Well, this one wasn't really a proper session in the same way as the others, since we spent a fair bit of time discussing what we were going to make/do in the diagnostic game Numpty offered to run for us. However, it was also decided that I'd try to finish off the fight that the PCs had started last session. Rather than giving a blow-by-blow, I'll just mention a few queries that came up and I needed help with.

First of all, we had several incidents of spirits trying to ambush people, which become a rather complicated process. Specifically, a spirit ended up, on two occasions, doing the following: materialize on one pass behind a wall, then on the next pass move out from the wall, do something, then as a free action drop the materialization. Is this the only way spirits can ambush people? It seems that even if they move in astrally, they still have to take a Complex action to materialize which leaves them standing there like a lemon for a pass.

A second comment about ambushes relates to held actions. It seems that SR lets you activate a held action anytime, even in the middle of someone else's phase, so unless somebody acts in Surprise resolution at the start of a combat trying to (as above) sneak in a spirit is out of the question because they only need to have one held action to interrupt you as soon as you come into view. Is that right?

Rituals. Can you "hold" a ritual? Say the ritual group sends out a spirit as a spotter - if the spirit hasn't found the target by the time the ritual time ends, is the spell lost, or can they hold the ritual until the target is found? Or does the timer only start when the target is identified so the spirit has to tail them for six hours or whatever?

And.. is there a good way of avoiding direct spells? Basically, Dawg commanded his spirit to throw a level 12 overcasted Powerball into the middle of a group and it nearly killed the spirit, but also killed pretty much everyone in the group except for a few mooks who got incredibly high rolls and the major NPCs who burned Edge. And that's even with a mage with Counterspelling 4 trying to protect the group. Ok, Dawg's not going to be too popular with spirits in the future, but he doesn't mind that much (at best they can spend Edge to resist summoning which for low Force spirits is no real danger to him)

I'm just not sure about the whole business where the PCs can finish an encounter but be doomed to death at a random point in the future because of errors they made in how they dealt with it - that just seems a bit opaque to me.

Spotters must find the target first, and then the ritual can begin. IIRC, the spotter no longer has to 'keep spotting' at that point, but the target has chances to notice the ritual building etc.

Direct damage area spells do not hit someone who is not in LOS of the caster, even if they are in range of the spell effect. And yes, direct damage spells suck to resist, unless you have a magician providing spell defense. Lucky rolls are lucky rolls. What spirit can cast spells out of the box? Man?

It's a consequence thing. In a living game world, NPCs are reactive AND proactive.

Re: spirits, yes, thank god.

I've never seen anyone keep a held action 'ready', just in case an invisible spirit appears. Hm.

Nope, direct spells rock you. If you have a spirit of Man with Powerball, that's just… bah.

If they screw up bad, there are realistic bad consequences. They still have options, like bugging out, changing their identity, hiding, etc.

You make it sound like it is a bad thing?

Spirits of Man cannot overcast (it is in the description of the spirit, SR4A p. 303). If it was not the case, no mage would ever bother casting a spell himself. If you want a Force 12 spell, you either take the drain of the spell or the drain of a Force 12 spirit.

Is this correct? I thought it would be another Complex Action to go astral again...


If Dawg tries to bind a spirit and is knocked unconscious or glitches, the spirit goes free and will probably try to kill him. A glitched summoning role can also lead to bad things. There's GM fiat, where spirits that aren't happy with a PC might willfully misinterpret poorly-worded commands.

If you mean "is there a more effective way they can ambush from the astral?' then the answer is, no (thank God). By the way, Dematerializing is actually also a Complex Action.
If they pass the surprise test I don't see any problem allowing them to use their held action before the spirit attacks.
for mundanes the only real way is to have a high willpower or to stay out of the casters (in this case the spirits) line of sight. There are some qualities that can help... magic resistance or, if surging, Arcane Arrester and Astral Hazing (though I do not recommend hazing for a PC). Otherwise no, mundanes are screwed.
Though, honestly, isn't that the fate of us all?

I was about to post this, but checking my copy of SR4A reveals the OP may be right. Materialization has its duration as "Sustained." The book doesn't say what type of action dropping a sustained power is, but dropping a sustained spell is a free action. It seems that materializing is a complex action, but dematerializing is a free action.

Interesting...the slight "drawback" is that it counts against the number of sustained powers the spirit can have going, although I've never seen that limit ever reached...otherwise Materialization is a lot better than I had thought - great for ambush situations...

Yes, I reasoned that dematerializing was a free action because it's dropping the sustained Materialize power.

I'm just not sure about how the consequences thing really plays out - it just seems too much like there could be any number of things the runners aren't aware of that could end up killing them off. In the real world, yes, getting involved with something like that could easily end up with somebody blowing you to bits the following day and you having no idea why, but does that make for a fun game? Is it really possible for the runners to arrange that there's no possible loopholes? Can they be expected to do that, or is it a judgment thing as to whether they've suffered such consequences - and if it is, how do you judge it?

That's really been my concern about implementing past advice - whether it's fair to judge that what the runners have done, is worthy of such harsh consequences, when I know the players are just doing what they think is a correct approach..

