Help for a New GM Options

[TheUrbanMonkey]

I am getting ready to run a Shadowrun game with some new players. The problem is that i've never played Shadowrun either. The only person i know who has played just moved out of town, but that's besides the point.

I currently have 2 players, and several questions.

1) What sort of monetary compensation is appropriate? I mean, what's a standard cash reward for a run?

2) Is there anything specific that i need to keep in mind while playing?

3) Does anyone know of any adventures that are available online that are good for new players / gms?


I'll probably come up with more questions, but that's it for now.

Thanks in advance.

[Fortune]

For adventures, you could always try the Shadowrun Missions scenarios from shadowrunrpg.com.

All games are different, but reading through those (there are currently 10 available) should give you some insight into your other questions.

[TheUrbanMonkey]

ok, another question, posed by one of my players:

If a Single Shot weapon is listed with a Recoil Compensation rating, for example the Panter XXL with it's RC rating of (1), does that mean that you add one die to the attack? if not, what does it mean?

[Kagetenshi]

It does not mean you add one to the attack. For some weapons, specifically those that can be dual-wielded, it means the recoil is compensated for if you shoot each one once in a pass. For others, like the Panther, it just means they did a good job making the weapon comfortable.

~J

[Fortune]

It's totally pointless in the Panther Assault Cannon (see above for other uses ;))! Treat it as fluff text that merely describes how the (mechanic-less) recoil compensation enables your Panther-weilding dude to absorb some of the 'punishing impact' from firing the mighty weapon. ;)

[ShadowDragon]

1) What sort of monetary compensation is appropriate? I mean, what's a standard cash reward for a run?

A good rule of thumb is to pay enough to cover a low lifestyle with 2 jobs a month plus the costs of consumables you think they might use for their runs (ammo, grenades, legwork costs, etc). This is the minimum required - then you adjust it as you see fit based on reputation, experience, and assets.

2) Is there anything specific that i need to keep in mind while playing?

Know that you're going to screw up consistantly for the first few sessions at least, and let your players know that you're not an expert just yet.

3) Does anyone know of any adventures that are available online that are good for new players / gms?

I use modified versions of the missions offered on the official website sometimes when I get writers block or don't have time.

[wargear]

A good reliable run idea that can be used over and over is to have a more professional team of Shadowrunners hire the PCs to create a distraction so that they can more easily succeed in the real run.
The PCs are met by a Johnson in a suit (the other team's Face). He hires them to break into Corp H and plant some explosives on the coolant towers, timer set for 1am.
PCs have to do a little legwork, break in, plant explosives, and escape undetected.
This is likely beyond their skills, but it doesn't matter if they can do it, because the Face has reported the breakin to Lone Star. Lone Star heat swoops in on Corp H and the PCs, leaving other nearby sites less protected.
When the explosives go off at 1am, or when the previously planted explosives detonate just after Lone Star arrive on the scene, the other team has a good 10-15 mins of freedom before anyone even thinks of looking at them, and by that time they are long gone.

If the PCs escape and make it back to the rendesvous with the Face, he happily pays them, plus a small 'Star' bonus, to compensate them for their trouble. If the team doesn't get hostile with him, he will consider hiring them again in the future. If they performed well, he won't doublecross them next time. :D

As for compensation...4000 :nuyen: plus 10% Star bonus. The Face has superior Negotiation, and will go no higher than 5000 :nuyen: . Ammo, contacts, gear, incidentals are the teams problem. The explosives and timers are supplied by the Face.

[Crusher Bob]

and when the team, monitoring the police band radio hears the call ahead of time and walks? They'll know the Johnson sol them out. Time for candygram.

[Kagetenshi]

If I were that Johnson, I'd have the runners killed at the meet.

~J

[Crusher Bob]

Well, with contacts in the organ and second hand cyberware market a team of runners is a pretty good haul. Assuming the sam has ~750K of ware and the rest of the team togeter has another 250K or so, plus the decker's deck + programs (mabe another 500K). Assuming the fence gives you 25% thats ~375,000 Y add another 40K for thier organs and you can rake in a little over 400K per runner team you whack. Looks like posing as a Johnson and whacking the team that comes to the meet is even better than stealing cars (which is a whole order of magnatude more lucrative than running with the 'suggested' pay scales). Of course, only only do something silly and dangerous like that after your actions have cause a collapse in the orichalcum markets... :rotfl:

[Snow_Fox]

what to keep in mind is that be consistent. sure you might screw up, admitt that when it happens "boy your right, I did handle that differently last week" but don't let them rail road you.

For compensation, it really depends on what your players are looknig ofr. Are they street level guys starting out? Middle class with some experience?

For example from litterature, Butcher's Harry Breslin is barely getting by from job to job, definately lower class. James Bond is clearly upper class (movies) or middle class (books) and would need more to pay off his debts so might pass on less rewarding jobs thqan Breslin the street mage might need.


Robert Parker's Spenser in the novels does a lot of pro-bono work (one recent book had him paid with 6 Kristpy Kreme donuts) because he got a large insurance settlement form another case that was documented in the books. In the most recent book he cvomments 'it had been a good year"

[TheUrbanMonkey]

THanks for the input.

Oh, and for the record, i'm an experienced GM, just not with Shadowrun...

But thank you for all the suggestions!

[Wounded Ronin]

I wrote a SR3 adventure for beginers: http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...l=mullet+police

I thought very carefully about the best way to introduce people into the game and thus the above link leads to the distilled essence of over 4 years of SR3 gamemastering.

[Glyph]

On the compensation question:

That can actually be a tricky one. The biggest problem is that some character types have higher overhead costs or improvement costs than others. Deckers spend money on hardware and programs, riggers spend money replacing lost drones or repairing vehicles, and so on, while others such as adepts have relatively low costs simply to keep their heads above water.

