Once upon a time, there was a place where all of our role-playing shame could be exposed for the World to see. When you got all the way into the enemy base and found you'd forgotten to bring the explosives, it was there. When you decided to climb up fifteen stories of empty lift shaft for no reason at all, it was there. When the mage decided to challenge the elf in the silly makeup to a spell duel... it was there.

These were the CLUE files where GMs and players posted each other's humiliating misadventures. They're still out there, but they haven't been updated or maintained in many a year.

It is my proposal, for the educational benefit of neophyte runners everywhere, to re-instate the CLUE files. I want your stories and anecdotes (preferably Shadowrun) of player or GM stupidity or simple unawareness. This species being what it is, I know there must be a goldmine out there.

What I would ask, is that people email me their stories through the link in my profile so that I can post a big bunch on the site for an unveiling. Doesn't have to be that way, but I thought it would be nice. I'll post back here with a link when I have a dozen, say.

Comments? Thoughts? (But stories by email, preferably).

Thanks,

-Khadim.

EDIT: I'm just doing the page layout and whatnot now. It's going to look lovely.

Once, a player forgot to say his character was wearing pants to a meet, so I had the Johnson walk out and the cops arrest and shoot him.

~J

I can only assume that you remove all sharp objects from the room before you begin running each session.

Seriously though, if anyone has any good stories, then please email me through my profile. Can PM it to me if you want, I'm just concerned for the capacity of my forum mailbox.

Are you sure you're not stealing the original girl... uh... whatever-her-name-was's idea?

May I make a suggestion?


Make the N.O.C.L.U.E. (New Operating C.L.U.E.) files in a Blog format. That way people can comment on the stories, and those involved may anonamously speak for themselves without fear of ridicule (on other names.)

If my group made the clue files once, it can do it again. Heck, I'm sure we could recycle some of our old adventures and give you months of material.

A bad example, but in this file, while there is some player stupidity, the GM conjures a Lone Star van out of the very air itself to compound the problem. Even with the ridiculous canon response times, they can't have gotten there before the character could read the nametag.

The obvious case of GM dickery that I remember is this one, where apparently the GM thinks that a pair of professional criminals, probably with high Intelligence scores, can't remember that they can't see in the dark. That's the one that I look to as my example when I do things like what I posted above.

Well, ok, I don't actually do those things, but that's what I think about when I get angry about "hurr hurr, my players so stupid". Which isn't necessarily what every player-action-criticism is about, of course, but far too many are.

~J

You are aware that the link in the first one does not have any surprise Lone Star vans, but does have two mormons getting shotgun blasts to the gut provided by some paranoid runners?

The second is an actual case of nit-picking the item lists.

I suggest this as a good pair though.

If you breathe, you are asking for my infinite wisdom. If you don't breathe, I provide my infinite wisdom without having to be asked (the first part of which is usually "breathe").

~J

As a note, the original creator of the CLUE files has asked that they not fall under new management. So far people have interpreted that as meaning, while they can make a new site with the same idea, they shouldn't reuse any of the stories (unless resubmitted) and shouldn't use the name. You may want to consider using a different name. The last effort called them the SLEUTH files.

Well, I have a bunch of stories. I gave 'em to the SLEUTH guy but he never put them up.

How many do you need?

I can add a few about bad GMing, as well, since the first couple of years of Shadowrun I played were with a killer GM who killed my characters on average every 2 sessions. We didn't play a whole lot since we were in high school using free periods, but there's still a bunch of bad GM stories there. I suppose that how funny they are depends on the telling.

Also, just to make everyone dislike me, I am an advocate of, "if it's not on your list it's not with you!", so I would have done the dark tunnel thing.

While we're on the topic of fun/nutty/crazy player antics, I present this bundle of hilarity:
975 Things Mr. Welch can no longer do during an RPG

Years ago back wen we were still playing 2nd ed I was running my group through the old adventure Dark Angel. It was my first crack at GMing and so far things had been going fairly smooth, at least as smoothly as any games where every participant was 15 years old and had spent the past 4 hours drinking bottle after bottle of pepsi.

