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Posted by: Krojar Aug 30 2011, 12:56 AM

A rapid change of schedules has, unfortunately, ended our game but i still have one player interested in a solo campaign. Im having some trouble thinking of a good campaign type though...my current thought is to have him as a mr johnson but other ideas are welcome.

Posted by: Method Aug 30 2011, 01:19 AM

How long (in game time) do you anticipate the game lasting? In my mind a solo game is all about character development: starting with a nobody and following their meteoric rise to awesomeness. As such, starting at 500 BP seems a little high, but you might have other goals.

As far as character concepts, I personally would not enjoy playing a Johnson, but YMMV. I would rather play some average schmo that becomes a bad ass underworld hit man, corporate assassin or such.

Alternately, I once built a great character who was a corp "investigator" (thats internal investigations) who was wronged by his corp and became an anti-corporate terrorist. Not "runner=terrorist" corporate media spin, mind you... I mean like blowing up office buildings, crashing nodes, assassinating executives, etc...

There is also a lot of room for epic character development with magic users. Astral quests, initiation ordeals, occult investigations and whatnot.

Also, some of the alternate character concepts IMHO are not suited to team-based games (free spirits and AI come to mind) but might be fun in a solo campaign. Just throwing that out there.

Posted by: Krojar Aug 30 2011, 01:41 AM

Actually im not sure why i put a 500 pt in the title... Certainly not married to the idea. The terroist type is a cool idea as is tge paranormal investigator. Reminds me of the Cthulhu game i played in college. Also since hes my roomie i plan on this going a whule. Im not sure the alternate chars would be a good idea as hes more casually interested in the world but an hmmv could be a possibility.

Posted by: Method Aug 30 2011, 02:20 AM

Yeah, I could basically see it going in phases:
-- character is happy corporate wage-slave assigned to investigate some badness (maybe involving some "nefarious" shadowrunners?)
-- character realizes the nature of the badness is an integral part of the corp
-- corp realizes character knows about the badness and fucks him/her over
-- character takes to the shadows and sells his skills to survive
-- character returns to wage private war against corp
-- explosions, awesomeness, etc

Posted by: PeteThe1 Aug 30 2011, 02:42 AM

I don't see a problem with starting at 500. Will let your player make a character focused on a role, but definately encourage skill diversity since there won't be a team and he'll need to be at least-not-incompetant at everything. Combat, social, technical, and so on.

One bonus is now you can do the stuff thats normally frustrating to do in group games, like astral quests or long-distance matrix runs or deep-cover long-term infiltrations. Sweet!

Posted by: Method Aug 30 2011, 03:04 AM

In deed there are some distinct advantages. I've been toying with the idea of running something similar in a PbP game for awhile. Maybe if my current tabletop group doesn't work out...

Posted by: Neraph Aug 30 2011, 04:10 PM

Nosferatu Mystic Adept with a tricked-out commlink. You can do combat, magic, hacking, and social, all well. I can actually build most of that in 400 BP, the extra 100 BP just makes it better.

Use conceptual elements from the http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=25710&st=0 (the Bloodmourne system especially) and the http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=30011&hl=farsight thread (namely Glitch).

Posted by: sunnyside Aug 31 2011, 02:32 AM

I did one solo game...and it was great! This is a rare opportunity to throw out the run-of-the-week playbook and write yourself something movie class.

You have a lot of options. High points could be good. Though you don't have to play a total hoop kicker. For example this might be the time for a "mr. lucky" build. Hackers and mages may play well as they can do a whole lot all on their own. Though it's also sometimes fun to have the guy be someone they can connect to.

In my game I was dealing with someone who had never played before and didn't know chargen, so I gave him a kinda dorky college student a slew of engineering and computer skills with a rich dad that had given him some bioware that would be relevant to school, but also other things (hey, extra actions let you work faster right?) And some "protective" stuff.

He winds up caught up in an extraction goes wrong, things are narrated through an extraction gone wrong, and I handed the character over to him as he's in a flaming tilt wing full of the now mostly dead guys that were "saving" him from people who wanted to kill him back at his comefy corp college as it goes down into a full storm drain in the barrens.

Posted by: Draco18s Aug 31 2011, 02:39 AM

Check the http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=23592 thread for some ideas.

I've got a drake mystic adept in there, there's at least one cybertank, I'm pretty sure a version of Bear Who Walks Through Walls is there,* along with some other gems.

*42P DV dealt to objects per melee attack. Enough to dig a 1m wide, 2m tall hole through reinforced concrete at a slow walking pace (at 1x1 it would be slightly below human walk rates, but Bear being a trollish sized character needs the headroom).