Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Vale on <03-26-12/0955:51>
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Hey there chummers,
So here's the deal: while I'm not new to tabletops in general, Shadowrun is a completely different ball game. I've been reading through the core books (Anniversary Core, Street Magic, the Almanac, etc) and feel fairly competent enough to start running a campaign.
As stated in the title, the primary focus of the campaign will be running guns in the pacific from Seattle to Shanghai. Most of my players are new to the system (well, newer than me) and I want to try and ease them into the setting as well as let them get a feel on how things are supposed to work in the shadows.
I know this is starting to get long, but I feel that the more information you have, the better you all will be able to help. So what I ask is this: Are there any supplements, media, etc that you would recommend for a gunrunning campaign? Any tips or tricks from your own sessions that might be beneficial? Any advice for a new GM in general? Anything and everything is appreciated as I want to give my players the best possible experience so that they want to continue playing.
Post Script: Also, is there a map of the world circa 2072? I've found one for the '60s, but nothing more 'recent'. Is that map still viable? Has anything changed?
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Welcome and I hope you and your group have as much fun as I do with mine.
For a group of new players and a new GM I would recommend the runner's Toolkit. It has cheat sheets that break down all of the active tests to help you walk through the mechanics. It also has a great GMs screen that I find very helpful too. In addition it has several other items for helping get run ideas and setting though it sounds like you have a good plan in mind for the campaign already.
If the game is going to revolve around guns Arsenal is probably a good thing to get if you don't already have it.
I usually allow the players to tweak their characters for the first couple sessions if they find they missed a skill they want or aren't using one they thought they had to have. Or if they just aren't happy with the character at all then start over and keep the karma.
As a GM I find it useful to have a broad outline of the plot for the run. Then I write up a detailed description of the meet and a couple other scenes I am pretty sure the characters will encounter. I also have the enemies made ahead of time and a general idea of what their tactics will be though I'm not afraid to change this on the fly.
Hope all of this helps
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WTW has a lot of good advice. My own little tidbit is this: find the Anime Black Lagoon and watch it. Great inspiration for anything going on in the SE-Asia area.
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For a fairly realistic treatment of professional arms dealing, watch Lord of War with Nicolas Cage. Also, read up on vehicles and real-world weapons regulations. While it may be illegal to transport that thing as a missile, it can be perfectly legal to transport a "display piece" in the same shipment as a "high grade demolitions ordinace" and "various rocket-enthusiast paraphernalia"
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Hilariously, the two main inspirations for this campaign were Black Lagoon and Lord of War. The thing about my GMing style is that I usually end up winging entire sessions and they somehow turn out better than if I would have planned them. With what I'm reading of Shadowrun, this method can continue in the previous vein or be a horrific catastrophe, so I'm going to err on the side of caution and follow your advice, omae.
As to the characters, I did a little something different that I'm hoping won't backfire on me. I've allowed each player to make two characters; one of which they play for the duration of the mission, the other being under my control. If everything goes according to plan, it'll keep my players from getting bored playing the same character all the time while creating a healthy level of competition. If it backfires, it'll be quite the cluster-fuck of inter-party conflict with a dozen characters to keep track of. I trust most of my players with this responsibility.
I actually do have the Runner's Toolkit and the PACKs system has been a saving grace in the otherwise confusing snarl that is character-creation. I suppose a lot of that comes down to unfamiliarity, but to quote the friend of mine who got me into the game: "Here's the Core Rulebook, you have 400 BP to spend. Go."
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Daunting the first time when someone says that no? :D
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It's almost as bad as hearing someone say "it'll be easy" or "trust me".
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Not as bad as my introduction to third edition. Which was here, make a character while we all play, here are the 8 billion books we have, oh and try to make a street sam. Keeping in mind that all I had read were some second edition books and I'd never played anything other than the starwars rpg. The priority system was hell. Routing cyberware was hell. 4E characters are like taking a nap compared to that. And of course it's all better than World of Synnibarr.
