Down in the Gutter, Planning a Long Term Gang Campaign Options

[WinterRat1]

Down in the Gutter

Welcome to Down in the Gutter, an SR 4 gang-oriented campaign based in the Redmond Barrens, Seattle, circa 2070.

This thread is solely to determine potential interest and provide interested players and GMs a central location to work on the framework and support structure of the campaign. An official Recruitment thread will be opened once it is determined that the game is ready to go.

For now, the purpose of this thread is the following:

1. To lay out the basic premise of the campaign
2. To solicit interest from any potential GMs interested in being part of this campaign.
3. To gauge potential player interest.
4. To provide a central location to build the game and exchange input in preparation for the actual campaign.

What is Down in the Gutter?

The basic premise of Down in the Gutter (hereby referred to as DITG) is simple. PCs will be part of a newly formed third tier gang down in the gutter that is the Redmond Barrens. As just one third tier street gang among hundreds, the PCs face an uphill battle to even survive, let alone expand and grow. This game will chronicle the rise (and possibly fall) of a brand new street gang struggling to make their mark on the sprawl, with an inner look at the lives of those who call the gang family.

As the story opens, a new street gang (the PC's Gang) has risen from the ashes of a recent large scale gang war that left numerous gangs crippled or destroyed. It is now up to the PCs and your recently formed gang to step into the resulting power vacuum.

Play will begin in the hour immediately following the conclusion of the climactic rumble, leaving PCs in the tense position of needing to regroup and deciding what to do next. Did you win or lose the battle? Whichever it was, where do you go from here? What do you do next?

You will need to gather up the survivors, put them on the streets, establish control of your turf, protect it against anyone getting ideas, and set about the task of trying to systematically build up your third-tier gang into a force to be reckoned with on the street, all while trying to survive day-to-day.

This will be an R-rated gang campaign, and focuses on survival and life on the mean streets of the Barrens. While I will not be gratuitous, I will not hold back in my portrayal of harsh (but very real) circumstances on the streets. Starvation, murder, abuse, addiction, prostitution, exploitation, rape, organlegging, and other potentially uncomfortable topics have a very good chance of showing up in the course of the campaign. Players should be willing to role-play the daily moral dilemmas and difficult questions that arise in the course of attempting to survive in a street gang.

Put another way, this is NOT ‘gang as after-school extracurricular activity or glamorous career path’. To quote an excellent GM on these forums, it IS ‘I need to commit petty crime X so I can put gas in my bike, have enough to eat today, and if I’m really lucky, go out and get trashed with my homies tonight’.

Regarding game play, the gang as institution will serve as the primary plot mover of the campaign, with the story progressing and revolving around the gang as a whole. The primary focus is on the development of the gang, with a secondary emphasis on inter-PC interaction with your fellow gang members.

Consequently, PCs have a lot of freedom and responsibility to develop their personal lives independently of GM involvement. There is absolutely no way I can devote time to each and every PCs personal life. Specific posting guidelines will be forthcoming if this project moves forward, but be forewarned, if you are not a player who enjoys independent action but prefers having a GM direct you from point A to point B, there will be no GM directing your character's personal life.

If you are a player who is interested in a long-term game that focuses on social role-playing with other PCs, wants to explore the harsh realities of life on the streets, and enjoys building things over a long period of time (namely the gang), then this may be the game for you.

Who are we looking for?

Players

I am looking for players who are consistent and committed to the idea of developing a gang and bringing it to life over an extended period of time.

I want players who enjoy interacting with other PCs and portraying the complexity of interpersonal relationships.

I need players who can function independently without a GM looking over their shoulder while exercising the necessary balance of discretion and ambition to move their character’s personal storylines forward to bring them to life without metagaming.

It is a requirement that players can play nice together and work as a collective unit, particularly out of game, since this will require input and collaboration of multiple parties to make it work.

