Stupid Deaths, Those Wacky Players Options

[Jrayjoker]

[SFEley]

Here's another "not quite a death but it should have been" moment. I still get nostalgic about it.

It's ten years ago. I'm running my very first Shadowrun session with a new group. I've spent way too long reading the SR2 rules. Alas, so have some of my players.

One of the players has created a typical big-gun troll. I only glance at his character sheet, and lacking experience I don't see much wrong. But he's sniggering about something, extremely self-satisfied.

Me: "These attributes seem a little high."

Him: "Yeah. That's because I took a Deadly allergy."

Me: "Umm, are you sure that's a good idea?"

Him: "Yeah, it'll be fine. It's something I'm positive I'll never come in contact with."

Me: "Okay, what?"

Him: "I'm not going to tell you! If I tell you you'll make sure I run into it all the time."

Me: "Dude. I'm the GM."

Him: "Just trust me, okay? If I actually see it somewhere, I'll tell you."

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that I was a dumbass to agree to this. But I must emphasize again that it was our first game. We've all been there, right?

So all the characters meet up, yadda yadda, and they get their tipoff for their first run. It's in an old house in Everett, and their client is a free hearth spirit that's the spirit of that house. The house is a shelter for a bunch of squatters, but a corporation has bought the land and intends to knock it down and build a Stuffer Shack there. The runners' job is to find some dirt that they can use against the company and convince them to change their plans.

Runners: "But how can you pay us? You're a spirit, you don't carry a credstick."

Spirit: "Do not concern yourselves. I have been conserving my resources for an occasion such as this. I am prepared to offer you three thousand of your...I believe it is called 'nuyen?' if you will accept this task, and another three thousand upon completion. Will you accept?"

Runners: "Sure. But we need the money now."

At which point the spirit manifests its Wealth power, and a shower of gold coins appears from above the runners' heads.

The troll screams and heads for the door, his skin burning and blistering, leaving the others agape.

Player: "How could you know! I didn't tell you, dammit!"

Me: "Tell me what?"

(pause, smack forehead)

Me: "Ooooohhhhhhhhhh."

[Sicarius]

GMing a game, with 4 players, One Cyber-Troll of Doom, a Alcoholic Mercenary with a Grenade Launcher Fetish, a speed-demon close combat samurai, and a Facer/Fixer type.

The mission was to take out a target expected to testify, being transported under armed guard, in City Master. The Group rightly decides to spend their up front cash on an anti-tank rocket from Fields of Fire.

They are laying in wait, the target comes into view, and they open up... and its a Miss. The citymaster unloads Metroplex Guards, under cover fire, which the team is prepared for, since plan B is a set radio controlled explosives along the roadway...

The Fixer States he's going to charge the CityMaster, with his trusty Crusader MP.

Needless to say, he takes a deadly...

The team detonates the explosives rather than rescue him.

[ShadowDragon8685]

SFEley - BWAAA-hahaahaaaaah!

That's perfect. Perfect! :)


And that fixer was a moron. I guess he got fixed, eh? :)

[Jürgen Hubert]

Those stories are great! Don't forget to put them on the Character Graveyard of the Shadowrun NPCs Wiki! ;)

[Sabosect]

I would submit the dead characters from my time playing, but there's a slight size issue. How many megs do you allow per section?

[Jürgen Hubert]

[nezumi]

He uses REALLY big letters.

[Sabosect]

[Jrayjoker]

Sounds like fun. Isn't there an event at GenCon that is pretty much just PK after PK after PK? D&D I think?

[Sabosect]

Hey, the other GM and I agreed: They can have 140 BP to use for character builds. However, the campaign is going to be challenging. And there's nothing wrong for a party to take justice into their own hands.

[PBTHHHHT]

How about trying Paranoia? That sounds like a game for ya.

[pragma]

[Sabosect]

[Jürgen Hubert]

[Sabosect]

There's about 2000 of them...

[ChaLk]

[ChaLk]

[ChaLk]

okay, one more...this one more recent. Also not quite deadly but still quite enjoyable.
The (uber powerful) team consists of:
A really fast sniper/gun bunny,
an absolutely terrifying (and very unlucky) shark shaman minotaur with a fetish for foreboding spells),
a crazy rigger/doctor,
and an ambidextrous giant who is ridiculously big and good at using his dual wielded combat axes.

