A free spirit that powerful could be almost impossible to spot as a free spirit.

Free spirit accompanied us on a metaplanar quest so we saw what she/it encountered when dealing with the Dweller on the Threshold. We have some knowledge we've picked up. NFI if free spirits using Astral Gateway are even meant to see the Dweller (thought everyone skipped that bit if using Astral Gateway, but I'm AFB atm).

Anyway, point is we know she's Force 10 (fact). We know she's a Free Spirit (we know she had a hand in killing her creator, who by all accounts was an Aztlaner blood mage). Beyond that we don't know anything else as fact. Oh wait, she is a Possession spirit and has the powers Vessel Trading and Astral Gateway (at a minimum).

- J.

That's not a GMPC as I'm using the term; it's an NPC that is allied with the party, but it's an NPC all the same. GMPC is a term coined on another generic RPG forum to describe characters a GM puts in a game that seem to exist solely to steal the spotlight from the PC's. (The term may pre-exist that discussion, but that's where I first encountered it.) An NPC can basically be a PC in the party without being a GMPC. For me, the line where a character becomes a GMPC is when it starts invalidating player choices and so the GM is setting up situations and resolving them on his own. The PC's become spectators because every important decision is being made by the GM.

My mantra as a GM is this: Every game is ultimately what the players choose to care about. If the GM has a great idea about a cabal of vampires who intend to blot out the sun and the PC's just want to steal a boat and go raiding, that game is about a bunch of pirates sailing around in the dark. You can drag PC's back to the story, lock them in cages or tie them to rails, but you can't make them care.

Ideally the players and GM (although at this point, it's more accurate to call us all players, since we're all playing the game) will meet each other half way and consciously decide to play in a game they all enjoy. But sometimes one element (or sometimes just one player) will go rogue and declare war on NATO. It's just more noticeable when it's the player who's running the game.

The facts of the matter (that the GM requests street level characters, then introduces them to a F10 railroading deux-ex-machina that steals the PCs limelight regularly) have "GM failure" written all over them. That the GMPC is a possession tradition succubus suggests a level of immaturity. If she were to ultimately be the arch-enemy the PCs have to kill at the campaign climax, everything except the railroading and thunder stealing might be acceptable, but you make it clear that you do not think this is the case.

One could accept a F10 Free Spirit to be extremely demanding, but such an epic-level NPC should really be on the sidelines manipulating the PCs from afar rather than becoming directly involved in the planning or execution of the runs themselves (at that power-level differential the GMPC should really not concern themselves directly in the affairs of pawns).

I suggest you try and get the other 2 players on board, do your prep for the metaplanar quest, and then when you are secure in your lodge ready to lock-and-load and head off to the metaplanes request an OOC discussion, tell the GM that the second the discussion ends your characters are going to head off into the metaplanes to kill her or die trying.

Even if it won't help, try to rationally and succinctly outline the problems you are having with the GMPC, especially the railroading and limelight stealing. Explain as you have above your characters' IC reasons for wanting her dead. And tell the GM you are prepared to walk.

I feel for you guys, I really do. Good luck, and I hope your metaplanar quest is a fittingly epic climax to your campaign.

@Mercer

But honestly, it is not very common, nor wise, for players to fight a plot every step of the way. Because THERE IS ONLY ONE Plot prepared.
You may have random GM-Fiat for the rest of the evening. (Which can be pritty worse if you are going to be pirats and the GM read before about how ships are protected at see...)
Or you steal cars, and the GM has seen robocob 2 the day before...
Because there is nothing else the GM may do at this point. (Yes, he can make the whole world your bitch and make Lowfyr serve you drinks. But I guess most players would thing this is even worse)

Sorry, but for me it seems there is a major misscomunication going on.
If somebody says to me we are playing a streetlevel game, I would not expect to have a million cash soon.

That's not been the experience in my games. Hell, my SR GM has literally dozens of runs planned out ahead of time. If we don't take one, he moves on to another. There is always a backup plan. In my own games, I do the same thing. You have to plan for the time your PC's say "Uhhh, no, I don't think we'll be doing that." to your idea. Not planning for them saying no is just as bad as not planning at all (unless you are one of the rare few that can pull stuff from nowhere on a moment's notice).

@Jhaiisiin
One back up run if the first gets solved to easy or goes down the river, yes.
But the second will be less prepared. And the thired will be just an idea. And the forth will be a half assed idea or nothing at all. (Or I will just recycle an Adventure I did with another group)

But except maybe for the recycling the quality will drop. NPCs will be less deep, description of surroundings will be less detailed, there will be less backup routes aside from Deus ex machina.

It depends on the GM really. For me, perhaps the NPCs and the description of surroundings may be less detailed, but there certainly will be no Deus Ex Machina and no need for backup routes.

For me, when in doubt as to the what to use as opposition, I use the as written Grunts in SR4A. When in doubt to the level of Grunts, I use the Grunts one Professional Rating lower.

And this is the thing -

Some GM's are good at thinking on their feet and improvising. Others aren't. We all (as players) make some allowances because we know GMing is a tough gig at the best of times. Even harder if you have a shortage of GMs and you're dealing with one who isn't a great storyteller.

This guy is not the worst I've seen but by far, not the best. He often resorts to heavy, rampant railroading when the PCs have thrown him a serious curveball that threatens to turn his "challenging" encounter into a total cakewalk. We make some exceptions for it but last session it got to a point of a joke where every five minutes there was an offhanded train reference and you could see he was getting upset. Especially when one player started up with the reference to taking the bus which led away from the train. But I digress. I can illustrate this with numerous examples but it all detracts from the crux of this thread.

