Of course we've all heard of them. Maybe even run one or two. But as standard practice how well does it work out, and how much buy-in is required?

Essentially I've hit a wall with my players. They take the jobs because they are supposed to, but if they aren't contacted about the meet they don't go looking for it. I feel half tempted to let the PCs starve because they didn't bother to look for a job, but am hoping for an out first.

The main idea I have in mind is this: calls from contacts late at night about a product available, strangers bumping into you at the club leaving behind contact info and a note about product, but with the contact charging for the info instead of paying. Essentially each contact (or most anyway) would fill the role of Quark (DS9) as a middle man.

I know that setting wise this works fine. But as far as the main thrust of the campaign, would it work? would it be too much effort for the amount of payoff? Is there a munchkin angle I'm missing?

It should work fine! If the Shadows are quiet for work, Shadowrunners need to made cred somehow to pay the bills and oil up the Street Samurai!

At the very least, there's Jacking Ford Americars, stealing cargo loads of goods for Fixers to dispose of, beating the drek out of the nastier gangs and pawning their stuff for cash (And getting the support of the neighbourhood! This is a good thing when you need to hole up!).

A nice mix of both of these is a good set up for any game. Throw in a few, "The drek hit the fan and my contact needs some protection/help" and you have a solid campaign.

From the title of this thread, I thought it was going to be about all-female teams.

Even with Johnsons, you can get the group to come up with extra cash.

My group took a way to incapacitate the Warehouse Guards at their first Shadowrun, and turned it into something they sold to Starbacks Coffee.

That's it Can, you need to run another game so you can have a new story to share (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) That's like the third thread today that has popped up in (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) : (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I ran one on the weekend that was too minor to warrent a post (They were Ninja Redecorators to screw up some Geomantic Feng Shui!), and an EPIC game tonight that'll get noticed big time!

...

I'm going to go back to my notes and add more violence now.

This can be done, but it will require some prep work.

First, you need to establish that you want the characters/players to be more pro-active. Come right out and say it: You want to give the players more freedom to direct the campaign, but

Second, you need to get an idea of what is going on behind the scenes in the game world. Is there a major shake up brewing at a Triple-A? Has a new drug recently hit the streets? Has Lone Star decided to shakedown section of the sprawl in the name of keeping the street safe? Has an insect shaman (or cult) moved into the PC's neighborhood?

Third, they will need some direction to get started, so you need to provide them with some plot hooks. Maybe they'll follow a hook to its logical conclusion. Maybe they'll figure out its a huge hassle and drop it in favor of something else. Whatever they decide to do, you need

Finally, you need to be willing to steer them back on course if they wander into the land of stupidity. This happens to the best groups. Sometimes a half thought out hook will be latched onto and followed... and you got nothing. Just be prepared to handle it. (I had this happen in an otherwise fantastic player-directed D&D game I ran years ago. Everything was going fine, until the players latched onto a red herring and just would not let go, even when I almost flat out told them to ignore it.)

Anyway, player directed games can be a blast.

-paws

Do it the slow way: give out shitty paying jobs.

NO, not starving them.

You give out special opportunites: the logical way of escape is a truck. Which the rigger keeps. The prototype is over there - next to the box of alpha-Wired 1 implants. The enemy mage has several foci. If the players have any smarts, they will notice that they are making more money on the side than doing their job, and that a johnsons "no stealing" policies are just a liability for little money.

How does it work? Depends. If your campaigns pay at least 20k¥ after expenses per session, hell yes. If you desire much slower rates, you´ll really have to work to deny money-making options, a definite no in my book.

I think I saw someone mention an idea on another post that would work well here, too. It's still corp related, even. Have a contact or friend of the runners who's a wageslave in some corp contact them with something he accidentally came across at work. He doesn't know exactly what it is, all he knows is it was supposed to stay a secret and the corp is willing to go out of thier way to make sure he "isn't a problem or a leak"
Fearing for his safety he contacts the runners offering them the juicy secret AND some creds to keep him safe and get him out.
Tah-Dah! No leg work required on the runner's part.

You can get away with this, but I can only see a few real routes for it to work;

1) Adventure is provided by the environment. Escape the arcology, or help guerilla fighters are examples. Toss your players in the meat grinder and they'll be happy for scraps from Johnsons.

2) Adventures are provided by the runners. They go out and find and arrange their own jobs. This requires initiative and contacts. Since it sounds like they don't have initiative, I wouldn't worry about this.

3) Adventures are provided by the runners' failures. I'm tempted to require all PCs have flaws, they make such good plot hooks. Characters with enemies should face their enemies now and again, and that includes ambushes, fake jobs, etc. If they don't have enemies yet, give them some. This'll give them something to keep them busy. My players have commented the best games they've had is when they got stuck in some muck unrelated to a job and they were suddenly put on the run.

If you want initiative, reward it. If your players don´t show initiative, the rewards have to be obvious. Keep the straight pay low, and answer all complaints with previous chances of striking rich. Things will evolve.

