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MrSandman666
Alright. I've had enough. I give up, where's my white flagß There, that handkerchief will do...

Seirously? How on earth is a GM to go about his job to create a good and enjoyable game while staying sane and having something like a life?

As a GM you're supposed to know ALL the rules or else your players (who know only the rules concerning their character) will use them against you. Most of the time it's not even malicious. It's just that they know their stuff and they're good at what they're doing. In order to be match for them, however, I must know all that stuff as well or they'll bust my plans. This means I have to know all the possibilites of about four or five character classes.

As a GM you're supposed to know any run by heart (and preferably two or three runs at once, in case you finish early or the players decide to simply not accept a job that looks a bit daunting). You're also supposed to change the run on the fly as the action unfolds, improvise and rewrite and STILL keep it a great story with balanced opposition that is challenging but not overpowering. Of course ideally you shouldn't plan a run at all in order to not railroad the players. But then again you have to make sure that every player is equally involved and always has something to do (in the game!) and gets his five minutes of fame.

As a GM you're supposed to be able to know every scene in deepest detail, have maps and everything ready for handout (or at least in you head, so you can scetch them during the game). You're supposed to populate every scene with fleshed out NPCs, each with a distinct character and personality, of course with full stats and equipment lists. You're also supposed to come up with the interiors of every building the runners decide to stumble into, no matter whether it was planned or not.

How am I supposed to do all this? You need a supercomputer or two to do all this stuff!
I'm sorry, I'm a bit bitter right now. I mean, for some reason I never get to play. I'm not complaining. Not really. I mean, yeah, it would be nice to play every now and then but i can play online. And until recently I did like to GM. But the real reason I'm always GMing is probably because I'm the only Shadowrun GM I know. Of course I could go out and try to find people in stores, but I've had some bad experience with that. I find it more enjoyable to play with my pals.
Anyways, I'm disgressing... Where was I...
O yeah, how am I supposed to do all this stuff? I would have to do this as a fulltime job in order to be able to read all the books, learn everything there is to know about the sixth world, know about all the rules, have enough runs and NPCs at hand in order to improvise and get enough practise to be a halfway decent GM. Unfortunately, nobody pays me for that kind of stuff!!!

My whole point in this post is:
How do YOU do this? Fellow GMs, please help me out! What is the solution? How do you manage to deliver an enjoyable game? Are you an Immortal Elf who has all the time he wants? Are you a millionaire so that you don't have to work and can devote all your time to studying Shadowrun? Are you an AI on a huge mainframe?
Help! Please!
IcyCool
Well you see, all of that comes straight from the RDB. wink.gif

But if your RDB isn't very populated try using some gaming aids. An NPC file, stock maps (Sprawl Sites?), a love for the game and great players. If you can get 3 out of 4 of those, you'll be all set.
Crusher Bob
Hmm...

When starting a new system, I'll see what people want to play and assign them the task of learning the rules for that as in depth as possible. So when I need to know about combat (or whatever) I turn to the right player and get them to help with the system elements.

Another thing I try to do is collect 'seeds', things that I see of think up, or hear on the news, or whatever... if I think that I could do something with that as GM, then I'll try to file it away for later use. This helps you have a pool of idea to draw on when tryin to come up with a new adventure (or change one on the fly).

When comming up with an adventure, I'll mark the page refs that contain the rules for anything that is 'supposed to happen' in the adventure. If I expect a car chase then I'll make a note that the rules for car chases are on p XX, if I expect some sneaking, I write down that the rules for stealth are on p YY, and so on. Since not every rules is used every adventure, this helps reduce your 'cache miss rate' when it comes to using the rules.

One of the simplest ways to make the opposition balanced is to simply not tell the players everything about the opposition (if possible). They know that they are going to be fighting a whole gang in the upcomming fight. But they might not know that a lot of the gang is doped-up (and thus has pain reistance -3) or is on a really bad trip (most start with moderate stun). This means that the opposiition is scaled on the fly to match the status of the party.

Don't be afraid to de-rail the game if the players become interested in something else (like buying the 200 year old eyeore-like cargo loading bots out of bondage) silly.gif.

The 'five minutes' thing can be a bit harder, the simplest way is to spend a few minutes before hand thinks about how to make something available for a player to have their five minutes, but not flesh it out too much before hand... sample: we 5 talking guy, fighting guy, decking guy. I have though (a little bit, anyway) about how to solve the problems in any of these three different ways, then try to offer the characters the choice of how to solve them, ideally they make their own 5 min after that.
Drain Brain
QUOTE (IcyCool)
Well you see, all of that comes straight from the RDB. wink.gif

But if your RDB isn't very populated try using some gaming aids. An NPC file, stock maps (Sprawl Sites?), a love for the game and great players. If you can get 3 out of 4 of those, you'll be all set.

I hate to come across as a complete muppet, and I'll probably kick myself, but... RDB?
Crusher Bob
Dunno, maybe Rouges Data Base?
DV8
Sandman, I know how you feel.

