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Posted by: Nerbert Jun 16 2004, 08:22 PM

Before I begin, this group has never played Shadowrun before. This is what happened over the very first three hours of their very first experience. They are all reasonably experienced roleplayers, primarily with D&D.

Three characters, a human shaman medic, an orc mercenary and a human adept "urban samurai". Only this urban samurai is all style, no tweakage. Wears typical japanese garb, carries two dikoted katanas, even though he can only use one at a time, spent extra to get all his weapons, and his dikoted armor, engraved and embossed.

Their mission, given by a branch of LoneStar, is to track down three kidnapees, all of whom disappeared in one particular area. Mistake number one. They accept the mission practically blindfolded, they don't ask for a percentage up front, they don't try to negotiate for a better price, they don't even ask for the J's name or to see any identification, all they get is a phone number to contact him at. Ouch. Thats gonna come back to bite them.

The next thing they do is leave that very night to go to a club where one of the kidnapees was last seen. The shaman and the mercenary enter the club, leave their weapons at the front desk, and proceed to ask people in the club if they've seen the kidnapees. This is a club full of writhing dancers, alcoholics, and drug addicts. There isn't a single sober person in the bar except for a collection of people sitting at a group of tables. These sober people consist of couples not much more sober than the dancers, and clearly people here to avoid attracting attention. And they talk to every single one of them. Mistake number two. They walk around, from person to person, showing them all a picture and telling them all different stories about why they're trying to find them. *slaps forehead* They're up to five successes on their wrong party test and they haven't even learned anything yet.

Meanwhile, the adept samurai stealths off down the alley to scope out the club from the rear. All he finds is a solitary elf guard smoking a cigarette and occasionally huffing from what looks like an asthma medicine dispenser. Our adept watches for about half an hour, sees a car pull up around dusk, some people get in, and the car drives up. He records the license plate dutifully. He then proceeds to hurl a trash can at the guard to distract him and GreatLeap through the air to attack him in a single strike. Mistake number three. The guard is hopped up on Jazz, which gives him enough of an edge to dodge the adepts running attack and go to hammer on the nearby door. Adept chops the guard in half and jumps out of the way of the guards exiting the building with SMGs. (yay improved reflexes) At this point though, things turn sour. He tries a running disarm (he's too far away from them for a regular attack) on the first guard, who dodges. This puts him at point blank against two SMG wielding Jazzed up guards. Between the two of them, one burst a piece, they put him down to one box away from death before he gets his initiative again, which he spends fleeing for his life. I basically let him get away at this point, I didn't feel like killing him before he'd even accomplished anything useful at all. Though I did penalize him for two ballistic armor points off of his nice, pretty, expensive armor.

By the way, these guards were average in just about every respect.

So, miraculously our other two characters hear the burst fire from the alley way over the din of the band playing and run out to help him. They see him hauling his bloodied carcass towards a public park where they stowed their transportation. Mistake number four. Bloodied, shot up people should stick to the alleys. When we closed the session (we had to finish early because one person was busy) a cop car had just pulled up after witnessing the shaman heal him back from certain death in the middle of a public park. I can only pray they have enough presence of mind to tell the cop he was mugged.

The moral? A combination of lousy dice and poor planning will lead to disaster every time, no matter how much more powerful than your opponent you think you are.

Posted by: Backgammon Jun 16 2004, 09:39 PM

Why were the guards idly taking Jazz? It's a combat drug, it doesn't give out a high or anything. Were they expecting trouble?

Posted by: Person 404 Jun 16 2004, 09:46 PM

Posted by: Street Doc Jun 16 2004, 09:47 PM

The mistakes that you noted I can see being a problem with people that have played SR before. However, you said none of these players have played SR before and are used to DnD and other type games. It seems to me like they roleplayed like they are used to, they didnt know to ask the J anything or to cover their tracks, because most times in DnD you dont do those things. You get your mission or quest, go off to kill, find, or capture what ever you are suppose too and then come back and get paid. So my suggestion is to talk with the players, let them know that SR is different roleplaying the DnD and go over their mistakes so they can learn from them. Just my 2 cents worth...

