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Posted by: Monnock Apr 26 2006, 05:06 AM

Hello, I'm new here (really new, I just found your forum) and I'm new to the Shadowrun system... and setting... Ok, I'm really new.

Now that that's out of the way, here is my question: My players refuse to work in the shadows! Just last mission, they were tasked with getting something from a truck that was delivering its cargo to a depot where it would be loaded onto a bullet train. They had no idea what the cargo was, though I don't think that played much of a part in their plan.

Their first idea was to blow the train off the tracks... Thank goodness they didn't go through with that, though perhaps that would have been more subtle than what they ended up doing.

The truck was being escorted by two KE police cars (very low security considering the cargo, but the idea was to keep a low profile and reinforcements were on standby). The party took a hummer, armored it up, mounted a light machine gun (Ingram White Knight equivalent) on it (it fipped up so it wasn't obvious) and loaded it up with explosive rounds and attacked it. The funny thing was, the LMG was used to just blow out the tires. The party technomancer hacked the two patrol cars running one of them into oncomming traffic and putting the other in reverse so it crashed into one of the cars that had just returned to the road after the chase had passed them. The mage killed the guard in the passanger seat with a mana-bolt for no reason.

Well, they managed to stop the truck and got the cargo. Through some good driving, they managed to escape the vehicle with all the KE police in the area chasing after them, and the driver managed to get the car away by driving it into the Rox (crime hotspot of Boston) where they didn't pursue because things had been quiet and they didn't want to be lead into an ambush.

At least they got away without anyone knowing who they were... Only problem was they got too greedy. Two people were offering them the same job, each from a different fixer. They gave the package to their first Johnson because he offered more, then sold him out to the other Johnson. The other Johnson was sent by the corp that they were stealing from once they caught word that information about the shipment was out there, and they had hoped to cover their hind-quarters by hiring their own Runners to get the package for them. It was deemed cheaper to hire them to steal the package (which they could cover the cost of with the security breach compensation that the KE offered) than to hire them to escort, which could lead to problems of its own (like them stealing the package for themselves anyways).

So here is the situation, by the next day the Johnson they gave the package to has been arrested and, of course, after being betrayed rats the runners and the fixer that set him up with them out.

KE was massivly embarrased by this incident, as a vehicle with military grade weaponary (that only shot out the tires, but the media loves leaving that out) just attacked and escaped into the Rox; Lonestar is capitolizing on this by publishing adds that are along the lines of "Lonestar wouldn't let this happen to you" and promising to clean up the Rox (though of course this is just propoganda, Lonestar is no where near equiped to handle such an invasion). It is unlikely that Lonestar could wrest the contract from Boston due to intanglements the government has with KE, but the possibility still exist, and it could prove costly to KE if it happens. They have a huge inscentive to regain popular support by bringing these guys in.

Ok, I'm really sorry for the LONG post, but the reason why I put it all out there was because this happens all the time with my players, not just in this system. They never seem to 'care' about the reprecussions of their actions, which tends to get them into a LOT of trouble since they love to abuse their power. To me it seems obvious that ratting out the guy who gave you work is just bad business, am I wrong? Attacking KE with military grade weaponary, hacking their patrol cars to kill innocent bystanders, and (to add insult to injury) they have magic too that they didn't even use other than to kill some guy who wasn't even a threat to them seems like it would draw a HUGE responce from KE, or would they really not care as much (would the public care that this happened?) It's getting to the point where I feel like I need to give them 'Deliver this teddy bear to a little girl" missions just so they don't go psycho and get themselves arrested or killed, but I also want to make sure that I'm not blowing things out of proportions.

I want to run a game that is more complex than just a simple 'gun them all down' game, and honestly so do my players, but they just don't think at all about their actions. Any ideas how I can get this through to them? I feel like saying something like "stay in the shadows" wont be enough, since I already prefaced this setting with that. The mage is already talking about commiting small-scale genocide of Force 1 spirits to fuel his spells (I have no idea why he wants to spend all that on that), I guess he doesn't think that the spirits will ever care about it or retaliate in some way in the future.

My plan is to have them set up by there fixer to go on a run to a wearhouse where a S.W.A.T. team is on standby to capture them using non-leathal force (unless absolutly nessisary, though they shouldn't need to since they are using gel ammunition). Once captured a 'mysterious benifactor' will help them bail out under the condition that they get the Johnson out too. Not sure where I will go exactly after that, but I'm hoping that this will send the message. I'm also not sure what to do if they manage to escape the capture.

Meh, ok, I'm done. What do you guys think? Am I wrong about this whole situation? I can't help but feel like I'm being a 'bad guy' here by throwing the consequences at them when they are just having fun. Sorry for the rediculously long posting, I'm just a bit overwhelmed.

Posted by: fistandantilus3.0 Apr 26 2006, 05:13 AM

This comes up a lot. THe simple answer is, warn them once of the potential consequences. If they don't listenl , give htem the consequences. Maybe the new characters they ahve to write up will be smarter. You know the old saying "those that live by the sword, die by the sword." Havethem go down in a massive gun battle with the cops . I had one group that normally plays pretty well, but they jsut went off once on the STAR. By the next session, two guys were disabled and at a street doc's after taking deadly wounds, one was identified by the cops and going in to hiding, one was never seen again because his ally spirit dragged his dying form away form the fire fight, and one was captured, tried, and given the electric chair. THere are only two characters left. Last time we saw them, thye were wounded, unarmed, and vehicle-less somewhere in Snohomish, with the STAR looking for them.

The next team they made did much better. It's harsh, but , hell, that's Shadowrun.
If we wanted it to be easy we'd play D20.

Posted by: Calvin Hobbes Apr 26 2006, 05:26 AM

It's been a comment I've heard about our team's action: we routinely opens indiscriminate autofire in downtown areas in order to cover their escape, and we'll kidnap fifty year old men to get their daughters to play nice with us. The GM wants us to be a more honorable team of heroes, and we're just a gang of cutthroats who'll kill everyone who gets in our way.

Personally, I think one key is to improve players' understanding of the things that they care about. Players tend to be indiscriminate with things like their lifestyles and all the other accoutrements of their lives so long as they keep their guns and car through the drek you throw at them. Spending games detailing their lives might sound boring to some (although if they're serious about "role playing" over combat, they're probably for basic interaction with people) but it also has the benefit of highlighting the stuff we don't want to lose: friends, family, dreams. Everyone shadowruns for the money, but what is that money *for*? And if the character doesn't have any motivations beyond the job, then ask the player to reimagine, or help them discover something.

Admittedly, sometimes it's hard for a group of dudes to run things like romance between character and NPC, but there are other things we can care about. Encourage players to develop their homes more: it really hurts when your kick-ass home in an abandoned movie theatre gets firebombed by the mob as a message about your organlegging syndicate.

When the PCs and the players, are faced with situations where the consequences of their actions end up effecting people they care about, it's sometimes a really hard lesson that they learn from it.

As to the deus ex machina, screwing with the players by hitting them with an ambush because of what they've done is occassionally okay, but rely on it to work perfect, and you'll just end up having to re-examine the miscommunication between you and the group again when it goes wrong.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Apr 26 2006, 05:31 AM

On the other hand, one could think about how to resolve this situation without ruining their fun, like Fisty said.

