Shadowrun MMO (Dumpshock Vision), Not here (yet?), but what would you want Options

[Apathy]

One problem I have with Shadowrun as an MMO is that the basic plot of SR is that shadowrunners are relatively unusual, unique. Somebody recently posted an attempt at figuring demographics in the SR4 forum, and they show a few hundred runners (in the whole range from elite runners down to substandard wanna-be's) out of the entire population of millions in Seattle.

[ Spoiler ]

(Quote from Mercer's thread in SR4:)
I made up a table years ago that was my attempt to deal with the "buyer's market" side of Shadowrun. I imagine this has been covered in a sourcebook somewhere, but its not one I own. I figured on roughly 1 runner for every 10,000 people in the population as a general guide, with "hot" cities (Seattle, Denver, Hong Kong, or Bogota by way of example) having as many as twice that. This was mainly to get the figure of 500 for Seattle, which would make my percentages easier in the next stage. If 500 is too high for your taste, you can make the number whatever you want. I basically used a Runner Population of 250 with a wannabe population of the same. Runners don’t consider the Inferior guys real runners, but people have to start somewhere. The percentages would break down similarly for most major cities, regardless of the pop. (There's probably even more wannabes than that, but all the excess does is keep the number relatively static as they get wiped out.)

With a Total Runner Population of 500, it breaks down like this:

Samurai, 40% (200)
Riggers, 20% (100)
Hackers, 20% (100)
Adepts, 15% (75)
Magic Users, 5% (25)

From there, it went by a general Rating:

Inferior, 50%
Average, 30%
Competent, 15%
Superior, 4%
Ultimate, 1%

So as a guideline, starting at 500:

Street Samurai (200 Total). Inferior: 100, Average: 60, Competent: 30, Superior: 8, Ultimate: 2.
Magic Users (25 Total). Inferior: 12, Average: 8, Competent: 3, Superior: 1, Ultimate: 1 (or less).
Riggers (100 Total). Inferior: 50, Average: 30, Competent: 15, Superior: 4, Ultimate: 1.
Hackers (100 Total). Inferior: 50, Average: 30, Competent: 15, Superior: 4, Ultimate: 1.

...So if you're in an MMO with a hundred thousand PCs running to a fro shooting each other and extracting research scientists from EVO, griefing each other, etc the setting starts to fall apart for me. It becomes more like City of Heros/City of Villains than Shadowrun.

The other issue with SR that sets it apart is the finality of death. In the RPG, when you screw up and security shoots you in the head, you're dead. There's no resurrect spell, no re-spawn shrine. This adds to the tension and realistic feel, and focuses players on acting smart instead of running in and challenging Alamaise to settle things 'mano-a-mano' (mano-a-draco?). This probably won't happen in an MMO.

[ Spoiler ]

Although, I do have to admit that SR4 already has a built in mechanic for this (which I hate!) in Edge. Get griefed, you lose a point of edge (and maybe get other random penalties and negative qualities) and have to spend karma to build it back up.)

[Kagetenshi]

No need for number-crunching and estimates—in Tir Tairngire (p143), Monitor pegs the number of "real" (read: hardcore, successful, likely to survive, the kinds of people that at least our group tries to make PCs part of) Shadowrunners in Seattle at less than a hundred. Tack on maybe twice that number of up-and-comers who probably won't last out the year and call it good.

It should also be noted that on the same page the idea that a government would hire Shadowrunners is presented as fairly unusual.

~J

[Kyoto Kid]

...@Apathy [blasted slow connection]

I agree with you on both points which is why I don't get into MMOs (Played City of Heroes I it seemed there were more supers than norms per capita). In a standard face to face campaign each GM has their own "world" and it is distinct and separate from another GM's. This is also why I do not like letting characters cross over between campaigns even in a group that has multiple GMs who take turns running. I may have a certain Corp. or NPC personality that the other GM doesn't have or wish to use and vice versa.

As to Edge, the way it is used makes me feel I'm almost playing that other game. It's in effect a "saving roll" to avoid something nasty. In previous editions, there was the old Karma Pool, but it could only be used for the following:

...To re-roll failures (and you could still fail the roll)
...Re-roll dice in an open test (at an increasing cost per die, also not guaranteeing success)
...Turn a catastrophic roll (rule of 1) into a normal failure
...Buy an extra dice (at an increasing cost per die)
...Buy a success (in which case the KP point is burned forever & the original roll still needs to yield at least 1 success)

The Hooper Nelson Rule (permanently burning KP to lower the TN) and HOG (permanently burning all good Karma plus Karma Pool to avoid certain death) were alternate rules. If HOG was used, it was a "one time only" hoop saver.

