to cut to the short of it, with all related media under consideration, how bad a run can go is "Alien monstrosities flood into the world, annihilating everything that lives, and destroy all future possibility of life inhabiting the earth, while electronic entities realize that the final measures used to combat the horrors and themselves will lead to a slow, inevitable loss of energy that will starve themselves. The lack of life will quickly warp the mana, trapping the horrors in their own death pit, gradually being erased from existence through mana starvation."

That's not how bad a run can go, that's how bad a run can go if the GM is a jerk who wants to wank some shitdark all over the setting.

It should never get that bad. Even if the Runners fuck up royal, there are much more powerful people than them who are probably planning to do something about it.

Yeah, I'm not really seeing why anyone would leave those kind of consequences in the hands of a small group of mercs. Particularly 1 small group of mercs, since there are undoubtedly more factions interested in the world continuing to exist who have better resources to throw at this en mass.

The question was never qualified by the phrase, "... when running under a reasonable GM." Under such a consideration, I'd say TPK.

Amazingly no run I've been on has ever gone this bad. The worst I had was after 2 full sessions of sneaking around in an enemy HQ, a street sam pulled out his unsilenced rifle and shot a guy in the head. Of course at that point it was no longer stealth and they inflicted death by superior firepower, but his teammates were about to murder him on the spot -- especially the mage.

We (sort of) finished this 'run last night. 2 characters dead, 2 character arrested. Me alone staying in a swanky hotel with spa and full room service. It sounds like I sold them out but I really didn't, and my situation is more tentative than it seems.

Mungo forgets he's lactose intolerant and gets real ice cream.

It sure does sound like you sold them out. How did that happen?




Nobody deserves to be subjected to that.

Nobody.

Q:How bad?

A:Prison, troll named Bubba as cell mate, not enough bleach.

When somebody thinks a 'Drive By Grenading' would be a good distraction for a data steal at a small research facility.

Where half the team start blindly launching grenades into the facility with the other half, as well what they are being paid to steal.

With or without appropriate Throwing / Launcher skill?

Because explosions do tend to distract people. It's just a question of whether you're alive to make use of the distraction or not. (That and whether you can get the job done and get out by the time the cops show up.) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

~Umi

This one isn't, strictly speaking, Shadowrun, but Eclipse Phase.

Still, it has a job going completely sideways.

The Job:
The group have been assigned to recover a missing Firewall asset, a Sentinel by the name of Violet Perdido, whose last known location was in her normal base of operations, Elysium. After some investigation and some properly paranoid gun-jumping, they have determined that she has been captured by the Shui Fong, the most powerful criminal organization, and only Triad, in town.

They determine that their best lead for locating her is that she had to pass through the Jade Dragon Inn, the Triad's breadbasket. The Jade Dragon is a ten-story hotel, containing (among a host of other criminal enterprises, including a black market point-of-sale and warehouse,) a Black Kettle* on the top floor. They know this because they recovered her body, but it had a 15-year-old Triad soldier in it.

The group considers getting close to one of the black kettle technicians by hijacking one of the prostitutes in a pleasure pod and using her body to get close to the technician (who get steep discounts on the whores and other services as compensation for being restricted to the building, so they can't be just black-bagged and interrogated by people like my PCs,) but reject that as the only one willing to fork a copy into a pleasure pod is an AGI with nonexistant experience in operating a humanoid body and very minimal experience in (simulated) sex.

They instead hatch the following plan: They'll recruit a bunch of shit-kickers who are of a mind to attack those who hold people in slavery (Indentured servitude, generally seen by its detractors as the same thing,) load them up in a big old mining site pickup truck with a gun mounted to it on a robot arm, crash through the front of the hotel, and have them launch a nakedly aggressive raid on the black market. While their goon squad are drawing the Triad's attention, they group would hit the black kettle, and liberate the slaves.

Their Proxy (Mr. Johnson) does not like this plan, but he wants Violet Perdido back and un-interrogated badly enough to give them only three instructions:

• Don't get into a gun-fight on the streets of Chinatown.
• Don't make the news.
• Don't set Chinatown on fire.

