How to Run the Shadows: A Treatise for Chum-Guzzlers as dictated by Mr. Black*
So a bunch of chem-breathing
gutter bunnies want to run the Shadows, but have literally no concept of the
hardship that is life in 2075. So what are these retrograde banglettes to do?
Lucky for them, I have decided to gather decades of experience into some basic
info dumps so they’ll stop dying and start flying.
Build
a REAL Character that will AID a Shadow Run.
Shadowrun is a role-playing game. If all you want to
do is attack/infiltrate a fortified position and then shoot things up, then do
everyone a favor and go play a tabletop skirmish game. Role-playing games
involve give and take between both your fellow players and your GM. By giving
your character the semblance of a real life, you will be rewarded with a better
role-playing experience. And don’t be afraid to give your GM a few character
hooks to play with. These hooks will also give you a more rewarding and
challenging role-playing experience.
Shadowrun is also a team game. Every member has to
do their part. So build characters that are very good at one skill set, good at
a couple more skill sets and nothing more. Sure, everyone should have some
Perception, Computer and Driving skills, but every character should be specialized.
Let other character do other things and concentrate on what your character does
best. It maybe a TV Trope, but the team full of specialists works. It also
gives every character a chance to shine. 6 guys who are great at shooting SMG’s
is boring and repetitive. But a master thief, a kick-ass fire mage, an ex-CAS
Marine sniper, an expert Street Sam, a teen-aged Technomancer with a dozen
Sprite friends, and a master mechanic/Rigger can do almost anything. I mean
really, which of those two groups do you want to fight with?
Push your character concept hard. As a Shadowrun GM,
I not only allow min-maxing, I encourage it. Take every Quality that will help
define your character, and fill them with Negative Qualities to get that Karma
back. Push the Attributes you need to the max, and use the rest as stat dumps.
Specialize in as many skills as you can. Not only will you have bigger dice
pools (even if marginally), your specializations will separate your character
from the pack. Buy everything you can afford and your GM will allow. It is
better to have the gear than need it 2 weeks later on a run. And buy the best
you can afford. 10 crappy cheap guns are useless. One excellent fully
customized weapon is much, much better. If you are afraid of running out of bullets,
just carry more clips. Or aim more, and shoot less. If you think you might need
different weapons for different purposes, just bring clips full of different
ammo types. And check with the rest of your Crew. All 6 of you do not need
Rating 2 medkits, or Rating 4 maglock passkeys. But one of you should have
those maglocks, and one of you should be carrying a rating 4 medkit.
And take contacts. Lots of contacts. Need a guy to
get your character guns? That makes sense. But every member of the Crew doesn’t
need an armorer. Help your Crew out and get guns for them! Your character will
build rapport faster, and your Crew will need less “real” time to buy stuff.
And your fixer can help you find guns, for Goddess’ sake. Your character should
also have “non-professional” contacts. Is your character a Seahawks fan?
Perhaps he takes a Seahawks booster club as a contact. And what do you know,
there is a lawyer in the club (you know, that guys who is always cooking
pancakes and real bacon at the pre-game tailgate), who perhaps can tell
you about another lawyer you are doing Legwork on. Or maybe that guy who runs
the soba stand you eat lunch at every day can put you in touch with the Yakuza.
Think beyond beans and bullets and have some people in your character’s life. These
non-professional contacts can also get you work. Perhaps a member of the
booster club talked too much drek on the St. Louis Rams social network. Now the
Rams are coming to town and their fans are looking to stomp some booster club
hoop. And your club needs protection. The kind your Crew can provide. See? One
little “useless” contact got you info on one run, and is paying for another,
and you’re getting tickets for a sold-out home game! If you are having troubles
thinking about possible contacts you might take, LOOK AT THE RULE BOOK you
mouth-breather! There are only 31 examples in there. The Runners Toolkit
has 108 more. And that doesn’t include taking any groups or
organizations. Look around your gaming table. There are contacts looking
back at you right now. As an example, my current gaming group has two
ex-military types, a corporate wage slave, a business executive, a warehouse
manager, a teacher and me, Mr. Black, the greatest Shadowrunner who ever lived.
Did you really just put armorer and fence as your only contacts? What a
useless pudwacker!
Now none of this is an excuse to be a complete tool.
(NOBODY likes THAT GUY. Don’t be THAT GUY!!) But build a character that is
different, alive, and useful. Your GM will thank you. Your fellow players will be
happy to have your character around. And most importantly, there will come a
time when the party needs your character to survive and achieve the mission.
And you will feel great about that later.
