These rules relate to Shadowrun 3rd Edition.

I've begun allowing players to have some Everyman Skills in addition to their starting skill points. (Note, please, that I use the standard Priority system for all characters; I've not tested this system with any other character creation system). The reason for this is simple, even a nearly unskilled person would have some basic skills they would've picked up from childhood, high school, etcetera. This is what these skills are supposed to represent.

Everyman Active Skills
Car 1 (Everyone would have some basic familiarity with how to drive, even if they don't use the skill on a regular basis. This represents drivers ed courses, or a parent teaching them how to drive).
Computer 2 (In a world where computers rule everything, it's only logical to assume the character would have picked up slightly more than a basic understanding of this essential tool).
Unarmed Combat 1 (Who didn't learn to fight growing up?).
Athletics 1 (Since Athletics covers running, jumping, climbing, etcetera, this is another logical choice given an active childhood).
Etiquette 1 (Basic interpersonal skills are essential to survival in the Sixth World and every character should have at least this level of understanding of social interaction).

Everyman Knowledge Skills
History 1 (I've found that giving this skill to new characters, especially characters controlled by new players, tends to give them a "hook" into the character and provides an easy means of allowing them to know basic historical facts about the worlds history).
Bushido Philosophy 1 (In a world that is heavily controlled by Japanacorps, like Mitsuhama or Renraku, it seems only logical to allow this skill to reflect the bias these corporations would have on the school systems of the countries they inhabit. Note, also, this DOES NOT imply a samurai character, or that the character is leaning towards being a samurai; it is only meant to reflect the cultural leanings of a society heavily influenced by Japanese culture).

Everyman Languages
Native Tongue at Intelligence Level(Half Intelligence Rating for Read/Write Skill, rounded down, as per rules). (I see no reason to force players to spend points for their native language. It makes no sense to me).
Japanese 1 (Again, as listed for Bushido Philosophy above, the influence of Japanese culture around the world (especially in the UCAS) would allow for this language to be taught in most schools throughout the world).

Contacts
In addition to the two free Level One contacts, I give all the PC's a free contact with a Mr. Johnson, and Illyana (a Fixer). This gives the new created character four level one contacts, minimum.

Obviously, players may create characters who might not have these skills. To date, this hasn't happened in my games, so I've not had to rework this system. I am open to suggestions on how to handle this, if anyone has any ideas.

Thoughts?

The problem is that 0 ranks is the everyman skill rank. It doesn't mean you don't know anything, it means you know as much about it as Joe out on the street.

The problem I have with that system is that you default, loosing a die. Since the average stat is 3 (and often argueably 2), we're looking at an average individual not being able to consistantly get even a single hit on a test. Secondly, knowledge skills rank 1 is "high school" knowledge. Everyone went to high school, so why do average folk know less about it than a student? (Yes, students do know more about stuff than their parents, for example. But I don't think lifelong retention is so bad that it means a whole skill rank.)

Anyway, onto your stuff. It makes me sad that characters don't start with a free contact or two. I wouldn't demand they be a fixer, but everyone knows someone (useful). Hell, everyone is useful at some point when you get down to it. So I think that's cool.

I've never actually made a character who speaks Japanese. While their culture is prolific, don't you think it would lead to a Firefly type language situation, or how people who watch anime are obsessed with calling other people "baka," but freeze if you say good morning to them in Japanese? I just don't really see people from Mexico, Ireland, or Italy having a default rank in Japanese. (Specially with language softs. Who LEARNS a language anymore! That's for our parents.) And I believe characters get thier starting language at "native" rank, which is mostly auto success. I to have been thinking about assigning ranks to their native language starting out, since there are well spoken types... and people who are much less so.

Alot of people didn't learn to fight growing up. I didn't know how to until I took Karate. I went back east to visit a friend, and the people there couldn't believe I had taken a martial art, and they thought I was messing with them when I told them I litterally couldn't think of anyone I grew up with who had never taken ANY martial arts (at the very least they got some at a summer camp). Alot of people don't know how to fight. It's uncultured and barbaric in today's society, don't ya know. Like owning a gun. Athletics is the same deal. Specially in the future with AR, you think everyone is going to be in decent physical shape?

