Spicing up the game, What do you do to try and add to your players experiences? Options

[Kren Cooper]

During last nights game drop in game, I sent two of my players (one of which was the decker) down into the cellar with a cyberdeck - er, I mean laptop - to "logon" to the matrix. There was a powerpoint presentation on there, to give them their job.
If you're curious - here's the file (watch the volume!) they saw which gave them a mission.
https://youtu.be/YNtHr0XKvrs

Curious to find out what other things GMs have done for players, or what you have had done for you by your GM to try and add interest, intrigue or a dash of different media to your games?

[pbangarth]

I've put together some playlists for background music during a game. It's been a long time since I played face to face, so not sure where they are, now.

[Acenoid]

I write news feeds from the tridio, or images from tv news after a run. I ll try to provide many handouts to the players.
(planned) I wanted to, when a NPC is introduced put a card on top of the GM screen, on the "hidden GM" side are stats shown, on the other side, that the players can see, a photo is shown.

[Kren Cooper]

I write news feeds from the tridio, or images from tv news after a run. I ll try to provide many handouts to the players.
(planned) I wanted to, when a NPC is introduced put a card on top of the GM screen, on the "hidden GM" side are stats shown, on the other side, that the players can see, a photo is shown.

I do trideo stuff too! This is the last one I did, after one of the teams broke into an Ares facility and got through all the security unscathed due to a very cunning plan. They managed to find the Ares Predator III serial number #1 and have it away, then fenced it to someone, realising it was way too hot for them...

Good evening, it’s Monday the 23rd, 2060, and here’s the news from Fox, I’m Dan Granger…

And I’m Katie McGowan. And here’s the headlines today…

Samantha Villiers makes donation to Boston Museum of Science

Explosion in the Barrens – accident or terrorists?

I-5 closed for 3 hours in Tacoma due to multi-car pileup – are gangers to blame?

Arcology still closed while military claim cordon essential for public safety – what should you know?

And now, the news in detail:

Samantha Villiers hosted a news conference only minutes ago, in which she announced that she is now in possession of a piece of UCAS history – Fox brings you this breaking news now from the Novatech press office

*** cuts to indoor scene, a modern bright and airy room, with several rows of chairs packed with newsies and reporters, behind which an arc of trideo cameras and boom mikes are set up. Flanking the podium are several large and imposing guards, wearing mirrorshades and discreet earpieces who scan the crowd. The buzz of background chatter stops as a lady in her 50s, still stylishly dressed and attractive, strides out to the podium then turns to the camera with a winning smile***

Thank you all for coming today. This is a great moment for me, a very satisfying moment – one where we can give something back to so many people. I’d like to announce that after protracted negotiations we have manged to secure a very significant item - the very first Predator III pistol ever made, signed by the lead designer and still in the original presentation case.

*** Villiers motions and another guard enters the stage with a large armoured briefcase, which is held up for Villiers to open. She pulls out a smaller polished metal case, which is opened and turned towards the waiting cameras, revealing a glistening pistol in the presentation case. Behind her, one of the walls suddenly changes, revealing that it’s actually a vid-panel, and Richard Villiers appears, also beaming and looking happy***

After some discussion with Richard, we have both come to the conclusion that something as historically important as this shouldn’t be kept in a private collection, unseen and unappreciated. So we have decided instead to place this on display at the Boston Museum of Science, so that the public at large can view this legendary piece of technology.

There it will remain for the forseable future, on display for everyone to see and investigate, to learn from and appreciate. It will serve as a reminder to us all that history has a way of coming out, and will be examined by the public, learnt from and those lessons will shape the future.

*** Villier’s voice seems to be hard and flat, somewhat at odds with her smile and generally open body language. As the camera zooms in on the picture, her eyes stare challengingly straight at the camera, unblinking.***

And now, back to the studio…..

Two minutes later, Rad gets a message from Knight-Stalker

“Shots fired, heads down. More to come.”


I love your idea of the picture / stats though - I may have to try that one, and build up a bank of NPCs that way. I normally use 6 X 4 index cards for main NPCs at the table, to make them easy to find and pull out (if they're not in my excel sheet anyway). But I love that concept as it gives the players a very visual clue as to the person and probably helps make it more memorable.