I know one GM who as soon as someone throws a curveball he hadn't prepared for, he pretty much calls a stop real quick so he can spend the next two weeks+ figuring out what to do next. He's a meticuluous, detail oriented guy. Another one I know is much like me and loosely plans out stuff, just enough for a broad baseline and will improv his way through... right up until the player's decide to do something he thinks is "stupid" (and not what they think is stupid necessarily) and it often comes to a bone jarring character death.

Yeah, it's a tough gig. We try and be cool but as the saying goes - sometimes there's only so many ways of polishing a turd.

Midas- thanks. Your post is pretty much how we're going to go about it.

- J.

I really, REALLY wouldn't take the ambush route. For one thing, if he doesn't want the character to die then she won't and nothing you try will work. Railroading, like all bullying, is a one-way deal: if he takes away your control he's not going to let you do the same to him. More importantly though, you'll piss him off not just as GM but as a fellow gamer too and bad blood will be certain - spend a session conspiring both IC and OOC and he'll feel more than a little backstabbed.

Given that he's picked up on the railroading insinuations and bristled at them but without addressing the problem either he thinks he knows what makes a good game and his players don't, or he thinks to change anything would be ruining his own fun. Either way, a pressgang is not going to persuade him of the errors of his ways. Most likely he'll take any form of confrontation as an ungrateful indictment of his GMing abilities, so an out-of-game discussion that's delicate but states your misgivings in no uncertain terms is by far the most likely approach to succeed IMO.

Ok, one more thing about how to kill this thing? I take it the metaplanar quest is kind of a given, BUT maybe you can soften the thing up a bit when it's materialized /posessing something. I'm not sure how free spirits deal with this exactly, so I may be wrong.

So it's got 20 hardenend armour and a metric ton of Bod, and possibly more worn armour. However, that's not unsurmountable. A nice AV rocket can do damage, but IMHO the best deal is catching it in a narrow corridor and letting off a few kilos of explosives. Maybe tamped. The trouble will be setting the trap without the GM metagaming the spirit not to run into it. The other poblem will be surviving the blast yourselves, i.e. not being there when it goes off. Hardenend armour is pretty binary, when you're taking a 25P blast 10-15 boxes might still come through. If it uses edge and rolls well.. hmm, it's not guaranteed, but at the least it'll have a few boxes of damage when it flees to its home plane.

Well, I do not quite agree. There are good GMs and there are bad GMs. And there are guys who work their ass of and there are guys who are lazy.

If you watch a group playing you get really fast a good idea what kind of person a GM is.
If you prepare you still have to improvise. You will just have a big advantage over the Guy who needs to do it on the fly.

A good GM coming prepared is not so easy to be caught on the wrong foot by the actions of the player.
(You may predict the behavior of your players to over 80% if you sat down and preped the shit. If you think of alternatives it is most likly that you will be right over 90% of the cases)

Preparing is always meant to write down every scene and put them in order. Thats the eaysiest form of prepartion. Still better than none but far from perfect.


This can happen and sometimes you are even glad about it. But the opposite is much more often the case. But this depends on how good you know the rules and on how far you (as GM) think.
A lot of player ideas are great for what is strictly ahead of them (and mostly they do not even cover that completly) but as soon as you think about reaction of the NPCs, it is often a instant group wipeout.

For example:
The players have to go into a storage facility, which is lightly guarded. The GM plans this as a sneak run, getting in and out undetected.
Well, the players think it is easyer to flood the facility with Gas (knockout or even lethal) and get in and take what they want.

First the unprepared/novice GM: He will try to explain why is guards are wearing gas masks or something like that.
Second the friedly undprepared/novice GM: Will just let the players get away.
Third the "just" prepared/experienced GM: He has really build the warehouse, build in sensors and so on. The guards won't have masks but the sensors will go off and in the worst case trigger an anti-Terrorism response, killing the team

The first and the thired response seam the same, but are (if it comes down to judging the GM) totally different. Letting the players get away with it is actually much closer to the first one.
In both cases you try to ignore the actions of the players on their surroundings. Only in the third case the actions of the players really get a reaction of the game world.

Edit
@Brainpiercing7.62mm
Your suggestions are fine example for what I have written above. To playe a bunch of explosives is a really nice way to piss the spirit off big time. Maybe he will loose a point of force. But he will live and he will come back for you!

Here again we have the same possibilities:
1. The GM blocks due to metagaming (but to be honest a force 10 free spirit has means and ways... But lets assume he doesn't in this case)
2. The GM just let you get away with it.
3. The GM plays by the rules, the spirit is disrupted and starts kill the PCs during an other run...

The last option seems like the GM beeing a dick, but it is actually what the "rules" and the "fluff" tell him to do...

Ok, seriously, when you build a run you should NEVER plan the way the runners are going to solve it. You should NOT make scenes, you make scenarios, which aren't even linked in time unless they are the classic Pre-run meet, post-run meet, and in between. You plant hints and then go with the flow. You SHOULD have a good idea about the opposition and security measures in place, and the consequences of certain actions. anything else will just make you a railroader, even involuntarily. If you even think about making a rail, then chances are you'll use it.

Irion, your ideal scenario horrifies me. Your Number 3 is a lot closer to your Number 1 than you want to imagine - the GM is just better at rationalizing it now.

