Shadowrun (was: Now that Helen and Atilla have moved back to our area...)

[Bob Schroeck]

...Helen's starting up a new Shadowrun campaign.  Completely new -- our old characters, like my Jewish street samurai Mossad -- are retired (for playing purposes).  And she's got a hell of a concept for the campaign.

We're all kids.  In Berlin.

(Before I forget to mention it, we're using 2nd Edition rules, because they're what Helen's most comfortable with, and what we all have the most books for.  And I honestly can't fault Helen for going with comfort; what I've seen of SR5 looks like a completely alien thing.)

So anyway, the character concepts are working out interestingly.

Attila, ever the one for overkill, is playing a 9-year-old troll physical adept.  (That's basically all you need to know about an Attila character -- it will be hard to kill, and good at killing other things. <grin>)

Peggy's playing what amounts to a 9-year-old version of Hanna, only raised in Sweden instead of Finland, and in Berlin to investigate the disappearance of her father.  She's going to be the team sniper, only she's so small she has to use a hunting rifle instead of a real sniper rifle.  She's also a shamanic adept of Wolf, which if you don't know the system means she's a very minor magic user, basically able to use only combat and detection spells, and only able to conjure forest spirits.  She actually designed the character to be the Shadowrun equivalent of a D&D ranger, so she'll be using the optional Edges/Flaws rules to get a few extra things like Animal Empathy. Lately, Peggy has been beefing up on both real-world and SR Sweden, and has been searching online for just the right picture of a small girl with a big gun to use to represent her. If only she would choose a name for the character. Oh, and her spells.

Me?  I had a lot of ideas at first.  One, which folks might find amusing, was a young Hermetic magic-user who thought he was Harry Potter.  Literally.  He was going to be convinced he had to use this stick and Dog Latin incantations to cast his spells (and I went through all the known spells from Harry Potter and worked out their SR equivalents).  He was also going to address all elves as "Dobby" and "Winky" depending on their gender, all Trolls as "Hagrid", and all Talismongers as "Mr. Ollivander", and his teammates were probably all going to be addressed as various other characters from the books.  And he was certain he was in Germany as part of some convoluted scheme to defeat Voldemort, who naturally was in England.  Completely insane but functional.

Eventually, though, I went with a different concept:  Lukas Veidt, an 11-year-old corp brat whose parents work for Saeder-Krupp practically 24/7, leaving him a latchkey kid ostensibly watched over by his uncle, who basically calls the kid once every day or two to make sure he's not dead but otherwise ignores him.  For fun, Lukas leaves the corp building where he lives after school and basically pretends to be a street kid.  Helping him survive this unwise choice of hobbies are two things:  one, his parents sprung for a "Big Man on Campus" package of bioware when he was conceived, basically giving him an edge in physical abilities and charisma, and two, he's actually a Dog shaman, who didn't realize he was a Dog shaman until recently clued in by a friendly adult.  (He just thought he liked dogs a lot.)  I spent thirty of his starting force points to give him grade 0 Initiation, with the ordeal of summoning a familiar.  So he has a big yaller dog as a "pet" which is actually a Force 2 ally spirit.  This left him with 5 points for spells, so I gave him Stun Missile, Treat, Disregard, Makeover and Fashion, all at force 1.  The last two he uses to disguise himself when he leaves the SK complex, and to cleanup and revert back when he comes home.  His spirit lodge is a blanket over a couple of chairs with all his "stuff" under it.  Oh, and his only weapon is a slingshot.  I've got some Flaws I'm going to use with him (Day Job, for instance, to simulate having to go to school), but I haven't quite decided on what Edges to buy with the points I got back.  Probably more Force points to boost his spell repertoire or power levels, and to give his "dog" an alternate human form.

I suggested to Helen that I could make him a Tiger shaman instead, with a tiger ally spirit, and reallocate a force point from a spell to give the spirit an alternate form of a stuffed toy, and change the kid's name to "Calvin", but she wasn't amused. <grin>

We've got one more player, our friend Frank, but I don't know what he's going to be playing, as he hasn't been by since the first character-building get-together.  When I find out I'll let you all know.