Dramatis Personae:

Tinman: a human streetsam who due to a misinterpretation of the rules had his entire body replaced by cyber and still had positive essence.
Elfin-Face: A troll street sam DMPC mostly along to hit things and not talk.
Archangel: A human(?) decker
Shaman (who's name I forget): an elf wolf shaman.

Anyhow, the climatic scene in Dark Angel involves the team assaulting a yacht some distance off the coast attempting to rescue a kidnapped rockstar. The waters surrounding the yacht were chock full of some kind of nasty sharks I can't remember if they were cybered or magically bound or what but either way they would attack anyone who ended up in the water.

The team approached the boat in a rubber zodiac when they felt something bump the side of the dingy. So far they had been remarkably good in their approach using a water spirit to push the boat rather than using the engine and had managed to make it about 50 meters out without being noticed. Unfortunately that little bump was to set in motion a bout of cluelessness that still gets talked about.

Archangel: "Something bumped us? I lean over the side of the boat to see what it is."
Me: "Ok, I'm going to need a TN 3 agility roll from everyone as the boat gets banged harder a second time, Archangel, you need to make TN 5 since you're hanging over the edge."
Archangel: "Uhh... I got no successes..."
Me: "Er, ok... as the boat rocks you loose your grip on the edge and tumble head first into the water... I'm gonna need a swim roll... modified by... you're wearing light security armour arn't you? that's something like 50 pounds?"
Archangel: "But I can't swim..."
Me: "Ok, then... the rest of you hear Archangel cry out in surprise as he tumbles over the edge and then hear frantic splashing as he flails about in the water. You also think you hear some confused sounding shouts coming from the direction of the yacht. Oh, and Archangel, something bits your leg trying to pull you under water, it really hurts, Resist 8M."
Tinman: "I start reaching over the edge trying to pull Archangel back in."
Me: "Ok Elfin-Face joins you. You see..."
Shaman dude: "Uhhh I pull out my flare gun and shoot off a flare"
Everyone: "WHAT?"
Shaman: "Yeah, we need to find him in the dark, I pull out my flare gun and shoot a flare"
Me: "Ok since both Tinman and Elfin-Face are busy trying to pull Archangel out of the water no one notices until they hear the Bang!-HISSS of the flare being shot... Sure enough you see Archangel struggling with a 5 or 6 foot long shark and definitely coming off the looser, but you manage to grab the collar of his armour and drag him back into the boat. The flare didn't help much though, since EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU except Archangel has at least some kind of low light vision... Unfortunately you also seem to have drawn the attention of the guards on the yacht. You hear the distinctive sound of automatic fire as tracers start tearing into your RUBBER dingy.

In the end because I didn't want a TPK I swapped the HMG for an LMG and fudged some rolls to let them make it to the yacht before the dingy sunk though they had at least one serious and 2 moderate wounds between them by the time they made it there. The long drawn out battle for control of the yacht with now alerted crew saw Tinman soaking overdamage, the Shaman get killed, and Elfin Face 1 box shy of a deadly wound. The runs entire profit was spent at the hospital.

Thanks. I particularly like the tag line of the entire profits being spent at the hospital!

I'll put it up on the site when we go live, but can I ask that any other submissions are PM'd or emailed to me. The intention is to compile them all there and do a big launch, as I think that will generate more submissions, ultimately.

Cheers,

-K.

In the spirit of nitpicking and infinite wisdom, did you say to the guy "you and everyone else can see just fine" before he fired off the flare or did you just assume that the character had forgotten he had lowlight (maybe he'd closed his eyes?)

Ah, ok. So he looks for his friend in the water, sees him clearly, and then panicks because he can't see his friend? LOL

he wasn't looking, the two sams were. Even if he could see just fine perhaps he forgot his two friends could too, their backs were to him so they couldn't see what he was up to.

Cool. Players gotta learn not to interrupt the GM. Why sully it with an in game explanation?

I have one from just earlier this evening AAMOF; it's too short for a C.L.U.E. file, but it's still good. I have a player (incidentally, the prez of my gaming club) who likes to play a troll grenadier named Petard. What his little bit of flair was, though, was that he would pull the pins on the tips of his horns and then let fly with the grenades. I let it slide with him having to make an Agility+Throwing Weapons(2) test for a single grenade and and an Agility+Throwing Weapons(3) test if he was throwing two 'nades in addition to the normal rules on grenade throwing.

