Killer GM anonymous Options

[FuelDrop]

Hello, my name is FuelDrop.
I am a killer GM.

I don't mean to be. My first couple of character deaths were solely the results of player stupidity. The first one was because the character (who'd already botched the 'stealth, nonlethal' mission by ruining half an hour's planning with a burst fire shotgun and Ex-Ex), instead of going after the target drug dealer, went for the other door and tried for the drug dealer's son. this earned him a shotgun to the back, and while the rest of the group managed to get his body out of there mere seconds before Lone Star rocked up they later decided that he wasn't worth protecting any further, and the Star caught up with him shortly thereafter.

My second character kill was the same player's next character. He was gunned down by police after turning a simple 'reveal hidden drug lab' mission into a terrorist attack, complete with bomb scare. The events of this run have forced the PCs to flee Seattle entirely, everyone who was involved has needed to completely scrub their identities, and they still managed to get a metric ton of notoriety from it.

I feel that both of those were justified.

Then I had my infamous chemistry teacher mission. No-one in the group died, but it cemented my reputation as a Killer GM.

Finally, cut to last session. It started with me as a player convincing the others to vote off the same guy's third character after he decided to replace the 'planned demolitions' phase of a mission with throwing a couple of grenades into an armory that the rest of the group were looting and yelling "Run!", an event which wounded every character involved in that part of the mission including him. He has said he's not coming back, but considering his antics I can't honestly say this is a bad thing.

Then came the next part of the mission. We got intelligence that a couple of guys had survived our little outing and our vindictive dwarf, Hagar, convinces most of the group to go on after them. My character declines, on the grounds that it's an obvious trap and we're not getting payed nearly enough for the risk even with loot. As a result our usual GM, who's character was going along, asks me to GM this bit so he can play properly.

It is a trap, with the 6 special forces guys the group is hunting having, according to the regular GM, 28 guys hiding in the bushes with them. I was also instructed that the group was to be taken alive if possible.
Our group by this point has 2 trolls in milspec, 2 mages, several humans in milspec, and almost a million nuyen worth of drones covering their asses (Our regular gm plays the rigger. funny, that). Anyway, our three guys with the best infiltration dicepools split up and approach the target (a downed helicopter) from 3 different directions. two of them make their checks well, while Hagar rolls averagely. Unfortunately, the goons (I had maybe 8 on duty at that point) aced both their infiltration checks (5 hits on 8 dice) and their perception checks (4 hits on 9 dice), spotting Hagar. Two short bursts of suppressed S&S rounds later and he's down before he knows what's happening. I give our other guys a shot at seeing what happened and one makes the roll, putting a round through the shooter's face in a truly epic roll (8 dice firing blind, 8 hits). What follows is effectively a sniper duel at short range, with two sides fielding suppressed battle rifles and camo/ghilly duking it out. Our sniper racks up 3 kills before withdrawing with 1 stun remaining (I was only making the stick-and-shock's 'Don't-taze-me-bro' penalty last a single combat turn, or until the next time he got shot), While the mage on the other side of the downed chopper (Long story) sat tight. Unfortunately the group were all coming in at right angles to each other and the guys thought 'Hmmm, if they came from these angles maybe we should take a look around here and here to see if there are more of them.' as a result they find and subdue the dwarf mage (They never found the fourth guy they were convinced was there), leaving the group with two characters down and a third heavily wounded.

These weren't the special forces, by the way. these guys were just regular troopers issued with Ghilly suits and battle rifles. They weren't even augmented or running tactical software.

With two guys taken down the rest of the group decides to launch a rescue mission, while back at the chopper an extra 4 guys jumped out to replace the men they'd lost and everyone shot up with some jazz. The group splits up (again) and goes in swinging, with a troll tank tossing grenades to attract attention while snipers picked off anyone who shot at him and the rest of the group circled around. The flaw with that was that group two included a troll with no infiltration, meaning that if the bad guys had set up a comprehensive perimeter (they had) then they weren't getting through without a fight. Group 1 killed 5 hostiles while group 2 downed 4, at the cost of almost losing the troll mage, heavily wounding the troll tank, nearly killing the rigger and forcing the group's Mr lucky to use all his edge (He was still injured, just not too badly). At this point I rolled a dice. 1-3 the special forces waited for the group to come to them, 4-6 they jumped out to do some damage. The roll? 6. So the special forces guys jump out and head for group 2, who obligingly all roll dismally on their perception. they get shot up and are forced to flee (I was seriously pulling my punches on this one, with only half the special forces guys firing a shot in the first IP, only one opening up in the second, and after a half-hearted pursuit letting the group get away). Of course the group are so focused on their wounds (Most of the group were approaching max on both damage tracks, no-one had any edge left, that sort of thing) that they didn't think that the reason they were let go was so that the tracker rounds that they were shot with would lead the special forces right to the rendezvous point. A logic check let one of the group realize and they activated jammers and beat a hasty retreat, which is where we've left the mission for this week.

