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Posted by: djinni Jan 22 2008, 03:55 AM

how do you get inspiration for the characters you play,

yes yes this is a shameless attempt at helping me get a background for my character. but ignore that.

normally I sit down and pick one or two people I've talked to and use that as foundation, then spiral out picking more indepth personality traits, and styles. but in the end I write up a short story instead of a "background" showing the character how he is now instead of who he was then...

Posted by: Ravor Jan 22 2008, 04:21 AM

Basically I figure that Shadowrunners has to have something fragging wrong that makes him unable or unwilling to find other employment, Runners are not healthy well-adjusted pros that would fit in with modern black ops, if they were then the corps would snap them up in a heartbeat.


With that said to be honest, I only write down the important bits, and then usually in bulletpoint shorthand, I mean really, if your Mage was forced into the Shadows because he cut off his own fragging hand and threw it at the shrink in a manditory psyche exam then just jolt that bit down along with a couple of sentences about what broke him in the first place, less is actually more in my opinion. (Within reason of course.)

*Edit*

Clarified a point.

Posted by: FriendoftheDork Jan 22 2008, 04:22 AM

Decide how the character is now and try to think why he has become that way, what has influenced him thorugh childhood, adolesence, or early adulthood.

How long has he been a shadowrunner? Why did he chose the profession? Why can't/won't he get a real job and SIN?

You might want to search the web for more such RPG questionaires to help create character background. Personally I don't use backgrounds overmuch, unless something is found out by fellow players etc. Usually I just make the characters and think of behavior, values and quirks, and leave it at that. Then I build up the background gradually while playing.

Posted by: djinni Jan 22 2008, 04:38 AM

Posted by: Glyph Jan 22 2008, 04:39 AM

I don't see the background as totally separate from the mechanical aspects of character creation. Generally, I start out with a few ideas and a general concept, start roughing out some stats, then fill in stats and background concurrently, letting them bounce off of each other. Here is where I will find out if a character trait is impractical, or if the character's background changes some of the stats. It has worked out well for me - my characters make sense, and their stats fit the background. I have seen a lot of threads with people who have started out with a preconceived concept or background, and struggled with building the character afterwards.

Personally, I like structured outlines like Bull's questions or the 20 questions, which keep my thoughts organized. Plus, even if I am suffering writer's block, I can at least work on some of the easier questions (eye and hair color, etc.). My overall philosophy is that my main concern should be: "how did this person become a shadowrunner, and how did his goals, motivations, and personality quirks evolve?" If his childhood was uneventful as far as motivating him to become a runner, I won't waste five paragraphs describing it. Instead, there will be a snippet like

Posted by: Kingmaker Jan 22 2008, 06:59 AM

I don't think that runners need necessarily be maladjusted or antisocial. Something could have forced them into the shadows. For example, a Irish Catholic gunslinger I'm working on started out as a Catholic paramilitary in Tir Na Nog fighting the heathen overlords, but ended up leaving the country when the Tir goverment started sending assassins after him. No more outcast or unable to work with others than a normal person, but he's on one too many shit lists to do anything out of the shadows.

Posted by: Karaden Jan 22 2008, 07:15 AM

Posted by: Glyph Jan 22 2008, 07:29 AM

One biggie I forgot to mention - be sure you know what kind of campaign it is before you make a character. And not just power level - look at the type of play (gritty heroes vs. gutter punks vs. hard cold pros) as well, so you can make a character who will fit in with the others.

Posted by: Riley37 Jan 22 2008, 09:31 AM

Most of the above is good in any RPG. I get better results when I think up at least a thumnail sketch of the PC's parents. After all, whenever I meet the parents of an adult friend, I usually get a bit more of a clue about how this person got to be the way they are.

For SR, there are so many aspects of the setting that one can tap, and/or explore, via character back story. I recently wrote an outline designed to do three things: 1) justify a min-maxed elf shaman illusionist who's not a wagemage, 2) create a character who has mixed feelings about their racial, national and class affiliations, 3) create a character that has tenative connections in a whole lot of directions: Aztlan, Tir, Pueblo, Wuxing, secret societies, magical lodge politics. If the GM wants to do a story in any of those directions, there's a plausible plot hook in which this PC gets a comcall from an old associate (that the GM just now made up). There's a bit of my own family history mixed in, since I have bilingual relatives in Guadalajara and Phoenix.

Here goes:

Juanita Vargas was the third daughter and fifth child born to a wealthy, landowning Catholic family in Gaudalajara, the capital of Jalisco province, in what was then Mexico. She was also the first elf born in Guadalajara. Her wealthy landownowning family was delighted to raise such a pretty, graceful girl... but they always had a bit of discomfort with her pointed ears, and were happy when she married Ricardo Perez, the manager of a tequila distillery which happened to get most of its agave supply from Vargas farms. Ricardo and Juanita were in turn delighted by the birth in 2042 of their son Carlos, who inherited his mother's metatype. Less delightfully, the crackdown on the now-illegal Catholic church reached Guadalara, Carlos's baptism ceremony was raided, they were arrested, and only by pulling some Vargas strings were they able to get released. They relocated to Pheonix, Arizona, where Ricardo had some relatives. Ricardo found a Masonic lodge in Phoenix, but the rites were different, most of the lodge brothers were Protestant, and the social connections were apples and oranges to what they'd been in Mexico. He retained a stake in the distillery as "silent partner", and found decent work as a factory foreman. When Aztlan nationalized all non-Aztech corporate holdings, both Perez and Vargas family fortunes were badly hurt, and Ricardo and Juanity had to make lifestyle adjustments. Consequently, Carlos grew up with the social grace training and dance lessons "appropriate to his station", but a lot of deferred dreams; "next year we'll go skiing, I promise, it's just a little tight right now". His parents spat when Aztechnology was mentioned on the news, and Carlos grew up with the idea that a golden heritage had been stolen... with the complications of being a Latino Elf in Phoenix, and learning Sperethiel on his own from Matrix sources, while speaking English in school and Spanish at home. He wasn't much of a scholar nor athlete, but he was still popular, managing to combine aristocratic elegance with affable warmth and a knack for jokes. Most classmates found him attractively exotic; even with those who found him disturbingly alien, he could usually talk his way out of trouble.

At 18, in 2060, Carlos weathered a few more transitions. He graduated from parochial secondary school and entered University of Arizona, he started dating a libertine from an elvish sorority, and he Awakened. Practicing his emerging ability to create light and sound by force of will was a serious distraction from homework. Calling forth spirits from the Astral shocked his parents and dissolved what remained of his Catholic identity. Dropping out of school and barely on speaking terms with his family, he needed something to turn to, something that would accept him with fewer compromises. He found the Trickster totem and joined a shamanic lodge. With raw talent and single-minded focus, he quickly became a master illusionist, with a sideline in detection, considering those a natural balance. As a fast-rising hotshot, he got drawn into a high-stakes feud in the Phoenix magical underground, and in a duel of illusions, he ended up winning a powerful magical ring. Afterwards, though, he was worried about who might hold grudges, and chose to move on, hoping to broaden his horizons, and perhaps to meet more elves and get a sense of what Tir Tairngire is about. His family's experience with a monopolistic, monolithic state makes him wary on that topic. Indeed, his experiences with institutions of all sorts have mostly been bad news. He puts a corresponding value on individual connections.

Carlos remains intently conscious of appearances and sensations. He is sensitive to extremes of light (always wearing shaded glasses outside) and sound (he hates loud parties and honking car horns). He experiences simsense as unpleasantly disorienting, and avoids VR; besides, he just can't get an avatar to smile as persuasively as he can in the flesh. Whenever he comes across something that he might want to recreate as an illusion, he tends to study it carefully, with an subtle eye for details of hue and shadow. He'll occasionally Mask himself to see what reactions he gets as a flashy Japanese hipster, as a scarred-knuckle bruiser ork, or as a blonde, blue-eyed, jut-jawed Anglo-American. He continues to tell jokes, pull pranks, and talk his way into and out of trouble. He had a legit job for a while as a sales representative for Wuxing, and got his shockrod focus as a bonus for setting a new record for total sales in a quarter; he then quit while he was ahead.

