It is when they break the rules. It's even worse when the player deliberately ignores rules and hands over his sheet, relying on the GM to catch him (and inevitably miss a few things).

I have one player in my game that consistently hands me the stupidest sheets imaginable. I spend more time explaining to him why this or that violates the rules than I do with the entire rest of the group combined.

Thats one SComp recomandation broken right there

And personally i have issues with Buying used Cyberware at Character gen (make them stressed out there arse)

That's such a horrible and weak character. He's a dead man, yeah, he's good at what he does in melee, but damn it's awful otherwise. He has no ranged combat skills at all, he's deader than dead.

I dunno about most other people, but anything melee comes up SO unoften. A franchi-SPAS with Ex-Exploding on BF is 15D. The guy will be rolling at 6's to resist that, what's wrong with that? A half decent shooter with a smartlink will knock up a decent amount of successes.

The guy will be charging him, right? Since he has no ranged ability he has too, so probably no or little cover, the range will almost always end up short. That character is horrible, with combat pool any attacker will most likely end up with 8-10 successes, because it WILL end up TN2 at some point.

Resisting 8-10 successes at TN6 with basic D damage is like... no frigging way.

If I had a character like that in my games, I wouldn't be worried about him being a tank so much, rather dying all the time and having to constantly remake characters, or at least him getting bored stiff because he had nothing to do.

Although, when it comes down to small arms and such, I do see your point, but he's hardly unstoppable. Anything that does FA is going to mess him up, because he has to charge at whoever is shooting.

Then again, the point isn't whether his character can be hurt, is it? It's rather the fact that he's making these awful characters, and that is seriously awful.

Right, lets think...

You see, if you adjust the games to show the characters weakness, he'll learn and adjust. What you need to do is inject the role-playing into his character. Add in an NPC that somehow finds him attractive, or something like that, make him begin to cherish the moments when he's outside of combat.

Hard for me to judge because I don't know the player. Most people say give him a hard time out of combat situation, I totally disagree. You need him to see the light, you need this player to start preferring those quiet RPing moments. That's what you need to do and it won't be a quick change. Stick with it and it'll work out.

Have the group meet some meat-head NPC that respects power and talks to this guy first, get him to RP with the guy and try to build up a friendship, add in a love interest, then work in a friend in need and perhaps try to knock up some charity acts. Like saving some chick from being brutally gang-raped. But if he just messes the gangers up, show her horror (although mixed in with the thanks) at what he did and what he looks like.

He needs to see the children that are scared of him, you know. If he doesn't role-play at all, or always role-plays the same self-serving cold killers, then have the group kick him out of the group. That's what we do.

When someone makes a character that the other characters don't agree with, he gets asked to leave the team. That carries on until the team works out well. Which is why I have all my players sit down and dicuss everything, so that the characters work out.

No humanis members with Orks, yah know?

Btw, read the rules on used cyberware. He's abusing it and should learn them, but don't be mean with it.




- Baatorian

yup thats the point

Not necessarily. Remember that in SR Charisma means more than just how pretty you are. In fact, it's the force of your personality, and as such applies to many other magical attributes, such as drain resistance for Conjuring and your effective Str when in astral form. It seems perfectly reasonable to think of decreasing Charisma as in a way decreasing the mental strength of someone, and when it reaches zero they can no longer move. I imagine wage-mages learning this spell mainly to combat conjurers, but it has a nice side effect of taking out people with no personality (this does not mean bad attitude, btw.)

Not exactly. The spell "Decrease Charisma" has existed for sufficiently long that most corporations, as well as a large portion of the shadow community, should be well aware of its general effectiveness against orks and trolls. The in-game justification of the use of the spell would be different than the OOC justification - but, then again, the actual name of the spell should probably be different, as the existing name simply describes its game-mechanical effect.

The in-character decision to use this spell against trolls and orks is in no way different than choosing to cast a powerbolt rather than a manabolt at an enemy mage, or a manabolt rather than a powerbolt at a troll. Your character wont be thinking to himself "mages tend to have a higher willpower score than a body score" or "trolls tend to have a higher body than willpower" - rather, your character will remember his magical training and know that its generally a better idea to use powerbolt against things that are less physically tough, and manabolt against things that are big and scary.

Good point on the armor. (Haven'tread the whole 4 pages of topic, so sorry if someone already posted this )

Read the armor layering rules -- only TWO layers of armor count towards actual protection, while all of them count towards penalties.

Ballistic Protection: 4 + 3/2 + 0 = 5 (6 w/ cyber). (3/2 is rounded down)
Impact: 2 + 2/2 + 0 = 3 (4 w/ cyber).

Total ballistic ratings (for calculating penalties for quickness):
4+3+3 = 10. 2 pts over his quickness, and therefore he loses 1 combat pool, and one effective quickness point (and one die from all related skills).

If you're not making him run towards the opposition at least some of the time, you're being too easy on him.