*Black Kettle: Martian term for a criminal body-bank, a place where egoes can be sleeved into a morph, or unsleeved from one, without going through regulated, official, legal channels.

Where we are now:
The plan goes very amiss on the very first roll, when the only PC with any Pilot (Groundcraft) whatsoever, who was chipping a skillsoft to do so, insists on taking the wheel from the NPC who was driving, and promptly rolls a critical botch. She spends moxie to downgrade it from a critical failure to a regular failure.

I rule that, instead of crashing into a passing police riot response vehicle full of armed riot cops who were on their way to an exercise, she "merely" T-Bones a big old panel van right in front of the hotel, smashing it against the front of the building and blocking the doors. Her recruited goon squad, a bunch of Scum from the Scum Swarm she recently departed, who have been unimaginatively dubbed Seal Team Scum, thinking fast, leap off the truck, free-running up the side of the stricken panel van. They shoot the glass window over the doors out, and lead with grenades: five frag and an incendiary. Right into the lobby of an occupied hotel.

Turns out that the kind of help you can recruit to launch a nakedly aggressive raid on a heavily-defended criminal enterprise for the promise of loot and reputation aren't exactly the most subtle or disciplined type of help to recruit. Thanks to some quick thinking on my players' part and complete domination of the building's security systems from long before the word "go," they do manage to complete all their objectives: Recovering Violet Perdido, Liberating all the slaves, and grabbing some phat lewt. But they also managed to tick every box on their "do not do this" list, too. They started a gunfight on the streets of Chinatown when the AGI (in control of the truck) rammed the panel van away from the doors so she could walk fire across the lobby, preventing the triads who were upstairs from flanking Seal Team Scum as they had a running firefight through the laundromat and black market in the basement. They lit Chinatown on fire because one member of Seal Team Scum, known as FUCKHEAD (emphasis on FUCK! and HEAD!,) proceeded to not only light the lobby on fire, but then torched the bar, and after a quick run through the black market basement, was called to torch the black kettle to hide all evidence of what the group did: a task he took to enthusiastically with a grenade launcher full of incendiaries and a portable hydrazine flamethrower. And of course, they made the news very dramatically because of their botched entry and the gunfire on the streets of Chinatown, resulting in everybody with a camera (literally everyone,) recording what they were doing and posting it to social media.

...this sounds pretty close to SOP for my group...
*facepalm*

They didn't get a lot of i-Rep (reputation on the Eye, that is, Firewall's social reputation network) for that one, no.

I mean, they did complete their Firewall-given objective. And it's not blowing back on Firewall, because the Scum are more than happy to take all the credit and brag about the attack, from the safety of the Get Your Ass to Mars swarm that they blasted off to promptly.

But still, they lit the town on fire and had a gun-fight in the middle of town, that made the news. That's not exactly endearing them to the "subtlety is god" faction of Firewall.


On the other hand, the member of the group who's also openly taking credit for the attack as a member of the Scum got a lot of @-Rep out of it. Turns out most Anarchists have mad respect someone who kicks in the doors, shoots all the slave-holders, and rescues the slaves. (Extropians don't, but that's only because they're keenly aware of the fact that most anarchists don't like their practicing indentured servitude.)

Actually I'd tick only the "Make the news" box. Technically SEAL TEAM SCUM got into a firefight and set Chinatown on fire. If none of the PCs were actually identified and made the news, then uncheck the "Make the news" box.

okay, i have a couple... mostly the same group (one guy moved away, others joined), different characters.

one time, we had a troll sniper. he liked to find a good spot before a meet, and he once picked the same spot as the OTHER sniper, who was not ready for troll melee. One run, they had a simple job to go into downtown Seattle, a biotech office on a high floor. they get the goods and a few extras as well. they go to the meet.. and a sniper shoots the Johnson in the head. now a vital point- they had worked with him before, and NEVER done any research into who he worked for really. they grab his commlink, and are doing a frantic getaway as a helicopter starts to follow them. the Johnson's commlink clams he works for Aztechnology... so they call those guys for help. they get an assault-chopper escort right into the 'safety' of the pyramid.