Although healing magic is not his primary gift, it has changed his life. For a while, he took long shifts in a Phoenix emergency room, laying hands on one patient after another, incurring Drain to the point of exhaustion. As mundane doctors and nurses discovered back in the Fifth Age, there's always more patients than one can help. Since he moved, he's been earning his rent by working with a street doctor. He helps patients recover from injuries, wounds, and augmentation surgery, and his bedside manner is a plus.

He has no significant pollution allergies, but he's noticed the much higher presence of respirators compared with Phoenix, he hears complaints from air spirits, and he's been in contact with a Thunderbird-totem mage about some possibilities of vigilante action against major violators of environmental regulations. In the meantime, he's interested in acquiring money and experience, for personal enjoyment as well as idealistic purposes.

Posted by: kzt Jan 22 2008, 04:30 PM

Posted by: Ravor Jan 22 2008, 05:02 PM

I don't buy that all once you start getting into the AA+ levels, at those levels the corps are literally nations unto themselves so saying that they won't have their own black op teams is akin to saying that the nations of todays don't.

Hell, I don't even buy that the larger A corps wouldn't have thier own teams, although by necessarity they'd have to be alot more careful since in theory they are still beholden to national laws.

Posted by: kzt Jan 22 2008, 05:29 PM

Posted by: jmecha Jan 22 2008, 05:35 PM

One of the things I use during my character creation process is the Shadowrun timeline. After I have already decided on who I am going to play I look over the time line and look to see what major events happened during my character's life time and I determine which ones would have had an effect on them to add some of the offical fluff to my character's back ground to give it more wieght in the Shadowrun world.

Posted by: Pendaric Jan 22 2008, 06:19 PM

Interesting question. I have been researching this very subject recenty. What I have found is that there are several places to start, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, but to get a 'good' character its' the amount of evolution you go through to fully realise them as a person.

Some people start with the background and see's where that leads and changes the charcter.
Some start with the stats, then backwards engineer the character's personality and background.
Some start with a concept they want to explore and build up from there.
This can also mean you work backwards from what the character does to who they are.
These methods can all be distinct or mixed up.
You then go into a series of questions that become more and more specific, like a series of filters refining the character. Finally it all has to make sense.

Condensed from like 12 conversations and 15 years of gaming, so it's broad brush strokes. Hope it helps.

Edited for spelling

Posted by: ElFenrir Jan 22 2008, 07:41 PM

I'm with the crew of ''have a rough idea about character, start statting them up, fill in bits and pieces as i go along''. Occationaly i come up with a really detailed bunch of stuff early; like if i know im playing and it's a slow night at work. Then ill stat it out accordingly. Most of the time, though, it's a rough sketch that gets built up. Everything has it's benefits, as said. Sometimes the rough sketch changes over time, and sometimes even splits off into two characters. This happened recently; i had an idea for a former company man/black ops type of character...who was also heavily into the occult, and was a hermetic mage. However, as i started fleshing them out...the occult-loving hermetic mage ended up going away from the former company man idea and more into the realm of a combat mage, and the former company man ended up branching off otherwise into a mundane...and so two characters were born.

And sometimes it's something as little as ''i want to play Gun Man'' and statting them up, filling out bits as i go along, especially when Knowledge Skills come into play.

Posted by: Fortinbras Jan 22 2008, 07:59 PM

When Laurence Olivier and Dustin Haufman were shooting Marathon Man, Olivier noticed that Haufman was exhausted in between takes and asked him why. Haufman said it was because he had stayed up all night because his character had. Olivier then gave the famous line "My boy, why don't you just act it?"
Everyone forgets Haufman's response, which was "Because I'm not that good."

Some people can make a character on the fly with as little background as necessary and get fully into that character right away. Others need to sit down and have their characters well thought out with pages upon pages of back story in order to understand what decisions they will make in game and why. Some people like to play caricatures, like the dumb, but lovable ork or the prissy elf. Others like layered, complex and mysterious characters who you need several game sessions before you get to know them.
Neither of these are wrong, they are just different means to and end. Some are more preferable to play, but almost all are fun to play with.

I, personally, enjoy writing a lot of back story. I think it's fun, it helps with my writing and it really brings me into the universe, even if the stuff never sees the light of day. But other players find it time consuming and distracting to have non-active choices for only a few minutes worth of dialog.
Everyone has their personal style, but the trick is to try them all and find which makes the best character, and which method you find most fun.

The only "wrong" method is the guy who never makes a character, he makes a character sheet. The guy who never talks in character and never separates player knowledge from character knowledge. The guy who doesn't understand the difference between Shadowrun and Warcraft. Be he the quite guy who never contributes to anything but combat, or the most dreaded of all player, Rules Whore of the Hill People, this is the guy you keep praying will have car trouble this week.
Don't be that guy. No one likes that guy.

Posted by: Stahlseele Jan 22 2008, 08:04 PM

more or less i start out with this crazy idea:"i wanna play darkwing duck!"
then i think about what would be appropriate to make him as close as the toon and then i stat out the toon and if i actually get to and decide to keep playing him i think up a little bit of background-story closely matched to the "official" story and then i start to flesh it out as i go and make up more as it comes to me . . more or less . . and before anybody asks: yes, i did in fact build darkwing duck with the NSRCG once *g*

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jan 23 2008, 02:41 AM

...what Glyph mentioned is pretty much the way I approach a new character concept. I also agree that the available outline questions help a lot. I also agree that the type of campaign is a factor as well. Now while I am known to put a lot of detail into character backstories and yes one of them is a short novel in length (done so as a writing exercise), I do try my best to keep to the basics.

I also have to differ with Ravor in that not every runner is a sociopathic malcontent.

A good example is the Short One (#103). Her background does deal with some fairly touchy subjects, hence the spoiler tags for the abbreviated version below (the actual story is ≈110 pages in narrative style).

Kelly Rourke (her real name) was unfortunate enough to be born to an elven family and grow up in Salem TT before the second crash. At first her parents, on discovering she had awakened potential did everything to support her. She was encouraged to develop her athletic abilities which also included martial arts in preparation for her eventually taking the Rite of Passage. Along with her sister, she was enrolled in an exclusive school and her parents went out of their way to make sure the had the same opportunities any other privileged Tir child would have. Unfortunately this would be short lived.

As she approached her preteen years, the other children that were once her friends began to avoid her (about the time that kids would begin to understand their parents' racial prejudices). Then things began to go wrong in school. She always had some difficulty with schoolwork but that was the least of the troubles. First there were pranks, then fights and of course Kelly, being the human and in a distinct minority, was the one who was always blamed. Her father's peers also took notice and began pressuring him as well to deal with her, to the point of telling him his human daughter could be his downfall. Being an ambitious fellow of noble rank on the Tir social fast track, he turned against Kelly as well and began mistreating her behind her mother's and twin sister's backs.

At first the abuse was mainly verbal and light punishment like being sent to her room & such. However, as the pressures mounted her father began drinking and started taking out his frustrations on her, often beating the girl when her mother and sister weren't around (contributing to her Dain Bramaged NQ). To cover it up he threatened her if she ever said anything and would have an associate heal the physical scars. At one point he even came close to killing her while her mother and sister were away for the weekend in Ashland, after which he used Laes to wipe her memory. Afterwards he concocted a story that Kelly had gone out of control and tore up her sister's things after breaking into his liquor cabinet and getting herself drunk. [In actuality, he tried to poison her that day by force feeding her alcohol but she managed to fight back. In anger at her defiance he nearly choked her to death.] Unable to remember the events of that weekend due to the Laes, Kelly had no defence. In the end he told her she was being sent to a boarding school in Portland [she had previously been expelled from the academy she attended and was being privately tutored at home]. In truth he planned to abandon her in the city and then claim that she ran off after they had stopped to get something to eat. In this case, who would be believed? the "upstanding" and respected noble father or the little human troublemaker?