Though ratting out a Johnson is something you Do Not DO, and all, and certainly a hijacking on the road was a bit loony.. If you just have sinpers take them out (likely what would happen) the players will rightly feel angry.

"Roll a damage resistance test Vs. 14D."
"Fourteen D?!!?"
"Fourteen D. And your armor dosen't apply."
"... I'm dead."
"Exactly. The rest of you hear and see nothing until the huge armor-piercing round turns your chummer's head into beef stroganof. And, uhh... Roll your own resistance tests, same type of round."

... Yeah. Real fun, that.

Posted by: eidolon Apr 26 2006, 05:31 AM

Posted by: FanGirl Apr 26 2006, 05:43 AM

Well, fixers are supposed to find jobs that are suited to the team, right? Why not send them on runs where they're told to do something flashy, but are actually meant to fail: the team is only sent to distract security so that another team can take advantage of the chaos, or a corp just wants to test the mettle of their elite security squad. Also, don't be afraid to have them suffer the consequences of their actions.

Oh, and make them read the http://archive.dumpshock.com/CLUE/.

Posted by: ChuckRozool Apr 26 2006, 06:49 AM

How old are you guys? highschool? If so i think it's great that you, as the GM, want a little more than massive firefights from your players. Our GM at that age was more than happy to let us lay waste to anything that moved and in return try to lay waste to us. College or beyond? Well I wouldn't know what to say to you without sounding like some pompous RPer who's all about the meta-game and street level Blah Blah Blah. I've matured as a player but I'm not a "meta-gamer", so...

If you're not cool with their attitude, maybe find new players? They don't sound like they're ready to "take the game seriously". Or you can suggest they read http://archive.dumpshock.com/bjcorner/ articles, that change my views on RPing not just Shadowrun but any game.

Posted by: Kanada Ten Apr 26 2006, 06:53 AM

The real consequences won't be from KE - they'll just pick up a couple of stooges, unless a PC wanders into their "we've got a rocket launcher going cheap" sting.

What'll happen is that their contacts will dry up for a couple of months. Nobody returns their calls. If they ask a fixer for work, he'll say, "And when the insurance agents show up offering 10%, will you be giving me up? You want work? Keep your fucking head down for a month, and we'll talk. So ka?" They'll start to need cash and probably turn to theft. But then they need a fence, and anyone willing to deal with them (gangs and outsiders) will pay crap. A couple months paying lifestyle with theft will make them long for a good job.

Then you give them a babysitting job. But you'll have to let them pull out the guns to even it out, they play along and you give them some fodder. Have them sitting on a wageslave when the home corp shows up en masse. Missiles, APCs, long range snipers from a stealth helicopter. Make it a fight worth a LMG, armored humvee and a chase through the Rox.

Keep giving them jobs where they have to protect the asset and show what happens when the enemy uses brains and stealth over firepower and flash.

Posted by: toturi Apr 26 2006, 01:34 PM

The problem is unless the GM is using the "Me GM, this my game, wat me sez goes" there is no game mechanic to punish the PCs if they go firing off their heavy artillery. And the thing to remember about people who sell heavy stuff is that oftimes they are undesirable themselves. "Don't be naive, Bob. What did you think I bought those LAWs for? Now, do we talk biz?" At best(or worst depending on your POV), I'd add a +6(outcome: disasterous to NPC) mod to the Etiquette TN and that is no big hurdle for a tricked out Social Adept.

Who is going to know that the PCs are the ones that blew X up or that they kill so-and-so? You as the GM knows, but do all the NPCs know as a result? Ask yourself this. Know this: If you close off their contacts, you'd force them to go into business for themselves just like low pay will inevitably do something more profitable with their time. Do you want to play Shadowrun? Or Sim Runners?

Firebombing safehouses as a warning might seem to be a good idea until you realise your PCs all have street lifestyle. Firebomb the dumpster? Ratting out a Johnson is a bad idea unless you can pull it off. If your PCs are good enough to convince other people that it wasn't them that ratted on the Johnson or somehow or another convince people that it was the Johnson that got sloppy, then it wouldn't reflect badly on them.

Remember it might seem that it is a bad idea to do X. But this is a game with game mechanics, with enough dice rolled, you can achieve enough successes for X to be a good idea. So what I am saying is that if the group is good enough, nothing (not even front page massacres) is a bad thing. I had a group shoot their way into a zero-zone, walk out through a SWAT army AND convince their contacts that "those guys" weren't them. It is ALL about the dice, TNs and no. of successes.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Apr 26 2006, 01:40 PM

Posted by: Kanada Ten Apr 26 2006, 01:52 PM

Posted by: eralston Apr 26 2006, 02:24 PM

Shadowy examples help groups be more "shadowrunny" (which just sounds awful, BTW).

Good examples would be:
M:I 1
-Use of disguise to enter a building
-Use of planning to make a 'plan' (betchya they don't use those either)
-Use of classic building infiltration plot device: Air Ducts

The Italian Job
-PLAN! PLAN! PLAN!
-Use of misdirection (really good one for SR)
-Their are myriad SR-like things that go into their planned heists, too many to list really. It's not a very good movie as movies go, but it is on basic cable and worth your time if you don't mind commercials

Metal Gear Solid
-While terribly cheesy at part, MGS has used every plot device available in the stealth-espionage genre to help players get, get out, and get it on. If at least one person in your group isn't a raving insane MGS fan then maybe you guys should play D&D

Speaking of D&D, you really have to tain people out of using: show up to the dungeon, slay the monsters, loot the bodies as a model for shadowrun. SR is more like: snoop in the matrix, make a plan, pay off a guy to get building schematics, make a back-up plan, case the joint, exploit a hole in their security, get in, do the job, get out.

A good exercise for this might be forcing a run w/o guns (as that leaves most meatheads SOL)

Posted by: Kagetenshi Apr 26 2006, 02:29 PM

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Apr 26 2006, 03:04 PM

Alternative, if you don't wanna piss on your player's thunder and steal their cheerios, you could just, you know, have extra-plus-sized air vents and air scrubbers, for the trollish population's air needs.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Apr 26 2006, 03:27 PM

Yeah! And then you could have all the bullets incorporate special technology to throw people hit by them back a dozen feet!

~J

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Apr 26 2006, 03:40 PM

Kage, that is so 1980s.

This is 2006. When we want to throw people a dozen feet, we use pieces of electrically-heated-to-the-point-of-glowing-red rebar and super-strong crossbows. Not only do they have pinpoint accuracy (once you compensate for the fall-at-range), but they also stand a good chance of pinning your target into a wall or other object if it's barrier rating is lower than the damage score.

Posted by: Kanada Ten Apr 26 2006, 04:00 PM

Small vents are good. They encourage shapechange spells. Plus, if the team mage doesn't have the spell, they can outsource it - and who needs a better excuse to turn the hacker into a real rat for a few hours. Maybe he'll get stuck passing through a ward inside. "Hey, Boss, there's another idiot stuck in the vent." "Damn it, they just pulled the last guy out becasue he was starting to smell."

