I wouldn't just allow such a character in a game. For such a character to work, the campaign would have to be specifically designed from the ground up to allow for such a character, but in a normal SR game that character is right out.

Ordinarily, I would agree with this, but...Dryad is 45 BP, Drake is 65 BP. That is 110 BP right off the bat, and, unlike AIs, he has to buy the FULL range of attributes. Add to that that he is making the character a Magician, that is 125 BP out of 400. That is 5/16ths of his BP right there With the remainign 275 before negative qualities(310 IF he maxes out the negative qualities), he is going to have to buy what normal characters are buying with 360 BP(395 if maxed out on negative qualities) to 400(435 if maxed on on BP) So, Qualities,, attributes(including a 4-5 magic!), skill, contacts, gear...Where is he skimping? A MAry Sue would end up not skimping anywhere...this character cannot even really bother with cyberware, since it waould hurt the magic rating AND not be useful in Dracoform.

Well, from that I can infer that the character is a waste of everyone's time, but not broken.

Mary Sue doesn't just refer to powergaming though. What it means is that the character is dreadfully ordinary, in the sense that they have a nonsensical background and are very very special, just like the majority of fanfiction crap characters. Things like being raised by a dragon, being a part dragon, and being a rare woodland race that's decided to come into the city who is ALSO part dragon and ALSO a mage... That's who's in the dictionary next to Mary Sue.

I agree with IceKatze, RC is great to help GMs build a wider variety of NPCs using standardized templates. But if every one of your characters uses a race from RC, you're looking at a team which is effectively impossible. We're not playing Planescape here, where bizarre creatures from a thousand worlds tend to congregate and form alliances. This is the 6th age, where rare, magical creatures exist, but in such small number that having 6 members of different rare magical races all living in the same place, knowing each other, and forming a shadowrun team is basically impossible without some kind of really solid story to justify it. If we just let runners pick RC races and arbitrarily form the team, that's radically changing the universe -- in order for it to make sense, RC races would need to be everywhere, to the point where it's not that unusual to see one. It's fine to house rule it that way if people want to. But IMO, when you start introducing random, weird races into everyday life, it sort of batters down the whole race tension issue that's a major part of SR theme. If you have a veritable circus of bizarre magical races running around downtown, it's hard to keep the usual metahuman race relations in perspective -- who cares about trogs when there are dragonblooded yetis running around, and they're common enough that everyone knows about them? The only reason metavariants, and Infected, and other oddities even make sense in the world is that they are just that -- oddities. They are so rare that people think they're a myth, and nobody thinks about them except conspiracy theorists and paraxenologists. If a GM decides to write off that rarity and have a whole party of RC races (and I'm talking the weird ones, not the metavariants that are only slightly different from normal metas), then the GM has to follow that up by rewriting the setting to explain how people have reacted to these races becoming more common.

Don't forget that it's a ninja and a direct descendant from Chuck Norris.

Karma gen. It makes dryads super cheap! Well by cheap I mean free, so then paying for a drake is not as painful. If using a BP system it does make the character a little less.... overpowered, but in the end you still come out way ahead for what else it gives you.

Although "Drakes remain exceedingly rare and are a recent phenomena"

"Scientists have tentatively categorized drakes as the rarest of
SURGE mutations" RC p. 59

What I don't even like about the concept of this character is that it uses the rules of Mary Sue Companion... I mean Runners Companion.

Personally the person is picking a rare metatype, the rarest of the rare SURGE, and a mage (also quite rare.)

"Drakes possess the same skills and base attributes in both forms"

Western dragons - +2 Agility, +2 Body, and +2 Reaction.
Oriental drake - +2 Agility, +2 Body, and +2 Strength.
Sea Drakes - + 2 Reaction, +2 Body, and +2 Strength.

So you can hit the table with 4-5 boosted stats... oh yeah and since drake is a quality it affects your stats after character creation, so boosting all those other stats are still cheap.

For 110 karma or 65 bp. For the bp drakes give you 60 bp in stats (while not actually counting towards stat building) and a whole mess of other goodies when it can shapechange (natural armor, astral armor ect...) The karma might be different, but that person is totally Mary Suing it up.

