Plasteel... I, uhh, really don't understand this martyr complex you've got going on. If GMing is really that much of an onus on you, you might want to take some time off from GMing.

I also want to reemphasize Draco's point of collaborative storytelling. Everyone is at the table to have fun, and the moment one person considers their own fun more important than the fun of their friends' fun, because of reasons, they should really take a step back and reevaluate things. Further, if the players are only allowed to do what you think they should do, you might be happier just writing a book.

Again, you guys are right. I was very clear that I supported NEVER letting the players do what they wanted, only what I wanted. I agree, killing the 1000Y drone of the player with a million Y bank account was totally uncalled for and since it's all about COLLABORATIVE storytelling, the best thing was for the player to just get up and storm out leaving the rest of the group to pick up the pieces.
Honestly, it been an education. This week I'm gonna make sure to advise my players that it's really all about them, I'm just here to do all the leg work required to support them in whatever fantasy enacting they desire.
I never really thought of it like it was about making fun for everyone. I thought spending dozens of hours planning, writing and building was really all about me.

Bunch of geniuses here. Really. Truly.

A game consists of the GM coming up with plotlines and NPCs, the players telling what their characters do, and rolling dice to determine what happens. Dice are important, because they 1) let players quantify what their character's abilities and capabilities are, and 2) add a truly random element of chance to the game. A lot of what the GM does will not involve dice rolling. The GM determines what plots the NPCs are hatching, what the stats of the NPCs are, how many of them there are, what the environment is like, and many other things. The dice only come into play when the players are trying to do something, or when something is happening/being done to a player character.

My personal preference is for the GM and players to both have input into the direction of the game, and for dice rolls to be impartially respected. Plots are fine, but once the PCs get involved in them, they should be able to affect them. I think if GMs make their plots more character-driven than event-driven, they can adjust to things going off the rails by asking: what would the NPCs do? If the group kills the main villain, great. Maybe the two lieutenants vie for the newly opened top spot, the lackey who had an obsessive stalker crush on him transfers it onto the character who killed him, another lackey vows personal vengeance on the PCs, the two rival groups move in on the weakened organization, the bio-plague that he was going to unleash stays buried in a bunker since no one else knew about it, and so on.

There can plenty of reasons for a GM to do things that seem arbitrary. Sometimes it is something that the PC would not know about. Sometimes the GM needs to metagame to compensate for a glaring mistake that the players are attempting to exploit, or to simulate someone like Harlequin who is a lot smarter than the GM trying to run him. And some GMs do run more storyteller type games, where dice rolls are ignored when they would mess up the story. This is something that the players should know upfront, though. Some players actually prefer this style of play, but it can make others feel disenfranchised from the game.

I want to be clear here. The drone wasn't important. I'm not a rigger, the drone is just a drone. What hurts is breaking the illusion that the game is fair.

This was just after a no-roll failed hacking attempt. I knew from the outset I was going to need to beat the odds to do anything with this system, but I was still giving it a shot. I rolled 4 hits vs a rating 6 host. He didn't even roll to see if the host got unlucky. Flat fail.

And no I have not done anything to the Vampire, which should be dead from our initial encounter were it not for the fact it was regenerating magical damage in a forest (IE somewhere with rather a lot of wood lying around).

Also, the old 'follow one scout with another to find out what happens to the first one' trick? I've given up on that after the 5th 'you see a blur and the first scout disappears/is blown up/is torn to shreds/other'.

For the record, this drone was shot. It's an insectoid drone that was on the ceiling of a ship docked off a tropical island in the spring (AKA insect paradise) while the inhabitants were feverishly building barricades to slow down the 100 or so troll gangers who were tearing the ship apart. Good thing they prioritized shooting bugs with their APDS rather than saving it for the actual threat they were preparing for.

Yeaaah. That does stretch credibility a touch.

Oh, and the drone was slaved to my deck with sleaze 7. I was not called upon to make a check to see if it was spotted on the matrix. So it wasn't that.

Your GM sounds...awesome, Fueldrop. You have the patience of a saint, is all I can say.

