[empirearmy]

After the players create characters how would you bring them together?  Does Johnson do it? Do they meet in a bar ? How do you guys do it? All replies welcome.

Just so everyone knows it has been 17 years since I GM'd shadowrun so I just getting back into the swing of things.

Thanks

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

If you do a session zero with your players, you can work out whether and how they know one another.  Are they a team with years of experience together? Are they meeting each other for the first time at the campaign's first mission's meet with Mr. J?

[ZeroSum]

A very common first encounter is a meeting at a restaurant where the Johnson will offer complementary food as an incentive for the team to take the job.

The simplest way to bring player characters together, especially if you are not running a table of experienced players who have built their characters to have shared contacts or a shared history, is to simply have the Johnson reach out to each player character's fixer. Each fixer then relays the message to the PCs that there is a job offer for your particular set of skills, the meet is at location X in 2 hours.

If your group has built characters together, on the other hand, it's entirely possible they've come up with a reason for why the PCs are already established as a team. Any one of the teams fixers could offer a job, and off you go.

Another method is the tried and true "wrong place at the wrong time". Somehow, inexplicably, all of the players find themselves at the same event and suddenly all hell breaks loose. Through necessity rather than intent the players discover that the other player characters have a skill they need, and they quickly begin working towards a common goal. This one takes a lot more setup from you as GM, but can be a fun way to kick off a game with a spectacular bang.

[skalchemist]

I am very new to recent Shadowrun, the last time I ran a game of Shadowrun was 1E back in the very early '90s.

But the whole "group meets in a bar for the first time to do a job" seems like a fine recipe for a one-shot but a not so fine recipe to me for a long term campaign.  I base this on experience running many other "mission" style games over the years. 

For a long-term campaign, I suggest you want to have a web of pre-existing relationships between the player characters and solid reasons for them to stick together when the going gets tough.  This can be created in a session zero as Stainless suggests.  I think it is very reasonable for the GM to set limits on character creation that enforce this.  For example, assume you have a session zero, and everyone is sitting around a table.  You can then structure this web of relationship building based on seating position and by making the players answer questions...

* You feel that the character of the player to your right is reliable and trustworthy.  Tell them a time you really needed them to come through for you, and they'll tell you how they came through.

* You owe a debt (monetary or otherwise) the character of the player sitting across from you.  Tell them what you think the debt is, and they'll tell you how they think you can repay it.

* You hold a grudge against the character of the player to your left.  Tell them the nature of the grudge and they'll tell you the circumstances of how the grudge came about.

That sort of thing.  This lets the players build a collective backstory in an interesting way.  Mix in positive and negative questions.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I mainly get my Shadowrun fix through organized play these days.  In SRM you're just expected to ignore the elephant in the room of "why am I participating in life-threatening, criminal activities with people I've never met before? Any one of them could be a Lone Star Mr. Orange!".  It's the nature of organized play- you willfully ignore it and move on.

Something I used to do is give the players a shared, free fixer contact. Everyone trusts their fixer, and the fixer is vouching for the reliability of all these other runners you've just met in the first mission.  It also helps give a grain for the team to adhere around: their shared fixer saw that they've done runs together, so naturally he keeps recommending them together to Mr Js.  By the time they've done 2 or 3 runs, they should have plenty of shared links other than that free Fixer that got them started.

But as I said upthread, Session Zeros are a gaming trend that I never heard of back in the 80s/90s when I used to run home campaigns.  I'd absolutely do that in modern times.  You not only work out a viable team, you have ample opportunity to interweave backgrounds.

[skalchemist]

I mainly get my Shadowrun fix through organized play these days.  In SRM you're just expected to ignore the elephant in the room of "why am I participating in life-threatening, criminal activities with people I've never met before? Any one of them could be a Lone Star Mr. Orange!".  It's the nature of organized play- you willfully ignore it and move on.

