[Strill]

One common complaint regarding shadowrun characters is that they're built primarily to be competent at their jobs, rather than to model a character concept or to represent a believable, relatable person. The assumption therein is that it would be more interesting to have a character who is less competent, but closer to concept.

I'd like to analyze this by looking at what action/adventure protagonists in books and movies are like, and contrast them with Shadowrun protagonists. What is it that pushes a Shadowrun player to make a hyper-competent character, while an action/adventure protagonist can get away with being incompetent but more "flavorful"? To start, I'll list out some ways I've identified in which action/adventure protagonists compensate for their weaknesses, and contrast them with Shadowrun's rules. Maybe some of  these narrative techniques could be adapted to Shadowrun.

#1. Friends in High Places

The protagonist has a highly competent friend, ally, or mentor, who acts in their place or compensates for their weaknesses.

Examples:

• Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and Obi wan Kenobi
• How To Train Your Dragon: Hiccup and Toothless
• Pokemon: Ash Ketchum and Pikachu
• Naruto and the Kyuubi.

Why it doesn't work in Shadowrun: Players have contacts, but they're not expected to act as personal companions on every run like one of these characters might.

#2. Tailored To You

The challenges the protagonist faces are exactly tailored to their skills. Any problem the protagonist cannot achieve on their own, they will have found a tool to solve at some point previously.  Alternatively, the protagonist only embarks on missions they're confident achieving.

Examples:

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: Ron is a chess expert and one of the puzzles is a chess game. Harry got a flute for christmas that can put the 3-headed dog to sleep. The Devil's Snare plant was covered in their classes, which Hermione has memorized. One of the puzzles is a logic puzzle, which Hermione is great at.
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Harry masters the advanced Patronus spell in record time, allowing him to defend himself from dementors which specifically come after him later in the book.
• James Bond always encounters situations where his gadgets of the day are exactly what he needs to succeed.
• Indiana Jones is an expert at even the most obscure of ancient traps, from noticing that the idol is on a pressure plate, AND having a sandbag already on hand, to identifying the true holy grail.

Why it doesn't work in Shadowrun: It happens to some extent, but often the GM will provide challenges which no player is well equipped to solve, to test the players' ingenuity. These are likely to bite an incompetent player, and if they aren't built to be good at getting out of bad situations, they can easily wind up dead. Furthermore, if that player has nothing unique to bring to the team, tasks intended for them may be completed by other players, leaving them feeling redundant and useless.

#3. Training Montage

The protagonist becomes competent quickly, or the story hits a timeskip after the protagonist has spent time becoming competent.

• Star Wars: Luke Skywalker learns to use the Force and fight with a lightsaber in a matter of weeks.
  
• Dragonball Z: Too many examples to count.
  
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Aang masters three of the four elements in the span of one year.
  

Why it doesn't work in Shadowrun: Karma is a strictly controlled part of the game, and giving one player extra karma to "catch up" would be unfair to other players.

#4. Ass Pull

The protagonist succeeds at something they logically should not be equipped to handle. Maybe through contrived coincidence, incredible luck, the inexplicable incompetence of their adversaries, or a sudden burst of technobabble that solves all the problems.

• Star Wars: Han Solo and Luke Skywalker not only escape the Death Star unscathed in the face of thousands of highly-trained soldiers, but rescue Princess Leia as well.
• Star Trek: Picard revolutionizes space combat tactics with the Picard Maneuver without warning or internal narrative build-up.
• Batman: Shark-repellent Bat spray
• Superman inexplicably has the ability to turn back time by making the earth rotate backwards in the movie Superman

Why it doesn't work in Shadowrun: Incompetent adversaries make for bad stories and kill tension. The antagonists should be a serious threat. Luck is a part of the game in the form of edge, but you'd need to burn edge to pull this sort of thing off, which is not a sustainable plan. If the GM gives this to the player arbitrarily, it can easily cause the other players to become jealous.

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I think that the reason players put so much focus on min-maxing characters is because RPG characters frequently do not have the plot armor and safety nets that literary characters have. Players become attached to their characters, and they want them to survive, but that's all based on the whims of the dice. While adventure protagonists might get by with luck, Edge can only carry you so far.

You also can't ever "catch up" if you start with less relevant skills either. Due to the fact that you get so little karma from runs relative to what you get from character creation, you have to make sure you're competent from the start, since you won't be able to make up for it later on. Every point spent on a non-practical skill is a point that could've saved your character from death.

Some of this is due to the skill system itself, since some skills are simply better than others. There have been several threads on hypothetical ways to consolidate or adjust the skill system to solve this problem.