As a GM for various games, I'm known to be fairly crafty. I can design scenarios that can present a challenge when attacked from multiple angles. However, if the PCs can come up with a way to circumvent the challenges I've put in place, or that I believe would be appropriate for the situation, and come up with an easy win, then that's awesome, and they should be rewarded for their cleverness.

Back to the OP: Any sort of resolution of this in-game is doomed to fail. The GM is the one with the power to decide the outcome, and if you attack his beloved pet, I don't see it going your way. It's not like he's honored the game and its participants in a remarkably honorable way so far. Why do you expect him to start now?

Even if he did respect the stats and the dice, and you somehow managed to ace the GMPC - congratulations. You've killed an imaginary character, who was never the real problem, and whatever the point you were trying to make to the GM, you have failed to make it, because he's not going to be reading the subtext.

You need to either abandon the game, or talk to the GM. If the GM proves unwilling to own up to his mistakes, then there's no point in trying to kill off the spirit, because the game is toast. If the GM is a lot more reasonable and mature than you've made him sound so far, and he agrees to let you take a legit shot at the character, you can always handle the prep after. The absolute worst thing to do is set up for it in-character and then reveal that you've been conspiring for this out-of-character, because that's a very hostile and confrontational scenario, and it puts him in a very bad position, and he'll resent you for it.

Just open the issue for discussion before the next session starts, and see what everyone wants to do.

That is honestly the worst crap I've ever heard about (in GMing, I mean). I've heard of some similar stuff happening at the table of a group of 11-year old munchkin power gamers who used transformers and space ships for their dragonslayers in a D&D game...but yeesh! I don't blame you for backing away slowly from that one - I would've run screaming...



Some types of shadowruns are more or less on rails by default, though - luckily, I'm in the train business, so I know of many ways to turn even straight sections of railway into multiple-choice potential catastrophies, derailments, and train-wrecks

I normally specify what defences and so forth exist. If my players come up with a smart move, I chalk one to them, zero to me and move on.

Of course NEXT time will be a different story.

Also, I've found that what works best for me is when it is abundantly clear to my players that no character - PC or NPC - is immune to being blown away. When a key NPC they've dealt with dies horribly, and not necessarily by their hands, they know I mean business. I also find it keeps them on their toes.

But we've also had games where PCs horribly backstab each other too, so, you know - to each their own.

- J.

When I first read your story I must admit I thought antagonist more than GMPC. Obviously you've experienced it and may disagree, but I only have what you've said to go on. Either way, for what it's worth, this is how I'd deal with it at my table:

Talk to the GM, but not about a GMPC and your problems with it. Instead state that you and the group have been talking and list all of your IC reasons for trying to kill the character. Tell the GM you intend to try and do this and give him time to plan for it (not plot agaist it as much as be expecting it in a GM capacity). If the spirit is a plot device and not meant to die yet then that may quickly become apparent. If you fail to kill the spirit then you still achieve your goal of removing the NPC from the group as the dynamic will have changed. At worst you now have a powerful enemy from which comes new and exciting adventure possibilities!



(Note: At my table we are all long time friends so YMMV. Plus our GM is very good at adapting to changes in the game. Just last game, as a group of players, we decided to sell the main plot point of our adventure. If your GM isn't so good with change just give more notice)

I'm not against this approach but the problem is this spirit can squash us like a bug six ways to Sunday. Including just telling our enemies a fraction of what she knows. She doesn't even have to lift a finger against us. And that's just the start.

Ambushing the spirit (and the GM) is the only conceivable way we can possibly have to survive and even then, it's a big IF (it's a Force 10 spirit and probably 10 Edge). Even then, that's only because she doesn't expect us doing so.

Everyone at my table are long time friends (GM is a former housemate) so I'm sure we'll be fine once the bruised egos fade.

Thanks for the advice though, I will take that onboard.

- J.

@Blitz66

No, it is not. It is as far from number one as humanly possible. The GM in 3 Build a situation WITHOUT taking into account any player action.
(He gives a scenario (should thinks of at least one possible way to solve it), and than hands it to the players.
This GM has made every thing up front. So actually you could have a hundred GMs and they would all have to decide the same way.
Thats the ultimate fairness.
The problem is, to make a scenario which is survivable (if you stick to the variables you set) and still a challange is very hard. (If you are good at it, you kill no players, provide a challenge and you have never to use GM fiat.)
The GM plays 100% fair!


So lets break it down: If your player roll bad you would also ignore the roll, because it was a good idea?
You divide into "good for the characters" and "bad for the characters" .


This means most of the time you have to skip about half a minute. (Or your run is crappy build to begin with)
Honestly: How many have ever had the problem, that the players solved a one evening run in 5 min? That one player had to do one part alone? Yes, that might happen. But something like that?

So this is in no way an extream situation most of the time. This only causes a problem, when they loose certain information, that they would need or which would make the "getting behind the shit" much easier. So if you do not change the scenario, you are stuck.

Actually I hear a lot of time, that the GM should accept it if players have a good solution for a problem. But I never seen this come up as problem ingame, or talked about or anything.
The other way around: "How do I get around killing my players?" comes up much more often.

