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JaronK
So, my character is a face/shaman socialite. He's part of a magical group that involves another socialite (and is made up entirely of PCs at this point, all cat shamen). Due to some interesting circumstances, I suddenly find that the character is able to set up an escort service to the elite... taking high end buisiness clients around to the best parties in town in return for pay. This buisiness serves a few purposes... it gets our party a number of high end contacts, makes a bit of sideline money, and potentially allows for some degree of money laundering. The real questions here are the following:

1) What skills will be necessary to run such a buisiness? My character (as well as nearly everyone in the party) has a Knowsoft Link and a DNI linked Optical Chip to store data, so he can theoretically get almost any knowledge skill needed. He's already got Ettiquette 6 and Negociation 6 + Cultured Tailored Pheremones, but what else will be needed?

2) What sort of challenges/runs might spring from this that would be fun to play through? I'm thinking protecting a client from a hit (possibly just a test from the company who's just hired him) might be appropriate.

3) Are there any rules for how much money an operation like this might make?

As a note, I have the following characters available to help out, in addition to the two cat shaman socialites: 1) my character's sister (also a PC) who's a cat shaman as well, but too introverted to want to deal with parties. She's the responsible one in the family. 2) A Leopard Shapeshifter Shaman. Not so good around people. 3) A face/rigger who specializes in stealth drones, generally anthroforms and miniblimps with sniper rifles and electronic warfare abilities. She's a gnome with no legs, and mostly does face work via the matrix or a laptop held by someone else (she's got a mini office in her van that is smaller than normal to make her look human). 4) A face/medic/B&E/streetsamurai skillchipper. She's mostly about big guns and has two obvious cyberarms, but she's also got Ettiquette 6 via chips with a rating 3 CED, so she's actually quite good socially.

JaronK
PBI
Can't really help you on 1, but for 2 and 3, ask your GM. Seriously. He's running your world, he'll have those answers. Now that I think of it, ask your GM about 1, too, for the same reasons.
JaronK
I should be more clear. I trade off GMing with another GM for this game. In future, a lot of the runs I'll be doing for this group involve my character asking the other PCs for help with this buisiness. So I'm looking for ideas, references, and so on to make this work better... ask your GM doesn't work when I'm one of the GMs! Neither of us are quite sure how to run this.

JaronK
Kumo
QUOTE
what else will be needed?


Other Social Skills. Ettiquette could be specialized in (socialites). And perception.

Infiltration, shadowing, Bland Quality - if your PC has to be REALLY quiet and discreet.
And there are many optional Knowledge Skills: assasins tactics, aristocracy, corporate politics, gossip...
Mostly, an effective security should also have technical support; it depends from GM, of course. Rigger is OK, but your PC also can have some skills like Pilot: Ground Craft. Help from competent hacker or TM (NPC, maybe one of Contacts?) is probably a good idea.
Think about skills, which rest of team lacks.
PBI
Well, aside from the fact that I think co-GMing is a bad idea (too much conflict of interest if the PCs are the same), it really is up to you how to handle the situation. However...

One of my players wanted to come out of chargen with a business and I allowed it (great plot hooks), but I wasn't about to let him get away with getting money for free, so I came up with an income/month figure that fit my campaign and kept the player hungry for more nuyen.gif . I decided on a simple mechanic of rolling a 1D6 x nuyen.gif 100 and made it clear that would be subject to change if I found having the business unbalanced the game. SR isn't really suited to 'boring' mundane elements like the day-to-day of running a business, so I like to handwave a lot of that.

As for skills, well, I guess it depends on how much interaction you want the character to have with the day-to-day. I think the best thing to do is come up with a monthly variable income and leave it at that. With regards to runs, well, that's obvious smile.gif Have a contract go badly, or at least not as planned. As the character becomes more established, maybe he can start using his legit biz as a cover to get him out of some iffy situations with the Law.

The main thing to guide you is "will this make the game better/more fun?"
PatB
QUOTE (JaronK @ Nov 16 2009, 05:27 AM) *
2) What sort of challenges/runs might spring from this that would be fun to play through? I'm thinking protecting a client from a hit (possibly just a test from the company who's just hired him) might be appropriate.


Let's look at it at both perspective, ie ideas for the GM and for the player who owns the company:

- Extraction: another team extracts one of the company's client. Runners do it, but will they accept it when someone else does it to them ?!?! It's all about reputation, so I bet the players will do everything to get the client back. Nasty rotate.gif

- Infiltration: one of the escort is actually more than a simple escort (she's got skills, she's working for the competition or an enemy, you name it). The escort might be there to extract/assassinate a client, get information on the company, or to gather information for the company's owner

- Blackmail: a client is not suppose to be there (company policy, wife, etc) and gets framed for that. That information can be used to threat the client or the client may become the Johnson and ask to retrieve and destroy the evidence

- Distraction: someone wants a client to be kept busy while that party takes care of some business (could be kidnapping his family, infiltrate his home or business, etc)

- Hoax: the company would like to increase the relationship with one of its client for a reason (be it prestige, publicity, rasing contact loyalty rating, etc), so the company decides to plant an hoax, like a fake kidnapping and rescue, while on the company's watch.

- Competition: being a new player, the company's affecting someone else's market. It could be one of the syndicates, a gang, or another similar company

- The law: the Stars are investigating on your company and its legality. They could even trace back to your shadowy side. How will you escape them ??

- The law, part 2: the Stars asks for your help because one of the company's client is on their black list
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