Unlike other campaigns, where characters make their homes and undertake the majority of their runs in a single city (perhaps taking a few out of town jobs along the way), this campaign will feature characters that live all over the world. For each run, the Johnson will meet the characters to a central location – either in the physical world or the matrix – and then provide transportation to the city in which they will run.
Why Use This Model?
The nature of Shadowrun inherently supports the notion of character trees. It also makes character generation a monumental task for the novice player and an opportunity to unbalance play (unwittingly) for the savvy one. A mix of players can result in a party where certain players, by the decisions they made during character creation, where a hacker acts three times (physically) in a firefight while the street samurai only acts once. While this may present some opportunities for interesting role-playing, the trend in gaming (especially with the advent of the dreaded 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons) is to make the party balanced in combat situations. Believe it or not, this can be accomplished in Shadowrun. And, if a player dislikes their character, it is easy enough to switch out with another character.
The Pile
Twenty different characters have been pre-generated. Players may pick any one of the twenty characters to play. The catch is that they have limited information when selecting a character. A picture, the character’s roles, and buzz about the character in the shadow community are all available. The “Prime Runners” section below contains a grid with basic information about each available runner, as well as a more detailed entry. The “Shadow Census” section below gives some demographic information about the pile. Teams for runs in this campaign will be assembled from disparate parts of the world on a per job basis. There is no home turf. As such, players can feel free to swap out characters between runs. To facilitate this, runs will be designed to be completed in one – or perhaps two – sessions each. The GM may even recommend that someone pick up a particular type of character to match the run. The GM reserves the right to add additional characters to pile at any time.
The Vault
Once a player selects a character in the pile, the character is considered part of the vault. No other player may use that character for as long as they designate that character as part of their vault. A player can, if they are not able to make a gaming session, leave their character in the vault. In addition, a character can leave their character in the vault and play an alternate character. This allows players to try alternate characters, while “protecting” their main character. Each player may have only one character in the vault at a time.
Extra Karma
Any character in the vault that does not participate on a run, gains half-karma for the adventure. This helps players who must miss a session and encourages players to try a different character from time to time.
Potters Field
Characters killed may not be used again. What – you thought they’d end up in Arlington?
Character Notes
The campaign model features a collection of characters from around the world, assembled separately for each run rather than using the same team, in the same city for the entire campaign, presents several challenges in regards to character creation.
Appropriate Contacts
One of the challenges with this model is making contacts in one city useful in another. As the characters – and their contacts – are prebuilt – the game master is in total control of the types of contacts that each character has. It is import to make most of these contacts more global in terms of their ability to provide information and secure resources. Typically, this means that the contacts in this campaign will have a higher Connection Rating.
Equipment
Another challenge that runs in multiple locations can provide is that of equipment. On many runs, the characters’ favorite toys may not be feasible as they won’t be able to bring them (although clever players always seem to find a way.) It is important that the runs do not always limit equipment, as some characters are more reliant on it than others are. In addition, character construction must consider the globe-trotting nature of the campaign and no character should be designed to be dependent solely on expensive and difficult to transport toys.
Initiative
In the interest of competitive balance, please note that only one character in the pile has more than two initiative passes in the meat world. It would have been easy to give many of the characters another initiative pass, but one of the biggest complaints about Shadowrun comes combats where one or more players sits idle for much of fight due to mismatched. Limiting high initiative characters has the side effect of making characters – both player and non-player – with a third pass something special. And you can always go in for elective surgery.
“Free” Build Points
In addition, each character begins play with the following assets for free:
· Three International Fixer Contacts, who mostly deal in securing high end international deniable assets.
o Jenny White, Female Elf, based out of Seattle
o Antoine Duprés, Male Ork, based out of Paris
o Li Hu, Male Human, based out of Hong Kong
· A single Level 5 fake SIN, valid for international travel. This SIN contains licenses for all implanted MedTech, magical foci , and weapons that the character may possess. This SIN costs between 5,000 (at least) and should the character trash it, it is their responsibility to replace it. This SIN will also degrade over time unless the character makes an effort to keep it up-to-date (via cash, contacts, hacking, etc).