25th February

Just going to quickly report a big shootout at Quick Eddie's strip-joint/bar. Apparently a lot of people died, including the owner, when they 'refused to surrender to the police'. Since this was Lone Star and a lot of the dead were metas, I'm suspecting classic *Bang* *Bang* "Surrender" *Bang* negotiation tactics were used.

25th February, part the second.

Okay, so after I posted that last entry I was planning on meeting up with my street doc friend Celinia and calling it a day. Nothing fancy. Of course, it didn't quite go as planned. So Celinia, Captain America and myself are in the kitchen, having a chat about recent events over a cup of hot soycaff (Yes, I finally got my soycaff. Things are looking up). I'm there to discuss getting in some new 'ware and the Captain is getting his legs checked up on. We here an odd noise at the door and, being a little bit highly strung at this point, the Cap and I instantly dive for cover. Then the breaching charges detonated.

It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you!

So I decide to do the smart thing and keep my head down when a bunch of guys in full body armour charge in and start spraying the place down with suppression fire. Fantastic plan, except for one thing: Celinia's still out in the open. Well there's no way I'm going to let them gun down my friend so I lean out of cover and take a shot with my Predator V. I know that I'm not going to drop the guy in one shot, even with APDS, so I settle for disabling his gun with a round through the firing chamber. Of course the guy spraying bullets in my direction isn't hindered by this at all and I take some lead for my trouble. This is a bit of a problem as I was wearing a hoodie, long-sleeved shirt and jeans over form-fitting body armour. Just fine for being incognito, less fine for a shootout while outnumbered two to one by guys in heavy armour. Now Sylvia is also an old friend of Celinia's and she's outfitted the place with some extra security in the form of, wait for it, drones. Yes, a rigger setting up drones to defend a place. What. A. Shock. I am once again glad of the dampener in my cyberears as a rail drone deploys from its hiding place above me and opens up with a fekking minigun on the guy who just shot me. It probably wont surprise anyone that this drops him. I pop out of cover again as the guy I'd disarmed pulls out his own sidearm and I decide he's not taking the hint... so I shoot him in the balls. That takes him out of the fight right quick and earns me some comments I'll not be repeating here, but suffice to say they were not the sort of thing you say to a lady.

Meanwhile Captain America has pulled out dual Warhawks and opened up only to discover he'd loaded gel today. Deciding to make do with what he has he goes for blowing guns out of the bad guys' hands and letting the heavy weapon go toe to toe with their combat armour. Behind us we hear more automatic weapons fire. Bullets are going everywhere, and I'm amazed that the lounge I'm hiding behind is providing any protection at all. I find out later that another of Celinia's friends had been in and rebuilt the damn thing with tank armour backing and ballistic cloth! I'd say it was paranoid except that it saved my life, which pretty much defines 'not paranoid'. Anyway, it sounds like one of Celinia's other patients and more security drones are taking on a team coming in through the other entrance. Captain America is covering one external door to our room and I'm covering the other, and before I can go and drag Celinia behind her invulnerable L-shaped lounge three more guys come charging through my door and another couple charge the good Captain. I manage to peg two out of the three and a spirit manifests to beat the tar out of the third one, but my pistol doesn't pack enough punch to take either down. Once again they decide to empty their clips into my general proximity and the drone over my head is leaking the magic blue smoke as its rotary machine gun lays waste to their general area. Another heavy drone is pummeling the guys at the other door and I am feeling way out of my league but when the two guys not busy punching a spirit to death go for Celinia I just have to act. I dive out action hero style and shoot one guy in the forearm, doing enough damage to force him to release the foregrip on his assault rifle and put him out of the fight for the moment. The other guy gets to Celinia and is about to put a gun to her head to take her hostage when Captain America puts a gel round right into the guy's faceplate, smashing through and smacking him between the eyes. He lets go and staggers back and Celinia drops to the ground, whereupon everyone in the room, myself included, open up on the guy. Shredded is an understatement as two miniguns rip him to shreds and I put a three-round burst into his head.

