Hello everyone!
I'm DM'ing a group that likes to dabble in various settings. This month we're having a go at Shadowrun, and I'm trying my hand at writing my first scenario from top to bottom. I've gathered a pile of ideas, creative outbursts and general musings in a heap below. If someone could have a look and hit me back with their first impressions - good or bad - I'd very much appreciate it.
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Shadowrun Scenario #1:
The players are contracted to investigate a very recent robbery. A magical artifact has been stolen after its recent discovery by maintenance workers in downtown Seattle.
Bullet Points:
-The artifact was being studied on-site and scheduled for transportation to a secure location next week.
-Security footage suggests the robbers were local gangers. But why would petty hoodlums rob a strange magical artifact unearthed from the poisoned bowels of a Seattle slum? Because they were hired to, obviously – by a shady puppet master well aware of the artifact’s true significance.
-The artifact is in fact a toxic relic from a bygone age. Freed from its underground prison, it has had an immediate and unfortunate effect on the gangers who stole it.
-News footage shows that the gangers’ getaway car was involved in a pile-up on a nearby super-highway. The players must scour the nearest free clinic and interview any surviving gangers.
-In the clinic’s waiting room, a ganger driven paranoid by exposure to the toxic artifact pulls a gun and opens fire on anyone around him. Hospital security eventually intervenes.
-If an interview with a wounded ganger is secured, the gang’s leader is identified: Lud Turner. He is not amongst the casualties. Dub-Cee, the ganger being interviewed, says she saw Turner escaped from the wreck on foot.
-If a wounded ganger can’t be interviewed at the clinic, the players’ trustworthy fixer calls to say the owner of the gangbangers’ car has been identified. He is a known gangbanger with an address in an industrialized suburb.
-As the players prepare to leave the clinic, a hit team from the Atlantean Foundation arrives at the hospital to extract the gangers and any would-be witnesses. Guns are drawn. Shots are fired. Stuff goes down.
-Arriving at Turner’s apartment, further pandemonium ensues. Turner has an apartment in a gang-infested squat. His neighbors, weary of strangers, will likely support him once combat begins.
-Once combat has gone down long enough, the characters hear the unistakeable sound of a tilt-rotor craft landing on the roof of Turner's squat. Turner runs to meet the pilot, his Johnson, demanding payment. If the players intervene, the Johnson will attempt to bargain with them. Money for the artifact in all its cursed, toxic glory.
-Player characters exposed to the artifact’s malign influence throughout the scenario may suffer for it (Add the “Troubled” Negative Trait).
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Shadowrun Scenario #2:
The characters start as small-time mob associates. They are accused of a crime they didn’t commit, or perhaps one they did? Whatever the case, they are run out of town and must find a place to hide before turning the tables on their accusers.
Bullet Points:
-The characters' mobster patron, “Uncle Vic”, makes a grab for power by attempting to assassinate a rival mobster within the family. It is an unforgiveable crime the injured party will go to great lengths to avenge.
-Once Uncle Vic’s treachery is revealed, the characters - known as his trusty henchmen - are themselves branded as conspirators. If they value their lives, they are forced to flee - likely by making contact with Native American smugglers.
-The mafia should waste no time spreading word of their enemies SINs to various law enforcement agencies, likely with various details severely embellished. (Add the “Criminal SIN” Negative Trait).
-They should wind up someplace exotic. Like Istanbul. This is home to an old ally of Vic’s, who will meet Vic and the players at a grand Turkish bath, right in the old Imperial capital, to asses their worth.
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Shadowrun Scenario #3:
The characters must discover the source of a recent shipment of strange magical talismans on Seattle’s black market. The investigation puts them on the trail of a notorious Native American tilt-rotor pilot and into direct conflict with his Koshari handlers.
Bullet Points:
-The character’s fixer is well aware that a known talismonger and associate of the sale in smuggled items was killed in a recent shootout with Lone Star officers. Her body is currently held at the basement morgue of the downtown Lone Star station house. The players must infiltrate it, possibly through the sewers, extract the dead woman’s datajack and escape – preferably unnoticed.
-Hacking the dead talismonger's hardrive leads the characters to the site of a Koshari halfway house - an abandoned sprawl warehouse the gangsters use to repackage the talismans for sale. An appropriately dramatic firefight ensues.
-Afterwards, the characters must interrogate a captured Koshari ganger or hack a matrix node in a back office to reveal how the Koshari collect their goods.
-An exciting climax would be a meeting with the Native American smuggler somewhere in the barren, toxic wilderness beyond the city limits, only to have the player characters ambushed by a Lone Star SWAT team.