Hi, I am a fairly new to GMing the world to shadowrun. However somehow, things don't feel quite right. We started with 2 players, it was pretty good. Then 2 new players wished to join. Ok sounds good so far. I give him the book and the excel spreadsheet from this wonderful forum, I tell themselves to knock themselves out. The next week the 2 chars arrive, I give them the run to infiltrate a facility retrieve, a weaken cyberzombie. They inflitrate the facility, using mostly kill anything that moves but stealthily tactic. Now for the part where things get ugly, they peak into the next room. Oh lookie a room with 16 researchers, 12 turrets, and 6 guards. Guess what the runners do? They throw in 6 high explosive grenades. BOOM! Nothing remains expect.... Er... one really lucky researcher, who is in shock. The support mage stabilizes and heals him. The PCs then began torturing the researcher then kill him. an unarmed researcher. The rest of the mission goes quite well, however near the end, when they are running away via motorcycles, our dwarf with the logic of 1 (yes the new PCs seem to be min maxers) decides its a good idea to donate 15 pounds of commerical explosives in the warehouse. 10 inocents die who live newby. So its the end of the game, guess what all players get 15 notoriety for the act of slaughter, and the dwarf gets 25. Is it just me, or do I find this ridiculous? So I have decided to most likely retribution is at hand, and advice? I personally would not like this to turn into a slaughter innocents campaign.

Yeah, the players need to know there are always consequences.

Their Johnson anonymously alerts the local Star/Knight Errant in fear of being caught up in that fiasco and their next Johnson recognizes them and doesn't want anything to do with people as.. noticeable.. I doubt their fixers want anything to do with murderous lunatics because they'll bring the heat down on them too. Then there are the family members and widows and whatnot that could hire other runner teams out for revenge.

A Mr Johnson hires them to break into a partially dismantled R&D facility. Using the groups noteriety to his advantage the R&D head of the facility (Mr. Johnson), needs to blame someone else for the death of all 50 research subjects during the testing of a new drug. If he does not his project is going to be discontinued and he is going to be without a job.

You never know what to expect with new players... Probably they want to feel "superiority". So don't be afraid and just kick their asses, like Khyron said . After that, if nobody will be willing to do biz with them, their only choice will be to take really ugly or dangerous jobs - and very cheaply. New employer can even install cortex bombs in their brains. "Friendly" contacts or runners may warn their next targets. Or maybe corp owner of destroyed facility will send them on suicidal mission.

There is a certain etiquette in the Shadows. I know that in my groups, in the past, I have described the results of runs like that, and their response was "Let's hunt 'em down!" Not even the most flamboyant player I have ever had would
have tolerated that...

Prime Runners coming after these guys for their "crimes against the reputationj of Shadowrunners" is very much
what I would expect!

even with fragmenting walls, that sounds like a gm being colorful with the explosives result, rather then going with the rules...

How are you figuring the 15 points of notoriety? I am not saying you are wrong, it is your game but I'd like to know if it is just something you simply decided on or is there a rule I missed.

I thought you weren't really supposed to rack up notoriety for doing the same types of things over and over unless you manage to get creative about it. This is probably worth about four or five, IMHO, which is pretty extreme already for a single run that didn't kill a beloved Great Dragon President.

Maybe you should talk this out with your players. Do they just like to kill stuff, or did they believe it to be an proper way of playing a criminal?

I'll agree with this, as you should probably treat the whole thing as one event. Also, with so much carnage, the heat should be on the players unless someone cast sterilize at the scene of the crime.

Maybe 15/25 points of Notoriety is too much, but at least 5 should be given. Killing everything on the way + killing innocent people + mass murder + tortures + blowing up some more innocents "because I want to" + stupidity (making corpsec REALLY anger)... Each way, nearly 100% of PCs' Rep is negative.

Simple: those guys have stepped from the category of "shadowrunners" and straight into the category of "wanted terrorists". Appropriate SWAT, FBI, Joint Counter-Terrorism and Commando Strike Team responses will follow. No shadowrunner, contact or fixer will touch them, and I don't give them more than a week on the run.

Wow... just wow.

An idea to obey the rule of awesome:
One of the security guards is rushed to hospital and resesitated only to die in front of his family hours later. He was 3 days from retiremant. His old beatcop partner (they were both drummed out of the force for not adhering to procedure, but the partner got back in to the police force for "extereme merit" and his relative youth) swears vengance "on those animals" The movies hero... I mean the old partner proceeds to begin breaking ever rule in the book in his quest, has to resign the force before he is fired and jepordise his love life... I think you get the idea - make sure the Runners find out their nemisis has a signifigant other too... see if they spiral down further or realise they have already F-d up hard and they shouldn't make it worse by taking away his reason to live.

