Yeah there is that too Crush. Though one option is a time based 'lock'. It's like some safes. If you close them after a certain time of the day (Or close them at all) they cannot be opened normally until X time the next day or X# of hours or so go by.

Youl could make it so that the bomb(s) only arm afterhours or something?

I suspect a hefty dose of knock-out gas would make a little more sense, that way if something goes wrong, there are just headaches all around.

Well, there certainly are a good number of mentions of gas traps in the various books covering corp security. Though a supprising number of them at least hint of using far more lethal things, such as Seven-7 while others might use Neurostun

A hefty dose of knock-out gas is only slightly less lethal than a hefty dose of kill-gas. The stuff doesn't clear instantly, remember.

~J

Careful dosage and ventilation control should ammend that.

In exchange for increased price, increased complexity, decreased effectiveness, and increased chance of detection (mitigable by spending even more money for hidden vents).

You can certainly do it, but there are enough problems with the approach that it isn't a no-brainer.

~J

I would consider it more of a no-brainer than loading the same room with forty pounds of c-4, which was the original suggestion.

well it seems i was not clear enough in my sugestion.

it was my idea that the bomb inside the safe would only go off if the safe was Phisicaly broken into, Eg with a thermite bar or trying to blow the door off, not joe worker getting the pass code wrong 3 times and leveling the office.

the gas sugesstion is a much friendlier way of doing it.

anyway, happy holidays

In general, safes are rated in tools + time. They are never intented to prevent the guys breaking into the safe, just prevent them from opening it in a timely manner.

So, example:

If the wrong conbination is entered into the safe, there is a 30 second window to re-enter the combintation correcty. If the corret combination is not entered, this sets off an alram in the security office. If someone in the security office enters the override code in, say, 3 minutes (is this enough time for a voice check?) then everything is still ok. If the security override code is not entered the safe locks for 1 hour? (something like that). In addition, an alarm code is sent out to company HQ/the cops. Even if all of this is done, the safe will not accept another combo attempt for, say, 10 minutes. Basically enough to prevent trying the safe combo randomly but not enogh to completely cripple normal operations. Even if everything screws up and the cops show up during normal operations, it's just embarrasing.

If someone is trying to break in and is trying to crack the safe by guseeing combinaitons, the alarm should go out. They can still crack the safe, but any raesonable safe would be rated for at least 4 hours of time. (Of course 8+ hours is even better).

An average safe should take about twenty seconds of dial spinning per guess. There are up to 100 numbers on the dial, with a margin of error of maybe 2 each way (that's being liberal), which means effectively 20 possible numbers on the dial. Most quality safes have four wheels, so that means 20*20*20*20 permutations - 160,000 combinations (and keep in mind, this is a terrible quality safe). A little quick division, that comes out to about 889 hours to try every combination. Since you have a 50% chance (in theory) on getting it around the 80,000 try or before, we can narrow that down a bit.

So a safe should result in taking about 19 days to crack by trying each combination, this
for a cheap safe.

Even assuming you're going the absolute quickest method and drilling, it should take 3-4 hours, and requires a fair amount of expertise.

I think calling the cops after one wrong attempt is a bit excessive, in that safes are exceptionally hard to crack without some better knowledge. I've seen the background to cracking locker combinations and it still requires you try about a hundred combinations, making it very time consuming.

In other words, in my uneducated opinion, if your runners encounter a safe, you better hope they have derived the combination beforehand or have some way of blowing the safe open (which is also very difficult). Unless of course they have the equipment necessary to take an x-ray of the lock, which is still time consuming, and highly unlikely.

Are you taking into account high Quickness and Wired Reflexes?

~J

High quickness yes, wired reflexes no. Assuming you move three times as fast, it would still take you about a week (with no time for sleep or breaks). I really don't know how a lock would operate at such high speeds, though.

Wired reflexes would have no bearing on drilling.

None or very little, certainly, but that dial would spin.

~J

Kage already summed it up nicely.

Not really. One is a way of screwing over the players and one is a away screwing over players.

