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...