Aeeehm....the core book? Section "creating a shadowrunner" under "flaws"? Haven´t the book at hand, but i mean to remember that there is standing something like "GM chooses your background etc."?

Nope. It says the GM chooses your "abilities, attributes, and so on".



Yes, it does. The character doesn't know what he is capable of. If he's put in a situation where he's using a skill (ie, "Damnit, take this gun, point it at those guys, and pull the trigger!") he can actually roll the dice on his character sheet. However, until he actually tries to do something (or someone clues him in directly -- character from his past, data in a computer he figures out was his, etc), he doesn't know how proficient he is at it. Try an amnesiac mage on for size -- he won't even know he's a mage until something happens to show that he is.

The only difference -- the only difference -- between the 10 and 25 point qualities are whether the player knows what the character is capable of. The extra 15 points for the 25 point quality is because you, as a player, get absolutely no say by RAW in what your character is.

I have to reread that. I´ll be back.^^

So, basically like characters handed out at cons and the such?

Iiiih....is that so at cons? Have never been on one.

Nope. Characters handed out at cons have the stats written right there on the page. 25-point amnesiacs don't have any stats written until the GM tells them what they can write down.

For reference and clear up some of the confusion.

Good job.

Hmmm.....ok, i really don´t see a section which says "the GM chooses your background" at the 10BP-flaw. How did we get to this opinion?^^

The 10 point version of amnesia state the character can't remember who they are, but retains the use of their skills and abilities. The 25 point version says the character has no memories at all, including skills and abilities.

So a 10 point amnesiac might know that he has wired reflexes and bone lacing, and is really good with guns and knives (but not know why), while a 25 point amnesiac wakes up in an alley somewhere, maybe with a bit of gear on their person if the GM is feeling generous.

The 10 point version is a flaw because in the 6th World, knowledge is power, and the character will be at a disadvantage when encountering anyone who knows him.

The 25 point version is a flaw because the player has no control over what type of character he gets, and then has to struggle to find out what that character can even do.

At 10 BP, it says nothing about whether the player is required to come up with his background or whether he is exempt from it. It also doesn't say anything about whether GM should come up with the background.

So it's really something the player and gm should work out. Personally, I think the player should still come up with a general background, with gm tweaking it and making sure that the player's character never get to act on the player's knowledge. 




That way, GM like The Jake wouldn't have to worry about players using it as an excuse to be lazy. At the same time, he can use it to his gm advantage and make sure the character pays for that 10 bp.

"As you jumped into the ocean, you feel an unbearable itchy sensation all over your body."

Congratulations, your character actually has allergic: sea water.




I agree the earlier comments about how GM should not hand out negative qualities at random to a degree. I think in general, a GM should not hand out something that hurt the character's effectiveness in his role in the team. As in, not giving a street sam combat paralysis. Not giving a summoner spirit bane to his favorite spirit (without good reason). Negative qualities that does not directly affect the player's role is not a problem, i.e. allergy. And in the case of players killing random people and what not, infamy and other qualities are justified.

OK, so it's more like the 25 point until you get your sheet and then you are at 10 points, because you still don't know anything about the character in question, aside from some stats ^^

Runner's companion encourage GMs to give points for fleshing out a character. I myself give more than is recommended so it actively encourages characters to flesh out their character with family, likes, dislikes, etc. It makes it easier on a GM to tailor runs to the players and gives the players an initial investment in their characters. The more players invest in their characters and how it increases the enjoyment of the game the more I give them. It is more about quality rather than length of description.

Actually it allows the GM to generate background stories without the character able to argue it is against character. There is a gap in the character's life, which he has no clue about. The GM is given fiat to bring in elements from that missing time. The player has no clue who is friend or foe. Maybe he has a wife or kid (as they don't eat up the character's time they aren't flaws). Maybe the character was an Andian hooker who blew up a bus full of kids. Maybe these so called friends are using my amensia to get what they want and I have no idea what their true motives are. Suddenly takes 5 years out of your life especially college or high school. Who are your friends? This is a 10 point flaw and it can be used against the group because one player has no clue what he did.

