The designers do have a certain control over the genre of the game, but it is up to each of us to choose to play the game as we like.

For a slightly different perspective, I've always found Con to be the ability to *sell* your lie, not to outright lie and get what you want. A con artist, or a "con"fidence man, wasn't so good because he came up with a great lie. He was great because he could sell it to you, no nerves, no pause, right stance and stature. It usually took prep work for the look, the intent, etc.

So if, for example, you walk into a warehouse and tell someone you're from Knight Errant looking for a place to store some 'disappearing goodies'... You might be able to sell you're from Knight Errant, you MIGHT even sell that you're looking for a place to store said disappearing items... You're not going to convince this guy to not text his warehouse workers to "Dump that crap you're loading into the boat right now and RUN!" If you're also trying to sell the fact that your company, a protection firm, needs a secure place to store things... you can't con someone the sun is blue today.

Exactly. Like I said, a Face has to know what to say as well as when and to whom to say it to. It's not just a bunch of random rolls of the dice. It's the roleplaying archetype, and if you don't actually play the part, it's quickly going to result in the vitriol and disdain that some of the people in this thread seem to have towards it.

Maybe I'll show my age a bit but... In my day the problem with playing the Face was that you did all your research, blackmailed the security mage. Changed your finderprints etc to look like the researcher, had the mage of the group mask your signature. Spend hours in VR learning the facility. Then you go in...

You grab the item...

And random joe security guard starts firing at you (why we dont know but he was on to you). Then knight errant apparently surrounded the entire building while you were in there(somehow the sniper and the rigger you had watching the place didnt see the attack helecoptors and tanks coming in) and they just opens fire, never mind the secretaries and other employees in there. This runner has to die!

And if you managed to get out with the item Mr Johnson shoots you in the back and takes the item and the money.

[edit] Oh and con shoudln't make them do what you say it should help make them believe what you say. OMG its a Dragon! Will just make them turn their head not actually believe there is a dragon.

You don't bluff your way into a secure building. You con the right people into inviting you in. A face is like a good hacker; it's not about beating the system, it's about abusing and subverting the (social) system.

A Face isn't something you make by putting some stats on a piece of paper; it's an act, and it requires a lot of creativity to come up with the scams that'll get you the desired result. The stats are rather like an afterthought.

Faces are an archetype that works best with planning and preparation. Pure bluff can only get you so far, even if you are a social adept.

A face is useful because social skills, and contacts, are tools that are good for the information gathering stage of the run, the infiltration and exfiltration, and the aftermath (fencing paydata, etc.). Shadowrunners may operate outside of the system, but they depend on a network of other people to give them jobs, gear, fake ID, safe houses, and so on. They also deal with dangerous and unsavory groups of people, sometimes when they are at a numerical or logistical disadvantage, or when violence would inordinately complicate their lives. The face's ability to navigate these treacherous waters is invaluable.

Being a face is a broad role, and not every social character will be a full-fledged face. Some are nothing but pure brute force social ability, with things like glamour or tailored pheromones that make them effective con artists at the price of making them memorable and conspicuous. You can also be a sammie, hacker, or other type with a "touch of face" - decent social skills combined with contacts and knowledge skills related to your role (maybe the sammie knows the merc hangouts, where to sell a case of hot Uzis looted from the security guards, and where to pick up milspec gear. Maybe the hacker knows who makes the best fake IDs, and which forums have the most reliable rumormills.).

So when you make a face, think about what aspects of being a face that you enjoy. Is it being supernaturally attractive? Is it being a social chameleon? Is it having buddies and connections everywhere? Is it being able to ferret out information by talking to people? Get skills to play what you like doing, and then pick some secondary specialties that go with it. Faces can be effective outside of the social realm, too.

Yes, Fisty and kzt - I did note that you cannot directly contradict a previous order. Generally the guy set to guard the yellow line or the front gate is the toughest part of the job for a face - because that guy's orders are to limit entry. That's the case where you either need another con, or another entrance.

