So, point of this thread is fairly simple. Two character sheets. One is you yourself. No BP to worry about, and I wouldn't be too concerned with any kind of starting resources. I'm just curious how people seem themselves. I would like to point out that no one here is remotely likely to have a 5 or 6 in any skill, and even 4 is going to be generally unlikely (Well, actually I could imagine some language skills at those levels, but aside from that..)

Anyway, I'm sure we'd find that most of us wouldn't last long in the world of shadowrun as we are, so then comes the fun part. Make yourself as a 400 BP runner. This isn't an ideal runner, or a particular archetype. Imagine what you would have if you had grown up in the world of SR as opposed to our boring world. Feel free to make yourself a mage if you think that would suit you. I'm guessing we'd have alot of hackers out here in cyberspace, but will be interesting to see both characters. I'll post my own later today when I have access to my books. Oh, all normal creation rules apply, feel free to use whatever books. No, you can't be an AI/free spirit/sentient critter. You can be a metarace if you really think it would suit you. One place the rules don't apply is the qualities limits. You can have as many good/bad ones as you want so long as they suit you.

So, have fun imagining not just a cool character, but yourself if you had grown up to be that sort of person. (Munchkins will be eaten)

Reserved for SR Mickle

Years ago my teenage daughter wanted to play herself in the future. I wish I hadn't been afraid that her future self dying might have traumatized her, and said no. She's one of the most resilient people I know. And she doesn't play anymore.

Several characters I have created have elements of me in them, particularly Arjuna, the physical adept archaeologist. Wonder how much of him might be in SR Peter?

This sounds like fun. Count me:

Reserved for SR Peter

Why not, it'd be fun to stat out.

Nope, it's not fun anymore. Let's see if that changes in the next few days of posting.

To be completely honest, I think 400 BP would be too much for me.

I'll see if I can create a character of myself

Reserved for Chrysalis

I think this statement is a huge (and quite erroneous) assumption on your part, as you know next to nothing about most of us in real life.

I'd have to agree... I get the impression that a goodly number of the people on this board are college educated professionals with at least a couple of years in their respective fields. That'll rate them 4's in most cases. I'd also say that the bulk of us have 4+ in Knowledge Skill (RPGs), if only by specialization ;p

I too chaff under the implication that my status as an internet person means I don't know shit about jack because everyone lies on the intertubes. That might be true but who gives a fuck? Some guy wants to claim that they have an 8 in the firearms skill group fine, it doesn't really hurt me. I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a fun little activity not an interview for a job on "Intertubes Biggest Hardasses".

Gotta say I agree with Fortune and the Doc. Implying that we can't possibly be above a 4 in something smacks of arrogance. Regardless, I think it'd be good to have a blanket agreement by all posters in here not to judge/critique other people on their rating of themselves. Keep it nice and friendly like yeah?

Absolutely, gaming is FUN gorramit! FUN! THIS WILL BE FUN YOU WILL ENJOY YOURSELVES OR ELSE!

And see, that is exactly why I pointed out that few people would have a 5 or 6 skill. People with a 6 in a skill are world classed. We're talking Olympians and people in Mensa think tanks for a 6 skill.



I'm not saying there aren't plenty of people who are really good at what they do, but I doubt we have anyone here with a patent in their name, who has competed in the olympics, is the president, or is the shining star of an elite special forces group.



I similarly doubt we have any pro athletes, special forces people, published scientists, or stunt drivers out there. Now, I mean maybe we do, but I don't think it is arrogance to think that we likely don't, and I don't think it is arrogance to remind people that while 4 is very common for a standard SR character, and they all seem to have at least one skill at 6, us regular people don't tend to have that much training in anything. Even if something is your job your only likely to have a 3-4 in it. But you are quite right, knowledge skills are likely to be an exception here (And I ment to include them with language) I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if we had at least one person with a master's or doctorate on the boards here.

As I said, just wanted to remind people what skills of that level -actually- mean.

Like I said, I'd love to see you as you are today sitting at your computer, as well as you as you think you might/could be if you where in the SR world (And had to be a runner for some reason). The second part is largely an exercise in what you love most about SR. Someone who loves magic would likely make themselves a mage, while someone who loves the drones figures they would have learned about them, and so on.

Well I'll admit I might have jumped your shit unnecessarily but there's been a couple times now where the whole "I totally know you don't know anything about X" has cropped up and it's getting annoying. Reminding people to refer to the example chart is perfectly reasonable, I just misinterpreted what you said.

I think Master's degrees aren't that uncommon here, so 5s in Academic Knowledge would appear quite frequently, given that most users here seem to be around 30 and older and have an academic background.

And you'd be wrong. I personally know people on here that fall into the '6' category as described.



Again, you'd be wrong.

You know pretty much fuck all about the rest of us. I do think it is arrogance to automatically assume mediocrity among people you don't know.

I don't assume mediocrity. Mostly I wanted to point out to people just what a five and six mean, because many people have a tendency to go 'well, I'm fairly good at something, give myself a 5'. I am basing this on past experince.

