[JormungandrO]

I'm anticipating my first game, and am wondering how other people have convincingly intigrated their players into a new Shadowrun team.

For me [Player 1] is a Face who has been hired by a AA Corp to keep tabs on [Player 2] who is a technomancer cyberterrorist. They have given [Player 1] a ticket to an underground concert, which they will be luring [Player 2] to with the lure of a challenge (in the form of an encrypted digital ticket). Meanwhile [Player 3] has operated in a support capacity to the local Shadowrun community, and has been given a ticket by one of her contacts as payment for goods & services. A local "pharmaceutical entrepreneur" will recognise her and offer her the teams first job...

Now, I need to figure out a connection between Players 2 & 3, so that he would be included in the job. Player 1 shouldn't have any trouble integrating himself into the job at that point.

I would love to hear your suggestions, as well as how you set up your players first run.   

[StarManta]

I like to reward Karma to players who integrate their history with the other PC's. If you wait until the game starts to do it, then you'll probably spend most of the first game session doing boring "how X met Y" stuff.

[Michael Chandra]

I'm lazy. Johnson wants a team of variety, asked around and gives them a job that should employ their various skills. Johnson passes the results on if they work well, so next time they're approached by another who got their info as a whole and employs them all together. Next thing you know, they start building a name together.

[ZeConster]

I'm lazy. Johnson wants a team of variety, asked around and gives them a job that should employ their various skills. Johnson passes the results on if they work well, so next time they're approached by another who got their info as a whole and employs them all together. Next thing you know, they start building a name together.

He's even lazier in the online campaign he's starting (I play in both) - I did a bookkeeping trick where my character shares a High Lifestyle with 2 other PCs, dropping the monthly cost to 4k per person (he didn't allow us to go beyond 3 people, so to be fair to newcomers, he gives them the possibility of living in the same apartment complex), so we all live in the same building. We basically did his work for him.
Meanwhile, the offline campaign team is starting to develop trust issues two sessions in - the Black Hat technomancer did a brief background check on everyone and is trying to hack the ones they couldn't get info on, and my Knight Errant contact apparently keeps tabs on everyone I associate with for safety reasons (it's a long story).

[GiraffeShaman]

I'm lazy. Johnson wants a team of variety, asked around and gives them a job that should employ their various skills. Johnson passes the results on if they work well, so next time they're approached by another who got their info as a whole and employs them all together. Next thing you know, they start building a name together.

Hahah, sounds like every game I've ever played in or GMed.

[JormungandrO]

Haha, now I feel like I'm putting too much effort in... I'm both proud and ashamed.

[Lysanderz]

My favorite story is the one of when my Hitman (A social Adept named Flash) decided not to kill his mark (A magician who was being played by another person in the party). Basically Flash saw that he was likely going to get geeked if he tried to take out the mage up close and instead ended up burning a lot of bridges and being left (Hung Out to Dry) by most of his contacts, but only after collecting the bounty on the mage by putting a cadaver in a car and making it go boom. DNA tests got... smudged. It was a full three weeks before a death squad from the Yakuza showed up at my apartment and came face to face with a very pissed off mage who was grateful for the heads up and offered to swap lifestyles with a certain hitman just for the opportunity to hit a little payback.

That was such a fun campaign. Sad that he died in a helicopter crash.

[cyclopean]

Have a contact in common, if the players are amenable to that. I have found that helpful when bringing new characters into existing groups. It's obviously in the player's interests to start working together (so that the run can get going) and having a mutually known and (perhaps) trusted contact helps to explain why their characters would team up with someone they just met.

[GiraffeShaman]

Have a contact in common, if the players are amenable to that. I have found that helpful when bringing new characters into existing groups. It's obviously in the player's interests to start working together (so that the run can get going) and having a mutually known and (perhaps) trusted contact helps to explain why their characters would team up with someone they just met.

