Yeah, I'm immature.

So we're finishing up the boat mission that things have been building up to for months both in and out of game. And I lost one of my bug drones.

Big deal. Drones die all the time. Why is it an issue?

Well, I've fitted out my drones with the best stealth programs in the game, and these things are tiny little buggers besides. So when I get told that it gets shot I say: "At least let me roll stealth." So I roll stealth. 4 hits on 9 dice, plus the -6 to spot a microdrone in the first place.

The GM doesn't even have the decency to pretend to roll dice. I mean, I knew that drone was dead before I rolled, but he could at least have pretended that all the money and effort I put into making it stealthy had any effect at all. I still don't know what killed it (You get used to that. Anything remote scouting, be it drone or spirit or NPC, WILL NOT even catch a glimpse of what killed it in this game), and quite frankly I don't care. I'm down a 1 grand drone in a game where I've got close to a million nuyen sitting in the bank, so that's really not the issue. My only problem is that he didn't even bother rolling.

Should probably amend with a question: How badly have I overreacted?

From your statement about scouting, it sounds as if this is not the only time a similar incident has happened.

Have you asked your GM why scouting always fails? Maybe he has had experiences in which cleverly laid plans were scuppered by reconnaissance. Now, as a GM, I would be proud of my players if they outwitted me, but there could be all kinds of mitigating circumstances that would bring your GM to feel differently.

Is there a general atmosphere of "players vs. GM"? Could some open and frank dialogue bring about a change in this atmosphere?

I played years ago with someone who thought his rigger's vehicles should not be singled out for attack and damage, because in his mind his PC laid out money over and above what other players did, and it was unfair to make him pay to replace vehicles. The rest of us didn't sympathize much, especially since he was the kind of rigger who sat back in his vehicle while we were targets. Is there a bit of that sentiment in your approach?

The game is too much fun to just quit, man. Talk it out.

Honestly?

Maybe a little bit.

Like you said, you are sitting atop a lot of hardware so the loss of a single drone isn't exactly bankrupting you.

GM's Fiat can be a pain, but he is the final word at the table and maybe he had a reason for needing that drone gone and didn't want to risk a roll and lose, revealing something too soon.

The dice are there to help resolve conflicts between two or more forces, but Drama/Storyline can and will trump these at times.

That doesn't mean though that the GM is totally in the clear though.

As he is mysteriously downing everything trying to do remote scanning/spying without any chance to defend or even identify then this is something to look at.

You should be able to ask what is destroying it at least by getting to see the wreckage and see if it was projectiles, sand, whatever that torn it apart.

Which should let you in turn try to devise a defense or choose other options. Maybe his Airborne Drone/scrying/spirit spying Defense is so good you are better off using a ground drone,

Strong electrical discharge? Consider sending one drone out front and have another bring up the rear so you can catch what happens to the lead drone on camera.

Ehh... depends on the table I suppose, but I subscribe to the "we're all friends here playing a game to have fun" theory, and that trumps any GM fiat any day. And Fueldrop was obviously not having fun.
Then he needs to communicate this. He doesn't get off dictating the player's actions without some form of compromise on his part. Even if it's "Hey, trust me for a little bit, the payoff will be worth it."

These little drones are, from what I can gather, central to the character's identity. This is what the character is good at, this is where their pride is invested in. By taking the time to customize his drones, he's telling his GM "These drones are Important™ to me" and by utterly disregarding that implied statement, the GM is communicating back "I don't care, what I want to do is more important than you."

The sulking and ragequitting is likely an overreaction, but this is why communication is so damned important at a table. The GM probably isn't perceptive or reflective enough to understand the implied communications of not only what Fueldrop is telling him, but also what his own response is telling Fueldrop in return. If Fueldrop were to tell him "Hey, you just eviscerated my character's identity" and the GM replies with indifference or worse, that's the point where you walk out, because at that point the GM obviously doesn't care about anyone else's enjoyment of the game but his own.

Honestly if it is the same GM as the GMPC Vampire mentioned in another thread...you are over reacting, but not. You really need to have a long discussion with this GM and bring up all the issues you have, and wait for the f-off, in which case walking out is the right thing, or you might get an actual constructive discussion, I don't know the guy so only you can tell. If you have talked to him about this shit and it keeps happening, and this is just the latest incident, then you have reacted appropriately and you need to find a new game.

