I'll be starting my first SR4 campaign soon, (hopefully). The problem is that I've only found two players so far. I've thought of a cople of ways of dealing with this and I'd like your opinions.
(cents will only be accepted in pairs.)

1. Some of the adventures i'll design myself and will be tailored to the abilities of my two PC's

2. I'll encourage my players to develope characters with broad abilities.

3. I'm developing a stable of NPC runners that the PC's can call on if they need outside expertise or extra muscle.

I'd like to use some published adventures so they will occasionaly need outside contractors.

On option three; I'm thinking of running these outside operators like gear. They will have a full character sheet with fully fleshed out backgrounds and legwork tables that the PC's can search. If the PC's decide that they need help on a run they can search through their contacts for a list of NPC runners that might fit, just like gearing up for a run. The NPC's will have something like an AVAILABILITY rating and a ¥¥ cost.

my main question is how to tie the ¥¥ cost and availability of the NPC's to their skills and abilities. I'd like to tie this in with the the Reputation rules (BBB pp.257) so the PC's can evaluate the NPC's on some kind of universal scale.

Extra Info

Knowing my players the PCs will be;
A- some uncommonly wierd type of elf that is a magician but secretly wants to be a street sam. In a previous discussion he said; "It looks to me like the best way to go is to be a mage that concentrates on defence and illusion and I'll have him carry a sniper rifle." (wish me luck with that one.)
B- the other PC will be either a hacker or a street sam.

So I'm betting that they'll need to hire Tech specialists or muscle, and occasionaly a REAL mage.

If I'm lucky I'll end up with a Shaman and a Hacker who will have some decent contacts, If not I'll give them each 1 free fixer they can pick from a list.

The scenario would work like this.
They decide to take a job but after doing a little legwork they see that they'll need at least one stealthy guy and one guy who can shoot things up if needed. So they put the word out through their contacts and the contacts come back with 5 or 6 names. Now they do legwork on the NPCs and, I give descriptions of the NPCs specialties along with the numbers for Street cred, Notoriety, and Public awareness. (the accuracy of the info I give will depend on the results of their legwork.) The PCs pick the NPC they want and check for availability,
which should be based on _________?
Once they find an NPC who's available in the right time frame they meet and conduct negotiations for ¥¥ which is contingent on the details of what they want the NPC to do but the starting point for price is based on________?

For price I figure that an equivalent level runner would start out negotiating for an Equal share. Street cred and notoriety would come into play somehow.

For availability, does street cred x (some multiplier) +- notoriety sound fair?

The players are going to be stingy, (until they learn better), so how would you set the price for an operator that is sub-par; i.e. an NPC with zero street cred rating.

Planned adventures
I never got to play 'BrainScan' so I'm beginning my campaign in mid 2059. To boost up the characters in prep for the Archology I plan to move some old adventures forward in the timeline. I'll play them in about this order:

1, home brew adventure to get things rolling
2. home brew adventure to introduce one of my major NPCs
3, "Mercurial". this one doesn't have any connections so I'll move it forward 9 years
3, home brew adventure centered around Urban Brawl!
4, "Ivy & Chrome", or SR MIssions; "An Ounce of Prevention" if they don't have a good street doc yet.
5. "Under The Influence". to introduce Renraku
6, Home brew Renraku Extraction, to introduce the archology, (if they play under the Influence right.
7. some tracks from "Blood in the Boardroom"
8. Finaly I will get to play "Archology shutdown" which i have been thinking about for years.

I'm probably going to need more players.

Anyone in north Utah want to break in a new GM?

If you have starting characters they will never find anyone really competent. They don't have the contacts and cred to get to them. Their fixer might, but why would he do that? If it's important enough and pays enough to get someone who is very competent, why wouldn't he hire a team to do it?

And if I was a contractor I wouldn't go work with a bunch of unknowns by myself. Who says they won't get you killed, or shoot you, or turn a quiet safecracking into a mass murder? I'd want to add the novices to an existing team where I or my trusted friends are in charge.