Posted by: Monnock Apr 26 2006, 04:01 PM

I just want to point out that I wasn't going to pull a "a sniper shoots you in the head and you die" on them (though as a funny side note, a GM did that to one of the players once, completely forgetting how infeasable it was to deploy a sniper at such short notice and shooting a guy who was mostly disabled just to finish him off, rather than the person who was holding a gun to the hostage's head who had full HP [D20 modern] and knew that he could take the bullet). First of all, that would be rather difficult to pull off, as it would require luring them into a location which is open enough to pull such a thing off, and on top of that it would require multiple snipers that work in unison to blow all their heads off at once... And on top of that, as tough as these guys are, they could survive the shot from a sniper rifle (we are playing under 4E for reference). Also, keep in mind this, they are using non-leathal force. Despite popular belief, traditional SWAT teams are supposed to incure as few deaths as possible, even if it is an armed criminal. With gel rounds to simply knock them out, I fail to see why they wouldn't use them. I'm not about to just gun them all down, what would be the point of that? I see this as a reasonable compromise. The players get arrested for their crime and they get offered an out which leads to other runs where they will hopefully play it more safe.

I see luring them into a simple trap just makes sense. I mean KE knows who their fixer is for goodness sake, and considering how from their dealings they seem to only care about the money, it just makes sense for them to do this. Am I wrong? Someone pointed out that a character can talk their way out of a situation if they are tricked out enough, but that's kinda hard when they are SINless, dealing with the cops, and there is crystal-clear evidence proving that it was them that did it (and that they are VERY armed and VERY dangerous to approach to chat with).

I try not to metagame anything (I say try because we are all human, we can make mistakes, I never do it intentially), but sometimes I feel that I may be blowing things out of proportions, like KE actually having a big incentive to bag these guys. Lonestar has been wanting to take the contract from KE for a long time now, and after this stunt, its a pretty big hit to KE's ego. Like the media usually does, this event is blown way out of proportions, which just adds to the situation.

Is this reaction unreasonable? I feel that it isn't, but I am fallible. I am new to the world and society of Shadowrun, so maybe running military grade firepower around in an armored hummer wouldn't draw very much backlash with the press/public or 'jeapordize' KEs position in Boston (though I feel this wouldn't happen, it doesn't stop STAR from trying or KE from sweating a little).

The PCs were careless, plain and simple. They sold themselves out when they sold out their Johnson. The Johnson told the cops who they were and how to contact them because he had nothing to lose by doing so and figured that he would likely have a pretty good chance of getting off the hook if he turned the runners in. The recording was done by one of the players, and it is obvious from the recordings perspective who it was. There is no metagaming here. The only thing that may be off about this situation is that the Corp looked for shadowrunners to get their own shipment as a sort of insurance (it's win/win for them: If the runners succeed, they keep the package and collect the insurance, if the runners fail then, hey - they are out 2.5k for hiring them to try and the package gets delivered - if there are other runners trying to get the package, they will act as an improvised escort at half the cost).

The Corp found out the information was out there when the players used an information broker (with loyalty 1) to get the paydata on when the shipment was heading out, which he - in turn - sold the information that it was leaked to the Corp for a hefty sum of money (of course leaving out that he was the one who leaked it). That's why the Corp had a Johnson out giving the mission.

Oh, I apologize for the terrible title as well, haha.

Though I would like to note that the idea that KE will just pick up some stooges to take the fall would also work, and I'm wondering if KE would just do that over doing any work even when it's staring them in the face. Like I said, I'm new to this setting, but I do know that corruption and backstabbing are quite common throughout, so the idea that KE would just blow this situation off wouldn't surprise me, which is part of the reason why I'm asking you guys.

Sorry again for the long post. I tend to think of the world as very dynamic; every action has a consequence. As a result, I tend to have a lot of random background 'noise' going on behind the scenes. You have to know the full picture otherwise you will say things like:

Posted by: hyzmarca Apr 26 2006, 04:24 PM

Posted by: Monnock Apr 26 2006, 04:34 PM

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 26 2006, 06:28 PM

Definitely hit them with the hammer. If the hammer doesn't fall because they don't take the job (or whatever other reason). Keep the investigation up until media coverage forces you to grab some convenient scapegoats.

Posted by: TinkerGnome Apr 26 2006, 06:42 PM

Last night, I caught the movie Layer Cake on Starz (On Demand rocks). If you haven't seen that movie, I highly recommend it. In any case, it put me in the mind of doublecrossing your Johnson.

There are all sorts of things you can do to teach your players a lesson (and many of those things are outnlined above), however, you have to ask yourself if you really want to.

One of the things that might help is playing a lower powered game than the standard. Make characters off 300 bp (SR4) or an with altered priority system (SR3, I think there is one in MJLBB) with strict availability and skill rating restrictions and then go from there. Start them on the street just trying to break into the shadowrunning biz and make the jobs small and their resources even smaller.

Alternatively, you could just do the classic SR thing and start geeking them when realistic opposition to their carnage tracks them down. Surely they left some tracks somewhere (like who put those armor plates on that humvee? I doubt any of them have a vehicle facility, so there's someone out there who knows... and may be getting nervous with the star snooping around).

Finally, the SR core books don't describe karma in the same terms as pretty much every module and the SR3 companion do. You get karma for doing things that teach you things, obviously, but you mainly get karma as a "universal reward" for doing the "right thing" when the option presents itself. Doing very bad things tends to not get you as much karma or gets you karma penalties in extreem cases. There is also notoriety to consider.

Posted by: Daddy's Little Ninja Apr 26 2006, 07:25 PM

If they keep selling out their Johnson's who would hire them? The high paying jobs should start to dry up. Would you hire someone who is likely to double cross you?

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 26 2006, 07:49 PM

Why would a fixer even consider you for a job after that? Their livelihood is on the line as well.

Posted by: Lagomorph Apr 26 2006, 09:39 PM

Yeah, I would have to say that even if the KE is a fumbling giant and never catches the runners. The word would spread that they sold out their johnson. Their contacts should dissapear. No jobs, no friends. Who wants to be a friend of a guy who only cares about the bottom line? You can even make it blatently obvious when they call "Sorry, I don't deal with sell outs" "I'd help but I'm afraid you'd give me out to the competition"

Posted by: Monnock Apr 26 2006, 10:20 PM

Thank you all for your advice, it has helped me out tremendously.

I figure that KE may just try to set them up, but if they reject the mission then they will just find some scapegoats. The only hole in this is that they don't have the hummer, and if it shows up again there could be some problems, but they could always make some excuse about how they caught the criminals but the hummer was never found.

After that, you're pretty much right, no one would want to hire sell outs. The funny thing was this happened with the first module that I ran for them. I forget what it was called, but essentially once they acquired the disk they needed, someone approached them with a much higher offer than the Johnson for the information and they accepted it, which led to the same result. I told them the results of their consequences (which they agreed that they should have thought that through a bit more) and decided to start fresh. Sure, it pays well to double-cross people. It has to otherwise no one would ever consider it, but in the biz they are in, it's kinda a bad idea.

Also, thanks a ton for all the movie suggestions, I'll have to check them out.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 26 2006, 10:32 PM

I've always had a problem with how most players will whine if the team just gets sniped out.

It seems to me that the only logical alternative for when they really humiliate a corporation is to send a few platoons of crack soldiers after them complete with artillery and magical and spirit support. Furthermore, bring advanced riflemen who don't "automatically" shoot the PCs first thing but have them keep delayed actions so that if the PCs appear at certain promienent vantage points they get shot at. That goes over better with the players.

