OK everyone, I have had a lot of people tell me that you can't generate good/playable characters with the Priority system and using stuff straight out of the rulebooks without optional rules, access to stuff like Tir Paths, etc. And yet, I saw a wide spectrum of characters at Gencon, and at other cons I've been to, that show me just how creative you guys can be.

So, here is your chance - Tell us all about your character - Let's start developing that Seattle Shadowrunners knowledge skill!

Post as much or as little about your character as you'd like - you can just post his/her background and description and basic skillset, or you can add in all the game mechanics stuff as well. Talk about your contacts. Talk about what missions you've already done, and who rode shotgun with you.

Hopefully, you'll inspire the others out there to make (better) characters as well and get into the game.

(if you have more than one character, post them separately)

Ok so first off I have no life.

However while I may take the time to post a character or 2 here I have 15 characters that have been made for SRM's. YES everyone of them was made useing the books and rules allowed by SRM rules. Each one is different to some extent or another.

Now why 15 you ask 3 per race. Half are female half are male the extra one is male. Half are magical half are not the extra one is magical. I did this cause for me to play is a treat so I wanted variety to chose from also it allows me to bring to the game a class that may be missing from the current characters. Just kind of my way to be helpfull at the cons I attend for getting to play is the big deal which character I play makes no difference to me I like them all. So to those that say you can't make a character useing the priority system all I can say is your wrong.

As to edges and flaws from time to time I would make a character with ambidexterity now I am not allowed to do it cause it is an edge which is an optional rule which is not allowed so in my opinion down with edges and flaws. You want them fine but to me they made it to where it is much harder to write a really good background story for my characters cause if I say he/she has this or done that and it is close to an edge or a flaw then my character just became unuseable and that sucks. More than half the edges and flaws made for good story telling for background stories and ya got no bonuses or negitives for having them.

Well that is my rant like it or not that is your choice but don't ever try to convince me that good quality unique characters can not be made useing the priority system.

Thank you and goodnight!

Since I have Started SR I have been using the priority system there is nothing wrong with it. I have generated numbrious characters and NPCs and Contacts from the priority system. This leaves a lot of room for character creation on personality. I find most people go for best skills and attrib, or just big bucks.

I have a better part of 17 Active contacts with my first group which are based on the priority system. I am not even going in to detail on the 2 files of characters I have been playing over the last 8 years, which I have upgraded from SR1 to SR3.
Yes and some of the Characters I had to regenerate to get them to correspond with the SR 3 Rules. Some of the conversions are not so great.

If I have a concept I create a character. I enjoy it.

I will pull out some of my recently created characters and post them here.

Just to fall in line with the crowd ...

As GM I have lead quite a bunch of players through the process of creating characters for SR Missions, using the priority system. From that experience I got the conclude that it is entirely up the imagination of the player how "good" or "playable" or "real" your characters become.
From a player that lacks imagination and just thinks about rules and numbers won't be coming a great character.
But take a player that knows nothing about the system, but a whole lot about the world and tries to create a character that really fits into the world ... seeing that character come to life during the creation process is a real delight.

I'll try and get my players to post their characters here ...

yes, please post characters...i did NOT mean for this forum to be a debate over the character generation system...

I want to see CHARACTERS!!!

For now, I have 8 players in my group. For each mission, I make 2 game sessions, and each player plays in the one which fits it better. What I try to do in my games is to force the players to do their best. For now, they got great success on the first 3 missions, so everything is going good. If you are interrested on seeing how I run all this, please consult Team Alpha headquarters . Since my players aren't dumpshockers, I'll post here the list of the runners in the team.

Dee : An elven decker originally specialized in "tabloïd" style media. He's initially a freelancer collecting interresting data on celebrities who got an offer for a Shadowrun.

Marco : An human elementalist. He's a street mage who shares his time between his numerous elemental friends and his passion for parazoology.

Bill : An human physical adept, more oriented on firearms than martial arts. This is the first time this player plays Shadowrun.

William : An human technician specialist in old style special effects. After a misplaced explosion in a movie, he disapeered from the world and joined the Shadows to use his technical skills.

Grizzly Bob : An human street doc. His mix of Bear shamanic magic and conventional medecine makes him a very good doctor. He might look like an overweight man with little class, but he's a good guy.