If forwhatever reason you put a an item that is there just screw players over you may as well go full bore on it. The fact is that if I saw a metal door with alock like tha tI would either use a small shaped charge or spell..But that is becuase wile not all my charatcers carry old metal lock picks most have magic or bombs.

....wow.

(Thunk) It's a message from the Central Bureaucracy! It says: "You are about to recive a message from the Central Bureaucracy."

(thunk) Oh look, it's a message from the Central Bureaucracy!


Intelegence of the world = constant
Population = growing

Well, that isnt really so much a case of not having access to the books as simply not having gone to any real lengths to find said information.

I mean there's alot of stuff about SR I didnt know about before that I've since found out simply by reading stuff here and asking questions. Though in the short run yes, online is abit more restrictive since alot of players dont bother getting even half the books related to the game their playing. It's rarely I've found a case where one really cant get them at all.

Also your vast knowledge of actual methods of theivery, I would still put under the heading of 'unusual knowledge'. Your average GM/PC isnt terribly likely to be an expert on the subject IRL. I never said it was impossible to be so, just not likely.

You allways will have folk who either are RL military, or safecrackers or god knows what. I've run into folks who are into all sorts of professions myself. Others such as myself have a broad but generalized base of knowledge. I read alot of books on militatry history, hardware, I've done hertiage masonry, I've done some basic architecture, including the full design layout of a house complete with load bearing calculations to specific bead types for the brickwork. I've also worked for several years as a security guard in various settings from concerts to all sorts of construction sites, and I've also equally been working in the IT sector and sales on and off for several years.

I wouldnt say I'm a specialist at anything or better at anyone thing than anyone else, but I've certainly got a broader basic knowledge base to work from than alot of folk I've run into. You cant ever really tell how much some one knows afterall, i mean one of my friends has a computer engineering degree, has worked in industrial manufacturing plants, is a combat aircraft buff and is fluent in 3 distinct dialects of spanish, as well as is fully fluent in English, Russian and knows a smattering of several other languages.

The simple thing is though if one of us wanted to know alto of the same stuff the other does, one simply needs to spend the time to learn it from the same/similar sources. RPG books are no different, and at the very least the players -should- have the core rule book. It also isnt hard, nor would it do them any harm to shell out a tiny bit extra to get their hands on even one of the more otudated SR books that deasl with 'security in the future'. The basics as far as I can tell between SR2 to SR4 havent really changed at all. And most of those basics are presented in the SR4 core book. And thats really the following:

Electronic and/or Mechanical locks with assorted options (such as biometrics in the case of electronic locks)
Automated gun turrets
Guard Animals/Paracritters
Gas traps
Drones
Security guards with assorted gear
Fences and walls, often toped with everything from barbed wire to monowire
Laser/Monowire traps etc.
Sensor system and video cameras

Knowledge of gear, vehicles and drones should be pretty much across the board since the guards will effectively have the same stuff the PCs can get their hands on. Paracritters and such are abit more specialized but there are knowledge skills to cover those.

Gas traps, sensors, automated gun turrets, locking mechanisms, they all have approrpriate coutners usually in the form of a mix of skills, gear and ideas on how to disable/bypass/destroy them.

I mean if your a totally brand new wet behind the ears player of a system of course you wont know half the stuff yet and some leeway is to be expected, but if you've at least spent abit of time learning the system you should equally know at least a few of the basics behind the stuff you run into.

I mean you dont need to know much about a system to make the general assumption that if you sever/destroy the head you kill the creature. There may be some very rare exceptions to this rule (robots for exmaple may well have the CPU in the chest) but its a pretty generic concept.

I mean I'd hardly expect a totally new player to manage to survive say.. an archology run in the nude.

Besides, I'm not sure I'd want to play in a game where the GM is trying his damndest not to challenge me at all. I mean, if the GM is going to do something like make sure there aren't any mechanical locks BECAUSE I'm not prepared to lockpick I think I'm going to end up being a bit bored with the game.

Yeah I agree with that allright for the most part. I mean if I design a run and say.. put in a mechanical lock, then it turns out perhaps a guy can pick locks allright but forgot his tools. Well if they decide to hunt around abit for some stuff I might let them find some very crude improvised tools and hit them with a penalty for that. And if they come up with something really inventive and it's going to work, all the more power to them.