Perhaps but he stated he lost only the one drone.

If you are not having fun due to the loss of a single drone, rigging probably isn't the career for you.

Was it heavy handed by the GM? Possibly, but without knowing more of the total situation it is a little early to burn effigies of the GM just yet.


Communication is good, but it can be hard not to overtip one's hand either in the middle of the game. What happened after the loss of the drone?

Sometimes you have a mystery to solve and maybe he is expecting FD to figure out what is happening.

An earlier poster suggested using two drones, cheap front one as bait while the other hangs back and sees what happens.

Now FD does also mention how drone/spirits/NPC trying to recon are being taken out with no chance to know what happens in this game in general and this might be an issue that they need to address, both as characters trying to figure out what is going on just as much as checking with the GM to see if this is really how things are supposed to be working.

It is possible the GM might not comfortable with advance scouting/planning on the players part, whether he feels like it's giving out too much information or it will somehow allow them to bypass whatever he has laid out.

But again until someone talks to him we won't know for sure.


But has the GM totally invalidated the character concept by neutralizing all of his drones or was this an isolated instance? He may not know what killed it but were the other attempts through out the game also without dice rolls or just his one case?


If this is the same GM as his Vamp issues this could be part of a larger ongoing issue and a sitdown is going to be needed sooner or later.

I've only ever had two games that I walked out of.

The first was back in college and the GM was known for being kind of an asshole to everyone all the time. So, taking it with a grain of salt already. He's also one of those "incredibly weird luck with dice" people, so I think the GM ended up rolling stats for 7 of the 8 characters (D&D). I walked out after one session.

Why? He threw us in the underdark (we knew we were going, to be fair), used destricans (sp?)--the blind hound looking things that use Sonic attacks--to railroad us into the first encounter: friendly hospitality of redcaps. Who were nice to us because they were throwing us in the gladiatorial pit come morning. And by "throw" I mean "herded by more destricans" into jumping off a cliff into a giant spiderweb.

Oh, and then the destricans collapsed the edge on top of us. My character got buried in the resulting rubble, which the GM was perfectly fine as "just killing" my character, but everyone else had a problem with it. So I took a tiny bit of damage instead and was given a strength check to dig my way out. Subsequently I missed the entire fight on account of missing the DC (a raw 15 on the d20 was insufficient, I think I finally broke out when I rolled a 17). And it's not like I was some pansy cloth-wearing wizard either. Barbarian.

The wizard ended up getting strength-drained by the "colossal spider so large the redcaps built a fucking tower on its back and manned it with archers." That player also walked out of the game immediately afterwards.

The other game I walked out of was one that was run over VOIP and IRC. That game was run by someone who should never have been running a game at all, much less one as involved as the game he was running. A little history: this group (or some fraction thereof) had...at this point I think four games on hold "because a particular player wasn't showing up and no one could get a hold of them" (not the same player, but rather someone didn't show up, so the group started a new game, only to have someone not show up). So either this game was #4 or #5, I've lost count. Same GM for all of them.

Anyway, I left for one singular reason:

The GM could not be arsed to watch everything going on in the "public channel." That is, the channel one would assume that the game was actually happening in (which was basically nothing as apparently the entire group save me and one quietly moved to PMs). I was told later that I should have privately messaged him if I wanted something done. In four games I had never seen this kind of behavior.

On another occasion out-of-game (I believe this was the week just after the above) trying to get some information out of the GM I asked a rather complex question, two hours later got a response of "yes" and was unable to get further replies. When I did finally get a response, his delay was due to "taking his roommate to the hospital for food poisoning." Which repeated the following day. Attempted to re-ask complex question that does not have a binary yes/no answer, two hour delay, excuse of "taking his roommate to the hospital." Both me and a friend I had brought in to bring our numbers back up to a respectable count both left the game that week.

Now then.

Should you be walking out because the GM didn't even bother faking a spot roll on your drone? Not by itself, no. But given the propensity for scouts never coming back alive, the flagrant BS of not even bothering to roll and not even being secret about it...

That would warrant talking to the GM and bringing up your concerns. If he doesn't do anything to address them, you're totally in the clear to just walk out. If he says he'll address them and then doesn't, feel free to walk out in the middle of the session. If he does actually change and address your concerns, do not hold this situation against him in the future: it was addressed and resolved.

