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View Full Version : Shadowrun Plot Ideas ( Need Opinions )



DizzyCrash
2018-08-05, 01:01 AM
Alright So For Starters.
My Crew:
"Baby Bullhorn" Cute Troll Mechanic from a trailer park.
"Red Riot" Young man with a trucker hat and love of racing and a Texas accent. ( Sorta Reminds me Terry Bogard )
"Barricade" Big african american orc with metal arms ( Sorta Reminds me of Mr T or Barrett )
"Jupiter & Star" A bald rock-star Elf girl with a attitude and master thief/con-artist ( Sorta reminds me of Mass-Effect Jack mixed with Gem and the Holograms ) ( Her band is Jupiter and the shooting stars and she has a pixie sidekick named Star )

Thats what my players decided on, a young group of basically kids with a single older member who works as a low level fixer, they are the lowest tier of shadowrunners and baically start off knocking over ATM machines and dealing with local gangs. Like the mad clown biker gang ( Who are under the employ of a the syndicate known as the midnight society )

Now my plot so far goes like this.
The CEO of a minor corporation based out of Kansas city called Echelon Pharmaceuticals is also the crime boss of the Syndicate known as the midnight society, He is engineering bio weapons and drugs and distributing them through his criminal distributes.
This CEO is a vampire with a pension for cruelty and ex street runner who worked his way up in a syndicate until he took control of all the crime in Kansas city through a violent take over.

Now when he was a runner Barricade ( The older shadowrunner ) was a rookie and he worked with him as well as the troll girls father "Bison Bullhorn"
Now thats just backdrop stuff moving in the background the players dont need to know about, But heres what I need help with.
Now this vampire has a master plan, he has engineered a drug with his own blood called "Bloody Lips" which he is distributing through the mad clown gang and the midnight society. This drug will make all the junkies in his city Reinfeilds/Igors, watching the city for him and being his eyes and ears.

Now iv set up a fairly well organized connected and villain who is hard to touch. So the players who figure out how will feel very rewarded. Rule 1 of Dming is the players dont care about YOUR plot they care about how it revolves around THEIR plot, so most of this is just going on in the background.
Iv set it up in such a way that this information will be trickled out based on what the players do, interrogation, investigation, connections and what not. And it all involves them and there choices.

For example, small ways the plot immediately involves the players and motivates them. "Red Riot" the southern racer kid is a member of a rival gang that opposed the Mad Clowns who killed one of his buddies.

The villain is deeply involved with Bullhorn and Berricades history, and Berricade fills a sorta fatherly role to Bullhorn as her father used to be his old running partner.

And Jupider is a 17 year old runaway who still has a Sin and doesnt tell the other players she is from a wealthy family, she is also an addict and potentially will take the bloody lips drug if its offered to her.

Now the plot goes like this.
I will offer the players a few jobs at first, simple ones and so they get sloppy and drop there guard... After hitting the Echelon Pharmaceutical R&D Lab they acquire something very valuable... And this catches the attention of the crime boss who owns it...

I will than offer the players a simple delivery job, no security and no combat, its a simple covert delivery of some stims. But it pays alot, like a million nyen.
When they take the bait its an ambush... They will likely not even post a look out cause of expectations to this point, but if they do it may save them cause its a set up, the Midnight Society will encircle the diner and just rip it to shreds... Any players who dont escape run the risk of capture or worse, and just to ensure they retrieve the syrum the CEO himself will be there. A very powerful vampire with a history with Barricade.

Now when the players escape they will likely lead the villains back to their hide out, a old Runner Bar owned by Berricade, all the homeless people in the area are effected and will inform the villains ware there base is...

The Corporation will than put the players on the ropes, burning down safe houses, draining there accounts pushing them into hiding.. heck if they try to contact family or friends they may even put them at risk.

The players will than need to fight from the bottom up, get revenge, get there stuff back, save there captured allies or avenge the killed... And hopefully the girl didnt take the bloodylips or there may even be a sleeper agent spy within there ranks.