A couple weeks later, there was news of a young girl’s body that was found in a seedy area of Portland. The investigation determined it was Kelly and the affair was closed. There was a short period of “public� grieving by the family and life then went on as the next Rite was soon approaching. Meanwhile Kelly had been taken in by a woman who had connections with several local Portland runners. After spending several months caring for her, she was convinced by the others it would be in girl’s best interest to get her out of the city and out of the country, particularly since her father’s associate was seen snooping around the area where the two of them lived. The final word on the matter was Jenna ni Ferra’s going off on one of her anti human tirades after her protégé was assassinated.

To make a long story short after a slightly harrowing escape, Kelly ended up in Seattle under the care of a well heeled private investigator who focused her work on cases of child abuse and neglect. Being Japanese and seeing the both the girl’s fascination with her culture and latent Adept talent she was able to pull some strings back home and send Kelly to a dojo in Kyoto to complete her training.

The rest as they say “is history� (well her-story ).

This forms the core of who she is and where she comes from, the events which took place after she was abandoned being more "icing on the cake" so to say.

Kelly herself has always been a very polite young woman (due in part to her early upbringing and later, the years she spent in Kyoto where she learned of the Bushido way). Even during the worst times she always maintained a very proper sense of etiquette and rarely if ever was unruly. At first she couldn't understand why her friends started turning on her and father began hating her so. Of course the girl was terribly frightened and in such cases (as in RL) was completely intimidated by her father. Up until things started to degenerate, she had led a fairly protected life and was even told that if she strove hard, she could be one of the first humans to make it in Tir Society. Instead her father gave into the advice of his peers that she could be a threat to his, her mother’s and sister’s progression within the ranks of Tir nobility. In the end his political ambitions won and she lost.

Much of KK’s experience in the Tir has of course affected her outlook and the choice she would make for her life (hence her tagline: "Forsaken Daughter is Watching You"). Being declared legally dead, she is truly SINless. Were she to resurface under her real identity she could be a marked young woman even with the original Tir council having disbanded. Many of the bad memories still run deep and she has no desire to return to her former home. Her handicap (her Dain Bramaged NQ) pretty much keeps her out of most meaningful occupations, even so much as working a Stuffer Shack™ as her aptitude for computers is sorely lacking. Her Awakened abilities would also ban her from most organised or professional athletics which would be about her last option. Seeing there was little to offer in the SINners’ world she chose the path her friend Randi (the woman who cared for her in back in Portland) took and headed into the Shadows instead.

Posted by: toturi Jan 23 2008, 03:43 AM

First I make up my mind on what I want my character to be good at and how he is going to be good at it. Then I create a character sheet. Then I wrap a character background around the character sheet. I will then tweak part of the character background and character sheet so that both are consistent with each other.

Posted by: bishop186 Jan 23 2008, 05:13 AM

I usually start with a basic concept, usually an archetype with a twist. Then I shade in the major stats and go back to the character design and fill that in a little more. I kind of add a little (or take a little away) from each one until I have both a working concept and a character sheet to go with it. Sometimes, of course, I get the whim to do something because it's funny, e.g. my Troll Technomancer Kraken - the worst possible race for a Techno (especially with the low-level 300BP game we're playing), get excited and do the whole character sheet, and fill in the background as I go.

I only turn to the 20 questions if I have writer's block and can't think of anything more than the base theme and stats. The 20 questions are good for thinking about how the character would ask them - I always snake the inflection and philosophy of the character in with the 20 questions thing. It's a good block-buster.

Posted by: Cardul Jan 23 2008, 07:17 AM

I start with the original stats, I write the background and adjust the stats as the background adjusts them. I try to avoid "Oooo! I am an Orphan!" or "I was part of the military/corpsec!" for my backgrounds, as those are just too cliche. Generally, when coming up with the concept, I like to take a normal concept and put a spin on it. I often build the character off of an image of them in my head. Where did they get that scar? What does that tattoo mean to them? Why did they get that cyber? Is their hair colour natural? If not, what is their natural hair colour? When were they born, where? And then, I write it first person, leaving out the stuff I would not know in character, but that a GM might very well make use of those holes....Actually, I kind of find writing the background to be the most fun part of making a character.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jan 23 2008, 03:59 PM

...excellent point about leaving the GM holes. That has happened with several of my characters, and usually makes playing them more interesting. Leela (#104) and Violet (#105) are two good examples.

With Leela, the GM played up the mystery of why she was yanked out of Croatia when a demolitions mission in her backstory went bad. She kept trying to find out but could never get the real story. This became one of her "personal" missions (she never truly found out as the one person who knew died while protecting her from an assassination attempt). On another occasion, during a run where she was posing as a waitperson at a banquet where we were hired to bodyguard an important figure, a woman from her past (from before the war) recognised her even through her disguise and remembered hearing her recitals back in Zagreb (love that old Distinctive Style flaw). The GM also played on her Flashbacks flaw as well describing in detail what she saw when they occurred.

For Violet, The GM is playing on her paranoia and delusion that MetaTech (now a part of Neonet) is after her (she was the corp's little designer "genebrat"). At meets she has noticed corp goons sitting a couple tables away who turn out not to be associated with the person we were talking with. Often times she takes pics of them first before taking pics of the J, then runs them by her Former Company Man contact to get an ID. [In her backstory she bartered the design of an experimental commlink to a competitor in exchange for her extraction from the corp's enclave and a new identity after he parents mysteriously disappeared and MetaTech was awarded custody of her].

Posted by: Ravor Jan 23 2008, 05:48 PM

Posted by: JonathanC Jan 23 2008, 08:37 PM

Posted by: Ravor Jan 23 2008, 09:07 PM

*Shrugs* And then we get back into the question of why aren't the Runners being snatched up to be part of corp black op teams? Viewing the Runner Lifestyle with rose-colored-image-links might be an explaination of why a young bright kid with a future could have first gotten into the biz, but I don't see the romance lasting very long, the life of a Shadowrunner tends to be short, violent, paranoid, and above all, fragging hard. And I very much doubt that the Trid shows the nastier aspects that comes with being a Runner either.


We have to remember that judging by the "normal" char gen advise on Dumpshock, most people are playing with Runners with dicepools that would land them a comfortable life in the corps, with the ones that love the "rush" being directed towards corp black-ops. (And hells, judging by the reactions I tend to get from my posts about Sixth World Society and the Pink Mohawks it seems to me that the gamestyle that people seem to want to play would also mesh with corp black-ops as well.)


Besides, it's a huge leap from having something fragging wrong with their wiring that makes them unemployable by the corps and being a 30 point mental case, although beggers can't be picky and if all of the "pros" are working for the corps then you take whatever backup you can get on the streets, just cover your own hoop as much as possible.

Posted by: JonathanC Jan 23 2008, 09:35 PM

A person can be unfit for corporate employment without being a nutcase or an asshole. I have plenty of friends who are great people, but for various reasons, are basically unemployable in a corporate setting. So we agree there. My point is that a lot of people don't seem to think so...but I digress.

I figure most of the kids who start running with stars in their eyes die messily. A couple survive, either because they're lucky or they're smart enough to do the job right. By the time they figure out that there might be a better way, they're in too deep. Charlie can't join the Ares Firewatch because he fragged them over like 6 times in the past 3 years. Sure, he didn't know it at the time, but they still remember it.

Also, corps don't just hire based on talent. Big dice pools are nice, but how the hell would anybody know about them? It's not like you have a visible character sheet telling everyone how good you are. The closest thing to that in reality is a resume, and nobody believes what they read in those things. They go by interviews. And nobody is going to interview some SINless kid with a chip on his shoulder when they've got an avalanche of good, clean-cut corp kids with verifiable qualifications.