The character is totally Mary Sue when trying to be a drake mage dryad. God I hate RC so much as a player creation tool. It should just be called MSC and has opened up Dumpshock to characters that I just can't stand. Day job.... famous.... dryad drake mage. All of this just screams power gaming. Just be sure that he is a voodoo possession mage with channeling so he can use guidance spirits for divination, guardian spirits if he wants to use a combat skill, task spirits for all technical skills, and spirits of man if he never wants to have to cast a spell. Give him mana static, and let him spell creation rules to drum up the increase attribute spell, but for 1 extra drain can use it for every single stat, and any other broken spell he desires. Maybe the player didn't go that far, but he/she sure found all of the exploits and really tried to push it.

For the love of god at least if they didn't just attach "rare" and gave some kind of statistic to what rarity means then a GM could at least be able to see how rare (aka if you would be the only drake mage dryad on the face of the planet or not.) Although thanks to RC they could just take the flaw distinctive style and net 35 BP or 70 karma for it making the Drake cost less painful. Thank you RC....

I think GM would be right to just say that they allready have the Distinctive style at max level for being a dryad drake, so they can't take it.

A good inflection - but not the way the rules work. It can also create more bad blood then just saying no to the character concept.

[Resisted for days posting in this thread]

I'm sorry, but if your the only Dryad Drake Mage on the planet (and with that very rare, rarest of the rare, rare combo you will be), you pretty much automaticly got distinctive style maxed for 0 points in my game.

That's if I don't beat you down with a bag full of dice for bringing a character like that to me after recieving my campaign guide.

"Ok, the game is going to be very street level, gritty, and harsh. Heavy focus on race tensions. Gang raised or related backgrounds should be the general rule, with the characters eventually trying to create their own gang or take over one"

"Here's my Dryad Drake Mage... Oh, he has world famous and day job too. Didn't want to give him trust fund or such because I thought that was too" *SMACK* *SMACK* *SMACK* *Thud* *STOMP* *STOMP* *STOMP*

You know, SINCE it was said that the rest of the team wants to run a pink mohawk style game, I actually don't have all that much problem with the character. Sure, it'll make tracking them pretty much automatic, and sure, it means that the character in question will stand out like a sore thumb... But there's an easy solution to this. Run the game ala 1st edition style - all about fighting 'the man', and blowing up corporate stuff, and spending your cash on hookers and blow. Like a blast out of Cyberpunk 2020, I think it could work.

Now if you were to ask me if I would allow that character in any OTHER style of Shadowrun game, I'd laugh myself into getting a hernia.

Putting a negative quality on a character is a GMs decision, but the player will probably want the karma/bp for the negative quality. It creates bad blood, but hell if someone dropped this in front of me I would do the same thing. Except for the fact that I would just say no and take RC away from the group to build a character with, as well as unwired (damn skill wire platforms....)

Pink or black. A broken character is a broken character. If that is fine at the table then that is fine. This character would pain any GM who wants to run a black game to his very soul though. Running black most of the qualities just are painful how it creates a pink, you get paid nothing, street level shadowrun.

RC seems to pull more towards the pink then the black and puts an actual cap on how shadowrunners are supposed to be and how they are supposed to be paid (I'm looking at you in-debt quality >.> ) The book is so Mary Sue it sickens me and makes me want to do an Earthdawn D20 skin. With all of the story, none of the step value.

Also I believe that Synner or one of the big wigs who staunchly argued about the karma system and meta types being free also said that distinctive style is a quality that you have to take and that it shouldn't be force upon your players. The rules have it as a negative quality, and so if you want to stick to the rules you can't place it on a player they have to take it.

By the RAW of RC drakes look normal they are assensed as normal, and they by all intensive purposes look like their meta type... until they shape change, and even after a blood sample is tested the DNA still does not show drake it shows the metatype. Drakes are just their meta type with a magic stat and can transform (their only dead giveaway.)

Yes they do

Drake is a quality. Being a dryad would get you the Distinctive style slap, but as a drake it is not a meta-variant.

