Continuing this from Here. I'm going to use this thread to post up in bits and pieces stuff as I get it completed. To start with...

Concept

Shadowrun, Jr. is designed to be a light-hearted and somewhat goofy version of the Shadowrun RPG. It juxtaposes the world and dynamics of Shadowrun into a grade-school setting. While this can be taken in any number of directions, for my own version, I'm choosing a friendly, simple, very cartoony approach.

Players will play "stereotyped kid" versions of shadowrun characters. They'll have to deal with the day to day activities of school in addition to the "jobs" they undertake, ranging from stealing test notes, hacking in to change grades, "extracting" a buddy from detention, bodyguarding a classmate from some older bullies, etc.

Weapons may include things like sling shots, squirt guns, and rubber bands. Mages might know a couple basic illusions spells, or maybe a snowball spell.

Design Notes

Generally speaking, I love to get feedback. However, I have a pretty specific idea in my head of what I want the end product to look like. I encourage you to drop me notes of comment on what I post, but don;t expect me to make any major changes in tone or style.

I'm using SR4 as a base, though I'm stripping some of the extra elements away. My goal is that the game will feel like Shadowrun still and the rule sto be familiar to current players, but should also be very fast and loose. The emphasis is more on style and story rather than rules and combat mechanics.

My free time is pretty limited, and I'm easily distracted by stuff, so I may produce this in dribbles and drabs. But my goal is that I want to have a simple, fleshed out, and working game "world" and rules set together by Origins. Which gives me just about 5 months.

Bull

So that's what we got.

This is a sweet idea


I was wondering how it would all work out based on your first post, but the setting makes it all work out awesomely. This should be cool, my ten year old is always wanting to play and something like this would be cool for him, and it also makes a great setting for adults too.

I think this is a great plan, but I think your numbers might be a bit off.

Well, William MacCallister is my old character, Bull. Who was a really, really, really good decker by the time I retired him

Basically, the 5 Mill was an "incentive" for Bull to start something. Between his Decking skills and his own personal slush fund (Which was significantly more than that), well... That wasn;t the only thing he sused.

PLus, for the most part, the school isn;t cheap. Parents still have to pay tuition. THough the exact cost is fluid, and sometimes Bull works out a deal for a job with theparents...

And as for the student population, welll... Considering we're talking (mostly) just the kids of Shadowruners? How many characters have you played or played with that actually had kids? I can't imagine that most runners would actually willingly have kids, and I imagine that birth control methods are pretty reliable in Shadowrun. I know Bull never would have, but he got sucker punched by a very sadistic GM who knew that I didn;t know SR very well at the time.

Bull

100-200 is just about right for a small community school, though not very practical for a full 13 grades.

Small communities around the united states have schools that size and they make it work.

There are schools that are 100 students or even less, yeah, that I grant you. But a school with one hundred students from all the grades between preschool through high school combined is not only rare, and not only a bit unrealistic given the circumstances, but most importantly, it doesn't sound like it'd be any fun. A GM would only have ten or less students per grade to work with, and that makes for a constrained plot without room for extras - or without other kids the PCs can go to for enacting wacky and creative plans. And those extras are important, mind you. When the PCs pull off some awesome run, there have to be random people to pass along rumors and gossip and form fan clubs.

I agree that the school should be small enough to allow some familiarity among people within a few grades of each other. But if everybody knows everybody else, then there's no mystery, and it's not as fun. I'd aim for grades no smaller than 20, which means a school size of about 300, and no bigger than 100, which means a school size of 1500 or less (depending on how many grades the reader's country happens to have - I count preschool, kindergarten, and first through twelfth, personally, after which the kiddies go on to MIT&T.)

The size of the school really isn't too important one way or another, honestly

Like I said above, I chose 100, because the Shadowrun community just isn't that large. TO me, this makes sense, but hey, who am I to stop someone's fun? If you want to run with the Shadowrun Jr idea and would rather have a school of 300, or 500, or 1000? Feel free!

For a smaller school, I'm imagining that the "grades" are grouped up a bit more. So rather than 3rd Grade (8 years old) being a single class, you might have 2nd through 4th grades grouped up and taking classes together.

of course, I'm mostly looking at this as a novelty setting that's really only good for a fun, light one-off game as a break from a serious SR game, rather than as a campaign setting anyways. If you were to try using this as the basis of a campaign game, having more students could be quite helpful.

Bull

oh wow, we actually did something like this set in HS a few years ago. We were limited in weapons, cyberware etc and were going more for local problems. gangers busting into the prom, lifting parts for a new car, pranks of the corp kids etc.

We had an ork who was the kid stuck in eternal shop class. the foot ball player who's rich daddy bought him some augmentation to snag a college sports scholarship, the decker was the nerd type, a phys-add was a track rat, the shaman was an outdoory type and the face was a cheerleader.

Aging and Metas

Children and aging has never really been touched on to any real degree in Shadowrun, that I know of. At best there may be a throwaway line or three in one of the novels, but there's nothing in the core books that I can recall. As for the novels, well... They had a Goblinized Dwarf once. <shrug>

Anyways, the one issue I thought about right away when I first started thinking about this game was the problem of aging. When Bull had kids, for simplicities sake our GM ruled that they aged pretty fast, since Orks have a shorter life span. I think we generally assumed 2-3 years for every 1 year in game.

