Character Creation Discussion

[Cairo]

That's definitely good food for thought, thanks! I'd say it leans more towards the "looser" interpretation of the combination.

Anyone else?

Something that occurred to me in the meanwhile was Harry being a song ghostwriter for a famous artist or band, then getting sacked. It's a different brand of abuse, but doesn't translate quite as neatly into wielding the fanbase for shadowrunning purposes post-fall.

[Chimi]

What if the Pop Idol wasn't actually in the employ of the Corper background?

What if Harry was a vtuber or had a sensory recording rig, and made weird art about being a Corper? Usually he's so good at editing out anything that directly tells where he works, but when Shadowrunners do a job in his office park, he captures the whole thing, generating both his best-selling VR, and also getting him fired?

[Inash]

oooooo nice

[Cairo]

@Chimi Hah, that somehow falls into both the "stricter interpretation" and "..or something else" categories at the same time. Also neatly carries the fandom over to the shadowrunning side. That's creative.

The game overview mentions that the PCs are setting out on their first run at the start of the game, but otherwise at least some of the PCs might have been the ones Harry captured raiding the business park. Might as well seek their company after losing his job.

[Arcticus]

6 hours ago, Inash said:

Sounds like a corporate managed boy/girl band member to me.

Could definitely see that.

15 hours ago, Cairo said:

A Nuyen for your thoughts since we're not in a hurry:

Let's say you did what I did and rolled a purely random character because you love discovery. Let's call them "Harry" and say they're a Corper + Pop Idol. Let's also assume for the sake of conversation that everyone's fun is different and there's no wrong way to interpret that combination - I'm curious about the range of thinking here.

Would you do a more strict interpretation of the Pop Idol (musician, journalist, etc) through the lens of a Corper (faceless cog) and say they were an investigative corpo journalist known well enough by their pen name but not so much their face.

..or would you prefer a much looser interpretation where you maximize both aspects even if it treads on other options to some degree. For example Pop Idol means they're a musician (even though they don't have the Performer background), and Corper means they participated in the building and served as the face of a record label (even though Corper says they were a faceless cog).

..or something else?

Another path you could consider, is they're a former Corper (mindless drone) who got fed up with all the corporate lies and hypocrisy and they became popular for their punk/anti-corp/fight the man views. Doesn't necessarily have to be a performer at all, could be like a podcast host (or the in-world equivalent). A good touchstone for that route would be Johnny Silverhand from CP2077, though I don't think he really had a corper background at all.

 

But yeah something to also keep in mind is that your Corper background is exactly that... your background. What you used to do. Everyone at the start of the game is considered an Operator/Shadowrunner.

[Arcticus]

3 hours ago, Chimi said:

What if the Pop Idol wasn't actually in the employ of the Corper background?

What if Harry was a vtuber or had a sensory recording rig, and made weird art about being a Corper? Usually he's so good at editing out anything that directly tells where he works, but when Shadowrunners do a job in his office park, he captures the whole thing, generating both his best-selling VR, and also getting him fired?

I actually had a speedster character in a M&M3e game that did something similar :D He had a custom camera that would capture him battling supervillains which he would then upload to YouTube

[Cairo]

56 minutes ago, Arcticus said:

Another path you could consider, is they're a former Corper (mindless drone) who got fed up with all the corporate lies and hypocrisy and they became popular for their punk/anti-corp/fight the man views. Doesn't necessarily have to be a performer at all, could be like a podcast host (or the in-world equivalent). A good touchstone for that route would be Johnny Silverhand from CP2077, though I don't think he really had a corper background at all.

Oh, absolutely - sequencing them is a tidy way to handle these aspects of the character with minimum fuss. The background leads to the focus and on to shadowrunning and the character grows (or at least changes).

These different takes do highlight the many fun ways these particular character details could be interpreted, though. I'll continue thinking about it while gradually creating a sheet for him.

@Arcticus On a somewhat related note, are you using the world / city building guidelines to define Seattle in CWN terms? If so, the PCs would probably be aware of the problems the world / city / starting district faces?

 

[Arcticus]

8 minutes ago, Cairo said:

Oh, absolutely - sequencing them is a tidy way to handle these aspects of the character with minimum fuss. The background leads to the focus and on to shadowrunning and the character grows (or at least changes).

