What if Incompetent were applied to an Attribute and prevented you from defaulting on any skill roll related to that Attribute?

Then I doubt it'd be 5 pts.

The problem with most marriages is lack of communication. Understand?

It is exactly the same in roleplaying, talk with your players about why you think their choices are poor. I can make another analogy (probably better) about raising children. Permissive-Detached-Authoritarian-Authoritative.

Permissive - Yes you can do what you want, but I'm giving up my authority (and yes GMs need authority from time to time).
Detached - Yes you can do what you want, but I don't care if the game devolves into chaos.
Authoritarian - No, because I said so!
Authoritative - No, because (here is where you explain why you think it is a bad idea)

Be authoritative and you will earn the respect of your players and allow the game to not get out of hand.

My opinion is I agree that Incompetent can be a broken quality (for the reasons people already mentioned). As a player you need to sit down and ask yourself why you're taking the quality. Free build points are tempting, but it doesn't help the game if the GM isn't happy. As a GM, just talk with the character, maybe you can work something out so they can have it. I heard someone say that they talked with their players to find a different negative quality and I think that is the ideal way to GM. I find myself wanting the extra build points, but I've also always wanted to run a game as a new shadowrunner (300BP) for the challenge and the excitement of the story.

Sure screw with characters, but don't screw players.

My three tenge... sorry I'm in Kazakhstan at the moment, it is their denomination (150 tenge = 1 dollar)

Shedim! Shedim! Kill it with fire!

This is also a question I ask players alot in many of my games...Sometimes when it is a really good idea,
sometimes when they are about to get themselves killed...

Of course, for the people talking about DayJob and Sensitive system? I have my own views on those.

Sensitive System, you will never see me take unless my character has a piece of cyber at chargen.
This is because, to me, a Disadvantage should have some tangible effect. Like my Street sam who was
incompetant: automatics.

DayJob...I think it very much depends on what your job is. It could provide benefits(like the elf Escort
I saw in a 3E game, who actually got info on the target of an extraction by being hired by him), or...
it could provide bad things(same elf escort...found herself hired by the team's Johnson...) It can
also provide other situations, like the Street Sam who had a job at Stuffer shack when someone tried to rob
it.....at gun-point.
One of the more interesting cases was the Day Job working for the Mafia: Started off the small level, where he
was just a sometimes legbreaker. He got alot of recognition, and got another level of the flaw, as he moved up
to doing the "Damage Insurance" sales. As he got more successful, it got more pints into, more duties, until at the "40 hours a week" level, he was having to go to church with the Don, and was keeping the books for the prostitution
and drug rings. Now, he had alot of freedom on when he did those, of course..but it still took up 40 hours a week...
(the salary was his cut of the money made). But, yet, he was also at the beckon call of his Don, and, sometimes, had to pay for runs out of his own pocket to make the Don happy...(like covering up that the Don's married daughter had
a thing for orks...there was a little section of Puget Sound that had a fair number of dead Orks in it...)

i prefer to write a very short background and add pieces to it as i go on. the first few runs are crucial, as the way you begin to play your runner at the start of his career gives you a bit of a path to go down in the future.

eg: smith's father was a bike racer who fell on hard times when he crashed his bike in a big race, so he needed his son smiths help to run some jobs for a few shady friends of his, As before he hit the big time smiths father was a member of a prominent biker gang, and that same gang helped him get ther now its time to pay them back. Smiths dad teaches him the basics i.e how to handle a pistol, ride a bike, and negotiate a good price etc.

but the job goes horribly and smiths father dies, (smith begins his life as a runner)

now thats an ok start for a shadow runner as you go you can add names to the people in the gang that may have had a part in his dads death, and he can take some side jobs to take care of them.

smiths uncle who is a gun smuggler could take him under his wing etc.

you can really flesh a runner out the more you play them.

Worst from a role playing perspective?

As a player, I find that the Enemy flaw would make me more likely to remove the offending character from my presence. Last thing I need is Ares Firewatch teams bugging about my business because the hacker pissed off Ares big time. It really cramps my style yo.

