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K1ll5w1tch
How do you deal with between mission roleplay. Alot of it tends be book keeping stuff buying new equipment, restocking used equipment, and general hanging out, part time employment for characters with the neg quality and the likie. With a group of 5 players I'm hesitant to spend too much time here even though I want to because it seems a big part of the overal gaming environment. However I can't seem to figure out a way to make it enjoyable for everyone without spending and hour with 1 player while the others sit and twiddle their thumbs. Suggestions would be appreciated on how ya'll handle this stuff.

phlapjack77
If a majority would be twiddling their thumbs, then take the between mission stuff off-line, so to speak. Have the player(s) write up what they want to do in the down-time, and deal with it between gaming sessions, so you can hit the ground running when you actually do have a game night.
CanRay
Contacts contacts contacts. Gotta keep them happy!

Visit Jimmy the Shiv during his nephew's Bar Mitzvah. Take your Dock Worker buddy to a Mariners/Seadogs game. Toss your Homeless contact your overused SIN and a cheap CommLink so he can use it to beg in better places than normal. Beat up some small-time gangers and put them in a convenient place for your cop buddy to find illegal firearms that were just used in a crime (Maybe even your own crime, getting the heat off of you.).
TheOOB
Between mission roleplay I usually handle between sessions(often over the phone or via IM), and rarely involve dice unless I deem it neccesary. Usually I just tell the players how much time they have between runs and have them tell me in general what they did, sometimes I have something come up.
Ascalaphus
Recruit some of the players to play NPCs for the player whose PC is currently doing stuff.
jaellot
I've taken a notebook and entitled it "Shadowrun Homework". Write what you are trying to get. Armor, spells, wares, cars, etc. It doesn't even have to be specific. One guy stated he simply wanted to get a good car that wasn't too flashy, tricked out to be faster and so on.

I then take the notebook, and some time between sessions I do all the numbers. I get the final pricing, the time it would take depending on Availability, means and methods of trying to get the item, and all that. I let the players know the price, and how long it takes to get it, as soon as possible. Sometimes they want it sooner, and sometimes the price might be too much for the moment. Things proceed from there.

Sometimes this eats into someone's time at the actual game, but I don't see that as such as issue, really. If the player is more interested in hunting down that new gun, obviously their character won't be present for things that are going on. Considering that we play twice a month (at most) this removes the sessions getting wasted based solely on a couple of the guys flipping through every friggin book, nutting over that big gun, or that awesome piece of tech. The session can move forward, and it's only your own fault if you get left behind.
Kyrel
"Downtime" play between runs can be highly entertaining, but it requires that you have a "living" world for the players to act in, and that requires a catalogue of regular NPC's who have their own lives etc. Yes, it can mean that you will have to spend some time on individual players who do their own thing, but as long as you keep the storytelling interesting for everyone to listen to, and make sure to cut between the players, then I don't find that this tend to be a problem (ymmv...).

Basically I tend to look at it this way. The Runs are the action sequences where you get to roll a lot of dice, but the downtime between runs, is the part where you get to roleplay and really create the character. The actual runs are maybe what? 10-25% of a character's time? What do they do the rest of the time? What happens in their lives? What happens to their friends? What's going on in their neighbourhood? How's their relationships with their contacts going? Do they have a girl-/boyfriend or regular sexpartner? Do they gamble? Do they owe anyone money, or are they owed money by anyone? Is the landlord an annoying bastard or a sweet old lady? Did the guy down the street loose control of his pitbull, which then attacked one of the character? Maybe their local groccer happens to get held up when they just happen to be shopping for their dinner, or maybe some punk tries to rob them. Maybe their mother calls and bitches about never hearing from them, or tells them that she and the rest of the family will be dropping by for Christmas. Or their kid sister suddenly shows up and have run away from home or something.

Downtime is where you and the players create the character's life, and frames the reasons for why the character is a shadowrunner.

IMO downtime is some of the best parts of the game, when done right.


Good luck, and have fun cool.gif
Belvidere
QUOTE (Kyrel @ Mar 21 2011, 11:39 AM) *
IMO downtime is some of the best parts of the game, when done right.


Thank you grinbig.gif Most of my players are, "Lemme just get to the run." kind of guys.
jaellot
QUOTE (Belvidere @ Mar 21 2011, 01:27 PM) *
Thank you grinbig.gif Most of my players are, "Lemme just get to the run." kind of guys.


