the worst thing i've seen a player do was to totally ignore a Trace IC that'd locked onto him. the character in question had two different megacorporate divisions listed on his charsheet as enemies. the most painful part of the experience is that i couldn't give the character what he deserved (a short stint in a jail cell, followed by a long stint at the bottom of the Sound), because doing so would have caused a rift in the space-time continuum; the character was simultaneously taking part in a run that happened after the matrix run he flubbed so royally.

like i said, the character was in two games that were being played at the same time (the games in question are played online, at shadowland), but which took place sequentially, in game time. getting caught, hauled off to jail, and subsequently waxed would have made it impossible for the character to have been involved with the next run--which was already being played out. if i'd known he was going to make that dumb a mistake, i wouldn't have run it...

Then start doing squat thrusts when he got bored.

I had my players do something to screw up a game a couple of times. One time playing Marvel Superheroes, one of them comes out (righti nthe middle of an investigation) and says "my character is going to Denny's, cause its late at night and he's hungry." As the others were about to start a fight - they were quite upset with him. I let him go to eat - and had him encounter the character of Sabertooth, who beat the ever loving crap out of him.
The SHadowrun experience happened when hte group was in Denver on a run. Their opponent was a Blood Mage and at one point he summoned a blood spirit to cover his escape by killing a little kid. Anyway, while the rest of hte group engaged the spirit, their Phys Ad goes after the Mage. What followed was a (real time) hour of me telling him "the Mage gets away" and him arguing "then I'll keep following him, my speed is fast enough." Finally we totally stopped playing cause the guy insisted on killing the Mage right there. I was like "DUDE! This is the main villian for the run! You ARE NOT going to catch him and kill him. Get over it." And then they did the one thing that no GM has power over - they all went home.
It was a good run too. A two-parter with one thing going on in Seattle and this going on in Denver. And I wasted my Super Awesome Seattle villian as they never ever got to go after him.

I was running a one on one session from a short campaign.

In this campaign the two player charachters had been mistakenly pegged as columbine style serial killers due to thier misfortune to have a slight resembelance to the real killers (who were great at avoiding cameras), and thier greater misfortune to have been doing a milkrun shadowrun for a contact at the location of and during one of the masaccers, the general misfortune to be sinless, and to be an ork or a shapeshifter.

So they went to ground for a few days trying to figure out what was happening and how to get out of it while security camera images of them were being slathered over all metroplex media, and probably several thousand individuals (friends and relatives of the 200 or so deceased in 5 or 6 massacers) personally hated them.

At one point the shapeshifter was walking across a parking lot and encountered two low end security guards. In a spasm of terrible role playing the player decided to try to bluff past them by acting normal. I rolled a luck die figuring that on a 6 these two guys somehow didnt recognise the famously murderous maniac, and that on a 1 one of them was related to a victim, and on any other number they just recognize the maniac. I rolled a 1.

One guard stiffened, his face turned white, and he stared momentarily frozen. The shifter, still incapacitated by this spasm of terrible role playing and therefore unaware that a large fraction of the people on the continent would know its face from 50 meters, decided that the bluff was working.

The other guard noticed the first guard, then noticed the shifter and drew his gun. The shifter acted afraid, hands up, "dont hurt me". By this time the spasm was beginning to abate. The player had realized that the charachter was famous, however the spasm was not yet done as the player did not yet realize that the charachter was a famous brutal mass murderer of a couple hundered people and that nobody was interested in making an arrest, especially not just two guys alone in a parking lot. So the first guard shot, and soon enough the second guard joined in. Finally the shifter fought back and with lots of karma pool use barely managed to survive (can't rember if it fought or ran, should have run) despite being a regenerating physad tiger shifter munchkin with a fair bit of karma and a kind GM (I gave the first guard some t# modifier for uncontrolable rage).