Your street hacker is probably twice as skilled as a corp kid of the same age. But that corp kid has test results going back to kindergarten proving that he's a computer genius, a family that's already working for the corp, and a SIN verifying his identity. Your street hacker is arrogant gutter trash that probably just wants the rob the joint from the inside. Why hire some guy off the street whose work you haven't seen, and who you have no reason to trust, because he has no identifiable roots?

What about hiring runners who Mr. Johnson has worked with? Well, that's even worse. I mean really, if you'd been hiring some guy to commit acts of terrorism so terrible that you don't even want the possibility of association with them for the past 2 years, would you really trust that dude with an access card to your office? Would you want to issue this man, who knows your most terrible secrets, an ID card identifying him as a citizen of your megacorp? Landing a serious corp job based on your running should be extremely rare. More likely, "corporate" runners are just independents with the equivalent of no-bid contracts. They get consistent work, and some side benefits (medical, weapon upgrades, etc.), but they're not part of the family.

Shadowrunners are shadowrunners for the same reason that day laborers are day laborers, and the foreign guy who pumps your gas used to be a college professor in his home country. Those guys on the corner waiting for a truck to take them to pick apples for 12 hours a day don't have anything wrong with them, and they're perfectly employable. Some of them even speak english. But they can't be employed because they're outside of the system, with no easy way to get in.

In SR, there's a way, but you have to eat crap and kiss hoop to even get in on the ground floor. You'll probably be given jobs that are unpleasant, dangerous, humiliating, or some combination of the 3, because you're at the bottom, SINless scum that the corp lifted up. For most people, that's still better than the alternative of starving on the street or shadowrunning.

For shadowrunners, not so much. Really, all you need to motivate you to shadowrun is some self-esteem, low birth, and a marketable skill. These are probably the runners who refuse wetwork, or do mostly "hooding" runs.

Then there are the activists (pro-metahuman rights, environmentalists, volunteer bug hunters, etc.) who shadowrun to make cash for their "real" jobs.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jan 23 2008, 09:41 PM

...to Perdition with the numeric references.

KK: she is unemployable by a corp in long term because of her background and Dain Bramaged quality. She can still function in the shadows as survival tends to be more based on Intuition (which in her case is above human average) than Logic. She barely has enough skill to use her commlink as a glorified cell phone and performs most of her "job related" transactions with certified credsticks. She also has a Matrix Specialist as a 6 loyalty contact to cover her.

Violet: well, she's seen enough of the corp gig while growing up that she wants no part of it on a permanent basis. Oh, she has no issue with a single specific mission, but tries not maintain any long term relations with a particular corp. Her obsessive and compulsive nature would also be something a corp would not see as an asset.

While not min-maxed, both these characters are very competent at what they do and have a professional attitude towards their work (particularly Vi).

Da Brat is probably the closest to the definition of "Street Scum" That I have. She literally did grow up on and learned the ways of the streets for a good part of her life. She is an opportunist and looks for any advantage to get ahead be it fast talking her way out of a jam, nailing an opponent in a "tender" part of the anatomy, or fleecing an unsuspecting wageslave out of some if his hard earned .

Posted by: JonathanC Jan 23 2008, 09:59 PM

Even professional, perfectly affable and otherwise employable SINless are likely viewed as "street scum" by most, and certainly wouldn't be trusted. Shadowrun was made in the 80's, and the megacorp culture is based largely on the way Japanese corporate culture worked back then...employees were lifers. That's why you need armed kidnappers to pull them out. You don't want outsiders, even very talented, charismatic ones, mixing in with your well-oiled machine. They're disruptive, they have their own way of doing things, they just don't fit in.

Shadowrunners run a huge gamut, but plenty of them are fairly average people in terms of personality. They're just in a desperate situation. SR is presented as being noirish in many cases, and noir protagonists are regular people caught up in a storm that's manipulated by the corrupt and powerful.

At least, that's how I like to play. I suppose a game about psychotic lunatics that are always 2 seconds from betraying one another to organleggers and rape gangs might be fun. To somebody else.

I'm pretty sure you could take almost any character background and have them become a shadowrunner.

Posted by: ElFenrir Jan 23 2008, 10:09 PM

Posted by: Ravor Jan 23 2008, 10:54 PM

Something that I think you are forgetting is that in the Sixth World the average professional dicepool is only 6-8, so the various builds that appear on these boards will simply blow away any of the competation, and a corp would be stupid not to welcome a fairly adjusted runner into the fold. (Note that there is a difference between welcoming someone and trusting them, I expect that certain safeguards would be put into place.) Also remember that the society in the Sixth World isn't even close to being the same as today's, illegal to-the-death-bloodsports are a huge hit with the masses, people log onto a livefeed just to watch some Johnson getting geeked by a runner team, and wageslaves have to buy themselves out of employment if they want to go work for another company.


Perhaps not surprisingly I also disagree with the idea that a corp wouldn't hire based off of a Johnson's reviews, in fact I imagine that the real purpose behind some runs is to hit the corp's own building as an "interview" of sorts. Remember that everything that you've said about Runners can also be said about modern day spooks. As for not being hired because you hit the corp in the past, true, but unless you assume that the corps are willing to accept being hit by runs then the entire setting falls to pieces and "Shadowrunners" can no longer be the idependant agents that that are assumed to be.


I don't really see how your day-laborer example applies, the illegals waiting at street corners are at best comparable in ability to the legal workforce, I'm talking about the char-builds that people post on the boards that are simply off the charts in talent. (Remember I'm the one who is always pushing for lower dicepools and broader characters in Fourth Edition.)


And it only gets worse when you start talking about the Awakened, Mages have literally won life's lottery just by virtue of being born, and the corps really can't afford to be nearly as selective as they can with their mundane employees.

Posted by: Ravor Jan 23 2008, 10:55 PM

Fragging double-post.

Posted by: JonathanC Jan 23 2008, 11:19 PM

Posted by: Ravor Jan 24 2008, 01:45 AM

I'm not quite sure where to begin, so I guess I'll just start rambling.


I have several disagreements with your arguments, first let's assume for a moment that I agree that for every street-scum Runner with massive dicepools there is a corp citizen with similair dicepools waiting to be employed. So what? My point is that if 6-8 is the average, then there won't be enough people at the upper end of the ability curve for the corps to be able to afford to be as selective as you assume.

Besides, provided that you have the resources it is actually cheaper to own and raise cattle for your meat and dairy products then it is to buy meat and milk at the store. The fact that you tend to get a better quality product is a rather heafty bonus as well. The same logic should also apply for corp black-op teams.

As for life not being a meritocracy, I never said it was, of course being a member of the corp family is going to be a factor that is weighed when deciding who is going to be hired or not, but it is not going to be the only one, and someone with massive dicepools and a history of getting the job done is going to be hired provided that you assume that people at the upper end of the ability curve aren't a dime-a-dozen.

Concerning your clerk/lawyer example, although you neglected to mention what country she was a lawyer in, I somehow doubt that she was skilled enough to practice law in America considering that a quick google search led me to a wiki entry about becoming licensed to practive law in America and there are ways for a lawyer to do so which does not require attending an American Law School. If I can learn this in a matter of a few mouse clicks then surely a skilled and talented lawyer could have learnt of it had she put forth effort to escape her "crappy menial job", even before the avent of the internet.

And an issue that you seem to be forgetting is that simsense indocturnation is a fact in the Sixth World, corps don't need to make sure they snatch up Awakened and other talented people as children, several hours/days/weeks hooked up to a computer is almost as good. But then again you are also assuming that having a previous corp history that could in theory be traced is a good thing when dealing with corp black-op teams or that especially with less and less of a Mage Population as time goes on that the corps could even afford to be picky enough to require brainwashing in the first place assuming that the Mage was loyal and that proper safeguards were in place.

*Edit 1.1*

I almost forgot, but yeah, I'd call you a cynic, today's media isn't real, the masses know that real people aren't being seriously hurt and killed on those shows, in the Sixth World, the fact that real people are being killed for entainment is what excites the masses and generates ratings.

Well, with the exception of the beheading videos, but I don't know anyone who cheered and wanted to see more of those.