inside the pyramid, they sell all the Ares goodies (including a magically active symbiote bioware implant larva), as well as the Suitcase- which is just like the one from that first episode of firefly, with girl sleeping inside (she was a technomancer). they then went on to pay aztec for the privilege of getting some implant (oh hey, cortex bombs!). later on they found and removed the cortex bombs, and helped the plot-important girl escape. and no, the johnson didnt work fro aztec, it was his fake cover commlink (his work model was an implant). these players hada bad habit of running away from PLOT as fast as they could manage, selling it at the first opportunity to the lowest bidder.

another time... the rigger (an alcoholic) FUBARed the run very hard. it was to get a package from a warehouse- security had offline wired CCTV, and the rigger was- in company outfit, in a company van (rented with large deposit from contact), and he had put on makeup 'to defeat facial recognition software' with a botched disguise roll. the decker had it set up, so that all he had to do was drive up, wait, and drive off. the team was around the block for backup. so... he offers a drink from his hip flask to the guard on duty (red flag!). the decker gets the package to the van, and i mercifully let them drive off before local security gets organized to deal with the HR problem. a security team follows the van, mostly to observe his driving, as things fall apart quickly now that the decker failed to erase certain data from cameras. there was a shootout with a fire elemental in a mall parking deck, and they stole a truck to getaway with the goods since the van (with LARGE deposit) was disabled under fire.

so the kicker- i ask the rigger 'where did you park your regular van, with all the drone?' he says his apartment. which is linked to his fake SIN. i asked him are you sure? he said yes. so your sure? okay then...lonestar is at your apartment. and then he got upset and started packing up his things to leave, because he was so attached to his van and drones (that cost SO MUCH of his starting money). he was ragequitting because of a problem that he himself had caused, and because of mere physical goods at that.

a 3rd game, someone else was GMing, and i was the hacker with dicepools at the softcap. the albino elf rigger (different player) didnt have a character sheet for several games before the GM noticed- this was the first game where i refused to help people build characters because i was getting burned out on it. most of the players only roll dice when asked... the game collapsed when i turned my brain off, and only rolled dice to hack when asked, because i had burned out. the 'detective' character's player wanted to do legwork, but often fell asleep or left the room during game to play online (we played at his apartment) and when i left legwork to him it just didnt happen. we had an NPC mage because none of the six players wanted to play a mage- we had a troll with no ware or social skills, a rigger, 2 sams, a detective with no ware, and my optimized ork hacker. and that group could not sandbox to save their lives- the game died when we got a sandboxy mission to protect an ork political candidate.

the big mess was a run where an AI we pissed off wanted revenge, and tried to get a package of children in medical stasis plugged into ultraviolet handed over to an organleggers. aztec wanter their goods back (we were in denver), another group tried to stop us (i stole their van and shot their rigger in the butt with his own drone), and we ended up handing the kids over to a good-guy organization.

i dont play with that group anymore....

Just because you hired/recruited/manipulated someone into doing something you were told not to do doesn't mean you don't bear any responsibility for it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)




That's not such a bad idea - running away from anything resembling PLOT as fast as they can. PLOT tends to be expensive to deal with and doesn't usually pay well, often failing to even recoup expenses, unless you want to sell large parts of an already grimdark setting right up the river to shitdark, and even then you usually don't get to enjoy the money you make selling the setting upriver because they either decide you know too much to live, or put you on permanent retainer as wholly-owned company or non-governmental-entity (or occasionally, governmental) assets.




There were some serious FUBARs there, some of them were not the players' faults. First off, unless you're making your disguise check literally in a McHughs bathroom stall with a guy running facial rec on everybody coming and going from the restaurant, there is literally no reason whatsoever not to test the integrity of your own disguises by running your own facial recognition program. The players should have thought of that, but you should have suggested to them that they test the disguise before setting out on the Run.

