Random Downtime, The Good, the bad and the ugly. Options

[Prime Mover]

I was recently reading about someone looking for some downtime tables. Got me thinking, be kinda fun to have some plot hooks develop while you were away from the table. Tables below are quick trial run of an idea. I went with the one good and two varying degrees of bad because well this is shadowrun .....can't be too nice to those players. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ork.gif)

Feel free to add your own or recreate the whole thing from scratch, if get some time might make some more.


GOOD 1-2
1. Win cash on scratch off ticket. 2D6x10 nuyen
2. Make a new friend. Late night hookup. Brother/sister deals combat drugs.
3. Find something you think you lost, one random piece of gear. Value not greater then 300 nuyen.
4. Make a new contact. Rating 1/1
5.Fixers calls he's found that piece of restricted gear you've been looking for at cost.
6. Inside info. Just happens to tie into next job falls into your lap.

BAD 3-4
1. Unexpected bill/ticket 2D6x10 nuyen.
2. Girlfriend/boyfriend pissed off and rips you off or trashes your place.
3. Loose something value no greater then 300 nuyen.
4. Piss off a contact loose 1D6 rating points until you can smooth thing over.
5. Fixer calls cops are looking for something he helped you find recently it was used in a major crime.
6. Some bad info you got leads you into a trap.

UGLY 5-6
1. Piece of gear you desperately need is in short supply and costs 1D6x current price.
2. Pissed somebody off and now they've got friends and looking for you.
3. Somebody stole your car, broke into your place and stole your trid or hacked your comm.
4. Former contact becomes an enemy. (Only if already pissed off at you.)
5. Fixer calls tells you he'd leaving town and you should do the same...NOW!
6. The cops are at the door and they have a search warrant.

[Dumori]

I think some of these are just too annoying plus you much much more likely to get Fraged over than gain anything. The good justdont blance out the max amum ugly with the same chance of happening. If i was you Id have good chancy and bad have some the opersit of the bad in good in cnacy have the win loses small cash plus some other one that are seim goo/bad
or spilt it to four

very goo good bad very bad
at 1, 2-3, 4-5, and 6 but compensate soem off the negative ones witt better bonuses. Such as "Lots of a piece of gear you desperately need has hit the streets and now costs 0.1D6x current price" and such so some day you get fragged over other you get it for less than half price.

[Karaden]

Perhaps turn it into an edge roll of some kind. Thus those who are lucky tend to be... well lucky more often. You know, nice little added benefit to having a high edge and stopping people taking unlucky and only taking 1 edge. If I had more time I'd work out a full example table, perhaps later tonight or during the week.

Edit: Not stopping, but providing an extra intensive not to.

[knasser]

I like it, but the negative results are too damaging for my taste. I wouldn't like to arbitrarily have cops show up at the team's hangout, for example. But I like the possibility of flavour. For example, the minor lottery win. I think I'll need to compose my own table to deal with my different needs, but I like it.

K.

[hyzmarca]

Zombie Rastafarian moves in next door, borrows a cup of sugar, and never returns your measuring cup. Add 5 Nuyen to your Necessities lifestyle catagory cost for the month.

[DocTaotsu]

Frankly I like em, although they are pretty punishing. I'd try to roll them into microplots or into the next run. Why is that vital gear so expensive? It's because the Vory are stomping on the Yak's and are buying everything on the market? Well shit... I'm not paying six times what it's worth let's go see if the Vory want to play ball...

Obviously that could devolve into a run but you could also spin it like "You call a guy who gets you in touch with a Vory agent. He offers to get you the item you want for X cost but... for a favor".

To the Bad I'd add "Cops serve no knock warrant... at the wrong house, your house".

[Heath Robinson]

Maybe this would work better if it's done thus:

Make an Edge+[Selected Mental Attribute] roll

Critical Glitch: Roll on The Ugly (instead of rolling twice on The Bad)
Glitch: Make an additional roll on The Bad
0: Roll on The Bad
1-2: Nothing of note happens (optionally, roll on a table of interesting but mechanically impotent occurences for flavour)
3+: Roll on The Good

Maxing out this dice pool will get you a good assurance of rolling on The Good, but the impacts don't seem significant to me. Yes, this system does make low-edge, low-mental characters more likely to end up badly off, but I feel that it's pretty evident that some not-so-smart people end up this way in real life as well.

Edit: The mental attribute is meant to be selected by the player, allowing different "survival strategies" for characterisation purposes.

[Prime Mover]

Just a quick draft of an idea, actually liking the idea of an edge roll. maybe just two outcomes good and bad or the 4 with two bad and two good of varying degrees. Really meant to be a fun way to fill in time between games maybe a laugh or a sneer from the players. Granted cops kicking in the door was drastic. Didn't wanna make it too complicated just an abstract way for a player to explain his downtime. Gonna mess with it some more this week.

[BullZeye]

Critical glitch on edge roll = something bad and ugly
Glitch = bad or ugly
(RP opportunities to counter for the bad & uglies a good idea?)
success 0-1 = very minor event with next to no value, but a RP opportunity
2-3 = something better
4-5 = something really good
6+ = something awesome

Character with bad luck, well, it's bad & ugly at best (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Muspellsheimr]

I do not like the idea of using Edge for this.

My suggestion:
1 - Something negative
2-5 - Nothing
6 - Something positive

All events should be minor, with the positive & negative roughly equivalent, simply opposite ends of the spectrum.

[Karaden]

I do not like the idea of using Edge for this.

My suggestion:
1 - Something negative
2-5 - Nothing
6 - Something positive

All events should be minor, with the positive & negative roughly equivalent, simply opposite ends of the spectrum.

