 Deluded Players |
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 Nov 7 2005, 02:23 AM
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#26
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Prime Runner  Group: Members Posts: 3,577 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Gwynedd Valley PA Member No.: 1,221  |
So the spoiled girl gets on the phone to roomservice....someone get me a LARGE bottle of Asprin.
Of course if she's too dim to dial 911 asap maybe the characters deserved her. |
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Nov 7 2005, 05:24 AM
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#27
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 276 Joined: 29-September 02 Member No.: 3,348 |
Why are you assuming I didn’t? In fact, the other players all provided explanations about their characters without my asking. Almost every other player made minor changes to those Flaws based on my input as GM. The exception didn’t take any Flaws.
I’m fairly sure he thought that. Then again, he probably thought I was giving him a hard time when his Strength 4, Body 5, Unarmed Combat 4 elf got severely wounded after he chose to go solo against an identical group to the one that had just taken the Strength 7, Body 8, Unarmed Combat 10 bear shapeshifter down to one Overflow box away from dead.
There’s more to a character than just it matching up mechanically. Though he failed at that, too, being several points over and having far more Flaws than recommended. After all, there’s nothing in the game mechanics that says a PC can’t take Sea Madness, Allergy: Being Out of Sight of Land for 24 Hours, and Phobia: Being Out of Sight of Land for 24 Hours. There’s nothing in the game mechanics that says a PC can’t take Sea Legs and Sea Madness, or High Pain Tolerance and Low Pain Tolerance, or several other contradictory combos of Edges and Flaws. The world of Shadowrun is a shared world between players and GM. Like all worlds of fiction, it requires a certain suspension of disbelief and it’s the responsibility of both players and GM to avoid things that violate that. If I as GM had a dozen streetsams jump out of a Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit and attack the PCs, I’d be violating that suspension of disbelief. When a player creates a character that doesn’t make sense, that also violates suspension of disbelief. And it was more than what I said. The character was a physical magician Wyrm Shaman, who ‘shuns contact with others’, so why was he holding down a job at all? And Wyrm Shamans have to sleep 70 hours a week. Between that and the Day Job, when’s he going to have time to be a runner? Why was the tiger better with knives and staves than unarmed combat? Why would the tiger’s unarmed combat skill be specialized in kicking? I could go on.
That’s a different definition of ‘quite good’ than I’d use. If he hadn’t been a shapeshifter, I’d have used the word ‘adequate’. |
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Nov 7 2005, 05:46 AM
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#28
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 207 Joined: 3-November 05 From: KCMO Member No.: 7,922 |
I think you ought to run with this. Make them play it out. The law wins & they end up in jail. Or, maybe, if they connected with the girl enough, she lies to get them off. Have they even considered the consequences yet of failing the Johnson? Maybe the rest of the team has to break them out of jail. If they run, they can expect to be on the run for likely the rest if their lives. You're the GM, you set the statute of limitatons for wherever & whatever world/city you're running. We often consider our GM's to be evil bastards, but that's mostly 'cause if we screw up as badly as your two did, our GM's get this evil grin/look of unholy glee about them, and always make us pay for being so completely stupid. Actually, I've been in games where the other players killed a player for making a series of really stupid decisions. His next character was much more cooperative.... |
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Nov 7 2005, 05:53 AM
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#29
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 207 Joined: 3-November 05 From: KCMO Member No.: 7,922 |
Sounds like a munchkin to me. The problem may be in that he thinks he's gotten away with this before & sees no reason that he shouldn't get away with it now. Shadowrun's pretty good about saying that the GM has to approve characters. The issue now is, can you make it stick? How are the other players reacting to this guy's attitude? Will they support you? Use a little peer pressure if you need the help. |
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Nov 7 2005, 11:55 PM
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#30
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Prime Runner Group: Members Posts: 3,577 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Gwynedd Valley PA Member No.: 1,221 |
That assumes they won't have a better team on line.
including an eye witness.
Now I ike the idea on making them go with that. Make them try to break out and escape and island nation with a highly organized police force. the role playing could be fun. |
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Nov 8 2005, 03:07 AM
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#31
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 276 Joined: 29-September 02 Member No.: 3,348 |
No, he isn’t skilled enough in character creation to be a munchkin. Another player built the bear adept shapeshifter and he kicks serious butt in unarmed combat. Captain Clueless wanted to build a tiger shapeshifter, who in addition to making no sense, was just as good at unarmed combat as his elf listed in the example quote. Somehow, he thinks Unarmed Combat 4 makes you Bruce Lee.
