Risk Adverse Gaming, A link and some random thoughts Options

[Mercer]

Going through my old link file I came across an essay from about a year ago entitled Dare to be Stupid. Most games tend to encourage playing it safe; as one of my old GM's used to say, you can't roleplay your character effectively if you're dead. (I assume my old GM was talking about my character being dead and not me the player, but this was 2ed AD&D so anything's possible.) But at the same time, characters who don't take risks aren't that much fun to play, and they're not that much fun to run for.

But this line in particular stuck out at me, as something I have noticed in the past in a variety of groups and systems:

[Critias]

To be honest, this very trend is what's had me pretty burned out on Shadowrun for the last year or two. I haven't ever really told this particular story before.

I play with some...well, we're some pretty hardcore motherfuckers, when it comes to Shadowrun. There are no punches pulled when we take turns GMing. Every die roll is out there for the world to see, NPCs use karma pool, too, called shots happen, characters die, and you just game on. There is little (or really, no) "tailor the threat to the party" in our social circle. If you get the Star on you, you get the Star on you. If you have a Hunted, it's not a matter of if but of when. If you aren't behind cover, you'd better make sure you kill whoever you're fighting, or odds are you're gonna bite it.

We're all assholes, basically. And our turn as the round-robin GM isn't only our chance to show the players our own little version of Shadowrun's crappy, dangerous, future (with our own favorite criminal or national group as the bad guys in the spotlight), but it's also, well, our chance to throw the world at that asshole who GMed for us the last time. Amidst it all, make no mistake, we tell a pretty good story -- but the dice fall where the dice fall, and bodies and Magic points and limbs and lifestyles and loved ones all fall right alongside them. Hell, in just one adventure I stripped the too-cool assassin of his car and all his guns, the combat biker ork chick lost her dikoted sword and her Harley (and picked up a drug addiction), the adept lost a leg and a point of Magic, and the rigger lost his 200k+ car and an eye from being punched in the face.

They signed up for the job, they knew the risks, and I ran the NPCs the way the NPCs deserved to be run; the fights were beatable, but very, very, tough. The bad guys spent Karma and CP wisely, and Shadowrunners started falling. That was...par for the course.

And it all came down to quick math. Understanding probability and target numbers and expected successes and risk management. So I got good at it. Really good at it. Learning the sweet spots, looking at the TNs and the die pools and the number of bad guys left, the cover available versus the lighting conditions versus the armor I've got on plus my Body dice, the power of my weapon versus the armor I see the bad guy wearing versus the smartlink II called shot bonuses. An aimed burst versus a pair of single shots, karma now versus karma later, combat pool, combat pool, combat pool. I learned how important Reaction was (for reasons that have nothing to do with initiative), just how much damage compensation was the best balance between nuyen, bio index, and toughness, and how to layer armor just right for every social situation. I knew what bioware and cyberwear to put on every character, what three or four skills every character needed to do well, what guns were statistically the best (not the coolest or the most expensive, but literally the most bang for your weapon frame).

I became, by necessity of survival, a horrible, horrible, power gamer.

Yeah, yeah. Good stories, still. Make no mistake. Really good stories got told. Great ones, depending on who you ask. All my characters had hooks, plenty of personality (too much, sometimes), and all kinds of depth and, y'know, flavor. Honestly. They weren't just numbers -- but what I started noticing was that the numbers they did have all tended to be pretty similar, from character to character.

And...I just got tired of it.

It all grew out of that "thinking before you act" reflex I developed, that you mention. That quick math, the Probability 101 going on in my head before I declared every action and die roll. Instead of just thinking before my next action, I'd think during the opponent's phases and plan ahead. And I'd think before the whole fight. And I'd think before the Johnson offered us a job and the session started. And I'd think before I spent my xp from that last session, and before I spent my nuyen on new toys. I'd think -- really, really, hard -- before settling down to make a new character.

"What do I need on this sheet to deal, maybe even solo, with ____________?"

And it just leeched most of the fun right out of the game, when I realized I was doing it.

