Dude, I'm 38 years old, with a wife and kid. I go to work, pay the bills, get the car serviced, change the baby, get up at 3am to fix a bottle (which is why I'm awake now), do DIY and get a bit of sleep. But every now and again, I sit around a table, rolling dice and playing the part of a cybered Japanese girl with sweet sneaking skills and a monofilament whip. I play to be immature.

Well, like everything, YMMV, so on. I don't really see elves as perfect in SR. It actually tells you there are rich elves, poor elves, good looking elves, ugly elves, smart elves, dumb elves, healthy elves, and junkie elves. Like someone pointed out, a lot of the glamour was stripped away. Any race in shadowrun is as flawed, or as perfect, as you make it. Example: With quality tweaking and the like, you can make an Ork(who really aren't THAT much lower than humans mentally....maxes of 5 in Charisma and Logic are by far not stupid), with biosculpting, cosmetic surgery, Human Looking, and the whole nine, and probably have one damn good-looking dude who not only looks perfect but has an awesome physique too, and pump the mental stats too, give him balanced skills and bam. You one a hell of a perfect Ork on your hands. I've seen plenty of perfect humans minmaxed out as well(keep in mind yes, this is mechanical, but they can be worked into the gameworld, as well.)

Then you can turn around to make a violent junkie of an elf who is willing to kill for his next hit, had estranged most folks close to him and has been known to sell his body. He's much less perfect than the above ork. You can also meet Joe Average the Elf, the guy that works at the warehouse with his friends loading and unloading trucks all day, smokes, and has beers with his friends every Friday after work. He's neither here nor there but just...average. Also remember, elves are metas and suffer racism like others, no matter how pretty they are. A humanis goon would just as likely want to sabotage the beautiful elf model as he would the dwarf down the street.

Oddly enough, speaking about them ''mechanically'', even though they seem to get ''all bonuses'' or not be flawed or whatever, most folks will tell you from a BP standpoint they are actually the worst bargain.

At the same time, I think I can understand where folks come from with guys like Superman, etc. And also, I know some of the elf-hate can stem from fans of elves too, much like the whole vampire thing. I play WoW, and Mailbox Elves really exist. For those of us who play elves in the game who actually want to, we usually facepalm often at some of the behaviour at the elf players. They do seem to attract...special fans at times, it seems.

Max: not that we can't all easily think of 2-3 reasons off the top of our head to dislike Superman, but I was curious what your personal problem with him is. (Used to be a media major, now minoring in folklore. I'm curious.)

And vampires are a completely legitimate character/archtype concept. Humans quest for immortality, human want for physical beauty, what they will gives up for it (beauty and immortality), and of course humans as predators. All completely legitmate. What I like about vampires in a setting like SR IS the dehumanizing factor. SR has a system after all where the more modifications you get to become perfect, the less perfect you become (essense loss). Basically both are in a way the same concept. (The last two sentenses of course being the relevant ones. Everyone is entitled to dislike whatever they want.)

I don't think that I've ever really thought of elves as being perfect, at least not in Shadowrun. I think that perfect is, however, how they're seen by other characters in the game. That is, they're expected to be perfect. They're supposed to be. Their flaws are the same as those of any human being, however, but, if anything, they show even more starkly against the preconceived notion that an elf ought to be flawless.

There is a tendency in the human mind to think the best of attractive people, a set in which a great number of elves, no doubt, lie, but when they fall short of that, not only are their flaws revealed, and they receive whatever judgment for that, but those who built them up in their minds feel disappointed or even deceived, as well.

Elves are just like humans, but they should be better than humans. Their greatest flaw is that they're not.

I am a critical perfectionist. And am not happy till its right.
So unless all my players and I have a great time with a sophisticated, mature, evocative, insightfull, pathos fillied and generally damn cool character interaction, etc I can be a wee bit demanding and critical.

As a player the same applies and makes reffing for me, tiresome but rewarding.

I like to be prepared, with most if not all the i's dotted and t's crossed. Basically I now where and where you cannot cut corners and so are unhappy when I ref or play in a game where the work has not been put in. This is because I really work at making a fully realised world or character to get a kick from the game. I like to be met half way.