Even some relatively similar types can begin the game with different upkeep costs. One street samurai can be living in a penthouse suite, while another one can be holed up in a squalid tenement in the barrens.

Furthermore, compensation can vary wildly depending on the complexity and difficulty of the job, but can also depend on who's hiring them. Johnson's walk a line between trying to get the job done as cheaply as possible, and not insulting a group of violent professional criminals.



My approach would probably be to pay relatively well, but stress that the characters are not doing this for the kicks. That's not to say that some of them won't be jaded thrill-seekers or idealists, but most of them run the shadows from a combination of desperate circumstances (SINless gutter trash, corporate burnouts tossed to the curb, fugitives, etc.), and do this dangerous line of work with the goal of eventually making enough money to retire out of it. So if some of the PCs are flush with cash, remind them that they should think of putting it towards their eventual retirement.

I personally think that shadowrunning should pay well, at least for reasonably professional teams who have a minimum of street rep. If the group starts out as a bunch of lowlifes from the barrens, they may have to take a few lower-paying jobs to start out with, but they should move up to better-paying jobs if they do well. Some GMs advocate giving them barely enough to scrape by, but I don't think that's too realistic, considering how easily shadowrunners could make money doing other, less dangerous things.


This all assumes a "standard" Shadowrun campaign, though. In other words, gritty but slightly ideastic professionals, performing corporate espionage and similar work against corrupt mega-corporations, usually at the behest of one of their rivals. Campaigns that are epic and world-changing in scope might pay a lot better (if the runners even care about pay), while low-powered street level campaigns might involve the runners taking nasty jobs for little money, because they lack any other options.

[Wounded Ronin]

One problem I had was with players accumulating huge amounts of money and being able to get all the most powerful equipment.

I suppose that the "correct" way to balance things would be to still pay more money but to make advanced gear, such as FFBA, be really hard to get.

[Lindt]

I usually take the teams total lifestyle and multiply by 4 times the length of time since the last run. Thats the baseline.

So the initial offer my team of 3 got was (¥3000*4*3 months) ¥36,000.

While 2 of my players have ¥100,000 or close to it, I reminded one of them that her DocWagon contract is up at the end of the month, and that it would be quite a bit to replace her Ares Alpha if it got lost. The other is sitting on it for a good weapon foci.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Lindt]

Its a nice number for a 120-ish BP group, though it can get kinda messy when people get better/ multiple lifestyles.

I wasent talking broken I was talking lost. People have to ditch weapons once in a while. I was playing in a game where I had to toss a Dobermen drone into the sound once. That one stung.
I was making mention that a dwarf mod. Ares Alpha is close to ¥10k once you make it yours (grip, shock pad, GV 4, clip of grenades and some nice ammo). Suddenly replacing your primary weapon is your entire take on a run.

This post has been edited by Lindt: Jan 9 2007, 02:42 PM

[hyzmarca]

An appropriate run depends on the characters, really.

If your team owns anti-tank weapons they will be doing runs in which anti-tank missiles are either necessary or useful.

If your five member team share a two-room cardboard box and their equipment is limited to a stick with a nails in it, a brick, a broken bicycle chain, and knuckle dusters make from duck tape and some guy's teeth, they will not be getting the glamorous jobs.

Before designing a run you should have some idea of the types of characters who will be running it either by letting your players make characters first or by deciding what they of characters you want your players to make.

Second, you need to know what kind of moral slant you want to put on your campaign world. Do you want the PCs to be Robin Hoods or Amoral Sumbeeches. If it is the latter you want stick-to-to-the-man scenarios such as protecting SINless people from greedy land developers or sabotaging a bottling corporation that is anchoring influence spells to their drinks as a form of advertising.

If you want to be more amoral you might consider something like a ghoul-extermination run in which they can't collect their pay unless they execute crying mother and her infant.

If you want something in the middle crime-family-on-crime-family and corp-on-corp is better.

If you want more militaristic stuff mercenary work in South America is always fun.


As for pay, I wouldn't base it on lifestyle but on the caliber of the runners and the difficulty of the run. Taking a package across a street might earn 45 :nuyen: while Mr. Super Assassin is going to get millions of nuyen for a kill Lofwyr/Angela Colloton/Damien Knight/[Insert Powerful Dude] run.

[Crusher Bob]

More importantly, decide with your players what sort of game you are playing. What unspoken rules are in effect?

Sample unspoken rule:

This SR game is supposed to be 'movie like' so one rule is that the characters will never need to worry about wearing masks. After all, it's hard to get a good character shot when you are wearing a ski-mask. So the team can walk into the bank they are going to rob, but the fact that thier photogenic faces and stylish clothing were all caught on the security cameras will not help the police in tracking them down.

[wargear]

[Slump]

Also, you need to keep in mind whether you want big shootouts to be survivable.

Realistically, most shootouts that last longer than 5 minutes from "first shot" to "runners are outta there!" should have Star response. Faster if you're packing heavier weapons or in richer areas.

For a stealthy game, Star response with be fast, heavy, and lethal. Star would probably be wearing security- or military-grade armor (depending on response level), and wielding sub-machine guns or assault rifles, with the occasional sniper and shotgun thrown in for fun. Not to mention they would probably make extensive use of neurostun, flash/bang and frag grenades.

For a BOOM game, Star response should be fast, but lightweights. Like in the movies where the 4 guys wielding assault rifles mow down 100s of cops wielding pistols with nary a scratch. Star would probably make use of smoke (but not tear or neurostun) grenades, light armor, and pistols.

[Crusher Bob]