My big thing in situations like this is the fact that everyone has agreed on the game you're playing. By which I mean, if I have to dittle dice for a result, *everyone* has to dittle the dice as well barring extreme (as in the whole session hangs in the balance) circumstances. Full Stop. GM Fiat needs to be explained immediately and the circumstances need to be made clear.

Anything else and you're just being a railroading douche canoe.
.

It's not the one drone, or even the cost of the drone. It's that this drone, or whatever it represented, was Important™ to the player in some manner and how the GM dismissed that importance. Maybe it wasn't the drone, maybe it was issues with the reconnaissance itself, or maybe it was the effort itself in making the drone hard to spot. Regardless, it doesn't matter what it literally was, the important part about it is that the player cares about it, and that care wasn't just not acknowledged, but actually injured by the GM's (probably inadvertent) actions.
As we only have Fueldrop's side, quite probably. I'm sure there's two sides to every story.
There's no card in the GM's hand that's ever worth not communicating and acknowledging player concerns. Usually a "I hear what you're saying, but I think the payoff will be worth it, trust me a little more and we can talk about this after the game if you're still upset" will suffice, but if a player's willing to walk from the table in the middle of play, inadvertently revealing a plot point is the least of the table's concerns.
Maybe, who knows, but a GM needs to be communicating these expectations to his/her players. It's not the player's place to throw darts into the darkness and guess at to what the GM expects/wants. Similarly, it's on the players to communicate to the GM what they want out of the game too.
At the same time, Fueldrop's response to said vampire was not exactly the most mature response either, so I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of issues that need a sitdown and a lot of honest, respectful, communication about the wants, needs, and expectations each person at the table wants from gaming together.

This is why communication is important. This is why being on the same page with your GM matters. This is why groups should talk some shit over -- expectations, campaign social contract, power levels, challenge levels, reward levels -- before a game starts.

I mean, if you were this upset over a drone getting blown up, think of how pissed off your friend would be if you killed his precious vampire GMPC (after metagaming to find out he was a vampire, which was the only reason you wanted to kill him). Metagame-y grudges, taking stuff like this personally (when the other person doesn't expect you to), being flippant about this sort of thing (when the other person isn't), etc, etc? It's all stuff that's toxic, and can wreck a friendship, not just a campaign. Talk it out first.

It's a game, folks. You're supposed to be playing it with friends. Act like they are, and I honestly think about 95% of the terrible stories in gaming vanish.

You need to vent, and that´s ok. If your trouble is really that the GM didn´t bother rolling, consider the max Perception dp possible and buying hits. Not that I think that is what happened.

If you are rolling in dough, your GM is unlikely to be about limiting PCs to watching from the sidelines. I´ve seen games break under the weight of rules-wise legal stuff, maybe your GM is afraid of missions going easy-mode with too much intel in player hands. You should prepare for runs- and be allowed to prepare - as long as there is sufficient time. You should not be stopped cold.

Walking out on the last leg of a major part of the campaign is IMO not fine, too. You know who you are playing with, enable everyone to finish the story, don´t disrupt the experience.

Was that before or after you insisted on nuking a vampire just because?

That'd have to be 22 dice.

4*4 = 16 + 6 = 22

That's a lot of dice, even on perception.

I'd say "get over it". Just remember how much effort and time the GM invests in making a game for you to play, and remind yourself how much fin it would be if they weren't even there. They're trying to tell a story, and from the sounds of it you have extremely powered characters. Maybe they just need your scout dead to avoid wrecking the story.
I'd live with it or download Shadowrun Returns and play by yourself.


{from the desk of someone who NEVER gets to play, but is always expected to GM for the rest of the party}

Er.

No.

GM: "This'll be a pretty standard game"
Player A: "Alright, I'll be the face."
[sometime later]
GM, without rolling dice: "The NPC doesn't believe you. He presses the silent alarm."
Player A: "I call bullshit. You didn't even roll dice!"
Plasteel: "The GM's trying to tell a story here. Maybe he just needs your bluff to be called to avoid wrecking the story."

^^^
And what's the problem with that?

Do...you understand the concept of "collaborative storytelling"?

