I remember scheduling food and drink runs for when the DECKER (Yeah old school) did just about anything. "Have fun in the matrix guys we will be back in an hour and hope you are done by then."

Yeah, when I say a Face requires the GM to keep some contingencies in mind I don't really mean anything all that out of the ordinary for a shadowrun game. A lot of matrix and Face activities are essentially just different forms of information gathering and legwork. That kinda thing is easy to account for, but it's also rather easy for a relatively inexperienced GM to inadvertantly undermine things a bit by being unprepared for some of the the stuff the Face might pull. The Astral and Matrix may get all the press as being the toughest bits for people to get their minds wrapped around, but I'd argue that the social rules are often left just as unexploited. Just because people understand the mechanics doesn't mean they'll see all the opportunities, particularly since lying to people is risky in the long run and the exact effect of net hits can be tough to gauge.

And that was a BAD thing. That's why despite the endless debate of fixed TNs and pretty much everything else in the new edition, everyone gives a big thumbs up to the wireless matrix. It makes playing a hacker vastly better because it changes them from being someone who is either sitting aound not using their primary skillset or is making everyone else sit around.

These days a hacker should be able to do thier thing in a couple minutes in most cases. Ditto with a mages and riggers. They can also do stuff relevant to the team at all stages of a run from legwork/scouting, to the on site but non-combat part of the run, and finally to the combat part of the run.



Lets not stoop to BS.

Look. Can a team without any social skills at all successfully complete every published SR mission/adventure? I think they can, feel free to show me one they couldn't. Maybe a few less nuyen, but generally smooth sailing. It isn't that they don't have to deal with people. And that's often some of the best parts. It's that you don't require any in game skills or abilities to do that, the player does the RPing and off you go. Basically so far as the published stuff is concerned the player's charima is important, the character's is not.

Can they complete those adventures/missiones without any combat abilities? Nope. Unless you don't count an army of drones or spirits as "combat abilities". There might be a few that you could get through using other skills. But frequently you'd just be screwed.

Similarly there are a few where you're boned unless you have a mage on hand. And it's rough going in most without one.

Matrix skills are hit and miss, but at least occasionally you simply need to have a decker/hacker to complete the job. Even in the bad old days teams would usually have an NPC decker.


Despite how fun they can be with the right group, social skills have always been optional, supported by a tiny amount of rules and guidance, and something between a waste and an annoyance with the majority of GMs.

And thats pretty much the thing i try to avoid. Having one person be important for 30 mins straight, and the rest of the team has nothing to do.

Had it happen in other RPGs and when your one of the guys who has to sit around, because Miss B&E is doing her thing just plain sucks (especially when it is the best option). Yes i often fall asleep at those moments or start making up 40k armies/new SR chars or whatever.

When your char is plodding along for too long. Thats the moment you lose contact with the game.

I prefer 10-20 minute phases max for someone. I totally do prefer combat where everyone has something to do about once every few minutes. Hard to achieve anywhere else, but its the same reasons my hackers dont get to see all the wonders of the Matrix every time they hack something. No need to have the rest of the group do nothing for 15 mins, only because the hacker wants to check some security feeds.

But thats me.

Yeah i hate it when the group starts to split up .

And a little bit more Ontopic.

Faces can be damn useful, but often enough they hog the limelight. And when they do that for too long the streetsams are going to do the same thing. Everyone likes to apply his hammer to the nails presented by the GM. If you as a face can apply your skills to smuggle the whole group onto something, you just made everyone happy. If you got yourself into the highsec bulding and everyone else is left waiting outside, theyll get impatient, and start looking for "their" way in. Which might just include guns depending on the amount of gunbunnies present.

Faces are damn cool, but as already mentioned, start with someone with a few dice more than the other runners, and look how often they let you apply your abilities. Then decide how much Karma you want to plunk into that.

Oh I agree. I was just reminiscing. All I am really trying to say here is that there is no way to have a group of 5-7 people play a game without taking turns.




Now here is the BS. I just reread the book, and I find nothing to support your point of view. Nothing to even imply it. The players charisma is irrelevant compared to the characters. A socially inept player can play a maxed out face. That is the whole point of having stats. That is why a scrawny dude can play a big bad troll. The players stats do not matter.

GM: "OK roll your Con+Charisma"

Player: "That's 13 dice"

GM:"Umm no your character has 13 dice, but YOUR Con+Charisma is only about 4 dice. Roll that"





Once again completely untrue. I have played in many many missions where combat never happened. Heck that is the goal of a shadowrun. Combat usually happens when things do not go to plan. Now I am not saying a team should not be prepared for combat, just that it should not be a goal.

