Going back over some old threads, that came up with the "GMing a Plotline" poll that seems to have been resurrected, I started to wonder something.

It was mentioned in one of them that most runners, at least those with backstories, don't have plot hooks related to family -- in fact, that most backstories seem to kill off family. It's piqued my curiousity.

Do runners have family lives, and how does that interfere with running?
Do runners have romantic entanglements?

they are a weakness. most shadowrunners do not have families or let people know you have families, that is why it is a flaw. If you cannot kill a man, it is much easier to get at him through his family.

Edit Added url for an example http://www.petprofessional.net/d/20050209.html

I have players in my group who do have characters with family members. In one case the family is hugely dysfunctional so the family members are also all enemies, you can only imagine how this interferes with running (now that Uncle Joe's plot to kill me has been foiled back to the mission we're getting paid for). Another has a parent in the Orc Underground that he tries to support, which is a cash drain and not too much more. ANother character has a very demanding girlfriend, who doesn't know he's a runner, which means he spends a lot of time coming up with excuses for missing dates, not calling, injuries to try to keep his activities hidden.

A long running character in one of my old agmes had a family he got on with perfectly well. However they where nothern crescent gypsies so fairly light on the law abiding side. He got on with them well and visited intermittantly, most of the runners he hung with did think him weird for this though...

My last sammie I played ended up marrying (well as married as you can get without a SIN) his street doc, which actually became a postive thing over awhile, for he got free surgery and at price bioware. They ended up getting a luxury place (she ran a nice black clinic, not some back alley shop in a pig slaughterhouse) and had SOTA sec, so they were relatively safe. Alot of his money went into his place though, but hey, it fitted in with his character.

My favorite character to date (Morgan "Doc" Shanes) was running to pay off his sister's debt to the Yakuza. His parents were alive and well, living and working in Seattle. His sister lived in Seattle, and he visited her all the time (taking precautions as much as he could). His on & off lover, later his wife, lived and worked in Seattle too.

So, it happens. I do notice the same trend a lot though.

(And no, he didn't have any illusions of ever actually paying off the Yak debt. He just paid installments as a pretense for what he was really doing, which was making enough money to smuggle her away from Seattle, and to later follow with his fiance. )

I wouldn't think having a family and running would be all that hard, the main trick is to make sure that they're in one city and that you're in another one some distance away. People move about so much going to uni or for jobs nowadays it's not uncommon to have families spread out over the country. Gets trickier when you live in the same city but somewhere the size of Seattle, New York or Hong Kong it shouldn't be impossible to operate out of seperate areas.

Plus it just provides lots of good roleplaying opportunities, juggling two disparate lives. Of course it can also descend into comedic farce if you want that- the folks come to town to visit and you have to plan things around them and family activities or you can play it straight if that's more your forte and stress the... well, stress of the situation.

Shadowrunning is a dangerous job. And it's one where you generally field your own phone calls. Your co-workers (the other members of your team) do not hear about your family.

Some characters have families, but they are rarely important to the story. There's usually not much difference between a Shadowrunner whose family is dead and one whose family is still alive somewhere.

Shadowrunners use fake names, live in secret hideouts, and have black marketable skills that they sell on the black market. They don't make a lot of face time with their families. So you don't have to have your whole family killed by bandits in every backstory. You really don't.

-Frank

Katklaw is somewhat estranged from his parents, though they're still one of his rating 1 contacts.

Meh. I typically don't make my players use up contacts to denote family members, unless said family member is a major plot point.

And sometimes a GM doesn't always feel like doing something retarded like throwing a hit squad at the PCs and their families at said picnic because PCs are, after all, (meta) human. It's fun to actually (and this is a shock, I know) role-play stuff that doesn't involving maiming, killing and destruction of property.

BTW, that reminds me of a certain PC's child who should be dating soon.

Frank's post is hilarious in the context of how the lives of people who do this stuff for a living IRL (you know, spies and special forces) is 180 degrees from what he described with regards to their family situations.