So he was having a blast (literally) in a warehouse battle when he decided to go for that extra bit of carnage and took out a pair of HE grenades.

And had a critical glitch on the test.

And he had no edge left.

*fiendish grin*

I ruled that the grenades had slipped out of his grasp when he gave the tugs to pull out the pins and that one 'nade was now essentially dangling from his horns while the other had slipped out of his grip completely and was bouncing on the ground at his feet.

So next combat round he actually scores a lower Initiative than he had the previous turn...

Everyone else on the team dove for cover while poor Petard got hoisted.

I'll throw my hat in the ring. This is a repeat of an earlier post, but I'll repost it here for convenience.

Had a group of relatively new players, convinced one of our mutual friends to get involved in a game. Name of Dave.

Dave rolls up a troll street sam that specializes in grenade launches. Subtlety was apparently not his strong suit. Anywho, we start the run, and everyone gets a call from their fixer to be at a certain bar by such and such time for a meet with a Johnson.

I go around the table, asking who does what, and get varying degrees of, "I head to the meet." Dave, unfortunately, did not purchase a vehicle at character creation, and so decides to take the bus.

"What are you taking with you?" says I.

"Everything on my character sheet," says he.

I check the character sheet, and notice that this includes a Ares Alpha and a MGL-12, which is the large capacity semi-auto grenade launcher, for those not up on their weapons. "Everything?' Says I, "You sure?" in that, "thats probably not a good idea" voice.

"Yup," he says.

So, he waits patiently at the bustop, and as the bus starts to pull up, the driver notices the heavily armed troll. "The bus drivers' eyes widen and he floors it, hopping a curb as he pulls away from the weapons laden troll at the stop," says I.

Hoping that this is an unsubtle enough hint, I ask Dave what he does next. First he waits about 10 minutes. Then he declares that he is hungry, and heads to the Stuffer Shack a block down the street. As soon as he walks in, people dive for cover and/or throw their hands into the air and pale in fear. So he takes his time, picks up some chips, a few drinks, then walks up to the cash register. The terrified store clerk rings up his order, when Dave pauses, and declares he empties the register. The clerk does so, then Dave walks out and is confronted by three Lonestar patrol cars, with six officers with submachine guns trained on him. They tell him to freeze, which he obligingly does, and then proceed to arrest them. He decides not to resist arrest, and manages to survive to go to jail for a fairly long time.

I decided that Dave got to use the exact same character, but had to change the name, since we really did want to include him but didn't want to wait for him to create a new runner from scratch.

I was perplexed, as Dave is not a stupid person, and we had explained to him that this was essentially a game about the real world + magic + ~60 years.

I agree completely with Kagentenshi. Most C.L.U.E. files were not clueless files at all, just 1-sided perspectives on a story. For example, 3 clue-files submitted here, seen from the other perspective....

Shooting a flare to save a team-mate. Actually a logical thing to do, it might have thrown the mission, but shouldn't have resulted in automatic fire. Should have resulted in multiple spot-lights on the boat, guns aimed at the boat 'just in case' and the rubber raft leaving as soon as the buddy was on board. It was no more clueless to shoot a flare than to shoot at a boat in the water that was obviously not trying to hide (they shot a flare)

Troll blowing himself up with grenades on a glitch. Where's the C.L.U.E.? Shit happens, he glitched. Using your teeth (or tusk) to pull a pin isn't a bad thing.

Dave walking around loaded for bear. First game? Looking through the book and seeing the pictures where everyone has guns strapped to their backs in a public place? The only C.L.U.E. was a GM that tried to 'hint' instead of letting the player know that 'his' version of Shadowrun was nothing like the pictures in the books. GM should have said, "Just an FYI, your character knows if he goes in public with visible weapons, he'll get as arrested as if he did it in the real world".

THAT's the problem with the clue files. They're not always as clueless as the're portrayed to be.