I started GMing a couple of years ago, and luckily, I knew more about the game than my players did, both rules-wise as well as universe-wise. But, quickly, the situation started to shift that the players got comfortable with their characters and the their abilities, and soon started to be a bit of an opposition for me, and they kept surprising me, and kept me sharp. You see, that's the fun part of being a GM, if you don't think that's fun then there's very little in your game to make you happy...and you play because you like it, I suppose.

Here's where a lot of people take a wrong turn; the GM's job, essentially, is to provide the story. That is, the actions and reactions of a dynamic world. And honestly, that might take a couple of hours a week to prepare, but anything more than that and you're doing too much, or you're maintaining a website like I am. You don't have to beat your players at the game, because, honestly, they have more hands to work with than you do, and in order to beat them, you must predict what they'll do, which every GM will be able to tell you, is never going to work. smile.gif

So, again; you are to provide a sequence of events and the actions and reactions of NPCs, and together with your players, you are supposed to create a good story. If you're simply butting heads with your players than the game is most likely either frustrating for the GM or the players.
Dashifen
I usually don't plan too much for the runs. I know what's going to happen and when, but if the players go off of my track, I just improvise. I guess a background in theater and improvisational comedy probably helps with that, but since not everyone can have those, my suggestion is to just make the NPCs act like you think you would. Most of us are probably average people -- average intelligence, average height, average build, etc -- and therefore the average person in a shadowrun game might act as we would.

Or, make up NPCs "archetypes." Mine are typically the drunk, the johnson, the guard, the elite guard, the normal, etc. Each of these types of characters usually act about the same way. Therefore, when you have a new NPC, decide which of your archetypes that new NPC fits and then you have a basic way of deciding how they will act.

Lastly, let the players worry about their five minutes of fame. I do my best to make legwork necessary on my runs -- the johnson never hands out all of the necessary information but rather just enough to get the players started. Then it's up to them to figure out how to do it. By giving them the control, they will inevitably create their 5 minutes of fame -- or more.

For example, one of my players is playing a character that seems to like going off on his own and getting into trouble. He's been implicated in a break-in attempt and the mauling of a guard therein as well as seen at the location of a major accident involving the deaths of three people. This character is off on his own creating his own fame. The others, on the other hand, are creating their own fame by becoming an integral part of the run. The face works hard to avoid combat and talk her way through things, the decker's forte has so far been in legwork, but he'll get the chance for overwatch soon, the fighters almost always get their moments eventually if they're patient enough.

I guess my point there is that as a GM, don't force everyone to have 5 minutes of fame, let them worry about it. When you start forcing a storyline just so that everyone has a good time, you run the risk of making it so that no one has a good time. Further, you may not always know how someone will react to your planned 5 minutes and may want to do it a different way. These two points, I think, make it hard to pull of planned 5 minutes.

And last I'll leave you with this; some famous guy said it:

I can't give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: try to please everyone.

-- Dash --
Drain Brain
I was thinking along those lines as I was trying to guess, but then Icy Cool goes on to list an NPC file as a gaming aid... so I discounted such a thing...


Oh masterful Sir Cool of Icedom, please gift thine knowledge to us!
MrSandman666
QUOTE

When starting a new system, I'll see what people want to play and assign them the task of learning the rules for that as in depth as possible. So when I need to know about combat (or whatever) I turn to the right player and get them to help with the system elements.


Well, the problem is: I can't really ask them "What kind of rating would his hitzamagoogle need to be at in order to outmatch you?", right?
Of course I can ask them if I don't know which dice to roll when but I have to know the rules myself in order to come up with the numbers and know them a bit better than just hearing a quick run-over from one of my players. Plus: this really interupts the gameflow.

QUOTE

Another thing I try to do is collect 'seeds', things that I see of think up, or hear on the news, or whatever... if I think that I could do something with that as GM, then I'll try to file it away for later use. This helps you have a pool of idea to draw on when tryin to come up with a new adventure (or change one on the fly).


Good! I might need to start doing that as well. Of course, every now and then I find something and think "Hey, this might be a neat idea for SR!" But I ususally don't write it down right then and there. (and my memory is REALLY bad)
Another problem might be that most things I see or come up with qualifiy for a completely seperate run or even a complete campaign. Hard to have something to patch in when a run needs to be rearranged. I guess this comes with experience... sad thing I get my group together only relatively few times due to busy schedules and relationsips (I know, never take a couple into the group... not if I had a great pool to choose from). Anyway, at the rate we are playing, I won't be getting any experience any time soon.

QUOTE

When comming up with an adventure, I'll mark the page refs that contain the rules for anything that is 'supposed to happen' in the adventure. If I expect a car chase then I'll make a note that the rules for car chases are on p XX, if I expect some sneaking, I write down that the rules for stealth are on p YY, and so on. Since not every rules is used every adventure, this helps reduce your 'cache miss rate' when it comes to using the rules.


Good idea! I'll try that. If I have time I might also go over some of those roles previous to the run. However, knowing myself I can predict that I won't have any time before the game (I'm always late).
Problem: You never know what's going to happen. Don't railroad the characters, rememer? What if they take a different approach than what I intentended? But then again, you can never make it perfect, right?

QUOTE

One of the simplest ways to make the opposition balanced is to simply not tell the players everything about the opposition (if possible). They know that they are going to be fighting a whole gang in the upcomming fight. But they might not know that a lot of the gang is doped-up (and thus has pain reistance -3) or is on a really bad trip (most start with moderate stun). This means that the opposiition is scaled on the fly to match the status of the party.


