I'm working on starting up an SR3 game with a group that is completely new to Shadowrun (myself included). Normally in games that I run, I like to encourage my players to put some effort into creating a detailed and thought out backstory. By "encourage," I mean that I usually offer some sort of minor bonus for starting characters that have such a background. In other games, this typically means a little bit of starting XP, or if it's worked into the backstory, maybe a special item that they otherwise would not easily obtain at character creation. It's never anything gamebreaking, and doesn't offer a huge advantage, it's just supposed to be enough to feel like a reward without being overpowered.

Anyway, with my inexperience in SR mechanics, I was wondering what would be an appropriate level offering for my players? I was thinking maybe a handful of extra build points for character creation, or maybe some extra starting karma, or maybe X worth of gear, etc. Being unfamiliar with the game in practice, I'm just not sure how much of what I can offer without unbalancing things too much. Any thoughts?

As a generic idea, maybe ~5 Karma that doesn't count towards earning Karma Pool and which can be exchanged for cash at a rate based on the character's selected starting Resources tier (for exchange rate, I usually start from the BeCKS values: 500¥/karma for 500¥ or 5k¥, 1.5k¥/karma for 20k¥, 4k¥/karma for 90k¥, 9k¥/karma for 200k¥, 15k¥/karma for 400k¥, and 20k¥/karma for 650k¥ or 1M¥). If you're feeling generous, you can allow them to keep the option to exchange up to the awarded amount of karma total over the lifetime of the character for cash as given above; anyone who didn't take 400k¥ or above probably isn't going to ever bother if they didn't jump right away, but it could be worthwhile for some cash-heavy characters later on.

If you go past about 10 awarded karma you start getting into places where you might want to increase the exchange rate if they're exchanging heavily.

~J

I ask my players to create a back story for their characters and don't reward them up front. It comes when something in their back story comes out in play. Because it's part of their character I'll give them a bit of bonus karma; like 2 points. But sometimes this will happen to one character two or three times. They may also get special items during play from this.

An extra contact, maybe?

Using this idea you can you use and house rule where you get CHA x 2 in free points for contacts and have them built into their background

First choice would be to give them an extra contact(s) relating to their background. or increase a contract up a level for them.

second choice would be an extra point or 2 in edges,

or possibly just give them some pocket change towards something, or a tip towards something they want that they can find later.

I like this one, more so than what I was going to suggest, especially if you're using priority. I know I've made charactera who I would love to give a Level 2/3 contact to better reflect their background but simply didn't have the cash for it.

Be careful with that, though. The Contact system is pretty wonky; a free upgrade from Level 1 to Level 2 is slightly more valuable than a free Level 1 Contact (since you can buy a new L1 Contact for 5k¥, but can't pay 5k¥ to upgrade either of your free L1 Contacts—so you can only get the 5k¥ upgrade price if you're already buying a third L1), but then handing out a free Friend for Life upgrade is worth 190k¥—nearly a fifth of max possible starting resources!

Needless to say, the Contact Rules are high on the priority list for getting the SR3R treatment.

~J