Long story short we killed off the last of the guys, the gang that Celinia works on in exchange for protection arrive late to the party (Leading to the rather amusing sight of Celinia the five foot nothing elf berating a seven foot orc ganger) and we figure that the place is probably secure for now, though the location will have to be pretty much rebuilt after a few hundred rounds were fired per room. Ballistic plasterboard will only take so much punishment.

It's at this point that we get a call from Sylvia. It turns out that the Triad are attacking a whole bunch of locations associated with her, including several of her safehouses. Those teams have all been dealt with, but the safehouses have been burned.

Then we get a call from Jack. See, the gang that he and Boris run also got attacked, only the Triad were expecting gang-level resistance so sent merely 60 guys in 15 Tacticals sporting heavy machine guns and APDS. Then Jack stepped out of the front door in heavy milspec armour with helmet, laughing sadistically as he gunned them down with his panther assault cannon and wired-out-the-ass reflexes. Then Boris began raining fireballs on them...
Still, a lot of the gang were injured in that fight and still more were injured when they commandeered the Triad vehicles and went to rescue another gang that was under attack by the Triad for their connection to Sylvia. Seriously, Jack was just wading into heavy weapons fire and yelling at the enemy for wasting ammunition he was going to loot from their corpses!

So Jack wants payback, Sylvia wants to send a message, and my soycaff had taken a bullet in the fight. That meant revenge. So while Jack and Sylvia are trying to pick a Triad stronghold to demolish in retaliation I do some poking around on the matrix and, what'a ya know? The Triads are prepping a shipment to send to Denver via truck. I suggest that instead of causing another news-worthy incident we do a bit of constructive hijacking and steal the shipments from right under their noses, and everyone's on board with this to the point where Sylvia wants to come along in person and be one of the drivers.

We also pick up a new guy, some brit sammie who goes by Hastur. He's pissed because he was getting some maintainance done on his cyberarm and a bunch of jackbooted thugs came in and started shooting up the place, so he wants some payback too. Sylvia picks us up in a pimped out chopper (Helicopter. I need to specify given that we have multiple troll gangers on this run) decked out for stealth. I go in first, jumping out and letting Boris catch me with levitate before I become paste on the roof of the security office. I crack the door and cap the two guys inside before anyone realizes what's going on then grab their keycard and go down stairs to where the security riggers are jacked in. I may not be cybered up for combat but a couple of jacked in riggers? Yeah, I can handle those odds. I then jack in myself as the rest of the team get into position and spoof a simple command: Set IFF value = 0, mass send.

Suddenly, most of the drones read everyone as hostile and react accordingly. I immediately get a call from one of the on-site security in Chinese... which I don't speak. The conversation went something like this:

*Panicked gibbering* "Um... we've had a slight weapons malfunction, but everything should be fine soon!" *Suspicious gibbering with a hint of panic* "Uh... Don't come to check on the security office, there's a reactor leak..." *I disconnect* "Boring conversation anyway".

When they stop firing I spoof a self-diagnostic command to take them out of action and send the rest of the team in to mop up. One drone saw through both of my commands and opens up, but an assault cannon round takes it out. The rest of the Triad guys are gunned down and we make off with two trucks full of loot, all records of our presence erased.

One truck was full of combat gear. As in, hundreds of guns, dozens of RPGs, stacks of grenades, crates of ammo, boxes of armour... it was a lot of fun sorting through it all. I scored about five thousand rounds of heavy pistol ammo, a thousand rounds for a sniper rifle and an Ares Desert Strike with Silencer and Smartgun. Jack's gang bought a lot of the rest off of us and the rest is to be sold to Sylvia's friends in the Mafia.

The other truck was full of drugs. I mean, brim full of pretty much everything on the street. I picked up some Jazz in case of emergencies while Hastur the unintelligible took a massive block of pretty much every drug in there as part of his payout. The rest is going to a friend of Sylvia's in the Yakuza who can shift this much product. We're not expecting a large return on its street price, all things considered, but the sheer quantity means we should be making out like bandits on this run.