...somewhat related...

Our group had adopted a house rule put forth on this forum a while back where Edge is treated more like the old Karma Pool. It cannot be bought up at Chargen and has to be earned (the attribute cap still applies). So every character begins with 1 (humans 2) and she can only increase it after earning 10 Karma, then 20 Karma for the next point, 30 Karma for the next etc. These increases are automatic and require no karma expenditure. So far, it seems to be working fine and characters tend to think a bit more about their actions when they don't have that all edge to throe around right up front. I am also considering making the Avoid Certain Death rule more like HOG in that the character also has to burn any good Karma she has (& she has to have at least 1 Karma or she can't do it).

[Apathy]

I suppose that the first of my issues (should be only a few runners in the city, not tens of thousands) could be partially addressed by having discrete instances (like GuildWars) where upon exiting with your team you won't have any interaction with other PCs outside your team. That seems like it would undermine other people's desire for a persistant world that is impacted (from everyone's perspective) by your team's actions. But it would probably be necessary; you can't retain suspension of disbelief if every week hundreds of corp execs were assasinated and hundreds of research assistants were kidnapped/extracted.

As far as the second (use of edge), I personally agree with your home rule, but think it would have to be dropped for an MMO. There's no way the standard teenage gamer is going to accept that 6 months of dedicated character development could be lost in an instant due to ganking or lag from a poor internet connection. It might be acceptable, however, to have separate 'Normal' and 'Hardcore' worlds. Then if the players choose to take on the additional risk they have less room to whine when it goes badly.

[Kagetenshi]

One of the things that would be really nice about taking a game like this and making it Massive would be being able to finally get rid of that "team" nonsense. Sure, teams would form, but much of the fiction (and the nature of the business) points towards much looser alliances than the sorts that tend to form in RPG groups.

~J

[FrankTrollman]

Regardless of how many "shadowrunners" there are (and 100 is absurdly low considering that fucking private detectives count as Shadowrunners), the amount of people involved in organized and disorganized crime in the Shadowrun world is titanic.

Sure, there probably aren't that many Street Samurai, and there are "only" fifteen thousand magicians in the Barrens. And in any case, a lot of those guys never do much more than scrounge for food and talk to the spirits and crap. But every single person in the Barrens is breaking the law every day. If they have power and water, it's because they are stealing it. They don't pay rents to the lawful landlords, and they probably steal food and clothing.

When I say "GTA Style" I'm dead serious. Your first missions should seriously be trying to get the power on in your squat, not assassinating the Governor. Shadowrun is a world which has a really legit reason for people to spend a period running around the sewers beating rats and each other with baseball bats with nails in.

---

You set the game right after a war, with the army being demobilized. Then players can pick a backstory:

• Barrens Born - You start play with a squat and some contacts. But you're SINless and all your starting equipment is asstasic.
• Ex-Military - You begin play in the Hooverville of unpaid vets. Also you get a nicely diplomatic message from your country about how they are thankful for your service (but not thankful enough to actually come through with the retirement plan that was hinted at earlier). You begin play with some cyberware in you, and a small pile of ¥s. But you've also been evicted, and your contacts aren't particularly helpful.
• Refugee - Pull down menu: choose a country! It doesn't really matter, but gives you some slightly different stuff and dialogue options. You're here from overseas and your are fresh off the boat. Your SIN doesn't strictly say that you are in this country, and you don't strictly know anyone in this country either. But you have the commcodes of some distant relatives who are vaguely related to you through the old country. Most of them tell you to frag off and get your hobo-self a job, but one of them is a member of an organized crime syndicate, and now so are you!
• Ex-Corp - Pull-down menu: choose a corp! It doesn't really matter, but gives you some slightly different looking stuff. You start with a nice set of clothes and you're hunted by the corp you skipped out on. You start with no contacts at all (hung out to dry), and you can attempt the high-difficulty mission "break into your own apartment and get all your cool stuff" whenever you want. So while you get a datajack, and a half-way decent commlink, you get no ¥s at all and have to go find a squat in the barrens as your first mission.

Each of the backgrounds gives you some starting hooks, some starting missions, and what is essentially a tutorial as to how the game works. The different opening missions give variety by presenting the material in a different order (for example: as a refugee you get the "making commcalls" tutorial right at the beginning, while as with the barrens bred backstory you steal a commlink near the end).

And yes, there are literally tens of thousands of these people doing crime and scraping by at any given time in whatever Shadowrun Sprawl you choose to set things. I think actual game play should be more like Longest Journey than Duke Nukem. And actual body counts should be pretty low.

