Now, I decided to break my posts up because the other one was long. Here's my Stupid Player Moment:

The Setup:
Generic "Break into the facility and steal the thingy" run

The Players:
Elf Speed Assassin
Human decker/demolitions

The office building was open to the public because there were several companies operating out of it (accountants, loan offices, a security-grade weapons dealer (didn't have merchandise on site), stuff like that). They made it up to the third floor and met the most basic of basic security -- the old guy at the front desk who asks for your ID. The decker decided to answer him by taking out a gun and blowing his head off. I should point out this was on a Tuesday an hour or so after lunchtime.

Needless to say, alarms were raised and wageslaves were panicking. The two of them started fighting security guards until the decker, not carrying anything heavier than a pistol, decides to pull out his big guns. So he starts pulling out clumps of plastique C12, molding them into soccer-ball sized chunks, throwing on a remote detonator, and tossing them around the place. Like 4m in front of the PCs in a hallway...

Somehow, they lived through that blast and ended up levelling the entire building, killing about 600 people working there and several critters I had in some labs upstairs they didn't bother exploring before blasting.

The moral of this story: Always expect the unexpected when GMing.

The other moral of the story: Keep Kim the hell away from the explosives section of the core rulebook.

The Abstruse One

If the players manages to kill the one you had planed was the Big Bad Guy, then between sessions (or in the middle of one if they really messed up) think out a new guy who's even tougher and let him be the real Big Bad Guy, while the guy they killed was just his flunkie.

There is one thing I've noticed. Some folks do okay with demolitions, others try and see just what can be blown up, and how quickly they can do it.

Had one pc in a game I was running that was extremely paranoid about her neighbors, so, over the course of a year of playing she set up about 100 kg of c-12 in her apartment building in various stragtegic and not so strategic but amusing locations.
One day, I decide to play with her mind (silly me), and have a pizza delivery boy knock ont he wrong door, hers naturally. Poor kid is looking for 583, but some dunce wrote the 5 incorrectly and it looked like a 6 (the delivery guy wasn't the brightest crayon in the box to begin with). PC hears knock at door, sees pizza she didn't order and panics, hitting the 'Button'.

So, her next character wasn't allowed to have so much as a stun grenade.

lol now thats funny!!

Regarding big bad guys escaping, unless for some reason you've distributed character sheets for the baddie to your players and they've had a Sensor 5+ drone and Intelligence 10+ character watching at all times, there's no way they can say "I should have caught them!"

~J

I have a wonderfully cruel trick for when the PCs kill someone who was supposed to be a reoccuring villain.

Let the guy's boss/partner/ex-subordinate take the role the original villain was supposed to play. Or, in odd cases, let the ex-villain's rival/hated enemy take over.

Nothing wrong with backup NPCs, and the PCs don't ever have to know that all you did was add 50 karma (or more) to the sheet of the guy they killed.

PCs should be rewarded for killing the villain. You shouldn't get petulant because they defied your plan to railroad them. As for the explosives, there is no way you can level an office building and kill 600 people with a backpack full of C12. The Oklahoma city carbomb killed about 200, and that was a truckload of high explosives. Given a better target location, and the greater power of C-12, and a high demolitions skill, you might be able to kill 600 with a car bomb, but not with a few chunks of platique that were just tossed around during a firefight.

Perhaps the building was gutted in the ensuing fire, if they managed to screw up fire sprinkler mains low enough in the building that the top stories burned?

Anyway, here is a GM WTF? moment:

As part of a run we must snuff a guy in an armoured limo enroute across town. Unfortunately we haven't identified any single certain point that he'll pass over. We have airborne transport, so we can scramble to ahead of him based on whichever route he takes. But we are pretty sure he has:
1) a Panic button
2) a good amount of armour on the limo
3) fairly ample armed muscle/magic traveling with

So a face-to-face straight-up slugfest seems rather risky, and 'runners generally don't like risk they don't have to take. But safely laying a landmine, especially on a busy streets can take a fair amount of time. So we start brainstorming. Exact wording my differ, but this is the gist of it.

