In the game I'm playing in we have a 5-8 person team, and unfortunately one of the players is a power gaming twit. His character lacks, well, character. His character is basically the guy from any FPS- point and shoot, and things like story, personality and not shooting are unimportant. And unfortunately he is pretty good at doing this one sad, sad thing (his solution to EVERY problem is "have my character shoot it"). Already there is a noticable power difference between him and the rest of us, and it's not just that he kills more enemies than the rigger. He is better at his one task (shooting without hesitation, and it's not really a character flaw, he just throws dice at things) than the rest of us are at ours.
Already we've had one run where the entire party sat around while he sniped warehouse guards (even going so far as to snipe a guard that one of us was already sneaking up on).
As GM's how would you deal with this power creep?
And as players? My character and he already have beef, and I've spoken with the GM (who has no internet at the moment, which is why I'm here) about problems that might escalate into a "professional dispute".

TALK to him about that . . there, it's been said, now let's see some other things to try *g*
throw situations at him where shooting will do nothing but create more problems . .

If hes fucking the game for every one else fuck the game for him. Make it so He cant do some thing have a group get the drop on him and hit him in melee. limit the amount of ammo he can lug into a run do that same for all but i should hurt him the most yeah you can have 2 clips and one smallish gun sorry high sec even a guns a huge risk. If he was power gaming to much I'd try talking to him tellinghim why its not a good idea if he still spoils it for you all kick him out. The best bet is to try and limit him and /or have times when he is needed both will hope full make him a use full one trick pony

When the answer is always shoot it, inevitably he will. When doing so has consequences, and these consequences have a similar philosophy, are as capable of living by it and they need something to shoot, make sure it is him.

Here are a couple of ideas if talking doesn't work...

1) Lone Star has been able to connect the spent bullets from several of his "shooting sprees" and video of him and have issued a "shoot first" warrant for him.

2) A victim's "family, friend, corp, etc." has hired a team to track him down and kill him.

3) Bullet tracking software added to automatic mortar system. Nuff said. And yes they do exist RL.

4) Countersniper...

5) Wound him and have a crooked street doc sell off his cyberware or if an adept, have him add cyberware to save his life.

THIS IS NOT THE GM'S PROBLEM.

They have a phsycho on the team who kills without hesitation for no reason. That is bad for business. The characters should deal with it. Whether that means they kick him off the team, tell him to shape up, or kill him, it's their decision. When there's an asshole with a gun in real life, god (the GM of real life, so the legends say) does not step in and have a talk with him. That job belongs to humans, i.e. the players.

Also, snipers are terrible and easy to ruin. Once the first sniper shot is fired, the enemies go inside and don't go near the windows. He's done. That's not GM intervention, that's just the guards not being mindless automatons

Well, if there is the total-stealth condition in a mission, he can't shoot anybody. Set up a mission, where every shot will be the failure of the mission. Let the runners get into a high security building, where the guards are linked to a biomonitor. If he shots anybody, the biomonitor will alert the rest of the guards. Drones and reenforments will arrive immediatly. When the runners had to get into a section of the building, which is sealed up, when the alert is triggered, the mission is a failure.
So there is the hour of the rest of the group. He can't do anything, but the rest of the group can get some real great spotlight time.

If he can't shot anybody, he is worthless.

This why a GM needs to seriously screen the character submitted to him/her, and yes I have learned this lesson very well and hard. Been in to many situations like this. I have seen the multitudes of ways and methods players can abuse the system.

In a case like you describe I would "Bore" the player to death, ie nothing is challenging, he wins every time, no one can stand against him, he is Number 1. Most munchkins take the hint after a bit. by sending more and badder NPCs against him you are providing a challenge for him. Take away the Challenge.

WMS

I disagree with Larme - it is the GM's problem. It is the GM's problem because simply having some decent combat ability shouldn't let a character coast like this. Even in a purely combat-oriented game, the bad guys should be using intelligent tactics, a sniper should have a hard time finding a good position (especially going against a complex that is presumably designed to not give snipers a clear field of fire), and there should be security measures such as locked gates, spotlights, motion sensors, etc. - not just a few mooks wandering around waiting to get wasted.

