Hey all,

I'm quite new to shadowrun and I'm looking for advice making a character.

The approximate background I have planned is an ex-journalist who turned to espionage type work (probably starting with PD type work and going up as contacts increased) after he got fired from his job.

At present I'm planning various vision and hearing enhancements, ie camera, sound filter, magnification, and so on, along with various social skills.

I have access to my GMs books, which includes all major books other than M&M, which he cant find at the moment.

The questions I'm most interested in are:

What contacts make the most sense/would be most useful?

What other cyber/skills/whatever would be useful?

Is there anything in M&M that I should know about?

However more general advice or advice on things I haven't considered would be most appreciated.

1) Find out if your GM is going to enforce contact upkeep. Many do, many do not. If he does not, pick up the main book and the companion and pick up every contact you can get your mits on at level 2. If he does, you'll never meet all of those upkeeps, so you have to pick and choose more. No face should be without a fixer, a doc, a fence, and a few corp suits or Johnsons. The spread available to the Face archtype (p. 327) isn't half bad. If you're computer savy, you also want to have Shadowlands as a contact.

2) What holes are there in group capabilities? Faces often do well as double duty characters, the most common being driver (or possibly a weak rigger), sniper, demolitions expert, and decker. These classifications require little in the way of additional cyberware and skills, but several of them do cost lots of cash. A priority B conjurer (hermetic, usually) can work well, too, because of the face's high charisma.

3) The sensory cyberware looks good. Try to focus on things that are legal since you're likely to get scanned quite a bit. Depending on the type of game, you might also need to go with some sort of reflex boost since only going once in combat sucks.

For one thing, being an elf wouldn't hurt. You'll want high etiquette, interrogation, and negotiation. Stealth will also be good. I would suggest in specializing in some of those skills along your reporter angle, get a couple levels in Media etiquette or interrogation and the like, it would make sense.
You're going to want electronics for lockpicking your way through things. If you pick up pistols, which would make sense with their easily concealable nature, pick up a machine pistol-your SOP during a firefight would most likely be spray a lot of bullets and make like Jesse Owens.

I would suggest also a lot of language skills, or a chipjack with a lot of language chips. You would probably want a bike and not a car, it's easier to manuever around in and smaller/easier to hide. You're going to want to ditch the natural eyes and get cybered, same with the ears-make sure to make them look natural, of course, and then jam them full of as much recording equipment as possible, as well as maybe some flash/noise damping and maybe some zoom features.

As for gear, I would suggest a lot of anything that you can spy or record with, the better concealable the better. Dataline recorder, what have you...electronics will be your friend. So get an electronics toolkit or shop.

Contacts, have at least one in mid-level media. KSAF[acronym approximate] would be a great place to have a contact. Some lower level politco would be good as well, also a decker who drops you tips he hears on the Matrix. I assumed you'd be getting a datajack, by the by. Also, you'll need at least on contact on the street who isn't Lone Star-prostitutes are great for picking up junk off of people, as it were.

The group looks like:

Thief
Weapons Specialist
Electronics specialist
Me

The GM, and players, have decided to go for a less openly combat oriented group than we normally would.

The most obvious gaps are magic, decking, and rigging.

I assume we could get NPC deckers to save hassles learning the matrix rules, and I have no knowledge of the magic rules, so I'd rather avoid them. But it would be easy enough to own a car and take some drive skill.

I had been planning (more or less) to go stealthy, not sure what would make the best second duty though.

What is KSAF?

There the news reporter people. Dunk when he was a live helped them get great scopes on all sorts of things. With his death he gave them more money.

KSAF is a trid station in Seattle with a reputation for hard-hitting (and often times very controversial) news. IIRC, they got a nice little something from Big D's will.

I'd like to emphasize a few things as well: Play an elf with the human-looking flaw. That way you don't have to deal with racism, but you get the extra 2 charisma. Make sure to take at least one good combat skill, but only use it for defense. Your job on the team isn't to wade into combat, it's to get the job done without having to get into combat. Conceal conceal conceal stealth stealth stealth. Max out your negotiation skill at the very least, and probably interrogation as well. Stay light on the cyber if you can because a lot of chrome tends to put people off. Do your best to try to get the 6 intelligence and 8 charisma at chargen because you'll need it later on to improve your skills and for knowlege skills.

The Abstruse One

Speaking of knowledge skills, any ideas on that front.

I always have trouble fleshing out my character with knowledge skills because I just dont know enough about the real world (and I refuse to make a character based around an undergrad software engineer).

What kind of things should a journalist know about?

Presumably something about media organisations, and something akin to a speciality (ie politics or sport or business), I'm running out of ideas already.

It'd be well worth your time to learn the magic system and go that way. I'd wager a mage with some face abilities would be more handy to the team than a face. Not having someone on team who can handle astral threats and scouting can be a real crippler.

The usual:

Literature or Writing
Journalism
Human perception
Research
Acting
Sports teams

The idea is a good reporter will be at least vaguely knowledgeable enough to fake a conversation with anyone in order to draw out information short of a formal interview.

In a formal interview, good people skills help your interviewee relax.

Flesh out additional skills based on character hobbies and other desks the reporter might have worked before moving up the food chain to his (or her) current position.

-Siege

I actually have an ex-journalist character. Interviewing is a great skill. It's like negotiations for information instead of money and a lie detector test combined.

One more thing. If you're using BeCKS or possibly even the build point system, you're better off spending the money to buy a chipjack and linguasofts than to pay for the skills. There's limitations of course in that you'll have problems doing dialects and your speech will sound unnatural, but it saves at chargen if you want a lot of languages right off. Make sure you have at least English, Japanese, and Spanish if you can to take care of Americans, Japanese businessmen, and Aztlan/Aztechnology people. Spierthal <sp> is also good if you're an elf and plan on doing anything in TT. German, French, Italian, etc. is good if you plan on doing anything in Europe (esp. French to impress those execs from Cross and other Quebecians), and Chinese is helpful with Wuxing execs and Triad members.

For other knowlege skills, you don't need to overload on any one thing except maybe Journalism or Literature. Get a good 2 or 3 in lots of stuff like Sports, Science, Politics, etc. Go pretty general with most stuff because a reporter would pick up a lot of knowlege during college and doing various stories, but unless he/she was interested in the topic and did further research or specialized in a particular type of journalism (political, sports, human interest, etc.), he/she wouldn't know a great deal about any one specific area.

The Abstruse One

We are using build point.

I had planned to buy some knowsofts, and possibly linguasofts, how much difference does it make?

If you're looking for contacts, try people in low-grade positions of authority. Morgue attendants who can tell you about those bodies that just came in. Emergency services dispatchers (if such things still exist in Shadowrun times, and given the level of judgement and discretion they have to exercise, I'm hard-pressed to believe they've been totally automated). People who are, effectively, one of the first points of contact when something newsworthy happens - but they're not front-and-center, so they're more likely to be willing to spill the beans.

As others have suggested, the mage route is worth looking at - try an aspected magician if you don't have the points for full mage. Conjurers can get a lot of information from spirits, while sorcerors have all those tasty spells at hand.

And if you're looking for spells, you just can't go past some of the manipulation spells. Influence will be your best friend; Compel Truth, Control Emotions, etc etc. Detection spells are just as useful - Analyze Truth, Detect (foo), and so on. Note that many of the compulsion-type spells are inadmissable in court, so an official law enforcer wouldn't have used them openly.