As a groups face what are the best things to know and how do you best utilize your skills and assets?

I'm new to the whole face business, and well I'm not downright terrible at it I know I could be better. So I'm asking the community for suggestions on how a face should act. For example what type of questions should one ask in a negotiation? What are the proper timetables for the procurement certain items such as SINs and firearms? How do you best use the knowledge you have to your advantage?

I hope these questions can be answered, and I hope you all have more suggestions for me.

For negotiations, depends on the type of negotiations. For an interview with a Johnson, I would say your goal is to get a good payout, with some of it in advance, along with whatever logistical support the Johnson can provide. Some questions would be:

What is the time frame for the job? How much time does the team have to prepare for the job and research it? Rush jobs should make a face suspicious, and call for higher pay at the very least. What opposition will there be - not only from the target, but from other people after the target? What defenses are in place? How will the team get in contact with the Johnson after the run? How will payment be handled?

Keep in mind that the runners should not depend on the Johnson for all of their information, because at best, he has his own agenda.

Timetables for acquiring gear depend on having high social skills, and will also vary depending on individual campaigns. In one game, you might be able to pick up a crate of rocket launchers that your fixer has lying around. In other games, a Panther Assault Cannon might be a rarely seen, almost legendary gun.

Knowledge skills let you add a bit of a personal touch to your dealings with NPCs, either to make small talk (discussing Italian cuisine or opera with the Mafia boss) or to make yourself fit in better (talking about how a local thrash band was better before they "sold out" when talking to a metalhead ganger).

Your role on the team is to be the team's, well, face. You do the talking. You represent the team to the Johnson, and do the main amount of talking in the negotiation. If you're not the team's leader, you'll probably appear as the leader to most other people.

What type of questions should you ask in negotiations? Smart ones. The same ones as everyone else, really. Everyone has a responsibility to ask the right questions, and bring up objections. ("You want this done tonight? Okay, but it's gonna cost you an extra twenty grand.") People are only limited by their stats - dumb guys won't have too much to say. If the other players are talking smarter than you, you can at least sum up their arguments and present them as a single set of arguments. That way, you're still the one doing the main talking, and can then roll your dice. You need as much info as you can get before negotiating price. There are other things you can negotiate for, such as up-front money, or access to gear.

Timetables for procurement of gear can be found at the beginning of the gear chapter, in the form of intervals.

Roles on missions include doing legwork to learn info. Everyone should do that, but you're better at it. Talking your way past guards is another good one. Or getting close to the mark, to facilitate an extraction. Any solution that doesn't involve combat or magic is probably your solution. Keep your eyes open for alternatives.

One of the most important jobs for the face is negotiation of fees and payment. Always try for a better price, and don't be afraid to spend edge if there is enough money on the line. A good negotiator is the difference between full price and half price when buying gear. Don't be afraid to negotiate for every major item the team buys, so long as you can get along with everyone else's contacts - contacts are people too and some won't want to deal with anyone except the PC who payed build points for them. The same goes for fencing gear. Don't overdo it, you can wind up bogging things down if you roll for every purchase so ask your GM if you can make one roll per meeting. Whatever you do when negotiating, make sure that the other party is still turning a profit - if you constantly rip people off, no one will deal with you.

Contacts are important for two reasons, help getting gear is one, gathering information is the other big one. Find out straight from the start how your GM handles contacts. Start with as many contacts as you can, and try to pick up new ones as quickly as possible. Try to develop a relationship with everyone else's contacts, but be sure the contact is willing to meet you. Treat your contacts right - make sure they get something out of the relationship. That could be cash, gear, information, or just a heads up to avoid 6th and Broadway Tuesday night from 10-11PM because there is going to be a shoot out. Try to build up your contacts ratings during play, and not just loyalty, try helping that corp buddy get a promotion to raise their connection rating, or whatever. Your goal should be to make yourself so useful to your buddies that the want to help you out with intel and gear and want to introduce you to their contacts.

Your last job is to be the con artist of your team. Weather its fast talking a guard or sweet talking your way out of a police search, you're going to be the one doing the talking and making the roll. Prepare several stock stories and lines in advance, along with knowledge skills to back up your bluff, write them down if you have to and reference them during a run. Don't claim to work for AZT unless you know something about them, and know a little Spanish. You don't have to be an expert, you just need to sound like you know what you are talking about. Make sure you have a steady supply of spare uniforms for jobs like custodians, delivery men, repair techs, low level office staff and the like. Looking the part is just as important as saying the correct things.

Hope that helps.

www.hulu.com
Look up the A-Team. Watch it...pay CLOSE attention to Templeton Peck, aka Face or Faceman (refered to
as both during the show). He is the epitome of a Face. He is what you should aspire to!

Cardul beat me to it. I would also recommend Burn Notice. All three of the main characters are good at social engineering in different ways.

I play faces alot, I just like them. My biggest piece of advice it this: know how to bullshit. Having prepared cons and lines is useful, but often you will find yourself in a situation where you need something on the fly. This is where bullshitting comes in. You need to be able to throw a steady stream of bullshit at people, it keeps them off balance and gives you the edge. As a face, when they are off balance you have them primed. They are ready for the coup.

