so i've tried to run shadowrun a few times now and asside from getting bogged down in the rules (an annoying yet solvable problem) i've had a lot of trouble keeping the group interested during the setup stages of a run

i really enjoy the process of planning out a run and get a great sense of satisfaction for a well executed plan ("i love it when a plan comes together") but i don't think that's true for most of the rest of my players

so
the question becomes
how do i setup runs they'll enjoy

i've had a few ideas for this
the first is simply to have some sort of guiding hand gently moving them between challenges, making sure that they have a good amount of freedom where they want but don't have the full load of planning out a run and getting all the ducks in order

this feels kinda icky to me though?

another i tried to implement in a short lived play by post fate campaign where whenever the players would come upon a challenge they wished they'd planned for they could "flash back" to the past when they actually set up for that thing

but that could involve some pretty complex note taking to manage all the characters at all the different points in time and maybe would break up the narative flow too much?

i've been trying to figure out what parts of our enjoyable campaigns i've actually enjoyed
some mechanics don't really transfer well to shadowrun but i think there's definately some decision fatigue that comes from being able to do literally anything
i tried to solve this by giving them a set of possible next steps along with a choose your own option for each setup phase of the previous run but that still got bogged down

having a guiding hand would allow them to get right into the run without any of the lengthy setup stuff but i don't want to deprive them of agency
but do they even want that agency?
it would also make runs a lot easier to prep because we'd basically be in medias res for the start of every run

actually now i'm thinking about how you could adapt frozen synapse to shadowrun...

i suppose one of the bigger issues is that when it goes to combat players die real quick
the game is less about outgun than out manuver
but that requires pretty well constructed encounters
which is
not something I'm good at

death in shadowrun would be more tolerable if character creation wasn't a four hour slog

and not in a good way like traveller or fate

see i tend to pull pretty heavily for rules light systems and campaigns
and yet one of our best campaigns has been d&d with straight combat all the way through with custom artifacts and bosses
and the setting of shadowrun is so cool
i really want to make it work

theres so many weird little systems i want to try too but getting people for those is impossible

@catoutofbed hi, jess