Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Character creation and critique => Topic started by: digeridork on <08-26-11/2245:50>
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I might be starting a game for some of the guys in my regular gaming group that want to get a little Shadowrun on the side. They are not really familiar with the system or the setting and aren't really the biggest proponents of finding time to read the material. We play Pathfinder and they've learned the default setting through game play and they will probably learn about Shadowrun this way as well.
My problem is that these guys are going to make characters soon and when I was rereading the character creation section it seemed like going into character creation with a good idea or a plan would be the best route. As the Ever Helpful GM™ I want to be able to give my players a resource for designing their characters and was curious about the process others use to come up with their character.
I did a Google search for a character questionnaire and came up with a few generic lists and some setting specific ones that I plan on trying to incorporate and I've tried to organize the process I use for creating characters to little avail.
So to create some sort of document to aid my players I was thinking that I might ask the community if you share the process you use for generating a character concept and if you had any ideas for what kinds of questions should be included in a character questionnaire.
Thanks in advance.
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The SR Companion has a handy list of 20 questions to get the ball rolling on character backgrounds. It also gives some broad "roles" characters can fill and some general ideas on what directions you can take to fill them. Typically I pick 1 primary role and one secondary role to dabble in. One is generally combat focused, the other is anything not directly or specifically fighting. Then I always have something to do in the game, whatever part we're on at the time.
You could also give them a leg up on things like team building just by having them start out as a bunch of gangers moving up in the world. Or buddies starting a 'private eye / security / 'consulting' firm'. Y'know, something other then a fixer throwing random goonies together.
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Check the link in my sig. In addition to using the Archetypes "off the shelf," you can also use them as examples or modify them as you see fit.
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I don't force the players to do this, but I imply that the story should be created first. Once the character is done, and I'm reviewing, I start asking "where did this come from". I tend to house rule a lot of things with the idea of i'll be reasonable if the players are. For instance, I may not make the characters buy basic gear, as I expect they'll have it. But in that vein, if you show up with all the uber-duper cool weapons, that violates my reasonable rule.
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I may sound like a corporate shill, but I don't actually get paid for anything I say, so I'm not really.
But, if you have access, I highly recommend Hero Labs, just because it helps with the math of character creation. (Not too mention they are also the official CharGen software for the Pathfinder Society, so there's that extra bonus). It can get a bit expensive if you start buying every bell and whistle but, for now, they are only offering the Core Rulebook for Shadowrun.
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The most important thing for making shadowrun characters is to define the charcter before putting pen to paper in any mechanical way. What is the character good at? What is their role in the group? What mechanical elements do they need (skills, powers, spells, implants, whatever) to fill that role? If you are building 400 point characters you can end up with people with elite skill, but you can't be a one man army. Discourage generalists, and encourage people to know what they want when they start. Help them pick the things that are core to filling out their character concept, buy them first, and then fill in the rest with remaining points.
Also, set out some guidelines about power levels and dice pools, and stats. Try to keep people roughly in the same neighborhood in terms of dicepools. Are you expecting min/maxed characters who have an 18+ dice pool in their primary skill, or is a 14 or 15 enough for your core compentency? Are dumpstats of 1 acceptable, or do you consider a 1 vastly undeveloped and a huge weakness? Either standard is fine, but what you don't want is the combat specalist who has 13 dice with his best attack next to the face who has 14 with his combat secondary focus.
Please note, the sample characters in the book are crap, for the most part. I would not suggest using them as examples or pre-made characters.
Umaro's link above goes to some characters he made as sample characters for Missions games. They are at the other end of the scale from the sample characters is SR4A. While there is much to be learned from studying them in terms of technique, they are highly, highly optimized. Not a complaint or criticism, but know what you are getting. They were designed to let a new player sit in and be effective next to experienced players with experienced characters. Even if they exceed the power level of the campaign you are considering they are helpful for looking at good ways to put together armor, comlinks, etc.
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I would also suggest once you have the concept and you start the number crunching, to use an excel sheet. I think there are a couple of links on the forum for sheets with all the options programmed in. That way you can think a concept, start filling in the sheet and all the calculations behind are done automatically. I use it for all my character developments and it's really fast. Especially since shadowrun isn't the easiest system the generate characters in (although not the most difficult either).
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Thanks this is a lot of good information.
Right now I am looking at different ideas to help my players generate character concepts. Since they're so new to the system and the setting I'll be starting with a clean slate with pretty much everything so that's a plus. I am putting together a good list of things I want my players to think about before they put pencil to character sheet and I'll share it when I finally finish it.
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For a new-ish GM running a new-ish group of players, I really think Runner's Toolkit could be a big help. It's got PACKS (a modular character creation system) that could help get the ball rolling, compiled gear tables from several of the core gear books (a handy resource), some cool maps (that are dry-erase friendly) for once game play starts, a ready-to-go adventure, a GM screen (always nice), and some very nice hand outs that would be perfect for a new group (give the combat guy the list of combat mods, the hacker the handout with the electronics stuff, etc).
