The traditional Shadowrun group I've seen will have a Mr Johnson call for a meeting, they'll go where he is (Since, y'know, it's his mission), the face, or closest thing to it, will negotiate (Or just take what's offered, straight up), then they go their seperate ways until the mission's done, when they go back and drop off the stuff for payment.

Which seems to be a tad off.

I've always thought of Mr Johnson as a step removed from the person needing the job done, personally. Middle Manager Kuratowa wants that promotion but needs dirt on Mr Ichiru, so, he hires a "Mr Johnson" to get him talent for the job. Mr Johnson is a professional negotiator and can get a good price, plus actually knows how to reach people who do that sort of thing. Middle Manager Kuratow wouldn't have clue one about how to find an actual Shadowrunner.

Mr Johnson contacts a Fixer, who assembles a team. The Fixer arranges the meeting (and gets a finders fee), and can negotiate for the Runners for an extra fee. He's also an advisor, offering several missions at a time to a team, suggesting, "Milk run, not much cash but easy" or "This one's out of your league" or the ever popular, "I don't trust this guy. Never worked with him before. New Johnsons are always a gamble."

This keeps the runners from knowing who hires them, since professional agents take care of this, which pops up again in local games where the runners just love to run Mr Johnson's face through recognition programs or test his plates, to see who he is. It wouldn't matter in this case, since he's a known commodity ... the CLIENT is the unknown, and they won't have access to that one.

...

I'm rambling.

At any rate, which way does yoru group handle it? Runners and the Client meet? Runners and a professional Johnson who represents intrests? Fixer and Johnson? Something else entirely?

I'm curious.

-- Wak

I think the nature of Mr. Johnson has changed over time. Back in SR1 & 2, Mr. Johnson's job was to recruit Shadowrunners on behalf of his employers. You had to make sure that at least one of the players had Mr. Johnson as a contact, or you weren't going to get much work. Mr. Johnson could also be used as the term for the employer himself if that employer handled things directly, but Mr. Johnson was definitely a discrete job for some people.

Now it seems to be that Fixers have taken over the role of assembling teams, becoming the agents that Johnson's used to be. And Mr. Johnson more commonly seems to be the employer himself. Back in SR1 & 2, Fixers were basically your suppliers. They could get you the fake SINs and the rocket launchers etc.

I tend to keep things in that mold because that's where I come from. Fixer's aren't team assemblers, they're wheelers and dealers. Maybe they'll get you some extra muscle if you're looking for it, but usually not. I have professional Mr. Johnsons who recruit the teams and will exist as contacts for some PCs. Occasionally, for a cut, they set up a meet for an employer directly who wants to be their own Johnson.

Mr. Johnson is a rarer talent than you might think. There are such people in real life who manage to keep one foot in the world of big business and one foot in the world of crime, entertainment, etc. It's long been the case. In Merrey Olde Englande, they were called Bawds and used to make a living off the wealthy who needed someone who knew their way around the brothels and the thugs, etc. It's a time honoured tradition and I have Mr. Johnsons sometimes have similar stations in life. But yes, PCs often do not learn who there employer is, though they may work it out.

Mr. Johnson can be pretty much anyone, from the little old orc lady who can't find her pet devil rat, to the Company Man as you describe, who's job description is mainly as an expeditor or troubleshooter using deniable assets to achieve the Corporation's objective, to one of the player character's Contacts, who is being leaned on by the local gang, to the team's Rigger himself, who needs a new batch of AutoSofts to outfit the Drones the characters liberated two runs ago.*

They might go through Fixers, or go slumming through the oft-misnamed "Runner Bars" themselves, or even just call the characters up directly, whether through knowing them personally, or having heard about them through word of mouth and tracking them down.

Bottom line is, the is no 'one size fits all' when it comes to Mr. Johnsons.


How's that for a run-on sentence?

Johnsons come in all shapes and sizes...

I tend to mix it up, with most meets called by a Fixer.

Once at the meet, they will either meet with Mr Johnson, or the Fixer, depending on how I want the background/scenario to go.

