I was GMing a session in SR once and just on the fly made a gang that tried to make the party pay a toll. One member of the party really wanted to check them out more then I anticipated. It created an interesting scene and had some good roll play come out of it. They were called the Coral Reef gang and were actually pretty down and out. Most of them were suffering from scurvy and they didn't even have a comlink between them. One of the characters took heart on them and actually helped them out more then they really anticipated (which in the end let me help them out.) All in all I actually did a better job half flying on the seat of my pants then the more scripted events.

Any good stories? Mine kinda sucks, but I was hoping there would be some great ones.

I was running a campaign in 3rd edition, shortly after Cyberpirates came out. Intro level group, 3 out of the 6 cats in my group hadn't played before. So I did a really nice, simple set up. The Rigger in their group is hanging out in Seattle and comes home to find a message waiting for him. A wageslave buddy of his that he's been drinking with on the regular at the local bar has come into possession of certain sensitive data his R&D department higher-ups would be upset to see in the wrong hands. He knows the Rigger is the kind of guy who knows people who can get someone from point A to Point B in one piece.

So he puts together a group (the other 5 players) and they tap some contacts, do some legwork and start staking out the joint. Like I said, I made it soft (it later came out the information he had was complete bunk, and it was largely a test by his corp to see if he was loyal. And no he wasn't. Whole thing came back to bite the team in the ass when their fixer got annoyed at them for selling him useless data.) so they got in and out easily enough.

And here is where the story takes a turn. Turns out no one I'm running this game for has ever looked at a globe. Or a map. Or watched the Discovery Channel. And unfortunately, their dice were not kind to them, either. I guess this is what happens when you grow up in the sprawl and don't have much of an education. You think Madagascar is, in fact, in the Caribbean, instead of off the coast of Africa. So you book passage for your team and the wageslave and cart your ass, and my game, all the way to the BLOODY CARIBBEAN ISLANDS.

So now they're in the Caribbean, no money, the wageslave has had his accountants frozen. And I am in a part of the world I had -not- planned for this team to wind up in. So I am flying by the seat of my pants and making things up as I go. But, as I said, cyberpirates had just come out and I'd poured over it recently. The Rigger gets it in his head that maybe they'll steal a boat and sail to Madagascar. Which they still think is just an island hop away. Because no one CAN LOOK AT A GODDAMN GLOBE. So I'm coming up with secondary characters and contacts and situations off the cuff, keeping the game flowing.

Eventually someone tells them they're all idiots and on the wrong side of the world. So now they have no money, but they do have a stolen boat. So what's a guy to do? Why, become pirates and EARN your way towards affording those tickets home. So now this idiot wageslave, two-dimensional character I've had drawn up is getting a backstory. Now he's a guy who was trapped behind a desk his whole life. Now he's a guy wearing his tie like a bandana and rattling a saber while he fires (poorly) a gun at ships they board. Now he's Nobeard. The accountant scourge of the Caribbean. Or so he introduces himself to people while sober enough to speak. So this idiot group of runners does this waaaay beyond the amount they need to, until eventually another pirate group gets sick of these greenhorns making noise in their pubs and sinks their ship. They've packed up enough money to get back to Seattle, having completely given up on laying low in Africa, and head back. They're home for three days (Nobeard having joined their group now--these are the sort of people this group was) when the corp they stole from catches up with them, shoots Nobeard dead and kneecaps the Rigger for being lippy.

I had a book full of story ideas that got shot to holes because no one on my team took geography. And because of it, a corporate wageslave got killed. A dwarf rigger had a pair of cyberknees implanted, and two runs later a Fixer had them all whacked for selling him the lyrics to Def Leppard singles under the guise of corporate cooked books.

Don't deal with a dragon, sure. Also don't trust stupid shadowrunners with really simple tasks.

Ever weatched the Anime Black Lagoon? Because this really sounds like Rock, a character in that show, who comes from pretty much that background.

Cute story though. I hope it was fun for you to GM, and not more on the ulcer side of gamemastering.

