Something I saw mentioned in the JA2 thread made me post this - how often has everyone played in a game where everyone played competent professionals, and/or most of the "required" skill-sets have actually been covered?

(And, drawing on experiences from my "body count" thread, just allow me to say that your character backstory prior to actual play, fan-fiction, fantasies, or PBEM games where you ran all 12 members of an elite special forces unit DO NOT count. Or matter. )

For me, I suppose it'd be never... In every game I've been in, we either missed key people, missed certain skill-sets, or had characters who sort of filled a particular role, but were something else (like insane, homicidal, easily distracted, 14 year old, or amnesiac ) first and foremost.

It's never really bothered me that much, but I've noticed that I tend to react to that sort of thing by, after making sure my character is solid at his core competency, filling in all the gaps and picking up the skills I think the group needs.

For example, I started one game with a street samurai character. Well designed - relatively, anyway - to handle his core competency (guns) with a smattering of other skills to round him out, and no glaring weaknesses. A year and a half later, his gun skills are pretty much at a standstill, but he's gotten good with polearms (fucking bugs...), electronic B&E, biotech and first aid ("Would everyone please stop getting shot?") and his charisma and social skills have gone up (CHA 5, currently) to represent the fact he's been acting as a pseudo-face fairly often.

Which suits me fine, most of the time, though I occasionally do find myself (semi-seriously) wanting to demand someone else do all the heavy lifting, allowing me to lead a happy-go-lucky existence as I just tag along. (though in reality, I'd never be content to put the responsibility in someone else's hands, I guess)

Alex would probably be doing more if she didn't have +2 to absolutely everything she did…

But Blake can keep the "getting shot" hat.

~J

All three of the characters in the Shadowrun game I am about to be in are going to be wearing multiple hats, and they're going in knowing it which relieves me.

Occasionally, I get lumped into a group choosing to play something that was just 'necessary' out of general dynamics. I've been a Mage when no one else was, a Fighter (Speaking AD&D) when it needed picking up, and finally with the one of the more recent games I'm in, decided to play something that could in fact handle just about everything without having to rely on one person. So what was it? Yes indeed, a Rogue.

Yeah, they run a lot of AD&D around here, but I have no problems. I can supplant the mage and cleric with the Use Magic Device skill, deal out equal damage as the fighter with Sneak Attack, and open my own locks and disarm my own traps. I can survive on my own, thankfully.

Unlike the characters in my Shadowrun game. Technomancer/Street Doc, Samurai/Assassin/B&E, and Face/Smuggler/Marksman. Hm. I just hope they don't seperate for too long during a run.

I have never seen a team that is ready for everything. In fact if I had to GM for a perfectly competent well designed team I would be bored out of my mind. I find that dysfunctional, semi professional, borderline screwups with issues make far more fun and interesting characters to both play and GM for. So in the group I play and GM with (we rotate GM duty) we frequently have to find creative ways around challenges, often because the rather straight forward challenge (like say a rating 4 maglock) is something the participating characters (everyone has multiple characters too) aren't really ready for. The wacky solutions are almost always good for a few laughs.

Our Miami campaign had:
- an ex-cop who acted as gunbunny and face
- a ki-mage
- a tech-freak who was also sniper
- a rigger

Besides the ex-cop all are coming from a professional background, be it military, security corp or mercenary, so they know how to react in a fight, how to behave etc. None of them had psychic flaws, but some social ones (like having a family, enemies etc.).

A friend of mine ran an Elf demolitions expert whose claim to fame was that she was far more deadly than the rest of us, while remaining nearly entirely non-cybered and non-magical.

She also had more skills than GOD. I was always shocked when we encountered situations where she didn't have an appropriate skill.

She power gamed?

On a more serious note having a professional background, or hell a well thought out background is pretty measningless if the dope playing the character is just that-a dope. I've seen some pretty damn good street level PC's run, with almost nothing for background. And conversely I have seen people who have played for years, know the rules like the back of their hands churn out heartless creations that suck so hard I have to laugh.

