Character first meetings.. and other confusing concepts.

[TheTSKoala]

Okay.. so.. we're prepping to start (yet another) new campaign.  I've rehashed everything my players haven't seen from the old campaigns into one super, new campaign.  I'm all happy.. I've got aliens, subterfuge, spies, assassians.. toy-crazed mad man... etc.

Then.. they hand me their character concepts.

1.  Korean hacker turned Vigilante.  (Sorta like that show about the serial killer who hunts serial killers.)
2.  American Thief who has a taste for hi-tech gadgets and historical paintings.  (That one is easy at least)
3.  An African Tribesman turned Wildlife extremist.  (Hunts down and kills poachers.)
4.  A Canadian-Irish Ninja.  (I kid you not.  She's playing a Martial Artist from Canada who's parents are from Ireland... I swear it's to mess with me.)
5.  An MI6 investigator and scientist.  (Think like Q from Bond meets Murder She Wrotes.)

So, I have two combat.  two skill based.  one Utility.  5 players.. in 5 different countries and 3 different continents.  Their first mission is to extract a high ranking officials daughter.  That's when the whole planet goes to hell and the real campaign starts... but.. now I have to figure out how to get a Irish Canadian, Korean, American, Brit and African into the same area without being the cheesy "You're all hired by the same agency.  You're a team.  Deal with it."

[Krensky]

UNITAS...

On a serious note, it depends on the character personalities, but the last two elements of that cheesy solution probably are your best bet. How they got employed by the same organization is dependent on the character, but Mother (the HR computer) spit out their names as the best people to rescue the girl.

Their employment is somewhat dependent on backstory and character. The Brit could just have been recruited. The American, Korean and African could have been dragooned. The American and Korena could also have been recruited in a more non stanadard way that was essentially a test of their abilities (a mock mission, as it were). That works for the Canuck too. If the Canuck is a member in one of what's left of the clans of the Iga and Koga then her superior may just have ordered her to do conduct the mission with them. Although, if she was a member of a traditional ninjutsu school, she'd probably be a Faceman not a Martial Artist.

[TheTSKoala]

Right.  The MI6 agent is the easy one.  The Canadian Irish Ninja.. ...well.. I'll work with that one last.  I swear she's just spiting me with that idea. LOL.  I think I'm going to go with the catch-all "You're all hired" type as anything else might get too complicated and be too much work.

What's going to happen is.. They get their mission to retrieve the higher ups daughter.  Mid way in, all hell breaks loose.  Stuff starts raining down from the Sky, weird creatures appear.. etc.  Then, they have to extract the the person while fighting off the chaos.  From there, the campaign winds up.

(Side note:  Is there in any pdf, book or other source rules for Airborne Dramatic scenes?  I'd rather use an Airborne Dramatic Scene for dogfights than just doing attack rolls and manuever checks.)

[Mister Andersen]

Maybe they're all attending the World Cup or something

[TheTSKoala]

Maybe they're all attending the World Cup or something

Sorta like Bourne series.  Have them all there for different reasons, then they all get paged, and thrown together by the agency for a new common goal. ...I like it! 

[Golden Dragon]

(Side note:  Is there in any pdf, book or other source rules for Airborne Dramatic scenes?  I'd rather use an Airborne Dramatic Scene for dogfights than just doing attack rolls and manuever checks.)

What's wrong with the Dramatic Chase rules, other than the flavor may need reworked?

[TheTSKoala]

Well, Dramatic Chase (as cars normally are) are very 2D.  And the idea of "crashes" are, for the most part, unheard of unless my pilot decides to crash the deck and have an aerial combat scene inside downtown London.  (At which point, I WOULD be using chase rules.)

For example, High-G banking, Barrel Rolls, Hiding in cloud cover.. those three are just the first that come to mind that I'd struggle with to adapt to Chase Rules.

[Maldroth]

perhaps they all know the person hiring them to recover the official's daughter.

To make it seem less cheesy and conveinent since you know their backgrounds you can customize the relation.

For the Korean perhaps the person was one of the people that helped him turn around from crime.

Things like that.

I'm going to take a similar approach to my upcomming Spycraft game. So far I have two players excited about the game by simply looking at the classes and the equipment lists. Our soon to be snoop was rather excited about the table of diseases 

[TheTSKoala]

Well.. you know.. the Korean hasn't exactly.. turned away from crime.  More like, is simply paid by a gov't to commit the crimes against evil he would have done anyway. heh.  Yeah.. the equipment lists makes my players drool.. and sometimes destroy whole scenes with explosives when they get carried away...

[Aldus Vertten]

Global Frequency style! They happen to be near the place of the incident and are called in because they are the perfect match for the mission.

GF is not a gov agency, so they dont care about their backstory, only about results. And they can pay whatever its needed...

And "GF Agency" has a lot of potential for using later, maybe even as enemies...

[Aldus Vertten]

Plus they get the "super cool Cell phone gadget with X free contacts per mission"...

[NekoMouser]

Throw everybody into prison, have a nice old man show up and explain their options. When they take the one he expects, you can assign the MI6 op as a sort of case officer.

Note that the option he expects them to take won't be breaking out of jail. But you wanted a team bound together by circumstance, and there you have it. If you as the GM suspect that might be the case, through the MI6 type in prison with them.

[Psion]

Okay.. so.. we're prepping to start (yet another) new campaign.  I've rehashed everything my players haven't seen from the old campaigns into one super, new campaign.  I'm all happy.. I've got aliens, subterfuge, spies, assassians.. toy-crazed mad man... etc.

Then.. they hand me their character concepts.

1.  Korean hacker turned Vigilante.  (Sorta like that show about the serial killer who hunts serial killers.)
2.  American Thief who has a taste for hi-tech gadgets and historical paintings.  (That one is easy at least)
3.  An African Tribesman turned Wildlife extremist.  (Hunts down and kills poachers.)
4.  A Canadian-Irish Ninja.  (I kid you not.  She's playing a Martial Artist from Canada who's parents are from Ireland... I swear it's to mess with me.)
5.  An MI6 investigator and scientist.  (Think like Q from Bond meets Murder She Wrotes.)

So, I have two combat.  two skill based.  one Utility.  5 players.. in 5 different countries and 3 different continents.  Their first mission is to extract a high ranking officials daughter.  That's when the whole planet goes to hell and the real campaign starts... but.. now I have to figure out how to get a Irish Canadian, Korean, American, Brit and African into the same area without being the cheesy "You're all hired by the same agency.  You're a team.  Deal with it."

"You all were finalists in a reality TV show."

[Krensky]

"You all were finalists in a reality TV show."

Coming this fall, "Who Wants to be a Spy?"

[TheTSKoala]

LOL.  *jots that idea down* "Enemy has a twisted SAW-esque reality game show..."