Basically proceed to toss a action movie hero ala. Die Hard, Leathal Weapon etc. al. at the offenders. Build him as a top of the line prime runner and I myself would try to limit and cyber or magic, just make him Ultra Bad Ass, probably a cyberhand or something, he's got a lighter, whiskey flask and smokes stored in it. Unless they left no evidence of thier identities they will get a "shoot to kill" order unofficaly sent out for them.
And I agree: their regular contacts should start drying up and those that stick with them start getting harrassed with signifigant predudice by a Bruce Willis look alike.
As for the mechanincal noterioty I'd be inclined to toss about 6 at them. Cause seriously. Large bonus to intimidate? Yessir! Large penalty to EVERYTHING ELSE - yessir. 15 makes them too famous, this is just one attocity. You've got to do a few of these to get really up there.

EDIT - for referance I don't use the Mechanics in the book for Fame and Infamy - I just eyeball it.
EDIT2 - Isn't demolitions logic based?

Quick note:
This is the gritty way to do it, and proably the more realistic one by a couple of orders of magnitude. Depends on the kind of game you want though.

To me this sounds like an OOC communication issue.

Are you having fun? If the answer is yes then don't do anything different. If the answer is no, then it's time to take a look at how things are working.

Remember this as the GM you do agree to help everyone else have fun, but not at the expense of you having no fun at all. (Some sacrifice comes with the job omae, it's a dirty game but don't hate the players right?) Sit down and talk to your players. Explain what you see-I'd recommend not being a dick about it, since most people when confroted with their own douche-bag-ness will deny, deny, deny and deny. Especially if it happens in scenario they feel the need to save face.

When I hit this wall, I ask questions. I put the burden on them. "Hey guys before we game tonight I want to make sure we're all having fun, so I have a few questions." Remember with out a group it's an MMORPG, and I'm sure we can all agree that's second best.

After asking a few questions let it drop. "Well you guys did this, and the way I see it in the real world this would happen. What do you think would happen?" Gauge their response, and go from there.

I have to remember to bookmark this thread and show it to a friend of mine whom believes that shadowrun is all about killing everything it is put in front of you.

Everyone's different. I tend to take more a "Caper Film" feel to mine, with a real dark emphasis. Bad things happen to good people in my games, and the players aren't necessarily "White Knights" either. Sometimes they are the problem. But the game is about having fun as I understand it, and everyone does that differently, right?

Yes, which is what makes the Log 1 dwarf all the more awesome.

I agree the entire situation is ridiculous, but it is still funny. Maybe I just have a messed up perception on life.

I don't know, this seems like a good introduction to the shadows to me.....

There are two paths to the team. One via the Johnson, the other direct.

The Johnson is probably screwed. When they watch the surveillance video they should be able put together the list of who would be interested in this project and who would have had the right amount of information. At which point Mr. Johnson is likely to get a visit. He'll roll over on the fixer. Who will give up the team.

So even if the players did a perfectly clean job and left nothing behind that leads to them, they are likely going to get rolled up anyhow. And it's likely that there is a path that leads right to them because they sound sloppy. So then they roll over on the fixer.

So if I were the fixer I'd probably want to get someone good to waste the Johnson and the team, then skip town for a few weeks/months and have my other contacts see if anyone from the Joint Terrorism Strike Force starts asking for me by name. Or be the informer who gets to walk after he turns in the Johnson and the team.

So if I was the team I'd waste the fixer ASAP, as the Johnson probably doesn't have nearly as much info on you as the fixer does. Then kill the Johnson.

Of course, if I was the Johnson I'd want the team dead. I probably wouldn't think to go after the fixer.

And with the large anonymous reward, all their "buddies" in town will want to turn the players into the feds.

See, this is a great introduction to the Shadows.

LOL!
Shadowrun teacher: "So kids, what have we learned today after watching the security tapes of this FUBAR run?"
Class: "That a high body count is bad for business and your life Mrs. Anderson."
Shadowrun teacher: "Good, good! And what else?"
Class: "Never trust high yield explosives to a meta-human who can't count his toes."
Shadowrun teacher: "Great! Class dismissed!"

err, i thought that was the point of that "other" game...

15/25 Notoriety seems awfully high. A couple points are more in line with RAW. With that high of Notoriety, it may be tough to ever get a job again.

As to the actual run, if the Johnson didn't give any parameters for the run, then I can't really blame the runners on this one. I know that after running enough games, I make sure the runners know if there are special objectives, like staying unseen, zero body count, do A before B, etc.

Seeing they had enough time to heal then torture the lone researcher without backup come to clean up the mess, I'd say you, the GM, were kind of late in showing the players in-game what they should and shouldn't be allowed to do. You let them run amok without consequences. I see two things you can do to salvage this:

1) Change the focus of the game to allow them to do these types of runs regularly.
2) Mark it down as a learning experience and work on creating future runs with more objectives to keep these actions in check (assuming you don't like the way this first run went).