Enemy does not cause a AAA corporation to come down on you. An Enemy is one guy who's taken it on personally that that character must die/pay for crimes.

I swear there was an option to make your enemy a group as well just like you could have groups as contacts in RC.

It is possible to have an individual enemy with the resources to send a Firewatch team... of coarse his name would probably be Damien Knight and your PC would probably be fucked, but it is possible.

I don't see why they couldn't be. If you can have group contacts, what's wrong with having Group enemies? If you want a sporadic case of a group hunting you, the Wanted NQ might be a better choice, since it allows for a diversity of adversaries and a frequency of attack that's a function of how sloppy the PC is rather than of how connected the hunting group are.

My technomancer had an enemy in the form of a hacker mystic adept and his ally nuclear spirit. Man when they finally met up that was a choice run. By that time my technomancer had threaded and bought a bunch of skills with the biowire (automatics, dodge, unarmed, and a few others at 4 & 5) and a custom combat drone that couldn't be rigged. With his echo that allowed him to control unriggable machines that meant the drone couldn't be hacked and once inside of it he was one of the most effective combat characters with his 5 IPs and multiple spirits for matrix backup. He had Wanted but gained enemy when by killing the mystic adept and having our mage take care of the spirit once and for all we shook the hornets nest and discovered a whole hive of toxic awakened and dissonant technomancers working together. Man that went south quick, in a good way.

My current character in another game system has Amnesia. It's a WW game, so the wording of the Flaw was pretty much an excuse for the GM to screw me. But, that isn't the way my group works. Instead, it turned out that I had a familial connection to the story and its prime characters, which motivated me IC as I explored it, and also happened to make me a target. It was great all the way around. In that case Amnesia ended up functioning in the Ars Magica sense previously mentioned, rather than simply giving me points for putting a "kick me" sign on my head.

Personally, I think the system itself encourages min-max behavior in this regard. When the system rewards players for taking flaws and puts the GM in the position of screwing them for it, this adversarial relationship shows up. J's reaction to Amnesia in his games is a perfect example. The system rewards players for trying to find flaws that don't hurt them, because they are set up that way. SR compounds the problem by doing things like charging for positive qualities that are negative more than half the time, and charging for positive qualities simulated by other expenditures, like contacts.

I've noticed over my years of roleplaying that often certain mechanics develop a reputation in a given group. In J's group, Amensia is for lazy players. In my group, I'm the only to have taken Amnesia in the 6 or so years we have been playing, because nobody else ever wanted to. I don't think the flaw itself is a problem, but if players don't want to add to the story it is within the bounds of the GM's authority to make it sting.

The goal of the game should be to have fun and tell a good story. If the GM is getting his jollies by toying with his players like a cat with a mouse, something is wrong. Conversely, if the players are getting their jollies by intentionally screwing up the story and the setting rather than immersing themselves in it, something is equally wrong. I'm sad to say I've seen much more of the former than the latter.

People love to blame players for being munchkins, ruining "their" games, and bemoaning the state of their beloved hobby and the barbaric "rollplayers" that have assaulted it. What I hardly ever hear people talk about is that in many cases the GM gave birth to the munchkins. The GM arbitrarily applied the rules to screw players, beat them over the head over and over with mechanically overwhelming characters, and laughs at them OC for "not getting it." Then the players respond by trying to make their characters good enough to survive in this inconsistent World O' Crap™, and yet another "besieged" GM shows up on boards like these whining that his players are "min-maxing." Has it ever occurred to them that their tendency to casually smack them with the equivalent of 5 Firewatch teams when their characters run out to get milk has something to do with it?

I don't say this to attack anyone on these boards, but rather to respond to the general tenor of the thread. When everyone starts piling on the munchkin players, I guess I'm just saying GM's can munchkin, too.

Read the damn quality. I quote:

Basically any flaw that doesn't really penalize you (Incompetent) or lets the player be lazy (Amnesia) are the worst flaws in the game. I don't even know how the hell they managed to make it into the game once, let alone make the jump from edition to edition to edition. Incompetence is already covered by having no or low rated skills, and amnesia is a 100% pure background element and certainly not worth giving a player bonus points because of it.