However, this creates some problems in my mind, because if they aged rapidly, they need to develop mentally more rapidly as well, or things quickly become weird (16 year olds with the mind of an 8 year old?). And Trolls would grow even faster.

meanwhile, do Elves (and to a lesser extent, Dwarves) develop slower? Would an elf be a child twice as long? three times? I remember one of the things in the original Dragonlance trilogy that always bothered me was some comments about how 60 year old elves were still considered children in their society. Considering that they aren't stupid or mentally challenged in any way, why would they develop intellectually any slower? And if they didn't, and it was strictly a cultural bias, well... I dunno. weird, again.

So I'm going with the idea that until puberty, all the metas age at the same rate, at least until puberty or so. This keeps the pre-teen game on even footing, and really doesn't effect the teenage game too much. It's basically just a growth spurt at that point.

Likewise, the metahuman attribute advantages struck me as a potential problem. Since I'm thinking about 3rd graders as the central focus of my version of the game, giving a troll +4 or +5 to a stat seems a bit ridiculous. I mean, Troll Children don't come out of the womb with a 5 strength.

So I'm basically ruling that, mostly, those advantages also are a part of puberty. The pre-teen game is going to have attribute caps below the norm anyways (Probably a cap of 4), so the penalties won;t really be a factor either. I'll probably give the trolls a +1 Body/Strength bonus, but they'll be the only ones with a bonus, and they'll be the only ones it costs build points to play.

I'm debating on the size for the dwarf children, as well. If their growth is relative, a 3rd grader dwarf would be ridiculously small. I'm thinking that they'll generally just be a little shorter than the average child, until they reach a normal dwarf height (Which would be right around 4th grade or so, on average), at which point they simply stop getting taller, and start bulking up instead.

I'll tell you what, pondering this game has got me thinking about Shadowrun in some very unusual ways.

Bull

THis is great.

It sounds like the school is made for the children of people who make enemies, but don't have the resources of a AAA corp behind them. In other words, it's special because it rolls up the knowledge necessary to survive on the streets, applicable 'technical' skills related to those their parents use, plus the standard schoolwork fodder, all in a high-security, well defended locale and with a heavy leaning towards anonymity.

Doesn't this sound like it would be enticing for a lot more people than just shadowrunners? Government and corporate spooks for one (especially those with questionable loyalties, such as if they're double crossing someone or secret agents). Maybe a few high-level corpers who don't want their kids fed the corporate line. A lot of people in corps which are AA or lower and are easier targets for the big boys.

In other words, you'd likely be looking at a good deal more kids, but little Sally, child of Shadowrunner, sits next to Roberto, child of Renraku Red Samurai. This gives you the chance for some proper cliques. Now if only the school were next to Lone Star's School for Poor Employees' Children.


In regards to brain growth...
From what I've seen, orks and trolls have slightly larger brains than the other races, and are carried longer before birth. However, ratios are also important. I believe a troll takes 12 months to gestate? Can't remember where I read that, but it sounds right. That puts it as being a little later than a horse. I don't know what a troll's birthweight is compared to its adult weight, that is pretty important. Given the very long gestation though, I would assume the ratio is smaller than that of humans (in other words, its born being more developed than a human baby).

So in these cases, trolls, and to a lesser degree orks would be more mentally developed ever so slightly from the getgo, and with more brain developing in parallel, a well fed troll likely is slightly ahead of the curve in regards to many important skills. The fact that trolls have a penalty to their intelligence leads me to believe that a troll brain is not precisely like a human brain, and likely has more space dedicated to physical activities and less to higher mental processes. So trolls are probably walking, running, throwing, etc. slightly before their human classmates. It is quite likely they develop their social skills earlier too, which means that in pre-school, the little human boys are still hitting each other over the head with blocks, while the troll child is learning how to share, draw and engage in teamwork.

I seem to recollect that dwarves also had a slightly longer gestational time, so they'd also have a slight advantage in the early brains department, but it would be so minor I think you'd only see it when you averaged out grades.

The book does clearly state an 18 year old dwarf is an adult. I seem to recollect the general rule is dwarves and elves become adults at about the same rate as humans, and I don't believe I've seen anything to contradict that. So I'd assume no one develops slower than the average human.

As we climb up the grades, it is pretty clear orks and trolls hit puberty younger. Currently I believe humans generally hit it around 12-14, so orks especially would hit it closer to 10-12. Better believe that'll be awkward! On reading it doesn't look like orks and trolls are naturally any more aggressive than anyone else, they're just reacting to being a marginalized minority. However in this school, they'll be reacting more to the fact that they have body hair and an interest in girls and no one else does. When I was 14 I remember feeling like the locker room was full of silver-back gorillas. Now it really would be! Presumably this is also around the time that orks and trolls (those with the penalty to intelligence) are going to start having a little more difficulty, as the school material gets more technical. I'm sure there'll be remedial classes for them, but a lot I suspect would decide they're banking on getting a sports scholarship to get through university. Elves MAY hit puberty later than average, but really, who can tell? They all look like 12-year-old girls anyway.