Posted by: JonathanC Jan 24 2008, 02:26 AM

If your Shadowrun is a shiny happy world where any talented person, regardless of background, can succeed if only their dice pool is large enough, then by all means, have fun with that.

Realistically though, how the hell do you tell the difference between a competent, corp-raised employee and some random street person who has a larger dice pool if both of them succeed? Does the Shadowrunner succeed with style? And if so, isn't that exactly the kind of maverick, non-team player attitude that you'd want to avoid in a full-time, true corporate employee?

You basically are arguing that life is a meritocracy, and any talented, reasonably well-adjusted SINless will of course be recognized for their talents and offered a job commeasurate with their worth.

The woman in the example I cited was Chinese, and was, I believe, in non-criminal law. Her english was serviceable, but she has a noticeable accent. Regardless of her competence as a lawyer (which I never had the occasion to test), I doubt she'd have gotten a job in her field in this country without losing the accent. If she was an ork, it'd be even less likely.

Indoctrination of adults can't possibly be as effective as indoctrination of children. Plus, if you've got these fabulously talented, independent people, why would they consent to being brainwashed? The only reason corp people don't complain is that they don't know better; they've been raised in total propaganda submersion for their whole lives. An adult who grew up independent is going to be asking a lot more questions.

And you still haven't addressed the morale effect on the regular workforce. How does it look when you've replaced the good, loyal salarymen who have given their lives and families to you with some long-haired hippy who supposedly has a larger "dice pool"? It's one thing to know that your company hires outside talent for ops that are ridiculously dangerous and prone to failure and/or casualties; it's another to be told that one of these jokers is your new boss.

As for the media not being real...that guy really did get beheaded. Britney Spears really does have serious personal problems, and we're all having a good laugh watching a human being basically self-destruct in public. We really do have TV shows where people eat raw animal genitals for money. We really do have snuff films, though they aren't mainstream. It's a short, dystopian walk from where we are right now to where Shadowrun is, media-wise. We already have a media culture with absolutely no sense of responsibility. We make celebrities out of serial killers and basically ignore the victims, unless of course they lived, in which case it's even better, since they can give us the lurid details of what they suffered. Our cop shows are as much about dissecting corpses and marvelling at the way their killer murdered them as they are about actual cops.

We're already obsessed with watching real people suffer, and watching fake people die. We're not so different from a society of people who watch real people suffer and die. We already watch dispassionately as people are lynched, murdered, tortured, etc. in other countries.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jan 24 2008, 02:32 AM

Posted by: Glyph Jan 24 2008, 03:57 AM

Not all SINless runners have to be people from the Barrens with skills, but no quantifiable record of them. A lot of runners can be ex-corporate, too.

The megacorporations are not shiny, happy places to live and work. They are the bad guys who are supposed to make the morally ambiguous runners seem like good guys in comparison. And you don't need the tired old "the corporation is trying to kill me" thing, either. It's more realistic to have the runner be like the old former company man or wage mage archetypes - people who had to leave when they realized just how bad their company was. They don't have to be idealistic, or wronged in some way, though. They can be burned-out black ops people tossed to the curb to deal with the post traumatic stress on their own, or simply be on the wrong side of a hostile takeover.

Posted by: Ravor Jan 24 2008, 04:49 AM

JonathanC

I'd be more then happy to compare the darkness of my Sixth World against anyone elses, and yes, SINless or not if a corp manages to find someone that is both well-adjusted and boasts the massive dicepools that I've railed against in other threads then that person will be hired in a heartbeat provided that there isn't some deal breaker hidden somewhere in the package. My entire point is that people who have said massive dicepools are almost as rare as hen's teeth according to the tables and examples we are given in the books so it should be largely be a moot point.

Still you ask how someone could tell the difference between a corp baby and street scum in my games, well I guess the answer would be that a wageslave and a razorboy simply aren't going to have the same skillsets in the first place. Besides neither is very likely at all to suceed.


Bob SINless isn't going to suceed in part because he was never given the tools to even be able to suceed in the first place. The best that he can hope for is to eek out a meager existance in the barrens and hopefully find protection by joining a gang and if he's lucky he'll be able to afford some secondhand cyber to get just enough of an edge to live alittle while longer.


Susan SINner isn't much better off, as a wageslave she belongs heart, body, and soul to her parent corp, she had to pay for the mandatory datajack and other equipment/ training necessary for her job, and the terms of her loan are such that she can never pay them off on her salary. Hell, she is swimming in debt as the corp uses quasi-legal simsense to push neverending lines of worthless junk for her to max out her corp issued credit on. If she is lucky she'll be pretty enough that her boss will be able to shelter her from having to start selling organs to cover her debts, at least until he tires of using and abusing her or he finnally drowns in his sea of debts. And to top it all off, she couldn't even quit her job even if she wanted to, after all there is just no way that she could afford to buy out of her employment contract.

The simple fact is that in the Sixth World unless you have something that makes you stand a head and shoulders above the crowd then you are damned no matter whether you have a SIN or not, the massive world-class dicepools that allows you to regularly pull off the nearly impossible is one such way to get noticed, winning life's lottery by being born Awakened with is another and life for these rare people isn't nearly as bleak as it is for the masses.

As for brainwashing the new hire, you are assuming that he is given a choice in the matter as opposed to being gassed one night and hauled away for "job training and placement" if management thinks it is gonig to be necessary. Sure the tactics are probably more effective on children, but my entire point is that by their very nature world class talent is going to be rare enough that the corps can't afford not to snatch them up. Mages on the other hand are rare enough by their nature that even average ones are very valuable to the corp, and world class wizards are worth pulling out all of the stops for.

And you are right, I haven't addressed the issue of moral of the existing workforce, that is because I don't think the corps of 2070 really gives a frag what their employees think, sure they have to make a pretending to care and the HR Department will issue statements designed to sooth any ruffled feathers while increasing the levels of happy juice in the water cooler (Don't forget to send a memo to accounting to deduct the extra cost from everyone's paychecks.) and reassigning or perhaps even promoting any protental troublemakers to "another branch". (In reality they end up as test subjects in some research lab or another.) Remember that the wageslaves are powerless, they can't legally quit their jobs and I'd hate to think what woudl befall anyone stupid enough to try to organize a strike or even a work slowdown.

*Shrugs* As for your chinese clerk/lawyer friend, as I said, there are paths availbe to her to be able to practice law in America provided that she was talented and dedicated enough to do so, accents are hardly an unsurmountable roadblock.

As for the media, I disagree that the trash that we have today is even close to what the Sixth World society demands and cheers, remember the stuff that is reviled today is cheered by the masses in Shadowrun.

Kyoto Kid

I agree, it is easier to "get them while they are young", but my entire point has been that the corps don't always have that option when talking about the level of talent that I am.

Posted by: JonathanC Jan 24 2008, 04:58 AM

Since when is that stuff "reviled" today? The only people complaining about it are old people. Teenagers on the Internet love beheading videos.

And again, I'm not trying to tell you how to run your own game. But realistically, I think it's naive to think that pure talent always shines through. I'm guessing you've never actually worked in an office if you think that's how corporations work.

And you still haven't addressed the morale problems created by hiring a bunch of independently-minded, highly-intelligent street people to work over your homegrown, loyal "employees".

Posted by: Ravor Jan 24 2008, 05:44 AM

Posted by: JonathanC Jan 24 2008, 06:11 AM

Realistically, any organization's power is dependent upon the people they rule over agreeing to be ruled over, or having a reason to value their comfort over their dignity. If you shatter the illusion of job security that wageslaves have, you create desperation. Hiring the next hot shadowrunner and giving him a corner office is going to turn the rest of your office into insurgents faster than you can say Office Space. It's bad enough that you've got competition kidnapping and brainwashing your wageslaves. If they start *wanting* to leave, en masse...well, that's a problem. There's no such thing as an organization that can afford to ignore morale. It doesn't exist. Ever.

