Mohawk or Trenchcoat?, How do I find out what my players want? Options

[Falanin]

So, unlike my missions and other convention Shadowrun games (which seem to start at pretty sweet and go up from there), my last home game was met with yawns from the players. Could have been due to a couple things, social dynamics at our table being what they are, but one thing mentioned was that they wanted to do more over-the-top mohawk shit. (Note: I translate into dumpshock terms here, the actual conversation was rambling and difficult to interpret.)

Since I don't want to abandon running SR any time soon, and I don't have a reliable playerbase other than the one table of guys I'm running with now, I was thinking of writing a survey to figure out what they would actually want and have fun with in a Shadowrun game. I don't want to have to ask the ADHD masses to write essays on what they want, so I was hoping I could get some help with multiple choice questions or "on a scale of 1 to 10" style questions to put into this poll.

I figure I can rate my table on these categories:

1. How combat focussed they want the game to be.

2. How much over the top shit they want to pull off.

3. How much they want to deal with the consequences of their actions.

4. How powerful they want their characters to start/get.

5. How much magical threats/matrix threats/mundane threats they want in their SR.

6. How much cyberpunk/crime/espionage/noir mystery/horror/etc they want in their SR.

Anyone do this kind of thing before? If there are anymore categories I should add, or if anyone has some cool questions that would be fun to answer and would tell me how to make the game more fun for all, well... I could use the help.

[Dr.Rockso]

So, unlike my missions and other convention Shadowrun games (which seem to start at pretty sweet and go up from there), my last home game was met with yawns from the players. Could have been due to a couple things, social dynamics at our table being what they are, but one thing mentioned was that they wanted to do more over-the-top mohawk shit. (Note: I translate into dumpshock terms here, the actual conversation was rambling and difficult to interpret.)

Since I don't want to abandon running SR any time soon, and I don't have a reliable playerbase other than the one table of guys I'm running with now, I was thinking of writing a survey to figure out what they would actually want and have fun with in a Shadowrun game. I don't want to have to ask the ADHD masses to write essays on what they want, so I was hoping I could get some help with multiple choice questions or "on a scale of 1 to 10" style questions to put into this poll.

I figure I can rate my table on these categories:

1. How combat focussed they want the game to be.

2. How much over the top shit they want to pull off.

3. How much they want to deal with the consequences of their actions.

4. How powerful they want their characters to start/get.

5. How much magical threats/matrix threats/mundane threats they want in their SR.

6. How much cyberpunk/crime/espionage/noir mystery/horror/etc they want in their SR.

Anyone do this kind of thing before? If there are anymore categories I should add, or if anyone has some cool questions that would be fun to answer and would tell me how to make the game more fun for all, well... I could use the help.

How about this:

Rent Sneakers and Smokin' Aces.
Make your players watch them.
Ask them which tone they would rather in the game.
...
PROFIT!

[TommyTwoToes]

How about this:

Rent Sneakers and Smokin' Aces.
Make your players watch them.
Ask them which tone they would rather in the game.
...
PROFIT!

I want to sit on the chainsaw!

[Falanin]

Hmm. Never actually seen those two movies. It's a good idea, in theory, but we only meet once a week to game. We're all kinda busy the rest of the time so we don't get together outside of gaming as much as we used to. So, while sitting my players down for 4 hours for movies would be cool, it's not a terribly practical solution.

I was looking for something I could pass out and we could all fill out and bullshit about during the 15min-1hour period of winding down from work and getting ready to game that we generally have before we actually play. Hell, if I really had to, I could just have them bring the surveys back next week. I just don't want to take a whole lot of time out of the gaming budget, since we don't get much there to begin with.

[Stahlseele]

Ask them wether they want to be Sam Fisher/James Bond or Rambo/Terminator . .

[TommyTwoToes]

When our group watched Smokin' Aces, everyone immediately wanted to play SR. Thats just how Pink Mohawk that movie is.

[BlueMax]

Ask them wether they want to be Sam Fisher/James Bond or Rambo/Terminator . .

I would say that if you pressed many of the "serious" players, and you made them answer honestly and thoughtfully, they would put James Bond clear in the Pink Mohawk category.

Facts
1. Public Figure who doesn't get his face changed daily/weekly and so on.
2. Totally willing to blow drek the frag up, even in public.
3. Massive gadgetry for the sake of gadgetry and MOST of it is used for combat.

James Bond is pink mohawk. Its just his Mohawk is a Tux chummer.

Deeply Pink Mohawk,
BlueMax

[deek]

What I did for my last SR campaign was give the players a handful of options:

1) Corporate Espionage where they are a group that works for a AAA corp using stealth above brute force
2) Street level in a gang that they mainly fight and do small mayhem type jobs
3) A post-apocalyptic setting where there are usage limitations to cyberwear, fuel is scarce, not wireless matrix and they have to scavenge for their gear

Point is, outline a few campaign scenarios that you feel comfortable running and let them choose. You are kind of doing that with your list, but I'm thinking if you give them a more complete feel, you can better assess what will work with your group.

My group ended up choosing option one and we had fun with it for close to two years. We did hit a slow point where my group was wanting more action, more combat and less planning and stealth, so I switched it up and basically ran a hack and slash type game for 6 months...

[McCummhail]

Some quick suggestions:
A) Get a quick survey of their favorite media (movies/books/comics/games/etc).
Take inspiration from these sources.

B) Take a session and play it completely over the top. High magic, high cyber, high adventure, high action!
Take some time after you finish to discuss.

One is a subtle approach, the other is blunt. The issue could even be something unrelated to your game style.

[Falanin]

Fair enough. I'd rather wait until I have more information so I can tailor the campaign to what eh players want, but setting up a couple-three options ahead of time sounds like a valid idea.

