Shadowrun - A Doctor Who style invasion!

[Dread Angel]

So here's a campaign idea I had recently. I only just started playing Shadowrun a month or so ago, I have a decade of DnD experience from 3rd ed to Pathfinder (adamantly refusing 4th ed) and I have done a couple horror themed games in Pathfinder before.

I feel that there is a MASSIVE amount of potential for a horror setting in Shadowrun. Just the cybernetics alone make for seriously troubling things, when you begin thinking about what happens when it goes wrong (the Cyberwoman episode of Torchwood, anyone?), as well as all the fun and games to be had with the Astral.

I was thinking of pulling a Doctor Who style Cyberman invasion type of thing, a crazy mofo has begun converting people into, essentially, robots bent on converting everyone else. The party is a runner team who have been working together for awhile. The campaign will be slightly sandboxy, in the way of "You don't need to actively try to end this invasion, just try to survive as best you can, but the farther along it proceeds the more robots will be out and about and the harder it becomes to survive". A somewhat realistic take on it.

There will be a focus on the grim and gruesome aspects of it - charred blackened corpses of people who resisted and got ...ahem....deleted. A mass of suicides rather than be converted. The nastiness of the conversion machines. Really dark and grim, with the added bonus of the goverments of the world first turning on each other as they believe it's a foreign attack.

Similar to the old "necromancer wants to use undead army to take over the world, the undead eat the necromancer, his magic continually produces more undead" instapocalypse concept, but with robots that are inordinately hard to kill and best confronted only with a good amount of preparation.

Any suggestions are welcome, I've never actually designed or run a Shadowrun game before.

[mjlush]

Any suggestions are welcome, I've never actually designed or run a Shadowrun game before.

Here are few random thoughts

To me saying "You don't need to actively try to end this invasion, just try to survive as best you can, but the farther along it proceeds the more robots will be out and about and the harder it becomes to survive". basically says "OK you can ignore it but if you do you will eventually die." Its almost passive aggressive GMing

OK IMHO Shadowrun is a setting in which altruism is not a survival trait. the PC's will not run round trying to find out what is going on if there not getting payed. If they do get payed and discover what is going on they will realize this is Too Big for us to handle, they'll sell the story to the Vid Channels pack up and head for the hills. There are many many groups far far more powerful than them. Groups who have a strong interested in not having the whole world cybered.

The thing about Shadowrun is the PC's are a long long way down the food chain... as are the Governments. Its the Megacorps who are at the top and their reflex response to a Cyberattack is Cool we want that technology.

So you kind of caught in a cleft stick you need something big enough to overwhelm the Corps but small enough that the PC's can make a difference and a plot glue strong enough to keep them involved.

I can think of a number of setups

1) Hired by the corps and told what to do ... which is not very sandbox

2) Give them a good sticky MacGuffin so the plot follows them around...The Cyber Sourcecode would be a good one because they can't get rid of it. all sides will want it and better still everyone will assume they have multiple copy's so will chase them even if they don't have it :smallbiggrin:

I've got to go now I'll probably post again.:smallsmile:

[TheDarkDM]

As was said above me, the problem with an idea like this in Shadowrun is if it's a big enough threat, the PC's are going to be little more than bystanders when Ares sends in Firewatch, Lofwyr shows up to eat the offending technomancer, or Harlequin stumbles out of his van and solves everything with a quip and a wink. That said, there are definite ways to do something similar without extending it into the wider ecosystem where the AAA's get involved. Hell, the basis of your idea sounds very similar to what went down in the Renraku Arcology, and a game focused on a runner team trapped inside when Deus went crazy could be an awesome horror campaign in the vein of System Shock.

However, there's still the core problem with trying to run a Dr. Who style game in Shadowrun. Unlike Dr. Who, Shadowrun is pretty hard Sci-Fi when it comes to its tech and its sociology, if not its magic. It's a very well documented setting, and one thing it's not intended to do is make the PC's heroes in the traditional sense. Shadowrunners are mercenaries who perform corporate espionage for a dangerous living - they're very human, and on the whole morally grey. Depending on the runner, they're as like to shoot innocent bystanders as save them, and it's not uncommon for members of a runner team to include addicts, fugitives, or worse. And again, it can't be stressed enough that 'runners survive only by avoiding the big fish in the Sixth World - if Damien Knight wants them dead, there's very little even a high-level group can do to stop it.

However, assuming all that fits into your mindset, there are a bunch of things to do with horror in Shadowrun. Anything involving Aztechnology will probably come with a good dose of human sacrifice and Twisted magic, Chicago is still crawling with Insect Spirits, the Kowloon Walled City is ruled by things that scare Insect Spirits, and who knows what kind of fail-safe plans Deus might have had in place before the Second Crash. You might involve cyberzombies, Shedim, or the HMHVV infected. But all of it should be personal in scope, or close to it.