If the GM's plans are utterly fragged if [some action] doesn't go his way, then he needs to write a book, not run a game. The players in a RPG are as essential to telling the story as the GM is, and if the GM is going to completely deny the character's actions, then the player is removed from helping to tell the story and may as well just leave.

^^^
I think you're taking an extreme view of GM "forcing" action in the game. If the GM cannot simply tell the players "this happens" without having to beat them in a roll off, then the players might as well just sit around the table and tell each other the story. No need for me to invest all my time coming up with a plot, building NPCs and acting as the referee/storyteller.
To be honest, players that can't take something going against them without demanding a chance to roll out of it are being babies and not actually participating in the spirit of a RPG.

Don't mistake what I'm saying as suggestion that the GM simply rules on ALL situations that would constitute a roll, but if they can't dictate that something simply happens from time to time, then they don't need to be there.

My favorite set of "how the GM plays this game" rules I've seen are as follows:

"GM says 'yes' or rolls dice."

That's it. Either what the players say they want to happen happens or the GM rolls dice, i.e. it's a conflict.

The point is:
If the GM's not rolling dice when his desires come into conflict with the player's desires, then he's being a bad GM. It's not even alright once in a while. One of the best games I've ever been a part of was the result of the players going "fuck the plot, we're going to do this our own way." Said plot then grew out of control (as there was no one to keep it in check) and so the GM started another game (running concurrently with the first) with a different group of people who actually had an interest in solving the original problem (I was in this second group).

Both games were very enjoyable in their own way and the GM was flexible enough to tell the story the players wanted to be a part of. He did not go "Nope, that spell fails. Deal with the problem."

^^^
To each their own.
I don't agree with you in even a slight way, but I have 0 interest in trying to convince you my way works. I'll have to settle for the 20 years experience I have running nearly every game under the sun, and the fact that in the end I'm the one that did all the work building the campaign, teaching the players the rules, assisting them in building their characters and developing a world for them to run around in. If they are so disrespectful of the fact that my own free time was used to run the game and do all the behind the scenes work, then they can go play by themselves. If they wanna be little children and pout and stomp their feet because I didn't let them do anything they wanted with complete disregard to the effort I've put in, they probably aren't my friends anyway.

Feel free to explain again how I'm a BAD GM since I run games differently than you.

You mean:

Do the things that they built their character to do, that you allowed them to build and join the game, thus allowed them tools they expected to be able to use, then took away from them because "it didn't fit the plot at that moment."

I'm with Draco18s 100% on this one. If the GM's plot is porkchopped by a microdrone...on the character sheet for them to note the presence of at any moment...then that GM needs to stop being the GM. If you don't like that the players have a chunk of gear you didn't plan for? Too fucking bad! You improvise, adapt, and overcome. It's not like the players ever really do what you expect anyway, right?

You know that Cthulhu crossover I mentioned a while back? The one with a Force 7 Servant of Yig? It went down like a pencil-necked prize fighter. I spent all this time working it up and I got one player failing his Sanity check and a dead major challenge in the session down in two fucking combat rounds. I even blew edge trying to keep the damn thing alive and it still got punked. And you know what? I certainly didn't tell them "Your 6 success Stunbolt fails". I sure as hell didn't tell them, "Your 5 success attack with a weapon focus katana misses". I fucking told them, "Good Job! Sorry it proved to be such a disappointing fight..." and carried the fuck on with a major plot challenge carved in two behind them.

Yup, you got it.

That's why when I let them build a decker I was actually agreeing they could successfully hack EVERY system out there, and how I let them build a street samurai so I was actually implicitly agreeing they could kill anything they wanted at any time.

Like you said though, I'm a BAD GM....
I'll have to live with that, just like you'll have to live with always being right. It's a tough life.

Plasteel... I, uhh, really don't understand this martyr complex you've got going on. If GMing is really that much of an onus on you, you might want to take some time off from GMing.

I also want to reemphasize Draco's point of collaborative storytelling. Everyone is at the table to have fun, and the moment one person considers their own fun more important than the fun of their friends' fun, because of reasons, they should really take a step back and reevaluate things. Further, if the players are only allowed to do what you think they should do, you might be happier just writing a book.

