Body Count, How many toe tags do you need? Options

[Crimson Jack]

I got to thinking about this after reading a couple of threads about the violence in games, namely SR. What is the typical body count on your runs? This would include PC deaths for that matter.

[RangerJoe]

Obviously violence depends on the nature of the game being played and the characters involved. My para-geologist magical researcher is less inclined to harm living things, however, the Viking troll adept I just put together exists purely to pillage, maim, murder, and thuggifercate.

Edit: thuggify replaced with proper made-up word.

This post has been edited by RangerJoe: Mar 3 2004, 06:42 AM

[Reaver]

[Req]

[Jpwoo]

What is a normal game?

[Crimson Jack]

[Shockwave_IIc]

As a rule i try not to play Psycho's so my character's body counts are normally low. Ranging from nil (going in with tasers, shock gloves and narco jet) to total (Assault rifles firing Hi Ex with air timed grenades). most along the lines of 1-2 due to being a sneaky bastard.

Oh as a side note i have killed my own team members on occasion.

[Wish]

Since our current campaign _goal_ is the death of several hundred people, we tend to have a pretty high body count. (They've earned it - doing things like trying to summon horrors, killing friends of ours, consorting with toxic shamans, and so forth.) Last session was atypical, in that there were no fatalities, other than a few things that had to be defeated in combat during an astral quest. The session prior to that, we had at least 16, not counting any construction workers who were too slow to get out of the way when the automatic weapons fire started.

[toturi]

Shadowrun missions (not including wetwork and destruction): 0

Merc missions (also shadowruns with wetwork and destruction): Mass graves are needed

[Corywn]

This is an interesting dichotomy in our group.

I am a sharpshooter Adept who dislikes outright murder (and thus carries loads of Pepper Punch capsule rounds for his rifle.)

One character is a Conjurer Shaman who dislikes using his (unsilenced) pistols until a last resort.

The last character (we're looking for new recruits) is a Full Mage (I think), that likes to make messes, apparently. Either by Mind Controlling a target and having them go ballistic, using an Fire Elemental to blow things up, or shooting things up with his assault rifle.

So...I'd say we average 1 or 2, at most, per run.

[Sahandrian]

Let's see... The biggest run we've had yet has been one called Lotus which involved ghouls and a vampire. We had 12 on that one, I think. 10 ghouls (at least five due to a high-force Nova spell from a foci the group isn't sure how to work yet), one random person killed by the vampire, and Epoc (turned into a banshee and killed by Shinji to give Ceres time to banish the spirit). The current run is called Lone Devil, and we've already had one death (NPC killed by another NPC), some minor injuries (gangers that didn't get out of the line of fire fast enough), and one near-fatal wound to an NPC that surprised Shinji (katana in the gut).

[Quix]

I'm voting for the 1-2 category for an average. My runners either tend to do really well and not kill anyone or it gets fragged up and they end up spraying and praying.

[Lindt]

All told the highest in one run was well over 30. All though they themselves only killed less then 10. They happily framed a group of Aztlan gun runners for a structure hit on a military base and let the attack choppers take care of the rest. Leading now to the "GM, can we kill all the mexicans?" I had to give them extra karma for the idea... killed a few much needed contacts, but...*shrug*

[BitBasher]

I voted zero, because realistically even NPC's that are pushed to deadly but dropped on corp land usually have someone that can stabilize them so they will survive the encounter. That's the vast majority of the time. Medical technology is very efficient in SR, and it's available to a whole lot of the people that SR's are shooting.

Somebody's not dead at 10 boxes, although some games do play it that way.

In the last 3 game sessions one NPC has actually died, and he was killed with pretty extreme predjuce.

The highest in one game was 110,232 because of the use of a force 10 spirit's accident power and the operator of a tactical weapon system in transit rolling an outright botch after he was out of karma. I then rolled 3 dice for luck to see how bad the botch was because of the high level accident power and dropped 3 more ones. This was in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

[Rev]

I had a revalation while gming long ago that security guards with severe, or even moderate, wounds do not get up and continue fighting. Really pretty much nobody who isn't cornered, or winning, continues to fight with a serious wound. I don't think the players ever noticed but the body count dropped dramatically at that moment.

[Shockwave_IIc]

[BitBasher]

[sir fwank]

you're talking PC's right? :P

cuz i kill 1 or more every session.

[Lily]

Our players are very attached to their characters, so if a PC dies, it's a BIIIIIG deal. We sometimes have NPC's bite it or we witness some large scale violence, but I have yet to play with this group and have a PC die.

Lily

[Siege]

Hah! My crew has more infighting than most reality shows. With heavy weapons.

-Siege

[Diesel]

Shadowrunner drama is the kind that needs several layers of MBT armor.

[mfb]

my guy's specialty is killing people, as is the guy that i most often work with. our mage (his SO) is all about the wanton destruction--she once attempted to smash a schoolbus full of children into itsy, squishy pieces--so our bodycount tends to be pretty high. i think the most damage a group ever did on one reasonable run (the occasional unreasonable run, i'll take karma for but won't talk about) was around 40, during a normandyesque invasion featuring a boatload of gangers-cum-yakuza as the Allies and us as the Axis. 'cept we won.

[CirclMastr]

I voted zero before I actually thought about it. Hey J, how many people were in that Stuffer Shack? ;)

[spotlite]

Here's the thing - averages based on all runs is a badly skewed statistic. Some runs actually demand bodycount, some require none at all.

If you were to take an 'average' smash and grab or extraction, where the employer hasn't specified either extreme, then the bodycount is probably around five or six in most of our games, assuming the demo-fetish nut-bar ork doesn't get a look in, anyway. That's probably one squad of guards and some incidental encounters.

[fish]

on a corp run, the security guards usually snuff it. once a lone star building, a maternity and an apartment block were turned to ruble, but that was an emergency... :S