do you just start with a backstory? a concept? (adpet, mage, mundane, gunner, face) min/max? just sit down and starting buying things and make a character to go with it later?
I usually start with a concept, get the very basics done, make a back story and then LIGHT min.max (within RP reasons ofc, never had a GM smack me with books... well once but I kinda knew he would that time). and sorry if I post a lot. I just notice a lack of normal SR topics, I mean a good rule debate can be fun. I just to have some fun posts to carry on with others on. :3

Usually all of it at the same time, with an inspiration first. That could be a picture, an abstract idea, a sentence in a book. After that, both the background and the rule/values grow and change at the same time, change with each other side, gets reworked, influence each other etc.

SYL

There is a certain amount of bleeding involved....

Usually a concept first, then flesh out the stats and skills, write his back story more and adjust the skills and stats to match what I've written. Take a look at the roles section in Runner's Companion and make sure I've got my character's role covered as well. Tweak some more and finalize it. They rarely end up following the path I think they will once the game starts however.

Usually a concept, based on an image or something I envision for a character's abilities and style, and I tend to go from there.

And yes, lots and lots and lots of tweaking (than you Chummer for making this easier).

I think about what I want them to be good at and how that will play against the team. Then I write down the appropriate pools, usually picking 3-4 dice pool sizes to define the character. One for their good skills and armor, one for their average skills, one for low skills or high defaulting attributes, and one for low attributes or defaulting. Give them any quality that I think is appropriate and pick some random equipment values if I think they need them. Then they're ready and I make the next one. Chances are they'll only get to be in the game for 10 or 15 minutes of gameplay at best.

But then again, the last time I made a PC character was 2010 and I haven't been able to convince anyone else to GM since.

I start with a general role or profession, with some kind of background or character hook, then stat it out. I am familiar enough with SR4 that my concepts will be things that will mesh with the system, rather than jar with it (unaugmented mundane human martial artists, etc.). I used to just rough out the stats, then start on the background, letting the two mesh as I went along. Now, though, I typically stat out most of the character. Sometimes, the initial concept will change a bit as I fiddle with the numbers. Then, I do the background, with a preference for structured formats such as the 20+ questions. As I flesh out the background, I go back and make a few minor tweaks in the stats.

I like characters with a nice, internally consistent feel, with the abilities they should have, and no glaring skill omissions or lopsided stats unless that is part of their background. I try to make effective characters, since I see shadowrunners as pros who do extremely dangerous things for a living. Having a dice pool of 20 is not really "min-maxing" to me, unless you consider making a guy who can fly and punch things hard in a superhero game to be min-maxed. This assumes default shadowrun - if it is a street-level or newbie game, I adjust the type of character I make accordingly.

I usually start with a game mechanic or a combination of mechanics I want to make use of. I stat up a character that takes advantage of those mechanics. Then I write up a background that fits those stats. Then I begin an iterative cycle, modify stats, modify background, until I get a character I like.

Usually I follow the Concept/Inspiration, Role Dependent Aspects (be it attributes, skills, or qualities), Background, then into the Chummer Generator to flesh things out. For me the Knowledge Skills select themselves usually based on Concept and Background.

I usually start with a concept and then I build a backstory/stat out the character accordingly. Though I have made characters totally based on some inane combo of traits before

I usually start with the basic idea of a concept, then fill it in as I go. I try to sum it up in one line. Depending on what I am inspired by while working it out, I modify and refine my concept.

Example 1:
In the previous game I played in, I was inspired by some things from Land of Promise and Seattle 2072. I started with "elven adept gunbunny, former Tir Peace Force." No John Woo, so I kept to single firearms. When I was looking at the negative qualities, prejudiced (elven superiority) leaped out at me. Later, Made Man also grabbed my attention. So rather than the stereotypical Ancients connection, I went with Laesa (aka the elven Mafia). The combination of the Linguist quality and the Linguistics adept power sounded like a neat quirk. (I spend how much time time listening to a language and get a free language at rating 3 effectively? Sign me up. Note to self: Don't abuse it!) The language thing provided a contact and the intro to Laesa. As my character progressed, I realized I wanted my character to be good, but not expressed through a huge dice pool. So I ended up taking adept stuff that negated penalties (heightened concentration, adept centering, improved senses, and the like). The result was that while my dice pool was just 12 dice, I was *always* at 12 dice regardless of modifiers.


