Getting (an) Edge with Legwork and Knowledge, for GMs with "difficult" groups Options

[Makki]

I noticed three things in the past:
1) many players (usually unexperienced ones) leave Edge aside during chargen and use their BP elsewhere. This is very sad.
2) some groups tend to skip over legwork and dive right into the mess. This is not supposed to be a criticism: Some tables prefer to leave the roleplaying aspect at a minimum and can't bare hours of bribing janitors and chatting up contacts in shady bars. But I believe other tables don't feel the need for it and the advantages of it, because let's face it, some GMs are not perfect.
3) Knowledge skills don't have a mechanical effect 99% of the time. Can be difficult for the GM to implement them regularly and on a fair basis.


I just came up with a solution for all three at once:

Every PC starts with minimum Edge as RAW. Edge can't be bought at chargen or with karma.
Instead, the GM rewards the players (all or individually) with Edge points for every successful piece of legwork.
Edge may also be gained by (very) successful knowledge skill checks on a critical topic.

examples:
-Hacker spends some time on data search and Hacking in order to get floor plans. Very helpful for the team. One point of Edge for everybody.
-Street sam bribes his gang contact. He aquires information about their enemies' equipment. One point of Edge for everybody who will be directly facing/fighting them.
-The Shaman assenses a patrolling spirit, that looks kinda weird. He then roles a knowledge skill check on "Spirits of the 6th world". Bam, 4 successes. The GM deems this enough to award the mage (and anybody he shares his knowledge with) with one point of Edge, that can be used in any circumstance regarding said spirit.

[All4BigGuns]

I noticed three things in the past:
1) many players (usually unexperienced ones) leave Edge aside during chargen and use their BP elsewhere. This is very sad.
2) some groups tend to skip over legwork and dive right into the mess. This is not supposed to be a criticism: Some tables prefer to leave the roleplaying aspect at a minimum and can't bare hours of bribing janitors and chatting up contacts in shady bars. But I believe other tables don't feel the need for it and the advantages of it, because let's face it, some GMs are not perfect.
3) Knowledge skills don't have a mechanical effect 99% of the time. Can be difficult for the GM to implement them regularly and on a fair basis.


I just came up with a solution for all three at once:

Every PC starts with minimum Edge as RAW. Edge can't be bought at chargen or with karma.
Instead, the GM rewards the players (all or individually) with Edge points for every successful piece of legwork.
Edge may also be gained by (very) successful knowledge skill checks on a critical topic.

examples:
-Hacker spends some time on data search and Hacking in order to get floor plans. Very helpful for the team. One point of Edge for everybody.
-Street sam bribes his gang contact. He aquires information about their enemies' equipment. One point of Edge for everybody who will be directly facing/fighting them.
-The Shaman assenses a patrolling spirit, that looks kinda weird. He then roles a knowledge skill check on "Spirits of the 6th world". Bam, 4 successes. The GM deems this enough to award the mage (and anybody he shares his knowledge with) with one point of Edge, that can be used in any circumstance regarding said spirit.

1) Not really a problem. Edge is best bought up if you have everything you want for the character and have enough points left to do so. (Not likely)

2) Not really a problem. Implementing something to try and force a player or players into doing an aspect they don't find to be particularly enjoyable is a sign of a piss-poor GM.

3) Can be a problem, but mainly because it's hard to know what knowledge skills will be that useful for a particular game--they're so open-ended--and then there's that there are a lot of GMs out there who frown heavily on having a majority of knowledge skills that are almost always useful.

[LurkerOutThere]

I tend to agree with big guns, your trying to fix problems that aren't necessarily problems.

For me the greatest inducement to get the players doing legwork is having situations set up ahead of time that burn the players if they don't know about it. Don't know your target under protection by a wiz kid gang? That could have serious consequences. Unaware that your J is hiring you to run on his own corp, that could have serious consequences. etc etc. There are a lot of situations in the sixth world where a little foreknowledge turns a potentially life threatening situation into a non issue.

[Garou]

Also, some runs have no time for legwork. If the johson is ambushed by a team of ghost during the meet, all your team has Edge 1? this can be a death sentence in some cases, specialy for the non-combative characters.

[forgarn]

1) All my characters have 2-3 edge on them. That is the way I build them and that is the way my group in general builds their characters.

2) Legwork is important and if the group doesn't do it, there are so many things that will go wrong in my games that they usually only skip it once.