The game should also involve far more than "shoot the guards and get this thing the Johnson wants". There should be planning, there should be legwork, there should be security that can't be broken through with pure brute force, there should be meetings with shady characters where "I shoot him" is an option that will lead to massive complications, and the hacker, rigger, or mage should never have nothing to do.

From your limited description, though, I am not sure whether the problem is a new GM, or whether the GM shares the same FPS style of the "problem" player. Although again, the problem isn't so much the character being overpowered, so much as the character getting away with things that should either be much harder to do, or have serious in-game consequences.

This is a problem I see with many games and the problem with internet forums. We usually only see one side of the problem.

Some person comes in here and whines about how powergamey or how munchkin someone else's character is, how "character-less" the character is and we all commiserate and offer suggestions. Nobody (else) asks for the other side of the story or even waits till the GM actually says something.

Glyph/Larme: The guards should only exhibit tactics that either they have been trained in or are capable of thinking up themselves. Which means if they are Rent-a-cops with minimal training and a minimal wage or they be dumb-ganger-guards, intelligent tactics should not be on the cards. We assume that buildings that shadowrunners want to get into are designed with security in mind. Often it is far from the truth. Barring some radical change in the civil engineering industry, designing a building with security in mind is expensive. Building it can be just as expensive too. I have projects that were initially supposed to have been designed with security in mind (if banks, casinos, courthouses and government buildings are not high value and high profile targets, I do not know what is), but the security features got scrapped in favor of better access, more people friendly features, budgetary considerations, etc.

Coldan: If said GM/Fixer/Johnson hired such a person whose sole expertise is shooting, and sends him on a total stealth mission, then such a Fixer/Johnson deserves to be shot himself. If such a person is sent on a mission, then the shooting should be expected or even mandatory.

I sadly have to throw another vote behind this being the GM's problem, not the players.

The purpose of a game is to have fun.

By and large, the purpose of the GM is to set the stage for having that fun.

If one of the players is affecting the fun of the rest, it's the GM's job to talk to that player and try to make things fun for all again.

If that fails, then it's the GM's job to either force the issue by making things not fun for the problem player (i.e. full stealth run) until they get their head out of their ass or else remove that player from the game (i.e. countersniper).

Ideally, the GM can convince the player to ease back on things that cause problems and find a way that everyone can have their shining moment. (i.e. the shooter shuts up and accepts stealth and non-shooting parts of the run and gets a chance to shine once in awhile with moments along the lines of "you have three seconds to trick shoot that wire from two hundred meters away in stormy skies or everyone dies. You're the team's only hope!").

In the context of an online game like a play by post or a mu* with 20-200 players, things become a bit more self-regulating without GM interference and problem players either get ignored by the rest of the populace or just plain get a bullet in the back for being twits in character on more bloodthirsty games.

Long and short though, talking to the player and trying to work out something without confrontation is the first step hopefully, otherwise the fun gets ruined by the out of character confrontation and conflict as much as the in character bullshit.

I'm guessing it may not entirely be the GM's problem. See, its a very large team, so I'm guessing the game actually encourages completely 1 dimensional characters because your individual weak spots don't 'cost' anything. So what if your social skills suck if you have 3 faces to do all the talking. So what if you have willpower one if your two mages ensure that you are never at risk.

However to address your specific example

How the fuck does he get away with just sniping guards willy nilly. I'm assuming that they have radios and might notice when someone stops talking. But more importantly, they also have biomonitors that are seriously cheap, so when someone actually dies, they might notice. Shit, if someone has a DocWagon contract and is an employee, docwagon are actually going to ring them up and say "XYZ your guard got shot, we are coming in HOT is your facility under attack?"

Also, cameras may notice that someone's head exploded in a red mist.