I've had a couple of characters with active families. One had a half sister (younger ) that he ended up training as a mage and a runner.

The other character was a troll that had human parents and a human sister. The parents were racists, and nto too fond of his being a troll, but still 'accepted' him. "Have you tried... not being a mutant?" He's been putting aside moeny form his runs to put his sister through college, since he wanted to do something his parents wouldn't/couldn't.

So far , no one's been a target for assasination, although the possibility has come up before. It never happened though. But it's been fun.

I think players are reluctant to write in families in their backstory because GMs frequently kill them. Puting families in jeopardy can be great plot hooks, but they don't always have to die. In our very streetlevel campain that we're struggling to get started, the characters are all going to have (sinless) families in the neigborhood. It's going to start of as a gang-style game a la Boyz in the 'Hood or something.

I always found killing family to be a little cliche, or in some cases the pc's dont care. Whats worked the best for me is to kidnapp the family, and for the runners to do runs to get them back.


But if I'm trying to further a plot, then I kill them very brutally (imagine max-payne mixed with the death of the senators son in Sin City) to get the PC to come after the group and further. Usually you have to pick the pc who actually treats his contacts like people and not bland resources.

Killing the family is a serious breech of etiquitte in these circles for one simple reason. If you start killing off their families what's to stop them for killing off your families?

Gangers won't attack the neutral family of an opposing ganger.
Runners won't attack the neutral family of an opposing runner.
Gangsters won't attack the neutral family of an opposing ganster.
Johnsons won't attack the neutral family of an opposing Johnson.
Spies won't attack the neutral family of an opposing spy.

Yeah, there will always be exceptions in the psycotic, powermad, and desperate. But, as a general rule it isn't done.

Biggest flaw with having a family, if ya get charged by the 'star and your family finds out.... you get lectures for MONTHS

Most runners don’t have a family they associate with. This may be because players don’t want to be lead round by the nose because of them but it’s also not unrealistic. How many people with the mentality to become shadow runners grew up in a supporting family. Some yes but many will be from dysfunctional families at best.

The other problem is having them in the system. I created one character that did have a loving and supportive family, even if they didn’t know he was a runner. Unfortunately in the SR3 system they worked out incredibly expensive. Giving them the traits of a good family that helps each other out. My parents and siblings would do anything to help pull me out of trouble they would never rt on me to the cops that I have SMGs in my bedroom (althow the cops would probably be mor enjoyable than a lecture from my mother) and would stick there necks out a short distance to keep me out of trouble. This makes them level 3 contacts 4 of them (2 siblings). There of absolutely no value on a run but if you don’t pay this then you have a family that doesn’t really care about you. Then there is accommodation. I was going to be living at home most of the time, nice family home in the suburbs, unfortunately you cant get a discount on your lifestyle costs for NPCs living with you so I would have to pay the high lifestyle cost, this makes sense from a game balance point of view but put a bit of a dampener on my young mage running under the noses of his well to do family idea. the living at home bit is a minor issue but the requirement to buy family as contacts if your on good terms with them is a strong disincentive to have a family that is in the picture.

Edward

I prefer to play broken chars, most of them don't have contact to their families for various reasons.

A buddy of mine played an ork who had a real numerous family in miami. He simply took the Edge (back in SR3) Pirate's Family (hope this is the right term in english), but changed it that it affected only Miami.
The family run some legal businesses and the char was an employee of his father, he worked as a sort of courier. Every time the char wasn't unable to finish a delivery or his van got shot up, his father called him and beat him up. It was really funny - and the other chars soon made jokes about it (while getting treated very gentle by the family).

My current character's family background has just come to the forefront in his last run. A lot of the night's scenario circulated around simply going with his runner-buddies to his aunt's house for dinner. There was the younger cousin attracting the interest of his teammates. There was the awkwardness of his aunt's questions about those teammates (She thinks they run a restaurant together...and wants to visit it.) There was the strained relationship with his father, and the pointed absence of his mother. And there was the military/cop cousin who suspects what the character really does and struggles with family loyalty versus sense of duty. It was a great game, with humor, melodrama, and something to keep everyone involved.

