The game is about to start. We're using a new batch of characters and the players have just finished filling out the PC sheets. Slowly they slide them over to me for review, a tradition I started years ago when somebody tried to slip a Skillwire 8 and a Panzer past me. I hesitate for a moment and pray to a random omniscient being that the stats I'm about to view are different those I've viewed a thousand times before. Slowly I look down at the sheets.

Damn, they took the million again.

I don't know what I ever did to my PCs to make them think that they'd need fourteen tons of steel built into themselves in order to survive my game but I really wish I knew what was up with the heroin addict like craving players generally have towards creating mega kick ass characters. It's always the same damn thing, tons of cyberware designed to increase Body and Strength, the token wired reflexes, muscle augmentation, some kind of lacing, and a dozen other trinkets, dropping their essence to practically nothing and leaving them in a state of invulnerability which necessitates the use of heavy weapons if I want to even scratch them. Like I'm going to throw Renreku's standing army at them the moment they start playing or something.

I've always felt that role playing should always take precedence over numbers and rules and have, so far, everybody's been pretty cool with that EXCEPT when it comes to character creation. They still sit there and calculate the most efficient way to raise a PCs body from a six to a seven, pay for the ware, and they're happy. Very rarely does a player rationalize why that particular piece of metal is there beyond the justification that it makes the character a "more efficient (fill in archetype)". If you pry you find out that, most of the time, the character has what he has to A: keep him from getting killed or B: help him kill. They want the highest number for their dollar, using the two above reasons as motivation for what they decide to buy.

Another problem which is relative to this subject is the funneling of skill points into only three or four areas, leaving the character with nothing but those skills. (Fucking minmaxers.) Something which also occurs way to frequently is the use of the concentration and specialization of skills for the sole purpose of raising a skill to an insane level, with only a half assed excuse as to why the character is so good in that particular area.

In any case, what this all adds up to is that somebody is putting too much emphasis on metal and not enough on creativity. Over the weekend I was allowed to play a PC for a few hours (yet another sign that our planet is nearing the threshold of oblivion) and created an immensely cybered character, an action which is not characteristic of myself. This character possessed a cyberarm, cybertorso, and cyberskull. If it had been created by somebody else for use in one my own games, would have made me a little bit nervous. Normally, bordering on 99.999 percent of the time, a character with such high metallic capacity is created for the simple purpose of being able to kick serious ass with the efficiency of a pc using a 166mhz Intel processor. Well, one that's running something other than Windows 95. (rim shot) [2018 NOTE: HOLY DATED REFERENCE.] In any case, mine was not. Sure I added on a bit of plating and installed a knife but, over all, the cyberware didn't toughen up the character to the extreme one might think. Actually, there were several other combinations of cyber and bodyware I could have used which would have added up to the same numerical stats, but at a fraction of the cost. The reason I blew several hundred thousand new yen and most of my essence on the listed cyberware was because, in his past, he had nearly been killed in an explosion while working for his former corporation. That's it. Sure once he gets the cash to pump up the limbs strength and add a few toys (which will never happen because I've already lost his sheet) the cyber additions would work to his advantage. But right now he has them because he didn't have much of a choice.

When somebody creates a character they should put as much thought, if not more, into the role playing aspects of the pieces of metal and skill shortcuts as they do into what the numbers will add up to. In return the gamemaster must be nice and not immediately waste them. Try taking something other than the million and see what you can do with it. Grab a variety of skills, not a handful with ratings of six. Try creating a character who CAN'T kick ass, one who's still working his or her way up the ranks. To put it simply: Use your creativity, not your calculator. Your GM will thank you.