[Kren Cooper]

I've put together some playlists for background music during a game. It's been a long time since I played face to face, so not sure where they are, now.

Good call. I've been looking at Tabletop Audio recently to see about adding some ambient noises and background to the games

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Maps on a tablet. Nothing makes a game more 'tech' than having a map that player can work in.

Bonus points for Shadowrun overlays.

[Iduno]

I did in-universe news write-ups about things they did in the previous session, as well as any information I got off the timeline that made sense for local news.

The only handouts I ever did were in the run where they needed to get information off a datajack in an Ares security manager's head. There was also a body double with a different schedule they didn't know about. So I handed out both schedules when they arrived at the airport for an ambush, and had to settle for grabbing the schedules off their public commlinks.

For that mission and one other one, I used one of the maps of Seattle with the Shadowrun overlay people have provided. It's nice when players ask what's next door, and I can just turn on the tv (set to be a second computer monitor) to show them the map. Distances, heights, what the building is for, etc. were readily available.

My players may have caught onto my strategy of having NPCs with stats that were theirs -1 for average opponents (I only create prime opposition by hand) when I couldn't get my computer files open. I had to ask the rigger how many dice he rolled, and then subtracted one to get the answer.

[Acenoid]

Regarding game addons - what sounds also funny (but is a bit of work to implement) is a shadowsea forum. I set one up for my group. It has an admin interface so I can add posts from NPCs.

Check this thread out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments...ayer_made_real/


After setting up a testserver on windows i bought a 1 eur vserver and have it now running on ubuntu (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Kren Cooper]

Maps on a tablet. Nothing makes a game more 'tech' than having a map that player can work in.

Bonus points for Shadowrun overlays.

I found this a while ago, and am waiting for the appropriate session to introduce my players to it - I think it's adds a lot of ambience
"Tron" style map overlay

[Tecumseh]

"Tron" style map overlay

Well that's pretty damn neat.

To address the original question, I often write up After Action Reports. Not so fancy and fluffy as the news releases, but a few paragraphs of concise fall-out and changes from whatever went down the previous week. I'll also mix this into some write-ups about Neighborhood Happenings, or things that are going on in and around where the runners live. Most of this is just fluff but occasionally I'll seed future plots (or even just downtime RP) that way.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Well that's pretty damn neat.

Very neat indeed - if only it would allow for normal OSM searches and info overlays. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

SRkit seem nice, for SR5 at least. Since SRkit is on github, you could fork it for other editions:
[img]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mehowmasta/srkit/master/images/banner2.png[/img]


DerHarry recommended eDEX-UI which looks neat as well:
[img]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GitSquared/edex-ui/master/media/screenshot_default.png[/img]

[Acenoid]

Very neat indeed - if only it would allow for normal OSM searches and info overlays. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

SRkit seem nice, for SR5 at least. Since SRkit is on github, you could fork it for other editions:
[img]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mehowmasta/srkit/master/images/banner2.png[/img]


DerHarry recommended eDEX-UI which looks neat as well:
[img]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GitSquared/edex-ui/master/media/screenshot_default.png[/img]

Is there a SR3 fork available?

[Kyoto Kid]

...created a custom deck construction spreadsheet in Excel that used the custom Deck rules in the 3E Matrix supplement. All you had to do was enter the test results and time each task took (it already had the tools and parts prices hardwired in that you also had to pay for), and it crunched all the numbers (using a middle lifestyle as the time/cost basis as that was required to have a shop) to calculate the total time and cost involved (including parts and tools needed).

After doing that process by hand (and I was a math wiz in school) I swore I'd never go through that again as I nearly used up an entire quad ruled notebook keeping notes (which helped in the design of the Excel formulas & such) and went through nearly a half a kilo of coffee in the process.

I allowed deckers to start in with a custom deck using this spreadsheet as it fit the old decker rule: "never trust someone else's tech". Consequently, none of the characters came in as teenagers because at best, the process took several in-game years.