Not every moment of a Shadowrunner's life is spent doing death-defying lawbreaking. Characters have to be doing something when they're not breaking into corporate facilities, and this thread is all about that.

For example: Zero (my new thief character) has a collage degree as a Journalist (though granted, not a particularly talented one with 3 skill and 4 attribute). She lives in a fairly nice place in Puyallup, and spends much of her time trying to make a name for herself as a freelance journalist. The problem she keeps running into is that all her really good stories tend to contain either information she acquired illegally or else implicate people she really can't afford to piss off and thus must be published anonymously if at all. As a result she's best known for covering local topical pieces such as school science fairs, festivals and events, that sort of thing. Naturally this isn't enough to keep her living comfortably so she supplements her income with shadowrunning.

My current character, a hacker infiltrator, really doesn’t have any other income. She spends most of her time clubbing, watching Urban Brawl, and occasionally teaching “Matrix for Dummies” classes for her contacts and friends of friends. The classes are free of course, it helps to maintain relationships and foster new ones. Since she only sleeps 3 hours a day, she has a lot of time to partake in her hobbies.

I try to get my group to go into this. Doesn't happen often.

My characters, however, have a wealth of things they like to do, including hang out with their Contacts.

Ah, another Urban Brawl fan! I can't help but feel the last season's champion feels like he's just going through the motions this year.
Have you looked into combat biking? Very fast paced, lots of blood, good lineup.

LOL!

At our table the GM has even gotten into the Urbal Brawl thing. Our team gets together on big game nights with a few close contacts and we make a night of it. It's a great way to have a good time and build relationships.

OOC: I'm not a sports fan at all, but I find it good to have a few skills on my characters that make them feel more alive. I always take at least one or two knowledgs skills that are hobby related rather than work related. On a rare occasion I take an active skill that is hobby related too, but those never get very high in value (hobby after all).

Same. The only time I didn't was DOA, who was always more concerned with surviving Chicago than hanging out. One of the reasons I retired her was that the whole 'fish out of water' thing I was going for with her really wasn't working, and I was interested in playing a friendlier and more interesting character. Pure killing power is nice in its way but I prefer interesting every time.

Gardening

My amnesiac Street Samurai played guitar on street corners, and was a fully skilled musician in other regards.

Red Queen, a heavy-melee Phys Ad played Violin in an orchestra and worked as a custodian for an Ares facility.

Creepy Doll used her magic to recycle old second-hand clothing (esp. silk) into fashionable new outfits with relatively minuscule overhead.

Gummy (Gnome throwing adept) is an auto mechanic.

Eskarina, (human shaman) was a cleaning lady, and left the shadows after purchasing a low-tier cleaning company, winning a high-profile case to exonerate her employer (also a runner), and becoming a super model (and this was BEFORE I started making charisma monsters). She retired to the Carribean with her boyfriend, a hacker.

PANic (underaged human technomancer) started running a disreputable sweepstakes website that actually ran a sweepstakes, and made extra money selling data to marketing firms/subsidiaries. It was majorly infected (by design) by a hacking website as part of the cover.

P'0 performs ballet pro-bono for the infected... not really for a living, but to help relive her dreams of potential stardom. Yes, I say again, I know her behavior would easily come back to bite her in the behind.

I have an Anti-Corp protester that works on a co-op growing realfood and pickets against the corps.

#82caff, a young, second-gen runner who looks after her mentally disabled father and attends online classes while trying to earn the money in the shadows to get her father genetic treatments to restore his scorched brain. Moonlights as "Aunt Peggy," the responsible adult of the household, as needed to keep CPS at bay; has help from one of her dad's old team (who also steps in as Aunt Peggy when needed).

amateur combat biking league

Awesome! What's your character's name, and do you mind if I namedrop him/her/misc?

well i have a Troll Adept i enjoy playing as named Brik who's hanging in Seattle before returning to NAN. He works on his bikes as much as playing in the shadows and puts biking above runs cause he enjoys it but he'll run if its good nuyen. he's a young emerging 20 year old adept and i'm currently reading up some SR fiction on combat biking to get a better grasp on the game. also idk what the rules are pertaining to adepts in sports since it seems like cyber implants are the popular choice amongst top players but adepts are powerful so. live to learn. oi thanks chummer

My BGH spends time with his granddaughter.

Jinx (Covert ops. specialist) (SURGEd Troll) (Satyr legs etc.) certified Armed courier (part-time) and ER Nurse for local hospital

My rigger has an MFA and is an adjunct professor of Western Literature at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
He also enjoys drone design and realistic, ultra-violent video games.

