[Chalkarts]

Is no one allowed to suck in SR?
I'm a long time gamer, my gaming background is wide ranging.
Over the years I've grown to enjoy two aspects of TTRPGs.

I enjoy the RP, stepping into the mind of a character for a couple hours a week is a joy.

But more so, I love building the character but not in a CharGan capacity(though that is a ton of fun).
I enjoy building the character in game.  I often make my characters very advanced, how I want them to eventually be, and then reverse engineer that to 1st level, or 0 karma, or the equivalent for whatever game I play.

This means my characters are flawed in some way.  Often intentionally, so that I can take my unsure new runner who's ready for his first outing into the shadows, and grow him into a badass over time.

I'm running into difficulty with finding an online group.  It seems the online groups are uninterested in growing a character.  It's as though the mentality is, "If you can't take out The Aztechnology Headquarters on your first run then why bother playing at all."

I know SR is a lethal game, but sometimes a flawed guy gets through it by luck and wit, stumbles through a run or two, then becomes invaluable through growth.  I enjoy the challenge of playing a little above my paygrade at first then growing into the paycheck.  Those are the games I want to play.  If I wanted to be a combat god right out of the gate and faceroll my way through missions I'd play WoW, lol.  Am I wrong for this?

[Michael Chandra]

If people only run minmax characters and heavy run from the start, that sounds incredibly dull.

[Chalkarts]

If people only run minmax characters and heavy run from the start, that sounds incredibly dull.

My thoughts exactly.

[Ghost Rigger]

No one wants a millstone. Build a character that's competent to begin with, and achieve your growth by diversifying your skillset and gear.

[Chalkarts]

No one wants a millstone.

Every new character is a millstone if you throw it in with a bunch of pros but if all the characters are on equal footing then they balance each other out and work as a team.  A team carries each other.

I prefer building an interesting character and make it badass rather than make a badass and make it interesting later.

“Ya wanna join the team chummer?  What do you do?”
“Uhh... I hit thing.”
“Where ya from?”
“I hit thing”
“Got any hobbies?”
“I hit thing”
“Great! You’re in, we’ll buy you a personality after this run.”

[Ghost Rigger]

I never said "don't make an interesting character". If you can't make a character who is both interesting and badass right out of chargen, then that's your problem.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Is no one allowed to suck in SR?
I'm a long time gamer, my gaming background is wide ranging.
Over the years I've grown to enjoy two aspects of TTRPGs.

I enjoy the RP, stepping into the mind of a character for a couple hours a week is a joy.

But more so, I love building the character but not in a CharGan capacity(though that is a ton of fun).
I enjoy building the character in game.  I often make my characters very advanced, how I want them to eventually be, and then reverse engineer that to 1st level, or 0 karma, or the equivalent for whatever game I play.

This means my characters are flawed in some way.  Often intentionally, so that I can take my unsure new runner who's ready for his first outing into the shadows, and grow him into a badass over time.

I'm running into difficulty with finding an online group.  It seems the online groups are uninterested in growing a character.  It's as though the mentality is, "If you can't take out The Aztechnology Headquarters on your first run then why bother playing at all."

I know SR is a lethal game, but sometimes a flawed guy gets through it by luck and wit, stumbles through a run or two, then becomes invaluable through growth.  I enjoy the challenge of playing a little above my paygrade at first then growing into the paycheck.  Those are the games I want to play.  If I wanted to be a combat god right out of the gate and faceroll my way through missions I'd play WoW, lol.  Am I wrong for this?

SR has always operated from the assumption that you "start" your career well beyond where many/most RPGs have you start.  Yes, you're already established and you're already "elite" at what you do.

Most, if not all, editions have had optional rules where you can start as true noobies.  For SR5, see the Street Scum campaign on pg. 350.

Personally, I think it's awful easy to go overkill and make a one dimensional character.  16 dice is enough to buy hits and auto-succeed on a Hard test (threshold 4), and is a good 3 or 4 more dice than NPCs typically oppose you with.  But players will often give in to the temptation to build ever higher dice pools.  I'd rather have lots of 12s than one or two 16+ dice pools, because sometimes whatever it is you over-specialized in just won't be applicable to the task at hand.  Or even more likely, the other players just prefer to do some plan that doesn't rely on your uber skill(s).

[Longshot23]

There are players who consider any story a waste of time.

[Marcus]

It's your character and your time, and you should build how you want your character to be. But show up table and fail the run b/c your character can't fulfill its roll and don't be shocked when you're not on folks short list for the next run. You don't take someone who can't do the job along in the Shadows, it can get your whole team killed.

That said it's fairly common to see non-optimal character running around. There's a big difference between Non-optimal and Sucking. So the question you and your GM needs answer is what is expectation of success vs failure? And what are the consequences of each of them?

[farothel]

I know SR is a lethal game, but sometimes a flawed guy gets through it by luck and wit, stumbles through a run or two, then becomes invaluable through growth.  I enjoy the challenge of playing a little above my paygrade at first then growing into the paycheck.  Those are the games I want to play.  If I wanted to be a combat god right out of the gate and faceroll my way through missions I'd play WoW, lol.  Am I wrong for this?

You're not wrong.  I often make characters like that too.  However, some groups want to play differently.  It's just a question of finding the right group.

Now you mentioned online groups.  There it's more tricky as online games (especially PbPs) can take a huge amount of time, so people might feel that growing into a role is not something that is possible unless you plan to wait for a couple of years RL.  I think it's best to keep searching (I found a group that allows these kind of characters, but I do know it's a rare gem in PbP play).

[Jareth Valar]

There are players who consider any story a waste of time.

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.