1: Weapon: The katana first and foremost; secondarily, 'the weapon required', even - especially - if that is no weapon, for the samurai's mind is the weapon . The idea of the street samurai was, to me, influenced heavily by Ghost-Who-Walks-Inside in the very first piece of fiction for Shadowrun, the 1e main book's opening fic 'Night on the Town'; you could see that Ghost was a sharp, working brain, which defined him more than his dual SMGs or wired reflexes did. However, that said, the katana carried the implication of honor, duty, loyalty, etc. - and to use one properly required dedication and training. (This can be said of any sword, but at that time, the samurai was really popular as the 'dedicated warrior'.)
2: Race. For me, because of the street sam variants in the back of the original Street Samurai catalog, race became 'whatever you happen to be'. My personal preference out of those five archetypes (human, elf, ork, troll, dwarf) was the ork, because he was such a wonderfully low-key character. While he didn't have (couldn't afford) a whole buttload of cyber in him like the others, he had
style:
I think this image really awoke me to the idea of the metahuman street sam, and in many ways began to define for me what a
real street sam was - not the overmuscled spur-popped SMG-wielding visor-eyeballed grotesque of a human of the main book, but class and subtlety.
3: Cyberware: Wired Reflexes, then a smartgun link. The street samurai IMO is dedicated to moving first, moving often, and being accurate with his weapon. Everything else, from reaction or quickness enhancers, dermal armor, spurs, or a strength boost, is flavored icing on your cake, to make it look like you want - but the wired reflexes and the smartgun link are the cake itself.
4: Philosophy: Street samurai are virtually identical to wave men, working for whatever master exists in order to buy their next bowl of rice. I would not categorize the Ronin code as honor above all, but instead as being 'the Samurai code' with a rider of 'the foolish dead man has no honor', and so contains a good dose of the survivor's code. (A ronin is perfectly willing to set up an ambush, especially if she's outnumbered.) For me, I look at Akira Kurosawa's seminal work
Seven Samurai to see what a Street Samurai is. The codes shown by Kambei Shimada and Shichirōji are essentially the code of the Street Samurai - that of the Ronin, but with
gi, righteousness, and
jin, benevolence or compassion, being the foremost guiding virtues instead of
meiyo, honor, and
chūgi, loyalty. One can see that there are variations on this; though Kyūzō seems to be on a search for the purification of his skill, though he originally declines to join the others, he eventually does so as he realizes that his quest could be better served by following
gi and
jin in helping the villagers.