Of course, if they goblinize, all bets are off (talk about embarrassing moments in the locker room!)

Haven't read the entire thread (short on time) so I don't know if you're at a stage where you are thinking about run ideas.

If not you can file THIS away as a future plot device.

Love the concept, btw.

Other people to enroll in the school... Don't forget Mr. Johnson's kids, if he's double crossed a team or two. So you have the runners kids in school with the Johnson's kids.

Parent's Day... Awkward...

This concept is awesome, and I look forward to seeing how it develops.

Zounds.
I agree that you would have a fairly reasonable calling to admit students from outside the shadow community, especially considering the state of the public school system, and taking into account the amount of 'programming' that the corp schools would involve. I could see some of the less.... zelotus, parents wanting to get their child into a quietly prestigious private boarding school.

First, Kiddierun sounds like an excellent one off "The-GM-Needs-Time-To-Think-Of-New-Ways-To-Kill-You" adventure. I find it particularly appealing since you want to run it with simplified rules and what sounds to be a firmly tongue in cheek atmosphere.
I must have missed this but: Are you using a point buy system with various attribute and skill caps? Seems to me that a buy in of 100-150 would be a pretty good starting point. The specialization such a set up would require would lend well to the “School Age Archetype� model you’ve mentioned.

And now my few sheckles on brain development and meta children.

I’d suspect that orks and trolls typically develop physical coordination much sooner than baseline humans. After all, if you’re only going to live to 40 or so you better hit the ground running (provided evolution hasn’t gone straight out the window at the first shout of “Magic!�). Socially and emotionally I’d imagine they develop at the same rate as your average human, up until their early puberty. As they’re puberty happens much earlier, it’d get done early and as a result their brain development probably finishes up much sooner than baselines humanity. All that hormonal soup crap gets flushed out sooner which is probably pretty nice (aside from the horribly traumatic experience of starting puberty when you’re 6). You might also use this to explain why they have lower mental stats. You get there sooner but stop before your brain has a chance to lay down the finer detail needed for higher order work (logic). I bet a corps like Evo is probably working on various nano treatments to allow meta children to develop to the same mental level as their peers. I’d be interested to see if orks and trolls have gender differentiated development, and to see if it’s the females who develop first or the males. I also have a great deal of time on my hands which explains why I’m writing a three page treastie on the finer points of the developmental physiology of beings that exist in the fevered imagination of individuals that accept “frag� will ever supplant the sublime f-bomb. (Yes I know that all changed in 4th ed but every time I cuss at my gaming table I catch myself mentally substituting.)

You could probably make arguments that an ork is physiologically mature at say 14 and (chemically) mentally mature before their 18th birthday. To contrast, humans don’t finish puberty until they’re 16 and our brains don’t settle down until our early 20’s.

The social implications of a group of people who go through the hormone fueled turmoil of puberty years before the rest of humanity is probably far reaching. Unless educational protocols were quickly updated there simply wouldn’t be the support structure in place to deal with things like a depressed, suicidal, and pregnant 6 year old. Furthermore, this child has the physical development of someone perhaps twice their age. Are you going to let your 90 pound baseline human child play Pee Wee football with a troll kid who weighs almost twice as much? Humanis must have a field day with statistic concerning troll on human injuries when the developmental disparities are greatest. See! See! They’re too dangerous to put in daycare let alone give decent jobs.

Of course with puberty comes that whole interest in the opposite sex thing and THAT dear friends is something I’m not going into right now. The image of a sexually developed 10 year old troll girl falling for her not so developed human “boyfriend� is probably a work in fanfic waiting to happen.

The bit about dwarves and elves being “adults� at 18 would probably have a lot to do with societal pressure. All your human peers are ready to go of to college, why aren’t you? I’d imagine in places like Tir, where elves have thoroughly embraced their odd nature you might see a more permissive attitude towards development. Eh, so you haven’t moved out of your house at 25, who really cares? It’s not like you are going to die anytime soon.

Of course in gaming terms, particularly Bull’s game, it would probably be easier to say everyone develops at the same rate and trolls and orks are just a little bigger. For comedic value you could even throw in that they go through puberty a couple years before everyone else. The emotionally scarred orc rigger who got made fun of in middle school gym class because he had to shave his back comes to mind.

And lordy, if you have read this far I wish I could give you a point of karma for diligence.

Sorry I'm a bit new to the forums but I found this topic to be quite interesting. One thing I thought was why gimp the stats on character generation? I mean if you want to keep some of the core rules why not just have stats for children and stats for adults on completely different level? I mean a teacher will be much harder beat then Jimmy... the little brat who stole this days shipment of milk and is selling it to students at a 60% markup. The principle of the school could basically be a dragon (in the sense that you never deal with the principle [squealing] or tangle with him/her.)