But your right, I suppose I am making an assumption that we don't have any NFL quarterbacks or anything, but it is ridiculous to claim I am assuming 'mediocrity' by taking a guess that it is unlikely that we have anyone of roughly national fame, and international skill (Which would describe a person with a skill of 6) on the boards here. Dumpshock has how many members? A few thousand? Of the how many billion in the world? I don't think it is wild to believe that a subsection of roughly .0000002% of the world's population is likely to include anyone that falls in the category of a six skill. So given that we're looking at a percentage of .0000002 and talking about people that maybe fall in roughly the .0002% range of people that are alive, I'm looking more at probability then assuming everyone here is 'mediocre'

If we have President Bush or Miyamoto or Bill Gates or someone similar here, great, but it just seems slightly on the unlikely side. Anyway, sorry your feelings are hurt because I think it unlikely that we have anyone like that sitting around posting on the dumpshock forums. Anyway, this conversation is entierly beside the point of my post, so I'd appreciate you leave it at this so people don't have to trawl through this argument to get to what the thread is about.

Jake already -IS- me in SR. As for me as I am, since adiposis is a changeling trait, instead of just "I'm a 360+lb fat guy", several factors are difficult to quantify on a sheet... which brings up a good point...what if you were born a troll? Or became a technomancer or physical adept? That alone could entirely change your life into unrecognizable strangeness.

You brought that into this. I would in no way say that bush has a rating 6 social skill of any kind. Now, I'm sure people will agree or disagree with me, point is, just because you are a president, ceo, pro athlete, or otherwise, does not mean you have the skill that those areas typically represent.

Likewise, just because you are not one of the above does not mean you don't have the skill necessary.

Yeah, considered taking Bush off the list after I thought about it for a few seconds, but I figured heck, with as many people as disapprove of him, he hasn't managed to get himself impeached, and he did manage to get reelected in 04.

Still, my whole point of mentioning the 5-6 thing was to remind people that despite every single SR character having them, they aren't real common.

Edit: Good point about the troll/Awakened thing. This is why I said take a meta-race/Awakened if you want, or not if you don't. I know you don't really get that kind of a choose, but I figure if you didn't want to be a mage, and you awakened, you simply wouldn't do much with it... as for the troll thing... well that's a little more complex. Maybe pick yourself as a troll and try to think how that would have affected your life as you would take it.

The main difference between the second character for this and any other is your not going 'What Would Joe Do' your going 'What Would I Do'

So, without getting labeled, how is a guy supposed to rate himself, when:

- he is a hair's breadth away from a doctorate (if he would spend as much time writing the damn dissertation as he does on this forum he'd be done),

- he has years of training in two different martial arts,

- he was a weapons range instructor in the military,

- he talked his way out of a midnight meeting with bored Peruvian teenage police with AK-47s who thought he was a Shining Path terrorist,

- and he holds his own very well thank you very much with his wife who HAS a doctorate and IS a Mensa member?

Conservatively and tending towards the middle, I presume.

Peter

Is it? This is your claim ...



You are not only discounting the possibility that anyone of us has a '6' but also dismiss any chance of one of us having a '5', and even cast doubts as to any person here actually having a '4' in anything but language skills. To me, that is definitely assuming mediocrity.

Well I'm not into the whole argument that seems to be popping up so I'll just try me. I may need some assistance with it though since I'm lazy and have no books handy so I used the character sheet here: http://www.imasy.or.jp/~miyamoto/rpg/javas...nHelperV10.html

Bren

Race: Human

Agility 2 (I'm a big guy and not nearly as flexible as I'd like to be)
Close Combat 2: (Martial arts for a few years)
Unarmed Combat 3 (Barfights for a few years as a grown up)
Firearms 3: (Range practice 2-3 times a week since I was 6 years old)
Longarms 4
Pistols 4
Archery 4 (Archery practice 3+ times a week since I was 6 years old)
Exotic Melee Weapon: Katana 3 (see above re: martial arts)
Locksmith: 2 (I used to practice opening locks for fun all the time, then started breaking into places around my school and stuff just to see if I could)
Throwing Weapons: 2 (I practiced for years with my shuriken, and I've won local knife and tomahawk throwing competitions at our fish and game club)

Body 4-5 (I'm tough as nails and solid as a rock)
Diving 2 (Every summer)
Reaction 4 (I kick major ass on all those reflex speed tests and occasionally do time distortion/lentation self hypnosis and meditation, it's trippy.)
Dodge 3 (martial arts training)
Strength 3 (i'm in good shape, not as strong as I used to be but still okay)
Athletics 3
Climbing 2 (rock climbing every summer)
Running 2 (once or twice a week)
Swimming 2 (once or twice a week)
Charisma 4 (Well I've slept with a lot of women...)
Influence 3
Leadership 3 (I ran a restaurant for a few years)
Negotiation 3
Instruction 3 (And was mostly in charge of training)
Intimidation 2 (I prevented a few barfights by talking scary, my fiance laughs at me and says I talk like I'm in a western.)
Intuition 4
Outdoors 5 (My dad's a gun/wilderness nut, it's how I was raised)
Navigation 5
Survival 5
Tracking 2
Stealth 1
Palming 3 (I'm something of an amateur magician)
English Language 4-5 (I'm fluent in english but I'm not a Ph D)
Japanese Language 2 (Took some japanese college classes and watched tons of anime)
French Language 2 (was in french immersion for awhile)
Logic 3-4 (Top of my classes despite never doing any homework, or attending often)
Biotech 2-3 (Bio in college)
First Aid 5 (I have all my first aid tickets and passed to become a paramedic)
Medicine 3
Electronics 3 (I occasionally tinker and build gadgets and little robots, built my first one when I was eight from scratch)
Computer 3 (I don't spend as much time on here as I used to)
Hardware 3 (Built my own network out of computers I put together myself)
Software 2 (Done some programming)
Mechanic 2 (Dad's a mechanic and made me learn)
Automotive 3
Demolitions 2 (I was a rebellious teen with an education in chemistry and access to the net)
Willpower 5 (Crawled a block to the hospital after being nearly beaten to death by a gang of 8 at 1 in the morning)
Edge 2