PC Gun-nut: Say, didn't we see some squeegee kids out near the edge of the Barrens last week?
*the GM had managed to annoy us with these little buggers running up at an inopertune moment and getting in the way*
Me: Ya, i remember that. So?
PC Gun-nut: Well, PC Mage you have a spell to control people's action, like a robot, right?
PC Mage: Er, ya.
PC Gun-nut: So we strap a bunch of remote control explosives on a few of these kids, then drop them off at an intersection a few blocks ahead of the limo. When the limo pulls up we get the kids to run over and start wiping the windows. Then BLAMMM!
GM and other PCs: WHAT?!?!?!?
GM: You can just go around killing innocent people like that. You'll take a serious karma hit for that.
PC Gun-nut: Why? They are from the Barrens. Most of them are likely orphans anyway. We should get a karma bonus for creativity.
GM: WHAT?!?!?
...

Fortunately sanity prevailed, and no squeegee kids were martyred during the run. However Squeegee Kid has now become our group's slang term for an innocent bystander that get hit by colateral damage.

It seems the Oklahoma bomb was 4,800 pounds. It must have been really weak stuff then. This is well under a ton of TNT. This article describes the effects of a ton of TNT (30' wide, 6' deep crater, leveled eight concrete buildings at a distance).

Bringing down an office building can, of course, be done with far less explosives than that, if they're well placed. But this apparently wasn't the case. Just throwing chunks around, you'd need a lot more.

Actually, I knew it was an improvised gas+fertilizer bomb ("Ammonium Nitrate and NitroMethane"). While it makes sense that such improvised explosives would be a lot weaker than even TNT, let alone (the imaginary) C-12, I also wanted to show how much weaker it is in practice.

But it's a good thing it was cleared up.

Players shouldn't take a karma hit for murdering innocents, unless it is stricly contradictory to their character description. There's no reason players should be forced to be good. This isn't Marvel Superheroes.

I need to remember to check the equipment list before posting.

Pull it together HoV, your flippancy could kill us ALL!!!!!!

This happened a long time ago, before I'd heard of Shadowrun (or indeed, any games other than AD&D and GURPS), but I don't have any good SR stories yet.

The players are two 14-year-old boys. The GM is another 14-year-old boy (me). We've been playing this campaign with these characters for a little over four years. Pretty standard 10-year-old fantasy, complete with PC-owned airship. The PCs are engaged in tracking down the Ten Swords of Power, and have figured out that this particular evil wizard has one, and is using it to craft creatures out of nightmare. He was pretty good at that sort of thing even without the sword, so retrieving it from him was a priority. Unfortunately, he's doing his work while holed up in his Evil Tower of Badness, which he has presumably filled with all the magical watchdogs he can slap together.

They've encountered his work before: monospiders, giant spiders that spun webs out of monowire, so they have a healthy respect for his ingenuity. Worse, one of the two PCs is deathly afraid of spiders, and so really doesn't want to enter the tower.

They do some divination magic. The omens are terrible. Once inside the tower, they'd no longer be able to teleport (a skill they'd just acquired, and were loving to death). This world has no resurrection magic (anymore), and they've already fought their way out of the Halls of the Dead once; twice would be pushing it.

I am sitting behind my GM screen, smiling benignly. They saw me come in, and know that my notes for this tower are easily thirty pages long.

They discuss this for awhile, going over their resources, their allies, their personal disagreements, everything they can think of. I answer from my notes, and things are looking pretty hopeless. Finally, they have the following exchange:

A: Well, I guess that's it then.
Z: Hm?
A: I mean we'll have to do that thing we talked about.
Me: ?
Z: You mean...?
A: That's right!
A&Z, with identical expressions of glee: Hindenburg!!!

Yep. They crashed their airship into the tower. We'd previously decided that the stuff in the gasbag was flammable, so the result killed the mage, squished his beasts, scattered bits of Evil Tower of Badness over a dozen square miles, and made the subsequent Sword-hunt much simpler. Ever after, "Hindenburg" has been that group's code phrase for "screw plans, let's try overwhelming force".

I still have those notes.

He rolled Demolitions to place the explosives on the supports of the building, shaping the charges for maximum effect. The building would've come down easily.

The Abstruse One

Hindenburg! Sweet! As for the charges, why didn't you say so? You indicated that he just put detonators on bricks of c-12 and tossed them around in the middle of a firefight. What book has the demolition rules anyway?

Using Demolitions to increase Power/DL or to penetrate Barriers better? SR3, p. 119. Other than that, I have no idea.

PS. GO LOUISIANA!

