On their last mission one of my runners ended up rescueing a kid (from Bug City) who I decided would become a dependant for him. I was thinking of making her up as a character (with about 80 character points). Anyway, I was looking for some advice on what kinds of things to do with this new wrinkle in our role playing. Make his character get the dependant a fake SIN? charge him for the child's clothes/food/school? have her get bored and bug him to teach her about running the shadows? Troublesome first dates, etc, etc? Anything you guys can think of will help, I am just looking for some ideas.

Oh, and do ya'll think 80 points is too much to use for a 14-16 year old kid? Thanks!!

Oh Jheez... well there's always dating and sex and the normal 16 year old stuff. You could keep her in reserve as a potential PC, also Watching your parent-type-person as a runner is not a bad way to become one yourself, and that could spur later campaigns (has happened in our group with a foundling dependant who became the caretaker's player's new PC in the next campaign, all connecting back to where the parent-type and the kid-type are now being played by two different people and can interact in game).

I think the most important thing for a kid-type dependant NPC is to give her a PERSONALITY. Decide what she's like, how she dresses, what kind of music she likes, what kind of food she enjoys- those things like you would do for a PC, then allow her character to grow organically from those things. If you plan to have her in the shadows she'll need a stat sheet, but that may not be immediately necessary. Decide the kind of person she is and how your PC reacts to that, and then see what you want for her in the way of stats.

Lily

It's always fun when your foundling dependant has family activly searching for them.

I agree with Digital Heroin -- plus there's the obvious and cliche usage of dependents as leverage on the one protecting. The concept of it is cliche, but if you're creative you could play around with it and have some fun

Not to mention the inevitable parent-child conflicts.

It's not like the standard runner's life is pre-disposed to giving a formative teen a structured environment. Of course, they could hit the same clubs together.

Or the kid is the polar opposite of the adoptive runner -- studious and quiet while the runner is loud and boisterous, etc.

80 build points -- sounds about right. Between hobbies, possible physical activity and running for your life from the bugs it should all balance out.

Is Joe Runner going to settle into the burbs in order to give the kid a "normal" life? Shadowrunning meets the Osbournes.

Does the runner have a SIN? Then the kid probably will need one too. Was the kid SINless before? Does she have family or some reason why she might not want to use her existing SIN? (fingerprint changes might be in order)

For some reason, I keep seeing Der Governator's character from "Last Action Hero" on this thread -- particularly the home scenes when his daughter is field-stripping an assault rifle instead of looking for a prom dress.

-Siege

Edit: Is she magically active? Latent? Race? Same as adoptive runner or different? Racial conflicts? Did she grow up in the burbs, never having seen Orks or Trolls? Different socio-economic factors?

Thanks guys, that was helpful. I think I will make him put her through school and have to deal with getting a SIN, uniforms, parent/teacher conferences "but Big Brother (that's what she's gonna call him), she HATES me..."
Should be oodles of fun!

Hey, her first run can be to alter her grades on the school mainframe!

"Big Brother" ... heh heh, thats funny. So I guess she is going to be trying to get in the runners pants? As any anime fan knows, any time a young girl calls a guy "Big Brother", its because she wants to sex him up. Hahahaha, and wackiness ensues. So let me ask you, what exactly are you trying to do with this. Does the runner find this funny also, or are you just trying to humble him. It looks like this is becoming a hassle form the runner. I have always been of the philosophy that this is the GM's game, and if your not laughing then no one is. I have some players that I have to smack around sometimes. Ofcourse they complain a lot, but they are a bunch of babies.

I dunno, get the wrong runner annoyed enough and he might blow her brains out if she's not useful. Remember, runners have had to learn to live with a lot of things on the conscious that they aren't proud of.

i'd go the other way--make her really handy to have around, a la Aliens.

Um, newt was mostly useful as bait from what I remember, that and a motivational tool to get the Marines off there arses and fighting again.

A fourteen to sixteen year-old? Some orcs and trolls are already running by that age.
I think lifestyle would play a big role in how this NPC is handled. At the lower end, a kid is going to be exposed to the shadows whether they want to be or not. At more costly lifestyles, a kid could be sheltered.

I like the idea of a character who is the foil of the PC. Some kids at that age take on the parental role. (picture him or her, arms folded, foot tapping, just inside the front door. Shadowrunner comes in bleeding....
Kid: "It's FOUR in the morning. Where WERE you?")

Ask your folks what was bugging them about you at that age. (I guess some of you readers are that age.)

As for plot lines... right now, one of my players' character has two kids of his own, one of whom has just begun to exhibit magical abilities. He enrolled the kid in school, only to discover a week later that the school was extraterritorial corp-land and now he's lost custody of them....

And maybe I'm the first to say it , but a sociopathic person living on the fringes of society (as most shadowrunners seem to be) 'adopting' a teenage girl has a definite Woody Allen/American Beauty 'Ick!' factor to it, depending on the maturity level of your players.....

I guess it depends on the character's motivations for adopting said character -- are they trying to reclaim a lost portion of their youth? Are they trying to honestly "do the right thing?" Are they pedophiles in need of a swift bullet to the back of the head?

