Game Level why must it be Street II?, puttting the train on the right track Options

[Kyoto Kid]

...OK as forewarned, now on to the Political Intrigue "world sweeping" types of campaigns. As a Player I have been in two, both published modules, the first being the Arcology Shutdown/Brainscan arc the other Survival of the Fittest. As a GM I ran one, my Rhapsody in Shadow arc.

Survival was very much fraught with political implications albeit on the GD scale as the runners were caught in a political game between Lofwyr, Hestaby and the Sea Dragon. In a sense the PCs were merely pawns in the game and for them it was ultimately a lose-lose situation as they either sided with Lofie or Hesty (and effectively became NPCs by that point) or they were dead. In this sense I agree, the characters seemed pretty meaningless, as they really had no way to affect the outcome on their own terms. If they tried, they were hors d'oeuvres for one or more of the GD personalities.

Brainscan was definitely epic for it had an important effect on the Shadowrun future history line and in a sense was the set up for System Failure. What could be more world sweeping than that? This was a pretty one sided campaign for again the PCs pretty much either defeated or succumbed to Deus (and being killed in the process). Basically there was no real middle ground save for the PCs telling the J to take a hike and then it was campaign over.

The first run of my Rhapsody in Shadow had elements of both the political and World sweeping (on a more regional level being set in southern Europe and the Balkans) campaign. Yes there was a desired outcome but the door was left open for the PCs to approach the issue in their own manner. There were a lot of conditions set on how the PCs reacted and approached the mission. Sometimes they made matters worse as in a case where they created a rather messy incident in Beograd. Instead of going after the runners, the Serbian government blamed the incident on Croatian terrorists and ordered a punitive airstrike on Zagreb. In their extraction of the kidnapped person they were hired to find they again precipitated action by the Serb government against Croatia after downing two military helicopters and setting off the facility's self destruct.

As the campaign neared it's conclusion, the players threw me for a total loop. After meeting with a group of Serbian veterans who were disillusioned with the way the country was going the team actually spearheaded a revolution which ended up toppling the dictatorship. As part of the plan (which took two sessions for them to orchestrate), the runners themselves turend the tables and abducted the Serbian Secretariat General (the nation's dictator) after which they remotely drove several explosive laden vans into the SSID (the Serb Intelligence Bureau) tower bringing it to te ground. I planned for none of this but they had come up with such a fantastic and daring plan I couldn't not (sorry for the double negative) let them try it.

In the end they all enjoyed the campaign. The PCs still achieved the main objective, and then some, but did so on their terms. My only misgivings was that some aspects of magic tended to spoil a bit of the mystery I had set up, but overall, it was a success.

The reason why I believe this worked was that all of us had been together as a group for some time. After all we had been through in each other's campaigns (Not only Shadowrun but other game systems as well), I felt the time was right to try something of this scope. Yes the characters retired afterwards with nice fat credsticks (one of the PCs even married one of the NPCs) but the players were really satisfied as they had a major hand in the outcome. The characters also grew and developed distinct personalities which is another reason I think it was successful

There were a number subplots that were not touched on directly but which still took place behind the scenes. Some had an effect on events that the characters encountered while others set things into motion the PCs were never aware of. Yes this is a very difficult way to write a campaign and it took me nearly eight months to work out all the possible angles (in a sense it was more a "decision banyan tree" format).

The second run was unfortunately not as successful since I pretty much thrust it on a fairly new group of players. My intent was to playtest it with a more balanced team (the first group was fairly magic heavy) but because of the threat levels, I had to use the MrJ'sLBB high powered chargen rules. Another facet was that the players were not yet totally famiiar with my GM style and expecting a more straightforward type of SR campaign than one with many subtle clues that needed to be tied together.

There was also a timing issue in that I was dealing with running a 3rd ed campaign while 4th had been out for nearly a year (and seemed to be more on everyone's minds). Furthermore, I had just come off a fairly bad experience in a 4th ed campaign I had closed which had an effect on some of the ground rules I set (such as banning Mindprobe and possession traditions - both for PCs and my NPCs). Finally, since part of the campaign took place in countries like Austria and the Balkans, character race was an issue and I suggested that certain races (particularly Trolls and Orks) may attract too much unwanted attention for the type of mission they were on.