TBH, someone doesn't need distinctive style to be easier to trace. If they're a hyper-rare race, that's basically an in-built bonus to find them. If my players were searching for "an elf blonde," they wouldn't get anywhere. But if they were searching for "a dryad mage who is occasionally seen changing into a dragon," it would be a lot easier. When the thing you're searching for inherently stands out, that makes it easier to find, just under common sense. The same applies to NPCs searching as it would to PCs. Distinctive style is a separate thing, it refers to your character's modus operandi, not simply their race. If the dryad drake wore totally nondescript clothing and had no quirky special gear or unique markers of any kind, he wouldn't have a distinctive style. That doesn't mean he's not instantly more memorable for being a total freak, he's just not a freak based on his style.

At some point the rest of the team should just get veto power. Why would they even let him on the team?

Actually had that happen in an SR3 game I was running. The group took one look at the new character and told him to beat it before they pumped him full of EX-EX.

Well, the character is "made" and I looked at the numbers.

The guy's got barely any skills and no equipment to speak of. Some attributes are RIDICULOUS but others are still at 1 or 2.

So he's not over powered, he's just "The Rarest of the Rarest of the Rare, sir!"

He -is- pretty good at summoning / binding spirits, though. (Not possession).

I think I will let him start with this character - and have a handy NPC villain who can overcast a force 12 lightning bolt at him. Multiple times. While shooting him with a gauss cannon. In a well-lit dead-end hallway.

If he RP's the character well, great. If the spotlight gets taken too much, then either the other players will geek him...or my NPC can.

My logic in accepting the character is this: It's a story. Stories are about the most interesting people in that world. Even if this character is the ONLY Dryad Drake Shaman in all the world.. that's okay.

My challenge as GM will be to give the other characters equal importance. Luckily they are both human, and not mary-sue themselves. XD

The only stats the character could have at 1 or 2 would be intuition, willpower, logic, or possibly reaction. What is the characters spell list and were you using BP or Karma? Messing with willpower and logic is generally always painful for a spellcaster.

Dicking the character hardcore with force 12 mana bolts and gauss cannons leave hard feelings and most players will hate you for years because of it. The easier pain you can bring on a character like this is just kill them a simpler way. The character is a Dryad and if the area they live in sucks they just up and die. If the character does not suffer an essence loss from bio or cyber then there is a 1.86 mile (diameter or radius I'm not sure it doesn't really say.) If things get bad the character can suffer penalties on all of their dice pools, and eventually die. A dryad in a city with massive amounts of violence would probably not have long for this world. Also what type of lifestyle did the character choose. Anything below medium would probably not be good for its health.

Actually.... That's a very good question. I'm not even sure he BOUGHT a lifestyle, come to think of it. I don't know how many BP's he bothered to spend on money.

He's probably homeless.

Granted, he said he lives in the woods.

Oooooo... I wonder what kinds of creatures live out there? O.o

Dryads do not die. They just get sick and get a -2 penalty to dice pools.

The book says they can get sick and die... though it may be more fluff than mechanics, I'll still geek him if he spends 4 to 5 months living in bad conditions.

"Living in the woods" does not mean happy joy joy smile time. Also a Dryad gains Symbiosis with an area they spend the most time in. Spending more time in the city means the Dryad will bond to that area. Having a street lifestyle means that the character lives in "squalid conditions" and doesn't even have a roof over their heads. If there are still forests left then you might pause and wonder why no one has clear cut that area. It could also be used as a dumping ground for other not good things. A good chance of feral ghouls, awakened magical creatures, devil rats, toxic shamans (at a toxic dumping ground in the heart of the forest.)

Remember 1.86 miles is a lot of ground even if it is in diameter.

What is his spell list? It would give a bigger insight as to what this character is really trying to achieve.

I agree with that reasoning, but IMO the player shares that responsibility. I wouldn't let someone make "the only one in the world," and then just appear in the campaign going "ta-da! Here I am! Now include me!" The player needs to answer very serious questions to justify his existence. Where was the character born? What did he do before he became a shadowrunner? Why is a dryad not living in the forest? Why does a dryad want to be a runner? How did this person survive for so long with almost no skills, and seriously unbalanced attributes? If the player can't answer these questions, then his character is not part of a story. He's a big turd that has landed in the middle of the story you're trying to write. Unless he can be written into the story in a rational way, he should be cleaned away with lysol and you should get a pine air freshener to clear the stench away.



