We're all aware of "written house rules". Alternate Matrix, Magic and Firearms systems. Alternate background. Alternate character generation rules. Banned pieces of gear. And so on. But what about "unwritten rules"? Stuff that just happened to come into being by (unspoken) group consensus, but never was stated as a rule?

It could be an understanding that some mechanics will not get (over or ab-)used (like "if we do headshots every fight, the bad guys will do it too, so we don't"), some flavor aspect ("magic and cyberware don't mix well, so we don't augment mages"), or harder "soft caps" ("we don't go over X DP totals"). Or simply something "learned" ("Don't waste money on quickening or sustaining foci, the NPCs love to rip those apart, and wards are everywhere").

Do your games have such assumptions?

The head shots thing and the DP thing for sure. Our gaming group has been together over ten years and while we mostly play D and D with some breaks for other games there's a what's good for the goose is good for the gander mentality. If one of us power games then the GM has to step up the competition to keep that one person challenged. It gets pretty lame pretty quick. Now there's no set cap, it's just one of those things, don't build game breaking characters.

Here's an example. I was talking to my GM about dumping six points into negotiation for my face and he said, 'I don't see why your character would be that skilled at negotiation.' Frankly I didn't either, he was right. The same thing goes for combat characters. A six in a firearms skill is Hatchetman level, why would you want to start out like that? Give your characters room to grow.

Anyway that's our take on things.

I tried to write mine down, and they are here:
http://toreadorvampire.co.uk/rpg/shadowrun#CampaignStyle

But of note: Playerkilling is 'discouraged but not against the rules'. SR is a dystopian game world, and I don't want to turn it into carebearland in regards to player-vs-player, but then I do want to encourage teamwork.

In my general GMing style, I like to really discourage one-trick-ponies and powergaming, making the game hard for them to adapt to. For example, right now the classic "sniper, who drops umpteen squillion dice with longarms, using his twinked out rifle" would be totally useless in my game. The team have been stripped of all of their equipment and are going to have to rely on a mix of social skills, the benefits from their implants (without letting anyone know they have implants), hacking, magic (once they get the magecuffs off), stealth and the players' wits.

Other things, I don't mind a bit of harsh language, don't mind a little graphic violence or lewdness, although I try not to make it the focus of the game.

I think "be reasonable" would be the obvious one ... if I think that someone has gained a ridiculously powerful advantage from a very low character-resource (karma and/or build points) investment then I will consider it a loophole in the rules, and close it with a houserule. Generally, I'm pretty easy with things though, as long as it makes sense.

One thing I don't like doing is escalating to counter powergamers. If the characters start using twinked out equipment, I won't have the enemies using better equipment - powergamers will just loot them one they're dead, and it all becomes like D&D. I prefer to just make powergaming pointless by not reusing the same kind of encounter again and again.

One of my players flat-out murdered an NPC. The NPC was not a threat and the PC's reasoning was that the NPC could have cost him money. So I docked him a Karma point. Even if you're playing a criminal or a thug you can still have a sense of honor and not be an amoral monster. I don't know if that would really be considered a "house-rule" but I penalize for any actions taken that result in the intentional or easily-avoidable injury or death of innocent pedestrians. That's about the only house rule I harshly enforce.

Well, the DP thing is variable. We usually run a 13-16 DP for specialities level, but sometimes the specialist has a 12 in more rounded(Firearms Group for example), or the Pistoleer might have 17. Somehow our games always end up balancing out in the end. We just run it by ear; if we play gangers we end up taking lower skills around, etc.

Since we dont play with Availability at chargen, the unspoken half of that houserule i mentioned is that we don't abuse it by getting the cram-addled ganger three panther cannons and a citymaster. We use it to get a few of those character-special pieces.

and basically, don't be an ass. Sure, you can have a more brutal character, or an assassin, or whatnot, but killing innocents is something that we kind of like to draw the line on usually. Don't go gunning down Joe Guard who just wants to go home at the end of the day if he's willing to cut, run, and not say a word.

Minmaxing is fine as long as it's making sense with the character. Hell, the characters themselves would probably minmax some. I mean, if you're in the Shadowrun world, you want to be good at something, and it might mean sacrificing other stuff. But again, make it realistic.

Everything is allowed, nothing is forbidden. They tend not to try to escalate the power scale because the GM will always win that fight, and the only caveat I have is that you can do anything you want that is in character for your character. So, I guess I technically control game content because I approve characters, but I rarely say no, I just don't like people to be inconsistent unless that is part of the character's personality.

