Alright, I've got a new player coming into my SR group next session, and instead of just plopping her character in with the rest, I decided to try and finagle a run of some kind involving her entrance to the group somehow. Worst case, I can fall back on the "falls out of the sky stuff", but I'm wondering if anyone has any good runs of this nature, especially if they evolve/are a little simpler than normal, enabling a new player to really get into it.

Thanks in advance everyone!

Has she ever played SR before? Frag, for that matter has she ever RPG'd before?

Did you want to put her through a quick mini-run so she can get a feeling for the concept or did you want an easy way to get her hooked up with the crew?

For B, I'd just have her introduced by contacts as a potential teammate, especially if she has needed skills/abilities for the crew in question.

-Siege

New character can be bodyguard of the Johnson, sent along to escort the team. Can possibly have a secret assignment from the Johnson as well.

New character can be found tied up in the back of the new van the team steals.

New character can be found tie up / tortured / experimented on / etc. during the run.

New character can be a separate person attempting to do basically the same job, or the final survivor of another team sent to do the same job. Possibly the one surviving member of the previous team Mr. Johnson hired.

The new character (hither to referred to as Red) stumbled across information about a syndicate (hither to referred to as the Triads) courier making an exchange of goods in a monostation.

Red knows the Mafia is going to hit the exchange as it happens because she lifted the information from a soldier right after he met his boss. The loot is worth a pretty penny, but with serious Triad muscle and Mobsters, she'll need some backup. Red hires the group to help her grab the goods before the Mafia using a friend of a friend contact.

Hopefully the "run" goes well and they split the goods evenly.

Later, Red gets a job offer from a fixer or J and calls the team for a second go.

for complete newbs, let em pick a template, and do a simple run with some combat. like 'eliminate the gang X'. best to see how lethal combat is with a throwaway character.

for adding someone to a group, best thing is to have a contact introduce em to the group. Avoids things like group shooting a stranger (the new guy), or making him wait forever because they didnt go out to find where he was stuck.

Well first off, lets get a little information to work with. What kind of character is she playing? Does she cover any skill-gaps in the group - able to do things the others currently can't? Also depends on the current PC's. I mean, how trusting are they.

If you're really stuck just have their fixer ask the group to let her join for the run as a favour to him. Maybe they owe the new PC a favour and she's calling it infor some work. In the end they let her stay on.

Is she new to just the group, or the game in general? If she's coming in blind, it might be worth doing a seperate one-on-one session beforehand and put here through Food Fight with a couple friendly NPC's to help get her up to spped.

I follow OurTeam's tactics. Mr Johnson tells group that newbie has some information relating to the run, group needs to go and get/find/rescue newbie. As group gets to newbie he/she is dispatching a group of thugs (lets group see he/she isnt completely useless). newbie refuses to give over info unless he/she can join group so he/she can exact revenge for something. provides the newbie with some background and attempts to ensure the group will take newbie along.

On the bright side, "out of the blue" tactics allows the PCs to get lumped together without having to bypass the pesky paranoia factor inherent to all runners.

-Siege

Nah, that just means that you give them the 3 day carcerands. If things work out, you slip them the antidote, and they'll never know anything happened.

if your playing a moral campain then you can tell the runners to extract said newb and then have the newb tell the runners of some huge threat that has to be dealt with right now and go. also you get the added amusment of watching the former prisoner have to loot gear as they go to be effective

Thanks, good ideas all-round.

I'm liking the rescue bit, or maybe something with amnesia. Right now she doesn't have a character (the guy who is bringing her in is taking his sweet ass time, that's for sure) but I'm forseeing some sort of combat specialist, as the group doesn't have a competent one, and that's not too hard to pull off, assuming she goes adept.

Thanks again!

Oh frag, is she the guy's significant other?

-Siege

if you have the luxury of the new player's time and attention for a short minirun (ala Siege//Teulisch's suggestions) they can at least get a feel for mood and general structure.

i also agree with OurTeam//FlakJacket's suggestion of having the Johson say "Red will be going as well." with nothing more said than that. then let the team do it's own recruit pitch, if everything works out. if it doesn't, you have all those plot Machinae (Red holds exclusive info, money, itamz that they need/want/lust after) to use as a follow up. though it may make things more... begrudged.

advisory: the amnesia // rescue plots may not work out as anticipated. players may not take the optimal path to fulfill whatever you're trying to have happen. in which case, as i just just witnessed happen in a friend's game, she'll get stuck waiting around for entirely too long.

and given how bewilderingly staggeringly big character creation can be (if you get immersed in details, ever, it's easy to do) why not just say "would you like to play *writewritewrite* THIS character?" that way you could make a competent character that's still fair to an introductory player. ("here's a decker. you can hit me now." :P )

Just be careful -- pitting the newbie at odds with the party could result in some unforseen tensions and a quickly dead newbie.

-Siege

Heh, on a previous game intro of a new character led to my cybermage burning a lot of karma to stay alive after a hit from a bf shotgun.