Hopefully the Triad get the message of 'Don't screw with us, it's not worth it'. Of course, there's a very real risk they'll take things the wrong way...

Two weeks and still waiting for replacement laptop parts for full post, but suffice to say that we just MELTED 20 lmgs due to firing them too much. 16k rounds with tracers.

17th March.

Lights just went out and I've got some time to kill, so I figure I might as well bring everyone up to speed.

Firstly, lets get the boring stuff out of the way. After my last blog we left Seattle, what with vast bounties from multiple sources on everyone's heads. So we got on our boats and headed out to Bali, which is where those slavers Sylvia's been hunting are hanging out. Along the way we encountered some pirates, and Deadbolt got to play around with his minigun full of Ex-Ex. The results were so predictable that it's barely noteworthy, with the exception of the fact that after the fight Mermaids rocked up and ate the pirates that jumped overboard.

It's kinda sad that I'm becoming this apathetic towards metahuman suffering, but on the other hand they did start it so it's hard to feel bad for them.

So now we get to the actual mission. Firstly, lets set the scene.
Our target is a 134 meter long, 18.5 meter wide luxury cruiser that's been modded to the limit of what's physically possible to turn it into a mobile base for the slaver/shadowrunner organization that owns it. The heads of this outfit are a couple of elves who apparently stole the boat and some other things (no details yet) from the company they ran when Saeder-Krupp bought it out from under them 10 years ago. They vanished and are presumed dead, though I suspect that there's a certain great dragon who'd appreciate having them delivered to him.

Anyway, they've come to an island near Bali for a bit of a holiday and to kidnap some tourists. Captain America and Hastur flew over to get some recon done while we sailed over and as a result we've got fairly solid intel by the time we get there. We're talking multiple milspec air drones (Sylvia says that with all the drone racks we're looking at 20+ min), multiple milspec sub drones which Sylvia says probably have anti-capital-ship capacities, at least 60 guys outfitted with SWAT armor and Ares Alphas, that sort of fun stuff. They also have 3 Nissan Hounds outfitted for heavy combat ops. On top of that there's almost certainly a ton of heavy weapons hidden just under the hull to take down pretty much anything... yeah, you get the drift. Attacking these guys head on is not the smartest move.

After a LOT of planning we have our strategy. I'm on stealth team 1 with Hastur, Captain America and another troll called Jade Falcon, who's primary skill is apparently punching things. Our job is to approach the boat from underwater and grapple gun our way up the port side, then head to the armory to stop the enemy from accessing their equipment while another team disables their AA weapons. on our Snipers on the island will pick off a couple of drones and two more teams drawn from Jack's gang will board and start the fight while our riggers engage theirs in air to air combat. Once the riggers have punched a hole our assault squads (Troll gangers with machine guns and assault rifles, lead by Jack and his personal guard) will fly in on our helicopters with ride of the Valkyries playing full bore, setting down on the top of the boat and advancing down while the amphibious squads make their way up.

Now the plan goes well right until it starts, as Hastur decides to screw the plan and swims under the ship to try and gain access through the drone port. We follow and succeed in getting in, eliminating two mechanics in the process. I seal the hold and cycle the pressure, then a quick hack on the cameras inside and everything looks normal. There are two doors out and two elevators. One door is sealed and has no access panel for me to hotwire, which is odd as it's supposed to lead to crew quarters according to the original plans of the ship. at about this point the ship rocks as what sounds like a shockwave hits it. The other door has a top-of-the-line maglock, it takes me almost 10 seconds to open it. That's the engine room. Beyond that... well, that's where they keep the girls they kidnap. Place is horrible, cramped and there's about 20 girls in cages. while the others stare I kill the generators, so they're running on emergency reserves. Without the generators drowning out the noise we can hear a bit of whats going on outside, and it sounds like the eurowar 2.0 just started. I bring the others in to cover the elevator for the inevitable counter attack, and as an after-thought we rip up a table and weld it over the 'crew quarters' door, just in case anyone is in there. Getting flanked isn't in my plans for the near future. I send a microdrone up in one elevator and stand in the other to get some signal (the entire bottom floor of the ship is like a single huge faraday cage) and it looks like they're digging in with machine guns in case we try and come up through the elevators.