What
to Do During the Game. AKA How to Participate in a Role-Playing Game.
Rule 1: Make Drek Happen.
You are a participant in the game. Don’t sit around waiting for another
player or the GM to make things happen. Do it yourself. Is your character a
master wizard? Then stop telling everyone you are a master wizard, and do some
frakking master wizardry! Does your character have problems talking to city
folk because you are a countrified elven Amerindian? Go talk to city folk and
have problems doing it. Show the Crew, the GM and all the frakking NPC’s what
you are. Show us, don’t tell us.
“But my character wouldn’t do that!” is not an
excuse for not making drek happen. If the Crew needs to take a boat across
Puget Sound and your character hates water and gets violently seasick, don’t
sulk and sit on the dock while the Crew goes out and has fun. Get in the
fragging boat and role-play your malaise. Hang on the Street Sam’s neck, moan
about how you hate getting wet and then puke on everyone’s boots repeatedly.
Again, show us-don’t tell us. Get it done, gutter bunny!
Rule 2: Don’t Stop Drek from
Happening. So the master wizard has finally decided to do some master
wizardry. And you don’t like it so you’re going to tackle him. Awesome, you
just wasted all of our time. We only have 1 day a week to play, 4-6 hours
worth, and you want to spend it by stopping drek from happening. Thanks
a lot. Don’t stop it, react to it. Build on it. RPG’s are like improvisational
theatre-lite. React and engage, don’t withdraw and muffle.
Rule 3: Embrace your Failures.
Everyone likes to and wants to succeed. But failure is also a part of life.
Sometimes failure leads to a new and interesting place. If you (or another
character) fail, embrace it, react to it and engage it. If while running along
a very tall wall one of the characters fall off, react to it. Does your
character attempt to save them? Laugh at them? Pee on their soon-to-be corpse?
Did your character fire his last bullet and miss? Stop moaning and go to plan
B! (Maybe ask another character for an extra clip, mouth-breather! There is a
whole Crew of you! You are not an existential being alone in the universe.
Interact with your friends around the table, and stop trying to carry the whole
mission on your back.)
Rule 4: Don’t Frak Your Crew.
Your character is supposed to be part of a Crew that is attacking and stealing
from major corporations. So why is your master thief wasting his time stealing
from a bunch of chum-guzzlers who share studio apartments in the worst part of
town with 2 other dudes? Better yet, why are you being THAT GUY? The guy who
thinks frakking over his friends is hilarious fun? What a frakking dicksling!
Hundreds of trillions of nuyen to take and you want to steal pocket change from
your teammates. What a lazy weak-minded drekbag!
Nobody is
singing songs and making trid-sims about the jerk who frakked over his Crew and
left them all to die. So don’t be THAT GUY either. The runner who brought down
an AAA corp? The Street Samurai who destroyed the Hive Queen of the Seattle
underground? The Crew who raided Zurich-Orbital Gemeinshaft Bank? The Wolf
Shaman who dueled a dragon and won? THOSE GUYS get to be legends. THAT GUY is
just pissing us off and wasting our time. If your idea of a great time is
giggling over the cunning plan you pulled off on your unsuspecting and trusting
friends and wasting their evening, do us all a favor. Go play in traffic.
Seriously.
Rule 5: Don’t be a Leroy
Jenkins. Sure, the original Leroy Jenkins is a tired and overused
Internet meme. But you aren’t him. If at any time during a Run you think “This
is boring,” and then have your character strip off his clothes, run in circles,
and waggle his pathetic pud at the bad guys while shooting his gun in the air,
you are not being a legend. You are just being a self-important jerk.
Sure, a slightly less odious version of the jerk than the guy in Rule 4,
but a frakking jerk nonetheless. “But I’m making drek happen!” I hear you say.
No, you are not. Ruining the run is not making drek happen. You are petulantly
throwing a fit and wasting everyone’s time and effort. The proper term for such
a person is “Ass-Hat”.
Running
in 5 Parts, and Your Part in Them:
Part 1: The Meet. 99% of
Shadowruns start with meeting Mr. Johnson. This is known as (amazingly!) The
Meet. And your character has drek to do. “But I’m not the Face!?!” you quibble.
Well go back and read how to What to Do During the Game. Rule 1: Make
Drek Happen. Sitting around with your digits up your hoop does nothing
for the game. So ask Mr. Johnson some questions. Is your character a
Street Sam? Then he probably is wondering about physical security. As in, how
many guards, what are they armed with, etc. So ask about it! Playing the
rigger? Then ask about spiders, drones, entry points and locks. Running the
master wizard? Then ask about their magical defenses! And so on. Sure, Mr.
