fun with new players, and this is me going easy on them... Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Switch to: Outline Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Nerbert]

Before I begin, this group has never played Shadowrun before. This is what happened over the very first three hours of their very first experience. They are all reasonably experienced roleplayers, primarily with D&D.

Three characters, a human shaman medic, an orc mercenary and a human adept "urban samurai". Only this urban samurai is all style, no tweakage. Wears typical japanese garb, carries two dikoted katanas, even though he can only use one at a time, spent extra to get all his weapons, and his dikoted armor, engraved and embossed.

Their mission, given by a branch of LoneStar, is to track down three kidnapees, all of whom disappeared in one particular area. Mistake number one. They accept the mission practically blindfolded, they don't ask for a percentage up front, they don't try to negotiate for a better price, they don't even ask for the J's name or to see any identification, all they get is a phone number to contact him at. Ouch. Thats gonna come back to bite them.

The next thing they do is leave that very night to go to a club where one of the kidnapees was last seen. The shaman and the mercenary enter the club, leave their weapons at the front desk, and proceed to ask people in the club if they've seen the kidnapees. This is a club full of writhing dancers, alcoholics, and drug addicts. There isn't a single sober person in the bar except for a collection of people sitting at a group of tables. These sober people consist of couples not much more sober than the dancers, and clearly people here to avoid attracting attention. And they talk to every single one of them. Mistake number two. They walk around, from person to person, showing them all a picture and telling them all different stories about why they're trying to find them. *slaps forehead* They're up to five successes on their wrong party test and they haven't even learned anything yet.

Meanwhile, the adept samurai stealths off down the alley to scope out the club from the rear. All he finds is a solitary elf guard smoking a cigarette and occasionally huffing from what looks like an asthma medicine dispenser. Our adept watches for about half an hour, sees a car pull up around dusk, some people get in, and the car drives up. He records the license plate dutifully. He then proceeds to hurl a trash can at the guard to distract him and GreatLeap through the air to attack him in a single strike. Mistake number three. The guard is hopped up on Jazz, which gives him enough of an edge to dodge the adepts running attack and go to hammer on the nearby door. Adept chops the guard in half and jumps out of the way of the guards exiting the building with SMGs. (yay improved reflexes) At this point though, things turn sour. He tries a running disarm (he's too far away from them for a regular attack) on the first guard, who dodges. This puts him at point blank against two SMG wielding Jazzed up guards. Between the two of them, one burst a piece, they put him down to one box away from death before he gets his initiative again, which he spends fleeing for his life. I basically let him get away at this point, I didn't feel like killing him before he'd even accomplished anything useful at all. Though I did penalize him for two ballistic armor points off of his nice, pretty, expensive armor.

By the way, these guards were average in just about every respect.

So, miraculously our other two characters hear the burst fire from the alley way over the din of the band playing and run out to help him. They see him hauling his bloodied carcass towards a public park where they stowed their transportation. Mistake number four. Bloodied, shot up people should stick to the alleys. When we closed the session (we had to finish early because one person was busy) a cop car had just pulled up after witnessing the shaman heal him back from certain death in the middle of a public park. I can only pray they have enough presence of mind to tell the cop he was mugged.

The moral? A combination of lousy dice and poor planning will lead to disaster every time, no matter how much more powerful than your opponent you think you are.

[Backgammon]

Why were the guards idly taking Jazz? It's a combat drug, it doesn't give out a high or anything. Were they expecting trouble?

[Person 404]

[Street Doc]

The mistakes that you noted I can see being a problem with people that have played SR before. However, you said none of these players have played SR before and are used to DnD and other type games. It seems to me like they roleplayed like they are used to, they didnt know to ask the J anything or to cover their tracks, because most times in DnD you dont do those things. You get your mission or quest, go off to kill, find, or capture what ever you are suppose too and then come back and get paid. So my suggestion is to talk with the players, let them know that SR is different roleplaying the DnD and go over their mistakes so they can learn from them. Just my 2 cents worth...