How do you get past the front guard? You figure out how people get added to the 'expected persons list'. You get yourself added to the list. Then you smile to the guard as you walk by.

I can say that, from professional experience, you can get into a lot of sensitive places if you look and act the part. The front door is the toughest part. After that... either hijack an enlistee as a guide, or cruise the cafeteria to gather information or snag a badge (or surf the cubicles) or whatever... Most people do not have the job of watching out for intruders, so they don't. Figure out who in the organization your target is trained to help, and become that person.

Ok I feel the need to relate a story as an example of what can easily be done.

In early 1993, my younger sister was taking figure skating lessons. As a surprise gift for her progress, my parents sprang to go see Stars on Ice. I was 19 at the time, and the idea was enough to make me vomit. But I was a good big brother, so I put on a smile and played along. At the show, my mother noticed my boredom and suggested I go and try to get an autograph for my sister. As I approached the area of the arena that was closest to the ice where people had gathered to try and get autographs, a security crew showed up to disperse the people and insist the go back to their seats. To avoid this fate I quickly pulled out my ticket a acted like I was looking for my seat. I appropriated a vacant seat and waited until the security guards were content and left the area. As they left, I noticed a side door towards the back of the arena that some of the guards were passing through. As I waited I noticed one of the guards that had passed through the door appeared a few moments later near the ice. I surmised that the door must be a passage to the back areas. I left my seat and found a secluded place near the door. When a vendor, carrying a large box, came through I was nice enough to hold the door for them. They never noticed me slip through the door. Once inside I quickly appropriated a box from a nearby cart. The nice vendor apparently had a stash behind the door. The box and a smile was all it took for the guards to ignore me as I walked into the back areas. I eventually found a hallway that lead to a buss parking area. The buses outside were for the stars and guarded by numerous ecurity personnel. As I scoped out the area, I bumped into a skater carrying a large duffel. She was well known enough that I recognized her instantly. I never flinched and quickly said, "Ms. Yamaguchi may I help you with your bag?" She smiled and handed me here duffel. I followed her to the bus and handed of the bag to the coachman who was loading baggage onto the bus. As the skater thanked me, I sheepishly asked for an autograph. "Not for me, but for my baby sister, who is a big fan. She would think I am the best big brother in the world if you would just sign." I eventually made seven trips through the security checkpoint carrying luggage and walked away with seven autographs. Security never questioned a thing. They all assumed I was with the skaters.

Now this was no Shadowrun and not high security by any means. But security was not exactly loose either. This is just one example I can provide. I have conned my way into many places. Including Whiteman Air Force base. Yup I managed to convince a group of armed airmen to let me drive my Suburban carrying my family inside, without even showing ID. With the right story and a lot of homework I could probably get into just about anywhere, but to be honest I am not sure I have the stones for the serious stuff.

I was in a professional course and the teacher mentioned he was given a guided tour of the Anacostia Naval Yards - without ever showing any form of authentication. Just look and act like you belong. (He was an ex-Marine officer - Major Paine, if you can believe it! But he obviously looked the part and knew the lingo.)

Those Marines are Crafty People...

Keep the Faith

Possibly he got in because it was a guided tour?

There was this huge snowboarding contest thing up at Bear Valley or maybe Snow Summit that happened one weekend while my brother was slumming it (sleeping in the back of his car so he didn't have to pay for gas to drive home every night, etc.) and the only clothes he had were his snowboarding clothes and his suit (his plan was to snowboard as long as he could Fri evening, Sat and Sun morning then to put his suit on and show up just in time for church with the family). So he realized that he wasn't going to be snowboarding that day, so he put his nice dark suit on to impress the girls. While he was walking along that morning he came to the spot where the professionals were going to the lift and he just walked up and started manning that spot. If someone was a professional, he let them onto the lift and the slope otherwise he turned them away. He got to spend the day chatting with the professionals who were waiting and he had a great view of the half pipe. Nobody ever challenged him or said, "Hey, you don't work here" or something, he was just dressed for something like that and he spent the day "working" like he belonged there. And then he partied with them all night long, but that's another story.