Not really CLUE but on the same lines;

so far our party has;

Stolen and used a MBT (conceal and movement power for the win) on a secret lab

Planted and detonated a VERY large bomb in the centre of London as a "cover" so we could turn up as medics.

There have been a few runs were not a bullet has been fired and no body dies but that soon passes and we have a "moment" and then S$$T gets blown up.

O and we have had 2 members of the party nearly kill them selves driving motor bikes at high speed, turns out none of them had a driving skill to start with.

But this weekend was a sad day we lost our face (go killed by our phy ad when he got mind controlled)

Dasiy the dum as bricks mad S/M freak with the looks of sex god and the morals of an on heat rabbit, will be missed.

To my GM who might be reading this;

You only making it worse, I see another mag in the near future LOL

Dave knew what he was doing. Why he did it, I have no idea. He wasn't a first time RPer, just a first time SR player. And I pretty much hit him in the head with the "bad idea" stick. If he, or any of my players that may not know any better, say they're going to do something that seems like an incredibly stupid idea, I have a rule. I ask them if they're sure two to three times, in an increasingly more doubtful tone. I tell them about this rule before I start the game, if they're new. I'm not going to tell them how to play their characters or railroad them into not being completely retarded. I HATE it when I try to do something in a game and the GM tells me that I "can't" do something, barring it being physically impossible. I understand, thats not what you're advocating Sphynx, I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from. I don't like telling my players in game, "This should be obvious to you," because I'm afraid of forcing my players down what I see as the "right" way to play shadowrunners.

I do, however, enforce what I see as internally consistent logic for crazy stunts(eg blowing something up will generally cause people with guns to arrive inquiring as to why you blew said something up.) Before anyone starts a game with me, I give them the basic idea of how the world works in my mind. For example, Dungeons and Dragons, you kill monstrous humanoids, generally no one will attempt to prosecute you for murdering a sentient, regardless of whether the humanoid deserved it, in human town. Shadowrun, you are a criminal who survives via paranoia, intelligence, and Shooting People In The Face™. I sat Dave down and explained the world to him. He had the example of all the other characters who specifically said, "I'm leaving my heavy weapons at home." But going into detail about what precisely I warned him against doing eliminates the point of the CLUE files, as I understand them. They're supposed to be funny, and serve as an object lesson of what not to do. The point is, any reasonably perceptive player, even thinking that this is a game where we blow things up for Fun and Profit, would have been warned by a)the other players leaving all their heavy stuff at home, b)me asking him if he was sure, and c)the bus driver taking off, specifically because of him. I then gave him ten minutes to do something besides sit at a bus stop with assault weapons. He chose to go to the store. This turned out to be a bad idea, a bad thing happened to his character, and he is now much more cautious about the legality of his gear in public.

My point is this. I could remind my players of everything their runners should know, but this would introduce my own bias into how they play the game, more so than enforcing what I see as the "rules" of the Shadowrun universe. Also, it would be lots of work for me. The way things currently work, there is a recognizable "this is a bad idea" check, and if they choose to continue on regardless, they will either fail and learn better next time, which often makes good stories, or they will succeed despite my doubts, which can also be fun and unexpected. As it stands, if I say, "Are you sure you want to throw that grenade?" and they stop and say "... um.... why wouldn't I?" I can easily respond with, "well, you are trying to be sneaky, and grenades tend to be really loud." or "Well, there are hostages that you're being paid to rescue in that room ,along with the bad guys, and thats a HE nade in your hand." If they're so damn fired to do something stupid, let em. The game is a compromise between what I want out of it and what my players want. I may want them to be paranoid criminal masterminds, and they may want a chance to use that new gyromounted vindicator. Compromise allows both sides to enjoy the game, and usually a whole lot of fun for both sides as we adapt to something unexpected.

I think that CLUE files have expanded beyond just player stupidity to include general funny Shadowrun files. The troll tossing grenades is still funny enough that I can see it being included.

That said, it seems to me that we'd get more stories if we asked for examples of GM stupidity.

Hey Cracker, no need to defend, the point was to express why the clue files went bad, not to actually indicate anyone was a bad GM. They became discussions about who the real idiot was in the game and often were fingers pointed at the person telling the story, usually because one of us felt a bond with the player, having done something similar and not finding it nearly as stupid as the story made it out to be.....