I have to agree with you on the Incompetent,Good Doctor. But personally as a GM I love to see Amnesia on a character sheet. I instantly start planning tons of horrible bad things to dump on said characters.

Seriously. I also think that amnesia is a cop out. but hey, if the player wants me to create they're backstory they had better not bitch too loud when the find out they were really a high class call girl who was given a sex change and put in the witness protection program after testifying against Mitsuhama to the corporate court. and that her children are now trained assasins with abandonment issues. or that...

And once again (third time this thread), I'm compelled to point out that only the 25 point Amnesia states that the player gets to skimp on character backstory. The lesser version just says the character doesn't know his history, it says nothing about the player. If you as a GM let players get away with it, that's a problem with you as a GM, not the flaw. The full Amnesia is harsh enough that I can't see anybody actually taking it just to get out of making a backstory for their character, because they also don't get to make their character.

EDIT: Actually, technically even the 25 point version doesn't absolve the player of making their backstory, just of drawing up the stats and skills, etc, for their character.

Let me quote myself just to emphasize the important part.

in MST if you have amnesia then your character sheet starts off blank and you fill it out as the game progresses. maybe that system could be adapted to sr.

In the street level / Go-Ganger game I'm playing in now, my character actually has Day Job and In Dept ($50k). Of course, we started with a hard cap of 10BP/$50k max in resources. Also, In Dept is ruled to give you 0BP in our game, with a maximum level taken up to your starting cash. Since the person my character owes the money to is the owner of the strip club he bounces at (and who has mob connections), he pretty much works for free and has to come up with an extra $2,500 a month. So far I only scraped the cash together one month. Rest of the time, had to do little 'favors' for him with little or no pay. My character is actually barely living on what he can pull by crime or street racing/hustling.

My character even took the club owner as a contact (at 3/3) who serves as a sort of mentor. The role playing that comes out of this is awesome. And it does not distract from the group, since one of the other players is a "Dancer" at the club and we use it as one of our hang out spots. Almost any of the flaws, if taken in proper context with the design of the character, can actually work well. In my case, I needed the cash since I'm pretty much the groups muscle (no Adept wasn't an option, game is low magic and we have our one magic type).

Now that is awesome... I like it...

That has nothing to do with my comments (it's also wrong, but frankly I don't care enough to argue about that). You claim that Amnesia is a tool for lazy players -- but in fact, it's nothing of the sort. Nothing in the description of Amnesia absolves the player of creating their background. They have to do just as much work for the 10 point (ie, usable) version as they would for any other character -- unless you let them get away with something the rules don't support. That's on you, the GM, not the rule.

Group enemies:
Touche.

However, it would be freaking stupid of someone to declare Ares as their enemy.

Yes, I, the street kid, have thwarted Ares at every turn, and survived.

To which you would get one of two response:



or

Yeah, that I wholeheartedly agree with. Ares as an Enemy flaw? Do Not Want!

Hey, if one of my players wants to make a stupid choice, who am I to stand in the way?

Sure you could tell them why it's a terrible idea, but if you let them make the mistake themselves, I guarantee they'll NEVER do it again.

I think it depends on the game whether or not that could work. Average game? No, Ares would be everywhere you were and more. But in a game set in the "wild west" parts of the world where people go to disappear it could work. Ares would barely have any pull there and are far less likely to have agents in the area. Most importantly people go there specifically to escape because of the lack of all around surveillance.

The rules don't support character backgrounds at all. If you make up a character with one set of stats, and a background that suggests another, there's no rule that will stop you. You have to fall back on GM Fiat.

The amount and quality of character backgrounds is entirely up to the individual GM. Amnesia is worthless in sme games, because the GM might not require an extensive backstory. In other campaigns, it may be worth three pages of writing, with footnotes. It's all variable.

That depends entirely on your definition of "support". There are no rules FOR character backgrounds, but the rules definitely support them.

