If you could play a contact from Shadowrun as a character in a Shadowrun MMORPG, what contact (or contacts) would you play? What contacts have such an active role that you would play them? How would you play them?

I am asking on behalf of the Shadowrun Awakened MMO project. We figured we would turn to the community to silence our speculation and provide facts on this issue. Thank you

Other Shadowrunners. Maybe bounty hunters (whether of the manhunter or paracritter bounty variety). Anything else that comes to mind is either too restrictive or too difficult to adapt.

If we assume that you have infinite creativity and resources, add reporter to the list, but just thinking about how to do that non-horribly makes me shudder.

~J

A base-level member of organised crime. Nearly the same as a shadowrunner, can get his own missions (higher percentage of guard-jobs). Regular pay, maybe a hideout if on gang-level. Needs restrictions on equipment and ware.

Maybe you could offer the opportunity to create gangs? Should be great for clan-play and could be so limited that real power would stay with the runners.

Batman!

(The cool one: Adam West!)

Street doc, maybe an Awakened one.

No one would dare piss me off... mwahahahaha!

Weapons dealer/gear dealer type. It would be cool, especially if there was some way of actually engaging in haggling and deal making, favors, etc., rather than gear purchases just being

Sword: 5gp
Armor: 10gp

By definition you can't play a contact. If you play a contact, it stop being a contact and becomes a PC.

Did you mean "what alternative archetype/character concept would you play?"

Mr Johnson.

Or a Animus/Anima Free Blood Spirit.

Mr Johnson too, or a fixer

Cheers,

Max

Street Doc: no.
Talismonger: no.
Mechanic: no.

IMO, of course. Then again, the number of people willing to grind to craft demonstrate that I'm probably wrong in my estimation of talismongers.

~J

Media type. Definitely one of the most underated and useful types of contact out there. Plus you get to act such fun stereotypes.

warehouse foreman.

"yeah, if you could just re-route these crates somewhere else.... great. and burn the paperwork."

Lots of my characters start out in Bounty Hunter roles, paracritter focus rather than metahuman, except for toxics and such. I've played a Shaman/media character who did a lot of wildlife photography (think the new Planet Earth series not that Irwin fellow). Spirit Concealment came real in handy for that, and Movement when it was time to run.

Rocker, wheeerrreeeeeeee *does air guitar*

That or a blackberry cat.

Yes. Rocker. Your game is worthless if it does not support rockers.

Blackberry cats are optional, but cool.

~J

Blackberry cats are awesome. I ran a job once where stealing a blackberry cat was the center of the plot. Hilarious times.

I think it would add a lot of flavor and depth to play a rocker. It means that you're emphasizing adding flavor and character to the world and not just catassing all the time to become t3h ult1m4t3 gunslinger.

I actually think that gunsmiths would be indispensible to the world of SR. There is a whole lot of things which are pretty powerful rules wise in the firearms customization rules that theoretically only a gunsmith can do.

my rigger has much better Blackberry cat--crawler drones that look like realistic felines, for subtle surveillance.

With eight legs? *Hopeful*

~J

Corporate Wage Slave....

I would never be late for work... NEVER!!

Seriously though:
- a snitch (aka "the poor man's information dealer")
- a LS beat cop
- a Doc Wagon paramedic (like the old SR2 alternate capaign theme)
- a bouncer
- a prostitute (not that you would want to roleplay *ALL* the possibilities...)

Those are just a few off the top of my head, although a street doc would probably be my number one but its already been said.

Playing a crafting character can be fun, provided the game economy is set up to be at least vaguely realistic. (so that there's a point to being able to provide a superior product, or have a competitive price)

It also has to take effort to get good at crafting, and high-end crafted items need to be better than what can be bought in stores, or commonly found on monsters.

I actually made a ton of money - and had a lot of fun - playing a weaponsmith in Dark Age of Camelot. I got good at it, and could make high-end weapons.

I frequently advertised by giving out free samples to low-level characters - I'd give them a cheap crafted weapon that was nevertheless much better than what they were carrying, so they could see what difference buying from a craftsman made, then tell them to come back when they wanted to buy something new in a few levels - and to tell their friends. I ended up knowing a lot of people, and was owed a lot of favors...

I don't know, I've never been big on Player-based economies in MMORPGs, everything is either priced way too high or way, way too low. And that isn't even considering the meta-gaming effects of Mules ect...

Well, before I quit playing Everquest II, you could generally buy superior weapons/spells for less then the weaker NPC versions would cost (Some of them priced below what it would have cost me to craft it myself.). However on the other hand, what was billed in the forums as a relatively common low level crafting book couldn't be found for less then 100 Plat and a slew of App III spells priced above Adept I for some reason...