I have experience with these players and i know there priorities and what insensitivize them, how they think. This should be alot of fun and if done right they will never feel like it was inevitable, there will be plenty of clues than in retrospect if they had payed closer attention or only connected the dots would have prevented all this.
A good role-playing campaign uses all these factors to make the players feel both invested int he story and the driving force behind the story.

These players are starting to trust me less though.. Iv betrayed them and hurt them before and I am getting a reputation for being that DM who likes to break there players hearts, with betrayals tricks and plot twists. I am very experienced and while some people may struggle with plots with so many moving parts i am confident i can handle it. I just want peoples opinions on how i can improve it and if their is any problems with it so far. Maybe some suggestions or if it all fits into the lore neatly.
Kansas city seems to be relatively untouched by the lore of shadowrun their is very little information on it which makes it open for me to explore ( Plus its ware battle angel alita is set which is one of my favorite cyberpunk stories ) And its southern so Bullhorn and Red Riots more southern redneck characters work here.

I love Berricades character too, he has a cute little orc daughter who is missing her legs and his only wish is to buy her some robot legs. And she is a back up Decker encase he ever dies.
And Bullhorns goal is to get enough influence to get her father and siblings official sins so they can live a normal life and move out of the slums.

This is a fairly moralistic group though, I have a feeling there good hearts are going to get them into trouble.

icefractal
2018-08-05, 02:40 AM
Edit: The first post changed a lot since I posted! :smalltongue:
Not sure if any of this is still applicable.

I guess the issue is - what if they all die? Or almost all of them do? I mean, it's not illogical for that to happen, but is it going to be any fun and would they want to keep playing afterwards?

Also - the whole "being toyed with by the villain" thing, especially if he lets them live when the corp forces could have finished them off - a lot of groups are not going to like that at all. I don't mean the characters won't like it, the actual players at the table won't. No guarantee that's the case, maybe your group will dig it, but changing the whole tone of the game like that is risky business, and if the group doesn't like the new tone then the events being plausible/justified doesn't matter.

Kaptin Keen
2018-08-05, 05:06 AM
I am willing to bed somebody dies in this ambush to raise the stakes... He knows there faces and ware they operate in and around cause of all the hooding jobs they did early one... he drains there bank accounts, set fire to there safe houses and even the teams fixer gets caught up in it... This will scare the players and from this point on they will be fighting from underneath and from hiding.


Don't like this at all.

You've decided beforehand that he's likely going to kill a PC, and he's clearly automatically succesful in draining their accounts, destroying their safehouses, and so on. He knows everything and auto-succeeds.

That's like a prime method for ending games right there.

Aneurin
2018-08-05, 05:45 AM
The story i am working on is i am gunna throw the players a few easy jobs, mostly a few hoodjobs cleaing out local gangsters and knocking over a few small time wage-slaves until they get a big break and do a job getting on the bad side of a pharmaceutical corporation... but since they are all rookies it gets dangerous cause once they cross this corporation a few times ( which also runs the local crime syndicate in the area helping distribute drugs they are manufacturing and getting people addicted )
The players than get a job... But its a trap, and my players will probably think its just a easy job cause of the few bones if thrown them until now gets there guard down... The job is delivering a package of drugs to a small diner, no combat or security, its just a covert exchange and the payout is HUGE for such a simple job, they will jump on it..

But once they get there its a ambush set up by the corporation, if they dont set up a lookout or something the corporation is gunna circle the building and just rip it apart with gunfire and grenades... ( Havent Named the Corporation Yet, I was gunna go with Umbra Corp as in night but... Its too close to Umbrella Corp the pharmaceutical villains of resident evil )

And thats when the villain appears for the first time... A vampire CEO of the pharmaceutical corp and leader of the crime syndicate the midnight society, he is scary, a vicious blood thirsty man... I am willing to bed somebody dies in this ambush to raise the stakes... He knows there faces and ware they operate in and around cause of all the hooding jobs they did early one... he drains there bank accounts, set fire to there safe houses and even the teams fixer gets caught up in it... This will scare the players and from this point on they will be fighting from underneath and from hiding.
The Vampire is a cruel vicious crime boss and he has been secretly bio-engineering mutants creatures and infusing his own infected blood into the drugs he has been circulating so all the towns junkies are his thrawls... ( which is how he can keep tabs on the players )

Okay, so your basic set up is this, right?


