[X] My Assistant

[Monnock]

Thank you all for your advice, it has helped me out tremendously.

I figure that KE may just try to set them up, but if they reject the mission then they will just find some scapegoats. The only hole in this is that they don't have the hummer, and if it shows up again there could be some problems, but they could always make some excuse about how they caught the criminals but the hummer was never found.

After that, you're pretty much right, no one would want to hire sell outs. The funny thing was this happened with the first module that I ran for them. I forget what it was called, but essentially once they acquired the disk they needed, someone approached them with a much higher offer than the Johnson for the information and they accepted it, which led to the same result. I told them the results of their consequences (which they agreed that they should have thought that through a bit more) and decided to start fresh. Sure, it pays well to double-cross people. It has to otherwise no one would ever consider it, but in the biz they are in, it's kinda a bad idea.

Also, thanks a ton for all the movie suggestions, I'll have to check them out.

[Wounded Ronin]

I've always had a problem with how most players will whine if the team just gets sniped out.

It seems to me that the only logical alternative for when they really humiliate a corporation is to send a few platoons of crack soldiers after them complete with artillery and magical and spirit support. Furthermore, bring advanced riflemen who don't "automatically" shoot the PCs first thing but have them keep delayed actions so that if the PCs appear at certain promienent vantage points they get shot at. That goes over better with the players.

The big problem with that is that it's a lot of dice rolls. But unfortunately how else do you simulate the effect of the PCs being crushed by overwhelming force?

[hyzmarca]

One way to move them away from the 'kill everything' routine is to give them terms of mission success that specify no killing. If they kill, they fail, so they have to avoid violence. However, with the doublecrossing problem you will have to have terms of personal success (as opposed to mission success) that are tied to politics and contacts.

Instead of having these characters be just Shadowrunners have then make orginized crime figures. Their goal would be to increase the size of their criminal emipire and their success would require a great deal of politiking an dbribery. Doing crazy things, killing the wrong people, and betrying the wrong people would have dire political consequences that would make it impossible for them to do business and ruin their orginization.

If they still want to be ultra-violent and reckless, and some people are going to hit me over the head for this suggestion, put them in charge of a megacorp and let them truely understand the power they are going against. As heads of a megacorp make sure that their actions have dire political consequences for themselves and their orginization. Then, once they understand how poerful their opposition really is, let them play a regular game again.


Also, you may consider implimenting a variation of the Inverse Ninja Rule to curb bloodshed.
Have all of your canon fodder characters start with stats and skills of 1 across the board. However, for every one of your ninjas that they kill the others gain 1 point in every skill, 1 point in ever stat, and 1 power, spell, metamagic, 'ware, or piece of equipment.
If you throw enough generic clone cannon fodder characters at the team and they insist on using lethal force they will eventually be faacing a single near-invincible foe due to the inverse ninja rule.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Preferably you don't, because the only one having fun there is the DM who decided to get his jollies by pulling out all the stops and crushing the PCs like ants.

And frankly if you do that too much, you'll have a jolly good time managing a team of NPC runners to run against your NPC corporations, because no players will play with you again.


Still, selling out your J is something you only do when he's double-crossed you first. Though I think I might see the problem - you offered them only 5000 for the job from the second Mr. J? Did the first Mr. J give them a more reasonable number? Because it sounds to me like they may be so strapped for cash that they're willing to act like greedy newbies because they're desperate.

[Monnock]

The mission given to them by the first J (J1) was to intercept a shipment that was heading out. They were given no idea as to when it was heading out, other than sometime next week. J1 offered them a 5k down payment (which the party face managed to get upped to 7.5k) with no obligation to fulfill the contract (as he realized he was asking a very difficult task without very many specifics), but the payoff was 10k extra for whatever was in the truck plus extra based off of what they found.

In order to find out the exact date/time they got in touch with an information broker to find out for them, which I mentioned the specifics of that earlier.

J2 came in offering 2.5k for the run and extra based off of the cargo.

Once the mission was completed J1 offered them 30k to keep the deal a secret, however once again the face managed to get the price upped to 50k (So that's a total payout of 67.5K). The Johnson knew exactly how important the object they delivered was, but he was remaining coy with them. One of the players decided that 'keep this under wraps' didn't include selling a recording of the meeting to J2. He even told the rest of the runners, who didn't seem to care, and he sold the recording for 5k. I was *shocked* when he took the money without haggling for more.