Meanwhile, I was busy clocking up my third character kill inside the chopper. Hagar was being tortured (the other GM specified that was the reason the group were being taken alive), and made the check to break free when he was left alone with the cyber-troll leader of the special ops team while the rest dealt with the group. He gets a free attack, then wins initiative and attacks again, dealing 6 physical each time. this troll had 9 body and so was on one physical when he subdued and re-restrained his prisoner... then Hagar burns his last edge for another shot I made it clear that this was an all-or-nothing manuver. So Hagar wakes up again despite being nutted by a cyber-troll, shot and tortured, busts his bonds AGAIN and decks the troll... who then no-sells the dwarf unarmed adept's attack. Hagar died shortly afterwards, but his memory lives on in the permanent scarring he left on what I hope will be a new recurring villain.

There is my story. I am a killer GM, I admit it, but I'm trying to work through this problem.

EDIT: I just realized, every time I've taken down a character I've used unaugmented mundanes. Huh.

[tasti man LH]

Well, as Noah "SpoonyOne" Antwiler puts it for D/GMs:

"We're not trying to fuck you up. We're trying to teach you humility."

[FuelDrop]

Well, as Noah "SpoonyOne" Antwiler puts it for D/GMs:

Indeed. who am I to argue with The Spoony One?

[toturi]

Your NPCs employ pretty good tactics. Which of them have good tactical Knowledge skills?

[FuelDrop]

Your NPCs employ pretty good tactics. Which of them have good tactical Knowledge skills?

The veteran special forces CO.

[toturi]

The veteran special forces CO.

Ah, and none of the PCs have any relevant tactical skills, I presume?

My GMs have learnt that an NPC using good tactics is not necessarily a good thing if the NPC does not have the dice pool to back his play. A Knowledge skill roll defaulting to Atttribute and rolling a glitch? Well, well... especially since I usually stat my PCs up with some sort of tactical skill.

Me: So what does my character think would be a good way to approach this particular tactical situation? By the way, is this going to be an opposed test, since the other side is going to make it as hard as they can for us?
GM: Yes, opposed test. *thinks* Oh shit. Damn. Ok, fine, default. *rolls dice* Critical glitch.
Me: Logic + Tactics, yes? *rolls dice* lookee, 3 successes.
Rest of the group stare at the GM like sharks smelling blood.

[FuelDrop]

Ah, and none of the PCs have any relevant tactical skills, I presume?

My GMs have learnt that an NPC using good tactics is not necessarily a good thing if the NPC does not have the dice pool to back his play. A Knowledge skill roll defaulting to Atttribute and rolling a glitch? Well, well... especially since I usually stat my PCs up with some sort of tactical skill.

Me: So what does my character think would be a good way to approach this particular tactical situation? By the way, is this going to be an opposed test, since the other side is going to make it as hard as they can for us?
GM: Yes, opposed test. *thinks* Oh shit. Damn. Ok, fine, default. *rolls dice* Critical glitch.
Me: Logic + Tactics, yes? *rolls dice* lookee, 3 successes.
Rest of the group stare at the GM like sharks smelling blood.

Well if I could come up with it given all of 2 minutes of prep, and the guy who designed the encounter was on the other side, I figured it was fair to let the veteran commander use those tactics. And no, none of the rest of the group had a tactical skill, though a couple had backgrounds and if they'd asked what their guess of the enemy's tactics would be I'd have happily told them.
They didn't ask.

[sk8bcn]

While I find it normal if PC sometimes dies, killing your regular GM's PC is kinda ... rude (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[sk8bcn]

Oh and, holy god, he setted with way too tough opposition, didn't he?

[FuelDrop]

While I find it normal if PC sometimes dies, killing your regular GM's PC is kinda ... rude (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I cut the forces he handed me by more than half, intentionally wasted shots on targets that I knew would not be effected but the soldiers wouldn't, and attacked to subdue and not kill. Oh, and I held back all of the special forces until the very end, and even then used them so little that it strained suspension of disbelief.

