"Cable... Shivani had to have died. Right? She couldn't have survived a rocket strike. If she's dead, then what am I?"
I loved my most recent character. Shivani Sedana is a cybernetically enhanced soldier, a monster with a golden machine gun, and a natural leader. She was also mentally ill, a sickness called cyberpsychosis bubbling just under the surface. She's a lesson in the dangers of ignoring your problems: it doesn't make them go away.
I loved her, but my interpretation of her mental condition is born from dysphoria, depression and disassociation. She was originally designed in 2017 and... I think it's fair to say I wasn't doing well. It's 2023 and I'm doing better, better enough that I'm making the decision to put her away. We had to skip a session this month, so I made a deal with the GM to get the game back on track and avoid having to think about Shivani for another thirty days. I can shelf her for a while, and write some long form content dealing with her condition. I can put her character finale to paper with some nice, rich description. Maybe even portray her improving. What a wild concept: a pen and paper character ever getting better.
I think playing her was pretty enlightening for a number of reasons, and I thought I'd go through them in no order. Some of these deal with building and playing characters, and some of these are specific to Shadowrun 3rd Edition.
Mental Illness is rewarding but draining to portray. Shivani only suffered a break for one session, showing extremely obvious signs and symptoms. However, her mental health issues were present the entire time I played her. Habits like her direct(to a fault) thinking, lack of backup plans and callousness were all informed by her condition. Her persistent delusions came up every single session: I just didn't say it out loud. For a long time it felt great to play her. It was an outlet for a lot of various feelings I had when I started playing her. Ones you can guess if you know me, and wonder at if you don't.
One of our players, the man behind the surveillance-drone rigger Director noted that he could tell something was wrong with Shivani from day one. I don't have a lesson to go along with that. It just made me feel really good.
But as those feelings and thoughts started to go away, she became a drain. It's tough to know what would help your character's mental health and know they won't do it. One of Shivani's unhealthy coping mechanisms was routine, and one of those routines was Shadowrunning. Running puts her into contact with a lot more stressors than her rigid adherence to routine was ever going to alleviate. So, playing her still felt good, but became emotionally taxing. It's probably just me, but watching a character make choices that will ultimately harm them is frustrating, even though those are the choices that remain true to their personality. It's even worse when those choices are done in-part or solely to keep them playable.
Be wary of characters you conceptualized a long time ago. I don't think this is a mistake on my part. Far from it, Shivani helped me a lot! But I should have expected playing her to become more difficult the better I felt about myself. Everything about Shivani's mental health was defined a long time ago, before I started medication and therapy for my own. I really should have seen this coming, but I guess nobody expects their mental health improvement to cause something like this.
I(Me, Mouse) Might be a Leader. I don't know what to say about this one except that I feel like I lean toward this role in games now, and I might be reasonably good at it. I guess you never stop learning things about yourself, right?
Homage Characters are Awesome! Most of the Time. Shivani was inspired by a friend's character from 20 years ago named Bob Collins. He also had Cyberpsychosis and heavily personal themes. Some of them are quite similar to Shivani's themes. Doing an homage to Bob without understanding those themes completely would have been catastrophic or even insulting. It's a good thing I didn't do that. Everyone should feel free to homage an existing character with their own... just be sure to know what you're doing and put in a little work.
Hobbies and Friends are Key to Building a Rich Character. So, I've started to see a lack of hobbies, activities, casual interests or friends as indicators of illness. That's an important tool, but I can't help but think that not including those things is simply a common mistake. I think it's especially true of fantasy games, where travel is overwhelmingly common. You sort of have to carry your interests on your back and count the PCs as your only friends.
But in a modern game, you really have no excuse. You definitely have a house. It's definitely full of stuff. Like, things. Things mean you have interests, and hobbies, and personality. The other PCs can't possibly be your only friends. Lacking some or all of these things would be a major red flag. Including a major red flag should be deliberate.
I probably have more to say on this later, so I'll save some for next time. In Shadowrun it's easy to focus on only taking the knowledge skills you think will definitely come up, like Chemistry or Security Design, or Gang Identification. I think that's a big mistake. If Shivani didn't have her skills on the bass or her love of tailoring, she'd be a poorer character. Did I ever roll Bass? Of course not. That's not why I took it.
I did roll Tailoring, though. Several times. So maybe it's just a question of what skills you're able to finesse into a situation.
Heavy Weapons Really Aren't as Great as they Seem. I enjoyed the hell out of Shivani and her gold-plated light machine gun, Golden Mandala. A Mandala can be described as a spiritual road map, and Golden Mandala is a map that helps you meet God. I noticed a few things about heavy weapons while I was using it.
* It's a pretty narrow skill. Realistically, it covers light machine guns, and assault cannons. That isn't as flexible as other skills. Other guns can be quiet, apply chemtech or cover funky utility weapons. Cannons and LMGs are quite nice weapons, but they really only do the one thing.
* The damage boost is slight. An assault rifle is 8M, and a light machine gun is 7S. You get a damage level bump in exchange for a reduction of power, and I'm convinced that ends in a very slight boost, especially if you're optimized for the skill you're rolling. It means that machine guns are better at suppressive fire, but... I'm tempted to say "so what?".
* They're big. So this isn't a concealable weapon in the slightest. I definitely couldn't carry or use it on every job. I can't say the same about shotguns, rifles, or even assault rifles. In a world where a sawn-off SPAS-22 is 9S, can burst and has a conceal of 6, I don't know how much I can justify carrying an LMG for any reason. The weight even became a factor: the GM can attest that I sanity-checked Shivani's loadouts for weight, and that's not something I ever had to worry about with other SR characters.
* They require resources to optimize. If you don't put forth resources toward lowering recoil, I don't know if LMGs turn out better than assault rifles at all. Mandala had a custom 2 pts of recoil compensation and Shivani had a cyberarm gyromount, both of which were integral to this weapon being a good one. That isn't a cheap piece of 'ware. If all you did was pick up an LMG off the shelf, I don't know if it's a great choice.
My GM was Right and Skill Groups are the Way to Go. I just wanted to say here that slightly improving the amount of skills someone can take via skill group discounts is a good thing, and there's very little downside. The bonus isn't that pronounced: I definitely didn't even roll every firearms skill. Even more of them I only rolled once or twice. They soften the blow of "required" skills and lets characters branch out and be useful in other situations. Seeing as how this is a game where you're sitting on your thumbs by design sometimes, that's good.
SR 3 Sure Has Weird, Draconian Armor Rules. I think it's weird that basically everyone layers form-fit with something else. If I had my way, I'd bump most sets of armor by 1/1 or 2/1 and just remove form-fit entirely. Just make the decision for you and let you wear one piece of armor. I understand the aesthetics don't necessarily matter, but having relatively little freedom in dressing your character and imagining their outfits sucks.
In addition, the penalties for having too much armor rating compared to your QCK is a pretty bad system. There should absolutely be a penalty here! It's just that trading points of combat pool for armor is a mathy decision and I don't like it. For as crunchy as people think this system is, it has very few of these decisions. I can see why future editions do away with pools entirely.
You Don't Know What You've Got 'Till It's Gone. I'll make this short. This is my first character with a low combat pool, and you really don't understand how nice it is to have a large pool until you don't any more. It's a good thing that Shivani was built to let things hit her. Because they often did.
That's it for today. Thank you for this weird potpourri of lessons that I don't think I could spin into whole posts on their own. If you're sad that Shivani is gone, don't worry: The next part of her story is coming soon. That, and I don't think the other characters are entirely finished feeling her impact.