The stable of NPCs thing can work great, since they can be provided by fixer contacts and the like.

As far as what to pay them, it depends on whether you want it to be realistic or just a nod to the fact that they're being paid.

I would, for example, "pay" them the same amount (or thereabouts) as I pay the PC runners, and simply increase the total payment from Johnson/Fixer to Runner to reflect that. Realistic, in that you're not hand waving these "other runners" into helping the PCs for free.

If you don't want the hassle of paying them, you can always just have the fixer provide them, and tell the PCs that the fixer has already made payment arrangements for the extra talent.

I'd like to note that it's not that much of a problem to have a team of two. I find, in fact, that teams that small are often a boon, rather than a bother. They just have to be willing to be flexible and talk their way through alot of things.

that's a good point. They'll probably try to do this as much as posible But they're going to need more muscle by the time they get to the archology so I wan't them to be able to pull in some NPCs if i don't have more players by then

if all you're worried about is muscle, i have some points to make:

1) spirits. you're gonna have a magician of some kind you said. magicians can summon and bind spirits. spirits can be muscle, or they can be other things too (stealth, distraction, etc). but this provides some extra help certainly. this works especially well if your magician happens to be from the voodoo tradition (which gives access to some very convenient spirit types for utility, generally speaking). also, don't forget the possibility of ally spirits (especially inhabiting ally spirits). even a force 1 spirit can be quite useful when it can inhabit, and without being a 'red shirt' either.

2) on the other side of things, you're gonna have someone who can't summon, and may feel somewhat overshadowed by the mage's spirits. this is where your other character comes in; both hackers and sammies can make use of drones without too much difficulty (obviously hacker works better). if you're gonna be a total cheapskate, you can get a moderately decent drone for under 10k nuyen. if you wanna go big, you can blow about 30k nuyen per drone, plus around 10k for startup costs (pilot programs, autosofts, etc). the low end can throw 8 dice on attack, 6 dice on defense. possibly 6 dice on sensor tests too, though that's a wee bit iffy. the expensive end will be able to throw 12 dice on attack, 10 dice on defense, and a couple other areas can be improved (recommend driving, ECCM, and possibly clearsight).

either side of things, they get 3 attack IPs per round if you choose well, and 2 full defense IPs (or 3 full defense IPs with a risk of crashing at the end of the combat turn). of course, these drones become terribly vulnerable in the arc at least, so you may want to consider combining the two ideas; possessed drones, baby!

3) you can always use these ideas in *addition* to your current plan of using NPCs too, of course.

Normally, I use a Hacker (previously Decker) as an NPC (in pretty much the same manner and role as kzt describes), alleviating a lot of the things that make my head hurt about Gming Shadowrun.

1) Sounds like you have some expierence, how about your players. If you players have reasonable expierence and are mature enough, consider allowing them to run two characters each.

This only works if the players can handle it (and dont mind it), but can beef up a small group of players (and provide some redunancy if a character does get killed).


2) Make sure (and/or strongly suggest) the players have some appropriate contacts.
Gang Leader C-4 L-4 is a good source of 'low-end' muscle. Now if they are treated as 'canon' fodder expect the rating to drop fast.

However if treated 'well' and the gang memebers usaully live, then expect it to go up (as the 'gang' suddnely becomes a runner group/merc group of their own, as they go from thugs, to skilled professionals).

Likewise:
Retired Merc Captain
Yakuzza Boss
etc.

All can provide 'muscle'. Now again they will be somethign generally 'under' the grade of the characters (if begiining 400bp characters expect 300-350 build 'help). But if treated well as the players gain rep, so would the people willing to help them out.

All of the above would have reasons to send 'help'.

Gang Leader to 'blood' potential memebers.
Merc Captain, Keeping his boys on his toes, testing 'new talent', etc
Yakuzza, pretty much same as Merc captain.



As to how much to pay....

Really depends on how much they do.