I think he may have gotten away with the twinkery before I played Shadowrun with him. He hasn’t with my existing group. So far his characters were: A greenskinned elf with horns, fangs, and a tail. Had a 4 point Hunter - Ares Arms Black Ops and a Dark Secret – former Ares Arms Black Ops who knows to much. Never made any attempt to change his appearance or go to ground when ID’d by someone from Ares. After which he rather forcibly retired. A rigger who had a Yamaha Rapier with about 20 CF of mods to it. That vanished in a puff of logic when we realized how grossly illegal it was. Though given the chance to respend the money and buy something else, he didn’t. Said rigger also had a van with morphing plates, color-changing paint, and a variable transponder. Too bad it didn’t have sensors, scanners, a drone rack, or rigging gear. It vanished in a burst of machinegun fire from a rotodrone. Then there was the ubertruck he wanted, a monstrous cross between the truck in Universal Soldier and the truck in Bubblegum Crisis. Of course, he never got around to actually designing it, apparently expecting the GM to do it for him. That character survived, largely because he owned a junkyard in the Barrens and the rest of the players found his contracts useful. In fact, other PCs routinely got more out of his contacts because they treated them better. He also designed a PC for his girlfriend, a newbie gamer. When he wasn’t there, someone helping the noob noticed the PC had Self Defense Pacifist as a Flaw. The player was appalled as that clearly didn’t fit a former combat biker and sniper and certainly wasn’t what she’d told her boyfriend. The GM took the character sheet home and fixed it for the newbie – she ended up with higher stats, skills, and Essence and without Flaws that contradicted the character concept. Then we had some turnover and I took over as GM. Captain Clueless’ girlfriend had me create her new character. He created a elven cybercatgirl who tried to go their own way and kept walking into trouble. (I’d told him Distinctive Looks, Day Job, and Hunted was a bad combo.) Tried to play Bruce Lee with Unarmed Combat of 4. Tried to hack a casino with Computer of 4 and no cyberdeck. Last seen lightly stunned, seriously injured, subject to a spirit’s Confusion power, and alone; charging after a bunch human supremacists into their home territory. They had a truck, he was on foot. They had assault rifles, he had a pistol. After which he wanted to play the Wyrm shaman physical magician knife thrower tiger shapeshifter landscaper.
Thanks for the advice. In this case, he emailed me saying that if he couldn’t play the character he wanted, he didn’t want to play. I emailed him back, saying I supported his position and wishing him luck with whatever other group he decided to play with. Last I heard he tried to bring a half-Shade, half-Infernal into a party with two half-Celestials and a Paladin. That group is thinking of buying him D&D for Dummies for Christmas. |
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Nov 8 2005, 03:21 AM
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#32
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,065 Joined: 16-January 03 From: Fayetteville, NC Member No.: 3,916 |
Bloody hell...just put a bullet in your own head and save Ares the trouble. -Siege |
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Nov 8 2005, 04:41 AM
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#33
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Shadowrun Setting Nerd Group: Banned Posts: 3,632 Joined: 28-June 05 From: Pissing on pedestrians from my electronic ivory tower. Member No.: 7,473 |
That's the worst case of ADD in a gamer I've ever seen.
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Nov 8 2005, 07:46 AM
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#34
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 124 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,812 |
The worst I've had was a ninja without the stealth skill, because they'd spent all the points on unarmed, armed (this was SR2) guns, demolitions and getting high stats. Naturally, I assumed it was a mistake and pointed it out to the player. They harrangued me for half an hour about how stealth was not an essential skill for a ninja (and I mean a proper born-in-Japan secret-ninja-clan ninja, not someone who likes throwing stars and sounding cool), despite me pointing out that a ninja is a practitioner of ninjitsu, which literally means "the way of stealth".