Something I used to do is give the players a shared, free fixer contact. Everyone trusts their fixer, and the fixer is vouching for the reliability of all these other runners you've just met in the first mission.  It also helps give a grain for the team to adhere around: their shared fixer saw that they've done runs together, so naturally he keeps recommending them together to Mr Js.  By the time they've done 2 or 3 runs, they should have plenty of shared links other than that free Fixer that got them started.

But as I said upthread, Session Zeros are a gaming trend that I never heard of back in the 80s/90s when I used to run home campaigns.  I'd absolutely do that in modern times.  You not only work out a viable team, you have ample opportunity to interweave backgrounds.

I hadn't considered organized play.  I agree with you, the same thing comes up in D&D Adventure League and whatever the Pathfinder equivalent is.  If you start asking the question "why am I risking my life for these strangers?" you have probably already lost the point of the exercise.

That shared fixer idea is good, especially including the two specific elements you mention: the player character trusts the fixer to not screw them over, and the fixer explicitly vouches for the player character to the others. 

The last time I ran any game without a session zero was at least 7 years ago.  Some more recently published games explicitly write it into the character creation rules, but even older traditional games I have run recently (Ars Magica, Twilight 2000!) I've had a session zero.  This is pretty good system neutral description of the context: https://cannibalhalflinggaming.com/2017/12/13/level-one-wonk-session-zero/

One of the greatest values of session zero with character creation is that I find characters created together are always more interesting than characters created separately.  Just 30 mins spent throwing ideas back and forth with each other before you dive into the spreadsheets and priority allocations can make a huge difference in the fun had with playing the characters.  Maybe you decide that your character should be related to someone elses.  Maybe another character is your character's former lover.  I feel so strongly about this these days that I will explicitly ask players to NOT think about character concepts and ideas before the session zero; try to come to the session zero with as blank a slate as possible.

Shadowrun is a bit trickier than some games, because the character creation is both intensive and reference-heavy.  By "reference-heavy" I mean you have to check the rulebook a LOT to figure out your character.  If you have multiple copies of the rulebook this might not be a problem, but it can be a recipe for frustration if you have to physically hand the rulebook around to multiple people at a table.  Session zero conducted online (via Skype or similar) can be a good alternative.

[Hobbes]

The other bit I've seen used in Missions play is the "Street Rep".  Characters have heard of each other, know a couple choice bits about jobs the others are rumored to have pulled off, have mutual contacts that vouch for them, things like that.

Just gives each Player a chance to toss out a highlight or two about their character and gives an in character reason for professional criminals to trust each other enough to make it to the first payday.  The Players should want to play together anyway, a minor in character justification should be enough to get the ball rolling if you don't have a session zero or don't want to set up a more complex set of relationships. 

[BeCareful]

In the Pathfinder equivalent, you're part of a global organization, sort of "High Fantasy Intrepid Reporters" trying to make reports/accidentally save the world. But yeah, there too, people joke that the higher-ups must decide which people make up which groups via Drunk Blindfolded Darts. Though that's taught me that some of the fun in the missions/scenarios can come from, "How do we survive when only one of us knows how to co-operate!?"

...for a given value of fun. Anyway, I do like the Free Fixer GM fiat, as well as players coming together and figuring out ways their backstories could co-mingle. I can honestly say that I've been a gamer for over a decade but have never (though I wouldn't mind it) found any of my characters in the scenario of, "You're all in the same bar together. Roll initiative."

[skalchemist]

...for a given value of fun.

That is hilarious!

[Kirklins]

(snipo) ... I've been a gamer for over a decade but have never (though I wouldn't mind it) found any of my characters in the scenario of, "You're all in the same bar together. Roll initiative."

So you never got to play food fight? 

[BeCareful]

Nope. I did get to GM Return to Sender that one Free RPG Day, though, and the PCs ran into the same problem. I know I posted my story of the second time I ran it elsewhere here, but the first time, let's just say the magician forgot to estimate the blast radius of that high-force stunball, and leave it at that.