Another contributing factor is the relatively low number of points for contacts and knowledge skills, which are big ways to add depth to characters. Giving players more of these may help to add variety to otherwise one-dimensional characters, and tie them more firmly into the world via their relationships with their contacts.

Perhaps it might be possible to reach a compromise that could allow players to have highly specialized and competent characters without them starting that way immediately. For example, the training montage concept above doesn't work in Shadowrun, mainly due to the nature of character creation and character progression. Players are expected to get an enormous amount of karma at the start, and a tiny trickle afterwards.  What if you were to design a character creation system where some character creation resources are left unspent, and are allocated by the player gradually over the first ten or twenty sessions? Rather than start with a master assassin from the start, you would be able to start with a more average character and roleplay how your character becomes so highly specialized and skilled in their chosen field.

[Jack_Spade]

As you correctly remarked, it's resource scarcity that propels min-maxing.
I noticed that my Prime Runners are much more likely to have that rounded feeling - Their stats aren't actually higher, they just have more of them. Conversely, Street Scum characters tend to be good at only one or two things - most often their stick and a combat skill.

Most RPG systems don't want your characters to be action heroes as seen in film and TV (honorable exception: Feng Shui) because they think you should have potential to develop. Sadly, if you aren't in a hyper focused play where you have one character over the course of years, you probably will never reach that level of competency in so many fields at once.

If I have my character do something, I want him to succeed - otherwise, why attempt it at all? Often enough a failure is worse than doing nothing, so it's generally a good idea to concentrate your abilities in things you can be reasonable sure will succeed and things you just leave other people to do. Which is a good thing actually, as that makes it possible for everyone to shine in their role - unless of course you are one of those players who could not commit to a role, has spread himself to thin and can't get the results he wants.

Another part is system mastery: Those who read the rules, frequent the forums to discuss ideas and have fun solving resource problems tend to have efficient, competent characters. It's a mistake to assume that those characters aren't "flavorful". They are just created with an eye towards what's actually possible and not what's desirable.

[Marcus]

Just to be explicitly clear, are you suggesting Min/Maxing is a bad thing?

[Novocrane]

Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and Obi wan Kenobi

I don't think you've quite got the hang of Friends In High Places. Try Yoda? Obi Wan was in some ways equivalent to the GM paying attention to the group's lack of decking skills (one PC said they might want to learn matrix skills, but they're more interesting in neo-anarchism), then providing a GMPC decker. Said decker even gets taken out in a way that pushes the PC towards decking.

[Strill]

If I have my character do something, I want him to succeed - otherwise, why attempt it at all? Often enough a failure is worse than doing nothing, so it's generally a good idea to concentrate your abilities in things you can be reasonable sure will succeed and things you just leave other people to do. Which is a good thing actually, as that makes it possible for everyone to shine in their role - unless of course you are one of those players who could not commit to a role, has spread himself to thin and can't get the results he wants.

One big problem with your explanation is that from a narrative perspective, the fluff skills are what a player should choose first, since they're what their character learns first chronologically. They're part of his backstory, and he should logically start the game with them.

From a min-max perspective, however, the shadowrunning skills are what a player should choose first since they're what the character needs in order to survive long enough to learn the fluff skills, even if they have to rewrite the character's backstory to make it fit.

This conflict is compounded by the fact that it's more efficient to max out a single skill at character creation, than to get many low-ranked skills. You want to demonstrate the character's passing familiarity with a handful of things as appropriate to his history, but you're highly encouraged to buy those one-rank skills with karma after the first session in what is effectively a ret-con.

Just to be explicitly clear, are you suggesting Min/Maxing is a bad thing?

I think it exposes flaws in the rules themselves, but that it's a perfectly reasonable thing for a player to do. I think the rules should work better to ensure that a min-maxing character is also an interesting character. Take for example, the lack of free contacts and knowledge skills in karma buy. I think is a huge flaw and a perverse incentive. You're heavily encouraged to play a character with no knowledge skills. That's no fun and makes your character that much more boring.

I don't think you've quite got the hang of Friends In High Places. Try Yoda? Obi Wan was in some ways equivalent to the GM paying attention to the group's lack of decking skills (one PC said they might want to learn matrix skills, but they're more interesting in neo-anarchism), then providing a GMPC decker. Said decker even gets taken out in a way that pushes the PC towards decking.

Yoda teaches him things, but doesn't personally act on his behalf all that much. Obi Wan takes a far more hands-on approach.

[Marcus]

It's my understanding that, it has been errata'ed where you do get contacts and knowledge skills.

[Whiskeyjack]

You're heavily encouraged to play a character with no knowledge skills. That's no fun and makes your character that much more boring.