Role playing isn't all about the numbers, or the design process.

I've never seen anything even remotely resembling a competent group in my games, playing or GMing... And I don't think I ever will. And that's fine. I agree with the idea that the crazy ones are more fun.

Let's see what we've had...

- A coyote shaman who went a bit nuts in bug city. He seemed oblivious to the personal consequences of his actions, and the answers he gave never quite fit the questions he was asked.
- A decker/face who flirted with pretty much any living thing.
- A sociopathic adept who might be a cannibal, and borders on blood magic.
- An american-hating, obsessively clean Japanese elf who once killed an ork with only her shoe.
- A wolf shifter who's half the time seems to believe he's Wolverine (amnesia flaw and an old comic book collection).
- A kleptomaniac who isn't going to survive his next game now that the rest of the party has discovered he's stolen about 30,000 in total from them.
- An adept so paranoid he often just fires his revolver through his front door instead of answering a knock.
- Pedophile troll who's also racist against every other metatype.
- Rigger who's so protective of his own vehicles that he goes out and steals new ones for taking on runs.
- Decker who has accepted run payment in the form of porn magazines and bags of candy.

...well, that leaves out the other rigger and adept (both incredibly incompetent), the street sam who made constant pathetic attempts to be cool, the fork-throwing nudist adept, the homeless B&E expert who just lived in other people's houses, and the mage/doctor who collected bodies, among others...

...but I'm tired of writing.

Hmm, most of my characters would have just gone all Heat-like and shot these guys in the back of the head. Thier stupidity/excentricites make it much more likely to get caugt/killed. In addition, you can't just tell them to walkt; they are witnesses to capital crimes you have comitted and you can't trust them to keep their mouths shut

I think Sahandrin has just defined the Pink Mohawk Crew to a T.


Though the Rigger's relucatance to risk his own personal ride on a Shadowrun is perfectly understandable - most Johnsons don't offer compensation/repair/replacement for equipment lost/damaged/totaled on the Run, and really, who would trust him if he did? And those things often cost what you get from several Shadowruns.

The headshot is the story. News in 2051 is first-person, and generated by the reporters!

~J

We have

PC's

Human Ex star DI aspected cat shaman, spells focussed on investigations and illusion. mild cyber and geas useless on the atral

super sammy twinkus maximus human designed by the gm with serious flaws but rediculous points tough as a average troll with his cyber. and wanted by the star...
A lot... i mean really a lot oh and he's amnesiac

Two orks one rigger one sammy moderate cyber/bio ware part of an azzie subsiduary high quality close proctection team in denver (currently new years 2061) it helps that the headware radio has decrypt 7 so we can listen to the star etc

Notice the holes (some of which we have covered by NPCS), infiltration is partially covered by the orks plus illusions, decking is at zero capabilty, magic is barely covered (did i mention the goon surged astral perceiving magic at one?), although again npc ally helps out here. combat though three sammy types have that covered especially with the npc sammy we know.

howver the two orks and the cat shaman are pretty pro so hey.

I guess I have what can be classified as a question about gaming table relations.

If you brought your character to the table with all the b4ckstory and all t3h r0l3 play, would you get pissed off if someone else brought an incompetent spaz to the table who made life difficult for the whole team?

Personally, because I was trained in my early gaming years by a Wheel of Pain type killer GM, I don't mind at all when the PCs are killed when I'm a player. I see it as part of the story. The death of the character, like in drama, is a consummation and no loss in terms of role playing. Furthermore, I like the strategic aspects of the battles and so forth and this calls for an acceptance of (some times sudden) pdeath in the interest of maintaining tactical challenge. So if you were role playing a character with psychological problems who did something stupid and in so doing threatened my character, I wouldn't mind. I'd think, "Wow, how dramatic and how challenging to deal with. Let's see if I can get out of this one alright or not."