The 25 point flaw is just like the bourne identity. You basically wake up a blank slate. No clue who or what you are. You know gender, race, approximate height and build. Everything else the GM creates for you and you have to find out the hard way. Maybe you are a street sam, an adept, a mage, a technomancer, or unaugmented. You don't even know your skills and a GM doesn't have to be nice if you are a mage. He could give you a magic of 1 and a couple of spells. That said is you are putting a lot of work on the GM and he is free to veto this flaw.

This is how we've done things in the group I game with. Have found it a lot of fun in the past.


On flaws generally: I lean towards flaws having a solid mechanical disadvantage - and you trade those for a mechanical advantage somewhere else. For roleplaying flaws and advantages, I like to keep those separate from the first group - remove the build points from them and lump them together as backstory. If that makes sense?


One GM I gamed with years ago had an interesting technique. Sit down with each player before the game and have a quick chat over the background. He'd assign the characters flaws after that - although there was some room for discussion. He'd sometimes pitch in with 'bolt on' bits of background... Most memorably for me - having the characters head used as a daycare centre for demonic child spirits. Who could say no!

I like encouraging backgrounds. I think it's a good idea, and it invests the player more with the character. However, there's a huge difference between "encouraging" backgrounds and "supporting" them. Love 'em or hate 'em, lifepath systems strongly support character backgrounds. (Oh, for the record, I tend to hate them, but they tend to do their job well.) The BP and Karmagen system do not, by canon, support backstories. Individual GM's do that.

i havent have time to read the whole thread yet, but here are my two nuyen on how to handle amnesia: make the player realize to distinguish his role as character and as player, make the player work out his characters background, even why his character has got amnesia, BUT make it clear he HAS TO PLAY HIS CHARACTER LIKE HIS CHARACTER DOESNT HAVE THIS INFORMATION (YET), this makes for an interesting job to do foer the player NOT TO let his metagaming knowledge influence his role as character, which in fact will be a big step in the learning process of that the character not always knows what the player does, nor behaves like the player would, which is essential for AdvancedRoleplaying™ ^_^

The way I would run 10-point amnesia is this:

Okay, your character doesn't remember his past. However, there was a point where your character first woke up with no memory, and some time has elapsed since then. The background should start from when the character first woke up with no memory, and go to now - where the character has contacts, a lifestyle, and knowledge of his own capabilities. In other words, tell me how you woke up in an alley, up to know. How did you wind up finding out what you were capable of doing? How did you meet your contacts? How did you wind up with a place to live, a fake ID, and all of that illegal gear?

An interesting solution.

I've got a player who did something similar to this with his character. He woke up in an alley with some basic equipment. Turns out he was on a mission of undisclosed nature, something went south, he ended up activating a panic button of sorts. Some 'friends/insurance' came and got him but he was unconscious. Per his previous agreement, they arranged for dumping him per his previously set instructions along with some equipment.

He also left himself a short message on his commlink explaining that "If you are watching this, something went horribly wrong on the previous mission' and the video gave instructions on a safehouse and a couple of contacts who will help him.

Nice... I like that...

Keep the Faith

I'm surprised allergies haven't been complained about more. I mean, there are countless allergens in the world -- and that's just nowadays. Imagine how much worse it would be in a future with synthetics as ubiquitous as Shadowrun? To me, the near limitless potential to rack up benign allergies for a whopping 10bp each seems a lot more munchkiny than amnesia.

Sounds alot like Hawkeye, one of my current characters. She left herself a slight 'welcome to life post amnesia' video for herself and the contact info for a run and that was about it.

Also, because I'm not lazy in the backstory department I actually have a highly fleshed out backstory, which allows her to be slightly... I guess something like multiple personalities. She has her post amnesia personality that is still rather confused and her pre-amnesia personality that will sometimes allow her to do things via muscle memory (Such as assemble her sniper rifle). Her main goal at the moment is trying to figure out what happened to her, even though she told herself she should just drop it

Working out very well so far, she is coming off fairly distant and kinda brooding so far I think, as well as a bit artificial (Or I'm trying to make her come off like that) because she basically started play the day after waking up.

On the Amnesia:
I have gotten to dislike it to, mostly because I hade 2 players who would mix it with Mute, Short and Young Age all of the time in my WoD Game. One of them would also always by Language: Sign.

