[Beta]

I often come up with backgrounds for characters, without really knowing what they will be in terms of stats or even roll.  I mean, sometimes the background gives some clue (they can summon spirits), other times it is more wide open (dwarf who has worked in under-water construction).

In some game systems this isn't so much of a problem – but those are generally systems where the conceit is that the characters start as relatively ordinary people who grow to more heroic levels in play.  SR, to the contrary is built more on the conceit that you are already quite capable at shadowrunning before play starts.  Implicitly that means being focused on some useful role because that is how the rule system is built.

Just building the character based on background tends not to result in a capable shadowrunner.  Focusing on the mechanical effectiveness can result in a character who doesn't resemble the backstory so much. 

Any of you have similar experiences, and have you come up with any tricks for crossing from background to shadowrunner?  Found some runner roles that tend to be easier to make this work with than others?  Found some traps to avoid?

[Marcus]

Refinement, the best characters are greater then the sum of their parts. Background is only one piece of the puzzle. If you are good with background then times to pare up with other steps to flush out the character and establish their role.

Various 20 questions list exist to help flush out personality trait an opinions, role is really a question by itself. Dwarf who used to do under water constructions. Why did he do underwater construction? Did he love the Sea? Scuba diving? Finished his time up in the seals and wanted cash in on his training doing ultra deep water construction? Was a  mage who desperately wanted to learn more about the underwater dragon? So he took up under water construction to get the skills need to go look for the dragon? Maybe he was an island surf champion who busted his knee and now does underwater construction b/c he can't bear to leave the sea? All of those question could come from that background and all would very different roles and very different characters.

Personally I develop a character's build, then a flush in it background and base of it's personality, and the develop it from their in play.  But there isn't a right or wrong way to do it.

[ShadowcatX]

My suggestion is build your backstory around your stats after the fact. Decide what you want to play, craft that character, then figure out how that character came to be.

[Beta]

I didn’t explain well what I meant by back-ground, so let me put in a few more words around that.  Consider it equivalent to half-a-page to a page of background/story.  It pretty much always implies key negative qualities, region of origin, usually (but not always) meta-type, sometimes it suggest positive qualities or certain core knowledge/skills/attributes. 

So when I said “Dwarf that worked under-water construction” I’m starting with a lot more than that, enough to easily guide character building – but without a role the build may just not be viable. (he’s Haida, hates MCT, came to Seattle to visit the beaches and riverbeds that went into the concrete to build modern Seattle, got involved in construction out of some youthful feeling of being closer to that, the underwater is because I’ve used the name for a couple of NPC shadow-board postings about underwater hazards, probably dwarf because it makes the timeline work out well (but could be an older human), probably has profession and knowledge skills around construction, etc).  In a case like that it is easy to start building a character, but they don’t always come out as fitting well in a shadowrunner team.   

I’ve gone this route a couple of time, with kind of meh results  (the ex-con / surge-baby elf /spell-less MysAd worked because ‘magic iz strong’ even if the build is janky.  The former apprentice bounty hunter using they cyber-arm of his deceased mentor never did end up with enough specialization to work.  I have about three or four backgrounds that I keep noodling with, looking to have some ideas ready if/when I get into another PbP game or have a chance to play in Missions, and just thought I’d see what has worked for others in going from character story to character sheet.

[Tecumseh]

Personally, I usually start with a 5-word concept that's more about what I want to play rather than what I have a good story for yet. For example, my last three have been:

"adept focused on Perception abilities"
"street samurai with four cyberlimbs"
"shaman focused on elemental magic"

From there I start shopping around for what I think would be fun to experiment with, especially if it's a concept that I haven't played before. Then, once I have the skeleton in place I start asking myself questions like, "When did they Awaken / what led to them getting 'ware? How did that affect their outlook on life? What were the logical consequences of those experiences?"

For example, I decided that the adept with lots of magical senses would make a good tracker so I made sure he had the Outdoors skills group. From there he turned into a bounty hunter, which led to him developing some abilities to be sneaky and to defend himself. Bounty hunting turned out to be profitable which led him to purchase x, y, and z so that he could be better at it. And so on.

For me the story and the stats aren't so much distinct phases of character creation; instead, I bounce back and forth between the two as the character develops. One affects the other and the cycle repeats, leading the character to evolve. I find this to be more organic so that I don't feel like I'm trying to shoehorn stats into a concept or vice versa.

I'm definitely not saying that everyone should do it this way, but that's how I develop my characters. Separately (but related), this is why I dread drawing up mooks. "I don't know what his stats are," I complain to myself. "I don't even know him!" So I start trying to figure out the mook's life, which leads to character development, which leads to me getting attached because I've put this time and attention into him, which leads to me feeling bad when the characters ambush him and he drops from a sniper shot that he never heard. As a result I often use NPCs stated in the books for my cannon fodder. Named NPCs get the full chargen treatment.

