It's daunting to get a SR group together, familiarity and acceptance of the game world takes a lot of reading, imagination and a certain kind of obsession. Dumpshocker's possess that obsession, but PBP games often have problems with flow. Keeping a scene moving becomes a challenge, exponentially so the larger the group. In my mind, an ideal format for keeping this sort of game moving is two runners and one GM.

the 400bp character creation system doesn't seem to cater to this, people often squeeze hyperspecialists out or mostly useless generalists. 700 Karma is a bit of a bitch, but the characters that can be created can have their specialisation and a solid grounding in general running tradecraft.

The purpose of this thread is to propose and discuss two runners who can effectively do everything a shadowrun requires, surviving against overwhelming odds using a wide range of abilities and tactics. What areas should both characters be proficient in? Where should they specialize? How can they be built cooperatively to support eachother in-game.

The biggest issue is the Matrix and Magic. In my opinion, this is where you start, at the point of exclusivity. One person takes responsibility for matrix operations, with all the skills and gear available to a hacker, such as Encephalons/Math SPUs, control rig, Simsense Booster, a tricked out commlink and software suites, and the ability to use drones and vehicles (probably can't afford the latter at chargen). This character would perform all hacking, comm security, communications, matrix legwork etc. This can get pretty expensive, and we need to save for gear and cyber for other jobs.

The magic issue is something I have a lot of trouble with in character creation, especially at 400bp. The extra expenditure on the Magic attribute, spells, drain stats, bonding, and more always kills any generalisation I attempt. Others will know more on this than me. Picking a tradition is important in selecting a second area of specialisation, due to drain stats and secondary skills. For my money, I would go with a Black Magician elf following the Seductress totem, max out Charisma, soft max Willpower, which gives good drain resistance and lot of dice to social tests, making this magician double as the face of the duo. I love the idea of a mystic adept in this role, but by RAW, the magic stat split and the loss of astral projection at the cost of paying a whole power point for astral perception, i can't see it working. If you think it's possible, i'd love to see the build.

Combat should be a shared role. Both characters should have the maximum amount of initiative passes to counter being outnumbered, through cyberware and sustained improved reflexes, respectively. The magician should have the agility to have a specialised weapon. The hacker should be decked out like a sam, with initiative and agility boosting ware.

Stealth is always important, in my view of Shadowrun, so at bare minimum, infiltration is needed, as well as elements of the athletics group. The hacker should have agility boosting implants that help with these dice pools, whereas the magician I have in mind has +2 to illusion spells. Chameleon suits with thermal dampening help.

Social skills are largely handled my the magician with high charisma. I've always liked the idea of having the character who isn't the face having a specialised intimidation skill, for when the carrot doesn't work and you have to use the stick.

How would you do it? I can imagine it done really well, but if I was a GM I'd raise the BP/Karma allocation to 600/1000 and bring back SR3's rules on stat-derived free points for knowledge skills and contacts. As an aside, this is a game I'd like to play, so if anyone wants to be one half of this team, or run this sort of game, let me know.

Using the seductress as a totem can be somewhat problematic - sure you get a resistance test (and with 12+ dices you won't fail it that often), but the resulting lifestyle is dangerous for a professional - though the more pink mohawkish the game, the less it's a problem.

Mix it with the Dark magic tradition's vorldview, and the result doesn't strike me as suited for a close-knit relationship, unless the other character is a loyal follower - though the loyalty is probably a bit one way.

I agree wholeheartedly that the more players you have, the more likely it is that the game will grind to a halt because of scheduling/outside commitments. In my experience, this is true of face-to-face games as well.

The more karma/BP you allow at chargen, the more likely you are to be able to cover all the bases. Given the exclusivity of magic and matrix, and the ability for each of those specialties to be augmented to do a respectable (not specialist level) job in the combat realm, you are probably right to split the pair as you suggest. Also, with more starting karma/BP, the more difficult but potentially more adaptable character types like Free Spirit PCs become more playable.

I'd be interested in doing some kind of GM/player sharing arrangement in this setup. Maybe with three of us doing so, rotating the job of GM, there could be some interesting experimentation in pairings. Of course, this may interfere with your desire to have "two who are all".

In the games I have played recently, there has been a significant lack of matrix play, and I wouldn't mind seeing more of that, if for no other reason than to learn an aspect of the game in which I am weak.

This is a good point. The only real character concept I have kicking around for a magician is based on Knasser's Carnival. An elf who grew up in a travelling carnival, learning knife tricks, shell games and old magics from the Romany hedge witches. When the seductress took him, she pushed him to excess that he couldn't reconcile, so he stole a road bike and tries to keep her in the rear view. I like my SR magic to keep up with the dystopia, so an adverserial totem relationship really interests me. By game start he's an accomplished magician, con artist and bike smuggler, with contacts throughout go-gangs, north american magical groups and smugglers.





