Wham! you have finally managed to read through the entire Shadowrun rule book. That's an accomplishment in itself, considering that it weighs more than War and Peace. But now you are ready to go on your first run. You have gathered a bunch of your friends together and they seem to be at least half way enthused about getting to play another one of those role-playing games. Maybe some of them have even played Shadowrun before, but that was a while ago, and they don't know much about the third edition. But who cares! You're so excited that you explain some of the background, all of that awakening stuff, and even teach them to call each other chummer, and frag this, frag that. Now let's cut through all the drek and get out hoops in gear. It's time to create characters cause this game is real whiz!
So you tell them to all pick a character concept and get started. Meanwhile you fall asleep between questions. By the time they buy all 100,000 nueyen worth of gear and fine tune their fifty skills it's 2:00 A.M. and you are sitting there wishing that you had watched the Spawn Director's Cut instead of letting your butt fall asleep on the kitchen chairs. As if the game masters of the world didn't have enough problems, I've decided to add this to the list. All too many times game masters come into their first run with hours of reading and preparation, but players that don't have a clue. The common solution is to do all the work for them, including giving them a character creation walk-through. However there are better ways that take the pressure off of the game master, and distribute it amongst the people who should be doing more than just showing up every Saturday.
The first step towards success happens to be an expensive one, but if your gaming group is serious about gaming than it is also a necessary one. Here goes: Everyone who plays also owns a rulebook. This thirty dollar step remains the best way to keep your sanity. It makes sense for two reasons. One, if the game master is the only person who knows what's going on then he is putting himself in a tough position. Not only does he have to look up the rules he can't remember, but he also has to try and answer the concerns of his uneducated comrades. This can not only hurt character creation, but can slow down play, if you ever get to it. The second, and even more obvious, reason is the ideal way to abolish lengthy pre-games: HAVE EVERYONE DO THIS AT HOME. You spend your precious time getting missions ready for them. The least they can do is spend a couple hours creating their characters by themselves while they have plenty of time to think without cutting into game time. If they don't feel comfortable enough with the rules to do this entirely by themselves, then talk to your player and decide on what he can do by himself. Maybe have him list all of the skills or gear he wants and then work with him before game on ratings and cost. At the very least he should have a character concept and priorities assigned. The more preparation your players supply to you, the faster you will get into your games.
The second important step to creating successful characters in shorter amounts of time is the character concept, or background information. Without a direction to travel in characters will go nowhere. Before any attempt is make to make a new character I require my players to take a blank sheet of paper and jot down their ideas. These brainstorms are always started with a two sentence description of their characters, mostly concentrated on personality or goals. I would encourage your players to write exactly tow sentences, no more and no less. This keeps you from having to read novels to extract basic information, and also serves not to discourage the more timid players. As an added bonus writing two sentences takes very little time, especially compared to answering 20 questions or some other equally time consuming venture. Leave this for post character creation when your players have gotten to know their little killers better. On the other hand, if you want to allow the players to make a list of one or two word phrases describing other aspects of the character that the two sentences didn't cover than go ahead. Remember, the idea is to have some sort of personality in your head when you choose skills and gear. It gets rid of the need to question everything thoroughly, and replaces it with concrete forethought.
You will never get rid of lengthy creation times all together, but by putting more of the responsibility into the player's hands, you will eliminate a lot of your own frustration. Tell your players to go spend a lousy thirty bucks and learn some of the rules themselves. The time that they spend reading can only come back in enhanced games, and better, more well thought out characters. When they have learned just what UGE means, and what the modifiers are for shooting a grenade launcher in pitch black, they will bring their minds to a game that once only had yours. You don't have to be their teacher all of the time, but you do have to make sure that they know that.
Now I want you to go and tell them that you just read an article on the Internet, and that they have to do all of this stuff because it said so. I'd love to see their reactions, "Frag that man!" More to come on subtlety in the next article.
