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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Style vs. Function

Posted by: ElFenrir Apr 21 2008, 02:41 PM

I was inspired a bit by the rigger thread with style i saw.

I notice in alot of the critique threads, alot of us take a much more functional approach(me included), when we are going over characters. Now, it's perfectly understandable as I believe that alot of those threads exist to help folks out with some things they might not have a full grasp on; or how to possibly better optimize a character for a certain role. And IMO, that's totally fine; i think playing a useful character is, well, good. I mean, you might have a hell of an idea for a crazy character that oozes style of a certain kind(whatever your idea of style is, it's quite subjective), but they just might not be useful, or even detrimental, to a team for varied reasons. (Of course, sometimes these folks can make an appearance in one-shots. )

I'm curious to know where alot of folks here balance their 'style vs. function' with their characters. Do you figure out the role first, and then get the important stuff out of the way, and then with leftover points round them out? Do you go almost completely optimal with builds? Do you care how optimal they are at all?

Myself, I have been known to sorta end up cheesing myself out of some stuff in the end for 'style' purposes. Now, i know how to make a character effective at something(whatever i'm in the mood to play. Although I admit i'm a little shaky on hackers, still. We just havn't done alot of Matrix stuff in SR4.) But i admit, ive been known to overspend-just because it adds a style I want to a character.

I know that Strength 3(5) is an 'optimal' Strength score for a combat-oriented character-or hell, I could go 3(7) since we don't limit chargen availability. Especially with weapons or martial arts bonuses(or both), I mean, I can do plenty. But you know? Sometimes 4(6) or 4( fits better. Or even 4(7). I know I could, like, save money if i went 4(5) or 3(5) and lost a point of damage(which i could make up for easily), but if I see the character with above-average Strength naturally before he got his ware, then, well, I'll put it-even if it's not the optimal thing to do. And it's 10 BP i could be spending elsewhere, i know.

A recent character I was tooling around with(I kinda wanted a skilled more action-esque assassin/modern ninja character, i was a little influenced by guys like Strider Hiryu for example,-blades, martial arts, only i also added firearms and thrown to the mix to plant smoke or other grenades around an area.) Lots of infiltration skills too; camo skill as well(disguise/camo.). Perfect to go hand in hand with a face/covert ops type(to handle the electronics stuff, my guy would handle the heavier lifting.) Well, I had this idea that i wanted to see the guy with two-weapon fighting, ambidexterity, a variety of blades in all four limbs and a sword; with a gun on the side, silenced, if he needed it; I had the picture of him clinging to a ceiling and stuff, all camoed up to it with ruthenium polymers before decending and slicing the hell out of them with retractable blades in his hands and feet; with a pair of swords or curved knives as well that he could use just to switch things up.

Now, i'm perfectly aware that the character does not need so many attack options; unarmed(for nonlethal combat if he wanted, or he could go lethal as well), and perhaps just blades-i didn't need to take Exotic Weapons(leg blades), and i could have saved a crapload of points...but then my 'style' factor that i had for the guy in my head would have gone down. I could had ditched the thrown weapons since he has a good Pistols skill, and a high enough Agility to default, but I wanted them because i could see him tossing out a few knives or stars; or sneaking around planting and rolling stuff to cause the distraction before he begins doing a four-limbed ginsu dance appearing from a wall from out of nowhere. I could have given him the 3(5) Strength, but i wanted 4(7); i wanted him stronger, just because it seemed right.

Anyway, he's coming out really cool IMO; and he's far from useless-his infiltration, athletics and shadowing skills and weapon variety will make him useful to any team; as said teamed up with a more traditional cover ops he's be hell on wheels. Is he fully optimized though? Not at all, I could have saved almost 30 BPs on some of his skills, but i didn't.

Kind of like the person who takes all three melee skills and specializes just because they see their character able to whip out everything from fists to blades to clubs; even though they can get away with just ONE of those skills. It's style. Same for the fellow that wants to be the great shooter...sure he can take Firearms Group 4 but they choose to buy them all at 4 with a specialization-the two extra dice in three types of guns end up costing them alot; but they do it anyway, because they see their guy as being better with Revolvers, Rifles, and Machine Pistols than the other ones. Or the person that takes the 'less optimal' weapons and vehicles for personal style, even though they might even cost more than their 'more effective' counterparts.

I guess the way I do it is I make sure the character can serve a sort of function in the party and won't be dead weight-but i'm almost not afraid to make a few sacrifices for style.

How do you guys do this?

Posted by: CanRay Apr 21 2008, 02:51 PM

Style is essential. If you're not doing something without style and panache, well then, you're just a thug doin' a job.

