Hi everyone

I'm trying myself in GM'ing soon and wanted to do a Campaign where my Players are all Average Joe from everyday life who slide into the world of shadowrunning as total noobs.

My thoughts were:
- Karmagen
- 500 Karma
- 200 karma (+/- 10) on Attributes
- Availability 8
- 1 Karma = 2500 Nuyen
- No Charisma x2 in free contacts
- Knowledge Skills cost Karma

QUALITIES
Every Char starts as a SINner with a Rank 6 standard citizen SIN and a Rank 4 Corporate SIN

GEAR
- no Restricted Gear Quality
- Restricted Gear only with a legit Licence from the government
- Forbidden items are ... well forbidden at start
- Free 3 month DocWagon Contract sponsored by their Corporation (Start bonus in case something goes wrong at the beginning)

SKILLS
- Best Skills shouldn't be higher than 3-4. Average Skills between 1-3. (Remember, they are total noobs)

CYBERWARE
- Cyberware is allowed but shouldn't be combat oriented, since the players don't expect "big trouble" but need those implants for their job at the company or in their private life

MAGIC
- Max Magic Attribute of 3
- No lethal Comatsspells at chargen
- Foci are handled like gear, max availability of 8

MATRIX
- Matrix Software are handled like gear, max availability of 8

BACKGROUND
- You start as a normal average everyday Joe. All Players work for the same company that is specialized in Virtualpets and -personas.
- The skills should somehow reflect the current position in the company. Jobs can be made up as long as they fit the corporation and the playstyle of this campaign.
- The Players shouldn't have been in Prison or something other illegal activities in their life.
- No "special forces" or something similar as character background, players should really be normal people that have no clue of the shadows.

Missions would give a rather "high" Karma reward so that my runners would be equal to standard Chars in about 5-10 Missions so that I could to a bigger Campaign with them. But first they have to earn their shadow reputation to get such a big job.

Has anyone tried something like that and can give me some advice or ideas to balance it? I would greatly appreciate some advice ...

I would limit magic rating at 3 to avoid overly powerful mages and adepts.

Start with Magic 3, Summon Force 6 spirit for combat, Force 6 spirit steamrolls opposition designed for everyman group.


this game breaks at lower than 300-350BPs.

Go with SR3

Spells must be BOUGHT at the maximum force.

Go with opposed rolls for spirits if their magic is TWICE of the caster or when over-summoning.

or simply up the opposition... have the spirits use edge. >;3. or, put some mages into the opposition, banish the spirits.

Average Joe's aren't awakened. If you're awakened, you're already not average. Limit magical ability to latent, or none at all.

That'll balance things out

or, go for what i have seen alot of people doing, take magic completely out of the game :/

I think the setting loses a lot of it's uniqueness with the magic removed, but you can certainly run a campaign that doesn't emphasise it. It can be more of a background thing and not something this particular set of characters experience every day.

Nah, a magic rating of 1 is what most of joe public has at best if we look at the percentage of magically active people as compared to POWERFUL magic people.

Magic 1 is pretty powerful in it's own right for a magician.

Useful F1 Spells
-Levitate
-Analyze Magic
-Borrow Sense / Animal Sense / Eyes of the pack
-Mindnet (limited to FX2 at best)
-Thermographic Vision
-Night Vision
-Fashion
-Orgasm
-Orgy
-Gecko Crawl
-Makeover
-Increase Reflexes 1 [Overcasting Required]
-Ignite [Limited to easily affected materials]
-Magic Fingers [Better than nothing]

Combat spells might be more limited but a F1-2 elemental spell might do the trick with a few successes.

maybe a magic of 2, if they focused more on gettin better at it, or have had more exp using it.

Yea, magic 1 for the average one and the 'high-end' magicians at 2.

Could get a good spirit at F4 with overcasting.

I did a similar thing and it worked pretty well. Everyone was a SINner to start out with. Magic can be overpowered at that end.

-It was a 300 BP game, but everyone picked an NPC stat block that matched with their character concept and then rounded the character out to 300 BP. Most of the NPC's were around 200-250 BP, so that's about 100-50 BP of customization. The only one that's a real problem is the Janitor (it's around 160 BP if I remember), since a min-maxer will have way more points than everyone else. The streetdoc and Talismonger are both much more powerful than the standard NPC, so were thrown out. The only other NPC that has magic is the Parasecurity expert (I only pulled from Contacts and Adventurers and SR4A) and it's hardly overpowered since it has no customization. Knowledge skills can be swapped to be more appropriate to the actual career that the player chose.
-Any other character can buy the magician quality and up their magic. One player did, but with only 60 BP for the Magician quality, raising magic and getting the magic skills, it keeps things pretty reasonable.
-Some active skill swapping was allowed, but only if it made sense, because not all possible jobs matched with NPC stat blocks exactly.
-All awakened characters start the game with the cursed quality level 1, because they have not fully learned to control their magic. (this helps to keep magic from being too game breaking)
-Restricted to 50,000 nuyen worth of gear to start with and similar legal requirements.
-Legal requirements included spells known. (So no combat spells and a license for any other spell)
-Everyone must have at least two contacts.
-No one was allowed to have a combat skill higher than 2, unless their career required it.
-Everyone had the day job quality and SINner quality (5 BP each if you wanted to start without them)

The group was onboard with this to start with, so there wasn't anyone that abused it too bad. At this level of play, Tasers are the most powerful weapon that the group will probably have (and they are powerful).