I find the idea really interesting, but if this is a school of only 100-150 students it might limit the amount of characters you could introduce if you decide to turn the setting into a long term game. If it was an urban public school with about five thousand students it allows the flexibility to incorporate other aspects of the Shadowrun game. It will allow you to incorporate various aspects of the game while allowing you to turn it into Shadowrun kid style. For instance the "gangs" can just be different groups of kids trying to do biz on the school yard. Might there be a child's version of troll biker gangs where they ride around on tripped out bikes or scooters? I don't know I just think a small school means that as small little Shadowrunners can't get themselves tangled into a crazy web of school politics, shady toy deals, and small time comic deals. I mean if they already know every single person and every single clique (trust me small schools = you know everyone and everyone knows you) it would make it harder to have a continuation of the game sessions. With enough students child SIN's (basically their student ID cards) someone could try to pull themselves off as Sally or Jimmy O'shey - 3rd grader in chess club. Maybe after the great computer crash (just 10 months ago) the system was terribly scrambled so a lot people have just kinda gotten lost in the system?

I think another interesting idea is scaling down the quirks so that it matches kids. Like mild addiction - milk, or common mild irritation sugar. Maybe some of the drugs could also be scaled down as well like coffee - +1 to Init +1 IP (man that kid is just tweaking out... he started to blur after that first cup.) If your keeping it lighthearted it can fit into the realm of being restricted or at least frowned upon by teachers and can allow for the same basic mechanics to be used.

I think it is a great concept though that you could really go far with. The only question I wonder about is how would you deal with damage tracks in a setting like this? I guess it justs a question of what do you want to run with, but I think you could make a lot of similarities between an adult version and a kiddy version of shadowrun.

In other news today, The Dunkelzahn Memorial School for Gifted Youngsters suffered a tragic loss as one of their students succumbed to a common food allergy...

Shadowrunner kids, they'll kill your kids, and make it look like and accident.

Okay, that's way to dark for this setting, but I still find it darkly amusing.

While Masterofm has some good ideas I think some of the charm is playing characters that are totally unlike what were used to playing (no stat lower than 3, a bevy of diverse skills). Looking down at your "average" strength of 1 as you try to kick a door would highlight such amusing disparities.

Plus we wouldn't have to make all new tests and what not.

Just a quick note to say I haven't forgotten about this, but with the board relaunch and such, I've been a tad busy keeping an eye on other things. I'll hopefully have some more soonish.

Bull

If you scale the system and lets say double the barrier rating of all objects it allows you to keep with the core rules instead of having to develop a whole new system. If an average persons str is 2 and a child's average is 1 then doubling the doors object rating gives you the same effect w/o needing to do a ton of reorganization. If children are 1/2 or 1/3rd adults stats then one can see that a teacher or adult might be more of a threat then an average child.

If you say piss off the child of a Yak gangster (so much so that he tattles on you.... the little brat) then one can see how if the adult steps in to try and "handle" the party he would pretty much be a boss NPC that the whole party would have to subdue. Maybe trip wire traps and contact drying super glue on the floor followed up by some rope and maybe silly string or mustard applied directly to the eye?

I think the main thing that would need a lot of retooling would be almost *all* of the spells and how child mages would be able to see on the astral or take on an astral form.

I love that idea.

As to development and puberty I would have it for simplicities sake that Orks and Trolls hit puberty at the earlier end of the human range while Dwarves and Elves would hit late.

However for the sake of game quality I would add a flaw (say 5bp) that is called prepubescent that way players would be able to choose just how "developed" their characters are.

As to the transition to physically adult I would guess Orcs and Trolls would be mature at 15-16, Humans 18-20 and Dwarves and Elves would be around the 21 range. However I would leave the emotional maturity level dependent on their social surroundings.

The problem with scaling the system means there's a huge amount more variance in rolls. I do like that, unlike The Other Game, with Shadowrun you can pretty much depend on a firearms master hitting a can at 300 paces.

Well scaling it just means that when you look at the kiddie shadowrunner and apply that to the real world that would mean if a child has 1/3rd adult stats that means a door might have an armor rating of 12 and a structure rating of 15, which means after a few blows a high strength troll could break it down, now slamming through some drywall would have an armor rating of 6 and a structure rating of 6. It also means that if a school is running a standard OS of 2 (in the rl version of SR) that means to a child it is the same as mill spec hardware. After that it just seems a lot of other things make more sense. If the kids were trying to take on a gangster with stats of 9 across the board with body armor they are basically a one man hurting machine (which is as it should be.) I just thought it was nice to scale everything in that way you could transfer over characters into the setting without having to do any tedious tweaking while also at the same time allowing the child Shadowrunners to use most of the Core rules. Not sure what you could do with weapons to devise what you can do with them, but I suggest try something like annoyance, and stun.

So for instance you could make an adept troll named "CC" the cupcake whipping troll. With Missle Parry 1 (.25 magic) - Reaction + Missile parry =/+ can grab thrown objects out of air. Missile Mastery (1.0 magic): Harmless objects become (Str/2) Stun instead of annoyance, Normal thrown weapons have +1 damage. Power throw 3 (.75 magic) + 6 Strength bonus when throwing objects. So it would basically mean that CC could just whip a cupcake and instead of annoying a kid by plopping it on his head he actually would send the other kid sailing across the room knocking him out cold.

The father troll: "Awwh look at that! Soon CC will be chucking knives in no time. I'm so proud of him!"