Even the nazis (please don't mention Godwin) had to keep the Germans complacent, not to mention complicit, in what they were doing. They made the trains run on time and stroked the egos of Germans with the Aryan myth. I doubt Stalin would have lasted as long as he did without an ocean of vodka to keep people complacent.

Complacency for megacorps comes from job security. You do what they say and never question it because as long as you do, you're in the family. Being outside of the family is dangerous and uncomfortable. You have to find your own housing, educate your own kids, and did you watch the news the other day? Those dreadful Trolls killed another one of those nice Humanis boys.

Once a corp smashes the illusion of obedience = security by hiring a "huge dice pool" (seriously, how does someone tell the difference between a dice pool 8 professional and a dice pool 16 professional? They're both never going to fail at common corporate tasks) SINless shadowrunner and giving them the swank promotion that every corp wageslave has been working for 10 years to get...well, I don't think any organization can realistically survive that kind of morale hit.

Corps are supposed to be exclusive. Shadowrun is about being on the outside of society. If all you need to slide into the mainstream is a level of skill possessed by pretty much every Shadowrunner, then the game loses its theme entirely. Again, if you want to play that way, more power to you. I'll be over here playing Shadowrun.

Posted by: Ravor Jan 24 2008, 06:40 AM

A couple of things off the top of my head;


You don't hire a ( Dicepool 16 ) Runner for a job that a ( Dicepool 8 ) wageslave could manage, you hire the ( Dicepool 16 ) Runner for a job that requires his massive dicepool.


There are many ways to ensure complacency, several of which you've touched upon and none of which are shattered beyond repair by hiring the few people in the world with the massive dicepools we are talking about.


I agree, corps are exclusive and the SINless are largely damned to forever remain outsiders looking in through rose-colored-imagelinks (After all, corpers are largely damned in their own ways that aren't really all that disimilair to the SINless.) if they don't have someway to buy themselves into the family, being Awakened is a hell of a start, being world-class in their choosen field is another.


Yes, Shadowrun does lose alot of its themes when DMs forget that Fourth Edition is built around the idea of smaller dicepools and weaves a world where huge dicepools are the norm for Runners. The fact that it is even possible to build such characters using the default char-gen rules is a bug, not a feature.

Posted by: JonathanC Jan 24 2008, 07:02 AM

I don't see smaller dicepools as the solution. There's nothing wrong with the size of these dicepools. It's just that you're making some odd assumptions about corporate culture that are based on your own (admittedly solid) logical approach to hiring, rather than the realities of HR.

Also, you're saying there are only a few people in the world with these massive dicepools, but given how easy it is to get pools that high in Shadowrun, they can't be all that rare. And I still don't understand why any corp would want the moral hassle, PLUS the cost of housing, paying salary, medical, etc. for these "geniuses" when they seem perfectly happy to pay those costs on their own and still do the jobs you need done when you do them.

Which sounds like a better deal? Hiring Munchkin McSupermage on as a full-timer, where he regularly makes your other mages feel like unappreciated crap just by existing, costs you a ton of money with his (reasonable) request for dental exams and a full checkup every 6 months, and lives in one of your most expensive penthouses that *you* foot the bill for.

OR

Offering Munchkin McSupermage a small retainer fee, that you probably pay mostly in telesma or other magical materials, for the right to call him when something catches fire and you really need a force 15 stunball to make it all right again. He pays for his own medical, rents his own apartment, and your regular employees don't even know he exists. He gets to live his life his own way, and your corporate culture remains unsullied by his love for Bon Jovi and Shoujo Anime.

Posted by: Cardul Jan 24 2008, 07:10 AM

Don't the Corps all have "Special Sections"? These are where I culd imagine them assigning the few former Shadowrunners they hire. These people are overseen by people perfectly willing to kill the former Shadowrunners to protect corporate secrets. The Dice Pool 16 Hacker is not going to be put doing the IT work the Dicepool 8 Wageslave is. No, he is going to be put to work souping up security. Or BEING security. The Dicepool 16 heavy weapns specialist is not going to be put to wrk as a Rentacop guard, but as part of a High Threat Response Team, like Ares Firewatch. The Dice Pool 16 spell casting Mage is not going to be put doing whatever the WageMAges do..no, that guy is going to be doing the BIG BOYS stuff. And they would not be part of the normal corp floor of people.

That said, I also doubt that the Corps would want to hire people who were former Shadowrunners first. In fact, I think those people would be the last resort. Generally speaking, to me, Shadowrunners exist because the Corps need them. The Corps do not need something that can be traced back to them, which, if they hired those runners and made them part f their Special Sections, they would be. Worse, the Corps do not want someone trying t Extract people in their Special Sections.

NOTE: I still remember a group of Runners I was with wh got WAY too high profile, and retired from running to become Freelance Security Consultants.

Posted by: toturi Jan 24 2008, 08:00 AM

Posted by: Fortune Jan 24 2008, 09:05 AM

Posted by: Pendaric Jan 24 2008, 04:16 PM

Sigh and another fluff thread is derailed.
Inspiration for a character is so vast in options that it is not readily quantifiable. I generaly use the concept creation method because of this.
I have made charcters from the classic, "we need a drek hot rigger!",
to " I want to play a melancholic shade of blue" as starting points.
As I said in my previous post it is often not the starting point but the final draft that starts play that counts.
After all the character creation is only the portion that get the persona to the point of evolving in play.

Posted by: apollo124 Jan 24 2008, 04:53 PM

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jan 24 2008, 05:05 PM

Posted by: Ravor Jan 25 2008, 02:15 AM

Posted by: Kalvan Jan 25 2008, 03:04 AM

My first group was basically playing their and my grandchildren (well, people they assumed would be grandchildren. Since then, several relationships {including one of mine} fell through, which meant that their {the characters'} parents won't exist to meet each other).

My first character (and the source of my handle) was a college educated elf mage from my hometown who went into business with a college buddy (and later teammate), a male Cat Shaman from Milwaukee with the handle of Meow Max, developing a software RAD tool for spell formulae. Despite the fact that we were privately held (and capitalized by bank loans,) we were the subject of a hostile takeover by Aztechnology through their unofficial California Free State subsidiary Pyramid Holdings LLC. In spite we erased all related code and a special piece of prototype hardware and disappeared into the shadows, with a grudge against Aztechnology.

Some Joker, the team's Decker, was a dwarf originally from Halferville. He and Noriko, an ork Physical Adept (and survivor of Yomi), met each other while doing separate solo sabotage runs against a Mitsuhama site on Treasure Island.

This was the core team. We would tend to run through Razorboys, Gunbunnies, and riggers like Spinal Tap ran through Drummers....

Posted by: Glyph Jan 25 2008, 03:40 AM

Posted by: Ravor Jan 25 2008, 04:34 AM

You're right, I do consider being able to build massive dicepool characters at char-gen to be a major bug, I try not to think about the sample characters considering that at least one of them actually breaks the rules by having an illegal mod installed into his cybereyes, and I don't consider Fourth Edition to be "the worst-designed game ever", sure it has it's share of warts, and there are times when I have to wonder what the devs were smoking (The Matrix comes to mind, and the devs apparently not considering the full effects of Fixed TNs is another.).

And of course, I disagree that high dicepools aren't broken even if you include all of the proper modifiers, but then again, I don't like playing in an over-the-top Anime game.


However, with all that said, remember that at worse in Fourth Edition ( Rating 6 ) is the same as ( Rating 9 ) was in Third Edition, and I'd argue that it sure feels like a character can pull off more hijinks in Fourth Edition then they could in Third Edition even using the x1.5 guideline.


Oh, as an aside, I do agree that I would have liked it better if the fluff for the skills included total natural dicepools as well, but considering that I can figure out the stat side of things fairly easily it doesn't bother me that much.

Posted by: Glyph Jan 25 2008, 05:32 AM

Many of the sample characters are done very sloppily. Things like characters with the Uncouth quality not getting dinged double charge for social skills, a character with an Ingram and no automatics skill, a character getting double points for the spirit bane flaw, and characters missing essential skills or gear for their stated functions.