He did do that. After he blew up everyone on that floor but the two of them (L for the insane decker and S for the assassin), he went to applying shaped charges to take down the building.

The Abstruse One

Usually if the guy is an "unkillable" NPC (Ultimate or plot or whatever), I will give my players a OOC heads up so they know if they try anything, the "inevitable" will occur.

But if I've got an NPC villian that got killed early, I'll give them the karma for the lucky hit and finishing the run, but not the "process" karma that I give for stuff they would have done on the run. So in the end they would miss out on quite some karma.

When your super-villain is a mage then the world no longer has to follow the laws of physics. For example;
"He runs around the building and presumably into the back yard" Once there the bound earth elemental uses it's movement power on the mage in a mauever we call 'Bugs Bunny' "You get into the back yard, roll spot. You don't see him."
Another example;
"He runs into the rolling fog you can't see him" Out of sight the Mage casts Improved Invis into the Sustaining focus Make the will rolls for the players to forestall metagame, then casts Levitate movement =magic x succsesses up to force. "You burst out the other side of the fog and don't see the mage...There are two doors..." meanwhile the villain is thirty six metres up and still going.
Make stats for the villains but leave your self a few GM outs, don't choose his Spells

Hey, GMs shouldn't cheat like that. It's one thing to make the NPCs clever, but generating their stats on the fly to counter anything the players do makes the game no fun.

Right on. GMs need to develop less linear plots. Any plot that requires a certain NPC to survive to a certain point, despite anything the PCs do to the contrary, has far, far too much railroading. The dice are there for a reason. They represent a true random factor in the game. Letting the players risk their characters being wounded or killed at any moment, while you break the rules right and left to keep your precious villain alive until the "right moment", is absolutely cheesy.

More accurately, the death of any NPC that needed to survive to a certain point means that the GM hasn't thought things through enough.

~J

It's for the benefit of the players, though. Sometimes it's perfectly reasonable to fudge an NPCs survival because the game turns out to be cooler and more interesting for everyone. There are other times when it detracts from the game (especially when that survival is unrealistic, as in every "asshole railroader" story I've read). GM's don't railroad because they're consciously trying to go into storytelling hour, they do it because they think it will create more fun.

The trick is to tell the difference, and that is one of the subtle arts of GMing. If it was as simple as being automaton-like in your objectivity, everyone would do it. It's not, because oftentimes nudging the situation into something more lively, colorful, and rich creates more fun for everyone.

Although, im am opening myself for abuse by saying this but leaving certain elements of an NPC "loose" and unwriten allows you the GM to make them smarter then you (as theGM),

Example: The NPC in question is a Dragon (Vanilla flavoured) i doubt there is a single person on this board that can say (truthfully) they are as intelligent as a dragon is meant to be.

Thus as a gm if you leave certain elements open, and your players come up with a plan/ action/ effect that is slightly obvious then the NPC (dragon in this case) being more intelligent has most likley thought of it and made some kind of contigentcy for said plan/ action/ effect. If this makes me a bad GM in your eyes so be it. Me? i see it as play the NPC as intelligent as he/she/ it should be.

However, if said NPC is just a troll with armour 10/10 hardened and a body of 20+, and your players kill it (i say it cos it's proberly no longer really metahuman) by wiping out a dragon ATGM, then fudging it so it stay alive (with the possible and VERY rare exception (so rare i've never done it) HOG) is bad GMing IMO

[/rant mode]

And in those VERY rare instance's allowance will be made (i have an INT 12 Otaku myself and i refuse to play her with my GM unless im very awake).

My point was that leaving things unanswered allows you to cover base's that would of been covered by said nPC to make then less easy to kill that perhaps they would of been.

ok i counter with the fact that the GM has only one brain to govern many people where as the PC's help each other come up with plans thus if any thing is missed by one person it's more likey to be spotted by the others.


Either way it's some thing that needs to be done in a balance, nor would i recomend that you keep doing it. but i know your going to disagree.

just because someone writes the run, doesn't mean he knows what will happen. the Players make the game take whatever course it takes, hopefully the GM has prepared for most of them, and is flexible enough to handle the rest. As for me, I don't prefab any characters. Does that make me a Railroader? no, it makes me lazy, I don't think you'll get any one of my players to say that I railroad. Nor do I have a problem with unkillable baddies, I tend not to use them, or, I at least make it plausible as to how they get away. I had one character that got into Melee with a player, he was hitting the player for no damage, but was getting rocked and rolled in return, so with a simple commlink call, his security mages show up, shove a physical barrier in between them, and he takes off for the secret underground passage that leads to a garage that allows the character to escape, while the Player had to find a way around the Barrier. That's how you do a proper unkillable NPC at least until you decide to let them get the upper hand on him.

