I've just started up with some new players and had our first session. I told them very specifically and weeks ahead I wanted to run a mirror shades-style campaign, realistic, preferably no ice cold spies, but starting shadowrunners that are washed out professionals or criminals moving up. I told them that they should be wary of qualitives that were difficult to play, either for mechanical or, especially, role playing reasons, like Vindictive which can be cool but end everyone in lots of trouble if not done right.

So everyone comes with good characters with solid backgrounds and some nice twists.

Except one that is really fucked up. Distinctive Style that can't be concealed, really strange background, spells like acid stream. I should probably just have vetoed the char, but I didn't, a mixture of thinking he had some point to it and could handle it, and that we needed to play and not have him make a new char.

So in game, he does strange things too. He says people react strangely to him because of his looks, and he acts strangely towards people also. His tradecraft sucks too, a mark that doesn't fall for an attempt to lure him away, he immediatedly starts very visibly throwing spells at him, in the open, undisguised and with his distinctive style showing.

I mean, fuck. I'm thinking back, why are fixers and johnsons dealing with this guy? Why are the other team members?

I have to kill him or land him in jail, soon, don't I? Hopefully without too much fallout for the other guys. At least it is a good opportunity to show them that stupidity kills, I guess.

If I was GMing with your player, I would definitely have his character have a very, very public and visible death. Something along the way of a multiple guard/drone/spirit pile-up that resulted in much dakka.

Well... you seem to have made it clear and you warned them all. Actions have consequences. No mercy!!!!

Hehe... well, you know what i mean. If it is possible to track him down AND he gave reason to do so: People WILL track him down. Done deal... nothing you can do about it.

Well, you could give him a few warning shots : a copious tongue-bashing by a pissed of Johnson backed by a very visible security making a stupid or violent reactin likely to be met with a prompt demise, or contacts warning him to lay very low as several not-so-nice heavy-hitters are around asking questions.

If he still doesn't understant, swat his character like a fly.

SR3 style Lone Star roto-drones that follow him around, watching the weird guy. I'm sure he'd never do anything so stupid as to attack an armed police drone that is recording his actions on video. ... That would put pictures of Mr. Distinctive Style on the comlinks of every cop in 5 minutes, and to the public a while after that.

Give a warning IC, and then give a warning OOC that you were clear on actions having consequences both for the character and the team in general. Make it clear that this is the one warning and if the keep acting in a brutally obvious fashion, respond in a brutally obvious fashion. Make sure the other players know that you have warned him as well, because they may want to take precautions to not get caught in the fallout.

Everyone has a right to play their character how they like, but if it doesn't match the theme and tone of the game, or it does noting but irritate the GM and other players, then they also have the responsibility to modify that play or find a new game. Everyone needs to have fun.

Actually, what happened with the mark would make a great viral video. So I'm thinking, some bystander recorded the incident, posted the video, it goes viral, and the ex-cop PC who was with him gets the video from a cop contact, along with a "WTF are you doing there, was that why they kicked off the force?!? And who's that weirdo partner of yours?" (They were in fake police uniforms when it happened)

It could be a police brutality or a funny video.

You have to be careful though. While you did give proper warning, if you kill that character he might be very upset about it depending on his maturity level. I've run games (D&D) where the players were very immature and thought that the game was so they can play a god and never have any consequences for their actions. Actions do have consequences, but if you want to keep the player in the game and he's immature, you gotta do it carefully. Me? I'd think that with such a distinctive style, a pissed off enemy is somewhere in his past... they'll toss a pound of explosive through his window one night to kill him.

What you could do is scare his character. Start with death threats, then have some very obvious attempts at his life (car rigged to explode, goes off when he uses the remote starter; gas line in his kitchen cut and explodes as he returns from a run; stuff like that) and have an entire adventure based around people chasing him down. Show him he has a LOT of powerful enemies and try to get his character to go on the run; perhaps to a foreign country where he can't be in the campaign.

My response to this topic is pretty complicated and I'm not sure that I have the energy right now to dig to the full depths of it, but here goes.



As you said, you are running a "black leather professionals" type game instead of a pink mohawk type game. I assumed this primarily because of your use of the word "tradecraft" even before I reread the beginning of the post. And as you said, you discussed this with all of your players beforehand and they all understood what it meant to you, because if you look at the actual Shadowrun artwork, it isn't very indicative of the "everyone is a spy and is subtle all the time" atmosphere that some GMs (including myself) like to use.

That said, even in the context of those assumptions, I am mystified by some of the stuff you said. For instance, acid stream? What is wrong with acid stream? It is mechanically less effective and has more flavor than, say, manabolt, which is the exact kind of thing I encourage in my campaign. Personality is more important than "more dice". For that matter, what are "spells like acid stream"?

Secondly, what do you mean by saying he "acts strange"? Is there anything in his character background that indicates that his "acting strange" is in character? What about his other negative qualities?

For instance, last night I was PCing but we only had two players and one GM due to cancellations, so each player was running two characters to field a new team. One of my characters was a "Reality-Impaired" hacker, and another was a creepily amoral (even by Shadowrunner standards) hermetic mage with Poor Self Control (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Both the hacker's inability to function socially outside of the Matrix and the mage's conspicuous, compulsive 'rituals' (not the magic kind, the OCD kind) as well as his general chilly demeanor were things that I roleplayed to the hilt, both because it made the characters more interesting, and because I had GOTTEN POINTS for them and it wouldn't be fair not to self-handicap. (In spite of awkwardness/creepiness, both characters were extremely competent at their areas of expertise which of course helps, being that both are professional runners in their 30s with at least a decade (backstory, not in-game, both are close to starting level) of experience.)

