Hello all,

One of my players wants to play an elven J-Pop star. I'm using the Karma character creation rules (with the Charisma-based free contact points and the free knowledge skills based on Logic), and I'm trying to see how it could be done.
The character is intended for a Ghost Cartel campaign, so it has to be viable (but not optimized!) for the settings involved in that campaign.

I'm wondering:
-If it's doable at all. How successful of a pop star can we have using character creation rules, including the 250000 nuyens limit?
-If it's not doable, what sort of acceptable break from the rules/houserule/custom quality would you suggest? How would you, as a GM, handle such a character concept without just saying "no, you can't do that"?
-Such a character would mostly be a face. What sort of abilities should it have for both flavor and efficiency?

Thanks a lot, Dumpshockers...

...

My head assplode.

Positive Qualities:
Fame (20 points)

Negative Qualities:
Day Job (5 points)
Distinctive Style (10 points)
SINner (5 points)

The character would have to "work" 10 hours per week and gain 10k per month and would be recognized by anyone who passed a INT+LOG+10 (1) test.
Unless you are playing a HEAVILY pink mowhak campaign, I would say "don't do it".

I'm surprised this hasn't come up already

Well what kind of character is this meant to be? Hyper specialized face or is he going to have other skill sets? Why/how does he run the shadows? Kind of hard to blend in when you're a pop star. Unless the game is set in L.A

Well, I said "yes" after reading "Attitude". Shadowrunning pop-stars isn't unheard of - so why not have one of my players have such a character? (Also, J-Pop totally makes sense to me in the Shadowrun setting, as long as it's 2072 J-Pop, so entirely unrecognizable compared to nowadays J-Pop).

My main problem is... how do I explain that the character isn't filthy rich and living in luxury? For that matter, what is the explanation given in Attitude for shadowrunning stars, given the risk/pay ratio?


Primary ability set: Face
Secondary ability set: head bashing. With guns or knives, the style matters little so far.

She sleeps with her fixer, always manage to get wind of what he's working on, and truly believe she can help his career that way.

i played a Social Adept (Face) and did these qualities

Positive
Fame
Trust Fund

Negative
SINer


The trust fund was set up by my Manager which turned out to become a fixer for me later in the game, the trust fund was really royalties from movies, songs, and Ad deals i did. the life style part of the Trust fund was supplied via a contract, so if i was caught doing really stupid "terrorist/shadowrunning shit" then i could lose it all.

it was a pretty fun campaign,.. the trick is not getting caught,.. but in most circumstances.. getting caught costs you more than a trust fund. there is no slap on the wrist, wag of the finger punishments for the stuff we had to do in that game.. getting caught meant death..

The PC is working on a concept album and needs the in your face Shadowrunning experience to get it right. If the other PCs know they could have been contracted to keep the rocker not dead (bit of extra cred every month) or if they don't know it could lead to some interesting results.

from a recent thread ( http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...7&hl=rocker )

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PJhEQj1...uthkey=CN2OnoYN


Because her recording company is ripping her off.
Read: http://rocknewsdesk.com/world-news/dont-ju...s-rollins/1703/
Listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIo7eTS-2PI (Mojo Nixon)
or, if you want the technical details:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml ("That report suggests that for every $1,000 sold, the average musician gets $23.40.")

Why?

S'just another Rockerboy, basically.

Pop star pre-fab pap for the lowest common denominator of the masses Rockerboy!

Get some dirt, get some grit, get some growl. Get some LIFE! Then I'll be interested.

It's SR4. J-Pop seems about right.

Sure, SR1, we'd have Wendy O. Williams standing on the bus with her fist in the air as it crashes into the watchtower, but that was a long time ago. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWiIch-WtEE...tailpage#t=158s )

Now you get G-Dragon hunting down helpless chicks ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muzIwjqT0rY ). Top and the rest of BigBang could easily be the rest of the crew. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjEXHgEbB5g ) <- I like the AR walls/windows...

Bah, music to lull the masses. Yeah, it's great when you're working for a Corp, but when you're trying to get the people moving and mobile against things, you need heart, soul, power!

Punk has it, Metal of all types has it, and so on! Crank it to 11 in your body, 12 on the speakers, and 13 in the lyrics! Make the bootleg copies have an "Warning: EXPLICIT LYRICS" and be sold in a plain paper bag for your Jazz Instrumental album!

Aren't the Japanese (as portrayed in Shadowrun) incredibly racist towards the metatypes, though? As in, "used to ship them off to a prison island" racist? Although that would answer the "Why isn't she a star?" question.