Again imperial, no need to defend. It was just pointing out why the clue files went bad. At this point people would be commenting at the strangeness that the flair was the 'clue' and not the gear being brought/worn on an infiltration and rescue mission.

Thanks to Sphynx, we can see that the real problem is that the CLUE files never were excessively over-explicit.

For the PC apologists, all CLUE files must include every detail, including GM style, footnotes about what certain GM behavior indicated, a complete map of the scene, and full character sheets for everyone involved.

Writing out the results of dice rolls would be nice too.

[/rolls eyes]

I hate the internets sometimes.

But that's neither the point nor the problem Herald. The problem is that alot of us could relate to the person being made fun of. And when -we- did it, it wasn't a bad thing, there were valid reasons. Meanwhile a bunch of clueless imbeciles were patting each other on the back as they made fun of a situation that had a very one-sided perspective. Most of the old CLUE files had the smarter crowd going, "ok, that's not really funny at all" because, like the flare, the other POV was quite logical.

MOST clue files were a GM laughingly explaining how he killed or nearly killed a group of people for not playing -his- way, as if to play any other way required a lack of intellect.

Agreed, Sphynx.


A DM's responsibility is to explain to players exactly the way the world works. Don't go "You sure you wanna do that?" like you're fucking Regis and you're asking if that's their final answer.

Explain to them, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, that getting on the bus with a heavy weapon squad on your back will get the Law after them. Because, as I said - any of the Shadowrun artwork features heavily-armed Runner teams walking around with shotguns and grenade launchers in hip, over-the-shoulder back-holsters, and that's probably where they're getting their impression of the game from.

I will respond to this once, and if anyone wants to debate the point further with me I suggest we move it to another thread, as we seem to be hijacking this one to some extent.

I don't like the comparison to an idiotic game show host, and I don't like the profanity. I use the "are you sure?" device maybe once every three sessions. I explain the ground rules to my players before they start playing with me. I expect them to remember those rules. Shadowrun(in my campaigns) is a much more lethal place than other RPGs I've played. I will fudge dice rolls if bad luck is killing my PCs. With blatant stupidity, the dice fall where they may. This reflects the chance that the stupid plan may actually be pulled off, through sheer dumb luck, just like in real life.

You argue that they got their impression from the pictures they saw in the book. I argue that that impression should have been colored by my description of shadowrun minutes before we started the game, since Dave was new to the genre, although we had discussed the general tone before.

I don't require my PCs to read my mind, merely to extrapolate that this is the real world, people will react in predictable ways, except with more tech and magic thrown in. I don't beleive this is an unreasonable expectation, and as I pointed out earlier, I gave multiple in game clues that Dave's behavior was out of the norm for the setting. I prefer to guide my PCs through in game events, not by GM intervention. I reward behaviors I like, and let the world(as represented by me) deal with behaviors that I think would result in something bad happening.

As far as I can tell, your argument is along the lines of, in a Dungeons and Dragons game, a new player who has played Shadowrun for years joins a group of d20ers. They all declare that they are going to try to sneak past a sleeping nasty, in order to escape the dungeon they are in. Dave declares he's gonna walk up to the sleeping nasty and say "Hi." I should at this point warn Dave that this behavior is probably suicidal, instead of saying, "um, you sure? There's remains of humanoids scattered all over the floor." While it is certainly your perogative to run your games that way, I find it odd that you seem to take such strong exception to the fact that I run my games in a different manner, given that the difference in my opinion is mere semantics.

I'm sorry if this came off a little nasty or strong, or for spelling errors, as I haven't slept in about 30 hours and am running dry on coffee.

Like I said, you wanna continue debating GMing styles further, or how much like fucking Regis I am, lets take it to either another thread or pms, so the fine folks here can get back to reading about stupid PC/GM tricks.

That would be the same scenario, except that the D&D books don't show the world as being one where waking up big nasties in rooms full of corpses makes you look really cool on every single page.

In any case, I've always found up front and direct communication with my players ("you and your friends all have lowlight vision" or "that will get you arrested") to be the better route. YMMV.