Playing in the Sixth World

Shadowrun is built around runs, self-contained missions that typically take one session from start to end. Multiple runs may be linked together by the narrative, or the crew might pursue different leads each time.

Most runs have the following parts:

The Meet

You get a call from one of your fixer contacts, or maybe from someone you've never met, telling you that someone's looking for a job. They might give you some preliminary info about the guy, or maybe they themselves don't know. Either way, if you agree to Meet, they'll give you a time and location. Might be a private room in a nightclub, a dark alley, a fancy restaurant, or even somewhere in the Matrix or Astral.

At the Meet, you meet Mr. Johnson. They're the person who's gonna hire you. Mr. Johnson will lay out the requirements, and you can then question them for more info, bargain for extra rewards or resources, or turn down the job.

Legwork

Pulling off a successful heist requires solid intel, and the process of gathering it is called Legwork. You might have something from Mr. Johnson, but often you need to work for it yourselves. You'll often want to learn about floor plans, security details, protocols, any magical or Matrix protections, and any other info you think might be useful.

Legwork can take countless different forms, from scoping a place with binoculars or camera drones, to scouting it in Astral space, investigating its records on the Matrix, or chatting to employees at a bar. Most runs have some form of deadline, which will limit how much legwork you can get done before you need to move on to execution.

The Plan

Once all the intel is on the table, you can combine it into a plan. Some people like to wing it, others like to have contingenices for when their contingencies fail. Either way, this is when you decide how you want to approach the run itself.

The Action

With a plan in place, it's time to execute. Maybe everything goes according to plan and you get in and out with no shots fired. Maybe everything goes to hell. Only one way to find out.

Getaway and Payout

If the plan went well, you might be able to escape the scene of the crime without raising an alarm or security making chase. If not, you might have to lose some cops in the streets before heading home. Either way, once the run is complete, Mr. Johnson will probably pay you what's they owe you.

While the structure of a run is pretty standard (Call, Meet, Legwork, and so on), the details can vary widely from run to run. Here are a few general types of objectives you might run into during your life in the shadows:

Burglary

Someone has something, and your employer wants it. Maybe it's a prototype drone that one corp developed and another wants to sell, maybe it's a historical relic, and maybe it's a slice of cake. Your goal is to get in, grab the thing, and escape.

Datasteal

Sometimes it's not a physical object that needs to be stolen, but digital files. Schematics, logs, and incriminating footage are all examples of data that people might want to steal. This typically involves getting your Decker into a secure location where they can connect to the local computer system, wherein they can obtain the required files.

Extraction

Objects and files aren't the only things that people want to take out of a secure location, sometimes it's people. This usually involves getting into a place, finding the prisoner or wage-slave you're paid to free, then get them out in as few pieces as you can manage.

Wrecking Stuff

Some things aren't worth stealing, or maybe they're too dangerous to be left intact. Sometimes you'll be hired to destroy something, leaving no trace for it to be recovered. This can be a physical object, a digital file, an entire compound, or maybe even a person.

Delivery

Sometimes you don't have to get something out, but to get something in. Sneak in to a place, deliver the object, file, or person, then get the hell out.

Protection

You aren't the only people running in the shadows, and the interests of different Johnsons can sometimes come into conflict. Maybe you need to stop that team of runners from stealing the data, or maybe you need to keep the VIP alive until they can get on their jet. Either way, you might find yourself facing against an eerily familiar adversary.

The Astral Plane

Every living creature has an aura, a manifestation of their soul, their their thoughts, and their emotions upon the waves of mana that surround the world. Together, all these auras, alongside with the field of raw mana, make up the Astral Plane.

While invisible to most people, mages have the ability open themselves up to see into the Astral Plane. While perceiving the astral, you can see the auras surrounding people and the astral signatures of magical effects. You can try to read these auras to infer a person's emotional state, detect whether they're Awakened, or identify the nature of an astral signature (i.e. what kind of spell or spirit left it). Meanwhile, non-living objects seem grayed-out and hazy, making it hard to make out the finer details.

When percieving the astral, you can detach yourself from your body, leaving it in a coma-like state while your wanders freely as an astral entity. In this state you're much like a non-manifested spirit, and can only interact with other astral entities. Your astral body can pass through physical barriers, but are blocked magical wards.

Typically only mages have the abilities of astral perception and projection, but an Adept can take these abilities as a power (one Asset point gives you both).

Spirits

If mages and adepts can visit the Astral, spirits are the natives of the realm. Mages argue over what spirits actually are, with some claiming that they're natural beings with lifecycles that mirror those of the living, others claim that they are manifestations of a collective human subconscious, and countless other theories out there.

Regardless of their origins, the fact of the matter is that spirits exist, and mages can summon them, bind them, and barter with them.

Some spirits agree to be bound by a mage, obeying their commands and lending their powers, in exchange for some service. Services can include things like cleaning up the neighborhood park, freeing some spirits that were unwillingly bound by a corporate mage, or the mage agreeing to occasionally 'feed' the spirit some of their mana.

While bound, a spirit must remain within a couple hundred meters of its mage, and the two can communicate telepathically. Spirits generally prefer to hang out in the astral, but can manifest physically at the behest of their mage.

You can see some example spirits here.

Magic Traditions

Ask three mages what magic is and how it works, and you'll get five contradictory answers. A hermetic mage will lecture you about quantized mana and milli-Holzblatts, a shaman will introduce you to the local nature spirits, and a Christian theurgist will show you a relevant bible verse. The important part is that every individual has a way of working magic, and that that way works for them.

When making a mage character, it can help to define the way they approach magic. For that purpose, here are a few example traditions of magic:

Hermetic Magic

A hermetic mage relies on logic, practice, and an academic understanding of mana to cast their spells. They see magic as an extension of the laws of physics, which they study in a lab, write an academic paper about, and hang a diploma on the wall.

Shamanism

A shaman sees magic as a force of harmony between humanity and nature. They cast their spells intuitively, channeling the will of nature through themselves, and strive to enforce some semblance of balance between the urban world and the natural world.

Wicca

A wiccan mage's beliefs originate in the 19th century pagan movements, though there are as many schools of wicca as their are practitioners. Most wiccans place the value of life and morality above all else, believing that whatever they put out into the world will be repaid threefold. Wiccans typically believe in either two or three gods, such as the Triple Goddess of the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, or the masculine Horned God of death and the feminine Mother Goddess of nature.

Christian Theurgy

A theurgist sees their magic as a gift from God, which they can use to bring His will to the world. Most theurgists are members of a church, which organizes sermons and charities for their local communities, as well as facilitating other machinations behind closed doors. Churches are usually hierarchical organizations, with strict expectations from their members (and certain benefits to match).

Qabbalism

A qabbalist draws power from the teachings in Sefer Ha'Zohar, an ancient text that purportedly leads practitioners on the road to Netzach, the divine infinity. Qabbalah combines an academic approach of experimentation, together with Judaism-inspired theistic practices and rules. Not all Qabbalists are religious, not all are even Jewish, but you can trust that they all know the texts forward and back, and they have very strong opinions on them.

Chaos Magic

A chaos mage is none of the above. Literally. Most theoreticians and censuses classify chaos magic as the "none of the above" option for mages who don't adhere to any of the classical traditions. Chaos mages tend to cast their spells intuitively, finding formulae online or figuring them out by themselves, or maybe even adapting them from mages of classical traditions.

The Sixth World is one of wireless technology, instant communication, and globe-spanning networks of knowledge. All of these combined make up the Matrix.

While most people are content to interface with the Matrix through screens and physical buttons