And so on and so forth. I like the idea, but the set skill sets are what I find a little iffy. Maybe givign a few ranks to players for "everyday" skills, and let them justify it, and slap them upside the head if they try to metagame it. (Though I did grow up learning to shoot guns, so there is my longarms and pistols skills.)

I've got to agree with Storm on alot of points.

Several languages are prevalent in our culture today, but that doesn't mean everyone speaks them. In the USA for example, Spanish is very prevelent, but I don't know how to say hello in it. Similarly lots of people watch anime and can maybe say 'baka' or 'konichiwa' but that doesn't mean they know the language at all. Heck, even after taking two semesters of it in collage I feel like I would only have a rank 2 in it.

Also as Storm pointed out, 0 is in theory the everyman skill, but I agree that the description of such and the execution via rules has a big discrepancy.

Your starting skills more or less represent a persons childhood and what skills they learned there. If they have athletics 0, maybe they where a coutch potato. If they have unarmed 0, maybe they never got into many fist fights as a kid (Like you know, about 99% of real people) And honestly, even an unarmed of 1 represents some actual knowledge of fighting. Perhaps this is just a few martial arts lessons, or perhaps a huge number of fist fights. No driving skill? Well, not everyone owns a car in SR, and even if they do, they can get by with gridguide doing most of the driving. Computers I would like to agree with, but once again, if the person doesn't start with the skill, it just means they never spent much time on a computer, too busy beating up kids in school or working out or whatever.

What this should be is a list of skills that you suggest everyone have because they are so common to childhood.

As well, based on your reasoning, I'd put forward that every gun skill should start at a 1 thanks to them being so prevalent in video games, movies, TV, and everything else, that everyone tends to know the basics of a safety, the trigger to shoot, and the idea of how to aim.

All this really does is change 'no skill' to a skill of 1, because you can argue that everyone has had some experience with just about anything.

As for the knowledge skills, I think by 'high school level' it means a kid who is currently taking the class in school. Thanks to having to actively know it for upcoming tests, they'll know it far better then someone who took the class 10 years ago. Take that show 'are you smarter then a 5th grader?' where adults don't know as much as the kids. This isn't because the adults are stupid, but because the kids are in the middle of studying the given subjects, and the adults haven't looked over them in 20 years. This is why every single character doesn't start with a 1 in biology, chemistry, physics, history, english, etc.

Also yeah, you start with your native language at... well at native, so you don't have to spend points on it.

As for those contacts... I kind of figured that is what the two free contacts your given are anyway. Everybody knows somebody, thus the reason for 2 free contacts. 4 free contacts assumes you do a fair bit of networking. Honestly, personally, if I was making myself as a character, I'd have 2 contacts. People I know well and would be willing to do stuff for me without a hassle. I know tons of other people of course, but not on the same level I think of as a contact.

Did you guys notice the SR3 flag?

Most of your arguments would fit to some degree anyway, but in SR3, it was much harder to default then in SR4 (even more so in 1st & 2nd edition). Also, Skill level 1 is really not that much in SR3, because your dice-pool is skill only for most stuff!

For contacts, I´m inclined to agree with the original poster, but on the other hand, many runners are removed from their previous live and some are downright asocial

I used to do something similar for SR3. Having said that, I think you are giving them too much, and would remove Unarmed Combat and Athletics. Even today, TV and the Internet contribute to an "epidemic" of kids who have neither skill due to being couch potatoes. This would only get worse in a world with Trideo, and the Matrix.

I would also only give 1 rank of computer, yes everyone knows the basic of using them, but no one actually knows anything complicated, or how they work, without study. In real life I teach computer classes, and one should never underestimate how shallow the average persons knowledge is in this area.

As for languages, I did handle native language just as you did. As for a second language (common everywhere but the current USA), I would let the player choose one from a list based on the neighborhoods and gangs in the starting city. For Seattle, I could see Salish (NAN border), Chinese (Chinatown), Korean (Tongs), Japanese (anywhere, especially downtown), and Or'zet/Trog (ork underground and barrens) all being reasonable.

Lastly, while Car 1 is reasonable today, and for rural areas even in the future, I don't think the average city dweller drives that much now and even less in the future.