I don't have much to offer in relation to stupid player deaths, apart from one incident. Back in the day before maturity caught up with most of my players and me, they played characters who would generally get to the point of being so ruthlessly hunted by the cops, organised crime, families of their victims, the gummint, the Tax Department and the League of Women Voters that they had to retire the character after about three games. After one particularly bad incident with them being dumped in the Barrens naked and ending up trying to rule street bums like kings and viciously assaulting then mangling the corpse of about fifty Ancients, it became obvious that it was time for another 'wrath of God' type attack to teach them what's what. The players know this is coming, of course. I think this was about 1am when they came up with "I know, let's find a backwoods town and defend it." Each of them got out Fields of Fire (again, SR2) and went through listing everything they would buy and take with them. It was a list of almost everything there is to buy in Fields of Fire, with a truck being needed just to carry the ammo and the explosives. They spoke to contacts, bought up big, stole some trucks and picked the town by saying "we drive until there's a good down then we kick everyone out." They set up, with sniper positions, ammo dumps, armour, food, water and so on. Each of them has a rocket of fifteen with them, and they've taken strategic positions. They plan backup positions, fields of fire, medical aid if any of them are hit, escape routes, vehicles, reloading if they're wounded, the works. The players are nearly wetting themselves with how cool this plan is, and how cinematic and cool the combat is going to be. I, being a total b*stard, had no interest in them getting a cinematic cool gunfight out of basically screwing up my carefully prepared game by being immature idiots. I describe how they see an armada of black sedans and choppers approaching the town, seeing cars in almost all directions. I describe how the corporate types out there (Ares being the most p*ssed off of the corporations gunning for the players) set up a permiter very wide, almost a kilometer back in all directions. The players feed belts into their SMGs and take some shots with their Barrets which miss. Amongst all the choppers and so on they see a large cargo-type plane flying overhead. Thinking they're smart, they shoot at it with SAMs and whatever is available, because they think it's dropping paratroopers. I think to myself why waste the lives of some perfectly good paratroopers and it drops a massive FAE bomb. The bomb blows most of the very small town (basically houses around a single street) into tiny pieces with the players taking a whole lot of the blast. Some of them die, some live after their ammo stockpile goes up as well, but are in no state to do anything at all about the Guardian drones that come into the crater/rubble and spend a couple of minutes pumping them full of bullets. Total planning time for the players was about three or four hours. Total playing time was about ninety seconds. |
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Nov 8 2005, 08:19 AM
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#35
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Freelance Elf Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 7,324 Joined: 30-September 04 From: Texas Member No.: 6,714 |
To be honest, that little snippet right there you can probably blame on the SR books themselves. Much like WoD, they get all excited the higher and higher a skill or attribute or whatever goes, and their background/descriptors for each level are all fucking crazy out of wack with reality. According to the main book, a 4 is actually reall good at something. We all know that's insane -- my main character doesn't go out of his way to get into brawls, and he's got Wildcat at 10 or so, with Carromelleg as a backup around 8 -- and that there's always someone better than you at Unarmed... but if you read the book descriptors, you could easily think a character with 4's across the board is some kind of badass. Which isn't me saying your player is smart, or deserves to be wasting oxygen, or anything like that. Just point out the book itself might be partially to blame for his confusion (along with genetics, and lead paint). |
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Nov 8 2005, 09:19 AM
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#36
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,283 Joined: 17-May 05 Member No.: 7,398 |
This thread made my day.
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Nov 8 2005, 12:17 PM
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#37
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,144 Joined: 22-September 04 Member No.: 6,690 |
I think that this one is applicable to the GM, although my memories of it all are a little hazy. IIRC, the team had to go to some slightly out of the way place in Southern France. One of the characters spoke French. The ones with datajacks got chips. We go to France, get some vehicles, and spend a couple days driving south.
We get to the town where we're supposed to meet this shady guy, and since it's late, the runners go into a local resturant to get something to eat. We sit down, we look at the menus. The waitress comes up and starts talking in a language we don't understand. Turns out, we were in a region with a high Basque population. Everyone in town spoke only Basque, and we hadn't noticed, not even when we were somehow 'reading' the menus. No one spoke English. No one even spoke French. The waitress got pissed when someone tried pantomiming with a credstick, thinking he was treating her like a prosititute. EVERYTHING we did just pissed off the locals more and more ('cause apprently we always did just the right thing to come off as purposefully insulting, instead of completly confused). Someone runs off to get our guy, and he shows up with a couple of tough buddies. Instead of going, 'hey, these guys are foreigners here to see me,' he gets pissed off too. We ended up bolting from town in a running gun fight, in which the locals wait on the sidelines, for the perfect oppurtunity to throw themselves in front of bullets. At the end, when we demanded from the GM what was going on, he said he wanted to give us an NPC with a good strong reason to hate our runners. ... :dead: |
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Nov 8 2005, 12:22 PM
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#38
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 934 Joined: 26-August 05 From: Earth - Europe - AGS - Norddeutscher Bund - Hannover Member No.: 7,624 |
How did you manage to drive south through France a couple of days? Where did you start? What kind of vehicle did you use? Bikes? o_O
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Nov 8 2005, 12:55 PM
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#39
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Freelance Elf Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 7,324 Joined: 30-September 04 From: Texas Member No.: 6,714 |
I...always thought most Basques still spoke French, too. I dunno, could be wrong, I guess.
