What sorts of adventures do you have in Shadowrun?

[Storminator]

I've never played, and I've learned more in this forum than I ever knew before.

So what's a game session like? What kinds of adventures do PCs have? Is there anything that's not shadowrunning?

PS

 

[Derren]

"Shadowrunning" is a very broad term, like adventuring.

The usual shadowrun is breaking into a facility and get something, or someone, out. Or to assassinate/blow up something.
But in the end, a shadowrun can be anything people pay you for. It could also involve investigating a crime or news story or even "good old dungeon crawling". It is also easily possible to play something else than Shadowrunner, for example cops or journalists.

Staying with traditional shadowrunning, a run usually consists out of 3-4 steps.
1. Making the deal. This can be an adventure in itself when the client insists in meeting at a unfamiliar location, like a celebrity party. Also there is always the chance that something goes wrong or that it is a trap.
2. Legwork. This is information gathering. Finding out who or what your target is to plan your attack, but also investigate the circumstances of the run and your employers allegiance. Not everyone (or rather nearly no one) is honest and upfront about who he is, and not knowing can get you into trouble or killed fast.
3. The run itself. Breaking and entering, shooting, sneaking, persuading. And of course, no plan survives contact with the enemy.
4. The delivery and escape. Once you have what you wanted you have in many cases to deliver it to your client. So now not only are you hunted by whoever you ran against, but if your client is going to betray you it is now. And even after the exchange you have to go undercover until it is uneconomical to pursue you further, something you can speed up with a little blackmail, etc.

Not all runs contain all those steps and it also depends on the preference of the group.

If you are not doing a run there are still a lot of things to do:
- Maintaining contacts.
Knowing people is very important in Shadowrun. And if you want to stay on their good side, or get there, you have to do some favors for them. This can be as simple as just spending a night at a hotter club (VIP of course) or can take the form of a Shadowrun in itself.

- Get gear.
Face it, even in the future portable tank cannons are not sold in your local weapon shops and the black market can only get you so far without you having to jump through hoops to get what you want.

- Do a astral quest/deep dive
For (techno)mages to get stronger or to get some nifty benefits you can't get anywhere else you can do this quests which, thanks to the amorphous form of the astral or the matrix can be pretty much anything.

- Survive
Yes, that can be quite a problem. When you are hunted by the law, or worse, have no cover ID ready so that you can even buy a candy bar (100% soy!) from a vending machine without setting off alarms all over the city and the local gang just wrecked your last safehouse "for teh lulz" just surviving can be an adventure itself.
Have I mentioned that the rats in Shadowrun are dog sized (which incidentally are among their favorite food, next to everything else).

 

[was]

we always ran a lot of corporate espionage and criminal underworld type adventures

 

[exile]

Freckles, my human weapons specialist, has helped stopped a gang war and trekked off into the wilderness in search of valuable critter components.

Berkley, my dwarven eco-shaman, has tracked and captured a rogue triad member; stolen living art (twice); engaged in a war of pranks between two minor corps; blown up the Brooklyn Bridge (she was greatly disturbed by the potential negative ecological impact of this run); and engaged in one pretty basic breaking and entering job.

 

[CAFRedblade]

I've been listening and watching while I DM a 4th ed game, and now I'm joining in on a secondary campaign. Shadowrun can be, and usually is, a gritty downtrodden Blade Runner style urban fantasy, where as mentioned above you run adventures around MEGA Corps (for and against) down to the lowest of the street gangs.

If you've seen/read or played through d20 Modern using one of the Shadow Campaign setting options you could approach the same style as Shadowrun, but probably a little more on the heroic side of things. Shadowrun can be very brutal on characters if they aren't thinking.

My first character is an ex-wetworks sniper in training, (former Ares Security SWAT) who had his program cancelled, along with all personnel and immediate families. He is cut off from main support and is working towards gaining vengeance upon culprit who placed the cancellation. Due to a small obsession with old horror flicks, he's taken the name of Eddie Krueger.

