OK, so in last nights game, 2 characters and the bad guys had the same initiative total (14). I resolved them in the order of highest reaction to lowest. The guy with the lowest wanted to attack the enemy that was most hurt as opposed to closest and I said that the actions were happening so fast, and so close together that he couldn't actively choose his target using the game information of who was hurt and who wasn't, but I would allow him to "choose" to attack the closest target. (I would imagine one would think that they would be the most threat and attack them on instinct alone.) Or that he could roll randomly (50/50). He thought I was wrong by not letting him choose his target. What do you think?

Isn't there still a Free Action to Observe in Passing? I would have docked him his free action and had him make a Perception test at -3 dice for being distracted. If you wanted to do stuff by some sort of rules.

Depends on how obviously hurt the target is. If he's clutching a bleeding wound (previous gunshot or stab wound), I'd allow it. If he's just banged up a little, I might require the PC to take a Simple Action to Observe in Detail to determine who was worse off. Remember, a combat round is three seconds, and the adrenaline rush of combat can dilate the perception of time. If the PC has multiple initiative passes, whether through augmentation, magic, or drugs, I think we can safely assume his temporal perception is dilated even further. What might seem fast to an outside observer could look downright stately to one of the combatants.

Also remember, good GMs look for ways to say, "Yes" more than "No."

I don't think you were being unreasonable, but as others have said you could have allowed him to try with some kind of penalty. I would also point out that if he was last anyway he could have delayed his action to see who was hurt the worst but that's just a technicality.

No, he's not entitled to use game information like that. A big bleeding slash could be fewer boxes of damage than a subtle bullet hole, so not even direct visual evidence (which he'd need that Simple Action to get) would necessarily be enough.

In future, make sure you don't give the players hard data on wounds - just describe what their character sees...

Without using an action to observe in detail, he can choose based on who is closest, who has the best tactical position, who is firing back, who the party is firing at, etc. He cannot fire based on who has the most boxes of damage. If he does take time to observe in detail, then yes, he has the information about who is most wounded. Of course, if everyone is shooting at one guy and getting obvious critical hits, then you can guess that he is most wounded (and fire on him).

I think that is one of the disconnects I have with SR (and any game that has such short combat rounds - particularly with multiple actions) is that things are happening so fast it doesn't seem possible to completely react - even with the augmentations - at least not with full knowledge of what it going on. Which, I think is somewhat realistic, and as my mind works that way (as in realistically) it is really the only way I can run. When games get so abstract (like D&D of any flavor), I have a hard time "getting into" the game, it feels too much like a boardgame. I like my RPGs to be more "simulist" I guess.

In the situation, I was thinking that they were doing things at the same time - or within about .25 seconds of each other*. To me, this means that it is nigh impossible to see everything going on and react to it, with or without a perception test. (Maybe in a Supers game where a character is like Dr. Manhattan, basically god-like in all ways, but not mere mortals, even enhanced ones. IMO.)

But, in deference to "game-balance/mechanics" I could allow them a perception check, though I would make it a fairly hard threshold.

I would have allowed him to take a negative on his initiative to make a perception test.

PS: The creatures didn't last past the first IP - as usual in SR. (Though they did inflict some pretty-good damage during their surprise actions. )

*Here's how fast I think all those actions happened: Clap your hands. Now, from the time your hands touched to the end of the sound (not the memory of the sound) fully react in that timeframe, with the ability to pick and choose your targets.

I don't think you're fully appreciating the nature of initiative augmentations. A character with four IPs can take eight simple actions - say, firing a semi-automatic weapon - in three seconds. That's 0.375 seconds per shot, or 160 rounds/minute... pulling the trigger manually. I'm not sure where you're getting the quarter-second figure from. Isn't it more reasonable to assume that the shooter takes his time selecting a target ("taking his time" being a relative term, of course, as I just demonstrated), and shoots in, say, the last half of the round? Even if he only has two IPs, he can still squeeze off two rounds in 1.5 seconds. A character with three or four IPs almost literally has all the time in the world to pick his targets.

I think everyone at the table would have come away happier if you'd given up on this particular slice of reality once you sat down to play, even better if you did it before that. Shadowrun combat isn't really built to emphasis (or support) the fog of combat. It doesn't really behove the GM to try keep it up (it's a PITA, slows the game down, etc) and it doesn't encourage the players to follow it, on the contrary it screams at them not to. So you are left making Dick moves like you did to try bring it to the table. Although having a roll based on the character ability would have helped emensely, still the player would likely feel cheated, and I suspect I would, too...see question at the bottom of the post.