Johnson may not know the answers, or not want to give you that info, or charge
you for that info. But it is worth your character asking. The Meet may
take an hour or so of a game night, so do your part!
And negotiate for everything. How much
you’ll be paid, how you will be paid, expenses, overhead, advances, and more.
Need a new hard-to-get bang-bang? Perhaps Mr. Johnson can get it, against part
of the Crew’s payment of course. During the Legwork, did you find out you need a
specialized piece of equipment you can’t do the run without? Re-contact Mr.
Johnson and re-negotiate. Need a helicopter so the party can land on the roof?
Negotiate for it. Need a speed boat for action on the docks? Negotiate for it.
Better to take less pay (and have a boat) than pay for extra bullet hole
patching. Once your Crew has the rep, you can negotiate price after the
Legwork. Figure out what you need and then negotiate for the whole deal. Or
barter for better rewards. Money is always good, but there are many things
money can’t buy. Super magical reagents and masterwork foci, visits to
beta and delta clinics, sessions with the qi-tattoo master of Chinatown and
more are all possible to negotiate for, when you have the rep.
Part 2: Legwork. Almost
every Run involves Legwork. During this time, the Crew investigates every
aspect of the run and creates a plan to deal with them. We hope. So do your
part. Does your character have contacts that may be able to give him info about
the Run? (and if not, why not? What, does your character don the Gimp suit
in between runs? He knows nobody at all? Why is such a loser
hanging out with the A-Team in the VIP lounge that is my game? Contacts are how
the GM has the world interact with your smelly, socially impaired gutter bunny
of a character. So make drek happen and make a frakking friend for frakk’s
sake!) So call them! Your Crew should be doing magical, matrix and physical
reconnaissance of every place they have to be on the Run. Even a mentally
impaired Street Sam can use his grade 4, Mr. Black-indorsed, Rating 4 cyber
eyes and count guards and look for trip wires, guard dogs and such. Or guard
the decker. If all your character does is sit on his hoop and count bullets
during Legwork time, then don’t be surprised when way too many guards use their
Ingram Smartgunรข until the lead in his body
is worth more than his cyberware.
Legwork takes about 3 times as many
sessions as the actual Run does. I will say that again. 3-4 sessions are
Legwork! 1-2 sessions are Runs. If your character doesn’t bring anything to
Legwork time, what are you going to do during those sessions? Sit around
bored, sighing loudly while everyone else makes drek happen? Once again, why is
your drekky, worthless fraktard of a character doing hanging around with the
Crew that makes drek happen? If you played any other game and only did
stuff ¼ of the time you would lose. So make sure you don’t lose in a
frakking role-playing game!
Part of Legwork is coming up with a
plan. No, make that The Plan. Make sure your character is part of The
Plan and not just acting as the decker’s bodyguard. Make drek happen.
The ideal plan achieves the goals of Mr. Johnson, and your Crew’s goals as
well. All while taking no damage, wasting no resources, causing little to no collateral
damage, and getting away clean so that no one, not the corp you hit, the
Police, not even your Fixer or even Mr. Johnson knows you did it. These are
called Shadow Runs for a reason! Get in, get out, and don’t be seen.
All while making maximum profit. Quite a tall order, so sit down with the other
players and plan. Steal ideas from caper movies or books. Look for the best way
in and out. Make a Plan A, and a Plan B.
The Plan should cover these basic
things:
·
How
you are approaching the Facility.
·
How
you are getting into the Facility.
o Going in hard? Soft?
Stealthy?
o Do you need disguises or
props?
o Can you go in through the
roof or basement?
o What gear do you need? Does
a Crew member have it, or do you need to buy/steal it?
o Will you need magick to do it?
o Will the Hacker need to
help?
·
How
you are dealing with the physical security.
·
How
you are dealing with the Matrix security.
·
How
you are dealing with the magical security.
·
How
you are going to acquire the MacGuffin.
·
How
you are getting out of the Facility.
·
Where
you are going after getting out of the Facility.
·
What
to do if something goes wrong. At each of the above steps.
·
Always
remember that unless instructed otherwise, nobody likes excess
collateral damage. Not the people you are hitting, nor Mr. Johnson, the Police,
the Public, the Criminals, or the Bangers and Dregs. Everyone will assume you
are just psychopathic killers and do what Society always does: hunt you all
down and kill all of you. Remember that the Corp you hit today may be the
Corp that hires you next week. Unless of course you wantonly murdered all of
their science and support staff because someone asked to see your badge. Then
they are hiring you to show up at your very own ambush and burial in Glow City.
