With no face those are the kind of missions they probably do get. Even if they have absurd stats and gear, but play them dumb as rocks with no tactics they'll get legitimately pwned by opposing mercs that do use intel and tactics. And then there's the risk that they will cry 'no fair'.

Why not? Get hit. Learn to suck it up. Use it. Feed upon it. Learn to break the guy's fist with your jaw. I would not work on staying a wimp.


Really? So the pornomancer doesn't count eh?

Move the game to a matrix online game?

I think you need to learn the difference between a wimp and a masochist or idiot. And the difference betwen sucking up something, and enjoying it.

The Pornomancer is a new character. As of the OP, Knasser had not yet experienced the joy of; "Your target faces you down from behind his panther assault cannon and..." "I rolled 18 hits to make him shoot himself".

Yes, there is. It is a matter of attitude. Being a wimp makes you weaker, transmogrifying the pain and enjoying it makes you stronger. God gave man pain to tell him he is alive; verily when you feel pain, you know God loves you. The least you can do is to love to enjoy God's gift to you. Learn to enjoy.


So? Greybrother was talking of an alternate setting. The new character would be the most convenient vehicle to introduce the alternate setting.

The point, as stated, is to humble them so much that they become your most loyal and devoted followers, like in a martial arts movie.




Actually, we were given pain so we know not to stick our hands in fires or chew or own lips off, that sort of thing. This becomes fairly obvious when you see kids who were born without the ability to feel pain, or totally indifferent to it. Pain means that you should stop doing what you're doing, generally.

Or that you should be learning to use pain in a more enjoyable manner.

I have the same problem as the OP... Powergamers dumpstating and all that. I've tried humiliating them, it doesn't work(at least not for my group). I get the "cheat" screen jokes cause I use a GM screen. I've actually been considering a TPK and starting over in a more Merc or spec ops environment.

In Fact just this last week, the troll with 23 dp to soak(and a 4 will) got to taste a mage manaballing the group... not a single one of them plays a mage, and I've warned them that it'd be they're undoing.

That troll should have been a Fomori with Astral Hazing.

As to the players, I don't know them, nobody here does, and I can't offer any concrete statements.

As to the various suggestions and comparisons here, here is my take.

1. Have fun. Everyone should and the facts of life are that everyone does so differently.
2. As to the suggestions on the theme of "Give the group what it wants." I would agree with any other system. Shadowrun (4th) isn't designed for it, it can't scale upward. (And it doesn't run too well if you try to scale the starting builds down too far either)
3. The constant reference to D&D as the prime game to "Kill and loot" while one grows in power, no. First and Second Ed shadowrun were most certainly that way. Paydata is part of the loot you find in the lair. There have been versions of Shadowrun that support this mode of play.


This difference , the lack of a staircase to a dead end, is one of the most powerful elements of 4th Edition. There is a cost to be paid. Players have to evangelize how to play in 4th. They have to convert people into thinking about how the game can be played. Don't hate, belittle or confront people who want traditional game play. Offer them an alternative and leave them alone after.

I feel your pain Knasser. My group still aches for a boss fight to end an adventure. That is to say, fight the boss, not a series of fiat traps, guards and whatnot before the boss. However, in 4th Ed boss fights can be seriously anti climatic. [With the exception of Spirits who do not have any upper bound]

If these characters are sitting in a squat with a huge cache of military weapons, why aren't they being robbed? Unless someone is at home all the time that would be a veritable treasure-trove of goodies for a thief, ganger or n'er do well. I was using the SR3 Sprawl Survival Guide rules on living space and security with my group. Our hacker was living in the Barrens with crap security arrangements and unfortunately, according to the random roll of a die by yours truly, someone broke in and stole his souped-up AK-97.

You can always discourage munchkin-behavior without throwing some ridiculously high-powered opponent at a PC.

Most likely because they secretly sit on a huge hidden cache of military weapons.

A couple of people have hit on a good solution, already, but I'm going to take it a step further.

Get your group together, go out, and get some pie. Do this on a game night.

Why?

#1: Everybody likes pie. Well, maybe not everybody, but enough people that eating pie is generally considered an enjoyable activity. Non-pie eaters are welcome to substitute a dessert more to their taste.
#2: You're no longer at the gaming table. Or whatever space you play in. Nobody's in the GM's chair, everyone's on equal footing. Now you're in a position to talk about what kind of game y'all want to play without people getting all butt-hurt over it. And if the tension starts ratcheting up, hey, you're still eating pie, so it's not all bad.

For what it's worth (nothing?) I still think the particular game with the particular players are unsalvageable. Anyone who would even consider cheating by creating a character, dividing up their stuff, then creating a new character, is so far outside the limits of RPG gaming that I don't think they'll be able to learn. If you have even a basic respect for the idea of roleplaying, you owe it to yourself to exit. Let them play how they want, but don't labor under the illusion that you can suddenly make them understand the point of pnp games, which they are clearly missing.

I agree with the others when it comes to having a talk with your players and if they are still insisting on the being powergaming twinks then I say that if you are going to leave the group you should leave the group with a good story as a lesson to future groups.

The story goes like this.

Once upon a time there was a security guard named Bob. Bob was a nice guy and had good friends and family. Bob wanted to be a security gaurd his entire life. When he got out of high-school he went to Dad and Mom who were execs for a megacorporation and had them arrange for a job in a high-collar R&D assignment. Then one day a bunch of scary shadowrunners came knocking down the door and shot bob and his security gaurd friends. The assumed that bob was dead. Thier GM gave an especially gory description of his death just to make them believe that he died. But it turns out that bob Expended a permanant edge. A little while later when he came to in the corporate hospital Bob found out that he had been paralyzed but the shadowrunners and he couldnt be a security gaurd anymore. Because of his pension he would be taken care of for the rest of his life and his parents had all the money in the world so he didnt have to worry for anything. Bob couldnt be a security gaurd though and that made bob mad. Bob wanted revenge.