Ironically rules that do emphasis fog of combat will drive some people up the wall, they'll swear up and down it's not "realistic".

A question, if they hadn't tied on the Init rolls would you have done the same thing? Has anything like this come up and have you done something like this before?

Yeah, you're forgetting that a person with 4 IP literally reacts four times as fast as a normal human, as in time virtually slows down, and 3 seconds seems like 12 seconds for them. So even someone with 4 IP that is shooting every 3/8ths of a second has a relative 1.5 seconds to plan that shot. Personally I think that I could react reasonably well for taking one shot in 1.5 seconds. That's certainly more time than the length of time for sound to travel about two feet from my hands to my ears as you suggest.

My personal GM motto for in-game stuff:

Don't tell a player, "No."

Tell them "How", and give consequences for their actions.




-karma

Three thoughts:

1) You're playing a game. Do you feel your decision made the game more fun for everyone at the table?

2) If the closest target was dead would you still have forced the character to shoot the dead guy? Wouldn't that have also fallen under "the actions were happening so fast, and so close together that he couldn't actively choose his target using the game information of who was hurt and who wasn't"?

3) My perspective is that you changed the rules in the middle of the gunfight. Normally, players choose their action on their turn. Up until this point have you ever not allowed a player to choose his action on his turn?

I'm going emphasize again that I don't think you were unreasonable. A lot of people seem to think you made a "wrong" call, but I think there is a balance somewhere between what your player wanted and what you decided. Whether or not this was fun for the people at the table is a judgement call to be made *by the people at the table*. My group tends to be simulationist, so they would likely agree with your assessment in this case and still enjoy themselves.

With that in mind, I don' think its unreasonable to say that the player can't make decisions based on the outcomes of actions that are supposed to be happening simultaneously, any more than a player can make decisions based on things that haven't happened yet. That seems to be self evident, but its very easy to use metagame information to anticipate what is going to happen in the next turn or the next action and respond. I don't think you are out of line for not allowing such.

On the other hand I do think that you can look at someone and tell how hurt they are (generally speaking and in most cases) provided you have enough time to make that assessment. I don't think you should tell your players "Mook B has 4 boxes of damage and Mook E has 3 boxes" but if he asks "Which one looks to be hurt the worst?" its not metagaming to tell him one or the other. I would note that the information doesn't have to be accurate- as Yerameyahu's pointed out the one that looks to be hurt the worst might not be. But in general I make my players spend an action to observe in detail if the info they want isn't immediately obvious (like pulsatile arterial blood spraying out the Mook's neck, for example).

So were you wrong? No.
Could you have handled it differently? Yes.
Was it fun for your players? Ask your players.

Good advise.

There-in is the rub. The actions aren't simultaneous, otherwise you wouldn't need the tie-breaker.

[Unilaterally] Changing rules in the middle of the combat to penalize a better roll over a poorer one. This is not a reasonable course of action.

According to RAW they are. SR4A page 144 is pretty explicit: "If two characters get the same score, then they act simultaneously."

Yes there are rules for resolving ties, but whether it was "imperative to determine which one acts first" in this situation is up to GM, and he seems to think that things were happening too fast for the characters to make distinctions. Besides, if that were the case he didn't use the appropriate series of attribute comparisons (as indicated by RAW) anyway so this character might not have been last and the whole argument is moot.

So I'll stand by my point: if things are deemed to be happening simultaneously (or close enough that you need to break out the rule book and resolve a tie) I don't think its unreasonable to say that the player can't make decisions based on the outcomes of the other actions.

I think if you're going to do that, you should ask the characters to decide what they're doing before anyone in the simultaneous action starts rolling dice.

Is that new?

So then Rand pooched it prior to that. All actions chosen, then all roll, then apply results. Screw the [incorrectly determined] tie-breaker altogether. Have them happen simultaneously, or not.

And stop unilaterally making up rules middle of stuff. "GM says blah, blah, blah." That's the road to suckville.

That doesn't appear to matter in the issue of 'using info you don't have', Dwight. Making these kind of calls is exactly what the GM is for, and he didn't do anything wrong… unless, of course, there's a pre-existing rule saying that the player should expect to be able to target 'the most wounded' enemy? (There isn't.)