Chris

Oh also, since this seems to be a theme with some of you, I have no problem with bloodthirsty and/or amoral characters. I think they add interesting spice to the game as a contrast to the other more peaceful "Just trying to make it" folks who don't kill for pleasure. Creates some interesting IC arguments.

Chris

I agree with DTF. I hate arbitrary decisions that 'punish' the player, like removing Karma from a character for a perfectly valid in-character action.

REMOVING, yes. But look at it this way.

Character 1 spends a session doing legwork, greasing wheels with nuyen, gathering info on a target, and has to shoot and kill some hit men that came after her. Her time in-game is marked by lots of good thinking, good planning, luck, and pushing the edge with skills. She gets (arbitrarily) 10 karma.

Character 2 spends the same session doing legwork, torturing information out of NPCs, bribing street kids with BTLs, and collecting some favors from Tanamous by kidnapping some random people off the street and trading them with said organleggers in exchange for gear. She gets 8 karma.

Why the difference?
Because unless you're running a game where kidnapping random people with the intent to have them chopped into spare parts is perfectly acceptable behavior (It very well could be! I've run many a game like that myself!) and hooking kids on BTLs so you have ready access to informants is also okay (Again, I've done this several times), then you should probably not be as rewarding of behavior that is less desirable. In some level, Shadowrun has always been about fighting against those with a great deal of power and little morality, and how the struggle against them affects how far you yourself are willing to go. Or at least it was in 1st and 2nd edition. Lately it seems to have drifted away to a more spy vs spy mentality, in terms of official releases.

Unless we'd all agreed to run a less-than-moral game, I would be loathe to give the same amount of karma to characters who are blithely cruel and sociopathic as I would to ones who at least made the attempt not to resort to extreme measures at the drop of a hat.

Interesting that snipers are "one trick ponies". I guess skills like stealth, stalking, camoflage, regular rifle, various combat skills, and athletics aren't part of their repertoire. All that means is any sniper will be able to function as a regular soldier...you should probably inform the player that what he has is a civilian TARGET SHOOTER, not a sniper.

So conversely then, do you penalize them with less Karma for leaving witnesses? Or evidence of their activities? I just think the differentiation is unnecessary. If you are clear up-front that you are playing a more moral than normal game, then in-game punishment is not really the best solution to a player that is not fitting in with that style. This is better dealt with through out-of-game measures.

Of course, I don't understand running a 'moral' campaign unless it is an aberration. Where it appears that you consider a moral campaign to be the default unless prior discussion alters that fact, I view things from the exact opposite angle, in that an 'amoral' game is in fact the default. I don't like dictating to my players how they should or should not act. Nor will I punish them with Karma reductions for in-character actions.

Like I said, that would depend on the game. I'd say half the time I don't give a crap - generally when I'm running 'vanilla' Shadowrun. The other half the time, I'm running a themed game of some kind, and I like to give people incentives to push the envelope for the genre. I'll give you specific examples.

In an international, 500bp spy-vs-spy game that I never named:
Less Karma
Leaving evidence without making an attempt to clean it up;
Leaving witnesses which could credibly vouch for your existence;
Opting to hole up and hide rather than evade and escape the enemy. (I.E. hiding in a safehouse rather than leaving the area)
More Karma
Cleaning evidence through use of fire, explosives, etc, and successfully getting others to blame 'extremist groups' or terrorists;
Ensuring that combat is intelligent and tactical rather than an exercise in having more cyberware & bigger guns;
Putting 'prime runner' type enemy spies/agents into 'traps from which they could not possibly escape' rather than killing them outright. This is actually the mechanic I used for the Hand of God, as well - is players burned it, they would be captured and then placed in a James Bond style trap which they'd escape from. It made it a lot more fun.

In "Little Trouble in Big China," a Triad-based game in Hong Kong:
Less Karma
Persuing personal shadow agendas rather than actively working towards the goals of the cell and parent Triad;
Abusing civilians under your protection (if they've paid up);
NOT attempting to suborn civilians to your protection rackets by any means you have;
More Karma
"Getting crazy," I.E. making things more like a wuxia movie. Sure, you could run across the room and punch the guy, but it's a lot cooler to ride the cart, guns blazing like Chow Yun Fat. The physad started a list of "Random inanimate objects I've killed people with," in pursuit of expanding his crazy.
Brutality. While brutality is neither here nor there for me most of the time, the triad the PCs were a part of had a rep for being exceptionally brutal. I didn't want them to shy away from doing terrible, terrible things to relatively blameless people.