As for Day Job it coursed me to come up with 2 of my 3 main characters
-Devon [Hacker]: Renuka Rich Brat still in High School. I took the 40 hour Day Job to represent his time in school and his Allowance that is still partially eaten up by his life style.
-Kusagi [Phis-Ed]: I took the 20 hour Day Job to represent him working security at a high class Japanese Night Club on week ends.
-Kovu Muphasa: [Ork Former Corporate Assassin]: Is living off his running. He also has a 0 point Amnesia Quality, he does not know what he did before he woke up in his corporations’ medical bay, but that was a few years before he went rouge.

I do have them knowing each other.

This make some games fun.

Devon: So this is going to take how long, 3 days, now this an’t going to work big test on Monday so let me contact someone for you.
Kusagi: No I can’t the bog Karaoke event it on Friday, let me contact someone for you.
Kovu: What the Pay I got the time.

Kovu has the most Karma


Incompetence:
-I have not seen much of this, the only occasion I saw it was for a time I was running a Twilight: 2000/Dark Conspiracy game and then I went to using SR for the Mechanics of the system. One of the characters was a SEAL that every time he tried to pilot a small watercraft he wrecked it. So when we went to SR he took incompetence: Pilot Watercraft.

Wow, had I ever had a character in that group, it would have taken all of 5 minutes to turn those other characters into social services and be rid of them. "You're a short kid, you can't talk, your waggling fingers at me and you obviously don't remember anything? Yeah, totally not my problem."

Especially in a World of Darkness game. I mean, shit. There're so many ways to murder someone for incompetence -- and so many reasons to do so, with tangible in-game benefits! -- in a WoD campaign it ain't even funny. Some schmuck shows up wanting into a coterie or pack that doesn't know who they are or where they're from, can't talk, is short even for a kid, etc, etc? Just Amnesia is enough not to trust someone in a WoD game. The rest is just icing, and you hoping they invested those disadvantage points into Generation so you can diablerize 'em real good.

The Short Flaw came out to be a fun one once.
We were starting up a Werewolf Game based in NY and the GM had all of us make up our characters separate from each other. I created a Bone Gnawer with the Short Flaw. When I showed the GM he just snickered and approved it. When we got to the game the three of us playing BGs had picked that flaw. The game did get a little silly though. We had one Glass Walker that called himself Scott that had taken the level-5 Wealth Merit, but was a complete mental case; we [the BGs] abused the crap out him. Out got out of him we one of our episode one liners when he looked over at his butler and ask “Scotland, Do I own that?” The game got really silly when all the BGs joined the NYPD as K9 Units.

I personally don’t mind flaws that get redundant, I just want to have them make some sense. It when the same Positive Qualities keep showing up with the same Negative Qualities keep showing up on the Players Characters.

The Positive Quality that our Regular GM and I started to hate was Magic Resistance-4. On a Troll [Called Tiny] with a Body of 9 and Will 5, put him in a Armored Jacket and wait until he needed to make a Will to Spend that Karma [a 5] for the Soak/Resistance Roll. He was such a broken character that the rest of us just stopped inviting to the games because we needed Military Grade Armor just to survive the fall out what the GM had to throw to challenge him. Eventually he figured out what the problem was and made [more reasonable?] character that was Jack of Trades with as many Gear Related PQs he could find, but that was another problem.

This sentence doesn't make any sense to me. I think I understood what you meant, but the sentence itself isn't clear.

We were talking about some Celtic Spirit or somthing.
-Eliot [Me]: I think it came from somewere in Scotland?
-Scott to his Butler: Scotland? Cheves it must be named after me, Do I own that?

After that at least once per session "Do I own that?" would come up.

That helps.

My last group came up with an idea -- and we all agreed with it -- that all four of us were going to take Amnesia, the concept being that we were not really true runners, but members of a sort of corporate hit-squad whose memories were wiped after every mission. We also took it to an extreme that, since we know nothing about ourselves, that the GM would make up our character sheets and background and reveal certain stats, gear, and contacts to us as the game progressed.

We got a good laugh at Ed's (our GM) expense when we presented this idea (I've never seen anyone's eyes stay that wide for so long before or since), but while intrigued by the idea, he killed it. We were only doing a couple of one-offs and not a campaign and he didn't feel like writing up four full characters (and I don't blame him for that, either).

Hehe, that's awesome.

One of these days I want to take the Judas quality, just for kicks.