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Having a basis for the character: Laura Croft, Dexter, Sherlock Holmes, Jackie Chan, Buffy Summers, Harry Dresden, or any other famous template is a great first step as you will have focus on what they do and don't do. Many characters have problems accepting limitations of a character but it is much easier to say a Physical Adept Vampire Slayer based on Buffy can Thump, moves really well, and has some great contacts but she does not drive well, lies and cons worse, has no more defenses to magic than a normal and is desperately trying to outgrow her infatuations with the bad boy element of her species enemy. It just goes down easier in a package usually. Also understanding what the player is trying to run makes running them in game many times easier. From the agreed on template generate your character and have fun. If it comes to giving them a few extra points to make the character feel right just do it. Its better to upgrade the scale in the adventure than explain why the character is missing key abilities or has lackluster major ones they expect them to have.
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Discourage generalists,
Why?
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Discourage generalists,
Why?
The mechanics of shadowrun character creation, especially the offical build point system, really emphasises building specialists. Skills costs are the same per point from one to 6, but you don't have enough overall build points for tons of skills. The most successful way, from a purely mechanical point of view, to make a shadowrun character is to pick a core skill/role, make that very high, and then pick one or two other things that the character is good at and make those moderatly high. Jack of all trades characters tend to end up sucking at everything. Its just the way the math works out.
Now I am not saying you will only have two or three skills, but I am saying don't try to be good at everything. Lets say you want to be a breaking and entereing expert. Figure out what is really core to that. Infiltration to sneak, hardware to deal with locks and security systems, a high agility stat, maybe locksmith (although with a high agilityand a good autopicker sometimes you can skip the skill.) Maybe athletics to climb if you wan to be a second story man, and it also give you gymnastics to dodge with. Throw on either pistols or automatics for a combat option and some perception and you are probably done.
The problems comes when you do that, but then decided that you should have some first aid, too. And that demolitions sounds cool. And if he knows demolitons how about some chemistry to make explosives. And I would really like to be able to fight hand to hand but thats more strength and then I need some implants for it. And I would really like some social skills And. .. and... and... By the time you find enough points for this your skills and stats are so diluted you can do alot of things, but you do tham all badly.
It is often said that Shadowrun is a team sport. Find a role on the team and make sure you can do your job well. Find one or two other areas of overlap( a combat option, a social option, a skill that stands alone and synergizes with a stat you arleady have fairly high) and be able to do a bit there as well. Everyone should be able to do some legwork, even if its just a few contacts and knowledge skills. Everyone should be able to do something in a fight, even if its hide in the van and run a drone. But overall the most common mistakes when first making characters is not having a clear focus and trying to be good at to many things.
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Thanks for answering. I agree with you largely, but I think that experienced players can have just as much fun with any type of character. My favorite character of all time was a generalist. So he had 8 Edge, he still had the most bizarre set of skills.
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Thanks for answering. I agree with you largely, but I think that experienced players can have just as much fun with any type of character. My favorite character of all time was a generalist. So he had 8 Edge, he still had the most bizarre set of skills.
Fun and mechanically effective are two different things.
Because the build point system is so open ended the important thing really is to keep the characters roughly in the same ballpark. In some games a dice pool of 12 is amazing. In others you need 15 or 16 dice to even be considered competent and doing your job with your main skill, and 20 to be elite. The gm challenge to to make sure you don't get a combat character with 10 dice in their main attack next to a face who has 14 dice with his combat secondary. Yes, there are some people who wouldn't care, but many people would. You don't want to frustrate or alienate a new player with a character who is clearly less effective than the other characters at the table.
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Fun and mechanically effective ARE two different things.
I like to think that Fun trumps Rules Lawyering every time. :)
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Fun and mechanically effective ARE two different things.
I like to think that Fun trumps Rules Lawyering every time. :)
But be advised, many, many players would find being given a clearly mechanically inferior character to be "not fun." In fact, i think that someone who doesn't is in a small minority. Im all for RP. I like RP. I like a good story. I have been guiltyof more than my share of theme builds. But if you have new players, which this thread was about, and one has a character that is clearly mechanically inferior to everyone else at the table, odds are strongly in favor of him not likeing that. And when a game is just getting off the ground not liking often equals not coming back for more.
Also, mechanics should mimic story elements. Its hard to RP an elite covert operative if mechanically he isn't any better at his job than fred the mall cop.
Being good at the Game part of a game doesn't make you any less good at the Role Playing part of the game. Its not Rules Lawyering to build an effective character.
