Enrichening the Setting, Making Shadowrun come to life Options

[Strobe]

[Talia Invierno]

It scarcely has to! ;)

[Strobe]

[Ikirouta]

In other games I have generated some news and "sports" scores. The news were mostly about what happened in the PCs' neighbourhood and occasionally mentioned some of the runs that PCs had done and were not covert enough. Sometimes they even reported how the investigations about those runs were progressing :)

Sports scores were actually about a net game.

One thing that I started to do with my latest game was to use one song as a theme for the game. So everyone knew that now the game has started.

What I intend to do is flesh out PCs every session a bit more. I will compile a list of questions that needs to be answered eventually. They will range from where they and what kind of place it is to what they eat. About their family and old friends etc.

[stevebugge]

The biggest thing I've noticed, and this is really basic, by a lot of GM's are senses other than sight and hearing, and this in a world where sim-sense is a dominant form of entertainment and information.

A lot of times I'll get some thing like:

"you get to the club for the meet, and it's dark, crowded and loud" with a quick description of the clubs prominent features thrown in sometimes.

No mention that you can feel the bass pounding in your bones, that the place smells like a mix of sweat, pheromone laced perfumes and colognes, cigarette smoke, and synthahol, and that you get bumped, jostled, groped while making your way across hard floor slick with spilled drinks.

For an idea of how to get some local flavor in to the game
The Seattle Post Intellegencer is unlikey to have significantly changed the way they cover news in 2070, it will most likely still be a mix of Human Interest, soft news, splashy coverage of big corporate events, and overhyped coverage of crime it is today.

The idea of commercials on the trid, announcements on the matrix and radio, news are all great. Also throw in some simsense blast advertising in the everyday wireless environment (say a broadcast smell of Pho when you walk by the stand in the mall) will make your world a bit richer.

[Solomon Greene]

The problem with descriptions is that many groups have no patience for them. I've run into countless times as a Gm when I attempted to give a detailed description and have been told "yeah, yeah, whatever."

Granted, it's not all players, but a good majority that I've run across.

The obvious statement is 'well, don't be descriptive all the time" and I'm not, but some people just don't care for it at all.

There's always the "empty house" techinque to consider - minimal description allows a player to "fill in the gaps" with memories, images and ideas from their own mind. A haunted house I describe is never as scary as the one living in your mind already.

And you just thought about it.

[stevebugge]

[Talia Invierno]

(Uh oh, here's that elephant lurking in the room again.)

@ Strobe:

There's many times when I would prefer to be wrong. We're going to have some challenging water times ahead of us -- globally -- and I'll be very surprised if some major wars don't break out over it over the next decade or two.

[TheMadDutchman]

I'm to the point of agreeing w/ Stevebugge. Players who want to skip the descriptions have characters who are being willfully neglegent of their surroundings. Of course, I'd gotten to the point (before I moved and had to stop gaming temporarily) that I had begun to send people like that away from my table entirely.

I've also begun toying w/ the idea of using rules and in-game effects to enhance things. Specifically I'm working up a description of a designer fashion line that's going to cause dice modifiers to social rolls.

I'm away from my base of operations of right now so it's going to take me a few days to put everything together and post it but I'll be in touch.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Dashifen]

But the description of a character's environment is IC, not OOC. Thus, there should be an IC effect if a character is ignoring said environment.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

The one ignoring it is the player, not the character.

[mfb]

OOC problems should generally be dealt with OOC. however, there are occasions where an OOC problem can only be resolved by a combination of OOC and IC action. a player who continually blows off listening to descriptions and whatnot might well not be convinced to pay attention until his character gets seriously screwed over by the player's willful ignorance. that's certainly not the first option a GM should take, but it shouldn't be left out of the toolkit, either. the goal should be getting the player to want to listen to the descriptions to enhance his interaction, not to beat him with the descriptions until he hangs on every word because he fears the consequences of missing a detail.

