1) Regarding the group I'm getting ready to GM for. I've got some ideas floating around in my head for a campaign arc, but I'm having a bit of trouble filling in details and connecting everything together. I want the plotline to be somewhat Horizon-centric, and I basically want to portray to them the extremely pervasive image of Horizon as the "good guys" of the megacorps, while gradually letting them uncover things that suggest the corp is not what it seems (I'm thinking of giving them hints of a connection between the corp's mysterious rise to power and he-of-many-Xanatos-Roulettes Deus, a theory I've seen a few people espouse here on Dumpshock. Having a TM contact of theirs send them the taken-out-of-context "morning sickness" post of Netcat's in Corporate Guide before disappearing is my main method for that at this point, but that would come fairly late in the campaign). I really want to adopt this into the campaign as well, plus the much-longer post by Stone on pg 104 of the same book:
QUOTE ("Corporate Guide @ pg 98")
> Want something weird? I was tracking down a specific item for
a client, and the trail led me into Manchuria, outside the city of
Quqihar. I came across a little village in the middle of nowhere. It
certainly wasn’t on my mapsoft (not that mapsofts for Manchuria
are worth a damn). Creepiest thing. Population was maybe five
hundred people, all wearing these blank zombie expressions. They
were moving around normally otherwise—talking, moving their
arms, not bumping into each other or anything. But you could tell
they didn’t see what was in front of them. Two men walked down
a wide, empty street and carefully stepped as if avoiding an object.
Others went through the motions of opening and closing doors for
buildings even though they were standing in the open on a flat
square of concrete. Another woman walked as if she were carrying
something heavy, then went through the motions of setting it down
and stretching. It was like these folks were living in a totally different
dimension. A group of white-coated men were moving around,
watching everything and taking notes. I got the frag out of there.
A couple of weeks later, I saw one of those scientists in a Horizon
enclave in Hong Kong.
> Ma’fan
a client, and the trail led me into Manchuria, outside the city of
Quqihar. I came across a little village in the middle of nowhere. It
certainly wasn’t on my mapsoft (not that mapsofts for Manchuria
are worth a damn). Creepiest thing. Population was maybe five
hundred people, all wearing these blank zombie expressions. They
were moving around normally otherwise—talking, moving their
arms, not bumping into each other or anything. But you could tell
they didn’t see what was in front of them. Two men walked down
a wide, empty street and carefully stepped as if avoiding an object.
Others went through the motions of opening and closing doors for
buildings even though they were standing in the open on a flat
square of concrete. Another woman walked as if she were carrying
something heavy, then went through the motions of setting it down
and stretching. It was like these folks were living in a totally different
dimension. A group of white-coated men were moving around,
watching everything and taking notes. I got the frag out of there.
A couple of weeks later, I saw one of those scientists in a Horizon
enclave in Hong Kong.
> Ma’fan
I'm also toying with the idea of introducing an already-Queen-led colony of insect spirits as an opposing party to Horizon, with the runners perhaps unknowingly taking jobs from and against both. Maybe the Queen is acting as an agent through whom Ares can sabotage some Horizon operations, maybe she's curious about Horizon's brainwashing techniques like the Fly Queen was curious about the baby in the Universal Brotherhood module, maybe Horizon's stealing her potential hosts and she's pissed off, I don't know. I think the three guys in the group who aren't entirely SR noobs will appreciate the color added by dealing with a magical threat, and may find it most unusual if they end up temporarily cooperating with bugs (depending on how everything plays out, and I expect the Queen would try to backstab and kill the runners after they are no longer of use to her anyway). Mind you, the queen would of course be either a flesh form or be hiring the runners via flesh form subordinates to keep the runners from realizing who they're working for/against.
Thoughts on how to fit all this together? Adventure ideas of your own to add?
2) As for my current group, my problem is a good bit smaller in scope. We've only had a single meeting so far, and will be meeting again tomorrow. I'm having them all play with pregens to get the hang of the game before I teach them the value of tactics by having some corpsec surprise and kill them using superior tactics and let them make their actual characters after that. This is my problem: After getting continued interest in joining after the fact, I am now dealing with a group of 7 players. I will neither split the group in two nor let anyone else join (which would then necessitate splitting the group anyway) because I am highly doubtful that I would have time to GM for two groups, so I'm keeping it as it is. But with so many players, I suspect there will be a need for several niche role characters to keep them from stepping on each others' toes. What character recommendations do you have for me to give them to spread roles out evenly?
I'm not allowing RC options to any of them except for maybe one guy who is reading a bunch of my sourcebooks and rulebooks so as to understand the Sixth World and thus know how to RP the advanced options. And that's still a maybe.
Advice?