People will actually notice after 1 or 2 guys goes missing. Tops. And they will call in the fucking SWAT team because someone is camping in bell tower with a silenced sniper rifle, especially as the facility is important enough to warrant multiple armed guards. Your run isn't going to go so well when multiple helicopters with door gunners and pissed of cops in heavy assault armour show up and try to kill you

I think that the problem with there is that he'd rather not kill all of the other PCs while trying to deal with the problem one. Upon shooting lots of holes in the one guy, the SWAT team's not going to just tip their hat to the rest of the team and wish them a good day. Alternately, faced with such overwhelming force, the sniper might even surrender, and, under interrogation, give up the rest of his team. My recommendation would have been not to allow the character in the first place. Having failed that, perhaps he could have a name for himself, and some other sniper tries to take him, and just him, out to prove himself.

Hrm. If it was my game, I'd tell them they swat team was turning up - maybe the hacker gets the police radio frequency, or the call to the complex security, maybe they notice the big black helicopter with S.W.A.T on the side and run the hell away - then I'd give them a free ride out of there (making it tense, but not so they actually got caught). If one guy stuck around I'd make sure got liquidated, removing the 'talking' problem.

Then hopefully they might understand the fundamental lesson that is 'in a modern world game, team 'the other people' has more, bigger guns than you can ever possibly hope to have, and you need to work around that'

I'm not sure you could block the character though, as I said, extreme specalisation is going to be an issue in such a large team. 8 players is a lot of people. The problem is not that he's specalised, its letting that specalisation dominate the game.

This seems to be a problem for the gaming group, not the characters, so it should be solved by talking among players and GM. "Solving" it in game often leads to an even worse arm's race - the player builds even stronger characters to survive what the GM is throwing at him. Other characters tend to end up as collateral damage.

Well, if the characters have an issue with this other character shooting up everybody they encounter, maybe it is an IC issue as well as an OOC one.

Sniping =/= powercreep. Powercreep is when all the stats in a RPG system get systematically inflated due to commercialistic soucrebooks marketed towards 12 year olds who are simultaneously hormonal but also socially disempowered.

Anyway, this is just a case of the GM not knowing his tactics. Snipers are a bitch, yes. Snipers are hard to deal with. Probably every runner team should have a sniper. But there's a bunch of things that can be done with snipers.

1.) When the sniper fires the opposition gets the chance to spot him. Maybe they don't get it on the first shot but with multiple shots it becomes more likely. When this happens the people being shot at can suppress the sniper and send out a flanking party. If there's not enough opposition to be able to deal with a single sniper in this manner then the GM needs to make more challenging scenarios.

2.) The opposition could have chopper support that can look for the sniper. I suppose that in SR rules the sniper could always do something crazy like snipe out the pilot, but then again maybe the chopper is rigged and there isn't a clear shot at the rigger. Once the chopper spots the sniper it can basically fire rockets at him to pwn him.

3.) As soon as the opposition spots the sniper, they don't even need to do anything like flanking. They could just call in their mortar support.

4.) If the team gets a reputation for sniping then maybe the opposition set up counter-snipers covering the likely sniping places. When the player makes his first attack and has used up all his pool or otherwise expended some in-game resources, the counter snipers get a free shot. Bakam.

5.) Magic. Krazap.

So I think it's a bit lame to complain that a sniper is able to kill everyone while the rest of the team is useless. Snipers are very effective. If there's a small group of opposition just standing around in the open, of course one guy with a scoped rifle firing from concealment will have a better chance of eliminating all opposition than three guys running up with assault rifles. What else could you possibly want? There's already great ways to pwn a sniper anyway.

It's obvious your GM is being uncreative if all the encounters he throws at your team can be solved with "I shoot it!". Don't bring up your resident power gamer but instead explain to your GM that you and the other players are bored with the direction the game is going and that you would like something more diverse than simple gun play. In my games non-combat-to-combat encounters are typically 50/50.

