alright hey all of you at dumpshock forums i am Schmitz but most of all i am a new GM and completely new to this game. all of the players i am playing with are new and none of us has played shadowrun before. most of us have played in DnD campaigns but that s it. i was wondering what are some aspects of what i do as the gm besides tell the story. should i make sure that the players make balanced characters and i have absolutely no idea how to control making 4-5 new characters with one PHB(is this acronym accepted or should i just type players hand book?). i have no idea what my story should be and don't worry i have read the rules before and understand them. also what do i tell them what dot i tell them. i know don't tell them about the ambush but do i tell them thresholds or not or what do i keep form them as the GM. how do i make sure my players don't get bored and lastly how do i control the players so they don't kill each other and do stupid stuff. Thanks for the help. Sorry this got a little long but thanks for reading.

-- schmitz

First off, which edition are you running? I assume fourth since you mention thresholds. Second, we generally refer to the core book here as the BBB (Big Black Book), but that's no biggie.

For a new group, I would simply suggest laying out some ground rules before hand. Let them know what your expectations are going to be. As an example, tell them not to bother with trying to off each other, as it's not the style of game you're going for (at the moment anyway). Second, give them an idea of how the law works. Let them know that a lot of responses will be based off of real life. You can't get on a bus with an assault rifle. If you kill a cop, things can get very bad very quickly. The game is not built around kill ratios for exp, that sort of thing.

Get them familiar with the setting. If you can pass around a book like New Seattle for each of them to read for a few nights, that would be great. Write up each of their characters at a differnet time, before the game. That will make things much easier with only one core book to go around.

As a GM, I'd suggest describing a few places in detail, a few groups in the areas such as gangs, organized crime, or policlubs, ,and a few important NPCs such as contacts. It will give them a better sense of the world.

Over all though, as I mentioned, be up front with them. You're all new to this, so it will be easier if you're all starting on the same page.

First of all, determine what circles you want the PCs to run in. Do you want them to be street punks working their way up the ranks of a local gang, do you want them to be well-known Shadowrunners who get all the big corporate steal-the-multi-billion-nuyen prototype jobs, do you want them to be mercenaries fighting for or against rebels in South America?

When you've got the general nature of the team, have the players sit down together and hammer out their characters. This is important because it really is a team that they are building. In many cases, every player will create his character in a vacuum they'll just be introduced to each other through some plot device such as a fixer. This isn't good for your first game. The advantage of having the players hammer out a team together with your input is that they will work better as a team when the play starts. Also, you can establish that the team has been together for some time and they can write each other's characters into their backstories. This save you from the boring character introductions period and gives you plot ammo to work with.

Balancing the team is far more important than balancing the characters. Shadowrun's chargen systems all reward specialization. Most characters will be specialized toward one task or another. Each of these specialties should be vital to the team as a whole. In Shadowrun, any punk with a gun can kill the most powerful characters if he uses good tactics. It is very easy to kill and it is also relatively easy to die (hand of God and trauma patches notwithstanding). But, a gap in the team's capabilities may make it impossible to complete a job.

Once the team is complete, then you can start with the plot and the adventures. The plot can pull from the PCs' established backstories, since they'll ideally give you a great deal of plot ammo. The runs should match the PCs abilities, obviously.


You might also consider running one of the old printed adventures, are at least getting some inspiration from one. Personally, I like Bug City and Super Tuesday.

I recommend a group prep session which involves watching Escape From New York, Big Trouble In Little China, The Best Of The Best, The Karate Kid, and Bloodsport back to back and not necessarily in that order.

Ronin, Ronin, Ronin - you don't start throwing movie titles at someone unless you also include....

Robocop - For that authentic urban grunge - And OCP, man, that's got to be a AA-corp, at least.
Ghost in the shell - Beware player desire to design an invisible cyborged naked ninja!
- (List truncated for space reasons)

Good call on "Big Trouble in Little China" though - that's gang-style shadowrunning with a Wu-Jen and a meatsack of a trucker.


And back on topic:

Discuss with your players what it means - it's going to be nasty, gritty, smoky, oily and rancid with global corruption. Your players are likely to be brutal and short lived - stress that.

The biggest (I've found) jump from "The other Game" to Shadowrun is the lethality of it. (Traveller players, spare me the story of your uber-roll nerfed at character generation) A 1'st level warrior will cringe at el 4 threats. A level 4 warror will laugh at el 2. Shadowrun is not like that. Nothing is safe.

Play a simple example - you are Joe Street Sammy (Use the book example), but you're coming home from the Stuffer shack and you're jumped (assumed failed "Spot the bad guys waiting for me" rolls) and attacked.

Resolve surprise.
Resolve Damage
-Hint that armour is your friend (Well, it was in 3rd. There is no 4th ed in this house:: )
Resolve outcomes.

And state that this WILL happen, at some point in their (in game) lives.

By this stage, they will be nicely paranoid and toss together a typical "warrior hybrid" who will tend to survive long enough so you can all learn how to play together.

After that, well, the rest of the game is up to you:)

_tir.

(No relation to the Prince)

Actually "the other game" and probably any other game can also be pretty deadly. My old DM (now one of my players) used to kill one of our characters almost every session, we played a gritty low-level campaign. Even in d&d at low levels a good placed critical hit can kill you and you have no way to raise the character (unless the DM invokes some Deus Ex Machina to save you).

I'm also new to the game and I'll start DMing my campaign soon so I can use your advice. I'm going to start with a premade Shadowrun adventure modified to fit BA since I'm probably going to have a lot of trouble explaining the rules to my players (they are NOT going to read the book) so I'll try to make things easier for me for the first adventure.

