Next Up – Shadowrun

I’ve finally started to settle on the game I’m going to try to put together for my next stint at gamemastering. After taking a good look at how Earthdawn went and where the problems arose as well as what parts of my gamemastering style need improvement I’ve decided to run a short Shadowrun mini-campaign – a single mission that will involve a basic run and then some follow-up in a more open format.

There’s still some time left in our Star Wars campaign, and I’m not trying to rush that out the door early in order to play something else. I’m hoping to use this blog as a design log and document some of the campaign design and planning that I do to get the game ready to be run. In the future I’ll be talking about the system I’ll be using, the campaign setup, the group template, and other aspects of the game but for my first post I’m going to start with how I’m going to address the problems of my Earthdawn game.

The biggest problem that arose during my Earthdawn game was that once the game was sidetracked I lost enthusiasm and everything became a chore instead of being fun. This time around I’m determined to focus on each scened and event as they come and try to make each encounter memorably in some way instead of simply having each one be a means to further the story. If a scene doesn’t advance the story or showcase an aspect of the setting I want the players to witness, that scene will just be glossed over and I’ll move on. Any time a scene starts being a chore to run, I’ll wrap it up quickly and move on.

In addition I’m not going to plan out a story for the players to follow along with. Instead I’ve opted for a more open format. The game will start with a single run, then give the players the freedom to act as they see fit in the aftermath. I do plan on fleshing out the target for the initial run fairly extensively, but I won’t be planning the players’ run for them. I’ll know what intelligence they can gather and what the actual setup of the facility is but the players will be free to plan to get in however they want to.

Once the mission proper has been completed there will be plenty of interesting things that will happen, but I’m not planning much of that ahead of time. I’m going to design the parties involved in the conflict as well as some interesting NPCs and NPC group. I’m also going to outline some cool scenes or visuals I want to be able to draw upon. Then I’ll file all my notes away to be pulled out whenever the opportunities arise in-game. This time there won’t be any tying specific people to specific places and specific plot points. Instead the players will provide the plot points and I’ll add people and places to flavor. As a side note, that means that after the initial run this campaign is going to be very player-driven. I’m going to have to make sure that’s clearly communicated to the players so they’re not expecting me to move the plot along for them.

Although I’m going to go into deals of system modifications later, I’m going to quickly add here at the end that I will most certainly not be using the Shadowrun system for this game. SR 3 is far more complicated than I want and SR 4 has the same horrible dice-pool-fixed-difficulty mechanic that the new World of Darkness games use, and I won’t be touching that with a 10 foot cyberspur. At this point I’m leaning heavily towards Spirit of the Century with some modifications to make it a bit grittier. Everything except the magic seems to have a relatively simple conversion so I’m most likely sticking the FATE-based engine for my game.

That’s the skinny of the upcoming Shadowrun game. I think my next entry will be on the campaign overview, the group template, and character generation. Stay tuned!