Again, just because your character doesn't know who he is, doesn't mean the player gets to get away with not knowing who his character is. Nothing in the Amnesia quality even hints at such.

Explain to me why they deserve 10 points more than anyone else with a good or interesting background. Or how having Amnesia (particularly the 10-point version) affects your stats in any way whatsoever to the point that you require 10 more build points. Those would be my points and are directly relevant to your previous reply to me. Your sole argument hinges on the fact that the flaw doesn't let you get away with writing a background. So everyone else who doesn't have the flaw gets to skip writing one? Or is it that they don't deserve 10 build points simply because they decided not to make their character forget a fragment of their past in said background? Even if their background is far more compelling and opens far more adventure seeds than this lazy, stereotypical goofiness does?

Is that really what your argument is? Because that's all I'm seeing in that particular rebuttal.

Because basically, you as the GM can give them whatever else you want up to the ammount of points they had gotten through that flaw in other flaws if they remember something . .
Basically, that flaw is players telling the GM:"Here, that is your limit for giving my character flaws that you can use as story line hooks"

And GMs can't do that anyway as appropriate? That's more of a "you must do it in order for the bonus points to matter" as opposed "here's an option for you Mr. GM guy!" The latter of which is the default anyway. And if it's something that has to be done in order to rationalize a character background you have to write anyway, you should have just taken the appropriate flaws yourself.

Hence it being a completely and utterly useless flaw.

No, a GM should NOT simply give my character any flaw . . because it's MY character. I planned it a certain way, i want to play it a certain way, i don't care about what the GM thinks, but i am NOT just taking a flaw handed out by the GM just because he thought it fit.
With Amnesia, i am giving him the go for doing that and at the same point telling him how severe these flaws can be at maximum, as a little safeguard.

So you're telling me that if you write a background for your character that has you as a wanted escapee from a maximum security prison, but decided not to take the Wanted or SINer 2 flaws, the GM should just say "cool background, welcome to the game?" He doesn't have the responsibility to tell you to take one or both of those flaws before the character is acceptable? That you should be able to do whatever you want however you want simply because it's "your" character?

Sorry, but no.

And that's exactly what a GM has the right to do with any character. Including asking you to add a flaw for story reasons that he has yet to reveal. Amnesia doesn't grant them either of those rights. At all. And that's speaking purely at character creation. Once the game begins, the GM totally has the right to give you flaws (and the resulting points) as determined by the events in the game.

This is a problem. You may not care about what the GM thinks, but the 99.99% of the gameworld's population that are under his control do. Your character may not accept that he/she has some negative Quality or another, but that means he/she is Delusional too.

As a GM, I've handed out things like Bad Rep, Enemy, Hung Out to Dry, SINner (Criminal), and Wanted for in-game actions. That may not have been the diesired outcome of the players or their characters, but I saw fit to do it. I don't think that makes me a bad GM, and neither did my players.

That is exactly the point. The 10BP you earn are simply a compensation for all the nastyness the GM gives you for having to create your beckground.^^

No.

I stat up the character the way I want them. The GM is free to allow or disallow them, and this does include things like "I need a good explanation for why your character doesn't have a criminal SIN after all of that," or even "Your character needs the Wanted quality based on this." However, the GM doesn't get to go "Oh, I decided it would be really cool if your character had a severe allergy to synthetic fibers."

Giving your character the amnesia flaw, however means that you're giving the GM the go-ahead to not only go ahead and give your character that allergy, but to have your first warning of it be when your character pulls on the polyester/rayon blend shirt they borrowed from a team-mate after their own stuff got soaked in raw sewage during the fight with that toxic shaman.

As for once the game begins, it depends. If the Street Samurai gets picked up by Lone Star and issued a criminal SIN in game, sure, they have a criminal SIN now. The Street Samurai having a criminal SIN randomly appear 5 sessions into the game, however, is not okay.

Sorry, but that is not what "Amnesia" is intended to be. Amnesia gives the player the same informations as the character itself has: NONE. Giving the GM a wish-list that he has to stick on, makes the flaw just something to get easy BP´s that are switched to other BP´s after game-start. It´s a disadvantage, deal with it.

