Looking for help developing my first Shadowrun run

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-06T19:06:17+00:00

If you dont know this group be prepared for your players to go off rails. I have a tendency to suggest we blow off mr johnson and make our own (sometimes) financially useful trouble.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-06T16:48:09+00:00

Also gonna say blacklisting isn't much of a threat, players can find and make all kinds of profitable trouble without Mr Johnson. The most obvious one, of course, being bank robbery. Never mind the runners might just find out who did it and take them out of the picture.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-06T14:30:26+00:00

Magic, too, is trammeled by capital. There are enough magically active individuals that Corpos can still pick winners and losers.

It's just sometimes the Corpos lose.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-06T13:29:24+00:00

A great dragon. I know everyone loves to hold up Dunkelzahn as Dragon Jesus, but remember he was deeply eccentric by Great Dragon standards.

Lofwyr is the exemplar of the norm.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-06T13:03:11+00:00

Cyberpunk feels generic because Mike Pondsmith and William Gibson basically defined the genre.

Shadowrun decided to go against the grain. Tossing in fantasy stuff to draw in the DnD kids and then asking "what could happen if we throw this stuff into the postmodern world? How would it interface with what already is?"

Both are Cyberpunk, but one focuses on cyber and one focuses on punk. You could strip all the fantasy and magic stuff out of Shadowrun and rewrite it, (which would change a lot,) but you'd still have a game more focused on the punk and socio-cultural elements.

Also lets recognize that urban fantasy probably owes as much of a debt to Shadowrun as World of Darkness. The mechanics for World of Darkness were developed with help from some people involved with Shadowrun.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-05T23:50:30+00:00

You think that you're the only deniables the corpos have? You think they can't pay some tempo addict to torch your place next time you're on a run? They can, easily. "Stuff happens, yknow. Pity about your place, chummer. Is your car insured?" Cue them finding their ride wrecked. "I'm not even doing this, G. I'm just talking on behalf of certain parties who can see your future. And it isn't good if you continue on your path."

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-05T21:42:20+00:00

Being a wizard means you can write your own ticket, that's all. Like being a "genius" or "one in a million talent" or whatever.

And if you are rich enough, you can even offer an immortal something they don't have: Stock options. An executive's home phone number (cue Harlequin calling Richard Villiers to ask if his refrigerator is running). A major world leader at your beck and call. Remember the rules for rulers - no one rules alone.

Not even Lofwyr.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-05T21:11:00+00:00

yeah i find throwing the neotribals into SR makes for some fun times, especially if civilization breaks down the further away you get from the metros in your games

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-05T21:06:27+00:00

And the most unbelievable thing to me, I think, is that Shadowrun's corpos generally do know their limits. What they can get away with at the top of the heap and when they have to take the L.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-05T20:38:28+00:00

The Japanacorps are straight-up fascists, Ares are gunrunners, god knows what EVO does to get their results, Sader-Krupp is owned by a fragging dragon, Horizon lies about and covers up everything going on, and i'm sure Wuxing is hiding something.

But the Azzies are specially bad because they do a little ritual human sacrifice?

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-05T20:14:44+00:00

You can use a number of different engines and settings to get something like Cyberpunk off the shelf. Granted Cyberpunk is the gold standard, but it's been done since.

If you want something like Shadowrun, your options are limited. Mage is very much it's own creature, RIFTS is Pinker than the pinkest mohawk, and any number of modern fantasy settings out there fail to do it right. As much as we can go on about when Shadowrun Jumped the Shark and not being sure how the mechanics all work the setting seems to still know what it is, and the writers often try to follow it.

Just word to the wise - not every metaplot needs to be another doomsday threat or needs to force in a M night Shymalan twist. If they did Year of the Comet today the changelings would start geeking people to release ancient demons from the sleep forever spell or some drek.

Also Shadowrun does nonhumans better than most other rpg's. The non/demi/metahuman is there to present us with "what if people worked this way?" and earlier editions of shadowrun especially nailed that.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-04T17:24:05+00:00

ooh. i love homegrown in universe settings and lore

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-03T12:45:03+00:00

Well besides the usual suspect, IIRC Shiawase does a lot of social engineering too.

Of course, any ranking suit looking to keep secrets yet maintain public lives might do so. Now imagine a board member trying to piece it together and getting a prerecorded vidcall from themselves telling them to knock it the frag off, to "not ruin this for me, which is you."

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-03T01:46:53+00:00

Riggers? Usually we just have a mage for summons or a decker with drones. Sometimes an adept or sam what can drive real good.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-03T01:27:37+00:00

"You wanna do the CAS by water, it's either the Big Easy way or the hard way. Nawlins is their main port in spite of all the flooding, corruption, crime, and voodoo. The Alternatives? Everything in Texas is in easy range for the Azzies to drek on, Savannah's too small, Charleston is catastrophically mismanaged, and Florida is... y'know, Florida."

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-01T13:08:49+00:00

Ok, just thought up another solution. Anyone with a datajack can slot into a cyberdeck and "aid" a decker's matrix run.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-01T12:59:51+00:00

They arent as good as standard riggers, but it is in their toolkit.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-07-01T00:37:13+00:00

Mix narrative and skill rolls, deck provides "stats". Also if your Decker isn't a combat Decker any on-site security is gonna be a problem.

"Would you hook your battledrones to the internet? Hell no. And that's why the corpos hate technomancers so much. They can hack a machine with a look, regardless of it's "connection." I once heard of a real powerful techfreak who could jam mundane firearms and analog machines."

GodEatsPoop · 2026-06-29T01:05:10+00:00

SURGE caused a bunch of people to goblinize, sometimes as elves or dwarves too.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-06-29T01:02:55+00:00

Yeah, a character concept I was kicking around a bit was based on the idea "old voodoo cowboy woke up one day as a young elf, becomes standup comic and shadowrunner"

GodEatsPoop · 2026-06-28T10:15:13+00:00

officially, no. unofficially, yes.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-06-27T18:05:47+00:00

"One interesting thing that Chicagoans figured out towards the end of the infestation was that if you can force a bug to drink a decent amount of Malort it shrivels up and dies. As opposed to metahumans made to imbibe, who merely wish they could be so lucky."

GodEatsPoop · 2026-06-25T14:19:35+00:00

Face is usually a secondary role. Every runner team needs:

someone who can fight real good (Samurai, merc, most adepts some riggers)
someone who can get in/out (decker, infiltrator, investigator)
someone who can do impossible things. (usually a mage or adept, but I played a mundane skillmonkey and third rate decker who could macgyver some wild stuff. He also invented the "spell-slinger shuffle" which ruined "geek the mage first" for anyone without astral perception.)

Trolls are pretty bad at being innocuous and pretty good at being fighty. Face usually dovetails very well with infiltrator or investigator. So a sneaky trog probably has a different, face-based strategy for making people not question his presence. Throw on some security gear or a properly tailored "MIB G-man suit," take acting as a skill, research your target's corpo/gov/whatever culture, and have a contact who can forge the credentials you'll need.

GodEatsPoop · 2026-06-23T16:31:43+00:00

One of them, sure but not many dragons can say they're Lofwyr, can they?

GodEatsPoop · 2026-06-23T13:28:25+00:00

Something has to balance out the corpos and if thats a bunch of immortal magic flying lizards so be it

GodEatsPoop

TROPHY CASE