Posted by: Nerbert Jun 16 2004, 09:58 PM

If nothing else, they were all addicted and it was in ready supply. They were definitely waiting for the car to arrive and wouldn't have wanted to be caught off guard. Its cheap enough and lasts long enough that I didn't think it was unreasonable for them to be using it pretty constantly, especially since you get hammered when it wears off.

Posted by: LaughingTiger Jun 16 2004, 10:13 PM

Your players actions reflect entirely on what you told them about the game world before you sat them down to play.

Did you even give them a clue about what they were doing? Did you allow them to have an idea that maybe, just maybe, they should do some other kind of digging?

They did what most people in that situation would do, they went and asked questions, just like you would in a kidnap scenario in D&D. I don't think they're horrible players at all. I think they were horribly informed. That's not their fault.

Posted by: BitBasher Jun 16 2004, 10:17 PM

Unless you sit down and talk to them about the way SR works you can expect this to keep happening. You can also expect them to get frustrated when they constantly get screwed for doing what they think is the right thing, because in most other RPG's it is.

You are essentially penalizing them for things their PC's shouyld know but the players do not. It's the GM's job to fill in this information when you see it happen.

Posted by: Smiley Jun 17 2004, 12:07 AM

Maybe have them read the fiction thingy in the front of SR3. Perhaps an adventure or two.

Posted by: tisoz Jun 17 2004, 12:39 AM

Give them each the Common Sense edge for free, then you can freely tell them when something would or would not be a good idea.

Posted by: Eyeless Blond Jun 17 2004, 01:11 AM

heh, I'm of the opinion that Common Sense should be a requirement for anyone with less than six month's worth of SR gaming experience, based on how many people here seem to swear by it.

Posted by: Nerbert Jun 17 2004, 02:39 AM

See, I've thought of all this, and normally I would agree with you. Except that these players all have a pretty good degree of experience with general role playing games. And there are two things I never do, leave a employer without at least some basic credentials, and attacking random people. Even if I am playing D&D, which I'm starting more and more to believe is role playing for kindergardeners.

On the other hand, every group is different. I'm just surprised how much I'm going to have to babysit them. The last group of new players I introduced to shadowrun got the gist of things right away.

Posted by: JackWill Jun 17 2004, 03:24 AM

i understand no negoatting with MJ.. its usally ends up wacking you and talking you down damn it.. and then it normally gets runners to back out of the run.

Well i useally just give contact numbers to an MJ and i expect the same back...

no names, no id.. just numbers.. thats the best way it works.

Posted by: Snow_Fox Jun 17 2004, 03:45 AM

It seemed fine, for beginers, until the adept jumped the elf guard. A phrase like "are you a shadowrunner or a mugger?" might have saved a lot of trouble.

Posted by: TinkerGnome Jun 17 2004, 03:57 AM

Getting credientials from the Johnson isn't really important... but you should get his picture if at all possible. Cybereye cameras are great for that. Ear recorders can get you a voice print, too.

If anything looks fishy, you use that stuff to dig into his identity and figure out what's really going on.

Posted by: Fygg Nuuton Jun 17 2004, 03:59 AM

I have to agree, they all did rather well. they attempted to perform the run without getting sidetracked by "killing everybody in a 5 mile radius" something i see alot of noobs doing. the samurai which seemed to be the wild card of the bunch watched the door for 30 minutes (IIRC) then dispatched the guard, something i would never do but in a game like d&d that seems perfectly restrained to me.

also i feel that him retreating to the safety of the park was unnecisarily "boned" by the cop driving by at the worst moment, i would have cut some slack on the first run, but let them know later it could have gone much much worse.

as a side note the thrown garbage can was, different but IMHO a very nice move on the adepts part if he felt he had to kill the guard, at least he tried to distract him. did the adept player know what jazz was?

