[Mithlas]

I've been slowly assembling bits and pieces for a Shadowrun campaign since I discovered the system years ago. One of the major figures (and the one in particular that will allow me to jump-start the first adventure once I have enough time to run a campaign) is a Mr Johnson who specializes in Megacorp rumors, Infobrokers, and North Atlantic smuggling rings. I've written up a full character sheet for him (not that he'll ever show up in person - paranoid about leaving Ritual Links), but I'd like to see your input on what you'd do or what you think is fitting for a powerful Mr Johnson who's somewhat of an international puppetmaster.

I'll post more about him later, but I'd like to hear what you'd put into a Johnson who has multiple infobroker and smuggling rings under his thumb, besides legislators from Seattle to Czech in his pocket. It's a character type that I've not seen discussed on the forums yet.

[Mara]

The PCs would never meet this Johnson in person. EVER. He would be someone who operates so deeply in the shadows
that it is likely his own Johnsons don't know who he really is. He would also be someone who plays on this. He has agents
who are janitors, and other "seen but not seen" people all around the world as well as his major contacts. And he is not afraid to off one of these guys after a report and say "I saw you with so-and-so the other day..." so that his major people are always
wondering who he really is...and firmly believe that he could, in fact, be ANYONE around them...because he NEVER meets his operatives directly...EVER.

[Mirikon]

Well, almost never. And certainly if he does meet them, they don't know it is him. Afterall, some things even the most scrupulous manager needs to get his hands on, to make sure things run like they need them too. But meeting him in person should be about as rare as meeting Lofwyr, and should carry a similar level of "You're fragged".

[Reaver]

So you're thinking a Kaiser Soze type character? Interesting.

Make sure he is loaded with skills and contacts. These are the most important attributes to a good Johnson.


And don't introduce him EVER to your characters... Keep as a shadow in the background... Cause even if you introduce him as the bastard half cousin of a friend of a friend's fith aunt six times removed, your player's are libel to sniff out that he's somehow important, and plug him full of lead shortly after he says "hello"

[GhostWriter]

Almost sounds like "The Shadow". Serious.

[Crunch]

The biggest question is how did he get there? Once you know that you'll know what skills he needs.

[GiraffeShaman]

An important part of building a character the PCs never meet is attributes that the characters can see, even if it's indirectly. One idea may be a consistent and vicious manner in which this character ties up loose ends. i.e. Loose ends always end up being fed to a certain ghoul ring in Redmond, loose ends are always missing hands and face.

Note, it is not necessarily the brightest move to have a consistent pattern. The reason to do it is simply story/character. It gives the PCs something they can see, since the character is all but invisible in the game world. Another way they can be seen is through their plots and goals. But if you play the character too intelligent, the PCs may never even see him in this manner. For example, Littlefinger in GOT purposely creates random plots that don't even aid his goals, just in order to confuse enemies.

Consistent subordinates or middlemen is another way. Yet again, it would probaly stretch believability for this type to even have consistent subordinates or middlemen. it's a trade off between letting the PCs see things for entertainment purposes at the expense of making the Johnson a bit dumber than he possibly should be.

The danger with using this type of intelligent character is that if you truly use all your resources to make him intelligent and crafty, the PCs will never even see the character in any manner. It can really feed a GMs ego and give him something to laugh about, but in the end is your goal to entertain yourself or the players? Unlike a novel, in a roleplaying campaign you can't really reveal shadowy plots in cut scenes. (Unless you choose to embrace that style of game, something I have seen done successfully)

So in the end you may have to sacrifice a bit of believability and give him some kind of pattern, if you want the players to at least see the character from the corner of their eyes. Or even make some slip ups eventually out right if you want to give the players the satisfaction of taking down the person eventually. (Or nearly take him down and barely fail)

You can run into a similar danger running secret plots and conspiracies. It has gotten me excited about running my game in the past, but I often was later frustrated by the fact that the PCs never noticed certain things, so in the end a large part of my efforts was known only to myself.

[OFTHEHILLPEOPLE]

That's kind of the Johnson that I'm inserting into my game from the start.  He's freed them from a Lone Star experimental prison with the sole purpose of using the players as "No-Name" pawns for his own end.  He'll have them run a few missions with shady goals (SRM Season 1 and 2) that secretly forward his goals while keeping his presence largely unknown to the power players of Seattle.  He even projects a false image when he has to talk to the players or talks through his butler and hopes to change his face and become the new mega corp boss of Seattle once everything in his plan happens and the loose ends cut.

[Stonefur]

This kind of Johnson did not get to be this type of Johnson by telling people how he got to be this type of Johnson.   T

[Mithlas]

So you're thinking a Kaiser Soze type character? Interesting.

Make sure he is loaded with skills and contacts.

Interesting, I'd completely forgotten about that character (and it wouldn't be out of the planned characterization either. Sometimes you need to do things hands on. As they said in The Sting, the best con is where they don't know they've been conned, and the con keeps on going after the job's been done).

That's kind of the Johnson that I'm inserting into my game from the start.  He's freed them from a Lone Star experimental prison with the sole purpose of using the players as "No-Name" pawns for his own end. He'll have them run a few missions with shady goals (SRM Season 1 and 2) that secretly forward his goals while keeping his presence largely unknown to the power players of Seattle.

Great minds think alike - that's very much what I was considering with this Johnson.

Given the importance of having enough of your people in the right places, once I tallied up the stats I thought made sense I realized that he had more points in Contacts than Attributes, skills, and qualities combined, and the next highest is knowledge which is again more than his Attributes and Skills (knowing who's who and what's likely to go down where means you can send one of your anonymously assembled shadow teams out as necessary). Knowing who's going to do what also makes it less dangerous to make an appearance pretending to be someone else, in order to throw out red herrings. The fewer people who know you're powerful, the fewer people who will want to replace you with a selection of their choice...

[Crunch]

This kind of Johnson did not get to be this type of Johnson by telling people how he got to be this type of Johnson.   T

Sure, but knowing where he came from will let you know what kind of skills and contacts to give him.

The Kingpin was the toughest guy at every level of organized crime until he got to the top and slapped a veneer of respectability onto the underlying brutality. But the brutality is still their. Kaiser Souse is essentially a con man so his skills are a con mans skills. Doctor Doom is a scientist and a mage who became a king. A villain (or major supporting character) will always be more effective with a back story even if the characters never find it.