3) I miss the 3e rules where you can add successes from your knowledge checks as dice to your active skill checks (I think that was 3e... maybe 2e?). That kept the knowledge skills relevant. Of course I try and let my players use their knowledge skills as much as possible. They see a guard, they want to roll their knowledge:firearms to see what the hell they are carrying, getting as much info as they can about the capabilities.

[Udoshi]

3) Knowledge skills don't have a mechanical effect 99% of the time. Can be difficult for the GM to implement them regularly and on a fair basis.

Two things.

This sounds very similiar to a post I saw a while ago on these forums, that allows a team to get planning points via legwork, and use them to overcome unseen hurdles or get free passes against security stuff they planned for without taking up a bunch of time doing it.
Kind of a point-based system for streamlining background stuff.


The other, my game has a simple houserule that you may want to adopt: we put Knowledge Skills Helping Out back into the game from 3rd(or so the other player say that's how it used to work). If you have a relevant knowledge skill for a task at hand, you can use the Knowledge skill to teamwork test your actual main test. For sanity's sake, we capped the hits at half knowledge, round up.

Obviously it doesn't apply all the time, but in some cases it can make enough of a difference.
Things like using a Financial knowledge hacking attempt to find traces of money laundering or embezzlement.
Stuff like that. Instead of 'oh. I have firearms design! this helps me shoot better!'.
Though I think someone did get away with a Sniping knowledge skill, since Longarms alone doesn't cover the entire role of hiding, breathing, windage and all the other stuff involved.

[Krishach]

I like that you are brainstorming other ideas, but I would disagree with the use of edge. It's powerful enough that, as a forced mechanic, it can really screw up game focus, and can make things worse instead of better, depending on your players and how many are eschewing legwork.


If there is no one at all who does legwork, then I'd consider just rolling with it. Have the legwork be done by contacts that they have to pay, to keep inside the Shadowrun universe.. Some of them may get greedy, and either start doing the legwork (Yay!) or try going without it. But doing it by contact can work as a valid tactic if your group isn't in to legwork as a whole.

If they insist on going without it (I don't need no stinking info!) or if SOME of the group does legwork and the rest can't be arsed, you're in my groups shoes. We'd been riding on Newbie Armor for a while, since the people in question are new to shadowrun. This can be punished.

We've designed some runs with rather obvious need for, or lack of need for, forethought and planning. The lack allows a relaxed play for the fun of the players, and lets the Diligent of the group know they can take a night off from babysitting everyone else. The need forethought runs will show an end-result difference for the people who Look Before They Leap, and the people who don't: the money, karma, or how badly they got screwed.


In general, though, if your group is looking for lighter play, and it is your whole group doing so, there is no need to force them into anything; I'd just roll with it. It's not worth forcing.

[Midas]

1) Starting characters with no Edge
Not much of a problem IMHO, and once one PC starts using it effectively, the rest soon learn to follow suit.

2) No legwork
Will get PCs killed in certain cases on some tables. If the PCs don't use legwork to find out the easy ins or to smell out a double-cross, I guess they will find out the hard way.

3) Useless knowledge skills
Depends a lot on the skills the character chooses. Languages can be useful dealing with the yaks or triads (esp via social skills). Knowledge of gang colours or security procedures have their uses too, as does accounting etc. Fluff knowledge skills such as interests might never/rarely be useful, but that's the nature of them.

I don't particularly like your proposed solution (GIVING a point of Edge for Data Search? Really?). It seems you might have a slightly unusual group, but I think there are better ways to encourage PCs to do legwork or knowledge skills than lavishing then with Edge for it. Hell, at least at first, giving a point of karma for someone who does a good bit of legwork or finds an appropriate time to use an esoteric knowledge skill should be enough of an incentive for your karma-hungry PCs if they are anything like mine. (Actually I do give a point of karma for good use of slightly fluffier knowledge skills in a right-place-right-time sense.)

[Warlordtheft]

My .02 nuyen.

Knowledge skills: Useful for starting legwork and giving the runners clues. Also helps the GM determine if the PC would know something, got to remember the player hasn't lived in the 6th world, the PC has. Especially true for n00bs.

Using Contacts:Better information from legwork, lower target numbers. The lower loyalty contacts may need some persuasion, higher loyalty contacts will be more willing to help out sans compensation. The limitation of legwork with contacts is that they sometimes don't know, and if low loyalty sometimes might sell any info you give them or if divided in loyalty might betray you.

Datasearch: Limited to what is available and easily accessible on the matrix and the amount of time spent doing such a search.

Edge: Everyone has 1 point of edge to start, humans have 2. So not sure what the fuss is about other than the Mr. Lucky corner case scenario (which has its upsides and downsides).