So in the end, running a successful epic styled campaign really depends on a number of factors: the group of players, the experience they have playing together (and with the GM), and the right timing as much as it does with the GM's imagination and preparation. This is not to imply the new group I have are bad players. In fact they are very creative and a couple are really into roleplaying their characters as I have seen in the 4th ed runs we recently have done (ahh, fun to be a player again for a while). It is more that everyone is still feeling things out and would like to develop their characters from more humble beginnings before tackling something on such a large scale as RiS.

In hindsight, I probably should have waited a bit and let 4th ed catch up (in the sense of source material), and convert everything over to the new ruleset while keeping the campaign in the 2062 setting. The only trick there is dealing with the wireless matrix which didn't exist yet. In light of the upcoming releases I have actually been entertaining such thoughts, but it would of course require a different group of players as the current team pretty much knows the plot now.

For now I'm taking a break from GM duties. I do have a couple other ideas for "down the road" one which stems from a three part mission I ran and the other out of an old 2nd ed campaign that involves the "new and improved"(?) TT. However these will need to wait until I have Arsenal and possibly even Unwired so it'll be a bit.

...oh and apologies for the epic length of this post. :grinbig:

[Method]

Yeah, if you could please keep your posts to "street length" from now on, that would be great... :D

[Kyoto Kid]

...but what about those who like the middle ground? :grinbig:

[Moon-Hawk]

Dude, that post was epic.

[Kyoto Kid]

...true, but a lot of bases to cover considering how difficult such a campaign is to pull off.

[evil_bacteria]

Could it be that we LIKE playing street level? It's called cyberpunk, not cyberpowerbroker.

If I want to change history, I'll play AD&D. If I want to scrap and save and squeak by on a meager existance, hey, Shadowrun's my man.

[kigmatzomat]

I guess it depends on how many points qualify as "street." My 400BP rigger has a decent stats, a hovercraft, four armed drones, a couple of spy drones, a motorcycle, couple of pistols, and skills to use them all competently. Is he "l33t"? No, but he's not grubbing for lunch money either.

Our campaign is "scruffy", doing exploration & escort jobs in the Australian outback. Very "firefly" in its own way. Our "jane" is pretty much useless outside of a firefight, lifting heavy things, or being a canary. Which is not to say he isn't busy, given that there tends to be lots of lifting heavy things, going places we think might be dangerous, or shooting stuff trying to eat us. "Simon" is our doc and biologist/botanist to tell us what we can eat, what can eat us, and what we can sell. We don't have a Zoe or Mal, we've got a "warrior scholar" sam/scientist, which is probably kinda Inari-esque. "Kaylee" is a mechanic/geologist/technomancer; not directly useful in a fight but dang, the sprites do help out. I'm Wash, pretty good in a vehicle but pretty easy to beat up.

A small street gang or bunch of bandits will have trouble with us, a big group can overwhelm us. One good military aircraft can probably bomb us into oblivion if they're fast enough to outrun the warning of my drones' sensors. Otherwise it'd take two military aircraft.

[Leofski]

Could it be that we LIKE playing street level? It's called cyberpunk, not cyberpowerbroker.

I've never thought of Shadowrun as a cyberpunk world. Its a world with some cyberpunk elements and Seattle is more cyberpunk than the majority of the world, but really its a question of locational focus for the cyberpunk elements. Additionally, to say that cyberpunk is inherently street level is eminently flawed when the two best known cyberpunk novels, Neuromancer and Snow Crash (which is I believe technically post-cyberpunk, but thats a technicality) involve what are clearly global level intrigue plots.

[Emperor Tippy]

For me it's not so much a debate between epic vs. street in the impact on the world at large, its a debate between street vs. professional.

I can see games where some gang leader highers the runners to hijack a Weapons World shipment so he can arm all his guys with AK's, this is not a really epic run. It has a street level impact but can use non street level runners.

[evil_bacteria]

I've never thought of Shadowrun as a cyberpunk world. Its a world with some cyberpunk elements and Seattle is more cyberpunk than the majority of the world, but really its a question of locational focus for the cyberpunk elements. Additionally, to say that cyberpunk is inherently street level is eminently flawed when the two best known cyberpunk novels, Neuromancer and Snow Crash (which is I believe technically post-cyberpunk, but thats a technicality) involve what are clearly global level intrigue plots.

True, that location matters. The streets of Seattle make a different game than the boardrooms of Tokyo.

Remember, not all of us have read Neuromancer, or even heard of Snow Crash, so don't expect us to know that cyberpunk can be global (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Trivia: William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and "father" of cyberpunk, dislikes Shadowrun intensely.

