I've been looking through the books that I own, SR4A and the rest of the core rule books, and have not seen anything in them.

I've seen a some negative qualities that in combination would be similar to what im looking for (Records on File, Hung out to Dry,
Bad Rep, Wanted) but they're not exactally what I want.


So is there an official Burn Notice negative quality outside of the core rule books for or do I have to make something up?

A Burn Notice, especially Micheal Weston style, is kind of a combination of factors.


When you're burned, you've got nothing.
No cash, no credit, no job history.
You're stuck in whatever city they decide to dump you in.
You do whatever work comes your way.
You rely on anyone who's still talking to you -
A trigger-happy ex-girlfriend, an old friend who used to inform on you to the FBI, family too... If you're desperate.
Bottom line, until you figure out who burned you, you're not going anywhere.


Firstly, you have to have worked, officially or unofficially, for a government (or megacorporate) intelligence agency. So that's a Criminal SIN right there.
You're going to have a Bad Rep - your name has been tarnished, justly or otherwise. Asset handlers know you're no good, they know that everything you've given them is suspect.
You've been Hung Out to Dry - either totally or near-totally.


Basically, I don't think it needs its own negative. A Micheal Weston style Burn Notice is a combination of factors. That said, if you want a negative quality for it, here you go:


Burn Notice (35 points)
You used to be a spy... Until you got a call.

You've had a burn notice issued on you; all of the intelligence community thinks that you are, at best, unreliable. You used to travel in the elite circles of espionage and counterespionage, but now you've been black-listed. You can't get jobs from intelligence Johnsons under normal circumstances, and if you are getting jobs for them, chances are they're blackmailing you rather than paying you. Your name is tarnished and notorious within the intelligence community; nobody is taking your calls, even those who feel you may be innocent of what you are accused of doing, simply for fear that your taint will spread to them. And worse, figures more shadowy than usual are most likely manipulating your life for their own ends.

A character living under the auspices of a burn notice is a spy out in the cold. He suffers a limited form of the Hung Out to Dry flaw: he may not have any Contacts in any sort of official community or espionage community; the only people still talking to him are random Joes off the street and criminals. None of his Contacts can have a Connections rating higher than 3; anyone more well-connected than that has heard of the burn notice and has severed their ties with him.

He effectively has the Wanted quality; every two-bit operator and worse that he's ever screwed over in the course of doing his job and was held at bay by the organization he works for finds their way cleared. You've crossed a lot of people, and now they're looking for payback. He can never be rid of this, short of a completely new identity with new genetics and everything, unless some agency starts looking out for him again.

Said character is known by people whom he no longer wishes he was known by. His records are on-file with at least one agency, maybe more, and lots of places likely have a dossier on him with more information than he wishes they had. He also effectively has a Criminal SIN; they've erased anything in his background that might have been useful, the only information that anyone searching for him will find will be things that he doesn't wish they knew.

Frankly, there has to be a reason this character isn't dead already, and that reason can only be bad news. He has come to the attention of powerful people, or worse. They may be manipulating him, they may be toying with him, watching him squirm, or they may be trying to drive him into such a state of desperation that he'll accept a devil's bargain.

I agree. If you are a fan of the TV show, it's that combo. If you haven't seen it, ShadowDragon8685 just summed the first season

I like it... might snag this if I ever build my character rather than just beginning to DM

The concept from a high level is awesome as the show depicts effectively a "modern" shadowrunner. I think this could basically work for any former SIN personnel or former CORP Personnel as well. Especially anyone on the more security/military side.

there is not enough karma to build Michael Westen, or any spy with this background. a 400BP guy is not worth the paper a Burn Notice would be written on...

You could pull it off with the karma based system if you know how to game it maybe...

I managed ex-SBS on that tough with admitedly slighty "rusted" skills but then a spy doesn't need the silly skills and cyber-ware that guy had.

Maybe not michael, but that doesn't mean that you can't do a lower end ex-corp security analyst/security op, ex military analyst/security op. Could also do something along those lines with the addition of a loss of memory or capability that he needs to relearn.

Exactly... when you are walking around with former deltaware, skill wires out the wazzo for every skill in the book, contacts and skills and you're rusted or got booted and mem-wiped, you might have to "Rebuild" a little.

From my perspective depending on the story I might even allow some roleplay leeway in terms of what tech could and couldn't be pulled out of the person when they kicked them to the curb.

I would have to disagree on the first part. If you worked officially for a government (or mega) you would be a SINner (not necessarily criminal). Yolu would also have 'Records on File.' When you were burnt it may or may not move your SIN to a criminal. Michael Westin wasn't a criminal until he started working on "projects." He was under surveillance but not necessarily a criminal. When he started doing jobs that they could loosely tie to him is when he became a "criminal."

So I would say just SINner and records on file if you worked officially. Unofficially, now that is a different story. Definitely a SINner until you got burnt, then they would be stupid to not make your SIN a criminal one. Still have "Records on File."

All the rest is good.

Yeah kind of agree with that... I would say that someone is specifically keeping you off the radar, out of the lime-light and where they want you to be (stuck in a city). Your life, everything about it is erased, you can't get a line of credit because you don't exist! you have no credit score. In some cases people think you are dead! Introducing yourself as a dead guy will either draw a laugh, disbelief, or ire

Another option is not only were you burned, but the agency wanted you dead... they thought you were dead... bourne identity style. Just a different type of burn...

Wow!