That GM deserves a taste of the sharp end of the rulebook. I'm going to second the "patience of a saint" call.

the problem isn't that he didn't succeed. the problem is that he didn't really even get to try.

if that was the type of game we were looking for, we'd be playing with a computer for a GM. the GM is a human being because it allows flexibility... if you're just going to railroad me to where you want to go, then don't expect me to care about where we're going.

and if i don't care where we're going, well, i've got better things to do with my time than to be denied the ability to make meaningful choices in a game where that's the only thing i'm able to do.

if you want to write a story, then write a damn story and if it's interesting, i'll read it some time... but don't try and pretend like you're playing a collaborative game if my only collaboration is trying to guess what you want me to do.

Hola FD,

Good to hear from you again my friend.

Between reading your last post here and from the diary....... wow.

Just... wow.

I am glad you were able to sit down and talk with the GM and clear the air a bit about why and what was going south.

However, I would still be a bit cautious in your optimism in going back already to that table.

It seems like there is going to have to be more than a little bit of an overhaul on how things are done within it and it may take time.

I am not saying you should not go back, but just keep in mind this is going to be sort of a relearning curve for everyone there as they get used to the changes.

Damn i at least drop dice to make the illusion of chance, usually the wrong number of sides and usually the players pick up on it. Course i only do this when there's nothing for me to roll (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I have to say, i get annoyed when the guy running the game, doesn't seem to care if i wanna contribute something yo the game or it's narrative. I usually walk away and stop returning phone calls when that happens. So i understand. Find a new group or a new GM. Hey, if i could find a way to transfer to Australia? I'd game with ya (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Don't do it.

Kangaroos are notorious dice stealers, though if you can mug one that pouch is a literal dice mine. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

If you do ever find yourself in Australia I'll be sure to find a way to set up a one-shot. Open invitation!

Oh, stop being ridiculous. What people are saying is that the dice should be coming into play to determine success or failure - and they're right. Anything else completely disregards the effort the players put in (you don't somehow think the GM's the only one investing anything into the game, do you?) and destroys their agency, and I simply cannot understand why the fuck you think that's a thing you get to do.

Yeah, it sounds like the GM and you need to sit down and figure some stuff out. At the very least he should give you the chance to be awesome, and not just blow a drone up "because".

No gaming is better than (frustrating) gaming.

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Plasteel, you can play the devil's advocate without being so abrasive. Bring it down a notch or three please. We understand that you don't agree with some of the view points others are expressing. You aren't going to make yourself better understood or your audience more receptive by drowning them in sarcasm.

Also, violating the Terms of Service by flaming within your first dozen posts isn't really a good start.

You are missing the point.
It isn't that the character wants to win. It is that he wants the CHANCE to win.
That is what the dice represent. Not forgone conclusion, but the possibility that things just might go the character's way. Your way completely removes any chance whatsoever.

So, I have an interesting question for the others here.

Would you guys consider me a bad GM for not rolling dice outside of combat?

It's a well known fact that at my table that outside of combat I often won't roll dice to save time. There are difficulty thresholds for pretty much every non-combat task (using the Success Test Difficulties Table, pg 62 SR4A, or other skill-specific tables scattered throughout the book), which I decide as I'm planning the mission or as the situation requires. When it comes time to roll, I have them roll and decide success or failure on whether they beat my target number of hits. Dracos18's example is exactly the kind of situation where I probably wouldn't roll dice. For a social situation like that, I'll include all of the relevant modifiers and redo the difficulty target on the fly (by changing my target number into dice (by multiplying it by four), adding or subtracting as needed, and then "rebuying" the hits). I'm really quick with the math, so it speeds up things at my table a lot. Since I currently have six players (and have had up to eight regulars), keeping the game moving matters quite a bit.

My players know I do this and they know that I'm fair with my targets (for the most part, I am human). The times I will roll my dice is combat (ALWAYS!), major story-related hacking, when it's a "random" event (like ID scans, "Oops, looks like the troll got through security just fine, but the squat gets pulled aside for 'extra questioning.'") and when I don't have a strong feeling on how I want a situation to go (ie, let the dice fall where they may).




