[X] My Assistant

[LurkerOutThere]

That sounds like a great way to screw up a friendship, game or no.

Honestly there's a lack of evidence to properly judge, but one guy in the equation already sounds like the "does not play well with others" type.

[hyphz]

Thanks for all your replies!

On the line of "Zod's player being a douche", he isn't. Honestly. I was probably a bit too brusque about his attitude when I wrote the previous post (that's what I get for writing detailed posts on a mobile). Basically, he follows the D&D attitude that he's the shooty guy on the team, and therefore he must be best at that AND therefore must avoid as far as possible doing anything that isn't shooting. So he keeps his Commlink off because he has no interest in the Matrix and he never deals with any social things because he doesn't have those skills (in fact I believe he has no Contacts). The players generally don't seem to be hugely interested in the Matrix aspect of the game and I don't really want to penalize them for that. I don't know if he's "metagaming" or not, really, that was probably just my irritation at it being so hard to deal with the problem of "you must do X, or the campaign won't work"

I'll check the limit on the van armor in the book.

As for Zod's blatant obvious murder of people - yes, there most definately is going to be a response to that. Shooting the low-life on the Verge I didn't jump on immediately because it's actively described in the adventure as an unpatrolled "Z-Zone", but that little slaughter outside the club is definitely likely to come back to haunt the group. Simply put, though, people aren't jumping on him immediately because he's made it blatantly obvious that he's a psycho with an armored car and an assault rifle. That takes some prep to take on.

Plus, of course, there's every chance that dropping Caine at that time has resulted in the Ragers having no idea about Tempo, which could change the course of the plot - that seems like an interesting thing to explore, both so that the death has consequences plus, hey, exploring stuff. Are there stats for Moloch or HardRain anywhere? Or, you know, the rest of the First Nations, or the Yakuza, or any of the people whose radars they just hit in a big ol' way? I'm betting some of them have armored cars.. (I'm not bringing Tam in at the moment because as I say I want to keep that long running and I don't think I can convincingly say that the guys in the car in the Verge, who were blatantly acting like obvious muppets, were Tam. Maybe Steppen Wolfs or just punks. Don't know. Plus, of course, when they do the next tail they risk getting into conflict with the Dogmen who most definitely _are_ involved with Tam..)

(By the way, one problem I'm really having is that so much information is distributed across books. Ghost Cartels sends the players to the Verge, but there's no mention of a Verge in Seattle 2072 that I could see. Also, Seattle 2072 says that the events of Ghost Cartels result in Lone Star being ousted from Seattle in favor of Knight Errant but it doesn't say anything about this in Ghost Cartels. Don't even get me started on how there appear to be two different versions of the Ragers in Ghost Cartel and in the corebook.)

[noonesshowmonkey]

Thanks for all your replies!

On the line of "Zod's player being a douche", he isn't. Honestly. I was probably a bit too brusque about his attitude when I wrote the previous post (that's what I get for writing detailed posts on a mobile). Basically, he follows the D&D attitude that he's the shooty guy on the team, and therefore he must be best at that AND therefore must avoid as far as possible doing anything that isn't shooting. So he keeps his Commlink off because he has no interest in the Matrix and he never deals with any social things because he doesn't have those skills (in fact I believe he has no Contacts). The players generally don't seem to be hugely interested in the Matrix aspect of the game and I don't really want to penalize them for that. I don't know if he's "metagaming" or not, really, that was probably just my irritation at it being so hard to deal with the problem of "you must do X, or the campaign won't work"

...

(By the way, one problem I'm really having is that so much information is distributed across books. Ghost Cartels sends the players to the Verge, but there's no mention of a Verge in Seattle 2072 that I could see. Also, Seattle 2072 says that the events of Ghost Cartels result in Lone Star being ousted from Seattle in favor of Knight Errant but it doesn't say anything about this in Ghost Cartels. Don't even get me started on how there appear to be two different versions of the Ragers in Ghost Cartel and in the corebook.)

Yeah, you'll have that. Friends are friends and they're great guys, fun to game with, but can cause problems in games a plenty. I've GMed for gamers in the past that consider SR4 to be a test in submarine construction. By that I mean that every single cubic centimeter of design must maximize efficiency. Character generation, for them, is just a thought-problem whose solution is maximizing the dice pool for one (or, rarely, two or three) tests. The extent of that play has been, in my experience, much like Zod: players pick up a mitful of dice, roll them, count the hits / success etc. and then do whatever the heck they say they do... And then the game moves on. The trouble with players like this is that they break down the 4th wall of gaming in a big, big way. Huge dicepools allow players to accomplish tasks that are generally absurd and impractical, even insane... and get away with it without any real justification, context, story. It would be one thing to do this in a context of group fun, high adventure, and general pink-mohawk-badassery, but I've found over and over that it works just like you describe. Player X says 'I shoot them. *rolls dice* They die. Next?' If that is fun for them - and for the rest of the group - carry on.