[Dashifen]

I don't see it that way. If I'm describing a setting, and the person across the table from me says "Whatever, man, I just walk up to the table where I see Mr. Johnson" then the player has chosen to perform an action in the game at the expense of that description. This is an IC indication that the character doesn't pay attention to the three guys in the booth next to the Johnson who all seem to be dressed similarly, for example.

[Rifleman]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Dashifen]

Very true, which is why the game mechanics of skills (e.g., perception) can allow a player who zoned out to try and get information for his character. I also tend not to provide pertinent information in my descriptions that wouldn't otherwise be attainable through the application of skills. To continue my above example, someone who skipped the description and, thus, missed a casual mention of the Johnson's backup would have the opportunity to learn of them via a perception test. Since I was going to (or did) provide that information to others for free, all we need is a hit on said test and I'll reiterate myself. I've found, though, that by providing that sort of descriptive, environmental information upfront, it's reduced the amount of die rolling necessary whenever a group steps into a new setting.

And, in the end, I should convince the player to listen because my games are story driven and very environmental. I may not tell people that there's a fight on the dance floor (unless they're looking at it) only that the crowd has begun to roar and cheer out of sync with the music of the band. If the players don't investigate why, they may not realize the brawl that's in between them and the exit until it's too late. Perhaps I'm in a very different situation as I game at the local university and, thus, I very often have 15+ players interested in my game and can, therefore, be very careful about making sure that their style matches my own.

Any road, the immersing, descriptive nature of an RPG is, to me, far more important than moving quickly through a game. I often spend months to years designing my campaigns and much of that work is mental notes about descriptions and environments. I work visually through the plot in my head as if I were directing it for television or a movie and, as a result, my games tend to be visually oriented.

[Eleazar]

One thing a lot of new people to SR and maybe even veteran players don't have is a grasp of cyberpunk culture and setting. Currently I am one of those. To help alleviate the problem I am reading the Sprawl Trilogy by William Gibson. This trilogy is iconic and significant in establishing cyberpunk. Gibson was the first to ever use terms like cyberspace and the matrix. I have just finished Chapter 2 of "Neuromancer", the first in the trilogy, and I must say I am impressed. There are also some good movies out there like Blade Runner and Johny Mnemonic. For Blade Runner you can also read the book it was based on by Phillip K. Dick called "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". "Ghost in the Shell" is also a great anime which I recommend, and I don't even like anime. Sunnyside made an allusion to "Mirror Shades" by Bruce Sterling. Then again it could have been an allusion to the Sprawl Trilogy because one of the characters in the book has glasses describes as mirror shades.

These books are the foundation that was built and allowed games like Shadowrun to exist. You will find out that Shadowrun has taken very liberally from all these books, most especially the Sprawl Trilogy. This is apparent to me and I just finished Chapter 2 of "Neuromancer". Getting yourself acquainted with the setting is a great step towards being capable of enriching it.

[Adarael]

Steve, the real question is if the Seattle PI will still suck in comparison to the Seattle Times.

Shadowrunners could be hired to stage events to boost ratings. Mmmm, Max Headroom style.

[stevebugge]

[TheMadDutchman]

I had another idea last night; it's pretty much an add-on to my original commercial idea. This is a fairly big one but I think it can be done relatively cheaply and quickly. It's the next big step in advertising: Product placement.

One of the GMs I played w/ until recently always made it a habbit to provide drinks at the game. We're all adults and we all had jobs (I say had because I'm currently unemployed and living off of student loans but by the time I get my game going I should be working again) so it wasn't any kind of a burden to pick up a couple 12 packs or 2 liters.

The idea I had was to re-label the drinks provided. Like I said it would take a little time but really not that much. Printers are smart enough and fast enough that it wouldn't be that difficult to print up a dozen logos and tape them onto the drinks. Then when the game starts before anyone has a chance to get a drink I plug the imaginary SR beverage and when they get to the fridge they find the same thing awaiting consumption. I'm trying to create a really vivid environment and I want to create a connection to the world for the players.

[stevebugge]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Kyoto Kid]

[Shinobi Killfist]