I know. Adjust the opposition on the fly. I do that all the time, when GMing. The problem I have with this is that I have to know how to adjust correctly in order to keep it balanced. What advantages or disadvantages I should give out to make it fair. Again, takes a great deal of knowledge, creativity and experience to make it work. It's hard.

QUOTE

Don't be afraid to de-rail the game if the players become interested in something else (like buying the 200 year old eyeore-like cargo loading bots out of bondage) .


But I am! I come up with this great run, which I am really proud off, and all of a sudden the players decide to toss it and I have to come up with something completely different on the spot! It usually takes me quite some effort to get into the right mindset for a certain run. I go through it in my head, talk to the NPCs, try to imagine different situations and possibilities and try to envision myself playing it as a player.
Changing my mindset so radically just doesn't happen like this. Or is there a trick?

QUOTE

The 'five minutes' thing can be a bit harder, the simplest way is to spend a few minutes before hand thinks about how to make something available for a player to have their five minutes, but not flesh it out too much before hand... sample: we 5 talking guy, fighting guy, decking guy. I have though (a little bit, anyway) about how to solve the problems in any of these three different ways, then try to offer the characters the choice of how to solve them, ideally they make their own 5 min after that.


And here comes the problem again of staying flexible and not railroading the character. You can't really plan things like that. The group comes up with ideas and after the run people complain "Well, you're runs are always oriented in this or that direction. I never get to do anything cool." This holds especially true when the player decided to ditch my planning again (which they are legitimate to do).

The players really demand a lot from a GM. Don't get me wrong, I can understand all these demands. I would love to play with a GM capable of doing all this. Hell, I would love to be a GM like this!
MrSandman666
QUOTE (DV8)
Sandman, I know how you feel.

Thank you so much DV8! This is what exactly what I needed to hear! smile.gif


Other than that: Thanks a lot to every one else! Great suggestions! Actually, I didn't even expect to get so much positive input! Thanks guys!

However, don't regard this as a final post! Keep it coming!

I probably have to get some priorities straight. I tend to demand a lot from myself.
Maybe I should loosen up a bit...
Siege
Not really a trick, but be willing to improvise on the fly. To that end, you might keep maps of various locations, quickie thugs and so on.

That way you can have stats and numbers ready to deploy on a moment's notice.

You might also consider carrying a cheap notepad and pen around with you -- I used to do it all the time while I was working retail, but I still find it useful for jotting down notes and miscellanious stuff.

-Siege
Crusher Bob
Best practice your I'm not a terrorist speach too, if your notes are going to includes things like:

'... blow up...' '...poison guard dogs...' '...sneak in though air vents...' :sigh:

Remember that you can also 're-cycle' unused adventures, that quick foray though the sewers that was not used in adventure 2 can be revamped and used in adventure 5 instead.
Omega Dragon
What seems to work for me is to not plan much more then a thin red line.

Before i start a campaign i ask my players what kind of chars they want to play and in what kind of setting. I combine that with my own thoughts and ideas (I usually don't give them exactly what they want right away, but i give them the opportunities to get it if they work for and towards it). Based on this i create a red line. This also ensures a common view on the world, and creates a world that both the gm and the players feel good about.

In my current campaign my players wanted something like the fast and the furious, gone in 60 seconds etc. I wanted to gm a low power ganger campaign.

So I tuned down the chargen rules, point system, max attr 3, no cyber, no magic no cash etc (magic can be gained (awaken) later in the game, although players have to say they it, and how they want it, at the start. Thus its gained my (personal) runs, cash etc much like cyber.

Right now my players are participating in streetraces and are in a conflict with a local low-class gang in renton establishing their turf / base of ops.

my group consists of one shitty street punk, a shitty driver (no vcr), a shitty car-thief and a shitty btl dealer. And I do have to say I'm blessed with some exceptionally good players.
We're all geared towards problemsolving and action combined with roleplay. Thus we get it all in the right mix (kinda worked out that way).

Now during the run all i try to do is let events happen in the world around the players that they can react to. And in return let the world react to the actions of the players.

This causes the red line of the campaign to grow and flesh out.

In between 'runs' I think of possible seeds to give them, and for bigger problems i do some thinking about how to present it to the players and think about the possible effects. But i don't plan anything out. This makes for a natural flow in the campaign, and the players feel and really do influence the world around them.

Whether problems are solved is based on legwork, strategy, teamwork and dicerolls. Roleplay adds to the flavour and the fun factor.

I don't know all the rules, sometimes my players know them better then i do. If there is a question on how things work (especially targetnumbers) I just make a ruling on the spot, based on memory, a players suggestion or whatever. rule discussion i ban until after the nights run is over. If things turn out differently we'll just know it for the next time. And in some cases that dont influence the story we can always make some ajustments.

I have a bad memory as wel, and that combined with this kind of playing leads to sometimes leaving loose ends etc. But that has not been a problem so far.
Mistakes will happen, thats ok, you will make them as a gm, your players will make them in char. so what
if your not capable of making mistakes your not capable of doing anything.


