It vexes me how you equate an inexperienced player making foolish mistakes that the GM didn't warn them about with stereotypical "Childishness", as if that were 1) in any way accurate or 2) in any way applicable. Such elitist bullshit.

The "rainbow comparison" especially annoys me, because it gets used to belittle anything that isn't edgy Grimdark nonsense. You're equating being a less skilled or experienced player - or even just one with a different personal taste than yours - with being a child: which quite obviously is something you despise. In the process you belie just how immature you yourself actually are about the concept of having fun by playing pretend, which is exactly what this game is.

Not all Shadowrun players are as "seasoned" as yourself. If you want to laugh at them for not having fun at their table, for their GM being a malicious and toxic tyrant who'd rather punish his players than teach them and cooperate with them, then at least have the decency to do it privately.

~Umi

More "Grimdark" than thou?

I am Vengeance...
I am The Night...
I...!
Am...!
Grimdark!

~(IMG:style_emoticons/default/ninja.gif)

Back in the days of SR1, I recall a GM who liked to capture and forcibly implant any magician PC he could lay hands on with as much useless cyber as he could think of. This was before The Grimoire came out, so even if you escaped with some Essence left, your lost magic was gone forever-- Initiation didn't exist yet. Also, thanks to the fact cybersurgery rules weren't out yet, there was no way to get rid of unwanted cyber. You couldn't just save up and replace it with something else, you were stuck with it. And he was perfectly aware of all this; he just didn't like magical PC's, and thus targeted them. Mind you, he loved his magical Mary-Sue NPC's, this was the guy who later had us riding around in a convertible with "Steve" aka Harlequin aka Q.

So, TJ, others: if that happened to you, would you "rise to the challenge"? Or would you realize that the GM is being a bastard, and start looking for another game?

I find most people have this odd duality about judging difficulty levels.

If Player A finds a certain task easy, then in their mind everyone else should find it easy too, and anyone who doesn't is a "noob" / "crybaby" / et cetera.

If Player A finds a certain task to be impossibly difficult, then in their mind everyone else should find it impossibly difficult too, and thus they deem it an "unfair comparison", because "no one" could find that task easy.

It's not a conscious sort of thing, so I can't really blame folks for it - even I fall prey to the tendency. The important thing is recognizing it and working to be more aware of one's own biases and limited vantage point.

~Umi

I've done that, certainly. But sometimes, it's not a matter of difficulty, it's a matter of the GM being difficult. Forcing a mage to burnout is in the second category, especially since there weren't any rules to recover.

Oh, I agree.

I just also think that for those people who would legitimately would see being screwed by the GM as an appealing challenge, it is reasonable to expect they would have a difficult time imagining why someone else would not enjoy it like they do.

~Umi

GM screwing over players is different to GM with kid gloves off. Former is bad, latter is good.

But the GM taking the kid gloves off may well be an early indicator of the GM screwing the players. If the GM wants to screw the players, he needs to take the kid gloves off first.

It's a lot like BDSM. It's cool if you're the sort of person who is into that, and you enjoy a bit of rough play. But just because you like it, doesn't mean everyone will, or that you have any right to mock or belittle those who don't.

And if you're actually the one running the show? Remember that it involves things like trust, and being able to read people. If you just break out the whips and chains on someone who isn't suspecting it, and they don't enjoy it, you're the one at fault.

Plenty of folks like a bit of "challenge". But the tables where this works are the ones where the players and the GMs all go into it aware of how things work, mutually agreeing to the rules of their little "challenging" world, and trusting each other to know the appropriate limits and boundaries, and to not make people genuinely uncomfortable. As soon as things stop being fun for anyone involved, it goes from being a game to simply being sadistic abuse.

If your table is great, and your GM is fabulous, and you've never run into serious problems when facing a "challenge", ask yourself why, exactly, that is.

Maybe it's because you trust your GM. Maybe it's because you know that they want you to enjoy yourself, and maybe it's because you know that the moment it stops being fun you can tell them and they'll work with you to fix that problem. Maybe it's because you don't even have to say anything - maybe your GM can read you well enough to know without words whether you're enjoying the rough play, or whether you're really, really not. Maybe it's because you know that even if your GM does fuck up somehow and ruin your fun, they won't laugh at you and call you a child for not enjoying the abuse they chose to dish out.

