Quirks! Options

[Draconis]

Quirks, the stuff that brings characters to life. I'm curious as to what character quirks you have or have seen.

One guy I ran with would get part of his payment in scratcher lotto tickets then during downtime i.e. on a stakeout he'd scratch em off often leaving a pile of useless tickets.

There was a dwarf rigger who I ran with who would go to restaurants and just eat condiments, ketchup and mustard seemed to be his favorites. Oh and he dry shaved unconscious people but we won't go into that.

Then there's my current character, Scratch, who seems to have an unhealthy obsession with cheesecake. Oh and since raiding a tomb for jewelry crowned himself a pharoh.

There's the dwarven mage we run with who's entire tradition and paradigm is based on a popular CCG.

The dwarven rigger who plays go with snowmen.

What have you guys seen?

Hmm come to think of it I run with some very odd people. Especially the dwarves it seems.

[Larsine]

Oh just the usual:

The Rat Shaman which litterly lives out of dumpsters.

The foreign monk that doesn't know one nuyen from 1.000 nuyen, always accepting runs for the price mr. J offers initially, and spending money without worring about what things cost or if they are usefull.

The spy who is absolutely paranoid. Triple checking all locks, sweeping everything for bugs (at least twice, with 3 different scanners), collecting photos (from his eyecam) of everybody, having his programs constantly looking for matches, etc.

The ork who things everybody is a member of humanis.

And there are more wierdness out there...

Lars

[Ol' Scratch]

I absolutely love quirky, off-beat characters. Not crazy or insane ones, just characters with believable traits that are unusual and breath a ton of life into them.

My all time favorite character, Ol' Scratch (I wrote a little about his concept in this thread), had a few. If a job offer involved the hunting or murdering of ghouls, he'd waiver his fee unless rent was due (and in those cases, he'd donate the rest to a shelter or something).

One of his quirkiest traits though evolved from some implants in the 3rd Edition rules that required players to increase their Lifestyle costs to account for an increased caloric intake. I think SR4 has one or two, too, but I haven't really made a heavily cybered character yet. Anyway, to reflect that in-game I just always had Scratch eating or drinking some random fast food product in most scenes. Like eating nachos while staking out a building, or slurping a SoyIcee while waiting for a meet to begin.

Another character of mine, Cosmo, was a menehune decker and a totally burnt-out hippie/surfer dude. When he talked in the meat world, it was always really slow and he'd easily get distracted by pretty much anything going on around him, complete with an overabundant use of the word "man" and "dude." Dressed like Eric Stoltz's character in Pulp Fiction most of the time too. You know, a pair of flip-flops, boxers, a t-shirt, and an old comfy robe. That sort of thing. And like Scratch (mine, not yours), he had a thing for eating in most of his scenes, but instead of random fast food he carried around a custom-built fanny pack that was a combination cooler and burrito toaster.

The list just goes on. But yeah, quirky characters are totally my thing.

[Critias]

There's a fine line between a "quirky" but believable Shadowrunner, and a character from Toon. Tread carefully.

[Draconis]

[Draconis]

[NightmareX]

[Marwynn]

There's a Dwarf Mage that we ran into that didn't know the first thing about weaponry, but he carried around a mean set of weapons, rugged used ones, just so he didn't get geeked first. Of course, it didn't take a high perception to notice that the ammo he had strewn about himself (in belt form) wasn't meant for any of the guns he was carrying... poor guy blew up when a wagemage Magic Fingered his brace of grenades.

There was a lesbian ork that always hit on the ladies, couldn't help herself. She'd toss out come-ons even in shootouts against corp security.

[flowswithdrek]

We had a rigger in our group, who when jacked in was pretty normal, however when he was back in the real world walking/driving about he was prone to a bit of bin hoking (dumpster diving). anything/anywhere that looked like there might be a bit of discarded tec was investigated, anything from skips, abandoned warehouses to wrecked cars got the once over even in the middle of hostile actions. This was based on a guy we knew in real life who would stop his car at the sight of a skip or discarded item on the road side to check it out.

[deek]

We've had a shoplifting/whippit addict that always hit a store after a run to grab a few whippits...even though he just got paid and the cost was pretty negligible.

Covert Ops guy that hit a bottle of booze and some novacoke before each run...and the timing when he crashed was always horrible for the group.

A porn addicted mage that constantly sent animal erotica to his teammates, before, during and after runs. He actually got caught masturbating in his chummer's pad during a meeting.

Had an ork adept that spent most of his free time in the bathroom "dropping the Browns off at the superbowl". He was constantly looking for bathrooms during meets and sometimes on a run.

