Actually, the "powerful players" implies that they (no matter the selected level) are noticably above the opposition's level. Thus "poor" players would then compete against "weak" opposition. Cinematic characters would 'run against powerful opponents. Does that make sense?

What kind of characters I like?

I chose average. As in standard 400 point creation, no items with availability above 12 at start, and as a GM I stress the need for charcaters to have varied skills and less specialization. this means an average character from my games can usually fit, adequately, into 2 or 3 roles (e.g. The Rigger can hack, has negotiations and is a good shot as well). Then again being a good shot is around the 3-4 range in a skill, a 5 is someone scary and a 6 is pretty much unheard of.

Attributes follow a similar lining, with one exception. For me regular John Doe and Jane Doe have an average attribute score of 2. So charisma 2 is just normal, 3 aobve average-trained, 4 is that huge guy at the gym who goes there every day and works out 4 hours straight, a 5 stands out immediately (charisma equivalent of great hollywood stars and such) and a 6 is pretty much Albert Einstein. Now when that charisma 7 elf enters a bar he turns faces, and sure he can talk his way into Damien Knight's office, but every girl who has seen him remembers him and the guys feel either doubts about their sexuality, the same infuatuation as the girls, intense envy or crippling fear.

What kind of game?

Gritty to dangerous deffinitely. Not because the bad guys have every stat at characters +2, but because they are nasty, witty, intelligent and are, allow me this redundancy, "dangerous". If you fuck with them they will retaliate, if you leave any holes in your aliby to the Star they /will/ get you, some will take revenge after brooding over it for a long time, they will execute your children, burn your house, rig your car with bombs, use ritual sorcery, have that forensics team study your DNA at the scene of a crime for years and all that stuff. Players usually are more afraid of not doing things silently for all of teh above, even if they can kill every HRT a corp cans end their way. Oh! And remember the golden rule of reinforcements: one assault rifle on the street means, at least, twenty cars of patrolmen, one or two SWAT teams, drone support, elemental support and one or two yellowjacket support choppers. Why? Because law enforcement /is/ militarized and they respond harshly to criminals. On the Barrens you may get away with the rifle, but gangersd will want that for their arsenal so you're not much better off. Social skills are a deffinite requisite to survive, even for the charisma 2 sammy. Don't ask what do grenade launchers get for a response, or a fireballing mage. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

However the NPC's deffinitely play by the rules. Usually, if the enemy is also a shadowrunner, I follow the general accepted codes of conduct (try to keep a low profile, don't draw attention, keep it hush-hush, etc), if its a corp, PR are very important so the hit team will have to perform with the same care that the characters must, cops are afraid to shoot pedestrians and would rather get an arrest than a dead guy (looks better for the media, as there's a face to blame for all the dirty crime in the city).

On the other hand NPC guards do wet their pants when someone puts a gun at their temple, gangers run when a mage casts a spell and even Special Forces dudes with Unarmed Combat (Kicking characters ass): 6 will, on a principle, avoid violence. This is because in every fight there's risk, and they want to avoid it if possible.

How much magic?

I like it low-end for NPC's and as much as players want. My group has one elf raven shaman, one TirNaNog elf follower of the Path of the Wheel, used to have a mystic adept, a Troll Combat mage, a technomancer and a rigger. They don't need a sammy, deffinitely, as those are getting quickly redundant and overly expensive to maintain -at least in my opinion and my group so far agrees-. When violence is needed drones fill the part of the razorguy-gillette, have better sensors, often better sense and almost always better social skills -drones know when to shut up (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) -. However That is adeffinite rarity and the team has recieved more than their share of contracts exactly for this reason: no other group ion the city has such a high amount of awakened people working together. At most the other teams have one aspected magician, and they usually know but a crappy spell or two. All in all the group is about 30% to 40% of the awakened running population in Denver.

As for corps and those who can pay, they go for cheaper solutions: long turns for teh awakened, large expenses on bound elementals and spirits, wards and foci used as security measures. Adepts are more valuable repairing wards than being cannon fodder for runners and the corps like it that way. It also means there's a heavy use of manatech on regular guards and paracritters a high priority for "delicate" areas. The corps also cultivate background counts on their grounds. I'd rather exploit the passive uses for magic like ritual sorcery and enchanting for these cases, and show just what the players are missing for saying they just want spellcasting.

