From:	Steve Collins einan@*********.net
Subject:	Low-Power Campaign(was: Off Topic Posts)
Date:	Tue, 2 Mar 99 07:11:14 -0500

On 3/1/99 7:47 pm, Jason 'Ding' Dowd said:

>> Has anyone tried a campaign where the PCs all
>>start as very low-power characters? I'm thinking
>>of running a campaign where the players all have
>>PCs who start off as corp wage slaves, or Stuffer
>>Shack owners, or cab drivers, etc. Through
>>hatever circumstances, their lives are destroyed,
>>and they must resort to shadowrunning to clear
>>their names, or get revenge, or just survive, or
>>whatever. I think it would be a pleasant change.
>
Low power campaign's like this can indeed be fun but they do require more
commitment on the part of the players and GM. Character advancement is so
slow in Shadowrun (not necessarily a bad thing) that you need to either
play alot (more than once a week) or for several years to allow the
characters much hope at all of resolving whatever conflict forced them
into the shadows. I know that people on this list have been playing in
the same campaign's for several years but I have had problems keeping a
campaign going with for much more than 2 years. If you are students then
playing often works but for us older folks with Jobs Wives and Kids it
gets difficult to find the time to play once a month (gods am I going
through gaming withdrawls, I havn't played anything yet this year and I
havn't played Shadowrun in about 6 months). Also you pretty much need to
keep magic out of it, if the non mage characters are struggling to come
up with ammo for the light pistols they have then a single mage is going
to be ridiculously powerful. It is possable for example to have a mage in
the party if he starts off with no Magical Skills or Spells (he just
discovered he was a mage) and has to learn every thing as he goes along.
The other problem is that the mortality rate can be quite high. Combat is
an inevitability in a game like Shadowrun, you may try to avoid it but at
some point it's going to come looking for you. Without the heavy armour
(armour jackets and lined coats) most runners wear even hand to hand
combat can become quite deadly. The final problem in the setup you have
described (there are other low powered campaigns that don't suffer from
this, a street gang for example) is how do you replace a dead character.
The characters remaining aren't going to trust many people and so when
one of their number is killed they aren't likely to be looking for the
first runner they meet to join them. It can get difficult to explain why
the runners will accept a new character into their midst.

Steve