Yesterday we have been playing again (after quite a long brake) and I have to admit, that it was very unsatisfying. Here a rough overview about the happenings:

At our first run, we should do an escort-job for a courier, which was stuck in a pub surrounded by a gay-streetgang (yeah-right). We were a little bit low on manpower (just a pistolero-adept, me as a combat oriented mystic adept and our hacker) but good on firepower. While my colleagues stepped inside, to check the situation, I stayed outside to monitor the enemy-movement. After a short time, we realized that the gang had some “additional members”, that only camouflaged as gangers. 4 of them on the front had only improvised gang-tags and an unknown number was on the backdoor (according to our hacker). Obviously either a corp- or a runner-team was also interested in the goods the courier carried around. On a secret command, the gangers stepped aside and closed the roads and every escape-route, while the “runners” started throwing Molotov-cocktails on the pub. 2 innocent guests stepped outside to escape the situation, but got beaten down, dragged into a backstreet so that the gangers could rape them. Because I play a medusa-like char. you might be able to imagine, that this isn’t something i would let happen (please check ancient-myths for further information’s), so my first shot was for the rapist, while the second one was directly in one of the runners. The quartet went after me, while my comrades tried to escape through the back-door. I got shot with an LSD-filled DMSO-bow-arrow, which took me out completely. My comrades tried to escape, but of course the other part of the team only waited for someone to step out of the backdoor, so my men got beaten down, too. Only because of the interference of an NSC, the team survived and we once again met at the street-doc.

The second run was over even faster. We should pick up an employee of a corp (young woman with 6-month old child, middle management) before “anyone else does”. So I put a decoy-car in a backstreet on the way to her, while my fellow runners rented a high-class car so that we could go to downtown unnoticed. As we arrived, 2 or 3 black vans parked directly in front of the apartment block, with the obligatory security personnel standing in front of it. The apartment block and the security belonged to the same corp and as we started to head for the house, the target moved out of the door, secured by even more bodyguards. It was obviously that she was not going with them willingly, but we was in a A-security-zone so we really had no clue what to do. So we tagged their cars to follow them, but (of course) they moved further into an AAA-security-zone.

I really don´t get if we did something wrong or if it was GM-despotism, but both runs were crap (IMHO). What do you think about that?

Way too many enemies in an enclosed space with "innocents" around and a DMSO/LSD tipped Arrow from a bow . .
Yeah, no, i'd blame the GM on this one.


Way too many enemies and an AAA Zone where you can't use heavy artillery either . .
Yeah, no, i'd blame the GM on this one too.

Was the group coordinated with the GM? Maybe he expected you to be more Pink Mohawk and gun them down with assault cannons and such? If not, I'd be with Stahlseele on this, blame the GM. Maybe you should talk this over and get to common ground about how pink-mohawk/black-trenchcoat your game is and what consequences are to be expected from openly firing and such. If that doesn't help, you should either swap GM duty to another person or stop playing with this particular group.

No, the group was not properly coordinated, but setting an ambush with 8 people plus support is not so much of a problem. With only 3 runners in my own team, we have a hard time to encircle somebody. ^^ Usually we only go pink mohawk in C and lower areas, but even in the Z-zone we were, we were massively outnumbered. I think i will have to talk with the GM about that.^^

But this leads me to another question: how many runners do you have in your teams?

It sounds a bit much from the GM, but I'd like to ask:

In the first instance were you sent to the pub and then immediately surrounded or did you have time to move the target etc if you wanted to? Was there any reason to stay there? Did you have any warning of (or could you have found out about) the threat before you went there and, for instance, not all gone in. Or left a getaway outside etc.

In the second instance, if the GM said 'get there before anyone else' did you go there immediately? If so then that's a bit harsh but obviously what you're meant to be facing (albeit a tough job). If you didn't then the GM is probably within rights to beat you there and make the job tougher.

Sometimes we're given jobs that don't have time for proper planning. I enjoy them from time to time (mixed in with other more conventional jobs). It's a quick line into the action without the 1/2 sessions of legwork/spying/scouting/shopping etc.

With my group it depends (I run mission style SR when not everyone can make it on game night) but from 2 to 6. As for a mohawky game may I suggest wearing a CMC-660 HCS (Iron Will with Life support lvl 2, Max Armor, Extreme environment mod, Fire Armor 10) next time and watching the zergzonelings burn.

Usually 5 to 7 runners.

Should have held out for the courier job for an escort.