I honestly don't think that this was because they considered themselves poor. I think the player (who was a mage) was just looking for funds for his Force 1 spirit genocide and to buy a slave...

The 5k was definatly worth selling out an employer who gives out that kind of :nuyen:.

[eidolon]

[Monnock]

Bah, edited because I didn't like how it turned out at all

[James McMurray]

[James McMurray]

For the record, Wikipedia agrees with me onthe definition, for whatever that's worth (if anything). :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming_%2...laying_games%29

[Wounded Ronin]

For me the biggest problem is handling all the dice rolls when it comes to the PCs calling down a military-type situation on them. Realistically, if a corporation is able to find where the PCs are and they want to kill them they'll surround the place, have all kinds of magic, have lots of infantry, have artillery support, etc etc etc. That's swell, and all, but you need to be the frigging master of, like, 3 sourcebooks (the rigger book, MiTS, and the Cannon Companion and possibly also Man and Machine) just to know the rules for all of that. You then need to be making initiative rolls for something like 50-100 entities, and every time a PC shoots at a grunt you have to seperately keep track of that grunt's combat pool.

On principle and philosophically I'd like to let the dice fall where they may and if one or two PCs somehow manage to survive and slip away between the cracks that's cool. But I feel like the PCs are unfairly shielded by the weight of the "engine"; it becomes very hard for the GM to throw 50-100 entities at the PCs at once just because of the sheer weight of the system.

(I once threw 100 entities at the PCs and forced them to retreat from some place, but honestly, I felt like the mental effort damn near killed me.)

Note that that's not metagaming; that's realism, at least I think it is. In Iraq if the Marines encounter three snipers at a minaret they don't charge in tiny groups of five so that they can be neatly picked off. They have artillery support, overwhelming suppressive fire, and overwhelming numbers that they bring to bear. Why should the corporate military not come in full force with all the toys when it's absolutely vital that they hammer a small team of shadowrunners?

[Snow_Fox]

they should not be able to escape the police. Ever watch "cops' or "World's most amzing police videos" the polcie have numbers and organization, they can cover each other, just stay on the runners until they run out of gas, as the cops get low fresh ones take up the chase. if the runners think they're ahead, have they thrown off the helo gun ships and dornes doing a long distance trace. the corp mage following them in the astral? notice that radiactive tracker attacked to their bumper?

"Team alpha, this is spy, targets have parked and left their vehical"

The team has a tirckedo ut truck? Groovy, watch the Lone Star Banshee come in on them. don't want ot shot up the car? Get a city master "Ramming speed"
ok guys you're pretty much trapped in the wreckage.

want to aovid that sort of general massacre? Are they always together, always armed to the teeth? of course not. They get picked up at a bar, maybe a joy girl slips them something in a drink or even slots a BTL into them in an embrace.
"Easiest :nuyen: 500 I ever made sugar"

put a price on their head. Remember as nasty as they are they are not the paex predators. there are others far more leathal than they are.

Ok , your going out to the car, Fred could you roll 8 dice please?
My body ?
yep, please roll,
4,4,3,3,6,4,2,1
Great, thanks. fred's head explodes. a momment later you hear the sound of a barrett snipe rifle. fred is dead.

Tomorrow you go out to your car....

[James McMurray]

Because it impacts the bottom line?

For a fight that big I'd never use compat pools for any NPC except the big guys. Give the rest either nothing at all or a threat rating a la SR2. Yeah, threat ratings have their problems, butt hey also have their uses. :)

The situation you're describing is not quite like finding some snipers set up in a ready position. You're finding a group of people hanging out eating pizza and playing video games (or whatever your runners do when they're together but not on a run). In a lot of the game I've played you'd actually end up with several different fights going on at once when the corp hits the runners one at a time as they find them, or all at once as a concerted cleanup effort. But that's just because the runners in my games don't usually hang out in a group when they're not working.

[James McMurray]

[Snow_Fox]

I should be the last course. to show how things can go against them, badly. since they have ignored the consiquenses of their actions, this would bring it home to them.

You could also do a ritual sorcery to have someone go to the police and sign a full confession.