I don't recall the exact details of how they got into this, but the whole team managed to piss off a corporate facility and require a hasty escape. Half of the team (sniper, rigger, and giant) manages to retreat to the heli-pad and is about to make good their escape. The Minotaur (under cover of physical mask spell) is cornered inside, and decides to use his favorite spell - an extremely high force foreboding spell, centred on himself (which he resisted without much problem). Guards no longer posed a problem as they flee nearly insane from panic. The minotaur walks up to the helipad, even causing several guards to leap off the building rather than stay within L-O-S. The rigger and sniper were safely out of LOS in the chopper. That's when the foreboding spell came down full force on the Giant. Absolutely cornered and insane with fear resulted in an attack by the Giant against this massive magical threat. An extremely lucky roll later, both of the Minotaurs arms were sliced clean off. now unconscious, his spell dropped. He survived (due in large part to the rigger/doctor) and now sports two shiny new cyberarms.
Weeks later, the Minotaur woke up, and he and the Giant agreed that because he'd taken the worst the Giant could dish out, then it's only fair the Giant take the worst he could deal. The giant agreed to this(?!) and braced himself.

Maybe it was mercy that he decided not to cast, but instead blasted the Giant point blank with his bf combat shotgun. The Giant survived (his body was huge!), and the team went on to more insane hijinks.

- yes folks, it took me a while to realize that keeping the amount of cash and karma you dole out for runs is a good way to slow down the insanity. alas i doubt there is any way to stop it. :wobble:

[Lucifer]

This was my first Shadowrun game. I was playing a cheesy 'ninja' character (an Adept with a lot of points in Improved Stealth, Athletics, Free Fall/Great Leap, and Throwing Weapons) and most of the other players were fairly generic archetypes. The standout was a player who started as a dwarf drone rigger.

To start the campaign the GM ran us through Food Fight just to get us acquainted. The brawl was quite fun; lots of food getting shot up, lots of melee, everything you'd expect. Well, except one thing. The unarmed drone rigger's first action when the battle ensued was to jump over the counter and hide behind it - right with the employee working the counter, who'd just ducked down to grab the Streetsweeper she promptly unloaded in his face.

He survived, mostly. For some reason I was rolling some incredibly high - though not especially good - rolls (instances where I'd only have one or two successes, but they'd be in the 18+ range, I mean) and the GM decided to go with it and give a lot of fluff about me kicking people through shelves of food and such. Which was probably for the best, because after the dwarf ended up pinned under an overturned Slurpee machine (no, I can't recall how - best not to ask, anyway) he let me lift it off of him because of an incredibly high roll, despite the fact that (based on what I know of the game now) I shouldn't have been able to.

No harm, no foul, right? We're all pretty new, he made some mistakes but good rolls got him out of it. Unfortunately that's what we thought, instead of taking it as a sign of troubled waters ahead...

We get hired to track down a Mr. Johnson who set up a fixer's previous team of runners. The first place we stop is his apartment; at this point several of the characters are still out doing other legwork (meeting contacts and such) and I'm alone with the rigger. I tell him I'm going up to check it out, and to run overwatch with his drones, and then go into (completely over-the-top, given the nil security present) 'ninja' infiltration mode up the fire escape.

Well, when I get inside the room I find the rigger in there, having gone straight up the interior stairs and enterred through the front door. There's an audio recording playing - the standard villainous "Bwahaha you're fragged!" speech - and a steady beeping sound. I, having a brain in my head, turn right back around and dive out the window.

The GM was rather magnanimous at this point, allowing the rigger's player a lot of (real-world) time to sort the situation out. His first reaction, despite seeing my character leap out the bloody window, was to find the 'phone' and answer it. The other players are all staring in disbelief, but the GM remains patient, and allows him to find the 'phone' - a small box with various colored wires attached to it, which the rigger ponders incredulously.

One of the other players - OOC - finally loses his nerve and blurts out, "It's a bomb!" The rigger player finally runs and dives out the window... still holding the 'mystery box' he collected from the Johnson's apartment.