Of course this is also generally why, when planning a run for PCs I just do a basic layout. Ok there are X number of guards, they start off stations in these spots. They have this gear, these skills etc.

Two guards will patrol this area every 1d6 Minutes (Or 1d6x10 or what ever, it would change somewhat drastically from place to place assuming there even are patrols).

So if it's an office for example, I just make the assumption that at least somewhere within that office, will be things one can normally expect to find in that office, and perhaps a few things that are less normal because some employee brought them and left them in a desk drawer for some reason or other. (Like that hidden stash of troll on dwarf porn mags in back of the bottom right hand drawer of the CEO's desk)

Well I've allways been one to give at least a small XP/Karma/Other reward for really nifty plans/improvisations, even if they dont quite work.

Of course I dont ever do any concrete planning beyond the first few sessions at a time so to speak. And I like to at least think I'm pretty good at comming up with stuff on the fly.

And what you guys are saying about improvisation is really the crux of the difference between a mandatory confrontation with 30 corn-dog crunching dragons and a random locked door.

If a team of shadowrunners are really and truly going to be stopped by a locked door, which means that in addition to a lockpicking skill and lockpicks they also lack lockbuster rounds, breeching charges, thermite bars, TNT bundles, an alternative entrance plan, the thought/ability to climb in a window, etc etc etc I really don't think that's bad GMing. I really don't. I think that's the players expecting the game to be a FPS rail shooter or something.

Exactly.

The goal of the GM is to challenge the players basically. Or well, one of the goals anyway. The other is to provide a good story. But any good story the protagonist(s) face challenges and hardships.

It also allows me to have sadistic fun. Like if i ever had a PC that actually for soem reason declared they bought a lottery ticket every month. I might jsut some day declare they won. But then some misfortune might also befall them as a result. Kinda like the deck of many things.

I've learnd to carelessly play with such decks. I've never had anything too horrifically permanent happen. Well.. not to me anyway

...I like the Lotto angle.

All of a sudden his datacom is flooded with calls from relatives he never knew he had, like that Troll Auntie in Poughkeepsie...

The one who has a "son" named Guido.

I've never been a fan of games where it is Gm vs Players. The Gm always wins.

I am a firm believer in the Gm being the facilitator

I facilitate yo mama.

IMO, the GM writes a world and runs it on him- or herself, with appropriate means for the players to interact with specified avatars within that world.

~J

I would agree with Kage. The GM does not facilitate but does not intentionally hinder the PC either. The GM sets up a reasonably realistic world with reasonably realistic reactions to PC behaviors, and enforces them (this is how I GM, not necessarily the only way to GM, it should be noted). If the GM sets up situations which only serve to facilitate my advancement as a PC, it's kinda dumb. Why not just write out a 2,000 karma PC and be done with it? If the GM sets up situations where the only goal is to kill off the PCs, or to create situations with unreasonable reactions, that's alright if the player goes in knowing it (like the running naked thread about waking up in the SCIRE), generally for a one-shot, but it doesn't make for a campaign.

Of course, in WR's campaigns, having a secret mountain base full of dwarf ninja pornographers is reasonable because that's how the world is defined beforehand and all the PCs would (I assume) be comfortable with that. I assume also that WR's characters have the option of turning down a job (although there will be reasonable repurcussions) or of doing their own thing. But as soon as a game strays into the place where the world is unreasonable, either to the PC's benefit or detriment, the game ceases to be fun for me.

Facilitate : to make easier : help bring about.

When I Gm I am using the second definition. The players can only interact with what I give them. If all I am giving them is crap, I wont have players for very long. I am there to initiate the 'story' and to make sure that the players continue the story past the first chapter.

Ah well, there are GMs like that but I wouldnt generally consider them a good GM if they seriously go out of their way to harm PCs etc.

I dont mind a GM thats brutal.

I dont even mind occasionally being thrown at something thats tougher than I am.

I rather hate it however when a GM forces PCs down a path simply because the GM gets some wierd idea that they have to punish PCs for daring to thwart their plans etc.