In general, I can see a player playing distinctive style the same way, and I wonder what other negative qualities the character in question had and how they factored in to the "acting strangely". If you just ban all of those qualities that effect the way you roleplay, you're making a conscious decision to cut out a huge chunk of the game.

I guess I want to know if this is really a case of "troll starts shelling the building with an assault cannon type stupidty" or is merely a case of "not everyone wants to roleplay Sam Fischer only with less personality".

And because everyone loves Shadowrun anecdotes anyway, why not describe the incident in question in more detail?

In summation, quirky != obnoxious...unless it does. It can be a hard line to see, short of having actually played in that game.

I think he meant that it is rather distinctive, adding to the already high trackability of this particular character.

Bye
Thanee

Moreso than what?

Are the only acceptable combat spells to take the mana, power, and stun lines?

-glitch-

The appearance, obviously.

Anyways, it is just my guess as to what he meant with it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Bye
Thanee

No, I mean, which spells are "subtle" and which spells are "distinctive"?

I have always assumed that magic was rare enough that even something like powerbolt or manaball was pretty damn distinctive, and I also always assumed that the flavor text of how visible/invisible those spells were and what they looked like was entirely up to the GM, or even up to the player if the GM felt like it.

This these pop up from time to time. cause like you said , there's always one. Someone that's not with the program. Best first step, IMO, is to figure out why that is. Start with your player. Did he simply 'Not Get it"? As said above, this could be a maturity thing, a lack of experience with SR, or perhaps he's just never had a character die. You're going to be a better judge of that than any of us , You're sitting down with the guy. Best way to start is to talk with your Problem Player one on one and find out where he's coming from.

Remember that the guy did take Distinctive Style and you did let him take it. Not all characters are professionals. There's certainly going to be a lot of psycopaths in the shadows. You did tell him there's a type of character you're looking for, and he seems to have gone the more fast and loose route. So it may just be that he's playing it while he can, and his character is going to die. Just remember that you ok'd the character. Sure you had reasons, but there's a responsibility on the GMs part to keep things running with the theme he's going for.
If that ends up meaning killing that character off for valid IC reasons, just make sure that the player understands why things are laying out the way they are. He may just be trying something new, or not really getting the setting or where you're coming from. Again, you're going to be the best judge on that.

Bottom line is to talk to the PC. Once you have a clear understanding, and get the Cause/Effect thing across, play it out logically. He took Distinctive Style, so he really can'y complain when he's easy to track down by Lone Star / Knight Errant/ whoever for murdering someone with a spell, and they respond with a SWAT unit. Just the way things go.

I've had a few players and even one whole group that didn't really care what they did or who they pissed off, until the first time it caught up with them. Wake up calls can be great.

I think that the psychopaths as opposed to the professionals SHOULD DIE, yes, if their actions warrant it, but I think they should do so when it is dramatically appropriate.

Reservoir Dogs would be a much less interesting movie without Mr. Blonde.

Psychopath and pro aren't exclusive.

Debatable. But it seems to be in this case.

one way to deal w/ PC is giving him Wanted-Negative quality (from Runner's Companion)
(some places/cars/? JUST happen to be under protection of major gangs/
Organized Crime)
let's see how fast PC buys off Distinctive Style- qualty with karma..
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/ork.gif)

Sometimes it's actually a bonus.

I don't think there's anything wrong with acid stream as such. But piled on top of all the other stuff, 2 levels of distinctive style, one of which is obese and the other is some big beard big hats thing, he's swedish and there was something strange with that too (maybe proud viking heritage or something like that), has shotguns and knifes. Many of those things in itself could work, but together it just all seems off.

Odd behavior, for example he touched the Johnson to cast Analyze Truth (it wasn't a professional Johnson, but I mean, aside from the spellcasting, placing your hand on the arm of the guy hiring you at the meeting?). I think he was also provocative to someone, but that might have been another PC, or appropriate.

Btw, I'd say the style of my campaign is more like a mafia movie than spy. Nearly everyone in and around the shadowrun community is broken, greedy, hot headed, addicted, sleazy, and/or lazy. If they were pro spies, they'd still be spies for a corp or state, instead of being outlaws hoping they don't get caught or sold out. At least it pays well (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I tend to agree with a lot of what has already been said, so I won't repeat it. However, there is one point that I think is important: what do the other players think? My old group had a guy like that and I know that in my experience "that guy" and his screwy characters was always very annoying to the other players. So much so that they orchestrated the death of at least one of his characters that I can remember. Anyway my point is that you might not be the only one who's enjoyment of the game is deminished by this guys weird roleplaying tastes. If that's the case, I'd say the most effective approach might be an OOC discussion with the whole group.

There you go. If you can't reach a compromise, then someone higher up could sell him out to cover his own skin, or sends them on a suicide mission. Think the italian dude in Boondock Saints... two bullets for 6 people. A dirty member could do that no problem.

QFT. Said it better then I could have.

This is often the GM or the thoughtful player's biggest question about other characters, lol.

I actually changed characters mid campaign once because I couldn't resolve the question and decided that I'd just change and run a character more in line with the silliness and evil level of the game. If your other players are playing along with your idea, this guy needs to change characters, or he may need to find another table.