I think this whole thing is a great lesson in how roleplaying is more important than roll-playing when it comes to surviving a game. An uber melee charachter nearly killed by two mall security guards with light pistols at close range because the player was not imagining the situation their charachter was in.


Most of the times my charachters have nearly died, or ludicrously failed thier missions are from the same thing.

One time I was playing an emotionless hitman sniper and after a rather ridiculous incident where a security helicopter fired a missle into their corporate HQ right outside the chief executive's office threw me totally out of charachter I walked into his office and instead of just shooting him stood there like an idiot listening to him fast talk until he could jump into his executive escape shute (which was a really cool idea on the GM's part i think, a trapdoor with one of those clingy cloth tubes ocasionally used as fire escapes in the guy's office) allowing him to get away.

About killing the main villain; you need a Shadowrun equivalent of the D&D Contingency spell. As a GM, that spell has been good to me when used with teleport.

The setup: The group needed to break into a waterfront storage facility and steal a rare japanese katana that was 400 years old.

The players:

Alex: 7 foot tall human, cold blooded killer. Favorite weapon: built in mono whip.
Red: Tiger shifter mage
Commie: Russian street sam
Elite: bike rigger/sam


The job is fairly strait forward, and there is minimal security in the place. The biggest problem is that it is a Novatech facility and they use it to store items in transit. They also have there T-bird garage next door to it with 3 GMC Banshee's in it. The Banshee's are all in various states of repair.

They insert from the ocean with some very creative planning. They use some stealth, magic, and timing to get past the cameras guarding the back door. I'm thinking, wow, these guys have really planned it out. They get to the door and silence falls over the group. No one knows how to either pick it or disable it. So Elite pulls out his silenced Colt and shoots the door knob til he can open it. Needless to say this sets off two alarms. The one the guards inside are monitoring, and the one HQ is. So far the guards just mobilize to have a look. The team moves in and does a good job of hiding from the guards, while looking for the package. The guards find the door and call for backup. Here is where it starts to fall apart. The team unexpectedly encounters a guard, surprise is rolled and only the mage (surprise surprise) gets to go. He blasts the guard with a flamethrower spell. Needless to say the guard screams as he is burning to death.

More guards come, everyone rolls initiative. The mage gets to go three times thanks to his enhanced reflex spell. He fireballs them, now he has a serious stun wound from failing to resist drain. The others go but they are not as effective. Next pass, the mage uses a 7D manabolt on a guard. The guard collapses and everyone is happy....

At this point I should say the team does not know the mage is a shifter. At some time in the past we had ruled that if he fell unconscious for any reason then he would revert to his tiger form.

....that is until the 7 foot long sleeping tiger sprawls amongst them. Passing out from the stun would the mage reverted to his natural form. The team freaked out and where halfway between geeking the mage and buggin out. Thats when the Ares Spec-ops team arrived led by a phys add ghoul of appropriate power.

Alex and Commie caught on fire and started burning there way through the spec ops team. Where before they where having trouble with a couple of guards, they where mowing down guys in heavy armor. Deciding that running away was the better part of Valor the ghoul used his whip to slice open a section of wall and run for it.

Alex gave chase lighting him up with a GL and some AR rounds. I have to admit I fudged the dice and the rules a little bit on the ghoul getting away. I wanted some drama when he died, not an anti climax. I couldn't belive the dice rolls my players where pumping out, it was insane. So the ghoul got away, the mage lived and the team got the prize.

I mention this because when they finally did kill him, it was a very awesome, and dramatic moment. Alex cut the ghouls head off with the guys own whip, and then tossed the body off the roof of the Rainier building on 6th ave. He stood there for five minutes holding the head over the ledge, like Conan killing Thulsa Doom, before he tossed it into rush hour traffice.

Head cut off and body maimed beyond recognition...
That's how i wanna go.