PCs do some small time, street-level jobs
Some of these jobs annoy a big pharmaceutical corporation
Said corporation decides to take out the Runners and sets up a fake job
The CEO of the corporation turns up in person
The Runners... lose the fight? That sounds like what you're planning here
Rather than kill the Runners the CEO lets them go, but steals all their money and destroys their safe houses?
Plot happens


Okay, so, I think my first question is, really, why the hell is the CEO of this corp turning up in person for such a tiny nuisance group? They're street level riffraff who apparently have only mildly inconvenienced the corporation. The CEO turning up in person seems overkill from what you've described. Hell, the Head of Security would be a disproportionate response, really. So why is the CEO there?

Next up. What happens if the Runners don't annoy the corp? What if they sell out to them instead, before the whole ambush thing? What if they see the ambush coming and refuse to walk into it?

If the corporation knows everything about these Runners (how, by the way? Random junkies aren't exactly reliable informers), why are they bothering with a fake job instead of just hitting their safe houses right out?

What's your plan if the PCs all die? Or win? Or whatever? It's not impossible (even if it is unlikely). Why does the corp not just execute them when/if they surrender. Is this an 'offer you can't refuse' deal? In which case attacking the Runners at all seems a little silly, all things considered, since it might kill a few Runners and security goons when just rolling up with overwhelming force and talking might have the exact same effect.



I'm not saying don't run this, but just make sure you have answers and justifications. And don't just strip all the Runners' resources away; if the corp has no way of knowing about something, let the Runners keep it - though if they've been careless they'll just learn a valuable lesson about keeping secrets. Watch your points of failure, all the little places this could go off the rails, and try and have a back-up plan or at least a rough idea of what to do if things don't work out how you planned them.

And make sure there are points of failure that the players can exploit, and use to get out. Let them have a chance to notice that the junkies seem to be spying on them and figure things out. The players shouldn't feel like they never had a choice about entering a potentially lethal showdown (though it's entirely fine of the characters feel that way).

Florian
2018-08-05, 05:46 AM
Ok, grab a notebook, write that story as a novel, publish it somewhere to get it out of your system and be done with it. Stuff like that always sounds good in theory, but will actually kill the fun of playing a game together.

DizzyCrash
2018-08-05, 11:44 AM
I guess the issue is - what if they all die? Or almost all of them do? I mean, it's not illogical for that to happen, but is it going to be any fun and would they want to keep playing afterwards?

Also - the whole "being toyed with by the villain" thing, especially if he lets them live when the corp forces could have finished them off - a lot of groups are not going to like that at all. I don't mean the characters won't like it, the actual players at the table won't. No guarantee that's the case, maybe your group will dig it, but changing the whole tone of the game like that is risky business, and if the group doesn't like the new tone then the events being plausible/justified doesn't matter.

So what I am going to attempt hopefully without the players catching wind is killing or capturing the NPC character on the team, there is one who is a young drug addict girl, she is sweet and well loved by the party but she is a tragic character and has been taking the "bloody lips stim" that the villain has put on the street.
I know my players very well so I am pretty sure most of them will escape and those who dont will likely be captured and we will need to mount a rescue afterwards.
Something like this takes an esperienced DM to do well, but so long as you make the players feel like what happened was cause of something they missed or did wrong and that it could have been prevented you will end up with them not feeling frustrated but angry and passionate to undo the damage.

Iv pulled similar stunts in the past all of which goes over well, If an actual player does die in this and isnt just injured and or captured its going to be cause they made a decision that got them killed, never underestimate your players iv always found. So for example if a player is shot and falls unconcious and is than taken captive, if they die it will bebecous they like spit in the villains face during intarrogation or whatever or they lose a hand or something over it... iv found that players often feel vindicated that there actions impacted the story for better or worse.