The rotating GM idea is pretty good. The problem I see is that there's no real time frame in which an adventure is settled, so some-one could be stuck as GM indefinitely, but that's an acceptable risk.

As far as the matrix goes, I'm happy to play it or run it, with a shit-tonne of house rules and personal interpretations. The hacker concept I have is purely based around the matrix and technical skills like chemistry/various build repair etc. because she was built in a very large team and came from an academic background.

This brings up another challenge, which is background. To justify a character who is a good hacker/rigger, but also is competent in combat, stealth and social engineering, I'd steer towards a background in military intelligence. I have an Israeli troll concept, a cybered weapons specialist. Part of his backstory is that he was quiet, sensitive and intelligent, but was overlooked because of his race and physical prowess and was urged into military service. He preferred non-combat roles, until a bus he and his wife and child were riding on was destroyed in a suicide bombing, leaving his wife dead and him injured. The personal trauma combined with an environment of fear and nationalism transformed him into an unscrupulous and murderous asset for mosad, shin bet, and throughout his career he saw action all over the middle east, and "on loan" in Europe during the second islamic jihad, and then during the whole business with Ibn Eisa. By the time the years of bloodlust faded away, his daughter was in her mid twenties, studying abroad in the UCAS, and now he resents himself for wasting her childhood torturing people to death.

With enough bp/karma, this character could be given a matrix focus. The non-combat roles he preferred could have been communications and electronic warfare. Military scholarships could have allowed him to get training (apparently Israel has some of the best military software engineers in the world), and years of black ops would have honed his skills under fire.

How would I do it?

Well first as a GM you can easily allow generalist characters, regardless of whether you do 400bp or 700karma. Inform your players on a hard cap on Dice Pools for character creation. Professional Rating 3 NPCs (cops, Corpsec sit around 2) can expect to shoot 7-8 dice, if your guys can shoot or attack with 10 or 12 and have Armor/resistances to soak their minor pistols and SMGs, you're off to a good start.

That sounds "not fun" but it opens your flexibility up a lot in character creation. If 10 or 12 is the target DP for something your character is "good" at, then having 8 dice for a social roll or other "secondary" is more than good enough and more importantly it is easy to get. These 12 and 8 dice pools might sound piddly, but if you're running "realistic" Shadowrun they are not only more than enough to get the job done, but they also don't require the GM to do a lot of tweaking to basic book NPCs which makes the GM's job easier. You can throw a decent amount of Rating 2 or 3 goons at them and if they don't over commit they'll be fine. When the Red Samurai show up they've either got to out smart them or get the hell out of there.

In a two player game I despise faces. Well I despise faces altogether, but I did a lot of early White Wolf gaming where socialization was a big part of the game and letting one person at the table do it all bums me out, but I digress. It seems better/easier to split the two man group into a "Good Cop" and a "Bad Cop," and split the social responsibilities. Gunning for 8ish dice to a couple different social skills is very easy.

Magic? How much is Magic a problem? It is a self perpetuating problem. If you don't have a Magician on the two man team then there is no reason for the GM to toss anything but low Magic rating putzes around on a typical security team. No Mages mean no astral signitures, no problem from most wards, no problem with most means of passive magical detection. ITNW only becomes an issue at Force 5 or so, anything below that a couple of shooters/stabbers should be able to outmaneuver and kill anyway. If the team does have a Mage, suddenly Magical threats become something worth putting into the game to keep the player MAge entertained, and that one mage needs to be able to cover everything and provide good counter-spelling all by his onesies.

Not to mention that Mages in Shadowrun are notorious uni-taskers. It is a lot of point investment to get your Magic up, buy your Foci, buy your spells, etc. All of that could've been going towards more resources and skills to branch out more.

Mages also pose a different problem. The same one that the Matrix poses. Either with Astral screw off sessions or long Matrix diddling around you can expect to take 30 minutes, minimum, where one player is getting the GM's entire attention. This is alright if you have more than 2 players cause they can smoke and joke and keep each other entertained. If you invite me over to game with only one other teammate and they spend an hour dicking off in the matrix, while I literally sit on the couch and twiddle my thumbs I'm going to get grumpy. Or drunk. Depends on whether you allow beer on game night, but neither will turn out well.

So, wut do? Here comes the list.

1. Don't do it Mirror Shades unless you're doing really low-end Noir Detective style Mirror Shades (these are really fun and don't require anything like a typical "Shadowrun setup," two Private Investigators with moderate skills doing 1950s detective movie stuff). There just aren't enough people to cover all the bases in a standard hyper-paranoia game.