@Brainpiercing7.62mm

And in this example(3) the GM did nothing else. (And of course you have to think of possible solutions the players could apply, or you end up with a dead end to begin with. "What, nobody of you can shoot lightning out of your fingertips... Well, thats bad")
The problem is, if you really do it, it does not make SR a cakewalk, more the opposite.
For every GM who changes the scenario or manipultes dice against the players, there are probably 200 who do it the other way round. I can think of one situation. And there the GM came bad prepared and did not think to get the effects he wanted within the rules of the world so he changed on the fly. Which caused a lot of problems. Having to revisit decissions twice in just a minute. Thats happening if you do not plan your scenario.
If you do plan, I can actually guarantee you, such problems won't come up. You will never have to railroad or up the oppostion to prevent players from anything. You can make due with the scenario you build up while preparing the run. (Yes, you might improvise some scence, true. If your players somehow do the impossible, but thats not happening often and is mostly a minor addition still based on the scenario)

@Irion: But look, I see it very simply:

A classic SR RUN is a problem. You set it up. You don't think about the solution, rather, you look at several angles and actually try to present problems from all those angles. Basically the angle you haven't thought about is the one the PCs can waltz through, the others might be circumventet.

For instance:

Problem: Get into a locked building, extract some stuff.
Setup: Maglocks, keycards necessary (held by the manager and some others), cameras, a panic button to law enforcement or corpsec, a locked safe. Astral barriers in place, MAYBE a spirit on patrol at night.

I don't need to think about a solution, because once the players have the information via legwork, they will immediately look at the various angles that could work. Each of those elements is a problem but also part of the solution. So my players say "we hack the locks, disable cameras via X, and the mage can't come in because he would alert the corp mage when pushign through the barriers". I say, "Ok, do it". But if they say: What the hell, we blast through the wall, fast in, fast out, and get away before corpsec arrives I still way "ok, do it". I do have various consequences in mind, becuase when I design the run, I design it as a guy rigging security for the building. NO security is perfect (at least none that I design), I'm sure of that, which is why I believe the runners will find an angle.

In order to make the scenario more complex, all you need is triggers and events. Say, for instance, the runners cause a disturbane, there is a trigger happy security guard in another building across the street. OR, in fact the entire thing was a setup. Or they leave evidence that can point back to them, what happens? It's impossible to cover all possible events, which means I'll make some general contingencies and improvise from there.

Another example:
In our last run my PCs had to find three drug cartel exectutives. It was meant as a fairly easy snatch-and-grab (and/or kill). However, I had contingencies in place for when, for instance, the runners were too obvious in their recon. Or they took too long. Or did whatever stupid. Which basically meant that after they had grabbed the first guy fairly easily, but then spent too much time messing around with him or doing other things, the other two now had fortified their positions. They also were on the lookout now, and had various places which the runners could use to get intel staked out in order to ambush them. Getting to the second guy in a fortified and booby-trapped building was MUCH harder now. The third guy was now in hiding, because they needed a day or two to heal after being repeatedly blown up and shot in that building. Trying to get him resulted in them being ambushed on a stuffer-shack parking lot, because their investigation into his (deserted) house was spotted. They then needed a convenient way to lure him out of hiding - again, there was a creative solution. The ambush team hadn't gotten the chance to report back, because in the end they suffered group knockout via stunball, which meant that basically they used one of the captured commlinks to call the cartel's security chief and meet him to hand over the "prisoners" for interrogation. They meet the guy and bam. So every bit of the problem inherently also contains a method for its solution. Runs aren't, IMHO, puzzles to solve exactly one way, they are problem sets with a complex, but variable solution. The more parameters you fix, the harder the problem.

I've done childish, petulant, in-game stuff just like this in the past to protest in-game situations, and my experience is that it's not the best way to deal with the problem.

This is an interpersonal problem, not a gaming problem, and it's going to be most effectively dealt with like "adults with interpersonal problems," not like "children with a game problem." He's acting like a juvenile; you shouldn't meet him at that level. Sit down with him, irrational or not, and negotiate like human beings. If that doesn't work, get out.

@Brainpiercing7.62mm

This I do different. I do not think of possibilities to stop players, I just think of situations.

Lets take a simple example: There is a wall and you have to get to the other side. (This is not to be taken literally!)
There are several approaches to solving this problem. (As a nice GM you hide a latter somewhere in case the players have no ideas)
You anticipate the players climbing up, building stairs or whatever.
So one player has now the ability (of which you did not know) to just jump over the wall.
So he would solve the problem with very little sweat. (But actually you are not at loss, because the others have to get on the other side too)

The problem is, you did not anticipate that. Because (for whatever reasons inside your plot) there was a bottomless pit on the other side of the wall. (Your thinking: If they climb the wall they will see it and solve in in a second)

This is what happens as soon if you really thought through your situation. Players have always less information than you have. So it is very unusual for them to be able to find a better solution (unless they know the rules way better than you)

It is like a big maze, but you look down on it from a helicopter and the players have to run in it. Even if they do something you did not anticipated (like jumping one wall), the chance of really getting around it completly is very slow. The chance that there is something which will hurt them, is very high!


It depends how you "fix" them. Decisions you make into play are not reversable. Meaning you can't undo them. So if you have some fixed parameters, you can't use there are less: Ok, your are dead, no you could not have known that.

The point is, if you do not think of your situations in advance you can (as GM) always cheat your way through the run. (So what the players do, does actually not change much unless they are really clueless...)

