I'm heavily considering running a game on the forum based around gangers. Here is the set of rules I'm considering for chargen:

Ganger Chargen Rules

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 and cost 20 points per level instead of the standard 10.

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

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.

Positive Qualities

• 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.

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. All Vehicle and Technical skills 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.

Gear

• Each bp spent on resources provides 2,500 rather than the standard 5,000
• 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.
• Cyberware and bioware must not reduce the character's essence below 3.
• Alpha grade implants are not available.

Lifestyle
All characters should have at least one month of prepaid lifestyle. A group lifestyle may be available at GM discretion.

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
During play, characters should ignore modifiers to skills and attributes (improved ability, racial attribute modifiers, etc.) when calculating the karma cost of advancing. Thus a troll going from Body 6 to Body 7 pays 9 karma (instead of 21).

Opinions? Suggestions?

I'd suggest only offering half bonus for uneducated. As for lifestyle? I'd open up SSG and figure out the cost for a warehouse or flophouse or what have you and let them start with it, with a special provision that people will be trying to take it away from them. And if they do, they'll have to find a new place.

I suggest making contacts limited to a certain influence, but making loyalty available at 6.

O'course, I'm kind of looking at it from a Warriors 2070 standpoint. Your mileage may vary.

On reading Uneducated, I'm of the opinion that it won't generally be allowed. The rest are edited in, as well.

A maximum of 150 build points on Attributes is kind of harsh. 160 build points would let a normal human have a rating of 3 in everything. It is in line with the Attributes of NPC types such as Humanis lieutenants or Halloweener gangers, if that is the level you are going for.

One restriction seems to be missing, though - are you going to limit the BP on resources to less than 50? I would assume so, given the lower power level. The single exception for rating/availability on gear is good, since it lets them create a cybered type with at least one decent piece of 'ware. Otherwise, you would probably wind up with nothing but awakened characters.

I didn't cap resources on the theory that they would really limit themselves in the face of the low total points and the avail restrictions. I didn't want to go with avail 8 overall because there is quite a bit at avail 8 that stradles the ganger/something bigger line.

I know I'm kind of late in the reply, but, yeah. I agree with Tinker. Part of the fun thing about gangers is that you can give them the crappy ware that nobody in their right mind would ever take because that's what they got off the truck or whatever. I remember doing someone with ruth dermal because no shadowrunner in their right mind would use tech that requires them to get naked in a combat zone.

In SR3, it was more important, due to contacts and so forth, but, yeah.

One suggestion, if you're playing with a small number of people, is to allow people to control two PCs.

Hm. I'm trying to think of other things that would make a gang campaign extra-capable. You'll likely want to focus more on the line of Make Your Own Crimes thing.

As a GM, I would suggest letting the PCs decide what they want to do when they're on the offensive, and prepare a couple of semi-stock adventures beforehand. I figure the average 'runs' would involve snatching equipment, snatching drugs, getting medical/cyber, and so forth.

I'd also have your members come together beforehand to figure out what kind of gang they want to be. If you have someone capable, you should possibly even draw up a gang emblem and so forth. With the RFID tags and AR so common nowadays, tagging areas is a cinch. Maybe even set up a simple Geocities/Yahoo page or something to keep track of stuff.

You might want to doodle up a couple of generic floorplans, too. Who wouldn't want to do a raid on a crappy-as-hell strip-mall for munchies, leather jackets, medicine, and trim? Do Food Fight from the opposite side. Man, if I wasn't busy with school (and didn't have the ADD when it comes to forum posting), this would be a fun-as-hell campaign to be in.

You should roll up a sample character. Heck, _I_ might.

Well, I figure this is going to be about 50% collaborative writing and about 50% RPG. Especially at the start. I want to throw to the players the task of writing up the gang, its territory, and its biz. They might be a defensive gang holding down a block in Tacoma. Or they might be dealing nitro. Or jacking cars. Who knows? That will be up to the players.

The game will also be more player driven than normal since there won't be a Johnson and there won't be a run.

Collaborative fiction is awesome. But, yeah. What sorts of opposition do you think you'll throw at 'em?

Amusingly, I don't really know crap about Seattle, despite having a sheer truckton of SR3 books. I'll have to snatch up that book about Seattle once they release it. Lemme know when you start this up? I'd like to keep an eye on it. It sounds really interesting.

Suggestion: When it comes to money, I'd keep the liquid assets high enough to keep in creature comforts and ammo, but not so high that they'll be bringing down the house with experimental rifles within a week. I'm thinking that rather than buying gear, you ought to try and do gear acquisition. EX: Just roll up a random table of lootable cyber-goodies when they want to go on a ware-run, and let them distribute amongst themselves.

