[X] My Assistant

[LurkerOutThere]

Only for convention and other public games. If it's a private table that uses Missions adventures, it's fair game (no pun intended).

True but that's not saying anything, a home game is a home game is a home game.

I believe that frankly Shadowrun period states that killing innocents has negative consequences. On or around p. 265, I think. I'm not saying you're wrong or right, just that the hymnal seems to imply a certain moral slant in and of itself, rather than having one GM's personal morality projected onto it.

No actually what shadowrun states is killing an innocent person may cause a notoriety gain. Then we get into fun things like what constitutes an innocent person in the world of Shadowrun. While it is possible that there might be an innocent person in the theoretical bar full of gangers to say that because they died is a reason for the Johnson to pre-emptively whack a Runner is a logical leap i'm not willing to make.

[Yerameyahu]

*shrug* There are cops and worse who exist specifically to punish this. Problem solved.

[Wasabi]

I think it'd be cool if future missions had an add-a-goon option that raised the number of goons for:

a) Public Awareness ("Hey Joe, its Killer Cabana the famous murderer! Grab reinforcements!")
b) Indebted ("You give us the vig or we take a piece of you home for da boss!")

And yes, add goons not increase TR. Let payouts stay the same and difficulty increase.

[DireRadiant]

As a Missions GM I am perfectly free to add whatever I want to the game to deal with Notoriety and Public Awareness as I see fit.

SR Missions aren't a pick a path or choose your own adventure book.

Frankly I think it's a waste of space to write in and encode all these "Missions" rules (I have horrifying visions of 30+ pages of boilerplate missions text in every adventure) when it is the GM's job to go Yes, No, and "WTF? Orbital Space Cows" fall on your character.

On the other hand, you might be able to write enough rules and deal with enough situations that you won't need a GM at all.

[Wasabi]

And by doing your own thing enough you may not need a Module at all. Now can we set the sarcasm aside?

[MikeKozar]

No actually what shadowrun states is killing an innocent person may cause a notoriety gain. Then we get into fun things like what constitutes an innocent person in the world of Shadowrun. While it is possible that there might be an innocent person in the theoretical bar full of gangers to say that because they died is a reason for the Johnson to pre-emptively whack a Runner is a logical leap i'm not willing to make.

Pet peeve: Telling other posters "No" makes them all defensive and flamey. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Keep it cool, omae.


What interests me in this scenario is *why* there was an innocent in the line of fire. Did the GM have the bad guys start a fight someplace public, counting on the PCs to "play nice" and fight with a disadvantage? That would be the GM's fault, not the players. Did the players go looking for hostages or bystanders to up the mayhem? That's sick, and will play well on the news. Expect to get as much mayhem as you can handle as the media circus ramps up.

Could it have been an honest mistake? I can't see that happening. Either the GM deliberately left little ethical boobytraps for the players to step on, or the players went out of their way to start a major police action.

Most Shadowrunners should never deal with "innocents" when they're on the clock. You meet the Johnson, you collect your gear, and you hit the enemy. If an innocent gets shot, somebody screwed up. My money is on the GM being a dick, though.

[DireRadiant]

And by doing your own thing enough you may not need a Module at all. Now can we set the sarcasm aside?

So am I reading a module to the players are am I unleashing my imagination and the players to have fun and excitement in an environment unfettered by some other GM who isn't even at the table and most likely will never interact with the same player?

[Wasabi]

In my mind its a judgment call with having fun being the goal. Some GM's might appreciate the structure. Some might not.

I can think of a few folks on the CGL demo team I've met over the years that preferred sticking to text and stats over improv-ing stats and that has allowed things like Notoriety, Public Awareness, and Indebted to be abused. I'm suggesting training wheels to show a clear way to hinder that and not at all saying you or anyone else should be forced to use them. As is though they are being abused. My team has a member with Public Awareness 7 who jokes openly and repeatedly about his character wanting to get sponsored by NASCAR and Indebted goes from negative to extra-super positive quality when the GM's don't persecute those not paying back the vig.

So...
Do I think its a good addition? Yes.
Do I think you personally need it? Don't know you so I couldn't say.
Do I think your preference to improv penalties is common? No. Damn sure not in the CGL-sponsored games I've played.