A similar story is why I'm banned for life from the Stratosphere in Las Vegas, but that's another story.

If you happen to be dressed for whatever you're doing and you're there working, nobody ever really challenges you unless it's s a small operation where everyone knows each other. You just need to watch out for those jobs where people are paid by "commission" (by how much work they do) instead of by the hour -- because then the other housekeeping team might radio back to ask which room they're supposed to be in because someone's already there vacuuming.

With the right cyberware, I've found socially oriented characters (especially those of the female variant) to be quite useful for assassinations. Seduce the target, then, in the seclusion of his bedroom (or the nearest bathroom, if he is of the less-than-romantic kind), make him experience that nice little throat-implant blade of yours. People probably won't go looking for him for a while allowing you to get away nice and quietly, if you make sure people won't see you leave his room on the same way you got in.

If you're doing the assassination as a preparation for a later raid, you could get finger(print)s (copies), eyeballs and similar as well. Of course, you'd have to take care that access codes won't be changed in the time between the take-down and the raid, so you'd better do the raid right after it and take care to hide the body, preferably going as far as making sure the guy's boss knows he won't be available for the evening or something.

Mind you, though, that all my experiences with "face" characters have been in other role playing systems, and that they also had decent combat skills, so they always were useful, even when not acting within their archetype.

I'm suddenly picturing the need for a heimlich after every assassination. Where'd I leave that mind bleach...?

There are stories of women in Colombia who would somehow cover or dip their breasts in scopolamine. They'd seduce the mark, bring him home, you know, then the drug would take effect and they would take him off to a safehouse where they could empty all his accounts at their convenience.

Good face with the right tools

edit: Well... good SOMETHING anyway.

One of my favorite Face moments in SR was when my buddy Ed ran On the Run for us. I was playing a Welsh elven Face/Pistoleer (we had no combat chars in the group, thus my need to be handy with an Ares Predator). We showed up early to Nabo's concert, my Face in his expensive three-piece with the human combat mage and the burly ork infiltrator (with street clothes over his sneaksuit) behind me as "bodyguards," and I bluffed my way past three successive groups of gangers by telling them that I worked for a European media corp and that I wanted to talk to Nabo about a European Tour, that I had already locked in tour-dates, and that my corp would be willing to pay for him and his "entourage" to make the trip. The best part? I winged that one off the top of my head, and apparently my surprise showed on my face because the GM shook his head and gave me a +2 dice pool modifier for pulling such a convincing con out of my ass.

Asking a lot of random wealthy looking men if they want to come back to your room to suck your tits until one says yes doesn't exactly require social skill. The person with the social skill is the one who came up with this scam, scored the scopalamine, got somebody to teach him to use it safely, and is skimming from the ladies who do the dirty work.

He has no social skill, just money. The person with the social skill in this scenario is the guy who comes in and the women give him a little quiet kickback for nothing before sending the rest on to the main backer.

In fact, the guy with social skills is the guy behind the guy who has money behind the guy who came up with the scam behind the girls...

hi hi

It's not about telling one big lie, it is about weaving together a fabric of smaller lies until it either sticks or becomes true by virtue of self fulfilling prophecy.

Most of the discussion has focused on the face bypassing security but the face has so many other uses, deadly uses, that it is sometimes scary. Has anyone ever seen Wag the Dog?

Edit: Secondary Pattern Voice Modulators have so many more uses than just bypassing locks, especially in a world where so much interaction is done wirelessly.

Back to a general discussion of how to approach playing a Face, my first suggestion is to go and pick up The Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick.

Mitnick is an ex-hacker-turned-security-consultant who generated quite a bit of news back in the day. The book is a discussion of what he considers the biggest and most easily exploitable security flaw in any system: Human interaction. It's a book totally on social engineering. It deals with using certain phrases to generate emotional reactions that will benefit the engineer, and gives several "real world" examples for each of his concepts on how an exploit could occur. It gets a little repetitive in the second half, but there's a huge number of examples that are applicable to a Face in any roleplaying game. It's a great "conceptual" book on how to A) produce social engineering attacks and B) how to make such attacks more difficult.

