Enrichening the Setting, Making Shadowrun come to life Options

[Blade]

Actually if you want your descriptions to convey some meaning to your players don't go into the details of how things looks, but just describe small details and items that will add a lot to the atmosphere.

Describing the layout of the bar isn't really interesting (except if there's going to be some action) but describing that the barman is quickly rinsing the glasses with a black/brownish water, that the floor is sticky, that the tables are blackened with ash and cigarette burns will help your players imagine the whole place and help them feel the atmosphere.

[Kyoto Kid]

...If it's a place they're going into the first time, I do give a brief description of the layout/clientele (like the quirky little underground bar in Vienna they went to in the last session RiS) After all, if something breaks out, the characters then have some idea of which table to duck behind or who is shooting at them. For the most part though I do to try to generate more of a general "atmosphere" of the place.

For "regular" haunts, after the first time I run it, I usually dispense with any details unless something there is something out of the ordinary.

[DuckEggBlue Omeg...]

The situations described seem almost the complete opposite of what I'm used to. In our group, the other players and I have a tendency to declare we are 'scoping the place out (in detail)' before the GM even gets to decide whether or not he's describing it. This happens when you have a GM who thinks details are important, but describing them to players isn't.

As for adding life to a campaign, I really wanted to see if I can use the Super Perforator clip from Manitou's Shoe as part of an ad campaign for a new line of budget APDS. I also did a write up for my home town once, but seeing as one of the major premises of it was why it was the only state capital NOT mentioned Target: Awakened Lands, it's wouldn't be very useful.

[stevebugge]

[Talia Invierno]

For a quick shortcut --

"You know that bar from Collateral? No, not that one, the one where the good-guy cop gets killed outside?"

There's an easy starting point: especially if the players do want to choose a regular watering hole. Pick your popular film. Amend details as necessary.

[TheMadDutchman]

I love stealing locations.

I'm planning on putting a Jackrabbit Slims in my SR game (I've got the special edition Pulp Fiction that included the menu)

There's one other location I really love, but I don't know enough about magic to know if it would actually work. I've played a lot of SR and even run a few games but I've never really played an awakened characters and I've never had one in any of the games I've run. The location I'm considering is: the Oblivion Bar (I probably won't end up using it- or at least getting rid of the whole metaplane teleportation thing because I'm pretty sure it wouldn't make sense w/ the way magic works in SR). If any of you are unfamiliar w/ the Oblivion then you need to pick up Shadowpact from DC.

[DuckEggBlue Omeg...]

Well, in complete ignorance of the Oblivion Bar, rather than having a metaplanar travel thing (though you COULD have an astral quest to a meta plane that was limited in scope to a bar) you could follow the line of something like the coffin clubs and have a bar for astral entities and projecting mages. Maybe it's even an astral construct somewhere that can only be reached via astral travel, and they serve Karma Daiquiri's and Essense Ale.

[Synner667]

[Synner667]

[Kyoto Kid]

[TheMadDutchman]

Well, having taken a good look at Magic in SR I've decided that I won't be using the Oblivion.

Earlier in this thread some people talked about using music. Now, I dismissed this idea because it always seems to distract my groups but I do use music when I'm working on my game.

One of my favorate cds for working on SR: Mob Hits. Seriously, it's great. All the songs come from mob movies.

[Hypatia]

I like to do news handouts from INN. I include daily weather, traffic jams, politics, sports, music as well as news. My husband gets the actual locals from Google earth to show terrain, etc.

I get pictures from magazines for my important npcs and Johnsons. Plus pictures of hotel lobbies, eateries, etc. I have found deviant art to have great pictures of macrabe creatures and ghouls. It shortens the time on descriptions and you know everyone is seeing the same thing in their head.

Food is a must. It's easy for me to whip up appropriate munchies. As for music, I like soundtracks with little words. Radio doesn't really do.

We use minatures from all over to depict the right scene. I have even had my son use his legos to depict buildings and such. He is always happy to build stuff for me.

Using butcher paper on the table allows us to easily draw up something, like a symbol or such and easy to draw a quick sketch of a layout to scale with the figures.

