[Shadowrun] Clown Country

[Rahzeil]

"Over? No, in my haste, I have maimed
him. Now it will never be over."

Clown Country

"You want to know what it's all about, but I've got nothing for you. All I know, is it's sure as hell not what it appears to be. Powerful people lining up on all sides. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, and nobody knows whose in the kitchen. There's something else too, something tugging at the shadows in ways I've never seen before. But hell. Does it even matter? You get payed to do a job. You want to know the whys and hows, you figure that drek out on your own Chummer."

Game Description Welcome to Clown Country, a Shadowrun 5e game based in Seattle with a fair amount of travel. Without giving too much away, this campaign will involve several of the most famous moments in the early history of the Shadowrun universe, along with some material straight out of my own head. I will ask that anyone interested in playing try to avoid searching online for answers. There are some cool things that will happen in this campaign, and I think everyone will enjoy it a lot more if they don't ruin the twists for themselves. The game is going to be somewhat player controlled, but keep in mind that you are shadowrunners, pawns in bigger games than your characters may ever know. Just because you choose to run off the rails doesn't mean that the major players stop playing, and if you spend too much time on the sidelines they might just make the next move without you. I will be taking a team of up to five runners into the game. One of the spots is spoken for though, so there are four up for grabs. I want to get the ball rolling fairly quickly so I'm setting the deadline tentatively for the 12th. Depending on how quickly I get applications, I may move that deadline up some, but I will give at least a few days notice if I do. At any rate, I'll be giving you a week after players are selected to finalize your sheets, so don't worry too much about having them perfect, a sheet that's about 75% done is fine. In your application you can include whatever you think will help you get accepted, but at a minimum I would like to see a personality (at least one paragraph), physical description (at least one paragraph), a background (at least two or three paragraphs), and the skeleton sheet I mentioned above.

Character Creation Rules This is a Shadowrun 5e Campaign. The only thing you need to start playing is a copy of the 5E core handbook. However, I will be using all books to craft the world and the NPCs within it, so it's only fair that you have whatever game information you can acquire at your disposal. That is to say, I'm not outlawing or banning anything in the books from the game. You can build a character from whatever you can find as long as its official Shadowrun material from the current edition (this includes the 4.5 stuff). However, We are going to run with something I have come to know as the Sniper's Agreement. If your characters can do something, so can your enemies, and they have more resources than you do. So before you make the character who can pick off any enemy at 12 miles without being seen, or who uses spraycans full of lethal contact poison, just keep in mind that your enemies can hire more snipers than the team can. As far as character creation rules go, consider everything standard with the exception that you should build your character with 2 D priorities rather than a D and an E. I'm currently looking through the books to decide if I want to add any houserules, but I will update this if/when I decide to. I haven't found any houserules I'm interested in using. While you are welcome to take a fixer as a contact, it is not required for my game. One will be provided for you. I don't have any hard and fast rules about the sort of characters I like, but try to keep in mind that your are criminals. You don't have to be willing to do any job out there, and ethical dilemas are sometimes part of the fun, but your character shouldn't balk at the idea of crime, unless he is so desperate for work for some reason that he has to set his ethics aside.

Update: The setting is 2050 with a single exception: all rules, including magic and technology, will be based on the information presented in the 5th edition rules, and not at all based on the first edition rules. When necessary, I will update things from first edition to fit the rules in 5th edition and never the other way around. You only need to learn 5th edition stuff and have access to anything in the 5th edition or 4.5 books (within availability and other rules of course).

To reiterate my reasons for this: I don't expect this campaign to extend long enough for the second crash to become relevant so I am taking a shortcut that I will better benefit all parties involved.

[koboldsDIE]

I might be able to paint you a picture. I'm not sure what the exact outcome will look like, but at the core, some horrible cross between Batman personal moral high ground, and The Joker's anarchist tendencies. An absolute Bastid.

[Rahzeil]

Originally Posted by koboldsDIE

I might be able to paint you a picture. I'm not sure what the exact outcome will look like, but at the core, some horrible cross between Batman personal moral high ground, and The Joker's anarchist tendencies. An absolute Bastid.