"the guard huffs off of what seems to be an asthma inhaler"
"the guard huffs off of what seems to be an asthma inhaler, but on a second glance there may be a good chance it is jazz, a combat drug used to quicken reflexes"

but as always this is only me 2¥ hope the next session goes better

Posted by: kevyn668 Jun 17 2004, 04:10 AM

This is how newbs learn. My first group that I GMed for did pretty much the same thing. (the weapon specialist shot the StufferShack girl in broad daylight and didn't grab the recording of said act). But then they learned from it.

Then they lost interest .

But a month or so ago they started back up with me about when we were gonna play.

But I don't have enough time to put a decent story together...

Oh well, your guys'll get better. Trust me, I used to be in sales. We don't lie.

(ps. I would have let them slide on the cop car drive by...)

Posted by: sidartha Jun 17 2004, 07:06 AM

Also some thing to keep in mind is that your players are most likely operating off of some little misconstrued thing you said that made him/her/them jump to some seemingly stupid conclusion. I didn't fully appretate this fact until I started GM'ing and simatainously driving one of my players home. We would talk about the game and discuss what was "supposed" to happen and what actually happened and it led to some real insights on my part.
The point is let the players take all the line they want during the game cuz you never know who they're going to hang with it.

Posted by: Abstruse Jun 17 2004, 10:59 AM

My group now is two D&D players, one half-hearted Shadowrun player (only plays deckers and I don't think has read a single book on the game, just what I've told him over the years), and one person who's kept up pretty well with the Shadowrun world. That's working out better than I'd hoped mainly because the vet Shadowrun players are working the paranoia overtime (seeing plots I wish I'd thought of first) and it's rubbing off on the others. They were even at the point where they didn't want to go to a safehouse just because it happened to be about 2-3 miles from the club they just had a shootout at. Ah, such quick learners...and I haven't even had to teach them any "lessons" yet.

The Abstruse One

Posted by: The White Dwarf Jun 17 2004, 04:25 PM

To the original poster... Hail Bad_GM_01. Any of those characters have contacts, or backgrounds, or perhaps even the freaking etiquette skill? Oh they do? Then the *characters* might know some things the *players* dont. Its YOUR job to make sure you inform them of that, by saying things like "in your professional experience you know its typical to get 1/3 or 1/2 up front" ... not string them out on all the mistakes.

Maybe if you tried to work with the players to make the game a good fun learning experience, theyd want to come back to it. Gloating on these boards how you held all the cards and were oh so benevolent to go easy on foolish new players... man someone has a security issue. Wish you could come play at our game so we could belittle you for hours and see how many of your characters we could kill...

Posted by: Clank Jun 17 2004, 09:52 PM

I agree with White Dwarf. I don't know how much info you gave your players beforehand, but were they aware of the paranioa slant the game has? It sounds like they got the quest from the king, proceded to the village and asked all the townspeople if they had any info. Typical D&D stuff. Being a Veteran Roleplayer doesn't mean they have range. I don't know your group dynamic, but from the context of your post, it seems very elitist (those N00BZ). If they were a group that talked crap about SR and you're showing them that there's more to life than D&D, then I guess what you did is fine, but otherwise, that's pretty messed up.

Posted by: Dax Jun 17 2004, 10:29 PM

D&D reduced to the red headed step child of the RPG universe. I swear, one of these days I will make Wizards pay dearly for what they did to that game...

But in reguards to the story you told. I've found out the hard way that new players can be a bit hard to rangle sometimes. You can think that you explained things easily enough, but they will still be confused about the specifics of what you mean. Definatly make sure that everything has been covered in as much detail as you can muster.

And if that doesn't work.....hit them.

Posted by: LaughingTiger Jun 17 2004, 10:43 PM

Since I see this brought up over and over and over again, I have to ask.