"This is Nothing, Nothing... we can fix this, it's nothing"

Yeah, Wag the Dog is pretty funny...

hi hi

It was funny, but the point I was trying to make is that if you can find people that want to believe a lie, you can get it to take on a life of its own.

Another example I know is in the book The Outback Stars where:


A living corporate asset might be easier to extract for another company if he believes his wife was cheating on him with his boss, for example.

Alright, I think people are arguing from a fictionalized imagining of how SR is played.

Choosing to play a face character is a tricky prospect at best. Here are some of the problems.

#1 If a face player is doing many of the things mentioned here, they're going to be effectively hogging the limelight , and this will not go over well. I think I can comfortably say that "face" types have the highest mortality rates in most any game. This is because either they have to operate nearly solo, at which point when something goes wrong, possibly by GM fiat, you're all alone and not that much of a combat monster, or you have to try and bring along the sociopathic troll that really really does not want to have come over for game night only to NOT get in a bunch of fights with the new cyberware they bought after the last session. I'll leave it to your imagination how well that's going to work out.

#2 The is no guarantee you'll be useful. A GM essentially can't stop a mage from being useful unless they start throwing manastorms everywhere. And so long as there is a fight the combat types are useful. But in many missions there isn't a "face required" part. To get a feel for this maybe read through the SR missions. Sure there is a spot here or there where a face might get to make a roll. But while a team might be screwed if they didn't have a mage, you don't really have to roll a single social die to complete them. Mind you I haven't played all of them, so feel free to pull out some examples in the missions that prove me wrong, it would make me happy to see some real social skill aspects added in.

#3 What they can acheive can often be duplicated by other players. Instead of trying to lie your way through, a hacker can get you preapproved. Instead of trying to convince someone of something, a mage can simply control them.

#4 I've often played face types, and I find there is significant pushback from GMs/DMs. It's rather strange, but while they can accept a troll that can bench press a car, a mage that can fly, and don't blink when someone has such a large dice pool that they can shoot someone in the head at max range while drunk and blindfolded, they simply cannot wrap their heads around superhuman social skills. In short I'd suggest that a social dicepool over 12 isn't going to really help you, and may actually be detrimental.

Now a face CAN be very important to a team, but it requires that the GM MAKES the setting such that a face is important. He has to make the information you learn during footwork critical not trivial like it usually is. He has to jump through the hoops to engineer situations where only social skills can get past something (which is actually fairly difficult). Or he has to make a convoluted continuing campaign where how the player relates to a wide range of the "cast of shadows" will become very important down the line.

By default they do none of this, and so by default the face type is a poor choice.

Unless you've personally seen a face be a vital part of the team in a game your GM ran, I'd say that if you want to play a face, you should be one of the other archetypes and simply throw some resources into a moderate social pool and see what happens before putting more resources that way. Adepts with their cheap social abilities and charisma based magic users make decent springboards, and since being a hacker doesn't have to use up that many rescources to be good they can also be a good starting point for a faceish character.

On the flip side, it is not expensive to become a face. I have seen both a decker/face and a mage/face, who spent very little to get there.

(I've also seen a rigger/adept/street sam/decker/attempted face, but... she pretty much sucked at being a face. Still, it was an honest effort.)

I know it's cliche, but it's easier to be a believable Face if you follow the most basic precept of that dog eared ol' tome "How to Win Friends and Influence People." Customs and acceptable behavior may vary around the world, but as a general rule you should never, EVER show someone up unless there's absolutely no way around it. People hold grudges, which is a problem when you consider that the people you will be dealing with in the shadows are generally armed guards, smugglers, drug dealers, con men, crooked cops, cutthroat businessmen, lawyers, mafiosi, gangers and assorted varieties of hired muscle. People always remember Machiavelli for saying it is better to be feared than loved but often forget about the part where he said that it also never pays to be hated. People at least have a grudging respect for tough but fair.