I don't understand what the problem is with making stuff up on the fly?
I've done whole runs with nothing more then an idea so making up all the stats as it is needed can't really be that much of an issue.

For me at least it's all about apperances since all this is just really happening in the head anyway. If the players feel that you're just doing things to keep your NPC alive at all cost, that can be a problem. If they feel you're changing stats because they have a good idea that you don't want them to do that can also be a problem. At this point it starts to be players vs. GM.

OTOH my experience is that if you keep a cool facade and don't make it look like you're fudging then doing so can increase the general enjoyment for all and make for more dramatic moments and posiblities.
Killing the big baddie at the wrong time can be pretty anti-climatic.
Keeping him alive at all costs can be worse by make the encounter feel pretty cheap.
Keeping him alive by being creative and quick thinking can make for the most memorable experiences.

As long as it incrases the fun, tesion and drama in good doses I think it's a good thing.

(A lot of groups I have GM'ed for I have asked ahead of time if they want open or hidden rolls and done it to their preference)

It's a double edged sword.

Players want a GM to be flexible in their favor. However, be to flexible and they complain there isn't a story. The bottom line will always be whatever you do to have fun is the right way to do it. And no ones opinion will change that.

Heres my view:

People often talk about 'having fun'. Are the players 'having fun', is the game 'fun'. Etc. Is it? Is it fun for everyone? Is it fun for the guy who spends 4 to 8 hours crafting a storyline, creating NPC's and trying to breath some life into a world. Is it fun for the one guy who makes it fun for everyone else? Try this. Gather 3 to 6 friends together to play Shadowrun. Try it without a GM. Not a lot of fun now, is it.

Is it to much to ask for the GM to have fun as well? For him to have a chance to see his NPC's last more than three seconds? See we (GM's) have a problem when making our npc's. We can't make them too powerful or they will easily overwhelm and kill the npc's. Se we ere on the side of caution and make them to weak. Now they die easily, but they wern't meant to. So we fudge some rolls so they live longer and the pc's yell and scream about being 'rail roaded'. Well next time, make the npc's too powerful, and when the players cry about there characters dying say... "Well I would have fudged some rolls but you guys got real mad at me last time I did that." Ok admitidly that's a little extreme, but I hope I made my point.

I have been GM'ing a while and I fudge dice rolls constantly to get a desirable outcome. Why? Because I know what makes a good story. I know what makes a good climax, and I know how to tell a good story. In the end, everyone has a blast, and maybe just maybe I have crafted a few of those moments that players talk about for years to come.

I have a lot more but I will save it, either you understand or you don't. Either your a player, or a gm.

Concider that not all players are going to have a stroke if the GM says "well he gets away because if you kill him now the campain is over."
Two friends of mine were playing D&D one was the GM when the PC's encountered the main villian. The two sides were supposed to fight for a bit then the Baddie gets away and the campain goes on. However the PC's jumped the NPC in the middle of flavor text when he had no defences up and would have killed him outright when the GM said in good nature "He vanishes in a cloud of black smoke." The players thought that was hillarous and one of those two friends still talks about that time.
If anyone has played the Survival module then you know that there is one brief moment when the PC's meet Ghostwalker in his human form. If the PC's decide to shoot and ask questions later and after you use all the Karma messing tricks decribed in DotSW, what should you do? Let the second most powerfull being in the world die because you are afraid of railroading the players.
We can all agree that there are times when the dice just screw you and that critical failure for damage resistance on a Bod 10 Mage with force 10 armor still dies. What do you do if nothing else had been set in motion at that point?
Just my thoughts.
By the way sorry for the spoiler about GW

Sid, you need the 'special escape' GM resources: 1) A screen to roll your dice behind, 2) The self-confidence to fudge a soak roll without letting on.

And that my friend is exactly my point.
There's no difference in What you suggest and simply saying that the NPC soaks and "Disappears in a cloud of black smoke"