Seems like an odd choice of music for an elf to make, though (although you could always play up the angle of an elf trying to make the metatypes more acceptable to her culture, which would coincidentally give a bit more bite to the character beyond being a bland pop star).

I would ask how much of a "star" are they? Are they working-class musicians who need regular paying gigs & only have a local fan base (ala Uzuhi or Echostream) or are they international j-pop stardom (like Yoko Kanno or Yoshiki of X Japan)? Depending on the level of Stardom, the Day Job quality could be much higher (being a well known musician requires more than just performing at venues. There are appearances, interviews, meetings with marketting people, meeting the label people, meeting with band for practice & writing new stuff, etc...).

Also you can get the In Debt thing as the label/corp you signed on with gave you a advance, but now you have to pay it back... OR ELSE.

As for the pay/risk... for some rockers, it's not about pay, but the adrenaline rush & material for the next album or being a rock star is the front. There's an episode of Bubblegum Crisis OAV number 7 called Double Vision. The plot was a rocker on tour, who was actually an assassin, plotting revenge on the CEO of the corp that killed her family. She gets into bed with a crime family, learns lethal assassin skills, & they create this false j-pop idol singer ID for her so she can get close to the head of the corp. It's a very SR plot & idea.

They could be one-hit wonders, bitter at the situation and turning to Shadowrunning to get back at the world for ignoring them!

...

Yes, I got Dead Island rented. Who Do You Voodoo, B****?

This is not required, unless the PC plans to live in his scene costume.

Ork Elvis, the physical adept with lots of firearms is.

I love the concept and it could totally work with Shadowrun. Don't worry about the "Why isn't she rich and famous?" argument. Remember MC Hammer?

I don't know how compatible it is with Ghost Cartels. The majority of that game is going from tempo slums of Redmond to international drug trading. Perhaps she's a Korean pop star who has relatives in the Seoulpa Ring who got her started ala Frank Sinatra and the mob? Maybe she gets more and more addicted to Tempo to the point where she had to go along with the Olaya cartel just to feed her habit? Maybe her record drops right after Tokyo Fireworks and her tour dates correspond with the Cartel's?

It's doable, but it needs some polishing. Talk to your GM about how to incorporate such a character into his narrative structure.

As for statting her out, take Fame and perform your serch-foo for a pornomancer.

I had a fanciful idea a while ago (that never went far off my brainstorming page) for a "Charlie's Angels" meets "Josie and the Pussycats" type deal int he real world. A pop superstar is actually the child of deep cover psyop agents who use her concerts as cover for intelligence operations. After all Entertainment troupes/concerts can often go places more easily than most others. Bring along a big enough entourage and it's easier for a fake SIN to get through. Not to mention the opportunity it gives for smuggling, extraction, and intelligence gathering, especially in free cities where the managers may be dealing with a national government rather than a local. The team could build itself really:

The Star - Face
The Bodyguard - Sam/Muscle
AR Special Effects or Sythlinc player - Hacker/TM
The Magical Special Effects - Mage
Technical Director or transporter - Rigger

It could work for sure if your GM likes a Globe-Trotting type campaign. I imagine you'd rarely be in the same city for two arcs (unless shit went down). I have to agree that there would be some Pink Mohawk involved, but they pulled off something similar in an episode of Sherlock and made it seem pretty down to earth.

Well, considering that she, as a j-pop star, literally belongs to the record company (I don't know, she might have been bought for a carton of CalorieMates from a Filipino brothel or something, no offense), I can understand her being an elf. But once she gets off the leash somehow, expect a bunch of angry corp goons and/or (with stress on the former) Yakuza trying to either retrieve her or bring her down.

Also, while we're at it, I just got a sick, wrong and weird idea involving j-pop stars, corporations, Filipino (or Korean) brothels and p-fixes. Maybe too much Kotaku and BAshcraft's articles about Japanese pop culture, but they're the people who would do it without hesitation.

So, she might be a cheap, knock-off Korean J-Pop star?

I hate those even more!!!

Could just be a little boy who looks like a woman. They have enough of those J-pop types now, I'm sure it'll get worse when you introduce Elves to the mix.

When Henry Rollins talks, I listen.

Mainly because I don't want him to break me into tiny little pieces.

No, not a knock-off nor cheap. Imagine this: MCT buys some SINless orphan from some Southeast Asian hellhole. They pretty her up, dress her up and wire her up, just so they can plug some skillchips with "musical talent" and a marketing dept.-designed p-fix into her. They give her an impenetrable corporate SIN. They promote her. When the idoru expiration date comes, they take away the chips, wipe the SIN and boot her out or, preferably, arrange a convenient "accident". Drunk driver, drunk driving, sudden depression, this kind of stuff. And then, they buy themselves another SINless orphan and start anew.