If 'minor' help behind the scenes / minimal risk /exposure. It should be a small fraction of the PC's pay, or even a small flat rate. The hacker/forger that makes you a set of IDs gets paid a few hundred nuyen.

If 'active' participants, but generally as numbers, not a key player, I generally will go with around 1/4 share.

If a key player, either vital skill or otherwise 'vital' call it a 1/2 share.

If pulling as much weight as the players a full share.



3) also as other mentioned, it is not uncommon for the Johnson to build the team. Perhaps HE has reasons to include a few extra runners (spies, trusted, secondary mission also, etc). So while he might higher the 'players' he also will likely say, Bob and Sally here will be coming along. They have negotiated a seperate deal.

I don't let any player play a secondary type character unless they also have a primary character. I recommend letting them play two characters each or just one with two characters if the other can't handle it.

If you are new to SR then don't let them play hackers - just use an NPC. It will speed up play. Besides you can do plenty with a decker contact and never need one in game.

Awesome,

Thanks for all the replies, I thought my thread died. I'll just respond in order.
First off; Best case scenario I'll get one shaman with a good selection of skills and a Sammi. That way I can provide NPC hackers and if it comes to gunplay they can take care of things themselves. What I expect to get is a half-sammi/spellcaster and a Hacker or TM who will concentrate on the matrix.

Jaid:
What is this INHABIT you speak of, I can't find it in the BBB. If it's posession that might be cool in the Arc because there are all the zombie fields. Both good points except that a hacker gets spread pretty thin if he hacks the matrix and riggs.

kzt:
this is pretty much what I'm planning, the PC's buy access to the technical skill sets they need to get through the mission, in combat they tell the character what to do, I roll the dice.

Laughingowl:
the only reason I don't like these players to have two characters is that it makes it hard for them to get in character and stay in character. I'm not talking about funny voices and silly hats. I'm talking about instantly knowing "what my character would do/feel/ROLL" without looking at the character sheet. Switching back and forth between characters is hard I should know cuz I usualy GM, (someday I'd like to just be a player, Sigh)

Hopefully the PCs will spend a decent amount on contacts then work them durring the game, If I need to I have a list of "talent" fixers and I'll let them each pick one from the list. For the tallent pool, I have about 15 specialist NPCs half completed and i'm working on converting MJLBB to SR4 as well as stealing NPCs that members have posted.

As to the level of tallent that they'll be able to access, I'll give them a meeting with ARGENT (is he still alive in seattle in 2059? yes, "Run Hard Dic Fast") if they're able to work their contacts hard enough. As to the tallent that will work with them; they'll have to play it right and they'll have to show the cred. (wich is why I need to know how much cred it will take to hire a Prime Runner with 50 karma for example)

I do need to develop a scale for the jobs. This would work for PC payment scale also. Off the cuff this scale will be a bunch of questions
How long?
What is the penalty of the crime for which I'll be an accessory?
What is the penalty of the crime you expect me to commit directly?
Will I need to be armed?
what if i have to draw my weapon?
what if i have to fire my weapon or cast a damaging spell?
will there be black IC?
what ¥¥ amount of my gear/ammo/vehicle will be used or posibly dammaged?
Can you provide magical healing?
Can you provide counter spelling continualy?
What is my exposure to identification, magic, bullets, R.O.U.S.'s?
Can you provide protection to ritual spell casting?
Can you provide support if I/we all need to pull the fade?

Probably the first three would be used to develop the base price of the ¥¥ scale and the rest would be used in points of negotiation.

I'll probably base the Shadow Wages Scale off Stree Cred (BBB, pp. 257), I know this has been hashed out in another thread but IMO shadowrunning should provide the potential to maintain a medium life style. To me this means >60,000¥ / year doing 1 - 2 runns each month. I offer the characters runns more frequently but I as a GM I'm serious about the Star and other CorpSec so players should be cautious about working when they should be covering their trail. (In SR3 I used to be able to get them to take a bad job once in a while but they wized up and started turning stuff down ) So basicly I'm talking about 3-7 grand/character/run depending on the legality/exposure potential of the job.