AS fort he first run, we were sitting in a restaurant, chatting about the happenings in the last few months as we got the information that we are needed immediately. So we didn´t even have time to get proper equipment. Just because we complained, we were given some better weapons (e.g. M23 with lasersight, instead of my fully-equipped-ares-alpha-combat-monster) and headed to the pub immediately. The only side-information we had was, that the courier was sitting in a pub and that he feels unsafe and wants escort before he leaves the location. There was no Wifi-surrounding close by, that we could hack, so we only had some very old road-maps. As we arrived there was a street party going on, because the gay-gang just conquered the street from a competitor. As my colleagues went into to bar to check the situation, it immediately went Boom.

As for the second situation, we got dressed up properly and rented a car. That was basically all the time we used up. We shortly thought about going there with my GMC-bulldog motorhome or with the hackers Ford Americar, but the GM told us that it would be ways to obvious and we even shouldn´t think about going there in less than good clothing. So yeah, we went there as immediately as possible.

We generally run with 5-6 (Rarely, with 7).

I think you are talking about 5-7 players, not runners. So you don´t play 2 chars. simultaniously?

In other games playing multiple characters just takes more bookkeeping. In SR? I mean, how do you stab yourself in the back without seeing it coming?

It is difficult, i agree, but we usually deal, that the 2 chars you play run as a 2-man-team to support each other (like sharpshooter and his scout) or that you separate the second chars into team beta, so that you can handle them seperately. It works better than being beaten up because you are outnumbered. ^^

Correct, 5-6 Players, running one character each.

CURSE YOU!!! We are only 4 guys, from time to time a 5th is joinging, but only very unregulary. I am officially jealous. ^^

I guess it would be impolitic to tell you that in the past we had 7-8 Players then, right?

Too many!

yeah, 8 is cutting it close to too many, but we are usually 5 to 7 players +GM IF i get to play at all . .

Honestly, that reads like you need to have a chat with your GM.

Failing that, it's time to go Full Retard, and bust out the pink mohawks.

GM likes disarming you? Make a habit of having a layer of C16 and ball bearings sewn into your coat. Remove, throw down in middle of room, duck behind something.

Get cyberweapons. Get concealable holsters. Get in the habit of carrying unreasonable quantities of air-dispersal psychoactive drugs. Always and I mean ALWAYS wire your car for remote detonation in case you need a distraction in the parking lot.



Although really it sounds like you're badly in need of a mage and a rigger for overwatch and artillery.

Agreed, which is why we are at the current 5-6.

My personal preference is 4-5 players. 6 is fine but 7 gets to being a PITA in my experience.

Honestly, I'd stop playing with the GM just because he thinks having gay gangers rape NPCs in the middle of a firefight is cool.

Maybe the GM was thinking you would try non-confrontational options? It's hard to get the whole picture of the circumstances from a small paragraph, but when I see overwhelming force my thought is "ok, we need to find a different tactic", rather than "sure glad I brought along my big gun".

This ^^

So grimdark

We are currently a group of four (what with people moving to different towns and/or getting podlings still too young to play). When I GM there is a street sam, a mobility adept and a technomancer, so lets look for some options. Scenario 2 has way to little info for that, but from the outset the run won´t be easy.

Scenario 1:
- If the hacker has drones, move them up. About 20k¥ should get you a rotordrone gangers won´t find funny to fight against. Have your comrades + courier escape through the front, where you have 2:4 odds regarding combatants, 4:4 if hacker+courier count as such. Summon spirits if you can. Initiate combat by taking at least one runner out. Deal with the rapist gang after the runners are gone.

- You ran to early. You involved more opponents than necessary while separating your team. Strike the front team, make your escape through the buildings on the opposite side of the street (or something).

- RP reasons aside, the strongest opponents have to go first. Revenge can happen with preparation.

Mistakes like that happen without GM help. We make our share.

I imagine someone calling them "fags" in his forum write-up might not see how that's offensive.

Unfortunately correct. Killing rapists to prevent the deed is a different thing, so it´s ambivalent.

@Machiavelli

Many written missions have a passage about „what happened, if the runner want more money“ or something similar. Most of the time it is “thank them for playing and let them go”.
This go both ways, if the gm insist in playing hard, dirty, the enemy is almighty and so one, passing the job is a legit action. Passing jobs which are too dangerous for the offered money or you set of skill is the think that let you stay in business. Even the bad guys sometimes win, and next times ask your fixer about Johnson’s reputation.