Sounds like a cheap knock off to me. Even cheaper if they try to second hand her ware.

Sounds like the Disney Channel. Except replace 'accident' with some scandal with boyfriends punching them in the face or nude photos.

"Choked to death on her own vomit.", now that's a classic.

Here's who should really be running Shadowruns and being a musician!

A J-Pop star needn't be Japanese.

Also, CalFree was Part of the JIS for quite some time.
Seems like LA and J-Pop could just be closest friends.

Here's one way to do it. This character actually works for the Dawkins Group and is based out of LA where she's popular in LA, the PCC, Seattle, Atzlan, and what's left of California.


Name: Eva Fring
Alias: Hikaru Rodriguez, Ms. Pink
Race: Dryad (Elven metavariant)
Height: 1.7 meters
Weight: 72 kg
Resources: 30,000 (6 BP)

Attributes:
Body 3
Agility 4
Reaction 4
Strength 3
Charisma 7
Intuition 4
Logic 2
Willpower 4
Edge 3
Magic 4
Essence 6

Positive Qualities:
Fame (National)
Symbiosis (Metagenetic)
Glamour (Metagenetic)

Negative Qualities:
Day Job (12500/20 hours)
Sinner (standard)
Pacifist (-5)
Media Junkie (Moderate)
Thrill Seeker

Active Skills
Unarmed Combat 4
Disguise 3
Gymnastics (Dancing) 3
Perception 3
Con 5
Etiquette (Music industry) 3
Negotiation 3
Artisan (Singing) 4

Knowledge Skills
English N
Japanese 3
Pop Music 5
Intelligence Agencies (Dawkins Group) 3
High Society (LA) 2

Adept Powers
Critical Strike (2)
Enthralling Performance
Improved Unarmed Combat (1)
Kinesics (3)
Voice Control
Facial Sculpt (2)

Contacts
Blackwell Productions/Dawkins Group 4/11

Gear
Moonsilver Evening Gown/Shawl
Steampunk Corset/Blouse/Skirt
Erika Elite w/Custom OS (Firewall 5/System 3) and Biometric Lock
Analyze, Browse, Command, Edit, Encrypt, Purge, Reality Filter, Scan, and ECCM at 3
Sim Module
1 month High Lifestyle

Symbiosis is a negative quality.

I'm surprised no one has named the Japanese Virtual Idols that exist currently. Change them in AI's & you have them ready & done.

Or the AR persona of a Technomancer showing what their Edit CF boosted the hell up with threading can do.

There is an Emergence adventure with one of those. My runners deleted her from the Matrix they were so freaked out.
There is also the Gibson book Idoru.

And what do you mean Japanese? That concert was in LA!

That Idol is from Japan and is pretty big there. This particular concert was in LA but the Virtual Idol thing hasn't really caught on big in the US. We got Autotune the News though.

Why steal them off the streets, when you can get better results from genegeneering your own?

Genegineering is too expensive for creating disposable one-season wonders. Plus, more variety. Plus, IT'S SO DYSTOPIAN! (and covering the fact is SO POST-DYSTOPIAN!)
Now, where are my hipster glasses?

Thanks a lot for the help; with this, we were able to create the character (which ends up being a face/combat adept). With Trust Fund, Fame, Distinctive style -25, and artisan 5 (singing songs with terrible lyrics) .

I have a question about distinctive style: the first level (5 BP) gives +3 to all attempts to track the character's meat body. What about the next levels? I thought the max bonus was +6, so why can distinctive style reach 35 BP? How does it work mechanically?

The more Distinctive a single Distinctive Style is, the more points it is worth. You can have MULTIPLE Distinctive Style Negative Qualities. You top out at +6 to be tracked with the 2nd Distinctive Style you obtain. You could, in theory, have 7 5-Point Distiinctive Style Qualities. But even still, your opposition will only get +6 DP to track you, not +21.

What justifies the BP for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th distinctive style if the don't harm the character in any way? You just confirmed to me that I understood the quality well, but that there's not drawback for the extra distinctive style beyond the first 2.

They are an additional way to be recognized. They just do not receive Additional Modifiers to be tracked beyond the 2nd. It is an MO thing. The more distinctive your MO, the worse it is for you. Hard to argue that you are not the one doing it if the MO matches on all 7 points.