Recently I'd been fantasizing about writing a SR3 campaign, where one feature of it would be that instead of everyone having one player character, and having the situations be survivable, instead the players would control a platoon created by each player having several characters where they would be able to bring one at a time into a given situation or mission. The odds of player death would theoretically be higher than normal but then the player would have several characters to fall back on.

Kind of like the old Rainbow Six games where you had a roster of operatives who could easily be killed, and then you couldn't use them again, although you'd be able to use other operatives.

Does that idea appeal to you? Or do you think it sucks?

As a player, it might be a great way to test out multiple character concepts in a short period of time. The real trick to it would be making the chance of death higher, rather than letting the game devolve into the players using their characters as disposable resources to get around obstacles. For instance, if the trapped facility of doom is circumvented by suiciding characters into all the traps, something is wrong. Unless, of course, that is the kind of game everyone wants to play. I guess what I'm saying is don't let it become Lemmings with Runners. If you do pretty soon everyone will have their .1 Essence Street Sam with 5 Cranial Bombs.

I'd like it as a short-term event. Over the long term, however, I prefer actually seeing characters develop and that happens more easily with people playing one character at a time. It would also get old and eventually the same characters would just get recycled back into the hopper upon death. "Has your mage died yet this mission?" "Yeah, but my Troll Mystic Adept has the summoning we need." "Oh, the one with the mentor spirit? I like him!"

The paperwork on the player side would get repetitive quickly.

Totentanz is right. There would be exponentially more paperwork, and characters would get recycled. Sure, they may lose any upgrades earned during play, but still, recycled. This will devalue individual characters, sap the roleplaying element and emphasize min-maxing, and turn Shadowrun into a miniatures battle game.

now i kinda like the idea of playing it as a lieutenant in charge of a few squads of steely-eyed killers, but at the same time as was said earlier, it kinda devalues the character. besides, shuffling 15 character sheets between players will get a little bothersome, too. while not quite the intent that im sure you intended, if i was gonna play this kinda game id just plug in to some full spectrum warrior, mechwarrior, or somesuch

I always thought that half the fun of an RPG is creating a character you're interested in and developing it. By the end of a campaign I usually had some emotional/sentimental attachment to a character, and as I learned the system better although I could have created a mechanically better character, I usually wanted to keep playing my old one. Having disposable characters would kill that enjoyment for me, and frankly I wouldn't be terribly interested in such a game.

Now that doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea, I just wouldn't want to play it.

I'd dig it in another fashion. The player characters are either generals or lieutnants. Some guys you see in the movies as providing intel and objectives. That would be fun. Those are the guys who tell you "damnit, you're leaving mission area and stop carpet bombing the whole city!"

I'm not sure this quite matches what you're suggesting, but what I could see is something along the lines of this. Everyone creates say... 3 characters. For each mission, each player brings one of their characters along, with which one depending on what the mission calls for (and what they're wanting to play). So, depending on the situation, you could have the same guy bringing their street sam, their shaman, or their hacker. However, having it turn into "You have 20 guys just like the current one, ready to step in if they get killed" isn't something I'd be interested in

But you'd only be running a single character at a time, right? So it would be running sort of like the high-fatality CoC games, where you write up three characters and just cycle through them?

I see no problem with it. In fact, it could be fun. A lot of people enjoy making characters, but don't find the time to use them all, and this would let you really turn up the danger of the game without peeing on anyone's head too much. The only thing you'll have to consider is how you advance karma - does karma earned by one character add to everyone in the group? Is there a set karma bonus for everyone at the end of the run? Or are characters just static (or perhaps after three games, you add a new character to the pool with now 300 BPs instead of 280)?

From what I understand, each player would have, for example 8 characters. One player could create a crack squad of spec ops just with minor tweaks and specialties between them. Another player could create an enclave of mages. Yet another player could create a mixed squad from all walks.

Here's the major problems I see.

1. If someone creates a platoon, what logical course would the platoon have to send single operatives and work with other platoons when they could do it themselves?
2. If the threat of death is higher, these guys are going to want more money. That isn't going to change.
3. Creating all of these characters. It's already a fairly in-depth process to create a new character as it is.

