Get ready for a big run-on sentence:

Joe Runner started out doing a few odd jobs for a gang called the Craggers until finally he hooked up with a Johnson and an actual running group who began to do odd jobs around town for various smaller corporations thus earning them a pretty good reputation after which they picked up a job with Renreaku who owned one of the smaller corporations Joe ran for and who gave his group some good overseas runs, a few of which took place in south Africa where there also happened to be a contingent of the Craggers gang who also were involved in some diamond dealings with a corp called Diat Inc. who Joe was supposed to run against thus putting him in poor standings with the Craggers who also happened to be involved in a diamond dealing which Joe was supposed provide security for which also had something to do with Aztech which caused Renreaku to become somewhat pissed at Joe but, hell, shit happens, and it would have been more expensive to exterminate Joe than to allow the deal to continue, which it did, after which Joe did some bodyguard work for the may of Atlanta who also happened to be laundering money from a small Chinese corporation who would run the cash through south Africa and somehow Renreaku got involved and tried to stop the laundering by crashing Zurich Orbital, which failed, but they tried to pin it on Joe who, in the mean time, was running guns with a rigger in an out of Aztlan and the guns were supposed to be used for assaults on that Amazon dragon infested country which caused a corp in Australia to become interested because they were exporting new spell formuli to the Amazon basin so they called upon a mercenary group to take out Joe’s operation but, by this time, Joe was in Japan providing security for some Fuchi big wigs who turned out to be working for another corp who had ties with the Craggers who were supposed to take Joe out when he returned to Seattle only Joe found out about it so he called on some Aztech buddies to wipe out the gang, which they almost did, except for one guy who called in support from south Africa and tried to blow Joe’s chopper out of the sky when he returned to Seattle after which Joe went to Atlanta and used his mayoral contact to have the cops take care of the Craggers after which he picked up some work on a ship smuggling radioactive material, a ship that was almost sunk by a Renreaku destroyer until Joe flashed a secret code so the ship was allowed to continue to some place in, I don’t know, how about Russia which didn’t allow it to dock so they ended up in England where they met up with some people who had something to do with that old Diat diamond corporation which decided to let Joe use their secret Russian dock if he gave them a cut, which he did, not remembering that the Diat Corp had retained their ties to the Craggers who assaulted the ship en-masse, killing everybody aboard; including Joe.

Joe is dead because he lost track of the Big Picture. Remember Diat Inc.? Well, way back in line siz (or so) I mentioned the fact that Joe ran against the corporation. Between that incident and Joe’s death many, many things occurred; probably far more than I bothered to mention. Over such a span of time and events it’s pretty easy to lose track of who your friends are and, worse yet, who your enemies are. Joe did just that and wandered into a death trap.

Actually, the above was a pretty bad example of how ignorance of the Big Picture can kill a PC because Joe didn’t die out of ignorance; he died out of stupidity. He forgot that he screwed over Diat and so when he waltzed into a deal with them thinking everything was peaches and cream he completely disregarded the fact that he’d given them the shaft.

Normally the GM won’t be so kind as to blatantly send a PC into a situation wherein all he has to do is remember past experiences to figure out whether the situation is dangerous or not. In the above example the GM may have chosen to have a corporation called Grender Inc., a subsidiary of Diat Inc., offer a safe dock for the freighter. Then the PC wouldn’t even be able to rely on memory to see if they’re being screwed over; they’d have to do a little research first. In any case, the point is that the Big Picture is an extremely important thing to keep in mind.

Perceptions of the Big Picture exist on two levels: That of the PC’s and that of the GM’s. Since the GM is the one who creates the Big Picture, he or she has 100% knowledge of what’s happening in it. The PC, however, isn’t so lucky. Even if the PC is really on the ball, the best he could possible hope for is about a 10% cognition rating, meaning he or she is only really confident that about 10% of the activities in the Shadowrun world that he or she perceives, and which apply to his or her profession, are truly accurate. Simple facts such as location names, buddy names, corporate names, etc. generally fall into this category. For example, we can all be fairly positive that our best buddy Joe is named Joe or that the Renreaku Archology is owned by Renreaku.

Unfortunately for the PC, knowing about only 10% of the world won’t keep him alive very long. This is why the PCs need to become more knowledgeable in other aspects of the Big Picture if they wish to survive. I’ve broken down these areas of knowledge into four separate categories:

Research: Before a PC does anything for or with anybody, they should make an effort to find out at least something about the individuals, corporations, etc. who are involved. Had Joe simply looked at a copy of the Wall Street Journal he probably could have figured out that Grender Inc. was associated with Diat Inc. If this was some kind of secret affiliation some heavier research may be required, such as having a decker crack some low level corporate databases to see where Grender Inc. gets some its supplies. Unfortunately, such research has the potential to take up enormous amounts of gaming time. Good GMs, however, can take care of such probings using simple social or computer skill rolls in place of long matrix runs or social meetings.

Reading: This method of knowledge acquisition falls onto the shoulders of the player, not the actual PC. Basically: Read the damn sourcebooks. While you can normally obtain book based information through the GM via skill rolls, knowing this knowledge right off the bat saves enormous amounts of time. Also, in my games at least, this is an excellent way to earn surprise and smarts karma. Often times a run has developed into a potentially complicated mess when, suddenly, a player remembers a small quote in the Seattle Sourcebook which states that Corp A is directly associated with Corp D, thus allowing them to complete the run without dealing with Corps B or C, both of which own laser equipped Panzers.

Memory: Remembering past information (or, in the case of Shadowrun, keeping good notes) will probably save your ass more often than anything else. As a PC become more experienced and encounters more situations, NPCs, etc. the Big Picture will become more complete.

Inference: When the runners don’t know something intuitively, can’t find it in a book, and can’t learn it through research, they must start making inferences. Basically: They gotta guess. The key to successful and accurate inference is to find out all possible information about the situation before making your guess. The runners may KNOW that Corp A and B mines diamonds in a particular town. They may also KNOW that there is only one actual mine in this particular town. What they DON’T KNOW is whether or not these corporations are associated with each other. But, by knowing that there is only one mine between two corporations the runners can make a pretty good guess that the corporations are, at least in some way, working together.

In the end, the maintenance and coherence of the Big Picture is the responsibility of the GM. This is a BIG responsibility and it can mean the difference between a Shadowrun world which is full, complicated, and organized; and a world that doesn’t make an ounce of sense. The world of Shadowrun has to be BELEIVABLE and, to a certain point, reliable. While paranoia is an integral part of Shadowrun, it should not be confused with nonsense. You end up with nonsense when you have a gang that was allied with the runners suddenly attack them simply because they’re now working for a corp who the runners ran against. I’m not saying this event couldn’t occur, I’m simply saying that it should not occur out of nowhere for no reason. A chain of events would have to be worked into the Big Picture in a way that would make the situation believable. The runners may not be fully away for the events which are occurring but they would at least be able to sense that something is ‘wrong’.

Finally, the primary key to an good and fully developed Big Picture is connectivity. No shadowrun should stand alone. They all should, in some way, have some kind of thread running to a previous (or future) adventure. This thread can be something as simple as a victim of one of the PCs’ runs being the nephew of the half brother of the runners’ Johnson to something a little more blatant such as the runners stealing an Aztech panzer and using it on a Renreaku assault thus sparking a corporate war.

And, whatever you do, make it real.