It's entirely possible the characters see themselves in the child's position and choose to act when others did not, but the motivations need to be clear behind the character so the GM can appropriately monkey with the works.

-Siege

Go watch The Professional. That's got some good stuff with is a decided approximation of your current situation. Probably a worst-case, but still.

Argh, Diesel beat me on that one!

(By the way, Natalie Portman signed up for a sequel... While it goes against the first movie's spirit, I hope Mathilda grew up into a hitwoman )

You could giver her a couple of intereseting flaws like a mysterious piece of cyberware. Or just make her a good-merge bug.

Oh, never forget to include a classic staple like "the guy at the school sold me this woooonderrfulll chip..."

Exhibit A: The long running "torture" thread.

(I just looked up 'Professional' on IMDb, I knew it as Leon...)

And if you want an idea of what can go wrong, watch La Femme Nikita. It is in French and most versions have terrible subtitling but that doesn't matter, it is good enough that you don't need a translation...

(Hmm... I have an idea for a run...)

Wow. I didn't think anyone would really reply to this. Lots of good ideas. Hee hee. I was mostly gonna use her to lighten the mood of our gaming experience and handicap the guy cause I gave him too many creation points by mistake (its only been about 5 years since the last time I played). Anyway, she's meant to balance him out some. Ended up giving the whole team extra flaws. The other foolish, foolish player actually told me "I killed this highly placed mage working for Aztechnology" and bought the "extra enemy" flaw. But he didn't put it on his character sheet. So I gave him an extra enemy. Now he has three!!! All from Aztech. Foolish, foolish boy.
As for the girl, I already told him there wouuld be "no sex in the champaign room" with her. And he was to play her straight, like a real parent. But I liked that idea of her taking the role of parent with him! "I thought you were supposed to cook tonight! Do you realize how much homework I had?" I also am thinking of making her a sniper, she did live in Bug City after all, she' got to have some combat experience.

Not neccessarily, on the combat experience thing. Some people prefer to run like fuck and hide like...sneaky things.

Violence doesn't have to be the answer!

There's always online games!

*cough*

er, sorry. was gonna say something about online games and where you can play them, but it got stuck in my throat!

Haha. That was snorkworthy.

Oh come on now Bandable, why can't you play anymore? Bored already? I'm still an Evil GM in Training ™, how will I get better if I can't torture you and your characters on a weekly basis? I thought we were having lots of fun. I guess I must have missed your little extra enemy flaw though. I was more concerned about the Power Foci you and your buddy started off with. You know, the ones that make your Mage and Phys Ad as fast as any Street Sami going, and by the way - almost as fast as Wanda - the street sami I ran for 10 years. And you are just starting off...
But its okay, I don't mind. It just provides me with lots of cool opportunities to do low-down sneaky stuff to y'all. In fact, I got a great one brewing even now. Though I guess now, I'll have to come up with a more secure method of plotting since you have infiltrated the board here.
You're like Game Stop - everywhere.

Then there's Jane.

Throw a kink into the fun.

Have Johnny Shadowrunner come home to find her sprawled out on her back, a cord running from her jack (cleverly hidden under the hair) into a horribly-spliced junction box stemming from a fiber-optic trunk you didn't even know was in your basement-flop.

Oh, did I forget to mention that she's really up on computer hardware and programming, and reminesced about the wind in her hair in the Matrix? And her imaginary friend she talked to while jacked in?

Oh, oops.. Jane's otaku, and she's bonding with her tribe now... by destroying an Ares node by sheer will alone.

Who cares if she likes Billy or Bobby? The drek she does online for fun is way more trouble to parents than anything offline. Oh.. and she's really creepy too. Seems she downloaded your history last night, and as a self-rightious 16-year-old knows best, is giving you drek about it.

It's all a plot device. Have fun with it. Mess with your players' heads. Enjoy it !

Well BitBasher, the foci they use are to boost their initiative, because they don't like the guy playing the street samurai and couldn't stand having slower init than him. I have never been a master of the magic rules, I just don't get them, so I tend to let people have what they want, and then if I decide it unbalances the game, I screw with them alot. Guns I get. Cyberware I get. Magic just goes right over my head. I can see the words, but they have no meaning for me.
I think what they actually have is "Spell Foci" with the increase initiative spell on them. I already had them experience the fact that all that has to happen for them to lose the benefits of the foci is for someone to simply take it off their persons. And had the first two magicians they fought both try to simply destroy the foci. A lot of their action is gonna revolve around people going after the foci - theives, opposition, enemies etc.
Plus, the two of them are almost totally bullet proof, using regular ammo against them is a waste of time, I am almost certain I am doing the armor stacking rules wrong, but I think I may just alter their enemies so that ain't true so much anymore, let em encounter more enemies carrying APDS ammo or something.

Baron j gets my vote for evily creative genius of the day.

In a situation like that, the best thing to do is just ignore the PC. Figure out what this kids life IS, what's happening in his life, the people, the events. Then just follow your own timetable and let the PC decide if and when and where he will chose to involve himself. This is more my generic method of handling NPCs, but it works.

Sunday