Of course we've all heard of them. Maybe even run one or two. But as standard practice how well does it work out, and how much buy-in is required?

Essentially I've hit a wall with my players. They take the jobs because they are supposed to, but if they aren't contacted about the meet they don't go looking for it. I feel half tempted to let the PCs starve because they didn't bother to look for a job, but am hoping for an out first.

The main idea I have in mind is this: calls from contacts late at night about a product available, strangers bumping into you at the club leaving behind contact info and a note about product, but with the contact charging for the info instead of paying. Essentially each contact (or most anyway) would fill the role of Quark (DS9) as a middle man.

I know that setting wise this works fine. But as far as the main thrust of the campaign, would it work? would it be too much effort for the amount of payoff? Is there a munchkin angle I'm missing?

It should work fine! If the Shadows are quiet for work, Shadowrunners need to made cred somehow to pay the bills and oil up the Street Samurai!

At the very least, there's Jacking Ford Americars, stealing cargo loads of goods for Fixers to dispose of, beating the drek out of the nastier gangs and pawning their stuff for cash (And getting the support of the neighbourhood! This is a good thing when you need to hole up!).

A nice mix of both of these is a good set up for any game. Throw in a few, "The drek hit the fan and my contact needs some protection/help" and you have a solid campaign.

From the title of this thread, I thought it was going to be about all-female teams.

Even with Johnsons, you can get the group to come up with extra cash.

My group took a way to incapacitate the Warehouse Guards at their first Shadowrun, and turned it into something they sold to Starbacks Coffee.

That's it Can, you need to run another game so you can have a new story to share That's like the third thread today that has popped up in :

I ran one on the weekend that was too minor to warrent a post (They were Ninja Redecorators to screw up some Geomantic Feng Shui!), and an EPIC game tonight that'll get noticed big time!

...

I'm going to go back to my notes and add more violence now.

This can be done, but it will require some prep work.

First, you need to establish that you want the characters/players to be more pro-active. Come right out and say it: You want to give the players more freedom to direct the campaign, but

Second, you need to get an idea of what is going on behind the scenes in the game world. Is there a major shake up brewing at a Triple-A? Has a new drug recently hit the streets? Has Lone Star decided to shakedown section of the sprawl in the name of keeping the street safe? Has an insect shaman (or cult) moved into the PC's neighborhood?

Third, they will need some direction to get started, so you need to provide them with some plot hooks. Maybe they'll follow a hook to its logical conclusion. Maybe they'll figure out its a huge hassle and drop it in favor of something else. Whatever they decide to do, you need

Finally, you need to be willing to steer them back on course if they wander into the land of stupidity. This happens to the best groups. Sometimes a half thought out hook will be latched onto and followed... and you got nothing. Just be prepared to handle it. (I had this happen in an otherwise fantastic player-directed D&D game I ran years ago. Everything was going fine, until the players latched onto a red herring and just would not let go, even when I almost flat out told them to ignore it.)

Anyway, player directed games can be a blast.

-paws

Do it the slow way: give out shitty paying jobs.

NO, not starving them.

You give out special opportunites: the logical way of escape is a truck. Which the rigger keeps. The prototype is over there - next to the box of alpha-Wired 1 implants. The enemy mage has several foci. If the players have any smarts, they will notice that they are making more money on the side than doing their job, and that a johnsons "no stealing" policies are just a liability for little money.

How does it work? Depends. If your campaigns pay at least 20k¥ after expenses per session, hell yes. If you desire much slower rates, you´ll really have to work to deny money-making options, a definite no in my book.

I think I saw someone mention an idea on another post that would work well here, too. It's still corp related, even. Have a contact or friend of the runners who's a wageslave in some corp contact them with something he accidentally came across at work. He doesn't know exactly what it is, all he knows is it was supposed to stay a secret and the corp is willing to go out of thier way to make sure he "isn't a problem or a leak"
Fearing for his safety he contacts the runners offering them the juicy secret AND some creds to keep him safe and get him out.
Tah-Dah! No leg work required on the runner's part.