If you want to have players have access to multiple characters, this is what I would suggest.
1. All of these runners are part of a co-location/co-operative/pseudo-union/guild operation. Basically, all of these runners have come together to assist each other and combine resources. Rather than potentially acting semi-independently.
2. Give the players a good reason to be pursuing that. Examples would be a gratis secure facility to work from, a pool of vehicles/weapons/equipment already available to use on runs. Perhaps some contacts available to the group as a whole.
3. Allow players to use multiple characters on a run rather than just 1 from their pool. The only caveat being that the chosen characters, when the group is splitting up, cannot be working together. Otherwise you'll see people just using one character and neglecting the rest. Even with that, worst case is they only use two characters, and in many cases they will still use one character the whole time and swap the 2nd character around.

That would make me stop playing. For me, this is a role-playing game, not a tactical, squad based, action game. I'm fairly sure, however, that there's a market for it. Sort of like more in-depth Necromunda.

The big difference is that in that set-up, your keep playing character 1 until they die, at which point you bring out character 2. The set-up I'd see, you'd be rotating between them based on what seems likely to be needed.

So, to give a quick example (borrowing the sample characters from the core book), we have 5 players. Each of them makes 3 characters, only one of whom will be going on any given mission

• Player 1: Face, Smuggler, Sprawl Ganger
• Player 2: Bounty Hunter, Combat Mage, Gunslinger Adept
• Player 3: Hacker, Street Samurai, Street Shaman
• Player 4: Covert Ops Specialist, Drone Rigger, Occult Investigator
• Player 5: Enforcer, Radical Eco-Shaman, Technomancer

Run #1 gets presented to the team as being very combat-heavy with a high likelihood of large-scale destruction being needed. Player 1 brings the Sprawl Ganger, since that's the most combative character he has, and they can still handle some legwork; Player 2 brings the combat mage to provide the potential for the more large-scale stuff, plus he's the only one who has a mage that isn't useless in a fight; player 3 brings the Street Samurai. Player 4 brings in his Drone Rigger, figuring a few Dobermans with LMGs should do well here. Player 5 grabs his Enforcer.

Run #2 is a fairly straight-forward highway-robbery. Players 1 and 4 bring the Smuggler and Rigger to cover the vehicle & drone portion of this. Players 3 and 5 grab the Hacker and Technomancer to protect the other two from being hijacked. Player 2 brings the gunslinger adept, figuring that while the various drones and vehicles can take care of themselves, the other PCs will probably want some close-range protection in case someone manages to get around them.

Run #3 is looking like it will have a lot of leg-work and investigation. Player 1 brings his Face, 2 brings the Bounty Hunter, 3 brings his hacker to cover the Matrix side of things again, 4 brings the Occult Investigator to handle Astral stuff and provide detection spells, while 5 throws in the Enforcer again, figuring the high intimidation should cover the one gap in the Face's social skills.

So, at the end of three runs, while a couple of the characters have been repeats, the result has been groups with very different strengths. The advantage for the players is that they get to play around with several different kinds of characters rather than needing to stick to just one. The advantage for the GM is that with the added adaptability that this give the Players, he can throw a much wider variety of challenges at them to take advantage of the team's ability to customize their strengths and weaknesses to the job at hand (assuming they have a clear - and accurate - enough idea of what the job is). Of course, this likely requires a little (though not too much) work to explain why there's (in this example), a 15 person roster but only 5 on any given run.

If you had say 4 players, running 8 characters each, against sufficient threat to make it a challenge, every 3 seconds of combat is going to take, literally, about an hour. I would kill myself. SR3 is not streamlined enough to move quickly with the number of people you are talking about.

If you're talking about one character at a time, this is pretty easily doable. One of the things our group digs about Shadowrun is that you can bring new characters in really easily between runs; most of my players have two or three characters that they sometimes play.