O'course, this leads to problems in the realm of awakened vs mundane advancement. If you can tell your awakened characters to keep initiation safe-and-sane, that might help things, though.

This sounds great!

How about combat drugs?

In regard to the BP limit, I think someone else mentioned it, but being in a gang should not nescessarily limit yur physical attributes.

Sure you may not have had a formal education, but even to that there will be exceptions, the odd guy who's granny hometaught him etc.

I think a restriction on starting resources would work better, in regard to maximum cash amount and available equipment.

Just my 2 cents worth.....

When are you gonna start recruiting players?

I for one would definitely be interested. I ran a gang campaign some years ago as a GM and would love to see how this one pans out

cheers and regards

Bladepoet

For material rewards, I'm highly considering working on an item rather than a nuyen basis. A little nuyne might be picked up along the way, but the rewards of most efforts will be weapons, gear, drugs, or 'ware.

Opposition will mostly be in the form of other gangers. Depending on the nature of the gang, the Star or other criminals might also be good.

Combat drugs will be prolific, of course. I just have to settle for a cost chart for them (adapted from M&M most likely).

In my gangers campaign I give the characters 300 BP, but let them spend 200 BP on mental and physical attributes. This makes gives them a lot of potential but limited skills. They will be stronger and smarter than your average ganger, but roughly as skilled. I find that the levels the skills start out at this way is very close to what is appropriate concidering the descriptions of skill values. I also like that development during play is in the skill area instead of in the attribute area.

I set the availability cap at 8 and accept no skills over 4 at all. They will propably only afford 1s and 2s anyway if they take all the skills they want.

I concider it very important to stress how 3 is the level of skill of a trained professional. I wouldn't mind if someone took a skill at level 4 or even 5, if they roleplay and explain that level of skill. As it is none of the characters the players ended up creating have any skills above 3.

@mintcar

I find it a good idea to make players explain why or how they managed to get over average skills.

I find msot players still approach character creation from a combat/stat benefit point of view, as opposed to a roleplaying one.

I have never understood why people want to play the ueberplayers.

it takes the fun out of getting better during the game

regards

bladepoet

Well, I expect this game to have firmer connections between character stats and RP than most, so I hope it's not a problem. Browsing the skill ratings chart, there's only mention of gangers under one set of skills (vehicle). The gamut is:

2: go-gang initiate
3: ordinary go-ganger
4: go-gang boss
5: ancients go-ganger

On looking at the stats for gangers in the NPC section, however, I see the point. I think the restriction is going to be "one at 4 or two at 3" with all other skills limited to 2 or less.

EDIT: After playing with a character for a few minutes, I think the resources cap is probably still too high. I'm going to say no more than 15 bp may be spent on resources (75k).

Since character points have to go somewhere, I'm going to allow the free purchase of skills and skill groups at level 3, but a restriction of only one skill at 4. I think.

I'll post some sample characters as I build them.

First sample is a ork knee-breaker. He's not exactly tweaked or anything, but might be an okay starting ganger:

I'd probably restrict Essence to 3+ or something like that.

Gangers shouldn't be cybered up to the max IMHO.

Bye
Thanee

I'd imagine a starting Ganger would make it his or her mission in life (for a few years)
to "aquire" used cyberware for personal use. This would cut down costs while making the ganger slowly tougher and bring in a modest income. It's what I'd do.

That makes enough sense. Y'know how often groups of gangers attack shadowrunners and so forth.

Every once in a while, they get lucky, win, and end up with a veritable treasure trove to distribute amongst themselves. Stranger things have happened, and so forth.

My usual impression of a 'knee breaker' is a guy who hits people for a living. Your ork there looks a little more like a gun-for-hire. Maybe it's the wired reflexes 2...

Well, physical violence is pretty much physical violence

Anyway, I don't like the wired 2. I think I may go with an essence limit, as well. 2 points worth of cyberware would certainly do it, but I'm afraid that'd just drive PCs to have more bioware and other higher end ware. Which is exactly opposite of what I want.

Here's my attempt at a ganger. Chokechain. Female ork who likes to beat people up with a length of chain, sometimes while riding a bike. A painfully obvious precursor to getting a monowhip! Anyways, she's obviously not finished because I apparently can't use a character generator worth a crap. I need to sit down and actually use the book to make a damn lick of good out of my brain.