I imagine whoever they put on lookout will be able to escape easily and the players inside are very clever and i am sure will escape the very dicey situation. As long as just one of them is captured or killed even the NPC the effect will still work. They will immediatly know the villain is dangerous and despicable and needs to die.

DizzyCrash
2018-08-05, 12:08 PM
Okay, so your basic set up is this, right?


PCs do some small time, street-level jobs
Some of these jobs annoy a big pharmaceutical corporation
Said corporation decides to take out the Runners and sets up a fake job
The CEO of the corporation turns up in person
The Runners... lose the fight? That sounds like what you're planning here
Rather than kill the Runners the CEO lets them go, but steals all their money and destroys their safe houses?
Plot happens


Okay, so, I think my first question is, really, why the hell is the CEO of this corp turning up in person for such a tiny nuisance group? They're street level riffraff who apparently have only mildly inconvenienced the corporation. The CEO turning up in person seems overkill from what you've described. Hell, the Head of Security would be a disproportionate response, really. So why is the CEO there?

Next up. What happens if the Runners don't annoy the corp? What if they sell out to them instead, before the whole ambush thing? What if they see the ambush coming and refuse to walk into it?

If the corporation knows everything about these Runners (how, by the way? Random junkies aren't exactly reliable informers), why are they bothering with a fake job instead of just hitting their safe houses right out?

What's your plan if the PCs all die? Or win? Or whatever? It's not impossible (even if it is unlikely). Why does the corp not just execute them when/if they surrender. Is this an 'offer you can't refuse' deal? In which case attacking the Runners at all seems a little silly, all things considered, since it might kill a few Runners and security goons when just rolling up with overwhelming force and talking might have the exact same effect.



I'm not saying don't run this, but just make sure you have answers and justifications. And don't just strip all the Runners' resources away; if the corp has no way of knowing about something, let the Runners keep it - though if they've been careless they'll just learn a valuable lesson about keeping secrets. Watch your points of failure, all the little places this could go off the rails, and try and have a back-up plan or at least a rough idea of what to do if things don't work out how you planned them.

And make sure there are points of failure that the players can exploit, and use to get out. Let them have a chance to notice that the junkies seem to be spying on them and figure things out. The players shouldn't feel like they never had a choice about entering a potentially lethal showdown (though it's entirely fine of the characters feel that way).

So yes I can answer these and also thank you for helping me tighten up my story.
So the players are actually going to aquire something very valuable from the corp without meaning too, a some experimental new thing that if another company gets ahold of it could mean bad news for Echelon pharmaceuticals, Plus the villain has a history with one of the runners involved but that is not revealed just yet. ( Think Vicious and Spike Spiegle, He actively wants to see this person die )

As for how I know what the players will do.
Iv been DMing for a long time and know my players very well I can guess pretty effectively how they are going to react in most given situations, I know that if i throw them a few soft balls leading up until this point they will get sloppy and over confident. Not to mention they are very altruistic so it would take very little insentive for them to take the bait, if anyones life were at risk in any way they will jump at the chance to do the job.
I know my players could potentially win but my experience with them is that there first instinct is going to be to run and those that do not will likely be captured. Sure the hacker could potentially hijack a car and run it into the boss from behind or whatever but being a vampire and all will likely be little more than embarrassing.

So unless i igo out of my way to execute them they will likely survive the encounter even if they are shot to unconsciousness and so long as one survives they can mount a rescue oporation, luckily most the members of the party are NPCs are the moment or secondary characters with players with multiple characters so if somebody needs to die to raise the stakes its likely to be them. If my players do keep a look out around the meeting place it will allow them a chance to flee when the enamy cars pull up, it doesnt really change much though cause the villains still are a threat and showed they were serious even if all they accomplish to do is set fire to the diner.