You can get away with this, but I can only see a few real routes for it to work;

1) Adventure is provided by the environment. Escape the arcology, or help guerilla fighters are examples. Toss your players in the meat grinder and they'll be happy for scraps from Johnsons.

2) Adventures are provided by the runners. They go out and find and arrange their own jobs. This requires initiative and contacts. Since it sounds like they don't have initiative, I wouldn't worry about this.

3) Adventures are provided by the runners' failures. I'm tempted to require all PCs have flaws, they make such good plot hooks. Characters with enemies should face their enemies now and again, and that includes ambushes, fake jobs, etc. If they don't have enemies yet, give them some. This'll give them something to keep them busy. My players have commented the best games they've had is when they got stuck in some muck unrelated to a job and they were suddenly put on the run.

If you want initiative, reward it. If your players don´t show initiative, the rewards have to be obvious. Keep the straight pay low, and answer all complaints with previous chances of striking rich. Things will evolve.

You can also find out if the characters have any interests of their own to pursue. Some of the most memorable moments in my previous campaigns come from runners choosing their own jobs and planning work for themselves. In SR3, one of the deckers really wanted an upgrade but didn't have the time or skills to build custom. So she found a location that was holding a Fairlight Excalibur.

The events that followed are fondly remembered as the Fairlight Massacre. The runners tripped a few alarms, and having foreseen this possibility, the mercenaries that they hired took positions outside. Armed with heavy weapons and a few spirits to protect them, they mowed through initial response and a few heavy response teams before a hot extraction.

At the end of the night, the runners were on a ship to Fiji where they were going to lay low while fencing some goods and working through contacts to obfuscate the evidence that linked them to the site. Two months later, they came back to town, fresh from vacation and hungry for more pay since they'd spent a chunk of savings living it up on the island.

First of all before this goes into the obvious realm of pushing over jewlery stores. Shadowrunners in part exist because the machine needs them, and there is no margin in hunting them down. The data they grabbed is sold and if you wipe them out you wasted resources and your competitor will just hire a different team next time. Star doesn't really care because they just want their contract renewed. The corp that hired the runners is likely now more influencial and they'd just as soon their little dirty secrets weren't poked around in. And so on.

However when runners start racking up body counts and massive property damage it becomes personal, when they get on the evening news they become a problem, and when they just steal some big expensive thing somebody is going to be willing to pay on the order of what it's worth to get it back.

And now, suddenly, the runners have real trouble. And you are not as hard to find as you think.

A run I suggest for most teams is being informed they can get in on a juicy bounty for bringing down a different runner team that decided to go solo and has been boosting expensive cars, making some residents consider switching from LS to KE security. LS can't have that, and they don't have time for red tape and jurisdiction.

Your runners aren't megacorps. But pretty soon they'll figure out that cameras are everywhere, you can use about anything for ritual magic, the spirit search power is almost broken, and if the other team wants to make some nuyen they have to sell the stuff somewhere and your face can find out a lot.

Of course let them know they'd better hurry. When a team with a 100,000 nuyen bounty on their heads is trying to sell a 80,000 car...well, things can get exciting.

I am doubtful given the OP about the players' willingness to put some effort into it. And that's only because taking your own jobs requires a lot of preparation work. They have to have their ears and eyes open for opportunities. They have to have money to bankroll the entire job themselves: that involves equipment, intelligence, transportation, bribes, counterintelligence and contingencies. They have to find a reliable fence and/or money launderer, and make sure that the job is worth the initial capital expenditure. Contingencies include all sorts of things from having a street doc or two on call to having an exit plan and the means to get you to the exit plan. Oh, and you also have to ensure that you make enough after all of that to bankroll the next job.

I mean, really, if you've seen Heat then you can appreciate some of the variables involved. The crew was entirely self-financed, and they had to put up massive amounts of time and money. The bank job cost Neal $160,000 on the front-end and 10% gross on the back just to buy the job from Kelso. And that is of $12 million in cash which would have to be laundered down to maybe $5 or 6M so that it could actually get spent at some point. And that is after the literally walked away from the metals depository, which was a blown deal that easily cost them a hundred thousand dollars, and the armored truck heist which may or may not have made them anything given how fucked the situation got on the back-end. And there is time. Michael Mann made the actors in that movie case the fucking bank a couple of times and even went through the process of opening accounts, getting loans, etc. All of which are relatively time-consuming for a heist that IRL would last no more than two-three minutes if they intended to get out clean.