The big problem with that is that it's a lot of dice rolls. But unfortunately how else do you simulate the effect of the PCs being crushed by overwhelming force?

Posted by: hyzmarca Apr 27 2006, 12:08 AM

One way to move them away from the 'kill everything' routine is to give them terms of mission success that specify no killing. If they kill, they fail, so they have to avoid violence. However, with the doublecrossing problem you will have to have terms of personal success (as opposed to mission success) that are tied to politics and contacts.

Instead of having these characters be just Shadowrunners have then make orginized crime figures. Their goal would be to increase the size of their criminal emipire and their success would require a great deal of politiking an dbribery. Doing crazy things, killing the wrong people, and betrying the wrong people would have dire political consequences that would make it impossible for them to do business and ruin their orginization.

If they still want to be ultra-violent and reckless, and some people are going to hit me over the head for this suggestion, put them in charge of a megacorp and let them truely understand the power they are going against. As heads of a megacorp make sure that their actions have dire political consequences for themselves and their orginization. Then, once they understand how poerful their opposition really is, let them play a regular game again.


Also, you may consider implimenting a variation of the Inverse Ninja Rule to curb bloodshed.
Have all of your canon fodder characters start with stats and skills of 1 across the board. However, for every one of your ninjas that they kill the others gain 1 point in every skill, 1 point in ever stat, and 1 power, spell, metamagic, 'ware, or piece of equipment.
If you throw enough generic clone cannon fodder characters at the team and they insist on using lethal force they will eventually be faacing a single near-invincible foe due to the inverse ninja rule.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Apr 27 2006, 12:16 AM

Preferably you don't, because the only one having fun there is the DM who decided to get his jollies by pulling out all the stops and crushing the PCs like ants.

And frankly if you do that too much, you'll have a jolly good time managing a team of NPC runners to run against your NPC corporations, because no players will play with you again.


Still, selling out your J is something you only do when he's double-crossed you first. Though I think I might see the problem - you offered them only 5000 for the job from the second Mr. J? Did the first Mr. J give them a more reasonable number? Because it sounds to me like they may be so strapped for cash that they're willing to act like greedy newbies because they're desperate.

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 01:34 AM

The mission given to them by the first J (J1) was to intercept a shipment that was heading out. They were given no idea as to when it was heading out, other than sometime next week. J1 offered them a 5k down payment (which the party face managed to get upped to 7.5k) with no obligation to fulfill the contract (as he realized he was asking a very difficult task without very many specifics), but the payoff was 10k extra for whatever was in the truck plus extra based off of what they found.

In order to find out the exact date/time they got in touch with an information broker to find out for them, which I mentioned the specifics of that earlier.

J2 came in offering 2.5k for the run and extra based off of the cargo.

Once the mission was completed J1 offered them 30k to keep the deal a secret, however once again the face managed to get the price upped to 50k (So that's a total payout of 67.5K). The Johnson knew exactly how important the object they delivered was, but he was remaining coy with them. One of the players decided that 'keep this under wraps' didn't include selling a recording of the meeting to J2. He even told the rest of the runners, who didn't seem to care, and he sold the recording for 5k. I was *shocked* when he took the money without haggling for more.

I honestly don't think that this was because they considered themselves poor. I think the player (who was a mage) was just looking for funds for his Force 1 spirit genocide and to buy a slave...

The 5k was definatly worth selling out an employer who gives out that kind of .

Posted by: eidolon Apr 27 2006, 01:49 AM

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 02:07 AM

Bah, edited because I didn't like how it turned out at all

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 27 2006, 02:17 AM

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 27 2006, 02:19 AM

For the record, Wikipedia agrees with me onthe definition, for whatever that's worth (if anything).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming_%28role-playing_games%29

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 27 2006, 02:40 AM

For me the biggest problem is handling all the dice rolls when it comes to the PCs calling down a military-type situation on them. Realistically, if a corporation is able to find where the PCs are and they want to kill them they'll surround the place, have all kinds of magic, have lots of infantry, have artillery support, etc etc etc. That's swell, and all, but you need to be the frigging master of, like, 3 sourcebooks (the rigger book, MiTS, and the Cannon Companion and possibly also Man and Machine) just to know the rules for all of that. You then need to be making initiative rolls for something like 50-100 entities, and every time a PC shoots at a grunt you have to seperately keep track of that grunt's combat pool.

On principle and philosophically I'd like to let the dice fall where they may and if one or two PCs somehow manage to survive and slip away between the cracks that's cool. But I feel like the PCs are unfairly shielded by the weight of the "engine"; it becomes very hard for the GM to throw 50-100 entities at the PCs at once just because of the sheer weight of the system.

(I once threw 100 entities at the PCs and forced them to retreat from some place, but honestly, I felt like the mental effort damn near killed me.)

Note that that's not metagaming; that's realism, at least I think it is. In Iraq if the Marines encounter three snipers at a minaret they don't charge in tiny groups of five so that they can be neatly picked off. They have artillery support, overwhelming suppressive fire, and overwhelming numbers that they bring to bear. Why should the corporate military not come in full force with all the toys when it's absolutely vital that they hammer a small team of shadowrunners?

Posted by: Snow_Fox Apr 27 2006, 02:54 AM

they should not be able to escape the police. Ever watch "cops' or "World's most amzing police videos" the polcie have numbers and organization, they can cover each other, just stay on the runners until they run out of gas, as the cops get low fresh ones take up the chase. if the runners think they're ahead, have they thrown off the helo gun ships and dornes doing a long distance trace. the corp mage following them in the astral? notice that radiactive tracker attacked to their bumper?

"Team alpha, this is spy, targets have parked and left their vehical"

The team has a tirckedo ut truck? Groovy, watch the Lone Star Banshee come in on them. don't want ot shot up the car? Get a city master "Ramming speed"
ok guys you're pretty much trapped in the wreckage.

want to aovid that sort of general massacre? Are they always together, always armed to the teeth? of course not. They get picked up at a bar, maybe a joy girl slips them something in a drink or even slots a BTL into them in an embrace.
"Easiest 500 I ever made sugar"

put a price on their head. Remember as nasty as they are they are not the paex predators. there are others far more leathal than they are.

Ok , your going out to the car, Fred could you roll 8 dice please?
My body ?
yep, please roll,
4,4,3,3,6,4,2,1
Great, thanks. fred's head explodes. a momment later you hear the sound of a barrett snipe rifle. fred is dead.

Tomorrow you go out to your car....

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 27 2006, 02:55 AM

Because it impacts the bottom line?

For a fight that big I'd never use compat pools for any NPC except the big guys. Give the rest either nothing at all or a threat rating a la SR2. Yeah, threat ratings have their problems, butt hey also have their uses.

The situation you're describing is not quite like finding some snipers set up in a ready position. You're finding a group of people hanging out eating pizza and playing video games (or whatever your runners do when they're together but not on a run). In a lot of the game I've played you'd actually end up with several different fights going on at once when the corp hits the runners one at a time as they find them, or all at once as a concerted cleanup effort. But that's just because the runners in my games don't usually hang out in a group when they're not working.

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 27 2006, 02:58 AM

Posted by: Snow_Fox Apr 27 2006, 03:03 AM

I should be the last course. to show how things can go against them, badly. since they have ignored the consiquenses of their actions, this would bring it home to them.

