Hi,
I could not find anything with the search engine, so my question is:

What are the members of your runner groups? Do you just play what you would like to play or do you have "character slots", for example you play with one samurai, one decker, one rigger and a mage and every player chooses one role?

I'll start with my group: everyone plays what they want and my runs are designed with their skills in mind. The members are:

American elven spy with insane dexterity and high infiltration skills.

Finnish human decker/rigger with a small army of vehicles and drones. He speaks German, Chinese, Russian and English, but no Finnish.

Bulgarian elven physical adept, with astral perception (the arcane branch of the group) and a preference for gun-fu.

Arabian mercenary, called Abu Methane. He is defined by plastic explosives, his AK-97 and good knowledges in chemistry (still thinking about a rigger control though).

tbd

Yeah, I COMPLETELY depend on characters to decide settings. I believe all players should play what they really want, so if I end up with a group of 9 shamans (we're a huge group) then that's how I determine the adventure settings.

For the list of our characters in the current campaing, I keep their sheets posted on http://shadowrun.i-sphynx.com/characters.htm

Sphynx

The oddest thing happened with my newest group, we ended up with no tanks. There is no frontline samurai type in the group at all. We have a rigger, two mages, a cat burglar, and a sniper. It is interesting to watch how strategy changes when you don't have an up close and personal character.

I have never seen a standard group. They are almost always heavy in some area.

Our group tends to be fairly standard. Generally there's a mage, a shaman, an adept, a street samurai or two, and a rigger. Someone usually does double duty as the decker (generally the rigger) and one of the mages generally acts as the face.

Though, if the GM didn't forbid it, the group would probably end up 90% awakened instead of just 50-60%.

We always have problems with my group...everyone likes to play support, nobody wants to steal the thunder of a street sami. I usually end up assigning a couple people to be combat monsters.

Hi,
why do there always have to be muscle characters in a group? I usually write adventures more or less without regarding the characters much, but without requiring any specific skill, like matrix, astral plane or muscle power, so no skills are really required. On the other hand, if I know there is a specific competence in the group, like a decker or a mage with access to the astral plane, these features can be included in the adventure.

If a group of 4 character consists of 4 muscles, they will excel at combat buck suck at sneaking or social encounters.

If the group consists of 4 spies, they will excel at sneaking, but suck at open combat but will have to rely on hit & run, as well as ambush-like combat.

It's up to the players what characters they want to play, but their decisions will affect the game play and the way encounters will be played.

tbd

As a rule i write the adventure and the players create or use existing characters. If there is no muscle in the group the team have to adapt or hire some cheap guns.

Hi,
what about the other question? What are the members of you runner group, or what kind of characters are usually involved?

tbd

If a GM is willing to come up with a scenario that fits a paticular mix of characters then the players should be able to play anything. However this can make the GMs life more difficult.

If however a GM has a particular type of campaign in mind he may restrict the characters a bit.

In the past I have done both - one campaign I ran I wanted to be street level with few gimicks and low magic. Obviously I didn't want 1M Nuyen samurai or a paryt of all Shamen.

I also ran one campaign where I let the players decide exactly where and what they wanted to play. It ended up being a group centred around an Eagle shaman eco-terrorist in the Pueblo sector of Denver. All the scenarios were fashioned around them striking at polluting corps and getting inducted into Greenwar.

Guys,

I will give my own experience.....with the caveat that your milage may vary. I have found that awakened characters in the long run are so much better, flexible, and more interesting than non-awakened characters that all the groups I have played in wound up with at least two awakened characters in them, and often three. In all cases, we had two mages (usually a mage and a shaman) which is optimal for many reason. In fairness all the groups had a streetsam and rigger in them as well.

As for Deckers, I have seen that played once (and it was a disaster as I indicated much earlier on a different thread), and I have seen a face played once.....usually the face is incorporated into one or more of the other players though. Personally, I have found that after 40-50 karma, a Phys-Ad can almost completely replace a streetsam, but streetsams start out much better.

-Polaris