I have rolled a lot of characters and played a lot of Shadowrun over the years, and I got to thinking about the most enjoyable runner I played with. He was actually my brother's PC, an SR2 troll named Bubba.

Bubba was a go-gang leader turned shadowrunner. With an A in attributes, Bubba had full Body and Strength and enough left over for good charisma and intelligence too. He didn't have much cyber and not much in the way of skills, but man, what skills he had...for instance:

Armed Combat 5 / Flail (aka "Spiky Ball Chain") 7
Stealth 4 / Urban 5 / Tiptoeing 6
Intimidation 3 / Brutal, painful, flail-induced injury-related Intimidation 5

Just looking at his character sheet told you all you needed to know; he was a hulking monster troll, who would gleefully break your legs and make up a dance about it. I left the stats in though I hesitated to do so, because the numbers weren't important to the character. The number just told you a story about who he was. He was not a character made for min-maxing so much, but a character made from a concept. A huge fiend who could drink, laugh, and then glare at you so hard your bones broke. Or brush you across the face with his spiky ball chain, and actually break your bones.

Also, Bubba was a man with hidden talents, like the ability to wax poetically about the gruesome injury he would lay on you if you didn't tell him what he wanted to know. He could move quietly when it was needed. Despite his strength and bulk he could be gentle, and could even fit into a suit and let a few small words tell the story, if need arose. People took one look at him and his scarred hands and face and thought they knew the whole story, but they didn't know he was taking night classes and was going to open his own troll restaurant some day.

On top of his well-known tiptoeing ability Bubba had a penchant for "troll stealth." "Troll stealth" is when they hear you come down the hall, ready their guns to fire at the door...and you burst in through the wall instead. Give a man with some boosted reflexes and 3 reach a single surprise round and you can imagine the damage that goes done. Despite his ridiculous size and weight and total lack of subletly, Bubba was amazing at getting the drop on people.

My brother saw the game through Bubba's eyes, and he was adept at seeing a new angle and leveraging his skills to the situations, like that age-old adage about the hammer and all problems being nails...

In another campaign you might label a player like this an actual troll, or a munchkin, and maybe some of you have arrived at the same conclusion. I want to emphasize that Bubba the character was adept at outwitting stupid people with just enough subtlety, and then stupifying subtle people with a flail to the face. He was more than anything a character, and not some numbers on a sheet, and Bubba did what so many of my own characters who were more job-title than character could do: made the world of Shadowrun come alive.

What about y'all? Who is your favorite character?

Meet Joel Hardinger. Or Wilfred Homes. Or Kyle Watson. Or any of his dozen other identities.
Joel was my first street sam, and in fact my first character. And he was prepared.
He didn't start out that way. When I was first making him I was young and stupid, and thus he began as just another ex spec ops gun bunny. then he started to grow, gaining gadgets and gizmos to fit any situation. no matter what happened, he was prepared.

Mostly though, what he had was safehouses. this guy had bolt-holes everywhere in the city, to the point where he was paying for three high lifestyles worth of squatter-level comforts, just so when things went wrong he'd have somewhere to hide with a full set of gear to rebuild. And all of these were rigged to blow if discovered.

He had cameras watching the homes and less well hidden safehouses of his fellow runners as well, and these locations were also rigged for demolition if needed. in point of fact, he once pulled the switch on a mafia kill team lying in ambush at one of his friend's apartments. (long story.)

His death, as far as the group was concerned, happened when he stepped into his home and moments later it exploded. however, his reputation was so impressive at this point that one PLAYER remains convinced to this day that he had a safehouse beneath his house and in his last moments he activated a trap door and escaped danger. I haven't had the heart to tell him that Joel was faking his own death.

Did I mention that he never went into a tall building without a parachute? he never went into a tall building without a parachute, just in case he was ever trapped on a high floor and had to escape. Spygames for the win.

Meet Jepediah Smith, catholic priest and magician

He got thrown out of the church for being too radical in his views. Shortly after that he went to Seattle to fund his own Church called "St. Jessebell".
Sadly he had to abandon his own Church and follow the trail of sinners which came from this new drug called "Tempo". Before he realized it he already was selling the stuff himself, while burning all his sinful enemies with overcast fireballs.

He tried the Tempo drug himself but didn't get addicted, he even tried the royal, concentrated version of it and made an almost impossible willpower roll to resist. But as soon as he took one nose full of novacoke he was sold. After that day, the devil had his grip on him and turned him into a sinner himself. He began a Journey of self discovery, fireball rampaging and carrying around 1kg of novacoke in a climber-bag around his hips all the time.

He became so addicted, that the GM even allowed him to take a whiff of novacoke as a free action during battles (put his hand in the bag and throw a handfull of novacoke in his face).
After the Campaign ended he lost his mind, faith and religion and became a homeless Person with a lifetime stash of novacoke (around 15 Kg) and disappeared in south-america.

Damn ... I miss this crazy old bastard!