My characters were still impulsive, make no mistake. Bold. Foolishly so, even, it would appear on the surface. But I never pulled a madcap charge on anything that killed me. No matter how cocky my street sam looked on the surface, I already knew that the movement penalty for advancing while I fired at that enemy security team would be offset by the XXX and the YYY and that if I drew enemy fire that was okay because I had the combat pool (16+) to spare and the group's mage didn't, and...etc, etc.

Just about the only reason I keep giving SR4 a try is because I want to...shake that off. I want to step into the Shadowrun world and only worry about telling a good story, again. I don't want to know the rules inside and out like I do for SR3, and always be thinking about TNs and dice pools in the back of my mind. I want to play Shadowrun, not kick Shadowrun's ass.

My name is Critias, and I'm an SR3 win-a-holic.

[swirler]

wow @ Critias
to OP
I've personally never had too much trouble leaping instinctively in games. Sometimes it's made me the hero, sometimes it's made me the zero. It depends on the character and the moment. I usually tend to be the player that the gm is often willing to give alot of power to, because they know I will use it to enhance the story, not to be supercool, or Billy-badass. Okay yeah I can play characters who want to be Billy-badass, but I usually have a pretty good handle on how they would react in most situations and react accordingly. Sure, sometimes you plot and plan, but there are other times when you just gotta go "ballz-out", and hope for the best. :D

[Blade]

Combat is special. I know some GM who ask the players to react in a few seconds. If they don't, they lose their action phase. Theoretically it's good, but there's a big problem: players aren't characters.

First, the player isn't in the situation of the character: the character sees the situation exactly as it's happening while the player does not. He might see the situation differently from what the GM is thinking, he might have forgotten that it's raining... So the player should be at least allowed to ask the GM to give further details.
But there another big difference between the character and most players: one is a combat expert who's been through a lot of fights, the other one just plays FPS from time to time.
For example, I once GMed a game with a katana specialist character. I used to describe in details when he was against powerful opponents, asking for nearly each one of his moves. As the player wasn't the expert the character was supposed to be, I allowed him to take his time to think about his moves.

Same with PC teams. They often spend a lot of time speaking about coordination and tactics, but if the team is used to working together and if each member has some knowledge about tactics, they should have some fixed modus operandi for the usual combat situations.

[Kagetenshi]

[Blade]

Exactly, and as you pointed out, it goes both ways. Our characters are more experienced than most of us are in combat but sometimes they are less knowledgeable than us on some topics.

A Charisma 1 troll with no social skill shouldn't be able to even speak properly. A low Logic/Intelligence character shouldn't be able to figure out things as easily as a bright player can.

[toturi]

There is a certain interface between the game mechanics and the roleplay. Someone with a good grasp of the math can run a very good PC, specifically a very good shadowrun pro. Why? Because that's exactly what a pro would do. He figures the angles. He knows which risks are bad and which odds have to be taken. I can figure the angles too, which TNs for what dice. But it never seem to me that the game was any less fun for it. Planning out the character to work the numbers is fun.

The numbers should be pretty similar once you get down to it. The number crunching enables me to do the things I want to do. Efficiency enables me to play the game. A pro would have figured the odds out, way before the first bullet is fired afterall. He has survived to get to that point, he is tried and tested.

When I decide not to play a pro on the other hand, all that number crunchy goes out of the window. I make a PC that is flawed and doesn't play the odds well.

When I GM, I see who is playing the odds. If a player roleplaying a pro, plays the odds well, that is good roleplaying. He knows the odds. A player roleplaying a neophite runner, playing the odds well because he knows the rules well, that is not good roleplaying, he gets to survive but he doesn't get roleplay Karma.

[Roadspike]

Critias - I'd just like to say "me too." Okay, so not quite to the same degree, the gaming group I started SR in tended to be relatively forgiving, but despite that, I quickly learned exactly what skills/attributes/gear/magic was optimal, and what was definitely sub-optimal. sub-optimal things didn't show up on my character sheets unless there was a dang good in-character reason for them.