Second, I'm not sure why you had offering the guy a drink be such a bonehead moment. One workin' stiff offering another a belt out of a hip flask is hardly the sort of thing that gets an armed response, and depending on the laxity of discipline at the company, it should've been met with either a "Cheers, want a donut?" or "No thanks, I don't," or even "Are you out of your gourd? Put that the fuck away and keep it out of sight. If anyone asks me, I smelled soycaf, but for the love of Ghost, HR is coming down on the shit on duty!"

One red flag should not FUBAR an entire run, especially something as innocuous as that, and the security team from the company should have been told "He's not in our facility anymore, he's not our problem. I'll let the delivery wing guys know to search all their drivers for flasks." And that would've at least given the rigger time to pack up and bail from his doss, which leads me directly to...




Uh, yeah.

A Rigger without his drones and his van is pretty much about as useful as a street banger in the game of Shadowrun. And I don't even mean the "super-competent banger who's on the cusp of graduating to the big leagues," I mean an ordinary banger who gets recruited as cannon fodder. Riggers losing all of their shit at one go would be like if you had the street samurai sedated and all of his cyber ripped out, then let loose with Lone Star hunting for him, or if you had an asshole cybersurgeon implant secondhand basic cyber-radios in a magician until his Essence was 0.5, and then let him loose.

So, no. I'm not going to call the player the asshole on this one. First off, you blew a minor role-playing offer of a drink into a run-scrubber, and then you tell him that he's completely fucking boned: Lone Star are after him and have his real face, his contact is after him (or at least no longer speaking with him,) because he got the rented van totaled, and the entirety of his efficacy in the team (he is a rigger: Drones and vehicles are what he does,) have been confiscated, leaving him massively underpowered and, at best, a Load on the team; and at worst, the other members of the team would actively hand him over to those who hunt him to get the heat off themselves, or put him in a ditch so he can't reveal any information about them when he inevitably gets picked up.

All because he gave a guy a drink, roleplaying his character's flaw (alcoholism) and a sense of beneficence well, and because you didn't remind them that they could test a botched disguise roll made from the safety of their own hideouts. For that, you escalated the situation to a point where he's being hunted by the Star, has lost the entirety of his equipment , which some archtypes (such as rigger, which he was) are utterly reliant upon to participate in the game, and you then belittle him as "ragequitting" over something "he started" and over "physical goods at that," which are physical goods he 100% requires to do the things he's supposed to do.

I'm sensing some CLUEfiles-isms here: you're slamming the PC stupidly hard over something exceedingly minor that you just leapt at a chance to nail him with full-on "CONSEQUENCES!" for, and then act smug like it's all his fault when his character gets so completely hosed that he gets upset and decides there's no point in continuing to play.

You can treat that as an unrecoverable setback, or as an opportunity. I prefer the latter. You can ALWAYS recover from a setback, it just might take a while. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
And yes, I have been in that situation. My Cyberlogician lost tons of specialized drones, several vehicles, and 90% of the ware in the character's body when he was captured and tried for Industrial Espionage. Took me several Months to Escape and reconfigure my biometrics a bit, but in the end, he was one of my most experienced and enjoyable characters. Shame about the Girlfriend, though. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

Something similar happened to me; it wasn't "How bad can a run go" so much as "how bad can the GM screw you when sending you on a run?" I was playing a Technomancer Drone Rigger with a secondary Face/Hacker aspect (and we had a dedicated Face and a dedicated hacker, so that wasn't my selling point). I'd explained my character's trick to the GM ahead of time to be a fair sport. My main equipment was a group of specially modded Flyspy drones. First run, we're made to leave without much prep work, I'm unable to get my drones before leaving, and we're dropped in the middle of a jungle, far from civilization. The closest I come to having drones to work with was some bust-a-moves which, when I try to weaponize to my resources, are quickly made redundant and un-usable via the plans of the rest of the team.