Maybe make the annoyance track a reflection of Willpower and make you stun track body (as the two forms of dammage you can inflict.) If you can annoy another child while hitting him with spitballs during class and he acts out he might end up being the one who gets punished (that is unless the teacher finds out about it.) It might take a high willpower to resist the annoyance of having a spit ball lodged in the dead center of the back of your head.

I haven't had any free time this week, but I'm hopefully gonna have some time tonight and the next couple days, so I'll try and work out a bit more background as well as the basic ruleset. Magic and Hacking are my sticking point right now, but I have some ideas for how to handle them simply and keep them within the scope of the game.

First off, I don;t really plan to "scale". One thing I want to do with SR JR is, as I said above, to create something of a "Shadowrun Light" game. One of those is, simply, smaller dice pools. I want to retain the feel of playing SR, but want to do some stuff like shrink the pools down a little, the the attributes a little more streamlined, stuff like that.

Ok, I lied. I am scaling the game a little. But rather than scale up attributes and skills and requiring tough targets, I'm simply scaling the average target back some. A lot of stuff will remain outside the abilities of a child, but even playing kids, most characters dice pools are gonna run from 4 to 6, which is enough for 1 to 2 hits. The idea is that under normal circumstances, a single hit will succeed on a test.

Really, at the end of the day, the ruleset isn;t all that important. I imagine this as a lot more of a narrative game than a rules-based one. The rules are mainly going to be there to outline the types of things the characters can do. The story more than the dice will decide how successful they are at those actions.

Bull

You forgot a key element of this style of game Bull.
You can't play this before midnight.
I requires that special kind of sleepy goofiness that can only be truly acheived through sleep deprivation.

Nice to see some of my games left an impression on ya!

Holy Shit! Tinner! Hey man!



Booze will achieve the same effect



Heh. Hey, some of the best times of my life man. I'm still waiting for you to finish that "Orks and Elves riding Raptors for Horses in the Old West" game

Bull

Where do I sign up for this event.... and subscribe to your newsletter

And what time are we doing SR Jr. at Origins?

They don't? I always assumed that they did, which is as good a reason to discriminate against them as any. I see it sort of like Worf's childhood in Star Trek: The Next Generation. As a kid, he played soccer and loved the sport. The, one day, he bumps into a human kid from the opposing team while going for the ball. From his perspective, it's just a gentle bump; he barely feels it. The human kid dies of a broken neck. This is why tends to happen when children of races who have with high strength and body bonuses play with the children of races who don't. It's very tragic. It makes good flavor.
Of course, it can also be slightly unbalancing in a fun kiddie game.

This is why I suggest a scalable system (yet again) because if you don't play a troll or an orc your a damned fool. Playing a human with 200 bp's means you really can't throw the stats that a starting troll or orc can have. If you decide to augment a troll or orc's stats is hard since you can't really throw 2.5 dice at a situation. I mean throw a few BPs into having a character that is just better then a human will ever be if the system isn't scaled. The easiest way to cut their stats in half is making them a 400 bp character (and it) basically makes their character a 200 bp character when dealing with adult characters or items. I mean if they can buy high level agents and programs drones would just rock. If you want the 200 bp thing I just see it as a potential problem whereas tweaking the game system just makes it easier. Although just changing the starting stats of the meta humans to make things equal... I don't know... it just seems so much easier. That way a character can never min max their stats to the point where they could be as stealthy as a professional Shadowrunner.

This is pretty much why I'm avoiding it altogether by not having the "exceptional" attributes of Metas kick in until puberty-ish.

I've pretty much decided that I'm going to have Elf, Dwarf, and Ork cost 5 BP, and Troll cost 10. They all get their thermo or lowlight vision, and trolls are going to have a higher attribute cap, but no "freebie" points. Thus you can have a troll that "hit a growth spurt", so to speak, but you'll be paying for it.

Bull

Not really worth paying 5 bp to lose a point of edge and gain some crappy visuals then. I mean a kid could still get cool shades that give them visual bonuses. Trolls also get some pretty lame stuff if they have to give up that extra point of edge... it's kinda like saying I payed 20 bp for a +1 to reach and the ability to move just a little bit faster. Would you make a meta human only have 1 edge and a human have 2? If so I think it would warp the balance a little bit (just my opinion.)

Honestly? Stats are usually one of the last things I think about when I create a character. I usually choose the race and "class" based on what I want to play, and then build up from there.

Oh, and I'm not gonna give the humans the +1 edge either. if I'm not doling out bonuses for the metas, it should go all the way around the table.

But again, I want this to be far more story driven than anything else. The Metahumanity is more for flavor than anything else. At the end of the day, the game is about a bunch of kids on a playground and in school, just adding in some Shadowrun trappings.

This is really what I'm striving for here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-1VkFVW0ns - YouTube of the Recess cartoon intro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recess_(TV_series)

http://users.cwnet.com/xephyr/rich/dzone/h...ages/recess.gif - Pic of the Recess Gang

Basically, imagine that gang, with Mikey (The big blond kid) as a troll, Spinelli (Girl with te leather jacket) and Vince (Kid with the basketball) as elves, TJ (With the backwards hat) as an Ork, Gretchen (girl with glasses) as Human, and Gus (boy with the glasses) as a dwarf. Gus is the only one I'd even say needed a size adjustment, just make him a little shorter and stockier. Everyone else is fine as is. Right there you have a decent Shadowrun team, as far as skills and racial allotments go

I think you're making a good call by not scaling the game. By keeping the numbers/dice pools small you can focus on telling a story and creating interesting characters (since they won't be able to fall back on their stats or even their skills to save their ass).

