That shouldn't be, the players are the "heroes", they must act, make things happen, not just wait until something happen that implicates them. They should seak out for their job themselves, not just wait for some random Johnson to find them some. They should have ideas as to what to do next, they should take initiative; I'm dreaming of the day when one of my players will go out by himself to do something that wasn't told by some npcs or isn't evident in the current setting.
But of course, to do this, players must have goals. That's what a lot of pcs sorely miss, goals, objective, something they want to achieve. When pcs have such goals, usually they don't play them since the whole of the pcs don't have any common goals, they don't have anyhting they want to achieve in group, as a gang. All in all, pcs must wait for the gm to give them jobs because they don't have anything to do by themselves.
So, what is the first step in having a team of acting players instead
of reacting players? Have a group with a purpose, a common goal. How to
do this? Get the players together before they make the characters and let
them choose what they want to do, together, as characters, with some common
goal in mind, any goal: from the fall of Damien Knight to the finding of
some incredible new hardware/magical stuff/Elvis impersonnator. Then they
can take personnal goals, which make even more interesting characters and
action.
I'm considering making the flaw "amnesia(-2)" an edge...
Or only allowing amnesia(-5)... (I'd be glad to make a character for one of my players... muhahahaha!!!)
Background should precede stats, since background represents what the character did in his past, and what the character did in his past determines what the character is able to do. And, most of all, this makes more interesting characters: if you know what you want to play before you make it, the character should be even more interesting.
No?