I know a force 10 spirit is not to be trifled with, but you can still ambush the spirit without ambushing the GM also. If you let the GM know you intend to ambush his spirit (but there's no conceivable way that the spirit would know) then it all works out for good. The possible fallout is a meta-game saving of the spirit, and as you said the spirit could crush the PC's no problem but, well, this isn't a problem either in my eyes. If you're thinking of quitting the game then why not go out as a group in an epic end-game battle with a force 10 spirit. If you win, you carry on. If you lose, you reset, roll new chars, and start again. Maybe you even learn a lesson about letting spirits help you. It's like sesame street.

@Irion:

Ok, so if the PCs do something stupid, the run goes south. Where is the problem? I don't build my scenarios with insta-gib situations in mind. That means that for every failure or bad decision (whether informedly bad, or just by bad luck) there is usually a sliding scale by which the run now gets harder to complete. And if they fail entirely? Who cares. A botched run now and then doesn't matter. In fact, it's a good hook. Problems only arise when you've built a situation where one of the PCs suddenly faces odds that were not anticipated, for instance, you tailored a fight for the team, but one or two runners meet it alone. So now you either change the encounter, or run with it and hope your runners don't run out of edge .

I'm in no way saying you should not be prepared, but I believe if you simply create your runs as a problem set then you can't really go wrong.

There is another style of run, which is the investigation run, that requires a different approach: Here you need to link clues, and ideally you compensate in advance for failure to find each and every clue that is critical, or else a dead-end can be reached too easily. This is easily done with the Three-clues rule, or the inverted three-clues rule, or a combination thereof, and by designing your runs with nodes: For each bit of scenario (=node) or element, you have three clues pointing to it, and three clues to be found that each point to a different other node. Now it's pretty much a given that the players won't get stuck, as every discovery will lead to another discovery. Ideally, each of the three clues for an element can be found in a different manner, for instance, searching, interrogation and matrix. Sometimes they will find all the clues, sometimes one, sometimes two, but very rarely none. However, even if they found none at one node, there should be other clues from a previous node to follow up on, to make sure they can go on. This, admittedly, requires a LOT of preparation, because you have to design a lot of nodes and think about how to link them. However, it's easily the most rewarding way to run an investigation run. Probably the best way to design such a run is filling up from the bottom: You have a goal, and you branch out from there. Of course, a starting point at the top is also necessary, so you should make sure your node paths meet up at the end.

From personal experience I can now only recommend to not introduce too many stages, since each node can, ultimately, take as much time as a complete run. For instance, to get information from a guy (who represents the node) they have to extract him. Now that's a mini-run itself. From there they find the next clues, and so forth. If you link three of those nodes, then the players might get frustrated that they have to repeatedly bludgeon information out of the next guy. (Yes, that happened to me, unfortunately, because I underestimated how long following the nodes takes.)

For more conservative play style, you could have a node tree in the background, with new runs offered to the PCs depending on the results of the previous runs, without ever disclosing actively that the runs are linked.

One thing I will say... please don't leave us hanging, regardless of the chosen solution. I read similar issues regularly in other forums, and I want to hear the results for once.

Haha. This just reminds me of one of the first 'runs I GM'd (I more often play). The players were breaking into a remote facility. One of the players asked me to draw it for them bird's eye view. I drew a stretched hexagon shaped fence with a watch tower and searchlight on each corner but, because of how I'd drawn it, on the back of the facility the search light patterns didn't meet in the middle as they should, so the players went round the back, ran between the search lights and started on the fence. I couldn't deny their thinking, I'd drawn it, I'd drawn it wrong and they noticed it. We all laughed about some poor security consultant collecting his p45 the next morning.

I have had this happen before. A few times. Maybe you just don't have creative players.

I had a player neutralize an entire cult in one round by giving a gift to the cult leader. I had players that avoided a run entirely by realizing they could get what the Johnson wanted without hitting the intended target.
As a player, we dealt with an infestation of undead horrors coming from an ancient mansion by barricading the doors and burning the thing down during the day rather than working our way room to room like the GM was expecting (the last one could just be shortsightedness on the GM's part). It does happen that players will trump everything you have planned and improvising is necessary. Just saying it doesn't, won't make it true.

Yeah, a GM should design reasonable security systems and challenges. But even reasonable scenarios can have huge loop holes for intelligent or creative people to walk through. This happens in real life.

It's the difference between strategy and tactics. If the players show up to the session where the GM has a run prepared, they have to recognize that if they don't want to do that there may be nothing else planned for the night. (I respect GM's that have multiple runs planned in advance or have the system familiarity necessary to run SR or the fly-- I could do it with SR2 and 3, but I don't know SR 4 well enough to do a good job of it.) That's the short term scenario where the players need to be accommodating of the GM, because GM's don't have unlimited time to prep stuff. The problem is if the GM only preps his ongoing plot every week, despite the players stated desire to do anything but whatever that is.

There has to be some give-and-take is what I'm saying.

These sound like good stories. Share?



Ahhh, the old Call of Cthulu standby, eh? I like it!

Duh, I tried that in my first and only Cthulu game. Ok, I didn't want to torch the place, I wanted to put 100lbs of dynamite in the living room and blow it. GM threw the towel instantly and complained "You can't play Cthulu like that!". That was the end of Cthulu for me.

To be fair, this was D&D so he was expecting hack and slash with swords. I think if it had been Cthulu, it would not have been such a big deal. After all, dynamite and leveling places are Lovecraft cannon.

Obviously he didn't know his D&D, or it was super-low-level. A common fire does piddly damage to higher level bad guys, so basically all you get by torching a place is everyone coming after you at the same time - at the time when everyone leaves the house.

