What sorts of adventures do you have in Shadowrun?

[I'm A Banana]

So, I'm getting the impression that there could be a lot of character deaths when the bullets start flying. Pretty true?

What are some of the reasons you'd roll dice when not swiss-cheese-ing each other?

 

[darjr]

You'd roll dice to get a better deal or to get better intel or to convince someone to do something for you. I don't remember the mission but we spent a good deal of time gaming the folks who wanted to buy the dewdad we 'liberated' to inflate the price. No swiss-cheese... uh actually there was swiss-cheese but it was on the crackers at one of the 'negotiations'.

 

[Abstruse]

So, I'm getting the impression that there could be a lot of character deaths when the bullets start flying. Pretty true?

What are some of the reasons you'd roll dice when not swiss-cheese-ing each other?

Everything else you'd want to do where there's a chance of failure. Shadowrun is a VERY skill-centric system. Sneaking around? Skill roll. Casting a spell? Skill roll. Hacking into a server? Skill roll. Trying to convince the security guard to let you into the building? Skill roll.

Unlike some other level-based systems involving twenty-sided dice, Shadowrun is about the mission and not about combat. You earn your experience (called Karma) by taking on a job called a shadowrun. You're a professional freelance criminal, a mercenary for hire. Someone (usually a corporation) hires you to do something most likely illegal (like stealing a prototype from a competing company, stealing back a stolen prototype, kidnapping an executive's daughter to use as leverage to get him to join the other corp or trash a project, or even just flat out kidnapping the exec himself). There's a lot of them.

You do not get experience from a body count. If there's 10 security guards around the thing you have to steal, you get the EXACT SAME rewards whether you sneak past them and steal it as you would if you slaughtered them all in one-on-one combat. That's where the big difference comes in, and it's something I feel I have to hammer into the heads of some of my newer players when they play Shadowrun for the first time.

Hell, last campaign I played in, I got into combat exactly one time. Over three sessions that were about 4-6 hours long each.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

So, I'm getting the impression that there could be a lot of character deaths when the bullets start flying. Pretty true?

What are some of the reasons you'd roll dice when not swiss-cheese-ing each other?

Most of the game is about legwork, planning, and infiltration, and so are most of the rolls. Even when playing a pink mohawk game, combat tends to be a relatively small portion of the game. Characters are often considered eggshells with hammers. It pays to shoot first, not second.

There tends to be a lot of social interaction (with related rolls). Deckers spend a lot of time working within the matrix gathering information. Mages or shamans do a lot of astral scouting and have to deal with spirits and mana barriers. Riggers control various vehicles and drones.

It's not a game with a lot of shared spotlight time. Shadowrun teams tend to be made of specialists, often with exclusive access to part of the game (only a Decker can hack, and only a mage can even see the astral plane). Even combat doesn't spread attention evenly, giving cybered street samurai more turns per round than other characters. It's very much up the game master to make sure everyone has their moments to shine.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Ran alot of what people mention above in 1E SR, never heard of Black Trencoat and Pink Mohawk, sounds like a Rancid song. Or, you could do what I did at two consecutive GenCons: Shadowrun Scavenger Hunt.

Crazy rich guy invites teams of 'runners to play a high-stakes game of scavenger hunt with a big payoff for the winners. Prototype cars, highly-guarded art, and equally difficult to obtain items made up the lists.

I think the game lends itself well to an extremely wide variety of "adventures" and approaches to them.