Why the hostility?, GMs vs. Players Options

[azrael_ven]

The problem I have been running into is some of my players have been reading and getting a better feel for the world. While others just play on the given day, it creates a slight imbalance. Most of the experience of the group is from the game that might cause cancer. So they are used to only having to plan a little bit and then have an all out brawl. All out brawls don't work well when anybody can die when edge is used against them. I was running 'On The Run' and the very worst happened. One of the players talked to the media, so everybody new the rumor was true. I had not planned on that happening. The run sort of ended short and failed of course. But it did allow me to use the NPC's for other uses since the players never came across some of them to spin a fallout story. For the end battle in 'On The Run', the NPC's were way to powerful for a beginning group. I mean come on, a level 3 grade init. that happens to be a vamp. Oh well, I'm sort of glad it didn't get that far. The group would've have been royally pissed to get that far and loose the disk. :vegm:

[Rotbart van Dain...]

OtR is broken by design, anyway.

[ornot]

My main problem with OtR is that a professional team has no reason not to just take the disk straight to Mr. Johnson. However, if as a GM, you can foster enough curiousity and make Mr. Johnson unavaliable they might be inclined to poke around and you can actually use the second half of the adventure.

I think the NPCs are a touch on the grotesque side, but it also suggests that they will blast away at each other as well as the PCs.

I do feel for you though, azrael ven. Trying to run inexperienced players through something that can rapidly spiral into complexity like OtR.

If I may, I'd like to suggest having a look at some of the SR Missions. The first one for SR4 (set in Denver unfortunately, as I presume you're settled in Seattle) is actually quite nice and straightforward. Almost a milkrun, which is good if your players are inexperienced. The SR3 SR Missions might make quite a good start too (at least the first one or two), although you'll have to update or fudge the NPC stats. As you lack any techy types you can overlook the fact that the SR3 material doesn't incorporate any SR4 Matrix stuff.

[Lagomorph]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Cheops]

Here's what I did to OtR to introduce my group of noobs (plus 1 experienced):

Instead of looking for the disk they were hired by Nabo the day before the concert. Turns out that a rival punk band (called Amadeus von Tukwila--think Falco but more punkish and really big on the Baroque feel) has been trash talking him on the boards and blogs and claiming Nabo isn't really street, just some poor kid from Redmond.

Nabo hires the runners to go to AvT's studio (F*U Studios in Tukwila) and trash the place. He provides the matrix access code for the studio as well as one of his business cards to be left at the studio to "send the message." Runners have to do it while Nabo is on stage since that will give him and his gang some deniability.

Group successfully trashes the place during Nabo's performance. Next day Nabo's manager meets with them to give them the money and offers them another job. Someone has stolen Nabo's commlink with his latest lyrics and music on it and he needs it back. They have a picture of the guy who did it but that is it, they need the runners to track them down further. (it was the group's street sam--Ninja type guy who dresses exactly like Cobra Commander).

Can't get into further details about what happens next since at least one of my players cruises this forum. Obviously Cobra Commander's group is the one that is On the Run while my group is attacking it from a different angle.

I was thinking of using this as my submission for the Commando program but I'm too lazy to do that just now so I'll probably use the next run for that.

[cREbralFIX]

I think people forget that the GM is a player too. All too often, I see players going through the game like it was a sporting event and they're hogging the ball. They get antagonistic with the GM. They want their "fantasy" and the GM and some players are standing in the way.

The World of Darkness games cultivate a totally different mentality. The system focuses on the story, not stats. There's nothing worse than a D&D player babbling about his +X sword, combined with the Gauntlet of Super-Dooper Strength with an Amulet of Space Doom, all melted down to forge the Mega-Spiffy Brooch of Butt Casting +15. Sheesh...never heard a dwarf start talking about his +2 battleax. It was always, "Grandfather Mighty wielded this blade against the goblin hordes in 417. Look, it chops through rock! Whack! Oh, @#$%^ I chipped the blade!"

[Blade]

You never heard a WoD player babbling about his 3rd generation Brujah with his level 10 something and his level 10 something else and 10 points of ... who singlehandedly... ?
I think that's the kind of character I heard the most muchkin talk about.

[eidolon]

Ditto Blade. "I totally got my storyteller to agree to me being 2nd gen, which of course means blah blah blah blah."

There are munchy players in every system.

[Spike]

I don't know if this is 'Evil GM Idea #421' or just bad/lazy crap...

If the run turns out to be super simple and easy, that's when the Johnson turns on them (or other plot twist of choice) that makes for a fun and exciting second half of the game.

If the run turns out to be super hard, the Johnson was on the level and congratulates them for pulling it off.

Do it right and it lookslike you planned for the easy/hard thing that went down. Of course, if everyone dies in the super hard run, then it was a really bad set up, and their next characters will hear all about how Corporation X screwed over a team of runners just last week...