What's wrong with D&D players? Is there some stereotype I'm missing? Some weird group of people that drag down the reputation of anyone who plays the game? Or is this just an elitist attitude, that if another game doesn't share the setting, rules complexity, or ideas of our game world, that it's somehow an inferior product?

I just don't get it.

Posted by: Dax Jun 17 2004, 11:01 PM

Beats the hell out of me LT. I can play D&D, Shadowrun, White Wolf, Warhammer, pretty much any of them. So I don't reall see the value in tearing people up beacuse they happen to like D&D.

But hey, i'm just one person. Obviously my "live and let live" way of dealing with RPGs is in the major minority.

Posted by: Luke Hardison Jun 17 2004, 11:11 PM

Posted by: BitBasher Jun 17 2004, 11:20 PM

Mr Hardison just stated the main reason that SR is the only game I play now.

The Games just require a wholesale mindset. The character interaction is far more complicated when things are not broken down into easy good guys and bad guys.

Posted by: Luke Hardison Jun 17 2004, 11:21 PM

Posted by: John Campbell Jun 17 2004, 11:23 PM

D&D tends to encourage a black and white view of the game universe, especially in people whose only gaming experience is with D&D. There are the Good people, and the Evil monsters, and you talk to the former and kill the latter, and if you have any doubt as to who's who, you just cast Know Alignment and find out. Not all D&D games are like that, but, IME, most are... and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with that. It's just that players who are used to playing that way are out of their element when they get thrown into a typical Shadowrun game, where everyone is shades of grey (and usually pretty dark shades, at that), and the PCs may not even be the good guys themselves.

Posted by: Dax Jun 17 2004, 11:23 PM

Posted by: BitBasher Jun 17 2004, 11:32 PM

It's also 99.9% of all the games I have ever seen or heard stories of

Posted by: Dax Jun 17 2004, 11:43 PM

Bit, you completley missed the point of that post.

People bitch that D&D is an over simplistic game with base generalities about good, evil and so on. The fact remains that the game was orginally designed to have one foot based in reality. The whole concept that "yes this is a fantasy game, but people still act the same".

I may come across as an old bitter man here. But I belong to the old school thought of D&D. Where the difference between life and death came down to wether you turned the knob on the door to the left or the right, and the only way you'd know which one to do would be if you PAYED ATTENTION to the clues and info that had been scattered in the mission before hand.

I've known good and evil characters to work together on for 20 some levels of play. They didn't like each other, but they sure as hell didn't follow the whole concept of "good" talk and "evil" kill. There are "good" religions in Greyhawk that I aboslutly loathe beacuse they act like frikin Jerry Falwell clones.

But the game has become purile and a mockery of what it was. I partially blame that on the Forgotten Realms campaign (GOD I hate Elminster), and I also blame that on what Wizards has done to the game.

All I know is that I am sick and tired of the elitiest attitude some SR players show to all other RPG's on the market.

Posted by: cha-cha Jun 17 2004, 11:44 PM

I have seen both types of games. I was in a D&D campaign when I first started learning role playing and the dude did not own the rulebook, just made dungeons and populated them with monsters. It was not uncommon to hear things like this:

DM: you enter the cavern and see 483 orcs (amazing how quickly my paladin could count, huh?),

ME: Kill em!

DM: Okay, they're dead! You see a +3 sword and a cursed shield (was not aware I had magic vision!).

ME: take the sword, ignore the shield.

Granted, i was 8 at the time. But the last campaign I very briefly played in was in 98 or so after the DM had read George RR Martin's 'Game of Thrones,' so it was all about political intrigure and various alliances and all sorts of consequences and covering up murders and trying to find assassins and working with the guilds and the guard to discover the real thief, etc etc. Very fun and quite 'realistic' given the constrains of fantasy, but my heart belongs to shadowrun now.