It's kind of a moot point as at that moment the ship rocks as someone fires a naval railgun or something, and then all the lights go out. Seems that all those heavy weapons draw a lot of power.
So here we are, stuck at the bottom of the ship with no way of contacting the outside. All that's left is to wait for the noise to stop and hope that our side won.

And this is how it ends.

Last night I walked out of the game session midway through, ostensibly due to a drone being shot down by GM Fiot. However, looking back on it all it becomes suddenly clear that wasn't the real reason. The real reason was simple: this isn't our story.

Every mission without exception is given by Sylvia, the GM's old character, to further her goals. Runners coming and going has no effect on the metaplot because none of them are important. None of the pages of background I wrote got as much as a mention in game unless I brought it up. Every non-run activity I tried to get people involved in was handwaved and glossed over because it didn't further Sylvia's story, only our group's.

In the entire span of the campaign no-one made any new contacts except for Sylvia, her alias's and her employees, in spite of me literally begging the GM to work out some contact-gathering during downtime.

As a side note, the correct solution to every session was violence. No exceptions. My infiltrator had about 20 points in combat skills just to survive, and was still easily the weakest member of the team. What non-combat skills I had were virtually worthless as every device we encountered was always at max rating and slaved to a max rating host, making my splash into hacking pretty much pointless and my lockpicking skills more time consuming than just handing the troll a crowbar. Then we get berated for not being stealthy enough.

My spy drones get shot despite being the size and appearance of bugs and having the maximum possible stealth and evasion software, while the enemy are anchored off the coast of a tropical island in late spring and are digging in to repel an onslaught of trolls.

We fight humanoid drones made using 4th edition armor upgrade rules then put inside heavy security armor and having them both stack at 100% efficiency, meaning that as the only member of the team without a heavy weapons skill and assault cannon I can't do anything against them. (Not entirely true, but they've started getting resistant to called shots to the gun).

But those are all minor gripes. In the end, the main problem is that this is someone else's story and I don't care how that story ends. I haven't even heard if the mission was successful or not (though I know it will be, that's a foregone conclusion). I'm taking a break, and after that if I do rejoin the game then I'll be playing an Old Man Henderson because damn it, I am not going to invest any more time being someone else's facilitator. This will be the group's story, even if I have to completely derail the damn campaign to do it.

I have been there myself, my friend. I really sucks to be stuck across the table rolling dice so the GM can have a good wank. You have my sympathies.

It's my own fault. I humored him and payed attention to his plots for far too long.

Well, now I have to get my "A" game out since my diary is the only campaign diary on the board now. I think it would be more interesting from the player's perspective as you wrote it, but I seem to be the only one willing to write about the game despite telling the players about this board and the thread I started.

Sorry to put pressure on you, mate. I'm going to call my GM today and air my grievances, and with luck things'll get better. Got a plan for a new guy already.

I could start posting some Pathfinder journals if people are interested in that. That game at least is going well.

Right, now that I've finished having my little temper tantrum I've talked with my GM, we've gone over the problems, and everything'll be alright. I am back in the game!

I knew there was a reason I game with these guys!

Glad to hear it! Will your DM withdraw Sylvia from the game then?

I have been assured that her arc is over, at least for a while. Whether that holds or not remains to be seen.

18th of March.

Today is a sad day.

Now a lot of this is second hand information so I’m expecting some exaggeration here, but it’s all I’ve got to go on.

