Pushing the limits as a GM, How low will you go? Options

[Slide]

As a game master, how far will you go for your story? To make a point? To handle characters, to reality check, or disillision your players.

Would you blow up the rigger's van? Have a snipper kill one of their contacts? Let a black clinic stalk them? Post their faces on primetime as the UCAS most wanted? Bring down the harsh reality of the full servalince state that is the 2070s?

Show them why in the movie "Heat" it was said, "never have anything you aren't willing to leave behind in 5 seconds." I want to know what envelopes other GMs have pushed in the name of showing their players the SR world.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

As a game master, how far will you go for your story? To make a point? To handle characters, to reality check, or disillision your players.

Would you blow up the rigger's van? Have a snipper kill one of their contacts? Let a black clinic stalk them? Post their faces on primetime as the UCAS most wanted? Bring down the harsh reality of the full servalince state that is the 2070s?

Show them why in the movie "Heat" it was said, "never have anything you aren't willing to leave behind in 5 seconds." I want to know what envelopes other GMs have pushed in the name of showing their players the SR world.

My characters have been Stalked (why stop at Black Clinics, when you can include the Triads, The Mafia, The Megacorps, and Bounty Hunters trying to collect on the bounty on your head?); had their vehicles blown up (or rammed with a Zugmachine at high speed) shot, or otherwise destroyed (sometimes while the character is in the vehicle); Had Snipers kill loved ones or contacts; Been Hunted by EVERYBODY (sometimes for things they did not even do); Had all their ware removed from their bodies and then thrown in prison (Eventually escaping and having to Acquire, Brock, Acquire, all over again); Lost it all because he had to move to a different City and start over; and been forced to raid an Ant Hive to bring back the queen, alive (or be the main course at the Dragon's Dinner Table)... The list goes on and on... *sigh*

Totally Awesome Fun, if you ask me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[DoomFrog]

I have never killed contacts. I have dropped a contacts loyalty because the runners got them too involved in a run.

As for blowing up the rigger's van, not exactly. I have had Lonestar put out city wide APBs on the van so the rigger had to get new plates, paint job, and all that. Plus fix the bullet holes and tires.

I love having organleggers stalk my players who have their homes in the barrens. If you spend a quarter million nuyen on cyberwear and pay a thousand nuyen in rent, you should expect some harassment.

[tjn]

As a game master, how far will you go for your story? To make a point? To handle characters, to reality check, or disillision your players.

If you're passive aggressively trying to teach some ham-fisted "lesson" to your players, your group really needs to sit down together and talk about setting ground rules and expectations.

At that point, there will never need to be any need to show them Heat because either they're all aboard the mirror shades train, or the group finds out that the GM is a dick and wants to ruin all their pink mohawk fun.

[Bull]

As a game master, how far will you go for your story? To make a point? To handle characters, to reality check, or disillision your players.

Would you blow up the rigger's van? Have a snipper kill one of their contacts? Let a black clinic stalk them? Post their faces on primetime as the UCAS most wanted? Bring down the harsh reality of the full servalince state that is the 2070s?

Show them why in the movie "Heat" it was said, "never have anything you aren't willing to leave behind in 5 seconds." I want to know what envelopes other GMs have pushed in the name of showing their players the SR world.

Heh.

In the original game that I played Bull the Ork Decker, Bull regularly lost things. I spent a weekend deciphering the original Rigger Black Book and tricking out a custom van when he first started branching out into rigging. The van lasted two game sessions. I bought that same van a half dozen times over the next few years, because it was easier to working up a new one. It got blown up by a dragon, stripped by gangers and left on blocks, stolen, destroyed in a car accident, etc.

Bull also lost his left arm. A lot. It got blown off during an explosion, ripped off when an elevator door closed on it (rigger controlled), cut off when I got badly poisoned to save me from dying, and it came off a couple other times. Usually I got a cloned replacement, but once got stuck with a cyberarm.