I like the film Heat(1995) with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. In one scene the criminals tries to rob a depository. A Detective observing the crime screwed up and the leader of the crew got a bad feeling. He called the job off, they just dropped everything and walked away. At this point all the police had was trespassing and vandalism. If the crew had forced it, finished the robbery and started a firefight, it would be life to dead, wanted dead or alive. It is the same with every criminal biz and SR, sometimes you just have to know, when to cut your losses and walk away. Walk away, thank the GM for playing and let him/her go.

And ask how he would handle the situation or what he would have done.
If the gm does not have a clue, or don’t know what your chars can not do, you know you did the right thing.

We have rotating gms.
We have a gm plus 2-4 runner and a 5-7 runner group. I prefer 4-5 players, a mage, someone who can talk, someone who will lead and someone who can open locks and infiltrate. Most of the times we have 2-3 mages, but no real combat mage, one mundane burglar and the rest are adepts. Sometimes a sam or combat hacker but that is rare.

Year sometimes on of this mages just enraged and call a stunball force 11 or on of the other two start calling in every spiritual chip they own and bring down 6+ Force 6+ sprits, some of them may be great ones, on whatever escalated the situation. But that is rare, and every time there were a lot on stack for them. (surival, children or many craploads of money.) But hey, that are 200+ Karma mages and no scrubs, fresh created.

@Scene 1 and 2
In both scenes my player would just pass, if there is not a crapload of money in the pot or a person/item of interested involved. They may have good chances to get the job done, but again they already have a lot of karma and money to force their way.

I even know what they would say. Depend on who is talking to Johnson.
“We looked into it but it was a trap, there was nothing we could do. And you didn’t pay us to make the news for the next 48 hours, or did you?”
“We checked it out and had to pass, please don’t call us again.”
“Friendly warning, the next time we see you face, we will shoot you.”

I think it's time you sit down as a group with the GM and have a good talk.

One, he shouldn't be throwing you into these no-win scenarios. Who's having fun there - him or you? It's supposed to be everyone. Tossing you into these impossible situations, with a high innocent count and some very...not cool opposition is not the way to keep players coming to the table.

Also, I'd have a serious talk with him about homosexuals and rapists. He might not realize what he's saying / doing.

It sounds like ya'll aren't on the same page when it comes to what you're playing, and you need to be. Otherwise, you're going to be stuck with scenarios like this - frustrated and ranting on a message board. If that's the kind of game he wants to run, let him at it. If it makes you uncomfortable, walk. No gaming is better than bad gaming. And if he doesn't realize what he's doing, then he needs to stop and take a serious thought about himself.

The whole scenario creeps me out. Wow.

I agree with that. There should have been a speech between you. Maybe legwork was insuffisent, maybe he makes it too tough, I don't know but in any ways, when it fails like that, it has to be discussed to get everyone on the same page.


That beeing said, those scenarios are pathetic in their story depth.

Ah but they didn't make it far enough to discover that those "gay gangers" were actually homunculi possessed by the spirits of Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, Andrei Chikatilo, Joachim Kroll etc as puppets of an I.E in a plot against a G.D. It's the players fault for not realizing this.

Have you considered that you are the victims of a long view set up? Is there a common thread to these runs? Are you getting the jobs from the same Face or Johnson? Do you trust them? I know I would not. Slightly faulty intel once in a while is to be expected, major emergency screw up...are they trying to get you dead, or want someone to be the scapegoats when everything ties together and the shit hits the fan. Of course if none of the above apply your GM is just yanking your chain. I would have a nice long "talk" with whoever is giving you these jobs, how medieval you decide to get is entirely up to you.

Yeah, we didn´t have the time to make it that far. ^^

No, i don´t think that the GM has a problem with homosexuals, he simply wanted to give us an additional "motivation" to succeed, but i think he screwed it up massively. The only positive think on that evening was, that we gained 6 karma and i had time to buy 2 force-6 sustaining foci. On monday we have the traditional walk-and-get-drunk-festival in germany (there surely is a term for that, i don´t know about) and i will try my best to get rid of the other memories from that day.

I believe that's called a pub crawl. As for the original topic, I've had talks with my players about what they wanted from the game and I've given them feedback on what I expect from them as players. If it hasn't always helped us stay on the same page, at least talking about things as a group has kept us in the same book.

Would you let your player totally disappointed without even talking to them about long term?

He just likes to make sure everyone agrees on the house rules.

Lies and slander!

It's written, that makes it libel.