[Cheops]

[Kyoto Kid]

[Luddite]

[ornot]

I had a run where the Johnson double crossed the PCs. Frankly I thought it was pretty obvious that he wasn't on the level from his behaviour at the original meet. I also left plenty of opportunities for the runners to recoup far more than their losses along the way. They didn't get paid, but they scored so much paydata they made a very tidy profit. And they got to slaughter the obnoxious Johnson!

I was very worried that they wouldn't survive the 'ambush', but I did have a backup plan to pull their fat out of the fire in case they did fall over (the organised crime fixer in whose establishment the meet was going down was mightily pissed that the Johnson was impugning his rep and his security). Worked out all right in the end though, except for the Street Sam deciding that this fight was a good opportunity to play with the called shot rules. Consequently he kept missing and getting beaten with a tomahawk.

[Denicalis]

This is why, generally speaking, I only play with friends. I know it isn't always an option, but I like to know a little about the people i'm getting into a run with. I tend to stick with really RP-centric games, where the combat is secondary, so I don't really have time for the munchkin players. Granted, if you play online--which it's beginning to look like I'll have to these days--there's not too much you can do about it, hm? All you can really do is "accidently" double tap the guy in the back of the head during a firefight. No one looks too closely at what bullet is in who, y'know?

[Garrowolf]

I like to run my games fairly difficult but every once in a while I give them a moderately hard run and have no surprises. They do a good job and out class the defenses. They come off feeling great about and they appreciate the harder ones even more.

I think that it is important to make them feel like bad asses every once in a while on purpose. They want that. If they are fighting for it all the time then you will feel like they are trying to mess up your game. If you give them a great success (and NOT lots of money!) then they will be more likely to go with the harder ones.

[The Entropic Wiz...]

Garrowolf:

[Kyoto Kid]

...older model VTOL, that is the key. I would have given it a level or two of gremlins based on it's age. Somewheres along the line something would break & they would have to fix it. Getting parts in the Outback would be hard (and costly) so they maybe would have just abandoned it or sold it to some other poor slot "as is" (which would be far less than the actual book value) before heading to HK. Now everyone has maybe 15, - 20 k instead of 150k & HK costs would soon eat that up since they were new there & had to rebuild their contacts base.

[edit addendum]

Now it wasn't clear, was that 150k for the entire team or 150k per runner? If it was the entire team (say 5 members) that would come to 30k ea, not totally unmanageable.

[deek]

I don't know...a runner team with 150K in nuyen does not seem that crazy to start. I could understand them taking some time off from running, so you have a session of downtime or something, buy some gear, a place to live and the like and that money is sucked up in a few weeks time...

And if the players aren't there to play and are fine sitting on their duffs...well, I just question why you would need to cancel it, as it sounds like they would just stop showing up:)

[Kyoto Kid]

...actually, after one segment of Survival of the Fittest, we all came into a hefty chunk of change. My character Tomoe really didn't have much more to buy since she did not use firearms, (throwing skill), and was pretty much at her Essence Index limit for implants. Not being awakened she had no big ticket items like foci to purchase and bond. Basically she should have retired, but there were still several segments of the campaign to go and I continued to run her more through obligation to finishing the campaign rather than for the character's needs.

[Luddite]

Yeah, I have to second the idea that :nuyen: 150,000 isn't all that much cash for a team of runners in a new city. It's barely enough to upgrade someone's wires, much less retire on...

[Konsaki]

You also need alot of cash to grease palms with in a new town/country/continent.
Some no name foreiner wants to make connections, show me the money, bioch!

[ElFenrir]

[Demerzel]

The excellent part about that, ElFenrir, is that every player type is a munchkin of one variety or another.

[Kyoto Kid]

...for quite a while I felt I fell under #2, though not so much due to flying lead as to flying mana. Almost every character had to have a maxed out Willpower, Body, Quickness, and Intelligence or they were pretty much toast since the mages we went up against all had 3 - 4d6 initiative. Then came dealing with Dragons & Great Dragons. As I mentioned before, I basically ended up founding my own "retirement home for PCs" because of this. Finally (and one of the worst) there was an issue with contacts and acquaintances, all of whom seemed to become more a curse than a friend or help to the character. I began to question why even do a backstory, for everyone the character ever knew, even the best of friends, was going to ultimately screw her over in the end. It got to the point I felt I needed to make all my characters hermits with the Hung Out to Dry flaw

I also have a bit of #4, in that I tend to favour characters that have more roleplay as opposed to rollplay potential. The difference here was that many of these characters were not totally min-maxed out (most of them had no more than 2d6/2IP initiative). Unfortunately, they were overshadowed by the munched characters in the group who often duplicated the primary skills they had. These characters also had a bit of #3 in that again, they still needed to survive in a setting that, because of the munched characters, was often over their heads.

It wasn't so much to "win", but more just to stay alive long enough to see some type of character development.