[Stahlseele]

Well, if you poke someone with a needle that does 10 Stun, the stun monitor is now full.
Now you poke him again, after he has taken the stun damage, and the damage transfers to physical.
the physical monitor is now full. the unlucky bastard is dead or dieing. cause: overdose on tranquilizer.
basically what you would expect, if you hit someone with enough tranquilizer to drop a horse with.
now with grenades, this becomes slightly more complicated.
for simplicity let's say that one grenade deals 10d stun one time.
and if you drop another grenade, well, guess what? you just gassed a whole room of people to death.

[Mesh]

Well, if you poke someone with a needle that does 10 Stun, the stun monitor is now full.
Now you poke him again, after he has taken the stun damage, and the damage transfers to physical.
the physical monitor is now full. the unlucky bastard is dead or dieing. cause: overdose on tranquilizer.
basically what you would expect, if you hit someone with enough tranquilizer to drop a horse with.
now with grenades, this becomes slightly more complicated.
for simplicity let's say that one grenade deals 10d stun one time.
and if you drop another grenade, well, guess what? you just gassed a whole room of people to death.

RAW you're right. I think what people have a problem with is this dynamic doesn't match reality (yes, I know RAW vs RL ad nauseum). When a drug goes from "standard dosage" to reaching its toxicity level is usually not at a double dose. Two sleeping pills can knock out an adult. Four sleeping pills won't kill you.

Mesh

[Bull]

In the core rulebook (Seriously, I want to ban the term RAW, I hate it it with a passion (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ), the suggestion for overdosing is to increase the power by a point or two per dose, IIRC (I'm being too lazy to look the exact wording up). I'd say you can run with this if necessary. But unless the player was intending to kill the room with stun gas, I wouldn't worry about it.

As for the discussion about "Choose Your Own Adventure" vs "GM choice", well... I think we need to find a happy medium for GMs working in an "open" environment, like Con games. We have to trust our GMs to do a good job, and we want them to have fun. Simply reading a prepared script for 4 hours may not be fun for them. So they have some leeway. By the same token, we want players experiencing the core adventures that we publish, and we don't want to go too far off board, so that when they play the next adventure under a different GM, they haven't thrown the game completely out of whack.

But, at the end of the day, the biggest thing is that we should be having fun. That's more important than anything else.

Bull

[Dantic]

In the core rulebook (Seriously, I want to ban the term RAW, I hate it it with a passion (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ), the suggestion for overdosing is to increase the power by a point or two per dose, IIRC (I'm being too lazy to look the exact wording up). I'd say you can run with this if necessary. But unless the player was intending to kill the room with stun gas, I wouldn't worry about it.

The core book reads,
"Concentration
If a toxin is applied at concentrated levels (more than a
single dose), the gamemaster may increase the Power of the
toxin as he feels appropriate, as well as increasing the damage it
causes or its other effects by an appropriate amount.
Likewise, if a character remains in contact with a toxin over
an extended period, such as being caught in a gas-filled room
for several minutes, she may receive an additional dose and suffer
stronger effects (or have to resist the toxin again)."

For Neuro-Stun, it reads,
"This colorless and odorless knockout gas is used
for emergency-containment conditions. Neuro-Stun comes
in different concentrations. Some become inert after only 10
minutes of contact with the air; others become inert after only
1 minute. Wind and other environmental conditions may disperse
the gas more quickly."

I'd just go with gas grenades, having the version of the gas that goes inert after one minute, by default. This way, You'd be correct to just increase the power slightly.

PS:
The core rule book use to be called BBB (Big Black Book), may I suggest, BGB (Big Green/Grey Book, SR4 is green, and the 20th Anniversary, is grey)

[CrowOfPyke]

*shrug* There are cops and worse who exist specifically to punish this. Problem solved.

But 50 innocent bystanders also stunned?

If I were the GM of this SRM with a player that did that, first I'd warn them of severe consequences for such an action. If they continue anyway, I would have no problem with putting their character on the "public menace wanted by authorities" all over the Matrix. And I'd give them +1 Notoriety for each innocent they stunned, which in the case described equals +50 notoriety.

Congratulations, you just made your character unplayable through your own actions because no one will hire a runner with +50 Notoriety.

[Doc Chase]

Stunning? Eh.

Stunning to death? Okay. I could see the Notoriety boost for that. Sleep gassing a room of people is a rather humane way to control the crowd.

[VillainsVision]

Pet peeve: Telling other posters "No" makes them all defensive and flamey. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Keep it cool, omae.