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Nov 8 2005, 01:26 PM
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#40
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Canon Companion Group: Members Posts: 8,021 Joined: 2-March 03 From: The Morgue, Singapore LTG Member No.: 4,187 |
I am not assuming that you did not ask for backgrounds, but I am saying that if you did not. And if you did not, even if all the rest did write their backgrounds, then I do not think you should expect the player to do so. There is no rule that a character must make sense in a storysense. So as long as the PC matches up with the rules, he is legal and should be good to go to play in any game (apart from the subjective "GM approval" this is the canon baseline, any additional requirement to the basic chargen rules is a house rule). There is nothing wrong with taking contradictory Flaws. In fact, it is perfectly legal, rules wise. Funny thing about suspension of disbelief... what is believable about dragons flying about, the USA breaking up... I could go on, but my point is that suspension of disbelief is another area where things are subjective. And all those things about the wyrm shaman? Remember when you were a kid and you ask all those whys? Now GM is the kid and the adult is the player. Some people's suspension of belief enables them to accept it at face value and look askance when the GM question them why. Physics in SR work differently from RL(as many veteran SR gamers will tell you), so why can't you accept that people/the world/the SR universe behaves differently and somehow allows these PCs to exist (as written in the rules, without house ruling)? Hence, my answer to your myriad whys: just because. |
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Nov 8 2005, 04:03 PM
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#41
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,144 Joined: 22-September 04 Member No.: 6,690 |
They do, that was part of the problem with, 'and then suddenly, you can communicate with NO ONE!' The GM wanted a language barrier to exist, and by Dunkie there was going to be a language barrier there. Even if it made as little sense as a lazy tiger shaman with no gardering skills taking a day job as a landscaper. I didn't think to question how long it took to drive through France. We had plenty of time to get there, so I guess it's safe to say we paused for wine, cheese, and sightseeing. However, somehow, we did not notice (even while reading the menu) that the French language had completly ceased to exist. And Toturi, that shifter might've been rules legal, but the way most of the people around here seem to play, Flaws don't exist just for you to get free points(although it's completly rules legal to do it that way). The job might even have an impact on the game. Not to mention the fact that if they're a worm shamen, with all that time sleeping, and then working (assuming, as it sounded, they had the 40 hour flaw), they are left with just eight hours a day with which to do anything else. |
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Nov 9 2005, 05:49 AM
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#42
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 276 Joined: 29-September 02 Member No.: 3,348 |
Your opinion is noted. I still don’t agree with it.
None but the rule of common sense. And courtesy to the other players and GM.
Which as I already said, he didn’t. :D
As I already pointed out he failed the GM approval step. And I gave some of the reasons why. Were you having trouble following my explanation? And there’s no problem with having house rules. After all, SR3 wasn’t graven on stone tablets and brought down from the mountain.