Paranioa?
Kobolds Ate My Baby?

Oh oh! Wolfenstien

Yeah, this sounds like these guys played a few too many video games.

15/25 notoriety is excessive. 15/25 notoriety means that - for the general runners - no one will hire them for anything, ever. They cannot roll any dice on any social rolls except intimidation. And most importantly, every single person they see on the street will recognize them. Now, that may be appropriate, given the circumstances and how you see the Shadowrun game world. But basically what you have done is say, "Your PCs are now unplayable.

That hilarious.

True, this. The Notoriety rules aren't really meant to be about short term consequences (that's left entirely up to the GM) but what happens if they make it out alive. If the characters realize just how badly they screwed this up, the follow-up evading justice should give them plenty of opportunities to earn Street Cred to buy 2-3 notoriety off (don't insult your contacts by looking to them for help, don't kill anyone even if it would be in your interest, try to figure out who your Johnson is and save his and your fixer's hoop without being asked.)

As for retribution, yeah, I'd say that they've crossed the line. The cops are going to pull out all the stops to find them, so any SINners likely have a week at most before they're upgraded to 'criminal' Every cop, rent-a-cop, and corporate security officer in the city has their picture. Whatever they're going to try to do to salvage their rep, they need to move fast because they've only got two or three days before they're going to have to try to make it to another city. And remember, without contacts that's a lot harder than it sounds.

Ok, I've made enough jokes of this. But I'll add my two nuyens to the pot. 15/25 notoriety means "please make new characters." 3 to 5 notoriety points seem more appropriate, it would be high enough to give them bad times and a few points on public awareness.

Personally I think you way overreacted, if the "innocents" were living next to a warehouse then they are probably poor and the powers that be are more concerned with having to rebuild the fragging building.

The real question is, did blowing the warehouse actually have a valid reason such as allowing them to escape or was it just a sick and twisted "frag you"?

Wow I wasn't expecting so much response to this thread. I will my best to respond to the masses of questions.
The notoriety thing apparently I misunderstood, the KEYWORD can ONLY happen once. So I would agree as an inexperienced gm I sped read the rules. When one of the more experienced players pointed out we most likely earned some notoriety, I didnt realize this stat, so I skimed it and said 15. Like most of the posters who actually know the rules, that is ridiculous and a bad call on my part.

Now for responders



I probably didn't give you the full story. The teams offensive mage, was also our demolitions specalist. When they were getting away the Mage realized he had his explosives set up and everything still at the warehouse, the dwarf thought it would be a brilliant idea to detonate the warehouse, for the lols. So he steals the denotator and presses the button
(Unless your to tell me pressing the button requires a logic test )
I think I like your idea of the avenger however, I have thought of a far more brilliant idea



Indeed all the players had a blast, but I don't want them playing this like gta where slaughter is simple, and its basically a contest to see how long one can hold up vs. the world. Thanks for the advice I will probaly do so. I will telll them the way I see it



Intresting idea sounds a bit cruel, but I like it.



LOL


Yep, For most this is their first RPG



Hmm, Sounds like a good adventure by itself. Hmmm.


More like KILL SOME More.

The hard part about fun is it's subjective. Leading your players to the things you see as fun can be fun, or it can be skull smashing boring, and worse hard. By prepping them for what to expect, when it happens they have no one to blame but themselves.

"I told you that I'd start having the Star examine murders you've committed a little more closely, so yeah I feel justified in giving you the Hunted Flaw-minus the points in exchange. Now let's see how smart you are, and whether you can escape the long arm of the law or not!"

Follow up depends on what you want to happen and what the players do. There is nothing wrong with running a Quake style game of SR, but if that not what you want you have a few options.

You could retrocon out the whole event as a bad dream and tell them not to do it again. You could have "rocks fall, you die" and make new characters. Or you could keep going.

If they see the news dominated with the story, and pictures of the team (as they probably didn't wipe all the surveillance videos) with the wanted AR posters appearing every 5 minute, what do they do?

Are you willing to kill/imprison the characters? Or do you really not want to do that?

Exactly.

If this was a AA or AAA Corp.... they would be on the war-prowl for the runners. Its bad for business, its bad for morale...
If the corp has the pull to be a multi-national and have extraterritoriality, they wouldn't stop until they had those responsible.
I would suspect most corps treat any security guard killing exactly how most governments deal with those who kill policemen. Very very harshly.

Super-squirt with DMSO and hallucinogens for the win!
Knock-out gas grenades!
Stick-n-shock, stun batons, and tasers!

