Loss of Innocence, A new GM's question Options

[Catsnightmare]

[mintcar]

I can´t remember the first time a character died while I was GM. But I do remember that when we where like 10 years old and started playing for real there was tears flowing when stuff like that happened. The first character of mine that died I do remember. I was playing with a class mate that usually played with some older guys. He was being totally unfair. Me and my friends characters where measly tramps with improvised weapons and his older friends were near gods with technological weaponry. It was a swedish game not unlike Gamma World. My character was a mutated gorilla with scales. We got to this underground lab. and we spread out to check it out. Then some robot knocked me out from behind. No fight or anything. And the poor gorilla met a sadistic and humiliating end in some labratory after that. It was harsh times to be sure. When I started to GM myself I was a lot nicer. I think? :please:

[Enigma]

If some work went into the character, I'm fine with saving them in various ways - fast EMT response, doctor on the scene, "you pass out and wake up in some sort of ritual magic circle with no clothes on and your testicles painted blue", you know, the usual stuff. Yes they take a hit (cash wise, reputation wise, loss-of-gear wise or something) but at least they're alive.

If they do something stupid, Hand of God exists. This means each character gets a one free pass on a stupid death.

If the character was made using the black sticky bits of their twisted little brains then they're dead and I don't care. The type of characters I'm referring to are, for example (when generating a background):

"Umm, yeah, well I've got Ninjitsu and, yeah, I like knives. Hey, let's all play ninjas, that'll be so COOOOOL. We can be from the same bad-ass school and have tatoos and stuff. Do we really need a stealth skill to play Ninjas?, because I can spend those points so much better on Heavy Weapons and Launch Weapons and other things."

or ...

"so, he's got assault rifles because I just bought CC and he usually carries that MGL-6 thing with like thirty magazines of grenades and so on. And, he always carries four knives, even in the shower and has two backup pistols JUST IN CASE and also silencers and so on. And I managed to get his initiative up to an average roll of 400. And, I've bought a car and it's got forty points of concealed armour but you can't see it because it's concealed and I painted the car black. And, he has pretty much this entire column of gear here, and all of those, and sixty of these things because they're cool, and whatever the coolest sniper rifle is. Oh yeah, character background, umm, he's ex-military and I'll figure out the rest later."

or ...

"yeah, he's from the streets and he like, ruled some gangs and stuff, and then he got approached by the yakuza and worked for them for a bit and he was so damn good they put cyberware in him and then the yakuza clan, like every single one of them, got killed by mysterious ninja assassins from japan so now I'm a runner and can I take four yakuza oyabuns as contacts because I've written it into my background?"

or ...

"where's that random generator thingy from CP2020? OK, I'm a male human causican guy who is (d10 sound) 27, (d10 sound) from a corporate background but am now (d10 sound) hunted by (d10 sound) Arasaka. No, wait, what game are we playing again?"

or my personal favourite ...

"he was in the military in this special ops group, and he was a gunnery sergeant because they're the COOL rank, and then he left the military but the military thinks he's dead and now he's a shadowrunner. What do you mean there needs to be more? Oh, right, you want the battalion name? Umm, the panthers, no wait, the vipers, no wait, the scorpions, no wait, the cougars, no wait, the roughnecks. Where are you going? If you leave before the game starts, does that mean I get karma to spend for next time?"

[DarkShade]

heh, with my old GM we always meant to buy an old fashioned ink stamp/seal, in huge gothic letters with the words S A D , to stamp it on precisely that kind of backgrounds.. or on the head of the player submitting them.. we never got around to it though :P


-note: our players werent that bad but sometimes we gm`ed in conventions and the stuff you see there sometimes.. * shiver* ..

DS

[Cable]

"There are two types of PCs. Those that are dead, and those that will be."

[Lindt]

Oddly I have only KILLED one PC. And that was scripted. His brother turned up (the brother was a compeating J) basicly had a short conversation with him, and stuffed a Scorp into his back.
I did on one session dole out some 9 Deadly wounds. Blasted shamens healing everyone...but then force 8 treats do tend to do that when it has a totem bonus.