The main thing while playing shadowrun is having fun!
Don't be afraid to make mistakes and experiment with different ways of gm'ing.
That way you will develop your a form of play that will suit you and your players best. Also ask your players for feedback. (that doesnt mean you have to do everything they suggest, but its good to keep in mind)

Anyway this is pretty much how things work out here, hope it helps.


Moon-Hawk
We all know how you feel, Sandman. We feel for you, we really do.
Y'know, every group has their own style, that come from the GM, the players, and the interactions between them. Different groups focus more on different things, so there's no single key to GM success, but we'll try to keep feeding suggestions.
I've got a couple of groups, and they're great. They're both really great, so I'll tell you what works for us.
First, the five minutes of fame. It goes two ways, you can give them five minutes of fame, and you can let them have it. Let me explain: To give it, it starts at chargen. Help encourage them to make interesting characters. In my games, the more interesting your character is, the more plot hooks and adventures are going to revolve around them. The characters with the better backgrounds will have more in-game tie-ins to their backgrounds. My players know this, and make interesting characters. They learned that if they make a character who's background is:
"His family is dead. He devotes his whole life to training with weapons. He has no friends. He is a stone-cold killer."
Then they're not going to have any cool adventure stuff revolve around them, because that character bores the GM to tears. So right there, good character backgrounds should give you dozens of ideas. Such as: "Oh, his little sister, who he loved very dearly, died three years ago, so I'll mjake the person that they have to bodyguard for the next three runs be the same age girl, and look kind of like her" Stuff like that.
Second, the way to let them have their five minutes. It is SO frustrating to players, when they say they want their character to do something or talk to someone (that doesn't have anything to do with the immediate plot) and the GM says, "Okay, sure, whatever, you do that. Anyway, back to my adventure." Admittedly, you can't always drop what you're doing to spend 20 minutes going into detail about them talking to a contact about something peripheral, often because the players have ideas like this at the MOST inappropriate times in the adventure. But you can stall. You can ask them if they need to do this now, or can wait for a better time. This gives you a chance to think about it for a few minutes. Cripes, if you're really caught like a deer in headlights, claim you have to take a dump and go think about it for five minutes. biggrin.gif The point is, when the player wants their character to do something, that's sort of a hint that this could be important to the way they want to develop their character, and it deserves a little personality. It's can be a bit of a hastle, but trust me, the ideas you'll get for it make up for it. Suddenly you have whole adventures spawned from the things that the players came up with for their characters, and they'll REALLY get into them.
One more thing, and then I'll shut up. My groups are wonderfully unpredictable. I gave up trying to figure out what they'd do, 'cause it all ended up being useless anyway. Now I spend that same time on fleshing out the situation. The NPCs' motivations and such, and then whatever they do, I just have to react in what is the obvious way. The reactions are obvious, if you've figured out the personalities and motivations of the key NPCs.
As far as having to know all the rules, I don't know what to tell you. It's a slitch. I do know all the rules, so I don't really have any help. Sorry.
The most important thing is that you care. You care enough to ask us, and so that alone tells me that you're a good GM.
Happy gaming. (that wasn't one more thing, was it?)
MrSandman666
QUOTE (Moon-Hawk)
We all know how you feel, Sandman.  We feel for you, we really do.

<snip>

QUOTE (Moon-Hawk)

The most important thing is that you care.  You care enough to ask us, and so that alone tells me that you're a good GM.


embarrassed.gif

I love you! I really do! All of you Dumpshockers, for your great support, but especially you, Moon-Hawk, for saying/writing this!
IcyCool
QUOTE (Drain Brain)
I was thinking along those lines as I was trying to guess, but then Icy Cool goes on to list an NPC file as a gaming aid... so I discounted such a thing...


Oh masterful Sir Cool of Icedom, please gift thine knowledge to us!

Sorry Drain, I'm at work so my response time is drastically slowed.

As to your first question:

The RDB™ - The GM's last bastion of defense against player ingenuity! (RDB stands for Rectal Database) When the players throw you a fastball, you pull something out of your ass to deal with it. While this sounds simple, the only way to develop this is via practice. Fortunately, if you are a GM, you get quite a bit of practice.

As to the curiosity about a NPC file, it's right along the lines of what Dashifen was talking about with "NPC archetypes". I often start with an archetype, and they sometimes develop into full fledged named NPC's. That's when they go into the file (which is just a box of 3x5 cards, alphabetized via name of course).

The suggestion of seeds is also a good one. Might I suggest BlackJack's shadowrun page for "101 Adventure ideas" and his list of 500 or so NPC's?

The one thing I would not suggest is writing up a huge "adventure" before hand. Get a general idea of what NPC's they are likely to encounter, maybe a map, and some general goals. Then pull the rest of the run from the RDB. That way you can have multiple "frameworks" floating around in your head, and if the runners shoot down one run, you'll have some backup.
Jpwoo
1. Don't worry about the rules so much. This will get better with time.

2. Sometimes your characters dump the run you had planned and do something else. Use email to help set up the job. Send in character emails to the players who are likely to respond, and let them pick and choose. Offer them several jobs that you have vauge ideas about, and when they agree to one, you can flesh it out for when you meet face to face. If they start dumping these runs tell them it is bad for their rep and it pisses you off.

