The Clue Files, New and Improved: Twice the NERPs! Options

[Paul]

So this thread is dedicated to those head smack moments we all have in games at one time or another.

So the guy I described in another thread was playing a street samurai named Holocaust, who also happened to be a Vampire. Because this was SR1, and at the time there was I think three books out-the main book, the Street Samurai Catalog and Seattle-and I was a brand spanking new GM I didn't do what I should have done, and just said no. Instead I rolled with the punches and like a fool just let him bring this monstrosity into my game. Quickly the other players cornered said, "Hey Paul we don't want to be dicks but seriously this guys sucks. A lot." But we were desperate for players, so we decided to deal with it in another way. everyone else created absurdly powerful characters.

It took a few sessions before we noticed it, but soon we realized this guy was just erasing stats and skills, and rewriting them on the fly to match everyone else. We were mortified, but again we were teenagers and trying to be cool-so we decided to take a break and go get some munchies. So we bring dude, and because we're teenagers we had pile of nickels, dimes and quarters to snag food with. As we exit the vehicle the change jingles, and he says with a straight face, "You guys are totally ruining your stealth rating."

That was the final straw for us.

[Paul]

When I was in the Marine Corps I played with a group of Marines who approached Shadowrun like any good Marine would-by the numbers! They were a particularly lethal group, who excelled at close quarters combat. We had a cat from another company decide he wanted in, so we gave him some SR2 books and the guidelines and he built a character. In the first game he never says a word except every time something happens he pipes up and says, " I stealth away!" After three sessions we decide to try and approach him about this. He gets really upset and says we're being dicks, and then decides to press up against the wall and starts trying to creep away. While we're staring at him.

[Paul]

Oh come on. Somebody out there has to have had a Clue experience!

[LostProxy]

We were making an escape after assassinating a politician who had been a part of a scheme to frame crimes on some Meta rights organizations when our combat mage decided that instead of risking drain on a fireball he would just throw a grenade. "It's ok" he says "I totally got this." Dice pool of 5 but he wanted to do this so badly. With 3 extra dice from edge it still ended with a glitch. Now we weren't exactly in a situation to jump out of cover to escape the blast so my troll bounty hunter did what anyone would have done. "It's ok" I said "We have a shield." I grabbed the mage and threw him onto the grenade after which I jumped on top of him. The GM ruled our combined mass absorbed the blast but when I stand up it won't be pretty. Well I was still pretty. Not so much the mage.

[BookWyrm]

NERPS. Try the new Diet Salsa version. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[JonathanC]

So, I was running this game where the players started out in prison. The facility was attacked, and the players were trying to escape in the confusion....but first, they wanted to break into the area where their stuff was being kept. After going to the nearly-abandoned (in the chaos) front office to get their stuff, they're heading back when they encounter some guards after failing a stealth check.

One of them was a martial artist, and built for melee combat. He flat out charges a group of 4-5 armed guards, hoping to use Finishing Move to sweep through them. He doesn't take them all down though, and while he's hard to hit, they eventually take him down in a hail of bullets. The rest of the group surrenders to the guards ("hey, that guy was crazy!") and escaped later. He was treated for his wounds and eventually escaped as well.

Yeah, I'm probably too lenient as a GM.

[Manunancy]

Very lenient - logically their stuff had no reason to be in the prison beyond a set of clothes, their Ids and some change - anything fancy or illegal (guns, armor, tricked-to-the-nines comlink and the like) would rather be into the evidences locker of whatever city they were caught and judged in. If not already auctioned away.

[Cain]

I posted this one a long time ago, but it bears repeating. It's a SR3 story, but I think the moral carried on and on.

Isn't it amazing how the Clueless are drawn to grenades?

I'm GMing again, and the mission is to take out a heavily-secured facility. Now, they're getting paid to cause heavy damage and carnage, so they go in packing heavy, knowing the opposition will be just as well-armed. Since they need to raze the place, they even brought satchel charges; research has revealed the walls are all heavily reinforced, so extras are packed.

Things are rough, but they're still going well, up until this point, when the oppostion barricaded a hallway.