Pastor : An human Aztlan preacher. He runs a church in the Redmond Barrens with protection from the local gangs, but this kind of institution isn't cheap to run. So he decided to use his skills to pay for his community. His fellow runners are quite suspicious toward him however. For them, either he's a decker, either he got excellent connections.

Michaël : A russian covert ops specialist. He's a very curious man, always prefering to act before thinking.

Jazari : An human Street Samurai from the Middle East. His boilling temper and sharp wit makes him quite a tough guy. He's always looking for action, but his frequent jokes help reduce the heat.

Dark Father/Eric is doing a great job with his group...

although i've always loved the "Street Preacher" archetype, i gotta say that William is probably my favorite character in their group - he has a plausible back story and reason for entering the shadows, and his broad range of skills and jack-of-all-trades makes him valuable to any team. with all the tech skills and demolitions to boot, and wrapping it up in concept as a special effects guy is cool...

No no, Jazari is the coolest.

Edit: Oh yeah, and Morocco is not in the Middle-East.

I created 2 characters for GenCon - Dokuja/Adder and Teflon. Adder had a rich background - grandson of a Yakuza Boss whose parents were killed by the mafia. He's a biochemist specializing in toxins and an excellent paramedic. As part of his revenge plan, he joined the Ares Biohazard Rapid Response Team and got more training in firearms and overriding security. After 'offing' several of the mafia folks, the Lonestar was onto him and he disappeared into the shadows for more revenge.

In GenCon I didn't get to play Adder because I gave him to another player new to Shadowrun. I played Teflon instead. He's a little less fleshed out but I had a blast playing Teflon in all 4 SRMs.

Teflon is the Elf face/special ops. He just want to make it big. He knows he has the looks and smarts. Slaving behind a Stuffer Shack cashier in not the life for him, so he joined an elite paparazzi company. Teflon got some augmentation and training and was doing quite well as a paparazzo. However, after uncovering some dark secrets of a simstar he knew he was in trouble and went into the shadows. Teflon misses the high life and shadowrun is his route to big nuyen.


Both Adder and Teflon are not magically active, so I can put my priorities on Attributes, Resources, and Skills. Sure I miss the VS rules of no limit on availability and ok on cultured bioware for character generation. But the character concepts are still intact and it gives characters more incentives to acquire those goodies during game play.

Both Adder and Teflon are stealthy, B&E pistoleers. Sure they might not have their AKs or Ares HVAR, but Teflon has gotten into more places with a pistol than anyone else. With a combat dice pool of 11 and initative of 10+2d6, Teflon can tough out most combats. He has looked into the barrel of an AK, faced a spirit alone, and survived both encounters to tell the tale.

A couple of weeks ago, I was joking around with a pair of my friends for whom I was going to run SRM for. I told them to create the most "uber-l33t" characters possible under the SRM chargen rules. So they put their heads together and gave me what I asked!

Uber A former UCAS Matrix Marshal who specialises in breaking and entering (after all, he was on the other side of the fence... know your enemy). His expertise lies in being able to bypass electronic and other technological surveillance and access off-line databases.

Leet An Italian mage with some Mafia connections who studied first with the Sylvestrines (Societa Thaumaturgica) and then under Prof Schwartzkopf in Prague.

Uber and the Leet,
Uber and the Leet,
one is a genius and the other's insane...

Well, I've got two complete, and one on the burner.

Timber Wolf is a street sam with a bit of an... oddity. A former UCAS Spec Forces guy, his body mods evoke an old table-top mecha combat game of the late 20th century. However, this still doesn't mean he's not dead useful, it just means he will be using a van a lot.

Chromium is more stealthy. Most of his mods are invisible, and he's good at his job. When one learns at the feet of the best teachers nobility can purchase, it's not hard to be good, be it guns, stealth, or even hitting on the ladies at the nightclub.

The third one, well, so far s/he's a set of priorities and a block of potential stats. So more on this one later.

Pounder - An old dwarf drone rigger who speaks with a Jamaican accent. Is a big follower of the music scene in Seattle. In "Mission Briefing" the team he was with failed to succeed on the run because they were too busy being forced to listen to his story about Maria Mercurial at Underworld 93 over the commlink channel.