That was the worst of it, but hardly all. He replaced his (now-dead) rigger mid-run with a 'combat decker'. This decker had Wired Reflexes III. Now, because he spent all his cred and essence on WR3 and a (really crappy) deck and accompanying programs, he had no other offensive 'ware - not even a smartlink, much less defensive stuff. And since we were playing with SR3 core rules only, he had only the paper thin SecureTech Clothing armor therein.

So what was his strategy in combat?

You guessed it, he'd win initiative (naturally) and then immediately run toward the enemy, firing away ineffectually. It only took a couple of combats before he was in the unenviable position of rolling higher initiative than the enemies, who in turn had rolled higher initiative than everyone else in our group.

He broke cover, sprinted down an alley popping off shots at the heavily armored corporate security team with his Slivergun, and then promptly turned into Swiss cheese when they all took their turns and he was the only available target not behind cover.

We didn't invite him back for the next session.

[Grinder]

:rotfl:

He should better concentrate on another, yet not-so-chromed, weapon as the slivergun if the character was supposed to last a little bit longer with this "tactic". :rotfl:

[fistandantilus4....]

Why not!? He sounds like great fun! :D

[Grinder]

But obviously he wasn't meant to last long as a runner. ;) bringing "style over substance" to a new level.

edit: typos corrected

This post has been edited by Grinder: Sep 3 2005, 01:25 PM

[Oracle]

In my group was an ExNavySeal character who was slightly paranoid. For that reason he secured his MPUV with an anti theft system which was rigged to 5 kg of C12.
One day the team was doing some surveillance work on a warehouse used by a go-gang as a hideout. All of the team was sniffing around in the surrounding area. The only person staying in the car was the elven cat-shaman, doing some astral scouting. Just in that situation a larger number of gangers returned to the hideout. The Seal parked the car just on the other side of the road. One of the gangers got curious and tried to open the door of the car. NavySeal:'Kaboooom!!' :(

Since that incident exploding cars are forbidden in our group.

[Cyberon]

Here a good one, my GM allways expected us to be goody two-shoes. He had the nasty habbit of punishing you through several gamesession, if you did something evil.

a Little Background. I was playing a Physical Adept - Close Combat Expert, that started out as a street thug, and actually had implanted Cyberware (Smartlink, Spurs), before he discovered that he was awakened. He also had a real temper problem, dealing with some anger management, he could litteraly snap, but through training he maneged to focus his anger into adept powers.
After many session where he eventually had gathered a lot of Karma, seeing his Street Sam buddies become better with purchased cyberware, and himself reaching the maximum allowed skill levels allowed in that game, and have tried finding someone who could teach him some adept stuff, 5 game sessions worth, just not exactly the way the GM wanted, he also expects that we use all our personal knowledge to figure things out, not just our Charactes, meaning since my character knew nothing about magic and the magic community i could not find noone to teach me.

Now also you must know since my character was strugling with his inner rage, and actually wasn't interested in doing good deeds, and his buddies had been pretty nasty to him in a few session. Then suddenly the Ultimate Bad guys show up and offer me to become initiate, during the initiation he was placed with a choice that to actually initiate he had to kill an innocent person. I actually concidered it a while, but decided that everything that had happened was enough and my character to the step to the "Dark" side.

Now keeping that in mind, a few game sessions later, our group are given to job to escort a crate to a corp building in a busy downtown area. We are on the square in front of the building when this person appears demanding that we handover the crate. Our resident mage take a peek in the Astral plane at the person and turns white... "It's a Dragon he whispers"
At that point my Dark Masters ambush the crate with a Sniper shoot, damaging it, but not destroying the Egg inside (Yep, we where facing Daddy)
The GM then have my Dark master whisper in my hear "Shoot the eg", i look at the GM and do the following:
Allready holding my Ares, i look into the eyes of the Dragon/Human form, "Frag you", and fires two shots into the egg. (Rolling a huge amount of successes, with both hits, smashing the egg.)
At the point all around the table including the GM look at me with a "What-The-F****" look.
After the session my GM asked me why i did it. I just looked at him and said "You told me too", then he said "But you had a choice", i just smiled and said "actually i allready made that choice during the initiation", i never stopped paying for that, and he almost ruined my lust for the Game.
The dragon offcourse went crazy, and our group where lucky to escape, we had to go underground for some while.