So if you discuss all that with them, and they want to go ahead: Super. I'm not expecting much given the OP, but I could be pleasantly surprised. If they do, let them know that those jobs are pretty fun. Not everything can be the story from Biggie Smalls' Niggas Bleed.

Some background. This campaign started with me giving the following speech:

"I want to run a game in the aftermath of Big D's death. A game of running after the prizes of his will, and facing off against AAA's and other runners for the bounties of Dunkelzhan's Will. There will be no overarching plot, the game will be focused on your characters. We will be following the SR Companions Enemy Rules, and you will decide who these enemies are and why they are after you. This is going to be the source of complications on runs. I encourage you to create the character you always wanted, but couldn't due to resource restraints. I'm looking for powerful characters. Interested?"

This was met with excitement from each player, though only one took me up on the offer. I have ended up running a fairly low level game compared to what I had planned, so I changed directions, decided to work on laying ground work for the next campaign, but none of them seem willing to go looking for the jobs. To get them to show for the last meet I had to be overly heavy handed (apparently omnipotent Johnson who met them individually on their home turf) the players don't go looking for run's, never call their contacts unless there is a run-specific reason to do so, and so on. So after 3 runs the campaign is dying, and I don't care for the heavy handed feel of a Johnson based plot (just a personal preference) so I thought a more free form run structure might help.

Anyway I suppose I'll have to run it by the group either way, just wanted to see if anyone had some relevent experience to draw on that warned against it.

Sounds like they don't have any incentive to run. Without a Fixer calling them and arranging meets with Johnsons, you've got to push them. Drop them in a "situation" where they have to act: caught up in a firefight, mistakenly blamed for some outrage. Push their buttons, slide some initial hooks their way - they don't live in a vacuum and it's up to you as the ref to provide the filler.

How about that their Johnson gets killed at their regular meet. They get blamed for the killing and now have to figure out what is going on, meanwhile their stash of money is steadily getting smaller.

Yepp, the hated What do you do when the fixer does not call? question.

Most runners take that as an oppurtunity to make a vacation, brush up their skills, get legal, play out some off time.

In one game, one of the characters opened a PI agency, which gave as the next couple of runs.

If you want the players to show more self-motivation, make the Johnsons less powerful and less professional. One of my favourite runs I have ever been on, started with one of the characters randomly meeting a contact at a party, who claimed that he had a willing buyer for a painting. Well, he didn't. But we stole the thing anyway and sold to someone else.

Of all the museums and painting in Seattle we couldn't chose one, but as soon as there was even the smallest incentive to pick one, it seemed like a good idea.

Part of the problem is that the group doesn't have any reason in game to stay together. Despite my encouragement to do so, none of them created characters with any connections to any other PC (not even a single shared contact/contact type). Well, game is tonight, so I'm going to see where we stand and I'll post the results tomorrow.

BTW: love the idea of killing off the Johnson at the meet, nothing like a shared enemy to drive the PCs together.

I'm skimming rather than reading entire threads at the moment, so apologies if this is old news by now.

I run a mix of jobs from Johnsons, fixers, contacts, and hell, complete strangers. I've even had games where the characters ended up paying the team to help them on personal jobs. It's all good in SR.

As to the characters having no reason to work together, I recommend just flat out telling them OOC that they need to start finding some. The old "I'm just being in character and my character doesn't have any reason to like this other character and doesn't work well with others" crap is so damn old that Tut rolls his eyes when he hears about it. Tell 'em "look folks, RPGs are social, and if all you want to do is come up with reasons to keep it from working, I'll go <insert activity> while you all wax eloquent on why you like making games a pain in the ass".

I completely agree (part of why I'm currently trying out other groups in the area), but that doesn't change the situation that I'm looking at, till I start a new campaign. The problem, as I see it, is that everyone in the group wants to play a lone wolf. All of the backgrounds in this campaign fit that mold. Unfortunately none of the players sees this part of the PC till we're two or three sessions in, and the normal response to this is to have the character wander off and create a new one, and at that point I may as well start a new campaign.

