Loss of Innocence, A new GM's question Options

[Angelone]

Earlier today I ran my group of newbie friends through the Food Fight scenario. To get them used to the combat system. Long story short:
Gangers- 3
Runners- -2 :|

Ended up with two PKs before the gangers even got started.

[DocMortand]

Yeah, the food fight scenario can be deadly in the wrong hands...

Heck, it can be deadly in the right ones too!

[Angelone]

What was messed up was they all took the million, used 6 points of essence between 5 characters, and all had 7+ months of luxury lifestyle. Group broke down to 1 troll gun bunny and 4 elven gun bunnies, all with identical skills, and mostly the same gear. I had them make the characters together after explaining what a good team of runners should consist of. They insisted they didn't want me hovering during the creation process. I had a good laugh when I saw the characters, and I almost died laughing as the gangers took them apart.

[tisoz]

[Spark]

thats pretty rough on newbs. You should have forced their hands a little more or maybe added a nearby LS cop to help em out a bit. After all, it would give them XP in evading police after the fight was over. hehehe you could do some evil but instructive things with that :D

[shadow_scholar]

I can't recall killing a lot of PCs outright, I've had plenty hit Deady (unconcious) but they always have DocWagon, which helps...alot. In this new group I just had the first guy go to Deadly. He was hit with something basic, a single burst from an SMG with explosive ammo, he declined to dodge, and didn't get any damage resistance sucesses because he didn't bring along his second layer of armor. So he's out, from one simple action, but luckily it wasn't on corp ground, so Docwagon shows and takes him away. After that firefight only one player is left in good enough condition to tail the target, but he makes some bad rolls and loses the target, which makes the run a failure, their first ever. Morale was at a serious low at the end of that last game session, so what am I gonna do now? That's right, I'm bringing back an enemy that's going to eff them up pretty bad because the players knocked him out and stole his Force 4 Weapon Focus worth half a million nuyen. Oh, I love being a nasty GM.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Talia Invierno]

It's entirely possible to throw everything but the kitchen sink at the PCs, and still keep the game both believable and engrossing to all, threat/potential death level notwithstanding. As in most things, it's a matter of balance.

Threats that are avoidable by the PCs if they use some common sense can be scaled up as high as you like. The point of these is that they are threats: potentials, not actuals -- and they'll stay at the level of potentials if the PCs are the least bit careful.

Threats which cannot be circumvented using common sense alone, but which must be met directly to attain a clearly defined goal, should be scaled to just at the level the runners are capable of dealing with, if perhaps above what they think they're capable of dealing with. The challenge exists, the imminent threat of death is real: and winning out over it gives a real sense of accomplishment.

This doesn't mean either that it's necessary to break out the Citymasters, or (conversely) that snipers should never be used against PCs. The instinct is to try to balance increasingly powerful PCs (and SR skews this a little, since it's designed to allow fairly powerful specialists right out of the box) by throwing ever more massed combat at them. Although sometimes this works, this is also where believability can break down in a hurry. It's easier to scale up smaller, covert scenarios than to restore realism/balance to full-out urban warfare. Just imagine what the PCs themselves would do, if they had the chance: and design the scenario so the potential (not the certainty!) exists to use it against them first.

It's easy enough to build self-limitations into situations that, on their surface, are "no win" for the PCs. One common example is the inadvertent "warning" shot: eg. the sniper whose first shot slams just a little off the target, and whose subsequent angles are necessarily limited by the local street architecture, with a few persons worth of on-site back-up. Contrast this scenario against a full team of snipers, plus Ares Guardian drones, plus Citymaster, plus [fill in the blank]. The first can be deadly; but the second almost certainly is.

Sure, it's relatively easy for a GM to kill PCs. GMs control the entire set-up of the situation after all: and it's very easy to slip into a mindset of GM (rather than NPCs) vs. PCs. For any GM who has thought out their scenario not only from the pov of taking out the PCs but also from the perspective of what those PCs are capable of dealing with -- and especially from the perspective of the players' desire to be challenged -- PC deaths should be (thankfully) rare: accident, never deliberate.

[fastdos]

It's a matter of story for me. When a character dies it's the end of the story arc for that character and a significant change for the team. Characters die for a reason more often than no reason at all. That means that in some runs I'll say to myself "it is ok to let someone die" and if someone does die then so be it--it's part of the story.

I did assasinate a char once. Barret rifle clean shot to the head. That character had been outpacing his team in power level and was forcing me to up the enemy level just to keep it fun for him which also meant that it wasn't fun for the other team members who were suddenly outclassed by the baddies. When that character died suddenly a bunch of information about his mysterious past turned up and the team ended up on an entirely new campaign based on what they learned about their teammate.

[DamienKnight]

Ive killed a few characters, but I have a favorite. One of my power gamers created a sorcer with a force 6 weapon foci sword, and after a run against renraku, snuck away from the other players a power foci.

So now he is running around with a force 6 sword and a force 4 power foci, and hes still a relative newbie.