So what are you going to do with skills? Keep the stock SR4 skills and apply them to kids or give the kids some kid specific skills? Athletics transfers over just fine but what about pistols? With the tone you're going for I doubt that kids are going to be running around gacking each other, thusly specialized skills like Automatics and Heavy Weapons would be out of character for this adventure. I'm guessing it would be easier to break combat down to "Ranged", "Brawl", "Improvised" and maybe having Throwing based off of athletics or something. Spit wad? Ranged. Tackling someone? Brawl. Hitting someone with a boot? Improvised. Throwing a tray full of food in their face? Maybe improvised, maybe throwing. Pantsing someone? Brawl. Applying a wedgie? Extended test brawl.
I'd probably do something similar with build/repair skills, breaking into Electronics, Computers (software), Craft/Shop, and maybe Weapons or something. You know, the go to guy for making that 6P rubber band gun.
Social skills could probably be put in unchanged, Con and Negotiate? I'm sure players will find a use for that.

Are you going to do some form of edges and flaws? Corps Kid would be a fun one, kinda like being a Sinner /and/ an ork/elf poser. Troublemaker means your character is obligated to take part in mayhem in all it's forms. That Guy means you're always the kid who is suspected, regardless of actual guilt. Tattle Tale, decreased rep with fellow kids, increased rep with some adults. Growth Spurt (Big For His/Her Age) might mean you gain a point of strength but you lose a point of agility and suffer some social stigma(you big googly kid). Pigpen, soap and water scare you but you scare the other kids. Teachers Pet, variable cost, low level gives you an improved relation with one teacher, higher levels add additional teachers. Prodigy, the Kiddierun version of Exceptional Skill/Attribute.

Not to generate extra rules but I think it'd be fun to have a Popularity Pool or as you mentioned in the original points "Cry Points". Various activities or attacks would deplete PP to nil and force the character to run away or breakdown emotionally (Nobody likes you, why are you even here?) I see it like a variable stun pool, you'd resist it with willpower+intuition/logic or just willpower alone. This gives players a way to take enemies out without being required to attack them. This mechanic seems a little complex though. I just like the idea of humiliating my opponents into submission. Maybe you could just do 4 levels: High, medium, low, Crying in the Corner (CitC)

I'd also like to see "older kids" be played like long time runners, veterans of many a school ground scrap. Who needs immortal elves when you're 8 and he's in highschool?
"I hear he can drive! Like a car! By himself!" "Well I hear he's seen a boob!" "No way!" "Way!" etc etc.

Skills is one I've been toying around with a bit when I can.

To some extent for skills (and attributes) I'm falling back onto 2nd/3rd edition a little, actually, since I want to simplify a bit. So I'm recombining Logic & Intuition into Intelligence, and Agility & Reaction back into Quickness. The skill list I'm gonna translate over into "Kids skills". Firearms becomes Water Guns. I'm gonna combine pretty much all the climbing, running, jumping, etc skills into Athletics, Pilot skills become "Ride: Bike", etc.

I'm also gonna be kitbashing a simplified Computer and Magic system. Give Kid-mages a narrow list of relatively low-power, non-damaging spells. Keep Hacking to one or two tests. I have a great idea for a technomancer, which will be one of the "Sample Characters" I do up for the game. (Bascially, Kid Technomancer will "talk" to the machines, make friends with them to get them to help him. AKA, using sprites, but he doesn't realize that's what hes doing or see it that way).



Yup. I'm seeing Edges and Flaws for SR JR to be a little less of an ability to twink out your character, and a little more like ways to define the classic "kid stereotype", SR Style. A lot of similar stuff to what you have above is sitting in a notepad right now waiting for me to quit slacking



Heh. That's an interesting idea.



Right now I'm focusing mainly on the somewhat narrow scope of the game i have stuck in my head, and I'm gonna try like hell to have that done, fleshed out, with a couple adventures in hand, etc by the time the cons roll around so I can abuse a few folks.

But there's definitely some more stuff that's kicking around my head. Options for older kids, alternate play styles and power levels, etc. HighSchoolRun is an interesting idea in it's own right.

If you've ever seen Recess (WHich is, along with a handful of other things, somewhat of a model I'm working off of), though, they really do play up the differences between the variouses age groups and how they see themselves. King Bob is a 6th grader, and the 6th graders are lords of the playground and have all the real power. the Kindergartners are all savages, almost literally, with war paint and this little tribal village of a jungle gym.

So yeah, I'm very much picturing this social range with high schoolers being the "PRime RUnners", the PCs age group being mostly newbie types, and the Kidergartners being akin to street ganger wannabes.