Let me borrow some of that attitude, and I'll see if I can bottle up some of the excessive role playing my group tends to do : )~. And by Role play I mean discuss and weigh the consequences of Every. Single. Thing. I don't mind such RP in some games, but when it tends to consume large percentages (30- to sometimes over 50%) of a session, it also gets in the way.
CanRay
QUOTE (jaellot @ Mar 21 2011, 03:27 PM) *
Let me borrow some of that attitude, and I'll see if I can bottle up some of the excessive role playing my group tends to do : )~. And by Role play I mean discuss and weigh the consequences of Every. Single. Thing. I don't mind such RP in some games, but when it tends to consume large percentages (30- to sometimes over 50%) of a session, it also gets in the way.

You need to find a Pink Mohawk Player. Get some Punk into your Cyber!!!
Lantzer
I find that colorful NPC contacts who generate some of that color interacting with the PCs helps a lot. It helps when one of your PCs is a natural straight man. The rest of the team seems to enjoy the byplay. I've done this in different games too. Like that other system that was once owned by TSR.

Examples:

A Ship Crewwoman who managed to pick up the idea that a PC had proposed to her (it was a quite reasonable mistake, actually).
A fellow runner contact (oh, hellooo Darlink!) who was trying to set up a PC with a teammate of hers - nice girl, just a little cyberpsycho (According to my wife, her favorite part of that character was the way she made that player wince).
An Idiot savant mage who was a Johnson and consulting contact.

As hinted by another, this works especially well if the other players help work the byplay. It gets some good intra-group dynamics going, and to be honest, the players tend to mention that stuff as or more often than the missions.
LonePaladin
This was something I posted on the Catalyst fori, as a tip for making NPCs on the fly.

The first time a particular NPC comes into the scene -- whether it's a contact for a new character, or a Johnson, or just some bystander who happens to be in the way -- quickly decide on a name, metatype, age, and ethnicity. The latter three will help you describe the person, and odds are the name will come into play at some point.

The next thing is to pull something out of the air that'll make this NPC unique. Maybe that troll has a duck's-ass hairdo, like Elvis. Or that dwarf mechanic just can't stop picking his nose. Or the receptionist has this horribly nasal voice. Or the gang member's an ork poser. Doesn't really matter what it is, as long as you decide it quickly, and stick with it.

If it's something you can't show off just by speaking in-character, do things to show it off. Does the arms-dealer have painfully bad breath? Mention this, describe something nasty like "His breath makes you think a family of devil-rats died in his mouth. After a month of pooping." Then have him really breathe when he talks. Take every advantage to throw in a word that starts with H, and draw it out.

When you get a spare second, jot yourself a note about the NPC. Something like "Dockworker contact: Hugh Jorgen. Ork male, 26, UCAS. Eyes bug out." Then, next time you trot that NPC back out, you can just bug your eyes out and everyone should remember who it is.
CanRay
Revisiting NPCs is often fun. My group pulled a job on the docks once and had to deal with a foreman who was hiding during the ensuing firefight.

Later on, they had to get intel from him, and visited him at his home. Luckily, he was drunk off his ass, and didn't recognize them. They also had to deal with his neighbors, one of whom got exactly what he deserved as far as everyone was concerned.
K1ll5w1tch
QUOTE (LonePaladin @ Mar 27 2011, 06:50 PM) *
This was something I posted on the Catalyst fori, as a tip for making NPCs on the fly.

The first time a particular NPC comes into the scene -- whether it's a contact for a new character, or a Johnson, or just some bystander who happens to be in the way -- quickly decide on a name, metatype, age, and ethnicity. The latter three will help you describe the person, and odds are the name will come into play at some point.

The next thing is to pull something out of the air that'll make this NPC unique. Maybe that troll has a duck's-ass hairdo, like Elvis. Or that dwarf mechanic just can't stop picking his nose. Or the receptionist has this horribly nasal voice. Or the gang member's an ork poser. Doesn't really matter what it is, as long as you decide it quickly, and stick with it.

If it's something you can't show off just by speaking in-character, do things to show it off. Does the arms-dealer have painfully bad breath? Mention this, describe something nasty like "His breath makes you think a family of devil-rats died in his mouth. After a month of pooping." Then have him really breathe when he talks. Take every advantage to throw in a word that starts with H, and draw it out.

When you get a spare second, jot yourself a note about the NPC. Something like "Dockworker contact: Hugh Jorgen. Ork male, 26, UCAS. Eyes bug out." Then, next time you trot that NPC back out, you can just bug your eyes out and everyone should remember who it is.


That was helpfull, thanks.
LonePaladin
On a side note, I've used this little trick of giving every NPC a visible behavior tag in order to stage a six-NPC argument. The first time I intro'd one of the NPCs, I gave the players a basic "what they look like", then put myself in a specific pose and rattled off the line. When I had that NPC say something else, I just went back to that pose and voice.

The players watched me go through this for probably twenty minutes; afterward, they told me they were able to follow who was saying what, and I never "re-introduced" any of them.
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