You can also find out if the characters have any interests of their own to pursue. Some of the most memorable moments in my previous campaigns come from runners choosing their own jobs and planning work for themselves. In SR3, one of the deckers really wanted an upgrade but didn't have the time or skills to build custom. So she found a location that was holding a Fairlight Excalibur.

The events that followed are fondly remembered as the Fairlight Massacre. The runners tripped a few alarms, and having foreseen this possibility, the mercenaries that they hired took positions outside. Armed with heavy weapons and a few spirits to protect them, they mowed through initial response and a few heavy response teams before a hot extraction.

At the end of the night, the runners were on a ship to Fiji where they were going to lay low while fencing some goods and working through contacts to obfuscate the evidence that linked them to the site. Two months later, they came back to town, fresh from vacation and hungry for more pay since they'd spent a chunk of savings living it up on the island.

First of all before this goes into the obvious realm of pushing over jewlery stores. Shadowrunners in part exist because the machine needs them, and there is no margin in hunting them down. The data they grabbed is sold and if you wipe them out you wasted resources and your competitor will just hire a different team next time. Star doesn't really care because they just want their contract renewed. The corp that hired the runners is likely now more influencial and they'd just as soon their little dirty secrets weren't poked around in. And so on.

However when runners start racking up body counts and massive property damage it becomes personal, when they get on the evening news they become a problem, and when they just steal some big expensive thing somebody is going to be willing to pay on the order of what it's worth to get it back.

And now, suddenly, the runners have real trouble. And you are not as hard to find as you think.

A run I suggest for most teams is being informed they can get in on a juicy bounty for bringing down a different runner team that decided to go solo and has been boosting expensive cars, making some residents consider switching from LS to KE security. LS can't have that, and they don't have time for red tape and jurisdiction.

Your runners aren't megacorps. But pretty soon they'll figure out that cameras are everywhere, you can use about anything for ritual magic, the spirit search power is almost broken, and if the other team wants to make some nuyen they have to sell the stuff somewhere and your face can find out a lot.

Of course let them know they'd better hurry. When a team with a 100,000 nuyen bounty on their heads is trying to sell a 80,000 car...well, things can get exciting.

I am doubtful given the OP about the players' willingness to put some effort into it. And that's only because taking your own jobs requires a lot of preparation work. They have to have their ears and eyes open for opportunities. They have to have money to bankroll the entire job themselves: that involves equipment, intelligence, transportation, bribes, counterintelligence and contingencies. They have to find a reliable fence and/or money launderer, and make sure that the job is worth the initial capital expenditure. Contingencies include all sorts of things from having a street doc or two on call to having an exit plan and the means to get you to the exit plan. Oh, and you also have to ensure that you make enough after all of that to bankroll the next job.

I mean, really, if you've seen Heat then you can appreciate some of the variables involved. The crew was entirely self-financed, and they had to put up massive amounts of time and money. The bank job cost Neal $160,000 on the front-end and 10% gross on the back just to buy the job from Kelso. And that is of $12 million in cash which would have to be laundered down to maybe $5 or 6M so that it could actually get spent at some point. And that is after the literally walked away from the metals depository, which was a blown deal that easily cost them a hundred thousand dollars, and the armored truck heist which may or may not have made them anything given how fucked the situation got on the back-end. And there is time. Michael Mann made the actors in that movie case the fucking bank a couple of times and even went through the process of opening accounts, getting loans, etc. All of which are relatively time-consuming for a heist that IRL would last no more than two-three minutes if they intended to get out clean.

So if you discuss all that with them, and they want to go ahead: Super. I'm not expecting much given the OP, but I could be pleasantly surprised. If they do, let them know that those jobs are pretty fun. Not everything can be the story from Biggie Smalls' Niggas Bleed.

Some background. This campaign started with me giving the following speech:

"I want to run a game in the aftermath of Big D's death. A game of running after the prizes of his will, and facing off against AAA's and other runners for the bounties of Dunkelzhan's Will. There will be no overarching plot, the game will be focused on your characters. We will be following the SR Companions Enemy Rules, and you will decide who these enemies are and why they are after you. This is going to be the source of complications on runs. I encourage you to create the character you always wanted, but couldn't due to resource restraints. I'm looking for powerful characters. Interested?"

This was met with excitement from each player, though only one took me up on the offer. I have ended up running a fairly low level game compared to what I had planned, so I changed directions, decided to work on laying ground work for the next campaign, but none of them seem willing to go looking for the jobs. To get them to show for the last meet I had to be overly heavy handed (apparently omnipotent Johnson who met them individually on their home turf) the players don't go looking for run's, never call their contacts unless there is a run-specific reason to do so, and so on. So after 3 runs the campaign is dying, and I don't care for the heavy handed feel of a Johnson based plot (just a personal preference) so I thought a more free form run structure might help.

Anyway I suppose I'll have to run it by the group either way, just wanted to see if anyone had some relevent experience to draw on that warned against it.

Sounds like they don't have any incentive to run. Without a Fixer calling them and arranging meets with Johnsons, you've got to push them. Drop them in a "situation" where they have to act: caught up in a firefight, mistakenly blamed for some outrage. Push their buttons, slide some initial hooks their way - they don't live in a vacuum and it's up to you as the ref to provide the filler.