Again, you guys are right. I was very clear that I supported NEVER letting the players do what they wanted, only what I wanted. I agree, killing the 1000Y drone of the player with a million Y bank account was totally uncalled for and since it's all about COLLABORATIVE storytelling, the best thing was for the player to just get up and storm out leaving the rest of the group to pick up the pieces.
Honestly, it been an education. This week I'm gonna make sure to advise my players that it's really all about them, I'm just here to do all the leg work required to support them in whatever fantasy enacting they desire.
I never really thought of it like it was about making fun for everyone. I thought spending dozens of hours planning, writing and building was really all about me.

Bunch of geniuses here. Really. Truly.

A game consists of the GM coming up with plotlines and NPCs, the players telling what their characters do, and rolling dice to determine what happens. Dice are important, because they 1) let players quantify what their character's abilities and capabilities are, and 2) add a truly random element of chance to the game. A lot of what the GM does will not involve dice rolling. The GM determines what plots the NPCs are hatching, what the stats of the NPCs are, how many of them there are, what the environment is like, and many other things. The dice only come into play when the players are trying to do something, or when something is happening/being done to a player character.

My personal preference is for the GM and players to both have input into the direction of the game, and for dice rolls to be impartially respected. Plots are fine, but once the PCs get involved in them, they should be able to affect them. I think if GMs make their plots more character-driven than event-driven, they can adjust to things going off the rails by asking: what would the NPCs do? If the group kills the main villain, great. Maybe the two lieutenants vie for the newly opened top spot, the lackey who had an obsessive stalker crush on him transfers it onto the character who killed him, another lackey vows personal vengeance on the PCs, the two rival groups move in on the weakened organization, the bio-plague that he was going to unleash stays buried in a bunker since no one else knew about it, and so on.

There can plenty of reasons for a GM to do things that seem arbitrary. Sometimes it is something that the PC would not know about. Sometimes the GM needs to metagame to compensate for a glaring mistake that the players are attempting to exploit, or to simulate someone like Harlequin who is a lot smarter than the GM trying to run him. And some GMs do run more storyteller type games, where dice rolls are ignored when they would mess up the story. This is something that the players should know upfront, though. Some players actually prefer this style of play, but it can make others feel disenfranchised from the game.

I want to be clear here. The drone wasn't important. I'm not a rigger, the drone is just a drone. What hurts is breaking the illusion that the game is fair.

This was just after a no-roll failed hacking attempt. I knew from the outset I was going to need to beat the odds to do anything with this system, but I was still giving it a shot. I rolled 4 hits vs a rating 6 host. He didn't even roll to see if the host got unlucky. Flat fail.

And no I have not done anything to the Vampire, which should be dead from our initial encounter were it not for the fact it was regenerating magical damage in a forest (IE somewhere with rather a lot of wood lying around).

Also, the old 'follow one scout with another to find out what happens to the first one' trick? I've given up on that after the 5th 'you see a blur and the first scout disappears/is blown up/is torn to shreds/other'.

For the record, this drone was shot. It's an insectoid drone that was on the ceiling of a ship docked off a tropical island in the spring (AKA insect paradise) while the inhabitants were feverishly building barricades to slow down the 100 or so troll gangers who were tearing the ship apart. Good thing they prioritized shooting bugs with their APDS rather than saving it for the actual threat they were preparing for.

Yeaaah. That does stretch credibility a touch.

Oh, and the drone was slaved to my deck with sleaze 7. I was not called upon to make a check to see if it was spotted on the matrix. So it wasn't that.

Your GM sounds...awesome, Fueldrop. You have the patience of a saint, is all I can say.

That GM deserves a taste of the sharp end of the rulebook. I'm going to second the "patience of a saint" call.

the problem isn't that he didn't succeed. the problem is that he didn't really even get to try.

if that was the type of game we were looking for, we'd be playing with a computer for a GM. the GM is a human being because it allows flexibility... if you're just going to railroad me to where you want to go, then don't expect me to care about where we're going.

and if i don't care where we're going, well, i've got better things to do with my time than to be denied the ability to make meaningful choices in a game where that's the only thing i'm able to do.

if you want to write a story, then write a damn story and if it's interesting, i'll read it some time... but don't try and pretend like you're playing a collaborative game if my only collaboration is trying to guess what you want me to do.

Hola FD,

Good to hear from you again my friend.