The above may seem obvious to many people, but I've found that the urge to always get in the last word can be a bit of a problem since many roleplayers seem to think that being "cool" is somehow more important than being magnanimous when it comes to playing a Face. It makes for some odd scenes in which a character acts kind of like a dick but the player cites his 3 net hits and says everyone likes him. Being witty and quick with the barbs may work on TV and make you famous, but keep in mind that in the real world Voltaire was repeatedly exiled or imprisoned for criticizing everyone under the sun. And you know what? Your Face ain't wittier than Voltaire.

I've seen a few books talking about how to not get killed on the street. In real life. They mention that getting the last word is bad idea. If some heavily armed asshole and his 12 best buddies suggest that if you don't leave their bar they will kill you there are several options open to you. Generally the option that minimizes the chance that you'll be encountering a pathologist or a trauma surgeon that night is to leave and don't say shit on the way out. Any comment you might make en-route that includes the word "you" significantly raises the chance that you'll need their services.

Yeah, you really only see those scenes where the big guy slaps the outsider protagonist on the back and pronounces him all right on TV for a reason. The exchange is a useful writing tool because it paints the hero as exceptional-- it's literally trading in on the audience's implicit knowledge that Joe Shmoe would be getting his teeth kicked in. There's exceptions, of course, but generally you don't get your way by making waves.

I absolutely 100% disagree with this. A face is almost always useful, almost always has an option. And the GM has to do nothing out of the ordinary to make this so. In fact the only way for them to not be useful is if the GM goes out of their way to make them not useful. It is up to the player to figure out how to be useful. Of course if the GM just says no to everything then you are screwed. That is not a problem with the character, but rather a problem with the GM.

And making a situation were only social skills can suffice is difficult? Seriously? What could be more easy. All you have to do is make confrontation a bad thing. Which is easy in shadowrun because in so many situation the other guy has more resources. Heck just every meet with a Johnson qualifies.

I do agree with your statement that a mage is almost always useful as well. Assuming they have a good selection of spells available. In my option it is the straight up Martial characters that are often left with nothing to do. Now granted, when the fit hits the shan, they are darn handy to have around, but the rest of the time they are on hold.

That is highly, highly subjective. The post you're responding to is biased by personal experience as well, but I think GMs do need to acknowledge that there's an inherent amount of ambiguity when dealing with degrees of success on a social test and that players may resort to other methods rather quickly if the group makeup gives the team other options. After all, what happens when you shoot a hell hound with a full narrow burst is pretty well codified compared to how much mileage you can really expect to squeeze out of a net hit on a Con test-- hell, the mark may not be able to do what you need him to do at all. Further, it's actually quite possible to make a game where social skills aren't that terribly useful. It may sound awful dungeon crawl to many of the people here, but it is quite possible for a group of street level runners to be asked to clear out a nest of feral ghouls or to sneak into NAN territory and poach a particular paracritter. Now, I'll grant you that in the latter case you might make some headway by hiring a local guide or something, but in a lot of cases Faces are merely greasing the wheels and saving the team a bit of nuyen here and there if the player and GM aren't pro-active about making their activities more noteworthy.

That and the way people describe the abilities of social characters they should never even go on a run. Too much risk for too little reward. Just go "social engineer" the local bank for a certified cred stick or two. Why risk going anywhere where you might get shot? Anyone can go into a bank and withdraw money.

Which can be difficult because we're roleplaying here (or trying to). If you're not so smart but your character is, a dice roll to figure something out is accepted -- our characters routinely crack uber computer problems that would take me hours to even start to parse. You may not be able to shoot worth a darn, but if you have enough dice it's really not a problem. You might be Stephen Hawking, but if your character is a Leopard Shape-shifter Trapeze Artist, then fine, as long as you roll the dice then you're just fine and dandy.