My face (cum fixer) ex-mafia Troll Murphy used to be an honest to God Golden Gloves (Super Hevyweight) level amateur boxer. He's never explained it to anyone, but it's why when he had to get a cyber arm after losing his left to a bunch of Humanis assholes with a grudge he had the replacement done up in golden chrome to make a point. That was 25 years or more ago now. He still keeps up on the sport, and takes book on the side out of the bar that constitutes his 'office' these days.

(cue immature giggles)

Jenks (British Occult Investigator, Magical Security Specialist, out of Hong Kong) enjoys poking around museums/old dig sites/new dig sites/etc. looking for interesting artifacts (the older the better). He is an archeologist (though non-teaching) that specializes in two time periods: Ancient Asian Cultures and the Crusades. Oh, and he collects Gargoyles. He has a pretty impressive collection.

Goose: Street gang member
Dr. Sprocket: Street Doc
Mountain: Mafia Enforcer.. er.. "Warehouse worker"
Mack: Trid Stuntman & Humanis organizer
Iron Neko: Mall rat
Padre: Street Missionary

It looks like most of my other characters tended to stay in the shadows, for various reasons - usually because they were hiding from something or someone, but not always.

Michael Nagato: Retired cop. Unjustifiably paranoid - to start with.
The Roach: Neo-anarchist organizer and wanted terrorist - justifiably paranoid.
The ViCaR: Ex-corp on the run from old bosses - he sees all, he records all.
Mr. Duval: Street sage (give him money, he gives you advice on solving your problem)
Glitch: Unemployed, sometimes walks dogs. Would you give a regular job to a gremlin shaman?

El Leon de Acero - Cartel Bodyguard - Human Full Conversion Borg. Collects 20th Century 2-D Movies.
Dharkh'oni - Oni Ninja, trying to bring his clan back to prominence (Iga Clan). Shinto Priest.
Sean Macklin - Ex Lone Star Detective. Occasional KE Asset and Private Dick. Takes a beating and keeps on Ticking.
Nexus - Cyberlogician obsessed with obtaining revenge for his Girl Friends death. Freelance App Programmer
Spike - 3.5meter tall, 500+ kilo Troll Physical Adept. Teaches as Wu Jen's House of Pain Dojo. Follows the way of the Warrior.
Cain - Human Physical Adept, Collects Books and Classical Music from before the turn of the Century.

Jack, my rigger, is a party gal. She goes out clubbing when not working. It helps on the secret identity thing if you can alter your appearance and gender from night to night with a hardware toolkit.

Old Man Jones makes plans. Lots of plans. He has been known to quote, "I dislike the term 'plan b'. It suggests that I only have 26 of them."

When not planning, he sits in his batcave apartment and... broods.


-k

I had heard of strap-ons, but bolt-ons??

Wait, it's the pixie with the anthroform.

Whew

I tend to only go to plan F (F=Fuck! Run for it!) but my plans tend to branch. a lot.

My gaming group has long had a declaration that Plan D is always a swift boot to the groin, followed by rolling the mark for his wallet.

I tend to view plan D as Demolitions. That's the point where subtlety is gone and we break out the breaching charges/grenades. We have been known to start with plan D on occasion.

Would that not make Plan D really Plan A (Anarchy)?

So D was for Date?

Actually, it's more a case of plan A-C being considered and rejected out of hand.

Team 2 on the other hand believes in Plan A (Anarchy).

Gotta Love Team 2's Flaming Mohawks...

Yep. They burned so bright they attracted Lone Star into the barrens. An unfortunate side effect is that they no longer have lives outside the shadows (or in the shadows for that matter...)

*Stares down at the ruins of the barrens, standing stock-still against a gargoyle, and whispers, "No."*

Tara (vehicle hacker/face) spends money on clothes, quality cyberware, high-performance vehicle parts or vehicle maintainance, or spas, drives street races and/or goes clubbing (apart from connection and relationship maintainance, of course).
Perry (streetpunk/budding streetsam) lounges before the trid, eating pizza and watching bloodsports, works out or trains in a gym. Occasionally, he treats himself to a block party.
Richter (madman) lives in Rat's Nest and often BBQs on the roof of his ramshacke brick shack and randomly shoots, yells and hurls beer bottles at passers-by. Think Agent Krueger from Elysium, but with a sledge hammer and a wide-rim hat.
Jason (combat medic) is a male nurse [correct term?] at the street doc's pretty much all my characters use. Also, he in vain tries to get his girlfriend out of streetwalking - in vain because she and the pimp are into exploiting him for his money together.
Kyle Shadowhunter (rich shadowrunner poser kid) hangs out in runner hangouts and likes to look super busy, all while trying to get in with actual runners, really pissing them off. He's part of the reason why runner hangouts fluctuate between clubs and bars. He also has a lifetime ban in the Penumbra.
Gaius Iulus Zachmann (black mage, predominantly conjuring) is a professor of metaplanar theory, deep metaplane research and deep metaplanar invocation at UWash. He frequently ditches his lectures, leaving his poor assistants and postgrads alone for weeks while he does research or "acquires third-party funding". He's also liaised with one of his assistants, who also acts as his housekeeper.