Example 2:
In the current game that I am playing in, I ended up in the hacker role. We're playing a noir game set in Miami. With that as my start, I was split between "criminal database becomes sentient" AI and "simsense porn/BTL dealer" technomancer. Since I prefer magical type characters, I chose the technomancer. (While a technomancer isn't magical, they sorta have the same feel.) I wanted him to be a Miami native, so having a Cuban/Hispanic background made sense. When I got to my knowledge skills, the music knowledge skill listed in Chummer sounded like a good idea. Then I added a specialization in jazz, because it matches my concept of noir.

Thanks to Sim Dreams and Nightmares and the porn/BTL dealer idea, I added Family Curse. That in turn inspired me to decide that the techno's parents were strung out druggies, so he was raised by his grandparents. (If it could be snorted, smoked, or shot, his parents did.) To add depth and justification to the family curse, granny was a functional alcoholic and granpappy was a chain pipe smoker. With daily and regular exposure due to constant simsense film editing, he's also addicted to simsense/BTLs, which also plays into the family curse. Seeing the College Educated quality (which I did not take) inspired me to make him a college dropout. I figured he had a dream to become a great simsense director for legit films and got lost along the way. I was looking for a way to squeeze out a few points when it hit me that ork would reinforce the "born on the wrong side of the tracks" vibe I was looking for. Then I realized that I could tie the simsense production/addiction back to his first hobby (music/jazz) and modify his dream to "simsense music video director".


In both cases, I try not to min/max too much. I generally get a basic idea of dice pools I and/or the group is aiming for and use that as my target guideline. In the first example, 12 or so was my goal for core competencies, 9 - 10 for secondary ones, then everything else. In the second example, 7 - 9 was the target for core competencies, 5 - 7 for secondaries, and then everything else.


All in all, it allows me flexibility during character creation. I don't feel bogged down by a need for extreme optimization. And I can be satisfied with the results.


-Temperance

Start with roleplay concept, min-max the hell out of it.




-k

I come up with the Backround story first. The Who/What/When/Why's of the character. Then I take the rules and fit them into the Character to get the best out of the rules Min-Maxing as it fits to make a viable/fun Character. In Shadowrun it's so much easier to do that vs other systems.

For example(Briefly as the backstory is about 4 pages 10point NTR): My current Character is Dr. Soloman (Code Name: Eidlion). He was a Surgon at Seattle General and completed a heart replacement surgery for a little girl with a heart provided by Tanamous. Got Blacklisted and spent his life savings into a rolling Med-Clinic to bring healthcare to those that cant afford it. He run's for extra money to supply the med-clinic.

I turned him into a Magical Street Doc with a Rolling rating 5 Clinic made from Rigger 3. He has very few offensive capabilities but a great support character.

1. First I consider an awakened character for about 15 seconds before promptly discarding it.
2. Then I come up with a mundane generic concept.
3. Once I have the concept core I min-max the hell out of my stats in order to condense the build as much as possible.
4. I then flesh out the character's history.
5. I use my remaining opportunity in my build to match things in the history or give more breadth with skills.
6. I then refine the history in order to match the character.

There're two methods. One is more successful for characters I play longe,r the other is more controllable.

1) I start with a concept - postapocalyptic critter hunter, for instance - generate a short background, and then build the stats up according to the background. I usually don't minmax there, going by the feel of the concept rather than what would be straight better, and leave room for later improvement. That siad, I also have a certain goal of competence in mind, and may or may not use specialisations and a bit of minmaxing to get there, depending on the concept. Stats in hand, I revise my concept story, add in a bit more fluff, usually character art and something about important items - and then the character is ready.

2) Much less dependable: I build either an NPC without stats and play that to have a defined backstory, or I build just stats and fill in the blanks as I go. Both often fail to produce cncepts I am content with, but if they do, it's a character for the long haul. It worked twice so far.