There are tons of forests in the 6th world. During the Awakening, large areas were reclaimed by wilderness, IIRC. And many of those areas are protected by dragons, powerful shamanic lodges, and/or horrible nightmarish paracritters. Not to mention general 'unexplained phenomena' in the 6th world. I'd assume that attempts to reclaim wilderness would often be met with backlashes due to the mana disruption it causes. Wild magic zones, deadly weather conditions, volcanic eruptions, earthquatkes.. The fact that magic now infuses al natural areas means that they both attract powerful beings and perhaps even have a means to defend themselves.

Good point.

What is your setting? Is it urban or rural? Lifestyle only gives an estimation of what kind of living conditions they exist in. Street means terrible, squatter means one slight step up. Low is an apartment and so on and so forth. Maybe if you are doing rural transcribe this into something more rural. Street means a tent in a very bad part of the woods, squatter could be living at an abandoned log cabin, Low could be a trailer in a low end trailer park. Middle a mobile RV at a posh gated campground. High could be a four bedroom cabin with sat hookup and some nice electronics, and luxury could be an entire ranch with a small security force and state of the art electronics.

Personally if you actually showed us a stated up character concept I would actually know how to comment on it.

That's it! You could be these folks!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....

*gasps for air*

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

So halfway through the run you all burst into song and dance with the guards. THen the song ends and you put bullets in their heads.

Don't forget scooby doo style where the band is still singing and running in and out of doors in a hallway with people being chased back and forth on both sides.

Fuck yeah! Them, only with wild novacoke orgies and murder for hire! It would be pretty easy to turn the cat thing into a kinky cyberfetish, too.

Read Shadowbeat, Rocker is a standard archetype and includes for running a rock band, including a table of rehearsal times.
It even has rules for rolling for Impact, how much your music effects the crowd. There is an impact modifier for being a Sasquatch (+3), which is totally insane when you remember that there were no rules for Sasquatches at the time.

And then you get into things like Performance Ratings and Distribution Factor and Booking Tests.

It also has rules for being a professional trideo reporter, including interview tests with hostile witnesses. The both reporter archetype is more heavily armed than the rocker is. While the Rocker only has the Rugar Super Warhawk and Firepower ammo, the male reporter uses a Mossburg Shotgun and several other weapons while the woman uses an ingram smartgun. Both are very useful for getting those hard-hitting interviews.



The way I see it, it doesn't matter what the character is, so long as everybody is having badwrongfun. Hey, I'm willing to be the game police (or the game lynch-mob) as much as anybody, but really, there is little to complain about here. It isn't like the character is based on the Val Kilmer version of the Saint, the Pierce Brosnan version of Thomas Crown, or any James Bond other than Sean Connery. Those would be real hanging offenses. But this is kind of benign.

Really, try to convince him to take Global Fame back.

They could all be a world famous band together and he could be like motherfuckin' Jabberjaw.

Or any other Anakin Skywalker other than Jake Loyd.

NOOOOOOOOOO! Additional layers of meaningless complexity! Make it stop before I claw out my own eyes!

Some of us like meaningless complexity.

SOmetimes.

Dude, SB has a control rig for musical instruments and smartlinks for video cameras.



My Mary Sue test is rather simple. Look at the fluff. Look at the background he writes for his character. If the background shows his character to be a perfect paragon of perfect perfection while being dumped upon by the whole world, they you have a problem. If not then he is just a dude who happens to be a drake dyrad.


I'd suggest the following guidelines for any player trying to avoid making a Mary Sue backstory.