2. Don't do it Pink-Mohawk. There just isn't enough firepower to do it right.

3. Aim somewhere in the middle. Solid action, Leg work still counts, decisions and sloppiness have repercussions, but don't take a fine-tooth comb to anything. I tend to call this Commando or Green Beret Shadowrun. Professional and fast; Plan A is stealth, Plan B is explosives, smash and grab, and egress.

4. You want the most enjoyable 2 man Shadowrunning team possible? Don't cover all the bases. Drop Magic entirely and reduce Magical force on the GM's end of the table. Force 5+ spirits and heavy Magical opposition only show up as a signal to the players to high-tail it the hell out of there.

5. Don't cover the Matrix but instead equip each of the players with a customized Agent with rating and programs high enough to seek out and retrieve data or accomplish a certain task if inserted into an appropriate node. Now the game becomes getting to the proper place to insert the Agents so it can track down the appropriate node and go to work. You've also opened yourself up to cool concurrent combat situations where every initiative pass each player rolls for himself (fending off security forces) and their respective agent (fighting off Matrix threats or scooping up data).

These Agents also double as Matrix defense so you can have these two split up and have relatively secure communication without screwing over them over with Hackers/Spiders. Again, big Matrix or Rigger security only shows up as a signal to tell the players to high-tail it out of there.



So, having said this: In my opinion, the most enjoyable 2 man team (for both sides of the table to experience) is a couple of Street Samurai and/or Adepts with complimentary social and technical skills. The more you strip out of the system the better it runs, and without enough players to keep themselves entertained you're going to need a streamlined system to keep the game rolling and interesting.

I've done it before and it worked really well. It is a great way to keep the game low-power and low-stress while still being challenging. It was a lot of fun for all three of us. It also ends up being mildly reminiscent of these guys:

http://defaultprime.com/wp-content/uploads...1_1600x1200.jpg

... well the good parts of those guys, the back-to-back gunfights and teamwork. Not the clunky mechanics, awkward controls, or homophobic yet strangely homo-erotic frat boy routine.

Another big perk of this super generalist low DP play is that rewards come fast and easy. Doesn't take much Karma reward before they're raising skills and feel like they're making progress.



You also mentioned smugglers in your post above. You don't have to do basic "meet the Johnson, do the job" Shadowrun. Hell after 20+ years of publication most of us are a little bored of it. A 2 man team that works as Coyotes in Denver could end up being a lot of fun. Dealing with different Underworld groups, smuggling and defending the goods, etc. Could be a lot of fun for just 2 people and wouldn't require a heck of a lot of optimization on either player's part.



Unrelated Sidenote: Israel has some of the best Military ____Fill in the Blank___ in the world. Their SF has always been damned impressive, their Airforce is gigantic for a country that small, and I hear they have helmets that can actually stop head on military-grade rife rounds rather than deflect stuff that probably wouldn't have scrambled your brain anyway. Pretty neat-o stuff.

You might also have to raise the cap on starting nuyen - even if you implemented a system of diminishing returns (the first 50 points is 5Knuyen each; the next is 3K; the last is 2K). That way, the matrix side could go Hacker/Rigger. And the Magic side could afford more foci.

Alternately, you could slightly expand, and have a TRIO, a three-person team. Magic, Matrix, "Other". That would maybe even be doable with RAW characters, or you might want to give another 50BP (and raise the Gear cap by 10).


I'd be willing to essay an attempt, as either character. Not as GM though, my track record there is ... not so good.

Didn't someone post a do-it-all troll at one point?

Thousand karma? Thousand? Seriously? I can do terrible terrible things with 750, and that would basically be like

I have a few combinations in mind.

I think my favorite is...
#1:
a: Technomancer Pilot. Human Edgebunny.
b: Technomancer Co-pilot. Also a human edgebunny.
Gimmick: They're smugglers and pool resources for a Thunderbird. They don't NEED to comb the streets for works; smugglers and pilots are always in high demand, so they don't need to cover ALL the bases that groundpunders do. Both have an empathic resonance link to each other. They can easily start with a cascade skraacha.


For a more practical approach, though, I would probably aim for as much multitasking as possible.
I'd look at roles.

Big ones are Fighting, Facing, Hacking, Thiefing(B&E), and Magic. Smaller roles are Doctoring, Driving, Mechanic, Tanking damage, and to some extent, Acquisitions/Finding gear..

Samurai/Ar-Hacker/Combat medic works pretty well. On a similiar note, Technomancers can StealthSam it up too.
If you're an Elf, you can hit high charisma and agility linked stuff, which makes you pretty good at multitasking.

