[Jeeves]

I had the idea of turning Shadowrun into a funnel, similar to the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG funnel, but with a shadowrun setting and rules. Here's what I've got so far, including some introductory stuff if you've never heard of a funnel. I originally did a funnel in Pathfinder to get over my aversion to killing player characters. I still don't kill all willy-nilly, but I'm over the aprehension now.

Each player starts with 5-10 randomly generated low-power characters. (We'll call them Chums for now.) The very first session of play will involve some sort of disaster/attack that will whittle down the number of Chums to one per player. THAT surviving Chum becomes their starting character. The number of chums each player gets is determined by the GM. For each chum, the player rolls a d100 and consults the "WageSlave" table. The result determines your Chum's starting job AND metatype. This means you're far more likely to wind up as human, elf, or ork, considering these races are the vast majority of the sixth-world population.

I haven't made the full list yet, but the number of types of positions will be determined by approximate population density info provided in various shadowrun sourcebooks. I'll probably skew the chart a little bit so there's a bit more chance to wind up as non-human, just to challenge the players.

The chart will consist of
55 human WageSlave jobs,
15 Elf WageSlave jobs
15 ork WageSlave jobs,
7 Troll Wageslave jobs,
7 Dwarf WageSlave jobs.
1 Metavariant WageSlave job. (Roll the d100 again, disregard another 100, and pick a metavariant for that type and your WageSlave job.)

Jobs will include things like janitor, IT guy, Rent-a-cop, and so on. The jobs are to be designed to be low-powered nobodies with perhaps a little bit of training in their field.

During play, pretty much all tests made by the Chums will have them roll a few dice, plus some modifiers if any. The base number of dice is three, but different metatypes myght get bonus dice for certain tests. Your metatype will also determine your starting condition monitors. For example:

   Humans: extra die when luck is involved. 9P, 9s,
   Elf: extra die when dealing with agility or charisma 9p, 9s.
   Ork: extra die when resisting damage or using strength 10p 9s
   Dwarf: extra die when using willpower or body 10p 10s
   Troll, extra two dice for body or strength, and have a natural armor of 1.  11p 9s
   Metavariants follow the same rules.

Characters will also start with one weapon and a piece of equipment determined by their WageSlave job, and 1d6 x 20 nuyen in starting cash on hand.

AFTER THE FUNNEL and everyone has only one Chum left, characters go to character creation with 800 karma. Your metatype is NOT free but all your attributes start at +1 from their minimum. Should you choose to purchase awakened or emerged character qualities during chargen, it's assumed that it is the result of a spontanious appearance of said abilities, and the characters will have had time to get a hang of some of the abilities they gained.

What do you think? Got any additions?

[k_night]

after reading your post i got a "warhammer quest" vibe from it dunno why

if its worked out more it could be interesting 

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Absolutely - let them swap metatype if they want.

[Jayde Moon]

Don't knock it!  DCC Funnels are insanely enjoyable.  Not only does it ease the pressure on the Game Master, but the players don't mind when one of their characters dies in some horrible, but probably vastly amusing way.

It totally sets a distant expectation.  I never thought about doing it for Shadowrun, gotta give it a try!

[Jeeves]

Absolutely - let them swap metatype if they want.

The thing about funnels is they're supposed to be a bit of a "natural selection," and the main reason I've liked funnels so much is that a lot of the people I game with end up with "extra special snowflake" syndrome, where their character HAS to be the most "U-neek persun EVAR" and they lose focus on character development beyond "My character is a shapeshifter. For some reason."

Normally, I'd agree, letting them choose their metatype is a great idea, since normally they'd start as shadowrunners, however green they might be. However, with the funnel, they're starting as joe-average boring characters so they can grow and develop their characters. The first funnel I ever ran (which has now become a full capaign) caused one of the players to think hard about the advantages of being a normal human being in a human majority society. Up till that point, she'd always played elf magicians. Always. It gave her a chance to play outside her comfort zone a bit, and she's doing great with it. It also gives something all the characters have in common: They're survivors of the same major catastrophe. That provides a step toward team unity that a lot of shadowrun games have fallen apart trying to achieve at our table. Combine that with the fact that you let them have a few slight bonuses at chargen for surviving the whole shebang, and you've got a great start for gamers of all experience levels.

As always, your mileage may vary, and if you're the kind of person who just wants to make a single character with a fleshed-out backstory and have all the intricate personality details fleshed out, that's fine. My group seems to really enjoy the results of our funnel, though.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

"For some reason."  This is the nutshell of why I don't go with this sort of thing.  Fun to play with, but when it comes down to 'what I want to play, it falls very, very short.

[adzling]

I'm still lost on the concept here.

Can someone help a guy out, what is this "funnel" you speak of?

[MijRai]

The idea is to have a bunch of low level characters that you then weed through, picking the last one standing as what you play (process of elimination FTW).  I wouldn't use the term funnel, as filter/sieve is more appropriate, but hey. 

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Call it a bloodbath, last character standing.

adzling, it goes like this.  Everyone gets ten or more characters - minimally competent, janitors and paper-pushers and guys who work in the motor pool, stuff like that.  Your basic general Non-Shadowrunner sorts.  They all - Players x 10+ characters - get dumped into a bloodbath grinder of some sort.  The Renraku Arcology starts shutting down, or their corporate tour bus breaks down in the middle of Ghouls City in the Barrens, whatever.  This host of potential PCs winds up having to escape the Dread Situation, but with one caveat - only one of each player's characters is going to make it out alive.  Each one can be as clever or as brave or as cowardly or whatever as the player wishes; the GM is going to use his kill-hammer just as gleefully as Gallagher going to town on a truck full of melons, blood and brains and corpses going every-which-way.

The idea is that the last lucky one in each player's set is the one that becomes the character for that player.  It theoretically gets the GM 'used to killing PCs', and it theoretically gets players used to having their characters killed off, and theoretically gives this rag-tag collection of useless people a reason to stick around together and run the shadows.  Jeeves claims success in helping his players play characters outside their standard comfort zones; me, I don't have a comfort zone; I tend to push the boundaries of characterization in some way with each of my characters.  So really ... I'd absolutely despise this, and/or make sure ALL my Paranoia-style clones were killed, in order to play something with an actual decent concept behind it.

[PiXeL01]

I don't see the need for this either. Players should care about their characters and doing this will simply have the opposite effect.
While SR is described as a deadly world filled with deceit and backstabbing I am not of the belief that GMs should go out of their way to kill off characters just because ...

[adzling]

thanks for the summary Wyrm ;-)
eek Paranoia was fun but man....

[Glyph]

I assume players who get a grab-bag of expendable characters, knowing only one will survive, will have some say - like, putting their troll in front of danger if they don't want to play a troll.

What I don't get is how exactly they get powered up to starting-character level.  Is there a time-skip involved?  Because suddenly you have these schlubs getting high Attributes, skills of 6, magical abilities, super-expensive decks or augmentations, etc.

[Jayde Moon]

I don't see a 'need' for it.

But, I would suggest trying it out one night, because it is simply amusing as f***.

If it helps, don't think of it as 'Shadowrun', think of it as a mini-game or something.  Don't need to keep playing with those characters if you don't want to.  I have found that anytime I have played a funnel-adventure, even with the intent of continuing on those characters, the game never really gets off the ground.  But that hasn't stopped us from gleefully pumping out a handful of characters and having an amazing night of death and mayhem where everybody is completely unattached to the actual outcome.