Did you at least give them a reason he got away? You could have thrrown up an obstacle or two, like a spirit or something. I hope it wasn't just:

GM: "He's running away."
PC: "I'm running after him."
GM: "No. He's gone."
PC: "But i have a quickness of 6..."
GM: "Here's a quarter. Call someone who cares."

Wait, I thought mages could only cast a spell once per combat turn, regardless of how many initiative passes they get?

Not that I know of.

The only thing resembling that is the dissemination of Sorcery dice into Spell Defense. The skill itself is not treated as a dice pool, only those dice allocated for Spell Defense.

Can you point to a rule that states otherwise?

they can cast as many times as they have actions. granted cast 4 spells a turn just means drain is goona get you that much quicker but hey, it works.

and you can cast two spells at the same time by adding +2 to each tn. gotta resist em seperately though, which will suck hard

Well, this didn't make the GM cry, but it definatley wasn't what he expected.

I had a character, Vic, who was a street punk that dreamed to become a Shadowrunner. This was his first "real" shadowrun and he was pretty excited about it. Vic grew up on the streets in gangs, so he had some sort of run in just about everywhere in Seattle with other gang members. Some good, some bad.
In this instance, Vic and the team had gotten into a bit of trouble and needed a place to lay low for a little bit. Vic knew his gang would help out with that and gave them a call. They decided to meet up at a mall where another rival gang was known to patrol. The plan was for Vics gang friends to come up and start a fight with the mallrat gang so to cause a distraction which would allow Vic and the team of shadowrunners to get out of the mall unoticed by their followers they needed to hide from. Everyone in the team was spread out in the mall while still keeping an eye on eachother so as not to attract too much attention. Well, while Vic and one of the team members were being nice runners, trying to blend in by buying ice cream Vic noticed that the leader of the mallrats gang, which he happened to have a real bad history with, was standing a mere 100 feet away. Vic had a bright idea to pay a random punk kid to go steal something of "Boomer's" (the leader of the mallrat gang) so that they would chase the kid and leave the area until the opertune time.
It all started to backfire for Vic when the Kid that he chose turned out ot be Boomer's young cousin that Vic had never met. Suddenly Boomer was storming his way over to Vic with a thug on each side. All but one of the other runners began to walk further away thinking that Vic was simply crazy given their present "in-chase" stuation.
Boomer began scorning the nerve that Vic had in being here and was getting quickly more raged by the second. Vic, however, remained cocky as hell, telling Boomer such wonderful words like,"I see you're still pissed about Cindy huh?". Basically doing nothing to downgrade the level of intensity in the situation.
It came down to a point where basically, Boomer was just shy of calling Vic out or just plain throwing the first punch in before Vic was ready.
So Vic beat Boomer to it and took one punch to Boomer's groin.
(I used all of my combat pool dice for this move.)
Boomer collapsed, and passed out immidiately from the blow.
The two of Boomers thugs stood there in total disbelief, tyring to figure out how the hell this scrawny 4'5'', 110 lb punk just took out there leader of 6', 156 lbs.
Vic smerked as he relished in the joy of owning a shock glove, turned and walked away to meet up with his gang friends.

Dude, a shock glove to the BALLS?

NOT cricket.

...effective, though.

To answer Smiley's question, yes, I did give them reasons why the Mage got away. He made it into a residential neighborhood, to take cover, player responded, "I'll jump over the house into the backyard." I said "well, when you get there he is not in the yard." That's when "no way, my speed of 6 means he can't outdistance me since that's max for a human....." The argument went downhill from there and led to me not playing for about five years. He also pointed out that since I had stats for the Mage, it was possible to kill him at any point. Never should have made stats for him...

Ironically enough, we started playing again recently, with the same group. This time I made sure to tell them "None of the villians for these games will have stats." But I think I might bring back the Seattle guy. He was cool.

You know what would have stopped him?
A shock glove to the BALLS.

Except you may cast two (or more) spells as one complex action. Split your dice accordingly. There is a +2 TN to each spell's drain however.

