I’ve been thinking about Shadowrun again, but my foreseeable future is urban and western horror/fantasy. This means my time spent to flesh out adventures is limited to what I’m going to run. Here are five adventure seeds for your Shadowrun (or, with some tweaks, any cyberpunk genre) game. You may grow them and tend to them as you see fit.
The B-Team
What should have been a cake-walk heist was botched by a previous group. The last squad to attempt the break-in is now a mix of corpses and the incarcerated. Now, more than ever, the Johnson wants their McGuffin and they’re willing to pay handsomely for it. The clock is ticking before the item is moved and security around the object has been increased and alerted. Sure, the PCs could go charging in, but they’re better off using the heightened alertness to con their way to the object.
Fast Food Wars
This seed was envisioned as a more lighter/comedic series of adventures. Possibly inserted at various instances throughout a more serious campaign.
Two fast food chains, McDowell’s and Wandies, have been in stiff competition for decades. However, it looks like one of them has decided to take the rivalry to the next level. The runners are first hired to drive away customers from a Wandies establishment—blowing up the building is fine, but don’t harm any customers and more importantly don’t let it be known that McDowell’s is behind it.
As chance would have it, the runners are then hired by Wandies to perform similar destruction on McDowell’s. The two rival chains go back and forth, hiring the PC mercenaries to derail shipments, destroy locations, etc. At the climax, the PCs are hired to assassinate the VP of one of the rivals.
It doesn’t take long for the public to blame the other company. Though the prior series of violent acts was never directly established to be by the fast food outlets, it’s pretty clear that the two companies are involved. Both take a massive PR hit.
Not long after, the PCs are awarded lifetime free meals at Nacho Gong. It appears they were the original instigators that sparked the war. Now that’s thinking outside the bun.
Trolls
A corporation has been having problems. Their advertisements are being hacked and defaced, their systems constantly under DDOS attacks, and online communities have been overrun with fake identities and accounts spreading malicious rumors and misinformation about the company. They’ve been unable to successfully track the source or sources of the cyber-attackers and have turned to the PCs to use their less public resources to find, and stop, the harassment.
The PCs will be fed some red herrings and sent on wild goose-chase regarding a rival corporation. However, after espionage, investigation, and/or violence the rival will be proven innocent. More tracking will lead the PCs to a enclave of actual trolls who have targeted the corporation just for fun. Stopping them will likely require violence, but these trolls won’t go down easy.
Extract the Brat
An orphan has shown some unique magical aptitude and the Johnson wants them. Unfortunately, official channels have blocked any sort of adoption, so the PCs are hired to extract the pre-teen from the orphanage. While guarded by both spirit and firepower, the orphanage isn’t that difficult to break into and the orphan is happy to be rescued.
Once out of the orphanage, however, the kid has no intention of being taken to a corporation. Using their surprisingly powerful magic, they’ll lead the PCs on a chase throughout the city. Sometimes they may allow themselves to almost be caught just to throw an insult or snotty remark in the PC’s face. By the end, the PCs will have to wonder if it might just be easier to bring the Johnson a corpse.
Rapid Growth
An arcology has been developing a plant growth accelerator. If perfected, this will allow them to feed their people cheaply and effectively. The formula will also be a highly sellable commodity. The Johnson doesn’t want the exact formula, they want one of the arcology’s research samples so they can reverse-engineer and avoid direct patent infringement. The PCs will need to break into the arcology and steal a glass canister with a soy vine. Said canister has electronics and lights at either end to nourish the plant.
Everything the PCs deal with from escape to delivery will be focused on not breaking the canister. Shots fired by guards, the chase, random mishaps… it will seem like the world is against the canister surviving. And, if broken (and it should break), the PCs will discover that the canister wasn’t just in place to keep the plant alive but in a state of suspended growth. Upon breakage the vine will branch out and grow as thick as a branch in an impossible amount of time and will seemingly not stop growing until completely destroyed.
The PCs will have to accept mission failure or come up with a creative way to save a sliver of the plant—keeping it in suspended animation lest they have to deal with the rapid growth all over again.
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