Had a mage that only used public transportation, but normally, just walked everywhere. Eventually, one of the group decided to pick him up all the time.

Another guy ended up being a pathological liar and on top of that, had a tendency to make up his own details whenever being contacted for runs and meets. He had a knack for "remembering" extra objectives to a run at the worst times.

[Critias]

See, some of those guys you just wouldn't work with for very long, is what I'm saying. Sure, it's funny-hah-hah to think it up OOC and get everyone at the table laughing, and stuff... but for several of those, after the first time they're dead weight and flat out shouldn't be hired.

[PlatonicPimp]

Someone I once played with played a male dwarf who was attracted to female trolls. Since I was playing a female troll it came up a lot.

Back in third Edition when you could take Shadowland as a contact, I had a character who was always looking for some big scoop he could post. Kept detailed records of his runs thanks to cybernetics and would scour them in his off hours for interesting data. The other characters were always worried about the gigapulses of recordings of their illegal activities sitting on my hard drive.

My last running group were circus folk. All of them.

my next character is going to be a cybermod freak. He'll have the skills to maintain his own cyberware, and will sort of obsessively fiddle with it. Like that guy who's always taking apart his computer or motorcycle to tweak it's performance, except it's his ARM he's poking around in.

[otakusensei]

I once played a character who vaguely talked about "hitting the big time" and kept saying that everyone would know it when he did. Later, after a big run, my character bought a nice house in the suburbs, one with a pool which he proceeded to fill with Sloppy Soy ™ brand soy based food stuff. When asked about it he responded that he could flavor it however he liked! Didn't get much work after that, but a raid on his house caused him to have to jump from a second story window into a pool of three month old soy product. Know what? Fresh as the day it was extruded. Thanks Sloppy Soy™!

[Draconis]

[Ol' Scratch]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[ThreeGee]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Check p. 47 of Augmention.

[Ol' Scratch]

[PlatonicPimp]

Augmenation, however, lets you put vecored thrust in the cyberlegs you installed in the horse, and rig it to boot

[Draconis]

[bibliophile20]

[Draconis]

[Sterling]

I've had a couple 'quirky' characters, but none topped Mack.

He was an ork decker who (at one point) had a set of those prototype dual-smartgun / independent cybereye systems.. the ones that gave you a splitting headache and were worse than having no smartlink. I think they were mentioned as fluff in the SSC.

But Mack was known for more than a wild shock of reddish hair that looked like it was the result of biting into a power cord. He has this totally 50's era chromed toaster that was a mini-drone (all it would do was follow him around and occasionally get 'frisky' with someone's foot) that was his cyberdeck. He really tricked it out, it was armored, and pretty high tech. I got a groan from the gaming circle when they asked him how he loaded his programs, and he just shrugged and said 'breadboards'. And it still made toast, too!

He wasn't bad in a firefight, wasn't top ork stats but could take a bullet or three, but had the personality of someone who took one too many hits from black ice and just was a little.. off. Harmless off, but off nonetheless. I think he was designed about the same time as Cyberkender's Chaz, who definitely takes the cake as far as 'quirky' goes as far as I've ever seen. Cyberkender even found some sort of real-life prop that let him... well.. I'm sure he'll chime in here with a full description sooner or later.

I also had 'Bill', the lean, thin troll who (with the help of enhanced articulation) could run on all fours. That pretty much was his quirk, along with being unable to speak more than a few sentences (damaged vocal cords). He was the one who ended up bending some hired thug's arms... not breaking, but bending due to the thug's bone lacing. Everyone took a few moments pondering how unpleasant that sensation would be.

There are a couple other quirky characters I'd thrown out there over the years.. Hans Forewarned, for example. Pretty much a cybered-out sammy with four cyberarms. Nothing really different beyond the extra arms, but it was a defining quirk. I also had a shaman who was a double amputee (legless) and, until 4th edition, levitated everywhere. He wore a long tapered armored tunic/serape. I'm not going to bother mentioning his name because I expect as the 4th edition 'rule shift' effect hit, he fell out of the sky and left a large impression on something.

I'll find my big blue book of characters and look through it sooner or later, I don't think there's much beyond those few that really qualified as 'quirky'. I think I made more than my fair share of characters with a decent 'hook', but nothing beyond that. I just realized a day or so ago that the troll ex-ganger (now full cyberlimb'd) NPC I created to help bodyguard the 'clueless mage PC'™ was a semi-subconscious transfer of the character Kikuchiyo from Samurai 7. Now that I've realized it, I think a really big sword is in his future.

[Draconis]

Dude the toaster rocks. In SR3 we converted a few toasters into flying drones.