Well, working on characters at last for my group, and they seem enthused with the game, so I'm happy! We're doing it at the local comic/gaming shop...

But explaining things to a new player whose never heard of Shadowrun before...

Me: "Well, honestly, a Street Shaman can summon spirits from anything... So, say, they're chasing after a vehicle and they know it went down this alleyway. He'd summon up the spirit of a puddle there... <Bubbly Voice>'Hello!' 'Yes, did some jerks just drive through you?' 'Yes!' 'Can you take us to the rest of you, that went with them?' 'SURE!' and then..."

New Player: "And then we'd have a damn puddle running down the street with five heavily armed and armoured guys chasing after it, freaking the hell out of anyone whose on Drugs!"

Me: "... Pretty much, yeah."

So, yeah, Puddle Spirits are going to be a running gag now.

...

Later on, talking about Contacts, and how anyone is a contact...

Me: "OK, so I'm a contact, with all my worthless data. No good in a fight, but hey, I knew stuff. Or our buddy here, he's a programmer, you need computer stuff, there he is... Hell, the Store Owner over there could be a contact!" *Points to owner at counter*

Owner (Distracted by own conversation, but hears name): "Call me at my game time after we close, and you ain't gettin' NO HELP!"

*Laughter all around*

Obviously loyalty 1...

In my Denver setting for SR3, one character played a Gator shaman... he was a little punk 19 yo human Atzlaner from the Atzlan sector. He took to living in the sewers, which his character had terrific knowledge of and did a lot of work as a coyote (ferrying people from one section of Denver to another without having to cross borders.) Fairly quickly this character developed the nickname "Stinky" due to being in the sewers all the time.

He liked to summon city spirits to aid him and I had great fun always making bits of trash, old plastic sacks, garbage cans and so forth be the manifestation of what he summoned. The guy looked like Pigpen when he'd be on a run.

He was a fun character, that Stinky. Liked his hallucinogenics... especially 'shrooms. (The character, that is! I won't comment about hte proclivities of hte player. ) I remember one time, while on a run where they had to crash a rather uptown party, he decided to drop acid and convinced the other three characters in the party to join him before going. They spent the entire night rambling around this posh penthouse suite making fools of themselves with the VIP guests before things got out of hand, the guy they were supposed to snatch called security and the gun bunny female troll actually lost a melee fight to 4 security guards armed with heavy duty stun batons. The dwarf mage was also unconscious (the acid and a badly defended stun baton from where he tried to tell the guard where he could put his stun baton) and the poor elf adept and hte gator shaman actually had to subdue the sec guards and roll the troll out a window into a trash dumpster several floors below. Ever after that, the troll would jsut growl at the Gator shaman whenever he would offer any of his goodies. Ahhhh, good times.

Vlad

My most entertaining moment was the GM's reaction to one of my characters. It was a ninja adept... katana, throwing weapons, sneaking, the whole lot. The best part, however, was his reaction the the addiction my character had. Addiction: Tentacle Porn.