Page 181, SR3.

glad I had it though
Vic was fun like that anyways, because he was just cocky and smart. Most of my characters aren't. well...back then they weren't...hehe

Second GM cry:
This was a cry.

...after setting off a grenade in the lowerlevel of a science labratory owned by some Corp (don't remember which one, they're all big and bad so...)

Mage: "Is that a large elevator shaft?"
Gun-Bunny: "Yeah, it's for troop and equipment transportation."
Mage: "Troops?"
*entire group looks at eachother as the elevator starts to make noise*
Mage (to the gun-bunny's in the team): "Give me a bunch of your grenades."
*The mage grabs a lab coat off of a dead scientist and puts all of the grenades in it, runs over to the elevator.*
**GM looks puzzled**
*Mage throws the lab coat up the shaft and magically levitates it further up and holds it there*
Mage (to the Gun-Bunny): "Throw a live grenade up there and run like hell."
..............

Levitating explosives around is always a good time.

Salsa

Detect Detonation and Barrier! Now that's salsa!

Trauma Dampener
D? What D?

I can tell why he lifted the coat instead of all the grenades. Less strain, less Drain!

Extreme dwarf tossing!

I could have sworn there was a line in the core rulebook that said mages could only take one magical action per turn.

If it involved KY Jelly and a snorkel, then I'd rather you didn't.

They were good enough that they didn't even NEED ky. THAT'S a Shadowrunner's Shadowrunner.

So how does casting mutliple spells per turn work? Do you have to split your sorcery dice between each spell, or can you use all your dice (provided they aren't in spell defense) on each spell?

Use all the dice of the skill, identicle to using a gun or any other skill.

EDIT: Oh... um, well no clue where ya got that idea then.

Maybe cuz most mages don't get more then one action a turn?

Yes tjn, I knew about the ability to cast multiple spells with one action, I just didn't know you could cast spells during more than one complex action per turn. I could have sworn there was a line in the book saying that you can only use sorcery/conjuring for one complex action per turn. I must be thinking of some other game.

re: Escaping baddie...I HATE when my players don't catch the hint that the NPC needs to get away. I've had that happen three times to me and they kept pursuing getting around every explanation I have for them getting away until I had to break the rules to get the NPC out alive (this also ties into my hatred of the hack 'n slash tactics that are all too common in RPGs because of a certain fantasy game with funny-looking dice...)

Me: It looks like you've him with that shot. He starts to run down the street to the right as a big thick fog rolls in, so bad you can't see farther in front of you than a few centimeters.
PC1: I run in that direction.
PC2: Me too.
Me: When you get out of the fog, no one's there.
PC2: Are there any doors in the area?
Me: Ummm...<thinking fast> There's two doors, one to the right and one to the left.
PC1: "You go right and I'll go left!"
Me: <swearing mentally> Okay, the door to the right is barred from the inside by a deadbolt. The door on the right swings wide open into the rear of a kitchen for a tavern. There's three people in the room.
PC2: I cast Detect Magic!
Me: <growling> One of the waitreses lights up like crazy.
PC2: I attack her!
Me: You kill the man from before, but his body disappears in a puff of smoke.

It later became a running gag that the PCs would kill that particular NPC and he'd "come back to life" somehow and be perfectly fine to fight again. They just couldn't take the hint that he was supposed to live to the Grand Final Plotline of that story arc. It was shortly after that game fell apart due to scheduling conflicts that I stopped playing said fantasy game with funny dice and re-devoted myself solely to Shadowrun.

Sometimes the NPC HAS to live for the plot. As a GM, your best bet is to try to give the players hints that they're not going to catch the NPC. If they don't take the hints and, after quickly but thoroughly examining the situation, you decide that there's no way the plot can continue without this NPC, I think it's okay to railroad the players.

In retrospect, I should've let the players catch that NPC as he was just an underling for the real villian, but I was more stubborn in those days.

The Abstruse One