Next run, we're sent through some sort of dimensional rift to an alternate reality circa 1980 (yet post-awakening for this world), no Matrix (I'm at a persistent -2). Because of how we were sent, I once again am denied my Fly-Spies. GM claims he was trying to make me more involved in the mission, despite absolutely nothing in the mission being usuable for me and myself being stuck at a permanent disadvantage through the whole mission. By the end, the GM more or less scrubbed the mission and Deus-Ex-Machina'd us back. I haven't bothered trying to remake and play the character again because I haven't had another GM to try the character with, and I already don't trust this GM with the character anymore.

I don't consider these stories of how bad a run can go, so much of how bad a GM can run a game.

The way I see it, if at any time circumstances in the game would put your character below the threshold of a chargen character, it's time to scrub that character and start a new one.

Especially if he's lost that friggin' much. That's no longer a viable PC, that's a guy who's floating along soaking up Karma and nuyen and not contributing.

One way to look at it I guess...

Me, I like the challenge. And losing "that friggin' much" is a character defining moment (It definitely was for me, losing almost 1,000,000 Nuyen in Augmentations (Almost all Betaware), Gear and Equipment). I like to see where my characters go when something like that happens. Maybe it ends with them dead. Maybe they rise above the situation, resulting in a rather cool storyline. In my case, the character was at base, even with no gear, still better than a starting character; which will always be the case in my opinion, at least for me, since I never define a character by what they have (since you can always get more), but by what they are. Probably a benefit of not Hyper-specializing. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

TJ, I'm sure you would enjoy the challenge, but we've established many times over you are something of an exception.

Furthermore, surely you admit the response to the player's mistakes was overblown, unrealistic, and even downright malicious on the part of the GM?

Sometimes a challenge can be fun. The trick for a GM is knowing when that's true, and when it fucking well is not. If you saddle a player with a challenge they feel they cannot overcome, (even if they actually can) you've fucked up. If overcoming a challenge that is within their power to handle is still going to take more time and effort and frustration than it would to simply make a new character, and the player isn't willing to make that deal ahead of time, you've fucked up. If the player feels that a challenge has been unfairly imposed, you've fucked up. If a player feels that you are punishing them, you've fucked up.

This all is highly variable, because it's all based on player feelings. If the GM isn't able to properly predict player reaction, they are unfit to be a GM. If they aren't willing to alter the mission or situation somehow to better suit player feelings, they are unfit to be a GM. If they obviously ruin a player's fun and then mock that player for being upset, they are unfit to be GM - and in my opinion need to go soak their heads and think about why they're such assholes.

~Umi

100% agreement from me. If all you ever play is pixie dust, frollicking through the happy meadow, and rainbow unicorn farts then you ain't playing any SR game I want to be a part of. Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome. It's not what goes well that is a character's defining moment, it's how they handle getting all their shit took, their cat assassinated, and a kick in the nads from their now-ex significant other.

Even, if you do not like metagaming. Sometimes you should just do it. Not to make it easy or give the player a pass, but rather to keep the peace and don’t alienate another player. Especially new player in the round, who don’t know how the things are running. How the gm is running the show. What to expect from the other players and the gm.

I have so many stories with rage, frustration and strife just based on simple misunderstanding or unlucky starts, which could have been avoided with a little metagaming or talking. A easy intro. A roll to check if maybe the character does remember something, which the player forgot. A wink if the player did something terrible or didn’t, which the character would never do or always do. Or just some intro to your version of SR. How you playing and ruling your game. What you thing is important. What you will ignore or will not ignore.

The player(rigger) in your story may be a little naïve, stupid or whatever. Your action may be legit. But they were not …. ok, to a new player, a new game, a new round.
By the way killing start equipment is the same as burning karma and killing skills. How much fun will you have with a character after the gm takes away 200Karma?

I don’t know about your group at this time. But in a similar situation as a player, I too would go. Clean the kitchen, pack my stuff, wishes everybody a good night and go. Not because you steal on of my character massiv karma/BP, shrug about this stuff and ignore it. It's because you played “falling stones” on me, out of the blue, with no warning or remorse.*


*Yes you repeated your question, but you saw that he did not understand you. That he did not knew, what you wanted from him.

Yes, but the other someone is not restricted by what I am told not to do.