The huge dice pools are kind of hardwired into the game - starting out with a lower powered game only delays the problem. If it really is a problem for you, the rules for grittier gameplay (such as limiting hits to double the skill rating, and making glitches easier for defaulting and long shot tests) would probably be a better fix than trying to limit dice pools.

What kind of specific problems have you actually had with high dice pools? I'm curious. I don't consider SR4 to be over-the-top anime. In anime like Noir or any of the Lupin III movies, normal and unaugmented humans seem to be able to do things that would be impossible for the most freakishly augmented or overpoweringly initiated shadowrunner.

Posted by: Ravor Jan 25 2008, 06:18 AM

Yeah, I use several of the "gritter" optional rules, but to answer your question perhaps the best way to explain the primary problem that I have with high dicepools is with a rant about combat.


For you see, I want the first thought that goes through the team's mind when they are taking fire to be "Oh frag!" as they take full defense and dive for the nearest cover, and I want the runners to actually consider aiming in order to get a bead on their target. I want both sides of a firefight to sweat and pray for every last positive modifier they can think of while at the same time trying to shut down each other's dicepool by using every dirty trick in the book.

I also want to be able to challenge the runners without breaking suspension of disbelief and throwing team after team of equally highly skilled foes at them, or using the typical RPG meme of seperating challenges between goons, mini-bosses, and bosses, everyone in the campaign world is a person and although I might not have fleshed out his/her history and dreams, he/she does have them and has access to every rule that the characters do.


Although the above example focused on combat, the same sentiments apply to every other aspect of the game as well, and high dicepools that allow the characters to skirt the edges of the impossible goes against what I see as the trend of trying to bring Shadowrun back to a more street level gamestyle.

In other words, I want the runners to suceed based off of their cunning and wits, not because they roll enough dice to be able to realibly shoot out the dots on a playing card or juggle lightsabers without fear.

The fact that with lower dicepools problems like becoming uber by having one of your spirits posses you and trollbows being turned into anti-tank weapons also go away is also something I like.

Posted by: toturi Jan 25 2008, 09:07 AM

I would believe cunning and wits would come under the purviews of the Mental Attributes. So do your PCs have high Mental attributes or are they only as cunning and witty as the players? Or does the PCs have a metagame attribute not reflected on the character sheets and are the NPCs only as smart or dumb as the GM?

Posted by: ElFenrir Jan 25 2008, 11:52 AM

Hmm. Not poking at anyone, just in general; ive noticed lately alot of these discussions end up as ''street'' vs. ''more professional'' and ''high dice pools are bad''.

I guess, since our table is more known for kinda pretzelish gaming, and the fact it IS just a game, we don't concern ourselves to the point of hairpulling about dice pools. Someone wants to play someone that kicks ass? Great. We've seen our share of kickass characters get smacked around just like everyone else. (I recall one game where i wouldn't call it uber-heroic or uber high powered, just kickass, professional characters...who occationaly ended up in instances that were downright scary and epic.)

I guess as a GM ive been more concerned about things like character background, to see what the players want to play, and i can usually fit any game plot around varied power levels.

I can recall one instance where, even with good dicepools, things worked against the characters. To make it short, the players met a pilot NPC who would be happy to fly them to London to meet their contact with all of their cool gear; but he didn't have a plane good enough to make a trans Atlantic flight, and it probably wouldn't have even had enough fuel to make the first refueling spot(it was one of those little puddlejumpers). So, he said, if you help find me a bigger plane, ill make the trip.

Well, even with good Negotation pools, Ettiquette pools, and Contact help...luck was not with them. They ended up having to fly commercial, and check their licenced handguns thru baggage. Their other toys? had to stay at home. They still rolled a fair amount of dice with their handguns, but they were pretty limited. And, well, nervous i could tell.

Again, just because characters are pro, doesn't mean they can't be challenged. I guess i think that at our table, putting more effort into the characters and story rules out worrying on wether Gun Guy rolls 16 dice or 12 dice.

Im not knocking anyone's style though; if anything, i guess for more laid back gamers like us, it's just hard to understand the seeming stress people go through when dealing with things like dice pools. We don't play superheroes or anything btw, either. Perhaps some gamers might not understand why we can be so 'laid back' about it. Again, it's a game. There's no right or wrong way to play it. I don't think people stressing about the PCs in their game having dice pools is wrong; it's how you play it. Myself, though, i'd rather worry about plots, characters, and wether or not my table is even having fun first and foremost.

Dunno. Sorry if i sounded cranky, but ive just seen so many discussions end up as '''dice pools are too high'' lately.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jan 25 2008, 04:04 PM

...once again excellent observation.

I spend far less time in character design worrying about dice pools than I do over what makes this character want to go out & risk getting her hoop shot at every other night. Why would any rational sane person (OK KK the PC excluded here) want to face such dangers rather than sit in a nice safe cubicle earning a steady paycheque? This was part of the reason behind the 100+ page novel I wrote about the Short One (another influence was a thread on this forum that asked the question "why would someone become a runner").

Posted by: Glyph Jan 26 2008, 08:54 AM

Bingo. That's about the most important question, right there. Why a character becomes a runner also gives you a running start into their long-term goals. Someone forced into running the shadows by circumstance will have a different outlook than someone who does it out of idealism, and a burned-out ex-corporate troubleshooter will usually be far more cynical than the street kid who only sees that he's getting a lot more respect now that he got those wires and that smartlink put in.


The skills matter a lot to me, though. They should fit not only the background, but the realities of the game. It doesn't do any good to say the character is a good shot, if the dice can't back it up. And it helps to look at the kind of game being run, too. The same dice pool can be too much for one game, or too little for another game. Some might call that metagaming, but it's metagaming to ensure that the background of the character matches the nuts and bolts. Worse metagaming, to me, is when people with Logic as a dump stat and no social skills try to play their character as a tactically savvy, take-charge guy.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jan 26 2008, 09:11 AM

...agreed skill choice is very important. A good GM you will usually give the players an indication from of the threat level of the campaign before it begins.

...oh and "Tactical Savvy" was almost hard enough for the Short One to pronounce let alone comprehend. Made for some interesting scenes. Now surviving the streets, that's an Intuition thing.

When someone once asked her what to do during a firefight she said, "you try to shoot at the bad guys first before they shoot you."

Posted by: Ravor Jan 27 2008, 08:44 AM

Posted by: Glyph Jan 27 2008, 09:09 AM

The GM and players both have disadvantages trying to roleplay characters more intelligent than they are. The player disadvantage is that, unlike the GM, they don't have the prep time before an encounter that the GM has, nor do they have the same control of the environment. The GM, on the other hand, is only one person, and therefore outnumbered by the players, brain-wise. Even the most intelligent GM can miss something that one of the players can exploit.

Mental situations are harder to adjudicate than simpler things like combat. Should a player's plan get vetoed if his character wouldn't be able to come up with it, or should the GM just penalize him on karma? Should an intelligent character about to do something stupid get a Logic roll to see if he notices the flaws in his plans? If the players discover an easily exploitable security hole in an ultra-intelligent villain's defenses, should the GM plug up that hole on the fly? Or otherwise make use of knowledge the villain wouldn't have, to simulate that villain's superior intellect?


Now, me, I can sympathize with wanting more roleplaying, rather than reducing tactics and social interactions to pure dice rolls, but I think the numbers on the character sheet should still jive with what the player is attempting. The ork with Logic: 1 trying to utilize Sun Tzu is probably the type of example toturi was objecting to.

Posted by: Cardul Jan 27 2008, 10:42 AM

Posted by: Riley37 Jan 27 2008, 12:43 PM

Dice pool arguments have infected many threads - now one more!
Rather than a slippery opinion, here's two of many possible examples of 15+ DP at chargen:

Mage with Trickster mentor spirit, Spellcasting (Illusions) 6, Magic 5, Power Focus 2. Spellcasting 13 for non-illusions, 17 for illusions. Can cast illusions at Force 5, can reliably get 5 hits. Mass Confusion at that Force is Drain 4, which she can fairly reliably soak. WIS 5 CHA 7 Elf shaman, for 12 DP to soak Drain; see previous post for an elven shamanic illusionist background story...

