I game-master less and less than I used to, in fact I haven't really run anything in close to a year and a half.  However, as some of you may be aware I have posted (and crossposted with Dumpshock from time to time) some rather detailed and even complex essays on matters of importance for Shadowrunners... stuff that gets often ignored in the 'Adventure of the week' format that Shadowrun seems to regularly devolve into.

At last I have some people interested in playing Shadowrun, even taking into consideration my rather brutally realistic outlook on the life of professional criminals....  Yes, Virginia, I have Masochists...

Anyway, this leads me to a problem. While I've attempted to GM Shadowrun in the past (having a more than passing familiarity with the rules....) I've never actually taken a game through even a single complete run.  The problem is one of technique: I tend to spend very little time preparing my adventures, and spend a great deal of time improving, getting players motivated to seek their own, even create their own adventure hooks...

This, I assume, CAN work for Shadowrun but it is, to be blunt, a shitty match.  Shadowrun calls for plans, for details, for things the players can seek out to improve their chances, or things to miss that will trip them up.  

Obviously, I care. Otherwise I wouldn't mention this. But I have no idea how to approach out the pre-planned 'run' that must be at the heart of any good Shadowrun adventure... even if the intent is for hte characters to run right off the rails and do their own thing, there still needs to be that 'thing' there.

Else, why run Shadowrun? I have a dozen other near future dystopian Sci Fi games that would work just as well, if not better.

How DOES one go about laying out realistic Shadowrun maps and adventures?  Should I try to find real skyscraper blueprints or something?

Well I start out with an idea. It's generally something pretty simple: The PC's are hired to kill someone.

Then I flesh it out. Who are they going to kill? What sort of person is he, what sort of security does he have, what sort of life does he live? What resources are available to help protect him. Who else wants to kill him? Why? Does he have any good habits? Bad habits?

From there I add in things weather events, things that happen in the world around them. Mapping is a bitch, but what I try to do is map the most likely places the PC's will end up. (So the meet point, potential weak spots in the targets security where the PC's might make a play.)

I try not to plan for what the PC's will do, instead planning what will happen when things happen: What happens when someone shoots at the target? Triggers an alarm? What is the local police response? is there dirty cops in the neighborhood? Gangbangers? What happens in reaction to the random weather event? Blackouts, sewage backups, a random kid drowning and increasing police presence for a moment....

I try to keep it real, but I also try to balance that with some good old fashioned TV show pacing. (So the scene in which they get hired. Then the investigation scene, maybe with a fight scene. The Job scene, usually followed by big bad fight. Then the get away.)

Quote from: Spike;257044Else, why run Shadowrun? I have a dozen other near future dystopian Sci Fi games that would work just as well, if not better.

Well obviously you have to answer that question, but for me it's the setting. Shadowrun has a massive amount of background material for me to draw upon.

As for realistic maps, I'd worry less about absolute realism and standardize for convenience. As long as they can read it, you're good. Let their imagination fill in the gaps.

I think I know what you are saying. On one hand the classic SR mission can look like a dungeon crawl, going from office room to office room, disabling security and taking out guards, it's not that simple. Most people don't really expect a dungeon to make a whole lot of sense - it  is a way to pack a lot of fun content in a small space - but will take expet the SR office to be laid out like an office, which mean most of the content it boring and irrelevant to the adventure.

I've never tried this, but I have often wondered in the past if the SR mission could not be done better in a more abstract way, sort of like the Skill Challenges of D&D 4e of the Contest Ladders of FATE.

Man I hope not. The last thing I want is my game reduced to a boring ass set of die rolls. Now maybe you don't find as much joy as I do in the investigative process, but keep in mind this shit doesn't happen in a vacuum. You don't just start asking questions, and no one notices. The world is constant flux and counterintelligence is the name of the game. Betrayal runs rampant, with loyalty being held by the highest bidder. The guy you work for today may be the target tomorrow.

For me Shadowrun isn't just about the job, in fact 90% of it is the lead up to the job. The job, if planned and executed correctly may not even involve firing a single shot.

A Dungeon Crawl would never be possible in my game-eventually someone calls the cops. Kill them, and they call more, better trained and equipped cops. I don't care who you are but you can't win that battle. Try and I'll do you just they would in real life-SWAT, National Guard, FBI HRT teams, and eventually Special Forces if needed. Your four to six man team just can't compete with the resources they can bring to bear.

Shadowrunners exist because they serve a purpose, not because they're so clever they can't ever be caught.

Damned Double Post.

The 'Else why play' question was largely rhetorical. I am obviously planning to play Shadowrun (and certainly shadowrunner style play of 'get mission' questing whatnot...) thus I need to address the weaknesses of my particular GMing habits.

The 'improv' parts, Cop responses and so forth are the easy work for me. What I need to do is learn how to have the right answers for questions the party will ask at hand and believable maps for locations that they WILL, assuming they actually do the runs, be at.... and possibly recycled for locations I didn't plan for.  What DOES a generic futuristic warehouse look like... floorplan wise anyway.

Luckily for me I am pretty sure I can 'fake' up NPC's by the dozens by assuming standard dice pools for most actions.  Joe Security guard is less a collection of stats than 'Shooting PC= 8 dice' or whatever.... though, in the name of versimilitude I may come up with a chance of having a random sharpshooter or weeflerunner per squad.