Long story short, I think D&D is an entry level game for a lot of folks who view RPG's as Doom but with dice and pencils. And the really solid ROLEplayers vs ROLLplayers tend to get lumped together and (understandably so) can get defensive. Plenty of GREAT players and GM's to be found in every game...I miss my first Robotech GM..that guy taught me everything I know!

I have heard of plenty of shadowruns on boards etc. where the higher the body count, the greater the game...so to each their own..I figure the minute a gun is pulled, the run is a failure...but my players LOVE Alias and Ronin etc etc etc.....and that is why I love them

Posted by: Clank Jun 17 2004, 11:48 PM

The problem with D&D is at its heart, it meant to tell the stories of Epic Fantasy. To some people, that means stories where the good stay good and the bad stay dead. Sometimes people get locked into modes (like starting adventures at the inn) and so I'm not surprised that the PC's acted the way they did ("It's worked before, why not now?").

Posted by: BitBasher Jun 17 2004, 11:58 PM

Posted by: TinkerGnome Jun 18 2004, 12:15 AM

You know... I don't think you can blame Wizards for what D&D is now. TSR drove it to this, and Wizards has just cashed in on it and made it more popular. The fact of the matter is that 3.5 is a much better system (on balance) than 3.0 and 3.0 was a much better system than AD&D (on balance). The fact that some people weave stupid stories around the rules is a non-issue. People weave some pretty stupid Shadowrun stories, too.

There are probably alot more (in terms of percentage) bad D&D games than SR games, but only because the simplicity of D&D lends itself more easily to younger and less mature players.

If you want to run a heroic epic, there are plenty of other systems out there, but the majority of them end up costing you more money (hell, Wizards released the majority of the rules for free on the web), being a lot harder to learn, and having a smaller player base. Many gamers start with D&D and then move on to bigger, better things.

I know I did. I do still play 3.5 a bit, though. I rather like it.

Posted by: LaughingTiger Jun 18 2004, 03:27 AM

What if the game world does have a "black and white" view? Simplicity does not mean or equal inferority.

So most D&D settings don't deal with a grey scale like Shadowrun does, but that's to be expected. They're completely different genres. It's like comparing apples to goats. I think it's kinda like comparing, I don't know, Pulp Fiction, to Lord of the Rings. It's not that one is inferior to other, they're simply different kinds of stories.

I also don't think the system breaks things down into simple good and bad, I think that's a reflection of the author of that particular story. You could do the same with any game system, labeling one as leading to that style may be a bit unfair.

Something is just rubbing me wrong, when I hear someone mention gamers playing one game, and how they are slightly, subtly inferior to gamers who play other games. Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm just hearing things, but I can't stand elitist attitudes. However, I think I'm agreeing with a majority of what's being said, I think I might be saying it in a different way.

Posted by: BitBasher Jun 18 2004, 03:37 AM

Posted by: LaughingTiger Jun 18 2004, 04:47 AM

Posted by: sidartha Jun 18 2004, 07:01 AM

Posted by: Voorhees Jun 18 2004, 07:16 AM

Poit, my friend, not point. Poit.

Posted by: Abstruse Jun 18 2004, 11:29 AM

The only thing WotC has done that I don't like is turn the d20 system into a "standard". Companies are trying to cash in on it instead of being innovative. It's stagnating much of the RPG industry as otherwise good companies are forced to make d20 versions of their games to stay competative, and it stagnates the player base as I've found out personally as no one wants to bother to learn a new rules set anymore. If it's not d20, they won't bother playing it no matter how great it is.

Trying to get back on track though, most of the D&D players you run across haven't played games other than hack-and-slash. You go through a bunch of talking between the GM and the guy in Drama, then you go to the dungeon, the thief (sorry, that's ROGUE now isn't it?) disarms the traps, and you slaughter things with either spell or sword and never both (unless you're a Paladin). Then you loot the corpses, grab the treasure, rescue the princess/prince/king/head of the church/whoever, and you get your reward and XP. I've got two D&D players in my group now (as I said earlier) and there are two things you have to do IMMEDIATELY to break them from D&D habits.