Replace Trickster and Illusions specialization for any equivalent combo, eg Bear mentor and Spellcasting (Health Spells), or Wise Warrior and Spellcasting (Combat Spells).

Street samurai with soft-max AGI 5, Muscle Toner 2 for AGI 5/7, Automatics (Submachineguns) 6, has DP 17 when firing SMG with smartlink, or can split DP 15 firing two-gun. Make her an elf with AGI 7/9 and you've got DP 19 with smartlinked SMG. If she's an adept instead, ditch the Muscle Toner and put 5 Magic into Improved Skill: Automatics for DP 27.

Both these examples can also afford, within 400 BP total, INT 5, Perception 4 (Visual), glasses with +3 Vision Enhancement, for visual perception of 14.

Neither of these examples have hard-maxed attributes, let alone Exceptional Attribute and Aptitude, with which another +3 becomes possible.

Posted by: Fortune Jan 27 2008, 03:25 PM

Posted by: Ravor Jan 27 2008, 03:59 PM

I don't disagree with what you just said Glyph, in fact the fact that I want the character's dicepools to "jive" with their actions is exactly the reason that I'm so strongly in favor for a lower dicepool world in general.


Cardul I would agrue that although everyone has an occasional brain-fart, the "dumb" people who come up with flashes of insight are for that moment using their average Intuition as opposed to their sub-standard Logic much as one of Kyoto Kid's character does.

However, someone who is using their Intuition isn't going to enact or explain their plan in the same way as someone who is relaying on a logical stance. Of course, exceptions can happen, but I like to think that my bullshit detector is tuned enough to tell the difference.


Riley37, although I haven't checked the math on the street sammy, your elven mage has paid 267 BPs according to my calculations for just the ability to throw those dice in her area of expertize, not what I consider the start of a wellrounded character by any stretch. And of course, this is ignoring the fact that the character in question is a virtual paragon of elfdom, with three stats softmaxed, with a Shaq-like level of magical skills before factoring in her affinity with illusions.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jan 27 2008, 08:40 PM

...@Cardul, I like your take. Sometimes the simplest minds can see the simplest solutions (as in the quote of the Short One on what to do in afire fight). Yeah it's basic, but is still a most sound strategy. "Shoot him before he can shoot you." It is kind of like how children can sometimes see right to the heart of a matter that adults occasionally miss because of all the preconceived notions we have developed.

@Ravor, thanks. Intuition indeed comes into play here as well and can make up for lack of logical reasoning. Yeah KK may not be able to mentally calculate the all the perfect angles from which to get the best possible advantage on her opponent but she still knows if her enemy is hiding around that corner of a building she is not going to blindly run up there to get shot in the face. In this respect Intuition is part common sense: "I go out in the open he shoots me. I stay behind this dumpster he has to step out to shoot at me." She's seen enough "old western" vids and anime (interest knowledge in both) to know you don't walk into an ambush. This is where part of her background and personality comes into play.

If someone starts rattling off complex tactics she looks at him with a puzzled expression and I have her roll a comprehension test (same as committing details to memory) with the GM setting the threshold. Makes for some interesting times [Remember the scene at Swamp Castle in [i]Holy Grail with the king giving orders to the guards who were to supposed to watch his son? Yeah, you get the idea.[/i]]

Consider also that Street Knowledge (e.g. "street smarts"), Survival, and Perception are all Intuition based skills and Initiative is a function of Reaction and Intuition (which is also used for surprise tests). Yes it is very plausible that someone like KK with a 1 Logic but high Intuition and Reaction can survive the shadows. Instead of pre-planning her moves she is more the type to stay aware of what's going down (reflected in her excellent perception DPs and Combat Sense) and adapt to the situation. Yes it does mean she sometimes acts on impulse but that can be as much an advantage as a disadvantage as it could catch her opponent off guard.

How many times have I seen (both as a player and GM) elabourate plans and tactics fall apart when something that wasn't anticipated occurs. This is when the character who can make that snap adjustment is valuable.

I'm not saying it is easy. On one run for example, I as the player knew the briefcase KK was given to plant in a car on a Puget Sound ferry was a bomb, but she didn't. It got even worse when there was a tanker truck parked behind the car. I knew she was about to kill everyone on board as she missed all the possible signs but still played though it. There was no way she would have been able to deduce the case contained high explosives with the information she was given. The funny thing was nobody else on the team (characters and players alike) suspected otherwise either. Given the situation (the run was during the Metroplex Election), it seemed perfectly reasonable to them that it contained what the Johnson said it did, incriminating evidence which would sabotage the opponent's campaign. It was a case where the smart were so "smart" and expected something that complex they were outsmarted by a simple plan.

Posted by: Glyph Jan 27 2008, 11:06 PM

@Cardul & Kyoto Kid:

I don't disagree with you - that's why I said those situations were so hard to adjudicate. My own approach would be that 1 is the lowest functional Attribute, and such characters are still capable of the occasional insight or bright idea. I would only have a problem with someone consistently using mental Attributes as dump stats, and still playing the character as a tactical genius and natural-born leader.


As far as dice pools, the thing that boosts them to high levels is all of the modifiers. Things like muscle toner, smartlinks, and reflex recorders. In my opinion, though, someone with biogenetically improved muscles, special added neural connections, and a combat computer attached to his gun should be capable of superhuman feats. So, to me, lower dice pools kind of weaken the whole transhumanist theme of the game.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jan 28 2008, 12:20 AM

...@Glyph...apologies

Didn't mean my response to be a rebuttal to your comments so much as to satisfy toturi's argument that there are a few of us who really do go out of our way not to metagame outside of our characters' concepts.

How often I find myself holding my breath when someone asks a question that I as a player know but my character wouldn't. It sometimes infuriates the other players when I shrug & don't give them the answer they want, but that is the character they are dealing with. If it is a rules interpretation that deems an response be made, that is different for then it is me talking P to P rather than P to C.

[sidebar]
As a GM I had to deal with a player who frequently made this mistake. Made for a fun little wild goose chase on one mission when I set up a situation that dealt with a case of potential mistaken identity and he made the wrong assumption based on his own personal knowledge & not the character's. Nothing that threatened the character or anything like that.
[/sidebar]

Posted by: Riley37 Jan 29 2008, 12:14 AM

Posted by: Ravor Jan 29 2008, 01:09 AM

Posted by: Glyph Jan 29 2008, 03:24 AM

To address Cardul's question about dice pools, generally you will see them in combat, spellcasting, or social skills, and they can get so high because they all have potential positive modifiers that stack together. Examples:

Combat: Agility: 5, muscle toner: 2, firearms skill: 6 with specialization, reflex recorder for that firearms skill, and smartlink. 18 dice.

Spellcasting: Magic: 5, spellcasting: 6 with specialization, +2 mentor spirit bonus, +2 power focus bonus. 17 dice.

Social: Charisma: 5, Magic: 6 reduced to 5 by bioware, adept quality, influence group: 4, intimidation: 4, tailored pheromes: 3, Kinesics: 5. 17 dice.

And none of those examples are maxed all the way, especially the social skills one. On the flip side, all of these specialties also face a lot of potential negative modifiers (visibility, racism, background count, etc.). Characters with such dice pools are far from invincible - things like security guards can use tactics, get lucky, or simply wear them down by attrition, and runners have plenty of peers in the shadows, from SWAT teams, to underworld heavy hitters, to corporate strike teams, along with more exotic foes like free spirits and vampires.

High dice pools are only a problem if you want the runners to sweat in every fight. So I consider the "problem" of high dice pools more a matter of different playing styles (with no "right" one) than an inherent imbalance in the system.

Posted by: Riley37 Jan 29 2008, 06:14 AM