[Canid13]

My policy on stupid actions from players is simple - Stupidity Kills. Though if the stupid act is funny and not too stupid I usually allow a reasonable chance of survival. However for the most part, my players do that all by themselves usually by coming up with plans which I hadn't thought of and completely bypassing the bad guys :o)

I've come close to killing a player once and one kinda died by it wasn't my fault.

The 'close call' was an extraction from a corp facility. The target was in a subteranean lab so the PC's absail down the lift cables and get out into the foyer by the lab. The team decker is running overwatch and the weapon specialist is guarding the cables to the lab building and the decker (in a building across the street). The decker misses one of the slaves for the cameras and so doesn't warn the team about a guard in med sec armour with a burst firing heavy pistol. Failed surprise tests and two simple actions later, the sam is on the floor and into overflow. The team had gotten the target and were on the way out when this happened, so the cat shaman high tails it up the lift shaft.

Meanwhile the weapon specialist is on his way over to rescue his chummer. He passes the cat shaman, who still keeps high tailing. He drops down the lift shaft like a stone and manages to pull the sammy back up with him. The cat shaman destroys the stealth line just as the two get back then stabilises the sammy just as the last box of overflow gets filled in. I allowed the spell to work - but invoked Hand of God and didn't make the shaman fall down through drain.

The one that wasn't my fault was really odd. Couple of my players couldn't make the session, including the rigger, but I decided to run the courier mission I'd written anyway since I had too for the timeline to work out right. So, the weapon specialist drives the car and a new char (regular player wanting to try something different - implant intolerant drifter with 3 skills, athletics, bike and shotgun, and an aspiration to be a combat biker) rides the bike (included that for the new char).

Anyway, to cut a long story, the team gets attacked so it turns into a running firefight down the interstate. The team is in a van with a LMG on a ring mount - the new PC dwarf weapon specialist is using that, the human weapon specialist is driving and my wolf is shooting out the back. However the biker with no VCR has split off and is tailed by an NPC biker with VCR, so tries to lose the tail in some woods. The NPC makes an impossible perception test (TN 14 or something) and reacquires the PC - at which point the players says "I stop and get off my bike and wait for him to kill me."

I gave the player ample opportunity to survive, even offered to send a pair of spirits to bring the body back for the shaman to heal but the player didn't want too. I only had to put up with sulking for a couple of days on that one.

Still, each one has taught me something - like the combat rules for vehicles are very harsh on non-riggers and that burst firing heavy pistols are tres nasty :o)

To answer the question though, I did feel bad about the biker since it was a no-win situation for the PC. The sammy who couldn't stage a pair of 12S with 7 points of armour I didn't - sometimes the fates just ain't with you.

[Jrayjoker]

Yeah, the concensus should be, "Stupidity Kills." I tend to give my folks some slack if they are new to the system, or I didn't discuss expectations with the players.

However, when I am dealing with someone who refuses to find cover facing two trolls in milspec armor on higher ground with LMGs and a locked gate at his back, the PC typpically dies. Do I feel bad, maybe....

[Canid13]

[Jrayjoker]

Yeah, it turned into that. And I quote,

Him: "I pull out my silenced predator and shoot the one on the left."
Me: "The one with gel rounds because you don't like to kill?"
Him: "Yeah.....oh."
Me: "Say G'night Gracie"

[Canid13]

ROFLMAO

[Traks]

Yup, nice stories. My players usually kill themselves. But I do enjoy a little their deaths :) I do not kill players if they haven't done stupid things though.
There are too countless PC's that have seen death to remember all.

One of stupidest PC death's: "I find ghoul and let him bite me. You know, I will be stronger and like, cool"
Me: "You found one. Deeply in sewers"
He: "Cool, I force his teeth into my arm"
Me: "You wake up. It's 9.00 and you think you should go to certain building. Why, you don't remember."
He: "Oh yes, job. I put on a hat and go. Rolls hide, defaulting". And rolls really crappily.
Me: "You come in, and hear people screaming It's a ghoul, kill that monster!"

So he died, because he worked in security firm and people tend to have guns there :)

[U_Fester]

I couldnt' help but feel like Satan...