1) Your character is not perfect, no one is. Include some screw ups.
2) No orphaning before puberty, unless the character is a former child soldier. "Humanis parents abandoned me when I goblinized" is alright. I watched Joe Chill shoot my parents when I was 8 is not.
3) No gratuitous rape or molestation. If you feel compelled to include rape in the character's backstory to add some spice or tragedy, don't. It just looks tacky or shallow. The exception is if you're going for some sort of personal catharsis. (This is, probably, the only instance where personalizing the character makes it less of a Mary Sue).
4)Unless you're Lynyrd Skynyrd, do not spell your character's street name with gratuitous 'y's. Do not spell his real name with gratutious 'y's, either. In fact, you should avoid gratutious letters altogether. And no replacing S with Z, either. Unless you're trying to create a useless poser character who should have dumb names.
5)Don't base the character on an idealized version of yourself, for the love of all that is good and holy.
6)No 'good' versions of traditionally 'evil' races or archetypes. This applies mostly to D&D, where alignment matters. In D&D, it is much better to play an evil character being as close to good as is possible without actually being non-evil, an anti-villain who understands that being malicious all the time just isn't productive and betraying your allies rarely engenders trust. In Shadowrun, the same can be said, if your GM lets you play an Insect Shaman. There is little else so alien to the human psyche that it can be considered evil by conventional minds. Of course, if your GM lets you play an Insct Shaman, you've got bigger issues than potential Mary Sue-ism.

Thanks for those suggestions Hyzmarca; I'll pass them on to the player.

He's going to play the Dryad Drake this way:

His friends and foes will not know he's a Drake at first; he's going to try to keep it secret from the world at large, because he's hiding from a Corp that knows he exists (as a Drake, but they do not know he's a Dryad) and wants to "study" him.
He barely ever goes Drake, and when he does, he uses the Improved Invisibility spell as often as possible.
He does mostly eco-friendly runs, or else gets paid to do other runs in order to make money to a) survive and b) possibly save enough to find a way to get the above mentioned corp off his ass.
He has no guns, and uses shock gloves in close combat (When he's not in Drake form). He tries to use his (uber)high charisma and social skills to get out of fighting if possible, and uses stealth and Improved Invisibility to sneak in and get the job done when possible. Because his character is taking this stance, I'm going to rule that he cannot accept wetwork assignments.
He will however claw someone to death or burn them with his breath weapon if they do something he thinks makes them "deserve" it; murder an innocent in cold blood, kidnap a child, or throw a gum wrapper on the ground in a public park, and your ass is toast with the crusts cut off.

I think all in all, he's playing the character as un-Mary Sue as he can...considering his existance.

I dunno, the "I'm a good guy in a world of bad guys" route is hardly digging him out of the Mary Sue hole. Though I suppose having respect for life, and not being an evil murdering sumbitch would make sense for a prancing tree-fairy.

Now that I think of it, whatever happened to dryads being all female? Did they ditch that in RC?

Really though, it comes down to whether the player plays the character in such a way that it adds to the game and is fun for the group. He can have the most inane background in the world, as long as it doesn't detract from gameplay. It's just, when you have a character like that, the GM's knee-jerk reaction is to assume that it will end badly...

P.S.

Wild novacoke orgies and murder for hire, motherfucker!

Actually, that describes the team that every canon SR adventure for three entire editions is designed for. The general conceit of the three whole editions and a rather large chunk of the Fourth is that, though criminals, the PCs should have strong moral convictions. They're not villains, they're heroes who happen to commit crimes for money.

Hagga, where does it say that Dryads don't die? I'm not seeing that in the Companion.

Page 119. If there is gang violence, social problems, drug abuse, the dryad feels depleted and sick and gets a mild allergy to it until the situation is rectified.

I don't think that extends to the PCs being good guys. I see it more as a firebrand kind of rebel fighter mentality -- most everyone in the shadows wants to stick it to "the man" without becoming "the man." Moral convictions are seen as a way to transcend the amoral greed of corporate culture, but of course this is coming from people who are effectively corporate mercenaries. Morality in Shadowrun has always been about the edge -- in CP2020, they actually called it edge running, for much the same reason. It's about players deciding whether the ends justify the means, and what their human limits are in a world that rewards the inhuman.

Furthermore, the Mary Sue tests I've seen tend to place mimicking the canon characters as pretty much the strongest indication of Mary Sue-ness. Nothing gets you more Mary Sue points than being just like the canon characters... The thing that makes you into a fun and unique character is being somewhat original.