~Umi

Actually Umi, I had simply stated that I'm not interested in games where doing something non-optimal doesn't have consequences, albeit in my own outrageous fashion. Where the rest of that rant came from is a complete mystery to me as, well...I wrote the post you were ranting about.

im a bit surprised that my own post got such hostility.... i had expected somewhat better of this forum than cheap shots from someone trying to start a flame-war.

the group in question refused to think, do legwork, sandbox, or otherwise interact with the game world in any way beyond a kind of 'theme park ride' approach to doing the mission presented. so naturally, i was slowly ramping up the threat levels to try and get them to notice their screw-ups. ive seen the same behavior in other games, so its a problem with the players themselves, and one of the reasons i no longer game with that group. these were not new players. the rigger in question had GMed shadowrun(3rd) before himself. despite having played before, some of them still asked 'what do i roll?' on a regular basis.

sometimes runs go wrong. most of these times its because the players made a major screw-up with their basic plan, such as refusing to do any legwork. failing to do ANY research into the site where the run takes place results in consequences. also when the decker only rolls dice when the team asks him to... hes really not doing his job, and that means parts of the plan never even got done by him. this results in things like a fake SIN being investigated by lonestar, or Aztechnology implanting cortex bombs.

That doesn't mean it's okay to literally fuck over a PC to the point where the player would be literally better off having his character eat his own gun and roll up another one, then berate him as childish when the player says "fuck this, I'm going."

You are right...
It is about feelings more than anything else. I would say that the GMs actions MIGHT have been overblown (But I would say he reacted appropriately, from his description of the scenario), but only if he did not give the player/character ways to recover from that loss and make his character cool again. In my case, the character spent about 7-8 sessions in Prison before managing to get out (and I played a different character while that was happening). When I got out, I had enough funds squirreled away (plus a little bit gained form my extraction contract) to recover some baseline gear, get a bit of General ware, and rejoin the team with a new face and identity. But then, my GM rocks when it comes to stuff like that. Did I get all my stuff back? Not by a long ways, but a 300+ Karma Character is STILL a 300+ Karma character, even with his gear mostly scrapped. Given a bit of time and effort (and another 100 Karma or so), he managed to recoup most of what he lost, had a slightly different 'Ware buildout, Managed to get better vehicles and drones and STILL filled pretty much the same niche as before. My point is that the situation is not a game ender unless the player and the GM cannot work it out. Getting offended the second it happened seemed a bit extreme to me, personally.

Fortunately for me, I am capable of talking with those GM's, and I have had a few. Situation resolved and game progressed. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Something else that may be a factor too...

Many players have a great aversion to capture (or loss, failure, whatever), and so choose the route of "Death before Dishonor."
In my experience, those who abhor capture are the first ones to complain about the GM being a prick for spoiling their fun.

A character that is only ever successful is a boring character (in my opinion), because growth does not come from success, but from failure (and getting the snot kicked out of you, or losing your stuff, losing your friends, etc). Yes, you can fail without ever being captured and forcibly stripped of stuff, or forcibly implanted, or whatever, but it is that fear that results in many of the attitudes I have seen over the last 25 or so years of gaming. In my experience, the narrative is far better when the character has trials and tribulations to go along with his successes and triumphs. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bingo!

There were plenty of directions the player could have gone, even with all his character rigger goodies being gone. Don't forget that the van and the drones were impounded not exploded. Go to the impound that night, Lone Star Technical Division is notoriously overworked after all, and sneak/hack/drive/shoot your way out through the side fence. Worked in Gone in 60 Seconds and Raw Deal.

It's not about it being possible to recover from. It's about recovery being something the player is prepared to do, or even realizing they can do.

TJ's example of a player being stuck in prison? Yeah, see, clearly he's cool with that. He understands and accepts that as a part of the game at his GM's table. He and the GM have a working relationship of trust and understanding, where TJ accepts that if he fucks up, he has to play a separate character for awhile.

It also helps that TJ's character is a friggen' 300+ karma behemoth, and that TJ himself is a 25+ year veteran of tabletop gaming. I'd wager he has played with his GM for decades.

Teulisch claims that everything was the players' faults - that he was just being a good little GM, while those meanie players weren't taking things seriously enough. I mean, they were committing such atrocities as asking what they're supposed to roll. How dare they ask the GM for guidance! It's not like it's the GM's job to guide the players through the game system when they don't know things!

They had "played before", so clearly they should be masters of the system! If you've played a half dozen games, you should be just as proficient with this world and mechanics as if you had played ten times as many! And even if you've played sixty times rather than just six, it's not like some people learn game systems at different rates! And even if they did, isn't it perfectly acceptable to deride and mock those who don't learn as fast as you do or did?