If you wanted that, you should have joined one of the Mobs as a Mook, or better yet, joined an office pool.

Anyhow, in as diverse and chaotic as the seedy-side of Seattle is, being a guy in a subdued suit and trenchcoat is going to make you stand out MORE than someone with Techhair and Spraypainted Flats!

Posted by: Shiloh Apr 21 2008, 04:11 PM

I think there's plenty of room in the generation mechanisms to stat for style. Sometimes people get too hung up on optimising dice pools for a specific job. Then again, there's a certain style to being "the perfect pistoleer", it's just been done to death.

Posted by: paws2sky Apr 21 2008, 04:15 PM

I have a couple different ways I go about making a character.

Sometimes I get inspired by a picture, movie, name, or even just a vague concept. These characters tend to get a lot of work put into them. They're very style first, effectiveness second (like, the Troll Face I've wanted to play since I picked up SR4). Of course, I try to make sure they actually good at a couple of things.

Recently, I've been reinventing old SR1 and SR2 characters for SR4. These characters tend to have a bit of history already and they don't lack for style. Its been slow going though because I'm getting very nitpicky about exactly how their abilities should work out.

Sometimes I decide I want to play a certain role/archetype, like a Gunslinger Adept or Burned-Out Mage or something. Usually, this happens when someone is running a one-shot or I happen to be in the right place at the right time. If there's a pre-made character for the role, I just grab it and go, filling in the details as the session progresses. Otherwise, I slap something together really quickly, focusing on effectiveness first. Since these tend to be short-term characters, I don't worry too much about style. I might just recycle an old character concept or rip-off a character from a movie or book.

On a similar note, my buddy and I got to roll up Warhammer 40K characters. It was kind of entertaining since the GM wanted us to roll everything randomly (I even opted to roll up a random name, just because). The only thing we got to choose was some starting gear and 400 XP in career advances.

In case anyone is curious what I ended up with...

[ Spoiler ]

I ended up with an Adept from an Imperial Paradise World. Amazing stats, all around, except for his strength, which is below average. Blond hair, blue eyes, tanned, relatively fit. His quirk is a poxmarked face, the result of coming down with a wasting disease when he was in his teens (also why his strength is below average). He has a point of insanity and a point of corruption, both of which I tied into his backstory (see below), which developed as I was rolling him up.

Backstory: His craggy face made him a social outcast on his homeworld (where everyone was beautiful, just because) and led him to hide away in libraries among the stacks of ancient book. Eventually he gravitated to the Administratum and became an Adept. He spent about ten years toiling away, copying ancient hardcopy texts to an electronic format. And all in all, he was quite happy to be a cog in the machine, he was, after all, doing good works for the Emperor.

While translating some ancient texts, he discovered evidence of a pleasure cult in the planet's past. He was shocked to discover a familiar in the texts. This symbol was present on many of the entertainment venues in the city, including a brothel, and was also used by a very elite social club. Curiousity piqued, he secretly launched an investigation. He acquired some video and pix as evidence, then called the authorities. (This is where he picked up his Corruption Point.)

Luckily for my character, the Inquisitior and soem Adeptus Arbites beat the Adeptus Sororitas to the scene. After being interviewed, he was immediately pressed into service by the Inquistor, who'd recently lost one of his scribe-servitors.

My poor, naive Adept bore witness to every single "interview" (read: torture session) the Inquisitor conducted. And then before he got to leave the planet, he got to watch from afar as the Battle Sisters came down and burned the shit out of just about everything in the capital city. (This is probably where he picked up his Insanity Point.)

So, basically, he's a whistle-blower who managed to get lucky and not get killed for his efforts. Of course, he's also painfully aware that his actions caused the deaths of hundred, maybe thousands, of people... some of them probably quite innocent. He probably feels a fair amoung of guilt, but its combined with a bit of bitter satisfaction that the people who made his life a living hell probably all perished. If I had any money left over after buying his damn pictrecorder (video camera) I would have bought a case of booze (to help him forget).

I still don't know what he's like, personality-wise, but he has a decent backstory, at least.

Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 21 2008, 05:31 PM

style is good and fine . . so you can go down in style and die good . .
but it won't really keep you alive, if you aren't playing a Face in a social situation to which your Style applies *g*
number should be good, but adding style TO numbers is where the crunch is at ^^

Posted by: ElFenrir Apr 21 2008, 05:58 PM

QUOTE

Style is essential. If you're not doing something without style and panache, well then, you're just a thug doin' a job.

I hear this. I mean, there is something to doing something with style.

QUOTE

I think there's plenty of room in the generation mechanisms to stat for style. Sometimes people get too hung up on optimising dice pools for a specific job.

