Hey all, I'm not new to the system or anything but I've got a small game going of some serious gamers and I am at a loss. Both of my players are faces, but in different technique and they represent Ares as a team of negotiators. I'm more experienced with action based games and this cannot be the case with this dynamic duo as they are literally walking squack boxes with limited combat capabilities. They do have a guy who follows them as their muscle but that is it.]


I need help with the general flow and idea of a dialogue based run, pretty much all roleplaying based with limited die rolling. I've got massive experience in dolling out encounters, gangs of thugs, fighting in spaces, even fighting in 3D environments however, as of yet a fully fledged negotiator campaign has yet to come up.

What kinds of things would a negotiator/high stakes negotiator be doing? How would these runs go? How can I come at them Shadowrun style?

I'd suggest watching Leverage. I swear on all things holy that Leverage is a Shadowrun TV series that happens to take place in the present day. It's also a basic cable TV series on a basic cable TV series budget, so it's very light on the shooty-bangy action (though Christian Kane gets a good fight scene once an episode pretty much). So it should give you a lot of inspiration. To a lesser extend, Burn Notice is pretty much the same way.

If they are Ares negotiators I can think of a few things they would do:

1) Crisis negotiation for KE;
2) Convincing execs to come work for Ares;
3) figure out how to keep dissatisfied important employes from leaving;
4) Solving labor issues;
5) Resolving issues with suppliers;
6) Hiring runners;
7) Open source investigation, like talking to reporters to gather info;

... ... y'know, I saw this thread before, started replying and then the phone rang and I got distracted. But I started my reply with, "First, watch Leverage and Burn Notice and take notes..." So, yeah, advice seconded. Leverage is good for the group-specialist-generalist dynamic of Shadowrun (each teammember has a specialty, but they all cross-train enough that most of the other members can take over or supplement one of the others' specialties), while Burn Notice is great for doing fairly great plots stemming from shadowy motivations, and Michael's voice-overs on tactics and strategies are worth listening to on their own merits, IMHO.

Michael's voice-overs are almost always straight out of real (declassified) intelligence handbooks. The only bits that are glossed over are typically those that are Modified for Your Safety™, such as "made from a few household ingredients" or glossing over the fact that certain methods are good for protecting against typical small arms fire but not great for armor piercing/high velocity/high calibre/etc. rounds typically used by law enforcement or military.

Now I kind of want to run JohnsonRun, in which my players are Mr. Johnsons for a triple-A, managing runners and resources like a game of Roller Coaster Tycoon or The Sims.

Johnson 1: "Can we really afford to put our prime runners on this one? I know they're contracted but we wanted them for the thing in Downtown."
Johnson 2: "We could probably put Knight Errant on that. Let's hire some trash runners as a distraction, though."
Johnson 3: "Ooh! Let's get a troll and a combat mage!"