Let's take Teulisch at his word. Let's assume he just had a bad crop of players. Let's even assume he did everything a reasonable person would do to try and guide them out of their bad habits with diplomacy and discourse, explaining things, answering questions, reinforcing good behaviors, all that good stuff.

At that point, he should have just walked away from the table. He should have said, "Guys, this isn't working. You all know my concerns - after all, we've talked about them at length. At this point, I don't know what else to do. I'm not having fun, and I just can't seem to impart you with the knowledge and good habits I feel are necessary for this game. It's not your fault - there are no bad students, only bad teachers. I just wasn't up to the task. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't think I can be your GM any more. No hard feelings, and I wish you luck finding a new GM. I'll talk to some of my other gaming buddies and maybe one of them will be interested and available. Even if not, you can always come to me for help and guidance if one of you would like to take over as GM yourself."

But no. He never got that far. He never stopped and tried to explain things patiently, diplomatically, reasonably. He just expected them to magically "get on his level" and start playing the game the way he expected it to be played, their own expectations be damned. He wasn't going to waste time talking out their differences and problems. That's for suckers.

He decided he was just gonna bring the hammer down on a group of players who obviously didn't understand the consequences of their actions. He was gonna hand the toddler a fork and point him in the direction of the electrical socket, and when that unsuspecting nitwit received a nasty jolt, he was gonna laugh at them. Because fuck 'em, right?

~Umi

For some reason, we're getting completely different rigger getting his goodies took story from the OP of the post this discussion is about. It's Ok, but I fail to see a single "Cthulhu pops into Seattle wearing power armor. Roll initiative, bitch!"/GM being a complete prick moment in the post. What I saw was a player making a bonehead move like parking their rigger van full of illegal goodies at their own apartment (for fucks sake!) after the GM confirmed that this was the one, and only, place the player wanted his character's box o' goodies to be parked. After a bad run.

So the player fucked up. Whoop-dee-doo! You can either cowboy/girl up and figure it out, maybe make getting your goodies back through an adventure or something, or you can do what this player did and simply walk away without even trying to work with the GM to solve the problem. Now the GM might have been a complete prick, that happens, but the rigger part of the story wasn't an example of it, IMO. Sometimes players do stupid shit, it happens, but it's not the GM's job to give them reconciliatory blowjobs every time something bad happens because of said stupid shit.

I'm not interested in scope or scale, I'm interested in principle. I don't care if the GM dropped a friggen' Thor shot on the character, or if they just made it so their SoyCola was unpleasantly warm and flat, I simply personally disagree with the principle of teaching by punishment.


And what I saw was a player who didn't understand the ramifications of their actions, and who suffered GM determined consequences more severe than they were willing to cope with. The GM was more interested in punishing the player than in ensuring that the game remained fun.


Wow. That is a colossal buck pass. According to you it's the player's fault? We're right back to the elitist bullshit of "everyone needs to get on my level", blaming the inexperienced for not being experienced. How dare they not have the same understanding and expectations of the game as the GM! Who do they think they are, not knowing what to expect from this GM who refuses to communicate except in the form of punishment? It's his right as GM to correct mistakes via negative reinforcement, right?


So you excuse the GM being a complete prick because "that happens", but the player is at fault because they made a mistake and the GM decided that the appropriate response was to ruin their fun. This is a gorram game, folks. People are supposed to enjoy themselves. And it is the job of the Game Master to ensure that everyone has fun.

I'm sorry that you equate a GM being positive and helpful toward a clearly inexperienced player with some crass sexual debasement. If you aren't prepared to deal reasonably with inexperienced players making mistakes, you aren't prepared to be a GM for them. Not everyone can handle the job - there are plenty of GMs who are only any good GMing when it's for their close friends and longtime players, because then the players handle a lot of the work for them.

It's a lot like being a teacher. Some people just aren't cut out for it, even if they make for perfectly acceptable teacher's assistants. They can do all the vital tasks of assigning coursework, handing out papers, grading tests, and all the rest of the little tasks that keep the class running smoothly and which facilitate the students performing their work - but they just aren't prepared to stop and instruct those individuals who are having problems with the materials. They don't have the training or the patience or the acumen to deal with students who need guidance - all they have is a big red pen to mark off failing scores with, so they set to handing out those bad marks with gusto. Who cares if the students fail? After all, education is about separating the winners from the losers, not ensuring that people learn things!

