Page. 19 of SR4A features your pink-Mohawk-black-trench-coat-man
At least the pink mohawk is what stayed with us and not the mullets like in the 1st ed cover.
Mullets only work for McGuyver and even then only barely!

Actually I can think of alot of reasons both can work together, the Mohawk is in it to D*** the man! A street fighter with nothing to loose. All wires and steel and bawlz. A trench coated pro criminal would have alot of uses for someone like that - kicking in doors, drawing fire, being obvious on the security footage.
Don't get me wrong, the Mohawk gets something out of this too, they get to kick the corps where it really hurts, something they can't do without "Mr Respectable" criminal find them the pro work - hes such a sell out...

I can see the sitcom sexual tension already..

Easy solution - don't go to the meet. Tell them what you want, telepresence in, rig someone's earbuds, whatever. I play a redneck in one of my games, and he almost always hangs outside.

If your character looks odd because he has an aesthetic preference for oddity and/or is making a statement, that's weird. Any person who has a professional preference for discretion will have a legitimate problem with that.

If your character looks odd because it helps him do his job (say, climbing stuff+melee+running fast), that's dedicated professionalism. A person with a professional preference for discretion will go "I want this guy, but maybe not for the society mixer next week."

If your character likes both, well, then he has to make sure he communicates appropriately to the audience.

Think of a troll character with shaved horns (so he can put a helmet on), a weapon arm hanging out of his upper back, an obvious gyromount sitting on his cyberarm, lots of armor, and a weapons belt that looks like it ways more than an elf. He is equally obvious and distinct and weird-looking; but no-one would say that he's unprofessional. He's just professional about hurting things. Same difference.

McGuyver could use Stick-n-Shock bullets to hack an AI.

Probably would say he's unprofessional because it's a troll that can rip you limb to limb personally or turn you into red mist over hundreds of meters personally.
An Elf? You can bet people will point and laugh ^^

Mutually exclusive. The Pink Mohawk Krewe are the ones who believe that they are supposed to be COOL, and
subscribe to that philosophy..Why sneak in a catering truck when you shot an arro from the sky raker across the way?
Why do that when you steal an aicraft, and bail out over the target? Why kill a guard when you can gas him with hallucinogens? Why have a sleek, featureless net avatar when you can have something amazing?

The Trenchcoat and Mirrorshades Krewe...these are the guys where everyone has their skin replaced with
fake skin, and their hair replaced with fake so that they cannot leave any dermal flakes or hairs for ritual links. These
are the people who carry stuff for when they get shot to destroy the blood(or, else, have that gene ware that
keeps any genetic material from surviving for more then a few minutes outside their body). These guys spend
all their time trying to think how to do a job, and no-one know one was done.

I would rather be Cool then Cold...

Personally I like drugging guards. Unnecessary body counts are unprofessional

I find that shaving and wearing clothing on most of your skin works pretty well. And wigs can be so much fun.

Admittedly I don't think my character has ever -worn- a trenchcoat or mirror shades, so maybe thats why (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I still don't understand why people keep refering to subtle setting as trenchcoat. In game, trenchcoats are mainly there to help you sneak a bigger gun (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

Because it bring to mind the modern media "Ice cold pros"

Me? 20,000 miles to Graceland..now THAT is a great example of a Run...

But others think a run should be Oceans 11...

I think the difference is between those who want to hide a bigger gun and those who want to trick it out in nickel and chrome.

<3 Ocean's eleven. And the show Leverage, too, if we're talking about visual media..

For books its the Vlad Taltos books, and Night Angels, among others.

Me? The Matrix. When Neo opens his coat at the FBI building checkpoint and the guards go "Oh shit..."

Freedom for the trenchocats!

Yeah, that was the best scene in the complete frigging series.

And there I was thinking Neo forgot to put on his pants...

Ok, how in the nines hells is ANYTHING in The Matrix held up as an example of "Ice-Cold-Pro", that movie is reskinned Pink Mohawk pretty much all the way. ( And just like Highlander, there was only one movie made in that series. )

I usually defer to Ghost in the Shell for my "Ice-Cold Pro" ideas.

Ronin, for me.

Well, I defer to GitS because it definitely embodies the cyber in cyberpunk. There's a lot of stuff in GitS that is thematically identical to how I envision the cyber/technical aspects of Shadowrun. There's definitely a lot of stuff in GitS:SAC that mirrors how things are in the Sixth world.

Oh, certainly. I like Ronin for the professional attitude the team in that movie displays.

I don't think you'll find many who'll deny that Stand Alone Complex was an inspiration for the wireless matrix of SR4.

Basically, when it comes to odd characters, I would say that fitting them depends on how the players and the GM are willing to work with it. Some GMs want to create a run for a Resevior Dogs style crew, all suit and ties and looking like salarimen and playing a 'calm, cool, collected' sort of professional team. If you were to add one guy with a pink mohawk to that group, it would throw off the look and the dynamics.

Which style is right; the GM dictating what sort of characters they want, or the players creating the characters for the GM to make stories around? I think both are valid, but the former would be more of a 'convention' style of play to me, where you are given prepared character sheets. The latter is what RPGs are to me, where you play the character you want to play and the GM works with what they have.

An example of when that fails was a D20 Star Wars campaign I was playing in. My character was a Slicer, the SW version of a decker. The GM decided he wanted to play a high Force campaign featuring a re-born Emperor, re-animated Jedi zombies, a re-constituted Vader. So, pretty much every fight we had was against people using the force and swinging lightsabers deflecting blaster shots back at us and everything. My character was basically either 'I shoot, then duck behind cover and run' if we were doing ground based combat or 'I fiddle with this or that device' if we were working in space. One combat, my character got to shine a little bit as he repaired the commsystem on a planet to signal for reinforcements before the battle got too bad, but basically all it was was me rolling three dice while the other PCs were engaged in heated lightsaber duels and the like, since two were force users and the other was a soldier.

A little off-topic but it comes down to the fact the GM had a story they wanted to tell and my character wasn't really much for that story, so I was off in my own little world a lot of the time. If the GM wants to tell a high-class story and one of the PCs is a ganger, it may not have the same edge and some GMs can't seem to cope with that.

At the same time though, the player needs to make some consessions to adapt to the story as well. If the player wants to be a ganger in an upper crust story the GM is telling, then maybe the ganger is trying to make it to the big leagues and get out of his gang, or the ganger is doing this as a favor to a friend, or whatever. I've seen some players looking for a complete story shift to suit their character. I wanted my Slicer to have more screentime, sure, but I didn't want to hijack an episode where it was all about decking and techie work and the rest of the group sitting there doing nothing.

Just my two cents on fitting in. Sorry if it became a bit ranty. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

compromise:
YOU need to do something VERY important, the whole thing hinges on your success/failure.
Of course, the other side does not want you to succeed, so the others have to guard you.
So you do not go into combat with the others, the others do combat to hold them off.

Of course, in that situation it still might not feel even. The "slicer's" very important thing results in a simple d20 check, whereas the people battling STILL have longer turns, roll damage, and have a generally more exciting time of it. Oh well, being the hacker in anything except shadowrun has always been the path of an unsung hero.

That ended up being it. A lot of the time, I was pulled along with the others as they charged into battle, me firing my blaster and having it deflected and then waiting for my turn again, ad naseum. When it was my turn to 'shine', I roll a die, then wait like twenty minutes to roll another die, while the others are discussing tactics and rolling extra dice and the like. I did get involved in that discussion, sure, but it was more like watching things.

I like Drraagh's post, and will continue to subscribe to his newsletter!