What about mouse shamans? My sister is playing one of those, and not because of this aspect. After I told her that the "looting everything"-part of the totem would be pretty essential, she started to take literary everything from her opponents she maybe could some time make use of, just as the totem says.
Nothing wrong with it. In my group we don't get individual karma, but she certainly would get roleplaying karma if we did.
I like to play my ape shaman in a similiar way, because he has very few equipment. Just "looted" two hold-outs and an AK-97 last run, starting to grow familiar with them(he also stole some Armanté clothing and hair shampoo!).

The analogy I've been using is that the GM is the guy responsible for ordering the pizza.

He asks everyone what they want, receives potentially incompatible answers and/or indecision, and then he orders the pie based off the best compromise he can come up with. From week to week, he might vary the toppings a bit to keep as many people happy as possible, but for the most part the typical configuration is established.

If someone decides the compromises aren't good enough for them, they leave, and the potential topping combinations change. If a new person shows up, the dynamic changes yet again.

In any case, the odds are good that no one is going to be offered exactly the pizza that they want at any given time. The point is the social gathering, though, so everyone should either learn to compromise or go eat elsewhere.

I thought it was about making it how everyone wants it.

Actually, it's about both. The trick is that the two goals are usually incompatible.

I didn't say "everyone else". 'Everyone' includes the GM. But, agreed on what you're saying.

Plus they don't seem to know jack about the character they're ripping o... "emulating."

Words to live by.

That would be an example of the 'stick approach'.
Why do you feel the 'stick' approach superior to the 'carrot' approach

Odd. I break the game doing stupid things for fun not because I'm a munchkin, but because I'm a looney. I tend to play characters who are happy-go-lucky and like to ride by the seat of their pants.

That said, that certainly doesn't invalidate the point, it's still the player's fault, and it still tends to get people killed, but it isn't because I want to be a super-ninja. I just enjoy playing too much

It's not a matter of stick vs. carrot. It's a matter of in character vs. in rules. I'd rather handle a problem using the game world than the game system whenever possible.

There are plenty of ingame carrots available to stop killing. Some employers pay more for deathless runs, your reputation as a professional is higher, and you're more likely to get the hard jobs (i.e. those that require more than body count and therefor pay more).

In my experience, the use of both sticks and carrots increases the value of each. Sort of a good-cop/bad-cop thing.

My group reacts better to sticks than carrots, lol.

Really depends on the game and the group. If you're basically running a splatterpunk game, having 1-2 characters die a session wouldn't be that out there, and the players know what they're getting into...

I've had the death of my character become the most memorable part of a campaign. Well not the death, but the subsiquent Reincarnation (3e campaign).

You see my PC was this Dwarf that was deluded in thinking he was actually an Elf that had been raised by Dwarves. He was a mage. He carried a sword and used a longbow whenever it possible even though he had skill in neither. He also wore prosthetic pointy ears in a way that it was most painfully obvious they were fakes. He went on and on about his elven birthright and such.

Then he died. Then the party Druid Reincarnated him. If you don't know the spell it has this little chart of 15 different possibilities based off a d100 roll. The Druid player rolls it and BAM! Elf. He had always been an Elf on the inside afterall. Thus that character's death and rebirth entered the hallowed halls of our group's collective mythology and took his place among the ranks of the campaign definers.

Unfortunately he also became a she and that pretty much broke their brain. Campaign wrapped up shortly after that and I never played him/her again.


I've seen even deaths be great and a lot of fun for all involved if the PC doesn't go before his time or quietly or meekly into that dark night, but with flair and valour and righteous coolness. Preferable with pyrotechnics.

blakkie's rule of thumb: Don't play any PC you don't think you can stand to see die. When a PC reaches that point retire him.

I disagree if you're talking about having them all run the same game you run. IME, letting everyone in our group GM a session created a false impression in their minds that they understood the game and the game system. From that point on, I couldn't run a session without someone bitching about something I wasn't doing "right", when all that was going on was me interpreting things as I saw them and adjudicating thusly. We couldn't do one argument-free session, because they all thought they knew the system and/or the setting well enough to argue it.

(Edit: Before anyone tries the "did you talk to them about it" approach, the answer is "constantly and it did no good.")

If you're saying "let them GM something to see how tough it is", then I agree wholeheartedly. I would simply advise that you have them pick a different system that the one you typically run.

The big problem here is, min/maxing experts and good roleplayers are not mutually exclusive. I've seen game-breaking players who'd destroy entire campaigns even if you handed them the most restricted character possible. And I've seen lots of excellent gamers who simply happen to like high-powered tactics. I am seriously reluctant to hammer on a good player who's found a break in the rules-- if he brings more fun into the game, then it's a problem with the ruleset, not the player.

I can see that we have different approaches to GMing. I come from a world of "Player's Guide" and "GM's Guide", where it's expected that the GM knows the system better than the players. Not only is it expected, but in my experience, it makes for a better game, because rather than bitching that you aren't giving them their negative one to TN for having freckles on a Tuesday, they're rolling dice and playing their character.

