Character background, how do you make them? Options

[djinni]

how do you get inspiration for the characters you play,

yes yes this is a shameless attempt at helping me get a background for my character. but ignore that.

normally I sit down and pick one or two people I've talked to and use that as foundation, then spiral out picking more indepth personality traits, and styles. but in the end I write up a short story instead of a "background" showing the character how he is now instead of who he was then...

[Ravor]

Basically I figure that Shadowrunners has to have something fragging wrong that makes him unable or unwilling to find other employment, Runners are not healthy well-adjusted pros that would fit in with modern black ops, if they were then the corps would snap them up in a heartbeat.


With that said to be honest, I only write down the important bits, and then usually in bulletpoint shorthand, I mean really, if your Mage was forced into the Shadows because he cut off his own fragging hand and threw it at the shrink in a manditory psyche exam then just jolt that bit down along with a couple of sentences about what broke him in the first place, less is actually more in my opinion. (Within reason of course.)

*Edit*

Clarified a point.

[FriendoftheDork]

Decide how the character is now and try to think why he has become that way, what has influenced him thorugh childhood, adolesence, or early adulthood.

How long has he been a shadowrunner? Why did he chose the profession? Why can't/won't he get a real job and SIN?

You might want to search the web for more such RPG questionaires to help create character background. Personally I don't use backgrounds overmuch, unless something is found out by fellow players etc. Usually I just make the characters and think of behavior, values and quirks, and leave it at that. Then I build up the background gradually while playing.

[djinni]

[Glyph]

I don't see the background as totally separate from the mechanical aspects of character creation. Generally, I start out with a few ideas and a general concept, start roughing out some stats, then fill in stats and background concurrently, letting them bounce off of each other. Here is where I will find out if a character trait is impractical, or if the character's background changes some of the stats. It has worked out well for me - my characters make sense, and their stats fit the background. I have seen a lot of threads with people who have started out with a preconceived concept or background, and struggled with building the character afterwards.

Personally, I like structured outlines like Bull's questions or the 20 questions, which keep my thoughts organized. Plus, even if I am suffering writer's block, I can at least work on some of the easier questions (eye and hair color, etc.). My overall philosophy is that my main concern should be: "how did this person become a shadowrunner, and how did his goals, motivations, and personality quirks evolve?" If his childhood was uneventful as far as motivating him to become a runner, I won't waste five paragraphs describing it. Instead, there will be a snippet like

[Kingmaker]

I don't think that runners need necessarily be maladjusted or antisocial. Something could have forced them into the shadows. For example, a Irish Catholic gunslinger I'm working on started out as a Catholic paramilitary in Tir Na Nog fighting the heathen overlords, but ended up leaving the country when the Tir goverment started sending assassins after him. No more outcast or unable to work with others than a normal person, but he's on one too many shit lists to do anything out of the shadows.

[Karaden]

[Glyph]

One biggie I forgot to mention - be sure you know what kind of campaign it is before you make a character. And not just power level - look at the type of play (gritty heroes vs. gutter punks vs. hard cold pros) as well, so you can make a character who will fit in with the others.

[Riley37]

Most of the above is good in any RPG. I get better results when I think up at least a thumnail sketch of the PC's parents. After all, whenever I meet the parents of an adult friend, I usually get a bit more of a clue about how this person got to be the way they are.

For SR, there are so many aspects of the setting that one can tap, and/or explore, via character back story. I recently wrote an outline designed to do three things: 1) justify a min-maxed elf shaman illusionist who's not a wagemage, 2) create a character who has mixed feelings about their racial, national and class affiliations, 3) create a character that has tenative connections in a whole lot of directions: Aztlan, Tir, Pueblo, Wuxing, secret societies, magical lodge politics. If the GM wants to do a story in any of those directions, there's a plausible plot hook in which this PC gets a comcall from an old associate (that the GM just now made up). There's a bit of my own family history mixed in, since I have bilingual relatives in Guadalajara and Phoenix.