It is also appreciated for players who have expertise in certain areas (magic, hacking, rigging, etc) to be willing to lend their expertise on an ‘as needed’ basis when those situations come up to help get through those thorny rules issues quickly and accurately.

Finally, I want players who have a passion for creating things, who want to bring to life the details of life in a street gang, in its entire dark and grim splendor.

GMs

Experience has taught me that no enterprise of this nature can be effectively run alone. Therefore, I am looking for a few good men and women to share the burden. I am hoping to staff the OOTG crew with the following volunteers:

Opposition Force GM: Required

Simply put, one of the biggest obstacles to a gang campaign is the sheer number of dice rolls needed in combat, especially big brawls, as the PCs can easily number 10-20, and then the opposition force(s) can easily push the number of combatants to 40+ in an all out gang rumble.

Needless to say, one GM cannot handle all this alone. Therefore, I am looking for at least one GM (but more is always good!) to handle the creation of opposing gangs and control them in combat.

If you enjoy tactics, strategy, simulations, anything along those lines, this is the ideal position for you. Essentially, you will have control over other gangs and run them in combat. If you are convinced that your strategic and tactical mind is superior, this is your chance to prove it. ;) It will be any Opp Force GMs (plus myself as needed) controlling the NPCs against the PCs during combats, so basically, you’ll be playing the NPCs as if they were your PCs.

If I do not get at least one, preferably two volunteers for this position, this campaign unfortunately cannot go forward. :( I already know I cannot single-handedly run a large scale gang combat without the game coming to almost a complete standstill. I do have a combat procedure in mind to (hopefully) ensure large scale combats don’t drag unnecessarily, but I will need assistance to pull it off.

So if you want to match wits with your fellow DSers, enjoy combat simulation type games, and are interested in this position, please let me know.

Wiki/Website Manager(s): Required, can still be a PC

Part of the challenge running a gang campaign is keeping track of the sheer volume of necessary information. Gang turf maps, important landmarks, gang history, buildings and people in a gang’s turf, allies and enemies, the gang members themselves, etc. are all necessary to keep track of in order to help players and GMs bring the game to life.

I personally lack the technical skill to run a wiki or website to keep track of all the information we will need, so if someone cannot do so, the game will rapidly degenerate because no one will have a clear idea of something as simple as their gang turf. Needless to say, when which side of the street you’re on can mean the difference between life and death, that’s not a very good situation.

Whether as PC or GM, if you are interested in being the resident ‘person or persons who keeps track of everything and organizes it so everyone else can know what the heck is going on’, please let me know.

Player GMs: Optional but a positive

Anyone who enjoys creating things or GMing more detailed elements of a players’ life would be excellent here. Obviously there’s a lot of work involved in creating a world, especially a detailed microcosm of one. If you would like to help create other gangs, turf, or GMing the PC’s lives in more detail, that would be fantastic, but not strictly necessary like the above positions.

Nonetheless, anyone who would like to contribute to the campaign by GMing in any capacity, please let me know.

So what now?

If you are still interested in participating in this campaign, the immediate step is to work on the creation of the gang itself. Suggestions on the following would be appreciated:

- Gang Name
- Specific Territory in Redmond Barrens (use Google Maps to assist you)
- Gang Colors & Symbol

You will note that certain elements common to all gangs (e.g. Initiation Rituals, Races Allowed, Operations, etc.) have been omitted. This is intentional. This campaign will use an ‘organic gang creation’ method, wherein players will decide on these things through role-playing during play as they develop the gang.

The following individuals have already been contacted or expressed interest in potentially being a part of this campaign:

Grendel
Vegas
Mister Juan
DireRadiant
Slipshade
ES Sparky
Rokur
Wounded Ronin

If you are interested in adding your name to this list and beginning to contribute, please post your thoughts, questions, comments, ideas, and especially any desire to participate in any of the aforementioned roles needed to continue with the campaign.