Everything else goes into money/contacts. As far as ware goes? I'd go for the most obvious stuff like dermal plating and possibly the rigger bits. And NO clue on the firearms. I could possibly see the remington roomsweeper.

Melee weapons? Aside from the chain? I could see spurs or razors. Oh, yeah. There's knowskills in there, too. But they're not too important right now.

I just want to beat people with a chain and drag them behind me on a motorcycle or an El Camino. You can't say that doesn't rock.

That's why I would think about a 3 Essence limit, and probably no alphaware, just standard... and used...

No reasonable way to get more than +1 IP, so people with Wired 1 will already be good. And no outrageous amount of cyber.

Bioware is expensive enough, so not much to worry about there.


Restricting Foci (like no Foci) would also make sense, I guess.

Bye
Thanee

Keep in mind that an Adept with 3 Magic can spend all the magic points for Lvl 2 Improved reflexes giving him +2 Reaction +2 IP.

Thyme

I'm comfortable with the adept spending all of his power points on IR2. It costs 25 bp to do so, which is pretty costly for the bp totals we're talking about. Wired 2 costs only 6 bp. A mage can also learn the IR spell and use it, though he'll likely have a hard time getting the 3 successes necessary for +2 IP.

Anyway, I'm going with a cap of 3 essence lost and I've changed the "one other item" rule. Now, mundane characters can have one item of better than standard availability. This is the method should limit foci (since what else do awakened characters buy that's hard to get?).

A Troll Adept
It should total 300 BPs. I used Daegann's Character Generator for SR4.
The Ares Alpha is the only eq above Av 4.
Automatics is the skill I took at 4, but I also took a speciality (Assault rifles).
Agility is at 5, but I took Exception Attrib (Agility), so the natural max is 6.

I made a handful of Characters using the rules, this is the character I like hte best.
Thought I'd let you take a look to make sure nothing is wrong with it.
I made the character because I just like making Characters for SR4.


Thyme

The troll doesn't look bad, though I certainly hope that's stretching the limits of what I'll see in terms of combat. I did change the gear rules around such that the alpha wouldn't be attainable (only mundanes get the extra item).

I think I'm almost ready to throw open the gang design thread. It might be a day or two more, though. Things like race will be further restricted by the gang design.

I first made the character before you started making changes to the rules...
I thought I cought everything, I guess I was wrong.

Thyme...

Thyme, it's not like the change from the Ares to an AK-97 would make the character significantly less deadly. You lose the GL and that snazzy 2 RC, but you can't really get ammo for it anyway (aside from smoke) so that's not too bad a loss. It also gives the character a strong goal for gear aquisition, too.

The threads will all end up in the Welcome to the Shadows forum. I have to work up a list of questions to be answered before the design phase can begin, though.

Speaking of changes, I revamped the rules again. Added a bit more explaination to several items, a few general notes, and added info on how I intend to allow karma to be spent.

Would the quality: apptitude allow a player to start with one skill at 5, or two at 4, or would it jsut raise their theoretical max to 7, which they'll never live to see?

Good question. I'd allow it, but double the bp cost for taking the skill to 5. 18 build points for one die on a single skill test doesn't sound like a great bargain to me.

I also have half a mind to nerf kinesics while I'm at it, but that can wait till later.

Also, you might want to clarify which equipment values you're counting as "ratings"... I'm trying to think of some examples off of the top of my head, but the only one that comes to mind is armor. Do the ballistic and impact ratings of armor count as "ratings" in terms of capping at 4?

Armor isn't Rating. Rating is Rating.

Maglock Passkey 6 or Medkit 4 have a Rating. Armor Jacket does not.

Bye
Thanee

But armor does have "balistic and impact ratings"

Yeah, but that's a different type of rating.

It's not the rating of the piece of equipment.

Bye
Thanee

Yeah, rating is any device which you can purchase in variable levels (and it still be the same device, armor jacket != armor vest).

What about a nano-disguise which SAYS it has a rating in the description, but whose cost doesn't seem to be based on its rating at all.

LOL, that's a case for the errata.

Bye
Thanee

Started the discussion thread here.

There's an associated wiki, as well.

Why, back in my day we made do with a smartlink and `razors and we wuz damn glad to have them.

<grumbles>

Do you have to clean your hand-razors with a razor-gator?

After another day of thought, I'm considering rolling back the bp total to 275 or 250. 300 is plenty for street level, but it overshoots young gangers by a fair bit.

Also, I'm considering doubling the cost of the Adept, Mystic Adept, Magician, and Technomancer qualities. And do a few things to make certain cyberware more appealing (like making hand razors and blades readily available).