So Bob called up mom and pop and had them use thier leverage to get ahold of some coporate assets. Long story a little shorter Bob hired a group of corporate "specialists". Among them was a oober hacker, A Face man, A Fixer type character, and a mage.

One night a littlewhile later the runners came home. Much to their suprise they found that their home had been robbed. Apparently the Crack addicts down the street were told by a friend of a friend of an acquantence that the shadowrunners had crack! After going down the street and killing the crack addicts as they deserved the shadowrunners went home. The next morning (ahem game session) they found woke up and found that their Notoriety had doubled! Quickly they called up their contacts and started asking them why? THe contacts told them that it would cost them. So the shadowrunners opened up their bank accounts and found that they had no nuyen! Apparently someone hacked their accounts! When they looked back to the contacts to tell them the contact told them to turn on the trid! Thinking that it was something interesting they did.

On the TV they saw that they were posted on the most wanted! Apparently people had taken video fotage of them when they were killing people and had leaked the information to the media. Now the media was saying that they were international criminals wanted for a bunch of stuff they didnt do!.

It got worse from there on also. Everywhere they went panic buttons would go off.
Everytime they met with thier johnsons they recieved less and less payout for more and more dangerous missions
They had hits put out for them by every organized crime ring in seattle (or where ever)
THe cops kept coming on and on!
Their contacts started ingnoring thier phone calls.
People on the street would randomly try to kill them!

You get the point

Basicly if they are going to play that type of game, run that type of game just be sure to include the proper consequences for that type of behavior.
Additionally if your are going to keep running game for these folk then you should be ready to adopted a sadistic evil GM attitude when it comes to that. IF they begin to wisen up then reward it but until then make their lives a living hell.

Looks like you got a lot of really well thought out responses to your problem, but I am going to tell it to you straight. There is no answer to your problem. You can't win. Your players want something from the game. That, obviously, is the feeling that they are badass Killy McStabandkills that can do whatever they want because they know how to abuse the rules. Guess what will happen when you don't give them that? They will complain until A) you give up and give them what they want or B) they loose interest.

Now, which one of those results best pans out for you? Do you have other people to play with? Is someone else in the group willing to run the game?

Look buddy, this is a game. Most RPG's are about escapism and hero worship. Just looks like to me that your friends have a sort of drekked up notion of what makes a hero. Too many Rambo movies I think. You can either play along or just walk away. How about a story arc where they actually manage to kill EVERYONE and they are the only ones left and start killing each other.

Just because PCs can't be bunker riggers doesn't mean the opposition can't be bunker riggers.

I hear some people saying "if they don't play your way, torment them by abusing your godlike GM powers." That's not a good thing to do. That way, you'll lose players and friends. If they're not going to play your way, taking revenge in-game is worthless. It won't save the game, it won't be fun for anyone. It won't teach a lesson to people who aren't bright enough to grasp the difference between PnP and FPS in the first place, it will just make them mad. The best solution is to get off that sinking ship of a game before it drowns you.

I agree with this. It's important to recognize that yes, as GM you can hit the "I win" button whenever you feel like it. It is trivial for you to contrive situations in which the players are defeated and humiliated. Some advocate this as a way of 'teaching the players a lesson.' It's unlike to work. The only lesson the players are likely to walk away with is that you as GM can contrive situations to defeat and humiliate them no matter what preparations or statistics they might have. And of course they would be right. This is most likely to cause resentment and detachment from the game by the players, and highly unlikely to produces changes in their behavior your desire. After all, if you easily defeated their fearsome death machines, how well might less devastating characters face? Indeed, they might (rightly) assume that no matter what kind of characters they develop and actions they take you could contrive a situation in which they would be defeated and humiliated. And they would be right.

They are not his friends. I think this should be established first since he is a pickup GM on this game. I think its kind of obvious why the previous GM left the group, and he has every right to say that he is done and walk away from a bunch of people who take the game waaaay to seriously.

Just saying that you have come to an impassible point and it's either your way or the highway is perfectly fine considering you might be the only person left who will GM with them. The guy who takes the game too seriously and you feel like he will throw a tantrum like a little baby might just need time to mature. Personally I have found that those people need to get a life, calm the F down, and then they can return to a gaming table a few years later and be tolerable. Yes it's a fantasy game, and yes people want to have it go the way they want, but it's stupid to just have everything you want. There is a reason why dice are rolled and why it doesn't always go your way.

Plus me thinks the group is involved in rampant cheating, and the easiest way to confirm this is to get a copy of all their character sheets and handle all the rolls for them. If they shoot you roll their attack dice and the defenders dice pool, you can ask them if they want to spend edge or not, but you can take the dice out of their hands. This way you can put up the dice modifiers and if you are good enough with head math you can slim down the combat time as well. If they put up a huge fight I think you know where they stand.

Even if the group is not cheating, even more they will not let you roll their dice. They would think that you are cheating. Especially since you are controlling the situational dice mods.

If they already think that way then the group is lost to begin with.

Not true. Rolling for your players lessens their sense of ownership of the characters. If they already are more concerned with the numbers to begin with, you want them to identify with their characters, not detach themselves from their PCs.

Ain't no such thing as a secret. Only truths that take longer to come to light. Hiding those weapons is going to take a security investment that costs more than covering them with a moldy tarp. And I would have a hard time believing that no one in the neighborhood spotted a group of young men sporting mil-spec-level firearms gallivanting to and from a warehouse/abandoned office building/whatever.

The PCs aren't coughing up the dough they need to be in order to keep those guns and other toys hidden. And that's where I'd hit them, in the pocketbook.