Qualities:
Ambidextrous (This I've been practicing since I was about 5 when I found out what ambidexterity was and that my dad's ambidextrous)
Animal Empathy (We raised dogs growing up and cats love me)
First Impression
Guts
High Pain Tolerance level 2 (I think between my willpower and maybe the meditations I do, it makes me pretty tough)
Natural Immunity level 1 (Chicken pox, hepatitis b, tetanus)
Quick Healer (A day or two rest will pretty much fix me up from anything)
Resistant to Pathogens (I haven't been sick since I was 8 years old)
Resistant to toxins (It takes me forever to get drunk)
Toughness (Despite all the crap I've been through over the years, the falls, the fights and so on, I've never broken a single bone.)
Will to live level 3 (See above re: crawling to hospital)
Gremlins level 1 (Sometimes tech just doesn't work or completely fucks me over, which sucks when you're a tinkerer, also streetlights often go out when I walk past)
Incompetent Level 1 (Impaired sense of direction in urban areas, especially at night)

Contacts:
Massage Therapist (My fiance)
Mechanic (My Dad)
Electrician (My Mom)
Aeronautic Engineer (My Uncle)
Accountant (My sister)
Artist (Other sister)

All loyalty 6 rating 6

Gear
3000 Money per month or so
Home computer network
Ford F-150 Pickup Truck
Gravel Truck/Plow
Mongoose Bicycle
Katana
3 Short Swords
Rifle
2 Pistols

Thoughts on this? I think I may be a little over powered, but all of it sounds about right to me and I can justify it.

The only thing I'd call foul on is having your massage therapist fiancee as a Connection 6 contact. Same goes for the rest of them. Drop their connection ratings substantially, and I'd find it much easier to swallow.

Well, given my previous numbers of the dumpshock community representing roughly .0000002% of the worlds population, I still stand by what I said about probability. I hardly consider a 'professional' skill rating to be mediocre, of course given that I'm only 21, I could well be misjudging that sort of thing. Sure, alot of people are professionals, but that doesn't mean they have that level of skill.

So yeah, perhaps I said what I said too harshly, but I don't think betting on general odds of someone who has a skill level 6 being in any particular group would be unlikely. Heck, if you gave me a group of 1,000,000 people I'd still say it is unlikely that any more then about a dozen of them would have a skill of 6. So, scale that down to.. what is the active dumpshock population? 1k? How many people will respond to this thread? 20ish?

Given that I think the biggest problem is that we view a skill rating of 6 differently. I envision it as something that maybe .1% of people have. So, given the world population of 6.7 billion, that's 6.7 million. Actually a decent number, but that is still 1 in every thousand at best, and if dumpshock community is 1,000 then I would guess based purely on statistics that maybe 1 person has a 6 skill. So yeah, maybe I'm wrong, maybe dumpshock has an unusually high concentration of amazingly skilled people, but I still stand by my claim that it is unlikely that any given person replying to this thread, based purely on probability, is unlikely to have a 6 skill.

So yeah, I'm not assuming anything about the people here, I was simply pointing out a statistical likelyhood. Sorry your ego is apparently crushed by me not assuming that you and everyone here has a myriad of rank 6 skills.




Lets see. If your about to get the doctorate, I'd say give yourself the appropriate skill for already having it. As I said, knowledge skills are going to be much more likely to have high ranks in them then skills like firearms thanks to high education and and low people shooting each other on the streets (Please don't argue with this point, I know there are exceptions).

For the martial arts, I'd think that would be a 4-5. I've personally done what sounds like a similar level of martial arts and would likely give myself a 3-4, but I've also got combat paralysis, so harder to judge thanks to that.

For the firearms that sounds like a 4

Well damn, sounds like a fun night with the police, really unsure how to judge something like that. However, unless it is the sort of thing you do often, I think it might have been a 'lucky roll' or 'use of edge' as it where, though I'm sure it wasn't an unskilled test reguardless.

Smart wife, sounds like a high logic thing (on your part), combined with the difference between actually holding your doctorate and being very close to it being rather small.

Can I ask why? They're my immediate family mostly and we're really tight. Norman Rockwell childhood and all that.