So... yeah, I didn't plan to kill the GM's PC. He just rolled badly with his resistance checks and was in VR (Rather than operating in AR) so no dodge. As I said, I wasted shots on drones that looked like humans rather than finishing the PC off.

[thorya]

7 guys versus 28 regular military and 6 special forces? So like 5-to-1 (maybe 3-to-1 with drones) and you're the killer GM? That sounds like the regular GM set you guys up to get fried and you would have had to bend over backwards to not kill them unless they managed to stealth the entire run.

Then again, I use to be a killer GM. Then I moved and with a new group I wasn't. It's amazing how much intelligent tactics and a less kick in the door mentality can keep a group alive even through a lot of hard stuff.

[bannockburn]

Your players need to learn to back down, IMO. These deaths qualify as stupid, as well, especially with you refusing to go into an obvious trap.
Also: Don't they know they can burn edge to survive?

[ShadowDragon8685]

Your players need to learn to back down, IMO. These deaths qualify as stupid, as well, especially with you refusing to go into an obvious trap.
Also: Don't they know they can burn edge to survive?

It looked to me like they were burning Edge - left, right and center.


Me, I tend to be more forgiving. If a PC has to invoke the Hand of God rule (which I ported over to Star Wars as a Will of the Force rule) and burn permanent Edge (or spend a Destiny Point,) they get to depart the scene immediately and are removed to a safe location where they are not in any imminent danger, either from the environment or their erstwhile enemies. How this happens is narratively up to them, or I choose if they can't come up with anything, but either way they get to leave the scene safely and wind up somewhere safe for them to plan their next move - maybe their DocWagon bracelet got shot in the firefight and an HTR chopper was almost on top of them and swoops in to extract them, or maybe they take a flying leap over train tracks and land on top of a moving train, maybe they escape into the sewers - whatever, basically. Either way, they don't get caught, and they get removed to the nearest safe place for them to hole up and think about what they're doing, whether it be the DocWagon clinic, an uncompromised safehouse of their own, a nice street doc's in Redmond Barrens. (Or maybe they stowed away on a transport heading off-world and wind up on another planet altogether or something.)

[sk8bcn]

It looked to me like they were burning Edge - left, right and center.


Me, I tend to be more forgiving. If a PC has to invoke the Hand of God rule (which I ported over to Star Wars as a Will of the Force rule) and burn permanent Edge (or spend a Destiny Point,) they get to depart the scene immediately and are removed to a safe location where they are not in any imminent danger, either from the environment or their erstwhile enemies. How this happens is narratively up to them, or I choose if they can't come up with anything, but either way they get to leave the scene safely and wind up somewhere safe for them to plan their next move - maybe their DocWagon bracelet got shot in the firefight and an HTR chopper was almost on top of them and swoops in to extract them, or maybe they take a flying leap over train tracks and land on top of a moving train, maybe they escape into the sewers - whatever, basically. Either way, they don't get caught, and they get removed to the nearest safe place for them to hole up and think about what they're doing, whether it be the DocWagon clinic, an uncompromised safehouse of their own, a nice street doc's in Redmond Barrens. (Or maybe they stowed away on a transport heading off-world and wind up on another planet altogether or something.)

Agrees!

While I don't hold punches (I even sometimes roll openly when it's a potential killing roll upcoming) when it's a destiny/Edge/whasover last chance point, your character survives (except ultra specific cases). Something totally unlikely may occur. In case of dorf's case, it could have been: a third party attacks the ambushers for a reason (and new story plot) and delivers him, even if it wasn't their goal, the helicopter crashes and he survives miracelously, he's brought elsewhere and something get him free, they got a new uberplan that dorf should do with his cranial bomb, whatsoever.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Agrees!

While I don't hold punches (I even sometimes roll openly when it's a potential killing roll upcoming) when it's a destiny/Edge/whasover last chance point, your character survives (except ultra specific cases). Something totally unlikely may occur. In case of dorf's case, it could have been: a third party attacks the ambushers for a reason (and new story plot) and delivers him, even if it wasn't their goal, the helicopter crashes and he survives miracelously, he's brought elsewhere and something get him free, they got a new uberplan that dorf should do with his cranial bomb, whatsoever.

I wouldn't even do the cranial bomb thing. Even if the other guys had already captured him when he decided he wanted to burn Edge and Hand of God his way out of the situation, he gets out safe and sound; such as mysterious benefactors who may or may not reveal their existence or demand a favor at a later date staging a run by Prime Runners on the location where he's being held and extracting him before they get around to breaking out the power tools, playing with needles or installing the cranial bombs, then patch him up and deliver him unharmed back to his team.