So, let’s start with what was happening when we cut off the power. That massive explosion we heard that rocked the boat shortly after we got on? That was a Cuttlefish Torpedo Drone locating one of our waiting groups of troll divers and firing an Anti-Ship torpedo at them. Based on what we’ve found I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was an Ares Riptide, an anti-capital ship torpedo that the arms manual I found advertises as capable of hitting targets up to 12 kilometers away. Needless to say that we’re not even bothering to look for the bodies of that team. Upon the rather impressive explosion sending a plume of water 30 meters into the air the element of surprise was pretty much lost, so the slavers began deploying air drones as a defensive measure. At this point the sniper teams opened up on their drone racks, destroying many of them before they even got airborne. Those drones that did survive engaged and quickly destroyed the majority of the snipers, with only the two runners attached to the ganger squads escaping detection and extermination via AV missiles.

Then the air war began, with riggers on both sides engaging in what amounted to hide-and-seek as both sides tried to get missile lock on the other, while at the same time trying to avoid getting locked onto themselves. Considering that most air to air missiles are designed for engagements measured in kilometres and both sides had modded their drones to make sensor lock as difficult as possible, this engagement lasted for the duration of the fight and ended in something approximating mutual annihilation.

With the drones engaged it was time for the cavalry to ride in. Jack and his gang flying over the island on a fleet of helicopters, playing Ride of the Valkyries at full blast. What was left of the drone picket line (IE the ones not outfitted for playing hide and seek in the clouds) opened up, but Jack was ready for them. He ordered the Helicopters to turn side-on to the targets and opened the doors to reveal every machine gun his gang owned ready and waiting. I believe the official count is 8,000 rounds, one third of which were tracers, were used to basically enact area denial on the sky. At this point the ship’s defences kicked in and their own attack helicopters moved into position. 6 GE Vanquishers and a pair of MLRS systems deployed and opened fire, completely obliterating two of the helicopters and their contingent of trolls. Then the main cannon, a heavy mortar of some description, deployed at the bow of the ship and fired, removing another helicopter from the sky. Then their emergency power ran out.

Now their helicopters were heavily armed and armoured, but between the sheer number of machine gun bullets and RPGs, along with a small collection of assault rifles and heavy lasers, meant they went down before they
could noticeably contribute to the battle. Still, we lost about a third of our force on approach, and after firing off a total of around 18 thousand rounds without break most of the heavy weapons on the troll side needed their barrels replaced. Still, we had even odds against the enemy.

Now I’m sure most of you will remember that massive trailer full of weapons we liberated from the Triads? Well, on top of the vast collection of guns and crates of ammunition there was a pallet of assorted grenades. These had been distributed among the troll assault force and after it became clear that the enemy was dug in like ticks the trolls quickly decided that throwing grenades into every room was easier and quicker than getting shot to pieces trying to take positions the old fashioned way, with bayonets affixed.

Special mention goes to Jack, who was toting around a HMG loaded with belts of gel rounds solely because he found it amusing to watch the enemy get blasted off the ship and into the water (where sharks and merfolk were beginning to gather) as he hosed them down with bullets. Since he was outfitted with a full suit of troll sized heavy milspec armour he was able to wade through bullet fire like it was rain, alternating between laughing in what he thinks is a stereotypical pirate accent and berating the enemy for shooting up his new ship.

Down below our group was somewhat spread out, with Hastur in the engine room covering the elevators through the doorway, Jade and the Captain in the right hand elevator preparing to assault the enemy strong point above us, and last but not least myself checking things out in the drone bay. Then the power goes out.

Now this is a problem as the emergency procedures for this section include all of the 8-inch-thick composite steel doors automatically sealing to prevent the boat from flooding. Thus, Captain America and Jade Falcon were stuck in the elevator, I was stuck in the drone bay and Hastur was stuck in the engine room.