I'd probably divide the roles into The Pointman, and The Backup. The pointman would cover all the roles that require someone to be in people's faces. That means Talking, Fighting for when the talking doesn't work, and Thieving because it shares Agility with Fighting. At those points, I can throw in passable Magic in there too - and Counterspelling goes nicely with Not Dying When Things Go Sour.
In light of this, my pointman would be an Elf Mystic Adept running a Charisma Tradition.

Backup needs to cover the other roles. Vehicles. Techskills. Hacking. Either Metaplane Crap or Resonance Crap.
Its a tossup between a Technomancer, and a Logic-Tradition Magician with a point or two of ware.



I thought that this was worth mentioning. I have a 750 point build that manages to fit in two force 6 ally spirits without really being gimped at all.

The ability for one character to bring 3 full Magicians to the table, especially ones that have built-in telepathy(spirit/summoner link), two of which are walking tanks, is HUGE.


I would second this. I've wanted to play in an 'enforced magical rarity' game for a while now. Have your players play actaully interesting criminals, and make magic RARE - if the players want magical support, make them WORK at finding and building contacts that are actually reliable, and don't show up to the run drunk, stoned, high... or rope the team into their problems, enemies, and debts.
If you're doing it right, your players should groan at the thought of dealing with stupid arrogant full-of-themselves mages just to make their lives easier.

Eh, you can easily have 2-man teams on 400 bp.

Just looking at the archetypes (first link in my sig):

Generalist (Hacking/Face/Street Samurai/alright B&E) + any of the full mages/mystic adepts
Combat Hacker (Hacking/Street Samurai/B&E)+Spirit Medium
Mercenary Rigger (Hacking/Street Samurai/alright B&E/Rigging) + Spirit Medium
Technoshaman (Face/Hacking/alright Rigging) + any full mage/mystic adept
Info Savant (Rigging/Hacking) + Spirit Medium

Use Franks house rules for character generation. Two mages, with extensive other skills and a few combat spells & summoning plus bioware to get fast enough to fight and still walk through wards. Use agents for hacking plus contacts.

Come up with backstories that have the characters having fairly strong ties to each other.

Could you link to Frank's houserules? I remember reading them and liking what I saw, but it's been awhile.


Or use Fiasco's relationship tables, which are useful too. Here's a good one for fantasy gaming - Fantasy Relationships.

Honestly, my core SR group has been a Phys-ad face/driver/electronics and a cyber gunbunny/stealth/medic for the better part of 6 years now. They are pushing 100 karma, and so long as I keep 2 players in mind, things work out well. They have a few skills at 5 or 6, and a pile at 2-4. Toss in plenty of tools, and they can handle 75% of everything with relative ease. Sure, full mages and serious streetsams are trouble, but they can fall back and regroup to make most threats less dangerous. Just be careful of 'alpha' damaging the team. Its very easy to have 1 good roll take down the character with the skill needed to combat the threat at hand.
Contacts play HUGE part of the game at this level. Its not what you know, its who you know.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...mp;#entry707795

I think another way of looking at a two-person team is to have them specialize in certain types of runs (covert ops, infiltration, detective work, bounty hunting, etc.), rather than attempting to cover every single thing that a full team of runners could conceivably encounter.

Karmagen falls flat in some areas, but for making solid generalists with a decent specialization or two, it is very good. The flat costs in build points tend to severely punish characters who want or need a wider spread of skills.

Which is why I suggest Franks's system. Skills and contacts are very overpriced in SR and you need lots for this style game.

Late to the party, I know, but I would agree with the OP that a 2-man runner team that covers all the bases will probably be based on:

1) A CHR tradition mage/face; and
2) A hacker/rigger with some combat skills; or
2) A sammie with a chunk of his cash invested in a good commlink, programmes and hack-in-the-box agent

I prefer to go with logic+skill matrix use. So ideally that's things like cerebral booster, encephalon, math spu. Then for combat there's muscle toner, initiative enhancers of some kind. A decent commlink starts to stack up, and modifications you'd want to include to be faster than your opponents and get things done quicker, both to your comm, software and cyber if you're using unwired. It's pricey, but it can be done.

I've been thinking about going back and reading up on the Eurowars and the corps, militaries and agencies involved. Cross referencing Shadows of Europe, Spy Games and SR3's Corporate Download are giving me some ideas. I also wouldn't mind playing a magic light, high-tech game as per . Generally I like games that favour infiltration and investigation, but combat and improvisation is good too. Ultimately, both the characters build rules and 'backgrounds should be tailored for what the GM has the inspiration and material to create. Anyone got a setting they'd like to throw a duo into?