What interests me in this scenario is *why* there was an innocent in the line of fire. Did the GM have the bad guys start a fight someplace public, counting on the PCs to "play nice" and fight with a disadvantage? That would be the GM's fault, not the players. Did the players go looking for hostages or bystanders to up the mayhem? That's sick, and will play well on the news. Expect to get as much mayhem as you can handle as the media circus ramps up.

Could it have been an honest mistake? I can't see that happening. Either the GM deliberately left little ethical boobytraps for the players to step on, or the players went out of their way to start a major police action.

Most Shadowrunners should never deal with "innocents" when they're on the clock. You meet the Johnson, you collect your gear, and you hit the enemy. If an innocent gets shot, somebody screwed up. My money is on the GM being a dick, though.

The GM , me, was following the mission that was laid out for the players, they needed to get to the top floor of a triad owned club to find an assassin responsible for killing a little girl. The club was packed to because of the time that they were running the mission, to keep a fire fight to the minimum ,and to make a combat heavy group use some of their other skills. At least that is what I saw when I read the mission. I used bouncers,low end triad thugs, to make it difficult to walk right up into the secure offices of the club, in response the grenades were dropped. Dick GM maybe, but I tend to want to challenge players and throw things at them that are a challenge to handle, not to mention I was following the official mission.

Anyway I have taken some of the suggestions to the table and we got it all cleared up if he tries that again.

[jakephillips]

I agree that gassing a whole club full of people would probably get you some public awareness but if noone died no noteriety unless the johnson says so. I would want to know where they hid those grenades to get them past the bouncers.

[Yerameyahu]

No notoriety for gassing people? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[explorator]

I remember a few years back when soviet special forces used a sleep agent to help pacify a theater full of hostages and terrorists. Alot of people didnt wake up.Read all about it.

Depending on ventilation any gas would linger, sinking to the floor where all the bodies are, replacing the oxygen

Saddest part of that story was the detail that many of the unconscious hostages were laid out in the parking lot on their backs and in the rain. Some did die from the massive amount of gas that was pumped through the ventilation system, but many more actually drowned.

Edit: the gas was pumped into the theater (probably though the HVAC system) for 30 minutes prior to the assault, and while all the hostages were KO'd, the majority lived, although most have long-term health issues related to their long-term exposure to the gas.

Most modern nightclubs have vigorous ventilation and fire-control systems. I could see a problem in an underground club in the barrens having zero ventilation, but a licensed club would have some heavy safe-guards. Knock-out gas certainly could kill some people, with the elderly and children most at risk. I imagine some otherwise healthy club-goers might be on drugs that would have a bad interaction w/ KO gas, but generating 50 dead bodies with KO gas seems awfully heavy.

Now that it has happened, you will have to deal with it somehow, so maybe this was the night everyone in the club was trying some designer downers that compromised their respiratory system and that combined with nasty KO killed them. That would take some of the heat off the perp, without really absolving him.

What if you bought some KO gas grenades that turned out to be filled with Nerve gas? That could kill 50 people and make for a mighty interesting run and resolution.

[Yerameyahu]

I don't think it was a 'sleep agent'. I think it was a (powerful, surgical-grade) contact/inhalation anesthetic that they refused to identify fast enough to save over 100 people. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Mesh]

I just watched Oldboy last night. Odaisu said, "Later I learned the valium gas they used on me was the same used by the Russians in the theatre that killed all those people." He had an alcohol problem though so I'm not sure how true that is.

Mesh

[Doc Chase]

Not very. Everyone's middlingly certain it was a weaponized version of fentanyl.

[Mayhem_2006]

Does the player in question actually know that his stun gas grenades are prooving deadly? He may not be intending to murder rooms full of people, after all.

[Neurosis]

If you're talking about Narcojet, it specifically says in its fluff text that it has no negative effects beyond knocking people unconscious! I would just rule that it doesn't do physical overflow and/or (to make it more balanced overall) only does its 10 Stun (Toxin Power) once, or once per MINUTE (so it also doesn't inflict EVERYONE IS UNCONSCIOUS MWAHAHAHAHA which is more of a game balance issue) rather than every turn.

Anyway, this samurai is at least using Narcojet. People ought to stop making him out to be Hannibal Lecter!

[Yerameyahu]

Narcoject is Injection, not Inhalation. Generic stun-gas is Neuro-Stun; it fails to say 'no side effects'. :/

[Neurosis]

Oops! My bad on that one.