Ok so last night I was GMing a campaign, and we introduce two new people to the group, and Shadowrun. So I give them the job from the Johnson, go over the specs, and then have the Johnson leave so the group splits up 3 go home, and 3 go to a bar called O’Hanrahan’s. Now one of the new guys goes to the bar he is a Technomancer named Twitch who has no knowledge of the world since he has recently escaped from a Neonet research facility, so he has never been in a bar before. Now he orders a random drink. I roll a D6 and it comes up as a 6 so I have him get whiskey. So he gets really wasted, and tires to walk towards the mens room.

So he is walking along then I have him roll an agility test to keep from face planting. Now he fail so I have him roll a reaction check to see if he can catch himself, and keep from falling. So he pass the check, but glitches so he catches himself with his left hand on a table, but his right hand lands in the crouch of a go-ganger. So he takes a swing at the Twitch, and misses. So the Mage who was at the bar with Twitch casts Orgasm on the ganger, and causes him to pass out. The adept draws his sword, and goes to attack the gangers, but gets tazed by the bouncer. Twitch then books it he runs into the kitchen, and keeps running straight right into the counter. He goes flying over the counter, and lands hard on the other side. Twitch manages to pull himself up, and go out the door to the alley. He then turn right, and manages to run to the end of the alley. Twitch stops to catch his breath.

The gangers come bursting through the door into the alley, and see him so they start chasing him. So he runs out of the alley past a Knight Errant patrol car which is parked next to the curb. The gangers come charging after him. One of them stops, and picks up a bottle off the ground. Then they huck the bottle at Twitch, hit hits him in the back, but he keeps running the Knight Errant cops hop out of their car. The gangers scatter, but one keeps after the Twitch. One of the Knight Errant cops takes off after that ganger. After that had been running for a bit the ganger knocks over a trash can. The Knight Errant cops ran right into it, and slams face first into the pavement. So now it is just Twitch, and the ganger. Twitch lucks out, and is able to out run the ganger. Twitch is now lost, and doesn't have GPS can see any street signs. (Because the run is taking place in Boston which was totally build on a grid concept, and believes in street signs ).

After hacking the local shops to figure out where the hell he is Twitch walks down to the corner, and calls his buddy Crimson to pick him up. While Twitch is standing on the corner waiting for Crimson to pick him up a car pulls up. The passenger side window roles down, and a female voice from inside asks how much. Which of course he doesn’t understand, so a states how much he is getting paid for his current job which is 5,000 Nuyen. The female voice says that is far to much, and offers him 250. At this point Crimson shows up, and rescued him from becoming a Joy boy thus ending his night of horrors. Twitch himself this declared this the Best Night Ever. I don’t think he knows any better.

I gather that the player is having a lot more fun playing the "Naive, Humorously Incompetent Puppy-Boy with a Wild Talent" role than he would with the "Ueber Bad-Ass Stone Cold Pro in Mirrorshades" role.

Those roles can be fairly close to each other; see Luke Skywalker from his first appearance as a whiny farm boy who also gets over his head in trouble at a bar, to hours later when he destroys the most powerful space station in history with a perfect shot at a difficult target, using his adept abilities rather than the smartlink.

I hope the player with the sword adept realizes that he's playing someone who should not survive long in a Stone Cold Pro campaign. When your friend accidentally grabs a ganger in the crotch and the ganger responds with a punch, it's time to say "Hey, it was accident, my friend is sorry, let me buy you a beer" rather than escalating to lethal force... because the barkeeper is gonna remember him and might well have a security camera recording, and might share that recording with his regular customers the gangers, and his buddy who runs the bar across the street, not to mention Knight Errant and Lone Star.

Boston would be a good city for getting lost, and for losing pursuit around unpredictable corners and intersections.

Anyone stupid enough to draw a SWORD in a bar isn't planning on living long. If you are going to carry a totally illegal and nearly impossible to conceal weapon at least carry one that can kill many people rapidly without your having to close on them. To then draw it so as to escalate a fistfight into a deadly force encounter in a bar full of people you don't know is just crazy. Who does the bartender shoot with his shotgun? The regular patron defending himself or the psycho with a three foot razor blade? Assuming several other patrons don't just shoot him as the crazed manic runs at them with his sword.

Yeah, But sometimes you just need that kind of humor in a game. I get tired of everyone making the same thing. A hard ass with a bad attitude, standing in the corner, making a bunch of one liners. When you get a group like that together, it gets a tad annoying.

Heck yeah. Some of the best stories in the genre, from Count Zero to Firefly, rely on interactions between the badasses and the non-badasses.

My current PC is a Wild Talent type, and he's not the bumbling sort of comic relief generally, but he's a shaman with LOG 2 and no ranks in any technical skills, and I play that to the hilt; other players thought I'd taken Incompetence. He's also never killed anyone... yet.

I enjoy the comic releif. For quite some time, my charactor Hood, who now is a bad ass type. Was the comic releif of our group. Always getting into one scrape or another. I remember games where for a full 20 minutes our group would be rolling in laughter over something i would have him do or say.
But at a certain time in a shadowrunners career, after going through so much, if they dont get serious, then theyre lible to not be taken seriously in return.

Myself and the group I regularly play with are quite big Role Players so our games, no matter what system or genre they tend to be, are about 2/3's RP and 1/3'd combat.

We can be serious when we need to be but with that ratio we tend to have quite a bit of comic relief, and frankly I think for our group its the comic relief that makes the game just that much more fun for us.


Honestly I cant wait to see my friends in action when I start up my SR4 Campaign