I think you misunderstand what my post was about. I am not talking about a long term item, but something the GM has planned for sometime in the near future game time, however players playing characters usually concerned with immediate gratification might not even look at. When I say a long view set up, it simply means the GM is thinking ahead, and is setting them up over a couple of sessions as the fall guy. So yeah I would let my players be disappointed for a couple of sessions because they trust me enough to know that I would not be doing it without a reason, but it would never get to a couple of sessions. In fact they would be extremely suspicious if I ran either of the missions described, and would be flipping every rock in town and talking to every homeless person, ganger, face, bartender, etc. to find out if they have heard anything related to whoever they are taking orders from. In other words my players would be driving the story from the moment they got screwed, and trying to find out if they were sacrificed by their employer, or if they were being deliberately exposed.

If it was me, I would (and have in the past) look the GM in the eye the moment it was obvious things looked to be too problematic in-game, and say "I'm gonna head out."

If there's some sort of story going on, and it's not something my character would tolerate, my character isn't going to tolerate it. If it looks like somebody my character doesn't know is setting him/her up to fail, my character is going to disappear into the shadows and go elsewhere, and if the person tracks them down and keeps it up, many people (including any NPCs who might have had information on me... INCLUDING beloved NPCs) will die in-game and I'll be somebody else with no trail back. Then again, I consider GMPCs and Beloved NPCs to be a sin that requires purging even without extenuating circumstances.

----------------MISREADED PART-----------------------------------------------------------------ANSWER FAELAN IN A TOTAL WRONG WAY---------------------------------------------------

If you play with a GM long time ago, you know whether he likes to do that or not. By no way would my players be so dissapointed that they'd talk about it into a forum because I like to create links between my scenarios.

You have hints when playing a thing like that. I mean, you can feel it if the GM does that on purpose or if his dissapointed himself. And if, players are disspointed, he would probably say something at the end of the game (like little hints that the story goes further than what they just played).

I don't expect that from this game looking at Machiavelli's original post.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



----------------ANSWER TO HIS POINT---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




erm, well if I was your player, maybe I'd do that research well, in order to fill the blanks from the game session. I'd find that scenario shitty, tough.

However, I think Machiavelli's group is very very light on legwork. But let's assume I did it right and it failed miserably. I would find it so unsatisfactory that you (the GM) expected us to fail then crumble back to pick up the pieces. I'would not like that way to set up a story at all and if we (players) let it go because we don't feel like pushing the story, the GM takes the blame.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If I'm being honest, I think this is what me and my group would have done in both situations:

- Tried to gain an advantage from the situation
- Once that failed, tried to compete the objective in any way possible (escape with the courier/hit the convoy)
- Once that also failed, tried to get away and cover our escape
- Once THAT failed, tried to get away individually - in any way possible
If that fails then you're dead. If not you regroup and say something like. "Man that was tough. I have no idea how the Johnson (or GM) expected us to do that...."

...and on to the next one.

It's fun. The GM has no doubt set up a scene that he thinks will be fun. It seems he's overestimated the challenge. If it persists then just comment afterwards that the runs are impossibly stacked against you, though he should realise that after you failed 2 in a row.
I often find the most entertainment in runs where you're horribly up against it and everything has gone to shit. I take pride and find excitement in just surviving where most others haven't.

I'd keep playing. Play his game. If he's set up a tough situation, throw yourselves headlong into it and see what happens. If you all die then next time the GM will know he set the bar wrong.

From this thread I can see that most people won't agree with this sentiment, but it is what it is. That's just how we play. Good luck in yours

With the information given it is unknown if the group in question is able to seize the initiative in scenario 2, or find a working trick in scenario 1. My group could handle scenario 2, while we are not that good at not triggering alarms (likely a part of scenario 1).

From the GM POV, scenario 2 requires offensive team play. The players are set up for the ambush, and either have to cope with the known enemies in front or an unknown enemy in the back. Individualists taking on opponents designed for the whole team should get hurt. If the players decide they can´t take the obvious route, a less defined secondary route offers some adaptability (no take-backs on stuff already described). Letting the team get away by NPC rescue is always possible, but if I did, I´d have the NPC give them some tactical pointers.

So have a nice talk and ask if you are just not getting the lesson, since otherwise there is a problem.

If it were me, I'd invest in some good quality published adventures and give them to him saying something like, "I thought these looked cool and I haven't read through them or anything. Can we run these?"

Some published adventures might give him an idea of what makes a fun adventure. The key of course, is to get published adventures that are good. I haven't played any of the recently published adventures, so other forumers might have some insight there.