The cops tend to use astral mages to scout and direct spirit action, specially Spirits of Man, as they can cast spells, and can take over the role of acting magician inside a SWAT team, helping a mate in need and similar.

Cinematic implies a theme as well as a power level, it's best to separate them.

Please note that these statistics and descriptions reflect Shadowrun Second Edtion.

I chose that I perfer to play 'Powerful' characters. We use the Second Edition Pirioity character creation system, so the characters do not usually end up being absurd. However, as noted in your description of this question, we have no limits on availibility. Our characters are made so as to have been on a shadowrun (or many) before. If you want APDS ammo, you could have gotten it by now. Fopr the post part, there is a gentleman's agreemant (gentlefolk? gentleperson? whatever...) that characters will not be stupid. We don't take edges and flaws, we do play characters with personality traits though (flaws with no points). If a PC is a street thug on his first run, he doesn't start with resources in the A priority (1,000,000) [Aside: the exception to this is sometimes street mages, but that is a flaw with the priority creation system in that resources and force points are given in the same entry, so if your street mage knows many spells, which is entirely possible, she has to start with alot of money.... But that is another issue entirely.] Also, my group plays using (in our opinion. No I don't want to "discuss" it again (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) ) higher karma reward for runs, such that characters may actually improve over time as well as a more realistic amount paid to the runners than suggested by shadowrun (any edition) cannon. (If you can make more money with less danger being a wagemage, you would. A street mage could walk into any corp, ask for a job and a SIN and almost definately be granted both.) All of that being said, for our newest campaign, I'm playing a shaman with meager attributes, good skills actually, and 3 spells (with 5K to spend at creation). However, she will most likely initiate at least a few times (see below for statistics), and probably will end up being one of the more powerful 'mages' around once she gets going. I've also played a Physical Adept who killed armored trolls with playing cards, owned more than one small company, and used his "Dispelling focus" (Technically, it was a level 1 weaopn focus, but I didn't add the extra die to rolls becuase I only wanted it to be 'astrally active' to attack spells and spirits) to counter sustained magic. Also, with note to power and the ignoring of 'restricted gear' rules, the last character that I played had a tactical computer. Yes, he basically just noticed everything and killed anyone who got in the way (not that he liked killing mind you).

Shadowrun is a cyberpunk game. Well, second edition is anyway (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) . The megacorps make the governments of today look like hippy bastards (no offence, i'm sure all of you hippies reading this are great people who even take showers occationally). They have extraterritorial rights, meaning that when you break into their building they can kill you, torture you, and throw your mangled corpse in the dumpster without anyone else batting an eye. After all, you don't even exist. The coprorate peacekeeping forces (LoneStar, KnightErrent, etc.) are similarly scaled to those of today. You were holding a gun? You must have been threatening them, otherwise they wouldn't have shot you in the face before asking you to drop the gun. Yeah... right. The megacoprs are not concerned with your life, nor with the lives of their indentured slaves wonderful employees. They care about the bottom line, the next dollar. They hire you to break into their competitors facilities, in which they are pretty sure you'll end up killing a guard or 30, to steal some piece of information or another becasue it MIGHT put them one step ahead. Now add to this Dragons, who's schemes run over decades and centuries, Free Spirits, the crazy death mages from aztlan, the Invae (the Insect Spirits) of the universal Brotherhood and otherwise... And we haven't even begun to talk about the gang wars, the political infighting, the wars, the poverty, the porn industry, the BTL dealers... The list goes on. 90% of the world would slit your throat for a buck (10% if you're only counting SINners). more than once have our PCs been attacked in their homes, while they were asleep. A PC's wife was murdered with ritual magic. Airborne toxins to out apartments, to keep us under control so they could grab us to interrogate us (this didn't work out well for them, but well...). Another campaign started with the first "run" in the Chicago Containment Zone weeks after it was established, hired by Ares to clear out an Ant nest. The 6th world is a dangerous place chummer. Better learn fast, or get out now. (Oh right, I chose "Powerful" for the second question (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) )