Now whether or not the issues could or even should be addressed I'm not sure, but I do know that I don't want a tricked-out Predator selling for less on SBay then what Ares charges except in some very special situations anymore then I want certain types/grades of Fetishes/Spell Formula/Foci to only be found through 'loot' or "crafters" anything a crafter can sell you a NPC should as well, and visa-versa, at least in my opinion because to do otherwise breaks the 4th Wall in a way that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

FWIW, IIRC the SI of a Predator is .75, so there's canon support for picking it up off the street cheaper than Ares sells for.

~J

True, but that would the same Predator that Ares will sell you, not a tricked out Super Predator that you can't even find in the stores.

Also exactly how common are the facilities to build firearms from stratch going to be in the Shadows? I'm having trouble imagining something akin to EQ's system where crafting stations are made public and free to wanna-be crafters.

Hmm, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the entry into 'crafting' was high enough that only the hardcore Fixers/Talismongers/ect like I suspect mfb might be could start, and there wasn't an artifical reason to force Runners to the "crafters" instead of their NPC Fixer... <Edit>(Who should also be using the Street Index price.) </Edit>

*Edit*

Then we'd just have to figure out ways to discourage crafters being used to support the Player's shadowrunner character...

The fixer should definitely be one, if only a side role, maybe.
The street doc, definitely
The Talismonger and Mechanic would be good too, especially since there's a good reason for the really GOOD telesma/parts to be hard to find.

hm. i haven't noticed that problem in WoW, but i've also noticed that WoW seems to have a mechanism in place that neither EQ (the first one) nor Matrix Online had--namely, they put a constant, strong drain on your cash supply. just about everything you do costs gold in some form or another. that said, it's pretty easy to make money, and there are enough different ways to make money that it takes a while to get bored with it.

as well, WoW doesn't allow reselling used items. any item that's worth keeping will "soulbind" itself to you, either the first time you use it or the first time you pick it up, making it impossible to give it to another player. so once you outgrow your Sword of 1,000 Truths, you can't sell it to someone else. how you'd do that in an SR MMO, i'm not sure--i think the SR world would require a vastly different economic paradigm. maybe you could strictly limit availability--make it so that there are only a finite number of Ares Alphas that can possibly exist at one time. or, if Ares Alphas are a craftable item, make sure that there are only a finite number of Ares SuperSelect Trigger Assemblies (an item that is necessary to craft Ares Alphas and other super-high-end weapons) in the world. if an Ares Alpha is destroyed, it will then be possible to find parts to create another Ares Alpha--one Ares SuperSelect Trigger Assembly will appear in the shipping area of a random Ares facility, or something.

as far as making sure crafters don't support players... if that were the case, i personally wouldn't enjoy crafting. there wouldn't be any point to it.

A +100 Predator of Wailing Doom isn't exactly Shadowrun. The best you'll have on a Predator is a custom grip and a smartlink.

Item progression, in general, isn't exactly Shadowrun. One of the things that makes the game just a little bit realistic is that it is rare for one weapon in a class to be significantly better than any other weapon in that class, burst-fire heavy pistols notwithstanding.

One thing I really hate is the OMG i HAVE THIS COOL SUPER-SWORD BECAUSE I'VE BEEN PLAYING FOR ONE MOTH STRAIGHT WITHOUT STOPPING TO EAT OR SLEEP OR GO TO THE BATHROOM. I'M SITTING IN MY OWN STINKING WASTE BUT ITS WORTH IT BECAUSE I AM INVINCIBLE!1111111!!!!!!111!!!1!!!!1!111111!!!!!!

In a faithful Shadowrun RPG a newly minted punk would be carrying the exact same type of heavy pistol that a 10,000 karma Prime Runner carries and would be almost as deadly with it.

The difference is that the Prime Runner also knows guys who can get him uncommon classes of weapons. An anti-tank rocket can come in handy but it isn't a standard replacement for a heavy pistol.

Now, I also don't see how you can limit the number of a specific type of weapon that enters the economy, unless you make looting impossible. If there can only be a limited number of each weapon in the game then you end up with the silliness of high-security military facilities being guarded by naked boxers because there are too many items in the economy.

I think the use of "stolen" " and "used during the commission of a crime" flags to items would be the preferable way to encourage high item turnover, combined with realistic carrying capacity so that looting won't get out of hand.
Basically, runners would be encouraged to fence stolen goods and destroy murder weapons as quickly as is possible because the police can identify them. These flags would be invisible to players unless the PC has access to police databases so it is highly likely that an individual purchasing a "cheap" ares alpha from another PC is buying one that was used to give a Lone Star Officer an impromptu lobotomy and will have to hide it or dispose of it quickly or risk a very dangerous confrontation with police.

With runners destroying weapons after every run as a matter of course, and hiding those that cannot be reasonably replaced for later use, you end up with a very high weapon turnover rate.