Just my 0.02

I am also a newbie, but I play a face Shadowrun over Skype so its easier for me because I have time to think what to say. When faced with a social situation think what would apply best. In negotiations its really a game of between you and the GM. On my first negotiation with a Johnson, I led him to talk about the job before I committed my team to anything. After the Johnson offered what he would pay for the job, I pointed out that we haven't agreed to a job yet, and it would be such a shame if someone went after the item in question if they were not hired by him. Negotiating a better price was easy from there. Don't think the GM will make that mistake again.

I would suggest getting 3-4 different high quality SINs, and develop a backstory for each. Keep switching between them, and use disguises to keep your "face" off the radar.

Also don't neglect your other skills, so you have something to fall back on if the talking goes wrong. Infiltration is a good choice.

However I am not sure if you should purchase the Social skill group. I haven't had to use etiquette once (though don't have much experience, but see where it could be useful) and I'm not even sure what Leadership does.

Generate a list of jobs and their expected costs with your group and GM. Its impossible to know if your getting a a good deal or the shaft if you the player don't know what's reasonable.
There's at least one list floating on these boards, and I think there's one in one of the 3rd ed books.

Leadership is for influencing people through creating the impression of authority. Convincing people to follow your plan, calming/inciting an angry mob and instilling confidence in someone are typical examples. Even 'negotiating' with a contact could be a leadership roll if you, say, expected him to appease you through fear and/or respect.

Hey everyone, thanks for the suggestions, these are really going to help. I'd implore that you keep 'em coming.

If someone is going to be bribed, fast-talked, or otherwise socially bypassed, it will generally be the Face who arranges it. Usually your Troll Samurai will just manage to insult them.

Face is a funny role.

On the one hand, there's no requirement you think for yourself when doing your actual trade. What you bring to the table are a set of skills no one else has. If someone else has an idea, a question, a plan, etc., you should be able to roll the dice on his behalf. (And if your GM gives you trouble, remind him that he doesn't require the gun bunny's player shoot a round at the table, or the decker bring his own laptop, so falling back on your stats instead of thinking up the BS line/question/whatever yourself is completely fine, by the rules.)

On the other hand, faces are expected to have a persona of their own that is carefully cultured. THey're expected to know more about the world. To be more sensible. To know what questions to ask when no one else does. This isn't something you can roll for, and ultimately it falls on the player, not the character. Develop a style.

If you are new to Shadowrun, the face is the last role I'd recommend.

You MUST HAVE high intelligence, negotiation and etiquette. There's no way around that. You also should probably are going to need an auxiliary skillset. Rarely is a campaign such that social interactions take up even a significant amount of time (they're just significantly important!) Deckers and mages seem to be the most popular second choice in my experience, with mages enjoying the most synergy. Make sure you aren't JUST a face.

Your face should have a background; a style, nice clothes, a way to portray himself which makes a strong impact on the GM. Whether he notices it or not, that will have an influence. You benefit more from actual role-playing than any other person at the table. Ham it up. Learn to BS. Yes, you can fall back on the dice, but draw on those benefits if you can.


Consider also diversifying your face skills. Fixers, shoemakers, con artists, hustlers, they're all 'faces' too, and have particular skillsets which give them an advanced ability in a particular area.

Pick up some language skills and a diverse range of knowledge skills, such as corporate politics, underworld organizations, etc. Your skills should give you background information on who you're dealing with.

Contacts are super important. Unfortunately, they offer relatively low value for their cost. Still, you'll need more than two, so invest in some good ones. Don't get a fixer, instead aim for specialists, and be your own fixer.

There are some fun shows based on what type of face you pursue, but most are not appropriate for most types of faces, so figure out your specialty first. There's a Cyberpunk 2020 book, I believe it's called Wildside, which focuses exclusively on the Face character and is excellent. Seek it out, it will bring your play up to a whole new level.

Thanks, I'm aware of what a face does. I was looking for suggestions and tricks of the trade to make me a better face. Not new to Shadowrun (okay, well, relatively new) but new to Face-ing.

Intelligence is broken down into 2 Attributes. I do not think that high Logic is essential for a face, high Intuition is useful in that all runners should have good Intuition if simply for Perception dice pool.

High language skills are very necessary, Bilingual is well worth its cost because it essentially lifts one of the cap of your social skill dice (when interacting in another language, your dice pool is somewhat limited by your skill in that language, Native languages do not have that limitation).

Depending on what you use Contacts for, they can be quite cost effective. At Connection 1 (barring GM-discretion complications), you are certain to get hold of the Contact. And taking the sample contacts in SR4A, IIRC, the blogger has a specialty Knowledge skill at 5. With some proper preparation, you could get a data dump on the subject/s before going out to smooze.

That book would be the Shadowrun Companion. The rates were far too low in my opinion, but to each their own.

I'd recommend that you go over with your GM just how much a typical bribe is for a given situation. Or decide what sort of a roll is required to guess an appropriate amount.



If you find yourself needing a large number of languages, consider getting skill softs, they aren't as good as the real thing but they can save you a lot of karma.