I love his idea of "downtime activities". He plans to take over his slice of the barrens.


First, some background. The players did Food Fight last game, because the whole group was not there. During this fight, the player with the cute "avater" drone reavealed a monowhip tail and molecular chainsaw-claws, and eviscerated one of the gangers so bad that the Shack was awash in human entrails.

This, of course, got broadcast on TV thanks to the Shack's security cameras, and I told them how much news it was getting; interviews with the tramautized teenager behind the counter and the one at the AR-cade, interview with the gnome manager (why, the 'runners who busted up gangers back in '57 - they had class!), and told them that Kenneth Brackhaven had personally denounced the violence and was launching an investigation and promised a harder crackdown on this kind of runner violence.

In short, I gave him a fiat point of Public Awareness, and a point of notoriety from it.



He starts this by buying squirt guns that look like Uzi-IVs, and a real Uzi-IV, and inviting the gang leader to his bunker. It takes three days (during which time, the gang leader is preparing his own defense) for the gang leader to arrive, unexpectedly, with five trolls (one of whom sporting obvious cyber) and a gaggle of orks and humans.


With him is the gang leader (name of Sticks, an Initiated mage, grade 1), accompanied by numerous spirits of air - one of which is his normal, personal Force 5 spirit, and six others, all force 3, summoned for the occasion.

The purpose of these Spirits is to keep any of the geek's drones and other mechanicals disabled. The geek revealed his numerous gun turrets and drones, tracking the gangs, and the spirits appropriately seperated, taking one and preparing to Accident it, except the Force 5, which made ready to Engulf the little psycho kill-bot with chainclaws and a monowire tail. Excepting for one spirit, whose job is to enter the facility, find the geek, and stay near him, prepared to Materialize and Engulf him if Sticks dies.

The gang shows up. The gang leader will not enter the inner chamber without his bodyguards, and the Geek gives me lip about it. He finally says that he lets out an exaggerated sigh over the radio, and lets them in, admonishing the gang leader not to let his body touch anything or speak up.

He meets them with the drone, which of course the gang leader refuses to talk to, since, you know, he's seen that very drone go from "Lovable toy" to "murderous death-bot" plastered over the seattle 'trix. He demands to speak with the Geek, who refuses to come out.

The geek taunts the gang as they're leaving, saying that he's passing up money, and Sticks silences one of his gangers who looks interested at that, saying that more than just nuyen is important to surviving in the barrens. The geek orders the drone to leap to a box, and monowire it's top off, revealing the Uzis.

I decide that the spirit interprets this as a hostile action, since the drone is moving and it dosen't know what the drone is going to do, and Engulfs. The Geek says he hits the panicbutton, and orders his drones to gun them down.

And I tell him that they all fail to get the message, because the spirits' accident power causes radio blips. Then he says he'll give them verbal commands through the comms, to which I tell him that the power supplies will have a momentary lapse.

He starts screaming bullshit at me, and I try to explain that the spirits are under orders to surpress the drones at all costs, and then he starts arguing the nature of a "normal" accident. I tell him that no matter what, something will happen to prevent the drones from firing on the gang; the power supplie blinks or fails, the motivator pops, the gun jams, whatever. That's Accident for you.


So he pulls out the number of dice he normally rolls, and tries to claim that a gun jam is a 1/100,000 chance, based on the odds of his normal firing habits rolling a critical glitch. I tell him the odds don't matter, because that's why it's magic, and he starts screaming bullshit and railroad and he quits.



Now, bear in mind, I'm not trying to railroad him here. I'm not trying to force him to do anything, I'm just not going to let a newbie shadowrunner, a cripple at that, push around someone who's managed to take and hold control of a significant portion of the barrens. But, this gang leader Sticks, likes the Geek. The Geek's drones protect the street doc in his territory. So he just wants to shut the drones down, and get out with his life, and retain control of his gang.

Basically, I'm not willing to let him shove around this guy. He'll deal, but the gangers won't deal with a drone, especially one they've seen demonstrated capable of going from "cute avatar" to "murderous deathrampage" in less than an initiative pass.

Was my interpretation of the Accident power invalid? He starts screaming at me trying to say that it's "not a normal accident", but frankly... "If the crriter wis, the character suffers an accident determined by the gamemaster".

By RAW, Accident against a vehicle results in a crash test.

But... A: The drones were't moving. B: Drones == Vehicles? C: I didn't want them to peel out of control and crash, I just wanted the accident to shut down their ability to perpetuate super-initiative violence.

My argument was this:
A) By RAW, Accident on a vehicle (which drones are) results in a crash test, they can't target specific systems.
B) Even if they can target systems, something that has 1/100,000 odds is not a "normal" accident by any stretch of the imagination. Something that, statistically, has never happened in my characters 10+ year shadowrunning carrear is not normal.

If the Geek is selfish to the point of hurting the game, let him go.
If the Geek adds fun to the table then use RAW or pre-written house rules to set your playes expectations of how the game will be resolved.