Other runs are player or contact inspired/sponsored.

Thank you DR...

I generally run somewhere in between the 2 models set above. In my games, Fixers are middle-men. Some specialize in gear, others in jobs and manpower. (In SR3, calling a fixer implemented the Friend of a Friend rules).

Most Mr. Johnson's on a corporate level were professional assets which specifically dealt with the shadowy aspects of big business. There were and are occasional moonlighters like the middle manager who needs dirt on another manager and cannot go through his corporate handlers to get in touch with shadowrunners, but they were less common.

Johnsons are a dmine a dozen, good johnson's that wont get you killed or in a bad situation are rare.

The Johnson/Fixer is probably the most organized and most experianced. Mafia Dons, Company Men (IE: the Enron Boys), hell all contacts can be a johnson its all about Opportunity and who can give it to you.

Also think of the places were meets can occur. Normaly I held all mine in highly public or extremely private places. Sports Arenas, Ferry Boats, The blimp that tours the city, the seedy neighborhood bar, matrix club, one of those astral clubs, in the mituhama offices (of course it would be a small and rented office set up as a front so my runners would think they knew who they were working for).

My goal is to think of who my people work for and want kinds of things do they want. Thus the johnson depends on the job and what there "True employer" really wants. As I sit here at my desk I'm thinking who would I call to get shadowrunners,... the accounting or our "special projects" division to get in touch with the company man who will get in touch with a few fixers or other people he knows to put a team together. Johnsons probably have a ton of level 1 and 2 contacts they can call for "help"

Let me stop ranting you get the idea

I still consider it rare if the runners meet the actual client. It also adds a much higher level of complexity, as you're *far* more likely to get geeked at the end if you know the guy you're working for.

I see it about as you described.

The Up and Coming Exec needs something done. He calls a friend in security, who knows a guy, who sends Mr. Johnson to meet with U&C. U&C explains what he needs, and Mr. Johnson says "Consider it done. I will contact you in 4 days time." U&C goes on his merry way.

Mr. Johnson then either calls up a team he knows in the area, or contacts a local fixer (depending on his contacts). Either way, the runners get a call that says either "Hoi, Chummer. I've got you a Mr. J. Meet him in the Barrens, at the old Humanis HQ. And be ready to roll out. This could be your big chance!" or "Our previous interactions have gone well enough, save for the Incident at Nakamura Square. I have a task I feel might be suited for your particular brand of mayhem - meet me at the Lucky Trollop on 9th in 2 hours. And this time, try to be discrete?"

U&C never even knows who is actually doing the job, the runners never know who U&C is, although they likely have a clue by the end. Mr. J. knows everyone, and thus has to dance about to keep himself alive. The Fixer provided the contact (maybe) and is there to call when things go bad.

Alternatively, the runners go to their fixer, and say "Hey, man, we're on our last ounce of Novacoke, and the sam needs some new Ex-Ex somethin' bad. Whatcha got?" The Fixer has an open job from some Mr. J. that he passes on to the runners.

I don't really think runners should have Mr J as a contact, for the most part. Mr J comes to them, or calls their fixer. They call their fixer, to get Mr. J.

Rambling too.

The professional Johnson is certainly needed to pull that 'plausible deniability' thing of, which is one of the basic reasons to use Shadowrunners - Shadowrunners can't tell who hired them if they don't know.

Wanted to write more, but I think lorechaser did the work for me .

I still put a Mr J as a corporate type in my games. And a Mr J comes to you, not the other way around...again, in my games.

So, the Fixer contact is there to ask for jobs, fence goods, hire the runners for jobs, be the point of contact to find gear...all that stuff. I think every runner should have at least one Fixer contact.

The Mr J, on the other hand, is more one-way. You aren't going to be calling him for a job, he contacts you...and normally, working for a corp, is going to have his ducks in a row, missions will be pretty straightforward, with a solid amount of details and the pay will be good. Not to say that Mr J won't go through your Fixer first, but he doesn't have to.

Out of the 5 runners in my group, one of them has a Mr J as a contact.

