Apart from physical necessity (have to pay the rent, on the run, no SIN) do your characters have any deeper motivations? Do they fight the Man? Believe in survival of the fittest? Do it for a cheap but everlasting thrill?

For Leela, it was carrying on the fight for her country's freedom. She would usually anonymously donate a healthy portion of her rewards from running to relief foundations for Croatia. She was also curious on finding out just who may have been backing the Serbian occupation of her homeland.

For Violet, it is basically her strong dislike for Corporations since she grew up in a Corp managed environment where everything was provided (in her eye, manipulated). When her Parents disappeared & the Corp took custody of her (she was still technically a minor in their eyes), that was when she bailed into the shadows.

For Katiyana Markova, it was to get away from the New Soviet who passed her over for the upcoming Mars mission & put her in charge of some pretty nasty research in Divided Poland. "I'm a doctor, not a torturess dammit"

Kyoto Kid, is basically a runaway. She was the unfortunate human twin who was stuck living in the TT. After having enough of being the scapegoat for everything that went wrong because of her race, she ran away to Seattle at age 12 where she lived as a street kid until her adept powers began to emerge. She basically hates the TT and has a very strong distrust of elves.

Night Angel is basically a Fallen Angel of the Seraphim. A spy who came out of the cold & into the shadows. She is looking for some kind of angle to pay back Lucien for what she feels he did to her. She is way messed up from ailiasofts & the constant programming/deprogramming.

All these characters are still in the SR3 timeline 2063 - 2064

The chicks. I'm in it for the chicks.

My main character could cover rent with legitimate research work. For her runs were to help people who needed it, and to put pressure on corps to stop some of their most outragous activities. Make a project too expensive and a corp will recosider it.

Save the world, chummer. My main character's a Vactican(Vigilia) diplomatic UNESCO cover COMA agent. Save the world from magic threats and stop the corps' unethical activities.

Snow Fox, what did your character tend to do? Doesn't sound like much of an extraction or wetworks specialist.

Because i can. One day it will get boring, but for now, it's something new and shiny.

My current character ditched out of the army. With his skills and legal status, it's the only way he can earn a decent living. That's the surface reason. He could just go home and face the music, but he kinda gets off on the adventure and danger, same stuff he was looking for in the army but never found.

Hmm... I've had four different Shadowrun characters, and they all had different starting motivations, but ultimately three of the four considered themselves "professionals" who operated by a code of professionalism, more a sort of urban mercenary than a thug for hire. (The fourth didn't last long enough to develop an attitude, professional or otherwise, about his work: the campaign only lasted one session.)

Alan, the 60-year-old spike baby elf street sam who never behaved like an elf, got his start doing small jobs and being a vigilante around the neighborhood, and was in it for the adventure as much as for the money. He's the one who was only around one session, so I don't know if that would have changed given time.

Ratchet, the rigger, was a SINless former smuggler. He did it at first because he didn't have a lot of other ways of making a living, then after he had a fake SIN and could have lived off his mechanic work, he did it to cover the cost of awesome vehicle hardware, and of course because he was a pro.

Kenneth "Ken" Shinichiro, the physical adept with a love of katana and pistols, thought of himself as a sort of modern-day samurai or ronin. And where better to find combat than the shadows? Work for some honorless megacorp? Ha! Plus, there were the chicks. Well, there was one chick he rescued from that Aztlan jungle that time. But there would have been others if Ken hadn't gone down covering his teammates' escape with a grenade-strapped banzai charge against a Level 6 initiate blood mage and his vampire adept minion.

The ex-Marine street sam known to his teammates only as "Sarge" was Marine Corps to his core, so after he was out of the military he looked for other ways to use his skills. That means mercenary work, which in turn leads to work as an urban mercenary: a shadowrunner.

Mr.Platinum, working for the watada rengo but theres nt always work, so running came about and then a high life style, and then a way to support the high life style.

Katklaw runs to sharpen his skills. It's the survival of the fittest, and he's getting fitter all the time.

Because I can't sing or dance.

For a chance to see Snow Fox in those Daisy Dukes she doesn't wear anymore.

Hehe, nah, j/k. I play a lot of former military. They run for all kinds of different reasons. Some just because they don't know how to do anything else. Some see it as the last true freedom in the world. Some because they think there is no such thing as patriotism anymore and have become jaded. Lazarus because he can't go back so he doesn't have a choice or at least that’s the way he sees it.

I don't think I have a single character that does it for purely altruistic reasons. I mean sometimes they will do "good" things or hood runs but these are more spontaneous rather then an established goal. Of course I GM almost always and my SR universe is very dark and gritty so my characters' motivations tend to reflect that.

Hmm... How do I get my hippie-elf dude to shadowrun? Hippies are, like, so not shadowrunners.

And chicks. Don't forget the chicks.

That too. Chicks will probably be far more interested in a shadowrunning bad-boy than in a hippie. Unless they're hippie chicks.

Ahhh, but a shadowrunning bad-boy hippie would be far more interesting to chicks.

Selected characters from each edition:

Jacko ran because as an accomplished decker he could get himself free trid hook-ups, power, water, sewage, and pizza delivery as long as he didn't do anything to call attention to himself like live in a decent neighborhood or hold a steady job. So he could live the easy life as long as 100% of his disposable income came from low-life criminal undertakings.

El Hazrad ran because he was pledged to The White Flower, and The White Flower was a magical group associated with the Triads in the Bay Area of the California Free State. As such, he was bound by magical oath to use his magical talents to support a wide variety of criminal undertakings and to undermine the efforts of rival corporations, criminal syndicates, demons, and law enforcement agencies such that they might interfere in those undertakings.

Chun the Unavoidable ran because after his older brother turned into a ghoul he became convinced that he was going to goblinize himself any day. So he made sure to make sure that his brother would have the best possible resocialization (and get the same treatment himself) by becoming an agent for Asamundo. Of course, since his brother shared the same magical talents he did, Asamundo would have afforded him place in their therapy programs whether Chun hunted Wendigo or not - but Chun never really understood that.

Ophelia ran because Poland was no longer safe for her and the world corporate structure was a corrupt establishment that every civillian has a duty to dismantle and undermine with whatever tools are available. In her case, those tools include a passable familiarity with explosives and the ability to blend in with crowds.

-Frank

Well, there was an infiltration expert (with less essence than your average street sam) name Watcher. He had lots of cameras, with really high level broadcast encryption with the decryp stuff in his head and an imagelink. He was dang near immune to toxins (ingested, inhaled or injected) thanks to cyber, but was looking to seriously upgrade so he could afford the essence for a VCR and to get really good snakeyes systems for his runner buddies. The mage wouldn't consent, but the others said they would with varying prices.

Did I mention he really liked to have a visual on everything around him?

Q: Why?
A: Because I enjoy playing characters that can do cool stuff that's illegal.

Q: Why SR online games?
A: Because I have no friends nearby who play SR.

Q: Why do my PC's do runs?
A: One is currently being forced to run on pain of death. Another is a very curious and illegal being, so illegal and fun things are done to survive.