All of my Call of Cthulhu games end that way. Dynamite seems to be everybody's go-to for dealing with squicky things. Every. Last. One.

The first one, I learned the valuable lesson that cursed items are more dangerous to your NPC's than to the players. (again, D&D) One of the players had acquired a necklace that granted you immunity to cold, made any weapon you touched icy burst and improved your strength. It also had the draw back that it only worked if you worshiped Freya (goddess of winter in this world) and if you failed your Will Save you immediately converted and became slowly more fanatical. Its magical aura was altered to hide the curse part. The barbarian wore this necklace for several levels, before it eventually became a problem and the group eventually got it away from him and removed the curse. Rather than destroying it though, another player wrapped it up in a cloak and hung onto it (I assumed to sell to some unsuspecting shopkeeper). Cut to two adventures later, the player gets split from the party and captured by a Nerull worshiping cult (god of death) while they are in the process of permanently summoning a new undead creature into the world. The player claims that he too worships Nerull (and actually did, oddly enough) and that he wishes to join the cult and to prove this he offers the necklace as a gift. The cult leader is of course suspicious, but detect magic reveals that the necklace is powerful, detect alignment shows that the character is chaotic neutral so at least not good, and he can't detect any curse on the item. He has an underling take the necklace and when it becomes apparent that the underling has been granted power by the necklace the cult leader snatches it for himself. I figured this would not be a problem for the leader because of a high will save, but I rolled a 1 on his will save. The player immediately spotted the change and ran to the summoning circle and screamed, "Great and powerful Nerull, do not give control of your undead child to this false worshiper! Your priest has betrayed you and worships another." The cult leader orders him killed, but since the cult was performing a ritual directly linked with Nerull and his power, I did not feel like it was a stretch for the player's prayer to be heard. Nerull's skulled head appeared in the vortex of energy glared at the cult leader and immediately the ritual ended with a thunder clap. All the cultists were left standing around trying to figure out what had happened, while the high priest screamed to kill the unbeliever. It did not take long before some started to question the high priest and soon the cultist turned on one another. The player slipped away and met up with the rest of the party who were running to his rescue. Sure, I could have ruled that the high priest didn't take the item and a lot of the plan depended on luck with bad saves on the evil side or I could have ruled that Nerull ignored his prayer, but it just made more sense to me even if it meant scrapping the fight with the cultists and the disarming of the summoning that was planned for the evening and then the run from the catacombs as they collapsed. And the players loved it.

The second one, the team was hired to break in and sabotage a shipment of the new cola the Johnson's rival was releasing (yes, I stole the idea from the story in the core book, but there was not the complicated racially motivated double cross since my players have actually read the book) so that it would make people sick and the new cola would tank. The team decided that they could accomplish this much easier on the low security retail end than at the factory where they would have to tangle with security. They rigged up aerosolized laxatives, salmonella and rat shit and spent a day or two going from one grocery or convenience store to another in the test market subtly spraying down the tops of cans and their packaging. It took a week before the medical community traced all the stomach pains and diarrhea back to the cola, then the rat shit was discovered. It immediately got out that the Cola's bottling plant was infested with rats and that the new cola contained rat shit. Even though they never found rats at the factory, the company still had to shut it down and spent millions on a new PR campaign.

We were level 3 if I remember. A few things did try to leave the house, but when players are waiting in ambush most appropriate CR creatures don't stand a chance. We set the entire circumference on fire so nothing could get out without being burned a little, it takes time before things hiding inside know to flee, some of them were weakened by sunlight, traps can't flee, and things in the lower levels (i.e. the more powerful things) also have to deal with floors collapsing on them. Though it's true that fire does not deal a lot of damage if you just go by the 1d6 per round. Gold and magic items should mostly survive fire though, which is nice.

The point was though that the entire dungeon was solved in almost no time and the GM's plans were scrapped rather quickly. He did an awesome job though, when we got back to town and announced that the monsters were dealt with, someone with the claim to the estate appeared and demanded reparations. Of course this individual was connected and may have been connected with the creatures in the house to begin with. So we got to deal with that for the evening instead.

That is only because nuclear ordinances have a longer waiting period.


I know my most favorable SR GM would design Standard Operating Procedures or templates of them for facilities. His mentality is that there is a functioning world out there and if the PCs are interacting with parts of it, design the machine then describe the cogs if it comes up.

@thorya
Well, most of this was really bad prep. I mean here is the house of horrors go from room to room and kill any undead.
Can we just burn it? Mhm, I guess so...

Honestly? Burning shit to the ground is quite THE first approach any group has.

Giving players stuff that changes the personality of somebody is just asking for it. (And I guess it was a bit of bad luck there)

This is exactly what I mean with the GM has to come prepared. Those things do not happen if you took a look at the character sheets and think about the situations you are creating.

@Brainpiercing7.62mm

I am just saying doing so takes more preparation than just make up a few scence. I do not argue, that it is the better approach.
Just to really do it, you have to put at least the same amount of work into it. I would even say more, because you need to prep. for more eventuallities.
(Because if you don't you will soon realize that without thinking about how your players might approach it, you won't beprepared for any approach.)

Preparing one array of scence is a bit gambling. If everything goes fine, you made due with almost no preperation. If players go in an other direction you stand only a bit better than with no preperation.