We've had apartments and houses blown up. We've had NPCs we pissed off come after us and our families. We've had entire corps want us dead.

In a game I ran, the PCs decided to go play Cyberpirate for a while after that book came out, and hooked up with a crew working out of New Orleans. First missions involved kidnapping the New Orleans Mafia Dona's daughter for ransom, and video broadcasting that they were doing so. This lead to them having a Mafia Deathmark on them, and them fleeing from New Orleans.

I'm a big fan of utilizing the character, their families, their back stories, their stuff, and their very lives as a storytelling technique, to draw them into the game world and to make it real for them. They make whatever choices they want, but they don't have control over their lives, because just like real life, shit happens whether you want it to or not. And the more you care about something, the more you're attached to something... The more personal the story can become.

[Bull]

Note... YOu have a fine line to walk, and you have to know your players well;, and they have to know you. There has to be trust there. I trusted my original GM not to just screw me over for no reason, and my players likewise trusted me to do the same.

[Whipstitch]

I love having organleggers stalk my players who have their homes in the barrens. If you spend a quarter million nuyen on cyberwear and pay a thousand nuyen in rent, you should expect some harassment.

My issue with stuff like that Is the simple fact that unless you are blowing the cash on obvious cyberlimbs it is actually rather hard to be obviously packing valuable 'ware. The higher end stuff tends to be head, bio or alphaware, which is tougher to detect by definition.

[Umidori]

At my table, we seem to all agree that the dice fall how they fall, and that the best thing you can do is just run with them and make the story epic by coping. Sometimes I'll bend the rules to allow things that make sense but don't follow strict RAW, but I don't fudge dice rolls in anything except the rarest and most important situations.

I typically manage a decent pokerface, but sometimes a particularly spectacularly good or bad roll for the NPCs will make me facepalm or groan, and then the players are on tenterhooks until I reveal whether they just won the lottery or bought the farm. I particularly enjoy looking at a single player as if I'm about to tell them they need to start working on a new character sheet, shaking my head, sighing deeply, and then telling them something like the enemy rigger who was about to run them down just critically glitched and instead plowed facefirst into a brick wall. At which point the table cheers or cracks up laughing, we pass around fresh drinks, and the chaos continues.

~Umi

[Slide]

Just to clarify i'm not looking for ideas or anything of the such. I just wanted to hear a few good stories. Here about SR being done right.

Here is a story. Team gets hired to do a job. With little leg work they walk in, shoot four guards and walk out with prize in hand. They aren't hunted, and get paid handsomely.

To me this is the worst Shadowrun story imaginable. I'm of a particular opinion that if you aren't jerking them around, bringing in back stories, and putting heat on them, you aren't playing SR right. However, with a capitol H, on the other hand the players are at the reigns and I'm just along for the ride. Players need to be allowed to make meaningful decisions that allow them to be (or strongly feel) that they are ultimately in charge of their own destiny.

[Umidori]

Fortunately, my characters play "unprofessionally" enough that most of the hooks come from them, not from me. They also don't plan for every contingency, probably in part because they prefer to adapt as I throw things at them.

That's another thing I don't fudge, by the way. I pre-plan most of the opposition and challenges before the run, and anything that I need to determine on the fly I have predetermined as dice roll values, kind of like scatter. 1 = Event X, 2 = Event Y, et cetera. If the players skirt around my plans, I might roll an impromptu die or two to determine if they encounter some other comparable obstacle or see if they get detected somehow, but most of the time I let my own inability to plan for their craftiness serve to reward them for outsmarting me.

~Umi

[Pendaric]

Got a long list of the usual dickery which my player love me for !? But above kidnappying PCs my favourite sucker punchs are I had an annoying contact love interest work her way into their hearts only to be blown up in a car bomb meant for them; the adopted NPC son of one of the characters fighting for his life and love in a gang duel while his dice were being rolled by the unluckiest PC and the lover of the Streetsam turning out to be a ninja sent by his family to kill him. Which he found out when near fatally poisoned. O and PC seeing the party of fairies that were negotiating a marrage contact for the mage while she was still newly married.