Once I fill the required roles above (assuming I actually do), specific details on character creation, storyline, etc. will be hammered out and posted in a formal recruitment thread, since I will obviously not be continuing a project I know will eventually fall apart anyway. For now, as new developments arise I will post them in this initial post with a corresponding announcement. So if you’re interested, step up and speak up, and we’ll see where we go from here. :)

[WinterRat1]

NOTE: Credit given to Tinkergnome and the old 410 Crash game for the basis of the Character Generation rules, which will be used extensively in this campaign.

Game Related Links
Down in the Gutter Wiki
Map of Redmond Borders

Power Level
A general note on power level. Gangers are not Shadowrunners. They're not even close. They're also not professionals who know the best weapons to use and the best ways to employ them. Gangers should be relatively low powered. Though the exact nature of the gang will determine a lot, guns shouldn't be anyone's first option in combat. That's how turf wars get started and a lot of gangers get dead.
The GM will likely have a heavy hand in things which he believes are too strong.

Build Points
300

Attributes

- Physical/Mental are limited to 200 bp

- Magic and Resonance are limited to 3

- Magic and Resonance cost 25 build points per point

- Awakened and technomancer characters must have an essence of 5 or greater

Skills

- PCs may buy only one skill at 4 (and none higher). Skill groups and all other skills are capped at 3.

- Specializations must be limiting in some way (i.e. No generic ‘Martial Arts’ specialization for Unarmed Combat that effectively raises your Unarmed Combat skill to 6)

- Specializations that raise skill dice above 4 (e.g. Blades 3 w/Specialization in Swords would effectively grant 5 skill dice to Sword related rolls) must be specifically explained.

I will disallow any specializations that raise skill dice above 4 unless your rationale really impresses me. If you want to know what really impresses me, take a look at the Living in the Shadows Guidelines thread and you should have an idea of what will impress me. If you need more specific guidance, ask me.

Any effective skill level of 5 or 6 puts you among the best in the world. If you’re going to be world-class without the benefit of cyber or magic and running with a third-tier street gang, you better have a very good reason.

Race

The available races may be restricted during the creation of the gang. Some gangs won't accept trolls or orks, some won't take elves. Some parts of town are better or worse on various gangers. This will be organically determined during play.

I.e. If there are no elves in the starting batch of PCs, it’s possible the gang will not allow elves. On the other hand, if there are three elves in the starting batch, it’s highly unlikely the gang will suddenly outlaw elves from joining the gang

Positive Qualities

- Adept: There will be a TBD limit on the number of adepts allowed; currently I am projecting a limit of two.

- Aptitude: This quality works as per normal and also raises the character generation cap on the skill by one. The cost to raise a skill from 4 to 5 is 8 bp. After character generation, the cost reverts to normal. This quality could also be used to gain two skills at 4 (the cost to go from 3 to 4 is not raised).

- Home Turf: All gangers recieve Home Turf at no bp cost. The bonus will only apply on a common sense basis. E.g. You might receive a bonus to Shadowing on your turf because you know it intimately, but you won’t miraculously become a better Pistols user just because you happen to be standing on your side of the street.

- Magician: There will be a TBD limit on the number of magicians allowed; currently I am projecting a limit of two.

- Technomancers: Technomancers will be disallowed unless you have a very impressive and good backstory for one.

Negative Qualities

- Addiction: No more than 10 bp should be gained from this quality (two mild or one moderate).

- Incompotent: May only be taken for skills a character is fairly likely to need on a regular basis. Selection of this flaw will face scrutiny.

- SINer (regular): You should have a strong reason for having one and being on the streets.

- Uncouth: Not allowed. Gangs are social groups, after all.

- Uneducated: Not generally allowed (read the description in the book). Requires special GM permission.

No cheap flaws. Awakened characters with Sensitive System, cheap allergies like gold, etc. will be disallowed. If I don’t think you’re going to be bothered enough by your flaw to warrant the BP, I will disallow it.

