Step 1: Choose your metatype. And hoooo boy, there be a lot of metatype, it includes the variants and the infested and the changelings etc etc. Example: Human, 0 karma.
Step 2: Choose your nationality. They focus on North American ones, but, eh, them's the breaks, and they're pretty easy to swap about. Generally give a primary language, a secondary language you know a bit of (sometimes), a quality or two, some assorted skills and occasionally a stat point or two. Costs 15 karma. Example: General CAS citizen. Gives you +1 Charisma, +2 Computer skill, Etiquette +1, Knowledge: History +1, Knowledge: CAS +1, and the SINner quality at the 5 points value.
And yes, one of the options there IS SINless.
Step 3: Choose Life Module 1 (Formative Years). This covers your character's life up until about age 10 or so, and costs 40 karma. Example: Military Brat. Gives you (Strength +1, Reaction +1, Uncouth (14). Close Combat Skill Group +2, Negotiation +1, Perception +1, Professional Knoweldge: Military +3, Interest Knowledge: Military History +2.
Step 4: Choose Life Module 2 (Teen Years). This covers your character's teen years up to age 17, and they all cost 50 karma. So, the example PC I rolled up for fun last night chose Military School (+1 Body, +1 Charisma, Military Rank (5), Code of Honor (15), Blades +1, Electronics skill group +1, Firearms skill group +1, First Aid +1, Leadership +1, Unarmed Combat +1, Running +1, Swimming +1, Professional Knowledge: Military +3, Academic Knowledge: Military History +3, Academic Knowledge: [Any] +1, Professional Knowledge: Strategy +1)
Now, here, you can
-Choose a Further Education module (College of varying levels, with majors and everything.) (Varying costs, 2 or 4 years of education, making your character 19 or 21 and ready to either then buy a Real Life Module or move onto Shadowrunning)
-Choose a Real Life/Career Module (Cost 100 karma, generally 4 or 5 years in the career. Also, you can't 'stack' a module and take it 2x)
-Call the character done and spend your karma willy nilly, although the setting does seem to recommend at least one more Life Module choice. Still, hey, if you're a young Ganger getting into Shadowrunning at age 17, well, there you go...
Step 5: Life Module choice 3 is pretty much your character's starting profession before they became a Shadowrunner. These cost 100 karma each, and you can take more than one, as long as you have the karma to cover it. Each takes So, for the example PC, who, by the by, I decided was a Wolf-totemed Shaman with a strong military background, signed up with the CAS Mage Corps for a Tour of Duty. This gives Wolfman (I need a shorthand for the example character, and he is a
Wolf Sha
man) Body +1, Reaction +1, Strength +1, SINner (5), Firearms skill group +1. First Aid +1, Navigation +1, Unarmed Combat +1, Professional Knowledge: Military +4, Assensing +2, Conjuring skill group +1, Perception +1, Sorcery skill group +1.
Of note, you can't take an active skill above Rank 7 or a Knowledge Skill above Rank 9 via buying life modules, so you do reach a point of diminishing returns eventually. However, if you do get free ranks around that aren't skill group increases (IE, you end up with +8 blades), you max it at +7 and can then allocate the extra point to another skill that links to the same attribute.
So, at this point, Wolfman is ready to finish his normal karma gen, but has a rather more organically grown skillset, I think.
Of note, 'Rank' is a new quality they added in there that can be applied to many walks of life. So, Wolfman, having gotten 5 points of Rank going into his Tour of Duty, he's an NCO and finishes up as a CAS Lance Corporal. If he had purchased up Rank a bit, he'd have been a Sergeant or Sgt. Major. if he'd gone to Military Academy, he'd have gone into the CAS army as an Office,r not an NCO.
He's supposed to be on the reserve lists for 3 years, but, well, Shadowrunning is a lot more lucrative...
At this point, Wolfman's spent 235 Karma (Magician costs 30 karma) and has 515 karma left to buy up stats, increase skills, money, contacts, and qualities. Not bad, and I'll happily give up a bit of min-maxing for a more balanced, organic character with plot hooks built in for explaining things.
IE, contacts? Obviously, old friends from his school, a military buddy, the slightly corrupt Quartermaster who's willing to let things fall off a truck if some favors are done for him to get him things he can't easily get to sell to the guys in the service, a friend or acquaintance of his old CO who's a Fixer, etc etc etc.
Also, Rank. Mentioned it earlier. This is a new quality, so I'm just pasting it in here in its entireity.
RANK - Rank is the way most organizations or institutions determine leadership and responsibility among their staff or members. Although it's usually associated with the military, in fact rank exists in all facets of life, including the business world and even policlubs and hobby groups. Rank provides a +1 to your social limits per level for those within your organization. In the case of military or law enforcement characters, the social limit modifier applies to members of the public over whom they have authority. In the table, the number on the right side of the slash is the cost for military or law enforcement; the number on the left side of the slash is for other ranks.
-Run Faster, Page 86
So, you can also just karma-buy it as well if you're doing point buy. *shrug* As mentioned, Wolfman picked up 5 points of Rank going to a Military School, so he finished his tour of duty with the CAS Mage Corps as an NCO (A Lance Corporal, to be exact)
That's as far as I got with chargen last night before faceplanting, so a few finishing notes...
-Nuyen is 1 karma for 2k nuyen, with a 200 karma cap for buying nuyen.
-Standard contacts purchased at the rules used in the core book.
-Your SIN doesn't stack. You take the highest ranking SiN quality you got buying modules and use that.
-You can buy off negative qualities at this point with your remaining Karma pool. As long as you have under 25 points of negative qualities, you can then buy more. So if you don't like a negative quality you picked up during Life Path chargen, you can swap it for an equivalent negative point or just buy it off.
-If you get the same qualitiy twice in chargen and it isn't tiered, you can swap them for quality of the same karma cost.