I always handled it that the corp-sec is less likely to go really nasty after you
if they know they are not going to be killed...If they are pretty sure they
are going to die(like they would be with these guys?) expect the Red Samurai-equivalents
en route, and a HTRT loaded for bear...Maybe even with a Striker equivalent gunning
for your rigger...

I think this explains your problems better than anything else, Lich. It's entirely possible that the group just doesn't know how the game should be run, and so they're just fishing for ways to play.

While everyone else explains how dark and dreary everything is, I have another suggestion. Really, it should compliment everything here. You're more than welcome not to use it as it'll take a strong stomach. I can't guarantee it's the best idea for your group, but I didn't see anyone else mention it.

Your group should pick up notoriety, definitely, and folks will start coming after them. However, that also means that some folks will pick up attention, meaning the truly twisted freaks out there.

First, design a terrorist group that stands for something absolutely disgusting and/or bigoted, with the kind of leader who could run his own cult, and probably does and is. Then paint the PCs into a corner, and as they run out of grenades and things look bleak, they get saved by the terrorists. They then speak with the leader, who should seem insane, and get sent on even worse runs like bombing orphanages and kidnapping children to stitch bombs into them to make them blow up their families.

Either your players will have a lot of fun, or they'll refuse to do these twisted things and work on destroying this terrorist cult. If they have fun with it, I feel so sorry for you as a GM, but then again I can't really see that happening. Maybe they'll try it for a few evil runs until they start to realize how nasty it is, but eventually realize they need to take it down after seeing the repercussions of their actions. If they start feeling sick and either want to quit or destroy the cult, maybe you can have another Johnson hire them to help work on destroying the cult.

As new people, this plan has the possibility to backfire and convince the players that all Shadowrun is about twisted terrorist groups. If someone wants to quit the game, make sure you talk to them and find out if they'd rather play a less degenerate setting.

Destroying the cult could give the group a second chance, but it would likely be probationary, where their actions are monitored more closely or conditions are set for payment.

If a rut should form where the PCs don't like the cult but can't figure out how to deal with it, have an NPC suggest the idea of blowing them all sky high. One of them should have a parent, sibling or some kind of contact or something, and if all else fails, the Johnson may offer a second chance if they destroy the place.


Not knowing your group, it's impossible to tell from this side of the screen how your players would react to this idea. If you simply punish them when they don't realize they're messing up, though, they're only going to get frustrated. If you feel the cult idea is too extreme, having an NPC Shadowrunner save them and take them under his/her wing should work to a degree if they're willing to listen to him/her.

Apologies if the idea is too crazy for you to use, but sometimes the RP equivalent to reverse psychology can work wonders.

*looks up at AndyZ's post*

Kidnaping children to stitch bombs in them...*scribbles notes*
Yes..I like that idea....I will remember it...

"I just want my phone call."

How did YOU not stumble upon this up until now? O.o

Maybe I should run Chrome Berets, the old CP2020 adventure for you. Small island, military advisors and not many international witnesses.

Remember kids, slaughter is only an s away from laughter.

LOL! I'm totally stealing that as the catch phrase from a future NPC...

It's a slight rewording of:
"You can't spell/say slaughter without laughter"

And guts* is part of slaughter.

*Guts in this case refers to internal organs, blood, and gore not the guts colloquialism which stands for courage.

One of my favs from back in the day was Chrome Berets.

Am I the only one who doesn't have that much of a problem with the room full of researchers, guards, and turrets??

It had 6 guards and turrets, depending on the teams capabilities grenades very well could have been the best plan. The team I currently roll with has a heap of technomancers, so I suspect we'd hack the turrets and have them waste the guards. And then maybe stunball the researchers. But if you don't have stunball what do you do, intimidate them and tie them up?? And what hope for the best once they begin investigating this. I can see a lot of teams who act like hardened criminals making the decision to kill them. I'm not big into torture and unnecessary death so I'd try a different method if I was holding the reigns. But hey everyone rolls differently.

Now if there was the alternate route past the turrets etc, hey just avoid them. If you build the warehouse like a dungeon with guards in front of the boss room don't be surprised if the guard room gets fireballed.

Now the demolitions in the end doesn't seem "Evil" notoriety, just wasteful and dumb.(but hey he was a 1 logic type) But if the explosives were laid out so they would killl neighbors (why in gods name did they place explosives anyways) I guess it falls into the notoriety category.

Why exactly would someone mount gun turrets in a room where things could get damaged, especially expensive things? And even if they did, wouldn't they use less than lethal munitions?

Man I want to choke the whole pink mohawk crowd out. It will never go away, but I can hope!

We are the PUNK in Cyberpunk.

I stand by my previous statement, I can't wait for the punk crowd to get kicked to the curb. Hopefully never to return.

Then it would only be Cyber

Yeah! All Shadowrunners should be act like Solid Snake and Sam Fisher.

Hiding under a card box in the middle of nowhere?