Don't get me wrong though, I don't think Mary Sue is the be all and end all of a character's validity. Some of the points it makes are really good, like don't be an orphan, don't be a victim, etc. But a lot of it is just stupid -- many parts of Mary Sue tests that I've seen ask whether your character has any unique characteristics at all. According to some, being the best at something, or even really good at it, makes you a Mary Sue. Having distinguishing features makes you a Mary Sue. For most of the tests I've seen, the only way to score a 0 is to be a suburban kid who grew up, went to school, lived with her parents, and still lives with her parents to this day. Even though that would be just about the most boring character even seen, the Mary Sue test would tell you that it's awesome, at least by inference. The biggest problem with the whole concept is that it doesn't refer exclusively to action-based RPGs, but is mostly about fan fiction -- I think that many (most) great novelists pick relatively ordinary people to be their protagonists, with the 'uber' characters playing supporting roles in the story. But while ordinary people who aren't mighty warriors make for great stories when thrust into a situation that's over their heads, they make really crappy shadowrunners who get taken down by stun batons and thrown in the clink.

You'd be wrong there. Look at the victory conditions, the ones that you get karma for, for the SR1 and SR2 adventures; you'll see that they're consistently white hat, almost purely so. It isn't just about rising above the amorality, it is about being Men in Tights, like Robin Hood.



Actually, most Mary Sue tests focus on being super-perfect and better than the canon characters at everything.



The definition of a Mary Sue is an Author Avatar wish-fulfillment protagonist. This is the person the characters creater wishes himself or herself to be, is perfect at all things, better than everyone else at everything, is extra special, and is incapable of doing wrong. Internet Mary Sue tests, those that are not made by morons, use the most common author-avatar traits to judge a character by. And since most fanfic authors are teenage girls ... (who like gay sex and shipping) ...

Ooooh, okay. I thought you meant they wouldn't die from getting shot/stabbed/blown up. That makes a hell of a lot more sense.

Like I give a fuck about SR2! Or should I say GayR2?




Well, I've seen tests that focus heavily on lack of creativity. AFAIK, the term Mary Sue is such because Mary Sue is a generic name, so a Mary Sue is someone who's generic. And it happens that crappy fanfic writers are pretty uniform in wanting to play out fantasies about being perfect beings inside their favorite imaginary world, making such characters generic and boring.

Funny thing about the Mary-Sue thing -- it works pretty well as an "anti-munchkin" test, too.

Munchkins like to eliminate weaknesses; such as family (orphaned at birth) dependants (children/"I'm a loner") or addictions. All of which fit in nicely with the MS tests.

Of course, all of that said, almost all of us are guilty of some measure of Mary Sue Syndrome in our characters; we play people who are more capable than ourselves generally, and that is a hallmark of MS. The entire thing can be seen as the pot calling the kettle black if you aren't careful.

Of course, a good character should have at least one weakness or habit that you don't aspire too. Addiction quality? Hothead who gets into fights? Strength of one? Not my goal in life, but makes for a good roleplay...not to mention gets me more BP for all those Mary Sue characteristics.

See, I think that part of Mary Sue is just invalid. The whole point of Shadowrun characters is that they're really good at something. If they aren't, what's the damn point? The problem is that Mary Sue is mostly about fanfic, and fanfics about ungodly super powerful people are trite and uninteresting. But Shadowrun is an RPG, where the mechanics are arguably equally as important as the story. If anyone actually took the Mary Sue concept literally, the whole team would get geeked on the first run, because they would be so shitty. The only way for your dead average protagonists to survive is if they're part of a non dice-based story, where they survive on luck and wit because the author wants them to. But in SR4, if you don't have the dice, you don't have a character who contributes to the game. I wouldn't say that most people are guilty of playing Mary Sues, I'd say that the Mary Sue test is simply not suited to judge RPG characters -- it's so broad, that it applies to every Shadowrun character who's at all likely to survive the first shadowrun. The only time you can successfully make a character that has 0 Mary Sue points is if you're playing a street level campaign where the character and all of their opposition are noobs. And I strenuously object to any so-called standards that force me to play this way.

I think the important parts of Mary Sue are the ones that get to boring story/personality issues. Murdered parents, being a loner, being a victim, being the only one of your kind, being misunderstood... These are all valid points of criticism for shitty characters. But being good at something? Having distinguishing characteristics? Those are good, in Shadowrun, and to the extent that Mary Sue sweeps those things in and calls them bad, it should be ignored. The pot might be calling the kettle black, but when black means "stylistic and useful," then it's not a bad thing.