[Nerbert]

If nothing else, they were all addicted and it was in ready supply. They were definitely waiting for the car to arrive and wouldn't have wanted to be caught off guard. Its cheap enough and lasts long enough that I didn't think it was unreasonable for them to be using it pretty constantly, especially since you get hammered when it wears off.

[LaughingTiger]

Your players actions reflect entirely on what you told them about the game world before you sat them down to play.

Did you even give them a clue about what they were doing? Did you allow them to have an idea that maybe, just maybe, they should do some other kind of digging?

They did what most people in that situation would do, they went and asked questions, just like you would in a kidnap scenario in D&D. I don't think they're horrible players at all. I think they were horribly informed. That's not their fault.

[BitBasher]

Unless you sit down and talk to them about the way SR works you can expect this to keep happening. You can also expect them to get frustrated when they constantly get screwed for doing what they think is the right thing, because in most other RPG's it is.

You are essentially penalizing them for things their PC's shouyld know but the players do not. It's the GM's job to fill in this information when you see it happen.

[Smiley]

Maybe have them read the fiction thingy in the front of SR3. Perhaps an adventure or two.

[tisoz]

Give them each the Common Sense edge for free, then you can freely tell them when something would or would not be a good idea.

[Eyeless Blond]

heh, I'm of the opinion that Common Sense should be a requirement for anyone with less than six month's worth of SR gaming experience, based on how many people here seem to swear by it. :)

[Nerbert]

See, I've thought of all this, and normally I would agree with you. Except that these players all have a pretty good degree of experience with general role playing games. And there are two things I never do, leave a employer without at least some basic credentials, and attacking random people. Even if I am playing D&D, which I'm starting more and more to believe is role playing for kindergardeners.

On the other hand, every group is different. I'm just surprised how much I'm going to have to babysit them. The last group of new players I introduced to shadowrun got the gist of things right away.

[JackWill]

i understand no negoatting with MJ.. its usally ends up wacking you and talking you down damn it.. and then it normally gets runners to back out of the run.

Well i useally just give contact numbers to an MJ and i expect the same back...

no names, no id.. just numbers.. thats the best way it works.

[Snow_Fox]

It seemed fine, for beginers, until the adept jumped the elf guard. A phrase like "are you a shadowrunner or a mugger?" might have saved a lot of trouble.

[TinkerGnome]

Getting credientials from the Johnson isn't really important... but you should get his picture if at all possible. Cybereye cameras are great for that. Ear recorders can get you a voice print, too.

If anything looks fishy, you use that stuff to dig into his identity and figure out what's really going on.

[Fygg Nuuton]

I have to agree, they all did rather well. they attempted to perform the run without getting sidetracked by "killing everybody in a 5 mile radius" something i see alot of noobs doing. the samurai which seemed to be the wild card of the bunch watched the door for 30 minutes (IIRC) then dispatched the guard, something i would never do but in a game like d&d that seems perfectly restrained to me.

also i feel that him retreating to the safety of the park was unnecisarily "boned" by the cop driving by at the worst moment, i would have cut some slack on the first run, but let them know later it could have gone much much worse.

as a side note the thrown garbage can was, different but IMHO a very nice move on the adepts part if he felt he had to kill the guard, at least he tried to distract him. did the adept player know what jazz was?

"the guard huffs off of what seems to be an asthma inhaler"
"the guard huffs off of what seems to be an asthma inhaler, but on a second glance there may be a good chance it is jazz, a combat drug used to quicken reflexes"

but as always this is only me 2¥ :) hope the next session goes better

[kevyn668]

This is how newbs learn. My first group that I GMed for did pretty much the same thing. (the weapon specialist shot the StufferShack girl in broad daylight and didn't grab the recording of said act). But then they learned from it.

Then they lost interest :( .