[kzt]

The game is a combination of what you and the players WANT and how they play it.

If the scenario is written such that using direct violence is the best way to run it, then expect they will do that. Don't set up games where walking in and out or sniper rifles is the answer if you don't want that to happen.

You can also plan that the players will shoot their way in and out and have all sort of cool things that will happen when they do, but they don't always do that. If instead the players decide that is suicide and instead figure out a way to walk in and then get the target's security to help load their objective on a truck for them and hold the gate as they leave, well that's a GREAT game, not a failure.

Another thought: If the game assumption is that the runners are supposed just do the job and deliver the sealed box to the Johnson, but instead they decide to peek, well that is where complications can arise. Many of the written SR scenarios assume the players are going to look in the box and have things happen based on that, some scenarios blow up if the players are pros and just deliver the sealed box as they have agreed.

The whole idea that the Johnson is constantly double-crossing runners is obviously stupid if you think about it. Johnson, Fixers and runners live or die by their reputation. Runners are by definition people who are used to using violence to accomplish their objectives, and a reputation of being a patsy isn't good. Fixers who allow Johnson's to screw over them or their runners won't get anyone working for them and they have lots of resources with which to find and hurt those kind of people. And Johnson's have lots of money and no spare lives.

[Moirdryd]

Indeedy. I do like the way it mentions the Johnson "screwing over" in the GM section (and the story) is more a case of the information they leave out because of the "need to know" bracket and the Runners don't "Need" to know they're actually hitting an Aztechnology compound. That's far far better than the "double cross" classic that is often, lets face it, a bit dumb (althopugh entirely appropriate under certain circumstances).

[Slide]

Another thought: If the game assumption is that the runners are supposed just do the job and deliver the sealed box to the Johnson, but instead they decide to peek, well that is where complications can arise. Many of the written SR scenarios assume the players are going to look in the box and have things happen based on that, some scenarios blow up if the players are pros and just deliver the sealed box as they have agreed.

I was playing in one game where we had some one criticaly glitch a search roll to figure out what was in the trucks we were hijacking. GOLD!!! Well.... after a fire fight to get the trucks, and we are hauling down the road, we got a troll with a plasma cutter opening the boxes in the back to get ourselves a bit of a bonus for the job. Open it up and suddenly we are in possession 50 Bunker-buster man portable missiles. Glad he didn't glitch with the plasma cutter.... Also way more illegal than stealing gold....

[MindandPen]

In a game I run with my kids, they were letting a family argument get into the game... so I dropped a Space Cow on them... twice... then I cooked hamburger for dinner (IMG:style_emoticons/default/spin.gif)

-M&P

[GiraffeShaman]

This story was a case where I was definitely messing with the characters, but had no intention for it turn out as badly as it did.

I was running a homebrew module set in the Crash Zone, a fairly wild part of the Redmond Barrens. The runners were working for Novatech to find some parts from the shuttle that crashed there with a Corporate Court Justice in it. After the runners entered the area, I had Ares security forces cordon it off. I wanted the runners stuck there a few days so I could do some Fallout type action. It was a magic heavy team, and there is a large background count, which added to the tension.

Before they even found one piece of the items they were searching for, they decided they needed to go back to the main city. I don't recall what the reason was, but probaly either some injuries or something they forgot to buy. Anyway, they are shocked to find this massive Ares cordon, including air support, which is completely out of league with what they are usually used to going up against. But they decide they'll simply go try to talk to them and ask them to let them leave.

This Ares officer interrogates them, one by one. (Naturally, Ares had an interest in the same parts as Novatech, which was the reason they were locking down the Crash Zone, as they suspected rivals had sent runners into the area) The officer is nice about it and uses the carrot approach, rather than "enhanced interrogation" or threats or the like. The runners keep refusing to answer questions. I was actually surprised a bit by this, as I didn't realize they were that professional. But apparently they took the SR code about screwing over your Johnson serioiusly.

