Things You Thought Your Players Would Do, But They Didn't, And Vice Versa Options

[Epicedion]

Inspired by the running list of things you're no longer allowed to do in Shadowrun, and by the noob GM legwork thread!

Sometimes players come up with such strange things, or miss such obvious ones, that the result is basically art.

Tell us the funny.

1) Spend several days setting up surveillance equipment to monitor a cargo ship at the docks, then listen to the GM describe how for days dockworkers are coming in from off-camera to load things onto the ship. And then never once stop to think about how that information could be useful.

2) Decide that they need to steal a keycard from some poor wageslave so they can bypass the security door to enter an office complex, then spend a few hours watching the building and then following a random worker back to his apartment. Once they make it to the apartment, two of them sit on a motorcycle in the adjacent parking garage, down from the target's car. When the target goes to leave his apartment later in the evening, they switch on the motorcycle, pop a wheelie, and speed past. The ork on the back chops the guy in half at the waist with a dikote combat axe. On the plus side, they got the keycard.

3) Plan a full assault on a moderately fortified gang compound in the Barrens, just so they can find out who hired four of the gang's members to shoot up a bar. Asking nicely would have worked, too.

[Socinus]

Sounds like a very...excitable group you've got there

[nezumi]

Retreat in the face of overwhelming force.

Push in the face of a retreating enemy.

Enter the target.

Not enter the non-target.

Stay the hell away from explosives.

Follow instructions.

[wanderer_king]

Randomly pull a supressed SMG and murder Joe Bob the maintenance man during a stealth industrial sabotage run. Seriously, the guy didn't even spot the runner or anything.

[Tiralee]

Spend their Ill-gotten gains. (They buried their wages (Untraceable credsticks) in a sealed lead suitcase down by the docks until their resident hacker could find out what was wrong with them. 1 year later, they're still down there.)

Take the the prisoner outside (out of the Faraday cage building, uncommonly perceptive of the players)

Let some of the witness free. (To run into a crossfire setup by other parties. Very clever players, using their natural paranoia)



Thing is, most of my rewards ARE trap/hook free.
The players haven't figured that out yet.
-Tir

[Garou]

Legwork.

[Garou]

Edited for double posting. Also, magical recon.

[otakusensei]

Not doing legwork or magical recon. Then finding out that the blood mage they were going to wrap up and turn in to the DIMR for 1M¥ isn't there, because the blood spirit they tracked is free. And has his own aspected domain. And possession. And a security door that he keeps open but concealed for just such occasions.

[Makki]

keep the new drug stashed away, until the market value has trippled or even further. I would have given them at least 7 times the money they sold it for depending on their patience.

[Prime Mover]

My players always seem split. Half want to plan,sneak and work out multiple backups. The other half believe in fate,luck and personal ability.
This usually means hours or days of planning and expensive purchases. The cocky half of the team just wait nervously for something to go wrong so they can pull guns and "fix" the problem.

"We have an inside man, we've planted the scripts in their node, the stealth gear has arrived, the diversion is set and here are our 3 escape plans."
v.s.
"How much damage would I take if drove the van in lobby at this speed?"

[CanRay]

Actually find out that their Contacts are good for more than just what they think they are.

Krunch is actually a University Professor of Parabiology. Klub is an expert on infrastructure, specializing in all the fiddly little bits that make up a building and it's wiring.

[BishopMcQ]

Not ask questions.

I had a group (this is SR3) that the hacker had tracked down a Fairlight Excalibur in a showroom, and was planning a full heist. She convinced the rest of the team to come with her, and get a cut of the profit. She even went so far as to hire additional muscle for support when the Star arrived.

Halfway through the heist, they trip an alarm. Star shows up and the runners all hear a muffled explosion.

Runner A: "What was that?"
Hacker: "Just the backup, it's fine."

Several minutes go by, more explosions. The runners call in their ride, a rutheniumed chopper with spirit support for concealment and guard. (They thought they'd have a great story to tell...)

When they reach the roof, the "backup" are a bunch of people they know--a combat mage and three Heavy Weapons guys with rocket launchers. Below them, several squad cars and two swat vans were charred wreckage from AV Rockets and Lonestar was calling in snipers and military reinforcements.

End of the run, they got away with an Excalibur, several lesser cyberdecks, and a two month vacation in Fiji for plastic surgery.

[wanderer_king]

Buy contacts.

Come up with character backstory.

[hobgoblin]

Thing is, most of my rewards ARE trap/hook free.
The players haven't figured that out yet.
-Tir

http://www.weregeek.com/2011/02/23/

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Retreat in the face of overwhelming force.

The campaign I've just begun this happened TWICE and both of them the whole team was killed. Seriously, one of them by the way was just a random group of gangs passing by the street shooting at people. If they decided to simply take cover, they would be fine, but the magician decided that going kamehameha on their asses would be fun, and he killed 80% of the gangers, just to be killed by one bullet and drain...

But as Garou said above, legwork (he used to GM to us, but now I'm GMing to the rest of the group and THEY DON'T DO LEGWORK).

[capt.pantsless]

As part of a larger story-arc, a Mrs. Johnson attempted to hire the PC's to assassinate another group of shadowrunners. I was sorta assuming the PC's would tell her to go to hell, but instead they took the job. They went to the other runner's hideout, filmed the successful hit (all while using gel-rounds) on the other runners, drug the unconscious team to a safe-house, bargained with them in order to cut-off one of their fingers (for proof).