~Umi

But the issue to me is that the player didn't even give the game a chance to see if it could still be fun. The player made two rapidfire assumptions. First, they assumed that the question about where they parked their van wasn't important despite the GM double-checking (red flag, anyone?). Second, they assumed (just like you did upon hearing the story), "Bad thing happened, thus fun is completely impossible for the player to have with this game ever again." Well dude, assumption is often the mother of Clusterfuck. If the player had even tried to continue after the bad situation due to pulling a dumbass then, yeah, it's 100% GM fault if all the player got was the RPG equivalent of a cock-block. I'm sorry, but I have seen far too many ragequits over even more minor hiccups than the one in the aforementioned story in the 29 years I've been a tabletop gamer to firmly place the blame 100% on the GM's plate in this case.

I cut my megacorporate dystopia gaming teeth on Cyberpunk, where in the base rulebooks (it was a boxed set) it says (paraphrased), "Screw them over. It's Cyberpunk. Things break and people die. Life sucks. Wear a hat." There is a corporation in that game, if you're not familiar, called Arasaka. Arasaka is the leader in the game world of security services and security technology. They offer everything from ADT-type home security systems to full-on multi-layer Secret Service-style protective technologies and security details including full netrunner (spyder) support. They have a reputation for taking their reputation very seriously, by which I mean that if they found out that your character fucked with them, they will hunt your character down like a dog (expense being no object) and make them die the (proverbial) death of a thousand papercuts. They will then use a Trauma Team (Docwagon) card to resuscitate the character's bitchass, roll their body in rock salt, and then proceed to kill them again. Then they will post the video on all the internet mercenary websites.

So yeah, harsh-ass shit.

I have played with everyone from first-time gamers to old hands like myself. You're typing at the semi-official "character bitch" in pretty much any group I have played in because I love to get the player's creative juices flowing while I describe the game world and what each job offers to the party. I also have the patience to guide the new players through the often long creation process, all the math involved being fully explained, while also offering some helpful tips about character generation that I have learned over the years the hard way. Hell, I'm running my Shadows of the RGV SR4A game and took two complete tabletop noobs through the character creation process. You know what jobs those two sons of bitches took? One took a hacker/paparazzi/blackmailer that works with the Catholic Underground to "assist with the paperwork". All those programs sure were fun to cypher up, not to mention describing all the programs and their uses. The other one made a Wolf aspect shaman coyote that helps bring the Catholic refugees over the border with some "benevolent assistance" from one of the Ghost Cartels. He specializes in summoning spirits and combat spells. Yup, no long explanations or tons of math there.

Not sure why we've gotten off on the wrong foot here, Umi, but I pride myself in being "strict but fair". I won't kill anyone outright because of a bad roll or a single bad decision. I will make them pay for their mistakes in a manner that fits the situation, but I will also allow them a chance to work through the situation to get their character back on their feet. What I will not do is pander to a whiny, candyass player that can't hack that doing something stupid in my opinion (just look at all the videos of the stupid things professionals in all sorts of fields do and they do it for a living) results in a potentially major setback for their character. It's not my job as a GM to kiss their boo-boo and make it all better as it's both of our jobs to make a fun and (perhaps more important) interesting story. If they can't take a setback as a potentially cool plot twist or a chance flex a different skillset's muscles, that's not my fault. Ragequiting is the gamer equivalent of a temper tantrum, seeing them as anything else cheapens the hard work the GM and (more importantly) the other players have put into the game.

Again with the belittling of people for not being prepared to handle what you dish out. Please stop. For as much as you paint them as being "childish", your fixation on their behavior is even more so.

You seem convinced that is impossible for a GM to misjudge a situation - that if a player gets upset, it's the players fault for not being made of stern enough stuff. Has it never occured to you that GMs can misread people, or that they can misrepresent the severity of a setback, or that they can fail to ensure the player is having fun? Do you honestly believe it better to teach via punitative measures, than to pause the game and have a diplomatic discussion with the player to make sure they understand what's going on?

I've had bonehead moments with my players. They've asked to do some really crazy things. Nearly every single time, it was because they didn't realize the implications of what they wanted - it was because they had an imperfect understanding of the game world, of a particular thing within it.

