Shadowrun Road Trip

Question

So I've been in a Shadowrun campaign and my group has fallen afoul of both Aztechnology and some powerful Seattle organized crime people. I've been scouring all the books I can think of, but I can't find anything on travel in Shadowrun; even the Sixth World Almanac doesn't say anything about border crossings, and it's bothering me a little.

For instance, my character has a criminal SIN, but only because he didn't have any ID at all (it was lost in the Crash, and he's also an amnesiac so he can't go and dig up the old records). However, his criminal record is spotless, in part due to paranoid identity hiding and in part due to common sense and the Erased quality.

Would he have issues getting to, say, Denver through Salish Sidhe and PCC/Sioux lands? Or, more coherently, are there any rules that govern this? It would be in his character to take his upgraded RV (that may or may not exist, again, paranoia) through the desert rather than leave it in Seattle, so any way he takes of getting there has to permit a Ford-Canada Buffalo on a 20k budget.

We're playing Fourth Edition, but I remember having this same problem back in Third as well.

Answer 1

Runner's Companion: “Travel and Smuggling” (pp. 28–33) has an overview of the subject but no hard numbers. It discusses common transportation methods, techniques, and challenges that players are likely to face.

The Unfriendly Skies and Deadly Waves mini-supplements are full of vehicle stats, which may come in handy for travel adventures.

Spy Games: “Getting Around in Denver” (pp. 13–16) briefly discusses border crossings, although the gist is that the internal borders are a joke that only stop honest people. There's more information in Midnight.

For more extensive examples of world travel and border crossing, see the Dawn of the Artifacts series. Each adventure features at least one sprawl and one feral zone in a different part of the world. There are guidelines for travel by car, rail, air, space, smuggler, and coyote. Shadowrun has a long history of introducing optional rules and setting details in adventure books like this.

Dusk: This adventure mostly sweeps travel details under the rug, although it does have some stats for third-world airport security and a bush pilot (p. 14).

Midnight: “Road Trip!” (pp. 22–25) has stats and mini-encounters for traveling cross-country with a T-bird smuggler. “Denver Layover” (pp. 25–29) deals with border crossing with write-ups for a fixer, coyote, and border patrol. There's also a piece on traveling through snowy Chicago, but it wouldn't generalize well to other locations.

Darkest Hour: “Travel on the Fly” and “Travel Arrangements” (pp. 10–13) has the most technical information on travel, with comparisons of commercial air, sub-orbital, road, and train, including checkpoints and security ratings. “To Find a Thief” (pp. 21–30) has extensive information about a holding center and jailbreak, which is not directly related to travel, but useful if the runners get themselves in hot water with the travel authorities.

New Dawn: There are scenes aboard a zeppelin and a cargo ship, but they may not generalize well to other missions.