At least, not with action. I have a (potential) player dangling on the line, but although I know he's a good roleplayer, he's pretty darn new to the Shadowrun or cyberpunk genres. He dosen't want to start off with a Shadowrunner, but has proposed to me an alternative - he'll basically play an NPC for awhile, until he starts to get enough of a feel for the game to make a real character.

So I've been thinking of making him the Fixer - letting everybody have him as a contact for free, should ensure the group is more or less on the same page. I can use him as a plot device mouthpiece, and as a bludgeoning tool to ram the players back into line if need be...

How do I make it interesting for everybody? He pretty much understands he's going to be sidelined while everyone else is running and gunning and dallying to boot, and he's cool with that, but how do I still make it interesting for him?


If it helps, I'm planning to send the players through On the Run, with an interlude of Food Fight in the middle (reconstructed primarily from my memory of playing it in third ed, unless it has been rereleased updated for Fourth) just as a break.

Hmmmmm, make sure you give him a role that, if he wants to, he can jump right in.
For example, give them a run where they have to protect someone. The "NPC" that they're protecting is the new guy. If he wants to be totally passive and just do what they tell him, that's cool. He doesn't have to shoot guys, he doesn't have to make drive tests, or hack, or anything. But then when he starts getting into it, he has a character right there, in a room with the other PCs.
If your Fixer angle works with that, that's cool too, but my advice is to make sure he can jump in as soon as he gets engaged. It'll probably be sooner than he's expecting, otherwise. But having a passive NPC role like that means he can still be a wallflower as long as he needs to be.
My 0.02 Nuyen.

Another alternative is to just have him watch for a session or two to see what its like.

The thing about having the fixer is that I plan to have the fixer surprise-whacked when the player wants to actually get in. I may tie it into the run, but I'm thinking of making it a loose end that the players can (should) tie up, but that there will be no penalties for leaving unresolved, since it was basically unrelated to them.

(Normally poking your nose into others' bisuness is a bad idea in the Shadows, but a group who goes out of their way to avenge their Fixer would probably get street cred (or maybe rep) instead of noto.).

I would say one way to get the guy involved is deal with gear. Fixers trade gear for stuff all the time and then have to do something with it.

Hell you could make a run out of having the runners protect a shipment he is sitting on until it can be moved. Various groups could be gunning for it and if they do not protect him, they lose their street cred and a contact.

Or, going a bit further, have him play an extraction target. He gets to interact with the other players, and doesn't have to know any more about Shadowrun culture than "corporate enclave."

Being a fixer, as far as I know, is a very active job. You have to talk to a lot of people. You have to keep a lot of contacts happy, and not offend any of them. You may have to play both sides of a conflict, and keep it on the down-low so you don't get whacked.

I think it could be a cool effect to "switch scenes" between the team in the middle of combat with CorpSec, and the fixer in the process of securing the next job. There could even be some action (most likely a chase of some sort) involving the fixer and that goon from the Mafia that saw the fixer talking with a Yakuza. That part could get the new player started on combat. It wouldn't have to be terribly much, really. Just some dodging, most likely.

Playing a fixer, I think, could be tons of fun.

I think it sounds like a good idea. Take a look at Reuben from the "Ocean's" trilogy. He wasn't "directly" involved in the first "run." He just bank-rolled everything and supervised. He got to see everything happen (except when he was at the MGM for the fight) yet didn't have to get his hands dirty.

In the second movie he WAS actively involved. Haven't seen the third yet but I know that Elliot Gould is in that one too.

I'm glad for the feedback, chums...

Another thing that has interested me, Aaron, is the possibility of having the player stand-in for the teeny technomancer in Ping Time. He dosen't want to look into the Matrix rules, but since it's already been established that Brent is still a callow youth of a Technomancer, and he's not crazy enough to risk not living long enough to outgrow the callow youth stage, he woulden't actually have to do any technomancing. And he'd be in a position to stay in intermittant contact with the players, of course, without having to roll a die.

[edit] Plus, you seem to have included at least a few locations from On the Run, which I could use to tie into that adventure, at least tangenitally.

I like the "NPC the players are deal with" as well.

Is the reason he doesn't want to make a char is because he doesn't want to pour through the book and dumpshock threads so he doesn't waste game time or do something really stupid to hose the team? If not that why?

Oh another idea that fits into any run. Back in ummm second ed I think they had a book called "prime runners" which wasn't all primer runners. One character was a rich kid who was totally enamoured with shadowrunning and would pay runners to let him go on runs with them (I think he considered it practice). You could have a lot of fun letting him be someone like that. They're in on the action, the team gets some extra cred, and nothing the new guy does is too stupid. Should be a lot of fun to roleplay as well.

I'm somewhat partial to extraction target that the employer refuses to (or is unable to) take delivery of. They kidnap the guy but they can't turn him over and they can't release him but he's too valuable to just kill so they're stuck with him.


Maybe an amnesiac cyborg killing machine with the mind of a child due to horrific brainwashing experiments, whose wife hired the runners to rescue him but she refuses to accept custody of him because she can't stand what has been done to him.
We could have grenade-launchers permanently mounted to his cybertorso but remain sort of a non-combatant because of his child-like personality until he begins recovering his mind with time and hard work.

Sadly the character you described is almost an archtype of too many players out there, except for the not killing everything in sight part.

I get the feeling that this guy might not like taking that role. But maybe he would. This isn't neccesarily the character he'll eventually play. Just someone he's jumping into for a while.

You could also have him play something not typically a player character option. For example if your mage has a spirit they bind you could have him play the spirit. You could probably talk your mage player ahead of time about doing it.

Spirits are supposed to have personalities after all. And he wouldn't have to worry much about messing up since the mage gives the orders.

If you go the fixer route and he decides to play then his character could have the hung out to dry flaw (is that still in 4th ed? I don't have my books with me). Having all your contacts dry up would be a good kick into the shadowrunning team as they are the only people who still deal with you. If the player then doesn't like running the chracter can simply set up shop fixing again with some new contacts or you can do a run to get the data and clear his name and things.

-Strobe

So he wants to basically have something to do while he watches the other people play. Playing the NPCs allows him to interact with the players and see how they respond to certian situations and get a feel for the rules before jumping in.

After a few sessions how would he feel about playing a NPC the characters are to rescue, liberate. Big Secret - he is an assassin and the PCs are his target.
Did this with guest once form out of town. The PCs lost. However, the game is more interesting now.