[Shadowjack]

I know this is a very sensitive topic but I have to bring something up. I've been visiting this website for many years, people have come and gone and editions have passed, but this particular section of the forums has been dominated by power gamers.I understand that people want to "optimize" their characters, but a lot of advice seems more like power gaming tips. People want to know what is the "best" assault rifle, which priority is the "best" for attributes, etc. A lot of the characters I see here are not believable, they are clearly just piles of stats and gear to be extremely powerful in a particular area, often making the rest of the character really weird looking. I have read your backgrounds, they're awesome. I have seen your character concepts, they're awesome too. I'm not saying that anyone is doing something malicious, I just don't quite understand the mindsets of most of you guys.

When I go to build a character the first thing I do is start dreaming up how I think they should be as a person and a runner. I would never choose a specific priority for anything just because it is mathematically superior, to do so would mean that I may not have made the correct thematic choice. If I picture my character a certain way and I don't have enough points to get the stats I need, I will absolutely shuffle my priorities around to strive for immersion. But I understand one thing, the priority system encourages power gaming. Many choices are superior mathematically and people want the "best" character they can get. There are a LOT of things thrown around like "You MUST have you primary skills at rating 6, you NEED a dice pool of 20 for attacking as a street samurai, the low end cyberdecks are useless, etc" These are untrue statements and based on power and not immersion. People in rpgs often believe they need to "win" the game and to do so they create the most powerrful characters they can. Why is that exactly? I think it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of your character failing, fear of death, fear of being robbed or disgraced. But you know what? Those can all be interesting things to explore in an rpg, and the GM has control over how things play out. Losing fights is a lot of fun imho, I don't want to win all the time. A good GM is going to tailor his runs based on the group's skill set. A weaker group can have just as much fun as a sstrong group, they just need to do different types of runs.

I think the only way to "win" in an rpg is to have as much fun as possible. At it's core, character creation is about creating the character you imagined, creation rules can pose a problem there, that's why we see so many different takes on it. The best (and slowest) solution I've found is the Point Buy/Karma Buy system from Run Faster. If you use that you aren't burning valuable Karma for the sake of immersion, you get exactly what you paid for. You don't need to have a character composed of all skills at rating 1 or 6, which I must note, is completely unrealistic and silly. The amount of characters I see with rating 6 in 3 skills and rating 1 in 4 skills is mind boggling. Does it really pain you that much to lose Karma? If that's the case, you should really just use the point buy system. I am surprised such characters can even be fun. You might not mind because your dice pool is still adequate, but having a 1 rating in a skill means yoe are a beginner and "you have a little training about how it works but not always why it works." How does your character have a background as a skilled Shadowrunner with the following skills?

Automatics 6
Pistols 6
Unarmed Combat 6
Etiquette 1
Perception 1

That doesn't like like a real person, can you imagine someone so 1 dimensional that they can basically only fight in combat even though they're 35 years old? The character looks like it was constructed from cardboard. That is of course just my opinion but I do think it's valid as I have been playing for decades. I also know for a fact that a lot of players have been driven away from this section of the forums over the years because people tell them "you built your character wrong". Ironically, I'm doing something similar here but I'm talking about the characters that were actually realistic, characters who were not min maxed. Power gamers see these characters and come with guns blazing, that drives people out of the hobby. I'm not here to say that I'm better than anyone else, this is just a game and I implore you to play it in any way you find entertaining. If you think such characters are a blast to play, fantastic! But I really do think this  game and this hobby has a lot more potential than creating hyper specialized characters that have genes made of mathematical equations. I'm 32 years old now. When I was just starting I was 12 years old and I was making more simple characters too. I didn't want to loes fights, I didn't want to die, I wanted to be Mr. Badass and trample everything in my path. But over time I grew to realize that there are many different enjoyable experiences in rpgs, and imho you will have a much better experience if you say "No" to power gaming and trust your gut, make the characters the way you think they should be made, not like you're trying to beat the game.