(Warning: TVTropes links detected!)

[Nal0n]

If they walk into an obvious Trap with minimal preparation and minimal recon they deserve what they get.
They might get out alive burning some serious "Hand-of-God™" Edge but even then they deserve to lose a major part of their equipment!

Just my 20 NuRin

[ShadowDragon8685]

If they walk into an obvious Trap with minimal preparation and minimal recon they deserve what they get.
They might get out alive burning some serious "Hand-of-God™" Edge but even then they deserve to lose a major part of their equipment!

When did RPGs become about "punishing" "stupidity," anyway? I thought the point was for everyone to have a fun time.

A lot of times, what a GM sees as grossly retarded is what seems perfectly reasonable to players; and on the flip side of the coin, to the players, it seems like the GM is just yanking their chain, hitting them with things they couldn't reasonably have been expected to think about.

I see this attitude more and more. If your friend does something in real life that gets him hurt, or causes him property damage, do you leap to your feet, point your accusatory finger at him, unleash the Nelson laugh and go "HA-ha! You get what you deserved!"


I'm willing to bet the answer to that is a resounding 'no,' if for no other reason than that your friend would quickly stop considering you a friend in very short order.

[Wounded Ronin]

I don't really know much about SR4, but in SR2 and SR3 I want to say that my first experiences as a player with were rules and written and TPKs resulting from opposition in published modules.

I don't think that's a bad thing. I just think that's what makes Shadowrun special. Deadly combat.

None of this Fallout "shoot me 10 times through my leather jacket" BS.

Nothing wrong with TPKs, in my opinion. Just have the players create a backup character so the session doesn't have to end early.

[Nal0n]

When did RPGs become about "punishing" "stupidity," anyway? I thought the point was for everyone to have a fun time.

A lot of times, what a GM sees as grossly retarded is what seems perfectly reasonable to players; and on the flip side of the coin, to the players, it seems like the GM is just yanking their chain, hitting them with things they couldn't reasonably have been expected to think about.

I see this attitude more and more. If your friend does something in real life that gets him hurt, or causes him property damage, do you leap to your feet, point your accusatory finger at him, unleash the Nelson laugh and go "HA-ha! You get what you deserved!"


I'm willing to bet the answer to that is a resounding 'no,' if for no other reason than that your friend would quickly stop considering you a friend in very short order.

Well, what to say about that "Real Life" ... hmmmm....

- PCs running into an obvious trap ... where one of their team tells them: "Do not do that it is obvious trap!" ... well I'd laugh them in he face very well...
- If a "chummer" of mine fell to some " I am Dr. whats-his-name from Monrovia-or-some-place-in-Nigeria offering a mutual benificiant business opportunity-Deal-scam", then yes, I would laugh at him ... hard ... before helping him out ... so what?
- So a clear 'No!' .. there are always dumb ppl that deserve what they get. If you lack any "common sense" then sorry, you get what you had coming! Laugh at it, discard it, learn from it, then move on!

And yes, I had a RL pal who suffered from somting similar ... I laughed, he laughed, we figured out a solution and went on with life.
Bad things do happen, how you handle the bad-beats shows what you are worth!

[binarywraith]

I feel your pain, FuelDrop. It definitely sounds like your regular GM screwed up big time in his scaling of that encounter. You may want to sit down with him at some point and ask him how he expected that to run, I'd guess he's got some very different assumptions as far as scaling goes.

[Raiden]

I like deadlier missions, but groups need to know it is a deadly mission before hand so they can prepare properly try making sure they understand things and tell them what there characters would know whether the played asks or not.

[FuelDrop]

I like deadlier missions, but groups need to know it is a deadly mission before hand so they can prepare properly try making sure they understand things and tell them what there characters would know whether the played asks or not.

Well, as I got handed the GM seat just as the group were going in I had no control over how the mission was presented beyond my in-character statement that it looked like a deathtrap, and the moment the group had any intel I gave them everything they could reasonably know about the enemy including full equipment loadout and tactics... and the second attempt went noticeably better as a result.

[Wounded Ronin]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqJzvf0d1w4

I always tell people it's kind of like this game...

[toturi]

When I am on a killer GM mood, I tend to precede it quite obviously. My NPCs die. Named NPCs die, and it is on a random it-could-have-been-the-other-guy basis. Like when there is a drive by shooting. And the NPC that the PCs have been angling to gain as a contact bites the bullet. Then foolish and/or reckless actions by PCs will suffer the consequences.