So 5000¥ ÷1.5 jobs = 3000¥ for a full job
Add 1000¥ to the base price of the job for each point of street cred (or average of the team's street cred)
Subtract 1000¥ for each point of noteriety of each character on the core team.

This base price might be adjusted by the time involved wich I'd base on actual in game time for use of technical skills or the fraction of time the NPC was involved in the run.

If The details of the run will involve highly illegal activities
+10%, TRESSPASSING in a high security area of a corp/government
+10%, GRAND LARCENY (add and additional 10% per 100,000¥ of the value of the item(s).)
+10%, MAJOR PROPERTY DAMAGE (add and additional 10% per 100,000¥ of the value of the property.)
+20%, ASSAULT (add and additional 10% for each person to be assaulted per the contract.)
+100%, KIDNAPING (total price might be doubled if the PC's are required to hold the target for an extended period, more than 5 days.)
+200%, MURDER (this aplies in cases where the johnson acknowleges that murder may be necessary but is not requred.)
+400% PREMEDITATED MURDER (this is the price per each person to be assasinated in the contract.)
MASS MURDER (if a johnson reqires something like this he should be ready to pay for a permanant lifestyle of luxury for each contractor)
-50% ACCESSORY (If a character is involved in the run only as an accessory devide the total price in half)

(total price might be doubled or trebled if the person(s) to be assaulted/kidnaped/killed makes more than 1 million ¥ per year, has a skill rating of Elite or higher in a tecnical skill, is a politician or celebrity with nationional popularity.)
("we're having a half-price special on maiming and murder of unpopular sinless people today today" )

Similar modifyers could be used for smugling.

does this sound fair?

Inhabiting is in Street Magic. Basically putting the spirit into a shell/physical body. Think bug spirits or homonculi creation.

I think you are blowing the whole 'payment scale' thing out of proportion. I don't believe you have to work that hard to find a balance. In reality, a specific type of job that might be worth X¥ to one client might be worth Y¥ to another. Payment is usually more of a 'feel' thing, as opposed to a 'chart' thing, at least in my experience.

I think it would be just as easy to determine what the job paid per runner, and pay your hired help that amount.

Ex.: meet with the johnston, accept the job, get the details, tell him how many runners you will need to use, XXX nuyen per runner. Your PCs get the same as the NPCs in nuyen.

Or
Fixer determines that another mage and a hacker are needed. They are at the meet with the Johnson, rate of pay is XXX nuyen per runner.

HOw much to pay is almost impossible to determine.

It REALLy depends on your group. and is largely like karma rewards.

How fast do you want them to progress.

If you arent sure and don't want to give too much (or too little).

Have the Johnson cover 'normal' expenses. (anything that is directly needed, travel, (additional runners, IF the johnson feels it is a 5 man job), etc.

And pay a X¥ per each person.

For each person they only thing they have to worry about is 'personal expensies' (usually ammo/binding materials/'bribes'/etc). Though some of these if flat 'required' could be worked as an expense. (If the team needs to get a pair of tickets to the sold out concert... the scalping price of the tickets could be covereed by the Johnson.


Doing it this way you dont have to worry too much on how much nuyen the players will have it will grow by a little under X each run.


If the Job calls for 5 people and you only have 2 players, the three 'helpers' are easy since the Johnson is paying them (even if the 'team' recruits them).


The only time you have to worry about 'how much' a runner costs, is if/when the player suddnenly decide the need 'more' help the the Johnson arranged. (such as when they think the Johnson might be doing a double-cross at the meet, so higher a little back-up muscle on their own).

For this look at how much money the players have. How hard you want to hurt them, How dangerous the job is, and how 'elite' the runners they are highering are.

When in doubt, dont hesitate to hand out too much money.

IMO too much is better then too little.

Shadowrun by nature offers WAY WAY to many ways to pull the money from the players (especially if they keep it on ANY kind of electronic medium, be it online, Cert-stick, etc).