Honestly, I'd spit on "Bushido Philosophy". Really, most of Japan wouldn't know even that much. I can't see something that the majority of the country of origin doesn't know filtering over into a country they had a cultural impact on. I don't know the SR3 Knowledge Skills system, but if there's something else that better fit Japanese Culture in there, go with it. Otherwise tell me that I'm an ignorant n00b for trying to make suggestions about a gaming system I don't know.

I'd have to agree with you, I glossed over that because I assumed the original poster was using "Bushido Philosophy" as Etiquette (Japanese). In SR1 & SR2 each version of Etiquette was a separate skill rather than just a specialization of one skill. Based on that I forgot the change was before SR3.

Anyway in SR2 I would have given each character 1 rank in Etiquette (Japanese) and Etiquette (Street). In SR3 I would just give one rank of unspecialized Etiquette.

I have to say the ONLY one I agree with is Native Language at Intelligence level. ALL of the rest are far too situation dependent. The one that comes closest next to it is Know-History*1. But even it is better, I think defaulted to Intelligence than simply granted via fiat. All of the rest si simply gilding the lily. It looks more like a form of group (and by that I include the GM) munchkinism or a lack of understanding of how the default system works. Pretty much ANY skill represents a degree of interest/involvement GREATER than the minimal. An Int*3+ represents not just an above average IQ, but also probably a degree of education higher than the average.

Joe Mook gets along fine with using his defaults for most situations, and so do the PCs for those where they didn't have interest enough in the skill to spend a point or two on it. Giving out "everyman" skills nerfs the hell out of low dice skills, making them even less valuable than they are.


Isshia

No, I was well aware that this was about SR3, and all of my comments where directed towards SR3. I do however admit that I don't have a book on hand to look up the language thing, but I seemed to recall your native language being a given thing in SR3 just as it is in SR4. If not then that is one point I completely agree on, you shouldn't have to burn points to learn to speak your own language.

I seem to recall that you got your Intelligence x 1.5 in 'free' Language points at chargen, but I'm old and it's been a while.

I'm 22 and I don't know how to drive. This is because I live near the centre of a large city, and can take public trasnport or walk everywhere I need to go. I admit it's a nearly universal skill, but as the cities get bigger I can see people needing to know how to drive less and less.


I agree on this one, though people should still have the option of starting computer illiterate if their background dictates so.


I got into maybe 4-5 fights in the 12 years of primary / high-school, and none of them really taught me anything (they weren't so much fights as a single punch being thrown). If I hadn't taken karate lessons as a kid I wouldn't know the first thing about fighting. This would be an appropriate skill for people who grew up 'on the streets' (or in the barrens), but certainly not for everyone.


Again, unless you grew up in a rough area, it's pretty easy to have absolutely no athletic ability whatsoever, even if your shcool does have PE classes. =P


This sounds fairly resonable.


While there are a few small exceptions, most people do know basic stuff about how civilisation got to where it is (who hasn't heard of Darwin, for example? You'd be hard pressed to find someone in Australia who'd never heard of Ned Kelly of Captain Cook). Like Computer above, people might not have it if their backstory indicates as much.


Gotta disagree on this one. The man on the street isn't going to know jack squat about Bushido. This would more be a knowledge skill for people working in a Japanese Corp environment.


I don't really know SR3, but assuming they don't already get this, this makes sense.


I disagree. Even in noticably multicultural countries (like, for example, most of central europe), not everyone speaks a second language.


Free contacts makes a lot of sense.

All right. Thanks for all the feedback. You all have given me much to think on.

Thanks again.

Silicon Avatar

These rules relate to Shadowrun 3rd Edition.

I've begun allowing players to have some Everyman Skills in addition to their starting skill points. (Note, please, that I use the standard Priority system for all characters; I've not tested this system with any other character creation system). The reason for this is simple, even a nearly unskilled person would have some basic skills they would've picked up from childhood, high school, etcetera. This is what these skills are supposed to represent.

Everyman Active Skills



I'm 28 and I still don't know how to drive a car. My brother go his license just now. Distances are long when travelling city-to-city that it is easier to take mass transit like trains. The city itself is small, so it is easier to go y bus or by bike. A car is beyond my means to keep.