-Frank

[Kagetenshi]

[FrankTrollman]

[mfb]

not to mention Dirk. on the other hand, Dirk didn't identify himself as a shadowrunner. i don't think guys like private detectives would necessarily be counted among most in-character estimates of the shadowrunner population. we count them, out of character, as runners, because we play them as such. likewise, we often play OC associates, mercenaries, and government/corporate agents as "runners".

[Kagetenshi]

The existence of an archetype named "The Investigator" does not provide any kind of firm base whatsoever to draw the conclusion that all private detectives count as Shadowrunners.

~J

[FrankTrollman]

[mfb]

that still wouldn't make you a "real" shadowrunner, and it doesn't mean all--or even any--PIs are counted in any in-character estimate of the shadowrunner population.

[nezumi]

I like Frank's list of starting characters!

I don't think there's any reason to assume any starting characters would be proper shadowrunners, or that a majority of experienced characters would make most of their money that way. If anything, real shadowrunning would have such a highly demanding skillset that most people aren't going to even attempt it until they're close to their 'maximum level' (or whatever you'd want to consider the SR equivalent). I can imagine a character starts with 0 in all skills, he only becomes a Shadowrunner when he's gotten some up to 5 or 6. But there are a bunch of shadowrunny jobs he can pursue - mafiosa, gang-member, investigator, courier and so on. That would be in addition to all of the other jobs available. I would imagine that shadowrunning would not pay as well in cash or karma as a lot of other jobs out there, the reason you do it is for the thrill. So a lot of people are going to make something else their bread and butter, and moonlight as a runner.

That said, having 50,000 people who try and do runs at some level or another wouldn't be all that bad. Very few will be advertising themselves as runners, and successful jobs are almost never shared, so as I walk through a bar, I still see people by their 'public' personas. Only the truly stupid or truly experienced might advertise themselves as real Shadowrunners. That means from my point of view as a player, I might as well be only one of 200.

[martindv]

[FrankTrollman]

[mfb]

[Kagetenshi]

Frank, what you're saying is directly at odds with vast amounts of canon material—to skim through the adventures I have on hand (discarding ones that are "unbusinessy", most notably Harlequin's Back):

<I had a big long section detailing the subsections contained in Corporate Punishment, Harlequin, and Missing Blood, and arguing that except for the last they don't in the least indicate the generality of Shadowrunners that you describe and the last is strongly suggested to be unusual in the text, but it got eaten while editing>

If I get the time I'll dig into my physical library (adventures and novels), but I'm really not seeing how you can defend that view of Shadowrunners based on canon material.

~J

[FrankTrollman]

I'm not saying that people who set bombs on oil rigs or perform high level espionage aren't Shadowrunners. Of course they are. The thing is that the people who track down and repossess missing prototypes (Dream Chipper) or get hired as extra emergency bodyguards for pop stars (Queen Euphoria) are also Shadowrunners.

James Bond is a Shadowrunner. The Dude is also a Shadowrunner. Both of them take dubious jobs under the table for employers who need plausible deniability. James Bond is what the Fuchi RAD would refer to as a Permanent Asset, while The Dude would be referred to as an Expendable Asset. But they both go on Shadowruns, they are both Shadowrunners.

-Frank

[mfb]

[FrankTrollman]

[mfb]

not to most characters in the game. even a RAD case officer is going to understand the difference between a shadowrunner and a member of the shadow community, and a given asset's status as one or the other is going to be a factor in whether the RAD officer hires that asset, and what jobs the RAD officer will hire that asset for. he'll view both as potential hires, yes, but if you asked him how many shadowrunners he works with, he'd tell you the number of people who self-identify as shadowrunners. he probably wouldn't include in that number his ganger contacts, his merc contacts, his OC contacts, and so on, even if he frequently hires those non-runner contacts for the same types of jobs that he hires shadowrunners for.

[FrankTrollman]

That is not consistent with what the RAD tells its actual Johnsons (according to the SR Companion).

[Kagetenshi]

Um, there's a big difference between the "pink mohawk crowd" (who are, IIRC, well-represented amongst the professionals—I'll have to go back through my novels, but I distinctly remember several of the higher-powered teams being described with "distinctive fashion sense") and the kinds of private investigators, gangers, etc. that we're discussing the inclusion or noninclusion of.

~J

[mfb]

[Ravor]

Sure, but neither of you actually addressed FrankTrollman's point, in order for the 98% quote that he brought up to make any sense at all the corps have to be looking at a much larger sample size then "less then a hundred" so In-Character the person who wrote that article does use the broader use of Shadowrunner that FrankTrollman is defending.