Now, that isn't to say I think what FD's GM did is right, but I only know FD's side. As Devil's Advocate, I know there have been a few times where I needed to use my GM Fiat for the sake of story, but it's always prefaced with a "trust me." Sometimes, it pisses players off. Usually the player will roll with it and talk to me after game. Sometimes, we can talk it out; sometimes, we can't. In a group the size of mine, I can't please everyone all the time. My job is to please as many people (myself included) as much possible. Which brings up that sometimes I have to use my GM Fiat for the sake of the group. I hate doing it and will only do it if it's a last resort, but I do. I know this is where I'm going to get the most disagreement, but let me explain. Every person in a roleplaying group is there to tell a story, whether it's my campaign or the story of Bob the Street Sam. GMs know that players are spotlight hogs and will take any opportunity to make the story about them. This means a normal roleplaying group will need something like four or five different spotlights at a time. Problem is, this isn't really feasible. Good GMs know to balance who gets a chance to shine in the spotlight. However, GMs are human and sometimes we make mistakes and let one player have too much time or have a build that is way better than we thought or whatever. The majority of the time, we can fix it without having to resort to extreme measures. Other times, we have to take a more heavy handed approach.

A real life example: Recently my hacker has had way more than his share of the spotlight, often outright eliminating the need for the face to do anything because all of the legwork had already been done digitally. I decided to remedy this with a better-than-average maglock on the rear door to the facility the hacker couldn't just pop open. This would necessitate the face talking their way in and sneaking to the back to let the rest of the team in. This was all supposed to go down without either player knowing what had happened and all would be good. However, Lady Luck had other plans and the hacker rolled an ungodly amount of hits. I still wouldn't let him in. He knew that by all right and reason he should have beaten the lock and started to argue. I told him we'd deal with it later, and moved the scene to the face (and accomplice) at the front door, talking their way past security in a tense scene with excellent roleplaying. The two managed to con their way inside and to bluff and sneak their way to the back door and let the rest of the ream inside. This took a significant amount of time away from the rest of the party, but everyone save the hacker was deeply enthralled by what was happening. After the game, the hacker came to me more than a little angry. He knew I basically failed him on a whim and he was rightfully pissed. When he called me on this, I blatantly told him that I personally felt that he'd been getting way too much time in the spotlight and that the face and accomplice hadn't had much of a chance to do anything significant lately. I'd love to say that he was understanding and forgave me, but he didn't. He pitched a bit of a tizzy fit and proceeded to bitch about it to me constantly for the next few days. While he was whining at me via random texts, I had two of the other players approach me and tell me how cool it was that the face got to do his thing. First was the face himself who had been feeling useless lately and was grateful he got a chance to shine. The other was a member of the second group that thought the tense cat-and-mouse with the face was way cooler than the hacker popping the lock and everyone sneaking inside the back way yet again. Eventually the hacker stopped being butthurt and I was able to explain what I did and why. After a lot of discussion, the hacker came around and agreed to share the workload a bit more.

I know a lot of you, especially players, won't agree with what I did and that's okay. There's a reason I'm talking about this.

Like I said before, what FD's GM did sounds like something isn't right. FD, you need to sit down and talk with him. You also need be willing to accept the fact that you might be part of the problem. I say this because a lot of your threads here deal with walking out of games, complaining about how unfair your GM is, and planning ways to take down killer GMPCs. I'm not saying that to be rude or anything, it's just that I find you saying and doing things that I found myself doing as a player when I was being a problem and didn't realize it. So, good luck with your GM, keep an open mind, and listen to what he tells you back.

Honestly? Yes, I would.

The system has rules for skills and social interactions for a reason. Whole character archtypes are based around this. By not using dice outside of combat, you are massively favoring the combat-based characters, as they are in a position for their character sheet and random chance to matter much more. Assumed difficulties and successes means that the non-combat characters have only their own luck to work with, they will never get a success because their opponent failed.

This is also an advantage to the game world and NPCs, as they only have to worry about the player's successes, not their own failures.

It depends.

And it largely depends on how consistent those fake-rolls are. If the player's are rolling a stealth check and will still never roll better than the opposition, then yes, you're a bad GM. It's as much bad GMing as the players kidnapping a hobo on the street and interrogating him about the villain's plans because, "He's an NPC played by the GM, the villain is an NPC played by the GM, therefore everything that the GM knows any given NPCs also know" would be bad roleplaying.

Does a shadow taking out the remote scout without being seen never fly? No. But you need to have a good reason for it when it does happen. It's supposed to be an "oh shit, this thing is way more badass than we thought" kind of thing. If it happens all the time all the players are going to do is stop trying, aka lose agency.