My quirks:
1. As a GM, I'm a real dickhead... I wouldn't play under me!! (Somehow, my current group won't play under anyone else.)
2. I hate Elves and Dwarfs.... (D&D burned me out on those... my last ever D&D session had 4 elves and 2 dwarfs... I feel like playing one is the opposite of creativity.)
3. I loathe Emo fiction. (Vampires after Anne Rice and WoD, Star Wars Ep: 2 & 3.)
4. I find myself.... wait thats one of my GMing secrets and one of my players (at least) trolls the forums here regularly.
5. I will mess with players for no reason that they are min-maxed.
6. I tend to min-max my characters.
7. I despise people who can't pick a skill set and "generalize" so they can horn in on every action.

As a GM and a player, I try to push characters until they break. Consequently, I'm more interested in why characters are shadowrunners, rather than how effective they are.

I always lay out the stakes for each roll - that is, if a player says, "I want to leap from this rooftop to the next," I respond with, "Okay, if you fail, you don't quite make it, and you're hanging on by your fingertips." If I'm the player, I always ask the GM what happens if I fail before I roll.

As a GM, I always roll in the open. For everything.

I play RPGs for the sake of playing, not for immersion. I guess I tend to approach them like board games.

I am totally guilty of deliberately choosing the worst possible race/metatype/whatever for the role I'm intending. I'm a big fan of Troll mages and elves who're into brawling.

I'm probably not hard enough on my players when I GM. I want to make sure everyone is having a good time, and sometimes that leads to them succeeding too easily. That's especially rough in SR, though I'm totally stealing that idea upthread about having the guy the runners did a job for turn out to be a lying manipulator who is later arrested for kiddy movies.

As for the discussion of Elves as being better than human, I suspect that those who dislike them have never had them played well. Because the joy of being more than human, better than human is that your failures and your mistakes will also be bigger than life. A good roleplayer will take that and run with it, and make the story better for it. An average one or worse will take that same situation and make a character that it's hard to like, because they're too perfect.

Funny you mention that. Just last night I tried making a Troll face. Didn't really work out. We've had plenty of times where the troll on the team becomes the face by default. "Uh oh, [team leader] is gone. Who's got the highest charisma?" "I've got a 3. And a negotiation of 2." "Okay, Brutus, you're up."

When I GM, I often underthreat. I'd really rather not kill the team by improperly balancing the threat, so sometimes I wimp out. This annoys the team because they get less karma.

Two of the things I like most about Shadowrun are the endless possibilities, and the social aspect. You can take that elf with its myth of perfection, and make that into a character flaw, or you can just turn the myth on its head. Instead of complaining about it, make something of it.

Bah, elf brawlers are awesome. Mine freaking rips faces off repeatedly(No, not bragging or anything. It might just be nice, lucky die rolls on my part and unlucky on the opposition. Dice can be like that. ) Nothing non-optimal about it. If you want to be technical...there IS no race that's NOT good at brawling. With the martial arts rules cyber/bio and/or adepts, any race can be a monster; even the 3 foot tall 90 pound weakling of a dwarf, with the right setup. Troll mages are likewise awesome; and I've seen Troll faces do awesome, as well. it might take a little bit of fixing here and there, but an Adept face of ANY race can be quite awesome, I've found. One day I might make my compendium of ''stuff that isn't considered optimal but can actually be just as awesome''.

Oh, and underthreating? Yeah, be there too. I hate to see good stories go down the tubes due to bad die rolls, so I guess I feel under-threating the party might be a decent way to do this.

I play RPGs, because I hope to be an assistant in writing the story as it develops.

ElFenrir, ever had the same thing you want to assist in writing the story but find them to be so goal oriented and conflict centric that having a bit of character time is unproductive and opposed either actively, passively or tacitly by the GM or other players?

I shouldn't reply to you, just because of your infernal handle, but I will humor you non-the-less.


