So You Want to Be a Shadowrunner

Welcome.

Eventually, this will be the landing page and starting point for the SYWTBAS project. For now, it will be our home for coordinating the work and status of the various projects.

Why?

When a player joins the Haven who is new to Shadowrun, the system can be daunting. Often, these players come to the table with a vague idea of what kind of character fits their personality, but with nowhere do start, they only have a few options: (a) dig into the core book. This is an option, for sure, but it's a long one and too burdensome for a lot of players at first. They want to try the game out, not learn everything before their first run. (b) Fire up chummer and start clicking buttons. Hey, we've all tried it, but with so many options, it's easy to spend a couple hours and end up right back where you started from a lack of decisions. (c) Ask chargen. This isn't a bad option, and if a minion has the time and patience to follow through, it can be a great start. But we can't be there for every player, and often we repeat ourselves a lot, since most new players need to learn the same things.

So that's where "So You Want to Be a Shadowrunner" comes in.

I'm looking for a set of pages that describe the basic gameplay goals of various common archetypes in the Shadowrun world, along with a generic, middle-of-the-road sample build. These are NOT optimization guides. The suggested builds should be strong, playable characters, but I have no interest in maximizing karma efficiency for this project. The goal should be to give a place to start, not a finished character.

Phases

SYWTBAS will be rolled out incrementally in three phases. This is partially to help ease the distribution of labor, and it's also partially because I would rather move slowly and get things right than rush and end up with a mixed bag of quality.

Phase 1: The List

The first thing I want is a stable list of archetypes, prioritized by how relevant the build is to new players. I've included a first pass below, but I'll be taking feedback and suggestions for changes over the next week or two.

Rank 1: Core archetypes

- Street Samurai; mundane cyberware, ranged focus

- Decker; hotf focus, no agents

- Face; mundane

- Rigger; mundane, jumped-in vehicles and drones, no swarm

- Mage; spellcaster and astral combat, minor spirit focus, no initiation plans

- PhysAd; unarmed combat focus

Rank 2: Popular options

- Infiltrator; B&E, sneaking

- Technomancer; CF hacker, minor sprite use (not a petnomancer)

- Face adept

Rank 3: Niche builds

- Technorigger; jumped-in rigging, capable-if-not-stellar hacking

- Bow adept;

- Channeling mage;

- Swarm rigger;

Again, this is not a complete list. I expect it will change, and I am looking for feedback on both things I've missed, things that should be reprioritized, and aspects of things that you think should be different.

Phase 2: Consolidating Data

Once we have a complete idea of the scope of the project, we'll move on to assembling the content of the guides. This is probably the fun part. I'll be taking volunteers for builds, and while I'd like to ensure we get at least one person for each, I'm happy if there are more than that—two perspectives mixed together will produce a better overall guide.

The basic structure of a guide contains four pieces:

1. What's a ____? This is a basic introduction to the concept. Why does this archetype exist? What problems does this character solve in a team? What is the pacing and feel of playing the character? These should be largely centered around the role, not the build. You're explaining "why", not "how".

2. Gameplan. This is a high-level overview of how the character is going to accomplish their tasks. This might mean a short explanation of the tactics that the character will use, along with the highlights of important aspects. At the end of this section, the player should understand the underlying factors which will make their character successful.

3. The Build. This is where the rubber meets the road. I'm looking for a brief summary of what the player should be attempting to accomplish with each of the five priority classes: metatype, attributes, magic/resonance, skills, and resources. For some, this might be very short. Others are going to take a bit of explaining. This is not meant to be comprehensive, and in most cases, the guide should not completely allocate resources. We can give options, but we also want to give the players a large margin to find ways to make the character their own. I expect this to be a learning tool, not a template.

4. Options. These are alternative choices that a player might take which reverse some of the decisions above. These shouldn't be small. An option should be a different way of building the character using different assumptions. These should not be as in-depth as the primary build in section 3. Think about an option as a way of inspiring a player to explore a different avenue, rather then providing a full second build idea.

Your task will be to assemble this information for the archetypes you volunteer to work on. Note that I said "assemble", not "write". For phase 2, I only want notes, not prose. This is mostly so that we can iron out wrinkles and get the data right before we go through the effort of actually writing it all up.

One more important thing: I expect that I'll also ask some of you to review other guides. This is not because I don't trust you—if I didn't you wouldn't be helping—it's because I expect that the builds will be more general and that we'll get better coverage if we help each other out.

Phase 3: Writing

Turn our ideas into introductions to each archetype. I'll provide wiki formatting templates, but I'm going to need folks who write. Each section needs prose, written in a clear and concise manner, suitable for someone who isn't yet fully familiar with the game. I expect each guide not to be more than a couple of screens of text, but the length will probably vary based on the complexity of the archetype.

Finally, as before, I expect that this will be a collaborative effort: writers and editors needed. Also, depending on who is willing to help out, it's possible that you'll be writing a guide from someone else's information. Obviously, I won't be handing out an archetype to folks who don't feel comfortable with it, but we may have more or less people in phase 2 than phase 3.