It's the old rub, in order to make the game functional on a social level without starting a new campaign we have to create new characters at which point the disconnect forces a new campaign.

I know the lone-wolf-problem, though it never affected my whole group so far.

Usually its a player thing, but when it's the whole group, maybe they just aren't used to the social part of roleplaying.

In my town there is a high school churning out players like that. They feel like their character background and what he says is like flavour text in a video game. They never really interact as characters, except in form of witty replies. It's really creepy to play with one of them, but the problem is too subtle to just say do that and that differently. And they tend to make lone wolf characters, because it makes the most sense in their type of gaming.

But I guess that is just one kind of weirdness that can come up with groups that have played in closed circuit for years. So maybe you should check for that.

Alternatively, a plot device that brings lone wolfs together quite nicely, is a common possession, like a house (preferably so they have to live together)or a company or a potentially expensive item they all own but can't seem to make use of, in your campaign that could be a key to that room in the arcology or a device that shows the direction of one of the magic items, or whatever you want them to look after. Each character has an interest to stay close to the group to make use of that item and guarding it from the others, who might take it away. Maybe that's the target of the first run you send them to, just that the Johnson never got around to pick the item up. After some time, they hopefully got used to each other and make friends and you can tone the influence of the thing down a bit.

Still, I believe that the GM needs to give some kind of plot hook for the players to do anything interesting and coordinated. It doesn't have to be in the form of a Johnson and the more sensitive the players get, the smaller this can be (a news cast or a weird person on the street might do). Still, the story needs to have a proper beginning or you have to make sure, it just never ends.

You know, I like that idea. You mention the "Key to the Arcology", which reminds me of one of the bounties in Dunkelzhan's will, which is a good sum of money for information on what is behind door xxx in the... I don't recall, I'll have to reread the book but that could certainly be arranged and given the vagueness of the hook it should be possible to make it work with the current direction.

I always loved these kinds of jobs. I mean why would shadowrunners pay for stuff like gear when their whole job is stealing things from people? You want that shiny new Hughes WK-2 Stallion/Battletac system/Fairlight Excaliber then rather than having to pay the full whack plus street index why not pay a Johnson or data broker to tell you where a new legitimate one of them is being kept and then take it from there yourselves. Steal one for yourself plus maybe another as a spare and then anything else you can haul away to fence to pay off your operating costs and hopefully make a profit on. As BishopMcQ mentioned with his Fairlight Massacre they can be a lot of fun. Our groups similar version of that was probably slightly even more hectic than that since we'd decided to rip off something just a touch more noticeable, a GMC Banshee Thunderbird.

Of course some groups just don't seem to get into the vibe or enjoy these types of game. If you're wanting them to be a bit more proactive then dropping some hints and nudging them along a bit in-game is fine but I'd also have a chat with the group as well to make sure everyone knows what you're trying to do and is happy with it.

Why not give them one or two? Make them regulars to the same contact - friend-of-a-friend.

I especially like the idea of them all being blamed for the same crime. Nothing encourages cooperation like being in drek up to one's neck.

I cheated with my group, one of the PCs was a Doctor at a Shadow Clinic, and I said, "OK, he's your 'Family Doctor', or the closest that passes for Shadowrunners." "So... If he vouches for everyone..." "Then they're OK. He's seen them inside and out, after all!"

When I was running the Other Game, I started out with everone getting arrested by slavers and having to make their way through the wilderness and eventually explain why they killed lawfully operating slavers. You can do something similar here. They're all in the arcology when... They're in a restaurant when it... and so on. Then they have an opportunity to work together. Make it clear that any PCs who decide they don't want to work with the group are welcome to have their own adventures... but you don't have time to GM those adventures. That should give them both the IC and OOC impetus to work together.

That was actually revealed in Renraku Arcology Shutdown IIRC.


Of course what it is in your game is entirely up to you as the GM.