You could also do a ritual sorcery to have someone go to the police and sign a full confession.

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 03:11 AM

Posted by: toturi Apr 27 2006, 03:15 AM

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 27 2006, 03:16 AM

Before the PC gets barretted does he get to make a perception test to see the sniper? That's a potential problem.

The other problem is how the players would crrryyy and moooaan.

Posted by: Kanada Ten Apr 27 2006, 03:28 AM

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 03:46 AM

Toturi, the players in my game have no leg to stand on. They have no street cred at all. They are new to Shadowrunning, and honestly they should be glad that they got such a high paying mission, but perhaps they don't realize that getting over 50K as a starter mission is a lot of money. They should have at least realized that 50K+ > 5k, and I tried to make it clear to the player who was speaking with the other Johnson that he was clearly much more innexperianced with the whole Shadowrunning business (I actually said that this was apparent to the player during the first meeting).

What they should also realize is that betrayal works both ways. By turning in the first Johnson, they were basically begging their Johnson to sell them out in turn. They didn't even do it subtly, as I said before, the recording is obviously done by one of the runners who was in the room, and in fact the Johnson could tell who it was because he noticed that the mage was looking around like he actually noticed the world around him, unlike before where he just kind of stood in the corner and didn't take interest in the conversation. He didn't think anything of it at the time because he just figured that the mage took interest in what was in the package.

Also, as a comment to using forensics against the PCs, unless they actually have some sort of knowledge of something like how a rocket launcher works, they would have no idea how to figure out how to mask the signature. Simply having the skill to fire the weapon would suffice for me to say that they would at least know about the marker.

Also keep in mind that this is not going to be a military stand off. The PCs will be sent to steal something, and as soon as they get into the room to retrieve the package, a flashbang and smoke gernade will be tossed into the room and the SWAT will use a sweeping entry pattern with thermographic imaging to take down the runners. In addition to this the squad leader will put a focused jam on the room to block their technomancer and any alternative means they could use to dispel the confusion. If all goes as they plan, they should have the runners incapacitated within a few combat rounds. Of course I will be sure to allow them intuition checks to see if they 'get a bad feeling about this' bonus to their suprise round check.

I'm not going to cheat in any way. I refuse to under any circumstances. I will do everything by the book to the best of my abilities in this matter, and to top it all off, if they turn down the trap, they may even get out of it scott free, but they will be registered criminals after this, and that does mean something in a world where information is power.

Really to finish it off, Toturi, it sounds like you are trying to convince me to allow the players to cheese out of the situation by rolling some dice. Short of direct mind control, I don't feel that it is possible to talk the entire KE police force into believing that you didn't commit the crime when they have absolutly, positivly, no evidence whats so ever that they didn't do it, and in-fact two of them have criminal SINs. What happens when they somehow get uber hits to convince them all that they didn't do it? Do you have God himself come down and tell them to let them go?

Also, I find that often times social skills (in all the games I play) are given a lot more leeway with doing impossible stunts because you can't 'defign' the rules for social interaction. Can you shoot the Moon with a handgun? No, but apparently you can convince someone (with no magic at all) that they are actually on the Moon right now being probed by government agents as part of a project to cross-breed aliens with humans and that you are there to save them from the system because the player got, like, 20 hits... Riiiiight. Going through some rediculous process of adding up penalties is pointless, because no matter how high you set it, no matter how improbable it seems, it can happen, and once you admit that, you might as well let the gun-slinger shoot the Moon because a rift in the space-time continuem just happens to appear right where the bullet was headed and warped it to the Moon for him because he rolled a lot of dice.

Ah, sorry for the rant. I do understand that the opposite is true as well, where when the player offers something plausable but the GM just flat out turns it down without rolling dice. I don't think thats fair at all, and I wholeheartedly agree that talking should be an option, but I feel that it is circumstantial, and that just because you roll well doesn't entitle you to circumvent reality entirely.

Posted by: FanGirl Apr 27 2006, 03:55 AM

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 04:07 AM

Posted by: toturi Apr 27 2006, 04:20 AM

What I am saying is that just because you think that shooting your way in and double crossing your Johnson is a bad thing, it does not mean that rules-mechanics-wise, it really is.

What I am saying is that if the dice say that they go scot-free, then perhaps you should let them go scot free. If they rolled uber-dice, then they should walk away. Just because the player rolled well doesn't mean that the GM should circumvent it (game mechanic reality) to suit his(GM perception) reality.

In fact, I always remind myself that my vision of reality isn't going to be the same as the players and the only constant in all this is the reality of the game mechanics.

Posted by: hyzmarca Apr 27 2006, 04:48 AM

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 05:04 AM

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 27 2006, 05:10 AM

Posted by: hyzmarca Apr 27 2006, 05:26 AM

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 05:50 AM

I appologize for being so obstinate about the topic of the use of social skills; I get the feeling that we could probably come to agree (or make some sort of comprimise) if we were playing together and as such recant my argument.

Posted by: eidolon Apr 27 2006, 06:15 AM

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 06:29 AM

Posted by: toturi Apr 27 2006, 12:38 PM

Posted by: TinkerGnome Apr 27 2006, 01:26 PM

Posted by: Daddy's Little Ninja Apr 27 2006, 02:02 PM

I thought the GM was po'ed because they were not using social skills. that they were just blazing away and running for the barrens.

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 02:43 PM

It would be pointless for me to restate my opinion on the social system any further, it all just depends on your game.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Apr 27 2006, 03:09 PM

Which is not an unrealistic expectation if their driver has spent so much time becoming so dang good that he uses a car like James Bond does.

Yes, in fact, if they do drive hard and fast and well enough, they should lose the police. They've earned it. Especially if they drive into the barrens, which is frankly probably more dangerous than the police.

Apparently they want a world like GTA, where if you can shake the heat long enough the cops go away, because they simply do not care about you. Realistic? No, especially if you've been gunning down cops. Then again, KE, Lone Star, are corporations - vengeance for officers who go down in the line of duty is something you'd expect from a modern-day civil service, but it's not that unrealistic to expect KE and Lonestar not to care - at least, the people in charge of the bottom line won't care.

Posted by: Daddy's Little Ninja Apr 27 2006, 03:29 PM

Or the police wait and as soon as the characters poke their heradso ut of the barrens- BLAM! Is not KE a subsidiary of Ares Macrotechnologies? Does not Ares have a subsidiary that makes MBT's?

The police will not go into the barrens but if the runners are limited to the barrens, their incomes should drop. They expect to sneak up on a run and then dash away guns blazing. But if they are so recognizable that they are fighting their way in, the target will be long gone.

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 06:04 PM

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 27 2006, 06:12 PM

Sounds to me like you should stop running. If nobody else wants to take up the mantle of GM, find something else to occupy your game nights. A movie marathon of intelligent criminals might spur some ideas in people.

The point of playing the game is to have fun. If you're not having fun, don't play the game. Sure, some nights you just won't be up to it because you had a bad day or something, but will GM anyway because that's your "job." But if you dislike doing it consistently, don't do it at all.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Apr 27 2006, 06:13 PM

I'm pretty sure some KE and Lone Star are going to have more than five dice to throw. That said, getting 17 dice into a single skill is no mean feat - I'd call the sacrifices made to munch his driving ability out that far as "earning it."