Here goes:

Juanita Vargas was the third daughter and fifth child born to a wealthy, landowning Catholic family in Gaudalajara, the capital of Jalisco province, in what was then Mexico. She was also the first elf born in Guadalajara. Her wealthy landownowning family was delighted to raise such a pretty, graceful girl... but they always had a bit of discomfort with her pointed ears, and were happy when she married Ricardo Perez, the manager of a tequila distillery which happened to get most of its agave supply from Vargas farms. Ricardo and Juanita were in turn delighted by the birth in 2042 of their son Carlos, who inherited his mother's metatype. Less delightfully, the crackdown on the now-illegal Catholic church reached Guadalara, Carlos's baptism ceremony was raided, they were arrested, and only by pulling some Vargas strings were they able to get released. They relocated to Pheonix, Arizona, where Ricardo had some relatives. Ricardo found a Masonic lodge in Phoenix, but the rites were different, most of the lodge brothers were Protestant, and the social connections were apples and oranges to what they'd been in Mexico. He retained a stake in the distillery as "silent partner", and found decent work as a factory foreman. When Aztlan nationalized all non-Aztech corporate holdings, both Perez and Vargas family fortunes were badly hurt, and Ricardo and Juanity had to make lifestyle adjustments. Consequently, Carlos grew up with the social grace training and dance lessons "appropriate to his station", but a lot of deferred dreams; "next year we'll go skiing, I promise, it's just a little tight right now". His parents spat when Aztechnology was mentioned on the news, and Carlos grew up with the idea that a golden heritage had been stolen... with the complications of being a Latino Elf in Phoenix, and learning Sperethiel on his own from Matrix sources, while speaking English in school and Spanish at home. He wasn't much of a scholar nor athlete, but he was still popular, managing to combine aristocratic elegance with affable warmth and a knack for jokes. Most classmates found him attractively exotic; even with those who found him disturbingly alien, he could usually talk his way out of trouble.

At 18, in 2060, Carlos weathered a few more transitions. He graduated from parochial secondary school and entered University of Arizona, he started dating a libertine from an elvish sorority, and he Awakened. Practicing his emerging ability to create light and sound by force of will was a serious distraction from homework. Calling forth spirits from the Astral shocked his parents and dissolved what remained of his Catholic identity. Dropping out of school and barely on speaking terms with his family, he needed something to turn to, something that would accept him with fewer compromises. He found the Trickster totem and joined a shamanic lodge. With raw talent and single-minded focus, he quickly became a master illusionist, with a sideline in detection, considering those a natural balance. As a fast-rising hotshot, he got drawn into a high-stakes feud in the Phoenix magical underground, and in a duel of illusions, he ended up winning a powerful magical ring. Afterwards, though, he was worried about who might hold grudges, and chose to move on, hoping to broaden his horizons, and perhaps to meet more elves and get a sense of what Tir Tairngire is about. His family's experience with a monopolistic, monolithic state makes him wary on that topic. Indeed, his experiences with institutions of all sorts have mostly been bad news. He puts a corresponding value on individual connections.

Carlos remains intently conscious of appearances and sensations. He is sensitive to extremes of light (always wearing shaded glasses outside) and sound (he hates loud parties and honking car horns). He experiences simsense as unpleasantly disorienting, and avoids VR; besides, he just can't get an avatar to smile as persuasively as he can in the flesh. Whenever he comes across something that he might want to recreate as an illusion, he tends to study it carefully, with an subtle eye for details of hue and shadow. He'll occasionally Mask himself to see what reactions he gets as a flashy Japanese hipster, as a scarred-knuckle bruiser ork, or as a blonde, blue-eyed, jut-jawed Anglo-American. He continues to tell jokes, pull pranks, and talk his way into and out of trouble. He had a legit job for a while as a sales representative for Wuxing, and got his shockrod focus as a bonus for setting a new record for total sales in a quarter; he then quit while he was ahead.

Although healing magic is not his primary gift, it has changed his life. For a while, he took long shifts in a Phoenix emergency room, laying hands on one patient after another, incurring Drain to the point of exhaustion. As mundane doctors and nurses discovered back in the Fifth Age, there's always more patients than one can help. Since he moved, he's been earning his rent by working with a street doctor. He helps patients recover from injuries, wounds, and augmentation surgery, and his bedside manner is a plus.

He has no significant pollution allergies, but he's noticed the much higher presence of respirators compared with Phoenix, he hears complaints from air spirits, and he's been in contact with a Thunderbird-totem mage about some possibilities of vigilante action against major violators of environmental regulations. In the meantime, he's interested in acquiring money and experience, for personal enjoyment as well as idealistic purposes.

[kzt]

[Ravor]

I don't buy that all once you start getting into the AA+ levels, at those levels the corps are literally nations unto themselves so saying that they won't have their own black op teams is akin to saying that the nations of todays don't.