You should read Lone Wolf by Nigel Findley. Argent, once of the nastiest sammies that ever took breath, explained to the main character about how weak Shadowrun teams were in a fight. Why they were not meant to slug it out in a firefight. He compared shadowrun teams to a light recon force. Even went so far as to say that the typical team would get creamed by the average military squad.

QFT

Of course that is not in the books but most players I know prefer to just roleplay the social parts. Sometimes a roll is called but most of the time we just don't need to. And nobody likes to break the timing of the dialogue to roll dice. The exception is when there is a character with higher than averege social skills - the character talks much better than us players - or the GM needs a number of hits as a base to something he has to decide.

Yes... yes they can. At least in the manner of which you (probably unwittingly) describe them. If you have a team of mindless combat junkies without any social capabilities whatsoever, they'd never get a job in the first place and unless the adventure/mission is a giant bag of GM handholding, they'd rarely if ever get the clues or necessary legwork done to follow up on, well, anything.

Likewise, a Face can fire a pistol, cast a spell, or toss a grenade just fine, even if they don't specialize in it. Just like everyone else.

You can't assume one is completely devoid of the other. Because, despite your attempts to prove otherwise, social skills are as vital to the game as combat skills are. And, because of that, someone specializing in one is just as useful as someone specializing in the other.

Oh come on, don't be like that. I think you know exactly what I meant, and it's implied in a lot of the posts here by other people.

In most instance a face can't just walk up to the guards, roll a pile of dice and get let through by the GM. They have to "roleplay it". Which I agree with actually. But as soon as you do that, you're shifting from the character's charisma to the players.

Though I was refering more to the flip side. Which is where when it comes to things like negotiating with the J or interacting with someone else in game, it's very easy for a player with negotiating skills but with a character with no social skills to handle most of the situations present perfectly fine. Especially if they're backed up by some detect lies magic. I've even (and seen others) essentially drag the money negotiation into the actual verbally role played portion of the conversation, removing the single social roll in most games with the players own ability to wheedle the GM.

I find GMs, who generally favor role playing over roll playing, are reluctant to say "shut up and roll".




Ok, are you talking about Missions like the published ones or your GM created sessions? And in any case I never said there were no Missions or published adventures that couldn't be completed without combat, just that you can't do all of them without combat, but (more importantly) you could probably complete every single one without social skills.

And I'm not arguing the fluff. But the OP isn't writing a novel. They're playing in a game with a GM that, like as not, never read that book.

If the OP is actually reading this, you could guide the discussion a lot by describing your group and your GM. If you want to be a face because the rest of the team is using th edge on social rolls all the time it's very different than if it's a new team, or if it's a team that's been getting along perfectly fine without a face for months.




First off all they aren't mindless combat junkies. Or if some of the characters are most of the players aren't. And they can have a good array of non combat skills. Hacking, Magic, scouting drones, even some contacts. The OP isn't going to become stupid if they don't max their fast talk skill.

No, you know full well that there are tons of groups, probably playing as we type, that don't have any social skills on any of the character sheets in the whole group and they're doing just fine.

If legwork contained hard and critial information, as in you simply can't complete the run without four hits on it, that would be something. At least they'd want to get a contact helping them out (though since this is outside of the run that's pretty easy to do, arguing you need a face for legwork is sort of like arguing that the team needs someone to play the fixer). Still, I find that isn't the case. The information found in legwork provides hints to things you'll find the answers to other ways. Again feel free to point me to a published produce where that isn't the case.

Still though, hints can be nice, and legwork can usually be handled with a a couple rolls, so it is a thing the face should try and work in, and that good GMs will reward.

*shrug* I think it's exactly the same as using Firearms. You can't just skip the use of ambushing, cover, ammo selection, or targeting and just 'roll Firearms'. For social skills, you also have to ambush, cover, select ammo, and target, THEN roll the dice.

Well said. That's the best description of a face I've heard yet.

(Starts planning next session.)

Very nicely put. I'm going to use that next time I need to explain how to play a Face to someone.

Well i never let players roleplay above their level. So if someone has Cha 2 and Influence 1 i would let him get by conning a guy in the stuffer shack. Anything else needs a roll.

If someone has high Charisma and Influence skills, he has the skills to back up roleplay and done.

But i guess you guys roll the same way ^^.

Ok let me be clear here. What you are talking about is at a minimum munckining and at worst cheating. You are saying that you use Charisma and its linked skills as dump stats so that you can put more BP into combat skills. Simply because you are ignoring the rules for them and using the players Charisma instead. I am not certain what to call this, but it is not role-playing. Look at the phrase. You are playing a ROLE. If the Troll with Charisma 2 and Influence 1 is negotiating with the Johnson, he should suck at it. If the player is slinging a brilliant line of BS because they (the player) have a high Charisma, then they are NOT roleplaying. They are just being themselves. If you want to roleplay someone with a high Charisma then you should build the character that way.