Posted by: Daddy's Little Ninja Apr 27 2006, 06:33 PM

The police have riggers, the police can buy hits too. They cna probably be better than the player. what happned if the tires go out on the car?

If these guys are bad enough, the police will go into the barrens after them. They are too much trouble to let go and the police can worry about the rest of the place later. Remember- SINless do not make reports so no one was hurt when the KE carpet bombed the street.

Posted by: Birdy Apr 27 2006, 08:25 PM

Posted by: Kagetenshi Apr 27 2006, 08:27 PM

If I wanted to spend an evening shooting things, I'd go to the local range.

(Alternately, for the lazy/disinclined/whatever, spend the evening with the current FPS of choice)

~J

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 10:01 PM

The five dice was referring to the average Lonestar cop in the book. I kinda got miffed there for some reason, so I'm sorry I came off so annoying. For the 'earning' part, your right, I do realize that he made a significant sacrafice to be so good at it, but what am I to do? He gets annoyed no matter what he does. If I make him roll his 16 dice - oops, he got two hits (which has happened an abnormal number of times)... now he is pissed off the rest of the night. I make him buy hits... well, he win's, but it boils down to me saying "yeah, you outrun them," which he realizes is really lame that he is so good at it that he doesn't even have a challenge any more. If I counter overwhelming skill with the overwhelming numbers/logistics of KE, he gets pissed because he can't just wave them off somehow. But wait... He gets annoyed when he does... Do you see why I'm having so many problems?

I've quit this group before, but they came back later on and I figured "sure, I'll give it another shot - and lets try Shadowrun while we are at it." Quiting isn't easy when my best friend knows that you can push me over with a feather to get me to keep running it. I'm just trying to make due with the situation, and I really want to make everyone happy... I just don't want to be the only one not having fun in order to accomplish that.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Apr 27 2006, 10:10 PM

Then don't let him outrun them. Give him a running gun-battle in a packed tunnel, ala the Matrix's Highway scene. Why can't he outrun them? Well, he can, but if he does, he'll take his jamming field (he does have a jamming device on his hummer o' doom, right?) away from the pursuing police, who will inform by radio of where he is. That would be a Bad Thing, since they could then arrange a roadblock up ahead.


However, about the guy who sold out a really, really good Johnson for 5K? I'd have a contact contact one of the other members of the team, and say that if they ever want work again, the one who did the sell-outting needs to die. You Do Not sell out a Mr. Johnson. And if you do, you don't do it for ONE-THIRTEENTH of what the Mr. Johnson pays!

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 27 2006, 10:35 PM

Monnock: I feel your pain. That's sort of how I felt as a GM after a while.

Posted by: Monnock Apr 27 2006, 11:38 PM

ShadowDragon8685: Actually, they had jumped out of the hummer earlier on. While going at full speed through one of the many allyways they kept taking, they all jumped out (one of them nearly died from the ordeal), but the car kept on driving via remote. They didn't think to jam the car as they didn't realize that the hacker that was plaguing them was actually in the vehicle.

Also, what you described is far more interesting than what they are willing to put effort into doing. They had an area jammer field, but they didn't activated until well after the assault was under way. They did an awesome job planning that... hah. It was powerful enough to block out the car's radio too. One of them was on of the truck with the intention of breaking into the cab. The mage buffed him all the way up... then he ended up almost being flung off the top of the truck because they decided to shoot the tires out of it while he was on top of it. Whoops.

Posted by: eidolon Apr 28 2006, 01:59 AM

on what everyone is looking for, and the actual situation you're in.

Posted by: FanGirl Apr 28 2006, 02:04 AM

Posted by: eidolon Apr 28 2006, 02:13 AM

Meh. If they took it "the wrong way", I'd take that as my cue to find new players. All he's doing is trying to provide them a better game.

Surely they all have maturity+1 hats.

Posted by: Monnock Apr 28 2006, 03:03 AM

I try talking to them, but every time I feel like I just don't say the right things or share enough of what I'm thinking. It's easy for me to spill myself out here because I don't have to worry about anyone here taking it personally, but some of the problems are with spefic players and specific things that they do so I try and be vague when I address the issue. I don't think my talking to them is working (at least not how I'm doing it), because even though they all agreed that it was really really stupid to sell out their Johnson in the first run I did for them, they did it again! Not only did they do it again, but they did it for 6x less money!

I took a look at the C.L.U.E. files, and I'm seriously considering printing out a copy of them for my players. Maybe seeing carelessness unfold will let them understand how I see the situation.

The worst part is, they really could have gotten away with what they did if the mage hadn't sold out their Johnson! That's what's so frustrating to me, and they should have known this from the last game.

Thank you again for the help.

Posted by: Birdy Apr 28 2006, 08:15 AM

Posted by: eralston Apr 28 2006, 08:21 AM

That's why America's great. Cause we're not only lazy, but simultaneously destructive...

Posted by: hyzmarca Apr 28 2006, 08:25 AM

Greece, I know, bans all video games but what others countries ban FPS games?

Posted by: eralston Apr 28 2006, 08:29 AM

I dunno, but maybe we should bomb them...I bet Bush would be up for it...

My first instinct when I think of censorship is China, but I would think they would like the soldier-building qualities of it.

Posted by: Shrike30 Apr 28 2006, 08:30 PM

Gaming in China is apparently an enormously booming industry.

You don't have to kill players to have their dumb actions count against them (although sometimes, it's helpful). One morning, one of the players gets a commcall from a contact of his... a loyal fixer, maybe a bartender in a cop bar, someone who'd have a source of information but not a great level of detail. "Man, I think you and your boys had better get low and stay low for a while... the cops have got you pegged for something, and I think they're coming gunning for you." Let them spend a couple of sessions trying to find places to stay, dodge surveillance, and getting commcalls from their mothers asking "Why did the police just visit my house? Are you in trouble again?"

Or have a representative of a Johnson show up. Possibly one connected to the guy they screwed over. "I've got some work for you. It's not nice, and it doesn't pay well. Actually, it doesn't really pay at all. But the group I represent is aware that you've got problems with the police, and we'd be willing to help you get rid of those problems... if you help us get rid of some of ours. If you don't like working under these conditions, you're free to go, and we won't hold it against you. You might find, however, that the police investigation will stop encountering the difficulties we've currently arranged for it."

Wanton behavior by characters should get a response, but it's certainly possible for you to make it more interesting than a bullet in the head. The players could get good sessions out of it, and generally decide that maybe they're better off not having to do tasks at someone else's bidding.

And hell, maybe one of the jobs the guy wants you to do involves going after ecoterrorists in Guam or wherever Someplace their "unique skills" might be useful, but they'll really hate being in. Damn mosquitoes...

Posted by: Daddy's Little Ninja Apr 28 2006, 08:45 PM

In China and Korea they have gaming addicts and rl crimes committed between gamers who do not like what on line characters do. I am not kidding. Things like murdering a gamer because his character stole the magic items of another gamer's character.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Apr 28 2006, 08:52 PM

This is nothing new. In the US it happened with tabletop gaming—see stories of various steam tunnel incidents. There are unbalanced people the world over, why is it so strange that some of these unbalanced people have hobbies?

~J

Posted by: Calvin Hobbes Apr 29 2006, 02:04 AM

The steam tunnel incident you're referring to happened once, with someone who had problems that were way past D&D problems.