I mean you do have to sort of take the mindset of GM vs PCs in that you want to -challenge- them now and then. Otherwise it's just dull and borring. Adversity is what makes thigns interesting but at the same time you have to roll with what happens. So if the PCs get lucky with the dice rolls or what ever and your plans get hosed.. big deal.

It happens. I mean it can be very fustrating to see alot of work go down the tubes. But just as often as that happens to you, you can bet it'll happen to the players now and then too.

I mean one game I had a character that seemed rather cursed. The GM would occasionally roll for random encounters, we'd even see the dice rolls (He'd some times roll.. just for no reason at all other times for encounters so you never erally knew what the hell he was up to)

He'd some times roll to see who was targeted. Ask us to pick a number from say.. 1-4 then roll a 1d4 to see whom 'bad things happened to'. Oddly.. it allways seemed to be my character. But at the same time. Well.. at the same time my character not only developed rather well. But was one of the few that never had anything really horrible hapen to. All the -really- bad stuff (like death) happened to everyone else. It was kinda wierd. All the little thigns would backfire for my PC but I'd allways in that game get lucky when it really mattered.

It's stuff like that that can some times really make a game interesting, and you get to have fun razzing each other about stuff. Like how bob allways manages to allways roll crazy when it doenst matter but the moment the chips are down he turns into a clutz because of luck of the dice. Or maybe it's even the reverse.

Now and then it makes for some really heroic moments, when a PC everyone is sure was dead acutlaly managed to survive and comes back to save the day.

Though yeah, some people take it like some sort of pissing contest and thats really just the wrong way to go about a game.

Now with corp games etc in particular it can get a little tricky. It's hard sometimes trying to think up 'what next?'. I mean when players ultimately only answer to themselves they can very easily come up with all sorts of stuff on the side.

Its why in semi controled enviroments like that I often between missions etc have some downtime for the PCs. Ask em what they want to do. Even run a few 'side quests' just for one or two PCs at a time. Most of the time I've found it a good source for cannon fodder later.

There have been times that I will GM a game and it will be me versus the players in an attempt to take them out by any means necessary. Those situations usually come when the character(s) have really done something to deserve it, but sometimes it's just time for something different.

What I am trying to show is that sometimes, if used carefully, you can have a player versus GM game where, even if the GM wins, the players will have fun. One of my players in a game had a character who wasn't very 'dark and gritty' in her opinion, like Kaylee from Firefly and I guess she wanted to be a little more like Zoe, so she decided to create a super-secret organization that was kidnapping people and training them to become secret agents for them. Since the team was a group of friends, she had figured that what we could do was have the team bust in to rescue her as part of the conditioning had been done but not all of it. So, she could have a reason to focus on the gritty aspects of the character like combat, rather than playing the techie she was.

It's much like if you were to look at the real world. I can go out tomorrow and get killed by someone who wants my wallet. That would be a random encounter, and yes, perhaps I had a way out of that since it was me and them. But lets say its a gang of ten people, and even after giving them everything, one of them kills me for the hell of it. That's the world/God/whatever against me, and I lost. I can't really curse anyone for that, since there sometimes just no chance for you in a situation.

Now, let's say that situation happens in Shadowrun. There's always going to be someone bigger than you, and someday you might just run into them. However, it's quite possible, much like in the RL example of the gangs, that that situation could have been avoided or handled differently, but at the moment it happens, you don't really think that.

IE: Did the players charge headfirst into unknown territory? Could they have taken another route (likely just delay the encounter if the GM is realistic)? But here's one that some people overlook, Is there some sort of 'trick' to it that if the players had been more creative that just 'I shoot, I dodge' that they might have won?

That last situation is very popular in video games, and most people don't seem to complain about them being unfair. Sure, they may have some problems in a certain level, but the game isn't out to get them. Just the world in the game is out to get their character. ;P Which is exactly the same in Shadowrun, except the GM is the world, and sometimes payback's a bitch.

Edit: I figure since the three times I tried to write this post, I kept making some reference to this, but didn't feel it fit.... I'll include it here at the end.