As for the original question, I'd like to play a bribe-taking grenade-throwing KE officer named Cletus Van Damme.

i agree that in general item progression has no place in modern settings--or, at least, that the item progression should be short but slow. for instance, gangers are basically never ever going to get an Ares Alpha. they'll probably only get ahold of APDS once, if at all, in their entire lives. as a runner moves up in the world, he won't exactly progress in items. rather, he'll progress in available items. he'll be able to get ahold of Ares Alphas, whereas he used to use AK-97s because that's all he could find. he can still use that AK-97, should he wish; it won't do more damage than the Alpha, but the Alpha will have cooler stuff, and will mark him as a higher-grade runner (which can have its own drawbacks).

re: progression in general, the route that Pirates of the Burning Sea is taking (according to their devlogs) is that higher-level characters will be more diverse, not necessarily more powerful. a pistol fired by a L1 character will do the same damage as a pistol fired by a L50 character, as i understand it. the L50 character might be able to reload faster, or shoot your sword out of your hand, or maybe even shoot you in the eye for more damage, but the gun itself won't be the source of the extra damage. and the reason they can shoot you in the eye for more damage won't be, i believe, because they have a higher pistol skill, it will be because they've learned a Shoot You In The Eye ability.

Another aspect of the item swapping bit is dealing with item damage. As items age, are used more often, and are passed from hand to hand they're going to accumulate damage, some of which should be unfixable. Some weapons like the AK-47 will have extraordinary shelf-life, naturally, which'll be part of the reason they'll still be around even though noone's still producing them. Others, like an Ares Alpha, created by a megacorp obsessed with short product life cycles and thus greater profits, will have a product that degrades and accumulates more permanent damage more quickly.

yeah. part of maintaining a healthy game economy, i think, is ensuring a limited lifespan for items. levelling up such that a given item is no longer useful is one way of doing that (assuming that the item is destroyed rather than simply being passed on to a twink); simply having them degrade with use sounds like another good one.

I'd like to play a free spirit, maybe one that does som enchanting/talismongering or othe magic related business on the side (teaching/selling spells, warding, astral protection, magical healing, etc..)

It would also give the game a built in karma for cash outlet.

Mob boss, Yakuza boss. Gang leader.

One oddity I noticed in the design notes is that you're implementing trade between PCs, but not buy/sell. Why is that, exactly? If you're worried about people cheating the system by giving advanced equipment to new players, why allow the barter system? And, if you want to allow fixers/Johnsons/gunsmiths/talismongers/etc as PCs, why not implement buying/selling?

Buying and Selling implies a set price, trading implies you get whatever you can find someone to pay you. If money is involved with a trade, we are still calling it a trade. If we were to write up "buying and selling" for PCs, we would target some other type of mechanic where the PC has a "storefront" to sell from or something along those lines. Is trading not enough?

For the moment, the concept of "Crafting" (such as through this little occupation mechanic) is in flux. Crafting poses a fundamental economic issue since it creates wealth. We are on the fence as to how early to introduce crafting and if it was "Terribly shadowrun" hence why we asked here. How often do your characters craft? What would we lose by excluding it? Who would we lose?

Your explanation of economic controls for items (such as item damage) mirrors our own in certain respects. Also, the points that there are few ways of "progressing" items is a core concept we have debated. We will implement "customizations" for all available types of items one day, but I would not equate that to progression (and of course, random plug for anyone equipped to help us, it is open source). How much progression do we need? I say none, just a list of items and a short list of customizations (to come later)

We are having a back and forth about enforcing scarcity of items. The "only so many" approach is impossible for the reasons pointed out. The "Stolen" concept is good. Any other thoughts?

Usually only the riggers and weapon nuts go into crafting. The latter are not exactly rare, so the amount of crafting will depend on the advantages one stands to gain.

You can give an adavantage to crafting by reducing the traceability of the used equipment, if you are going to implement some kind of fallout for runs gone sour.
Ingame advantages always depended on the specifics of the gear creation system in question, not on the idea of technological advancement.

Another way would be an item condition monitor that gets worse with time and equipment usage. Doing maintenance on the team rather than going to a weaponsmith/garage would be much more conveniant - and cheaper over time.

You mean Mages (talismongering) and weapon nuts—Riggers upgrade, sure, but they don't make anything. You don't take pieces of metal and churn out a turret, you take a turret and a van and produce a van with a turret on it.

~J

well, actually, one form of "crafting" you could do in an SR MMO would be redirecting shipments. as a decker, you'd seek out shipments of various useful items (eg vans and turrets) and get them dropped off somewhere. then your team goes and picks them up, and you've "crafted" a van and a turret that your mechanic can convert into a van with a turret on it.

people think of "crafting" as actually sitting down and producing items in a shop, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. hell, as a fixer, you could "craft" information--spend enough time talking to your contacts, and you get a useful bit of info that can be sold to others. re-selling the same information would reduce your reputation; plus, the information would degrade in value over time.

I think that riggers to indeed craft things, as customisation work can be rather unique. Thats even one of the more interesting options as it could get the racing scene in the boat.

yeah, i mean, if you take a Regular Turret and some hydraulics, neon lights, and fuzzy dice, and you produce a Pimp-ass Turret, that's crafting.