[Monnock]

[toturi]

[Wounded Ronin]

Before the PC gets barretted does he get to make a perception test to see the sniper? That's a potential problem.

The other problem is how the players would crrryyy and moooaan.

[Kanada Ten]

[Monnock]

Toturi, the players in my game have no leg to stand on. They have no street cred at all. They are new to Shadowrunning, and honestly they should be glad that they got such a high paying mission, but perhaps they don't realize that getting over 50K as a starter mission is a lot of money. They should have at least realized that 50K+ > 5k, and I tried to make it clear to the player who was speaking with the other Johnson that he was clearly much more innexperianced with the whole Shadowrunning business (I actually said that this was apparent to the player during the first meeting).

What they should also realize is that betrayal works both ways. By turning in the first Johnson, they were basically begging their Johnson to sell them out in turn. They didn't even do it subtly, as I said before, the recording is obviously done by one of the runners who was in the room, and in fact the Johnson could tell who it was because he noticed that the mage was looking around like he actually noticed the world around him, unlike before where he just kind of stood in the corner and didn't take interest in the conversation. He didn't think anything of it at the time because he just figured that the mage took interest in what was in the package.

Also, as a comment to using forensics against the PCs, unless they actually have some sort of knowledge of something like how a rocket launcher works, they would have no idea how to figure out how to mask the signature. Simply having the skill to fire the weapon would suffice for me to say that they would at least know about the marker.

Also keep in mind that this is not going to be a military stand off. The PCs will be sent to steal something, and as soon as they get into the room to retrieve the package, a flashbang and smoke gernade will be tossed into the room and the SWAT will use a sweeping entry pattern with thermographic imaging to take down the runners. In addition to this the squad leader will put a focused jam on the room to block their technomancer and any alternative means they could use to dispel the confusion. If all goes as they plan, they should have the runners incapacitated within a few combat rounds. Of course I will be sure to allow them intuition checks to see if they 'get a bad feeling about this' bonus to their suprise round check.

I'm not going to cheat in any way. I refuse to under any circumstances. I will do everything by the book to the best of my abilities in this matter, and to top it all off, if they turn down the trap, they may even get out of it scott free, but they will be registered criminals after this, and that does mean something in a world where information is power.

Really to finish it off, Toturi, it sounds like you are trying to convince me to allow the players to cheese out of the situation by rolling some dice. Short of direct mind control, I don't feel that it is possible to talk the entire KE police force into believing that you didn't commit the crime when they have absolutly, positivly, no evidence whats so ever that they didn't do it, and in-fact two of them have criminal SINs. What happens when they somehow get uber hits to convince them all that they didn't do it? Do you have God himself come down and tell them to let them go?

Also, I find that often times social skills (in all the games I play) are given a lot more leeway with doing impossible stunts because you can't 'defign' the rules for social interaction. Can you shoot the Moon with a handgun? No, but apparently you can convince someone (with no magic at all) that they are actually on the Moon right now being probed by government agents as part of a project to cross-breed aliens with humans and that you are there to save them from the system because the player got, like, 20 hits... Riiiiight. Going through some rediculous process of adding up penalties is pointless, because no matter how high you set it, no matter how improbable it seems, it can happen, and once you admit that, you might as well let the gun-slinger shoot the Moon because a rift in the space-time continuem just happens to appear right where the bullet was headed and warped it to the Moon for him because he rolled a lot of dice.

Ah, sorry for the rant. I do understand that the opposite is true as well, where when the player offers something plausable but the GM just flat out turns it down without rolling dice. I don't think thats fair at all, and I wholeheartedly agree that talking should be an option, but I feel that it is circumstantial, and that just because you roll well doesn't entitle you to circumvent reality entirely.

[FanGirl]

[Monnock]

[toturi]

What I am saying is that just because you think that shooting your way in and double crossing your Johnson is a bad thing, it does not mean that rules-mechanics-wise, it really is.

What I am saying is that if the dice say that they go scot-free, then perhaps you should let them go scot free. If they rolled uber-dice, then they should walk away. Just because the player rolled well doesn't mean that the GM should circumvent it (game mechanic reality) to suit his(GM perception) reality.

In fact, I always remind myself that my vision of reality isn't going to be the same as the players and the only constant in all this is the reality of the game mechanics.

[hyzmarca]

[Monnock]

[James McMurray]