However, at the end one of the runners started talking with the Ares officer. The officer had framed it as helping his team, because Ares would be very generous to those who help them. At that point the officer started asking more direct and specific questions, along with offers of Ares corporate script, which the runner accepted.

Having made some headway as he sees it, the officer brings back one of the earlier runners who refused to talk. His sole intention is to cause trouble among the runners by letting them know one of their members cracked. But he's purposely subtle about it. He manages to get the message across though, without the runner he was talking to figuring out what he was doing. Thus that runner now knew that one of their number had cracked and given information. At that point he already suspected who it was, although it wasn't revealed. Also he had no idea that money was involved or how much info was leaked.

So, at this point the officer makes the team a buyout offer, a really generous one. Money up front for turning coat on their employer, followed by their original run payment if they complete the run, for Ares instead. They refuse the offer. The officer doesn't confine them, but he informs them he can't let them cross the cordon and leave.

Once the party gets a ways away from the cordon further into the Crash Zone, one of the runners immediately comes up behind the guy that tattled and puts a bullet in his brain. He said something as he did it, but I forget what. Something to do with being a professional, I'm sure. Anyway, the kicker was after they start looting the corpse. They found in his pockets the huge wads of Ares script. (Which I had made red and white) There was huge groans of outrage around the table. I wasn't happy the player died, but it was such a perfect, unplanned moment. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Rystefn]

I've been on both sides of the table for runs that went smooth as buttered glass and for runs where every single thing that could possible go wrong did, and a few impossible things, too. While the second kind makes for better stories, I do feel it's important to mix in a few of the first kind (assuming the players can engineer it, of course, I'm not a fan of hand-holding).

I go for a mix of pink mohawk and black trenchcoat, and wear both IRL to show my loyalty to the concept (although IRL, I've got a blue'hawk these days). Mostly, that takes the form of "oh shit, the trenchcoat plan failed... Mohawks up, bitches!" So my take on that is: yes, if I do something stupid or overlook something obvious, for the love all that's holy, DO teach me a hamfisted lesson. If I crew up, break my face in for it.

As a GM, I geeked a player's contact in the first session to show people I was serious about the "gentleman's agreement" regarding sniper rifles (yes, it was clearly stated in plain English before the game started), and I've blown up people's houses to further my story. As a player, I've had my characters' contacts killed, been double-crossed by Mr. Johnson, betrayed by friends, their girlfriends murdered, been arrested by the Star when I missed a session, conscripted into the military, been lit up by overcast combat spells during salary negotiations, and had magic-users put in -10 mana ebbs for the duration of an extended run. In fact, all of the above happened to the same character. That's the way I like it.

This ain't HappyGoLuckySkippingThroughTheParkRun. This is ShadowRun. Things get broken and people die here. I expect the other people at the table with me to pull no punches, because I most certainly won't.

[bannockburn]

I'll pretty much go anywhere, short of instant killing characters without the possibility to save themselves.
I.e. I'll do anything that isn't a player's taboo to the characters ... if it is appropriate. Nothing is holy.

I've had ...

• a vampire kill a character's lover and send her a text from his commlink to drive the point home
• a character's eyes scooped out with a rusty knife (while chained to a bed)
• a character stabbed through the heart with a bowie knife
• apartments burned down
• a ghoul virus scare

These are story things. They all happened to the same character and are only an excerpt. My games can get pretty dark, but in some cases the player asked me to incorporate scenarios where the character may end up with cyberware, thus knife stabby action.

