Shadowrun General > General Discussion
RP vs Statting
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:
--- Quote from: Chalkarts on ---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?
--- End quote ---
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:
--- Quote from: Chalkarts on ---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?
--- End quote ---
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).
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