Just be sure to keep in mind that there are plenty of underground types who are more than just a fixer, chop shop operator, drug dealer, (insert other job here). There is absolutely nothing that says that your fixer can't also be a mighty fine Mr. Johnson is he has to be and the money is good. A Johnson is just a cut-out between the employer and the employee, after all.

Don't know if the OP is still bothering with this thread.

But first off all I think you need to clarify what you mean by them finding runs for themselves. I caution against just having the runners steal and try to fence stuff. It doesn't take too much creativity on their part and I would think that it makes for a dull game. Or one that's over all to quickly if they manage to score something really really expensive and they just retire.

Hmmmmm. You know what. Maybe what you need is to get them some inspiration. Even seen the series Firefly? You should at any rate. I'd suggest just buying the DVD or recording it if you get the Universal HD cable channel, but if you're cheap I'm sure you can find the episodes online easily enough.

Anyway the point is:

1. The characters operate the way I think you want your players to. Having contacts all over they check in with for work or for info on stuff they could do themselves, sometimes even doing legit or semi legit work. And if they don't have contacts in an area they do the legwork thing to find something.

2. If shown how it works they might actually be interested in doing something like that.

Maybe let them buy a used tilt wing for a fraction of the price or some hovercraft or something if they want the vehicle shtick.


As for the lone wolf thing. I don't generally have a problem with that. It's a bit different than if they don't RP at all. Let them each do some things on their own to develop sometimes. (I find this works best when the other players want to do something like get food or if someone shows up earlier to the game than the others. But ten minutes of table time on one guy doing something isn't so bad).

Or kill their Johnson *after* the run. Often, the only reason the target corp doesn't come after the 'Runners is because what they stole isn't recoverable any more, having been spirited away by the sponsor (Johnson). If that doesn't happen, and the target hear about it, they may well exert themselves a little to get the maguffin back.

Set it up so that some random violence endangers the Johnson at the payoff meet. You'll have a few potential outcomes:

1) the Johnson dies, leaving the 'Runners saddled with whatever they took
2) the Johnson dies and *someone else* steals the maguffin
3) the Johnson survives through their own efforts and blames the 'Runners for the doublecross.
4) the Johnson survives thanks to the 'Runners and sics them on whoever blew the meet.

There are additional complications such as whether the 'Runners got paid or not...

4 could lead to the Johnson and the 'Runners being thrown together (maybe the meet was blown by an ambitious underling who's used the Johnson's "failure" to usurp their position and now the Johnson promises the moon on a stick to Runners if they'll help. but that's getting away from the initial premise...

I'll be keeping all this in mind for the future, but as of last night two of my players told me (before game) that they wouldn't be able to make it for the forseeable future. A new player was added to the group, and since that meant character creation before we began a vote was placed for what campaign we'd run. Apparently I'm the only one in the group who has any interest in continuing the campaign, and so it dies (despite the fact that those who remain are the ones who volunteered me to run it in the first place). Thank you all for you're suggestions, and if I ever get a chance to run another one I'll be sure to put them to good use.

This all reminds me of a run that started from my one character going out for a drink. He was in the bathroom, and some guy tried to crush his head. He ducks out the door, coathangers him with a shock glove (all he had on him, as he was just going for a social drink) and then finds himself being chased and shot at by a team of men. He manages to escape in a cab, gets the cab fucked up by a powerbolt, he has to run on foot, fight a mage, steal the riggers sportscar, and have to defuse a bomb under the seat (I ended up removing it and throwing it through a shop window, it was ridiculous. Afterwards he sold the car to his fixer in exchange for telling him who tried to kill him. He goes to his safehouse, grabs his camouflage armour gear, weapons and gear, gets the call from his fixer telling him the address of the Johnson who organised the run against him. He invades the place over the roof down to the balcony, sneaks in the dark, scuffles and then manages to restrain the guy. He then proceeds to intimidate Mr. Johnson into telling him who was the client, when the door bursts in a flashbang is thrown into the room and as Raven (the character) jumps to the side and gets out his gun, Johnson has bean shot dead. Raven spins around the corner to shoot at whoever it is and then sees that the shooter looks exactly like himself.

