We've recently gotten a new influx of players into our dwindling local group (and more and more members of the group become non-local) and we've started Shadowrunning again. As part and parcel of having new players, we occasionally regale them with tales of past exploits. Sometimes these are spectacular (wired gillette hopped up on drugs and magic outmaneuvers guided missile), sometimes these are learning opportunities(decker survives point-blank panther cannon), but most of the time, they're just dumb(both of the aforementioned events). Even worse than our stories were some of the house rules and custom content we generated when allowed to run willy-nilly.

Chief among these terrible ideas was Karma Krazy. At some point or another, we allowed our shaman (which was, tragically, me) to use the Spell Design rules presented in the Grimoire to create a spell that produced karma. Needless to say, it went straight to crap from there.

Everyone's done, allowed, thought about doing, or thought about allowing something that makes them cringe now - so what's yours?

Starting with a fully submersible APC with many many drones with full auto shotguns in my first game of second ed. Going through a warehouse with said drones, and blowing the everloving crap out of the gangers in the area.

Hmm, blasting a Yellowjacket with an assault rifle while it was hovering over a glass roofed Mall probably wasn't my finest hour....

Having my summoned spirit use it's remaining services to rape and sexually assault a hostess in only my second game (the karmic negatives I reaped were horrible, and she eventually became more or less possessed by a revenge spirit akin to a Shade or Wraith). It would have paid off to read more into what was acceptable as a player before I had started playing.

One of the coolest things I succeeded in was using a water spirit to freeze the bottom of my feet to slide past two guards as I simultaneously cast two knockout spells. Only one was knocked out, but the other was put on his ass. It wasn't until months later that I realized as a mystic adept I didn't get my magic attribute at full anymore because of the power put towards adept powers, but it was still a cool move (no pun intended).

going into unarmed combat against a small feathered serpent . . yes, it was a high STR/BODY Troll . . ok, i held myself for two rounds and in the third round i went down with deadly+1 physical damage, but i got stabilized and the dragon got blown to pieces by my characters twin with an Ares Great Dragon ATGM(oh the irony)
the most stupid part?
i had an LMG and another Ares Great Dragon ATGM at my disposal and decided not to use either one . .


also:
don't know if that counts as a dumb move, but stun being carried over into physical meant i killed someone with deadly stun damage due to gel ammo fired on full auto from an silenced assault rifle, after he had been hit by a dart-rifle filled with gamma scopolamine . .

My group extracted Goofy from DisneyLand, and didn't erase any of the RFID tags I had told them about.

Numerous times.

And gave equipment to get rid of them.

Yeah... Earth Elementals rising out of a Suburban Yard are cool!

So in reminiscing with my group last night, I remembered something else.

When we first started playing Shadowrun, instead of, say, reading the rules, we awarded karma on a "2 karma per kill" basis.

Let's just say a lot of missions ended in bloodbaths.

I'm sure I have done so many retarded things, but the thing that comes to mind is the death of my favorite character so far.

He was a big crazy cyber-pirate. Drove around in a Winnebago of "Doom" ... he was awesome

So the team was apparently fighting an insect spirit, our team was a rigger, me the sammy, and a Troll adept with killing hands.

My laser rifle wasn't doing it, and the rigger was just as ineffective. The adept decided to attack it with his non-foci mundane as all hell axe.....

Even though we out of character advised him. He felt pretty tough, so he got ripped in two...Never used the one ability we had at our disposal to actually damage it. It went downhill from there

Some time after I had just started GMing, my players came up with an idea to rebuild a blimp with 40 or 50 armor points, don't know anymore, because the rules in the Rigger 1 or 2 would allow it, or rather not forbid it. I let it slip. Bad mistake. That think cost me my last nerve. If I remember correctly, some unspecified force got so fed up they nuked it.

Ah... the barrens had been turned into a military concentration camp after godzilla sacked Seattle (Moral of the story: Don't tell a powerful Monkey Shaman to cause as much chaos as she can). I was captured by the military as I was scouting the lay of the land, and was thrown into said concentration camp. I was tired of the character, so I decided to kill him. Unfortunately for my two strength elf, instead of doing the sensible method of suicide and trying to climb the fence, I decided to go and find the biggest, meanest troll in the camp and punch him. Needless to say, the troll decided to show the elf who's boss. Not by killing him, no. Instead, he picked up my elf and dragged him back to his tent. Cue mental scarring...

Probably the dumbest thing I ever did in Shadowrun was throw a grenade without the Throw skill. Here's how it happened:

The team was sent to geek three different targets. We had a large group, so we split into three roughly equal teams (I think it was 4-5 members per team; like I said large.) Anyway, my group was on target #3 and (predictably) I was the one who totally hosed the mission by starting the firefight early. I ended up crouched down behind a Eurocar Westwind 2000 with bullets splanging off the car and this is when I got the bright idea to throw one of my frag grenades at the enemy.

The grenade (because of scatter and a crap roll) landed on the opposite side of the car from me. I didn't take any damage, but one of my teammates went down with a Serious wound, because of it. Totally hosed the mission.

Now, under normal circumstances, this would've been a good call. Except I didn't have the Thrown Weapons skill. I'm still not sure why an Archetype came with a weapon it couldn't use. (It was a 1st Edition Bodyguard.)

After that, I MADE SURE any Archetype I picked up could use everything it came with. And I chose better tactics.

Silicon Avatar

Tried to melee a wendigo with an average human player one of my first runs. What the hell was I thinking!?

Hmmm... my first character was the SR3.0 archetype trollmercenary.... we added a bunch of grenades and a single panther SC + lots of ammo...


His streetname was (from the beginning!) "Splatter" and he intimidated a con-mage on my first run by his brute appearance, well the indimidation was successfull ...


... one moment later "Splatter" got blasted in tiny little bits of fresh troll meat by a lv 8 fireball

Similarly, our GM had a habit of inserted some new and interesting paranormal animal into each adventure. In this case, it was a protean disguised as a cow (just like in the Shadowtalk for the critter). Suddenly, our "combat" decker speaks up - "Y'know, I'm tired of shooting crap all the time - I'm just gonna jump this one..."

Haha, I remember that adventure. At first I was thinking "Dear Lord he can't be serious" but then my evil GM mind kicked in and the thought turned to "This will be memorable and fun to see played out..."

Oh the fun that can be had using paranormal critters. Smokin' Jo was my hero.

Dumbest thing I ever did. Should have ignored one dice roll while GMing, screwed up a nice adventure.

Luckily, I redeemed myself with a Cow Kidnapping.