In general response - Luckily, I tend to be overanxious to get things done, and more than a bit impulsive. Combine this with the fact that few of the people I played with optimized to quite the degree I did (I make no judgement on this point, except that they were probably in the right where their characters were concerned more often than not), and I could be pretty sure that my "heroic" and "impulsive" actions would succeed when they were attempted. While the choice to get -into- combat wasn't always considered well, the choices made once in combat usually were. As Critias mentioned, it may look like a risky move to step out from behind cover and charge the "bad guys," but when you have the second highest combat pool in the group, and double the next highest Body, it's sometimes good to draw a little fire.

To get more fully on topic - Yes, I think that players often take too much time contemplating their actions in combat, but it's also not exclusive to combat. How many times have you had a 'Run where you just -know- that the players would sit around for days and days RL planning the thing out when it's supposed to be a "last minute" job? Some of that can be put down to characters with more combat experience than their players, but some of it is, as Mercer mentioned, the desire to not get ganked. How can we encourage more "risky" and "passion-driven" actions? -Should- we encourage them? I don't know, but I definitely think it's something worthy of discussion.

[Penta]

This is why I love playing on MU*s - especially ones with no, zero "mechanics".

It encourages the immersion when there are no dice being thrown - when we're more likely to whip out figure models and build mental pictures and such, than run for numbers to see whether that move you just pulled would work for that sparring. Encourages, sometimes, some silly cinematic moments (This is an Ender's Game place, for what it's worth), where you have 8-year-olds using the matting along the walls in the physical combat training area to do flips out of a Bruce Lee movie during a spar, but it's all good; admittedly, we sometimes use younger cousins or younger siblings to test our theories, but hey.:P

I sometimes wonder what it would be like if you tried to play an SR game with as -few- dice rolls as possible, even in combat. Just rely on roleplay, on "what feels right".

[Kagetenshi]

Get thee behind me, Satan!

~J

[Mercer]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Kagetenshi]

I'd also point out most of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

~J

[Fortune]

And most of Fleming's James Bond novels.

[Kagetenshi]

Also, I'm not sure why it took me this long to point this out, but the word you want in the subject is "averse".

~J

[mfb]

i guess i sorta see the problem. it's ameliorated by two things, for me. first, combat is fun. i've got a few characters who are not hardened combatants, but most of my characters are combat vets because i enjoy excelling in SR(3)'s combat system. so it's okay, to me, that the system gives you plenty of control, because i get a lot of mileage out of using that control to its fullest. my non-combat characters do less well, and i roleplay them as being somewhat scared and confused during combat--but i don't make dumb choices with them, because i feel that their lower combat abilities (and the lower performance that results) represent that well enough.

the second reason is, i'm fucking crazy. Critias's characters take 'risks' because he knows the odds and knows they're not all that extremely risky. my characters take risks because i'm constantly pushing the limit on what they can achieve. on one of her first runs, i took my shiny new character and had her leap from a moving vehicle onto the roof of another car, because she was nuts enough to try it and i was nuts enough to roll it. two scenes later, she took on an invisible mage and his two bodyguards, and by god, she took out one and a half of the guards before eating a manabolt (thank god for friendly mages with heal spells).

that said... my 'old' main char, Italy, has been knocking around for a while. he's done a lot of stuff--he's run the Arco twice, he survived a massive shedim infestation in the midst of a civil war on Wetar, he fought a dragon, he's taken on Ghosts. if he put a notch in the hospital bedpost for every time he's been at S+3, he'd have sawn the damn thing in half by now. he's got a fuckton of karma, his primary skills are high, he's got 12 centering dice he can throw at just about anything he needs to do... he's fucking badass. and... i don't play him anymore. there's almost no challenge left; he'd have to be suicidal to take on the kind of run that would really challenge him, nowadays. so i've rolled up some new characters, some hardcore crack-pipe hittin' gutterpunk mu'fuckers, and i play them.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Ahhh yes. The old "If you don't roll-play well, you don't live to role-play well" problem.