Seriously, wierd things happen when you don't use the Fixer calls Team and gives Johnson, who wants things done for money. I still made good money from the convertible, and a new contact who looks uncannily like me.

What you are really asking is how do you engage your players into driving your campaign rather than being passive participants. The Johnson model makes it easy to start a game, but can discourage initiative. A person wants to hire you and tells you the goal. It makes it easy for the GM to plan a single adventure and the players have a single goal that they can shoot for. Simple, but limiting.

If you want the players to show more initiative than they are doing on their own, there are some easy stages you can walk them through to develop initiative.

Stage 1: Give them choices: Three different Johnsons each have different jobs in roughly the same time window. Maybe they can do two if they take some risks that the first job goes well, but certainly not three. This gets them used to making choices, gets them used to working with very limited information as they do not yet have full details on the jobs and debating what they really want to do. It also introduces factors on which Johnson they trust, how much risk they want, and forces tradeoffs (which is role playing). It also gives the GM good insight to what the players like.

Stage 2: Get them into adventures that have no Johnson
• Give them rumors, bounties, and other interesting plot hooks. Give them a half dozen or more every time an adventure ends. They may investigate 2-4 and pick on only 1. The key is the role play the investigation based on some limited notes until it is clear that the party has settled on an option with maybe a stand alone encounter to give some action. If they do not show any interest, then include in the rumors that somebody else got a big payoff from following up on a rumor you mentioned 2 games back. Maybe some of these jobs have a Johnson that can be approached – somebody interested in paying for results, but many would not.
• Have something happen (good/bad/interesting/terrifying) in the vicinity of one of your players. Their girlfriend got killed. A human footprint is planted on the hood of their car – and is radioactive. A mob hit occurs in the same restaurant as your annual team dinner. Somebody finds a pile of high tech goodies and a body in the street. You get the idea.
• Ask each character what they do – hobbies, interests. If they have none, then use the advancement rules and make adventures out of getting skilled training or special equipment. The key is to offer up an adventure hook tailor made for a particular character. My own experience is that players only take these hooks 1 time in 3, but I have hung an entire year long campaign on a single character’s driving ambition.


The question of how the players make their money (stealing, doing jobs, mix, free lance work, merc work, etc) really depends on the game style you want. It is a separate question.


Stage 3: Sit back and try and keep up with the players pushing for their individual agendas.

One thing to keep in mind is that doing private runs for individual players can get a bit iffy. My 3rd edition character was quite proactive to the point where she managed to net two fairly decent hauls in runs that she did by herself.

Now, anytime I mention doing something like that the idea gets shot down faster then a double crossing Johnson. Also several times I've been in the position where I've OOCly asked the GM 'Will you allow me to do this?' and the answer has been no.

One of my GMs might spot this thread, if not I'll push him in this direction and see if he's willing to comment.

Part of the problem is that every run so far had been to introduce a new character. Started with two players, no sooner finished that run than I had two more to introduce, then another player was added, though with the "voting" system our group decided to implement two weeks ago we'll never actually get to that run.

I had a plot in mind that involved most of the players. The majority had some potential tie-in to a mag-medical research group, and I was going to focus on that for a while, then two of the four who had such a tie-in disappeared (players, not pcs). I've been volunteered for a DnD game so the SR campaign is temporarily on hold (though I suspect the DnD will fall through as well, but that's another rant).

But surely, almost by definition, there's always a Mr Smith...
...Even if it's the Character himself - since he'll be the one to decide on a target, the payoff and deal with the aftermath ??

I tend to have few "formal" hirings...
...Because that always seems such a rubbish way to get characters involved in anything - "your life is so empty that the only way you can make money or find meaning in your life is meet a bunch of strangers in a bar/hotel/office and do something for money just because they ask you to".

Didn't people stop doing that in D&D years ago, because it was such a blatently obvious way to get people together that had no backstory ??


Anyways...
...Once a group has done a scenario, they have contacts and repercussions from what they've done...
......And those become the next scenarios.

It's more work for me, and needs the Characters to have some sort background...
...But it lets things grow organically, without being forced - too much.

Pre-6th World, they probably got called "the client".