(Not saying that was the whole game. I mean there was some stuff about a mafia smuggling ring and werewolves too, but that's beside the point.)

Probably in the near future, we'll be involved in reacquainting one teammate with the family he hasn't seen in twenty years. Should be interesting.

The campaign I am currently running is all about family. Two of the PCs are cousins, one of whom took his parents as enemies at chargen. Said parents have attempted to kill both PCs and are holding their mutual grandfather hostage in an effort to control the family fortune.

The holidays are akward, but hey - whose aren't?

Swell. When she grows up she'll look like Alachia circa 1933.

Is that what all the little Tir girls want to look like when they grow up?

I think the slutty ones are partial to Jenna Ni'Farra.

well since Ni'Farria is (IIRC) Alachia's daughter with very strong familial resemblance....

Oh, right. I forgot that you haven't read Worlds Without End.

I've seen a couple instances where other PCs had families.

Two players created elven sisters from England, which provided a good way for an experienced player to help the newbie. And it was very nicely played - when Jazz got caught up in a driveby shooting, Circuit Breaker came rushing in to save her baby sister. Nevermind that Circuit Breaker was a breaking and entering specialist and Jazz was a far more combat capable streetsam.

Or there was a physad - Joe Brick, the troll owner of Joe's Dojo. His son was a no-good dropout who hung out with scum. His daughter was an idealist who wanted to work with metahuman rights groups. And Joe's wife was the only being in the game Joe was afraid of.

And my PCs have typically had relatives; whether as contacts, dependants, or background color.

Chance, my Chinese streetsam, lost his immediate family as a child and was raised by an uncle. He also had a live in girlfriend. And was seeking vengeance for the death of a former girlfriend.

Fogg, my black British ork physical magician was born in Jamaica. His caucasian human half-brother lived in London. His Chinese elven half-sister lived in Hong Kong. His mother was still alive though she never kept in touch and he might have had other half-siblings out there. Then there was the former streetkid he was training to be a Shadowrunner.

Fiver, my rigger, is sure he'll goblinize any day now. After all, his parents, siblings and children are orks. He's got a big family and he's shadowrunning to support his numerous children.

All of these relatives enhanced the opportunities for roleplaying.

The only Shadowrun character I played who didn't have family was Whisper, my orphaned streetkid thief. And even he had friends.

Before converting to fourth edition our characters achieved their longtime goal, became filthy rich, parted from each other, changed identities, and settled down.

We then made a ten year leap. Now the three characters meet again, and are for various reasons forced/drawn into shadowrunning again. In the five games we have played so far, family has been very important.

The first characters squandered almost all his money, then bought a garage, married, and got a kid. He is a bit of a bastard, though, so his wife divorced him and married a much nicer guy. Now he tries to maintain a civil relationship with his ex-wife, meet his son as often as possible, and control his growing antipathy towards the new husband (last game he lost control, however, and beat him up).

The second character married, had two kids, and became a secondary school teacher (!). He told his shrink about his past, the shrink told the FBI, and the character just barely got away, seeking out his old buddies for help. Now he's angsting over whether he will be able to contact his family again without anyone dangerous noticing.

The last character had to choose between his girlfriend and his criminal career ten years ago, and choose the career. Since then he has been making a lot of money, and has become a semi-important figure in the Seattle underworld. He is also paranoid and lonely, however, and wonders whether he made the right choice. And recently everything turned to shit anyway, and his mafia associates decided they want him dead.

- Magnus

I was playing an Elf who was basically a career student at UW. He already had a degree in history and was going for a degree in fashion. Both of his parents were professors (Magical Theory and Biochemistry) and loved the fact he was still in school. His shadowrunning was a vigilante thing. He thought of himself as someone who could fight for a little justice since the law was doing so badly with it. He had a SIN and everything. He was, of course, very choosy about jobs he'd take, and depended exclusively on his level 3 contact (fixer) to arrange his jobs and do negotiations. It worked out. He was a fun character to play.