When you're playing a gameof Shadowrun, you need characters for your PC's to interract with and come up against. Cops, Security, Other Shadowrunners, etc. And you pretty much need some combat grunts, Specialists deckers, riggers, mages, shamans, gangers, etc. Not to mention the other 95% of the population, the civilians, accountants and fried noodle vendors. Punching up stats, skills, then calculating pools and assigning cyberware and gear takes a while, and so often it's a case of, "ok, you arrive at the compound, a security guard sees you, roll initiative... oh shit, what's the guards initiative?" and then the game is halted by you figuring out stats.

Some of the sourcebooks have some archetypes in them, and the PC runner archetypes in the front of the BBB are ok at a stretch too. I was wondering what you guys do for archetypes? Do you keep filed archetypes you've created? Do you just use the book stats over and over? Which books are the best for it? Is there a big helpful database of NPC Archetypes somewhere?

Also, I was thinking, if the responses go a certain way, we Dumpshockers could start up and share a database of archetypes that would eventually grow to be very handy and centralized, and with more variations of characters than we'd ever need. What do you think?

I use the ones in the BBB but I have begun to make some of my own more recently. I too am for the creation of a centralized Grunt database and I would be more than willing to toss a few in there along with the ones I create for special circumstances and so forth.

My games tend to focus on character-contact and character-character relationships more than they do on actual 'running, so it's important that I try and stay away from being too cookie-cutter with my NPCs. I do use quirks and similarities, bits and pieces of what would go into "typical" NPCs to give the players something to associate the character with and identify the NPC by.

I'd say that generally, the only "stereotype" NPCs in my games tend to be the total minor players, like sec guards, mob mooks, any kind of NPC with the GeekMe™ sign on their forehead. For these I also tend to just page to them in MrJLBB on the fly and adjust as necessary. (The old Contacts sheaf has some good stuff in it too, although you might have to monkey with the numbers.)

Any NPC's my players encounter are normally made up on the fly. I decide how bad-A the guy is and just make up numbers that seem appropriate. It takes me about 3 seconds.
As for NPC's that my players won't be geeking, it doesn't matter what their numbers are.

...I tend to follow the route that Eidelon mentioned. I flesh out "star"NPCs (using the NSRCG Programme for SR3, Wizdoc Spreadsheet for SR4). For VInPcs (very important NPCc - the ones that hang around for most of the campaign), I also write up a short description & background.

For grunts, I will develop one or two (usually the leader) a little more than just numbers & gear. In one run I had a five person shadow team go up against the PCS. They were built as PCs complete with names and personalities.

Anything that's part of a prepared run will be determined in advance. I'll use stats from the book for grunts, and give the named individuals more detailed writeups.

If the group goes somewhere I don't have planned (in other words, almost every session) I'll make things up on the fly. This pretty much ensures that the players never even get to a point where they can start making educated guesses about someone's stats that aren't based on in game knowledge, because even Joe Security Gaurd at the old mini-mall may turn out to be a bad ass.

I have the NPCs from about a dozen and a half adventure modules and sourcebooks in doc form. Most, I updated as best as I could to SR3 statistics.

I forget if it started seeming redundant or if I just got tired/lazy and quit doing them. But If there is a place to post them, I'll send them along.

I've gotten to the point where I'm pretty good at on-the-fly NPC generation. It ends up with a lot of 2-4s in attributes and 3-5s in skills, but it works and that's about what I come up with when I spend more time on it anyway.

~J

Names have always been a bigger problem for me than the actual numbers.

There is only one NPC archetype which you need and it may be found here:

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...=american+ninja

So who's up for the creation of an NPC archive/database? I personally don't have the skills/means to host and maintain the thing, maybe some-one could voleunteer?

I think it would be good to have a collection of archetypes to reach in and grab from one centralized place, and every time we create an NPC in any of our games, we punch the stats into a submission and so the database would grow with not only every class, sub-class, and oddity of NPC, but variations of each theme, and at different balances of power levels.

If we aren't too protective of our PC's, we could also submit their stats etc. to be used as NPC runners, complete with descriptions.

Someone at some point created an NPC wiki. It may be worth throwing energy at that: http://shadowrunnpcs.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

LOL

I just tried entering a single NPC into the wiki. I do not think I'll try again. Maybe it is the "template" and trying to get spacing to work. Instead of a horizontal
BQSCIWER, it should be vertical.
B
Q
S
C
I
W
E
R
Then spacing is not a problem, just 7 extra lines of space. I tried turning off the wiki formatting to no avail.

I don't know how to work the wiki. How can I add things and update all the links correctly? I was going to add a NPC category "Ninjas" and paste the stats from my American Ninja SR3 project.

Tisoz, use the "goon" template. It's got what you're looking for.

Eugh, it's not too great, but it'll do, as long as some-one actually knows how to update it.