Being a scrapbooker, I employ my tools and add a little to the pictures.

As a result we have three ring notebooks of npcs, contacts, places etc. One for each. We have layouts of team member's homes and even furniture. Ikea catalog helps there.

We also have a notebook for gaming history, and it gets very detailed. Some of it reads like short stories. As a result we don't have a hard time keeping up with the date.

THis is so common in our games it's weird not to have it now.

[bardnoir]

I have a system similar to TheMadDuchman in that I use music, however I make mix CDs and often label them "combat", "night club", "back ground".
I use Pop or Techno for clubs (depending on the club) and slow rock or alternative for background (depending on the mood) while guitar driven or hard core rap is used for combat.

I also made a habit of taking two current and popular actors and making a hybrid name for the new SimStar and often have people ask about the new Sim. The players can easily play along. One of my favorites was when someone asked a character/player in a club (they were waiting for a contact to show up so I RPed the event) if they'd seen any good movies he respond "No, but I've been waiting for that new Jackie Li forever... what's it called?" I quickly came up with a title like Mortal Kombat Thirteen and we carried on. I think three games later they were in an electronics store with the decker meeting with a contact and a different player just said "You know what, my guy's bored. He's going to see if the new Jackie Li movie ever came out." this turned into a funny scene where the character almost got into a fight over the movie because he wouldn't sell the last copy that he was keeping for himself. I always let the players add something to the game, not only does it let them feel more involved but it often lets them just "know" what's out there by simply making it up. They never ask me "What's a soda I can ask for?" they just go "Give me a 46 oz. Jolt Cola 3000!" and then late I'll make up an annoying new NPC who talks really fast and buys Jolt Cola 3000 by the case.

I also use NPCs for flavor as well. Being an actor of sorts I can do a few impressions to the point that one of my players, at some point will ask "Would Christopher Walken happen to be the Mafia Boss!?!" or "Oh, is the Stuffer shack clerk Al Bundy?!?" even without these you can use even a bad impersonation to have a colorful NPC - I can't actually a decent Chris Tucker to save my life, but it didn't stop me from having a re-occurring NPC that was always trying to sell them a watch or some "herbs"

[TheMadDutchman]

I definately agree w/ following a players lead on flavor issues (such as the jolt cola 3000)

There are 2 exceptions to this:
1: If the player is just being stupid (or that I just construe the player as being stupid) usually this is 1 in the same. I'm completely cool w/ people joking around at my table and making jokes about my game. Gaming is supposed to be fun. What I won't stand is for a player to just outright mock my game and there is a difference. Sometimes the difference can be hard to tell but you should usually be able to tell when the jokes at your games expense are good natured or not.

2: If the road the player is trying to lead me down could have major relevance to my plot. It sometimes can be hard to spot- especially if you've never had it happen to you before but some players will try to use a number of seemingly unrelated and seemingly "flavor only" aspects of their characters to actually empower their characters in a way that they plan to "defeat my world or plot". At this point this item is almost a non-sequitor because I don't game w/ people like that anymore.


Also, to clarify I typically don't use music during my games (I find it often to be distracting) I do use a lot of media (music, movies, tv) while planning sessions.

However, I have come up w/ an idea that might make me experiment w/ music again at the game table. What I've thought about is just using sound bytes. For example if the group goes to a club start playing music appropriate to the environment and use this while introducing the location and reading any prepared descriptions. As soon as I'm done "setting the scene" or even as soon as the player jumps in w/ an action I'll cut the music so it doesn't interfere.

[kzt]

I've seen really clever GMs handle the player doing clever tricks. Like the player who had the "Starship Enterprise" on his equipment sheet, which the GM approved. At an appropriate time the GM casually pointed out that the player didn't have a communicator on his equipment sheet. Another time the GM figured out the clever trick we were doing and shut us down about the time we were going to spring it on him. Though I have no idea anymore what it was, I remember being really impressed that he both figured out what we were edging towards and put together a coherent reason why it wouldn't work.