I agree that all events should be minor, but why not use edge? Edge is a numerical measure of how lucky your character is. Why should someone with 1 edge(luck) have the same chance of getting lucky at something like this as a character with 8 edge(luck)?

As for the adding in a mental attribute.. I don't know, that seems to be too much. I mean most characters are going to have at least 1 mental attribute at 5, and even with an edge of one that gives a reasonable chance of getting 2 hits, and virtually guarantees at least 1 hit.

I'd suggest flat out edge but use the rule of 6s. I've actually started doing this in the game I'm running. Had the group roll a 'luck' test to see if something good happened during a difficult battle.

[WeaverMount]

I actually really like the institutionalized harshness. I would like to see my players get tooled more often by exactly this type of thing. I however don't do it that often because i want to be fair. I think a table like this would help get these story elements on stage without seem worrying about playing favorites. I'm actually totally ok with the bad results totally out stripping the good. In my head if a contact calls you up and say "Hey chummer, something ... a ... came up" The character should be excited.

[Dumori]

yeah but the max win gaing inside info good max loss cops blowing the shit out you and your house or a trap that could wipe the team. Seams a bit unblacenced to me I dont mind more bad than good just with that much more I would piss me off as a player.

[Ryu]

Also, the Blackjack Tables can be found under the Sheets and Tables Section of the Web.Archive.org: "Blackjack Jan 2007" page copy.

[Heath Robinson]

There should be very little that players can not affect. It hurts the believability of the world if a talented, experienced runner has the same chance of getting themselves implicated in a crime as a special newbie. Alternatively; why should the Pornomancer have the same chance of their S.O. wanting to trash their place as a borderline autistic hacker?

Life will shit on people, but it is ridiculous to say that it shits on everyone equally or that it's impossible to make it shit on you less. With some effort you can minimise how much misfortune heads your way. Refusing to allow players to do this whilst using "flavour, lol" as an excuse is not good GMing in my opinion.

We have a name for people who wish to subject people to misery with no chance for them to avoid it, it's "sadist". Society has seen fit to give them a place for them to practice their kink in a publically acceptable manner, they call it the IRS.

[Prime Mover]

Point taken, and one of the reasons I think it deserves more abstractions. More a Pitfall / Windfall small gains or loses that are out of the hands of a persons influence, more like real life. Just need to find a balance between good clean fun to get a laugh or prompt a nights run or pissing off players.

More like few random lists that you could add or subtract too as time goes buy and using an Edge roll to determine outcome. Or for more fun let the players choose Pitfall/Windfall that will befall there comrades....or toss some in a hat and let them pull some out at random.

[WeaverMount]

Life will shit on people, but it is ridiculous to say that it shits on everyone equally

Gave me an idea. Have each player write up there own table. That would create tons of easy RP opportunities. It would also give the players meaningful but limited control over how the story goes. Good and bad. Coming up with 18 thing that happen to a character on a routine basis basis is pretty good exercise in its own right.

[shuya]

I don't understand why you would want downtime to be random at all. Our current group is at the moment in the middle of some crazy organ-legging-revenge-streetfightbetting-yakuza thing that pretty much came together during our downtime after our first run because we're all fraggin' drug addicts and can't keep our heads out of trouble.

Make everything work for the story! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Karaden]

Gave me an idea. Have each player write up there own table. That would create tons of easy RP opportunities. It would also give the players meaningful but limited control over how the story goes. Good and bad. Coming up with 18 thing that happen to a character on a routine basis basis is pretty good exercise in its own right.

1. My character gains 1,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
2. My character gains 2,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
3. My character gains 3,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
...

[WeaverMount]

1. My character gains 1,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
2. My character gains 2,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
3. My character gains 3,000,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)
...

If you have to police your players like that I'm sorry you don't have a better group

[kanislatrans]

I kinda like it. just a little bit of something the players can use as a flipside to the things in life they can control. I wouldn' t go crazy with it..hm now you got me thinking....

Good things:

1) Ganger bites it in your front yard...and drops a shiny new Ingram in your petunias.
2) Suzi thinks your cute....gain a 1/1 contact
3) Someone drops your name in the right ear...maybe a little side work in the near future.
4) Lone star misfiles your file...-2 dice from ID check for next week.
5) Delivery drone accidentally delivers 2 cases of NERPS to your address.(Its Party time!!!)
6) Your Fixer made a bundle off that last job you did...add a loyalty point.

Bad

1) Barrel needs replaced on you favorite Pred IV. trip to Weapon World to get back on the firing line.
2) Fixer recommends you to a friend , who recommends you to a friend, who recommends you to a friend, who recommends you someone who recognizes you from the run you made against his/her company.
3) That ugly chica at the bar....The one you drunkenly referred to as "The Half Ork"? her brother is a Humanis lieutenant. And he ain't happy with you ..
4) Need new tires for your Ride..all that tearing up the streets is hell on the Polyester blend fibers...
5) Hacker sends a trace ice to your address while spoofing...that feeling that someone is watching you? its not paranoia.
6)Your spam filter fails at the mall. Its gonna take months to get all that drek out of you commlink....

just what I came up with off the top of my head...

[Karaden]

Fun stuff. Real trouble is you need stuff that can happen to any character. I mean tons of people would complain about 4. Obviously if they don't have a ride it is pointless. If they don't use it much or aren't the 'burn rubber' types, they may complain. Course you can certainly adjust it to just about anything. Point is something is out of whack for a little while.

Not trying to bash your stuff, because it does look cool, I'm just thinking absurdly general things would be better, and things well beyond the control of the player. 1 on the good list is a perfect example... then again if they live in an upper class place... ah well, guess nothing is perfect after all.

[Darkraven]

old post but here is the link that I post for another post

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...st&p=592693