We had our bi-weekly game yesterday and I had a somewhat startling revelation about my character. He seems to be going in a different direction than I had planned for him. I'm not talking about little things like favorite weapon or weather he likes sushi or not. It's more of a complete different set of moral and ethical parameters. Maybe I should explain.

Tick-Tock,aka Dave Kalamar,aka Vance Newton,aka Dillon Kramer.aka Duke Albion is a rigger. Born into the bottom of Potter Inspections Inc. corporate family, he dreamed of working his way up through the ranks of the company, a subsidy of Ares, and becoming a Nova hot rigger for the parent company. He spent 15 years of his life fighting to realize his dream,only to to be time and time again to be pushed down to the bottom. one day, he just walked away. He then spent 3 months living in his van, not really having any idea what he wanted or where to go.

That all changed when he stumbled into a firefight between a group of runners and some big time corp mages. Although the encounter went badly for his pretty much off the rack drones, he did give the team a chance to geek one of the mages and withdraw from the encounter.

Since then his world has been crazy. He is hanging with big time runners and criminal and has been living a lifestyle well beyond any thing he could have dreamed of working for the company. Expensive foodstuffs, high class "escorts, fancy vehicles, and out the wazzo.(ok its not that much , but for some one who's salary was about 7 k a year, suddenly having some one pay you 5 to 20 k for one job is just incredible.) of course the downside is having the mob and the yaks calling for your evisceration and working for some big time drug dealers tends to sometimes leave a bad taste in the mouth. But, Frag!! The bennies are just to Fraggin' over the top. Spirits man! he spent last night in a Bunraku parlor with two elvish school girls and a trunk of B/D toys (comped even!) after just getting beta cyberware at an incredible cut rate!!!!

Heres the catch. When I started this character, I had intended to him to be a little stabilizing to the team. You know, that little conscience of the group who says" maybe we should get all of the orphans out of the building before we turn it into a pile of rubble."

I am afraid my character has turned to the darkside. Maybe it Ghost Cartels fault or maybe he had repressed that side of himself living in the bright light of corp life. What ever the case, he is spiraling into a crazy, decadent , adrenaline fueled ride to hell.

And I am enjoying the living drek out of the trip.

So, does anyone else have any stories of characters who didn't turn out how you thought they would? or am I the only one to have a creation wander off on its own?

I think it's fairly common. The background starts you off, but after that, the character can go all different kinds of directions. My 40-BP character, Rat, I envisioned as a pathetic loser. But his drive to get out of the gutter, his survivor's instincts, and an extroverted personality made him the default face/leader of the group, even with the Uncouth flaw (the SR3 version, not the crippling SR4 version). I have had other characters veer off, too. Once the character is out there bouncing off of the other characters, that interaction can take you different places than you had envisioned.

I have only one character that turned (or rather is turning) out exactly as planned, started out as a coward who hides it under a veneer of morals and ethics and still does after 2 years...
All of my other characters change drastically...
The other character I currently play, gun bunny with some B&E on the side) can be summed up with a Futurama quote: "Fry, I'm an 80's guy, so to me friendship means that for 2 bucks I'd hit you with a pool que until you got detached retina." But then, 2 sessions ago something happens and I just couldn't shoot the 6-year old witness... I don't know where it's going, but it ain't going where I thought it was...

He was a CP2020 character, but close enough.

So Eric was a Fixer. He specialized in moving product, buying and selling. He had some time in the military and was decent with a gun, but nothing crazy. Straight up man, didn't drink or do drugs (Bio that made him extremely resistant to em), a very good backup/support guy.

So after about a year of play, he is running a multi million euro a year company, has a live-in girlfriend into bondage (and girls), two willing sex slaves (twins, both capable of beating him to a pulp with ease), and a little jap girl trained as a companion and medic. That lil jap girl figured out how to make custom drugs that go around his resistance. He ended up in a drug induced week orgy through an arab sheikh's harem. Oh, and he is banging his personal assistant too.

In Neo-Hongkong he is considered one of the badest of the bad. Of course, the fact that he wears nothing but white, knocked out a martial arts master with one punch (rolled 10, 10, 10, 9 to hit with cyberarm, can you say *MEGA CRIT!*) and shot a missile out of the air with one shot (and *ALL* 10 of his luck points) might have something to do with it. He kinda took over a porn studio and was in his own production "EZ bangs Bangkok!", a 48 hour masterpiece du' porn, again thanks to those lovely drugs.

So the solid dependable backup character became the rich, playboy, leader, face, drug popping, Beotch Smacking, BLOW MUTHAS AWAY guy.

I had a pistol wielding adept in SR3. He started off with dual pistols in a back alley and some cred in his pocket, along with amnesia. He was intended to be the guy who doesn't know about his past but 'Hey whoa, I accidentally just killed three gang members by shooting them on reaction.' (Kinda tripe, I know, but I can play a cliche every now and again if I want to!) He was originally going to be the guy who was super nieve and good at shadowrunning but bad at societal stuff.

He turned into the group's common sense guy. Like these gems.
PC1"Crap, that guy saw us, and Johnson said not to kill him, whatta we do?"
PC2"I've heard of a super rare Elven drug that can erase memories, but I don't think we could find any in time."
Me:"Or we could, y'know, get him piss ass drunk . . ."
PC1"Or we could . . . I'll do a vodka run."

PC1"We need to find a way to kill power to the zoo."
PC2"We could hire that decker contact of yours to deck into the main city's power computer. Could be expensive."
Me:"Aren't you a demolitions expert? Can't we just sneak you into the zoo and have you blow their transformer or something?"
PC1"Hey, I am! I'll go get a fake repairman ID."

My current character, Malcom "Malus" Himura(mal for short), started off as an american/japanese ex-renraku troubleshooter(black mage magician, seductress mentor), who screamed G-man and was totally professional and up-tight. Now he is kinda the deadpan snarky sarcastic guy of the group. Still more professional then the rest of the team, but not if his mentor spirit has any say in it.

Characters develop over time.

The character remains the same. It is the player who changes.

Sounds like the chicken or the egg debate to me

The egg, by several million years.

The character does not exist without the player; it's actions are always the player's choice, even if they deviate from the player's original intent.

It's pretty much inevitable in any gaming experience, or in any writing experience, that things do not turn out exactly as planned. No plan survives reality. Eventually, something always throws a monkey into the works.

"Angdagnir", aka Ben Irons, the Troll Rigger(2nd Edition, pre Rigger 2).
Character was an Aerospace and mechanical engineer, he got into running because, well, he wanted to test what he was building. Never satisfied with anything. He was intended to be the "cool head" in the party....

Then that damned Street Sam pulled a gun on him and tried to tell him how to drive...in his own Eurovan. Next thin you know, this guy is building an ejection seat, lined with explosive and ball bearings to be a dedicated Samurai Seat....Mr. Spouts philosophy, reads classics, is now using stupid street sams as living claymores!

Oh, thought of another one.

Our GM wanted to to make a 'Silly, damaged goods' campaign, and all our shadowrunners were supposed to be off-the-wall crazies.

I made Millie. An 18-year-old petite human bear shaman. She was originally supposed to have gone through domestic troubles, and had mentally regressed to the emotional state of an 8-year-old, and she would only use magic if scared or provoked.

Then she failed a rage roll on her second run and (through spending of edge dice and a series of VERY lucky rolls) summoned a force 10 beast spirit to F-up the opposition. She afterwords became like that girl From F.E.A.R. No one wanted to go near her, and they feared that she would turn into Carrie at the drop of a hat. She turned around quick.