I really didn't expect for anyone to go as far as you did ShadowDragon8685, you didnt have to but thanks

A lot of what you wrote up for the Burn Notice quality is probably what I would have ended up with myself.




Jeremiah, You can come pretty close to a "Michael Weston" with 400 BP. Granted you limit your contacts and start the game with practically no gear.

Spend 200 BP for attributes, that's 3's (Typical Human) across all 8 attributes @ 160BP with the remaining 40 BP you can either
A) bump 4 of those attributes to 4's
B) bump 2 of those attributes to 5's
C) bump 2 of those attributes to 4's and get 2 more edge
D) whatever else as you like
Leaving you @ 200 BP

Take the Burn Notice neg quality as Shadowdragon8685 summed it up or grab the official SR neg qualities that come closest to being a "Burn Notice"
in your opinion (you should be @ 235 BP now if you max your neg qualities)

Take Restricted Gear once as one of your positive qualities. (230 BP if you don't take any other pos qualities to balance out)

Skip skills for now and go straight to Nuyen and gear spend 2 BP (at minimum especially if you want to start game with practically nothing like Michael did)
and spend the ¥10,000 on buy Skillwires rating 5 (228 BP)

Spend 12-18 BP on 2-3 contacts with connection no higher than 2, and loyalty no lower than 4

Which should leave you with between 210-216 BP for skills which is quite a lot, enough for
A) 5 skill groups at 4 (Vetran), with some change left over or
B) 10 skills at 5 (Expert) with some change
C) whatever combo of skills skill groups you like

Yes, so you start the game with no gear (which I would take as a challenge to fix) and your probably not going to be joining in a big run for the first 30 min
to hour of game anyways (sometimes not even the first game session) work on getting gear. Hit up your contacts, con some people, do some B&E or pick-
pocketing, shoot even go shoplift/knockover a Stuffershack (which should carry anything thats not R or F on availability), and you"ll be on your way to some
basic gear (which hopefully includes some activesofts to fill out the skills you couldn't afford). And if you can get a bit up front from your Mr. J for your first
run you can outfit yourself even more.

I would replace Skillwires 5 with Skillwires 4 and a Skillwire Expert System.

I love the Burn Notice/Shadowrun idea, and I've played around with it a few times. One problem, though, is that it really dominates the campaign. Burn Notice is a show about Michael, period. The other characters have to be okay with that.

I'd be fine playing Sam And I'm sure somebody would like to play Fi. She's basically any generic gunbunny

I'd be glad to play Jessie.

Aw, that's a huge misreading of Fi. Especially because she's at least 33% face/smuggler.

Anyway, the point is not that no one would want to, just that the players need to be okay with it. You get this 'one main character' issue in lots of RPGs, and you can miss out on some great stories if the players aren't interested in being awesome but-not-the-one-guy characters.

You could always have a whole squad burned. . . .

which I expect from every streetsam-kinda char anyways!

I think what makes burn-notice interesting is that he isn't the "one guy". He has friends and partners, he has to wheel and deal and pick his contacts back again. It's all part of the game which is what makes that show so entertaining. He's still... just... one... guy...

Plus he always plans a contingency... or two. Sometimes on the fly.

He's not 'one guy', he's 'THE one guy'. Totally different. It's not even that he's the most powerful (… he is, of course), but that he's simply the one the show is about.

Yes, you could do a whole burned squad. It's a little trickier, because now they all have to have roughly the same backstory. :/ Not necessarily fun, though not impossible. They could be a motley crew who *then* got burned, maybe.

Burn Notice is a story told from Micheal's perspective, and the majority of the plots do revolve around him, but they also tend to revolve around him rallying the group to action - whether working on getting him unburned, sorting out a mess one of the group or a contact of the group has gotten into, or trying to fuck with the people who burned him.


Fiona and Sam have started their fair share of the runs when their downtime activities went dramatically south, mind you, or when some friend of Sam's contacted him in need of help - I think a few times when Fiona saw some Situation that needed intervening in, too. And then of course, they burned Jesse, and recruited him along the way.


Sure, the situation with Micheal Weston and friends isn't exactly the typical "We do bad things for money" Shadowrun set up. Primarily, they do bad things to worse people for money. The story does tend to revolve a lot around Micheal, probably because his background is the one who ties them all together, and is the one that causes the most problems for the group...

Aaaat least up until Fiona went and turned herself in to make Micheal go after Ansen. This should be good, and I am angernated that they skipped last week in the episode line-up.

I just now realized I'm an entire season behind on this.

Oh no, spoilers! ShadowDragon, it sounds like you're at least 2 eps behind; Fiona got some serious solo-spotlight in those two.

I'm not behind.


I figured this way a way of writing Gabrielle Anwar out of the season so she could shoot some movie or something, but it looks like they're doing some serious "behind bars" play with her.

Just because you got pinched by the Star doesn't mean you have to wait out-of-play until your friends can spring you.

Those side sessions are hell on the group/GM, though. :/

You just lift the plot of The Losers wholesale. I think that could be lots of fun for a limited-run campaign.

Yes, but I'd say to meet up with the pinched character(s) at a different time/day from the main group meeting unless there's a significant chance their paths will be crossing (such as if the group is pulling a 'run to free their colleague... Or, say, if they've all been pinched and are about to arrive in his slam for an entire story arc of incarceration.)

I got ninja'd but this is the whole concept of The Losers. I don't think they're quite to the level of burn notice since you can get away with a lot fewer negative qualities mostly because the bad thought they were dead rather than burning them. Also, fantastic hacking moments.