But a month or so ago they started back up with me about when we were gonna play. :)

But I don't have enough time to put a decent story together... :(

Oh well, your guys'll get better. Trust me, I used to be in sales. We don't lie. :)

(ps. I would have let them slide on the cop car drive by...)

This post has been edited by kevyn668: Jun 17 2004, 04:10 AM

[sidartha]

Also some thing to keep in mind is that your players are most likely operating off of some little misconstrued thing you said that made him/her/them jump to some seemingly stupid conclusion. I didn't fully appretate this fact until I started GM'ing and simatainously driving one of my players home. We would talk about the game and discuss what was "supposed" to happen and what actually happened and it led to some real insights on my part.
The point is let the players take all the line they want during the game cuz you never know who they're going to hang with it. ;)

[Abstruse]

My group now is two D&D players, one half-hearted Shadowrun player (only plays deckers and I don't think has read a single book on the game, just what I've told him over the years), and one person who's kept up pretty well with the Shadowrun world. That's working out better than I'd hoped mainly because the vet Shadowrun players are working the paranoia overtime (seeing plots I wish I'd thought of first) and it's rubbing off on the others. They were even at the point where they didn't want to go to a safehouse just because it happened to be about 2-3 miles from the club they just had a shootout at. Ah, such quick learners...and I haven't even had to teach them any "lessons" yet.

The Abstruse One

[The White Dwarf]

To the original poster... Hail Bad_GM_01. Any of those characters have contacts, or backgrounds, or perhaps even the freaking etiquette skill? Oh they do? Then the *characters* might know some things the *players* dont. Its YOUR job to make sure you inform them of that, by saying things like "in your professional experience you know its typical to get 1/3 or 1/2 up front" ... not string them out on all the mistakes.

Maybe if you tried to work with the players to make the game a good fun learning experience, theyd want to come back to it. Gloating on these boards how you held all the cards and were oh so benevolent to go easy on foolish new players... man someone has a security issue. Wish you could come play at our game so we could belittle you for hours and see how many of your characters we could kill...

[Clank]

I agree with White Dwarf. I don't know how much info you gave your players beforehand, but were they aware of the paranioa slant the game has? It sounds like they got the quest from the king, proceded to the village and asked all the townspeople if they had any info. Typical D&D stuff. Being a Veteran Roleplayer doesn't mean they have range. I don't know your group dynamic, but from the context of your post, it seems very elitist (those N00BZ). If they were a group that talked crap about SR and you're showing them that there's more to life than D&D, then I guess what you did is fine, but otherwise, that's pretty messed up.

[Dax]

D&D reduced to the red headed step child of the RPG universe. I swear, one of these days I will make Wizards pay dearly for what they did to that game...

But in reguards to the story you told. I've found out the hard way that new players can be a bit hard to rangle sometimes. You can think that you explained things easily enough, but they will still be confused about the specifics of what you mean. Definatly make sure that everything has been covered in as much detail as you can muster.

And if that doesn't work.....hit them. :D

[LaughingTiger]

Since I see this brought up over and over and over again, I have to ask.

What's wrong with D&D players? Is there some stereotype I'm missing? Some weird group of people that drag down the reputation of anyone who plays the game? Or is this just an elitist attitude, that if another game doesn't share the setting, rules complexity, or ideas of our game world, that it's somehow an inferior product?

I just don't get it.

[Dax]

Beats the hell out of me LT. I can play D&D, Shadowrun, White Wolf, Warhammer, pretty much any of them. So I don't reall see the value in tearing people up beacuse they happen to like D&D.

But hey, i'm just one person. Obviously my "live and let live" way of dealing with RPGs is in the major minority.

[Luke Hardison]

[BitBasher]

Mr Hardison just stated the main reason that SR is the only game I play now.

The Games just require a wholesale mindset. The character interaction is far more complicated when things are not broken down into easy good guys and bad guys.