Not by me.

I don't mind the idea of having one statis'ed character in the hopper, but I think 4 is a little excessive.  The main three benefits I see of having a statsis'ed character would be:  1) You get bored and want to switch concepts, so after the 6 month period, you switch, 2) Your current character is killed, so you can continue playing almost immediately, and 3) GMs would not feel so bad if a PC really f-ed up and had to be killed, since the person has a PC in reserve anyway.

I think the idea of alts though in the online Shadowrun universe is a pretty touchy one though.  In SR online, a lot of the game is having the right connections.  It is isn't the standard Fantasy RPG, nor is it even much like the tabletop game where you switch over to another character to fill a void in the party.  Playing SR online is also about learning secrets and being able to keep secrets.  Let's say you are on alt A, and you are part of some faction that is planning on trying to eliminate the HQ of a faction that your alt B happens to be a part of.  As alt A, you don't really care for the leader of your faction, so you decide switch over to your alt B and somehow manage to be in the right places at the right times, and low and behold discover that the opposing faction is up to something.  All hail alt B, discoverer of the plot.

It might be suggested then that:  1) There will be no gangs/orgs so we needn't worry about this, 2) We will just not allow alts to be members of opposing factions and that will solve the problem, or 3) <Insert other reasoning here.>

But to 1) I would say that simply because there will be no gangs/orgs at the start of the game, does not mean gang-like or org-like entities will never come into existence.  I think the best SRing outfits in NS will wind up being somewhat org-like in structure.  Likely, there will be several competing for work, resources, and so on which will create enemies and perhaps even lead to (neccessary) alliances among others.

To 2) I would say that it is impossible to know from one day to the next what factions will always be friendly and what faction will always be enemies.  A quarrel over something two friendly factions both desire, such as a big payday SR, could turn friend to foe in an instant.  If you have a PC in each faction, you could find yourself in a quandry.

Let me just say that in conclusion, I always found Seattle's one PC per player policy to be unique, unlike what you would find on most of the White Wolf MUSHes or other Fantasy/Sci-Fi MUSHes.  It adds an element of risk and really forces you to decide if your character would engage in behavior/activity X that might have a higher probablity of death than normal.  Sure being able to play other roles might be fun from time to time, but I think that's why there are other worlds to play at.  If you feel like playing a decker on NS, but get bored and decide that you want to play a Samaurai, you always have the option of starting up that alternate on Denver SR MUSH or in a tabletop game.  I'll wind up playing regardless of whether the 1-to-1 rule is kept or not, but I just figured I'd offer up my two cents, as I tend to lean toward the status quo on this one.

I really really really really like the idea of an alt system. Really. Much.

I can't seem to jump the fence on the idea, but here's a thought:

What happens when someone tries to use their alts against each other? Maybe they can never be in the same place at the same time, but what if someone's character is hired to ice one of that player's own alts? That's just one situation, but it's not too hard to imagine alts crossing one another in biz.


I don't know what could be done in such a situation. You can trust a player to keep their alts away from one another, sure, let's just say that that's a given. What if someone else were to put you in a situation where two of your characters are needed at the same time? Knowing the attitude of the MUSH as I do, some people might be sad to find that that forces you to tell someone that "State" plays "Solaris" too. Me, I don't really care about that, but keep in mind that this system takes away some of that anonyminity we all use.

I might have it wrong, so dispute my thought please.

I like the alt system that Melkir has over at Dragonlance. It's a very clean system. I like, no I love the thought of alts on SR-Seattle. But no more than 1 alt per person. I don't think anyone can effectively jugle, RP and maintain more than that. With any more, you loose focus or start devoting more time to one or the other.

To address the comment about "Alt A" being hired to kill "Alt B"... How many times in the last 3 years has anyone actually been hired to kill another PC? In all honesty, it could be stated explicitly that your alts do not interact nor have contacts/pc's act as intermediaries between the two. If someone so wishes, they might be able to work something out to be the killer of thier own PC, but I'm guessing that would be a rare case and only if the PC wished to "loose" an alt to create a new one. (Which might lead to issues of abuse as well though)

Personally, playing one character for an extended period of time was always my biggest hurdle. I loved being staff since I could plan an entire cast of characters. But as a player, I had a revolving door in CharGen installed, since there was always something else I wanted to try, some new concept I thought I could play better than the current PC I was using. In that respect, I would love to be able to put a PC in a box for a bit to wax creative with a different type of PC.

I think this is a little bit of a judgment.  Personally, I tend to play more than 1 character at a time without any problems. Ask many of the people who have known me -- I used to often juggle anywhere between three and five different characters /simultaneously/ without a significant impact to speed, RP or information -- and had more than that that I didn't play as much or at the same time.  Some people can, some people can't.

Cool, I've got an alt system. I run everything. ;-)

Congrats. Can I come play on your DL Game?

Of course, always welcome. ;-)
Just to set it straight, that's X's game, and alt system. I'm only clever enough to copy +finger from one game to another ;-)

Since we're talkin about alts, how about the pregenerated character idea? Several games have it, it allows for fast pickup. But I've always found the concept a bit strange. But then I like creating characters with a goodly ammount of personal detail.

Please NO!
precreated characters o.O ewwwww! I really would hate to see two exaclty same characters on the grid o.O beside that it is not really any usefull shortcut as I think making the +sheet only takes a fraction of the time making a char compared to making up a decent background ...  well unless the predone chars would include a background but that would get really ugly I think o.O
What I think what would be usefull i that aspect would be a list of 'usefull skills' saying stuff like that you need street rumors to access the rumors board as new players don't know that

Pregenerated +sheets using the character examples in SR4 is something I would like to see. It would help new SR players get into the game faster since (I'm assuming here) the character examples work well with the new SR4 game.

It would allow players to have a playable character from the get-go. I know I would have appreciated them when I first started playing. So many useless skills for the character type I was trying to play could have been avoided had I known what one looked like.

Of course the requirement for players to have access to SR4 before CG would probably cure this...

Have a +sheet there and allow the player to make their own background to fit it.

-Hades

I like the idea of having the /option/ to take a pregenerated character. For instance, have the first choice in chargen be, 'Custom Char' or 'Pregen'. That way, people who want to make their own (the majority of peeps, I would guess) can go ahead and do so, and people unfamiliar with SR or who just want a quick start can go ahead and choose one of the pregens.

Of course, modelling them after the examples in the book may be a bit problematic... we'd have to review them to work with whatever chargen restrictions we have. I know that many of the example chars in the SR3 book were too powerful to have been allowed out of CG in our old system.

Also, the old SR tradition...The example chars were (and are) hilariously broken when the normal CG system is applied.