After various discussions on various threads, I'm quite curious as to how the game is actually played by the GMs of the groups.

There seems to be a very loud voice in regards to minimalizing potential of players, such as expanding upon legalities, training time, surgery times, etc in a manner where progression of characters is kept under a certain level of control.

There seems to be various levels of extreme on what a GM allows a player to achieve, for example, in a game are you more likely to:
A) Declare that attacks from the burstfire weapon tore the armour to shreds thus reducing it's armour values to 3/1 instead of 5/3 as you take a Serious Wound
B) The players did well, here's your Karma/Nuyen, you still have all your gear
C) You break into the place and find this R&D SotA Combat Suit which has full flexibility thus ignoring Quickness modifiers due to extreme Armour levels, and it gives the wearer an Armour rating of 7/5.

Personally, I play in a level B game, we never find really cool stuff that would turn at least one of us into BadAss, but we lack alot of the realism that actually bogs a game down and makes us feel like we just wasted our time by coming to a game where the GM has the attitude he's gonna see how many ways he can screw us over.

Personally I run a type C game, allowing players to find all sorts of cool gadgets which would make their characters alot more badAss, but they're not safely stored in a safe, they have to get them from the person using them against the players. Finding something insanely impossible like a Beta Grade piece of Cyberware I know a player really wants, that doesn't need to be custom made for a person.

But, from the sounds of things, at least those that voice their opinion on how a game 'should' be run, it seems a large portion play the type A game, where fantasy and high adventure take a backseat to realism and controllig limitations. Such as making it impossible to learn skills above 6 (making players find teachers which don't exist) or keeping cyberware upgrades to a minimal by either limiting the finding of the gear or clinic willing to do it, or by setting the conditions in such horrid areas that players realize they're going to get screwed, or implanting cranial bombs and such.

What I'd like to hear is how your games go, If you run a type A game, when's the last time you tried a type C game just to see how the players react, or visa versa, if you run a Type C game, when's the last time you tried a type A?

I was a very devoted type A for a long long long time until I ran some games at the local youth club for kids ages 14 to 18 and re-remembered what it was like to 'monty haul' a game. Although i think I do a good job of running games that don't go to such extremes that I can't control the players a bit, I do like to see them get something they really wanted for their characters.

Once again, rambling, so feel free to do likewise, this is a good thread for just expressing how you see things being run (or how you wish your GM would run things)

Sphynx

I generally run games that goes like this C-A-B.

Part "C" Run begins, high paying, simple if not difficult task. Something like a wetworks or a smash and grab - clear outcomes, good intel (sometimes).

Part "A" comes in when the run is over. People trying to get back at the runners/get back what is taken. A lot of money is spent buying favours and getting the hell out of dodge. This part sometimes happens, sometimes doesn't depending on how the run goes down.

"Part B" Should the runners avoid the fallout from the run, they get their Karma and may even keep most of their gear for a run well done.

I find the game does need a certain amount of logical consistency, not realism. Shadowrun, and the cyberpunk genre in general, are not realistic given the changes that occured since the genre was originally developed. However, if you take the setting as the premise of the game, things still need to be logically consistent. If the Yakuza are big in Seattle and go out of the way to ensure that people that mess with them pay for it, then when people frag with them there should be repurcussions. Not doing this to give players a break seriously detracts from the game as the sense of 'danger' and being there is removed.

Just a ramble. Sphynx's looked all lonesome.

I need no invitation to ramble, as anyone who reads my posts should know

I'm more of a combination between A and C I think...I'm really generous with gear and money, but I'm a bastard when it comes to screwing with the players. They may be some cool SotA armor, but the corp that made the armor WILL want it back. They may find a weapon focus that can be used by a non-magical character, but a great form spirit of some type is locked inside and will be released eventually during use...

I think it makes the game more fun to give the players interesting and unique weapons and gear. Just so long as you're still challenging them, it can be fun. Why would I ever want something in game that I can just make a new character and give it to him/her? What's the point of working my ass off on a run to buy an Encephalon when I can just make a new character that already has one?

Besides, it's just so much fun to tempt your players..."If you do this run for us Mr. Decker, we'll give you this new prototype for a sort of headware wired reflexes, as our R&D department is calling it (marketting hasn't come up with a trademarkable name yet). It makes you react faster on the 'trix, AND if you have response increase, they work together! There are a few bugs, however..."

The Abstruse One

PS.: The bug in question on that peice of equipment was that it caused the character to studder and it also had a nice little bit of code implanted in it that worked like a psychotropic IC, making the character get the warm-and-fuzzies whenever he saw the Renraku logo and all that jazz. I wish I could've run that character through the Archology post-shutdown just so I could see the logical loops. "Cannot...destroy...Renraku...property...big...scary...tenticle...robot...thing...is...going...to...eat...me...but that LOVELY LOGO!! I just can't bring myself to shoot it!!"

I try to run my games fairly realistically. My players get screwed six ways to Sunday, but every once in a while they'll catch a break (like the high-security safe that wasn't just being used to store the items the team had to retrieve, it was also storing a decent amount of Orichalcum). The breaks are, as they usually are in real life, relatively uncommon.

~J

The last game that I played in seemed to combine all of the options as well (A, B & C). In an early run, we all earned a favor for saving a high-ranking corper, she'd fullfil a shopping list for each one of us, but we had to pay normal price for the gear (she'd get us almost anything for regular price, no street index). We also had a mutually benificial, on-going relationship with the corper.