 

[Abstruse]

Best example I can give you is actually from a TV series called LEVERAGE. Watch the pilot episode. Add in magic and more cyberpunk elements and that's pretty much what SHADOWRUN is like.

 

[darjr]

Leverage, yea! Well, also more gunfire and explosions and combat.

 

[Abstruse]

Leverage, yea! Well, also more gunfire and explosions and combat.

Depends on the style of game you run. There's two basic styles of play in SHADOWRUN, nicknamed by the community Black Trenchcoat and Pink Mohawk.

Black Trenchcoat is a very stealthy style of gameplay about infiltration and careful planning. You do your legwork about the target, make plans and back-up plans and back-up plans for the back-up plans. You then con or sneak your way into the place and accomplish your goal. If you have to draw your gun, you've fragged up. It's named after the fact most characters in such a game would pick up one of the various longcoats you can get, which give bonuses to items concealed under them allowing you to sneak gear on site more easily.

Pink Mohawk is a more overt style of game. Who needs a plan when you have C4? This style of game is all about combat and smashing your way in, doing as much collateral damage as you can. It's named after the fact that, back in the early 90s, many characters in games like this looked like bad anime versions of punk gang members with two foot tall pink mohawks.

Okay, I'm being a bit biased. Probably a bit obvious which style of game I prefer. If LEVERAGE is the quintessential example of black trenchcoat games, then BURN NOTICE is the quintessential example of a good, strong pink mohawk game. They still make plans, but stuff tends to get blown up more often and assault rifles tend to be included in the plans frequently.

 

[darjr]

Me and my kid played quite a few missions. Everybody wanted to be Black Trenchcoat but things always seemed to go Pink Mohawk. Sometimes at the hands of my son. Krulch, his Orc shotgunner didn't seem to understand the phrase 'hold yer fire'. Though, in other games, his Elven sharpshooter Sirin 'fixed' quite a few potential 'problems' before they blew up in our faces.

 

[howandwhy99]

It's a life of cyberpunkian revolt 80's style, with elves. The game's setting is really the guts of what is interesting about it, but the adventures one goes on are very much informed by the punk culture as expressed in cyberpunk writing.

Corruption abounds. Most people have either sold out to money and power or have blown their minds on drugs or media. Lawbreaking isn't about being a criminal, but the only sane act in a ruthless culture where the laws are tools of the rich and threats to everyone else. Everything you own you probably stole or found. It's cities are modern day Dalllas: An isolated , expensively manicured downtown surrounded by a vast doughnut of urban decay where life is cheap. Goals and matters of identity are largely inscribed by personal rebellion for survival, if not rogue justice.

Now into this culture of threat, think 80's Cold War fatalism, advance the tech timeline forward about 100 years, but based on 80's futurism. (No nanites, singularities, etc.) Then add in fantasy D&D style, but every bit as dark and punk as every other element. Magic has returned, but it isn't innocent and pretty. People are transforming into magical creatures. Shamanistic magic is real and in the standard setting, a future U.S., it is almost completely based on Native American traditions. The rural areas have been given up on largely to environmental crazies, but cities are still own and run by megacorps, think multi-nationals without international law.

When I've played what we most often ended up doing is making the world better if just a little bit. We saved people who were kidnapped. Stole money to give to those on the streets. Set up a half way house and defended it. Broke into corps so the Decker can plug into a secure terminal and hack something on the Matrix.

This last is probably the iconic Shadowrun op. The biggest problem we had with the game, aside from the rules in 1e, was the decker could end up being a solo gamer where everyone else had their own session in support of what they were doing. The decker was designed to kickass on the Matrix, but not so much elsewhere. It's the reverse from every other archetype. This often left them out of game until we started treating almost everywhere (in cities) as hardwired to the Matrix, sort of like an tech informed Ethereal plane. Then they could help out in a street fight and not be sidelined.