Shadowrun General > General Discussion

RP vs Statting

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Jareth Valar:

--- Quote from: Longshot23 on ---There are players who consider any story a waste of time.

--- End quote ---

Yup, and personally, I do't waste my time with those. They can have their style of fun at someone elses table.

neomerlin:
Shadowrunners who don't bring value to a team don't have a team. Shadowrunners who aren't good at being Shadowrunners get shot dead.

Shadowrun has never been a game that is, by default, about first time runners dipping their toes in a life of crime. It's about career criminals, and burned corp specialists selling their highly trained skills to get by or to rebel against a system they can't beat. Characters are assumed to have had a life and shadowrun career long enough to establish contacts, collect gear and chrome, get some false identification, a place to live, and have done all that without the Bronze blowing their face off because all they have is stars in their eyes and room to grow.

Or maybe it is. Maybe it is about playing the rookie who is still trying to prove himself, or the guy who is okay enough at what he does to get by but will get better with time. Play the game how you want. I don't think anybody worth sharing the gametable with will care. Don't judge me for wanting a character rolling 20 dice out the door and I won't judge you for wanting to roll less. We can all have fun.

Shadowjack:
People like to think that all shadowrunners are required to be strong right out of char gen but that is NOT TRUE. As long as your character concept is fine with your group, it's fair game, you just need to find the right group.

Beta:
There are two factors to keep in mind in this regard with shadowrun characters:


* the progressive costs of improving through karma (for the cost of taking one skill from 5 to 6 you could bring three skills from 1 to 2, or two skills from 2 to 3.
resisted dice pools, which means that a dice pool of 8 is not 2/3 as good as a dice pool of 12.  It is more like 'good enoughto get  you into trouble, but not good enough to get you out of trouble.'
*
Because of that,

* the weaknesses that most runners start out with is being narrow, and
the most common character growth is largely in becoming more broadly competent. 
*
So the guy who had been trained as high end security before fleeing his corp learns how to be more personable and sneaky, the decker gets outside a bit and learns to run and climb walls (after getting enough strength to carry their deck around without getting tired), the shaman finally learns how to drive a car and develops some decent social skills instead of relying on their charisma, etc.

At character creation in a standard build game, the character is expected to be a shadowrunner.  That means that they can be expected to overcome nominal resistance in their area of expertise.  Fighters should be able to hit a dodge pool 8 opponent reliably, and get more actions than unboosted opponents as well  Deckers should be able to deal with a rating 4 host for at least straightforward tasks.  A mage should have enough drain soak to put their spell force high enough that without using reagents their limit is not so low that their spells can't deal with a resisting dice pool, and if casting AOE combat spells they should be able to reliably generate the three successes to get it on target.  And so on.

Now, if the game is different, expectations change.  I did a one-shot on-line game where it turned out to be a deep VR simulation, and all the characters were teenagers built with sum-to-8 and couldn't bring in any gear, and very few dice were ever rolled.  But that is not a typical shadowrun game!

Hobbes:
"Interesting" isn't a quality your character buys with in game points. 

If you're good at RPees, be good at RPees and be a good example and help the GM/Table with staying immersed in the game.

If you're good at optimization, be good at optimization and offer to help others during char gen.

If you're good at both (and I've met / played with all kinds of people who are), Rock on!

Comments that put optimization and min/maxing as a negative aren't really helpful.  And neither are comments like "Your Decker only has 11 Dice, we're so screwed!". 

Don't be a dick.  Be helpful.  Remember everyone is just there to have fun. 

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