Its also a real pain in the rear for the GM to have radically differnt power levels in a group. A combat challenge that is good for one guy either murders the other or is not threat at all. Like I said above, the key thing is that no matter where the power level for the campaign shakes out to be you need to keep the characters roughly in the same range. This can sometimes be putting a cap on a power gamer, but in Shadowrun because its honestly so easy to make a flat bad character until you learn the rules a bit it is often making sure that the newbie does not completely stink up the place. All RP purity aside, a hacker who can't hacker, a fighter who can't fight, etc, is just not good for the game in any way. Its harder to GM, its harder for the other players who are relying on that character to cover his role.
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Not every line of every character for every game needs to be "optimized." It's a game. If you're so worried about being "good enough" or being "the best" that it turns into work, or that building a character turns into a rote addition of must-have items with nary a character point left over at the end of it, you're just not playing the same game as I am.
Most players want their characters to be good, sure. But you know what? A game can run just fine on characters that are just good enough.
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Not every line of every character for every game needs to be "optimized." It's a game. If you're so worried about being "good enough" or being "the best" that it turns into work, or that building a character turns into a rote addition of must-have items with nary a character point left over at the end of it, you're just not playing the same game as I am.
Most players want their characters to be good, sure. But you know what? A game can run just fine on characters that are just good enough.
I agree. Like I keep saying, the important thing is to keep the characters at a particular table roughly in the same power band. Its having one character that is markedly less efffective than the others that tends to upself players and make the GMs life more complicated.
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I agree. Like I keep saying, the important thing is to keep the characters at a particular table roughly in the same power band. Its having one character that is markedly less efffective than the others that tends to upself players and make the GMs life more complicated.
I would amend that with "...one character that is markedly more or less effective than the others," personally. If most of the group, GM included, is content running an assortment of archetype-level characters that are new to the shadows and feel some moderate danger from the NPCs in the core book, the "outlier" character being a min/maxed to hell and back uber "optimized" murder machine can be just as disruptive to the game.
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I agree. Like I keep saying, the important thing is to keep the characters at a particular table roughly in the same power band. Its having one character that is markedly less efffective than the others that tends to upself players and make the GMs life more complicated.
I would amend that with "...one character that is markedly more or less effective than the others," personally. If most of the group, GM included, is content running an assortment of archetype-level characters that are new to the shadows and feel some moderate danger from the NPCs in the core book, the "outlier" character being a min/maxed to hell and back uber "optimized" murder machine can be just as disruptive to the game.
Agreed. The guy with 19 dice may cause hard feelings if everyone else has 11. He also one shots the things that are a challenge to the rest of the group.
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I think this whole party balance thing doesn't jive with the suggestion that everyone has to make specialist characters. So the sammy has a million dice to hack and shoot with. My hacker doesn't. The face doesn't. Does that mean that the combats have to accomodate them? I say no.
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Yes, but you can see how it might be a problem if one person brings a face who also has 15 dice to shoot people, and one person brings a street samurai who has only 12 dice to shoot people and doesn't have any real skills other than that.
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I think this whole party balance thing doesn't jive with the suggestion that everyone has to make specialist characters. So the sammy has a million dice to hack and shoot with. My hacker doesn't. The face doesn't. Does that mean that the combats have to accomodate them? I say no.
Which is why I'm not a fan of insisting everyone needs to make specialist characters, personally.
As always, though, and with everything else in Shadowrun (or gaming in general), it's an attitude that's going to vary from table to table. Not all the advice you'll get on these forums is going to jive with all the other advice, but that doesn't make any/all of it "bad." It just means different folks have different ideas about power level, expectations, dice pool requirements, and how to handle the game.
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Yes, but you can see how it might be a problem if one person brings a face who also has 15 dice to shoot people, and one person brings a street samurai who has only 12 dice to shoot people and doesn't have any real skills other than that.
If he has no other skills, what the heck did he spend his BP on?
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Yes, but you can see how it might be a problem if one person brings a face who also has 15 dice to shoot people, and one person brings a street samurai who has only 12 dice to shoot people and doesn't have any real skills other than that.
If he has no other skills, what the heck did he spend his BP on?
Look at the weapons expert sample charcter in the book. An extreme example I know, but thats a 400 bp character that tops out their best attack at 10 dice AFTER the smartlink and has has 1 IP. And thats on a character that is supposed to be a combat expert. What did they spend it on? CRAP THAT DOESN'T HELP. Not yelling at you, just yelling. Shadowrun character design has more traps than a North Vietnamese game trail in the late 60's. Its really easy to do things that at first blush sound like they should be something good, but in practice add up to a pile of pooh. There is very little forced game balance in this system. You can build characters of wildly different effective power levels for the same build points.
Now if everyone is built to the level of the weapons expert, where 10 dice is good and 12 dice is great and extra IPs are rare, that character works. But if you show up at a table where the face shoots better than you and the mage is better at hand to hand (I have seen it happen) and then they have the things that they are actually good at on top, you might feel robbed.