Is your character’s only part of the plan shooting
something? Big fraggin’ whoop! Any 10 year-old in the ghoul-infested mess that
is 2075 Sub-Saharan Africa can shoot a frakking AK-97. And some of those
10 year-old's can do it better than you omae! Look for ways for your character
to aid in the plan. Does he have a needed skill, or special piece of equipment?
Does he have a truck that can knock down a gate or drag it away? Again, make
drek happen. Talk with your fellow players, ask questions of the GM and get
it done.
Don’t like the plan? Then you better come up with
something better fast. If your objections are along the lines of “It’s
too dangerous!” then find a way to make it less dangerous. Also remember that
this is a game where everyone carries a gun and wears body armor. Danger is a constant
part of the Shadowrun milieu. So suck it up buttercup. If your objection is “My
character doesn’t know how to scuba dive!” then borrow someone’s contact and go
learn, chummer. If you don’t like the plan, but can’t come with anything
better, then make the plan work and null your hoop lip. Nobody likes a whiner.
Get out there and do your best to get it done, gutter bunny.
Part 3: The Run. This
should be the easy part. That is, if you did your Legwork properly and came up
with a great plan. If not, then you will be having fun. That bullet-flying,
magick-frying, hoop-tightening kind of fun. So make sure your character is
ready for both. Planning on knocking guards out with gel and stun rounds? Keep
a mag of APDS on you. Brought smoke and thermal smoke grenades? Better pack a
frag ‘nade or two just in case. The hacker was supposed to open the side door
and block the alarms? Make sure the entry team has a maglock passkey. Planned
on entering with a passkey? Bring that auto-picker and sequencer as well. And
so on.
So job number one on the run is to get
out of the van, unless your job is to stay in the van. This goes back
to making drek happen. Can’t open the lock? Stop the hoop lip, and do
something. Shoot it, explode it, go over it, go under it, but get past
that door. And let the Crew know what you are doing. You are a team, not an
angry band of kinderschnitzel. So work like one. Stop waiting for others to
help you and ask them. What you are really doing is allowing your
fellow players to make drek happen with you… Amazing, isn’t
it. 5 year-old's in a sandbox can do it, but 25 year-old's in a frakking game
store, who are supposed to be friends, suddenly become as coy as the new guy
during his first day in the prison shower room.
Part 4: The Swap. After
your Crew has succeeded, (and you did succeed, didn’t you?) you will have to
meet with Mr. Johnson again. Normally this is where you give him the MacGuffin
he asked you to retrieve (or proof of destruction of the MacGuffin he asked you
to destroy) and he pays you. Should be simple right? Except for that screwing
over the Runners meme Shadowrun is so fond off. Okay, I’m not saying it doesn’t
happen. But a good Fixer should make sure it shouldn’t happen. More likely this
is the part where the guys who were chasing you catch up to you. Anyways, watch
your back. Think about every movie you ever watched where two heavily armed
parties were swapping things. You know, the money for the drugs. The money for
the guns. The money for the blackmail material. The money for the girl. And all
of those at once. So be ready. Again, if the Crew did it’s job right this
should go smooth. Mr. Johnson wants to pay you. If he is at all reputable (see
the fixer part above) he may want to hire you again. This part may have some
more negotiation bits (you only got 4 of the 5 MacGuffins, or you want more
because half the Crew got Patrick Swayze-ed), but it should go easy. Do your
best to let it. Because you really want to get to Part 5…
Part 5: Downtime. So you
got paid (we hope). Now is the time to spend it. Do your GM a favor and make a
list of what you want, how much extra you are willing to pay for it (if any),
and any other particulars. This includes training, Attribute increases,
Initiation, etc. Because if the GM has to role-play 6 players meeting with all
their contacts (and their contacts contacts), this will take frakking
days. Literally. Like the next 3-4 game sessions. No frakking joke, my
right hand to Ares Macrotechnology© and all their wonderful guns I kill people
with. So make a list and turn it in. If your GM has any questions he will get
back to you.
If you absolutely need private time
with your GM (which is definitely not as sexy as it sounds), try to
schedule it outside of game session time. Because no one wants to watch you hog
all the GM’s time after they all got new guns and gear. They all want to go out
and start this all over again, not spend 3 hours listening to you try to hustle
the GM into an extra 5% discount on that pistol. Again, don’t be THAT GUY.
Because, again, this is a group activity and FRAKK THAT GUY…
*Much of this was inspired by Grant over at Look Robot. Well him and my new, flailing players. I want to thank Grant, and recommend his site. As I always say, steal from the best.
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