How do your players dress in-game? What fashion nightmares have they come up with?

Camoflague armor usually. If they're on the street it depends on the occasion. Walking around is usually jeans and a t-shirt. Going to meet the Johnson is business. Going to fancy spots is fancy dress.

That's just the current character though. I've had characters wear jeans to the Ritz.

i try to play around with the idea that stuff that's looked on as being edgy or uncouth today could be mainstream or even haute couture in SR. for instance, it's pretty common to see respectable people with facial piercings, when i'm running things. sometimes i'll build functionality into them--lower lip studs that double as microphones, stuff like that. my main character tends to dress fairly fashionably and is basically a family man, but he's usually got a temporary tattoo somewhere on his body.

Nice thoughts, mfb.
On the tattoo front, there's a Nokia ad on in the UK at the moment full of people with moving tattoos. Looked very SR to me.

Think Mad-Max and that pretty much describes fashion in the low to mid level runners in my games.

How many of them wore black trenchcoats?

my own idea, is that as a runner you want to look like everyone else around the target area, so you can blend into the crowd more easily. armored jacket and helmet go very well with a motorcycle. respirator is a good idea, as the air tends to be bad these days- plus i dont like getting bugs in my teeth at 80 kph.

You general need 3 types of armor- the business look, the street look, and the stealthy look (either camo for enviroment, or a long coat). it dosent matter whats better armor, so long as you have some armor.

that said, i would expect any profesional to have their armor modified and upgraded when possible. this depends a lot on tools and materials, but adding a hidden pocket inside a jacket behind a plate, lined to stop scans, seems like a simple trick to pull.

putting hidden sensors in your wardrobe is always fun. a skinlinked cyberscanner adds so much to your AR.

Most of the time my players go with that suit line in CC, if its some grubby ass place then the mage and gun bunny physad normally are in normal clothing, kevlar trench coat or winter coat and some FFBA.

Well, in my games, it was almost universally Full Camo Suit or Lined Duster with the occasional Armor Jacket. Pretty boring.

Of course, t3h r34l SR fashion isn't a *black* trenchcoat. It's a *tan* trenchcoat with the gigantic Blade Runner collar. Didn't you ever play Rise of the Dragon?

One of our teammates, an orkish face, wore clothing made of ribbons. Thousands of them. He was a clubber.

For concealment sake I like using knee-length coats, the full ones just strike me as something that would tangle too much, as I don't really think they're meant for gunbunny or physad movements.

I mostly wear things suited to situation. Even took a knowledge skill "Appropriate Attire" to help brain farts, since me as the player is much less knowledgable on what to wear in a given situation than my char is.

Oh he tends to like tailored armored suits too.

Suits. Bespoke, armor-lined made by a Mexican tailor in Los Angeles (The guy is also reasonably priced). Even into most parts of Redmond and Puyallup (He once wore a grey suit with a crimson shirt (under an armor vest) on an extraction mission into the heart of the Puyallup Barrens. Unfortunately the jacket was damaged because some dickhead decided to shoot him.

While he usually wears black BDUs on missions, there is the occasional change in clothing depending on what the mission is. Sometimes he has had occasion to wear something akin to executive-golfer (khakis and a polo, sans the beer gut) or even *gasp* jeans and a t-shirt (though rarely, because then he can't walk around strapped in "straight" places).

For most extractions and wetwork, actually, he wears the suits. It's just how he is, and because he learned to fight and kill while wearing cheap suits (so now the difference is in the quality). He has several of them in different cuts and colors along with interchangeable shirts. He shares my own fashion sense when it comes to clothing - minimalist, solid colors or muted patterns, so forth. I could probably spend 200 words or so just describing a single suit.

Most of my other characters are also mostly into that casual anonymity look, especially considering how almost all of them have backgrounds in espionage and undercover operations. One guy, however, only wears Army surplus clothes. Another is barely above squatter and so he is even more obssessive about his 4 pieces of good clothing (3 shirts and boots) than the first guy since he can't replace it easily.

For my game, I'm going to describe the idea that poverty is so prevalent outside of corporate districts that everyone wears second hand (or more) clothes. It'll give everyone a sense of grunge and rattiness that will work well with establishing the prevalent mood I think.

Also, that fashion in a world of such is more based on flashiness than it is on style.

i've always liked the idea of paper clothes, for poor people. in Heavy Weather (Bruce Sterling), relief workers passed out paper clothes to refugees whose homes had been destroyed in disasters. as prevalent as such disasters had become in the book, paper clothing had basically become anonymouswear.

the problem in SR, i guess, is that it implies that somebody actually cares about all the poor people.

There are paper clothes in SR. They're dispensed from vending machines, and are mentioned in SSG. They are pretty cheap, too.