Vigorously enforce the movement rules: while he's running towards your guards/thugs, he's only moving a few meters, and chances are they have a chance to plaster him with a few full auto rounds. Which means he gets to resist (and dodge) several full auto sprays. If you have four guards, they'll probably be all shooting at the wall of steel/flesh/horns.

Let's run a little 'test'.

I assume that your team is given runs that will challenge them: Guards always travel in groups (let's say, 2-4), have some cyber, and are above average with weapon skills.

My assumptions: guards have 4's in CP-related stats (CP=6), SMG or AR skill of 4-5, and Smartlinks. Maybe some initiative-increasing cyberware. At least one guard in the pack will be a 'leader' sortof and have 5's (CP=7). Their weapons will have good recoil compensation (guards don't needto be stealthy ). Say gas vent III-IV.

I'll assume that your troll is maybe ~20-25 meters away at beginning of engagement. All the guards will shoot at him, for reasons mentioned above.

[foreach guard]

And then the second guard goes. Same scenario, except Mr. Troll has no combat pool left (OR is already in a lot of pain). Thus, he takes an S wound, most likely, and is either dead or in a lot of pain.

Assuming that there are only 2 guards in this patrol, sure, they've been killed ... but gunfire going off has set off alarms, all the other guards are on alert, and chances are your troll will not survive another such encounter. This will motivate him to either play a different type of character or try to develop a different style of play -- probvably with a new character better suited for stealth

I don't consider this to be trying to screw the player. Well, OK, yes it is ... but the intended lesson is, "No matter how badass you are, automatic weapons fire from a couple of guards can still beat you down." - hopefully he'll try and play a bit more stealthily, because players by definition CANNOT win the arms race vs the GM. This might get him to stop trying to do so.

Or it might play exactly into his hands .. but if you're looking at how to challenge him, this could be a way.

No, I'm not wrong. The problem definitely is the GM. Players all are trying to have fun, that's what they do. Unless the player is encouraging player vs player (stealing your team mates equipment, or backstabbing them in some way) then whatever the player has in 'power' is not going to effect the game's "fun factor". I'm sorry, it's just not possible. If I went on a run with a big lug of a troll who picked fights with everything he saw, I'd use that to my advantage, I wouldn't whine to the GM that the character was overpowered and ruining my "fun". That's like complaining that an NPC is ruining my fun. As a GM, I'd encourage players to role-play the character as they wish and help setup the story so that they each have fun with their character (as long as they don't encourage player vs player).

I think most of you would find my 150 karma sorcerer a bit more powerful than your characters, but how would that make playing your characters any less fun? This isn't SuperMan, lightning speed take out all the opposition, complete run and be back before you guys can load a gun. And I guarantee that, looking at the 2 example characters, there's no way this character is hogging all the fun. They're both 1-trick ponies really. I mean the troll can do what? Soak damage? No electronics, computer, or any other invasion skill available. "Waaah, it's not fair, he's never hurt..." So what? The Sorcerer, that's a laugh of a character. He can cast some combat spells without taking drain? Is that a huge deal? He can't sneak, go invis, he's last to act, and has to use all 9 combat pool to soak any damage, and better hope he doesn't meet someone who's good at melee in the process. "Waaah.... he takes as little drain as me with my pistol and does about the same damage"

Anyhows, sorry for ranting, I'm just annoyed at being called "totally" wrong. Even if you could find a more sensible way of blaming the player(s), there's definitely some GM-Fault here, like it or not. But I can't see anything wrong with the player or the characters to accomodate a belief that the blame goes there. Characters are sound, player's having fun and I'm assuming not killing other players off. What's the problem with the player?

Sphynx

Lol. Dammn GM and his sec-guards. Why can't they just use hold-outs and gel rounds?

Challenging players isn't the hard part. Presenting a challenge that challenges every single member of the team but can be walked away from is the hard part. You could drop a great western dragon on the team's heads and they'd be "challenged" (and also very dead). The problem sounds like you've got four characters who want to roleplay and one who follows the Fighter mentality (If it moves, kill it. If it doesn't move, wait till it does then kill it.).

I can give a challenging math problem to a class full of first-graders and it might be 3+1=?. However, if I wanted their teacher to be challenged by the problem I was giving the kids, it might have to look like 4x+19=48. The teacher could probably get that, but there's no way the kids could. The same thing applies here. Throw a cyberpsycho at the team and challenge the combat specialist... and turn the rest of the team into a pale pink mist. Or send a team of girl scouts after them and have the combat specialist laugh in their faces. It's a tough delima and one not restricted to SR.

Sphynx is right, in a way. The problem isn't the player. [edit] Rather, it is not just the player's fault. [/edit] He doesn't know any better and thinks that this is the way to have fun. The GM (maybe the last one, maybe several of the last ones, maybe even the current one, hell we don't know) may have not known how to deal with his behavior and channel it into more constructive directions.