You as GM have unlimited resources to throw at the Geek. The government could want him recruited at rifle-point and the gangs could want to sell his parts to a cyberpsycho jealous of the Geek's setup. Lone star could declare the guy a public menace unable to be handled by their own resources and put a bounty on his corpse.

A few notes on handing rules lawyers:

1. Stick to the rules. They are going to make you stick to yours so don't add things to the game like squirts that dont look like squirts. He gets to use RAw, you use RAW, you have unlimited resources, he can adapt or switch to being fun at the table instead of a whiner.

2. Let the player know up front if his acitons will overescalate the situation. I've had several instances where a player wanted a Vigilant Autocannon on a van or somesuch and when I looked them in the eye and said, "Its in the book and you have contacts who can get one but if you do the power level of the game will probably escalate past what you'll want to face." Its a blatant threat and sets the bounds for what you as GM find reasonable for that particular campaign.

3. Use social limitations. When the Johnson calls for the meet have him look at the runners with good rep and offer THEM a job. The one plastered on the trid, the Johnson could say, is undesirable and if found on the job will forfeit the arrangement and initiate reprisals when the Johnson calls his Johnson buddies and 'puts the word out. You don't need to respond to a combat munchkin with combat, you also have VERY powerful social situations you can pwn his munchkin-ness with. Also, offer less money if he must go on the run. After all, the Johnson will need extra bribe money to help do cleanup after.

I believe your character is right in that case. A normal accident is definitely not something like power generators suddenly losing power inexplicably. I think you were abusing your GM powers to get a specific result, albeit for a good cause. It should be nowhere that simple to completely disable all electronic protection for an armed and armored fortress.

Alternative anti-drone-rigger tactics:

1. Spirits of Man with Interference power overcasting and using Edge. It makes the most powerful of TM's cry.
2. Drones are objects and vehicles. The object resistance table for a spell/spirit power can be easier to penetrate than armor. Hint, hint...

i think you abused a little bit. you basically took his toys away and gave him no chance to counter--that is railroading. i think if you wanted to 'go easy' on him and not blow up all his drones, you should have had the drones roll a crash test, with the result of failure being inability to communicate rather than just crashing.

that said, i think you had the right idea in mind. this player sounds somewhat problematic, and other than not allowing him to roll any kind of defense for his drones, i don't see that you did anything i wouldn't do.

The accident power can result in a crash test, but doesn't necessarily do if the GM doesn't want to.

Your interpretation of the accident power is for the moment being legitimate. However, keep in mind that Accident is only instant duration, not sustained. The spirits must always ready their action to 'jam' the drones whenever they try to act, in this case, shooting around.

Some drones therefore might have had the possibility to act, because even all the spirits can't foresee whatever the next action of the drones would be.

So, now he knows why lone wolves get shot down like dogs in SR.

Fatal mistake number 1: He failed to even ward his bunker. A BIG ward will keep out spirits, a smaller ward at least gives your magical support a chance to show up before the crispy critter you.

Fatal mistake number 2: No magical support there or on call.

Fatal mistake number 3: Underestimating the opposition.

Accident is a nasty power. But with a force 3 spirit that's typically 6 dice vs the characters intuition + reaction (which is usually greater than 6), so it wouldn't be 100% effective by any means.

Alternative anti-bunker tactics:
1. Use spirits to constantly remove wards with mana based spells from the astral. Don't let the occupant know when the attack is coming.
2. Dumbfired AVM's are your friend. Nothing more than a laser sight. It can't be weapon mounted (bigger than a LMG) but penetrates barriers really well.
3. Buildings need power. Power can be cut. If internal generator a spirit using the search power can find it and report its location.
4. Mind Probe the other runners to find out intel on the bunker. Mind Probe is ranged.

booo hooo. I can't play god...

tell him to go play a game that allows you to.

The first bit where the node spazzed out was probably fine if the spirit got a bunch of successes. Power surge or something. It was the "nothing after that will work" bit where I think you may have crossed a line. Especially if there weren't swarms of spirits and especially if you didn't let the drones/system/rigger roll something.

And while you may not have been railroading in the overall sense you were railroading just then. You had decided that the drones weren't going to accomplish anything by golly, and that your NPC wasn't going to get pushed around.

Oh, and if you kill the "avatar" it should be a decent link for ritual sorcery since he has put so much emotional energy into it, the quadriplegic Cheesemonkey.

I'm not trying to kill him! (Unless he kills Sticks, at which point that spirit on vengeance-duty will cut down his crippled rigger like a dog).

I'm trying to:

A: Teach him an OOC lesson, being that Mage > Rigger. If you want to survive a mage, you have to have a mage protect you from them.

B: Teach him an IC lesson, that being that you do not push around someone who managed to take and hold a slice of the barrens for any good amount of time.


However, I have two problems:

1: I am only passingly familar with the magic rules. I wanted something that could shut his drones down without damaging them; basically, a huge shut-out, a wake-up call.