• I destroy equipment on a regular basis, but my players usually buy stuff that can and will be discarded during a run. Normally critical pieces of equipment aren't going to be lost or destroyed (at least not without the possibility to recover or protect them), such as the hacker's tricked out commlink or cyberware. Those only get damaged.
• Contacts can die, but I don't do it without good reason. It can get pretty old if it's not dramatic enough. Also, the contacts usually have safeguards in place to protect themselves, but if the character does something stupid to get his affiliates targeted, they are totally on the hit list.
• Bounty hunters and syndicates may hunt the characters if it comes to it. Syndicates especially are vindictive (as opposed to, usually, megacorporations), as individuals can be when they feel slighted, or the characters did something unforgivable to them or their loved ones.
• Sometimes I throw in what I call 'high exposure runs'. The characters protect a politician and get caught on camera. They blow something big up and end up on the evening news, stuff like that. It can be detrimental or add to their street cred, but the result is usually at least one bonus point of public awareness.
• I normally don't use the full power of urban surveillance. Instead I assume that every character with a computer or data search skill of at least 1 (and let's be honest: every character should have that) knows and implements some 'good practices' in regards to that issue. This doesn't mean, they're immune, but they are as difficult to find as if they'd be searching for such an individual. If a character doesn't have this skill ... well, it might just happen that he updates his status on P2.0 and KE comes knocking to ask what he did last knight in that secret research facility, provided the player gives me a plot hook in this direction.

These are consequences of the character's actions. If they play it smart, they don't get to suffer them or only the lesser ones. If they go all out balls to the wall, Bad Stuff can, and usually will, happen as a consequence.
I'll never nail a character with a sniper from 1,5km. I may alert them to the presence of such a sniper by having a civilian walk into the line of fire and have his head explode.
I don't drop cows from space, but if the character is stupid enough to have a targeting beacon for a thor shot in his pocket, he'll be vaporized.

All in all, I'm a pretty forgiving GM. If you make it plausible to me that you took precautions, I'll take them for granted and not have you reiterate them every session. I'll even ask some specifics sometimes to give out hints. Everything else is too much micromanagement for my taste and bogs down the game.
But I let the dice fall as they do. I use some rules to the benefit of my players (such as not using encumbrance rules when they only wear one piece of armor), but in other cases I have optional rules in place that are a clear detriment (e.g. critical damage rules from Arsenal).
Players at my table need to expect that their characters have a high chance of getting maimed. And when they die and don't burn edge to survive, well, then they're dead.

What I don't forgive is stupidity. If a player is in the process of doing something really stupid, he'll get one inquiry as to what he thinks he's doing and when he doesn't get the hint, the consequences soon (or late, when someone wants to get a good revenge) follow.


tl;dr version:
For story I will do a lot of evil GM things and let the characters try to cope with the situation.
Consequences are all on the player's heads.

[FuelDrop]

I played through Fast Food Fight today.

The railroading was staggering. There was no way to avoid a fight with witnesses. Stake the place out? Target never leaves. Try diplomacy? They start a fight. Avoid that trap? Some other nut at the fast food place starts a fight, and the PCs are targeted as allies.

My normal stuff? I don't run it like that.

[kzt]

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of new love by the CGL dev and writers for shiny steel rails going over the horizon.

[Sendaz]

Rumor has it they were thinking of changing the name to ShadowRail, but TOPPS nixed it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Slide]

Shadow rail sounds like something bad that happens to you when you walk through the streets alone at night...

[GiraffeShaman]

Rumor has it they were thinking of changing the name to ShadowRail, but TOPPS nixed it.

ShadowRail, where you play train robbers in post Civil War America, and the Robber Barons rule the Rails with an iron grip. There are spaces between the train compartments...it's those spaces that keep you alive...

[Sendaz]

Decking over the telegraph line.... ugh

And you thought the Public grid was bad. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Umidori]

"What's he say, Chauncy?"
"Quiet!"
*sounds of Morse Code*
"File... obtained... meet... on roof..."
"Capital news! We should hurry!"
"Wait, there's more! ...con.... const... constable! ...taken... care of... need... a new... handkerchief... L... O... L..."
"L-O-L? What the devil could that mean?"
"I'll be deuced if I know, but we'd best get get cracking my good man!"
*jaunty silent film piano music*

~Umi