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Palladium Rifts. "Here's the books we're using, make sure it can go underwater."
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I'm afraid those last two i've never heard of so the referene is lost on me. Though I'm actually interested in the Star Wars System and hopefully I can get a game going for it. :P
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I've got know idea what the current star wars system is (last one I played was some horribly cancerous version). The one I was referencing was the old awesome as hell West End Games D6 version complete with color advertisements throughout the book for blasters and spaceships.
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Interesting :P.
Well regardless, I bet it was fun.
Btw Han Shot First. :P
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Hoi Omae, glad you could make it here. I think the two characters per player idea is an interesting one, if potentially confusing. You're right it'll depend on your team. Since you use PACKs, there are some custom ones on this forum that are worth taking a look at. My recommendation for the campaign would probably have to do with travel. I'm going to assume that VTOL/VSTOLs are slightly out of reach, so you'll be traveling most likely by sea. That will offer you some interesting opportunities, such as mana storms, being cut off from the matrix, and a confined space forcing the team to live together like a safe house. It'll also make transition points and how you use SINs slightly more prevalent, as well as Languages. "Translator" might be a sub-role to be filled by a team member (most likely your face), and customs will be an interesting challenge (well, I'm sure you'd rather avoid those, haha).
Of course, just running guns between lines in a single city is a challenge in and of itself. In that case etiquette would probably be more important than language skills. Gun running is as much about who you know as the big fire fights that happen when someone decides the deal isn't good enough.
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I was wondering when you'd chime in, chummer. (Laur is one of my players and the aforementioned one who got me into the game.) I suppose it's a good thing I've yet to fully finish Stolichnaya yet, looks like I'm going to be redistributing a few skills.
What is the consensus on keeping the group in Seattle for a month before shipping them out to sea? Good idea, bad idea? The idea is to get them used to the system first and gradually introduce concepts like all-encompassing AR, data trails & tracking, and all the other little concepts that make this system so entertaining (and deadly) before throwing them to the sharks, both literally and metaphorically. I'm thinking that the NAVI program (an in-game tutorial program to help explain game concepts and common knowledge) will help smooth the transition a lot, but you never know.
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Everybody needs a home port, if that's to be Seattle, then it would be good for them to get familiar with the area. Care to elaborate on NAVI?
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"...off to save, the Princess Zelda..."
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NAVI (Neural Augmentation and Virtual Intelligence) is, on the surface, a training program for new runners. She's going to have the 'bubbly elf girl' personality that occasionally glitches to 'bloodthirsty succubus'. She'll cover things like Street Etiquette, the HALO system, Codes, etc. in addition to giving players out of character knowledge that they should already know (what to roll to shoot a gun, etc.).
The fun thing about her is that she's actually an AI and is very good friends with Stolichnaya. While she helps the newbies out, she also diggs through their comms and cross-references what she finds with multiple databases to learn as much as she can about the runners and transmits the data back to Stoli; a safety precaution for the both of them. If your new street samurai is being hunted by and has a huge bounty from Ares... well, why not nip the problem in the bud and make some cash along the way?
"Ganon took her away, now the children no play..."
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Something that comes to mind for me is what exactly are the clients in SE Asia asking for? I'm under the impression, and I may have read wrong, that a large volume of weapons are already produced in SW Asia. I would assume the same goes for SE Asia. So what makes the guns coming from N. America more desirable to justify what they'd be paying?
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Something that comes to mind for me is what exactly are the clients in SE Asia asking for? I'm under the impression, and I may have read wrong, that a large volume of weapons are already produced in SW Asia. I would assume the same goes for SE Asia. So what makes the guns coming from N. America more desirable to justify what they'd be paying?
High end stuff from Ares' military division, of course.
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Smuggling is just like any other trade route, you don't want to travel with and empty hold. So you need something to go to SE Asia but you also need something that comes back from there to the Western markets. Typically, these circuits involve more than just two points. Since there's wars going on in SE Asia, a lot of legitimate weapons trade is going on. What the gunrunner is looking for is the surplus that can go back to North America. What they don't have in SE Asia are luxury items.
