Shadowrun

Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: mensik on <01-05-20/0851:53>

Title: [SR6] First time GMing, looking for a mission to offer my players
Post by: mensik on <01-05-20/0851:53>
Hey everyone!

As I said in my first and only post so far, I'm new to Shadowrun. I played a bit of 3E when I was a kid but my friends and I thought it was too complicated and gave up. I recently got back to D&D after about 15 years without touching any TTRPG. I then remembered how I enjoyed the setting of Shadowrun and decided to pick up the latest edition. I really want to introduce my friends from my D&D campaign to the Sixth World. One guy has already played a while ago (might have been 4E but I don't remember) while the others have only heard about the game.

I haven't played much of SR but I would like to give a try at GMing. I've read quite a lot about the background and I am slowly but surely going through the CRB. 6E feels quite streamlined from what I remember and I find this to be a good thing. Of course there are some unclear parts and some others that might require house-rules but I can live with that.

Aaanyway. All that to say that I plan to run the Battle Royale adventure from the Beginner Box with my players to get them to understand the mechanics and dynamics of the game. We'll probably use the pregens for that, even though there seems to be a few mistakes on their stats in some instances. I'll make sure to double-check everything before making my friends play them. Then, and only then (unless you don't recommend me running Battle Royale?) we'll start looking at character creation.

I was wondering what good first mission you'd recommend me, both in terms of fun and difficulty for me and my players. I think I'd like to run a few pre-made missions before diving into something completely custom. I want to learn from them and get to know the language and mechanics of the game. Would you have any suggestions? I know that they're a bunch of 4E or 5E adventures out there but I wasn't sure how conversion to 6E would work in terms of numbers.

Thanks a lot for your help and patience chummers,
M.
Title: Re: [SR6] First time GMing, looking for a mission to offer my players
Post by: Stainless Steel Devil Rat on <01-05-20/0924:20>
The Battle Royale is meant to be a way to expose players to the new edition of Shadowrun, so it's a good thing to cut your teeth on.  Both as players, and as GM getting familiar with the rules.

There's only one mission published in the new edition's rules, called Free Seattle.  You can find it on the CGL store and on DTRPG.  Once you get more familiar with 6we, you'll find that converting missions written for 5e and even 4e aren't too hard to convert to the modern rules.

Additionally, the Catalyst Demo Team has access to the Shadowrun Missions that aren't yet available for purchase. If you want to become an o-fficial Shadowrun demo agent, you'll get access to them! Of course, that's not everyone's cup of tea... no clue what's holding up the rest of season 8's missions but when seasons 9 and 10 are available for sale, they'll be dual-statted for both 5th and 6th world editions.
Title: Re: [SR6] First time GMing, looking for a mission to offer my players
Post by: Michael Chandra on <01-06-20/0128:07>
Asides from Matrix and Spirit stuff, low-level SR5 adventures should be easy to use in SR6. Worst case, just decrease all attributes and skill ranks by 1. Higher-level ones would be tougher. Though you could just grab adventures and throw in grunts of the appropriate SR6 PR level. SR5 PRx1~1.5 should suffice.

As for Matrix stuff, consider decreasing Host Ratings with 1. With Spirits, I'd knock off 1 or 2 points of Force from most adventures, and replace Bound Spirits with similarily-lower-Force extra summoned spirits.

Not sure which adventures would work well for intro-stories, though. :-\ Usually the start of a location works fine, but that kind of ties you to the scenes, aka Chicago / Neo-Tokyo. CMPs often are higher-power and thus less rookie-friendly. And the last time we had Missions in Seattle was SR4, which is a bit tougher to convert.

Depending on how good your German is, there's a German free SR6 adventure out, haven't read it yet: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/292478/Shadowrun-Schattentricks
Title: Re: [SR6] First time GMing, looking for a mission to offer my players
Post by: mensik on <01-06-20/0855:29>
Thanks to you both for your comments and advice.

I have a degree in German so yes, I'll definitely look into the German supplements. Thanks for the heads up!
Very appreciated!
Title: Re: [SR6] First time GMing, looking for a mission to offer my players
Post by: Beta on <01-06-20/1018:05>
The ShadowRun Missions have been running for many 'seasons', and the first two seasons are available for free from the Catalyst web site (it may take some googling to find them, but they are there).  They were written back in third edition, so you'd need to change stats and matrix information -- but this is actually quite easy in most cases as you can use the standard NPCs (of various grades of professionalism) either as written or at least as a reference.

In particular, I like season 1, mission 1, as a way to bring player characters together.

In addition, a contributor to the Shadowrun reddit page created an adventure well structured to introduce 5th edition SR:  The Delian Data Tombs:  https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LL1Ft_k7Kb7q19sKzvq   Again you'd have to update for the differences between editions, but again you can look at what the intent of the various challenges are and bring in appropriate 6th edition NPC, host, etc.

Good luck, and I hope that you all have fun!
Title: Re: [SR6] First time GMing, looking for a mission to offer my players
Post by: penllawen on <01-06-20/1401:25>
In addition, a contributor to the Shadowrun reddit page created an adventure well structured to introduce 5th edition SR:  The Delian Data Tombs:  https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LL1Ft_k7Kb7q19sKzvq   Again you'd have to update for the differences between editions, but again you can look at what the intent of the various challenges are and bring in appropriate 6th edition NPC, host, etc.
I endorse this, and also the second adventure from the same chap, Gravedirt Slinging:
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-LTKR31YJGiuI7X42DcE

Although they are for 5e, they should be easy to adapt, and in any event as there’s very little for 6e around you have to deal with adaption regardless.