That is also how pretty much every run I've ever played in or ran has started. The mutual contact is usually a fixer. (
And I always give this fixer as a free contact to everyone) This then leads to the Johnson setup Mike mentioned. I've always seen it as more realistic that most intros go through fixers first.

BTW really low rank shadowrunners often have to do lame stuff like stalk potential Johnsons at bars, kind of like aspiring rock musicians, hahah. This is somewhat depicted in the Colt Novels. I always figured players are above this rank already though, but I might demote them to this if they frag up enouh. It is an option though if you want to assume your players are real scrubs.

[Ricochet]

I'm lazy. Johnson wants a team of variety, asked around and gives them a job that should employ their various skills. Johnson passes the results on if they work well, so next time they're approached by another who got their info as a whole and employs them all together. Next thing you know, they start building a name together.

This is why I think Shadowrun about the easiest game to form a party around.  A fixer finds assets to team together for a mission, and you go.

[RHat]

I'm lazy. Johnson wants a team of variety, asked around and gives them a job that should employ their various skills. Johnson passes the results on if they work well, so next time they're approached by another who got their info as a whole and employs them all together. Next thing you know, they start building a name together.

This is why I think Shadowrun about the easiest game to form a party around.  A fixer finds assets to team together for a mission, and you go.

There's also the truly laziest way - make the PLAYERS tell you why their characters are in a place, and then have shit happen in that place and let them respond.

[I_V_Saur]

My game started with the typical 'Johnson calls in unrelated assets' ticket, to bring the Mage, the Hacker, and the Ninja into the scene. Then two players wanted to join, so I threw them a curveball - they had to find their own way in.

So the gunslinger intentionally butted heads with the mage, proved he was pretty skilled, (Took an overcast Illusion, Agony if I recall correctly, to the face, shrugged it off) and then when hacker one went missing, and a Sammie in the bathroom nearly took the ninja's head off, hacker two and the gunslinger made chunky salsa of him. After that, they ran from the police, and it was pretty well agreed that they were in.

Just about every DnD game I've ever been in, started at a tavern. Only one actually involved drunken bets as a means of getting into the party, shockingly.

[Crossbow]

I like the way I started this PbP game I got going.  I got the idea from a plot hook in an old Shadowrun sourcebook, thought it was Tir Tairngire, but I couldn't find it again when I looked for it.  It has worked out really well I think, forcing the players to come to grips with each other while providing a little bit of paranoia and conflict.

http://forums.shadowrun4.com/index.php?topic=9781.0

Anyway, I don't see anything wrong with the idea of a fixer gathering assets for a game, that is the way it seems to work in the world, and it is a helluva lot less contrived than some D&D formups I have seen.

[GiraffeShaman]

That is an awsome setup, Crossbow. I think that a feeling of confusion and being a bit out of your depth works well, both for both readers of fiction, but also for players in a RPG. It was a pretty silly movie, but "Dude, Where is My Car" did this to good effect as well, with the characters unable to remember the previous day and what they did. Yeah, I may try this tactic for 5th edition. Just got to be careful not to take the gear, as players really hate that.

[emsquared]

No matter the RPG, I tend towards the "bonds forged in the flames" approach.

I prefer to start with none of them knowing each other (less chance of internal strife), or at most, sets of pairs do - however they may all be familiar faces to each other. Run in the same circles type of thing. Set the scene, let them all describe themselves to each other. They're all just simply attending or possibly hired separately as simple muscle at x-event (say, a community party), or all are just day-drinking at their favorite dive, when all of a sudden violence erupts at the event (someone is attacked, general riot, etc.) or the dive (which also happens to have a back-door gambling table) becomes victim of a stick-up - usually with a free decent loyalty low connection contact associated with the event or dive so they have some "natural" incentive to act. For the players that aren't magnanimous enough to volunteer their help (which may be all of them), of course the violence and/or robbery comes to them. When they do eventually take action they're all forced into this same situation and end up having to work together, usually gives a good chance for some characteristic RP too. From there, that same mutual contact being appreciative and (hopefully) impressed, offers them their first run.