Posted by: Kagetenshi Apr 29 2006, 02:27 AM

Thank you for that concise summary of my point.

~J

Posted by: eralston Apr 29 2006, 03:09 AM

My sister in-law once had a friend, a real snatch, whose judgement was extremely clouded about RPing by media portrayal of such incidents. When she found out I (and my wife) were gamers, she urged my sister in-law to convince us it was bad.

To my sister in-law's credit, she showed considerable restraint and I actually really misinterpreted the whole situation when it was explained to me and made me gut-response angry. Anyhow...long story short: For every person who commits something like that there's a hundred that blow it out of proportion, an equal number to hold them back and a million who just don't care.

Just try not to become a crazy-pscyho statistic, k brothers and sisters?

Posted by: Snow_Fox Apr 29 2006, 03:18 PM

The problem in China is it's getting worse. with the closed society this stuff is one of the few ways they can exercise their imagination. since art and philosophy is heavily regulated, so they get much more passionate about it than we could ever get. So you have more people being pushed further and the little htings that might make one of us get good and drunk and sending a nasty letter to a senator, gets them getting WAY personal over their characters.

To get htis back on track, sure the characters can be good with high skills and rad toys BUT whatever the runners can get, the police get better. what ever skills the players have, the police have better. Sure ont every street cop is a wheel man, but neither is every runner. You have a rigger. So do the police.

there is no toy the runners can't get, that the polcie can't get bigger/better/faster/way badder. If the police are on the scene, game over, you can't get away. You have to plan to not be there when the police arrive or you're otast.

Posted by: toturi Apr 30 2006, 12:17 AM

Posted by: Kanada Ten Apr 30 2006, 12:24 AM

Do forget that, during the chase, the cops get to add a die to their test for every car and drone in the chase. This represents their ability to coordinate and cut the runners off before they reach the Barrens. With enough manpower, they can overcome the rigger's edge - well, maybe not his Edge, but his big dice pool. And since the runners killed cops, the KE agents might use their own Edge in the test. That could get ugly.

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 30 2006, 12:26 AM

What kind of edge pool would a police force have? Maybe one per two-man team?

Posted by: Kanada Ten Apr 30 2006, 12:30 AM

I was thinking of just using one (but I guess they are mostly human, so does that make it 2?), but since it applies the rule of 6 to the test, we could see a lot of successes there.

Posted by: ronin3338 Apr 30 2006, 01:12 AM

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 30 2006, 11:04 PM

Posted by: James McMurray Apr 30 2006, 11:11 PM

Yeah, because obviously people should be killed for being good at video games. I take it you're not good at them?

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Apr 30 2006, 11:43 PM

Posted by: eralston Apr 30 2006, 11:45 PM

I became better at video games the moment I realized people can't play without their fingers. And you know how tasty fingers are

Posted by: toturi Apr 30 2006, 11:47 PM

Posted by: Voran May 1 2006, 12:25 AM

Posted by: James McMurray May 1 2006, 12:34 AM

Anyone who kills you for looting the monsters he just killed (or even just beats you up) needs to be culled from the gene pool. I'm not advocating going out and stealing from people in games, but like in RPGs, it ain't real.

Would you beat up your friend whose rogue just robbed the party and disappeared into the night at your weekend D&D game (or whatever similar situation may exist in whatever game you're playing)? If so, your friends need to find someone a little more stable to play with. If not, why would it be ok to do it to someone who stole from you online just because they're a stranger?

Posted by: eralston May 1 2006, 01:00 AM

Well, video game cult followers are necessarily excluded from social habits that allow for easy co-existence with other people. They are probably otherwise depressed and misanthropic, otherwise why would they so avidly play the game?

Yes, that person that just stole the party would probably receive at least a mock physical gesture against their continued good health. Death? Probably not, but they were still a dick and should be treated thusly. As far as strangers, people even in these forums have expounded upon the wisdom of the penalty of death for lesser offenses. Anyone who has would probably never follow up on it; however, you can never be sure.

Posted by: Kanada Ten May 1 2006, 06:33 AM

Posted by: Voran May 1 2006, 09:00 AM

The lines become less clear when the person who ninjaloots/ganks/etc adds insult to injury by taunting Everyone can be a brave trash talking texter in virtual reality, behavior that tends to get restrained in real life cause...well, it can lead to a beating. Is it any surprise vr behavior comes back to haunt a person too?

Posted by: tisoz May 1 2006, 11:03 AM

Posted by: Brontal May 1 2006, 11:41 AM

Posted by: James McMurray May 1 2006, 02:55 PM

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 May 1 2006, 03:03 PM

Nonwithstanding the fact that gold farming ruins the game for everybody who is not A: a gold farmer, or B: a gold farmer's customers, and all gold farmers need to be taken out back and beaten within an inch of their lives...

Bitter? Moi? Maybe.

But really, you'd be pissed off if one of the other players was selling nuyen for IRL dollars to the other players.

Posted by: James McMurray May 1 2006, 03:06 PM

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 May 1 2006, 03:12 PM

Mercenary!

Seriously, gold farming ruins MMOs. On top of the monthly fee to play, if you want to compete with those who do bisuness with the gold farmers, you have to pay more to some asshat in china so the guy who's running the gold farming sweatshop gets a load of money, and the bastard who just cussed you out gets a pittance.

Posted by: Kanada Ten May 1 2006, 08:19 PM

Gold farming ruins MMOs because they resist it. The game makers could end it all by selling gold themselves since they will always be able to undercut the market. However, gold farmers and power levelers are actually a large chunk of the service, so no, they don't ruin it; they make it affordable / profitable to run the servers.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 May 2 2006, 12:30 AM

We're already paying to play the game twice at the least, sometimes many more times. We don't need to pay three times.

Let's see...

Pay 40-60 dollars for the box, 80 if you get the collector's edition...
Pay between 10 and fifteen USD a month to play. Heads up folks, that comes up to 120-180 USD a year. Not much for a year, but that's also a hefty library of Shadowrun books you could have purchased...

Not to mention any expansion boxes, which cost 30 dollars to buy, on average.

And on top of that, we should pay the game makers another 200 dollars to get the 200,000 gold we need to compete with that rich ass-tard who calls everybody a newb, even though the only reason he can win in fights is because his daddy gave him an unlimited creditcard which he has used to buy uber-gear?

Posted by: Kanada Ten May 2 2006, 12:34 AM

Why not? It's just like a CCG, then. With the added ability to actually grind your way there.

Besides, there are games that max level and items in PvP (Guild Wars, for example).

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 May 2 2006, 12:38 AM

Maxleveling is the worst and most horrific mechanic to restrict munchkinism that I can think of.

"Oh, I can't wear this helmet. What? Just put it on my head? Duuuuude! I can't just put it on my head! I'm only level twelve, and I has to be level fifteen to wear it! What? Won't it fit on my head? Sure it'll fit on my head! Put it on? I just told you, I can't doooo that, duuude!"

And it rarely prevents abuses anyway, because then they'll just switch to selling accounts.

Posted by: Kanada Ten May 2 2006, 12:49 AM

Selling accounts /is/ fair. I'm not sure what you issue really is here. What does it matter if the person you're opposing has something because the earned it in game, or earned it out of game? Some mystical "that's not fair" tantrum?