Hell, I don't even buy that the larger A corps wouldn't have thier own teams, although by necessarity they'd have to be alot more careful since in theory they are still beholden to national laws.

[kzt]

[jmecha]

One of the things I use during my character creation process is the Shadowrun timeline. After I have already decided on who I am going to play I look over the time line and look to see what major events happened during my character's life time and I determine which ones would have had an effect on them to add some of the offical fluff to my character's back ground to give it more wieght in the Shadowrun world.

[Pendaric]

Interesting question. I have been researching this very subject recenty. What I have found is that there are several places to start, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, but to get a 'good' character its' the amount of evolution you go through to fully realise them as a person.

Some people start with the background and see's where that leads and changes the charcter.
Some start with the stats, then backwards engineer the character's personality and background.
Some start with a concept they want to explore and build up from there.
This can also mean you work backwards from what the character does to who they are.
These methods can all be distinct or mixed up.
You then go into a series of questions that become more and more specific, like a series of filters refining the character. Finally it all has to make sense.

Condensed from like 12 conversations and 15 years of gaming, so it's broad brush strokes. Hope it helps.

Edited for spelling

[ElFenrir]

I'm with the crew of ''have a rough idea about character, start statting them up, fill in bits and pieces as i go along''. Occationaly i come up with a really detailed bunch of stuff early; like if i know im playing and it's a slow night at work. Then ill stat it out accordingly. Most of the time, though, it's a rough sketch that gets built up. Everything has it's benefits, as said. Sometimes the rough sketch changes over time, and sometimes even splits off into two characters. This happened recently; i had an idea for a former company man/black ops type of character...who was also heavily into the occult, and was a hermetic mage. However, as i started fleshing them out...the occult-loving hermetic mage ended up going away from the former company man idea and more into the realm of a combat mage, and the former company man ended up branching off otherwise into a mundane...and so two characters were born.

And sometimes it's something as little as ''i want to play Gun Man'' and statting them up, filling out bits as i go along, especially when Knowledge Skills come into play.

[Fortinbras]

When Laurence Olivier and Dustin Haufman were shooting Marathon Man, Olivier noticed that Haufman was exhausted in between takes and asked him why. Haufman said it was because he had stayed up all night because his character had. Olivier then gave the famous line "My boy, why don't you just act it?"
Everyone forgets Haufman's response, which was "Because I'm not that good."

Some people can make a character on the fly with as little background as necessary and get fully into that character right away. Others need to sit down and have their characters well thought out with pages upon pages of back story in order to understand what decisions they will make in game and why. Some people like to play caricatures, like the dumb, but lovable ork or the prissy elf. Others like layered, complex and mysterious characters who you need several game sessions before you get to know them.
Neither of these are wrong, they are just different means to and end. Some are more preferable to play, but almost all are fun to play with.

I, personally, enjoy writing a lot of back story. I think it's fun, it helps with my writing and it really brings me into the universe, even if the stuff never sees the light of day. But other players find it time consuming and distracting to have non-active choices for only a few minutes worth of dialog.
Everyone has their personal style, but the trick is to try them all and find which makes the best character, and which method you find most fun.

The only "wrong" method is the guy who never makes a character, he makes a character sheet. The guy who never talks in character and never separates player knowledge from character knowledge. The guy who doesn't understand the difference between Shadowrun and Warcraft. Be he the quite guy who never contributes to anything but combat, or the most dreaded of all player, Rules Whore of the Hill People, this is the guy you keep praying will have car trouble this week.
Don't be that guy. No one likes that guy.

[Stahlseele]

more or less i start out with this crazy idea:"i wanna play darkwing duck!"
then i think about what would be appropriate to make him as close as the toon and then i stat out the toon and if i actually get to and decide to keep playing him i think up a little bit of background-story closely matched to the "official" story and then i start to flesh it out as i go and make up more as it comes to me . . more or less . . and before anybody asks: yes, i did in fact build darkwing duck with the NSRCG once *g*

[Kyoto Kid]

...what Glyph mentioned is pretty much the way I approach a new character concept. I also agree that the available outline questions help a lot. I also agree that the type of campaign is a factor as well. Now while I am known to put a lot of detail into character backstories and yes one of them is a short novel in length (done so as a writing exercise), I do try my best to keep to the basics.

I also have to differ with Ravor in that not every runner is a sociopathic malcontent.