I am talking about elves in general. The elven meme if you will. I hate it. And yes maybe my hatred blinds me towards whatever (small) differences shadowrun may spin on this meme. Shadowrun certainly has its prominent members of this stupid elves superiority que (Harlequin, I'm looking at you!). And even introduces new twists on it (Drakes). And while every race might have variations elves (IME) tend to be more cookie-cuter then most. The reason for this is obvious. When your playing a Troll the assumption is that you are strong, but dumb. Thus playing against this stereotype is easy and interesting. But if the grain of the elf is (as most seem to agree) being awesome in every conceivable way, playing against this grain becomes 'sucking in every conceivable way' rare is the author or player who makes this character development choice. As I said, some may think playing such 'superhuman' characters is interesting, but I think its dumb and think those people are dumb as well.

Now of course making blanket assumptions or stereotypes about a race without taking in to account the differences that individuals might have is pretty much the definition of racism.So I am a racist in terms of elves. I am perfectly happy with that label. Most of the responses I see to my position amount to 'hey, elves can be different individuals!' which is kind of like telling a racist person not be racist. This is a thread about our 'quirks' right?

In any case, I can offer only two point in my defense.
#1. How else is one suppose to judge a race except by the traits they have in common? The trait elves seem to have in common is being awesome beyond all reasonable measure, with no flaws, which I find incredibly lame. It is not racisim to point out that all black people are black, nor is it to point out that elves, as a race, are built with only bonuses, and no flaws. And thus a critique of the race may indeed be in order.

#2. More often then not, my generalization is in fact correct. Many (stupid) players and authors are drawn to elves as a meme or as characters because they find their particular attributes (being flawlessly awesome) appealing, for reasons I can only attribute to flaws in their personal character. Some may make token attempts at developing a character flaw, indeed there is a whole genre of elves based upon this concept, ref. 'Dark Elves.' which almost invariably fails. Or in fact goes to far and they feel the need to create a 'better' character that rebels against this flawed race with his renewed perfection (ref. Drizzt). Now some people may think that is cool. I don't. And I think those people are morons.

Some have said that the flaw in being an elf is that you are expected to be better than human, and at times you are not. How the hell is that a character flaw? If a player came to me with that crap "Hey GM, my characters flaw is that he is supposed to be super awesome, but you know sometimes the dice will go against me and I won't be! Cool eh!?" I would hit him with a book. Imagine if Superman came up to you and was all whining, "Its hard being me, people expect so much from me, but some times I let them down..." I would try and kick his ass then, were he not an invincible alien from Krypton. Some people obviously find that supposed 'flaw' appealing. There are certainly enough comics written about it. I personally think that it is crap (and I think those people are stupid, so there!).

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There is one person whom supposes, rather insultingly, assumes that this is due to the caliber of the people I have seen roleplay, which he judges to be low. Since I think everyone who plays an elf is a moron, I will tactfully ignore this insult


Maybe. But perhaps you can understand how I find the concept of a character who must feed on my race for food rather distasteful? I am not a big fan of cannibals either. Or how I might scorn someone who got those things (immortality and eternal youth), and revels in them, while at the same time bemoaning the loss of their humanity in the process! Freaking emo-crybabies. I think this meme probably came up because the only way to make a predator like Dracula appealing as a human hero (as opposed to an inhuman villan) was to have him bemoan his fate and lost humanity. But of course as I said above, this doesn't work, and strikes me as retarted.

Thus I have little problem with Vampires as inhuman predators who see man kind as prey. Dracula, he's cool in my book. But they can't exist as such and be protagonists, or player characters. Books about heroic serial killers are rather rare! And as a human, I can't help but think of a character like Dracula without imagining ways to bring such an inhuman monster down. I find when I relate this to my players, their desire to play a vampire dries up


Superman is an Elf from Krypton, what else can I say? He's a character with no character flaws worth mentioning (oh I become weak if the sun was to turn red!), and pretty much every power conceivable. So I find him pathetic. How can I empathize with such a character? How can I feel sympathy for him when he fails in a task, or joy when he overcomes the odds and succeeds? How is he supposed to grow and develop, and become better than he currently is? Thus superman falls flat to me. His only recurring 'flaw' is to fail to live up to his expectations, which (as I said before) comes across as moronic to me.