I kinda like the "compare two movie titles" idea for questions. Makes good use of mental shorthand. Any more movies I can use for comparisions for different aspects of the game? Any other questions I should be asking?

[McCummhail]

I kinda like the "compare two movie titles" idea for questions. Makes good use of mental shorthand. Any more movies I can use for comparisions for different aspects of the game? Any other questions I should be asking?

Here is a thread with a few movie ideas.
Some more pertinent than others.

[DrZaius]

The question I always ask my GM is on a scale of 1 to 100, with 1 being "shoving spoons into a jury-rigged Shotgun to kill my dealer and get one last hit", and 100 being "Vat-grown super assassin", where should I make my character? It's usually pretty informative.

-DrZaius

[SkepticInc]

1) Have someone make up a one-shot Paranoia game in an SR-like setting with pre-gen characters of SR archetypes. Make sure that only takes about half an hour.
2) Run it twice; play it in 'Zap' style once and 'Straight' style once. Ask what they liked about each.
3) Profit.

[Wandering One]

To expound on McCummhail's concept, you can even do this within the SAME campaign, just change the locals.

Want a chance for them to utterly cut loose? Send 'em into the Amazonia border war.
Something with some possible repercussions if it's take too far? A Barrens/Sprawl crossover with some cops kicking around.
Something with low intrigue and constant thought, but dirty enough to make a mess? Denver with the border crossings up and a large degree of smuggling.
Something all thought, no blood? Smuggle the Tir's.
Something bloodbathic yet with high risk/high reward? Security deposit box steal from Zurich Orbital.

Give one of them a contact for a professional Johnson, 0/6 kinda guy, too busy to ever take a call, but connected EVERYWHERE.... and doesn't really care about the runners... but has these 'one off' jobs that they might be interested in. Run 'em through the blender a few times with the table and see where things end up happy.

[Witch]

I think that rather than having a survey, an actual conversation about what they want from a game - heck, even setting up a game together - might be more helpful. A survey really won't get you the information you need.

[Mesh]

If it's not the kind of campaign YOU want to run, why do it? What will motivate you to write for it?

Mesh

[Wandering One]

If it's not the kind of campaign YOU want to run, why do it? What will motivate you to write for it?

Mesh

Might just be a difference in taste, Mesh. I am a GM, and done it a long time for a number of different systems, and player groups. I can do techno-wars, strategical mechas, spy thrillers, mohawk madness, and paranoia. I enjoy the story, any story, more than the silence. The players are the ones writing it with me.

The thing is, the GM isn't the one who writes the story, he's just the prop guy. He sets the scene, sets up the characters for interaction, gives them their blocking, creates a few external scenarios that may or may not come into play and... curtain up, players are on the stage, and we get to see how the story turns out. What those characters/scenarios involve depend on the 'style' of game you're doing, but really... it's only a piece of the puzzle.

Well, unless of course you're railroading... then it's a different story.

[Falanin]

(Note: I translate into dumpshock terms here, the actual conversation was rambling and difficult to interpret.)

This is the reason I wanted to do a survey. Our conversations tend to ramble, interject, joke, and in general... not give a whole lot of meaningful information.(EDIT:Though our conversations ARE a lot of fun...) I'm GOING to take our discussions into account, I just wanted something additional to that so that I can get everybody's thoughts down in writing, hopefully more clearly than in conversation, and so that I don't have to REMEMBER what the differences between players are.

I don't mind writing the campaign to suit the players. It's WAY more fun to me to pull off something everybody had a blast with than it is for me to go all "high concept" and do something that *I* think is AWESOME, only to have it die after the second night in favor of something else. I'm not that hard to please as a GM, so I can do whatever works best.

Once I get everyone's preference down, I'm going to write up the campaign overview, help the players make characters that work with what they said in the survey, and then write up the first several runs.

Thanks for the one-shot ideas for trying out different play styles, Wandering One. Those will be useful, at least as something to change up the tone once we decide which tone to set.

[Caadium]

7th Sea is a swashbuckling game that has lots of options for where a campaign can go. In that system characters are built using a 100 point buy system. In the GM's book, it has a section titled, "The other 100 points". These other 100 points are a way to do exactly what you are asking.

Players each have 100 points to spend on what type of campaign they want. The categories given for 7th Sea (which could be changed for Shadowrun) are:

Intrigue
Exploration
Romance
Action
Military

By letting the players do something like this you can put something together based on their collective interests. It also lets you know what each person is looking for so that you can put those little details in for them. For example, using the 7th Sea categories, if Romance scores low overall you probably won't put much in; but if 1 player put a good chunck of points into it (perhaps thats all the points it got), then you can work stories where its not part of the overall plot, but might be able to tie in some Romance for the 1 player that wanted it.

Off the top of my head, I'm not sure what categories I'd create for Shadowrun, but if I had a group where I wasn't on the same page as them this would be how I would start to mend that.

[Ol' Scratch]

Why not just talk to them about it straight up? You don't have to take some kind of quiz or attempt to be sneaky about learning their motives. RPGing is a social activity. Socialize.

[Nifft]

Surveys are hard to write, because people are bad at introspection. Instead, let them choose the missions they want to run.

For example, this one Johnson wants to pay for an extraction. The extraction requires three separate teams, for security:
- The Pre-Schmoozers: walk or sneak in, case the joint, plant some equipment for the next two teams.
- The Stake Out: infiltrate slowly & very carefully, the corp should never know you were there.
- The Distraction: hit an irrelevant target hard & loud, so the Stake Out team can make their move.

All three jobs will be paid the same, and all three teams will face significant danger.

Let them pick which team they want to be. This should tell you a lot about what they want to play.