Session Zero

Questions to answer before we start. There are no wrong answers and a few of them change the campaign.

Work through this before session zero or at the table, whichever suits. The point is to find out what everybody already has in their head, because Shadowrun runs two genres at once and most people arrive fluent in neither, one, or a different one than you'd guess.

Answer honestly rather than helpfully. A shrug is a real answer and so is "I don't know what that is."

The questions

A. Where you're coming from

  1. Have you played the Harebrained video games: Shadowrun Returns, Dragonfall, Hong Kong? They're a lot of people's only exposure and they set specific expectations.
  2. Have you played R. Talsorian's tabletop Cyberpunk: RED or 2020?
  3. Have you played Cyberpunk 2077, or any of the other Shadowrun video games?
  4. How much do you want to know about the setting before we start, versus discovering it in play?

B. The crew, before session one

What I'm planning, so you know what you're answering against: you've worked together for years, and the campaign doesn't open on you meeting. You have two fixers: Fontaine downtown, who runs a coffee stall at Grand Central Market, and Marko "Tally" Zorić in San Pedro, who only does harbour work. Both take ten per cent. Neither has ever burned anybody.

If any of that doesn't suit you, say so now rather than working around it.

Answer these together:

  1. How long has this crew been working together?
  2. What was the job that nearly ended it? One job, and somebody still doesn't talk about it.
  3. What does each of you owe one of the others? One debt each, in a circle.
  4. Do you work with Fontaine or Marko more, and why? There's no right answer and the difference between them is real.

All four answers are canon the moment you say them, and they go on the wiki.

C. Touchstones

Mark each: know it well / seen it once / heard of it / never heard of it. No wrong answers, and "never heard of it" is genuinely useful: it tells me which references will land and which will be noise.

Films

Heist films

A Shadowrun run is a heist, so these may matter more than the cyberpunk list.

Anime

I lean on anime shorthand when I'm describing action, and it carries a lot of the classic cyberpunk besides.

Video games

Books

D. Tone: pink mohawk, mirrorshades, or black trenchcoat

Shadowrun's community has three names for how a run feels. Pick where you'd like the table to sit, and say whether you want it consistent or varying run to run.

Follow-ups:

  1. How much moral compromise do you want available? Shadowrunners work for people who are not good. Do you want the option to refuse jobs on principle, or is that not the game you're here for?
  2. How much comedy? Some tables want gallows humour throughout and some want it to stay bleak.

E. What you want to spend time doing

  1. Rank these by how much screen time you want: combat, infiltration, social manoeuvring, downtime and character stuff.
  2. Do you know what you want to play yet? Archetypes has the roles, what each one does when a plan comes apart, and a flowchart if you'd rather be asked questions than read a list. Answering "no idea" here is fine and common.

F. This campaign in particular

The default is everything already on this wiki, and I'd rather you knew that than discovered it. Now is the time to say if you'd rather have something else.

What's here, in summary:

Two alternatives, and either is a real option if you want it:

  1. Canon Seattle. The published default: a corporate enclave with a governor, a functioning legislature and Lone Star on a police contract. Thirty-five years of sourcebooks behind it, so there's an answer to almost any question. Plays much more like the video games.
  2. Canon Los Angeles. The published version of this city rather than ours: thin, a handful of pages, and without the reasons we invented for why there's anywhere to run.

Then:

  1. How do you want to treat the lore generally? Follow it exactly, keep the broad strokes, or sand off the rough edges and adapt it to what's actually happened in the forty years since the game came out? (This wiki does the third.)
  2. Real organisations, or invented ones? Unlike D&D this is our world, so you get hired against Chevron and Paramount rather than the Umbrella Corporation. Does that appeal, or do you want the distance?
  3. The backstory leans on a pandemic, mass detention, corporate capture of government, and Indigenous dispossession and resistance. Some of that is background and some is plot. How much appetite do you have for politics in the fiction?
  4. Do you want to read the setting history before we start, or have your character learn it as it comes up?

G. Lines and veils

Skipping this one, and saying so rather than leaving it out.

We've played together for years and we already know where each other's edges are. If that weren't true this would be the most important section on the page, and if the table changes it comes straight back.

What stands regardless: anything can be off the table at any point, including mid-session, with no explanation owed. Say it in whatever way you'd actually use: a word, a look, a text afterwards.