So I just caught an episode of 'Human Target', and that has reminded me that there are several current TV shows that are, more or less, about teams of runners.

I've often used one of these shows to give people a bit of a showing as to what runners do.

However, which of these teams would you really consider 'Runners' and which is your favorite?

Leverage
These 5 all have clearly defined rolls. A combat monster, a hacker, an infiltration specialist, a face, and a roll not really seen in SR, a 'mastermind'.

Burn Notice
While Michael Westin was a spy, he now does odd jobs. I'm not as familiar with this show, but I know his team consists of a crazy gunbunny and Bruce Campbell.

Human Target
More 'goodguy' runners, all I know is that Jack Chance is an ex badass of some sort, and Chi McBride and the dude who play Rorschach do cool shit and wreck badguy plans.

Although i dont watch it i think leverage is probably the closest to being runners from what i do know of it. Burnnotice to me, is too generalist to fit as a shadowrunner.

While it's not a "team of specialists pull off heists" show, Sons of Anarchy has proven very valuable to me as a reference point for criminal and "off the grid" organizations. "The Wire" and "The Shield" are also good points of reference.

And you should watch the show "Terriers" while it's still on. Wacky private eyes take on a development corporation. Lots of good "screwed by Mr. Johnson" moments.

Burn Notice is what happens when you take a 400BP Face and give him about a thousand Karma.

Burn Notice is:

A Face/Weapon Specialist/Infiltration Expert (Michael Westin)
A Gun Bunny/Demolitions expert
A Face/Weapon Specialist (Bruce)

But really Michael Westin probably does have about 500+ Karma on top of his 400BP
Bruce Campbell probably has about 400, so does Fiona

Human Target:
Chance is a Face/Melee Specialist/small arms guy
Winston is a Former Cop/Fixer
Guerrero is a Assassin/Long Arms/Torture/Intimidation guy

Again, they're way above 400BP

If you get the retro channel there's always the A-team. Which also continues the trend of being fairly faceish. Except the guy they call the face is maybe #3 when it comes to what we would consider faceish skills.

Can we go backward a bit?
Alias
Chuck
Buffy

A bit of an oldie, Birds of Prey, shows a high tech runs in the shadows 3 woman team. You have your hacker/intel person (Barbara/Oracle), your street sam (Helena/Huntress), and your mage (Dinah). All three tend to fill the face role at different times, though it tends to be primarily Dinah (as the sam tends more towards intimidation to sweet talking).

I don't know. How many build points do you think it took to buy the Bruce Campbell's Chin edge?

That's clearly a 30BP Positive Quality.

400 additional karma
not 400BP and that's it.

There are many "teams" which could be used as, or at least inspire characters in shadowrun... even if we stray a bit from the core concept.

For example we can easily translate Michael Knight and K.I.T.T. into shadowrun:

A driver/melee fighter/face dude with an erased past working for a strange organization partnered with a high-level AI in a overmodded, armored sportscar.

Or even more generic characters of more generic shows (I mostly think of 80ies shows for some weird reason).

Like Riptide, or Stingray (which is totally awesome) or McGuyver. Virtually all adventure/crime/action/horror/sci-fi shows can be ripped apart and the parts glued and scattered into shadowrun... that's why it's so cool.

The Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman (with a price tag of eleven million for what amounted to be the same parts).

I suppose they both had to absorb the R&D costs, since you could get the same thing for less than a tenth of the price in 2070.

It occurs to me that there are probably more examples in Anime. Some of which you can probably Hulu.

Cowboy Bebop comes to mind in a big way. They've got the cyber in there, and the "job of the day" aspect. I know there are tons more.



Oh! Has nobody mentioned Firefly yet? Granted they go between planets, but it's no Trek with transporters or anything. Once inside the atmosphere their ship is basically an unarmed Banshee, and most runner teams have, if anything, better weaponry and equipment.

My favorite TV Runner Teams, in no particulate order:

Burn Notice
Mike Weston-face/covert ops specialist
Fiona Glennanne-weapons specialist/face
Sam Axe-Bruce Campbell
Madeline Weston-utter badass/team mom

The A-Team
Col. John "Hannibal" Smith-tactician/weapon specialist/face/badass
Lt. Templeton "Face" Peck-face/weapon specialist/badass
Sgt. Bosco Albert "B.A." Baracus-rigger/tech specialist/weapon specialist/brick/badass
Cpt. H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock-rigger/weapon specialist/loony/badass

Firefly
Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds-leader/weapons specialist
Zoe Washburne-weapons specialist
Hoban "Wash" Washburne-rigger
Jayne Cobb-street sam
Kalyee Frye-tech specialist
Dr. Simon Tam-team medic
Shepard Book-awesome yet hard to define
Inara Serra-face
River Tam-complicated

Actually, all the old stuff A-Team is up on hulu for free. So damn pink mohawk. I almost pissed myself laughing at the battlebus.

River is obviously an adept who awakened in the womb and has several grades of initiation which were swapped for more power points, giving her improved ability in pretty much every skill, plus things like traceless walk, improved attribute intuition/logic, etc.

Book is probably another adept, one who used to be a warrior's way who is now trying to go the shamanic way.

Mystic adept, with a few detection and illusion abilities. For psychic hijinks.

I hate myself for knowing that.

Heh. Maybe I'll watch a couple ones I haven't seen there. Thanks.
As for pink mohawks this is forth edition. where your hair can be any style...as long as its black.