This is why I instituted 3x hit points at first level in my D&D game. (I have no idea how to make it analgous for SR). I want my players to not have to powergame every second, I want them to make emotional, irrational choices, and not have everything fuck up on them.


SR's not really conducive to that, though. If you tried to actually play a pink mohawk crowd and the GM is a no-holds-barred no-punches-pulled grittier-than-sandpaper, you're going to be going through new characters faster than an incontenant man goes through toilet paper at a chili cook-off.

[Gelare]

I haven't played quite enough SR to comment in that context, but there is a certain other game that I've played a lot, and I think the experiences apply. I've been thinking about this a fair bit recently, actually. When I play an RPG like Shadowrun or something else, I want my character to do awesome things. That, to me, makes for really cool stories. I like having my character be able to be competent most of the time, and then every so often totally flip out and kill people. This is one of the reasons I like SR4 Edge (or as I like to think of it, action points on cybersteroids). For most of the run your character can be doing his stuff, whatever, and then all of a sudden he throws caution out the window and starts blowing holes in buildings or whatever.

Now, that's just my preference for stories, many people have different preferences, and that's cool too. But my point, I think, is that for most systems, including Shadowrun and a certain other one, there is little to no in-game benefit to having characters try crazy stuff, and in fact there's usually a penalty: in-game your character dies, and out of game your party members are pissed because they have to go get your corpse or complete the run without a sammie or whatever. There's just a bunch of disincentives. And as I'm writing this, I realize that for the game I'm going to GM on Sunday, I'm going to try to make doing crazy things more appealing. Your character wants to jump out of the window and shoot the helicopter pilot on his way down? Sure, go for it, here's some bonus dice just 'cause it's awesome. I would fully support a widespread effort to encourage risk-taking, the trick is to find some sort of incentive, because in the system now, playing it risk-free is encouraged. Experienced groups can sort of collectively decide to make a role-playing effort around this, but most groups will need the GM to make it worth their while.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Wounded Ronin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FRH6ag2yG0

I found a lot of Golgo 13 stuff on YouTube.

And apparently you can get the manga in English now, too.

http://www.viz.com/products/products.php?p...product_id=5469

[wargear]

We found our groups problem came from well-oiled teamwork. Our players would work seamlessly together, allowing us to operate well above our threat level.

This was fine in our team of ex-spec ops characters...didn't work so well in our subsequent ganger level game...

It put us on hiatus and we've been playing D&D ever since.

Thinking it might be time to return to the fold, perhaps even to SR4...

[Critias]

If the gangers are used to working together, why not have them use teamwork? In Shadowrun, it's perfectly likely that any given group of street-thug gangbangers has seen just as much life-or-death combat (and often with just as many automatic weapons and explosives) as that fancy-schmancy SpecOps team you mentioned.

[toturi]

The core gangers who have survived a long time together, when they are put together, they'd have teamwork. But the new recruits and the old hands who are put in charge of them may not.

[Critias]

Right, that was the "if they're used to working together" part.

I just meant there's nothing innately special about military or law enforcement or corporate groups (or even Shadowrunners), in a world like Shadowrun's, that give them any sort of innate edge as far as teamwork goes over gangs (the way the gangs are described, they tend to very nearly be paramilitary organizations, themselves).

[Stahlseele]

i play shadowrun because i want to do crazy fun stuff . . .
most of the time it's:"is the probability of my character being dead after this high? if so . . i'll porbably not do it . ."
if the probability of getting killed is in my eyes not high enough, i mostly say:"ah fuggit, gimme my gun!" and do it . . but that's mostly due to my characters being actually able to dish out and survive some damage . . if i were not playing in a group but alone, i'd mostly not even think twice before doing ANYTHING . . thought-process is mostly:"i wanna do that . . i do that!" . . with group it's mostly:"i wanna do that . . i COULD do that . . would get the others in trouble . . hmm . .nah, they probably won't survive that . . aaww shit . . ok, i won't do that . . (again) ._."