NOW PLAYING
A common problem
I've seen through my years of game mastering is in the character creation
process: mini-maxing, or the optimization of characters. The vast majority
of players I've seen try to make them the most powerful they can. While
this is not bad in itself (I don't like characters who totally suck neither)
when this is the central and only concern in the creation process, that,
quite simply, sucks.
It is easy to figure out that a player is mini-maxing:
if the player chooses his race by just checking the bonus they carry without
looking at anything else (I have a player who made a "night-one" without
even knowing what it looked like...) or if he chooses the million (an all
time favorite) then there's the possibility of mini-maxing (especially
for the first criteria). In general these players tend to build their character
so they hit the hardest (every single possible bonus is added), move the
fastest (wired-reflexes level 3 anyone?) and are unintelligent, low-charisma,
under-willpowered persons. After making this, they slap a story the way
they can (the gm: "Where did he get all his stuff?", the player: "He killed
the people who had them and stole it", gm: "I should have guessed...")
and a personality ("my character doesn't like anybody, doesn't talk much
and loves killing": the typical personality line for a lot of characters,
sadly) because they have to.
Once this has been done (usually you end up with a character
with an average of 4 actions per turn in which he does 18D two times with
a base difficulty of 3) the player starts, well, playing. Having probably
almost no talent that doesn't involve killing people these characters (and
their players) just wait until there is someone to kill, not doing anything
active until then. When that moment comes it usually doesn't last long
(with those 4 actions he acts before everybody, and with that 18D he kills
everybody in one shot) and then the player sinks back into lethargy.
You can now understand my concern: these characters
are unidimensionnal (not even cardboard thick) and boring to have in play.
How is it possible to make more three-dimensional? Well, quite simply,
make the background before the character, keeping in mind what you want
to do of course. Think about what you want to play before thinking about
how hard you want him to hit, think about how your character thinks before
you decide what gear he has. That way, you will end with something that
is, at least, a little bit more "human" (please, none of the "my character
doesn't have any feelings" shit, your playing a (meta)human being, not
a computer) and who have done something with his life before shadowrunning.
Another thing: try to vary the character's personality.
Some people just seem to able to play one type of personality (usually
one of those "Rambo" types...) but make multiple characters (I've even
seen people doing multiple characters with the same name, go figure). Variation
is fun! Try it, you'll like it!
All in all, what I ask for is characters with possible
personality, that have not been made to kill the fastest way possible but
to have a life of their own. When everybody will do this, role-playing
will be more fun than ever...