My only real-life Shadowrun game of SR3, which due to our young enthusiasm for violence and laughs was fairly silly:
"Raven" was my character, an infiltration specialist Elf. He started out as a corporate brat in New York, but a wicked anti-authoritarian streak led him to escape arcology life and do catburgling jobs for the Mafia, stealing art and raiding safes of rich family's like his own. His shining moment for the Mafia was a long term infiltration of a rich corper's household by learning to play piano and posing as a piano teacher for his daughter. They fell in love, and he ended up admitting everything to her, but unfortunately her and her father were caught in a missile the mafia fired at their limo, and they put Raven on a boat for Seattle, where the game started. (anyone ever watched Dark Angel?
)
While stealth was his specialty, he was also a fast talking, charismatic elf, and he used to dual wield a pair of Browning Max Powers when his silenced Predator wasn't enough. He was also good in unarmed combat, with a punching specialisation. He was also pretty wired, IIRC it was his ears, eyes and reflexes that were modded.
Memorable moments:
-A huge barfight that resulted when two thugs tried to rob Raven's favourite bar. Raven decided to be nice and "non-lethal", so he dived under the table and shot a thug in the kneecaps (which I found out later, is debilitating and not very nice at all). Unfortunately, the other thug was behind the bar, and Raven decided to be a hero, and dived over the bar, tackled the thug into the glass shelves and beat him senseless. He spent the rest of the fight under tables shooting patrons in the kneecaps.
-During some legwork on a target, Raven single-handedly broke into a government building through a tiny bathroom window, but couldn't be bothered hacking in to steal the files, so he replaced the hard drive with a sandwich.
-Having the aforementioned government target fall out of a first story window of his family home right on top of Raven. I think he took light stun.
-In nothing but jeans, a t-shirt and a pair of shock gloves, Raven survived a shadowrun on him involving a punch-up in a nightclub bathroom (coat-hangared the guy with a shock glove as he chased Raven out the door), avoiding a pistol firing assassin on the dance-floor, as well as the bouncers trying to catch him, having his escape cab lightning bolted to slag, dodging a fireball from the same mage while failing an athletics roll to jump a fence (he fell on his back and saw the fireball fly over his face), punching the (drain fatigued) mage out, resisting an intercept by a shotgun wielding rigger and jumping into his Westwind and speeding away. He also had to "disarm" he accidentally activated in the Westwind, by throwing it through a shop window, as well as a final gang encounter on the road. He made a profit, too!
-Starting a side career as a media snoop, because during an infiltration he abseiled past a couple having sex in their apartment, and decided to take a few cyber-eye shots, which he ended up giving to a reporter who was down on his luck.
-Saving a woman from an Ork mugger who was much tougher and stronger than himself with his pugilistic prowess.
His team-mate, who joined the campaign after a few of those incidences, was an Ork Samurai named "Loki". Loki was a scandinavian born ork, who got mixed up with a Seattle street gang called the Red Dragons (or something), who were jap-centric, and decided to follow the ancient code of Bushido. When the game started he was on the run from the gang.
Loki was pretty menacing, with his crew cut, red cyber-eyes, dual cyber-arms and huge physique. His specialty was killing, with his only other real talent being intimidation. And I don't mean "combat", I mean
killing, because while he was deadly with his katana and dual cyber-spurs, he had no unarmed combat skill, which was an endless source of amusement.
-When we house-invaded a politician to intimidate him into dropping from a campaign, with the exception to the grounds guard that Raven shot in the head, Loki took out (non-lethally, go figure) the whole security detachment at the guy's house with a gas grenade in the window, and shooting all the guards running out the door with gel round bursts from his ingram.
-In the barfight I mentioned earlier, Loki decided to start beating up the panicking patrons of the bar, but unfortunately, due to his non-existant Unarmed skill, he kept missing (five times in a row, I think?), while the wageslave trying to defend himself got in a few punches (which he easily soaked), until Loki decided "to hell with non-lethal" and just stabbed everyone with his spurs.
-Spraypainting the aforementioned politician's dog his gang colours.
-Headbutting the politician who was trying to escape backwards out a first story bathroom window (and guess where he landed?)
-The reason the politician escaped was because after we tied up his family and security team in the lounge-room, we sent Loki to go grab the politician (forgetting his ineptitude for non-lethal tactics). The politician hit Loki in the back of the head with a candelabra, and after trying to punch the poli in vain revenge, he decided "to hell with non-lethal" (again), and got his spurs out. Luckily, Raven had the "common sense" edge, and my GM told me it would be a good idea to go check why Loki was taking so long. Loki refused to back down, so Raven tackled him to the ground, but Loki tried to punch him back. Once again, Loki's defaulting against Raven's high unarmed combat did him very little good, although he did manage to fluke and head-butt Raven in the face. This was of course how the politician managed to escape to the first story bathroom.
-During that same run, some Lone Star cops showed up to investigate a noise complaint. Loki grabbed either the politician or a security guard and told him to answer the door and act calm, with a katana at his back. He didn't manage to convince the cop to not come in, and was pushed aside and Loki one shot decapitated the helpless cop with his katana.
-During a shady dealing we ran security on, Raven kept plugging a wired up Elf samurai, sword in hand, running screaming with his pistols but couldn't bring him down, and Loki decapitated the guy just in the nick of time (He loved a decapitation).
"Jack" was an Elf Raven met on a run. They were about to shoot eachother, when Raven realised that their faces were
identical. This, funnily enough, was the reason that Raven was attacked at the night-club. He was actually the GMPC, and he was an ex UCAS government agent on the run from a conspiratorial government cabal called "The Ring" or something. He was basically a CIA-equivalent field operative, and a bit of a Jack of all trades. He annoyed Raven a little, because like many GMPCs, he stole the spotlight a little. Not to say he didn't have some memorable moments:
-He was completely paranoid, and wore wierd disguises all the time, like fake noses, moustaches, beards, silly hats and glasses, etc. Raven and Loki teased him a lot.
-He could speak both Japanese and Sperethiel, so whenever Raven or Loki wanted to make fun of eachother, they'd address it to "Jack".
-After the Lone Star cop was decapitated, Jack rolled a HE grenade underneath the police cruiser just before he could call for back up. Of course, we had to run the frag away anyway, but the description of the lone star patrol-1 being lifted into the air in a nice quiet suburban haven by a thunderous explosion was very memorable.
I also played a game that never really got off it's feet due to the strange dissapearance of Divine Virus. I won't go into detail, but the team was large, high powered and
very paranoid. There was some excellent player vs. player conflict, including a great one between Chrysalis' Vera and one of our particularly paranoid magicians, Aleph, which ended in Vera storming out of our dirty shared warehouse HQ and going to stay in a classy hotel and taking a luxurious bath. My ultra neurotic czechoslovakian dwarven prodigal genius also pissed a few people off in several ways, including throwing a vegan hissy fit over the cooking of bacon and eggs, jumping into the rigger's van without permission to sulk, and telling the rigger "I'm sure you already know this, but the manifold parameters on that drone are off by 0.2 percent..."