I make guys all the time to play with mechanics and stuff. Getting handle on a rule or a wrinkle in the rules or whatever. But I never intend to play them. That knowledge then bubbles up while creating a guy from a concept.

For actual characters I'm going to play, I usually start with a role to fill, and start playing with numbers. With stats and qualities, I start to get an idea of who the guy is. Get some skills, get some gear. Then some serious back story. Then modify what I already had as the back story demands, and do knowledge skills. Which always leads me to more ideas about the back story, which then leads to more modification of the numbers. Then contacts, and add/modify the back story to fit contacts in, or pull contacts from the story, and then more number mods. Eventually, I have a couple of pages of "backstory". Mostly notes and individual sentences, with a couple of anecdotes added in. This process was very painful before there was nsrcg and chummer

I often make use of the cards from the CCG. For the last guy I played, we needed a hacker. I thumbed through my cards and found Cracker Jack. Between the picture and the skills it gave him (decking 2, pistols 1) I came up with a skinny, greasy haired decker who can hold his own in a fight. Picture plus my love of the Payalup street gangs gave me "former reality hacker". Then it was just doing numbers.

It depends . .
Either i get asked to make a certain character or i see something silly/awfull/awesome somewhere and i start to tinker untill i can match what i saw to my liking . .
And afterwards i start thinking about how and maybe why the character ended up how he did.

They pop nearly fully formed from my head.

The major problem is the headache involved. Also, I only know one blacksmith, and he's frequently busy.

My first ever Shadowrun character has a very odd history. A long while back, I had just recently gotten really into the works of a certain musician I had stumbled across by chance. Incredible dark, evocative, haunting folk music with a powerful atmosphere and story.

When I fall in love with certain musical works, I'll often set them to repeat and listen to them over and over. Two pieces in particular stuck in my mind, and after staying up until the sun rose, lost in the album, I finally passed out and slept long and languidly.

And I dreamed vividly of the mountains and the forests, chill fog, scattered boulders, creeping vines, sheer cliffs, unearthly raptor calls, and a woman lost amid the wilds, fleeing from an unseen menace that followed without relent. Shadows in the trees, rustling branches, a deer starting from a bank of brush, a quavering wave of panic and confusion, and then turning at the sound of breath. There, standing on a stone, a barely-human embodiment of senseless slaughter, a weatherworn figure with sunken, hateful eyes above a wild beard, rifle held stiffly at his side, an air of indefineable malice and unreasoning tangible around him. He doesn't speak. He simply stares through her with focused hatred and calculating hardness.

A distant gunshot, startled birds taking flight over the next crest, his gaze shifted, he crouches and smells the air. His tension snaps, he is simply gone, silent, throwing himself through the trees, rushing impossibly quickly to bigger prey. The terror rises once more, a blind flight to the riverside, clattering over wet stones and rotted logs, and then the ground drops away, tumbling, crashing, the warmth of the soil, the scent of ferns and blood and an ever distant roaring and wailing.

And then I awoke.

Dreams like that stick with you, as you might imagine. I tried writing about it, but nothing suitable came about. Months passed, and while the music and dream alike still haunted me from time to time, I had forgotten them for the moment. And then, for no reason I can comprehend, it came back to me when I was thinking on what type of character I'd like to play for the Shadowrun campaign my friends invited me to join. I sketched out a backstory for who this unnamed hunter was and who his prey was, and between the two I came up with a suitable role and purpose for a living relic of the rural past in a dystopian future setting. From there it was easy to stat him out as a sniper and outfit him with a PSJJ sports rifle, camouflage armor, and a pair of tomahawks.

~Umi

...Zeus? Is that you?

~Umi

please say yes, pretty please!

on topic:
I have several styles, some of which were developed with players to come up with "something different"

1) Old School: I see something in a movie, read it in a book, a song I here, etc. that gets my creative juices flowing and then flesh out the idea character background/ system -wise.