Why would he assume that his hack would work? I mean IRL many businesses back doors do not open from the outside, no key, maybe a push to talk intercom, and a surveillance camera. Even if he hacked the lock, how does he know it is not bolted from the inside. Was it previously determined that the back door on an out of sight alley, in the world of Shadowrun was somehow the primary entrance for the building. In my experience the door with full access via a keyed lock is usually the most visible one, just so the junkie in the alley, or some gangers don't get any silly ideas.

I ostensibly wouldn't. You say you communicate with your players. That's the entire thing. FD's GM effectively said "rocks falls, drones die" when FD went to scout.

With eight players, I think it'd be natural to look for shortcuts to speed play and allow the game to move along at a quicker pace. If everyone's on board with this, then no harm's done. However there are those that really just want to roll dice. This where the art of the compromise comes in. You say it's your job as GM to make sure everyone's having a good time; I would modify that: it is the responsibility of everyone at the table to ensure everyone has a good time. If Bob is the only person out of nine people that want to dice everything out, it's Bob's responsibility to realize this and not try to ruin the experience for the other eight people by demanding everyone needs to dice everything. As a compromise, as a GM you can say that when it's Bob's time to shine, you make a specific point to dice things out, but not as a regular deal. Or if that's not enough for Bob, Bob should find a group that's more fitting to his playstyle.

There's a couple maxim's I try to follow regarding rolling dice, and they're all related:

Say Yes or Roll the Dice. This goes to stakes. If there's no conflict, there's no dice to roll. Further, by saying yes, you're enabling the players to have an active roll in shaping the story.
Only Roll if Failure is Interesting. Take the ubiquitous locked door, the standard rpg framework is if the player fails to pick the lock, the door remains closed. That's boring and it stalls the game. If there's nothing at stake if the player fails but to try again... and again, go back to the above maxim. There's no point to making the player roll to open the door other than to institute a false sense of challenge. Instead, a failed roll means a guard happens by and asks if he needs help. Which leads to the next maxim.
Fail Forward - Resolve the conflict with the player's roll and keep the story going. Make the scene transition so that one conflict leads to the next. If the PC's fail, make sure the story progresses naturally from that failure, don't keep the players stuck in limbo guessing at the right answer.
Roll for Conflict Resolution, and Eliminate Rolling for Failure. Two related concepts that I tend to lump together. They are a bit harder in SR, as the nature of the system encourages players to roll to roll to see if they can roll. I'm looking at you Matrix... yeah, you know what you did wrong. Anyways, as an example I once was in this game that had an assault on a castle. This was awesome in theory, but it was a roll to get the grappling hooks up the wall, roll to climb, roll to sneak and surprise the guard, roll to take out the gaurd, roll to climb back down the other side, roll to sneak across the grounds, and on and on. None of the rolls were all that hard individually, but you roll enough times, and you're going to fail at some point. If the entire story is predicated on the players making it to the keep to face the big bad... all of these little rolls are at best a distraction, and at worse can actively derail the game. If the interesting stuff is in the keep, don't bother with rolling to scale the wall.

As to your specific example, I sympathize with your hacker: hacking's what he does best and he got an amazing roll in his specialty and it was taken away from him without any obvious rational. This was your bad. There never should have been an opportunity to hack it, even if you think it has a 0.1% chance of happening... it'll happen. Set it up such that the only way it opens, for whatever reason, is physically from the inside and thus is unhackable. By setting up a hackable maglock, you are setting an expectation that the hacker can hack it, and you violated your hacker's expectations when it suddenly wasn't hackable. If you violate those expectations, players will be mad, conversely if things turn out better than they expected, they will be happy. It's a elemental human bit of psychology. That said, once you explained that you were trying to share the spotlight with other players, his lack of caring about the other players having a good time would not go over well at my table.

Essentially, you did the wrong thing for the right reasons. Again, to reiterate, communication is the most important thing, as it sets expectations and allows a consensus of the table to be built such that everyone can agree to those expectations.

I don't want to edit this into my previous post, but binaryrwaith's points made realize I wasn't exactly clear about a few things. First, to be clear, my tendency to not roll only applies to non-dramatic situations. In the example about the hacker, the face was consistently being rolled against by everyone he saw for both social and disguise tests. Any time I make a ridiculous roll (either really good or really bad), I will also show the players because I feel they deserve to know.