Lastly, if you think my opinion is complete shit, that's fine. I 100% understand that this is one of the dirtiest topics in the hobby and every day people get upset about it. I'm just voicing my thoughts on the matter.

[gradivus]

Most of the character's I post on here are mental exercises....
I wouldn't play three quarters of them because of many of the reasons you posted.
That being said, different strokes for different folks.

[gilga]

Well characters response to the kind of game you are playing, the one you described is good for a game where combat is most important. But what if the game become social? You need to crush a party uninvited and steal something you need to dress the part and don't blow your cover. Can this guy do that?

Think about players as reflection of the GMs and the story they tell  - players like their characters and want them to survive and everybody likes to have a 'super power' . I see nothing wrong with the skillset you just posted and I already have a nice back story for it.

A monk driven with revenge dedicated the last 10 years to become a weapon so he can avenge the death of his (father?). His sensei tells him that he is ready but now in the real world there are new skills he needs and he struggles with socity that he does not understand. He is naive and vulnerable to manipulation and is manipulated by fixers that sells him bullshit about his fathers killer and exploit him for his combat skills. If he does not pick some social skills over the game, he'll continue to be exploited by people - and heck perhaps the face of the team saw the gullible fool combat god and manipulated him into running with the team thinking that he can be useful and does not require much nuyen to hire. Just make him believe that you are unlike the rest - and are completely dedicated to give him his revenge. (while - continue to use him as cheap security )

 

[Jack_Spade]

That doesn't like like a real person, can you imagine someone so 1 dimensional that they can basically only fight in combat even though they're 35 years old?

I hope you know that you are playing with gasoline and matches here...
Applying a label to someone is the first step to disregard them as a person, ignoring their motivation and generalizing something that demands a case by case judgement.


That said, you are stating a general problem in all RPGs: How can you translate a complex person/character with the minimum amount of bookkeeping onto a sheet of paper?

The truth is: You can't. All the skills you have as a person can't realistically be described using a gaming system. And neither can you do the same for a character that usually has a lot more professional knowledge and experience than you.

Now, you try to simulate it the best you can by assigning limited skills over a large area. That will in consequence limit your actual ability to perform well in situations that need it.

In my humble opinion, this isn't a good strategy.

First and foremost, you don't roll skills, you roll pools. The one point of Perception suddenly becomes  a pool of 8, equaling 2 bought hits. This is quite adequate in most situations.
Similarly you can use your attributes for untrained checks or you can substitute skills with existing ones as per p. 130 core.
A true "power gamer" therefore would have taken only Automatics 6 and not Pistols - unless its in his concept to be equally good with both types!

Secondly, lot's of skills a person possesses are in fact knowledge skills - theoretical knowledge with little practice. And even here the above said applies: untrained and substitutions are a must if you want any character to be anywhere near what a real person knows about the world.

You find a lot of combat focus (including magic and matrix) because it is one aspect of the game that comes with a very real and easily understandable win-lose condition.
If you shoot at someone you want them to be taken out as a threat. For that you have to not only beat their numbers but by such a margin as to render them incapable of retaliating.

Other parts of the game are more forgiving/have not the same harsh consequences.

It's not about "beating the game" it's about being a protagonist worthy of that distinction. Most people don't derive fun from constant failing.
My definition of an optimized character is understanding the game mechanics as well as the options it provides and applying them in such a way that you create a character capable of overcoming obstacles typically encountered by his party role.
Or simpler: Be good at what he does.

Getting back to the 35 year old professional: If he is a fighter I want him to be able to drop an enemy in one combat round, if he is a hacker I want him to be able to hack the thing without being found out or getting damage to my health or equipment.
Imho this are legitimate wishes if you are playing a professional. He might be a lot weaker in other areas, but that's why he has a team - to compensate for his weaknesses.

...

And then there a thought exercises designed to redline the game system, to explore the possibilities the system gives and to maybe encourage the game designers to avoid certain pitfalls next time or at least use clearer language.
Playing with numbers is not everyone's notion of fun, but it is nonetheless for some.

[Hache]

(disclaimer : not native english speaker, I'm not used to such long posts, phrasing and words can be funky  )


I like your post. I don't fully agree with everything, but I like how you explain your point of view.

I'll first try to answer the "this character makes no sense, it's just a pile of stats".
- Shadowrun gameplay is based on optimization. As D&D is, and many other games. The core goal of Shadowrun is to win encounters. Fighting, negociating, disabling security devices, B&E, hacking, racing, and so much more. You are rewarded (nuyens and karma) for winning. When you create your character, you know you will face such situations, and you ask yourself "since the goal of the game is to win, how do I maximise my win chance ?" Optimization is part of Shadowrun, there are way better games if you want to just "live your character".
- there are different types of players. Some like to roleplay. Some like to roll dices. Some like both. I like both, but I don't need my stats to roleplay. I don't fall in the "put 1 in CHA because I'll roleplay it", but I don't need my character stats when I just roleplay. But if the GM asks me to roll dices, ok baby you want the "rolldicer" player, not the "roleplayer" one. The stats for my next character still have elements of my character concept (I have both 9 in AGI and a cyberarm with 9 AGI, it would be more optimized to drop the cyberarm), but it lacks some elements, sacrified to the altar of optimization. But I have a 16 pages background, and boy oh boy I'll roleplay them when I have the chance, even if it's not on my character stats.


Then, the ending of a discussion I had with a friend on the same topic : on the forums, you always advice the "best", not what "fits" the character.
- on a forum, we don't know what your character background is (and no, the 3 lines description is not enough for me), we don't picture your character the same as you. If I take Batman for example, you don't picture it the same as I do. Maybe you'll think he needs a huge LOG to create his equipement, but I'll think his master stat should be VOL because of all he faced. And this is for Batman, a character we both know. For your character, that only you imagined, how can I picture it the same way as you ? How can I know what "fits" your character ? I can try, but I'll probably help you more by telling you what "works best", and then you'll take it or leave it wether it fits your character or not.
- we don't know your GM nor the other players of your group. We don't know if "medium" in fighting means 6, 9 or 12 in Automatics. I believe you need to be about the same level as the other players to keep harmony on the table, but we don't know which level is your group. We can only say : specialisation gives you 2 dices, skill gives you 6 dices, attribute gives you 6, race gives you 1 or 2, smartlink another 2, and enhancement (magical or mundane) 2 or 3 = 20 is about the max at character creation. If you know you only need 16 to be "the streetsam" of the team, then drop some options we gave you. But you can't accuse us of giving "power gaming" advices, those are the best advices we can give.



Now, there is one thing I agree with you, it's the feeling. When you see a character, it's very easy to go from "your character could be better by doing this" to "your character is weak because you didn't do this". Some posters here manage to stay the first, and gives you advice that you take just as advice. Some other fall into the second category, and wrap their advice with judgment. With experience, you walk away from the judgments and take only the advice. But your post is a good reminder that we can both say "I like your concept" and "your character could be more powerfull by doing this".

[Novocrane]

First and foremost, you don't roll skills, you roll pools.

I think that hits on something that's been somewhat more clearly outlined in the CRB.

Most of these things —common tasks like eating, sleeping, and crossing an empty street—are done automatically and are kept in the background of the game.
*(unless the character is Incompetent, and then hilarity ensues)
When you need to do something difficult or extraordinary, or when you need to avoid someone who has got you in their crosshairs, you have to roll the dice to determine a result.

You don't roll skills, you roll pools. Dice Pools show how well you do in an unusual, dangerous, timed, or limited resource situation. Skill Ranks give the GM an idea of a character's performance when not under pressure.

*stolen from the vehicle section, but I think it bears mentioning

[Reaver]

No, I would agree that this section of the forums is predominately "Power gamer" builds. But, that is to be expected as;
1: these are forums, and that is all you are really going to get. ever
2: people looking for help with characters are generally looking for "power builds" in the first place.  Creating an immersive character is easy! Creating a "power gamer" character takes more skill.



All the rest is an argument of "style over substance". And really, this is going to boil down to your table and your table's expectations. People play a LOT of different RPGs and MMOs these days. these all have different mechanics then SR. And I think people get a little confused by the "power" system in SR and how is works.... as it is not laid out as clearly other games. (I've gone over this in an other post recently)

Take the world famous DnD. <yes, I know things have changed some in DnD, but the example stands>. In DnD, you go off, you fight monsters, you gain XP, you level. You then go off, fight other, slightly more powerful monsters, you gain XP, you level up. Rinse and repeat. At level 1, an orc with a Greataxe is a serious threat! A single hit can drop all but the healthiest barbarian! But, by level 10 an orc with a Greataxe is a joke! Even if he could hit you, it would take several (lucky) hits to even threaten you!

But in SR, a Ganger is a ganger is a ganger. They never really get any better..... and character don't "level" up like they do in DnD... and I think this creates this disconnect, both in players and in game masters.... and it ends feeding on itself in giant circle.

Players build "uber" characters, Start to wipe the floor of the opposition. The GM in turn ups the dice of the opposition, feeding the need of the players to maintain their combat "edge". Thus the character focus on their Speciality and not secondary skills (creating a more rounded and "immersive" character). Thus combat becomes easy again... Thus the GM increases the dice pools.... and so on and so on. Pretty soon you have ganger mooks with 20 dice pools, using mil spec weapons! Or clutches of dragons decending on runner teams like they are chocolate coated Bon-Bons!

This Really isn't the way SR is set up to work. Its not like the players hit 100 karma and suddenly all the ganger "gutter snipes" turn into ganger "Fire support mini-gun operators". They are STILL gutter trash ganger mooks! And yes, any skilled Runner team should be blasting through them like paper!


The question really is:

"How many dice is enough?"

And really, that question is like asking "how much money is enough?" DO NOT expect to get a consensus! Best you can hope for is a per table idea of how many dice the enemy is going to be throwing, and then judge from there for your selves.

To give you all an idea. I play in a high karma game. But the dice pools of the enemy really hasn't changed all that much on the average. If I am fighting your run of the mill gang land mooks, they are throwing some where around 4 to 10 dice. Rent a Cop security isn't much better at 6 to 14 dice..... Elite security can get scary when they start throwing 20+ dice..... but we have to be fairly incompetent to be running into THAT level of talented opposition! (because guys of that skill don't just grow on trees! Nor do they hang out in office towers waiting for shadow runners)

So if you know that the average guard is throwing 10 dice on the average, do you really need 37 dice in you gun skill?

On the other hand, if the random ganger on the street corner have the gunnery skill of a master marksmen and the combat reflexes of ninja on crack.... maybe you DO need that 37 dice pool...


The other problem I have seen (and this is for the GMs out there!) is unrealistic security. Oh this is a huge one! I can't tell you the number of times I have seen the defenses of "Common" office towers put maximum security prisons to shame! Take the time to plan out your buildings... and use some LOGIC!!! IF employees can not walk 3 meters without being subjected to a body cavity search, how does that building produce money for the corp? If that building is NOT making money for they Corp, why does is need a body cavity search every 3 meters??
If the employees can not do their job with a minimum of interference, then chances are the security is too high! (people are lazy buggers! If you are golng to demand they enter 3 seperate passwords just to log on, expect them to use the SAME password! Or expect them to prop open doors, etc.) Use your head! People have to work and be productive there!
And no. Guards do not wander the halls in platoon sizes, armed in heavy military gear..... It puts the wage slaves on edge. At best you have Hank and Tom, the professional guards right out of a military tour. But most likely you have Bob and Jerry. They barely passed high school, have a donut addiction, and just enough training to be a serious threat to wageslave.... Cause THAT is who is going to be causing 99.999% of the problems on a yearly basis in an office tower... Other wageslaves.  (Face it, Shadowrunners are rare! And if the Runners are rare, then the Runs they go on are rarer still... and a city like Seattle has a LOT of office towers...)


*****


But in the end, it IS about having fun. And to some people rolling 458 dice at one time is F  U   N   !   !   !

In the end, if everyone at the table is having a good time, then someone is doing something right. If someone is NOT having fun at the table, then it's time to stop and ask why.... And see what can be done about it.

[ZeldaBravo]

That doesn't like like a real person, can you imagine someone so 1 dimensional that they can basically only fight in combat even though they're 35 years old?

That is literally me when I was 23. I was fresh out of the army and I was even considerind going back in despite I don't particulary like drills or taking orders. I was pretty oblivious to what civilian life is, I feared that I will never find a job because I didn't have a good education, I thought that I was "too old" for colledge, and the only thing I was good at is being a soldier. There is a reason to why some people see grunts as "meatheads". Soldiers have a very narrow and a very focused skillset, and their civilian social skills are often underdeveloped if not crippled.
It is important to keep in mind that Shadowrunners are not normal, believable persons. The wageslaves are, the KE officers are, the blue collars are, but not shadowrunners. They are oddballs and freaks that live outside of the society. They are terrorists and thieves and murderers, plain and simple. They must have an edge to live through another day and to be good enough to get hired.
Seriously, Shadowrun is not a game about abolutely normal people.
Also, I totally agree with other posters.

[Shadowjack]

Thanks for your replies, I found them interesting. So many different points were made that I cannot reply to all of them, instead I will give a general reply. I don't agree with the notion that Shadowrunners need to exceptional at their specialty. This may be true if you are dead set on being successful early in a campaign, but I think it's not accurate to say that it must be this way. Some of the most fun I've had playing rpgs, Shadowrun included, was when my character wasn't that powerful. I still built these characters with the same amount of Karma as my more specialized characters (the ones that most people here would probably prefer), but the provided me with a new experience. It can be very interesting to explore the life of a Shadowrunner that isn't amazing, yet has potential. After all, not everyone starts off at the same level of skill. Working your way up can be fun, especially if you play that character for a longer period of time you will feel a strong connection because you got to experience the entire process.

While it is true that the common objective of the game is to go on shadowruns, I don't think that failure is a bad thing. In my experience, the majority of groups tend to win the vast majority of the time, and in some groups, all of the time. Each time you win you get a little more comfortable. Over time winning becomes expected and the fact that you don't lose makes the wins less fun. Failing to complete one or more runs, or losing a fight here and there can be a very good thing for the game because it makes the times you do win more memorable. Of course it's fun to complete runs but if you always complete them, in all campaigns, it isn't as fun as it could be. I will go so far as to say that I'm extremely confident that is true as I have experienced all angles of it.

I also don't agree with the idea that pools are what matters and not the skills. That doesn't seem to make very much sense to me. Attributes govern your natural (or unnatural) ability and cover a certain spectrum of skills. Skills explicitly cover how proficient you are. You could have a Face with only a 3 Charisma. He tends to rub people the wrong way and his hygiene isn't great, but he is a hell of a negotiator and he has 10 ranks in it.  That tells me that he is far more skilled than many other Faces with a dice pool of higher than 10. Taking maxed out cyber limbs and grabbing a bunch of skills at rating 1. while completely legitimate, does not indicate that you're talented at the skill, it means that your cyber limbs are carrying the bulk of the weight.

I found the post by ZeldaBravo to be an interesting one. I think you would be quite well developed for combat, there is no doubt about it. However, don't they teach you how to do first aid and survive in the wild? I'm sure they teach you many such skills, none of which are represented in the example character I provided. I am aware that many people have the opinion that you can't possibly represent all of the skills you should have, but I think you can at least make an attempt to do so. You do start with a minimum of 25 Karma, I don't see why you can't allocate some of it to purchase skills that your background supports. It seems very immersion breaking to me for a soldier to watch his teammate bleed out because he has literally no ability to use a traditional medkit. Granted, perhaps in Shadowrun they would just use the autodoc because it is available, but you get my point.

As for increasing levels of difficulty, that's another trap I've fallen into for most of my gaming career. Like many, I started with DnD and that taught me that rpgs should have a linear scale of challenge. That is extremely unfortunate and immersion breaking. It is much more powerful when the challenge is not linear. Once in a while it is good to lose to an opponent you have very little hope of defeating. Should you defeat this opponent the value of the victory is amazing, should you lose, the lose feels appropriate. Who is to say that you would encounter increasingly difficult challenges and start out with easy ones? That is more like a video game than a roleplaying game, especially since you can't view the statistics of your opposition and thus have no way to accurately guage their power consistantly. Encountering a weak opponent can also be good because it demonstates how far you've come and that not everyone is going to pose a challenge. Varying the level of difficult is a powerful technique.

I build my characters with realism and immersion in mind and my characters tend to do pretty well in the shadows. I build them with a range of power and each one has provided me with an amazing experience. I don't really see the need build super powered characters every single time. And to be clear I am capable of, and do occasionally, build extremely powerful characters, but I still always manage to stay true to the character concept. I just find it very disappointing that so many characters here are made using the same formula that was developed by power gamers and all the new players are being taught to do it. Number crunching is definitely fun for some players, some people really enjoy it and that's  great. But it is not going to provide the best roleplaying experiences. It's possible to get the best of both worlds and that's when you'll have the most fun.

[Whiskeyjack]

From another thread:

In the vast majority of cases on this board, you get a thread with a sheet and a comment of "plz to critique." No context about the game, about expected dice pools, etc.

Not knowing how your game is set up,and thereby not knowing how to build for it, is especially common if you're joining a PbP of random people who don't know each other but it certainly happens in established groups where the GM has failed to hold a Session Zero in which they set expectations of power levels and theme (yes, I'm comfortable laying this at the feet of the GM).

In the absence of that info it's no surprise that the default advice is set to "be as good as possible in your focus areas."

I'll add to this. First up, I feel like your first post's penultimate paragraph contains a Stormwind Fallacy, and your second post doubles down on it. I'm not going to delve deep into this, because there's not much point or value in doing so, but I do want to point it out because I consider the "it's not ROLL-playing its ROLE-playing" meme to be a exhausting and condescending conceit. I don't know if you're really doing that here, I just find that tired old saying and all the baggage that comes with it to be somewhat toxic and tone deaf with regard to accepting that other people have other preferences and not everyone has to game for the same reasons or with the same goals in mind.

At any rate, I don't play SR to be an ineffective chump (if I wanted that I'd play Dark Heresy 1e, which I have played for years and greatly enjoy, but I also go to it for very different themes and game tone than SR). THe long and short of it is, I have little interest in playing SR and not building a professional criminal who can mechanically act and succeed like a professional criminal, who typically succeeds on the rolls in their focus area, because to me, a pro hacker who constantly fails at hacking isn't going to be a pro hacker paid to do hacking jobs. That just doesn't make sense to me on the narrative level, and it's not fun for me in play to constantly fail the thing I am supposedly good at (which does not mean I never fail, it just means that failure happens only when the stakes are high against a comparable opponent. Failing because I have a bad dice pool to hack a wage slave's trash commlink, and reading in some general commentary about how failures are exciting in the context of tasks that should be easy for a professional criminal, doesn't appeal to me in the slightest).