Sounds like a true sociopath, but some say Runners are sociopaths by definition.

Not that I expect this to come up necessarily, but this is probably as good an opportunity as I'll get to mention this. I need my players to be able to play nice with one another. In otherwords, I don't really mind what kind of quirks a character has, even if they take the form of straight up madness, so long as it doesn't interfere with them working as a team. While lone wolves are compelling from a narrative perspective, they don't really apeal to this kind of game.

Also, a bit of an aside. I'm not exactly pro-PVP, but in certain situations I will allow it. I've got rules though. In addition to being completely consensual with both players (if one players doesn't want to, then it won't happen), it also needs to make total narrative sense and not be the result of player squabbles OOC (which I'd like to avoid in general). It also can't slow down the game, so if anyone decides they are interested in persuing something like that, I'll need them to craft their followup character first, even if they are sure they'll win.

Just an FYI so everyone knows where I stand.

[Beez]

I haven't played shadowrun before, but I've been wanting to. I've got the book, but I'm just now cracking it open. There's one character I've been considering for a while though, would a metalhead anarchist fit this game? Willing to work with others, will reluctantly work under a Corp if it means goals get furthered?

[zarzak]

Oooh ... commenting to remind myself to apply.

[Rahzeil]

Originally Posted by Beez

I haven't played shadowrun before, but I've been wanting to. I've got the book, but I'm just now cracking it open. There's one character I've been considering for a while though, would a metalhead anarchist fit this game? Willing to work with others, will reluctantly work under a Corp if it means goals get furthered?

It's fine if you're new, and a big help that you purchased the book at least. There's a chart on page 65 which is the basis for character creation (remember that I'm giving you an Extra D priority so there shouldn't be any Es). Basically character creation starts with picking what you want to be most to least important and then going from there with the points that alots you.

That's a start for character creation, but what about the game universe. Are you at all familiar with Shadowrun? I can give a brief overview of how it works and I know some things that can help put you in the right mindset if you've never played any of the video games or anything like that.

Also, hey Zarzak.

[koboldsDIE]

So how will that double D work anyway, if say your build doesn't need magic?

[Baxder]

Sweet! Another opportunity to get into Shadowrun already! I'm interested!

[Rahzeil]

Originally Posted by koboldsDIE

So how will that double D work anyway, if say your build doesn't need magic?

Hmm... fair question. If you want to play a mundane, you can have 2 extra points of stats or edge instead.

[koboldsDIE]

I'll take the edge.

[XQbitor]

Interest! What year are the runners starting, not that I'm going to look it up?

[Rahzeil]

I'm going to intentionally keep the timeline vague, mainly for book keeping reasons. For one thing, we'll be using the latest Shadowrun rules including technology, even though the tech has changed significantly since the early days of Shadowrun (mainly, there was no such thing as wireless in first edition).

Still, I think late 2050 is fairly accurate and also vague enough for me to work with. We'll leave it at that for now.

[Darays]

I'm definitely interested. Got to find my books to whip something together. Got some experience in Shadowrun, but rather extensive experience in D&D.

Character-wise, I'm looking at a personality mirroring Juice from SOA. If you haven't seen the show, I'll break it down when I re-edit the post with the updated info.

Edit:

Got the character sheet ginned up. Elf technomancer is what I have planned out. When I have the whole background worked up i'll upload what I have all at once again as an edit.

[Rahzeil]

Originally Posted by Darays

I'm definitely interested. Got to find my books to whip something together. Got some experience in Shadowrun, but rather extensive experience in D&D.

Character-wise, I'm looking at a personality mirroring Juice from SOA. If you haven't seen the show, I'll break it down when I re-edit the post with the updated info.

Also, any hard post requirements we should be aware of?

I came to Shadowrun with almost all of my experience being dnd and other d20 systems. Never seen SOA though. Never struck me as my kind of show.

I'd prefer for everyone to at least manage a post a day. If posting delays start bogging the game down I'll create more concrete rules but for the time being I'm hoping irrationally that player interest and enjoyment will trump PBP conventions. If you're worried that you may not be able to post consistently I'd also prefer to know that upfront.

[koboldsDIE]

I should have my app up by Friday the latest.