For magic, I chose the Average, 1%, option. This both does, and does not reflect the world in which we play. First off, This choice does reflect the population as a whole. There are not many mages walking down the street, you don't see many strange metavariants sitting on park benches. If you see one Ogre in a month, you're had a lucky Ogre-spotting month. this applies even moreso to the number of initiated mages, which are basically 10% of the previous level. 1% of metahumans are Magically active in some way. 10% of those are initiated, 10% of those are grade 1 or higher... and so on. However, the average listed here for magic does not reflect the amount of magical activity the the runners played generally encounter. Most of the cool Threats are magical in some respect. insect Spirits, for instance, have a large role in shaping the events of the 2050's (in which we play). We all like Earthdawn quite a bit as well (we played a 3 year campaign), and therefore we keep it as the History of the 6th world, and it will sometimes (Harlequin/Harlequin's Back anyone?) have an impact on the campaigns that we run. Almost all shadowrunning teams will have a magically active character as a matter of course. This is the only viable way to penetrate magically protected facilities.

EDIT: Hey folks! It's a damn poll on Dumpshock, it's not going to be published in some psychology journal or something. Either answer the questions, or ignore them. Don't post about how bad it is.

I like to set a theme to each campaign (once we get the basics down). But normally, I want the players to start out with standard builds and customize to the theme. I like the players to shine, whether a street level theme or a high-end, globe-trotting theme. I've also been quite enamored with building in a lot of karma-awarding objectives (e.g. bonus karma if you finish this mission only using 1IP), so while the players may be able to shine, I challenge them to do more with less, for a reward.

So, I tend to have more gritty and dangerous campaigns because of those artificial challenges.

I like to keep magic rare and I'd say only about every other campaign do I get a player that wants to be Awakened...so it works out fine for me.

This is basically an admission the poll is flawed. You have choices available without clear definitions of what those options mean.

Thus, any results from this poll are inaccurate at best.

SR4 (not A)
I like a "Street level" to start a campaign - poor/ easy jobs to get peoples feet wet and get a name on the streets. Weak-ish PC's.
The opposition will usually be equal or better then the players (numbers or skills) but often ill prepared for the PC's early on owing to the "questionable" value of the targets.

As time passes things get gritty, fast (20-40 awarded karma). If your not careful with your legwork, security gets a leak from a contact you might coming for dinner and brakes out the good silverware in case you pop by. Double crosses from all quarters get more likely as the stakes rise. Going smoothly from gritty to dangerous as the team starts going national and international (this is in the 125 to 200 karma range, variant with the group). I vote gritty as that where I tend to spend *most* of the time.

Magic: rare, but not hens teeth - there are several hunderd full magicians in any major city and several hunderd to a few thousands mystical adepts, adepts (blah, blah, blah, etc.) in addition to this. Looking at the numbers many people will have some sort of magically active person in the "friend of a friend" cirlce or closer. And yes, all of them are tired of being asked to *insert something mages or their tradition cannot do here*. The Traids being magic heavy makes the SCARY etc. etc. "Mr. Johnson, we have a mage." is a negotiation point I award a die or two for in the unlikely event this has not been factored in.

Its a poll, not a scientific study. Have fun with it and leave it at that. If the OP starts posting that trends and makes claims based on this poll, then go ahead and reign down your terror and pick it apart. Until then, let's just have fun with it.

I answered "average" on all of them, because that's my "default" setting for shadowrun. However, that varies based on the kind of story I want to tell. I ran a Triad gang in Hong Kong that was packed with magic, all the characters were larger-than-life, and the danger level was dialed down: lots of mooks with a couple of "Boss" type NPCs, because it was supposed to feel like an action movie. I ran a spy game where the characters were high-powered, there was almost no magic, and the danger level was through the roof: it was supposed to be James Bond meets Metal Gear Solid 3. The next game I run will have average magic, high-powered characters, and a hellacious danger level.