[imperialus]

Trivia: William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and "father" of cyberpunk, dislikes Shadowrun intensely.

Even though he's clearly an Immortal Elf Mystic Adept with multiple initiations under his belt

http://www.arcanology.com/2004/10/21/neal-...william-gibson/

[imperialus]

Slightly more on topic I enjoy the grit and grunge of street level games. I like my characters to wear mirrorshades, long leather trenchcoats with the collars turned up to protect them from the rain. I like dingy bars and being forced to deal with people who will knife you for a decent pair of shoes. I like my Rat Shamans living in cardboard boxes, my Street Sams desperately scraping together money for that next piece of ware that will keep them on the bleeding edge, stuff like that. Sure the face with the thousand nuyen suit has his place but he's the exception, not the rule.

That said I've never run a 'low power' campaign. Characters are still created using the 400 BP's but Nuyen and Karma don't come fast and don't come easy. I encourage players to take an 'easy come easy go' attitude towards money. Hording won't help if you get a bullet to the skull.

Street level just seems more dangerous to me but it's more of a perceived danger than something that's going to kill a bunch of characters. There is more risk just going about your day to day life but the risk is oftentimes less lethal. You piss off a bunch of gangers or the Star you can go to ground, lay low for a while and then get on with your life. You screw up trying to enter a MCT ZZ zone you're dead. That simple.

[Sir_Psycho]

Trivia: William Gibson, author of Neuromancer and "father" of cyberpunk, dislikes Shadowrun intensely.

The best part about it is that we based our matrix systems (up to 4th ed) on his writings, and he had never used a computer. When he did finally get his hands on a computer, apparently he was like "this is stupid!"

It's amusing that we argue so much over the matrix, about balncing it between real-world computing and the conventions of the genre, when the guy who made it all up had never even touched a computer.


As for myself, I keep the BP at 400 points, and you can make very good runners with 400 bp, but I keep it paranoid and "professional". By proffesional, I don't mean globe-hopping paratroop runners in security armour who work for Lofwyr on retainer. I give them 400, but I keep the style down to silenced light pistols and subterfuge. To do a run without getting killed, you need to do extensive legwork, that has to be contributed by all members of the team, not just a once off hacker roll. It's professional, but it's also gritty, rather than epic. At least most of the time.

Street level just seems more dangerous to me but it's more of a perceived danger than something that's going to kill a bunch of characters. There is more risk just going about your day to day life but the risk is oftentimes less lethal. You piss off a bunch of gangers or the Star you can go to ground, lay low for a while and then get on with your life. You screw up trying to enter a MCT ZZ zone you're dead. That simple

I like this. Most of the time, barring horrible rolls or brainfart screw-ups, I don't punish the players with death, just consequences. Healing times, new enemies, lost/stolen gear, dead contacts, etc.

[evil_bacteria]

As for myself, I keep the BP at 400 points, and you can make very good runners with 400 bp, but I keep it paranoid and "professional". By proffesional, I don't mean globe-hopping paratroop runners in security armour who work for Lofwyr on retainer. I give them 400, but I keep the style down to silenced light pistols and subterfuge. To do a run without getting killed, you need to do extensive legwork, that has to be contributed by all members of the team, not just a once off hacker roll. It's professional, but it's also gritty, rather than epic. At least most of the time.

I'd love to play in one of yours games, yo. That's exactly the kind of style I want, though every story DOES need something flashy, like a big gunfight or car chase or seomthing.

[Knight takes Bis...]

Sometimes, I feel that the epic story can't offer the feel that I want for the game.. Most D&D campaigns chronicle the rise of heroes, or villains, and are comprised of epic feats that often change the face of the world. Something could be said about the street level games being a more interesting story element at times. These stories take place on a smaller scale and deal with the minor conflicts that threaten the individual, or the sub-groups of society, rather than the city, country, planet, or fabric of the universe.
The potential for the dramatic elements of the story are no smaller when dealing with a street game. If you feel like simple warring gang story, with fast paced urban brawls and shootouts, then of course the game type accommodates this. However, all human conflict, and emotional resonance, found on the largest scale of thematic storytelling can be found on the smallest scale, as well. If that's what you're looking for in a game, then you can incorporate that , as well.

I personally feel that it's a good idea to alternate between epic, and street-level games. Go save Seattle, and then experience the lower rung for the perspective.

It's the small, and seemingly menial acts, that serve no more purpose than to sustain the hero, that can begin the greatest adventures.