[Dread Angel]

Hmm. Yeah, I was giving it some thought this morning and realized that it seems too broad-scope.

Perhaps a Silent Hill style thing, where the PCs actually become trapped in a single suburb or something where some seriously weird stuff is going down.

[mjlush]

Hmm. Yeah, I was giving it some thought this morning and realized that it seems too broad-scope.

Perhaps a Silent Hill style thing, where the PCs actually become trapped in a single suburb or something where some seriously weird stuff is going down.

Nailing them down to one suburb could be an issue, these are runners, so the normal altruism you can rely on from hero's is not there. A SciFi setting offers a lot of transport options and its difficult to nerf them all without making it sound like a railroad... I think you'd be best off being really upfront about it say a huge magic forcedome cutting them off.

[Hopeless]

Whats stopping you from revealing that all those people who died and didn't have their implants stripped from them are reawakening as new members of the Cyber whatever you want to call them?

Also nothing says the recently deceased haven't been used as guinea pigs for experimentation as the Corps would be interested in extending the life span of their executives if nobody else and a drone army would be seen as a potent workforce which doesn't require pay and only needs to be maintained as long as necessary add in some kind of self destruct and they could be used as walking bombs even if to just spread their latest cybervirus... cyberpunk generations anyone?:smallwink:

[mjlush]

Whats stopping you from revealing that all those people who died and didn't have their implants stripped from them are reawakening as new members of the Cyber whatever you want to call them?

Also nothing says the recently deceased haven't been used as guinea pigs for experimentation as the Corps would be interested in extending the life span of their executives if nobody else and a drone army would be seen as a potent workforce which doesn't require pay and only needs to be maintained as long as necessary add in some kind of self destruct and they could be used as walking bombs even if to just spread their latest cybervirus... cyberpunk generations anyone?:smallwink:

The sticking point (not a roadblock by any means) is that any threat which the corps can't deal with are so massive that the PC's will be totally overshadowed and basically stuck in a desperately trying to survive narrative.

I get the impression that Dread Angel was looking for a bit more than that... I still think that an everything falls down campaign would be great fun the PC's need a bit of plot device to give them the edge noone else has.

[Dread Angel]

I get the impression that Dread Angel was looking for a bit more than that... I still think that an everything falls down campaign would be great fun the PC's need a bit of plot device to give them the edge noone else has.

That's exactly it, really. I think I'm gonna need to come up with something they have, can't get rid of, that will make them the only ones who have a realistic chance of taking out the threat.

[mjlush]

That's exactly it, really. I think I'm gonna need to come up with something they have, can't get rid of, that will make them the only ones who have a realistic chance of taking out the threat.

How about having the party all part Cybermen. They were half way through the upgrade process when Firewatch turn up and trash the place. The first part of the campaign would consist of everything falling apart, while they dodge both the Cybermen and the Corps hunting them to either finish the upgrade/nick their technology/Destroy them as the Cyber scum they are.

The second part comes after Harlequin and Lofwyr have had their heads slowly pulled off and the Cybermen are stomping through the streets (or are you going for the old Who less stompy one :-) Anyway this is where the party realize there still plugged into the cybermind and are the only people on earth who could masquerade as Cybermen or they learn that there is another race called the Darlexx who could kill the Cybermen.

Edit Thinking about the Nick their technology plot line, part cybered subjects would make a much softer target and better research subject compared to capturing a more or less invulnerable Cyberman. They could end up being vilified in the press because there the Key to defeat the Cybermen and they won't give themselves up ... now everyone will turn them in (mostly for the vast reward money)

[Hopeless]

Reminds me of the Resident Evil sequel where a father developed a means to save his daughter's life in return for working for the bad guys of that series and I think she was otherwise perfectly fine.

So lets say its a rogue virus and rather than being the cause it actually immunises the target and the Corporates want it stopped captured and analysed although officially its being blamed for whatever's happening so you have a threat thats not what its claimed to be and your PCs may learn that they have to prevent the Corp from creating a new form of their hellish curse that the rogue virus doesn't effect?

[DigoDragon]

Perhaps a Silent Hill style thing, where the PCs actually become trapped in a single suburb or something where some seriously weird stuff is going down.

I was thinking this too.

Like, one way I might employ this idea is by having a nasty blizzard plow through the city (assuming you play where it does snow, like Seattle, Chicago, etc). Everything is covered knee deep, power has gone out, and all transportation is effectively "frozen" (ha ha) until the city can dig its way out.

During this crisis, a handful of "Cybermen" get lost/misplaced/escape in transit to a secret lab and are now wandering about killing things and doing whatever horrors you want to. The police think it's just a gang taking advantage of the situation but can't afford to sent many officers after them because they're trying to keep the town from rioting and looting.

So, the city is cripple, the police are tied up, who's left? The Runners. :smallbiggrin: