My personal preference is to run games for people who build characters with broad sets of skills, because that means I don't have to just throw combat at the samurai or social situations at the face but can include everyone in everything
I feel like there's a fallacious assertion here. Any character can already get involved in any scene and the only relevant factor is player interest and if it makes sense for the character to be there. A troll Sam or antisocial decker can totally be in a snobby gala and be uncomfortable or out of their element and roleplay this and there probably will be no good reason to force them to make a test on an Etiquette dice pool of 3 or whatever unless the GM's goal is to make them feel bad for their build choices. This could be a fun scene to run and play in but that doesn't mean that mechanically enforced consequences are necessary.
Maybe so, but in a game built around dice rolls it puts characters with ludicrously low dice pools at a significant disadvantage. If the player character in such a situation is asked "Why are you here" and they don't respond "Uh, to steal all your shit" (assuming that's their job), then his character is lying and you can bet I'm going to make you roll Con if you do indeed try to lie. So by having hyperspecialized characters in situations they are absolutely unprepared for, I'm having to cater to such characters extreme weaknesses, whereas in a more rounded group most of the people can lie and mingle adequately enough that it's more often not a problem (i.e. they can buy the 1 or 2 hits needed to lie semi-convincingly).
Yes, Shadowrun is a roleplaying game, but it's also has plenty of mechanical rules and functions. Just roleplaying your way through social interactions when you're an Ork with Social Stress and/or Uncouth doesn't fly at my table, and I don't think there's any fallacy to actually using skill rolls when they are appropriate. YMMV, as some tables play very dice heavy and others don't, of course, and either way works. But I call bullshit on calling my preferred playstyle "fallacious" for the reason you give above.
As to combat, everyone should be able to do something in combat because "the best run is one where you never fire a shot" is a nice conceit especially for a book but when it comes to an RPG it's just a meme, and I can't think of anything more boring than every run going down that way (because now you're penalizing the guy who played a gun bunny and the GM should be throwing complications at your neat and tidy perfect infiltration).
Again, for my personal preferred playstyle, I disagree. I've played games where there simply were no gun bunnies or samurai because the team was all mirrorshades all the way and got into a fire fight maybe once or twice every 5-6 adventures, and even then they were brief as the team ran rather than stand and fight. I've also played games where everyone was borderline combat monsters and almost every scene had some sort of combat. Both can be fun, they're just different. My point is that with everyone on an equal footing in terms of having low dicepools there is inherently a much stronger focus on teamwork because the player characters literally can't fight their way through a horde of security guards on their own.
This statement, paradoxically, is decrying specialization while also asserting that people can't roleplay outside of their mechanical spec. And that's just not true at all. But not every roleplaying moment has to be fraught with dice rolls. It certainly can be, and maybe the rude decker does get ejected from the gala for being super inappropriate, but that should be a mere complication to the characters getting the McGuffin out of the panic room now that the decker has to work totally remotely, not mean the run is completely ruined and failed.
Your words, not mine. I never said people can't roleplay outside of their mechanical spec; but when a game is built on game mechanics and a GM calls on someone who doesn't have skill X to make a skill check, things get interesting. Whether that's interesting good or interesting bad is up to the players. As you say, if the rude decker gets ejected that doesn't mean the end of the run, and it's my job as a GM to enable the team to complete their tasks with the skills they have. But I don't think I'm being unfair if I play up a characters mechanical disadvantages and actually make players feel the consequences of their actions without trying to "punish" them.
I think that those example characters are built similarly as archetypes. With the rules that you can have a single 6 or two 5 in your skills and all other can be max 4. Try to create your character by using this rule. They looks very different after that.
Absolutely. It just so happens that that is one of my personal house rules that I brought straight in from SR4A.
Your idea in last paragraph is very interesting. I think that I would enjoy to play in this kind of teamwork group. But does it work in Shadowrun? At least for me the growing power of the characters is one reason to play. You can see how your characters grow and get more abilities. In Shadowrun karma rewards are so small that you very seldom rise skills to higher levels than 5. The teamwork group characters are mediocre just after chargen and after 10 runs not much better. Without growing potential I think that the game becomes very uninteresting after some runs at least for me. Maybe it's only me, but growing potential is very essential, I can see ordinary persons and successes in real life enough.
If you optimize your character, you can see him to grow much faster, because with joat you can easily train new skills to max 4 and rise those low attributes to higher level.
Does it work? Absolutely. Progression can be slow, however, but it's my job as a GM to make sure that players are having fun; I try to set expectations before we start playing by getting a general consensus of what people expect in terms of rewards vs what I had planned. One game we had going for a year and a half gave players very little in terms of monetary rewards, and the players followed more of what you see in the fiction where the team was literally living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to make ends meet. The players were all in on this idea, however, and it's definitely not for everyone. But, you can easily play something like what I described simply by making sure that the team gets enough karma and money to make it interesting if the players are more interested in seeing real progression. So really, it's all up to the GM and players on agreeing on an overall feel for the game.
This is a co-operative roleplaying game, after all. If players have wildly varying expectations and thoughts about how their characters should be represented within the world then you've got your job cut out for you as a GM. Doesn't mean it's impossible to do as long as the players work together to make the game fun, but it can definitely be challenging.
<znip>
Does this mean I can't have fun both ways?
No, I can most certainly have fun with 12DPs as 20s.
Hooah to that
