Hey all,
I'm getting ready to run Shadowrun 5th ed for my group and I'm kicking around some ideas for runs and campaigns. Unfortunately I only have the core rules, and while I know I can run whatever I like (my group don't know SR very well) I would like to keep things at least close to canon if possible. Therefore I'm hoping you good folk can help Shadowrunise some ideas.
My current campaign idea is for the party to be hired to find a run-away. Of course the run-away isn't quite what the Johnson said it was (hey, I never said the campaign would be original!). My problem revolves around what the run-away turns out to be. My current ideas are:
1) A.I. in a human shell - Unfortunately, after reading a bit of SR A.I.'s online it seems they still need vast main frames to generate the intelligence which kind of scuppers the run-away element. So I went to plan 2.
2) Golem - Somebody has bound a spirit into a humanoid form. Unfortunately I can't find much information on golems in SR, so I was hoping somebody may be able to shed some light on the subject.
2a) Possession - Somebody has bound a spirit into the body of a VR meat-puppet. Unfortunately the information on spirits is a little thin on the ground in the 5th ed core rules so I'm not sure if it is even possible to possess a living being let alone a BTL junkie.
3) Shapeshifter - I know shapeshifters exist in SR but again I can't find much information on what they are capable of (I'm not after stats, just a description of their capabilities would be helpful).
4) Crossbreed - As I understand it some of the SR critters are mutations of meta-types (wendigo from orc for example), and meta-types are essentially from the same gene-pool (human parents can give birth to elf children, etc). So does that mean it would be possible to gene-splice meta-based critters to create vat grown abominations?
Finally, is there anything like a 'brain-pod' in SR? By that I mean a living brain in a jar that gets slotted into a machine body; kind of like Cain from RoboCop 2 or Dragoon borgs from CP2020. If not, is there anything to stop that from happening in SR?