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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: danturek@*******.com (D. T)
Subject: Roleplay and power level
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 10:06:28 -0400
>From: zebulingod <zebulingod@*****.com>

>#There's no reason why someone with 13 dice in #Automatics and a truckload
>of cyberware can't be a deeply #complex character with a tri-dimensional
>personality, after all.

>This paragraph alone makes me cringe. I have yet to meet a player who can
>ROLEplay this sort of character effectively. People with characters like
>this play a number & dice game, they ROLLplay, in other words.

Then you need better players.

When you max out a few things you tend to totally lack other skills.
For my latest character this made sense - a maxed out decker in SR2/3 hybrid
rules who lived in the Renraku Arcology until he made his break, and while
he is hunted by various megacorporations, he is still more sympathetic to a
Japanese corporate mindset than other lifestyles. The thing that helps make
the character work for me is I took the Eidetic Memory edge (the character
is supposed to be otaku-like but we started in 2050 so there were none back
then) and the Mystery Cyberware flaw. That I later found a datachip that I
think was also broadcasting some weak wavelength to ID me implanted in my
body was only a small concern (still haven't tried to decrypt it yet), but
as a player I'm more worried about the .4 essence of other stuff my
character knows nothing about and is convinced cannot be since it took a
very intense scan to find the chip.
Before finding the chip I was effectively Hunted without having the
flaw/points. I'm totally fine with that, the GM can do whatever he wants as
long as it fits the storyline.

There are other examples of people being very good at one thing, and also
are usually supported by a group or company to cover all the missing parts.
In a way this is good, because it means the character is used to having to
rely on a group and the other characters hopefully quickly fill this role
and the players can depend on each other. If the characters are self-reliant
Renaissance people they are more likely to backstab and betray each other
since they don't need anyone else.

So when a character now makes something with 13 dice, what do you do to help
encourage roleplaying? Is it somewhat famous and on the cover of Merc
Monthly for his role in Desert Wars XIV and can get in free to some Weapons
World sponsored conventions if he signs autographs at a booth? Or do you
tell the player the character is well known in that community and force the
player to come up with everything that that could mean? The more limited
skillset and higher skill levels, the more the player should hope the GM
will mess with the character and help add the social dimensions. Characters
with a bunch of mid to low skills and a bunch of contacts usually have all
the roleplaying bases covered and aren't don't seem as open to having the GM
throw them for a loop beyond the occasional kidnapping/evil plot involving
the contacts.

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These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.