This is a great chance for everyone, player and GM, to learn new things. Joker's already picked up the most important lesson from all of this. Don't smack the player, let the world smack the player. A few good examples of this and, if nothing else, the character (maybe the next character) will change to suit the world. He may still be largely a one-trick pony, but he'll at least learn the merits of discression.

Take this situation. After a run, the team is heading back to meet the Johnson and get paid when they run into a police roadblock. The PCs can run (but there are cops waiting to run down those they see turning around -- a real life example I've seen before), they can talk their way through it, or they can go to jail (show me a shadowrunner who doesn't have jailable offenses on his person and I'll be surprised... though I know a few do run that way). Even better is if the PCs are seperated during this process somehow. This works even better in a border-crossing scenario.

The inclusion of events that make the choice clear that roleplaying is the away to avoid the stick and get the carrot will work wonders. Try not to hammer him for things he couldn't know about, but drop hints about some things. If you start warding high end restaurants, for instance, make sure there's a "magic check room" at the front where they politely request that the PC leaves any magical goods because of the warding they've recently had put up (to protect their patrons... last month there was an incident with a possessed chicken).

It's clear that the guy is Joker's friend or he wouldn't bother to go through the trouble of helping him learn some lessons in gaming (elephants are cheap and kill any character if dropped from sufficient height). Mature gamers tend to work with the GM to ensure that they don't all die, if nothing else, and that everyone has fun. The game isn't the GM against the players, it's the GM with the players (to steal someone's sig).

The parts of the player's characters which break the rules have to be changed forcibly, obviously, but the player needs to learn about the game world through example, if nothing else. Joker's already listed off a massive toolkit of items that can be used to show the player how the world "really works". The only warning I give for that toolkit is to make sure you have a damn good reason for snipers and other "save or die" type situations. If the PC just kidnapped the daughter of a high ranking corper, had his way with her and killed her and left all sorts of evidence and material links behind, that'd count as a good reason. As would organizations which use snipers as part of their SOP (like a Lonestar raid).

If he's REALLY on your nerves, snipe him and then have it be the adventure hook (the race to catch the Seattle Sniper!). Don't just do it because he annoys you. Well, more than a few times.

Thats what I'm screaming!!

If I have to buy two (if not 3) different types of ammon for all my guns just so some chics aren't widowed and some kids aren't orphaned, the least the sec guards could do is NOT mow me down when I happen to trip the alarms.

Common courtesy, ya'know?

This is really quite funny. The GM of this game, which is the only person we know to have any first hand knowledge of the situation, says that the player is making the game no fun for everyone and that the player knows this and refuses to stop it yet you guys are certain that it is because the GM sucks and that the player is just fine.

You have no idea if that is true or false. Griefers exist. Long ago I GM'd for a few of them on IRC and I had no problem dealing with regular munchkins and powergames, even ridiculously self absorbed drama queen munchkins (shudder). But a griefer is a completely different animal. They want the game to be LESS FUN for everyone else because that is what makes is fun for them. You must either convince them OOC to stop it, or kick them out. No matter what the gm does a griefer will still be able to screw up the game.

I did not say the player is a griefer, I said that it is a possiblity that the GM needs to consider. You say that it is not. Absurd!

GM'ing isnt a job. You aren't being paid. If a player has no interest in you or anyone else in the game having fun or is incapable, for whatever reason, of allowing them to have fun any effort spent accomidating them is wasted. If none of the other suggestions given here work it is possible that either the player cannot play well under any circumstances, or the GM is not yet able to handle such a problematic player which does not mean that they are doing anything wrong. The alternatives are then kicking out the player or playing the game and having no fun which surely means stopping alltogether eventually.

And I am not frightened by your 150 karma charachter, I have gm'd groups including charachters with karma ranging from 0-200 even illegally munckined players I could not get to follow all the rules (IRC made it hard to stop them, and they were otherwise fun to play with so I dealt with them) in the group and handled it just fine so that everyone had fun but there were a few people who made any game they entered significantly less enjoyable and had to change or I would refuse to allow them in my games. Some of them changed, some never played under me again.

Power level isn't really the problem here anyway. As has been repeatedly pointed out these charachters aren't really that well number crunched. The problem, I suspect, has more to do with the player forcing every situation into combat and if killed making a new charachter that just does the same thing. Hopefully the tips given here will be able to correct the player, but if none of it is working the GM really has a choice to either have the game die or to get rid of the player.

Rev, perhaps you should re-read the first post. He's not complained about the griefer type, his problem, as posted anyhows, is the characters the player MAKES not PLAYS. "Demigod characters" "At least one attribute is 10+" "4, Force-6 combat spells". Those do not a problem make, the problem is with the GM.

Sphynx

That's not entirely right. That's not what he said. he said:

And that is correct. Ultimately the GM is allowing this to happen. The GM is allowing him to play these characters. The GM is approving these characters for use in the game.

If they are Griefers or Drama queens then it is the GM's job to identify this and kick them out of it is causing the other players to not have fun. A player canot do something in a game that the GM doesnt allow.