Sif - A female, elven decker formerly with Lonestar. Was kicked off the force despite her skill after multiple instances of non-judicious use of her given matrix power. Has extreme self-confidence, egocentrism, and near mania that borders on psychological disorder. Still, this confidence coupled with her elven heritage makes her much better in social settings than your average deck jockey. She refuses to meet in person for jobs, as her legal citizen status would obviously endanger the new shadowrunning career that she feels is an "adequate" test of her skills. Her icon is the Norse patron goddess of excellence, skill, and beauty, Sif, whose normal golden hair is replaced by flowing green "data". She specializes in programming so next time you other deckers are at a con... err, I mean "'runner haunt", look her up for some choice software.

Hope I didn't bore you guys!

legal citizen status???

Remember, as a shadowrunner, you have left your former life behind. Deckers (or yourself) have gone in and erased any records in the system of your existance - you are a non-entity, an unknown...you have no SIN.

Certainly, you can purchase a forged identity, but this is only a legal citizen status insofar as your ID is not compromised...

Since the rules say you can choose whether your character has a SIN or not at character generation, I chose to give this particular character one. As a Decker it will be possible to still remain anonymous with one to an extent. Mr. White, or "Maps", said this was a choice to make for your character at GenCon as well. I'm fully aware of the difficulties a SIN could result in, but having one fits my background and is possible to work around with smart playing.

I'm sorry, but in this instance, Larry White is incorrect...and while i agree with you in concept, this is a unifying and underlining part of the campaign...

while the rules may say that you can make this decision, it is part of the campaign concept, as outlined on the main website:

Background


Everyone has a story, as the saying goes. You might be from any of a dozen different backgrounds, but a few things tie you together with others that you will work with from time to time.

You are all SINless - it doesn't matter why, or how, that is for you to decide. If you're from the streets, then you never had one; if you're from the corps or some other sector of the "civilized world" then you have arranged for your former identity to be deleted from the databanks. Many may establish new identities through various channels, but these are forgeries, and will eventually leak out through the databases in the light of day.

Curses! Of course I find the one core rule that is not used in the campaign . Guess I'll just have to get a fake and have contacts handle all the SINny stuff for me.

The only SRM character I've played so far is Jesus Benitez, aka "Benny". He's an Ork of Mexican descent that operates as a stealth and B/E specialist. He has a moderate amount of cyber, mostly in sensory upgrades. He uses pistols exclusively so far, including a ceramic hold out with Hi-C rounds to get through security checkpoints.

His contacts are mostly from the Ravenna slums (just north of UW) where he grew up. He became a shadowrunner after passing through the ranks of a picketpocket and burglary crew made up of children who were organized by a local fixer. He was also a former janitor for 2 years when he tried to go straight. That experience has been useful, as Benny picked up useful skills (Maintenance Procedures), contacts (a Corporate Official and a Mechanic), and new avenues for illegal entry (he has a delivery truck with photovoltaic paint, etc., a work drone he controls with a RCD, and lots of landscaping, painting, and cleaning tools and supplies, traffic cones, and yellow plastic caution tape).

After he had some success as a small time criminal, he made his move up to shadowrunner status by sinking his entire savings into a ruthenium polymer jumpsuit, which he has used just once (successfully!) during his first four runs. His common law wife, Maria, would be very unhappy if she learned their nest egg was spent on some very fancy clothes...

My backup character for SRM, which I haven't played yet, is known as "Deever". He's a human hermetic mage from Quebec. He previously was an Executive Protection Mage with Cross Applied Technologies, but had to flee Quebec with nothing after 2 members of the protection detail team he was working with betrayed their principal. His only contact that remains from his past is Skye, the decker from that protection detail. She successfully fled as well. He has developed 4 contacts here in Seattle during his brief career as a shadowrunner.

Deever specialized in counter sniper and magical defense while with Cross. So far he has done some things to make himself a more well-rounded shadowrunner, but still has some work to do (once he earns the karma to do so!) He would feel most comfortable with protective duties, but beggars can't be choosers...

Several runners working for the fixers introduced in Mission Briefing have been buying Micro or regular sized Transceivers Rating 6 with encrpytion that they synchonize when they work together. Then one of the team always carries a Jammer Rating 4 around in case the drek hits the fan. If so, the runner w. the jammer activates it and jams all radio commo between the security forces, the Star, etc. The math works out that all the team radios should burn through the jamming, but every radio short of those used by Seal teams should receive nothing but white noise static [opposed test flux of jammer (6) vs. rating of the transceiver (6) vs. flux of the transceiver (6) vs. rating of the jammer (4)]. That helps to make a quick getaway against an uncoordinated security force.