Gear

- Ratings are limited to 4 and availability is limited to 6.

- Each mundane character may have one item of up to rating 6 and avail 12.

- Dermal Plating 3, Muscle Replacement 3, Hand Razors, Handblades, and Spurs are allowed regardless of availablility

- Each build point spent on resources provides 2,500 nuyen instead of the standard 5,000. Players are limited to spending 20 BP on resources. (50,000 nuyen)

- Cyberware and bioware may not reduce the character's essence below 3.

- Alpha grade implants are not available.

Lifestyle

Since forum games run a lot slower and the focus of this game is on day-to-day survival in the gang, lifestyles will be paid daily. Divide the type of lifestyle by the number of days in the month to determine your daily lifestyle expenditure.

E.g. A Low lifestyle in January will cost 2,000/31 = 65 nuyen per day.

Lifestyles may not be prepaid by more than one week. No lifestyles above Low.

Contacts

Connection rating is limited to 3. Loyalty may be up to 6. It will not be necessary to purchase other gangers (in the PC's gang) as contacts. Gangers from other gangs would need to be purchased.

Advancement

Karma will be awarded on a weekly basis. Advancement will require training time in addition to expenditure of karma.

Thirty Questions

Background

1. Where and in what kind of environment did your character grow up?

2. What are your character’s relations with their family? (Does your character keep in touch? Where are they now?)

3. Does your character have an ethnic background? (Is it relevant to them?)

Appearance

4. What does your character look like?

5. What does your character dress like?

6. What are your character’s physical quirks?

Skills, attributes, resources

7. What did your character always want to be? (How did they go about getting this job/position/ability/image? Did they succeed?)

8. Where and how did your character learn their Active and Knowledge Skills?

9. Where and how did your character get their major equipment and ‘ware?

10. Where and in what kind of place does your character currently live?

11. Who are your character’s contacts? (How did they become contacts? Why do they still talk to your character?)

12. Who are your character’s enemies? (How did they become your character’s enemies?)

13. For Awakened characters, how did your character learn their magic? For non-Awakened characters, how does your character feel about magic?

Personality

14. What are your character’s personality quirks?

15. What are your character’s likes and dislikes?

16. What is your character’s moral code?

17. Does your character have personal beliefs?

18. What are your character’s personal motivations?

Running with the gang

19. Why does your character run with the gang?

20. When and how did your character join the gang?

21. How does your character contribute to the gang? What is his role; not just in terms of how he/she makes money, but where does he/she fit in the social hierarchy?

22. What would make your character ever leave the gang?

23. How does your character feel about their life in the gutter as part of a street gang? What is their view of the rest of the world? (i.e. Non-gangers)

24. If your character could have their ideal life outside of the gang, describe what that ideal life would be.

25. What ambitions does your character have for the gang as a whole? What ambitions does your character have for their place within the gang?

26. If your character is a recent addition from another gang, how does your character feel about joining a new gang? If your character is not a recent addition from another gang, how does your character feel about the new arrivals to the gang?

27. How does your character view relationships within the gang, both romantic and friendship? How does your character view relationships outside the gang, both romantic and friendship?

28. What is your character’s view of the other gangs in the area? (Note: Wait until other gang info is up and available before answering this question.)

29. What is your character’s attitude towards/view of the gang as a whole?

30. What is your character’s view of each of his fellow gang members? Answer for each gang member listed below. (Note: Cannot be completed until our final roster is fleshed out. Update this as membership roster changes or significant events occur. Specify events or reasons that led to changes in perception. Do not delete prior perceptions, just add what has changed and why.)

[Konsaki]

I would like to express my interest as a Player GM and Opposition GM. I am on the board regularly, 2 times a day at least, and like to write out descriptive posts. As it is right now, I am active in 2-3 games, one of them being LITS as a player, and feel that I have enought time on my hands to handle this with little problems.