A real life person playing a face character, though, has to actually know and understand social situations and so does the GM. I've seen people who are like the sample people posted earlier in this thread -- making snarky derogatory comments to the Mafia boss but citing the 3 net hits on the social roll as the reason why the Mafia boss respects the character and is fine with that sort of language. To play a face character well, you pretty much need to understand how a face character works. There's been some great examples

If there's one thing I've learned while GMing it's that you need to be careful about stonewalling a Face in front of the gun bunnies too often-- at the very least you need to throw them some kind of useful info as a bone now and again even if they're consistently barking up the wrong tree. That's because if the rest of the group is already inclined to shoot their way to a solution the Face may not have many chances to work their magic before having to get behind cover. It's about group dynamics as much as it is opportunities.

I agree that their is always subjectivity in gaming. Playstyles vary. I also see your point that social skills results are less specific and require more creativity on the GM's part. I usually refer to that part as role-playing.

Your feral ghouls example is one were a face probably would not have much to do. But a shadowrun were all you have to do is go to point A and shoot things, does not sound very interesting. The face can get you info on their feeding habits, their location, who else might be interested in having the ghouls gone. (Hey, why not garner some favors for doing something that someone else is paying you to do.)

The paracritter example, however has face written all over it. Talk to the local animal control or game warden. They know where to find them, how to subdue them, and how to transport. Heck, they even have the gear. Make them your new bestest buddy. For the low cost of a "consulting fee" you can be the proud owner of a new paracritter.



This is very true. Knowing and using group dynamic is paramount to both players and GM.

Something I'll do as a GM, on a face's request, is allow them to roll a Logic+Con roll to attempt to figure out a useful con without planning. Depending on the # of hits I'll help them with more and more useful possible con jobs they can try on the fly.

@Whipstitch: There's another side to constantly stonewalling your face, too... and that's body count. The less useful non-impact solutions are, the more your players are going to start relying on C4 over stealth. There's a balance to everything, like allowing for a con job or a masterful matrix hack to get you halfway in before you hit the security that actually cares, etc.

Or you just might make your presence known to the very man whose job it is to stop you. Social engineering is a rather risky game. Risky enough that some groups might have a point when they argue that a simple snatch and grab might be the safe route.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer!

I think one of the most important qualities a player needs to play a face effectively is to be proactive. Creative a close second.

In the game I'm running the player who is the face is currently struggling with this. I was really glad when he wanted to be the face as he's more the type to "wait and see" or "go along with the group", though he did always have good insight and ideas.

It's been interesting to watch him learn to face because, well, a face has to create their own usefulness. A Street Sam/phys adept can kick back and wait for combat, a mage will always have niches depending on how it's built, a hacker/TM knows they can cover the tech stuff -security, info hacking, whatnot... But the face needs to think up their own usefulness or they won't do much besides get cheaper 'n rare gear, and info.

The face in my game has started to learn when to jump in with a lie or a misdirection and is now working on the creativity part, but just jumping into the situation is a good start. A "sit back and wait" face is a bored face.

For those who don't know, this is a statement that should raise some flags. It's the character generation equivalent of "It'll be an easy run, no complications".


In the examples about the paracritter. The face might cleverly think to ask around etc. However as he starts to RP with people, the shaman will get board, whistle up a spirit, and have the thing find what they're looking for with a quick toss of the dice. Before the face can get out "But I was going to..." the rigger is taking off.

Someone mentioned Burn Notice earlier. (Great show by the way, get over to Hulu pronto if you haven't seen it). But one thing that happens at least every other episode is that Fiona says something along the lines of "Wouldn't it be easier to just shoot them?" And the answer is always yes, but Michael doesn't roll that way, so you have a full episodes. The Troll Sammie wouldn't ask permission, and if he did the rest of the team would give it to him anyway. A typical runner team would complete the typical episode of Burn Notice in about five minutes.

Again the trick isn't coming up with situations where a face could be useful. It's a matter of having a situation where the pile of BPs they spent will do the trick, but that can't be acheived by the abilities of the other clever players.

