Metatypes

Street Ronin teams, as any teams built up of professionals, tend to have their members highly specialized. Roles are varied and often combined, but generally most teams have these roles:
Muscle - Either heavily cybered Street Samurai (often just called a "Sammy") or Awakened Adepts, whose unusual physical abilities depend on the magic or genes they channel through their bodies and their self-belief. Muscle deals with direct physical threats and are expected to be capable of dealing and soaking massive amounts of damage, coupled with high Initiative Passes count, allowing them to act more frequently in the real world than their opposition. It is also a good idea for Muscle to have some infiltration skills to cover up Shadows and at least marginal intimidation skills. Despite the popular Hollywood image, making Sammies and Adepts into actual sword-wielding melee warriors is only encouraged if you want to see your character dead. Melee has the disadvantages of needing to get in the open and run up to people to slice/bonk them where a good gun allows to stay at range and behind cover.
Shadow - Physical infiltration specialists. Those are usually either special Adept builds or non-Awakened characters using specialized implants. Naturally, Shadows are expected to be as unnoticeable and observant as possible, making implants and powers that allow them to hide from sight or perceive outside human spectra highly popular. Shadows should also be capable of full-on breaking and entering, requiring some hardware skills and specialized gear. Hardest role to pull off reliably due to the shitloads of security systems and ways to detect intrusion magically existing in SR, but oh-so-rewarding when done flawlessly.
Face/Fixer - The social player of the party. The Face is the one who deals with the employers (typically a go-between traditionally called a "Mr. Johnson"), gets the gear needed for the job, and has all the right contacts and the cunning plans to come ahead of the opposition. Many Faces are also the ones to hire the hideouts for the team and some of them make excellent impersonators, using magic or specialized implants to assume disguises. While Face is a relatively straightforward role mechanically, it is frequently the most intellectually tasking and roleplaying-heavy, since it often falls on the Face to arrange the team's planning.
A note on Faces and Fixers: A Fixer is someone who handles brokering jobs and checks that the Johnsons aren't fucking with you. Someone who's a dedicated Fixer stays far away from wetwork and is probably an NPC - they'll be basically a DMPC, but with a much better chance than usual of not being terrible. On the other hand, if a player really wants to be the team's Fixer, then they'll usually take some of the more field-oriented specialties like impersonation and regularly head into the field with the team. When you say "Face", this combined role is what you usually mean. Theoretically a Fixer could also be the decker and mission control, but in practice the stats don't work out well for that.
Mage - The astral cover. Mages are all Awakened, but still come in different traditions and specializations. While some rely on direct-effect spells which allow them to whip out bagfuls of damage dice, fly, dodge bullets, and more, others count on summoned spirits to do the job for them, without risking direct opposition or at least having some heavy support at hand. Mages' ability to astrally project makes them valuable assets for scouting, especially long-distance one. Given enough time and resources, they can get almost anyone in the world with ritual spellcasting, and naturally, Mages are also the only magical healers a Street Ronin team can hope to get. There's also absolutely no defence against a Mage except another Mage (or a quick bullet, leading to the basic and often given advice "Geek the Mage first"), so the runners depend on their mage's counter-spelling abilities and guard spirits heavily. Not everyone who is Awakened can be a Mage, as it takes training to be more than a liability to your local community. Shamans, on the other hand, receive guidance from dominant spirit Totems.
Adepts - Can amplify their own attributes and talents and have access to unique Adept Powers, but they can't use conventional spells or astrally project, making them more like Street Samurai or Shadows in practice. In fact, they can't perceive astral space at all unless they buy the specific power that lets them do so, a weakness shared with their traditional magic-using hybrid, the Mystic Adept. Finally, Aspected Magicians are "diet" mages, only skilled in a single category of magic, e.g. a spellcaster only or a summoner only. They're very good at that category, but can never use any form of magic outside that category.
Decker/Otaku (Hacker/Technomancer): - Before the Crash 2.0, Matrix intrusion relied on specialized hardware setups often built into a device the size of a skateboard, the archetypal cyberdeck. The decker maintained such a rig and used it to break into Matrix security for his team. His Awakened counterpart was the otaku, a teenager with the odd ability to interact with the Matrix without a cyberdeck; he still needed ASIST hardware and a datajack, but he didn't rely on a bulky and horribly expensive piece of tech to do his thing. The otaku lost their abilities as they aged, a process they called "Fading." After the Crash 2.0 and the Wireless Matrix Initiative, the times of the decker and otaku were over. In their place emerged the Hacker and the Technomancer, respectively - the former are mundane boys with a head full of 'ware and a commlink the cost of a house, and the latter are believed to be the "evolved" form of otakus that retain their skills as they age, and can also compile and command sprites (which are essentially the Matrix analogue of spirits). A Street Samurai team depends on the Hacker (or Technomancer - in practice, their abilities are more or less identical) to find the info that the Face's contacts can't or won't provide, break into opposition's hosts to fiddle with security systems, intercept their data exchange or do the rest of other things a hacker can be doing with a computer. Most hackers were known to be couch potatoes, but between isolated wireless networks and wireless-inhibiting building walls, they have a good reason to have some actual infiltration skills. Hackers also frequently moonlight as Riggers on the side. Recent security measures introduced to the Wireless Matrix have brought the use of a new generation of cyberdecks modified to interact with the new Matrix and bypass security systems back into vogue, making the terms "hacker" and "decker" interchangeable again.
Rigger - The drone specialist and usually the driver for the party. Riggers are mostly the ones to pimp out rides for shady Street Samuraibiz, and their swarms of drones can rival Muscle and Shadows at their jobs. While rigging presupposes spending a lot of your time "jumped in", wearing your drones or vehicles as your own skin, many Riggers also double as back-up hackers. The high Logic needed for hacking and rigging also makes Hackers and Riggers the most likely candidate for the team's paramedic.
=== Pink Mohawk, Black Trenchcoat and Mirrorshades ===
Among the player base, three terms have emerged for describing the prominent roleplay-styles for Ark.
* Pink Mohawk refers to playing fast and loose. Subtlety? Screw that noise. Write your names on the walls of corporate property with bullets. Blow holes in the walls of secure military facilities. Flip dragons the bird. That kind of stuff. Playing as a Pink Mohawk means acting like a stereotypical musclebound 80s-action hero and generally being balls to the walls insane with a devil-may-care attitude and succeeding at it. 
* Black Trench coat refers to a more clandestine approach to runs. Generally more grounded in the concept of not getting caught in the first place. Black Trench coats generally view runs more like spec-ops missions or espionage and try to solve situations without resorting to violence and not to leave behind incriminating evidence.
* Mirrorshades refer to a game that try to balance both above mentioned styles, where players do their best to plan things in advance and stay discreet whenever possible; but do not hesitate to go all-in and bring out the big guns when fecal matter gets in contact with the rotating ventilation device.
Category:OC Creation