[Deimos Masque]

I personally prefer street level, in that I don't like having world altering events that change the very face of the gaming world. Once you've done it, it always seems that the next storyline has to be even bigger (change the face of the solar system?)

I however like my players to have goals and I tailor the stories around letting those players achieve their goals.

My current campaign is based very loosely off the concept of the TV show Burn Notice. I have one of the players who's a former corp agent who was "Burned" (fired and had his record tarnished so no one would hire him, they also tried to kill him) in the middle of an op. He had to have his nervous system rebuilt and has become the face man of a small runner team (an alcoholic dwarven Technomancer looking for his next suger-mama and an elven Gunslinger adept and go-ganger who wants more challenge than the go-ganger lifestyle provides.)

Each of the characters has a motive for both revenge or for security. The ex-corp player wants to know why he was "burned" and eventually get his life and identity back. The Technomancer is looking for an interesting way to make his beer money, as well as a desire to collect as many exotic and imported beers as he can (even wants his own brewery one day). The Go-Ganger Adept seeks to avenge her mentor, make her gang one of the strongest in New York City (the setting) and have a Trid movie made about her exploits (she's an egotistical one).

Once those goals are completed, the game is more or less over and its time to move on to new characters and explore different situations. It still gives the players a good sense of accomplishment but keeps the game low to the ground so you don't have to constantly 1-up your last story arch until your fighting dragons for the control of entire nations.

[MaxHunter]

Firstly I have to say I love this thread so far. Thxs to KK for railing it back -and, for one, I am very interested on more details about your RiS campaign- (even if not in these thread, of course)

On the street / epic discussion; IMO SR lends itself for both ends of the spectrum. SR4 is more street ruleswise, but it is also quite easy to max out a character, even in chargen, so, if there is not a clear players-gm agreement on what style of play is intended it could be helpful sometimes to introduce some limits to chargen.

For example, my players started playing SR4 very early on [I was a playtester] and so they were quite used to Sr3 double digit attributes and huge dicepools. After the first batch of characters died out, were retired or the players got bored with them, we made a second batch of runners, this time with some chargen criteria (no skills at 6 at chargen, strict enforcement of the availability 12 limitation, etc...) These mechanic enforcement of rules did not affect the style of the game we played. Which was never actually street, to boot.

From my current experience, my preferred gamestyle is definitely not street, but is not epic neither. However, story arcs may lead to something epic, depending totally on what the players want and my inspiration at the moment campaign starts.

IMO the SR missions campaign was too street for me and my players. I think the default 400bp Shadowrun and the Shadowrun world is thought out for something in the middle -profesional criminals raiding megacorps, etc, etc. -but allows for any style of play.

I am GMing three groups at the moment, with quite different arcs and scopes.

In one, the players are playing a group of heavily cybered japanese specops at the service of their ministry of homeland affairs (this story is my GitS ripoff); in their last session they failed to protect the japanese prime minister and she was killed. (this was NOT what I had planned for the story, but well...) One of the characters nearly died and is now in a coma, the others are alive but really, really dishonored... let's see what happens. Of course, you could quailfy this arc as epic.

Another involves a group of newbie runners who, after a couple years campaigning, have grown into a professional shadowrunner team and are getting better jobs. (actually, the word "team" is a little big for them, because they are only two after one of the regular players moved to another city and the other was "retired" by his Rl girlfriend). There is not much of a metaplot, not epic scope; but their runs are quite adventurous. Their last involved working for the Nubian Insurance Company and retrieving a couple egyptian artifacts from a cult. (and this was their first international run, and it felt "important") They failed and ended in hospital, past overflow, one of the runners had to resort to HandofGod to survive the run. (mmm. I see a trend here, maybe I am rolling too luckily lately)
However, this group remains close to their roots and the style still gets a "gritty" flavor. They own money to the mob,
have been to jail, keep some of their low-rung contacts and habits, etc. Next run we will be recruiting a couple more players and see what happens. I would say this is a mid-level campaign with many street elements.