Then they meet-up with Mrs. Johnson, and presented all of this evidence (with a really nice edge-boosted Con roll) and convinced her that the job was done. They get the money, and promptly geek Mrs. Johnson's 2 bodyguards, and take her captive.

Great fun was had by all, and I was forced to re-work a bunch of the plot to adapt to this.

[Draco18s]

I don't think my GM expected my character to join Deus.
SR3 and I had 1 box left before "dying" and my hacker/rigger PMed Deus saying, "let us escape and I'll come back to you." I took this minimech that was part of our reward, payed off my debts to the face (I'd bored some 40,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) from him for my drones) and found my way back to the research compound and became a Deus Slave.

In another game (SR4) we stole an oil tanker and the GM didn't expect the mage to summon a spirit to "Control Weather" and cause a hurricane (in Seattle!). It did mean that the cops couldn't use air support to bring us down, which was fine by us.

Oh, and on Yet Another Job, the crew was hired to off themselves (the Johnson didn't know who exactly the Stray Dogs were and hired us to kill them, not knowing we were the Stray Dogs).

[SpellBinder]

Take advantage of some partying, stoned, and drunk go-gangers to extricate their target, only to have them wait, not leave someone on a stakeout to monitor them, and come back to find everyone gone without a clue to follow them on.

[Troyminator]

Inspired by the running list of things you're no longer allowed to do in Shadowrun, and by the noob GM legwork thread!

I am honored! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

I hope to be able to post after Saturday night.

[Caadium]

Thing is, most of my rewards ARE trap/hook free.
The players haven't figured that out yet.
-Tir

There have actually been sessions where I had been stumped ahead of time so I just tossed some simple run idea to them, then let them give me the ideas for the opposition as they worried out loud of how I was trying to screw them over.

[Troyminator]

Actually, I can post now.

last session I told them that I would work a little encounter up to get them used to how combat works. Go in, blow the ghouls to hell, discover that they were the incorrect targets, go blow the insolent gangers to hell, then start the real campaign.

They turn the throwaway encounters into a MASSIVE roleplaying thing on how thier characters meet, put in some legwork, and a whole lot of stuff that I was making up as we went to meet their needs.

They blow the crap out of the ghouls and devil rats (which I expected) and then the face got a HUGE number of successes facing down the ganger boss (who only got 1 success to resist). So the gang up and leaves to relocate somewhere else.

I thought the whole thing would take 1 hour (blow crap away and get on with it). It took almost 4 hours. Most of that, TBH, was us trying to figure out how combat worked. It doesn't matter how many times one reads through the rulebook, putting the rules into play for the 1st time is always a bit confusing. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)

[Manunancy]

Then they meet-up with Mrs. Johnson, and presented all of this evidence (with a really nice edge-boosted Con roll) and convinced her that the job was done. They get the money, and promptly geek Mrs. Johnson's 2 bodyguards, and take her captive.

Great fun was had by all, and I was forced to re-work a bunch of the plot to adapt to this.

Ouch - depending on what they did with her afterward it's the sort of move that can be very harmfull to their career. Johnsons aren't exactly fonds of runners biting the hand that feeds them (especially since it will the Johonson's own hand in that case...).

Unless said Johnson is safely dead or thoroughly held with blackmail, I'd expect her to spread the word of their lack of loyalty - as far as I can tell from what you told there was no cross from her, only a job the runners found unsavory and cheated before betraying her.

Which is a complete breach of shadowrunner ethic. If you take the job, unless the Johnson is crossing you, you're supposed to deliver and leave him alone afterward.

[James McMurray]

They were told by the powerful free toxic spirit that they'd have to surrender their weapons before he'd let them go down into the basement with the incredibly heavy steel door and large bar. Apparently he didn't want "his guests" getting hurt. I expected them to tell it to go fuck itself but instead they handed over the weapons and walked one or two at a time right into the waiting jaws of a horde of ghouls. What I'd hope would be a fairly easy fight to teach a new guy the basics of SR combat turned into a major clusterfuck.

[capt.pantsless]

Ouch - depending on what they did with her afterward it's the sort of move that can be very harmfull to their career. Johnsons aren't exactly fonds of runners biting the hand that feeds them (especially since it will the Johonson's own hand in that case...).

Which is a complete breach of shadowrunner ethic. If you take the job, unless the Johnson is crossing you, you're supposed to deliver and leave him alone afterward.

In the interest of brevity, I didn't mention that the Mrs. Johnson in question was one of the primary villains of the story-arc, not to mention that she was trying to hire some shadowrunners to KILL some other shadowrunners in order to tie-up a loose end. First rule of assassination and all that.

[Tanegar]

They were told by the powerful free toxic spirit that they'd have to surrender their weapons before he'd let them go down into the basement with the incredibly heavy steel door and large bar. Apparently he didn't want "his guests" getting hurt. I expected them to tell it to go fuck itself but instead they handed over the weapons and walked one or two at a time right into the waiting jaws of a horde of ghouls. What I'd hope would be a fairly easy fight to teach a new guy the basics of SR combat turned into a major clusterfuck.

Sounds like a classic case of too dumb to live. Sometimes the only appropriate response is, "Make a new character."