:rotfl:
Which doesn’t stop if from being perfectly stupid. Face, it there’s more to the game than the rules. Your example of the child asking questions, in addition to being patronizing, has nothing to do with the actual situation. That’s someone trying to describe something they didn’t make and is very complex to someone with a very limited understanding of how the world works. As opposed to the player, who made the PC and should understand all the whys. If they can’t answer simple questions about things don’t make sense about the PC, that isn’t the GM’s fault. Sure there’s suspension of disbelief in SR as in any work of fiction, but the key is consistency. There are dragons in SR, which requires a certain suspension of disbelief. But most players would find that shattered if the GM described the dragon suddenly turned into a soap bubble. And the GM saying ‘just because’ or ‘it’s all fantasy anyway’ wouldn’t be an acceptable answer to any player over the age of about six. The same is true for the player. If you put the 20 questions (or any other reasonable questions) in front of them and they can’t provide an answer, that’s the player’s problem. And saying ‘just because’ or pointing out the PC didn’t break any rules in creation isn’t going to cut it. Some people are content playing stats on paper. For them, the only requirement is that the PC obey the character creation rules. Some of us like games with characters. I doubt you’d like the game I run. I’m certain I wouldn’t like the game you run. But that’s okay, so long as your players enjoy it. |
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Nov 9 2005, 06:40 AM
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#43
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Canon Companion Group: Members Posts: 8,021 Joined: 2-March 03 From: The Morgue, Singapore LTG Member No.: 4,187 |
My point was that it might not have been the player's delusion that the PC made sense. If the rules were not broken(according to you, they were, but for the sake of argument, I'm assuming they weren't), then it was a perfectly sensible PC.
See my sig.
Characters are stats on paper, in addition to the canon SRComp 20 Questions. |
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Nov 9 2005, 07:26 AM
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#44
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Target Group: Members Posts: 57 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 1,767 |
What in the world are you talking about? Right in SR3 it defines skill levels and their comparative meanings in a normal campaign. A skill of 4 is defined as being Well-rounded, while a skill of 5 is Professional or Educated. There is no way anyone who can read would mistakenly think that a skill rating of 4 makes you some kind of legendary master. And for the record, 8+ is World Class/Genius level. The only people who should even think about throwing down with your Wildcat 10 character in a fair fight are physical adepts specialized in Unarmed Combat. There may be people who have a higher natural skill level than your character - as in, maybe and probably no more than five in the entire freaking world - but the likelihood of him meeting them under normal circumstances is laughable. You talked about World of Darkness in your post, and maybe that's what you're thinking about as well. No one ever said that a score of 4 was excellent in Shadowrun, or that a score of 10 wasn't absolutely extraordinary, least of all the actual books. |
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Nov 9 2005, 03:38 PM
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#45
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 276 Joined: 29-September 02 Member No.: 3,348 |
Whether or not the character was legal by the game system and whether or not the character made sense are completely separate issues. Haven’t you understood a thing I’m saying?
So you believe the creators of SR3 made no mistakes? And that the GM’s job consists solely of mindlessly following the rules as written?
This confirms it. You haven’t understood a thing I’m saying. |
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Nov 9 2005, 03:51 PM
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#46
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Midnight Toker Group: Members Posts: 7,686 Joined: 4-July 04 From: Zombie Drop Bear Santa's Workshop Member No.: 6,456 |
The shifter landscaper could make sense with some minor modifications. 1 or 2 points in the landscaping knowledge skill, the owner of a small landscaping company as a level 1 contact, and perhaps a more industrious totem.
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Nov 9 2005, 03:56 PM
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#47
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 276 Joined: 29-September 02 Member No.: 3,348 |
Ouch. Since he had played Shadowrun before, the greenskinned elf with the horns, fangs, and tail did have the the Stealth skill. He had Stealth of 1. :eek: We found this out after he insisted on taking point. :please: After which he got shot up and we sent someone else to scout ahead. He tried to follow to back up the scout, trusting to his Stealth of 1 since it had worked so well before he took the Moderate wound. :eek: |
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Nov 9 2005, 11:11 PM
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#48
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Canon Companion Group: Members Posts: 8,021 Joined: 2-March 03 From: The Morgue, Singapore LTG Member No.: 4,187 |
1) Yes, I understand. But for any meaningful discussion other than expression of opinion, I think you are wrong. 2) No. Yes. 3) I understand prefectly well. But I choose to disagree and I'm using the printed rules to show you why. |
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Nov 11 2005, 04:03 PM
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#49
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 276 Joined: 29-September 02 Member No.: 3,348 |
Exactly. Any one of these would be a major step in making the characcter credible. |
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Nov 11 2005, 04:24 PM
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#50
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,070 Joined: 7-February 04 From: NYC Member No.: 6,058 |
Having a skill of 4 equated to being very good at something makes a lot more sense to me than a character with 10 in Wildcat being seriously concerned with meeting a non-adept better than he is. In all the games I've played in so far, the SR3 skill descriptions (aside from things like world-class, I think 8 might be a bit low for that, but it's not a bad starting point) have actually held up very well - unlike the ones in WoD games, which really are meaningless. |
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