A good example is the Short One (#103). Her background does deal with some fairly touchy subjects, hence the spoiler tags for the abbreviated version below (the actual story is ≈110 pages in narrative style).

[ Spoiler ]

Kelly Rourke (her real name) was unfortunate enough to be born to an elven family and grow up in Salem TT before the second crash. At first her parents, on discovering she had awakened potential did everything to support her. She was encouraged to develop her athletic abilities which also included martial arts in preparation for her eventually taking the Rite of Passage. Along with her sister, she was enrolled in an exclusive school and her parents went out of their way to make sure the had the same opportunities any other privileged Tir child would have. Unfortunately this would be short lived.

As she approached her preteen years, the other children that were once her friends began to avoid her (about the time that kids would begin to understand their parents' racial prejudices). Then things began to go wrong in school. She always had some difficulty with schoolwork but that was the least of the troubles. First there were pranks, then fights and of course Kelly, being the human and in a distinct minority, was the one who was always blamed. Her father's peers also took notice and began pressuring him as well to deal with her, to the point of telling him his human daughter could be his downfall. Being an ambitious fellow of noble rank on the Tir social fast track, he turned against Kelly as well and began mistreating her behind her mother's and twin sister's backs.

At first the abuse was mainly verbal and light punishment like being sent to her room & such. However, as the pressures mounted her father began drinking and started taking out his frustrations on her, often beating the girl when her mother and sister weren't around (contributing to her Dain Bramaged NQ). To cover it up he threatened her if she ever said anything and would have an associate heal the physical scars. At one point he even came close to killing her while her mother and sister were away for the weekend in Ashland, after which he used Laes to wipe her memory. Afterwards he concocted a story that Kelly had gone out of control and tore up her sister's things after breaking into his liquor cabinet and getting herself drunk. [In actuality, he tried to poison her that day by force feeding her alcohol but she managed to fight back. In anger at her defiance he nearly choked her to death.] Unable to remember the events of that weekend due to the Laes, Kelly had no defence. In the end he told her she was being sent to a boarding school in Portland [she had previously been expelled from the academy she attended and was being privately tutored at home]. In truth he planned to abandon her in the city and then claim that she ran off after they had stopped to get something to eat. In this case, who would be believed? the "upstanding" and respected noble father or the little human troublemaker?

A couple weeks later, there was news of a young girl’s body that was found in a seedy area of Portland. The investigation determined it was Kelly and the affair was closed. There was a short period of “public� grieving by the family and life then went on as the next Rite was soon approaching. Meanwhile Kelly had been taken in by a woman who had connections with several local Portland runners. After spending several months caring for her, she was convinced by the others it would be in girl’s best interest to get her out of the city and out of the country, particularly since her father’s associate was seen snooping around the area where the two of them lived. The final word on the matter was Jenna ni Ferra’s going off on one of her anti human tirades after her protégé was assassinated.

To make a long story short after a slightly harrowing escape, Kelly ended up in Seattle under the care of a well heeled private investigator who focused her work on cases of child abuse and neglect. Being Japanese and seeing the both the girl’s fascination with her culture and latent Adept talent she was able to pull some strings back home and send Kelly to a dojo in Kyoto to complete her training.

The rest as they say “is history� (well her-story :grinbig:).

This forms the core of who she is and where she comes from, the events which took place after she was abandoned being more "icing on the cake" so to say.

Kelly herself has always been a very polite young woman (due in part to her early upbringing and later, the years she spent in Kyoto where she learned of the Bushido way). Even during the worst times she always maintained a very proper sense of etiquette and rarely if ever was unruly. At first she couldn't understand why her friends started turning on her and father began hating her so. Of course the girl was terribly frightened and in such cases (as in RL) was completely intimidated by her father. Up until things started to degenerate, she had led a fairly protected life and was even told that if she strove hard, she could be one of the first humans to make it in Tir Society. Instead her father gave into the advice of his peers that she could be a threat to his, her mother’s and sister’s progression within the ranks of Tir nobility. In the end his political ambitions won and she lost.