Well first of all I am not trying to say that the face is the only or most useful archetype. A well rounded teams will always be the best way to go.

As to your assertion, they are true only if you ignore consequences. With the paracritter, if someone is hiring a team of runners, there must be some danger, either from the critter its self, its location, or both. So sending a spirit into such a dangerous situation alone is a fast way to loose a spirit. What you are suggesting is the same as charging the front door of a megacorp for a datatsteal.

As for Burn notice and the shoot them remark. Hey, I love Fiona, she is a great character. But the truth is, shooting brings a lot of consequences. As Micheal would say, "people ask questions" Shooting is a good way to make sure everyone knows what you did and to trigger revenge. Its like John Malkovich said in "In the Line of Fire" when talking about killing the president. Doing it is easy, getting away with it is hard. So yeah, the troll sammie could just roll heads and bring on the slaughter, until the day he kills the misfit second cousin once removed of someone powerful and they decided to make ending your life their ticket into the next election. Soon you are public enemy #1 on their tough on crime campaign. Now if the sammie had just knocked the guy out, well that's just less newsworthy. Heck fixers will stop calling you when they start to figure out that every job you pull ends up on the evening news.

Do spirits even need to move in order to use the search ability? In any case the capture and extraction is the hard part. If the thing is in the middle of a corporate facility that's a different sort of run.



It would be awsome if a GM would come in, eat the cheetos, and than say "nobody hires you after that last one" and walks out.

However if the team did the shooting in an SR mission, I'm guessing that the team is correctly confident that they'll be doing the next one. Plus, this is SR, even after the face does his thing they like as not end up shooting the guy in the end anyway.


I'm not saying that faces are worthless. I encourage players to be facey, and ensure my games are geared for that. However on the other side of the table I've found that being a face type is just an invitation to frustration, both from characters I've made and watching others. And that goes for multiple GMs and multiple game systems.

Ergo my statement that, unless the GM is actively making the game so that faces are useful, you'd be better off making nearly any other type of archtype.

I'm not saying the OP shouldn't make a face. But I'm saying that before they do they should either strongly consider how the game is structured or have a talk with the GM with their BS detector cranked up to full.

If they're unsure at all, make a character that is something else with a little bit of social ability and see how it goes. If it's great than go ahead and pick up some social adept skills when you initiate or whatever.

Still, there's just no reason to expect that the GM wouldn't be "actively making the game so that faces are useful". It's tabletop, that's his job. And as people have said, it's no stretch to find ways to make a face useful. A game without it wouldn't be Burn Notice (or Leverage, or Oceans Eleven, whatever), it'd just be SOCOM: 2070. In conclusion, thank god for good GMs.

As a GM, in such a situation, I'd say "okay, so those three hits were... just enough to get you to overcome the obvious social screwup you committed by insulting him in front of his men. He *probably* won't kill you for what you said, he actually did chuckle, but he's impatient now and has no intent of letting you stick around to insult him more in front of his men."

Every RPG I've ever played in has advocated to give a modifier (usually a bonus) to any social rolls if the player roleplays. I see no problem with giving a penalty if someone does something immensely stupid.

That's what you see on television. Someone who says something that instantly raises the success threshold to 4 successes by being a smartass, and they nail 5. If they hadn't been arrogant smartasses, instead of barely squeaking by, they would have succeeded wildly.

As a GM, I don't *have* to give success thresholds. In fact I usually don't unless the character has a reasonable knowledge of how unlikely something is going to be.

So much this.

A good GM gives everyone chance to shine and tailors runs to match the party makeup. There is an all too common misconception that at an RPG table it is the GM's game and the players conform to it. No, it is the players game and the GM conforms.

Nah, it's everyone's game. The GM creates stories he likes and which he thinks are fun, and tries to make it so that all the players can contribute to it equally. The players, in turn, create characters and story seeds for their characters (though qualities, contacts, background stories, etc.) that will fit in with the basic scenario the GM concocts and that will be compatible with the rest of the players. Then everyone sits down and weaves a story together with the GM acting as the main narrator, player of the NPCs, and all around referee for any rules disputes or confusions.