Quote from: Spike;257374What I need to do is learn how to have the right answers for questions the party will ask at hand and believable maps for locations that they WILL, assuming they actually do the runs, be at.... and possibly recycled for locations I didn't plan for.  What DOES a generic futuristic warehouse look like... floorplan wise anyway.

Whatever you want it to look like. Just be consistent.

I personally start with yahoo maps, because it's easy to cut and paste. Then I start assigning locales. When people build stuff in the real world they do so with purpose right: gas stations don't generally sit next to each other right? No need to over complicate it right?

Quote from: Soylent Green;257127I've never tried this, but I have often wondered in the past if the SR mission could not be done better in a more abstract way, sort of like the Skill Challenges of D&D 4e of the Contest Ladders of FATE.

Not to be insulting (too insulting? Bog knows I could care less if I offend you...) but that would sort of be missing the entire point of Shadowrun.  It'd be like watching a sport's movie where the team runs on the feild, then runs off the field while subtitles announce that it's two hours later and they won...

It's be like watching Psycho where Norman Bates dresses up like his mother while the corpse watches as the very first scene.

It's be like watching Heat where DeNiro and Pachino spend the entire movie talking over coffee about the nature of crime, criminals and the cops that catch them...


.... ok, that last one might be pretty good, but only because of the actors involved.  But its still better when the crooks plan and execute the job around that coffee scene.

I mean, abstracting the run is like playing D&D where the PC's roll to see how wwell they cleared the dungeon and who survived the dragon at the bottom of it, then random rolls on the treasure chart, rather than, you know, actually went into the dungeon, fought all the critters and, yes, even the dragon at the bottom of it, and figured out how to haul all that loot out.

Its the faaking POINT of Shadowrun... and you want to abstract it???

I shall taunt you a second time.

The HELL???  What happened to my first post to Serious Paul???

 Eh: to sum up quickly (so I can close up and go home fer the day!):  What I guess I'm looking for is solid advice/resources on this whole 'preplanning thing' as I have twenty years of practice at going 'Concept: The PC's are all wiffle bats! Game ON!'... and rolling the dice from there.  I'm good at it, but it simply fails miserably for Shadowrun in general, and the sort of shadowrun I hope to run in specific. So far the only solid lead I have is Yahoo Maps, which I shall look into tonight.

Have you checked out Google Earth? it can be pretty handy for adding color. I use it mostly for natural areas-parks, forests, lakes, etc... Plus it's handy for large overheads. (And it's interactive.)

Obviously in the future some shit has changed but some things just aren't going anywhere-after all why knock down those apartments if they're still standing, and functional. So obviously it will be a mixture of old and new. I like highlighting these differences, personally.

Have you seen Seattle 206x? It was a free TSS supplement about locations. (It sucked vastly less than New Seattle.) (Which is easy to do.)

Do you access to any of the Shadowrun adventure supplements ? I have got a couple and they answer some of your questions about technique, not to mention giving you a detailed setting to play with. Bug City IMO is great.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: Spike;257374What DOES a generic futuristic warehouse look like... floorplan wise anyway.

It looks exactly like a modern warehouse, because warehouses are the layout they are for logical reasons which transcend time periods. In other words, it's a big square room, with aisles of products. The difference in the future will be who is working it, and what that means for the layout: robots will be doing all the work, and they'll basically be big forklifts with barcode readers. A product is ordered, the robot [drone, in shadowrun parlance] wheels out [or runs on tracks connected to the racks] finds the right box, scans its barcode to remove it from inventory and verify its contents, then wheels [or tracks] its way to the dock to throw it on the truck.

If the drone is wheeled and independent, it'll be controlled by radio, which makes it take-over-able remotely. If it's on a track, and only delivers to a conveyor which loads the truck, it could be hardwired, but that just means your rigger [or decker, depending on how the system is run] simply needs access to the track [or a connected system, such as the inventory management system].

All of this means the warehouse can be very tall, much taller than a human-manned warehouse would be. But the lack of human eyes means surveillance needs to be more extensive; if humans are around, they'll [theoretically] notice someone who doesn't belong, but the loader robots [drones] don't care...unless they're programmed to, of course.

Now, this all sounds a bit like future speculation, but in fact it's based on today's technology,* and in fact is probably not projected far enough into the future. Still, for most players - assuming they're not familiar with automated warehouses - it'll be enough, if properly described, to produce the "whoa," moment you're looking for, with machines whizzing about without apparent supervision, efficiently performing task after task to load a truck which itself has no driver.

*In fact, it's based on an actual automated warehouse I was lucky enough to spend some time in once. However astonishing the image in my mind was before I saw it - a robot-operated warehouse that could load trucks without supervision?! - the reality was vastly more astonishing.

I haven't played Shadowrun since 1st edition, but back then there was a book called Sprawl Sites that had lots of floorplans for various types of buildings- apartments, restaurants, hotels, subway station, and on and on.  I'm not sure if it's ever been updated to a later edition.  Even if it hasn't, floor plans are floor plans.  If you can find a copy cheap you might want to pick it up.

Other than that, I think the answer to your question is to get a feel for what your players are like.  If they are the kind who want to lay out a very detailed tactical plan before the run, then yes you'll have to provide more details.  If they aren't so much into the details, then you don't have to be either.  

Here's the book:

http://www.amazon.com/Sprawl-Sites-Shadowrun-Fasa-Corp/dp/1555601197/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224248155&sr=8-1

You can get it used for $2 plus shipping.

It's worth the two dollars, I've used it here and there.