The third group is quite more professional and comprises three characters in their 170 karma. They started as "regular" pro runners until they had a huge misunderstanding with Ares which ended in an epic run at a secret research facility and the runner's plane crashburning in the desert. Now they have undertaken some surgery, faked their own deaths and moved to Germany. In this second phase of their careers they are laying low, trying to restart their careers and aiming for big money jobs. These characters have flaws and lots of personality, they have traveled around a lot and have top notch gear but still the samurai is scraping nuyen to pay for his debts and get more cyber. Their last run was quite street as they played bait for the local docwagon (BuMoNa) who was a victim of a series of terrorist attacks. Now they spent one session doing legwork and research and now they have landed their first, new-career big money job which involved stealing a mysterious magical tome from a castle in the Bavarian alps... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Great fun, we play on Sunday.

See? I can post epically too.

Cheers!!

Max

[CanRay]

While it's not Shadowrun (Again, I've only played the one game, which was spoken about here!), it was another long-running Cyberpunk RPG game that my group had gotten to the big time.

We started out in the gutter, literally, and, eventually working for a minor Corporation on the rise, and we had just taken out our competetor, and hit the big time!

Rich, powerful, and money pouring in. Hot and cold running chicks...

And then everything fell apart when my character went nuts and was nabbed by the cops, turning States Evidence (He had a choice, Life, which would have been a few months, doing Hard Time as someone's woman... Or Life at a Low-Level Security Facility with White-Collar Criminals.).

The Execs pulled their Golden Parachutes, and the group had to run to that game's equivilent of Z-Zones just to prevent being picked up. Where the game continued, on the street. Where once we were setting up Corps and tumbling them down, we were doing hit-and-runs, stealing Soymilk Trucks!

And, damnit, we had FUN with both! No complaints.

Well, revenge threatened against my character, but that's a different story.

[evil_bacteria]

Oooh, ooh, what's a Z-Zone?

[CanRay]

Z-Zone: Zone where there's no law save the law of the Concrete Jungle. Redmond Barrens and Puyallup Barrens are the Z-Zones of Seattle.

They're places where SWAT goes in only when out-and-out wars are going on, and ask for Military Support when they do so. And make sure they broadcast all the dangerous things going on, to make sure the Sheeple stay nice and scared and continue to pay for lots of "Security".

[Kyoto Kid]

Thxs to KK for railing it back

....hmmm? Fascinating to see that it was necroed considering I made the OP and last response over five months ago.

Wish I had a sever and domain, it would make it so much easier to post details of such an extended work like Rhapsody. About the only way I could see doing it at this juncture is set it up in something like MS Word (PDFs are such memory hogs) and attach it to an email.

Basically it took me nearly five months of preparation, a good portion of which included historical studies on the Balkans, crush of the 68 Czech Liberal movement. The 1989 Tienamen Square protests, The French and German Resistance during WWII, as well as personal experience of being in East Berlin when the city and German nation were still separated. I had actually purchased real maps (since the maps in SoE didn't even have a scale) including a map of the northern Balkans, Beograd, and Zagreb (the latter two being rather tricky to find), and even the floor plan of the Muzikverein in Wien (where everything started). I also had compiled an extensive library of photos of the region.

With the second group, I wanted the players to really feel what a true dystopia (Serbia in the campaign) was like. In the end I guess I succeeded a little too well for when they got to Beograd after spending a few days in occupied Zagreb, the feeling of hopelessness became a bit overwhelming. Not sure if I will try to run it again as 3rd ed has pretty much been pushed aside and finding players more into the intrigue angle is not always easy.

[Heath Robinson]

I like lower powered games because I'd get to play characters with mundane concerns. I want to play the businessman who isn't hot shit but has all the latest cool toys from MCT and a couple of people who owe him favours in accounts. However, I cannot find a reason for this character to be involved in most of the Shadowrun games that get run.

Hell, I don't want to play low powered games. I want to play games that are not Shadowrun, but use the system and setting of Shadowrun without the playstyle associations. I want to play Shadowbiz, where a team of corporate white collar types pull out all the stops to get the job done. I want to play Corprun, where a group of Corp-employed security personnel get assigned to investigate the latest hit on an extraterritorial facility. I want to play Shadowrush, in which a group of multitalented wageslaves get diagnosed with a rare acquired condition that requires them to keep their adrenaline constantly on and their medical insurance doesn't cover implanting an adrenaline chemical gland.

[Method]

Z zone: not to be confused with Zero Zone, a term coined by Mitsuhama, which is a facility with a zero entry zero survival policy. In other words a facility where any intrusion is met with lethal force.

Heath: do I sense a bit of sarcasm or are you serious?

[Heath Robinson]

Heath: do I sense a bit of sarcasm or are you serious?

I am deathly serious.

[Method]

Interesting...