How would you react, though? Is your gaming crowd the type which would get all pissy at the screwup character's player for not playing to "win"?

We tend to just shoot losers in the face, then carry on with the job (and a larger pay cut apiece, amongst the survivors).

Nothing wrong with someone playing a screwed up character, unless they expect everybody else to metagame like crazy to justify not shooting/ostracizing their character, for the sake of their "roleplaying". In other words, if you want to roleplay someone who hoses up a run, don't whine and complain when the hard cold pro sammie puts a bullet between your character's eyes. The player of the sammie is just roleplaying, too.

I think players should show some common politeness, in the sense of getting an idea of what kind of game it is, and making an appropriate character. You're not writing a novel by yourself, you're playing an interactive game with others. I hear all kinds of complaints about powergamers messing up the game for everyone else, and I think that someone dropping an incompetent into a "pro" game is showing the same disregard for the other players, and the game.

I played in a game a while back, our characters were an ex-spec forces team. Two sammies, one ex-adept turned face, one combat mage, a couple of phys ads and a npc decker. Infiltration was our group specialty. All the players worked together well and the unit meshed well as a team. We operated well above our weight class.

It was a great campaign, and our characters eventually went legit and (semi)retired.

I have also run or been involved in campaigns featuring such gems as:

The troll phys ad with Killing Hands (D) who insisted on testing them out on a Lone Star cruiser's engine block.
A dwarf burned-out mage with a rather severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (rather well roleplayed actually)
An entire team who went into every mission with plan A being shoot everything in sight.
A cat shaman with the Mind Probe spell who habitually used it on targets, Johnsons, random pedestrians...and party members.
A street sam extreme sports nut with a habit of 'accidentally' killing guards and sentries when ordered to subdue or neutralise them.

Our current team is far from perfect but works.

The Face - 8 +3 charisma, SINner, ex-Ares security consultant (semi-amiably) gone freelance and far too good with his Ares Viper. (rolls his 7-dice pool very well every time) Acts as a fixer when possible.
The Weapon Master - directly from the book, can use any gun in the book but never has the right gun for the job when the drek hits the fan.
The Smuggler - right out of the book too, with a sex-change. He has developed a love of sticky-shocker rounds.
The Mage - Low tech, focus on illusion and healing. She loves her mana-bolts.

Not the perfect team (missing drones, hacker and any great stealth-specialist) but surprisingly effective. The face gets good deals on hiring in outside help when it is necessary but they tend to want to stick with what they are good at.

Here's the team in a SR campaign I'm in:

An elf adept that absolutely slaughters every from close to medium range with his pistols, rarely ever speaks. Sometimes I forget that he isn't mute.

A ex-Russian Human soldier, low-budget sniper and demolitionist. Makes his own vodka. Blew up a couple teams of Red Samurai with C12 on a timer.

Me, as the Human Weapon Specialist. Can use pretty much any weapon in game that fires a projectile. Pretty much the team leader despite his average charisma, and etiquette. mostly because he's the only person that TALKS and comes up with a plan! Sanity is not usually a factor in some of them, but they sometimes work. The ones that don't are easily resolved by the time old tradition of busting down the door and shooting everything in sight. Our shenanigangs in the game now result in us beating a very hasty exit to the CalFree to do 2 things.
1. Go to an estate to kill our last target and finish the run and be paid.
2. Get the hell out of Seattle before Lone Star kills us and lay low until they go after somebody else.

A Chinese human Jack-of-most-trades, so far his claim to fame is to be the guy that always get shot first. He's like the Red Shirt of our group, if there is danger, he gets shot. Maybe it's because I replaced his Kevlar armour with heavy duty magnets... Has a lot of useful and highly placed contacts though, so useful to keep around besides as the meatshield. The second most talkative guy in the group.

A Yakuza Snake Shaman, doesn't often cast any offensive spells. We mostly abuse him as a Spirit Dispenser. The closest thing we bunch of uglies have to a face. Sometimes wonders why he sticks around with us crazies.