If they don't understand that having their commlink off, especially with out of game metagame statements like 'you'll have to give us adventure seeds and information somehow, just not through my character', is pretty cheesy without a background justification, then whatever. DnD players / power gamers making the transition to SR4 have a long, winding road of it.

So long as everyone has fun, then you are doing it right. Like my first response to your adventure log: sounds GREAT thus far.

The 2nd part: One of the hardest parts of GMing Shadowrun is having sufficient background to figure it all out, as it were. At any given moment, players can and will do things that make you suddenly need to answer questions like 'what is over there?', 'how long does it take to get from A to B?', 'are there cops here? how many?', 'I need a nightclub... and fast...' etc.

Getting all of those parts to work in a cohesive, meaningful way is really hard. And, as you described, much of the information disseminated on the topic of the gameworld is spread around pretty handily.

Vice, I believe, has information about organized crime and gangs in Seattle and abroad. You might try nabbing a pdf of that and taking a gander.

[nylanfs]

I have found that the best way to keep track of stuff that comes up (and isn't detailed in the module I'm using, or I haven't thought out ahead of time) is to keep a exposition notebook right handy during the game. The each game start a page with the game date, (module or run name is using also) and then I can jot NPC names, bar names and anything else I need right quickly. Plus it has the added benifit of MAKING the players keep notes because they see me making notes and I don't use my notebook. If they don't know chances are their character doesn't know. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

I think I have probably about 40ish notebooks scattered over 4-5 game systems with detailed and not so detailed notes.

[Manunancy]

Note about the murdermobile : one problem is how to deal with the thing without fragging the party inside. Some suggestions on how to achieve that :

* the most obvious is to go at it while the PCs aren't inside. One nasty trick could be to drag the thing into an enclosed and wifi-proofed semi-trailer. Or just put some gasoline-soaked used tires under it and torch them for a cheap and dirty destruction.

* if the car is left to it's own devices with intructions amounting to 'pop out the turrets and frag anyone who interferes', a car's pilot program is dumb enough to cause all sort of problems with that. The nicer the area, the more embarassing it can be. Fragging the hobo who puked on it in the Barrens is unlikely to cause more than some laughs. Fragging the police drone giving it a ticket for parking downtown is another thing.

* you can pull a Ronin-style trick too : it sounds like the murder mobile is a large car. Have them chase some smaller car they can't affford to just shoot into stopping (something fragile to recover inside or the like can work). The chased heads for the backstreet and alleys, in increasingly tighter spaces. At one point they notice the chased car folding down it's rearview mirrors. If they think fast and stop, no problem, if they keep on chasing, they'll end up jammed between two buildings. With the car's armor and if they were moving fast, there's no way the car will get unstuck without lengthy efforts...

[Mayhem_2006]

Zod generally has his commlink off all of the time, saying it doesn't matter if he can't get calls because missions and/or any critical information will get to them somehow as otherwise there would be no campaign.

Screw that.

Make them pay out a couple of months rent and other upkeep before their next job, and make it a crappy one.

"Oh hai, guys, there you are. Been trying to get you for ages but you've not been answering calls. Sorry, I gave all the good work to more reliable runners, but I got a little something for you if you need the cash..."

***

Or, as its just him... do these guys live with each other IC?

If not, have the others (or him) attacked in "downtime" where being able to call the guy with the murdermobile would be really useful. Do it sequentially so that even if calling for help wouldn't have been useful, being able to warn the others would have been.

[Wiseman]

Nopte about the murdermobile : one problem is hopw to deal with the thing without fragging the party inside. Some suggestions on how to achieve that :

I got a few!

Could be fun to have a hacker gang take over the car and go on a rampage. Not only do they have to face their own murder car (without destroying it) to get it back, but risk it becoming even more visible to the public by the gang's mischief.

Have it impounded by the star and let them do a run to spring it. Course they just mayyyyyybe want to be more subtle on that run, video footage and all. Plus those no neck peacekeepers tend to be as bad as gangs when it comes to losing one of their own.

Have it run out of gas at an inopportune moment. LOL

and finally, have a resident AI make a home in the Murder Car's node that can lead to all sort of hilarity and plot threads.

At some point though, definitely should have Murder Car mimiced in a trid show that way overcheeses it.