I do not disagree with your points, Larme. I just take issue with the Mary-Sue concept. In my opinion, it is a cop-out in terms of criticism. Bad writing is bad writing and boring characters are boring characters. A critic using a derogatory term to describe the bad writing or boring characters is lazy and bad writing in itself.

Let's look at some famous "Mary-Sues" -- Superman. Beowolf. Robin Hood. All of those characters fit the definition, yet our society has been shaped by their stories. Sure, many of the Superman comics/movies/shows are boring and badly written; yet once in a while a great one comes along and maintains the power of the character. It's the story that makes the character and the character that makes the story; a nice ourboros if ever there was one. A weak character can be bolstered by excellent story telling; a strong character can sometimes elevate an otherwise poor story. Of course, everything works best when both the story and the characters therein are strong.

The point of the Mary sue isn't that they're good at something, but that they're better than the established canon characters. In Shadowrun terms, a Mary Sue would be someone who could out-deck Fastjack, out-scheme Lofwyr, out-magic Harlequin, and out-brown-nipple Nadja Davier at the same time without breaking a sweat.

In an RPG, where the rules prevent such absurdly overpowered characters, the phenomenon tends to manifest in attention-hogging characters (or, more accurately, attention hogging players who want everything to revolve around their character).



No. The term is named after a very specific character named Mary Sue who appeared in a story that were published in a 1973 Star Trek fanzine. Just like slash was originally shorthand for Kirk/Spock, every major fanfiction term that doesn't come from anime comes from pre-internet Star Trek fanzines. The original Mary Sue was so amazing in her abilities that she essentially overshadowed every canon character on the ship to the point that it would have been more efficient for Starfleet to just fire everyone else and have her run things all by herself. That specific story, however, was a parody at Mary Sue fanfiction in general, as a great deal of it appeared in Star Trek fanzines of the time.

The Mary Sue triumvirate is Author Avatar, Unrealistic Superiority, and Blameless Perfection.

The first one is obvious. If it isn't an author avatar, then it isn't a Mary Sue, period. This is hard to avoid in RPGs, as all PCs are, in some ways, avatars of their player. But it can be minimized by appropriate intellectual and emotional distancing.
Unrealistic Superiority means that the character isn't just better than everyone else, but is better in some way that is unbelievable within the setting, thus damaging suspension of disbelief.
Blameless Perfection means, that though they may have experienced tragedy, they make no mistakes. They're inhumanly perfect in every possible way.

Having extra-special attention drawing features can be a bonus, but isn't necessary. It is fairly common, though.
Degrading or diminishing canon characters is a very common side effect of Mary Sue writing, because the Mary Sue would otherwise be superfluous and the mere presence of the Mary Sue often makes the canon characters superfluous.

And to give everyone perspective, I suggest reading the page at following url.
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/3958/prede.html

I agree, it is a pretty shitty concept in general, and is often used unfairly to lambast some pretty cool characters. The especial problem is how badly the "test" fits with RPGs, which are not subject to the same general problems as fanfiction. We ought to, instead of using the term, point out exactly why a character is shitty. That avoids confusion (and multi-page debates over what Mary Sue means >.>) and gives people a guideline to make better characters. If we just give it a label, and say it's bad because it has the label on it, we're really not helping.

@hyzmarca: Thanks for the background info, interesting stuff.

Mary Sues actually predate the term "Mary Sue", since, IIRC, the story that gave us that name was actually a parody of similar types of fanfics.

Mary Sue is not really a term that applies to SR4 PCs. You can have cliched backgrounds, and you can have attention hogs, but not a true Mary Sue. This is because, unlike fanfiction, where the author can have his pet character effortlessly show up everyone else and triumph against any odds, Shadowrun is a game. A game with other players who can roll their eyes at your antics or hang you out to dry if you annoy them enough. A game where the outcome isn't determined by what you want your perfect character to accomplish, but by the cold, unforgiving dice. A game where the GM controls NPCs who can wipe you out with little effort if you think you can push around the big power players like Damien Knight or Ehran.

Keep in mind, too, that GMs can drive characters to create cliched backgrounds, if every weakness is used to screw them over and every loved one gets repeatedly kidnapped.