Bull

gotcha (/rules nitpicking disabled) I just like the idea of a troll SR kid knocking another kid out cold with a cupcake and then looking innocently at the board when the teacher whips around to see what happened. If it is mainly story driven then the stats and whatnot are pretty much arbitrary at that point anyways. Looking forward to it seems like it will be interesting! I think it won't be to hard to use spirits and spells in more of a childlike way. For instance an earth spirits elemental attack could throw sand in a kids eye, and you could have AOE wreck milk (where everyones milk in a 5 meter radius explodes.) I mean I can just see milk (or water balloons) used like grenades. Maybe just use tricksie childlike spirits that are highly interested in causing mischief.... or how about every kid mage has basically an ally spirit that needs to be looked after (in fitting more with the theme of Recess,) and sometimes goes around causing a bit of havoc as well as helping your team out. Maybe it can still have the same Cry boxes and after a while of being humiliated it goes and skulks in a corner on the astral.

Some other thoughts that occured to me:

The CitC pool came to me because I envisioned a physad applying a truly earth shacking wedgie during combat, not only inflicting regular stun damage but also hurting his targets pride and playground standing. The idea that the runner team could than run previously mentioned target up a flag pole would have a cumilative effect and possibly knock that NPC out of the game (or that PC if the converse happens). Similarly you should be able to use things like bugs and dead animals to gross certain people out and inflict CitC damage.

By the way, TM Kidderun? OH HELL YES. The image of a 8 year old TM talking to his best friend Mr Calculator or Mrs Apple Machine is just awesome to me.

I think it'd be more fun as a Quality but it would also work as a contact:
Older Brother/Sister
Cost: Variable
Players who take this quality have may make a negotiation test to acquire items not typically availible to their age group. This negotiation test may also be used to get to access to people who are not in their age group.
The Bad Stuff: Never make a deal with an Older Brother, they are bigger and might hold you down and bungee loogees into your face.

Younger Sibiling
Cost: -Variable
Gives a negative social pool in most situations. May be tactically used to confuse, hound, and recon an enemy. Powered by cookies or candy. Additional rules: When summoning a Younger Sibling an offering of sweets must be made along with an opposed willpower roll. If the player wins the opposed check, the number of sweets offered dictates the number of "services" the YS will provide. Caution! If the number of sweets exceeds the total willpower of the YS the YS may fly into a "sugar rage" and "flip out" acting randomly and inappropriately for the duration of it's services. (This last bits mostly a joke, but it'd be a funny mechanic)

Pansy
Cost: -Variable
Players are easily effected by "gross" things (GM descretion). Use allergy rules for point value and general rules. Use Phobia rules for further guidance.

If you're going to you spirits you'd have to make some new kiddie appropriate spirit powers.

(Things have been hectice. I'm still working on this, but it's going much slower than I'd hoped. This is a little In Character piece taht I'll likely open it with)

When two men from the Dunkelzahn Institute of Magical Research showed up on my doorstep, I was confused. When they showed me the passage from Dunklezahn's Will, one of the sections that hadn't been made public, I was flabbergasted. After all, I'd never even met the Wyrm, let alone told him my private little dream.

My name is William Michael MacCallister, also known as a Former Ork Decker and Shadowrunner named Bull. Yes, that Bull. Despite my best efforst over the last couple decades, I never managed to keep my real name much of a secret, even if my SIN said that I was legally deceased. I stamped it out as best I could, but at the end of the day, any halfway competant decker was usually abel to ferret out my name, if they wanted to.

What wasn't well known was the fact that I was married and the father of 3 children. My first was born about a year after I started running the shadows, with the twins born the following year. They're tough kids, very talented, extremely intelligent, and they survived far more than any child should ever have to, including over a year in Bug City.

I've done my best over the years to protect them, shelter them, and educate them, but it's never been easy. Between moving around a lot, the danger that constantly hung over our heads, not having a valid SIN themselves, and a million other little things, they never really got a proper education. I'd idly wished over the years that there was a way for them to get an education, one that wouldn't put them in danger if someone made a connection to me.

So imagine my surprise when I get handed an awfully large check and told that a dead presidential dragon wanted me to start up a school that could do exactly that. And the two men from the DIMR also told me that the Insititue was interested in helping out, that something like this was "good for the future".

I told them to go stuff themselves. If I was gonna do this, I was gonna do this my way, with no interferance and no coporate or governmental influence. They simply nodded, handed me a business card, and left.

I eventually took them up on their offer, with a few stipulations thatthey agreed with. After all, 5 million nuyen is a lot of money, but hardly enough to really start up a full blown school. It would have ended up as either a very small school, a prohibitivly expensive one, or more likely both.

So while I hate to admit it, the school now has more than a couple unofficial "corporate sponsors", though I'm careful and very clear that the school will not be influenced by them in any way. And usually the sponsors have a reason or two themselves to follow the rules. After all, more than one corp exec or celebrety has an illegitimate child that he can't acknowledge publically, but could still be a target by his enemies.

At the end of the day, that's really the purpose behind the Dunklezahn Memorial School. A safe, secure, and private place of learning for children who might otherwise find normal, public schooling difficult or unsafe. Of course, the fact that most of these kids are the children of Shadworunners, Corp Execs, Politicians, and Celebrities presents it own unique set of challenges...

I don't know Bull, it's just not dark enough, not gritty enough, not depressing enough to be REAL shadowrun.