I would also like to be a player in this game, but I belive that would have the problem of I couldn't play the Opposition GM.

[WinterRat1]

Konsaki - Thanks much for volunteering! It's a huge relief to have you onboard, I'm looking forward to having you on the Staff. :)

If you like, you can play an NPC within the PC gang. I'm open to having a few of those for the GMs so they can experience the interactive role-playing too, because it's easily one of the most appealing things about this campaign.

As a matter of fact, I personally was planning on having an NPC within the gang so I could have the fun of the interactive role-playing, so I certainly have no problems with you doing it as well. :D

[Konsaki]

Sounds great. I could do an NPC, I think.
I just need information to get my brain grinding which I guess I should ask in a PM.

[adamu]

I would love to be a player in this game.

I would especially like to play a budding mage or adept (start at Magic 1). But if all four (?) spaces are taken, mundane would be fine.

I fear I am already just way too busy GMing to make an effective contribution to your staff, and if that deprioritizes my acceptance, I do understand.

As for "gang ideas," one thing that occurred to me, in light of the "organic gang creation idea," was that at this end of this Gang War Apocalypse you describe, the survivors are from a bunch of different gangs. Left totally alone without their usual support networks, they must team up with their former sworn enemies to have a chance for survival.

Gang colors, customs, etc. could grow out of this amalgam.

Just a thought.

[pragma]

Interested in playing.

Can't contribute much for the next couple of weeks but I may be able to provide some technical support in the form of dice rolling scripts and/or site management after that point.

[DireRadiant]

I volunteer to be the plucky sidekick!

[Vegas]

Woo hoo! Now we're cooking with gas!

Can't wait for this to really get down to brainstorming. I'm cooking up a character in my head. Don't know what more I can do within the staff outside of offering my abilities to be a Wiki-mistress or whatnot.

I'll do some more brainstorming about generics to toss up there for the gang and hopefully more people will toss out ideas too.

ETA: Any thoughts to ages in this situation... I mean I know there's not a hard or fast rule by any means, but like in the 410 game since we were all so green we all opted to be relatively young... or are we gonna run the gambit here as far as age goes?

[WinterRat1]

Adamu - I've seen your Hitting Bottom game, and I'd definitely love to have a player/GM of your caliber on board. :)

And truth be told, I like the idea of having a budding mage or adept as opposed to 4 'maxed out' mages/adepts in the gang. It'll add a nice element of variety.

Regarding your idea, a result of the Gang War is that it will specifically affect the political situation the PC Gang finds themselves in at the start of play.

However, it is quite plausible that gangers from now extinct gangs will need a place to go, and could possibly join up with the PC gang, forming some interesting inter-gang dynamics. I like it and I think I'll flesh it out a bit more when I work with Konsaki and any other GMs on forming the other area gangs.

[WinterRat1]

Vegas and DireRadiant - Any wisdom you'd like to contribute from your time in the 410 Crash or LITS to help people understand what we're looking for would be great.

Obviously our experiences with the 410 Crash are forming a foundation that we're building off of, and LITS's strong support system and uniform standards in terms of posting, character development and story progression may serve as valuable references if you have any insights you'd like to share.

[WinterRat1]

Re Ages: I'd guess between 13-23, with the median age being 18, which gives us a +/- 5 year range. Keep in mind that 23 is practically ancient by ganger standards, so if you're going for a 23 year old, they should have been around the proverbial block a few times by now.

Because of the recent gang war and Adamu's insightful comment that there will be survivors who need to find another gang to call home, it's reasonable for older gang characters to have been in previous gangs if you desire, although it's not required. Keep in mind though that play begins 1 hour after the climactic fight, so any 'transplants' would have to have had their original gang wiped out before the final battle.

I realize the definition of appropriate ages for a gang can be largely subjective. Since I'm going for an R-rated gang campaign with mature themes, I'm trying to keep the age range open enough to allow for a wide variety of concepts while keeping the average age at a level close to what one would expect given the hardcore nature of the gang life and activities we'll be portraying.

