| From: | Toubrouk@*********.ca (Toubrouk) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Average starting characters? |
| Date: | Sat, 27 Aug 2005 00:06:12 -0400 |
>Actually, I sort of disagree on this. The world is full of people
>with tremendous athletic ability or prodigious education who would
>not last 30 seconds in some inner cities. And a master marksman who
>spent 10 years training for the olympics is a perfect explanation for
>a suddenly SINless long gun with a 6 in Rifles and a case of Combat
>Paralysis... "Fragging hell, that's a person... I... I can't!"
>
Amen to that.
It's not because someone is competent in real life that he will have the
same level of competency under stress or in another context. I remember
the story of a Karate guy who witnessed the beating of a woman in the
hands of a street thug. In the perfect gentleman that he was, he stepped
in and cremated the punk's ass. What do he received as reward from the
woman? She pulled out a gun and she shot him dead right after he dropped
the thug. You see, the woman was a prostitute and the thug was her pimp
in witch she was dearly in love with. It's not brute strength that got
that Karate-ka, it was the lack of "Cultural" underground knowledge.
>I have seen plenty of starting characters over the years who were above
>average in their old life, and suddenly barely surviving the shadows.
> The big fish in the fishbowl is still tiny in the pond. The problem
>with all the various editions of SR is the same problem inherent to
>any char gen system. If there is no story, no depth and background
>to a character, then the numbers exist in limbo. You have to make
>your players tell you why... why a guy with a 6 Intelligence,
>Quickness, and Willpower found himself living on the streets. Why a
>guy with Assault Rifles 5 and Small Unit Tactics 5 is rubbing
>shoulders with the dregs of the SINless. Why someone with a 600,000
>nuyen cyberware package is forced to live outside society and take
>corp scraps to survive. And you hound them until the story makes
>sense.
>
This can be resumed by one single question:
"Why this character is running the Shadows?"
For me, this question is much more valid if it's directed to players who
put money or magic into "Priority A" during character creation. With one
million NuYen, you can buy a permanent high lifestyle and being magician
can give you a well-payed job (or three) very fast. I will go a little
further: the world of Shadowrun in the 2060 is filled with so much
wonders and technological advances that i barely see why i would want to
be a Shadowrunner without a very good reason.
Of course good reasons exists but the mess created by D&D still bring us
the bane of the munschkinism. Of course, a good dose of common sense and
sensible role-playing can easily set back some of the worst reflexes. I
have yet to see a Troll who dint get shot into overflow in the first
three game sessions. Munschkins exists because GMs let them be.
The lead PC in my most active campaign is a "Million NuYen Samurai", and
a well-rounded one. She is a half burned-up aspected magician with 750
000 Nuyen worth of bioware in the body and a very powerful ally. At
first sight, the character seem to be a munschkin but the background
make her human. She was orphaned at young age with only her big sister
to watch over her. The big sister became a shadowrunner to pay the bills
and ended-up at the wrong end of a corp-sponsored operation against
Tamanous. She met the corporate sponsor of the operation and he hired
her. After a series of successful operations, the sponsor offered to
"Upgrade" her with bioware. She accepted but vanished right before the
day of the surgery. Fearing for the worse, the sponsor offered the
bioware package to the PC, who accepted. Right after her time of rest
following the surgery, she left to seek for her big sister. She found
her. She was straped on an operating table, in a Tamanous "clinic",
gutted-out of half of her internal organs and very much awake. She asked
for the PC to ableviate her pain and the Pc killed her.
The wonder behind that character is the flavor of what the Shadows
represent in my point of view: emotional baggage. The player, an
excellent roleplayer, always played her as a distant, calculated young
woman with a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder and a
crusade against Tamanous. As far as i am concerned, that character is
the most interesting PC i ever had in any of my games so far.
Another thing: I have a NPC who is a genius of the small unit tactics
and a virtuoso of the battletac system. Why he's doing mercenary work?
Because he got fired of his post as a general of the UCAS Marine Recon
Corps when they discover that he's gay.
>And you can always, under Build Point systems, give less BP.
>You want weaker characters, start with 90 BP. Most of my Combat
>Night games use 90 BP or less characters.
>
This is a cool option. It gives some real pride to the player when these
characters survive a tough nignt.
I love the idea, i might just run away with it!
:)
>I think you will find, once SR4 leaves the hands of the playtesters,
>that it will be plagued by munchkins as much as any edition.
>"God-like" is a pretty relative term, after all. Things break
>whenever someone places min-max mathematics over (role)playability.
>
The only God around a roleplaying table is the master itself. Some tend
to forget it.
That remember me the last time a NPC shot one of those "God-Like"
characters.
Who knew you can drop a Troll Physical Adept with two slugs of a cheap
Ares Pred...
:D