I think the point was that you could take this problem with expectations, and make an interesting character out of it.



Personally, I just think it's a little odd that you hate elves because they're supposedly better than humans, yet they're really equal, because we all get the same build points. But so what? That's your quirk. But you've got to be all hateful about it. I'm supposedly a moron, because I didn't have to spend any BPs on charisma for my street samurai?

An Elf, for their BPs, gets three stat boost and the ability to see in near darkness, which is rendered null and void if they take any implanted augment to their vision.

A human gets enough extra BP by not being an elf to buy three stat points, and can spend, what 150 nuyen to get low-lite contacts.

All you get being an elf is longer like and a propensity for eating flowers... from a purely mechanical standpoint the hate-fest seems petty.

...and they lose a point of Edge, so they actually come out behind humans.

Their perceived perfection is a flaw, because unlike Superman, they really aren't. And when they are, they don't get credit for it. It's like someone being a hard worker or getting good grades on a computer course, and having people say "Well of course, he's Japanese, they have this attitude about being hard workers, and they're good with computers." The poor guy doesn't get any credit or recognition for his own hard work, and heaven help him if he's a slacker, or isn't a computer guru.

Elves and dwarves are similar, in that both have baggage associated with them. Elves are supposed to be delicate ethereal creatures, and dwarves are supposed to be tech wizards. So you see a dumpy elf living in a crappy tenement building, or a dwarf who shrugs and tells you he has no idea what's wrong with your commlink, and you think "What's wrong with them?" When, for a human, you wouldn't even note it, because you wouldn't have those expectations.

As far as vampires, the sole interesting thing about them, and ghouls, is that the transformation usually isn't voluntary. So the real roleplaying comes from turning into something that needs metahuman blood or flesh to survive, and asking "If I needed to do something like this to survive, would I?" The problem with this in Shadowrun is that you're already a criminal who shoots people in the face for a living. So what's the big deal about chopping off a flank steak from a guy who's already dead, or draining some Essense from someone you're going to geek anyways? So I don't see the appeal of them as PCs in Shadowrun. Other than that delicious powergaming, of course.

By the way, I blame Laurell K. Hamilton, more than Anne Rice, for the angsty pornstar vampire thing. Anne Rice actually did a nice subversion of the trope in her Tale of the Body Thief book, where the main vampire, who's been whining and bawwwing about his lost humanity, gets a chance to be a human again, and finds out that, after being a super-powerful vampire, being a normal human sucks.

I could make an interesting character out of a fruit bat. It hardly changes the fundamental problems I have with the elven meme. Nor does it make a problem with failing to meet someones expectations an interesting flaw for me to base an entire race around.


Personally I think its a little odd that you haven't pointed out that mechanically elves come out behind humans in BP when attempting to refute my rather personal, petty, and possibly slightly irrational reasons for hating elves. But don't worry, I'm sure someone else will do it .


You expect a self pro-claimed racist to be nice and loving when describing his feelings about a race he hates? Or to have kind things to say about that race's supporters!?! I would hardly be a racist then now would I?


I still don't buy 'not meeting your expectations' as a flaw, for the reasons I stated above. But I somehow think this other spin on it, 'not getting credit for your hard work.' Is even more humorous. First because I see it as mostly not true. All over fiction (and in SR fluff as well) people fawn over elves for their superior magic/looks/ability to run on snow without leaving footprints/whatever. What do the elves expect, us to heap even more praise on them because looking this good naturaly is hard work!? Secondly because it really just is a variation on 'the expectations are the flaw' theme. Which I still find rather silly.

"The flaw with my character is he has to work really hard to meet the expectations people expect from him naturally!" or, "OMG, it is such a problem for my character he's really not that good at talking or magic, but like because of his pointy ears everyone expects it out of him! Gosh, it is such a huge drawback for him!" Boo hoo! Cry me a river. I would be more sympathetic to your complaints if you didn't also get to live forever, or if your had huge tusks sticking out of your mouth which made speaking and not drooling all over the place difficult. Or if you were 3 feet tall.