Now as for the junkies, once they take the bloody lips drug thy become a renfield they are completely under the control of the vampire and report to him directly, and nobody notices a homeless person, they walk right by them.. I am willing to bet my players wont even mind them as they go straight back to there hide out which the junkies all over town report there every movement. ( Plus the players hide out is literally just the backroom of a old bar so its not very covert or well hidden )

Now they can keep anything they arent sloppy with.. contacts the villain has no way of knowing they have, secret accounts, stuff like that... my first thought is they are going to immediatly hide out in the sewers when the bar is burned down. that seems like something they will do.
Family members should be safe unless they contact them after the event, One of the runners has a Sin she is a teenage runaway from a wealthy family so her family is likely in danger anyway though. So in the future if i need leverage i have that. but i just know my players are gunna go insane worrying about there dependant NPCs being unable to contact them and not knowing if they are safe or not... wracking there brains trying to figure out who the spies are.
How many times they wil be caught before they realize the drug the syndicate is pushing is enthrawling the addicts around town.
And dont worry i will plant plenty of hints leading upto the encounter, not things i know my players will notice but things that when they look back on it they will blaim themselves for the mistakes.

DizzyCrash
2018-08-05, 12:21 PM
Ok, grab a notebook, write that story as a novel, publish it somewhere to get it out of your system and be done with it. Stuff like that always sounds good in theory, but will actually kill the fun of playing a game together.
Trust me, Iv run games like this for years, my players enjoy games like this, tricking, deception and tragedy are what they thrive on.
I am no rookie, its games like this that make roleplaying worthwhile for my crew. So long as you build your game in such a way that the players feel like everything that has occurred is there own doing and a result of there actions than they will appreciate a story heavy game.
A valueable lesson, players dont care about your story, they care about their own story and as long as the story is personally about them and you involve parts of there individual stories and backgrounds and dependant NPCs they will be thrilled by every second of it. ( also never kill a player without having it be a result of there own actions, if a player for example spits in the face of a villain and dies as a result of it he feels vindicated that it was his actions that resulted in his death, but if he just lost a fight and the villain walks up and shoots him in the head after the fact that is frustrating and upsetting for a player )

So as you can see the psychology of DMing is already at play throughout the game and is not an issue. The games ware my players are betrayed, or tricked or accidntly do horrible things and make mistakes are always the most memorable games in there minds.
This would make a terrible story for a book its structured in such a way that can only work for a role-playing game and everything is set up to lead the players to making decisions to move the plot forward and into place structured in such a way to give the players false sense of security before taking that away to maximize the impact of the climax, you dont write books the same way you design tabletop role-playing game plots.

Something every DM needs to learn the hard way, Every second of a plot should be built around your players decisions and actions bringing up there backstory and contacts and personality traits constantly shining a spotlight on your players to make them feel validated and valuable to the story. So when you do pull the carpet out from under them they are thoroughly invested by this point. Some DMs just run cookie cutter stories with very little depth cause striking this balance is hard and most dont understand why exactly players dont want to sit through alot of exposition and plot. Thats why a story should be snappy and simple but with alot of moving parts behind the scenes that are utterly reliant on knowing your players and being able to predict there actions and knowing the right incentives for each player.
For example one of my players is a overportective father in real life, iv learned if you ever include kids in your story he will jump through hoops to protect them and so they are the perfect bait for him to feel both validated in his decisions as well as working him into the plot and encuraging him in the right direction withoutt ever actually suggesting an action to the players ( which does infact ruin the fun )
Or one of my players is altruistic, he cannot allow any injustices, one of my players is a romantic, all of these things can be used as tools as a DM, a story does not need to be bad to be fun, it simply needs to be engineered for your players and roleplaying as a whole.

DizzyCrash
2018-08-05, 08:58 PM
I updated the main thing i said and was more clear this time.

https://orig00.deviantart.net/df6e/f/2018/217/3/8/sarah_bullhorn___shadowrun_character_by_supermemor ycards-dcjbn8d.jpg

Also i doodled an imagge of the lead runner, she is a kind hearted troll with big ideas about being a shadowrunner.

DizzyCrash
2018-08-06, 11:28 AM
I think the characters of this game area well balanced and thought out dynamic with one another.