On this front, you can certainly know things about subjects and not have them be reflected in Knowledge Skills. The character sheet is not the four corners of the character's mental experiences. Tons of actions theoretically covered by Active Skills should never be rolled because there are no truly meaningful consequences of failure (like googling the menu and map to a local restaurant) so I feel like knowledge skills should play the same way.

[Jack_Spade]

One big problem with your explanation is that from a narrative perspective, the fluff skills are what a player should choose first, since they're what their character learns first chronologically. They're part of his backstory, and he should logically start the game with them.

From a min-max perspective, however, the shadowrunning skills are what a player should choose first since they're what the character needs in order to survive long enough to learn the fluff skills, even if they have to rewrite the character's backstory to make it fit.

This conflict is compounded by the fact that it's more efficient to max out a single skill at character creation, than to get many low-ranked skills. You want to demonstrate the character's passing familiarity with a handful of things as appropriate to his history, but you're highly encouraged to buy those one-rank skills with karma after the first session in what is effectively a ret-con.

Ret-cons aren't a bad thing. Quite often you have to play a character for a session or two to see if you idea works. That's why I usually allow my players to rearrange their character a bit after the first play. Backstory and stats don't have to match up perfectly at first. It has a touch of quantum mechanics: As long as no one has observed your lack of skill, there is no reason to assume you lack those skills. And even than - just say you learned it and have neglected to keep up on the subject.
Inplay, no one can see your character sheet.

A lot of people forget that active skills can be used as knowledge skills.

But yes, SR is stingy with skill points in general - that is most notable if you look at the sample contacts: Most of those can't be recreated - even with Skills A.

[Hobbes]

Action/Adventure heroes are frequently soloist and therefore would be impossible to create in Shadowrun without tremendous amounts of resources.  Good with any Weapon, can fly, drive, or fix anything, smooth in any social situation and always gets the girl?  200 skill points give or take.  Charming, Smart, and Strong?  No problem, just need around 40 stat points.  And don't forget the 5 to 7 points of Edge.

Shadowrunners aren't intended to be a Mystic-Decker-Face-Rigger-Samurai-Adept, and character optimization has nothing to do with character backstory depth.  *shrug*

[DigitalZombie]

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I think that the reason players put so much focus on min-maxing characters is because RPG characters frequently do not have the plot armor and safety nets that literary characters have. Players become attached to their characters, and they want them to survive, but that's all based on the whims of the dice. While adventure protagonists might get by with luck, Edge can only carry you so far.

You also can't ever "catch up" if you start with less relevant skills either. Due to the fact that you get so little karma from runs relative to what you get from character creation, you have to make sure you're competent from the start, since you won't be able to make up for it later on. Every point spent on a non-practical skill is a point that could've saved your character from death.

Some of this is due to the skill system itself, since some skills are simply better than others. There have been several threads on hypothetical ways to consolidate or adjust the skill system to solve this problem.

Another contributing factor is the relatively low number of points for contacts and knowledge skills, which are big ways to add depth to characters. Giving players more of these may help to add variety to otherwise one-dimensional characters, and tie them more firmly into the world via their relationships with their contacts.

I havent implemented this houserule in SR5, but I have used it in other systems.
What you could do if you think your table is ignoring/down-prioritizing fluff/depth/varity skills and abilities, is to give the players karma earmarked to such skills.
For instance: instead of awarding the players with 10 karma after some sessions, you could award them with 8 karma and 5 fluff karma to be used solely on knowledge/soft-skills/etc.(if you are feeling kind you could just give them 10 karma 5/fluff karma).
This would of course scew some qualities a bit. Like those requiring you to spend x points on knowledge skills when improving combat skills (in that case. said player should still be forced to spend more karma on knowledge skills than the other players).

This has the added benefit of in-game character advancement vs adding more contact points and knowledge skills at the start of play.

[Jack_Spade]

Don't think so complicated. Just say: Hey, you earned a point of gang knowledge today. Enjoy.

[DigitalZombie]

That would also work for many groups. But then you would remove a bit of player empowerment,by not letting the player himself decide if he should upgrade gangs street knowledge/his ganger contact or streetdrugs. (say the character was involved with those 3 cases last run).

Its not really meant as being very complicated: you could make it like this: whatever karma you earn, you earn ½ of that amount in fluff-karma.