Here I also totally agree. Thats the kind of situation preperation won't help you with. This you can't anticipate. (For example that half of the group just wants to do something completly different than running)

Also very funny is, if Players meet the big bad in earlyer but they do not know who he is, but he knows who they are....
This is also something you might just not be able to prevent without streatching ingame logic too much.
Or the players getting romantically involved with the big bad guy/girl.

The figure you're thinking of is for a common campfire. A roaring house-fire would quite justifiably be more damage. Plus it's damage per round, which is going to be a while since they were barricaded into the house. Let's not forget the smoke causing suffocation (possibly not an issue if it's full of things that don't breathe, admittedly,) and the damage that the house collapsing will cause.

So yeah, you can kill something surprisingly high-level by barricading it into a sturdy house and then torching it.



You 'dealt' with that demand with a sword to the face, right?

The problem with solving D&D dungeons by burning the whole thing down is simple. D&D consists of two steps; killing things, and taking their stuff. Burning the dungeon down takes care of the first problem, sure, but now that magic sword, chest of fire opals, and pile of electrum pieces are all buried under tons of charred rubble.

Yeah, a GM is completely out of line having things that change personality in their world. Especially when those things are canon and the players have access to spells that do just that. I don't know what I was thinking.

Do you want to tell me what I did wrong in letting them avoid raiding the cola factory too? Probably the grocery stores should have had chemical detectors and there should have been armed response teams waiting at the 7-11. Preferably with spirits as back-up to catch would be vandals. It's obvious I should have anticipated that the players would go for retail stores and I should have just mapped out the security of everyone in the greater metro area.

What you seem to be saying is that a GM should simply have the entire world designed to deal with what the players are capable of. The world does not revolve around the players and their character sheets. If you want it to, that's fine, but don't act like everyone else's should or that it's good GMing.

Also, think about what your argument is. Players coming up with creative solutions that solves things quickly never happens. GM's are never caught with their challenges suddenly solved. If it does happen, then you're just a bad GM. You should have anticipated every creative solution and set things up to thwart it. I guess I'll just stick to running canned adventures where some smarter GM has already thought through every idea or scenario my players could think up.

Edit: Also, my original point was that it does happen to all the rest of us bad GM's.

This may be true, but the swag should be intact unless the GM has been hitting the "art objects - cloth and wood" table pretty hard. Clearing out tons of rubble is a simple matter of manual labor - you can cast up spells, hire peasants, or even do it yourself.

Remember, the lengths to which players will go to make a fast GP are extreme. Don't mention that the bad guy has tiled his grand hall in imported marble and silver tiles, or they will not only pry up every single tile, they will go room-to-room in his castle, conducting a materials survey.

Okay, so I'm gonna weigh in from the other point of view, as someone who's been the bad GM.

When I was younger, I fell into the GMPC trap. I don't wanna go into a lot of detail, but let's just say it was a) not pretty and b) vaguely similar to what you're going through. Now, as an outsider who's been on both sides of the GMPC issue, I believe you're right in thinking this is a problem. Personally, though, reading through the thread and your responses to various points that have been brought up, I don't think you were posting looking for advice, I think you were posting looking for validation. I'm not saying this to be a jerk, I'm just stating what I see. You (and your friends) want to take your frustrations out on this GMPC rather than on your friend, the GM. That's good of you guys, but to be honest, you NEED to sit down with the GM and talk this through.

This isn't a problem with the game or the GMPC, it's a problem with the GM. Personally, before getting the whole group up in the GM's face, I'd sit down alone with him and express your concerns that this GMPC is getting out of hand and you (as a player) are not sure if it's meant to be a Deus Ex Machina or the Real Big Bad. Explain that you (as a group) are considering killing the GMPC because of this. Then ask him point blank what the character is. A good GM will be willing to tell you "Yes, this is the Real Big Bad, just trust me on this" or he will freak out about you killing his PC. Do this right before the session where the group plans to spring the ambush on the GMPC so he doesn't have time to prepare any tricks. If he asks you to trust him, do so; just let him know that's he's going way overboard on making you want to hate the Real Big Bad and ask him to tone it down since it's making the game less fun. If he freaks out because you're going after his Precious, be prepared for all out war.

Also, don't forget that some people just aren't GM material. In my old play group, we had a good player who was a terrible GM. We'd tried letting him GM a number of times and he'd done pretty much everything in the Bad GM Playbook, including over-powered GMPCs in every game. Every time we tried a different solution (in-game murder spree, not showing up for games, "It's us or you," kicking him out of the group for a while, etc), and the only thing we found that worked was sitting him down and just explaining what was going on. Like your GM, it would be good for a little while then back to business as usual, so we ended the campaign and not so politely told him that he wasn't allowed to GM anymore. Hopefully it won't come to that though.

Now, as for the subject of "ah, it's cool, we're friends" "time heals all wounds" and all that other BS: DON'T BE A DICK. Seriously, the guy is human too, and has to be more or less decent if he was a housemate with ya. You don't want to throw this away over a stupid game. Don't give him an "It's Us or You" speech, just tell him that the game isn't fun anymore and that you want to play something else. Don't play SR with a different GM, play a different game with a different GM. Don't say "You change or we walk," say "you change or you get stuck playing for a while and then maybe, when you've had time to think about what you've done, we'll let you GM again." Seriously, I've seen this kind of thing ruin decade-long friendships. Basically, what I'm trying to say is: Don't kick him out of the group, just don't let him GM. Encourage him to play since he's still part of the group. If, at that point, he decides to walk, then it's on him.