Really everytime I run a game it's by the seat of my pants... I've got very little time to prepare for a game(work, school, family take up most of it) so I just get a general idea and go with it and base my games on what my players decide to do. It usually goes over pretty well until they deide to go after something much bigger than themselves and get most of the group killed(they haven't learned to run away when out matched yet)

Same here, really. And the times that I do prepare an outline or a few hooks, by the time we get to the table and start playing, things can go in a million different direction. The only time I really save by NOT flying on a whim, is statting out key NPCs or opponents. Anything else, really just kinda flows through gameplay.

An 9 times out of 10, the stuff that GM cares to detail, usually is something the players don't care about as much and sometimes ends up being a waste of time for the GM.

By being able to think well on the fly, grasp the rules well enough to always move forward and just have some good logical sense, the players can really just run the games and maximize everyone's playing time and experience.

Sounds like you had a good time of it but, MAN!, is it ever frustrating when your carefully written adventure gets blown to pieces because a party member doesn't know the definition of a word. Or where Africa is.

Man! And I thought my runners were uncultured... Anyway, good story and kudos for making things up on the fly in a funny way.

Cheers,

Max

Ps: I usually have lots and lots of run ideas in store, many more than I can actually Gm (and I have been doing it for more or less fourteen years) so I never get to really really make things up on the fly; When I get to improvise I take stg from my "unused" pile )

No, I've never seen Lagoon. I basically only get exposed to anime when a friend of mine finds something exquisite and makes me watch it.

Also, the most frustrating part of the whole thing is how outside my ken the feel was. I run a very dark, very Noir-inspired game. There's a lot of grit, and not a ton of comedy, in the way I handle my business as a GM. Had to fall back on my personality a bit to make it a touch lighter when the group becomes rum-running pirate-kings (or so they told people, the truth was the dwarf kept falling off the boat). At any rate, it was fun. But I was much happier when they died off due to stupidity and I wound up with a group of players who were much more in synch with the feel I was going for. Noir-narrative in a gritty world that was much less action movie, and much more sandpaper rough.

Truth be told tho, the players have to be having fun and enjoying the story as well as you do. My group that I run for has been together since Jr High school and have been thru all 4 editions of the game(I started running with 2nd) and I happen to know all my players pretty well. I can make guesses as to how my group will react in certain situations(Like staying and fighting the Ares strike team instead of running) and they know how I run my games(It's a dangerous job running the shadows, people die all the time)

And they know when I'm running on the fly and when I've planned things out... Things go smoother when I'm running on the fly compared to when I plan out the whole run or get a published adventure.

I, too, run most everything on the fly. I figure up the beginning: how the group is contacted, how the "Johnson" works, and my idea of how it should probably go. Then I've got a main idea of what needs to be done. I then try to get a few ideas on how I think my group would run the mission, that gets completely blown up, and they do a bunch of stuff I don't expect. Yep, so I've pretty much stopped planning. I just try to keep up with the group.

Hell, half the time they end up doing more than the mission. As an example: they had about five hours between finding out when their target's next meet was and when it was to take place. So two of them decided that they'd like a nice fat gun in the back of the box truck of theirs, and since this was the first run, didn't have the money. So they went to their "boss" (one of the players, who the group decided had started the team) and told him they need some funds for a little side project to help "further the group." The "boss" approved it, and as a group they completely shook down a doctor's office and sold the stuff they ripped off from it.

That was completely out the blue and unscripted, as I had no clue this was going to happen. I prefer to play my games like that though. I like the players to feel like they have control. I mean, I've got control of the world, and if they screw up, they know I'll get 'em, but if they feel comfortable doing something, I dont stop them. Shoot, I even let 'em do things on each other if they want. Such as the "boss" using magic on the big Troll who doesnt respect him and never uses his real name, so that the big dumb troll calls him by name. Although I've had things like that go bad before...hey, I wouldnt be happy if I figured out you've been using magic on me either.