[CyberNed]

Question: A lot of the 4e books are told from the pov from the posters on Jackpoint. What's a good way to get one of my players on JP? From the posts in the books it sounds like Fastjack personally vets for each member on the network. What kind of service could a PC possibly offer such a prestigious and powerful runner to earn his trust?

[Bradd]

Well first of all, it's hard to gain someone's trust if you only see them as a means to an end! Likewise, if your only native qualification for joining an exclusive group is that you want to be in the group – well, most likely they'll just see you as a wannabe and shun you or take advantage of you.

However, if you have a character who might legitimately be a good candidate for JackPoint, and you're just trying to deal with the metagame aspect of how to connect the dots: The most likely "in" is to do cool things, and run in similar circles. Pay attention to what JackPointers do, and then do the same kind of thing elsewhere. Find out who's friends with Turbo Bunny or NetCat and make friends with them. Network!

[FastJack]

I like Oreos.

Just kidding.

(OtakuSensei's going to smite me over that...)

[Kontact]

Well, if being on Jackpoint and interacting with the regulars is the goal, then there's going to be a steep barrier to entry.

However if getting access to the info on Jackpoint doesn't necessarily mean you need to be hanging with Frosty.  That sort of info leaks down to the various shadownets with time.  Usually once its become a bit dated, but none the less, it's out in the world.

[Bradd]

Speaking of Frosty, I hear she could use a hand with some work in Nigeria.

More seriously, Dawn of the Artifacts is a good "in" to the JackPoint crowd, if you do good work and stay on her good side.  She has the potential to be a Connection 5, Loyalty 4 contact from this series. It's no cake walk, though: You end up traveling all over the world, mostly to the worst places known to man. And lots of folks find Frosty (and her boyfriend, and her family) to be insufferable, although she gets on well with my group.

Earning trust takes time, and it's important that you actually fit in. If you hate Frosty, that'll make your life harder. If you only get along with Clockwork, you can pretty much forget it.

[Mara]

Earning trust takes time, and it's important that you actually fit in. If you hate Frosty, that'll make your life harder. If you only get along with Clockwork, you can pretty much forget it.

But...what if you want to strangle Clockwork? Then resuscitate him so you can strangle him again...then resuscitate him so you can give him a sucking chest wound, tie a rope
around his waist, set him on dowse him in oil, pull the pin on a willy pete grenade that you have stuffed in his pants, and throw him off a building?

[FastJack]

Earning trust takes time, and it's important that you actually fit in. If you hate Frosty, that'll make your life harder. If you only get along with Clockwork, you can pretty much forget it.

But...what if you want to strangle Clockwork? Then resuscitate him so you can strangle him again...then resuscitate him so you can give him a sucking chest wound, tie a rope
around his waist, set him on dowse him in oil, pull the pin on a willy pete grenade that you have stuffed in his pants, and throw him off a building?

To those that haven't yet purchased MilSpecTech:

Apparently, our boy Clockwork sold some upgraded software to Aztechnology for their machines making 'running that much harder against them. The boy just digs his rep deeper every day...

[Digital_Viking]

But...what if you want to strangle Clockwork? Then resuscitate him so you can strangle him again...then resuscitate him so you can give him a sucking chest wound, tie a rope
around his waist, set him on dowse him in oil, pull the pin on a willy pete grenade that you have stuffed in his pants, and throw him off a building?

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter

[Fizzygoo]

[Must. Resist. Commenting. On. Clockwork comments....errrrrrguuuuuarrrrgghhhh, okay. hehe.]

I see this as a three pronged issue.

1. Street Cred
A good metric to use would be the character's Street Cred rating. A Street Cred of around 5 would be a good bench mark +/- what ever you feel is appropriate. That's about 6 successful runs or so and would translate into being pretty well known among the shadow community. But high Notoriety and Public Awareness ratings would hurt the chances (did Clockwork have a high Notoriety before getting on JP or is it all earned post-access? Ak! Must resist!)

2. Favors
The PC should want to join JP and a good start would be to feed Fastjack info picked up on runs. "Hey, you might be interested in this, got it from here, not sure what it's about, but it was heavily defended info" kinds of drops. If enough of the drops are legit/relevant/interesting to JP's topics, then Fastjack (and any other system operators at JP) will get a feel for the PC. Of course...finding the info drop should be a pretty hard Data Search and/or use of legwork.