@schmitzzy: I also founded a useful website with cheat sheets that I can use or give to my players, I guess they're going to be usefull for you too. http://pavao.org/shadowrun/

D&D hasn't been deadly since you stopped rolling your first hit die. The days when someone without bonus hit points from Constitution could get 1 hit point for their first level, those were the days things were deadly.

~J

hahaha tell that to my little level 1 wizard with 5 hp escaping from an orc barbarian that could do 1d12+6 damage with a single hit! It really depends on the DM, ours didn't care about matching our level vs the mosnters CR so you encounter a Banshees or other high level mosnters when you were still 5th level chars, all you could do was run and hope you could outrun you friends

Somehow I can't be impressed given that back in the day our party Psionicist could be killed by a hit with a pair of chopsticks (which did either 1d3 or 1d2 damage, I forget which) for her first two levels

~J

To any New GM, I suggest you set down with a pencil and paper and just start writing down things you like in a story. Plot twists, romance, action, whatever, just write a few things down and see what develops. SR4 is farely easy to learn and run if you keep it simple. Run a couple of rules learning games first. Use the arhtypes from the book and run the free missions from Official Shadowrun Web just to get a feel for how the game works.

Then with 2 or 3 sessions under your belts you, and your players, will have a better understanding of what they want in a game and in characters. Hopefully by then you will have your campaign in mind and you can give them some advice on character creation (you are all escpaed convicts, you are all ex-Rusian soldiers etc).

Make sure they are playing a viable character. In my recent games (I was the player) a person who was new to the game sabotaged the whole game for everyone becasue they did not like their character. So make sure that does not happen.

I would consider a viable character someone with to Initiative passes and the ability to ebgage in combat and do other things.

My strong advice to a new GM is to make sure that every character can do something in each phase of a run.

A pure combat character is generally bad news for everybody. First they tend to get board when there isn't any "action". Second they have a bad tendency to slowly have their IQ drop so that they can provoke more action by doing stupid stuff. I think a fair number of "I can't believe my players did something that stupid" is really some combat character getting board and deciding to trash everyone elses plans to the group has to fight.

But I also find it's bad to have chars who can't fight at all. Because if you run a high combat adventure they may start getting board.

So I suggest.

-Each char be competent in combat
-Each char be competent at some legworkish skill
-Each char have contacts
-Each char have some useful active but non combat skills (like maybe lockingpicking/maglockpicking, bluffy social skills, climbing, parachuting etc.)
-Each char have a respectable ability to infiltrate.

Also I advise getting the team hooked up with well encrypted communications most of the time, with the option to listen in on what other chars are hearing, maybe seeing. Pretty easy to do in 4th ed. But it means that if one char is say, in position on a roof, they can still be a part of the action for the char trying to fast talk a guard.

Generally you just want to minimize the time any char spends totally board, and maximise the flexibility the group has so you can do different types of missions without worrying if you have enough combat or have enough for the face in each mission.

Having the players build a team together can be a great help. They can also decide upon a general approach to things.

This makes it easier than having an ecliptic mix of characters who might not work well together.

Also the group session gives the GM an Idea what types of runs/storylines the players might be interested in.

You know, the 1HP fighter has the potential for some National Lampoon hilarity. I forgot which movie it was but in one of them the family gets saddled with a dead senior citizen. I imagine something similar where the party gets unexpectedly hit with a dead fighter at some stupid time.

GM: "You all spend the evening at the Black Bugbear Inn preparing for tomorrow's expedition to the ruins where several village children have disappeared. As new adventurers you probably have a low-key adrenal thrill running through you as you think of your very first foray into unknown danger. Will your skills be enough? What glory awaits you beyond the light of day in the ancient crypt? I mean, if that's in character for you. I don't dare dream to tell you how to role play your character."

Magic User: "Rudolf the magician boasts to his fellow party mates about his Sleep spell and how it can put an entire gaggle of monsters to sleep! He orders some wine and his boasts grow more extravagant the more he drinks!"

GM: "Okay, the wine costs you 3cp."

1 HP Fighter: "Barbarus the fighter is going to order some ale and beef!"

GM: "Okay, that will be 2 silver pieces."

Theif: "Booger the theif is going to fantasize aloud about how perhaps there will be old treasures for the taking in the crypt!"

...the next day...

GM: "Barbarus, it seems that the beef you ate was spoiled. You take 1 HP of damage from food poisoning."

1 HP Fighter: "But I only have 1 HP!"

GM: "Okay, as you all meet downstairs the next morning with your adventuring gear Barbarus vomits up some digested beef chunks and drops dead."

Theif: "I check his pulse."

GM: "He's dead."

Magic user: "Well, fuck..."

Well, im all for, mechanic wise, the team each be able to do something, and they have their specialities. The sam's the shooter, with a fair ability to infiltrate and some social skills. The face has all the social skills, with a little infiltration and some combat ability if it all goes wrong(which it probably will more than once. ). Hackers dont ALL have to be social inepts, although to be fair, a hacker can probably get away with the least social prowess, due to them being able to discuss things not in their meat bod.

Also, the team should gel together in background, too. Having a team consisting of Darkthorn, bloodthirsty elf assassin/Satanist/roadie who spends all of his nuyen on whores might not gel very well with Father Timmons, the pacifistic human defensive magician of the cloth, whom in turn might butt heads with Sandra, the extremely foul-mouthed athiest technomancer raver/tabletop gamer whom keeps a supply of Novacoke in her dice bag.

Of course i was using some extremes, and differences CAN of course be good, amusing, and overall fun, but there are times where you just have to wonder, ''how in the nine hells DID this group get together?''

Creating characters as a whole would be a great idea, ill agree with.

I'd watch it.