There is indeed. With 400 BPs there is plenty of room to allow for some stuff that adds to the style of a character without sacrificing how good they are. Taking 8 BPs dropping your Pistols from 6(+2) to 5(+2), your Blades from 5(+2) to 4(+2), only sacrifices one die and you can nail an Unarmed Combat skill(with a specialization too maybe) to add some variety and color to your character's attacks-even though he wouldn't need the skill, necessarily.

QUOTE

Sometimes I get inspired by a picture, movie, name, or even just a vague concept. These characters tend to get a lot of work put into them. They're very style first, effectiveness second (like, the Troll Face I've wanted to play since I picked up SR4). Of course, I try to make sure they actually good at a couple of things.

Im alot like this too; if i'm inspired by something(like the one i was tooling around with), then yeah, alot of work is going in. Of course I want to make them original too; the inspiration might be little things like a bit of fighting style, concept, maybe some physical quirks. But in the end i give em my own spin, of course. (Though for a one-shot, who knows. Could be original, could be a rebuilt X from Y.

)

Though I sort of try to spin their usefulness and style together; kind of like Stahl mentions. I want 'em to be both stylish and useful to the party and good at what they do, but if that means losing a skill or two over gaining another skill that I really want because it would look cool on the character, (like i did above), it's all well and good.

I think like anything there's a balance. Too far to style and randomly plugging numbers might end up a bit ineffective in game, but building something completely for usefulness's sake can get boring.

Posted by: Larme Apr 21 2008, 06:17 PM

IMO style is just as important as the playability of the sheet. The character has to be fun to roleplay, and that means they need style. But it also has to be fun to rollplay, when I throw my dice pools at my specialty, I need to kick ass to have fun. People often go one way or the other. Like they make a guy whose background is that he's an ex-mil sniper who has maxed his agility. Or they make a guy with a very rich history who's a private investigator and has tiny, flaccid dice pools in a very wide variety of areas, and not a single piece of ware or magic enhancement. I think that for a character to really have long term playability, they have to both be fun to roleplay and effective system wise. As long as your style choices aren't making the character weak and worthless, then do them, because there is no detriment. Especially when you're talking about optimizing to the die -- if you have 1 more die than you need, or 1 less than is optimum, it doesn't matter. Single dice in SR4 are pretty irrelevant.

Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 21 2008, 06:32 PM

QUOTE

Style is essential. If you're not doing something without style and panache, well then, you're just a thug doin' a job.

you say that as if that were something bad . . being a thug can be a style too *g*

Posted by: CanRay Apr 21 2008, 07:21 PM

QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Apr 21 2008, 01:32 PM)

you say that as if that were something bad . . being a thug can be a style too *g*

Bah, the thug style is so 2040s, you know!

Wait, it's coming back in fashion! Thug is good!!!

Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 21 2008, 07:27 PM

everything comes back some time . . elvis will too if we wait for him long enough!

Posted by: CanRay Apr 21 2008, 07:29 PM

Well, with Vegas being under NAN control...

Still... Yeah, I can see that.

Posted by: Synner667 Apr 21 2008, 07:31 PM

Doing things with style s the Cyberpunk way !!

QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Apr 21 2008, 08:27 PM)

everything comes back some time . . elvis will too if we wait for him long enough!

Elv's Ar-On Presley = the clue is in the name

Posted by: Stahlseele Apr 21 2008, 07:40 PM

and if i sit by the river for long enough, the dead body of an immoral elf will drift by *g*
Style is . . hard to do in Shadowrun where dice-rolls decide if you live or die sadly . . not enough dice? dead!
dead in style, but still dead . .

Posted by: CanRay Apr 21 2008, 07:53 PM

QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Apr 21 2008, 02:40 PM)

and if i sit by the river for long enough, the dead body of an immoral elf will drift by *g*

Yes, but, did http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masamune#Legends_of_Masamune_and_Muramasa?

Posted by: Synner667 Apr 21 2008, 07:56 PM

QUOTE (Stahlseele @ Apr 21 2008, 08:40 PM)

Style is . . hard to do in Shadowrun where dice-rolls decide if you live or die sadly . . not enough dice? dead!
dead in style, but still dead . .

Actually, that's pretty much how Amber Diceless RPG came about..
..The creator had a 9 hp Thief in AD&D, at something like 9th level, and knew he had little chance of surviving anything.

So, he never rolled dice for his actions..
..He always described his actions in detail, so the GM couldn't just kill him with an unlucky diceroll.

If there's no room for style, then SR has serious flaws..
..CP2020 is much more dangerous than SR [the "hamburger effect" from automatic fire, especially so], and hasn't forsaken style.