A GM versus player game in every game is like you playing a game with a friend, let's say Basketball. If every game you played ended like 20-2, 20-1, 20-0, 20-0... It wouldn't take very long for you to get pissed off and walk away, since the odds of you winning weren't really worth the playing. However, if the games you played with a friend always ended up like 20-19, 20-18, 20-19, basically fairly close games every time, then you're going to look for some other challenges even if it means they wipe the floor with you, because it's something different than what you were getting before and it's aalso a good test of your abilities.

In gaming it's like that too; if it's always you guys against challenges you can beat, then after a while, it gets boring. But having a challenge every so often where you know you might not walk away from that can really make a character shine, and make the player really get into things. It's like if you're now playing basketball with one of the top NBA guys, sure it's going to be hard as hell, but it will be fun because a) on the off-chance you win, you'll look really great and b)even if you lose, you had some fun.

Second Edit: Imagine a situation like in the movie Phone Booth. Put a character in that role and if he knows the GM is pulling his punches because the players are the focus of the story and they don't want to kill players, the player will say and do anything because they expect to get away with it. Now, if it's GM versus PC in the fact that the world isn't a shiny happy place and people can die (much like our real world), then the player might be a bit more careful.

An addendum to my last post, I have also seen games where the GM doesn't need to be too hard or too soft, per se. The game I run with my wife is primarily exploration and political intrigue. She deals with relationships, learns about the world, etc. and she enjoys seeing how creative I get. There is life-threatening combat (and she's currently dealing with the results of that, actually) but since we play a lot while going on walks, actually having combat results which are anything but arbitrary may be difficult. She seems to enjoy the game even though the focus is far more on the world around her and how groups interact, figuring out their plans and anticipating, bla bla bla, rather than about her personal character.

If I had to guess, the exploration players are likely to be older, better educated, calmer, enjoy watching Nova and the Discovery channel, female and well-read. Meanwhile, the GM must (must) be skilled at making stuff up on the fly with a TON of background stuff already made up so he can keep spinning that thread. A close GM/player relationship contributes to this because it allows more PC/NPC intimacy.

The other thing that contributed is for about six months of game time I kept her distracted with adventures, combat and excitement while I introduced her to NPCs and set up situations, then when everything was in place, pushed her into the political arena. It is difficult to simply toss someone in and expect him to remember ten or twenty important NPCs and play out relationships with them if no such relationships exist between the player and the NPC. So a gradual shift over a long term may make this possible when otherwise it would not be.

I always GMed to challenge the group, but not necessarily kill them off. If they did something stupid or used bad tactics and some got killed, that's the way it is. I'd also cut them some slack, secretly, if they were doing things mostly right but were making really bad rolls.

On the other hand, if the group is being nasty, they are in for a hard time. In a D&D campaign, the party was being decidely unpleasant and malicious in the game and toward me. So, they finished the dungeon and were one their way home with all their loot and forget to set a watch one night. They wake up during the night being bound and gagged and get to watch most of their goodies be taken away by bandits. Never had to do that kind of thing very often though.

Picking on players sometimes though, is fun. Both for the player and the GM. Or at least it can be. I've told my GMs when I play outright I don't mind being put in situations as long as there is a way out. For a GM, that gives them options to play with without having a player who will complain 'Why are you picking on me' and so forth, and the player, well, they get a lot of RP.

Seriously though, lets use an example. Blackjack's Guide of Bitter GMing talks about having a mugger try to mug the PCs. Sure, the PCs would likely kick the mugger's ass, but it can be themely.

A comedic example I like to use is Vinnie from Gargoyles in Vendettas. He was just a small time character that kept having events happen to him. The gargoyles stole his bike, then attacked the place he worked security, and then kidnapped someone from his next security job. Another scene they didn't show later was that he was going to have some debris from a Gargoyle fight land on him. And... his whole payback for this was to cream one of the gargoyles. Banana Cream, to be accurate, a pie launched from a giant rocket launcher style cannon. Then he just walks away whistling, since he got even with them.

Now, I know the focus of the show is Gargoyles, but just think about it this way. You've got a friend who shows up every now and then and wants to play; hand them a 'Vinnie' character; maybe once they start playing more, you can do something like that. If nothing else, it's a one or two shot bit character. good for a laugh.