Not a PC, per se, but I wrote up an NPC as a full-fledged character so my runners would have a little extra help should they need it.

Rescue (real name Amy White, or so she claims) is a 14 year old technomancer who's had a bit of a rough time. She began manifesting her technomancer powers around age 10, which freaked her parents out something fierce. As a result, they pulled away from her emotionally and basically treated her as a stranger for a couple years, before eventually getting wind of some research that Shiawase corporation was doing on people who could do strange things very similar to what their daughter could do. They ended up selling her out to Shiawase at age 12, specifically a Seattle subsidiary of the Shiawase Biotech branch, for a very nice sum of nuyen.

Shiawase Biotech used her for 2 years as a test subject for researching the interactions between technomancers and devices, even going so far as to implant a datajack in her head to see if it hampered her abilities or augmented them in any way. All that really did is give her something that tends to itch when she projects her living persona. Eventually, a group of runners who had broken into the facility she was being held in to steal data related to another research project going on ended up breaking her out when she helped them get the data they needed, and she's been tagging along ever since.

Nowadays, she lives in the tiny apartment formerly occupied by the team's previous decker on the border of Puyallup and Auburn, having unofficially inherited his gear after an unfortunate incident on a run sent the decker back home in a body bag. She spends most of her free time between brushing up on skills she may need to help out the team, going out clubbing, and exploring her abilities as a technomancer.



If I ever play in a game rather than GM one, I may try to actually use her as a character.

No, demolitions as a fallback plan are how you make exits where there were no exits. I had a character who kept a frame charge in a backpack on runs that were not ultra-low profile, since you never know when a rapid exit via a new door might be really useful. Never actually used it, but he had it handy.

I get it...
We use just such a method when we invaded the Mitsuhama Towers in Hong Kong (for the 7th Time in 2 years). Created a door (window?) from the 43 Floor, which we then proceeded to base Jump from under fire. It was quite exciting... Especially for the two characters who had refused to actually pick up the Parachuting Skill.

Great, now I'm homesick.

My hacker spends most of his off-time either pretending to be a Matrix security consultant (to trick the super at his building into thinking he's legit), posting on a Chaos Engine node that's the in-universe version of 4chan, going clubbing with his girlfriend or watching bad action trids with his best friend. More solitary activities include reading, simsense games and AR FPSes.

One of my fictional characters: Hunter, "retired" ZDF & legitimate bounty hunter in Denver.

Awhile back I actually statted out a Corporate Wageslave who snapped from the tedium and lack of fulfillment stuck in his cubicle, bought a flamethrower, torched his office complex, and disappeared into the shadows.

Turns out an enthusiastic attitude and a flamethrower will only get you so far as a runner, especially when you're an unhinged maniac with control issues and a rebellious attitude, but either out of sheer luck or the will of the Universe he survived enough runs to actually start to get sick of his new lifestyle. Not knowing what to spend his earnings on other than spare fuel canisters and extensive dry cleaning, and finding he missed the structure and security of his old lifestyle, he did one last run to get a hold of a "peace offering" valuable enough to convince his former employers to clear his record and take him back, then retired to a comfortable life of monotony and unimportance.

So basically like "It's A Wonderful Life" or "The Prince and The Pauper", just with more burning flesh and demented laughter.

~Umi

Concept I'm unlikely to ever get to play...Safehouse guard dog who is secretly a shifter( but tends more towards the Snoopy/Gromit end of the canine personality spectrum), who finds a long hidden stash of early 20th century detective novels and becomes fascinated with them. Inevitably opportunities arise to use the skills learned in the stories...

so, Sherlock Bones?

"Booooo... Hissssss..."



I know, it was inevitable... *sigh*

See, that makes me pine for my old concept of a not-quite-legal Inhabitation tradition Free Spirit of Man in a Hybrid Form dog body.

Yes, I know, I have the weirdest character concepts.

~Umi

So, Scooby-Doo?

http://drugsrus.wordpress.com/2007/09/18/t...out-scooby-doo/

Hmm, might work in a game...

McGruff The Crime Dog?