Freelance or Affiliated? Options

[ting-bu-dong]

Hi,
I am currently thinking about how to bond closer ties for my group with a specific organization because of the stronger background involvement and loyalty ties.
What are other people's experiences with this? Do you work for a different corporation, organization or syndicate every run or do you stick to e.g. Ares, the UCAS Army or the Triads most of the time? Why?

tbd

[thunderchild]

Shadowrunners should be freelance, once you affiliate them with a certain organisation its only a matter of time before you have to have the organisation stab them int he back because otherwise shit just gets too boring.

[ting-bu-dong]

Hi,
I am not talking about totally affiliating them with an organization, like putting them on Ares' paycheck. In that case either the situation you mentioned comes into effect or the group would not be a shadowrunning team but a Ares SWAT-like team, making campaigns totally different.
What I am talking about is a team doing frequnt runs for a specific organization, corporations being the most unlikely, such as MOM or Humanis, but also doing jobs for other employers. This way, a campaign would get a theme and NPCs of that organization (only the Johnson in most cases, and depending on the size of the org.) would become more than "The Johnson" or "The Mage", turning into living characters.
The downside is, of course, the more or less fixed theme. But if the affiliated organization bears potential for more than one kind of job, would it really get that monotonous (which is why I started this thread in the first place)?

tbd

[Tanka]

With working for specific orgs, you may end up with characters who don't like that org and doing their best to frag them over.

In the case of Humanis, I doubt a meta would work for them after figuring out who they are. In fact, they'd probably do their best to slot with any Humanis punks they see.

[Dashifen]

You might be on the right track for something, TBD, and what I usually do sounds similar. However, I don't usually work for just one organization. For example, during the last four months or so, my group finished three different runs, two of which were intricately connected to each other and to a "metaplot" that I wrote involving the team. But the third was totally random. It's good to have some organization pulling strings behind things because it brings things up to the level of a conspiracy, and it's always fun for the players to try and figure out what's going on. But, you also should try to throw in some "extra" information to confuse them. Do a run or two that has nothing to do with the organization or the conspiracy so that they don't know which are the important runs to the conspiracy. Then, I think, you have the makings of an interesting few runs. As always, YMMV.

[Backgammon]

We are about to start a campaign in which the players are a deniable blac ops team for Renraku posted in the pre-shutdown arc. Basically, they go where normal shadowrun teams cannot be trusted, but where Red Samurai cannot go. The missions are mainly going to be facility intrusions for theft of destruction with higher level toys, while the downtime is going to explore the advantages and disadvantaged of living full time in a corp environnement inside the SCIRE, and a more military-ish structure. Eventually, the campaign will wrap up with the shutdown.

[kevyn668]

Whats the SCIRE?

There was a thread about this a while back (or maybe it was a drift). There's a poster that came up w/ this cool idea. The team work for a "Broker" that handled all the jobs. The GM came up a bunch of categories (B&E, Extraction, Overwatch, Surviellence, etc) and then made up a bunch of short run ideas, put them all in a hat and would randomly pull one out. In a second hat there would be the names of Organizations. MCT, Ares, Mafia(family), Yakuza(-gumi), etc.)

S/he would keep a running tally of how well the team performed and for which organization. Like, the team could have a "5" in B&E w/ MCT but only a 2 in Extraction. Or a 9 in Extraction w/ Ares but only a 4 in Surviellenc w/ one the Mob families. Clear as mud?

Higher ratings get better pay, treatment, et. Lower ratings have the opposite effect. Then you get to toss in rival Orgs trying to use the team against each other and the team trying to maintain some sembalance of objectivity. Then toss in some infighting and other teams competing for the same jobs.

I never got a chance to try it but sounds interesting.

[Backgammon]

SCIRE = Seattle Arcology. SCIRE is a fancy acronym name that also means something in Latin. You know those corp people, always gotta come up with clever names.

[gknoy]

[kevyn668]

To know what? Don't make something that can wake up and kick your ass?
:D