I am average in computer literacy in my own opinion, but when compared with people in my individual circle of friends I highly computer literate. Most have trouble operating Microsoft Office, let alone finding new drivers or tweaking with an operating System.



I learned from a very early age that there was no way I could beat a full-grown man in unarmed combat. They just have far too much body mass for me to beat. Same thing with a knife. I would have to make sure they know martial arts for me to even use locks and then that is an issue where I can get charged for assault if I win. I would have to be able to clearly show that I was under clear and life threatening threat for me to fight back.




I work out a little. Not enough to stay in solid physical shape. I would need to have a strong environment for me to get into good physical shape. In the past two year alone I have lost alot of my muscle tone.




And yet looking at some people on this forum they would not know how to deal with a situation with people where they are out of their comfort zone.



Again this make assumptions on history. For instance I find that most people have no knowledge of history, no interest in learning their own history and most what it is also reinforces certain nationally or government handed assumptions on how things went. George Washington wasn't an American, despite what conventional folklore states, he was British.



Most of the Japanese Samurai caste even during the Tokugawa period did not subscribe to a Bushido philosophy. Today it is a gimmick to sell over priced junk to westerners and has been reinforced through many years of bad 80s movies.



Define language and literacy. If you live in Southern California, New Mexico, or Florida, the language you need to at 1 is Spanish. In some location in the United States English still is the secondary language.

Rates of literacy in the United States depend on which of the various definitions of literacy is used. Governments may label individuals who can read a couple of thousand simple words they learned by sight in the first four grades in school as literate; but the most comprehensive study of U.S. adult literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government argues that such adults are functionally illiterate — they cannot read well enough to hold a good job (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2002, Adult Literacy in America). A study by the Jenkins Group has shown that millions of Americans never read another book after leaving school(Jackson, Robyn; 2008, Some startling statistics).

The National Center of Educational Statistics funded a five-year, $14 million study of U.S. adult literacy involving lengthy interviews of U.S. adults, the most comprehensive study of literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government, was released in September 1993. It involved lengthy interviews of over 26,700 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in 12 states across the U.S. and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information."

Knowing a few words in Japanese does not mean you have proficiency in the language. They are often discrete loan words, something English uses to develop its semantic construction and matrix.


***

Edit: Silly me I forgot my point. I think this is a worthwhile list, but maybe instead of giving a point in each or two points in each instead you give them five points that can be spread between all the quoted skills at a maximum of 2 in the skill level.

So I skipped the rest of the convo after "did you miss the SR3 flag?"

Yes, yes I did. Wanted to fess up. I'll be over that way now. *points*

Uhhhhhhhh, today lots of people in the US grow up without being able to fight worth a damn. Look at fight footage on YouTube, or even footage that made the news of teens getting beat down by vengeful peers. They have no clue what to do.

Yeah, perhaps a rank in 'how to get beat down' would be more likely then unarmed combat. Getting into a fight is easy, learning anything from it isn't.

I think the big problem is that people look at shadowrunners, and all the high skill levels they have, and think "Well darn, 3 must be about average skill." Well that's true, if your a professional in that skill. Honestly, I think most boxers and such that you see only have an unarmed combat skill for 4-5, with perhaps a specialization in boxing. 6 is the guys you see fighting in the Olympics, and maybe even some of them only have 5s with specs.

Personally I've taken Martial Arts for years and have gone through earning a black-belt twice, and I wouldn't give myself more then a 3 or 4 tops for unarmed combat, more likely the 3, but maybe I'm just modest. Point is that even a skill rating of 1 actually represents a decent level of knowledge/training in a given skill, and if it wasn't for my martial arts, I wouldn't know the first thing about throwing a punch.

Further using myself as an example, no way I'd have a point in History. Sure I know WWII and WWI and the american revolution happened... at some point in the past.. over reasons... Ok, I know the reasons, but the point is valid. Heck, in one of my collage classes the teacher was talking about the year... um 1790ish or something, maybe one person in our class of 30 realized that was the french revolution, and funnily enough no one in the class realized it was also about the time of the American revolution, even when the teacher mentioned that there was another big revolution. And yes, I live in the USA, so yeah, that's 30 collage students that don't have a point in history, and I think education is generally 'better' today then in the world of SR.