1) Get them paranoid. If they're paranoid, they're acting correctly. If you're not going to do bugs on them, give them 2XS to read. It's probably the best written of all the Shadowrun novels I've read so far (somewhere between fifteen and two dozen), and it does well to show how people in the world generally act. Paranoid as all hell and seeing connections between everything.

2) Get them to understand body count doesn't equal experience. The best way to do this is, in the first adventure, give them opportunities to kill people indesciminently. The second adventure, hit them big with the reprocussions of this. In the third adventure, they wake up and find out the first two were a dream or something so they can still play their first characters and still learn their lesson.

The Abstruse One

Posted by: tjn Jun 18 2004, 01:36 PM

Posted by: Solstice Jun 18 2004, 04:15 PM

Why did they have dikoted gear when they are just starting? Isn't there an availbility on that?

Posted by: TinkerGnome Jun 18 2004, 04:17 PM

Yes. It's not greater than 8, though.

Posted by: BitBasher Jun 18 2004, 04:19 PM

I've already said that no players are inferior, all are equal.

Trying to change my opinion about liking or not liking a game system is futile, it's like trying to convince me not to liek a color or a smell, it's entirely opinion. I despise d20 level based systems in general, and there's nothing wrong with that anything more than someone else hating d6 non level based systems. It's all just prospective opinions.

Posted by: Eyeless Blond Jun 18 2004, 06:45 PM

Posted by: Traks Jun 18 2004, 07:00 PM

Posted by: Herald of Verjigorm Jun 18 2004, 07:28 PM

Posted by: Phaeton Jun 18 2004, 07:30 PM

Posted by: Nikoli Jun 18 2004, 07:32 PM

Ya know, if I want a party spread like that I'll play Rifts.

Posted by: Phaeton Jun 18 2004, 07:32 PM

Posted by: Nikoli Jun 18 2004, 07:34 PM

Never played/heard of Torg, what is it?

Posted by: Phaeton Jun 18 2004, 07:35 PM

It's sooooorta like Rifts...Except. Eh. Well, it's hard to explain. But it is one of the earlier tabletop RPGs. Might be defunct these days, but not sure. I mainly learned about it from my cousin.

Posted by: tjn Jun 18 2004, 08:04 PM

Posted by: Phaeton Jun 18 2004, 08:07 PM

What IS a Mul?...Or Mul Monster?

Posted by: TinkerGnome Jun 18 2004, 08:08 PM

Posted by: Phaeton Jun 18 2004, 08:12 PM

Ahhhhhh...

...*lets the thread continue*

Posted by: Raife Jun 19 2004, 06:01 AM

I feel the biggest mistake the GM made in the above mentioned story was one that is as old as roleplaying. He didn't let the PC's succeed... Let me explain...

Yes pc's screw up and such, and yes, sometimes they should be allowed to fail. But I play with a very fast and loose rule my players don't know about. If they come up with a plan, I CHANGE my run to make it have a chance at success.

If your players decided that questioning the people in the club was the way to go, there needed to be a guy in the club who knows whats going down. It would have been a great scene for your players to question everyone, then they see an elf starting to look nervous as they work their way through the crowd towards him. Then, just as they get within 10 feet of him he takes off.

As they pursue this elf through the crowd, dodging dancers and couples they notice he is heading towards a door leading to an alleyway. The man bursts through the door and says something to the elf with the Jazz. The sam in the alley realises something is up, as his two companions come rushing out behind him... BAM combat insues as a car from across the street turns on its headlights and begins to drive over... the players better subdue this guy quick, and get him out of here for questioning.

This gives you a fight scene, a chase scene AND a hook to get them back on target!

Posted by: nezumi Jun 19 2004, 05:16 PM

Posted by: Phaeton Jun 20 2004, 01:06 AM