So, I'm planning on running a Seattle campaign for new players.

All of the PC's live in a slum that's populated by various gangs, they want to join a gang because runners on their own don't get the jobs that the organized gangs get in their area. So they end up joining up with the smallest gang in the area that has a rep for being weak with all of the other gangs.

Would 400 BP characters be too much for this? I'm trying to justify them joining such a shitty group because they just can't get jobs in their area. Is this even feasible?

I plan on having them climb the ranks within the gang and take over other gangs' territory and try to rule over their respective district in Seattle.

400 BP characters should be fine, but set clear expectations about the 'tone'

A) The amount of cash that will be availible in the campagin. If you're going to run low cash, you need lower lifestyles, and you're also making mages relatively better than street sammies, riggers and other characters

B) Hackers are doubly gimped - they need money to get better - but the game will have no money, and probably be low on computer systems. Discourage people strongly from playing pure hackers - tell them to focus on rigging with a side of hacking

C) Okay this is A again - anyone playing a mundane is going to get screwed. You'll either need to throw random equipment items in, or you'll get a power imbalance.

400 build points is the norm for a starting runner, and 300 build points is the norm for street-level punks.

On the feasibility level, if your players worked with you on it, you could all come up with backstories justifying the characters being in desperate circumstances. But it's really hard to imagine professional runners, who are miles above gang members in ability, having to join a crappy gang to get jobs.

I wasn't planning on running a lot of hacking, probably focusing more on physical jobs at the lower levels. Like I said, I want them to rise in the ranks of the gang and have the gang get bigger and more powerful, so the money and types of jobs will change as they go up.

Kind of what I'm looking at here is having the gang leader offering them two simpler jobs after initiation (Blood In, Blood Out to teach basic combat).

A) A corner of prostitutes is getting roughed up pretty regularly by the Johns. Show the Johns that it's not appreciated if they come back with bruises.
-A gang of Troll bikers shows up and takes a bunch of the prostitutes to have a party, they all come back pretty battered.

B) Transport a small group of drug mules carrying Betameth through rival gang territory.
-Obviously, the other gang doesn't like this. They happen to be a go-gang.

Then after completion, the leader tells them that he shouldn't need them for anything else right now. Giving them some time to just live out the lives of their characters and letting them focus more on their character.

The next week, the gang's lieutenant comes by their houses/apts. and tells them some drug dealers have moved in on their turf and aren't paying dues. They get to go tell them to piss off, or pay tributes.

To draw on Glyph's point, whichever one of those you pick, you're still going to have mages > sammies

I can see what you're try to do - but mages, who advance by karma, are going to be better than sammies, who advance with money, in that situation.

A 400 BP character either has a tremendous amount of natural talent, years of training and experience, or some combination of the two. Such characters are likely to be near the zenith of ability in there specialized field(eg a pistol fighter will likely have somewhere in the realm of 5 agility and 5-6 pistols with a spec, and numerous other mods) and will be elite in related fields, and have a professional ability in several other. Reducing the BP amount(as well as the skill caps, say two at 4 or one at 5 and reducing max availability at start) will make the campaign much more street level. The characters will still be skilled professionals in their chosen fields, but they won't be top-of-the-line bad-ass mercs either.

As for a street level game, there are just some changes you have to realize. Your team should still have a matrix specialist, but they will likely only dabble in hacking(hacking is expensive) and be more used for more legit(or gray) tasks like organizing the group, finding hidden nodes/tags, and making quick data searches. Mudance characters will rely heavily on cyberware rather then bioware, but they won't be able to buy top of the line stuff (standard grade mostly, second-hand from more expensive implants, certainly no alpha). Magical characters should be restricted on how high they can take their magic to when starting to help make up for the fact that your mundanes won't have SOTA augmentations.

If I was going to run a street level game, I would start with 325 points, and tighten the amount on cash quite a bit. Also cut down availability of items to about 8.
But if you want this game to have them "Climb the Ranks" then I would dish out about 150% karma for a while just so they catch up. But once they do cut the karma back down to normal.

You may also want to cut down the attribute maximums, skill maximums, and contact maximums.

Yes this will suck a lot for cyberware characters such as street sammies, deckers, and riggers . . . but that doesn't sound like you're game anyhow.

Hope it helps

@Snowfall:
Low Nuyen & increased Karma payouts = bad idea unless the entire group is Awakened/Emergent.


For a game like this, characters should be built with around 325 - 350 Build Points (450 - 500 Karma), with character generation limits reduced to the following:
Availability 8
Maximum skills: one at 5, rest at 3 or below, or two at 4, rest at 3 or below.
Maximum attributes: one at one below natural maximum, costing 15 additional Build Points (for a total of 25), with the rest at two below natural maximum or less.

Hand out Karma based on how fast you want them to advance, & keep the Nuyen payouts low. To avoid imbalance between Awakened & Mundanes, be sure to include usable equipment as loot, bringing the total value of "payment" to approx. 2,500 Nuyen per point of Karma earned per character - this should be calculated after expenses, such as ammunition, lifestyle, etc.

You wish to play a campaign that forbids nearly all toys from even the main book, with new players. I´d suggest that you generate all characters for the game, straight-out forget about self-made chars.

Lower the BP value, restrict ressources to 20k¥(10k¥ for mages), restrict skills to 2*3, the rest to 2, and magic to 3. Tell any player of an awakened char that increasing magic or initiating will not be possible for the time being. Create a lot of relativly unable contacts, as you have to make up for the lack of toys with more interaction. Decide how you will deal with get rich schemes that would work.

(I would strongly suggest a more standard game for new players, like "weak runners with a syndicate connection". Much the same, but more toys. Did I mention that toys are important?)