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Transporting little geisha dolls with bobble heads is a legitimate smuggling job if you're paid in guns
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Ha, this is reminding me of another suggestion I received: Darwin's Nightmare.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOXO7kMbu84
Granted it's mostly about how shitty that part of Africa is, but underlying fish for guns trade is directly translatable.
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This is pretty unpalatable, and puts you squarely in the role of 'bad guy', but you could do human trafficking into SE Asia for the surplus guns. Probably need to hook up with the Vory or Mafia for sourcing.
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Post Script: Also, is there a map of the world circa 2072? I've found one for the '60s, but nothing more 'recent'. Is that map still viable? Has anything changed?
The Ute Nation no longer exists, it's now part of the Pueblo Corporate Council.
Don't think it'll have much effect on your game, being a bit out of the way of any Seattle-Shanghai routes, but since you asked...
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Well, when I said Seattle to Shanghai, I didn't mean only those two cities exclusively; it was just a bad case of wording. They're going to be smuggling and trading all throughout the pacific, Seattle being their home port and Shanghai being a definite stop on the route. And who knows, as they start getting better at what they do more of the world opens up to them.
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I think that the important thing to note is that the PCC now borders six countries. Aztlan, CFS, CAS, UCAS, Sioux, Tir Tairngire, S-SC and it has a deep water port in Los Angeles.
Are they directly competing with Wuxing? Or are they maybe handling the deniable trade for Wuxing?
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You're going to have to elaborate a little more for me, Joe. Remember, I'm still pretty new to this stuff. What I know of Wuxing is 'foremost magical AAA with a Wu Jen flavor'.
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Wuxing's origins and backbone (aside from the banking) is shipping throughout the Pacific Rim. They even formed a allied corporations thing call the Pacific Prosperity Group.
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Huh, well I would think that a triple A would only worry about the big fish in the gunrunning pond, which is not necessarily the level that the group will be running at for some time (though Stoli is fair game and thank you for giving me such a wonderful idea). As they get better, though, everything's fair game.
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Consider whether you and your players want to run a Freight Business or a Cargo Business.
As Freight, you don't own the stuff, you're just transporting it. You don't get paid if you lose it, and you might also get into trouble if you do lose it. However, once at the destination, selling the stuff is someone else's problem.
As Cargo, you do own the stuff and it is your responsibility to find buyers and sellers and all that.
Some people simply aren't going to be into the whole negotiating and planning routes and such. They just want something to shoot. For them, it would be better if this was a Wuxing (or other powerful group) backed freight operation. Gun running is simply an excuse for you to be in different places around the world and to get attacked by various people (since they want your stuff).
If you've got the players that like to sink their teeth into a logistics puzzle, go with the cargo method, but probably limit the logistics portion of the game to about 10-20%. Maybe one session is planning out the route and then 4 sessions are hot spot events that happen at various locations along the way. You might look into some board games that might simulate logistics aspects.
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It can flop back and forth drastically from group to group really. My old group used to spend two sessions for almost every run, one for planning and one for the actual run. The only exceptions were usually runs that had to happen right then, and those were the only runs where we got into much combat at all usually. I think my street sam fired his SMG a whopping total of around twenty times during that entire campaign.
Most groups I've played with since prefer to do about 25% planning and 75% running.
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With my group dynamic, it''l most likely end up 60 percent planning, 40 percent running; it'd swing more in the way of planning if one of my players wasn't 10%:90%. I'll probably start them out as a cargo business to see how they handle it and if they enjoy it. If not, well, Stoli still has some very valuable contacts that could use an expendable freighting team.
On the subject of the map, is there anything else, internationally, that's changed?
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Start them as Cargo, and see how they like it as players. If they start to balk, have their Cargo Company undergo a hostile takeover and it becomes a Freight Business.
There's a pretty good write up of SE Asia in Shadows of Asia. It's 3rd edition but didn't actually have much mechanics to speak of, so probably still valid enough.