I do want to stress, though, that under "ordinary" Shadowrun, I really don't care what people do. I've docked karma from people about twice. Once that I recall was when a PC multilated a random child because they were frustrated, and another was when a PC deliberately set up an NPC to become an insect host body. I docked them Karma for those actions because they were grossly at odds with both the theme of the game to that point and their own PC's behaviors.

...we have recent adopted one hard and fast unwritten rule. The term Hacker is no longer to be used and Decker is now back in our group's lexicon. Matrix Specialist, while more appropriate, tends to be too cumbersome. Should a player say the forbidden "H" word, during a session, some sort of non life threatening yet highly annoying circumstance may befall the PC at some random moment.

On the subject of Sniper PC, they don't necessarily need to be one dimensional. I had a sniper character who was good at a number of other things than just shooting as well as being the bass player for the team's band.

Yeah well, when most people say "Sniper" they think of a trick shooter and not of a highly trained soldier. But I think there was a recent thread about what a sniper really is. In the games I've been playing, one-trick ponies have become boring to their players and been replaced rather quickly because they'd get around 5% playtime unless they're very creative roleplayers.

It seems you recently got to be the GM

Oops, sorry, I should qualify the whole sniper issue since it relates to something very personal to me that I didn't explain fully.

I am talking about someone who uses a sniper rifle as their only weapon and never anything else

They are basically built as a street sam, maxxing out their longarms skill with everything they can get their hands on, then they buy and mod up a twinked rifle, then use it in every circumstance they can, including urban combat, as point-man, and occassionally, they actually snipe!

Since they do omgwtfbbq damage with every hit, and have wired reflexes, their standard combat at close-range is to kill six bad guys one-hit-one-kill, or at range three, with alternate take-aim actions to ignore the range modifiers.

OK, alright, but that's all they can do - kill stacks of people ... they are usually awful at everything else, or pick "cheesy" skills. The character concept is essentially: "how many dice can I roll to kill someone, with the highest rate of fire, with a silencer, with the best damage"

I don't like snipers like that - however, you are welcome to play an *actual sniper* in my games. It would be a (very) refreshing change from my old tabletop group.

You can be fighting against immoral bastards and still be an immoral bastard yourself. Whether this is something you want to explore with your gaming group is up to you (meaning you and them), though, and it's the sort of thing where you all need to be more or less on the same page.

In any case, there's already a game mechanic for dealing with casually sociopathic characters -- Notoriety. Seriously, it's not "fluff you should just ignore", but rather a useful way to impose consequences without being arbitrary and heavy-handed. As a bonus, it lets you penalize the smartass who has build points from "Incompetent: Industrial Mechanic" and "Incompetent: Artisan".

I just thought of (was reminded by it_trolls) another major unspoken/unwritten houserule I use in all of my games:

Social skills cannot be used directly by one player character versus another player character. I do not allow (without use of magical manipulation spells or hijacked skillwires/move by wire) one character to force another character to do something.

However, I run social skills differently anyway:

Versus NPCs, social skills allow the players to either "help influence the NPC to do what they wanted" (if the interaction isn't key to the plot), or (if it is a major portion of the plot) a social skill allows a player to ask me "behind the scenes questions" and recieve extra information during a social encounter.

EG: someone with negotiation might suggest a trade of items, and if their roll is high, I might secretly tell the player: "Hmm, he seemed really uneasy when you were speaking about him giving you those floor-plans, you feel like he's under duress not to let them out of his sight" - which would lead to more roleplaying, but the character can do better because that information told them things they wouldn't otherwise know.

Versus PCs I do not use social skills to force their characters to take actions, nor do I use hallucinations to force them to take actions either. I won't say "The cop rolled a higher intimidate, so you have to tell him stuff", instead I make those opposed rolls in secret, and if the NPC wins, I lie to the player about what they see and hear. I make the player nervous, by making it seem that things are happening that aren't, like the cop has more evidence than he really has, or they have other PCs in captivity and have confessions from them already, and things like that. IE: The character is encouraged to take those actions, by the fear I instill in the player.

Since I am the character's eyes and ears to the player, I can interfere with those senses if the character is not in a sound emotional state. I love the idea of doing that (in a controlled manner, don't screw with them al of the time, that just gets annoying) but it's more immersive than "You must do X because I rolled some dice".

As an example, in 7 game sessions of my current campaign (in case people get the wrong idea of how often I do it), I haven't had a situation where I did that yet.