3. The SR world is huge and full of crazyness, you don't have to keep up with all of it. That would be a waste of time. Read what you want. and if you enjoy it keep it.

4. If you are still feeling overwhealmed, eliminate a 'class' No deckers, or no mages, until you are more comfortable with the rules as a whole.

5. try and find published adventures. These will help you gain in confidence and normaly they are pretty good. You can find them on the cheap too in the used bins at games and comic stores.

Have fun. and if you stay frustrated. stop playing for a while. This is enjoyment
MrSandman666
Thanks again!

Another question:
How do you go about improvising uilding maps without repeating yourself after the fourth or fifth building and especially how do you go about creating special buildings that you don't really know much about?
Crusher Bob
Hint #1 include bathrooms
Hint #2 include fire exits
Hint #3 Get several furniture catalogs

You can also try getting a 'home finder' or similar, since it often includes maps of houses and apartments. You can also practice doing some maps with graph paper and cut-out furniture, so that you have a bit better idea of how places end up laid out (no getting stuck between your desk and the wall, room enough for chairs). Don't forget to include room for trolls (or not, as the case may be)..
michaelius
First, i just stumbled across this forum and this topic is AWESOME! it should be sticky or something so all new GMs get to read it. Anyhow...

in addition to all the other cool advice that's been given, a tactic that i just put into use was starting before the character became a shadowrunner. i have a player who wanted a character whose limbs had been cut off by the yaks and he was bent on revenge. i thought that would be really cool to play out, so we started about three years before it happened and played through the dismemberment. it was AWESOME, if i do say so myself (he liked it too). now granted, this is a single player scenario, but it creates so much background characters by its very nature.

i also find that while i'm commuting (on a train, not in a car) i just think about the adventure and envision it in my mind. i may not have to have everything written down, but getting a picture in my head works really well for me.

and most of all, let go of the story. if we, as GMs, try to manhandle it too much it will sound forced. but really, plenty of great stories will tell themselves if you let them. draw from your own experience. if they decide to go to the grocery store (or soymart...whatever) then pull from one you've been to and jazz it up a little. keep it simple. provide as much detail as they want. and really, if they need to know what the checkout girl looks like and it doesn't matter, then say she's average, blah blah blah. if they need to know what color the wall is, make it up. i'm the kind of player who is always asking really banal questions about my surroundings cause i'm always thinking of weird crap to pull. so, when they ask a super weird question, just ask yourself "What color is the floor?" and tell them what you answer. it usually is that easy.

woof
michaelius
buildings also get pulled from my real life. i use my office building or the law firm i temped at or my school or the theater i used to work at...see?

woof
joe12south
I'm not even GM'ing yet and I feel your pain. I'm in the prep. phase for my first attempt at GM'ing. To make things worse, I haven't even played in 10+ years.

In the process of re-educating myself I was terribly surprised at the dearth of computer/online tools to make the mechanics of gameplay easier. It's just ludicrous that in this day and age we should actually have to remember all of the rules, all of the interactions, etc. Now, I'm not discounting the effort it would take to build such a system for a game as complex as Shadowrun, but it is eminently doable. Imagine how much fun GM'ing (and playing for that matter) would be if you were free to concentrate on the roleplaying, not whether you are screwing-up a roll.

The Shadowrun Tracker character generation program is a good example of what can be done. Sure its interface is a little rough around the edges but it *really* makes that one aspect of game play so much easier. Better, really, because you can experiment in a way that would be too tedious on paper.

My own little contribution is going to be a "semi-smart", Shadowrun specific combat map. It will track and display position, direction, line of site, range of motion (walking and running,) stun and physical damage, a combat turn clock and a dice roller (of course.) Version 1.0 should be ready in the next week or two. If anyone is interested in testing it, send me a PM.
MrSandman666
Homefinder... Nice one!

What interests me most are special facilities. Mainly the ones most of us have never set a foot in. Like an R&D department or so... Appartment houses and offices are the easiest.
Corp facilities are hard to do after you're through your third or fourth. They all start looking the same and it gets boring.
MrSandman666
As for computer tools, I'm still waiting for usefull ones to come out (of course, NSRCG is already very usefull and I use it all the time). In the meanwhile, I'm planning on writin my own little tool for that. Let's see whether I can do it. I'm a little out of shape and don't have that much time to spare.

And taking ideas from real life: sure, I do that, too. The most obvious way to get ideas for buildings (and people, too, by the way). However, I've been only to so many office buidlings and only so many corporate holdings. And I've actually never been to a corporate R&D facility. How do I come up with different plans if I don't really have any experience or floorplans to foot it on?
Runner Smurf
My couple of cents:

1. I know how you feel. GMing a SR game is 10 times more work than a D&D game. Between the "downtime" activities issue, feeding players information about the game world, coming up with stories, contacts, obscure activities by characters...I feel your pain.