One of my characters is big on army surplus jackets (or armored look-alikes), leather work or combat boots, jeans or cargo pants, and t-shirts. He likes all the pockets, and having a heavy jacket to hide a gun under. He's got several sets of "nice" clothes, ranging from casual to designer suits, but he only wears them when he needs not to look out of place.

When working, he usually goes with the most armor that the situation allows for - anything ranging from FFBA to Light Security plus helmet.

Another guy I play has something on the order of 20K worh of clothes, and IIRC once wore casual designer clothes (his attempt at dressing down) when going to a bar on the edge of the Barrens. (leftover from growing up well-off in a corp environment) When working, he's almost always in a ruthenium covered armor suit, and generally working hard on not being seen.

I go with Armor Jacket for normal street wear, and Form fitting armor for runs..

No long coats; they get in the way and could "tip me off" when I'm hiding...

oh yeah, forgot about the vending machines in SSG.

Chinos. Definantly Chinos.

http://www.pyke-eye.com/cyberpunks.html
A photography portraits gallery of London cyberpunks in 1990. Excellent stuff.

Check out the band Sigue Sigue Sputnik.

The more ritzy/night life characters and locations in my games usually look like 70's/80's new wave videos. Missing Persons. Etc.

I don't have a problem with things being more like the artwork in the book, but then I've never liked the whole extremist "you're meant to be professionals! Mr J is not hiring street punks!" thing some GM's go with. Shadowrunners are expendible assets, which makes them more like cheap labour hire in my mind, than highly trained professionals and corps generally don't hunt you down, not because they can't identify you because your entire team was dressed head to toe in black FFBA or anything, but because you're just not worth it.

Clothes come from your lifestyle generally, and if you live on the streets or on the outskirts of the barrens, you should look like you do. Will you get into that high society dinner? No, but that's what the face and a few hastily aquired waiters uniforms are for.

An inelegant post but I think people will know what I'm trying to say.

I sometimes have difficulty relating the art seen in the books with what runners would really wear. The art in SR 4 is a little better, as it comes off as more urban oriented, and not flashy for flashiness sake. The general population seems to have picked up on flashy dress, (on a side note I wonder if its because people in 2070 find their lives so humdrum, depressing, a crushed that they have to compensate with exaggerated dress styles), so its easier to blend when wearing the same.

You could actually get away with "The Matrix" kinda dress.

Well I have to ask actually....

Are your players in hiding or are they flaunting their wealth?

In the impoverished masses of many countries (hell THIS ONE) you can find people whose wealth and attire show off that they're involved in illegal activity. That doesn't stop them from doing it.

Why should Shadowrunners be denied bling?

One of my characters wears an Armor Jacket tailored in a sort of neo-0Chinese style (at least, it looks neo-Chinese to me). Similar to the jackets the Grammaton Clerics wear in Equilibrium. Oh, and shades modified with zoom vision and ultrasound (his cybereyes have the other vision mods, except drone).

Depends on character.

Naoka (22), my girlfriend's Inuit street-angakok (Bear shaman) character, wears a variant of traditional Inuit fur clothes (made out of wolf-fur) with serious modern influence; I'll dig up my girlfriends sketch of her later and upload it.

Nejala (18; NPC roommate to Nauka and Technomancer-Rigger), a hardcore anarchist (member of a BlackStar splinter-group) has long hair dyed in a very wide multitude of colors, a tatoo on her left shoulder saying "Meat = Murder", a largish copper nose-ring, and wears an assortment of clothes she got either by dumpstering or by shoftlifting, usually a wide obviously-synthetic cloth skirt (she has a Surge tail), a black T-Shirt with a big "A" on, and an obvious-plastic (she's against fur) overcoat. Always seen with atleast two cockroach-shaped drones.

Volinski (41; NPC arms-dealer/fixer) has his head shaved with an obvious datajack and two obvious cybereyes (with red "crosshairs" on them, no less) implanted and wears simple slacks, a sleavy grey buttoned shirt, a black tie (always loose) and a real-leather jacket. He also ALWAYS seen with a cheap, Russian cigarette in his monuth.

Talya (48; NPC Ork militia-leader of a Pullayup neighbourhood and community activist; Nejala's mother) had a long, hard life of poverty and temp jobs at local factories; she dresses very simply, with heavy work pants, a worn-out sweater (or a sleeveless T-shirt in warm weather) and usually a Long Coat (worn-out Red Army surplus sold for cheap in the UCAS; insignia stripped away). She wears her greyish long hair loose most of the time, or hold togather back by a rubber band when she expects violence.

Edit: edited Nejala's description to fit her finalized version.

The street look might even come in handy. Makes it easier to blame on marauding gangs or eco-terrorists. Black-garbed and balacavas makes it more like a corp hit-team, which may not the impression the J wants.

