Exploring the different 'classes' of Shadowrunners(Read: A Ramble)

In my time playing Shadowrun, I've probably played in numerous styles of campaigns. A very long running one in the US that I was a part of on and off(depending on when my work allowed, it went on for a LONG time though), had everyone fairly middle class and doing a lot of legal work; it started out as critter hunting and had a lot of really awesome arcs and twists(and I hope to see the campaign again sometime!) 

The first game I played in had a motley crew of characters from rich to poor to middle, and I've played in dirt-poor street campaigns, and, well, about everything in between. 

I also am a fan of various old SR sites that featured a variety of 'types'-the great Winterhawk Mage Space is an old favorite to read, as is Twilightrun, and both of these have been very big inspirations for me in terms of the more 'Middle Class' runner-hell, in the case of Wiinterhawk, upper class. Meanwhile, another favorite old site was Blackjack's, who actually dealt more with the 'gritty' end of Shadowrun from mostly what I gathered. (Not necessarily street level stuff, and actually he had several articles espousing good moral behavior in runners like not shooting everything dead, but a little less upper class, I can say.) 


(As a quick aside, I highly suggest anyone check those sites out if you want some good SR reading material. They deal more in the older editions, too.) 

So what do all of these tell someone? Well, there are lots of ways to play and enjoy Shadowrun, indeed, at all sorts of levels. I don't mean 'power' necessarily-but there is a difference between, say, the Twilightrun campaign and one where the team all lives in a Low lifestyle and the like(even if they use the same creation methods.) 

One of the big questions people ask to folks who run a more 'high class' style campaign(where most of the 'runners are packing high lifestyles and earning enough for its upkeep plus their own upkeep), is 'why, is someone who is able to earn this much, running in the first place?

There could be a lot of reasons. Middle? Middle is fairly easy to explain. Middle lifestyles, as it says in the old books(I grabbed my 2e here), are the realm of 'ordinary successful wage-earners or criminals.' So it's something that a team who takes reasonable jobs can get on. I can see why people may continue to run here; to make it bigger, they're stuck in a more underground lifestyle but want to stay comfortable, they choose more decent targets, etc. 

But high lifestyle? At that point, a runner probably has a fair bit of nuyen socked away. Like possible savings, even if it's certified credsticks stuffed under their mattress and hidden around other safehouses. They probably take one decent job with a big payoff that gives them decent paydata and probably run a small biz on the side or something. Or a mix of this stuff. One might think, though, someone with those sorts of resources-couldn't they invest in a strong enough fake SIN or something, or even use a real SIN, to go ahead and live a more normal life?

For one, discovery. I notice particularly in the realm of mage characters, there are likely magic secrets that are kept very...under wraps by corps and other higher-ups. Magic is one of those things that even in the 20whatevers(depending on what edition you play) there are tons and tons of untold secrets. Not all of these can be learned sitting in a ritzy apartment. Maybe one wants to liberate these.

Or perhaps some runners actually are motivated a bit by benevolence, and they want to try to make the world somewhat of a better place, the best they can; sticking it to some of the more nefarious corps is certainly a way to do this, albeit a dangerous one. 

I'm of course just throwing out a couple of ideals. I mean whatever people want to think up. If you really want to pull strings, Batman is filthy rich and still 'shadowruns'. And no, your game doesn't have to lose its 'edge' for this. You can still feed all the cool cyberpunk descriptions in! Like, you don't need to lose atmosphere brought on by pictures like this:

(3rd picture is the Sprawl Sites cover)

(Yes, this is from CP2020's Night City supplement, but I'm just going for atmospheric pictures here)

(The fly in from the intro to Bladerunner remains one of my favorite movie intros ever, the Tyrell buildings looming on the landscape of the super-cyberpunk city is too fantastic)

(And to show the contrast; the inside of the Tyrell Building is very much...'cleaner', being the corporate office. But it's still hella cyberpunk!)

Just to have some runners who might live a more middle+ lifestyle. All of this has a ton of cyberpunk feel to it. And you don't need to give up the 'noir' angle either. (To be frank, what 100% counts as film noir, cyberpunk-noir, cyberpunk, post-cyberpunk and so on is extremely up in the air. Shadowrun already mixes fantasy and cyberpunk! I don't think we need to stick too terribly hard to rigid definitions here.)

So let's look at the lower end now. I think for many, they like the more 'low-life' aspect of cyberpunk since perhaps it sort of hits home that you're small potatoes compared to a lot of bigger stuff. It's perhaps easier to believe because at that level, you sort of have to do something to get by, possibly things of questionable legal nature(in-game, of course.) Maybe for some playing(or GMing for) a more higher-class character feels 'off' because they could, in theory, sit down at any time. I think for others yet, the stories at the lower ends are more 'personal'. 

(Again, not talking about power levels here. You could be playing a mundane face with very little 'ware and all of their resources sunk into living arrangements, or a street samurai with eight hundred thousand nuyen worth of 'ware in his bod who lives in a scuzzy house on the border of Redmond.) 

I can see the 'personal' argument. I admit; when I think about Shadowrun Returns: Dead Man's Switch(still one of my favorites of that series, that and Hong Kong, which is tied with it despite me thinking HK is very much the better game)-my favorite part of DMS was the first half of the game I'll say up to the end of the UB arc(not spoiling it). The last third or so of the game ended up getting...'big.' Now don't get me wrong-it was still pretty awesome to watch your runner go from zero to saving a lot of stuff, but going back and replaying it with a variety of characters and such, there was something that was just...fun about the lower level game when you're running around the Barrens trying to solve crimes and talking to Dan the Donut Man. 

So perhaps, for some, characters living a more luxurious lifestyle makes one feel like they miss that level; because 'why would they have a reason to be involved more at the street level?' Hell, I can think of lots!

In SR Returns, one of the early plots was your character being hired to find your friend's killer, which in turn leads to a chase. I can't see why class would come into play here. I mean sure maybe someone with nuyen to spend could hire someone to look into it, but if its someone's friend, why not go poke around yourself? A creative GM and characters could come up with lots of reasons why someone might poke around a lower class than they actually live. 

I guess my little ramble was inspired by a couple discussions I saw about how 'rich shadowrunners have no reason to run', and just figured I'd maybe attempt to debunk that. It really doesn't matter, and you can still keep that cyberpunk feel to your games regardless, I think!