Starting my first SR campaign, and gearing up for game day next week.

Normally in other systems i have GM'ed, I would keep a semi-permanent sheet with vital PC info on it that I may need at any time. (health, defences, perception etc.)

The SR4 mentions several times about making private perception tests and the like.

I am wondering:

- What things (if any) do you as a GM keep track of? (Perception? Commlink Firewall?)
- Does anyone have a template for this type of sheet in pdf or word etc. that they use (And will share)

An example would be, if an enemy hacker is trying to discreetly hack a players comm, I don't really want to ask him it's rating, do I...

Sorry if this has already been covered. New to the forums, and I couldn't find it via search.

Thanks
NW

Years ago I would track everything, perception pools, health boxes, etc. To be honest, it's a pain in the rump, especially if you have 4 or more players. You end up spending as much time tracking the characters as you do running your game. It's OK if you have just a couple of players or are really quick with a good spread sheet to track extra things. Now days I only track their initiative score, NPC's data, and extended test tallies for that game session. The rest I trust the players to track, and remain "in character" for things like perception tests. If they forget to record damage or knock off that ammo they expend, who cares? We do this for fun. If they need to cheat to "feel like a winner", well, I don't really care either because they have bigger issues if they have to cheat at a role playing game.

Oh, and for the comm link thing, I pretty much told my players that if you freaked out every time your firewall gave you a warning, you'd go insane. I figured with spam bots, viruses, and script kiddies running rampant in the 6th world, they were probably getting a couple of alerts a day from their comms. Just gotta trust your tech, and if you get paranoid, get better tech. Once again, as the GM, just step in and let them know that what the player knows, the character doesn't. Award players that take that to heart with extra role playing karma awards. Put the burden on them to be good players. Put your efforts towards creating compelling stories, and crafting challenging scenarios rather than innovative ways to build that character / player wall and I think you'll get more mileage in your campaign.

Initiative-which I write on the bottom of our laminated grid paper. Beyond that there's little I need to track.

Great, thanks for the input. Im not really in the habit of trying to keep track of everything, and my group has no trouble being mature and good gamers about whats IC and OOC.

If you search for Wordman and Shadowrun I believe he has Shadowrun 4 sheets-that include some NPC tracking sheets.

Good, keep doing that.
And since I've been on the other side, I'll illustrate why I stopped.
5-6 players, each with perception pools of varying sizes with multiple mods based on gear, specializations, etc. So every time I thought it was appropriate for a perception test I had to calculate the pool based on all of the above, then make up to 6 rolls and either remember or record the results for each roll. It really crushed the flow of my games, so I stopped.

I generally run with a handful of notes ands if I have to track something it's iniative. Since I play almost exclusively online, I keep multiple windows open with the various rules pulled up that I need