Posted by: James McMurray May 2 2006, 01:38 AM

Posted by: Kagetenshi May 2 2006, 01:51 AM

Posted by: Kanada Ten May 2 2006, 01:54 AM

The intellectual properties of the password and userID do belong to you, and you should be taxed when you sell them. You're taxed when you buy them, after all.

Posted by: Fire Hawk May 2 2006, 02:02 AM

I love the explainations that people have to deny the obvious.

The truth is, I never got into MMORPG gaming because I don't see the point of a game I have to keep buying.

Yet, some people deny this fact by saying "no, you're just buying the game once, then paying for server time! Yeah! That's it!"

Since I can't play the game without being online, that kinda means that I have to keep paying for it, right? All the while, I could be using that cash to feed my paper/pencil/dice habi-er, hobby, which actually requires me to think.

As opposed to an MMORPG, which is brain-rot in comparison...

Posted by: Kagetenshi May 2 2006, 02:24 AM

Posted by: Kanada Ten May 2 2006, 02:30 AM

Posted by: Fire Hawk May 2 2006, 02:30 AM

On the flip-side, there's always the prospect of a good ol' MUD. No flashy graphics, but (depending on the one you find) the playerbase will actually be more fun to hang around with (In Dragon Swords, we used to join up into 20+ player groups and go 'round slaughtering MOBiles.), and you never have to worry about people H4XX0|2ing the system/buying their way into higher equipment.

Plus, they're all utterly FREE (except for ValhallaMUD. Talk about defeating the purpose...)

Posted by: hyzmarca May 2 2006, 02:43 AM

Money only matters if it can be used to buy things that mater. The best way to avoid powergaming through gold farming is to properly balance items so that the most expensive items are no more powerful than their cheapest counterparts.

Posted by: Kagetenshi May 2 2006, 03:07 AM

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 2 2006, 03:15 AM

Posted by: Kanada Ten May 2 2006, 03:23 AM

Posted by: Kagetenshi May 2 2006, 03:45 AM

Given that the US Government decides what is copyrightable within the US (input from the Berne convention aside), it does indeed not matter if you call BS on the government.

As for TOS, it is indeed not a legal matter. Fraud, on the other hand, is—if you sell someone your username and password, you're in the clear (and the account will be cancelled as soon as it is determined that the original licensee is no longer the individual using it, as is their legal prerogative). On the other hand, if you claim to sell them your character and their virtual possessions—something you do not own—you have fraudulently misrepresented your legal rights over the items in question and their transferability.

~J

Posted by: Kanada Ten May 2 2006, 03:50 AM

Well, the courts actually make the ruling on the holder of the intellectual property, but again, it doesn't matter here. I'd love to see them arrest some chinese kid on the charge of for selling his "character". "What? No, I was selling my character; you know, my ethics."

Like I said, backwards services.

Posted by: hyzmarca May 2 2006, 03:55 AM

----------

"The" : A poem

The

----------

Great, now I've copyrighted "The". Everytime someone uses "The" in a sentence they have to pay me $50 US.



That's why you can't copyright words and phrases.




TOS is a contract and violating a contract is a tort (assuming that the contract is legal on its face). Of course, as contracts go TOS is slightly less enforceable than a same-sex marriage certificate written in invisible ink on wet toiler paper. But they could try.

Posted by: Kanada Ten May 2 2006, 03:58 AM

Actually, I'd let you sue if someone else wrote a poem called "The" with the subject of "The" spaced how you spaced it. Of course, you could only sue for the value of the poem, which is 0.

Posted by: Kagetenshi May 2 2006, 04:19 AM

There, you have discovered how one-word poems become copyrighted—it isn't the word.

A word is not copyrightable. A work that consists of one word with one particular layout may be.

~J

Posted by: hyzmarca May 2 2006, 04:37 AM

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 May 2 2006, 05:19 AM

Two ways to "solve" gold-farming.
Here's my favorite: Make every common item on the game server ridiculously cheap, to the point that any n00b can own one within an hour's work, and make every "super duper deluxe special item" a piece of junk with a very marginal boost in power over the super-cheap version, and ten times more expensive. This way those things become the "sunday best" gear that a n00b will wear out to strut, and you can tell that if someone is walkign around decked out in nothing but the super-duper 1337 "deluxe" version is either an ancient player, or a schmucktard who paid IRL cash.

This will never happen, because the next "super-duper deluxe!" that keeps coming ouit is what keeps the non-roleplayers coming back for more.

The other option is to flat-out undercut the gold farmers officially. This again does not solve the problem of your IRL cash being leveraged to get you an in-game benefit. This would be tatamount to paying Valve USD$100 for a "legal" wall-hack that Valve Anti-Cheat ignored.

Posted by: Calvin Hobbes May 2 2006, 06:11 AM

One game that I saw handle farming very well is the Matrix Online game. There, agents show up and kick your ass if you're doing the same mission for very long, and anyone can perform modifications to items/item creation, devaluing the value of equipment, although I suppose inflation's always going to be an issue.

Posted by: Voran May 2 2006, 07:14 AM

I suppose they could do something like Morrowind/Elder scrolls 3/4. You can wear anything you want, any time you want, but if your skill level isn't high enough you don't get the full benefits from the gear.

Posted by: James McMurray May 3 2006, 12:02 AM

Coincidentally enough I just noticed that one of the advertisements circulated through at the top of the page is $1.50 for 1,000 platinum pieces in D&D Online. I guess we know the Dumpshock Official Stand on gold farming.

Posted by: Kagetenshi May 3 2006, 12:13 AM

Google official stance, actually.

~J

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 May 3 2006, 12:24 AM

Google's official stance is "They pay us the ca$h-monie$, so until someone tells us it's illeagal, we put their ads up"

Posted by: James McMurray May 3 2006, 12:29 AM

For a second tehre I thought you were telling me to google for the phrase "official stance."

Posted by: Platinum May 3 2006, 02:42 AM

Just click on the adds at the top of the page ... and cost those gold farming slimbags some coin.

Posted by: Taran May 3 2006, 02:44 AM

Actually, Google will remove specific ads from a given site if asked.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 3 2006, 02:47 AM

Posted by: hyzmarca May 3 2006, 03:36 AM

I have mixed feelings about google's human rights policies. On one hand, Google China is censored to PRC standards. On the other hand, Google has fought requests for information by the United States government and the main Google site is available Chinese uncensored.

Personally, I like that they sold adspace to disreputable internet pharmacies who give perscriptions to anyone with the coin to pay. I like that they sell ads to goldfarmers. I like that they are generally unscrupulous because I like the basic concept of lacking and and all ethical and moral standards while being legally savy enough to cover your ass.

That is why I watch Boston legal after all, to see lawyers who shoot people and get away with it, to see lawyers who cut off preists' fingers and get away with to, to see lawers who say "you should commit a crime but I can't advise you to do that because I'm a lawyer" and get away with it because they cover their own asses.

Now, part of me sees Google China as a way for Google to cover their own asses in China while subverting censorship by still providing the real service to anyone savy enough to get around government filters in the first place.

From this point of view, Google isn't immoral enough. They need to hire Shadowrunners to kil some people for them if they haven't already.


Of course, it is possible that I'm misreading Google's stance on China and they really do buy into the censorship BS.