He brought up that opponents can never fail, which is really true. Or, put another way, I just assume that most people doing their job under normal circumstances won't fail at their job. Let's take an example using the logic I follow. Conning a barrista out of a free cup of coffee has a variable difficulty. If you're a regular and asking for a plain cup of joe, then you'd be looking at one hit. Basically, all you have to do is say please and not act like she owes you the world. If you've never walked into the shop before and are asking large, double ristretto, non-fat, no foam, extra hot latte with cinnamon in a double cup, no sleeve, you'd be looking at a difficulty of four (Hard from the table on pg. 62) because under normal circumstances no barrista in her right mind is going to go to that much trouble for someone she doesn't know. This still gives you a chance at success, maybe she thinks they have a cute accent or maybe she's feeling particularly nice that day, but it's not a huge chance. Modifiers can affect things too, like how busy the shop is or how well thought out a plan is. Walking up to the counter after standing in line for ten minutes at a busy shop and demanding a free cup of coffee won't work (4 hits). At best, it'll get "No really, what can I get ya?" and at worst (if you push the issue and get belligerent), it'll get you tossed out on your ear. If you hang out for like ten minutes, then in the middle of a rush, ask the girl who's handing out the coffees where the medium mocha you ordered ten minutes ago is (1 hit after modifiers), you're probably going to get that mocha.

@binarywraith: I respect your disagreement with my style. I totally encourage it, in fact; what works for my group won't work for all groups! I disagree with your statement that my style favors combat over non-combat characters, though. When I have stats for a character (like for a canned mission) I'll buy hits for an average roll and use that as a base. That's a 1:4 hits:dice ratio. Players have a 1:3 hits:dice ratio, assuming normal probability. That means my players should succeed the majority of the time against similarly skilled opponents and that is what I find in my game play.

@Dracos18: The shadow thing is total BS, I don't condone what his GM was doing at all. Consistently denying players like that is bad GMing, plain and simple. I was just making the point that perhaps the GM might have a reason and that he might be part of the problem too and should be willing to accept that.

I do try to make my difficulties as consistent as possible, using the book and what I've done previously as a guide. And, if anyone has a question on how a difficulty was determined, as long as it's not game breaking (according to me), we will discuss how I arrived at a particular difficulty after the game. If it will break things, then we pause and discuss, but it that is rare. And I am more than willing, with good argument or evidence from the player, go back and change a decision. If a game-breaking discovery is made after the fact, then usually I will allow the group to choose what to do at the beginning of the next session. Occasionally, we go back and retcon something or even replay a scene or two. I'm not proud of it, but I've made mistakes bad enough that they've chosen to replay entire sessions. Once this resulted in me having to throw out a campaign that had I had been prepping and seeding in game for over six months of real time. I was pretty pissed, but the group was happy, which is what matters.

@Faelan: You're right, although it was glossed over. He rolled something like 10 hits and figured that he should have popped the lock, which is true. I could have spent a lot of time arguing with him about why it was also bolted shut (regular lockpicking roll), why there was a chain on the door (pulls out his bolt cutters), etc. I just said it wasn't good enough and since I didn't feel like arguing with him and spending more time focusing on him, I told him to talk to me about it after game and moved to the scene with the face. He was not happy about that. Yes, I'll admit it could have been handled better.

@tjn: Are you familiar with the illusion of choice? I gave him the illusion of a chance at the maglock so he could feel he made a decent attempt (and I'd already established it was a maglock in a prior session). IIRC, it was a rating 6 maglock and had rating 6 anti-tamper (yes, I know it only goes to 4, hush). The plan was for him to not get the required hits and to just have it shut down. No problem. I can't remember how, but he managed to get this absolutely insane pool (way higher than I expected or even thought possible) and got around it. Usually, when this happens, I will just roll with it, but as I detailed before, I didn't want to. My mistake, which I'll totally admit.

Actually if it is bolted shut on a proper security door (90 minute fire rating steel jamb, steel door, kinda standard for commercial properties) he ain't using lockpicking. Bust out a torch, C4 the thing, or get a Troll with a battering ram...but I get your point.

Like I said, "It depends."

Not everything calls for a roll.

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