Shit happens in my games. Bad shit happen to not-so-good people. Reckless people have shorter life expectancy. Retreat/running away is a perfectly sensible tactic.

[Umidori]

My experiences with being a killer GM have been bizarre.

My players routinely exceed my expectations, almost without even trying. When they were first picking up the game system, I started them out easy, sending them against street level thugs, that sort of thing, and they got their feet wet with barely any scratches, which I expected. What I did not expect was for them to be alarmed and worried about those few scratches they did receive. I tried to let them down easy - "Yeah, next time is gonna be harder, but you'll be more used to the system then, right?"

They grumbled, resigned themselves to what they believed was insurmountable challenges in the near future, and then began a streak of resounding successes wherein they not only accomplished their missions, but also pulled off every side objective, and found every secret. What started out as a rather neutral GMing attitude of giving fair challenges and reasonable odds quickly shifted into trying my damnedest to get them killed without having to resort to cheapshots and absurdity. A quarter of the time, they just made solid choices and worked professionally, and the dice were kind enough to let them pull it off cleanly. Then, about half the time, they made choices that, from where I was sitting, seemed half-baked, or just inherently risky and liable to produce suboptimal results at best, and painful mistakes at worst. And then the final quarter of the time, they just went full crazy - stupid, dangerous stunts done for the laughs, or just because, or because they failed to realize exactly what the consequences would be.

And it worked. Everything they've done so far has been gold. Our most recent exploit had a two-man team attempting a combination assassination/demolitions job, sneaking onto the private yacht of a vacationing politician with nothing but a collapsible sniper rifle and two combat spells between them. They went up against a dozen elite bodyguards, an excessively armed ex-special forces security chief, and a drug-crazed melee adept passenger, and managed to take them all out in a single extended gunfight, despite being isolated from each other on different levels of the ship and having absolutely no means of communication between them at the time. Per instructions they executed the target, sank the yacht, and made their way back to shore discretely (in a stolen microcraft which they were smart enough to ditch and torch).

Completely clean, no strings attached - except for the Johnson, who they failed to suspect was planning on betraying them. They wanted to call him up the moment they got back from the job, but then they realized that earlier they had destroyed a spare commlink they no longer wanted, and that it was the one which they stored the Johnson's number on - the stupid, noobish schmucks. So what do they do? The footwork they should have done before the run to learn who the hell the Johnson actually is. They take a day, roll phenomenally well, sweet-talk a few secretaries, bribe a few officials, and finally get a decent idea of who their employer is. More importantly, they call in a favor to from a hacker friend and track down Johnson's number - his home address, specifically, since that was the only one they could find.

By this point, they're so relieved that they now have a means of contacting their employer again, that, although they're overdue to get in touch, they immediately go out for a night on the town. In the wee hours of the morning, while they're enjoying mondo-stacks of pancakes as a late night snack, they decide they should call him now to arrange a meet now, rather than later, because they might crash soon and be too hung over later to remember. They ring him up at his upscale private home in Belgium at 4AM, address him by his actual name, and inform him that things went off without a hitch - which is actually news to Johnson, as he expected them to fail spectacularly and for word to get out - the fact that no one yet realizes what happened made him think they'd bailed on the job or something. He's a bit unnerved about how much they know about him and how blasé they are about it all - maybe the idiots he hired to run his tailchaser and take the fall aren't actually idiots, and maybe they're toying with him.

He plays it cool, pretends to shrug things off, all the time sweating bullets, and arranges to actually meet them to deliver their pay, instead of giving them an address to a trap as he originally intended. The runners show up on time, express an interest in working together again, express seemingly genuine goodwill and unshakeable confidence, and utterly freak out Johnson who at this point has critically glitched on two separate occasions and is now convinced these guys are some sort of spooks, probably working for a dragon.

Fast forward to the group's first ever Earthdawn game. Half the team wound up dead and only survived because the pre-made adventure I was running to get us used to the system made specific allowances for reviving fallen characters because it's such an introductory mission. I guess polyhedrals aren't as merciful?

Oh, and regarding NPCs and tactics, the group actually complained about the lack of intelligent combat maneuvers in our Earthdawn run until I told them that the enemy behaviors were specifically called for by the adventure - mindless zombie cadaver men really do just attack the nearest living thing without regard for their surroundings or the actions of other foes at range.

~Umi