… It's not that kind of 'game'. It's a reasonable world, so the runners can anticipate (and prep for) reasonable threats (to the best of their information). If they're attacking a street gang, the world can't reasonably hit them with mil-spec commandos. If it *does*, they know their intel was wrong, and something odd is going on (which they can either investigate or stay the hell away from). But it's never about having 'no possible loopholes'.

At this point in their story, yes, they can reasonably expect crazy death squads. I've had games where the entire gang had to escape cross-country, because there was too much heat where they'd been. Hiding is as *at least* as much a part of shadowrunning as shooting.

No one has suggested that you TPK your party, or at the very least not without warning. I started a new campaign about a month ago. The characters all had real background stories, personal strength and weaknesses, but at least two things they do well. Normally I take a couple of sessions to ramp up to the "you should know better" level of expectation. I have two GM experienced players, one newbie who took to the setting and gaming like a duck to water, and one moderately experienced player. I made sure they new that it is a dystopian world, kids shoot each other over Soyfun Grape Flavored Nitrous Carbonated Energy Drinks, wageslaves, real slaves, black market for bodies not just Tamanous but you know Soylent Green type stuff, no real rights for the individual except what you take and keep for yourself on pain of death, in short a shithole that makes third world countries today look cutting edge. On the other hand you have the rich, the favored megacorporate stooges living in a virtual utopia, or you can disconnect and actually live in a virtual utopia. All of this is dancing on a razors edge, and if you screw up you fall. In the first session I built up the setting, the theme, the mood, to such a degree that my runners have since been running with a very healthy level of paranoia, actually turning down jobs they think would make the big fish in the tank look at them. Big fish eat little fish who fuck up. So if your players are not constantly looking over their shoulders, physically, astrally, and electronically in Shadowrun at least they should be used, abused, and eaten by the powers that be. Those powers are anyone willing to pay for their services, the jobs they take are a minefield and some employers believe that dead men tell no tales.

With that in mind you don't need to TPK your party to enforce consequences, but you have to have consequences. Your problem is really that to you they are the big fish in the tank, and that simply is not the case. They are not the power elite, they are not pulling the strings, they are the worm at the end of the hook. The sooner you start thinking that way, and occasionally fudging things (Zod takes 20P but somehow survives waking up in the hospital etc. they think he is dead and he want to stay that way, or they know he survived and a hit team is headed to the hospital) the more real player generated plot you will have instead of the semi-railroad of a module.

Yes. Your runners have begged for fiery death-capture-manipulation-general -massive-pain repeatedly through actions and on these forums. They are more than aware that they ar epissing off syndicates. if you don't want to TPK, try the following:

Isolate: Kill contacts, families, suppliers.

Deny: Any asset not on their body is fair game.

Destroy: Still not getting it after the mob kills your contacts, burns your safehouse to the ground, and carbombs your truck? Kill them.

That's what I thought too but then I saw this in the rules for Free Spirit characters in RC:

I think Free Action makes sense if it's truly sustained, so either the above is incorrect or Materialization is a "special case"

From the situations and questions you've been presenting it sounds like you believe there to be only two options: The players are clueless everything is random to them or every action the players take have one, and only one, correct outcome and the players should have it spoon fed to them every step of the way and always come out on to mo matter what.

That's not how it works. As long as you know why something is occuring (and it doesn't always have to be about combat) then that should be enough. It can even be a hook for a whole side adventure where the players are trying to find out why group X is targeting them. Though, the way you've described it the players should already know who is after them. Obviously you don't just drop random ambushes on them out of nowhere - work out in your head how their enemies might track them so when they to figure it out you have something to tell them when they succeed.

I know that's a bit "off script" and "on the fly" for you so here's another little tip: Being able to make it up as you go jsut requires a general understanding of how the world (ours or SR's) works and having a good pool of source material in your memory. I find the best place to get source material is movies... spy moves, sci-fi, etc. Obviously you don't want to be one of those hack GM's who runs a mission straight from the movies (what if they leave the script again!) but bit's and pieces from here and there will give you an idea of how a criminal organization is structured, when and why they'd put a hit on someone or send a team after them, what they would do during a fight, etc.

I think this is handled by determining (beforehand?) what style of game the group wants to run. Pink Mohawk? No / not many consequences from things they do. Black trenchcoat? Make sure the players cover every single tiny detail. There are numerous threads about these play styles and the differences, maybe this could help determine what the consequences for your group should be.

An example of us players going through a 'WTF ?' moment happened during a cyberpunk game. We the players were developping our own weapon trafficking company. At that time we were trucking three refurbished ex-russian BMP-3s headed for one Africa warlord through Mexico to an atlantic coast harbor.

During the transit, we were attacked by a bunch of asiatic corporate ninjas - which sounded very odd, especially once we managed to nail them as ethnic corean (one of the charatcers was japanase and could figure it out). Considering that we wrestled the company froma russian boss and had only had run-ins with mexican criminals to date, it got us into serious head-scratching mode. Who the hell might have sent them at us ?

Well, after quite a lot of poking and searching, we noticed that a rival warlord in the vicinity of our customer was financed by a corean mining and steel company. So that company decided to hinder their pet warlord's competition by hitting said competition's suppliers. Which means that what looked at first like a absurd bolt out of the blue had a perfectly logical reason to happen.