This page last modified by Jens-Arthur Leirbakk

GM's prerogative - a rant:

My original idea for a campaign such as this came from another Shadowrun campaign - a 2nd Edition campaign, actually. I was looking around the table, imagining the various misfits that was described by the statistics scribbled down on the various character sheets. Misfits who more or less bumbled through the scenarios that the GM put in front of them, usually using more firepower (and probably suicidal amounts of it if the GM had meant for at least a little bit of legwork to solve the case). It was fun at the time.

Then, a week or two later, I was watching an old episode of A-Team. Yes, the A-Team. I was struck by the similarities between our Shadowrun campaign (well, if a series of one-night standers can be called a campaign - and no, I'm not talking about that kind of one-night standers, you pervert) - but more importantly, I was struck by the differences.

In A-Team, each member has a specific role in the way they perform their missions. In our old campaign, each and every of the characters tended toward the street samurai archetype, whether or not they had cyberware. It's amazing what a sorcerer adept with a few increase attribute and increase reflexes spells can do - and the same goes for physical adepts who've decided that melee is well and good, but nothing is quite like a hot assault cannon.

I wanted to create a campaign where every member was well-rounded. Up until then, we had worried about setting limits on the characters in the campaign - we felt that people had to create a character they wanted to play. Now, I believe this was merely the munchkin in us - we wanted to be able to create the kick-ass character, without limitations. It actually became so bad that we created one character after the other - but all of them had certain traits in common. If you were a street samurai, you would have an Ares Alpha Combat Gun - fully modded. If you were a spellcaster, you'd have a spell lock with Increase Reflexes +3 on it - and so on. If you didn't, you'd be dead.

The first try we had on such a campaign, is the now-infamous "250 karma" campaign, so named because each character had 250 karma and a few million nuyen to create their various characters. What did we end up with? Characters who couldn't fill their assigned roles, because - true to form - the players had created street samurai archetypes... again. That campaign didn't last more than three or four sessions, but we've had a first-hand look at what a campaign with no limits might be like. Virgin telesmas in enchanting, delta-ware galore, and so forth. It wasn't pretty.

Now, I'm willing to try again to GM such a campaign. This time, with a bit of luck and cooperation, I'm confident that we'll get it right. And if we don't - well, at least it might be good for a chuckle or two when the various fuckups are detailed in the web site.