I'm with the idea of there being a lot of middlemen in the process. Mr. J is hired by the corp (or he's a salaried Johnson, or, more rarely, he's just some exec, middle manager or employee who's doing the work himself), Mr J calls one of the fixers he knows. The fixer says "I'll find someone." Fixer's got a number of runner clients, and he calls the ones the ones he thinks are best for it. They go meet the Johnson, who finishes business with them.

This makes the fixer a disproportionately valuable contact, because he also is the gear supplier, but I've been balancing that by limiting what he has available at any given time and having him charge a bit more than a more specialized contact.

This makes more sense to me than the old Johnson-runner relationship. I figure there should be a sort of shadow businessman (the fixer) as a buffer between the street scum (most runners) and the suits (Mr. J and his employers).

I like this setup as a GM, because the fixer is someone they trust in the biz, who provides some consistency (I like having a few regular NPCs to play as) since he brokers most runs. Mr J, on the other hand, is almost always different and that keeps a sense of mystery to the runs.

The Fixer is also nice for Mr. J because if things go bad, he can simply make it the Fixer's problem, rather than dealing with it himself.

"Your team has not proved to be all that you have promised. Their instructions were to extract Morimoto-san, not to level his building. This has become problematic. I trust that you will take care of the problem."

On the flipside, if the Johnson tries to hose the runners, they have a witness, and someone to yell at.

"You can kill us, but Mindwipe here has been keeping in contact with Mr. Fixit. He knows what's going on, and is holding a copy of the paydata. So if we go down, you'll have to take him out too. And he has a lot more friends than we do...."

or

"DAMMIT Fixit! You told us that this would be easy! Now we have a chip full of data we don't want, and Mr. J. won't buy it because he says the data isn't pure. You'd better cover at least half what he was offering, and make him go away!"

I also like to have Mr J not deal with the runners, on occasion, and have the whole deal go thru the Fixer. This makes it almost impossible for the runners to figure out who they are working for.

Most runs, they deal with Mr J, as he does not want the Fixer to know any more about the run than need be.
Most professional Mr Js deliberately mislead you about who they work for (different corp cuff-links, suit, business lingo, etc..)

It also depends on the purpose for the hire. As an example, in one of the premades (in Corp Punishment) the Johnson meets directly, because they're being set up. So the J woulnd't want to go through a fixer, because that's someone else to remove later. A lot of the premade modules don't include fixers because they're a variable that they can't predict. Others have an example written in.

In our game, the Fixer is basically an agent. Gets his cut, sets the team up for better jobs, tries to get an idea of how dependabel the J is. So fo course because of that, there are going to be Johnson's that try to go around the fixer, or ones that are just inexperiences and don't know any better.

Even back in SR3 we always had it set up so that the J was a corporate "problem solver" who would or would not necessarily be arranged to meet via fixer.

Whereas we've always been able to get smaller type runs from the fixer just from people that need some discrete work done, and aren't necessarily corp.

And while I was at work today, I dusted off Mr Johnson's Black Book, and there's a whole section on how Mr Johnsons and Fixers act as middlemen.

D'oh!

Handy lil' guide, that.

And now that it seems that the normal setup *is* Mr Johnson, representing a client, meets the fixer, who builds teh team, who does the mission and reports to Mr J, who later reports to the Client when no one's around ... well, that leaves all sorts of spots open for stuff.

giving teh PCs a couple of 'Arrangers', Fixers who specialize in team-building, that they can mission-shop from is nice, meaning I only need maybe a half-dozen "Stable Hands" to take that role, including teh one they use most often. Otehr Fixers do tech, or specialize in data, etc etc etc.

Having a couple of standard Mr Johnsons that can be re-used is also handy, plus leaves room for Street Johnsons, which are bound to get nicknames (Uh oh, Guido's got a mission. You want to earn mobster points?) and 'Damsels', which are peopel needing help that don't know what the heck they're doing. (My husband's gone missing. I ... I didn't know where to go, but my cousin Tony... your bartender friend? He ... he says that you solve problems. Can ... can you help me?)

...

Oh yes.

There will be Good Things in the future.