When a player says they want to... say... steal a cop car, I tell them straight up that unless their character is high or stupid, they would know that stealing a cop car is bad news, and that if they want to try to do it anyway, they will run almost certain odds of being locked up. I tell them in no uncertain terms "THIS IS A BAD IDEA". I tell them that although it is possible for them to attempt it, they're almost certainly going to fail.

If they really want to try it, I tell them what it would take to suceed. I tell them that if they want anything remotely resembling good odds of not going to jail, they need to have a watertight plan in place which is going to take lots of resources and professional execution. I tell it to them straight if they are not prepared to do what they are trying to do, and that if they persist all they have to go off is blind luck. I tell them that if they try it and fail, they will be in a cell with Bubba The Love Troll and their character will be unplayable until such time as they are able to get out of jail. I inform them it's not going to be a week, or a month, or anything resembling quick. I tell them they will need to have an entirely different character ready to play at our next session if they get caught.

Most of the time it takes very little to disuade them, because once they realize what the actual implications of what they are doing are, they go "Oh! Shit! Whoops, no, I do NOT want to do that!" and they do something sane instead.

Players having fun don't always have the appropriate mindset of criminals living in a dangerous world trying to make a living screwing over powerful people. Players can get distracted, or they can get a little silly, or they can even get a bit power-drunk from the fantasy of being a badass street samurai or a spell-slinging magician. If a player wants to do something that is going to ruin their fun, I stop and say, "Hey... that's gonna ruin your fun" and they almost always respond with "Oh! I don't want to ruin my fun, so I'll not do that then!".

You, on the other hand, seem to believe that the GM has zero obligation to do anything other than serve as a world simulator - that if the player is about to ruin their own fun, your job is to just sit back and let them, then laugh them out of the room when they get upset because they didn't understand something. For some reason you care more about mechanically enforcing the rules of an imaginary world than you do about adaptively and organically having fun playing a game with your (ostensible) friends.

~Umi

But parking your car isn't a crazy thing. If I get players doing something bugfuck crazy, then I'll be just like you and tell them they're way off base. If they come off a bad run, strung out from the adrenaline, and pull a DA like parking the getaway vehicle in the parking lot of their crash pad...well, real professional criminals, covert operatives, and high-speed, low-drag types do dumb stuff like that all the time. Familiarity breeds contempt and it's really easy to get complacent once you get away with something a few times.

The disconnect in our policies seems to be that you prefer to warn them about the potential for bad stuff because you feel that the characters are supposed to be the James Bond of covert ops or something (and I'm using 007 as the consummate professional example here, not mocking you in any way) and they just plain old know better. Totally cool. My policy is that shit happens even to the pros and I let them learn on their own unless they go completely off the rails and they need to be nudged back in correct direction. Also completely within bounds. You see getting character shit took as a complete non-starter and I see getting shit took as a great way to branch the character out a bit and/or goad them into another adventure or something fun like raiding a police impound.

Both versions are fine with the right players. You obviously run your games your way and have fun with your friends. I run games my way and have fun with my friends. I simply prefer a grittier feel where there are real consequences to even some seemingly-innocent decision making. It keeps me nose over toes as both a GM and a player.

To be honest, I'm very up front about my style of game. I don't let the players think that it's a pink mohawk game and then throw nothing but mirrorshades at them. I tell them up front, "I tend towards a street-level game with great potential to expand the scope as we progress. Huge influences to my game style are the Micheal Mann films Heat, Collateral, and Miami Vice. Ronin would also be an excellent movie for you to check out if you have the time. I'm stern but fair. You will occasionally screw up and bad things will happen because of it. How your character reacts to these situations will often give me new adventure ideas and I will do everything I can to get your character up and running again short of a handout."

So no, I'm not some dice-weilding Attila the Hun waiting to pounce upon my helpless players with every nit-noy error they make in a game.

You might try getting a bit more hands off. You'll find that the players can usually handle themselves and that they'll learn to respect the game tropes without you having to say anything at all. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

We're clearly not getting anywhere trying to convince each other, and both of us are necessarily making a lot of assumptions about each other's tables without any actual informational basis. I propose we simply let the matter lie. We could be at this for a good long while and get absolutely nowhere, otherwise.

Hence, the only portion of my argument I still wish to press is that it is callous and uncouth to laugh at others whom one had previously been trying to have fun with. Doubly so to laugh at them on a public forum where they are not present to offer their side of the argument. For your own case, I find it distressing that you would defend the behavior of someone who mocks in this manner, even considering your own personal game philosophy.

~Umi

But if you don't mock stupidity you are having fun wrong (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) .