As for computer 2... I don't think you realize how many people are computer illiterate. And no, you can't just say that it is the 'older generation because they didn't grow up with it' I know people older then myself that know computers better then me, and I know people my age and younger that are lucky they can open Word (In fact, thanks to a tiny error in our school computers, plenty of people can't open Word on them without spending about 30 minutes installing the rest of Microsoft Office.) So yeah, I think you'll have tons and tons of people who know just enough to make their computers work, but won't be able to do anything else, once again referencing a skill of 0, not even 1. Personally I'd put myself in the 2-3 range here, but I spend plenty of time on computers and I even know how to program, but that is a different skill entirely.

Athletics? You really think Joe Wageslave has the time, energy, or notion to work out after a 14 hour work day? (Or however long it is, I forget) Sure alot of people run around as kids, but that hardly represents a level of skill in Athletics, and for most people that certainly dies down as you get older, even more so with computers dominating everything. Why go run around outside when there are virtual mantis spirits to blast? And actually, if your a corper kid, odds are running around outside isn't an option in the first place.

Language skills? Now there is a fun subject. Two semesters of studying Japanese and two on German have maybe granted me a 2 in the languages, perhaps I had a 1 in the first semester. Before that? Yeah, you can't actually speak the language no matter how many catch and curse words you happen to pick up. Knowing a few catch words and how to curse in a language doesn't count as having a rank in it.

Etiquette? I hardly think Runners are generally the most social of folk, but even so, how much do you really know about etiquette? Do you know which of the three forks, two spoons, or two knives to use when presented with a full table set? Well, that's really the sort of thing that a single rank in etiquette would cover. 'Don't fart at the table' doesn't count as a rank.

Edit: Now, all that said, these are reasonably common skills. I think the best idea would be to point this out to people and suggest they take those points, kind of a way to round the character out as more of a person, instead of just focusing on a handful of skills they have pumped to max.

Chrysalis' idea of allowing a very small number of skill points to spend on these various skills as the sort of thing that you tend to pick up early in life isn't too bad, but overall I think it feels very munchkiny. If a character has no points in unarmed, he never got into fights as a kid and never took martial arts. If they don't have a driving skill, maybe they never owned a car.

The point is your starting skills are supposed to represent these vary kinds of things, the trouble however is that skill points are a precious commodity, and people don't want to waste them on 'character building'. I mean sure, it may make a cool backstory that my decker took martial arts as a kid, but as a skill I'm unlikely to use, I don't want to burn points into it that could go into more decking skills. Sure, my sammy really loved computers as a kid, but since he is never likely to use the skill, seems a waste to put an actual point there.

I would make this highly dependent on where you grew up and the affluency of the PC's family.
If you're from Atlanta, you would know how to drive even if from the Barrens. It's a requirement here for getting anywhere and I can't see that changing in SR. Most Southern cities are not very big on public transport.
In many other metroplexes, you would have a very functional public transportation network. In SanFran, Washington DC, and NYC, you would never need to learn to drive. Toronto too.



I might agree with Computer 1, but I also have worked IT for a decade. You'd be surprised how many people born in the 1990s can't freaking operate a computer.



Many people. Me included. Those in a corpfamily are likely not to know how.
Other have argued this already better than I.



It might make it easier, but it's not terribly realistic. Most people don't know jack about what happened 10 years, much less 20.

I agree about Atlanta since I grew up there.
It was a shock moving from a city with a mediocre subway system (MARTA) to one such as DC (Metro) and even then these pale in comparison to places such as Tokyo or Hong Kong... the subway coverage and experience is so different. Though, it's interesting with the advent of the ZipCar, some folks who normally wouldn't own a car in the city can now drive it once a week, ensuring they refresh their driving abilities. Hmmm... so there might be a rise or prevent a further decline in folks knowing about the basics of driving.

I didn't get my driver's license until I was 25 years old, myself. That's because I grew up in New York City where a car is more of a liability than an asset.