#3. Training Montage

Why it doesn't work in Shadowrun: Karma is a strictly controlled part of the game, and giving one player extra karma to "catch up" would be unfair to other players.
Well, if all the rest of the players find it unfair, isnt it then working as intended? And if all the other players are cool with newer players/characters catching up, then the GM could easily award the new guy a bit extra, until he is close enough to the other characters. (unless you are playing some official missions stuff of course)

#4. Ass Pull

• Star Wars: Han Solo and Luke Skywalker not only escape the Death Star unscathed in the face of thousands of highly-trained soldiers, but rescue Princess Leia as well.

Why it doesn't work in Shadowrun: Incompetent adversaries make for bad stories and kill tension. The antagonists should be a serious threat. Luck is a part of the game in the form of edge, but you'd need to burn edge to pull this sort of thing off, which is not a sustainable plan. If the GM gives this to the player arbitrarily, it can easily cause the other players to become jealous.


Well, since the imperials wasted energy on putting a tracking device on the millennium falcon, thus enabling them to royally screw over the rebels. I would say that it went all according to the antagonists plan. (kinda like if the runners manage to trick the dragon and get away with it rather easily)

[/list]

[Shadowjack]

I think players usually aim to create powerful characters because they want to succeed and stay alive. Failure in Shadowrun is quite punishing, you either die or lose Edge, which is a tremendous setback compared to the Karma you earn during the game. Shadowrun also employs the use of dice pool penalties, particularly while damaged or in poor conditions, this means that low dice pool characters can quickly be rendered useless in a  given situation. However, I think it is best to not min-max and instead create the character you will have the most fun playing, whether that character is highly powerful or not. It is then the GM's job to plan his campaign to suit the player characters and provide appropriate challenges.

I occasionally start campaigns with additional points for contacts and knowledge skills because they can be fairly sparse on some characters, which doesn't exactly match up with their alleged experience in the shadows. Players rarely ever allocate starting karma to knowledge skills, which is a shame. I am willing to pay the price and sacrifice power in other areas in favor of additional knowledge if it suits my character plan. A savvy GM will reward players for doing this, at least from time to time, otherwise they are indeed quite low value.

[Novocrane]

Yoda teaches him things, but doesn't personally act on his behalf all that much. Obi Wan takes a far more hands-on approach.

Precisely. Contacts aren't hands-on helpers during a run. Especially not FIHPs. They do favours that are important, but only need their peripheral involvement - gear, info, arranging meetings, etc.

[Glyph]

I think min-maxing is encouraged by not only the game mechanics, but the game's premise - the character is a specialist who is part of a team.  So of course the player's primary focus will be to be good at his/her job (spellcasting, decking, etc.).  And skill points left over are unlikely to go to purely flavor skills, because shadowrunners also need a few tertiary skills such as etiquette, perception, sneaking, etc.  Even contacts and knowledge skills can be chosen more for utility than flavor.  A 4/3 fixer contact will usually be more useful than a 1/2 squatter and a 2/2 matrix blogger.  An ork face is likelier to get ork underground: 5 and Cascade ork smugglers: 4 than ork cuisine: 3, ork neotribal music: 2, street fashion: 3, and dirt bike racing: 1.

Keep in mind that not every player will be torn in two directions.  A player might think that a 4/3 fixer contact and knowledge skills of ork underground: 5 and Cascade ork smugglers: 4 fit the character's theme and background just fine.  Are specialist characters really a "problem"?  The whole game, including character creation, is more or less centered around the premise of specialists.

I think part of the problem is that Shadowrun's character creation systems are so wide open, choice-wise.  So if you want to make someone who is an awesome marksman with virtually no other skills, you can do that, even though you will be bored outside of combat, and some of the things you omitted were important things to have.  Conversely, if you want to be an unaugmented mundane human with average attributes and skills across the board, you can do that, even though your dice pools will be too low to succeed at any difficult task, and the other characters are likely to outshine you.

I think the best cure for overly min-maxed characters (and overly weak characters) is experience, with a GM who is clear about what kind of campaign he is running making that learning process easier.

If you want to solve the problem mechanically, though, then I think the best way is to expand on what the basic rules did when they made knowledge skills and contacts both separate pools of resources.  So, one example:  "Okay, sum to ten as normal, but everyone starts out with etiquette, perception, and sneaking at rating: 2, which can be improved further with Karma and skill points.  You also get 6 points of active skills that can't have anything to do with your specialty - skills like artisan that you normally wouldn't take.  You get 30 points for contacts, 10 points for language skills, 24 points for useful knowledge skills like gang identification, and 18 points for knowledge skills representing hobbies and interests, such as urban brawl or dwarven microbrewery beers."  Because all of the character creation systems suffer from scarce resources, I think a carrot approach like the one above would work better than a stick approach (making them spend a certain portion of their points on fluff).