Once the team breaks contact w. security, of course, the jammer is turned off so the team can't be traced via the jam signal. Even better, the jammer can be set up to activate remotely so tracing the jammer doesn't lead to the team. It leads to a brown paper bag in a nearby trash bin that contains the fingerprintless jammer.

oh, don't get me wrong - a character can certainly EARN a criminal SIN during the game (and someone has, at one of my tables). but you can't start with one...

Ok, here's a question. I know we don't use the Location books at all, and this may seem to answer my question in the most literal terms, but here goes:

A passage in Shadows of North America says that if one is to buy Pueblo Corporate Council stock you are issued a SIN, whether you have one or not. While it comes from a location book as I said, this seems less like a special rule to that book and more like a simple piece of information about the game world. So what do you think, does this bit of information "transcend" the absolutely no stuff from location books, or is it denied credibility because it happens to be mentioned in there?

I don't know about the official policy, but I'd rule that the main point is "No SINs",
so that would include "No SINs by buying stocks", regardless of what book would include that option.

correct - the spirit of the game is No SINs...

now, once the game begins, if and when we have a shadowrun that takes place in the Pueblo Council and you get a new contact there that can handle such arrangements (hint hint - i currently have someone that is proposing a run to this area) then you'll be able to get such a SIN - I'll have to read up on this, however, because it sounds like this SIN is not a full background SIN, and is only recognized by that corporate entity and government taxing authorities for the purposes of purchasing said stock. otherwise, it would defeat a major background concept of the game and the whole mechanics with fake ID credsticks, as you could just go buy 1 share of stock and get a free SIN. I'll have to do more research...

I created a "legal mage". No spell or focus over Rating 2. He learned his Magic at a 2-year Technical School [you've probably seen the late-night ads: "you too can become a highly-paid corporate magician by attending evening classes, with Life Experience credited toward your Master's degree"]. He had a data-jack installed to make it easier to attend the online classes.

After "graduation", he failed to impress people here and there, and finally turned to robbing Paycheck Loan stores with a Shotgun. He uses the data-jack to control the firing mode, safety, clip ejection, and choke.

His name is "Mr. A", and he wants to join a " T " team. I hope to be able to play him in a Shadowrun Missions game some day.

Several great characters runnin or been run:
Diesel - Think Jack from Big Trouble in Little China, but a Troll and a rigger with a big purple truck, funny how this rigger always ended up being the party meat shield, and was hardly ever in his truck. Born in Galviston TX, he has a bit of a draw, his current location is the Big Easy (New Orleans) a great place for smugglers and runners. He enjoys watching combat biking on the trid, shooting his 44 mag with ex exp rounds, and hanging out with his buds a voodo guy named Dried Apples, and a little elf mage, kindly named Lolita.

Johnny Gynohammer - well Johnny has a problem, hes a human...but at heart thinks hes a troll. He somehow got involved in a Troll thrash metal band and is prone to fits of violence and sexual dipravity. He is pyschotic and tough as nails, trolls love him, women love him..well some women love him.

Cassanova - Cass is an Elf, a slick talking pretty boy...who happens in his normal days to run a prostitution ring. Whats wrong with pimpin? it aint easy! He is a gentleman, and treats his girls with respect and defends them against rotten johns.
Cass has lots of friends and loves meeting new people who dont have the inclination to shoot him. His prefered weapon is the Ares Viper Slivergun, best gun ever.

just a few of my fun guys.

You've seen Joe before. Everyone has. He's just got one of those faces you know. Almost like he's practiced being nondescript. In a crowd of 100, he could be confused with at least 10 other people. Blending in is what he does. Nothing out of the ordinary at all, nothing that makes the eye linger. How's he dress? depends on where he's going, usually shirt and pants, nothing unusual.

completely average

HobbeGoblin- a matrix ganger [ System Corrupt(s)] who is stepping into the role of a professional shadowrunner. Persona these days is a cartoonish orc with long ears and a large pointy nose, wearing a business suit. Frequently wears Tusk-rings ( a new fashion for orks and trolls in which rings are fitted, and slipped over their tusks)