3. Posting
As a GM, I would want my player to have his PC create a blog (extra kudos for actually creating a blog and posting in character). These would be short little write ups about topics that he/she thinks would be of interest to the JP forums. If the player doesn't have time/energy/skill to actually write some things up, then make the PC roll Artisan skill checks for how well the character can write the blog posts. A few weeks of being relevant & making sure the blog comes to the JP community's attention then there's another notch on the belt for getting in.

After these three points have been addressed, then I would say the PC could actually be vetted by Fastjack himself.

[Bradd]

I think you need a lot more than 5 Street Cred to be well-known and respected. Five or six jobs means you're not a noob anymore, but it's a long way from actually being a name. For what it's worth, the Missions campaign sets the bar for "Legendary" characters at 250 Karma with some significant exploits. That's about the level that JackPointers operate at.

[Fizzygoo]

Hehe, okay, okay, edit to add "being pretty well known among the [local] shadow community" ... and I never said "respected"

Very true about the level of types of runners in JP. So the 5 Street Cred would translate to 1/5 the Street Cred of a low-end Legendary character.

My reasoning was stemming from a playability standpoint of being able to introduce a PC to JP (and the related people there) in a time frame that would "seem" plausible (at least to the players, not the PCs) as 250 Karma is over 25 runs. My own bias here is that I'm looking at averaging 1 run every 2 - 3 evening sessions, so 25 runs is equaling about a year's worth of actual game time.

Regardless, even going full 250 Karma = legendary, I would say that my 3 point outline, especially with one or two runs for people already on JP, it could allow access with limitations (not able to post in major document threads, limited to "jobs wanted" forums, pay dues, perform jobs for greater access levels, etc.)...one does not simply hack into Jackpoint...you hack and wheeze and eventually cough up a lung's worth of paydata and hope they let you in as codemonkey slave and from there work your way up until people will bother to turn away from you when taking a leak.

Incorporating getting into JP into the ~25 runs helps the players feel like they're accomplishing things, which is fun for them. Watching them weep as the Wendigo's dance on their broken bodies with a "welcome to Jackpoint" invite on their commlink popping up, that's fun for the GM

[Bradd]

Oh, for sure it would be a good idea to start introducing the players to JackPointers well before they become legendary, and your suggestions are good ones. Since we started about 10 months ago, my own group has played On the Run, Dawn of the Artifacts 1-3, and Supernova. They each have 105 total Karma, they have a good working relationship with Frosty (Loyalty 3), and they just made Neonet's prime assets list. If any of them are interested in JackPoint, this would be a good time to start serious networking, getting to know the other major players. By 150 Karma they could be up for consideration by FastJack, and in by about 200 Karma. (Not all of the JackPointers are legendary.)

[Fizzygoo]

Yeah, 105 is definitely getting big, that's a 10 Street Cred, and 3 Public Awareness

By the way, what's Supernova. I checked the catalog, couldn't find it. It rings a bell, but not the right bell, hehe.

Have you done home-brew runs in between/around the published ones?

[Bradd]

Supernova is a short mission from First Run, the intro adventure book for SR3. It's a milk run that goes sideways, a nice mix of comic relief and in-over-your-head terror. After months of chasing magical artifacts around the world, I thought the gang might enjoy a neat little corp job. It translates pretty well to SR4, although updating the stats is a lot of work, and there are some weird bits (like a cameo by Miles Lanier, who is supposed to be missing in 2072).

I haven't had time lately to put stuff together completely from scratch, plus I haven't really got the hang of Shadowrun mission design yet. I can do a heroic fantasy adventure off the top of my head, but I'm still learning how to do cyberpunk and pink mohawks. Our other GM has done a couple of original missions, but that campaign seems to be on hiatus.

[Mara]

I haven't had time lately to put stuff together completely from scratch, plus I haven't really got the hang of Shadowrun mission design yet. I can do a heroic fantasy adventure off the top of my head, but I'm still learning how to do cyberpunk and pink mohawks. Our other GM has done a couple of original missions, but that campaign seems to be on hiatus.

OK...best advice on how to do a mission of your own: Decide on the McGuffin, decide how the johnson is going to betray the team, let the party take things from there!