Who's Game is it Anyway?

Part of creating a character is knowing the style of the campaign before you go into it. Some GM's favor non-standard missions, some may present you with apocalypse scenarios, some might focus on your basic smash & grab missions, some on espionage, some on NPC interaction, some on stealth, while some might force you to make your own missions.

When creating a character, it's very important to think about who the GM is, and his particular play style, to make sure that your character doesn't end up sitting out all the time.

A GM that focuses on "do the right thing" saintly missions may not have as much for a ninja assassin who specalized on harvesting the body parts of his victims to do.

On the other hand, a GM who does a high paranoia kill-or-be-killed campaign is going to have the total pacifist literally sitting out all the time when his teammates are murdering everyone who gives them an awkward eye.

In the existing system, Riggers can pose a big problem, especially if they focus only on driving the car, without any special skills to actually complete missions, you're going to have an awesome driver with nothing to do.

Likewise, even the most detailed aquatic secret-base-building water sprite is going to look pretty foolish when most of the campaign takes place above water. (Or all of it!)

And the ugly cybertroll from hell is going to be sitting around bored every time a mission can be solved by stealth, negotiation, or planning. He may even get bored and start shooting policemen with his sniper rifle for no reason.

When in doubt- make a character that can do anything. That's the best way to get by. If he can stealth when he must, fight when he needs to, talk when it comes up, and break though a door, this guy will always have something to do. The cost of generalization is average rolls. The cost of specialization is almost never being able to make a roll because it doesn't come up.

I've seen campaigns where the best thief in the world with maxed out skills was of little use because it was a Mutants and Masterminds campaign where teleportation trumped opening doors and stealing things every time. I've also seen master merchants waste their potential in a combat-oriented D&D game.

You know who your GM is- you know if he favors magic or melee, combat or concepts, stealth or cynicism... you can build your character to match and have a lot of fun and have plenty of the spotlight, or you can build the character who gets along with no one, fights with the johnsons, and wonders why he's never included in side missions.

The game is there for everyone to have fun. The GM should definately try to accomodate each player. While PvP can be fun too, team cohesion is what makes survival in a game like shadowrun: the dystopian corporate evil game, possible.

Just think about it.