You might want to keep an eye on changelings since someone with Astral Hazing would keep the group literally safe from most supernatural threats if they have high essence.

Not to mentioning nullify any magically active person in your team.

based on the OPs outline I will attempt to make a power char, possible min/max points :3. just to see how bad something can be done.

Generally I don't think it's necessary to limit characters strictly. If the players all know the type of game it is and the GM has a veto rule then all should be good. If someone does try to abuse the system just a simple 'haha, no, try again' would suffice.

Edge will sort that out. Force 6 spirit adding 6 Edge pre-roll to resist the summoning will give 10DV physical on average, whilst with the skill and attribute caps the summoner will rarely gain a service - assuming a Summoning DP of 8 the summoner will fail more than 80% of his attempts on average.

I hope I did the spoiler thingy right O.o anyway that's the main part of the char. lol.

Nice try with the Streetcop. Really forgot about the cyberarm "cheese" hehe
But you made a mistake with your cyberarm:
Obvious Full arm = Availability 4
Customized Agility 6 = +3 Availability
Customized Strenght 4 = +1 Availability
Customized Body 5 = +2 Availability
= 10 Availability but the game MAX is 8.

but I also see that you don't have any contacts (they aren't free) and you haven't got knowledge skills since they cost karma in karmagen.

and since you also used restricted gear (gun and shotgun), be aware that you have a official licence for them and they can easily be tracked back to you

when i'm bqck home and have a computer in front of me instead of my mobile phone I will analyse all the advise you people gave me

i had about 30 karma left over, I didn't feel like doing the contacts and probably would have to drop a tad bit for a few more points for knowledge like leadership but (he would'nt have that many ) but precautions can be taken to get out of the licensed weapons hole, specially with a good gunsmith contact. that's also a reason I gave him gel rounds :3 I probably could have done worse things in min/maxing but meh. I did not feel like putting A LOT of effort into it XD and of course when firing the shotgun I would use the avg. of the cyberarm and my nat agi. so only a 6 lol

EDIT: besides, all guns are restricted sooo.

There is no customized body, I THINK (still new to cyberlimbs) it started at base 3? and so added ENHANCEMENT 2, which increased capacity not availability.

i've rewrote some of the rules I want to implement. do you guys think i've covered enough?
i want to be fair with my rules but still restrict enough so that my player won't min max too much
i also have always the last word if a char gets accepted or not

so my guy is now the head security guard lol. I hope they do not piss off some gangers O.o. but I am guessing my char would not get accepted XD lol.

but I do like the idea. just want to know how and why they get thrust into the shadows

Well ... I need to write you a PM about that, since my players casualy read dumpshock too

I did something similar in 2nd ed, but I just used contacts out of the books.
I put 10 contacts from the books on character sheets, told my 5 players that these were the guys on the Renraku shuttle that's leaving the Arc right now, and they should pick which one they wanted. We had a dwarf technician, a mr johnson, a security guard, a corp secretary (I made her a phys-ad to make some one want her) and a wiz-kid mage. Then, the shuttle got shot down, and the PC's were the only ones to survive the crash and the followup strafing by the attack chopper. "Hey, your corp wants you dead, you're 20 miles outside of Seattle and ony 2 of you have guns. Welcome to the shadows".

I'd agree with this. I'd kind of like to see/play in a game with the magical rarity enforced. IE, where the only mages you can get on a run are your Contacts, and they all have their Price. Some are giant assholes, take lots of money, are unreliable and show up drunk or not at all, etc.

Cutting out some stuff to prevent giant quoteblock.



Consider doing away with high karma rewards, and asking each player individually what their character would like to improve on. Consider handing out flat +1 increases to skills/stats, or freebie spells as mission rewards, etc. Keep track of how much EFFECTIVE karma has been spent in case someone falls behind, but it should help mitigate karma hoarding.

Basically consider the time in the CorpLand as a tutorial - hand out non-traditional freebies and quest rewards for completing goals with some karma, instead of billions of karma.

Adventures in missing the point.

wait what?