How about that their Johnson gets killed at their regular meet. They get blamed for the killing and now have to figure out what is going on, meanwhile their stash of money is steadily getting smaller.

Yepp, the hated What do you do when the fixer does not call? question.

Most runners take that as an oppurtunity to make a vacation, brush up their skills, get legal, play out some off time.

In one game, one of the characters opened a PI agency, which gave as the next couple of runs.

If you want the players to show more self-motivation, make the Johnsons less powerful and less professional. One of my favourite runs I have ever been on, started with one of the characters randomly meeting a contact at a party, who claimed that he had a willing buyer for a painting. Well, he didn't. But we stole the thing anyway and sold to someone else.

Of all the museums and painting in Seattle we couldn't chose one, but as soon as there was even the smallest incentive to pick one, it seemed like a good idea.

Part of the problem is that the group doesn't have any reason in game to stay together. Despite my encouragement to do so, none of them created characters with any connections to any other PC (not even a single shared contact/contact type). Well, game is tonight, so I'm going to see where we stand and I'll post the results tomorrow.

BTW: love the idea of killing off the Johnson at the meet, nothing like a shared enemy to drive the PCs together. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

I'm skimming rather than reading entire threads at the moment, so apologies if this is old news by now.

I run a mix of jobs from Johnsons, fixers, contacts, and hell, complete strangers. I've even had games where the characters ended up paying the team to help them on personal jobs. It's all good in SR.

As to the characters having no reason to work together, I recommend just flat out telling them OOC that they need to start finding some. The old "I'm just being in character and my character doesn't have any reason to like this other character and doesn't work well with others" crap is so damn old that Tut rolls his eyes when he hears about it. Tell 'em "look folks, RPGs are social, and if all you want to do is come up with reasons to keep it from working, I'll go <insert activity> while you all wax eloquent on why you like making games a pain in the ass".

I completely agree (part of why I'm currently trying out other groups in the area), but that doesn't change the situation that I'm looking at, till I start a new campaign. The problem, as I see it, is that everyone in the group wants to play a lone wolf. All of the backgrounds in this campaign fit that mold. Unfortunately none of the players sees this part of the PC till we're two or three sessions in, and the normal response to this is to have the character wander off and create a new one, and at that point I may as well start a new campaign.

It's the old rub, in order to make the game functional on a social level without starting a new campaign we have to create new characters at which point the disconnect forces a new campaign.

I know the lone-wolf-problem, though it never affected my whole group so far.

Usually its a player thing, but when it's the whole group, maybe they just aren't used to the social part of roleplaying.

In my town there is a high school churning out players like that. They feel like their character background and what he says is like flavour text in a video game. They never really interact as characters, except in form of witty replies. It's really creepy to play with one of them, but the problem is too subtle to just say do that and that differently. And they tend to make lone wolf characters, because it makes the most sense in their type of gaming.

But I guess that is just one kind of weirdness that can come up with groups that have played in closed circuit for years. So maybe you should check for that.

Alternatively, a plot device that brings lone wolfs together quite nicely, is a common possession, like a house (preferably so they have to live together)or a company or a potentially expensive item they all own but can't seem to make use of, in your campaign that could be a key to that room in the arcology or a device that shows the direction of one of the magic items, or whatever you want them to look after. Each character has an interest to stay close to the group to make use of that item and guarding it from the others, who might take it away. Maybe that's the target of the first run you send them to, just that the Johnson never got around to pick the item up. After some time, they hopefully got used to each other and make friends and you can tone the influence of the thing down a bit.

Still, I believe that the GM needs to give some kind of plot hook for the players to do anything interesting and coordinated. It doesn't have to be in the form of a Johnson and the more sensitive the players get, the smaller this can be (a news cast or a weird person on the street might do). Still, the story needs to have a proper beginning or you have to make sure, it just never ends.

You know, I like that idea. You mention the "Key to the Arcology", which reminds me of one of the bounties in Dunkelzhan's will, which is a good sum of money for information on what is behind door xxx in the... I don't recall, I'll have to reread the book but that could certainly be arranged and given the vagueness of the hook it should be possible to make it work with the current direction.

I always loved these kinds of jobs. I mean why would shadowrunners pay for stuff like gear when their whole job is stealing things from people? You want that shiny new Hughes WK-2 Stallion/Battletac system/Fairlight Excaliber then rather than having to pay the full whack plus street index why not pay a Johnson or data broker to tell you where a new legitimate one of them is being kept and then take it from there yourselves. Steal one for yourself plus maybe another as a spare and then anything else you can haul away to fence to pay off your operating costs and hopefully make a profit on. As BishopMcQ mentioned with his Fairlight Massacre they can be a lot of fun. Our groups similar version of that was probably slightly even more hectic than that since we'd decided to rip off something just a touch more noticeable, a GMC Banshee Thunderbird. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Of course some groups just don't seem to get into the vibe or enjoy these types of game. If you're wanting them to be a bit more proactive then dropping some hints and nudging them along a bit in-game is fine but I'd also have a chat with the group as well to make sure everyone knows what you're trying to do and is happy with it.