I think that's a bit of a broad brush to paint 'Runners with... Motivations vary, and the environment is *written* to provide opportunities for that sort of a hook. You could equally say, pace Tyler Durden, "Your life is so empty that the only way you can find meaning in your life is to do a job you hate to get money to buy things you don't need." Every P.I accepts jobs from strangers, and some of them verge on the illegal (see "pretexting" and the CEO of HP spying on the Board of Directors).


When people have no backstory, what other options are there? You can start "in media res" but that involves you providing at least the last few *hours'* backstory for them... People stopped being recruited as motley crews in taverns when players started giving their character backstory and working together to produce teams.

"I had a plot in mind that involved most of the players. The majority had some potential tie-in to a mag-medical research group, and I was going to focus on that for a while, then two of the four who had such a tie-in disappeared (players, not pcs). "


You are looking aat this wrong. This is an opportunity. Now the lead into this adventure is that one of their comrades is dead and another has vanished. Maybe a hit also occurs on the third character who is still around. The fact that the players are gone allows you to do all sorts of things with these characters - including makign them the opposition, the betrayers or the bodies.

Another great idea, too bad the campaign won't be being revived (no resurrection in shadowrun .

As of the last session one of those two were no where to be found, and all of the rest were in a crowded bar. I was going to drop the news of Big D's death and have the second get lost in the confusion. And the first just wouldn't have shown up again (only been on one run together and all that).

Just to throw my .02 in here. This entire thread is why I hate ever using johnsons or running games that are based on the Team/Johnson model. Of course I go over the top but generally if I can't get my players emotionally involved in at least 50% of the runs as opposed to it being just a complicated game of Rainbow Six then I consider myself having failed as a GM. I realize there are players out there who want precisely that, just slowly acquiring money in a regular fashion performing regular D&D style encounters ... but those aren't the kind of players I want in my games and not the kinds of games I want to run.

I guess my point is, know your audience. If you want motivation from your players, recruit players who are motivated and then provide them with plot and hooks and opportunities that they can't miss. A good rule of thumb is don't get TOO complex (unless its the main, overarching plot), and don't make it TOO hard. Challenge them but then give them something easy to make them appreciate their newfound powerlevel. Its all about pacing. A great campaign is just like a great movie with emotional and logical highs and lows.

That said this is all highly story dependent. I guess I very rarely use explicit johnsons and my players are fairly resourceful so they end up creating their own runs often times to acquire material for larger runs (why buy what you can steal for less). Usually I tangle my players up in the plot so thoroughly that the next "runs" are usually revealed during the previous ones. Of course I burned out on D&D about 20 years ago so the old "Gandalf meets you in the inn and says he has an adventure for you" ... which is all the archetypical Johnson encounter in SR is ... has long since been worn to the bone for me and most of my players. That said after enough plot/emotion heavy gaming they usually LONG for a straightforward "johnson reveals all" run and then I give it to them ... of course with my hooks in even those which I bring back to the forefront many months later ...

Ok I'm just an evil bastard who has too much fun running games. Ignore my rhetoric.

I've played in campaigns without Johnsons, both Shadowrun and ADnD.

The Biggest Problem: The GM (DM) has to be agile enough to handle what the players decide to do. If the players decide to organize a "Gone in 60 Seconds" type team, the GM gotten come up with buyers, victims, law enforcement, etc. Same for "Oceans 11" or anything else.

Players decide they want to acquire military hardware, rob a corp, hunt bugs, etc. today - the GM has to be ready.

Second Biggest Problem: The most motivated player probably wants to do something the others are not interested in. That's because it's something that's been neglected up to now. The Hacker wants a Matrix run. The Mage wants an Astral Quest. Sammie want a Bar Fight.

Third Problem: Players want easy.

OTOH: IF you are just looking to get the players off their asses - that's what consequences are for. If the players have commited a major crime in the past, someone should be investigating. Tangled with a gang or a mob? They should have enemies. Raid their joint. Arrest one of them. Conduct a Drive-By.

Want Plot Hooks? Look at their list of Negative Qualities. There might be something useful there. Maybe you can motivate them to get rid of the flaw. Conversely, you can offer them the opportunity to gain a Positive Quality.