2. Rules issues: Cheat. Blatantly if your players start complaining that you aren't following the rules, quietly if you can't. SR has three basic rolling mechanics: Open, Success, Opposed Success. Make up the target numbers - screw looking at the tables except for a rough idea of where to go. If something is hard, make the TN 6, really hard make it 8, or whatever. 10 times out of 10, your gut instinct for how hard something is going to be is going be close. As long as you are fair, your players won't care. Trying to be exact will slow things down to a crawl, which makes the game no fun at all.

3. Cheat sheets: I have cheat sheets made up for most of the major rules sections that outline how the rules work. Sure, it has tables on it, but I mostly use them to remind me of how the process works for a thing, as opposed to working out the detailed target numbers. I have a sheet for IC, a sheet for metamagics, a sheet for vehicle stuff (and frankly, the Rigger rules are so complex, cheating is the only way to run it at a sufficient speed). I have them on hand at all times - I've glued them over the pages in the GM's screen.

4. Prep Work: The more the merrier. I write down the stats for NPCs, critters and vehicles on 3x5 cards. All the rules I need to know I scratch down on the card as well (what the powers do, cyberware, spell notes, etc.). It's a bit of a pain at first (anywhere from 5 to 10 cards for a given evening), but pretty soon you have a goodly sized number of NPCs and things to draw on at short notice. Use the Renraku sec guards for all your sec guards with only the slightest changes. I also make it a habit to re-read one section of the rules (Matrix combat, crash tests, etc.) the night before a game, particularly if I know it might apply.

5. Lie: It's amazing how easily you can fake out the players. If you know a rule is really complex, flip through the book for a few seconds, roll some dice, scratch something down on some paper. They will assume you are doing something complex...while what you may be doing is trying to figure out how the hell to salvage the encounter. I used to get called all the time for not rolling NPC drain - roll a bunch of dice, pretend to count them, assign the drain you think is appropriate...and nobody bats an eye.

6. Railroad: Do not be so terrified of it that you don't do it when you need to. But when you railroad, be honest about it. If the team is about to go off the deep end of what you are prepared for or know anything about (the "Why don't we move to London?" syndrome) admit it, and say, "Look, if you go that way we're going to have to stop for the night. You really want to go this way. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Most players are surprisingly good natured and understanding about such matters. Especially when you have a player (like I do) who is constantly trying to diverge from the group and go somewhere else entirely - "Look, you can go do that, but you'll pretty much be out of the rest of the game if you do. Sorry, but I can't really do both at the same time. Are you sure you want to go to Tir Tairngire while everyone is doing the run in Atlanta?"

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. A bit cynical I suppose, but it's how I've managed to keep my game running. I still want to pull out my hair sometimes, but it's worth it.

If you want copies of my cheat sheets or matrix host generators or whatever, send me an email. I'd be glad to share.

- Runner Smurf
Reaver
Hi Sandman;

As a GM myself, I share your pain.

One of the first things I can offer is organization. Keep yourself organized so that you can pull things out of your arse. I've had to sit down and make forms for myself just to help me keep track of in game and out of game info. And it works if you keep it all in check (that's a chore in itself). As an example, right now I've got one characters past catching up to her with a vengeance, and I have been able to provide suspense and emotional content because I've kept all that info and kept it organized. biggrin.gif

On the subject of info, keep every tidbit you can on your players. That run they did forty runs ago that screwed over so-and-so... have it come back to haunt them. If you can keep all that info in a binder at your fingertips, the spider-web plots will develop all on thier own sometimes.

As for fly-by-seat, that only comes with practice. Players are often going to find ways to screw up your most well laid plans. I've experienced that many a time. If you have time (yea, that probably happens a lot) try to have multiple different plans just in case. I can't say I always get the opportunity to do it, but when you can sometimes it pays off. Even if you don't use those back-ups, it still gives you practice thinking of alternate plans.

Don't cut the players any slack in the Shadowrun world. If they start turning down runs you have planned, make it hit thier rep. All of the sudden they are getting lower pay runs and can't meet thier operating costs because they started refusing runs. The Shadowrun world should be unforgiving, especially when you need to enforce certain directions.

Finally, delegate. I offer players in my group an extra karma point if they write a detailed summary of the run they did. This helps me keep that data I was talking about earlier. I just tack those to my form for the run that has all my notes. For me it's helpful when I turn around and make the run into a story for my website. I'm getting to the point where I'm going to need a filing cabinet. wink.gif My biggest point, find ways to get the players to take some of the load off of you... without giving them an unfair advantage.

