Complaints, why do you get them? Options

[Fygg Nuuton]

why do your players complain?

i have heard that i am anal because:

-I ask where they keep there spare ammunition, its not magically with the character (i dont get this one)
-i enforce legality, so you cannot run around with titanium lacing and wired 3 in my game without consequences
-i use cops, not encounters. there are 2 cops in squad cars on daily patrols, there are cops in coffee houses on breaks, there are cops doing nnormal things, they dont only respond when shots have been fired
-i use common sense. if you have been shot in the mouth, with a shotgun i dont care what your armor rating is, and i dont care what your body score is, you have just died, and if you didnt die, theres a good chance you already were
-if steve hands me a character with an odd gun, titanium lacing, trauma dampener etc etc etc and the character dies, then steve hands me a new character with the same stuff, i ask why the character has such things
-on that note, if steve plays something, such as an ex beat cop, and the beat cop has a high skill rating in something, such as heavy weapons, i will wonder how he has that. i'm not against a high level in heavy weapons, i just don't see how the beat cop has that skill at 6

[spitfire gecko]

[KillaJ]

[Eyeless Blond]

I was with you up until this one:

[JaronK]

I got complaints that I was rushing the game too much from one of my players, and that she really wanted things slowed down a bit. Moments after she said this, another player decided to drop out, because things were moving too slowly. Can't win, I tell ya!

JaronK

[Domino]

I think you are an evil prick and should have your GM socks taken away from you. :D

[Sahandrian]

[Odin]

[Fygg Nuuton]

on the shotgun:

player was detained, shotgun barrel was in the mouth, character kicked the shogun guy, shotgun went off, player died. i ased 2 times if they were sure before they kicked. player complained that they didnt get damage resistance.

for some reason i do not think the back of your head is very resistant to a shotgun shell, but im no biologist

[The White Dwarf]

Theyre all valid points to enforce except the shotgun one. If a sam with titanium bone lacing gets shot in the mouth, theres a real chance he *could* survive. The game is berift with other examples of todays common sense != SR's common sense. Thus, Id just default to the rules. In that case, allow the character a damage resistance test against a shotgun called shot without armor (except demal/bone armor) and no combat pool; because thats what the shot is. Trying to logic-ify the dice out works fine, if you do it across the board. Allowing dice in some rolls and not others is imbalancing, regardless of circumstances, imo. Youll always hit cases where the people involved see things differently, and if you always fall back on the rules there is a predetermined and impartial way to resolve it all, rather than having to decide on one with a mid/post game discussion.

[Azrael]

More to the point, have your players ever complemented you on something ?

But on the complaints side:

- Deckers (hence we haven't had a PC one for 5 years)
- That dodging was scrapped from 2nd ed after being in 1st, so we implemented for 2nd ed and were very glad it came back in 3rd
- Having NPCs take cover and the players wondering why they don't last long standing in the middle of a field shooting it out with them
- Our resident munchkin once had a spit that a spirit nearly killed him and "Why the hell didn't it die - I put a full clip of explosive into it". Its amazing what you can do with players who don't read the rules cover to cover, and hence their impression of the world is completely from what their character's background is and what they have encountered in play.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[The White Dwarf]

Fair enough, guess Ive always thought of it like Wolverine's skeleton, which can stop lead. Whatever works for ya.

And yes, lucky NPCs are da debbil. I think its human nature to always presume youre lucky and the other guy isnt... sucks for you condition moniter to assume that eh.

I think the worst complaint tho is the "it doesnt work that way in RL, thats not what I expected" whine. Like, when people are decking and get thwarted cause its not how computers work now; or when they say "security wouldnt do that, not in RL"; or "wheres the fire escape, the building has to have one for public safey code". Suck it up, the year 2063+magic isnt too much like now either, is it. Trying to play a realistic game is one thing, but trying to play reality would sorta take out the game part.

[Mr.Platinum]

Sounds like your players are just a bunch of Panty Waistes.

[Kagetenshi]

[D.Generate]

I have to agree with the whole shotgun thing. Stupid players need to be punished not rewarded. Bone lacing Titanium or other wise is nothign like wolverine, in fact on that note bullets don't bounce off of him they go into him and his high healing factor keeps him alive. I don't know why everyone thinks Bone lacing makes you a tank, it doesn't just re-enforces your bones to make you more resistant to punishment.

My players like the fact that my game is very realistic. Of course I don't try to kill them, obviously everyone has bad night with dice rolls and such. But if they do something dumb like kick a guy wo has a shotgun in their mouth and it goes off then I'm sorry you are making a new character.

I'm not saying people who run shadowrun anyother way are wrong I'm just saying that if your players know before hand that its going to be more realistic then they shouldn't complain when they die because of something they did.

[FXcalibur]

Sounds like the players were expecting a different type of game than what Fygg was providing.

Probably best to ask the GM if he's running a serious or not so serious game so you synch up your expectations. If the player knew Fygg was running it realistically, might be have changed his action, or did Fygg already spell it out to him and the player was just being stupid?

[Backgammon]

Reasons why my players bitch at me:

• TN too high so they don't wipe out the opposition in 2 seconds
• I stick to rules instead of making house rules in my players favour
• Not enough stuff to do for non-combat characters
• Don't give them the gear they want

[Shockwave_IIc]

[UpSyndrome]

One time the decker in our group sold out the street sam by giving his personal information (including place of residence) to a team of Sioux Wildcats who were after him for a sleeper assassination he pulled (gotta love mysterious cyberware). Then the decker goes and tells the street sam that he came across some matrix info that indicated that this team of elite special ops guys were after him and knew where he lived (of course, leaving out the part that he was the one to give them the information for 5,000 cred).
The street sam decides he's gonna go back to his apartment to get his stuff, at which point I said something like, "Are you sure you want to go back to your apartment?" I don't normally give ooc clues but I had only intended to use the Wildcats as a sort of background threat, always on the heels of the street sam. So he goes back to the apartment anyway and of course, these guys take him out (though I think he got the captain with a claymore mine, Punisher style).
This was months ago, I'm not even GMing anymore, and I still get an occasional complaint about mysterious cyberware.
-Joe

[Large Mike]

I've never had a complaint while running my own game. Lucky me, I guess.

Actually, that's not strictly true. I once had a complaint from one of my players that he just plain old didn't like the game, but I still GM Unknown Armies for him and occationally D&D (as much as I dislike the game), so I think it was just Shadowrun in general he didn't dig.

[Deacon]

[Backgammon]

Well, we're playing a SOTA in-house black ops team from Renraku, between the deniability of shadowrunners and the power of a Red Samurai strike team, so things are a little differant. I have 5 players, so I can't be taking the time to roleplay with each character. We have 2 combat monsters, a do-it-all team leader, a rigger and a electronics/face guy. I've just recently begun really adding various rigging challenges and miscellaneous electronics challenges, so that's working out ok for the Rigger now. But the electronics/face still lacks things to do when we're not doing a facility B&E job (at which point he is indispensable). But still, specialised characters are hard to integrate all the time.

[Necro Tech]

And those are the breaks making a character that is too specialized. You might be the biggest baddest sword weilding adept the world has ever seen but if thats all you got, be preparred to wait in the car. Or, like a player in my game, she just accepts that she is a speciallist and doesn't complain if we get into that long awaited fire fight that takes 4 hours to resolve.

[BitBasher]