I had another character make a mage that he was roleplaying as very evil. He didnt have a johnson and I was trying to think of a way to work him into the run when it hit me: A newbie with so much power is going to attract attention.

The evil mage was offered this by a talismonger: Ill let you in on a job if you promise to kill this sorcerer and bring me her weapon foci... you can keep her power foci.

The evil character jumped on it, and after the job was done, 'had to pull over to pee'. He had already spoke with the mage(conjuring specialist) and paid him 50k to provide spell defense, and talked the other runner (a cyber sniper) to stay outtah it.

He blasted the sorcer with a lightningbolt (injuring her and using up her combat pool) then jumped her with a staff and gave her some stun. After that they both had enough spell defense that they just meleed it for 3 rounds until finally the injured sorcerer dropped. (the only hit she got in was with a kung-fu multistrike, but the mage had a pain editor and ignored it).

The mage executed the sorcerer to be sure there would be no retribution. Everyone walked away happy, cept the dead gal.

Do i feel guilty? Maybe a little, but I warned the sorcerer that she should be ultra paranoid trying to hold on to that magical stash.

[MaxHunter]

As a Gm I have killed characters many times. I kinda felt sad, but most of the times the players got killed themselves (or worse, sometimes they got a completely innocent team mate killed because of a stupid decision)

It is very easy to waste a character in SR, but I believe that it should happen rarely and most of the times It has to be in an important moment of the run.
If characters die too often, then the players are not acting professionally or you are just a nasty Gm.

That said, I remember a player who died quite regularly when my first group started playing SR back in 1994. This guy averaged a character every 1.5 sessions. (i.e he would come up with a new character, played one session, then died in the midst of the next one, and so spent the rest of that session making up a new character, and so on...)
I didn't really feel happy killing him every time, but (most of the times) I (and the rest of the team) just could not let go by some of his gross miscalculations and/or lacks of common sense. Eventually, he turned out to be a very professional SR player -actually, he is contributing in some of the books and all. The point here is: don't feel bad if you really have to kill a character for stupid playing, hopefully, the players will learn from their mistakes and that will make gaming richer, better and more enjoyable for everyone. (including yourself)

Cheers

Max

[Kyoto Kid]

[FrostyNSO]

I had to pop in.

I just wasted 4 PC's. After that, the last one standing surrendered and gave the assailant the info he was looking for. Luckily, she made some sweet biotech rolls and (including the use of a trauma patch) managed to save everyone's ass. Magic loss proliferated (not too crippling for the initiates), and one guy lost an arm, but all were humbled by the smackdown and seemed to have a genuinely good time fighting the good fight.

Great Times for All! (even me who felt a little bad afterwards)

[ShadowDragon8685]

[FrostyNSO]

Seriously. Seems like the GM was just arbitrarily trying to take some toys away, which isn't neccessarily bad in itself except for the fact that they plotted with another player to do it, in a way that pretty much prevented that player from getting to continue playing their character.

I'd be thinking, "What the hell did I do to you!?"

...That one seemed harsh to me, who just deadlied 4 PC's last week!

[Hell Hound]

Two player deaths have really stuck with me. One was the very first PC I ever killed off, the other was a character of mine killed off by the GM at the time.

My first kill came about with a group that had already been roleplaying with their current characters for a few months, not exactly newbies either as players or as characters. The two things that set up the situation and inspired me to essentially murder a character in a manner that gave them no chance to survive was that they were somewhat messed up from their last run and recuperating in their separate safehouses, and they had ticked off but not killed a Mantis shaman some time back.

I had one of the characters possessed by a female mantis spirit.

Then I told noone, not even the player of the possessed character, for several more game sessions until an initiated mage they had worked with cryptically informed them one of their number was an insect spirit. The character group began to disintegrate from justified lack of trust and the players themselves seemed to enjoy the intrigue, suspense and mystery the situation created. After several attempts to figure out who was the bug (attempts that the insect spirit secretly sabotaged without anyone knowing) they finally learned who was possessed and this lead on to the big confrontation with the Mantis shaman.

All in all the players, including the one killed off, seemed to enjoy the events. But looking back on it I realise it was a mistake to do this because I never gave the player even the slightest chance to save their character, no GM should have that kind of control over the player characters.


The death of my own character came about in an SR adventure involving aliens, wierd magical yet not magical crystals, real honest to god 'slug' guns, and a host of other bizzare things that made the game less enjoyable for me. Our group found themselves in the subterranean levels of the main villain's abode running from a maniac with a gyromounted LMG who at one point was a member of our group. At one point Mr LMG fires at one of the other fleeing player characters, said character does not successfully dodge and has nowhere near the body, nor enough karma, to have a hope in hell of surviving the hit. The GM informs him that he slipped on the floor at the last second and the entire ten round burst missed him.

Later, after losing Mr LMG for a while and getting busted up a bit, we find Mr LMG charging down a corridor about to turn the corner leading to where we are filing out our escape hole one at a time. My character, as badly injured as everyone else, is bringing up the rear. Realising there is no way he can get out the hole before a ten round burst of explosive ammo tags him from behind I elect to move up to edge of the corridor, wait for Mr LMG to round the corner then jump right into his face so he cannot bring the barrel of the gun around to hit me (melee combat is also my character's area of expertise and his best chance of winning a fight).