Well it certainly addresses unevenly applying "simultaneous". On the "using info you don't have" issue:
1) it DOES resolve it because it truly removes the information....
2) ....thus removing the temptation and even the perception that it is being used (well 'metagaming' is still being used, metagaming is pervasive, it has to be because the numbers are how we understand WTF is going on, it's our only input)
EDIT: 2.5) players/GM still gets to make the decisions they are used to making using the information they normally have (and don't have)
3) much fun has been thrown out in attempts to toss the 'evil' metagaming bathwater, this sure sounds like another tally on that front

If they aren't getting nods around the table, if it isn't in the end consensus, the GM is performing this [largely unnecessary] role poorly. Or they are playing with the Wrong People.

Now if there are unanimous nods around the table from everyone that that is how they want to play these ties? *shrug* Well then Rand did a stellar job (assuming they have foreseen all the consequences of it).

A very good idea if you ask me.


Not since SR4.

No body is perfect. We could all be better GMs.


While GM-fiat can have its drawbacks, at some point someone has to make a decision to resolve situations like these and move the game forward.

I disagree. The GM and the players approach the game with different mentalities. You cannot depend on the player to make those kinds of decisions becuase a player isn't as interested in

1) Game balance...it's the rare player who doesn't take an edge in the game if he can. It only makes sense from a players perspective.
2) universal game mechanics. The player doesn't design the adventures, doesn't create the encounters and isn't depended on to make judgment calls concerning the rules. They care about the mechanics that they use, or there party members use.

If you did a concensus on these kinds of rules then the players would run amok. There are always more players than GM (singular for the most part), so all judgment calls would would be biased on behalf of the players themselves.
I'm not suggesting the GM be a draconian control freak or not listen to input from players, it's the GM's job to be objective and run the game. If he is doing that, his judgment calls shouldn't be called into question. Giving the players the kind of control concensus gives them is a basd idea and will end poorly, someone will end up not having fun and since the GM is the guy who makes the game happen at least some effort should go towards keeping the game fun for him\her. Concensus for rules calls is the worst idea I've heard in a while.

Hey all, thanks for all the input. Excellent responses.


Not everyone. Most didn't care one way or the other, with the only one not liking it being the one player affected (shocking). I was happier the way I had it go. So not everyone it seems....


In the past, with different initiatives totals I didn't, but whenever I feel there may be a reason for confusion, then I will call for something - like a perception check or the like. The key here is: a reason. Now, I didn't put it in the original post, and maybe I should have, but they where in very dark tunnels (actually absorbing light/heat a bit so the lights they had were less effective) that were kind of tight. Also, the fact that one creature (unhurt) was closer to the attacking character makes me believe that the "self-preservation" mode would/could kick in.


As far as I am concerned, this is the best advice yet, and something I will definately apply in the future as I love to inspire creativity in my players.


Good thing I didn't do this then, huh? As everyone involved had the exact same initiative, no one had a better or worse roll than anyone else - except for those players that had lower initiatives that is, and aren't a part this discussion.

I do see two other good ideas from all of this: 1) Less info at the table. I usually don't let out a lot, but sometimes when I want to make a player feel good about what they did, or when I get a bit lazy (hey,. it happens), or when tired. But, that shouldn't count when a player makes a decision on what they are going to do, metagaming is bad -just don't do it! 2) Declare actions prior to rolling initiative and impose "changing action penalties".

See Method, this was NOT about moving the game forward. The game was ready to move forward just fine by itself if Rand hadn't interjected himself. He unilaterally decided his happiness trumped someone else. Shocking indeed.

Now he comes on here trying to get validation for his Dick move.

What's wrong with the GM being happy? If he didn't feel comfortable letting the player do something but he allowed it anyway, what happens the next time this issue comes up?

Whiner...

I wonder what Rand did to Dwight.

The player shouldn't be able to ask the GM which enemy is more wounded. At most, the *player* should keep track of who they've shot more. There's simply no reason the player should feel entitled to that. It's a very simple question, free of these personal philosophical arguments about good GMing or whatever.