[TeOdio]

I whacked a PC my first time running a game. My buddy took the elven combat mage archtype out of 1st edition. He may have modified it, but all I remember was the fact he had 1 body. Even with the old armor rules (automatic successes), the Ares Predator round I cored him out with was pretty devastating. The rest of the pc's decided to chuck his body out of the high rise office they were in to create a "diversion". I personally feel that Shadowrun should be run with a dystopian flair. The PC's really are the underdogs in the grand scheme of things. They should have their victories, but the threat of death/capture/possession/subversion should always hang over their heads. :nuyen:

[Daishi]

I think I asked which back-up character he planned on using next. Everybody here has a character stable, and we tend to play high lethality games. I'm trying to develop a bit more into storylines (not my strong suit, but I'm working on it) and sudden infantry death syndrome seems to derail for the most part, so I'm trying to tone down lethality without reducing the sense of danger. Of course during a recent session the team liked to derail that by assaulting the base from behind. Not too bad an idea on the surface except that the rear of the base is a 300m cliff face. So they're going to climb it. In the rain. With one set of climbing gear for six guys. One man was cliff pizza. The same one who was wounded during the HALO jump into mountain jungle. At night. Through the rain. *sigh*

It was damn cool that most of them survived to pull it off, though.

[DocMortand]

[FrostyNSO]

I've killed more PC's than I can count.

After the first. A troll gunbunny killed by a little girl's bodyguard. I thought "Hmmm, maybe I should make the opposition a little lighter."

We lost 5 last session. 2 bit it while HALO jumping into the Containment Zone, insisting that they would get enough successes to survive opening their chutes below the minimum safe altitude. The other 3 died when one of the characters (henceforth known as "The Chicago Butcher") cut loose the suppressive fire with a vehicle-mounted .50 cal at a temporary medical clinic (tent-city style).

[DocMortand]

What year are you playing in? Is Chicago still Bug City in your campaign? I know I started my campaign in mid-'58, so the Containment Zone was no more, altho Chicago was still a semi-wasteland from all the local warlords.

Made me cry, the whole Bug City thing...I was born and grew up in Chicago, and still shake my head that FanPro finally decided to recreate the ancient Chicago Cubs in SOTA64 as an expansion team. Bleh. As if the Cubs would go bankrupt or move with the guy who owns the Chicago Tribune owning them nowadays....

Heh...in my last game, another char came within one initiative pass of dying. He survived barely...and got a payday of 673K nuyen each(massive hijack of Renraku SOTA drone parts and they got away with it!)

Of course, the Renraku Shutdown looms on the horizon, and I have plans *muahah*

[FrostyNSO]

We don't really set a "year". Most GM's I'm sure would sneer at this, but in our game it is both 2050 and 2065, and at the same time is neither. We started in 2060 and I think it's rolled into 2063 just now. The containment zone is still up (because we said it was), warlords still run the place, and it's pretty well demolished. The Arcology is still shut down, and Ghostwalker hasn't demolished Denver.

Now that I think of it, none of it really matters. We have an experienced group (lowest member pushing 100 karma), but I've been so successful at keeping them busy that they're not really interested in a lot of that stuff. We're 'street-level' in good part, but the PC's have the connections to get bigger if they want. They don't want to though, because they're trying not to draw too much attention to themselves. Unbeknownst to them, they're actually becoming heavy hitters on the streets, and starting to affect more people than they know.

[Canid13]

In my campaign, none of the Harlequin stuff has happened yet although we know about immortal elves. The CZ still exists (I didn't know it wasn't to be honest), and the Arc is opened now. Ghostwalker is about and the Big D is dead :o(

Kinda mixed up, but it's only 2064.... we've a few more decades to go yet :o)

[DocMortand]

[Wounded Ronin]

A lot of these campaigns sound really colorful and interesting. Not like mine; sniffle. :D

[Traks]

Well then, be a GM and show them what a good campaign means.
I mean, I can say that everything sucks and be a freakin pessimist or I can work and let things to change, usually for better.

[Striker]

[GaiasWrath8]

Oh I have to tell my story here.

My first game of Shadowrun was being run by this guy named Ryan, he was a great GM. His best friend was a crazy nut named Nathean.

Nathean killed my first character with in 5 hours of play. Said he did not trust me and I might have been working for some corp. I had no clue how to play yet so it was not much fun.

Next game I came in, within two hours he shot me in the back of the head.

Next game, I came in with a area effect craineal bomb. :) He might have killed me, but I took him and another player out with me. :)

After that he stopped killing me.