I view your standard Shadowrunner as a perspective character from Leverage or Burn Notice as a default. Sure there are games where you play gangers or whatnot. But to me the default runner is much more competent, they're the refined metal separated from the dross. If you read the source material like Neuromancer, Molly is not just some schlub with razors. She's a very well trained professional at the peak of her game.

I don't have fun when I fail at things that should be easy. I get aggravated. So if fun is the most important thing about gaming, why are you saying my fun is bad because I want to minimize my chance of failure, since I find success fun, particularly when playing as an expert criminal who certainly had to succeed to survive into their current status of shadowrunner?

Now I'm genuinely curious about what your point in posting this thread was to begin with. just exasperation with the trend, or what brought it up for you that you wanted to open a discussion?

Just a final note. I'm an opinionated person and I know I have been guilty of being very judgmental in the context of giving build advice. In the past I've said that peoples' characters were basically trash. I'm certainly not the only person who's done this on this forum. For a while I justified it to myself as exasperation with people who should somehow know better or grok the mechanics better when it certainly took me a long time to get the nuance of this complicated system. At some point I realized that was just BS for my own bad attitude, and venting frustrations at other things at people who simply wanted some help, and I was being pointlessly rude, so I've done my best to stop responding like that and to focus more on being constructive, even if the post turns into a laundry list of "how to do this better." I absolutely agree that we can give build advice without basically insulting people about their build choices, even if we fervently believe that their choices are poor.  There are absolutely good and bad ways to critique and to teach new people the myriad of nuances about this game that we love but there's absolutely no reason to drive someone off the board with vitriol or turn them off from a hobby that they might enjoy.

[Jack_Spade]

I also don't agree with the idea that pools are what matters and not the skills. That doesn't seem to make very much sense to me. Attributes govern your natural (or unnatural) ability and cover a certain spectrum of skills. Skills explicitly cover how proficient you are. You could have a Face with only a 3 Charisma. He tends to rub people the wrong way and his hygiene isn't great, but he is a hell of a negotiator and he has 10 ranks in it.  That tells me that he is far more skilled than many other Faces with a dice pool of higher than 10. Taking maxed out cyber limbs and grabbing a bunch of skills at rating 1. while completely legitimate, does not indicate that you're talented at the skill, it means that your cyber limbs are carrying the bulk of the weight.

But isn't that exactly what you asked earlier? That people should embrace low skills and instead have more of them?
To distinguish between raw talent and someone who practiced thousands of hours is futile. As in reality it's the results that count.
Both approaches will be beat by someone who has innate talent and invested the time to learn the skill.
There is a reason the skill ranking does differentiate between untrained and unaware. Untrained is what it says: You didn't have any formal training to actually do the thing. Unaware means you don't even understand the basics.

I build my characters with realism and immersion in mind and my characters tend to do pretty well in the shadows. I build them with a range of power and each one has provided me with an amazing experience. I don't really see the need build super powered characters every single time. And to be clear I am capable of, and do occasionally, build extremely powerful characters, but I still always manage to stay true to the character concept. I just find it very disappointing that so many characters here are made using the same formula that was developed by power gamers and all the new players are being taught to do it. Number crunching is definitely fun for some players, some people really enjoy it and that's  great. But it is not going to provide the best roleplaying experiences. It's possible to get the best of both worlds and that's when you'll have the most fun.

What it is this realism you speak of? Do you usually just play humans without augmentations or magic?
Or is realism(tm) just based on your personal judgement?
In that case you should be aware that a) not everything that is displayed in this forum is meant for play b) you just might have a limited view as to what is possible within the SR Universe.

[Hache]

Failing to complete one or more runs, or losing a fight here and there can be a very good thing for the game because it makes the times you do win more memorable.