I think Raiden was trying to give the GM a prospective "worst case scenario" under the ruleset the GM was planning to give the players, looking at what some dumpshockers can do will give prospective GM's an idea of how harsh or lenient they are being with the limited rules, if the worst case scenario isn't that bad, it may be a good set to work with for the table.

yeah, I didn't min/max everything as I could have had maybe 3-4 cyberlimbs lol. either way, it wasn't THAT bad, so he can shoot, and run decently, an few other minor things, all go with the character, yeah it may be a little different than what the GM had in mind, it was just a way of showing that this could happen, would you accept this? its a fairly decent rule setting from my perspective. since R4 is the max cap, the availability and no restricted gear perk really cuts down on maxing out stats. if all else fails ban cyber limbs, though I ask you, what about that character doesn't fit (except the 1 logic XD)

I'm doing an exact same thing in my current campaign. My rules were maybe even more restrictive:

-325 karma (max half on attributes).
-race costs BP*2 in karma, racial modifers applied after purchase of attributes.
-Max avail. 6.
-Restricted gear requires licences and needs to be approved case by case
-encouraged to take SINner quality.
-characters must want to involve themselves in shady stuff, but have limited experience with it
-same as you regarding ex-spec ops etc.
-characters are young and inexperienced (14-20 age).
-No magic qualities allowed except Latent Awakening
-no Hacking programs allowed at chargen
-free karma for knowledge skills (similar)
-no restricted or forbidden cyber or bioware.
-skill ratings must be explained in background, and generally no higher than 3-4 (we have one with Medicine 5 due to good education)

The party is based around a night club and having been to the same basic schools. Most of the characters are poor, except one with a rich dad and high lifestyle. One of them is already involved with unlicenced medicine and drugs ,one is a bouncer, one a thrill-seeker urban explorer.

I can give some tips or tell more if you like.

Ah. I missed that. My Apologies, Raiden.

I thought it was meant to be a sample character in line with the GM's wishes - not a worst case scenario.

I looked at it, and thought: "Look, the GM was looking for Average Joes, who work 40 hours a week, go to the pub on Friday night, and spend their off time watching sports on the Trid. You know, normal, non-combat optimized people. Who the heck would bring in a cybered adrenaline-junkie with 4 combat specializations - and who didn't even bother to list his knowledge skills (like Professional Skill: Cop)?"

I guess I've developed a sensitivity to seeing one too many ordinary corp wageslaves who happen to be Olympics-class marksmen.

easy to get jaded here pretty quickly, but yeah I think Raiden was mostly trying to help the GM get an idea of what to expect at the worst.

325 Karma?
At that point you are not even an Average Joe... Average Stats cost 200 Karma after all, and you said they could only spend 162 on Stats. Just wow...
As for the Skill 5 Medicine guy. Good Education won't even cut that if he is from 14-20. Not unless he started his Dr. Schooling at the age of 12, Whish is in NO way average.

Hmm actually I allowed 200 karma for most attributes when I think about it. Here's one of them:
Human
B 3
A 4
R 3
S 2
C 3
I 4
L 4
W 2

As you can see he has spent karma on his attributes after chargen. They are basically getting back the 325 they lost, 10-20 at a time, which can be used to get contacts, equipment, or raise the attributes up to the 325 karma maximum.

As for Medicine 5 - I don't see it impossible that a young and talented medicine student can get very good. The way I see it, an average GP doctor has rating 4 - which is the reason doctors are as rare as awakened people.
Balance wise I don't see a problem really. If it was Pistols 5 I would be more worried.

Calling them average joes might be a misnomer anyway. They're just supposed to be fairly "ordinary" civilians, and fairly inexperienced. That doesn't exclude real talent, potential etc. BTW the skill set belonging to the attributes seen above has nothing higher than 2, with a few specializations thrown in (mostly due to house rules). The group's gunslinger started out with Pistols 2 or 3, with a total of 8 dice.


In any case, as you throw in xp and nuyen the characters will become better fast - as the low-level advancement is cheap, both in karma and nuyen. Expect to see players milking out every cheap dp modifier possible to help them out.

Well, most of my characters (yes, even the combat ones) start out with a 2-3 in Weapon Skill... After all, 3 is a Professional.
In fact, MOST characters I have never get above a 4 in their skills. There are a few, which come along from time to time, but they are exceedingly rare. *shrug*

To each his own. 3 is professional in the literal sense - someone having the skill of a typical employee hired for that skill. That may be a taxi driver with Pilot (wheeled) 3, an armed policeman with Pistols 3 etc.

Not Professional as in this guy:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110413/

That's at least a 5 in relevant combat skills, and probably a 6 in Infiltration and probably having the Uncouth quality.

As I understand it, skill 3 is the average rating for something that's either your job or hobby, and skill 4 is what anyone can reach with practice (and a couple of years for average individuals). If you're an above average individual (something like 30% of a group, I imagine), you can reach skill 5 in your field, but only perhaps the top 1% of a group can will reach skill 6. This happily coincides with what the rules allow for starting character ratings, how about that (i.e. a character is above average in a lot of metrics, and is good enough to reach the associated skill levels, but the time devoted to getting and keeping [which is just abstracted in the rules] several rating 5+ skills is just not feasible)

It's more than feasible for prime runners. In fact, the elite special forces have rating 6 in skill groups.

Several rating 5 for the runners im talking about isn't though. Maybe one at rating 5 tops, OR two at rating 4.