I like it! Can't wait to see what you've got when you're not getting hammered by other projects.

Heh. I'm gonna have a section at the end for optional rules and ideas for tweaking the setting. I've already decided that I'm going to call the "dark, gritty" setting the Battle Royale version. Not sure I could ever play a truly dark and gritty game with kids like that myself though.



thanks, and sorry for not getting back to you yet. It's on my plate, but other stuff has taken priority.

Lookin' good


Have you looked at Cyberpunk: Cybergeneration ??
It's basically all about children and teens, and has some good stuff about being that young.

Been slowly gathering up my various notes, and gonna try getting a rough draft together this weekend. Hopefully. Heh.

Anyways, a few more thoughts and ideas I'm working with.

Age Categories

I'm going to break the kids up into three age groups (Basically younger Elementary, Middle School, and High School) as the three different "eras" that are playable. This lets me set attribute caps and such, and helps keep the kids on a level playing feild, so to speak. It'll also help the older kids refelect being "older kids", and it lets me ease in the attrbute modifiers for racials.

Qualities

I want to work up a nice list of school-age specific Qualities. One idea I have is that each kid can take a Personality Clique Quality for free. Bascially, Nerd, Jock, Etc, with an "Average Joe" version for characters that dont belong to any clique. Bascially, they'd give a bonus to their area of expertise, and a penalty as well.

The School

I'm still tweaking the school population a little bit. One thing I'm going to do is say that the school is actually split into two, an Elementary (k-6) and Secondary (7-12), which helps me spread out the students a little, and avoid overcrowding. They're still on the same grounds, but are seperate campuses, for all intents and purposes.

For the default setting, I still want smaller classes. I'm also going with the concept that on average, the student population grows as it gets older, to a degree. This is a compbination of younger kids getting homeschooled more often but needed a more formal education as they get older, and older children of shadowrunners probably being more of "problem children" and getting kicked out of schools, so they get sent to the DUnkie School, which has more in common at times with a military school than a regular school.

I'm not 100% sure how English schools tend to work, but I'm going to kinda borrow the model from Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series for classes. I'm assuming a smaller student base, and classes tending to be more standardized as far as who's taking them. So rather than a traditional high school where you might only have 1 or two classes with one of your classmates (or none), you're likely to stay with the same classmates most of the day, except for specialized classes.

Cry Points

I'm still playing with this idea a bit. I need a new name though. Right now I'm working with "Composure", but not sure I like it.

Basically, Composure handles a combination of a kids confidence, his health, hygiene, etc. Getting hurt, getting humiliated, being tired, all these things will reduce his composure, which makes it harder to focus and concentrate. In younger students, they'll eventually just break down and start crying. In older kids, they'll likely just get surely, resentful, and refusing to do anything.

It's still a work in progress. It would replace Health and Stun though, being a combination of your Toughness and WIllpower.

More later!

Well first of all, this sounds quite cool. Great job Bull.

Regarding English schools, from my experience growing up it works in 3 different ways.

Primary/Juniors School
Basically have a class of 10-20, 5-11 year olds. Each class has a dedicated teacher who teaches you everything.

Comprehensive School
A form of 10-20 again, 11-16 year olds. Each subject has teachers and then it breaks down on ‘sets’ which are basically grouping of abilities. Each subject class is usually made up from a pool of 2 forms and runs the 10-20 rule again.

6th Form
Tutor Groups of 10-20 people who are under a certain tutor then you have classes of your choice, for 17-18 year olds. You only see the people in your classes which can be maybe 1 or 2 per class from your tutor group.

Don’t know if that helps also that is from my experience in the UK of growing up and it does vary even by private/public school.

Keep up the good work.

Hey Bull!

I haven't read through everything (yet!), but here are some quick thoughts:

Metakid appearance:
- Dwarf: Mildly shorter but hairy from a young age.
- Elf: Tendency for slighter builds
- Orks: slightly beefier. Maybe looking like a kid one grade ahead
- Trolls: Noticibly big (with horn nubs) looks like they were held bacak 2 or 3 grades.

Combine physical & stun tracks into the endurance track (equal to 8 + highest of body/2 or will/2). Fill up the endurance track and you are "defeated".

Rate areas of the schoolyard by teacher response time.

Advancement: Rename karma as brownie points or gold stars

Use Bikes, scooters and skateboards for vehicles. Treat a kid having a datajack at a young age as having a piercing (but then i'm somewhat of an old fogey, so maybe that's not a big deal anymore.)

- Cabral/Pixel
I'll check back in when I have more time

RESURRECTION!!

I've heard that there is someone who has time on his hands, and a few of us who have been willing to help. I think we need to get this rolling again, so maybe it can be done for something upcoming (like a con... hint hint)

Wow, I know Jake and Mei would try to get their kid (when they have one) in there... I imagine an ork kid, a hacking adept or physical techno...

BTW, I see the stereotype conversion from Recess going a tad differently:

Mikey (The big blond kid) as a troll, Spinelli (Girl with te leather jacket) as humans, TJ (With the backwards hat) as an Ork, Gretchen (girl with glasses) and Vince (Kid with the basketball) as elves, and Gus (boy with the glasses) as a dwarf.