But it's hard and you have to think a few steps ahead of the players. But most players I've played with wouldn't have pushed it too hard anyhow.

[bardnoir]

[Kyoto Kid]

...on the topic of background music, it can work to help the setting or be a big distraction depending on how the GM uses it.

Many years ago I was involved in a "loosely" run (read heavily house ruled) version of The Game that shall not be mentioned where the GM used music to set the basic mood for the adventure. He usually put on a soundtrack record (shows you how long ago that was :grinbig:) at the outset of the session that related to the theme of the impending adventure. After the side played itself out, the rest of the session went on sans music.

This worked quite well to get everyone into the "feeling".

I have been in other games where GMs/DMs resorted to using music for very major scene change. This I find distracting as it seemed the GM as more into the playlist than the adventure/mission

Personally I use music very sparingly if at all in SR. I usually give a description of the type of music that is playing (e.g. 1930's Styled Jazz, NukeSlam, Klingon Opera :D etc) and let the players come up with their own "images". In the campaign I am currently running I did actually use a recording (A Chopin Etude) during a scene which was specific to the situation at hand.

[TheMadDutchman]

I'm all for just laughing it off if we're all just having a good time. The problem is that I've gamed w/ a lot of pricks who like to push the limits just to have the most powerful characters in the universe so they can around saying how cool they are and how they broke my game. That's why I take a very hard line w/ people doing what I see as taking advantage of my game.

I did come up w/ another cd for those of you who like to work w/ music: Duke Nukem; Music to Score By. (I think that's what it's called). I've had the cd for years but didn't think about mentioning it until today when I was listending to the Type O Negative cover of Cinnamon Girl (I'm pretty sure it's a cover but I can't remember who the original artist was off the top of my head).

[Fortune]

[TheMadDutchman]

I bet you guys thought this thread was dead didn't you?

Actually I've seen some things on other threads that've caused me to have more ideas and questions that relate to settings so instead of hijacking two or three other threads I figured I'd put it all in here and kickstart this one onward.

First off there is another thread (one of the new GM ones) where the advice is given to focus on depth instead of breadth and try to create/run in a smaller but much more detailed environment such as a single city rather than to try and do the entire world. This leads the questions: what about secondary locations? I haven't had the time to come up w/ any answers on this yet but I wanted to put it out there. It's not uncommon in SR to be based out of a city such as Seattle or Denver but over the course of the campaign I've seen a lot of instances where GMs get a little itchy for the open road and want to send the Players out of town for a run or two (You know, that daring break in Portland, or Celtic Double Cross, or that million nuyen run that involves a trip to detroit for the finale). How do you make the secondary areas as cool and exciting and real as the primary w/out putting another 120 hours of work it's development? I ask this because the last thing I want is for everyone to think my campaign is totally rockin' until I send them to Seattle for one mission and all I can do is describe it as cold and rainy. (Seattle's not the best example because of how much source material there is on it so I hope you get what I'm trying to say)

The other big question I have is: How sick is your game? How violent is the city around the PCs, how prevalent are drugs and other illegal trades, how cheap is human life? I ask this for a couple of reasons: first of all, I'm used to very low morality SR but I've noticed that some of the missions posted on the SR page seem to be written with the conception that Shadowrunners have scruples and in the case of some of the karma award tables, with the idea that runners should be punished for acting immoral.

[Draconis]

[Temperance]

One thing my SR GM has done to enhance the setting is encourage the players to take one of their knowledges/interests and flesh it out. For instance, your character likes to watch Urban Brawl. What the character's favorite team, how well are they doing this season, what are the draft picks, etc. It works really well. One player basically did that and his 'runner usually wore his favorite team's colors. But only during the season. Afterwards he'd go back to normal clothes.

-Temperance

[TheMadDutchman]

See I dig stuff like that. Some of the things I'm going to be asking the players in my upcoming campaign are: What are five things you'd always have in fridge and what's in your medicine cabinet?

I believe that stuff like that are actually very telling about the personality of the character.

[bibliophile20]

[Ophis]

Don't those fridges come as standard when you ahve your SIN wiped? :)