Let me skip ahead to the punchline:

Me: (to mage) Let me get this straight. You're in a two-meter wide, ten-meter long hallway. The barricade is about 7 meters in front of you. You're sustaining a Levitate Self and Improved Invisibility spell, you have a moderate Physical and a Serious Stun wound, lighting is bad and you have no vision enhancements, and you want to do what?

Mage: I want to fly over them and throw a grenade. I got a frag left, it'll mess them up.

Me: *pause* Ohhhhkay. You're only dropping it, so I'll go against base TN of 2....(calculates modifiers) Target number 17. You do have Thrown Weapon, don't you?

Mage: Yup. Lessee... I got one die in it

Everyone: *pause*

Me: Are you really sure about this?

Mage: Yup. I'll drop it, and fly right past. I can spare one from my combat pool.

Me: Ohhhhkay.

Mage (rolls): oh.

Sammie: What??

Mage: I rolled all ones.

Sammie: (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) Spend some karma pool, doofus!

Mage: I'm out of Karma pool. I spent it to resist drain.

Me: Well then. (I start pantomiming) You grasp the grenade in your left hand, pull the pin, and throw. An object goes flying. Then you look down at your left hand, and have a second to yelp. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/vegm.gif)

Surprisingly enough, the mage managed to survive this; the sammie, some distance away, did so as well.

[Paul]

Heh. I had a player once who, after I'd spent several minutes actually describing how the ceiling in the room was made of a twelve foot thick pieces of marble, inscribed with magical runes, said with a straight face, "I fire my under barrel grenade launcher into the ceiling. That will get their attention." The group literally just stopped and stared at him. I replied with a smile, "Are you sure that's what you want to do?" He nods and then says, "I'll declare now that I'll use Karma to reroll any failures too."

[JonathanC]

Very lenient - logically their stuff had no reason to be in the prison beyond a set of clothes, their Ids and some change - anything fancy or illegal (guns, armor, tricked-to-the-nines comlink and the like) would rather be into the evidences locker of whatever city they wer caught and judged in. If not already auctioned away.

It's been a while since that game session, but I believe they had licenses for their stuff. It mainly boiled down to them finding some guns, and the drugs necessary to counteract the drugs that were dampening their ability to use their cyberware/magic (one of them had enough medical training to administer the drugs). For the bulk of their actual stuff (IDs, etc.) they had to wait until they'd escaped the prison, jacked a car, and made their way to Puyallup to hide out. They then got their contacts (high loyalty, naturally) to bring them a care package.

I'm definitely lenient, but I like to think there's a logic behind it all.

[Manunancy]

With those precisions, not problem - at first read I had the impression it was the 'everything the bad guys stripped from you is neatly piled in the locker near your cells' situation common in videogames (and some scenarios).

[JonathanC]

With those precisions, not problem - at first read I had the impression it was the 'everything the bad guys stripped from you is neatly piled in the locker near your cells' situation common in videogames (and some scenarios).

I think I came close to doing that...I was picturing the scene in most movies where they give a released prisoner a box with his personal effects, but in the end I figured they wouldn't have much time to search for their stuff. The stuff they got out with seemed reasonable to find.

The escape scenario itself was ridiculous; a Japanese Ork freedom fighter/terrorist had been caught in Seattle, and was being held in the prison until they could extradite. His well-armed terrorist organization flat-out assaulted the prison. It was more important to me that the players start out hiding from authority and desperate for shelter than to keep them in prison for very long.

[Kirk]

I think I came close to doing that...I was picturing the scene in most movies where they give a released prisoner a box with his personal effects, but in the end I figured they wouldn't have much time to search for their stuff. The stuff they got out with seemed reasonable to find.

The escape scenario itself was ridiculous; a Japanese Ork freedom fighter/terrorist had been caught in Seattle, and was being held in the prison until they could extradite. His well-armed terrorist organization flat-out assaulted the prison. It was more important to me that the players start out hiding from authority and desperate for shelter than to keep them in prison for very long.

