their gear for a few sessions, but by night 5 or 6 they need to have something, and by night 12 or 15 they should be nearly back at full power.  And going along with that, you have electronics from outside the city show up, ad hoc networks come online so your hackers have things to hack, people with temporary power thanks to matrix vans - and opposition with working gear. 

[Gmanjkd]

@Michael Chandra, thanks for the info.  Its very helpful to know that the Plot Sourcebooks are not required for the campaign books.

@Merciless Ming and Beta,  This is also very valuable information.  I think starting with Free Seattle and then moving to Assassin Night will probably be a great fit for me and my group.  Thanks for steering me away from 30 nights.  It sounds great...but i really want to establish a baseline for my group of hey this is what SR is before we go off the deep end and do something out of the ordinary.

Thanks again all.