Nothing wrong with trying to be accurate, is there? I assume the OP wants to know something about opinions. But with the poll as written, he knows nothing about anything, except insofar as people have posted detailed responses. If you don't want to know anything about opinions, why post a poll?

Maybe my common sense isn't so common? I thought it was obvious that a voluntary poll is going to be skewed no matter what you do, so there was no reason, for me, to poo-poo the OP and tell him his poll is useless and flawed, or that it is basically worthless to post a poll...

But then again, I'm not much for derailing a thread and spreading negativity...

I tend to run it where the characters are individually fairly powerful, compared to your average street scum, or else this would be a poor profession choice, but they're not so powerful that they don't feel they're in danger in a fight. My players are generally cautious and prudent, so they aren't likely to just rush in and get killed, and I'm trying to keep encouraging that sort of behavior and thinking, without having to make a gruesome example out of anybody. So far, I haven't needed to choose whether or not to pull someone's ass out of the fire, but there have been some close calls, and I think that's about the right difficulty level.

As far as magic goes, I think what makes the Shadowrun setting's Awakened aspects interesting is the indigenous-empowerment and animist/neopagan/nature stuff. We tend to have a lot of that going on; shapeshifters and crazy wilderness things at the edge of the city, shamans as a regular part of city life, Winternight terrorists as a major campaign opponent. I feel it's that sort of thing that gives Shadowrun a particular feel different from other cyberpunk games.

A voluntary poll is skewed if you're trying to extrapolate some population other than "whoever responds." But all we want to know is the opinions of the respondents, without worrying about any inferences we can draw to a larger population. This is basically descriptive statistics, not inferential statistics, so we don't care about self-selecting respondents.

I'm not trying to poo-poo anyone, I'm trying to help the OP and everyone think more carefully about their polls, so they can achieve their goal of actually learning about peoples' opinions. The only person I went negative on was the guy who claimed that, just because he could interpret explain the poll consistently with what the OP was trying to express, that you'd have to be dumb to be confused by it.

I like grenade machine guns. They're fairly easy to make using 4th weapons modification rules, though capacity leave something to be desired. A belt-fed version would be nice to have for a troll.


Power can be measured in two ways, what can be characters do and what can they accomplish. These two are not the same. Characters capable of doing unimaginable awesomeness could also be incapable of accomplishing anything meaningful. That they can blow their enemies up with grenade machine guns does not imply that they can do anything to dent the corporate power structure.

I prefer games where the characters can do much but accomplish little or do little but accomplish much. This means fairly weak characters with political connections and ambition, or extremely awesome loners whose victories are ultimately futile because they don't have any political connections to back them up.

Thanks to everybody who voted, and to those who have so far made commentsin the thread. Judging from the majority of the answers here that addressed my comments in the OP, I think most people got the general idea of what I was aiming for. Looking at the poll results themselves (acknowledging they are anything but scientific), I see a coupleof interesting things.

The first is that for the most part, as a group we play with magic pretty much where (we feel) the original authors of the 6th world and the game system ment for it to be played: where it's still pretty special in the world as a whole, but natural to expect some sort of awakened talent on a team. I had honestly expected a much more "flat" response, with more people picking the below-average and above-average levels.

The second is that as many of us play with "average" (read: book standard to start) character power levels. I expected this to skew a LOT more toward the high end than it wound up.

The biggest surprise to me was that such a large number of people want a "hard" game, regardless of the relative power level of the characters. Perhaps it's the connotations of the word "gritty" which I selected, but combined with other things I have seen on this board, I think it ma just reflect that most of us see running the shadows as a "hard" life with lots of danger and potential pitfalls as well as serious complications.

Once again, thank you to those who voted and to those who took the time to give us some detail about what they really like in their games.

I prefer high powered characters. Who are skilled, tough, but not gods.

For opposition I like a sinking feeling in my gut when I realize what I got myself into. I want to chuckle nervously afterwards. Although sometimes mowing down hordes of mooks is good times. Depends on my mood I suppose. I always want a challenge however.

Magic average to slightly above average. 1 to 2 percent of the population are awakened.

Theme also varies from campaign to campaign. From cyberpirates to solid snake. Pink mohawks to cold hard pros.