And I guess the bright, colourful and outlandish dress sense of you average street punk/go-ganger/clubber would make for some sort of visual "white noise". The day glow mohawk may stick out in a room full of dull-grey suits, but try focussing on any one visual clue in room full of asorted freaks... It's like Where's Wally? on acid.

I guess my character is boring. He is a mage and uses the Fashion spell to change his clothes to blend it with whatever neighborhood he is in. Shades with flash protection are a must though.

My current cher is rather oddballish as they only have on a black hooded cloak (something like a poncho),a face mask hideing the lower half of ther face, a T-shirt, and Denim pants cut off at the knees and they did have a pair of mirrored shades but lost them in a accedent with some high explosives tho still alive.

On runs, my group's charecters are rather partial to chameleon suits and for deep cover ActioneerR business suits. Outside the run, only the (male) cat shaman and the dwarf decker/linker really give a $#!+ about fashion. The rest of the group is too busy planning out their respective retirements.

I once played a character who dressed only in Charlie Chaplin outfits. He and his contacts were a poser gang, all cosmetically modified to look like him.

My character Shen wears a robe that has black mixed with white in some parts, kind of like a Chinese painting, which seamlessly transition into parts with solid black or white. I have trouble visualizing it.

KK4.1 has no fashion sense at all. She is public enemy #1 on the Most Wanted list of the Fashion Police. (...where is that Distinctive Style quality when I need it?)

Violet likes to dress in a sort of "George Sand - Victorian Noir" style.

Hurricane Hannah is pretty basic: Jeans with t-shirt, tank top, or plaid flannel shirt (depending on the weather).

Babydoll is tres chic all the way. Hey, even a Troll has to look her best for those important social affairs.

My players (and myself) were always very suit-and-tie while around town and very SWAT team while on the job. Of course, there WAS the one decker with the neon fiber-optic mohawk...

One of my players once, had a character dressesd as an eightinth centuary vampire armed with a Gryojet Pistol. This is the most memorable one!
Needless to say he didn't last long, despite his protests that firing a Gryojet Pistol was silent, when Lone Star turned up, En Masse, to arrest him. The rest of the team made no attempt to stop this.

Recently I have an ork in Saeder Krupp body armour with full markings *cough(Twitch)*, and an elf with fibreoptic hair *cough(Glow)*. Destinctive styling their way around North America, without the flaw!

I think the most outlandishly I've ever dressed a character was in an armor jacket cut to resemble a kimono. Mostly, they're in as unremarkable clothing as can be managed.

The craziest character I ever made was a pirate with two gold colored cyber-arms, and golden teeth. He also wore a redmask over his face, kinda like the one the guy wears in the Princess Bride. His name was Pirate Fry, (based off of some amatuer video games I made) and he drove around in a rusty old winnebago he called the "winnebago of DOOM!". He of course had an antique cannon mounted in the back, pointing out the back doors.

He is the only character I ever made a voice for, and, truthfully, the funnest one ever. He once took a job in exchange for the Johnson's coffee table, and treasured it above all else. We'll besides gold....

He died a heroes death fighting an insect spirt.

Well my Face type character is very "GQ" in appearance. He wears suits more often than not, but not like business type suits, you know? They're more fashionable, like stuff outta GQ or any other male fashion mag. Color of these suits varies with whatever the current "new black" is. His choice of armor is based on weather conditions, i.e., form fitting on nice clear days or long coat for a rainy days.

When he's "on the job" he wears a plain t-shirt (usually grey or balck), armored vest w/plates and form fitting, combat harness(?), gloves, black or urban camo BDU pants, handkerchief (to cover face) and combat boots/shoes.

Oooh... GQ style. At least my PC admits he's gay.

Elf... Gay...
It's all the same

No.

GQ. Gay.

My characters range from pretty conservative to pretty outlandish in their dress, but I try to make it reflect their personality. For example the ex-Milatary Gun-Orc tends to wear camo and military surplus clothing, while the Texas Aristocrat Face wears the Armante Dallas line mostly, and the Pyro Maniac mage wears flame print shirts and bright red parachute pants. Of course their clothes are somewhat reflective of their monetary success as well, though that is often more reflected in the upkeep of their clothing.

I think that it's more useful to describe a style or fashion statement than to detail individual pieces of clothing. (That's like indicating what colours each room of your doss is painted.) You can get a lot of mileage out of tossing together a few fashion buzzwords that don't go together in modern times: "The guy's wearing some kind of gothic rat-pack suit." "I throw on some cowboy bling for my meeting with Mr. Johnson."

Yeah, those examples are kind of silly, but it's late. My suggestion is to use emotive words rather than objective description if you want to express any sort of style or fashion for your character. Do you wear a red, long-sleeved shirt, or an aggressive, flashy wardrobe? Then throw in a few details when the situation calls for it.