I like the "all players are part of an organization" idea. It will be cool if you can come up with a good reason for the whole group to be sending individual representatives (from each players "division?") on joint missions. Perhaps something like 9x9 or some flavor of extremist would work? Local guerilla resistance fighters would be neat, but I don't think they'd generally get to use picked operatives. However, terrorists might, and counter-terrorist organization as a campaign premise is flat-out cool.

Thinking this idea over, I can't seem to get GI-Joe out of my mind. Hmm.

Well, although I didn't explicity link the two in my mind, I just realized this idea popped into my head at the same time I was reading Rainbow Six.

DMZ?

I had thought of this - search this forum for 'beans and bulltes' (I misspelled beans and bullets), with the idea of creating a mercenary company where the players played officers of a mercenary company with a number of options.

I would definitely be interested, in either the "create 4-5 individuals and play them together" or the "create a sergeant/officer and allocate resources as given to create his squad as part of a larger ogranization" sense of the term. I, however, play SR4...

I had thought of this - search this forum for 'beans and bulltes' (I misspelled beans and bullets), with the idea of creating a mercenary company where the players played officers of a mercenary company with a number of options.

I would definitely be interested, in either the "create 4-5 individuals and play them together" or the "create a sergeant/officer and allocate resources as given to create his squad as part of a larger ogranization" sense of the term. I, however, play SR4...

I actually kinda like the idea. I've been considering a military theme game along that vein, though not on quite that scale, only three characters each, a single fireteam per player. But then, I've got a group of fairly experienced players who I think can run three characters simultaneously. Four players, 12 characters, makes a full squad for a high-drama, "Roger McClintock" style death fest. They seem pretty interested in the idea, it's not something I'd have suggested if I didn't have full confidence in their role-playing abilities, though. I'm somewhat concerned, however, that it could devalue the characters in play, as several of the others mentioned. I'll just have to see what happens.

Check out Albedo then. I'm not saying its rules are the best, and it's poorly known due to the fact that it's based off of a 20 year old not-well-known furry comic series (as in, actually in print, not available online). But it does offer rules for playing squads; 1 main, and 4 subordinates.

Actually, wasn't this whole thing kind of like that other game, Twilight 2000?

What he said. Except I have no idea what Necromunda is.

I've done this once. I had each player bring a couple characters, 2 to 3. The most prepared character or first arrival would then pick his team for the mission his fixer had prepared. In a sense picking his team for the requirements of the mission rather than doing a gunz ablazing merc group for a B&E stealth job. The goal was ultimately to provide a means for the right people for the right job but also to weave a story of the characters as freelancers vs. a team. In essence there would be a web of people who may or may not have run together but have heard of each other.

It had its pro's and cons and made for an interesting story.

I'd give it a go - sounds fun and I like generating characters.

Like a few people have mentioned - advancement might be a problem. My preference would be to have each of a players characters earn some karma/cash from their off screen activities.

Although I supose this might lend itself to a player having a 'slow builder' character who can jump in at some crazy power level after half a dozen sessions worth of XP - without having to play them through the horrible 'buildup' phase.

Think it would really rock in a small group where you can't cover all the niches you'd like to?


Sidetracking:

I'd certainly try this out.

Of course, the trick is coming up with enough characters you enjoy playing and developing, so i'd probably decrease the character pool to two per player.
It also requires a lot of flexibility as far as roleplaying is concerned.
But with the right group, this could work out great.

I once had the idea to make NPCs available as PCs in a long-running campaign.
So the PCs would get to liberate this jarhead or whatever at one point in the campaign and then could add them to their roster of potentially available player characters to choose from.
The idea involved a worldwide campaign arch, with several teams operating simultaniously, so there would have been a need for more than one PC per player anyway.
This would have allowed for the easy inclusion of settings that prohibit certain character types, too.
If team A has to go up to a space station, they don't bring the mages and adepts along, so these are available for another mission somewhere in Amazonia.
If the team has to mingle with a crowd of corp execs and other VIP, the scary changeling PC does something else and his player gets the formerly NPC company man as a replacement character.

For all of these concepts, the advantage is that you have less problems with PC mortality at the gaming table, because the player of a deceased character doesn't have to sit around and twiddle his thumbs.