Mechanical locks, or "How I plan to screw with my players" Options

[Stahlseele]

Whereas i meant what i wrote.
Magic is always cheating.

[Modular Man]

It is. That, of course, makes it bad form for a lockpicking expert who views the lock as a challenge and a sport. That's entirely okay (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Cheating well, however, is good form in general shadowrunning (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) I think nobody here denies that.
Maxim 31: Only cheaters prosper.

[Neraph]

I don't quite believe you meant it that way, but I'm letting you know right now that this response is immensely insulting and patronizing, and always has been, and always will be.

If you're not willing to answer a simple question and explain your point of view to people who aren't somehow magically innately like-minded, just don't even bother saying anything. There's absolutely no need to respond only to say you refuse to respond, particularly when your apparent motivation for refusal is so inherently presumptuous and dismissive.

I don't mean to be insulting and patronizing, but it is literally like trying to describe color to a blind man. You literally can't understand it if you don't get it - maybe taking years of martial arts would help. This isn't something that makes me better than you, it just makes the two of us different, and that's okay.

[Umidori]

Please just stop.

You are only making yourself look even more elitist and full of drek. You're saying the kind of self-absorbed nonsense I'd expect from Stephen Seagal.

You don't have some mystical knowledge that can only be imparted via your specific experiences, you're just either unwilling or incapable of expressing it as a coherent concept. Failure to adequately communicate on your part does not constitute an inherent incapability of understanding on someone else's.

And what the heck does martial arts training have to do with anything? We were talking about using magic to pick exotic lock designs being "bad form". Or are you still hung up on the comparative analogy of using a gun in a hypothetical martial arts tournament?

And even in that context, are you just ignoring my points about how "sporting form" is not intrinsic to all martial arts, and about how there martial arts that specifically make use of firearms? Your entire argument is that it's never ever "fair" to bring a gun to a knife fight, but when I point out various contexts in which it would be quite fair, you just feed me a line of bull and tell me I can't possibly understand?

No, I'm sorry, that's not how rational communication works. You made an argument, I pointed out flaws in the argument. Those revealed flaws are not negated just because you insist I'm not a True Scotsman.

~Umi

[Sendaz]

Think he meant Steven Seagal, because Stephen Segal is actually pretty cool.

[Umidori]

*facepalm*

I hate variant name spellings.

Well played.

~Umi

[Ryu]

Well, if you are a lock-picking runner you either want to pick that critical lock because it allows you to keep silent (goal-oriented), or you want to show of your special skill (a matter of pride). In the first case you´d be willing to see magic used, in the second you would not. My group is pretty goal-oriented, so whoever has the best chance of getting a door open gets to do the task.

Now to be a spoil-sport I´d call opening a complicated lock "fine manipulation" not doable via Animate. We are lucky that Locksmith is Agility-based rather than Logic-based, yes?

[Smash]

You know I never meant to start was evidently is a pretty passionate issue with several people. The thread I started in Shadowruntabletop forums even got locked. I found these locks and thought how funny would it be for un-prepared runners to come up against these. I didn't think it would need to be said that if I was throwing something that is obviously outside of the norm for a run that the GM would have plenty of clues and such in the appropriate legwork part of the run, because I thought that should be obvious.

Fair enough although you might want to select a better title next time:

Mechanical locks, or "How I plan to screw with my players"

sends the wrong message (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Sendaz]

Aye, with a title like that..... *puts on sunglasses* you should have realized some folk would get keyed up over it.


Yeeeaaaahhhh (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

[Glyph]

The trouble with "clues" is that things that seem obvious to the GM can often be far from obvious to the players. Especially if the GM is doing something that goes against the playstyle of the players. If the players habitually do legwork, then they will find out about the "special" locks and work on finding a lateral solution to the problem. If the players don't habitually do legwork, then they are basically being set up for failure.

[War Wrecker]

Yeah Glyph, but something like this could be used to teach players that they need to do legwork. For instance they break into a place, make it to a safe, and then discover that they can't actually get past the lock? So either they do the legwork DURING THE RUN, or they leave, do the legwork, come back, and then bust the safe.

It's okay for the GM to set up the players if the GM doesn't make it impossible for the players to deal with the obstacle. If the GM knows the players will fail the run, the GM better have made sure that it's okay for the players to fail the run. This is the kind of thing to throw on what would otherwise be a milk run, and then the players have to come back to the beefed up security the next day.

Alternatively it can be a barrier to a secondary objective, or there is a secondary objective and it's a barrier to the primary one, so the run isn't a complete waste of time and money.

And to boot, sometimes players can decide that finishing the run is more important than finishing it "without a trace" and as a result just destroy the lock instead of picking it.

But to reiterate, it's okay to force players to "fail" if you don't punish them for failing. Especially if there was actually a way to succeed, but you simply knew they wouldn't figure it out. Maybe you could make the players get caught, so that the people they're attacking make a counter offer.