2: I fear this player's powers of munchkinry, but I don't want to call airstrikes or use Force 8 Great Form Spirits of Earth to lay siege to his bunker. So I just don't know what's going to work and what won't. I figured that force 3 spirits ought to be able to shut down completely unprotected drones. Plus, I don't know, but I'm quite certain he's broken at least a few rules, but I just don't have the time to give his sheet a full audit.

to accomplish 1, there are spells that would have worked better. i forget the name--static, i think? it basically jams the signal.

A spirit set to disable the viciously efficient killdrone which slaughtered two men so badly it was broadcast on regional news.

I think you might have done better attacking the drones with electric attacks.

Also you probably would have gotten your point across cleaner if you'd had just jumped the guy with a spirit in the first place when trouble started. He couldn't get upset with you from RAW if they knew where his hideout was. And it's what any self resepcting PC in that situation would have done.

A spirit could find him rapidly (he's the glowing thing). And if it attacked from behind it could knock him out rapidly.

Finally where were the other players? If it was just the two of you hanging out that's fine, but if other people were sitting around board that's not so cool, unless they also get similar amounts of time in the spotlight. Even then it's best when the team is working together.

This was his downtime actions, between the regular games. And I didn't just want to attack his meatbod, because I didn't want to seem like I was fucking him over 100%.

>_<

Well if you don't have the time to do a full audit on his sheet then you can always post it here and let us tear into it like a pack of hungery wolves.

However, Accident as an auto-shut down was a bad call, you should have used an overcast Interference spell instead and then preceeded to have Sticks and gang either feed him to ghouls or if you wanted to "play nice" have them leave him alive but disarmed somewhere in Glow City or other nasty but survivable place.

Because the fact of the matter is, if Sticks lets the rigger live without turning him into Stick's bitch then Sticks will only be encouraging others to try to take slices out of his turf.

The force 5 spirit sitting astraly next to him gets 10 dice for accident, which would almost always win (without edge) against a typical PC.

That killbot of his will go down like a bish if struck by a sniper rifle firing APDS. It doesn't discriminate on what it blows a tunnel through.

Sticks should have shown up with half a dozen hired combat riggers/hackers to invade the drone network and fuck up his toys. Then make his way to his meat body with his magic and physical thugs, and the proceed to beat the ever living shit out of him for having challenged a gang leader.

They key was invading the network, not necessarily magic.

With mages being in only 1% of the population and all, I can't help but think that combat riggers are more common.

If you make summoner mages seem too powerful to a newbie who seems to like drones, be very wary of his next character. Chances are it'll be a summoner mage (possibly rigger mage), and You''l have to worry about him trying to pull the same shit on you.

I'm not saying you were wrong in how you ran things, and I can understand that you might not be interested in running a campaign with a focus on a player becoming 'that crazy guy who uses drones to keep the neighborhood in lockdown'. I dunno. Try to talk things out with him and see what direction he's trying to take the campaign in, and try to get through to him that that's not where you and the other players want it going (if that's the case).

He's apparently built a very specific type of character (spider-type drone rigger), and if you don't want him exploring that, maybe his character should be made into an NPC (possibly after fulfilling the rigger's goals). Let him make a new character with a totally different type of focus, hopefully one which doesn't involve drone, spirits, or sprites.


And please stop throwing the M-word around

SD8685, as has been said before, you should have played it by the RAW. The Accident power enables you to force a crash test against your players drones, that's all.

Start Initiative and play it out as actions. If you win the player has had a lesson in turf warfare. If your player wins you've learnt a lesson in humility, and also what your going to have to do next time to really scare him.

WHy didn't the gangers bring a rating 6 area jammer? Wouldn't hurt the spirits at all.

Except for the fact that it made it onto the regional NEWS, and just about everybody in seattle saw a uniquely-distinctive drone eviscerate someone.

I don't see how's he's a munchkin.

I'll say it again.

These two just need to sort out all problems right now, or they should stop playing.

One's a munchkin, the other's a relative new and inexperienced GM that doesn't like the other player's character.

You either sort it out, or you're going to complain a lot on the Dumpshock boards and showcasing your inability to have fun together, again.

Just have a spirit with Influence tell the rigger what a great idea it would be to use the monofilament whip to cut those useless legs of his off.

Jtuxyan from ShadowDragon8685's description Sticks seems like a cunning SOB, and although ShadowDragon8685 played it wrong in this case Sticks knows that your drones have a habit of gibbing gangers and that you have a one man bunker in the middle of his turf you use to contol drones on highly illegal tasks. More then likely in addition to viewing you as a rival he imagining the heat that your tactics are going to bring down on him someday so yes, by nothing more then your trid-worthy antics you have challenged him.

True. And I think I'd probably dig myself a whole too if the GM yelled at me with "YOU ARE NOT WINNING THIS ONE."

There is a disconnect somewhere in the cars of the fun train.