Some GMs like to give out fairly detailed descriptions of their NPCs to the player/s. Or they describe the surroundings in some detail. It may give the players the impression that they can tell things like being wounded without a Perception test. If this is the case, I do not think it is unreasonable for the player to say that he is going to attack the enemy that is more wounded - he probably means he is going to attack the enemy that appears most wounded.

Personally when I GM, each of my PCs are told what they can perceive individually.

I agree, toturi, as I mentioned in my earlier post. My point is that the GM in this case isn't necessary penalizing the player or imposing anything on the game. If the player actually meant 'who looks worse', that's one thing. We don't know all the details (including the player's intent), so it's a little inappropriate to say anyone's being unfair or a bad GM/player.

Me too. He seems to have a habit of inferring that people are dicks as of late.

Dicks, with a capital D.

Maybe he's assuming that they are all named Richard, and is using the common nickname for such individuals?

That, or he's decided that they are having badwrongfun, and he must champion the cause of their poor, downtrodden players, whether they want him to or not?

You could use the White Wolf method, in which players declare actions in *reverse* initiative order then carry them out in initiative order.

So slow people have to commit sooner and fast people can adjust to what they see the slow people starting to do.

This is definitely something that should have been in the original post. It's a hell of a lot easier to tell the difference between "hurt" and "unhurt" than to distinguish degrees of injury. Moreover, the question of when and whether the character's sense of self-preservation kicks in isn't yours to decide; it's the player's. You may choose to grant or withhold certain information, but you cannot dictate the character's actions.

I'd maybe want to know other important factors:

- Does the character have Guts or something similar that would let them ignore an obvious threat in front of them?
- Was the hurt monster near / able to attack a weaker character, so this was sort of a "heroic" sacrificial action?
- Does the player have a good in-character rationale why they want to dispose of the hurt creature first (knowledge of creature, a history with this sort of situation, tactics knowledge skill, etc)
- How close is the "close" monster? Right in the characters face, or were both targets similar-ish distances, just one maybe slightly closer?

Otherwise this does seem a bit meta-gamey. Not that it should be disallowed, just discouraged. Maybe give a "composure" dice-pool modifier because of the impending danger?

I don't think you understand how fast people who know what they are doing actually shoot in the real world.

An example that is perfectly doable with at most a couple of weeks of training (if you have never handled a pistol):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zJlsc8GU50

To see what someone who is really good can do you need to watch a grand master rated shooter at an IDPA or IPSC event.

As an example, consider the el presidente drill. El presidente has the shooter start facing away from 3 targets 10 meters away. When the buzzer sounds the shooter turns around, draws, shoots two rounds each at 3 targets 10 meters away, reloads and shoots the same 3 targets with two more shots each. An expert can complete an el presidente drill in under 6 seconds, with all the hits in about a 6" diameter circle.

In that scene, Vincent is at point-blank range. Can he do the same thing at five meters? Twenty? Forty? Sixty? Are the "el presidente" targets moving or static? Are they always in the same position relative to the shooter? This is my point: initiative augmentation allows a character to pick his target, aim, and shoot in the time it takes an unaugmented person to point-shoot.

I'll see your fictional movie and raise you combat training by people who do/did it for a living going much slower.

If all it takes is a couple of weeks of training, why are these professions so ungodly slow compared to the actor? It might be that when they shoot and hit someone the weapon is actually pointed at the person where in movies you can kill someone by pointing roughly in their direction.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7307259662158508631 (skip ahead to 00:57 or so)

It's interesting to note the time difference between where they decide on their target (lifting the gun) and shoot at the target.

Now since it is a game, I don't think it matters which way you do it, simultaneous or in order, but I do prefer simultaneous actions be declared before dice are rolled. After all, it's a game. screw reality and have the Gunkata be common by 2072. It's all good.

Personally, I have had characters decide who to attack based on who was most hurt.

But I'm always very careful to couch it in terms my character could achieve.

Like, "Who LOOKS most badly hurt?"



-karma

Yeah. And even if it isn't reflected in RAW, if two people fire at the same time, they're both going to have decided what to shoot at and start lining up the shot long before they pull the trigger.

Even if we discount that, of course you're going to need an Observe In Detail Action in order to, in the middle of combat, notice the location of the hit, which is nothing more than a 1cm hole appearing in the target's clothing, and accurately judge the severity of the wound based on that, before the wound has any time to bleed.