For future use... my daughter has a campaign she's running that started with everyone in jail for petty crap - arguing with the officer over a speeding ticket, drunk and disorderly, material witness, breathing while Chromed, that sort of thing. The subordinates of the NPC in the cell staged a jailbreak - a somewhat bloody jailbreak.

[Ed_209a]

Here's a notorious facepalm moment among my SR group.

We were doing a bodyguard job for a guy who was speaking at a transhumanism convention. Lots of body mods & body sculpting going on right & left. We leave our principal alone with our brand-new hacker for just a minute...

About that time, an adolescent troll discovers that the hot orc chica he had been chatting up is actually more chico than chica. Emphatic discussion ensues. Now, keep in mind, none of this is happening near the principal, and isn't really threatening the principal at all. The troll was just there to attend the convention.

The hacker gets spooked, draws his Warhawk, and open fires on the troll. Just to be sure, on his next pass, he fires again, with edge this time. Chaos erupts, but professionals that we are, we manage to extract the principal from the situation. The hacker wasn't so lucky. (I don't remember if that was intentional or not.)

So now our hacker is in the convention center security area, under armed guard. The rest of us start discussing how to get into the office (not to get the hacker out, I might add.)

In the end, the hacker's player leaves in a huff, and our GM handwaves this to be resolved off camera.


Another event happened much earlier in the game. This one was all me, and I still feel a little foolish about it.

We were fighting some security guards, and had them down to 1-2 guards. I drew down on one of the survivors and demanded he surrender. He didn't. I told him to surrender again. He didn't. Finally I killed him with a burst of SMG fire.

<sigh>

What I forgot was that I was running at 3 passes per turn , the guard was running at 1 pass per turn. I killed him before he had the ability to give up.

[Draco18s]

Here's a good one:
http://spoonyexperiment.com/2011/10/08/sha...quirt-gun-wars/

[Ascalaphus]

Here's a good one:
http://spoonyexperiment.com/2011/10/08/sha...quirt-gun-wars/

It's a nice story. Ah, teenage foolishness (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Paul]

I need to be more polite.

[Wounded Ronin]

When I was in the Marine Corps I played with a group of Marines who approached Shadowrun like any good Marine would-by the numbers! They were a particularly lethal group, who excelled at close quarters combat. We had a cat from another company decide he wanted in, so we gave him some SR2 books and the guidelines and he built a character. In the first game he never says a word except every time something happens he pipes up and says, " I stealth away!" After three sessions we decide to try and approach him about this. He gets really upset and says we're being dicks, and then decides to press up against the wall and starts trying to creep away. While we're staring at him.

That's really poignant.

[ravensmuse]

The Grandma Story

My wife is a great player but sometimes thinks a little too far into things. Or not. She has blonde moments.

The pair (my wife and my niece) have been hired to extract someone from a hospital. They're standing like, on the same block as the hospital and my wife decided that they needed the whole of the ER needs to come out to make it easy to get in. So she pushes a little old lady standing next to her into traffic.

Not gonna lie - I was kind of a little disturbed by the ease of which she did it, and how easily my niece agreed to it.

So I figured I'd be a dick GM and make her the little old lady some local mob boss' ma, and hey, now they've got mafia trouble. Because she pushed a little old lady into traffic.

But this wasn't enough - oh no. My wife decided that the little old lady was a "loose end". That needed to be tied. So she snuck back into the hospital to shoot the little old lady in the face. Not for money.

(she's laughing as I'm writing this - "we never did get that guy out of the hospital!")

She shot the old lady and alarms start (naturally) going off and security (and mobsters) start pouring out of everywhere. So she breaks out a window and leaps out, two stories up. I was a little admittedly a little ticked off, so I went with the whole "now the whole city! is after you!

Then they escaped whatever city that was and went to Tokyo where she blew up a model with an embedded bomb in a dress. That's another story though.

[Paul]

That's really poignant.

He was literally the first person we ever asked to stop gaming with us. Since then we've only had maybe two other people we absolutely couldn't game with. One was actually rather recently, and was the worst. (He was touchy-feely bad hygiene guy. Woof.)