In short, all of them have GM'd other systems before. They should know the pain, and be able to keep it in mind as players. All but one have now GM'd at least one session (if not more) of SR. It is now impossible to run a SR game for them. I could type out a long-winded example of recent game experience to further illustrate what I'm referencing, but doing so would get away from the "universal approach" method that most of these discussions expect, and into the "this specifically happened in / works for my group and probably won't work for your group" realm.

There are two main points that keep that from really being worth the effort atm:

1. DS discussions tend to be "sterile". They tend to discount the human game group element, and turn into philisophical debates that solve problems in a "perfect world" scenario, but don't actually work when applied to an average game group.

2. On DS, the attitude seems to be fairly heavily slanted toward "the player is right / the GM is just another player" attitude. I disagree with this view to my very bones, but most posters stating anything of the kind are just browbeaten with such non sequiturs as "you're just not a good GM".

I guess by "did you talk about it"-"constantly and it did no good" you ment something closer to "I told them to STFU and they won't". You are reaping what you sow. Autocratic arrogance leading to rebellion. Discounting the human game group element indeed. Flat out discounting the humans.

Well good luck.

EDIT: BTW I've been in the world of "Player's Guide" and "GM's Guide" too, and found it bankrupt. Because there is 1 brain on one side of the screen, and 3 or more brains on the other side. I should call it something past arrogance to expect that you will always know more about the rules and recall it each time better than all of the all players put together. Unless you are playing with real drooling morons incapable of memory retention and recall, which would beg the question why do that? All this much more so in a game system where there is no such divide of books, or inane "players are forbidden to read these rules" malarky.

One good way to do that is to see where they spend their karma and the "trimmings" bought at character creation. See an odd Knowledge Skill? A curious Negative/Positive Quality? A Skill that seems oddball for the character? Ask the player why that is there? Not as an inquisition hunt for the inproperly built character, but as a way understand the strengths, goals, and outlook of the character that the player intended. Then build obstacles to really challenge them on that.

Players don't need to write down a background, it's encoded right there on the character sheet already. Contacts are a goldmine for this kind of stuff. They are built in hooks. Which is why I encourage to give 'free' contact points as per the sole house rule in my character generator (see my sig). Hooks baby. A real Trojan gift those contact points are.

If they aren't use to questions like that, and maybe they built their character just as a collection of unrelated numbers then encourage the player to figure out what kind of character they really built . Give them some time and then ask them again.

Another excellent way is to ask them questions along the line of "so what kind of game are you looking for?" and "what is your character interested in?". Even better is listening to the incharacter requests of what they are looking for.

Are you always going to be able to provide exactly what they are looking for? I highly doubt it. It is a matter of integrating it all in, and stuff needs to get mushed around for that.

Hear! Hear!

Epecially for encouraging "roleplaying". Karma for roleplaying is my pet peve. Reward player roleplaying with character crunchie numbers? A pretty flower that smellls baaaad.

The problem begins with your premise being so broad that it's useless. Yes, the players want to have fun, but what if one player has fun by randoming killing other PCs? Well then we have a conflict, and no matter what, ONE player is not having as much fun as he could.

Players want to see their characters advance/achieve. I'm not sure about this. I know that karma/XP alone isn't the motivation for half the players I encounter. I regularly have to remind my wife to spend her XP so she doesn't die in combat due to power imbalances. She simply doesn't really care. Why would giving her more XP encourage her to do anything at all if she doesn't spend what she already has? She plays for the story, so all rewards need to be story rewards. This is complex when the advancement one player seeks is in direct contradiction to what another player seeks, for instance one is interested in being an uber sword fighter everyone is trying to kill because he burns down villages, and the other is trying to get elected president. Even though I can reward both characters, rewarding one is generally at the cost to another.

Players want control of their actions - this too is not always true. Many players don't care a whit about what their character does in combat or in a social situation or whatever, they just want to survive it so they can get back into whats interesting. I have had players (and I myself have been tempted) who just handed their characters over to GM control and said 'do whatever you think is best, I'm going to go read a book.'


So for a group of people who are all interested in karma, your ideas work. For a group of people who all want karma and enjoy combat, it works better. For a group of people who, some like combat and spend karma, some like social interactions and need to be reminded to spend karma, and some just like to goof around and bend their karma into balloon animals, your suggestions are, unfortunately, of limited use without being broadened in their applicability.

Ok, I misread some of your statements.

Although, re-reading it all, I do wonder what exactly the point of this thread is. The way I understood it, and maybe it's just me here, was that you're saying "player problems are easy to fix, so no need to discuss it". And, as we pointed out and I think you seem to agree, using in-game logic to curtail bad behaviour is preferable, and that's not always easy to think of, hence the need to ask people what they think.

So.. what are we talking about here?

I never really noticed that, but now that you mention maybe there is a new surge of it in the SR4 forum. I guess I'm just so use to seeing it on the main SR forum that it just blew right past me.

My players aren't bad just new to the game and world.
Like all good gamers they picked up the mechanics well but the world beyond them is somewhat of a mystery for them at the moment.