No one is more important than anyone else. Everyone has their role to play, and really good players put just about as much work into the game as a GM does.

If everyone wants to play a shoot-'em-up, that's 100% okay. If everyone wants to play an over-the-top pink mohawk game with no dice pools less than 40, that's 100% okay. If everyone wants to play a down-to-earth neo-noir game, that's 100% okay. If one person wants to do one, and everyone else wants to do something else... that's not quite so okay. Middle ground has to be found, regardless of who the outlier is.

A good GM yes. The average GM? Not so much. And by definition the average ones are more common.

Ok, so there's probably a fallacy in there somewhere, but it remains that a player should know what sort of GM they have, and what sort of players they're going to be with, before they build themselves a dedicated face type character, or they have a high probability of frustration.


That said the reason I encourage it in my players and often go that route myself if I'm a player is that, when it works well, the face can provide a great playing experience and really improve the game overall.

Sounds like you have not had good luck with GM's. Or maybe mine has been good. But I would disagree with where you put the average. Can not think of ever having "Bad" GM in Shadowrun. I Can think of a handful that I have experienced in other games. On a scale of 1 - 10 (1= terrible, 10 = phenomenal) I would place the average SR GM at about 7. In my experience of course.

Well, since they tend to be older I'd say SR GMs are generally a cut above your average DM.

However you don't just have to be a "bad" GM in order to make playing a face a bad experience. I've been enjoying myself in a number of games after I'd figured out to add the social skills as a minor addition instead of a focus , but than someone joined and made a face type.

There is a big difference between being able to sling a few social dice for some fun RP, the odd negotiation, or to try a different way to solve a problem and having that aspect be your character's bread and butter.

For example take Mantis, whose group had a face.
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...st&p=912496

It sounds like most of the time the face wasn't accomplishing too much, and when they did have their moment to shine it meant the rest of the team was sitting around bored. Which works for a single game with a good crew, but if the face tried to do that very often you start drifting into the territory where the troll sammie starts thinking of ways to "have fun" which usually sabatoge the face, bypassing him using some other option at their disposal (the mage using a control spell to accomplish the same thing), and/or enjoying watching him go down hard when the face gets picked up on a detect lies spell or something and starts burning edge to stay alive.

That's interesting, because as a GM, I'd say "your three hits tell you that insulting him is a stupid idea. Do you wish to continue?" Just like when the street sam gets 3 hits on quickdrawing, I don't say "earlier you said you insert a clip in your handgun. Handguns don't take clips, so it falls out when you draw the weapon. Also, you didn't chamber a round, so the firearm is empty".

I don't expect my players to be experts at what they are playing. I will tell them when what they are doing is not what the character would do, because of their lack of knowledge, and give them the opportunity to continue or not. I don't penalize players because they are not full-time criminals in real life, nor expect them to study these subjects in their off time.

How is that statement in anyway related to an archetype? You seem to be saying that one can have a bad play experience with a mediocre GM. Which I would agree with. But that can be true with any archetype. Heck it is possible to have a bad play experience with a great GM.




This makes no sense to me. Social skill are as much a part of the game as any other set of skills. I mean it is the same as saying, "Maybe I should start taking some firearms skills as a minor addition and see if they are useful?" Did it never occur to you that your character may have to interact with someone at some point?





First of all, the waiting your turn, scenario is always going to be a problem in RPG's. It is what happens in games. It is just as relevant if you are waiting on the hacker to hack, the rigger to do their thing, the mage to to be all magic like, or the face to talk it up. Having a player who hogs the spotlight or a player that just sits and stares, has nothing to do with archetype. A group should work together as a team and use their strengths to accomplish the mission.

Exactly. That's absolutely no different than having to deal with a hacker in the Matrix or a mage on an astral quest. At least in social situations everyone can actually contribute via the teamwork rules.