Like I said, taking the amnesia quality means you're giving the GM the green-light to go ahead and assign negative qualities to your character that you don't know about. My objection was to the claims that the GM should be getting to do this anyway.

Yeah, you can also see it that way.^^

By day, your runner is a high profile executive at Renraku who is hated by Ares. By night, he's the savvy rigger Mogwai who communicates with his teammates via complex drones and matrix icons. AKA ShinRa's Reeves and Cait Sith.



My character has a Criminal SIN, Records on File, and he's an escapee. However due to where he escaped from and where he is now, Wanted didn't make sense especially since the GM decided it wouldn't make sense to have a bounty on my head. Imprisoned in Britain, escaped to North America. It's also possible, given the background for my character, that the GM has assigned me an Enemy that I don't know about. Since while hammering out some of the details the GM suggested that my character's escape from prison was due to a prison riot that was instigated by a Saederr-Krupp agent hired to kill me. =(

So yes, I may have an enemy in certain elements within Saeder-Krupp. I don't know.

Please cite your source.



They get more points because their background is unknown to the character. That means they have no access to their contacts, no access to anything at all related to their past. They might be able to use an assault rifle if one is pressed into their hands, but they won't KNOW they can use an assault rifle. They might be the best damned hacker that ever lived, but they won't KNOW that. Without knowing what they can do, their actual capabilities are dramatically reduced.

Best time ever helping creating a character... The player took the Made Man quality, a sniper rifle, and when she got short on BP, asked "Can I take the Amnesia flaw ?" Priceless.

Nice.

I like my characters to have day job and dependents. It eats up a lot of time and the character has a brief window to perform the run. If I play a character with famous along with these traits then usually I tie it into how I view my character. It is also a reason there are high knowledge skills to represent the fact he is a professional.

As for amensia. I think it is a fine trait. The 10 point version gives the player a gap of memories. An example would be memento The 25 point version basically means the GM hands you a character that you know nothing about. Ie you wake up in a dark alley and know nothing. The real issue is the GM has to put work into player's character.

As a GM I always gave players extra build points for fleshing out characters with backstories. I also award more karma if they write down or keep journals of their runs (1 or 2 points extra per run depending on the quality of the journal). So the hack and slash players actually advance more slowly than the introspective ones in my games.

I haven't fully perused 4.5, but but unless something major has changed, you don't get bonus points for taking a backstory. There's no rules for generating a backstory (compare this to "lifepath" systems) and there's no benefit for creating one. A paragraph versus pages nets you the same 400 BP, by canon.

I think what Zurai was getting at is that the text of the rulebook suggests that character backgrounds are valuable to most (or at least many) styles of play, rather than offering incentive for creating said background (although GMs like Omenowl are welcome to do so, and if I played in his game I'd do more fleshing out than if I played in a game with no such incentive).

But I'm not Zurai, so I might be misrepresenting his point of view. Sorry if I do, I mean not to.

And if nothing else you can always use the Optional Rules provided in Runners Companion in conjunction with the 20 Questions to encourage your players to write backgrounds for Karma. Thats the method I take, works out well enough and the players can sometimes get 10 or so Karma out of CC (1 Karma/2 Questions). But that doesn't work for every group, it helps that mine likes to write detailed character backgrounds anyway.

I personally advocate having my players write backgrounds because 1) It ties them into the setting. This works better if your players have a decent amount of knowledge about the SR canon. 2) It puts some time investment into characters, so the players tend to be a bit more careful about randomly sacrificing the character they have become attached to in a blaze of bullets 3) It makes it easier for me to be a bit more careful about what I throw at them. I don't really mind risking a Team Wipe if the entire group is using throwaways. I am much more considerate when the group has a good backstory. That and I have heard horror stories of what some players can do if a GM kills off their favourite character.

Amensia isn't a flaw because it doesn't actually present as a disadvantage.

It's not like that if, say, you're a rogue corproate experiment so people from Ares try and kill you periodically is materially different from being a shadowrunner. The same shit happens to you anyway, it is just a different reason.