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I get it. Some of you like elves. Well I think your stupid then. You probably think I am stupid for hating them. Hah! Now we are even! I'll end my hate fest for them in this thread with that then.

And if you are getting offended by me calling you elf-lovers names, then you are probably taking me a wee bit to seriously .

...OK I am one of those who likes characters that are not necessarily the most powerful but yet the most useful.

Of course One of my other quirks is when push comes to shove, I am more into third edition.

I always need to have my big bottle of Guinness at each session and start the gaming day with an energy drink (my favourite is Jones Soda's Big ol' Can of Whoop Ass - can I say that here?).

I don't do well playing mages and I hate being the team's Face.

I love Nior and Deco.

I thoroughly enjoy the music of Johan Sebastian Bach, Frederic Chopin, Claude Debussy, and Oliver Messiaen.

I go to Karaoke bars and sing a wicked Patsy Cline.

I hate crowded buses.

I believe in the sanctity of the Holy Drop.

I like to slap people (particularly politicians) upside the head with fish.

I have to say, am I the only one that reads Max's rants and gets the perfect image of Dana Carvey's ''Grumpy Old Man'' from the old SNL news skit in their head?

But yeah, true-it's a thread about quirks, no matter how normal or out there, rational or irrational. In fact, I had only listed my quirks as a player, not even as a GM. I'm sure that even more quirks would come out, and some rather irrational as well. I'll list them later.



I do believe I have...if we are thinking of the same thing. Sometimes I will indeed take my character and try to push things along somehow, or perhaps try to bring up new story points, or explore things that they haven't yet...but then stuff just...happens in the plot. It could be that the rest of the team wants to run the other way, or whatnot. Ill be playing in a game in about two months when we head back to the US for a month(where my group is located), and my character has a couple of qualities that can indeed have some story impact(though I don't want them to take over the story to the detriment of the rest of the players, of course. I don't need spotlight time all the time, nor do I want it.) But I'm wondering how these will work out. To be honest, that group of mine is usually rather good with things like that, but I have played with other groups where yeah...stuff like trying to assist in the story does seem a bit counterproductive somehow.

Ok, some more(player oriented, but could be other) quirks I have:


I feel compelled to try to comment on as many character critiques as I can. The times that I don't, they might be so heavily, say hacker oriented(the one thing I'm fuzzy on) that any advice I could give might not be good advice. Though I will at least take a look at the skill list to see if any vital skills were left off(that I know at least. I just don't know the whole deal with programs, etc.) I also post my own characters often, even though I have a good grasp of the rules; but I usually do it for me ''hey, i need another set of eyes to look at this to make sure it checks out and I didn't forget anything.'' Proofreading your own work sometimes makes you miss things.

I think the reason I try to comment on as many critiques as I can, is when I see one with about 100 views and no comments, I at least try to let the person who posted it up know(and it can take awhile to type them up ) ''a-ok!'' (which seems to be the reason for no comments.) I'm actually surprised that the character critiques don't get more love here. Though I suppose there's only so much you can say, sometimes.

Not that you asked but I disliked Superman until I read Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman. Now I "get" Superman. Superman is the working-man's hero and has a working-man's problems. Superman grew up baling hay on a farm. He goes to work, for a boss, in an office. He pines after a hard-working gal. Only when he tears off his shirt does that heroic, ideal inner self come to life. That's more meaningful to me as a working fella than the adolescent fantasy of being a wealthy WASP who dresses in a leather cape and fights crime.

My generation skipped out on superheroes so I have never had the inclination of either collecting toys or seeing grown men in their underpants fighting other grown men in underpants. It means that max may have his elves, I hate superheroes.

I like playing surgical games, but I dislike that it turns out they are all robots or they all survive without a scratch on them. I like a little mess to keep the edge.

I have never been good at minmaxing so instead I have become adept at scaring my other PCs by playing the other spectrum - the psychopath.

I read extensively. I often find that strange since gamers seem to shun actually cracking open a book which is not an RPG.

I like playing handicapped characters. It can either be physical or mental handicaps.