About the winning/losing :
- losing because you fail some dicerolls, with the GM saying : "you don't get paid. Ok, now let's move on to the next run." ===> no fun
- losing because it was planned that you could lose, and that would develop into another arc of the story ====> epic story ===> lots of fun


Yes, I think that the GM should be able to tweak the difficulty in order to incite/avoid failure, based on what's planned next. Meaning the diceroll should not screw the story.

[Marcus]

Such ignorance is very disappointing. I thought we had made more progress then this.

Shadow, you have missed the whole point, it's a game, it's about having fun!
So long as you're having Fun that is success. That's what the game is about. How someone has fun is up to them, your judging them isn't useful, isn't helpful, and it's holding you back from a more complete understanding of gaming. I don't tell you how to play or how to have fun, I only encourage you too play and have fun.

Someday I hope you will really come to understand that background story and mechanics are truly independent portions of character creation. It's simply the truth. Think about it. Free your mind from this silly prejudice, and grasp that the system is there to have fun with. Give it a try!

[Facemage]

One reason to "powergame" is low karma rewards. 50 karma is not much, you can rise your magic to 7 and your str to 3. Which is not much (this is not the best way to use karma, only an example). But to get those 50 karma you need to survive something like 7 runs. Which is much, it takes many hours of real gaming time. So, because it takes very much time to train 6 skills from 3 to 6, it's much better to train only 3 from 0 to 6 and put those 18 skill points to 3 skills each to level 6. You save a lot of karma (in this example with joat 69 karma => 10 runs).

And because players often want to see how they characters grow in power (very classical rpg scenario, at least for me this is one of the key reason to play rpgs), they want to build them such that it is possible. Even though the Shadowrun is not DnD. If you create a character, who have 3 in every his stats and 3-4 in all of his skills, the character is mediocre and stays forever mediocre.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Man, this thread has three different 'Jacks!

Overall, I absolutely agree with your first point, Shadowjack. This subforum has a lot of high-dice pool, very specialized character concepts. No ifs, ands, or buts, that's just reality. Whether that is good, bad, indifferent, or other is up to the people creating and playing such characters.

The only thing I'll say is that there are a lot of comments on here along the line of "you need to do X to optimize your character more", which I personally think is a little annoying. Unless someone says "I want to achieve Y; what can I do", a lot of comments are simply based on specializing builds, but maybe that's how the majority of the people who come here play the game; with very specialized characters. Nothing wrong with that, just not my personal preference.

I mean, look at pretty much any character posted on these subforums and compare them to pretty much any character used in the examples in the books; whatever your feelings about the examples (a lot of them are just plain using the rules wrong, I agree), the example characters are much more diverse in their skill sets, with lower dice pools in many skills. I really do think this comes down to personal preference with some people preferring to play super heroes that are extremely good at "their thing" and not much else, and others who prefer having a wider range of skills (i.e. generalists). I also think this comes down to GMs as much as anything; if your GM doesn't regularly challenge your weaknesses, why wouldn't you hyper-specialize so you can shine when it's your time?

In short, many of the game mechanics (glitches in particular) become less and less important the higher your dice pools get, unless of course your GM regularly puts your anti-social decker into high society ballrooms and has them attempt to lie their way out of a sticky situation

There's no wrong way to play the game, as long as you're having fun.

ETA:
I also think this comes down to the way people build characters. It's much easier to fall into the "I need to get the most bang for my buck" when using the priority system, because one skill point can be worth 2 karma or it can be worth 42 karma (skill rating 1 vs skill rating 6), and one attribute point can be worth 15 karma or it can be worth 90 karma (Agility 2 vs Agility 6 for a human). I think most of us have a tendency to create more optimized characters with point buy as we all want to get our moneys worth, so to speak, whereas if you're using karma builds it's almost exactly the opposite. Getting that strength 10 as a troll costs a heap of karma so you really have to consider if it's worth the expense, just like that skill at rating 6.

Again, no right or wrong way, just whatever makes the game fun for you.