So a few moments later, sure enough, the generator kicks back in. Now as Hastur and I regroup our trolls decide to ride the elevator up and grenade the enemy position, completely ignoring the plan we’d put together. Unsurprisingly, they got shot up pretty badly before they could throw their grenades. When they got back down I pulled out my first aid kit and began repairing the worst of the damage. That done, we took stock. We had several flashbangs left, so I rigged them together as a single bomb and put that in the left elevator, rigged to blow up when the doors opened. In the other elevator sat Hastur, Captain America and Jade Falcon, ready to follow the bomb up and hit when the enemy is still blinded.

They secure the deck eventually, and I come up to join them. I’m out of supplies for my first aid kit at this point so I do what I can without any actual tools for the job. Captain America is sent down below to hold the drone room while Jade is told to stay put and hold this room. I deploy my drones to see what’s going on and to nobody’s surprise one of them is shot pretty much immediately while the other goes into a section that another team had already secured. Now that we’re out of the faraday cage we get in contact with the rest of the assault force and Hastur and I get called up to help with the assault. It seems that one of the squad leaders took a bullet to the brain so Hastur’s been promoted, while they need me to open a door for them. That done I head down to regroup with Jade and try and hack the enemy comm network when wouldn’t you know it? Grenades and gunfire down below. Jade and I rush to the elevators and I ready a surprise in the left one, following it closely in the right one.

Now my surprise isn’t what you’d call a standard grenade. It’s a modified paint grenade filled with industrial lubricant. That goes off and sends the enemy into cover long enough for me to throw out a smoke grenade and a glue bomb, then dive for cover. They return by firing off a flash-bang and diving into cover, only to have Jade catch the bomb and throw it back. Of course they manage to get underwater so they’re unaffected by all the grenades going off around them and one even manages to put ten rounds into Jade’s general direction before diving. After everything’s gone off they start opening up suppression on Jade and force him into the elevator, which works just fine for them until I hit them from the flank. I know my pistol isn’t going to penetrate their SWAT armor so I aim for the shoulder joint, bruising the bone and making one gunner drop his weapon. The other one shoots a grenade at me and I get flashbanged all to hell but between flare compensation and Dampeners I’m still standing. Jade uses the distraction to throw a frag at the bad guys and after one final flashbang to my face they disappear in a cloud of red mist. Quickly taking stock of the situation it’s pretty clear that they came out of the door we’d welded shut when we first got in here, don’t ask me how they got it to open again. It looks like they also hold the engine room again and have sealed the door behind them.

Worse. Captain America is dead. I’m only a field medic but from what I can tell it looks like multiple frag grenades to the chest.

I’m about to crack the engine room when word comes down that I’m supposed to kill the power, on Jack’s orders. Moments later another troll comes down and tells me I’m needed immediately on one of the other decks by Hastur.

I tell the trolls to hold the line and head up to see what Hastur needs. It turns out that he’s found the ship’s main gun and wants me to disable it, since I’m the only runner here with an ounce of tech savvy. That takes a couple of seconds, then I recruit him to help retake the engine room.

They did a number on the door’s control panel and the smoke from my grenade wasn’t exactly helping, but I manage to hotwire it open again. Some guy starts shouting at us to surrender, and is pretty confident considering we hold the majority of the ship. I signal Hastur to keep him talking and enter the engine room, checking after every step for booby traps. It looks like our mysterious shouter is in one of the holding cells, using the girls as hostages.

Drek.