[Beta]

Yep, there are lots of ways to go about creating characters, and I've used many of them at various times.

Here I was looking for anyone else who starts with story and has to figure out how to make a shadowrunner.

[Overbyte]

I think what you need to do in the case of starting with a story is
1) Start with story
2) Flesh out the char
3) Figure out if he is useful as a runner
4) Change what he needs so he can be useful
5) Go back and make necessary alterations to the backstory to accommodate the changes.

That's what I do with some of my better characters. You do end up giving up a little in story so that you can be effective.

[Marcus]

The problem with the Old Story is more important then rules argument, is that's it's a logical trap.

If story is more important then rules, then why are you using a system at all? Just go write the story.

If you want to play the game then, the story is river and the rules are the boat. You need to use the rules to follow the story. If you can't get the rules to do what you want, you need ether increase your understanding of the rules, until you can achieve your goal, or it's time to change the medium, and go to another set of rules.

The nice thing about making character from the build to the story is, it's much, much easier to re-frame and adapt the story then it is to re-write the rules.

[Stoneglobe]

Honestly what I'm seeing is that you're not so much starting from a story as from a more fleshed out concept. If you look at it this way it's much easier to make decisions that allow the character to become an effective shadowrunner. This tends to be how I do things as I just can't bring myself to start from a stat block and I'm not one to min-max and try to shoehorn a story to that stat block, not saying that this isn't a perfectly reasonable way of creating characters but it's just not for me. So I tend to end up with a character who isn't as fully optimised as it's possible to do but is effective within the role that I see them in.

From there the deeper story tend to write itself as the fleshed out concept becomes a character. Sometimes things get dropped along the way but compromise is what all character design is about in my opinion.

[Glyph]

I think you might be fleshing out your characters too much before determining whether they are viable concepts in the game.  Characters for a game fall under a narrower niche than characters for a story.  Furthermore, character creation is set up to encourage players to use their limited resources to specialize, and to get the comparatively cheap boost that magic and technology can provide.  Too-ambitious concepts fail because of limited resources, and ordinary-Joe concepts are sub-optimal at best because they are competing with super-humans.

When you come up with a concept, stop yourself at the “Dwarf that worked under-water construction” phase.  Before you have given the character a half-page background, ask yourself "could this guy bring useful skills to a team and make a living in the shadows?".  If the answer is no, scrap the concept (or use it for a story rather than a game).  If the answer is yes, then rough out some stats, what you would consider the bare necessities for the character to function.  See if you can afford everything, and if you wind up with dice pools that are viable.  If you can't, start over again (or revise the concept).  If you can, then flesh out and fully stat the character.

[FST_Gemstar]

Shadowrun mechanics IMO make it tougher to go from character concept to effective build than it is to make an effective build and then build a character around it. 

If you have a concept, don't expect that everything is going to be represented well in active skills/dicepools. They can be (depending on the concept), but don't count on it or fret about it. 

Characterization on paper can come in other meaningful ways:

Knowledge Skills - 
These represent a log of professional, background, interest, etc. pieces of your character that you can represent on your character sheet without having to compromise effective shadowrun active skills. These are the most freeform parts of character generation, and I think folks should take advantage of that and make fun and unique knowledge skills for their characters (and GMs should be more partial to more narrow skills or more generic ones).

Contacts -
Here is a another way to show more about your character concept without altering your main dicepools. You can express a lot of a character concept through the people that are important to your shadowrunning career, and flesh out more about your character in relating to these people.

Qualities -
Here are other ways to demonstrate parts of concepts, particularly negative qualities. 

Adept Powers/Spells/Tradition/CFs/etc - 
These are further options to demonstrate character concept, allowing background/history/lifestory to be shown on  a sheet. 

Unique Gear (interesting foci, cool car, named deck, etc.) - 
These are other ways to bring more of a character concept to your sheet without altering functionality. 


For your example (dwarf that worked underwater construction), the character doesn't necessarily need to be skewed towards dicepools in swimming, diving, nautical engineering, nautical piloting, survival, etc. It can, but if you can't also make a character that is good at shadowrunning, than it is probably not going to be a fun concept. 

Instead, the character may have professional knowledge skills related to underwater construction (ex. architecture [underwater]), Marine Geography, Sea Legends, etc.), a dockworker contact, Flashbacks quality to almost drowning, specialize in summoning water spirits, owns a boat or water drone, etc AND also have the stats/skills of the specialty they bring to their team.