If you absolutely have to kill the GMPC to get some sort of closure or whatever; I would just try and kill his GMPC and then call the campaign at the end of the night. Even with numbers on your side, you will probably lose. Speaking from experience, he's going to cheat. He's already let you know he's got plans and contingencies in place for when (not if!) things go south. He'll use them. He'll fudge dice rolls, he'll "accidentally" for get to add penalties for damage. He'll randomly summon 12 Force 6 spirits that she "just happens to have on retainer" when things start to go bad; and he's going to justify it by saying she's Top Dog in this metaplane and everyone is at her beck and call. When the smoke clears, I'll be really damn surprised if any of you are standing. As a GM, a group could spring this on me with no warning and I could still screw them seven ways to Sunday, even without breaking the rules. You, as players, need to be ready to accept that fact. If, through some Miracle of $Deity, you manage to kill it when it wasn't supposed to die, your friend is going to throw his dice at whichever player struck the killing blow and stomp away from the table. Don't rub it in, let him be mad. Then, a few days before your next session, call him up and let him know what he needs to bring so he can build a new character for the new game. Don't mention the old campaign at all. Pretend it never happened. Then, in a few weeks, when tempers are cooled and he realizes you guys still are his friends, discuss with him openly and plainly what went wrong. If he doesn't want to discuss it, then move on. Trust me, the group as a whole will be better for it.

Okay, there. I've said my piece. Please note this comes from nearly 20 years on both sides of the screen, making a LOT of mistakes along the way. Hope my advice helps.

TL;DR Version: Try talking first. Don't turn this into an Us vs You. He's still your friend, you don't wanna lose that over a stupid game. Remember, not everyone is cut out to be a GM. Lastly, when/if the crap hits the fan, just be done with it and move on.

Yeah, I did some shitty GMing like that too when I was 15. Thankfully, people generally talked to me when I did stupid stuff, which is why I got better.

I GM this exact way too; all of my games are definitely "any one can die" affairs, and my Players never feel safe. And yes, when someone more powerful than them can be reached and silenced, that can be quite a way to send the message that anyone can die.

But does this go both ways? Are you okay with your PC dying, if it makes sense in the story? Like if you were outfought/outhought by this F10 Free Spirit for instance, or if she managed to take out one or more of you before you finished her off.

Tangent: This is a fascinating topic me because the mindset of a player not being okay with a PC death is very alien to me. I think my gaming background is extremely traditional, and gives the GM a lot of authority and that the social contract at my table definitely revolves around respect for the GM's authority, regardless of what game we're playing or who's GMing it. The idea of players having the right of "veto" over their character's death--if that death made sense in the story and was borne out by the rules--is very alien to me. Apart from the Hand of God rule, obviously, which I think is a great rule. But the idea of any player resorting to "nuh-uh, didn't happen" has bothered me ever since I found out that was like...a thing.

Whats wrong with it?
It was a different approach but the run was not over, or was it?
(I even think it is the harder approach but thats just me. Well, it depends on how good the security in the factory is...)


If it was a problem for you, that he solved it that way, yes not all the stuff which is canon should be given to players.
D&D is not that bad in this instance as some other RPGs, but still.


It might be that we have a different view of the "size" of an "adventure". Yours might a bit smaller than mine. So I guess, my arguement would not be true in this case.

To give one extream example: If your adventure is rescue a cat out of a tree, true you can't count on the PCs to climb the (probably very high) tree. They just find a magical solution or take flying drone in SR.
But something like that I consider a single minor challenge. And yes, those might be bypassed. It does not stop the game and it has actually no results.

If your adventure only consists of a view major challenges I guess this could be a problem. But I never played this way....

We did the same thing in an old D&D game with a haunted ship: sailed away as it burned to the waterline. The GM said later that he did not see that coming.

That cat isn't bulletproof and you should have looked at their character sheets and the players have guns. So when they shoot the cat out of the tree, it's your fault because you didn't expect it. A good GM would have a cat in a tree with kevlar and anti personnel mines to prevent someone climbing.

I'm talking about when you prepare a session of an adventure (whatever size you want to make it and ignoring your adventure) and you expect it to take some set amount of time and it takes much less, but you've already set aside 3-4 hours to play so you have to move on to the next thing. I'm sure there are a lot of amazing GM's like you that have every possible scenario mapped out and have 100+ hours of game play sitting around for players to jump to so that players avoiding something entirely is just a hiccup.

Also, there is a huge difference between in game and out of game time. Sure in game it's faster to go in and fight the monster and loot the house. Out of game it's much faster to burn the place down and dig through the rubble for a week because there's a lot less rolling.

Edit: In case you didn't catch it Irion, suggesting that the cat should have kevlar was a joke to illustrate how ridiculous GMing gets if you're going to base every challenge off of what players are capable of.

I didn't know this was a thing? I've never heard of it before just now. Who does this? I think I'd get laughed at if I tried that with out regular gm and rightly so. Please tell me you just made it up

There might be a bit of validation I am searching for on this one. I'm relatively confident I've chosen the correct course. The reason I haven't spoken to the other two players is I can't rely on them not to go running to the GM before the start of the next session. At a minimum I want to discuss it with all the other players before the start of the next session first and confirm it is still an issue and we want it handled then and there.

- J.

I'm kind of awestruck by everything here. It's such a trainwreck (including sub-group cliques), I'm dying to know what happens. I hope things work out for you, but I'm so glad it's not me. :/