Hopefully some of this helps. Good luck. wink.gif
Moon-Hawk
Good call Reaver! Organization. (good call to everyone else who said organization, too) One of the best things I ever did was started keeping a 3-ring binder for every major campaign. It's even kinda organized. It includes all the information I have about every NPC. Few of them are complete, but this way when I make them up as I go along, I never have to do it twice and don't have to worry about contradicting myself. It also has a couple of timelines. One of them is a "projected timeline" with approximate times for when I want important things in the campaign to happen, and the other is the actual timeline, so I can keep track of important events. I also have accurate calendar pages from 2060-2063. Players like to know what day of the week it is, and for some reason mine like for it to be accurate. (I don't know why) I also have every adventure that they've done, in order, in the binder. Each one has all of my notes that I made before the adventure in there. One shot NPC's go here, recurring ones go in the other section, but you never know when they're going to call one of their old contacts up, and it really helps the story if you can recall little details about them, and have notes regarding what the contacts think of the PCs. Contacts are reputation are big in my campaign, they're always trying to get more, and they often find really clever ways to use them. The adventure section also includes the scrap note pages that I have. For the most part, each adventure has a page at the end full of scrawled numbers that is completely unintelligible, but every so often there's a gem in there that I'd never have imagined I'd want again. It starts to turn into a bit of a tangled mess, but here's the really cool part. I name all of my adventures. It doesn't matter what, the players almost never hear the names ('cause they usually give away too many clues) but they help ME remember what happened. Write the name of the adventure on the top of your note pages. Combine that with your timeline, and it looks an awful lot like a table of contents. Suddenly this horrible jumble of note pages becomes a very handy reference document.
Runner Smurf: Regarding lying about drain rolls and stuff: Yeah, that's a good trick. But keep it fair. I do that most often when it's very important to the plot, or when it's a big combat and I'm overwhelmed, but keep it realistic. I say this because I have played under GM's who did this sort of thing too much, and with NO regard for probability, and very little regard for possibility.
Another similar trick is to be a little bit keeping track of combat pools. I tend to note whether someone has used "none", "a little", "most", "all" with little mnemonic symbols and then estimate about how big I think it should be, rather than try to calculate every physical stat and pool, and bookkeep meticulously. As before, just keep it reasonable.
CanvasBack
It seems like I say this a lot, so what's once more. Get the GM screen for Shadowrun. It's very handy and it has all the basic info right there in front of you. As far as your NPCs being outclassed by the runners, I wouldn't worry about that unless your talking about special goons that you've come up with to challenge the runners. I personally think the average runner should be better than most run of the mlll doughnut eating security guards.

As GM, you have final say on character creation. Many folks like to bring all the supplements and take as many options as they can. Simply disallow this for now, get the basics down first. Define which books are in play, which options you're willing to deal with. If you don't want to deal with ghouls, otaku, or shapechangers as PCs then you simply don't have to. To make sure that special enemies aren't outclassed by the characters, you need to know every character fairly well. That means taking notes as you examine them at character creation. I don't know of a GM out there that doesn't examine starting characters in his/her campaign and that's the perfect time to get their baseline info and then keeping up with the character's improvement is relatively easy as well since they should be telling you what they want to spend their cash/karma on.

Anyway, as the GM you need to assert firm control from the beginning while at the same time being fair. The players really shouldn't have the upper hand in any situation since you define the universe by telling them what their characters see, taste, smell, feel and in some cases know during the game. So don't abandon ship just yet. cool.gif
Shadowfax
My group is insanely large making sticking to any plan almost impossible. I use a method that works well for us... I create the run idea, the places and npc's up to the introduction point, then let the players have the ball. I keep large amounts of maps and npc's on hand that have nothing to do with the run, in case they go in some odd direction, but let players tell the story... I just provide the world and flavor. I try to keep away from any preconcieved notion of how the run is going to go or how the players will react to something. I just have the world react appropriately to what they are doing and keep in mind of the plot that is going on in the background.

Kagetenshi
AI. It's all quite simple as compared to calculating pi to eighteen billion decimal places or the nine millionth prime number, really.
If that fails, though, learn to do two things:
One, accept it when your players walk right through something you didn't think of, as long as it isn't massively unbalancing in the long term.
Two, learn how to fake it.

~J
Namer18
As many people have already hinted it gets easier to GM as you go. All of those parts of the runs your players don't do add up and you end up with a good set of back up runs. I found that having a set of settings built and then letting the players interact with them seemed to be the best system for preparing, instead of really establishing a specific run from start to finish. Also, as you play you'll get to know your players and that will help in your planning. For example, I know my players when things went poorly always ran away to Denver, and they almost always wanted to take the bus, so I had a backup Denver and bus to Denver set of events. As for maps look on the internet for things and you'll be surprised what you can find. Also, you may try looking at other modern RPG source books since a building is a building no matter what system came up with the floor plan.

Namer18
danbot37
First of all-the RDB< although I've never called it that, works great. Good call on that one Icy. If I want a particular story to happen, I get a BASIC outline, and just wing it from there. I get a couple of hooks in my head, always more than one, in case they don't bite the first time, making it a personal hook to pull one in will usually pull the others in, but don't use that a lot, just when its really important.

Second of all, npcs, I personally do the important ones, and use old pcs for some, and use archetypes for unimportant ones.

Third, I used to use a palm. A dice roller that no one can else can see, notes, amp drawings, etc., I can keep it ALL on there. Takes a bit of prepwork then, inputting in all the info, but worked great when I had it. but I lost it and need to get another.. frown.gif But simplified a lot for me
MrSandman666
Hmm... the eMail notification system here at Dumpshock seems to work a little unreliably lately. Here are all those great pieces of advice and I didn't even notice it!

Organization really is a biggy, I suppose. I have yet to find a way to do that effectively but with all your advice I should manage.

As for technical helpers: I started using a laptop a few sessions ago. It hasn't proven to be very helpfull till now though, mainly due to the lack of useful programs. I mainly use it as a fancy notepad, to play music and look things up in the NSRCG.
Any other ideas what I could do with this laptop in order to make gaming more efficient?