2) I try to answer a Question with a character concept: "Who you're gonna call, if...?" (The answer rarely is Ghostbusters). "Roadblock" springs to mind. He was formed arroud the question: How can you wear tons of armor in broad daylight and nobody would care? Roadblock is an Ork who wears modified Heavy Armour in bright orange/yellow with a Display on the back of his Tornister, a red flashing light on top of his helmet and ARE Signs flashing arround him "Maintenance Work in Progress". The whole charater is build like a Maintenance Crew, with 2 Exotic Weapon Skills for a "Drilling Laser" and a Pneumatic Cyberarm Modification. He cuts through vaults or walls like a hot knife through butter and is always good for a fun time at the table.

3) I cross over from ather roleplaying games: What would a bayushi bushi (Legend of the 5 Rings RPG) look like as a street samurai. My former horizon high threat negotiators, Martin Belluire du Arrent, was based off an montaigne "Knight of the Rose and Cross Noble from a 7th Sea Game.

A word about movie/ novel inspired character concepts and group play - Whenever I or one of my players comes up with a concept based on a lead character (Spiderman, Wolverine, Batman, Heat, Matrix, Ronin, Jack Reacher, Rain Fall, etc.) I ask them (or myself) how they will cope with working as a team with others. I can't remember where, but I once read an article along the lines of: Wolverine may be cool, but would you want to work with him on a team? My Point is - Even the most diehard principled character has made some sort of concession to the world arround him, so he can work with others (maybe not well, but functional).

Metatype, archetype and a backstory framework comes first.

Then write down Attributes, Skills, Qualities, etc that are fitting.

Then (usually) reduce them to fit within the chargen limits.

Equipment usually comes last (except for key items, like cyber-/bioware or foci).

Then flesh out backstory.

Bye
Thanee

Pick which gun is going to be dragging the character around behind it. Throw some points into getting a decent body+stirrup interface rig.
Then start work on the AI that lives in the weapon.



Actually start with concept, then work from there. The end result usually bares no resemblance to the original idea, but that's par for the course.

I HAVE THE BODY OF A GOD...

Who really let himself go...

MY EMPEROR!!!!!!!!!!

Sir Slicer! *kneels*

~Umi

I always start with the concept. As I build the character, backstory tends to fill itself in. How far I min/max the character depends on a lot of things: how good I envision the character is at what they do, what he/she is bad at, the game expectations, and so on. Secondary skills get filled in depending on what the team needs and what fits the concept.

I just think of regular people and how they fit into the world. Then I think about how someone screws up their lives to make a quick nuyen. How do they use the skills and equipment they have to live in the shadows?

Or I think of someone who would already be disillusioned with the corps, why they feel that way, and what they do to show it. I might need to write up the mystic adept rocker that's partially forming in my head.

When I make NPCs I like to go through character tropes and pick ones that I like or I think will work.

I'm actually in the process of crafting an NPC crew for an airship.

So far I have....
Captain Carpet of Virility
XO Kick Chick
Master Mechanic Wrench Wench (Instead of Chief Mechanic because it abbreviates MMWW which if rotated 180 degrees is MMWW)
Chief Engineer Cloudcuckoolander
CAG Badass Grandpa
Master Chief Tomboy with a Girly Streak

While they will obviously have real names.... my goal is always to get the players to refer to the NPCs by those trope nicknames.

Something else I do (I had forgotten until someone indicated that he might maybe run a game later this summer and I immediately made a character), I usually finish the character by typing out a list of things the character can do and I highlight things that could potentially be difficult to GM for or that might overly simplify things with the option for the GM to veto anything before the game starts.

For example, "I put all of my left over nuyen into explosives. I currently have 47 kilograms rating 3 explosive. If you think that will be problematic let me know.
Also, I have two sustaining foci, one for health and one for manipulation. I also have control actions and decrease willpower. How do you want to handle an NPC who has Willpower 0 and is the subject of a control actions spell?"

I generally come up with a role or concept first, then make up personality and history as I assign numbers.

I tend to start with a premise and then let the numbers I decide upon make up the story for me. I start asking myself "why, does this person have skill at X in order to fill this role?"