The only character who collected his favor before the game ended (players graduated from college and moved away), bought a bunch of cyberware, after getting the rest of the group to loan him the cash for a lot of top-grade stuff. However, that particular character had annoyed the corper on several occasions, so he got an additional gift along with his cyber; an invoked memory stimulator (I think thats what its called, the thing that cyberzombies get). This wasn't a normal IMS though, it was activated by remote control, and the corper activated it (effectively veggitablizing the character) whenever he was in her presence. It was never used to screw the character in combat, but it annoyed him to ne end that he could never talk to the corper because he seemed to space out whenever she was around.

The GM also never missed an opportunity to make us pay for our mistakes, in the last few games, my elven mages was busy running from the police only to finally be caught. Having learned a unique metamagical technique that could allow him to escape (from a dragon, long story for another time), they kept him in check by keeping other prisoners with him and shooting one in the head with a shotgun every time he tried something. My character had demonstrated a respect for life, and had shown off his new technique way too much (in addition to pissing off too many powerful people, as runners tend to do), so they built a trap for me, and chased me into it.

All-in-all, it was fun. It was a high-karma, high-cash game that still always kept us on our toes. All the gear and karma in the world won't save you form your own mistakes, especially if you get careless or overconfident. So at least with our GM, we always knew we could eventually get whatever we wanted, and we knew the challenges would still be extremely tough regardless of our gear/spells, we'd still always have to work for it.

So my opinions as for how the game works best is; use all listed types, A, B and C. Let the characters have fun gear, make them pay for there mistakes, and reward them with cash and karma as appropriate for their actions.

Thanks for reading
S'Ren, the uber-mage

I think I run a type "D" game; whatever makes for a good story.

Heya Sphynx,

Now contrary to what you might think, I mostly run B games. The story is about the PCs not about my bad guys, so nm the A type stuff, I don't need to resort to wantonly destroying their gear to amuse myself. Could it happen? That a guy get hosed so bad his armor gets shredded? Sure it might but usually as a result of what I call "cinematic destruction" if one of my PCs is about to get hosed and taken clean out because of a bad roll or a lucky roll from some random NPC, I take it out on his gear and spare him. The heroes don't get killed halfway through the movie, they CAN die during the climactic finale of a given scenario, but not to some no name henchmen 10 minutes into the flick, know what I mean?

C games are right out, if I want to run a supers campaign, I'll run a supers campaign, not a shadowrun campaign.
C gear in general is right out, I never use something against my players unless I am prepared to have them take it and keep it if they win.

My shadowrun worlds are however, far darker than most people. The "ghosts in the system" aspect of shadowrun is prevalent. Big brother IS watching, and after a few runs, well he's looking for YOU =) I don't really like movies about assholes so my players tend to be the good guys, but they are darker heroes, living in a high tech, poverty rampant, privately run military state where many have fallen "out" of the system (SINless) and have no rights at all. anonymity is prized above all else and you only stay alive in the shadows as long as you keep an eye behind you, the day you stop looking, you stop breathing...kinda thing.

Sunday.

We play a level A game here. All the player's know it's my style of doing things. This, in fact, has encouraged lots and lots of roleplaying out of them and everybody considers a run without shots a perfect one. Not that it's always possible for them to achieve all their objectives without violence but well…

Back in the 2nd edition days we even played with the game equalized for maximum lethality. It worked well.

Characters
I make them work for what they want, surprise them by what they get, and limit how quickly they advance compared to the rest of the universe.

Players
I ask them what they want, what they liked and not.
I keep the game balanced so it is fun for both me and them.

Style C always bored me as a player and GM.

I'd have to say 'E'

I flesh out the plot and the assignment and then let the players fill in the story.

Personally it depends on the story. Also I like to mix it up so that they don't know what to expect. That makes it fun for them and fun for me. Some times the impossible mission is a cake walk and some times the cake walk is one you just have to walk away from. The primary thing in my campaines is actions have consequences. If you kill some one in public Lone Star Will be looking for you. Also once you get a few months of sessions the campaine will start to take on a life of it's own.

We're usually "b" with armor getting shredded, if we foul up enough to get in heavy fire.

Personally I tired of my players whining about us playing styles a) and b), so we tried c). We're back to playing a) and b), they tired of the high adventure and missed the sense of accomplishment of dragging their asses, shot and winded, through a dozen runs before they got a serious payoff. They learned not to make stupid mistakes the hard way and they act accordingly.

They realized that limited means, a harsher environment and consequences to every action, meant the challenges they faced and overcame were harder and deadlier but their sense of victory and accomplishment was magnitudes higher.

I run a game that is a B but it has some C bits in it. It's a YotC campaign where the players got their hands on a meteorite believed to have been part of (and actually was) the comet. They passed it on to the guy who hired them to steal it but I'm gonna bring it back up someday as it's gonna do weird gribbly stuff when the comet gets closer. Maybe have it act as a mobile force 1 power-site (like a power focus you don't need to bond)?

I've never bothered with any armor degradation rules but I do make them take time for surgery. I'm a bit soft when it comes to learning new skills as I've allowed people to pick-up an AR off a guards corpse and buy a skill up-to 2 as they fired their first shot.

I definatly dont run a C game as the standard. Probably more in the B category. However, if players do the work they can get "cool stuff" for sure, its just not something theyll stumble on without trying to (hence I say C isnt standard).

As for A... I dont run a whole game there, but as some have said it has its place. A is sort of the limiting factor on C. Yea, you can get "cool stuff" but theres a lot of "considerations" that come into play. Like you need to track C down, get C implanted, and then worry about people mugging you to take your C for themselves. Thus the power of C relative to B is balanced by A.

And no, this isnt a math class.....