A Question of Style..., Hoiw do you do what you do? Options

[psychophipps]

From the posts and responses here, it's fairly obvious that we all have different ways of running our games. Not to turn this into a "That sucks!" thread, but I'm curious how the various GMs up in this bitch would describe their games to idiots like the rest of us would don't know how it really should be done. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I'll start with the way I do my thang...

I'm guilty of the crime of running a style that is best described as "Technothriller". I'm a big fan of the genre on the whole and I take this nucleus and fuse the rest of the genres that comprise the mixture commonly identified as "Shadowrun" to create the alloy that is my game. Cyberpunk is definitely in effect (especially in the vein of Hardwired) more than the Fantasy aspect but I do loves me some heinous spellslinging and para-critters so don't be surprised if I toss a mage or nasty critter into the laps of my players now and again.

I generally start the character's in a routine-seeming op you'd expect in SR (bodyguarding, extraction, data-grab, find X person, etc) and then toss a good switcheroo just when they think they got the job cracked. Yeah, you found person X but they're dead in a most heinous manner and there is some big-time clues that show that there was a lot more going on than you thought. Oh yeah, and it's evil, nasty and probably distinctly unimpressed that you found out about it before it could finish it's mechanizations. Have a nice day!

I'm very lucky in that my players (and I) make characters that see bad stuff, realize that it has to be "handled", and are willing to risk life and limb to take care of it. We tend towards operational ruthlessness so it's Ok for me to toss it at them now and again and we have been known to do things for less scrilla or other payment than others might have be going for. And we don't do wetwork. Things break and people die but we don't do ops where the entire point is to whack someone.

Anyone else?