Move the campaign to the UK. The entire city of London is covered in CCTV, Guns are illegal, all Awakened are supposed to be registered as will all TM's after the conclusion of the Emergence campaigns.
Big Brother is really and truly watching over you. Pull a gun and fire it and it will get noticed as well as your face plastered all over Scotland Yard's DB and Interpol.

The local Bobbies will beat the crap out of you. Shadowruns in London are best done without gunplay unless you want to have the hounds released.

Fun stuff the Smoke is.

Should not have any effect on shadowrunners, except everyone wearing masks or other disguises.


If you are bored by the way your GM designs runs or one player manages to grab all the attention by doing whatever (like shooting people or refusing to shoot people), you should really talk with the GM and maybe the player. I doubt this kind of situation can be dealt with in-game.

A sniper can very reliably kill one target per IP, while being very safe from counter-fire. That is not a problem.

A proper samurai can reliably take out a whole group of targets in one turn, with a a small risk of getting killed in the process.

The samurai can quickly move his field of fire, while the sniper is very unflexible.


Dead people can be a problem regardless of the way they were killed. Psychos pay more for everything, because dealing with them costs extra. You do not call a psycho to do him a favour. Softies have it better.

To put it another way, if the character is able to solve all his problems by shooting stuff, then he is doing a very good job of playing the game that it being presented to him.
But with police and SWAT teams and paramilitary corp security you can almost never shoot your way in. Shooting your way out may be an option, but shooting your way in generally means you've already failed. I have no problem with people playing combat monsters, so long as I make it clear to them before we start playing that they will not, by and large, be contributing to the execution of runs, they are there for when shit goes wrong and the characters need to get out with their skins. Sure, they'll be able to contribute sometimes when the plan requires the quick, quiet takedown of a guard or two, but in general a combat monster isn't the plan, the combat monster is there for when the plan fails.

Now if shooting doesn't work, if shooting ruins the runs, and yet he's doing it anyway, then that's a different problem, with different solutions.

Well talking should be the first choice, though I know myself some cases it did not worked.

I`d suggest some runs where you have to enter a building (simple empty factory or that kind of stuff), which has more than one entrance, the opponents inside not coming out for any reason (ok that`s the point when the GM has to tell that the building may not be burned or destroyed in any other way, maybe because the hostage you should rescue is inside or something like that).

Make sure that the group has to split and go inside, having no chance to obtain a superior position. This might not keep the powercreep one from killing the opponents or being good at it, but it might make it a little more difficult. And yes, magic is the best way to stop people who believe they are better than the rest...I prefer control actions letting the character drop all his stuff and getting naked....

I don't believe I ever said he was a sniper- he has the biggest rifle he can buy, that's true, but his favorite weapons are a pair of sub machine guns.
And the problem isn't that the games aren't fun, or the GM isn't giving us good runs (to some extent it is. The GM is a noob, but he is a good storyteller), it's just this guy. Team work isn't something he's interested in, and maybe this isn't something that can be dealt with in game. I've never played with anybody who made the game unpleasant so this is a new thing for me.

But thanks to every who helped (and even those who weren't interested in doing so), all your comments should really help things smooth out.

So in other words the GM, rather than administering a game that includes tactical challenges requiring a variety of approaches, is focusing on "story". Which is fine, but that makes the obvious answer to your problem to have the GM think a little bit more about the former. Surely you can't complain when the character who is specialized in shooting, when presented with a situation where shooting evidently solves the problem and "advances" the game, shoots. Why should he collaborate with other characters when he can shoot everyone just fine himself? If the GM presented situations where collaboration would be required, though, and where 1 crazy gunman alone can't trivially solve all the problems, then wouldn't this stop being an issue?

I think he meant the offending player _is_ the powercreep.


This is just being a jerk... You have to let your fellow players have their time in the spotlight. You just HAVE to.

I would have every player privately mention to the GM how the disruptive player is bothering them. Maybe that will get the GM to talk to the player.

The toughest part of being a GM is not the writing, or the rules, it is fending off the occasional jerk who tries to ruin the fun for everyone else.

Frag him.