Well, I manage to sneak up to his hidey hole without him realizing then do a grenade and breach mauver, using my last lube grenade in the process. Since the room was full of pretty girls in their underwear I’m expecting to never hear the end of that one. The guy opens up with an auto shotgun but I manage to avoid the spray of lead through a combination of speed and the fact that recoil compensation is a lot harder to manage when your weapon is dripping in industrial lubricant, to the point where the guy quickly ends up on his ass. I shoot out one shoulder and he grabs for his sidearm. So I shoot out his other shoulder. He then goes for a HE grenade, so I put a round through his wrist as I stride over and restrain him. That done I rush over, kill the power (We have a plan this time, I’ll restore power in 5 minutes and I wait for Hastur to reach the next level before the power goes out, then I head back and stabilize the girls who got shot. Fortunately the guy only clipped them so once I stem the bleeding I’m fairly confident that they’ll survive until we get them to a medical centre.
Well soon enough we’ve taken the boat and of the 90 crew we manage to get maybe 25 prisoners. Of those we took both the owners alive, along with a bunch of the other rich scumbags who were in charge. Most of the rest were former runners who’d been kidnapped and fitted with high-end personachips or something, which should make for a few interesting days as our doctors deprogram them.
Most of the rest of the day has been clean-up operations, though I did kinda ‘Volunteer’ the owners to clean up the effects of my glue and lube grenades in the drone station. They also got the lubricated brig as their new home, because I am a sadistic bitch when it comes to slavers.

Though not as sadistic as Jack, who’s taken some time out of directing the cleanup and repair efforts to interview the boat’s backers one at a time… in full pirate getup, for the sole purpose of rubbing in that there is no way for them to bribe, threaten or plead their way out of this. Oh, and he’s got a new necklace: It’s the spent gauss rounds that they fired at him but failed to stop him. Yes, rounds plural. He got the docs to make it for him after they pulled them out of him.

The victory was not without cost, however, and once we’ve fully accounted for everyone I’ll be posting a list of those that gave their lives for the cause, including our Irish cowboy known as Captain America.
When I look at the death and destruction all around me I sometimes wonder, was it really worth it?

Then I see the girls we rescued from a life of horror and slavery and I know the answer.

Enjoying the story so far - what is it about Australian runners and their disbelief at how easy it is UCAS-side?

Dear gods - I should really write up Red7 Security concepts:)

-Tir

Amusingly, all of the high-up slavers were completely dumbfounded by the idea we were motivated by Revenge. It just didn't occur to them that kidnapping thousands of attractive girls over a span of 15 years might make them enemies.

Evidently, none of them have ever seen Taken.

Watching them be reduced to gibbering wrecks when Jack said he was doing all this because they'd upset an acquaintance of his was hilarious.

They're also really upset that we've decided to keep them in EXACTLY the same conditions as they were keeping the girls. They're all trying to leverage better quarters. It's not working.

No diary this week, since I'm not at the game. RL stuff, you know.

And I have now officially quit the game. Funny how boring, repetitive combat runs that pull bullshit to stop any attempt to be smart about it (did you know that every building in Seattle is a thermally shielded Faraday cage?) Aren't fun after a few sessions. Seriously, go back and check, you'll find several missions are just cut and paste jobs.

Having the whole game revolve around an NPC, with literally no variations in employer for the whole campaign, didn't help matters.

I hear you. It's one thing when you're 15 and with your friends hopped up in ridiculous amounts of caffeine. It's another when you're an adult and are looking for a chance to tell an interesting story with your friends that doesn't necessarily involve nothing but mindless mayhem.

I have been trying to reach my GM for two weeks, but neither phone calls nor texts have been replied to. Finally, earlier today I told him to get over his problem and contact me.

To avoid misrepresentation, here is the reply in full.


Well, I wish them joy and much luck with their continued campaign, but when I get demands for back story which is then ignored utterly and the missions are all variants of 'go to X and kill Y' in the name of the GMPC's character arc, then they can have that fun without me getting in the way.

Also, is it really that hard to write 'you'?

17 years as a "DM" and they can't come up with something deeper than what you were posting, Fueldrop? Huh.

Players can often become "rules lawyers" when the GM arbitrarily decides that the rules don't apply to them when they become even mildly inconvenient. I'm all for "story over rules", and have said it myself more than once, but seriously...sniped bug drone for absolutely zero plot-dependent reason, anyone?

The reason why you don't like GMing Fueldrop, sir, is because they want to be relevant to the story. Their attempts at relevance disrupts your hours-long mental masturbation sessions because you're much more interested in telling a story at everyone else than in running a truly collaborative story that would inevitably be more interesting for all parties involved anyway. Fueldrop hasn't missed the point, sir, you have.