[DireRadiant]

[Mister Juan]

I'm having some strong inclination toward cooking up some form of adept... and just like adamu, probably someone's who's a starter in the awakened realm.

[Cedric Rolfsson]

I'm interested, I have a whizkid ganger and a phys-ad ganger I'm interested in playing, so dealer's choice.

[Konsaki]

[WinterRat1]

Cedric - It's your character in a long term game. I'm not going to pick for you, since you're the guy stuck playing it. :)

That said, ultimately the slots are filled by who is selected, not who 'calls dibs' or submits first. So if you can't decide, just submit both.

E.g. If I end up with 3 magicians and 3 adepts, I will pick the 2 best concepts of each. You might get one or the other, you might get both and have to make a choice, you might get neither and have to go with a mundane character. But it's ok to submit both if you really can't decide, although I prefer you do pick one so it cuts down on the number of submissions I have.

DireRadiant - If you think you have a good idea for a TM, go ahead and develop it. Be forewarned, you better know your TM stuff well because my knowledge on that topic is not so great, so I won't be walking you through everything step by step if you don't know your stuff. Don't go with the 'Helen of Troy' thing though, to be explained in my next post.

[Abbandon]

Suggestions:

#1. Clear concrete rules on taking over bits of turf would be awesome.

#2. It would probably be really beneficial to split the gangs into sqauds. Like alpha, bravo, charlie, and delta. And then opp gm's would only have to deal with their sqaud of gangers. Each sqaud would run on a time frame like one week and at the beginning of each week people could switch in and out of different sqauds based on several factors like activity, roleplaying, whatever.

#4. The game sounds really fun to play in but i dont think I can handle the scale. I need my hand held alot still hehehe.

[Konsaki]

[Abbandon]

Yeah the storyline kinda has the feel of the movie "The Warriors". All the gangs get together to talk piece and alliance and then one gang takes out the guy who calls them all together and chaos ensues. One gang gets falsely blamed for killing the leader guy and the rest of them try to kill that one gang.

Your story could be that there are so many gangs and they are so widespread and out of control that one day just out of the blue, Lonestar and Knight Errant start systematically lashing out at the gangs whereever and however possable like its open season. They are in competition for a huge bonus from the city and the goal is to see who can contain/nuetralize the gangs the best.

This shatters gangs left and right and send the smaller ones scurrying for any hidey hole they can find which results in alot of the shattered gangs all ending up in like a certain sqaure block(undetermined size) section of the city. The security forces are content with corraling the gangs into a very localized spot and stop pushing. Instead they fall back and just maintain a perimeter and work on clearing out the gangs still left in the city.

Enter the players. The left overs from several different gangs with all kinds of different stories depicting what happened to pieces and parts of their old gangs. Realizing to many people are dead to attempt to just recruit new members, they have to merge and start over. Staking out their own turf and protecting it from others while at the same time trying to gain new turf and climb to the top of the pile.

Maybe instead of cops that shatter the gangs it could be just ordinary , every day citizens who are sick and tired of the gangs and organize a huge resistance. I mean they would know everything about the gangs anyways since they have had to live amongst them for so long.

[WinterRat1]

Ah, my GM staff is already in gear. There's a reason I always try to recruit assistance. Get quality people, give them direction, and work them till they drop...er, let them do their jobs, that's my motto! ;)

[WinterRat1]

[HeySparky]

To jump on the adept bandwagon, I have an adept concept, but it's WAY gimped from a mechancis point of view. I really dig it though. :D It's twisted.

[WinterRat1]

This isn't that adept concept from Quixotic Restoration, is it?

[Cedric Rolfsson]

Okay then I'll post my ganger kid, I've been dying to try this type of character since I read Heros Die by Stover, but I'm not using the name Caine. :)

Do you want me to PM you the character sheet or post it here in spoilers or what?