Thanks!
Sigfried McWild
Check out the SR tracker
It should help keeping trak of things in combat.
Mystery Mantis
A tip to help keep organized and your players in line, and keep from looking through the book for clarification...
Make a "GM Guide". In this book you should make technical instructions for how to do things. Example, in mine there are things like, how to learn a new spell, and in it it has the steps to follow, including how to calculate karma. it might seem like "hey, i can jsut look that up in the book!" but here is the thing, the book, at least i think so, is not an easy read. mostly due to lack of organization and technical writing. (not a slam on SR, i already had this rant before, and no one can convince me otherwise, so please lets keep it off this guys thread. not htat anyone was going to say anything, or nothing.) anyhoo, this book puts only the info needed at the moment in your hands right then and there. no fluff, no need to pull the info from pages of description. (not that i don't like the way the book is written, i jsut wish there was a little more push towards the layout. i think that is how i meant to say that). Other things that a must for the book, house rules. lay them out for all to see!
and book is really a strong term for this. mine is just a spiral notebook that i write into. nothing really fancy.
other good things to include are...
a page with little mishap rules that keep coming up, but you can never find...
steps for how to do advanced character stuff, like initiating, and summoning (and banishing for when it goes wrong)
anything combat related that you want, but for the most part you should learn that pretty well, becuase you will do it so much (if not then makes me wonder if you misread the title of your game.... wobble.gif )
anyways, all i have left to throw in, other than improvise like hell, is to have fun. it is only a game, albeit the greatest RPG ever made!
(jsut to throw them off, roll a bunch of dice, look strait at one of them, and then don't say anything. just ask what evey one is doing. player-induced wackiness ensues!)
Jpwoo
QUOTE
Don't cut the players any slack in the Shadowrun world. If they start turning down runs you have planned, make it hit thier rep. All of the sudden they are getting lower pay runs and can't meet thier operating costs because they started refusing runs. The Shadowrun world should be unforgiving, especially when you need to enforce certain directions.


I have to say I disgree with this completely. I reward my players for turning down runs they don't want to do. Drop a Karma point on them, and the word gets out to the other Johnsons that this group doesn't do X kind of work. I had a group that turned down two wetwork jobs. Johnsons learned not to offer them assassinations. Having them turn down a job can be bad for the GM because it scraps a lot of prep, but normally prep can be recycled later.

Certain kinds of Johnsons and corps respect 'private contractors' who are picky. This also means that 1.) they don't need the work. so they must be good. and 2.) they are serious about completing the job. and 3.) they have some kind of morals or specialty that can be exploited for corp interests at a later date.

I agree that newbie shadowrunners should take whatever job they can get their hands on, but don't punish them for being picky later on.
joe12south
I have a "pre-alpha" (proof of concept) version of my online Shadowrun combat map ready for input. You can read the instructions, and link to the actual application, here:

http://shadowrun.12south.com/phpbb2/viewto...pic.php?p=42#42

Let me know what you think. It's basically a visual aid, it doesn't know much about the rules (other than how to roll dice and compute initiative and distance.) Version 1.0 will enable all users to see changes as they happen. It also might be useful even if you're playing around a table.

When finished I plan on releasing it to the public as freeware. The standalone version won't require anything other than a computer, the "online" version will require only PHP/MySQL.

BTW, v2 will attempt to incorporate the bulk of the combat rules. The goal would be for the player to decide what to do, roll his dice and the program will take care of the rest.
joe12south
Link got mangled, should be good now.
Cain
I'm going to chime in with the outline idea. Remember, as a GM, your job is to set up the situation and the world, not to micromanage every last inch of it.

Give yourself general notes on things. Go for more detail on things that won't change much (building layouts, for example) but try to keep everything general and loose. As the players act, have the world react to them in a logical fashion for them. I mean, the average sec-guard is going to see a team of hardened shadowrunners, and run screaming for backup. He's not going to stand and shoot it out, so keep it reasonable.

In a very real way, the players are the only active force in the game. Everything else is reactive; it responds to what they do (or in some cases, what they don't do). You can't plan for every eventuality, so I don't suggest trying. Instead, come up with a few general responses, and be ready with those.
Finbar
I find some key things are...

Roll the dice, behind your screen, tell them to role a soak or something, then tell them how much damage they took. they get to think their soak roll actually means something.

Never give them health level sof NPC's, always describe the wound in as descriptive a way as possible.

If you cant remember the layout of a building, either A) lie and B) make something up. Maybe this floor has two sets of toilets, who knows?

The firestairs dont open on this floor? a Pc pointed that out? nod knowingly and grin evilly, point out that thats a very valid observation.

Ask the Players what they think of the Overall plot so far and what their chars are thinking. They often come up with far more convaluted and evil plots than you. Use all of them, at once.

Cant remember a rule? Either A) look it up (i do) B)ask a player and if they dont know, say "this is a one night only rulling till i get a chance to look it up" and make a ruling that sounds fair.

Cant remember the details of the Metamagic feats? make shit up. Just because there is a list in a book, doesnt mean that sthe comprehensive list of them
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