These different takes do highlight the many fun ways these particular character details could be interpreted, though. I'll continue thinking about it while gradually creating a sheet for him.

@Arcticus On a somewhat related note, are you using the world / city building guidelines to define Seattle in CWN terms? If so, the PCs would probably be aware of the problems the world / city / starting district faces?

 

I'm only planning for this to be a short mission, so I'm primarily using pre-established lore from the New Seattle sourcebook, just with NPCs that fit the mission.

Future goals, I'm thinking I might set up an episodic, West Marches-ish type of game, but that's, at earliest, a next year plan.

[GleefulNihilism]

I'm going to admit that I'm interested, but I have never ever heard of this system before beyond the name and have absolutely no idea how it works, let alone have a copy of the book. I can toss up the start of my idea though.

Edited September 12 by GleefulNihilism (see edit history)

[Arcticus]

1 minute ago, GleefulNihilism said:

I'm going to admit that I'm interested, but I have never ever heard of this system before beyond the name and have absolutely no idea how it works, let alone have a copy of the book so I have no idea how it works. I can toss up the start of my idea though.

The great news is that there's a free version of the rules on DriveThruRPG! It has everything you need (except for magic which is in the paid version) to make a character and then some.

I'm not sure what games you've played but it's part of the OSR (Old School Renaissance) subgenre of games. If you've ever played AD&D or Dungeon Crawl Classics, it plays sorta similar. If you're coming from D&D 5e, it plays like a very stripped down version of that.

[CraterShip]

I have been using the free version, and I must admit it is surprisingly full of a lot more information than I would expect from a free PDF copy.

[Rejakor]

For the weapons in Seattle 2050, I suggest replacing the Smart and Sight weapon traits with the Autotargeting weapon mod (from page 59 CWN). Not a huge issue, they're just describing the same thing.

Brown Business Suit usually means to me that there's fairly strong police presence and security checks, such that concealing firearms (or katanas) would be a nontrivial task for John Q. Public. Is that the case in the Seattle you're intending to run?

[Neopopulas]

This looks like it could be good. I'm one of those people who wants to play shadowrun without actually playing shadowrun (actually i want to play cyberpunk but same same)

[Arcticus]

7 hours ago, Rejakor said:

For the weapons in Seattle 2050, I suggest replacing the Smart and Sight weapon traits with the Autotargeting weapon mod (from page 59 CWN). Not a huge issue, they're just describing the same thing.

Brown Business Suit usually means to me that there's fairly strong police presence and security checks, such that concealing firearms (or katanas) would be a nontrivial task for John Q. Public. Is that the case in the Seattle you're intending to run?

Replacing Smart makes sense as that is effectively just Autotarget. Sight is a little different as it doesn't require Gunlink or cyber at all, but it is effectively the same thing. Could add a minor penalty for concealment if you have a firearm with Sight on it since it makes it a little bulkier.

That understanding of Brown Business Suit is pretty much in line with mine, with the addition that Shadowrunners are more skilled at concealing than John Q. Public and if/when you get in trouble with security, you have a roughly 50% chance of making it out alive (likely with some scars, but alive).

In terms of suvivability (my personal opinion, so take it for what it is), when drek really hits the fan, you've got a ~25% survivability rate for Black Trenchcoat. ~50% for Brown Business Suit. ~75% chance for Red Bodysuit. And for Pink Mohawk if you die it's usually for plot reasons or you made too many bad decisions the GM couldn't save you from lol.

[Rejakor]

Quote

Replacing Smart makes sense as that is effectively just Autotarget. Sight is a little different as it doesn't require Gunlink or cyber at all, but it is effectively the same thing. Could add a minor penalty for concealment if you have a firearm with Sight on it since it makes it a little bulkier.

There's a lot of +1's floating around in gear - in the low-bonus OSR ecosystem they are mandatory. This is a little lame. I'd at least have sight not stack with gunlink.

Only thing I can think of to convince runners not to just buy every upgrade the second they have nuyen in their pockets is have it all be super illegal, so an unmodded Glock is corp-carry approved but you see an AK dripping in gizmos that's illegal terrorist stuff.

Also have to keep in mind ranged weapons get an extra +2 damage and +1 to hit (from weapon mods etc) that melee weapons don't, so will typically hit more and harder once the group has nuyen (I think they have larger die sizes innately too).