Well both actually. I have played every published SR adventure. This does not include Shadowrun Missions. I have just started on those. In the two I have played this last month, there has been only one combat, and it did not last until the end of the first IP. Note: We had 3 faces and a mage as PC's for that one.



Shadowrun is not a game where you can divorce the fluff from the mechanics. The fluff in tied directly to everything Shadowrun is.





You seem to be under the impression that I am the captain of the Face fanclub and feel that no one should ever play anything else. Well if you go back a read my posts I have never said anything of the sort. All archetypes are valuable and useful. I am simply disputing the notion that faces are useless or never needed. Along with your notions that Charisma is not used. I have played many characters with low charisma and had fun doing so. My personal recommendation to anyone building a character would be to diversify as much as you can. Try and dabble in more than one archetype. The more situations that they are useful in, the more effective a character they will be.

So no a face is not absolutely necessary. Neither is a hacker, or a mage, or a sammie, or a rigger, etc., etc. but they can all sure be handy to have around.

I agree completely with this. I even take it one step farther. Add the narrative and roleplaying to the combat as well.

Instead of this....

GM: A guard walks around the corner.

Player: I shoot the guard (rolls dice)

GM: Ok that is 2 boxes stun for the guard, next.

Try this....

GM: A guard on his rounds, casually walks around the corner and appears startled to find you.

Player: I quick draw my silenced Predator with practiced smoothness and try to silence the guard before he can sound an alarm. (rolls dice)

GM: Ok you pull off your shot with text book precision, but this guard is no slouch. He managed to twist a little out of the way and the shots miss their mark, hitting him in the left shoulder. His armor absorbs most of the impact, and he takes two boxes of stun, leaving him free to draw his Ingram with his right hand and return fire.

Alright, lets simplify this a bit. When you break it down we are having two discussions here.

First is regarding the published materials. I think it would be hard to dispute the claim that social skills are treated with great brevity. If someone felt like it someone could compare the wordcount for social skills vs the number of wordcount for magic, guns, hacking etc. But I think we all know that it would be some ridiculous fraction. Like 100 to 1 for some of those match ups in the main book, to say nothing of the extra books dedicated to those other things.

Similarly if we really wanted to we could go through published adventures and missions, in which you will find that that there are instances where you absolutely need combat, magic, or matrix abilities to complete them, as in if your team doesn't have the right person you'd best hire an NPC. Not in every adventure, but in some.

I do not believe there is any product that has ever been published that cannot be completed without a face. Hence they are literally not "needed".


The second discussion, when you break it down, is between a number of people talking about how things should be, and myself and some others talking about how things actually are in many cases. Remember this is a player asking for help, not a GM still putting together their game.

It's like someone describing the wonderous driving abilities of an F1 racer on their closed circuit track. I'm just trying to point out that when you try and drive the thing around the pothole, bump, and debris ridden streets of Philly that things will not turn out as well you describe.

In the end -- like almost everything else that's argued abou for very long -- much of this "roll dice" or "play a role" stuff comes down to each individual game table, each individual gaming group, and what each player and GM prefers. Some folks enjoy thinking quickly and coming up with quick cons and lies and fast-talks in order to BS at their game table and convince NPCs to go along with what they say. Some folks aren't much good at that, or dont have fun with it, and would rather just tell the GM "I lie to the guard to try and get him to let us in," and sling some dice -- just like folks that say "I shoot at the guard to try and get him to let us in."

Ultimately it comes down to what every group likes. Personally? I'm a big fan of a little of this, a little of that. In most of the games I run, or play in, a half-and-half mix comes up where a player gets in character for a few phrases, hustles and razzle-dazzles (or intimidates, or inspires, or whatever) an NPC speaking in the first person...and then the GM tends to apply a modifier, change a difficulty number, or whatever (depending on what game we're playing) as a circumstance bonus, and we toss a handful of dice and see what happens.

Folks that enjoy the RP of it and like to think off the cuff can do so and get a reward for it (by way of extra dice) for their good roleplaying (assuming it's valid for the character to think/talk/lie that quickly...it can be a penalty, too, like if suddenly the low INT and low CHA Troll, with no social skill, comes up with a clever trick).

For some reason the players in my table that play low charisma characters don't even try to roleplay above their level. I think they really like to roleplay anti-social characters. Like this low social and mental attributes troll a friend of mine used to play. Most of the time he depended on other characters to even know who he should shoot. His street name was Weapon Mount.