Much of KK’s experience in the Tir has of course affected her outlook and the choice she would make for her life (hence her tagline: "Forsaken Daughter is Watching You"). Being declared legally dead, she is truly SINless. Were she to resurface under her real identity she could be a marked young woman even with the original Tir council having disbanded. Many of the bad memories still run deep and she has no desire to return to her former home. Her handicap (her Dain Bramaged NQ) pretty much keeps her out of most meaningful occupations, even so much as working a Stuffer Shack™ as her aptitude for computers is sorely lacking. Her Awakened abilities would also ban her from most organised or professional athletics which would be about her last option. Seeing there was little to offer in the SINners’ world she chose the path her friend Randi (the woman who cared for her in back in Portland) took and headed into the Shadows instead.

[toturi]

First I make up my mind on what I want my character to be good at and how he is going to be good at it. Then I create a character sheet. Then I wrap a character background around the character sheet. I will then tweak part of the character background and character sheet so that both are consistent with each other.

[bishop186]

I usually start with a basic concept, usually an archetype with a twist. Then I shade in the major stats and go back to the character design and fill that in a little more. I kind of add a little (or take a little away) from each one until I have both a working concept and a character sheet to go with it. Sometimes, of course, I get the whim to do something because it's funny, e.g. my Troll Technomancer Kraken - the worst possible race for a Techno (especially with the low-level 300BP game we're playing), get excited and do the whole character sheet, and fill in the background as I go.

I only turn to the 20 questions if I have writer's block and can't think of anything more than the base theme and stats. The 20 questions are good for thinking about how the character would ask them - I always snake the inflection and philosophy of the character in with the 20 questions thing. It's a good block-buster.

[Cardul]

I start with the original stats, I write the background and adjust the stats as the background adjusts them. I try to avoid "Oooo! I am an Orphan!" or "I was part of the military/corpsec!" for my backgrounds, as those are just too cliche. Generally, when coming up with the concept, I like to take a normal concept and put a spin on it. I often build the character off of an image of them in my head. Where did they get that scar? What does that tattoo mean to them? Why did they get that cyber? Is their hair colour natural? If not, what is their natural hair colour? When were they born, where? And then, I write it first person, leaving out the stuff I would not know in character, but that a GM might very well make use of those holes....Actually, I kind of find writing the background to be the most fun part of making a character.

[Kyoto Kid]

...excellent point about leaving the GM holes. That has happened with several of my characters, and usually makes playing them more interesting. Leela (#104) and Violet (#105) are two good examples.

With Leela, the GM played up the mystery of why she was yanked out of Croatia when a demolitions mission in her backstory went bad. She kept trying to find out but could never get the real story. This became one of her "personal" missions (she never truly found out as the one person who knew died while protecting her from an assassination attempt). On another occasion, during a run where she was posing as a waitperson at a banquet where we were hired to bodyguard an important figure, a woman from her past (from before the war) recognised her even through her disguise and remembered hearing her recitals back in Zagreb (love that old Distinctive Style flaw). The GM also played on her Flashbacks flaw as well describing in detail what she saw when they occurred.

For Violet, The GM is playing on her paranoia and delusion that MetaTech (now a part of Neonet) is after her (she was the corp's little designer "genebrat"). At meets she has noticed corp goons sitting a couple tables away who turn out not to be associated with the person we were talking with. Often times she takes pics of them first before taking pics of the J, then runs them by her Former Company Man contact to get an ID. [In her backstory she bartered the design of an experimental commlink to a competitor in exchange for her extraction from the corp's enclave and a new identity after he parents mysteriously disappeared and MetaTech was awarded custody of her].

[Ravor]

[JonathanC]

[Ravor]

*Shrugs* And then we get back into the question of why aren't the Runners being snatched up to be part of corp black op teams? Viewing the Runner Lifestyle with rose-colored-image-links might be an explaination of why a young bright kid with a future could have first gotten into the biz, but I don't see the romance lasting very long, the life of a Shadowrunner tends to be short, violent, paranoid, and above all, fragging hard. And I very much doubt that the Trid shows the nastier aspects that comes with being a Runner either.


We have to remember that judging by the "normal" char gen advise on Dumpshock, most people are playing with Runners with dicepools that would land them a comfortable life in the corps, with the ones that love the "rush" being directed towards corp black-ops. (And hells, judging by the reactions I tend to get from my posts about Sixth World Society and the Pink Mohawks it seems to me that the gamestyle that people seem to want to play would also mesh with corp black-ops as well.)


Besides, it's a huge leap from having something fragging wrong with their wiring that makes them unemployable by the corps and being a 30 point mental case, although beggers can't be picky and if all of the "pros" are working for the corps then you take whatever backup you can get on the streets, just cover your own hoop as much as possible.