Yeah I'm generally pretty okay with players shooting the one who appears most injured. I also assume that they are trying to pay attention to the combat and keeping track of who has been shooting at whom. If the mage casts a spell that doesn't leave visible damage or have a visible effect most characters aren't going to know that that target is most injured unless the mage also shouts out to shoot his target. Ditto with Stun damage because it doesn't always leave a clearly visible mark.

Edit: of course this is all crap that AR was advertised as doing when the edition was first announced but that then later forced characters to spend tons of money to get. I usually let a networked team get tacnet info without purchasing a tacnet. Then they can have filters set to mark targets that have taken the most number of direct hits show up in their AR HUD.

Nothing. It's how he got there. Rand abused GM fiat to put his happiness over the other person's, and drag the game down to boot. He created the crisis and then 'solved' it with a unilateral decision. Dick move.

P.S. Dungeonmaster In Complete Kontrol

Still not entirely sure how this was a D.I.C.K. move. All actions are happening simultaneously in a panicky and surprise-like situation. The characters didn't have time to plan together or even observe what each other was doing -- they literally pulled the trigger at the same time. The player was trying to use metagame knowledge by knowing the shot his buddy resolved first (not that happened first). It is entirely reasonable for the GM to assume that you would have shot at the one closest to you (and likely to maul you first) and assign some sort of penalty or roll for not doing so. Again, a composure test would have been a good test to make.

The situation is a weird one and I think that Rand was within his rights to force this decision on the player. The player was trying to gain an advantage that his character wouldn't have had. The player was breaking the role-playing to get a rules advantage.

Then why did the guy with the lowest reaction have to sit through everyone else's combat before being asked how he was going to contribute to the combat? If they all pulled the trigger at the same time, then all characters should have rolled dice at the same time and combat should have been resolved in a manner where no one knows who fired the killing shot.

This wasn't done.

The way things were done, the lowest reaction player was not going to be able to contribute equally because he was both:
1) slower than everyone else and therefore going last AND
2) going just as fast as everyone else and therefore going at the same time

I don't care which one you pick, but I think the GM should have picked one or the other, not both.

(Note: Just to be clear, I think the way Dwight is phrasing his argument is completely counter-productive. If you dislike what I'm saying because of what he's saying and how he's saying it, there ain't much I can do about it.)

Meh. Were it my table everyone would've declared their actions and I would've thrown them into the Kvetchin'Aid mixer™ and hit 'Frappe'. All acting at the same time? The guy with the lowest natural Reaction is still going at the same time as everyone else, I don't think he'd have the time to see who's the most injured as the bullet's in the air, but that's just me. I haven't had a matched Initiative roll since I started GMing this game some years ago.

There's a lot of 'coulda woulda shoulda' goin' on in here. Could it have gone better? Sure. Does it really matter in the long run? Well, I don't see anyone leaving the table in a huff over it, so not really. Based off that, I figure any accusations of involuntary character control should be neatfully packaged in enough tinfoil to be artfully sculpted into a fashionable 'hair helmet'.

He resolved them in a certain order but they all happened simultaneously. SR combat has a fucking retarded number of rolls and dice pool modifiers invovled to resolve even the most basic of actions. I can not fault Rand for not wanting to keep track of all of that while simultaneously trying to roll the bad guys' attacks and dodge rolls. Far easier to resolve them one by one and then describe what happens after the pass is finished.

I really don't see how the initiative tie was involved in this situation at all.

This doesn't seem incredibly difficult to me. My character notes clearly say:
I have similar notes for face work, perception, assensing, my armor, quick draw, etc.
I add up the individual pool, add or remove situation dice that the GM says, and roll. If I'm using my Morrissey Elan (for the first time in my character's life), it's easy to see that I'm no longer getting that smartgun bonus but I still get my Semi-Automatics.
And since I've colored in the 3,4, and 5 pips in my dice to the same color, telling the difference between a 1 and a 5 or 6 isn't rocket science.

By being organized, I find it easy. Granted, the sample characters and character sheets are not an aid in this. If I was using the character sheets that come with the game and unmodified dice, it would be a lot more busy work..

In SR an unaugmented person can NEVER do that. The mechanics say it's impossible. That simply is not a realistic position to take, so claiming how hugely invasive implants give you this great ability to shoot as fast as a real life normal person with skills is silly.

The SR mechanics do not model reality in any fashion. Making sweeping claims based on assuming that they do is silly.