I explain both my actions and the reasoning behind them to the GM. He says fine. Then when it comes time to actually perform the action he informs me I can't do it. "The corridor is actually too wide, you don't cover enough distance. Make a damage resistance test for the ten LMG rounds hitting you". I failed the test. My character died. Needless to say the rest of the evening was not very pleasant.

[Glyph]

Hell Hound, I think your last example, and DamienKnight's story, both illustrate the biggest no-no for GMs; playing favorites.

I have lost PCs before and not complained, but I would be upset if the GM let one PC off the hook, then let the same situation kill my character. And it's an even bigger no-no for the GM to essentially plot with another player to kill a PC.

Now, I understand that Shadowrun games can involve some paranoia and back-stabbing, but in that situation, even more than others, the GM needs to be impartial.

[Hell Hound]

You're right Glyph, playing favourites is a bad move. The thing is I don't think the GM in my case was actually playing favourites. Conspiring with other players maybe but I don't think it was meant to be playing favourites.

The crazed character with the LMG was still being roleplayed by his player, the GM had taken him aside earlier in that game when he became separated from us and the main villain gave him the option of joining the bad guys and killing his teammates, which he jumped at a lot faster than the GM expected him to. The character that the GM saved from LMG induced death was the group's mage, and since the GM had already planned the finale of the game involving a three storey tall ball of man eating jello (don't ask) that could only be killed with magic then losing our mage would have finished us all off. My character had already taken care of the melee fights, which is why we were just injured rather than dead when Mr LMG found us again, and so was no longer necessary for the group's survival.

What annoyed me was the GM's absolute refusal to consider any outcome except my character's meaningless death, a dramatic death I could have been satisfied with. Nothing could persuade him that I might have a chance in hell of avoiding being shot, or of changing my actions. By the end he was making up excuses such as "I know your quickness is 6 and no the corridoor is not 12 meters wide, but maybe Mr LMG was running flush up against the opposite wall in case someone jumped out and tried to engage him in melee combat before he could shoot them". But it never seemed to be a case of playing favourites. More his refusal, or inability, to admit a mistake or allow a player to dictate how part of the story would go. There was a precedent for that.

[DocMortand]

It's kinda neat to see people's stories about the killing of players. When I first started this thread I was agonizing over my first kill - it's been months now and I still have only truly KIAed three player chars - but I've done everything else possible - including two being drafted into the UCAS Military for storming the castle (errr the Arcology post Shutdown) and a couple other quirks.

I still feel a little bad killing chars because my players are the true dedicated type - they pour their soul into the char to make them realistic - believable DETAILED backstories, a char flaw or two which explain their every action (I.E. they never do random acts just for the heck of it unless the char was DESIGNED that way)

Of course, the flip side of that is the longest running character just got her 19th Karma point...Initiate level 5 shaman with quickened increase cha, will at force 7...

[LinaInverse]

Update: Doc's up to 4 KIAs now! :D

[mfb]

i'm going to assume you meant karma pool, not karma point.

[DocMortand]

Yeah, I meant 19 Karma Pool.

And the group managed to escape from a nasty trap with only one of the newbie chars dying. The experienced people held together. :)

[Straight Razor]

OK, best PC kill ever.
My friend was running a game with 4 friends. I rolled up an phyAdept with katana. Useing a few non-fasa resources i ended up with a super samuri, but that is not the funney part.
the others were already on a run, forget what it was.
The GM Gave me a Run. Kill the other 4 players. Mwhahaha.
My first and Best hit was a cybered out troll. He was easy to find because we was a bouncer for a day-job. I followed him when he got off work.(we were both on bikes) He sptoed me following him, and used his eye-zoom X3 on his rear view mirror to get a better look at me.
well. it was decided he needed to make a drive check to see if he could stay in controll of his bike while doing this. BOTCH! He layed his bike down on the freeway. Took a M for his effort. it was a good enough of a wrech to draw a small crowd.
I pulled up and anounced that i was an off-duty paramedic. I did a decption check and rolled well. they believe me, Yay!
I tolled the battered up troll "i'm a paramedic, just yay down" as soon as he layed down I pulled out a HE offencive granade, pulled the pin, let the spoon fly, and shoved it down his pants. Rolling quickenss i rolled aou of the blast best i could. I took a L after all the dice. He had no success on his soke. he died. i got out of there.

I ended up killing two others, and then i got nuked by the mage.

And just so you all know everyone in that game agreed that it was one of the best runs ever.

[Eggs]

Y'know, that reminds me of a Super Milk-Chan episode. Or at least, what I could remember of it before it liquefied my frontal lobe. ;)

[DocMortand]

Agg...never bring up that demon show again. EVIL!

Probably the only thing that occured to me when I saw it for the first time was "YOU DUMBASS!" for watching it. Bleth.