Being the only GM in the area that runs SR does not a completely awesome GM make. Lots of people wanted Geo Metros. It didn't mean that Geo Metros were the best cars in the world.

That said, I also find myself hoping that they have fun, Fueldrop. The game style was obviously not a good fit for your play style and I hope they continue to have fun with their game.

Well, I've always enjoyed reading your diaries, FD. Hope they will continue once you find a new group!

wait, isn't this the group where players kept on not coming back?

it feels a bit... questionable, at the very least... to claim that you've never had anyone walk out, when your group of players is in a constant state of change.

so, he's been GMing for 17 years, and doesn't have a stable group of players that like his playstyle enough to stick around?

i wouldn't call that an accomplishment. most people i know who've been GMing for that long have a stable group, and aren't constantly having to look for more people, because the people in their group aren't going anywhere and there's not a ton of room for more.

Well, I was the longest running original member of the group. Next up was the troll player. Our other three players are new, with the newest recruited in the last few weeks.

EDIT: on the bright side, the lack of any character driven stuff in the campaign meant that people dropping out wasn't too disruptive. Not sure if that's good or not.

What is the point to discuss about a GM or player if the only information you have are second hand, subjective and unverified?
What is the point to damn someone, if his story is told from someone who already condemns him?

First off, reality is subjective as it is based upon your past experiences and the lensing those experiences have created. Most Germans have a far different opinion on gun control than I do, as an example. This doesn't make them stupid, it just shows that we havea different perspective on the issue.

Secondly, we've had plenty of Devil's Advocating here and they have been pretty well slapped down because we've all been there, done that with similar GMing styles. We prefer more creative input in the game.

Third, Fueldrop's comments have been internally consistent throughout the entire campaign. There has not been a single "Where the heck did that come from?" moment in his narrative.

Finally, the final analysis is that we pretty much concur that we wouldn't have enjoyed the game much either. We feel that the GM could have handled things better. It was fun while it lasted, but it didn't work out. There is no long-term animosity here.

You know what? I'm going to throw in a few examples of my rules lawyerings. All of these were overruled.

1) I complained when the enemy were able to fire full auto then move into full cover.

2) I complained when a flash-bang produced enough explosive force to blow all the glue from my glue grenade 10 meters back to hit me in the face.

3) I suggested that maybe the ultra-paranoid pirates could be using Sonar as part of their sensors, thus diving (the GM's favored plan) might not be such a great idea. (This one also got me pinged as metagaming, as there was no way my intellectually augmented B&E specialist with high data-search and weeks to prepare could know as much about Sonar as a 23-year-old gamer who's been on a boat with low-end fishing sonar once or twice.)

did he allow players to also fire full auto and get behind cover in the same action?
as for #3 B&E specialist might be familiar with sonar if they are familiar with smugglers or dealt with boats before,but if you did research on basically how paranoid people would protect their boat knowing about sonar capabilities would be obvious especially for an individual whos entire job is figuring how can this be used to keep me out.

Of course not. Are you crazy?


Well if you check my character's background she's only got 10 years of experience with smugglers, and her father is a professional smuggler. Also had about a month of prep time.

However, the enemy having sonar that can pick up groups of divers approaching the boat would make diving non-viable as an attack vector. So stop harping on about it already and get your dive gear on, it's the only way to get aboard without being detected.

in that case he sounds like someone who is telling a story that only marginally involves the players and they have to follow along the railroad tracks because... reasons. Those are the gm's that i have a difficult time playing with.

It was also a handy way to pin you in a locked box while everyone else was having fun up top, don't forget.

My worst game ever involved this kind of GM. The game was on railroad tracks. Anything we did only created the tiniest bit of deviation. Plus he was, well in polite company it doesn't matter. He also didn't communicate at all. Half the problems could have been resolved with open and honest communication.

That one's not his fault, another player went off the rails and got us into that one.