Between reading your last post here and from the diary....... wow.

Just... wow.

I am glad you were able to sit down and talk with the GM and clear the air a bit about why and what was going south.

However, I would still be a bit cautious in your optimism in going back already to that table.

It seems like there is going to have to be more than a little bit of an overhaul on how things are done within it and it may take time.

I am not saying you should not go back, but just keep in mind this is going to be sort of a relearning curve for everyone there as they get used to the changes.

Damn i at least drop dice to make the illusion of chance, usually the wrong number of sides and usually the players pick up on it. Course i only do this when there's nothing for me to roll

I have to say, i get annoyed when the guy running the game, doesn't seem to care if i wanna contribute something yo the game or it's narrative. I usually walk away and stop returning phone calls when that happens. So i understand. Find a new group or a new GM. Hey, if i could find a way to transfer to Australia? I'd game with ya

Don't do it.

Kangaroos are notorious dice stealers, though if you can mug one that pouch is a literal dice mine.

If you do ever find yourself in Australia I'll be sure to find a way to set up a one-shot. Open invitation!

Oh, stop being ridiculous. What people are saying is that the dice should be coming into play to determine success or failure - and they're right. Anything else completely disregards the effort the players put in (you don't somehow think the GM's the only one investing anything into the game, do you?) and destroys their agency, and I simply cannot understand why the fuck you think that's a thing you get to do.

Yeah, it sounds like the GM and you need to sit down and figure some stuff out. At the very least he should give you the chance to be awesome, and not just blow a drone up "because".

No gaming is better than (frustrating) gaming.

Plasteel, you can play the devil's advocate without being so abrasive. Bring it down a notch or three please. We understand that you don't agree with some of the view points others are expressing. You aren't going to make yourself better understood or your audience more receptive by drowning them in sarcasm.

Also, violating the Terms of Service by flaming within your first dozen posts isn't really a good start.

You are missing the point.
It isn't that the character wants to win. It is that he wants the CHANCE to win.
That is what the dice represent. Not forgone conclusion, but the possibility that things just might go the character's way. Your way completely removes any chance whatsoever.

So, I have an interesting question for the others here.

Would you guys consider me a bad GM for not rolling dice outside of combat?

It's a well known fact that at my table that outside of combat I often won't roll dice to save time. There are difficulty thresholds for pretty much every non-combat task (using the Success Test Difficulties Table, pg 62 SR4A, or other skill-specific tables scattered throughout the book), which I decide as I'm planning the mission or as the situation requires. When it comes time to roll, I have them roll and decide success or failure on whether they beat my target number of hits. Dracos18's example is exactly the kind of situation where I probably wouldn't roll dice. For a social situation like that, I'll include all of the relevant modifiers and redo the difficulty target on the fly (by changing my target number into dice (by multiplying it by four), adding or subtracting as needed, and then "rebuying" the hits). I'm really quick with the math, so it speeds up things at my table a lot. Since I currently have six players (and have had up to eight regulars), keeping the game moving matters quite a bit.

My players know I do this and they know that I'm fair with my targets (for the most part, I am human). The times I will roll my dice is combat (ALWAYS!), major story-related hacking, when it's a "random" event (like ID scans, "Oops, looks like the troll got through security just fine, but the squat gets pulled aside for 'extra questioning.'") and when I don't have a strong feeling on how I want a situation to go (ie, let the dice fall where they may).




Now, that isn't to say I think what FD's GM did is right, but I only know FD's side. As Devil's Advocate, I know there have been a few times where I needed to use my GM Fiat for the sake of story, but it's always prefaced with a "trust me." Sometimes, it pisses players off. Usually the player will roll with it and talk to me after game. Sometimes, we can talk it out; sometimes, we can't. In a group the size of mine, I can't please everyone all the time. My job is to please as many people (myself included) as much possible. Which brings up that sometimes I have to use my GM Fiat for the sake of the group. I hate doing it and will only do it if it's a last resort, but I do. I know this is where I'm going to get the most disagreement, but let me explain. Every person in a roleplaying group is there to tell a story, whether it's my campaign or the story of Bob the Street Sam. GMs know that players are spotlight hogs and will take any opportunity to make the story about them. This means a normal roleplaying group will need something like four or five different spotlights at a time. Problem is, this isn't really feasible. Good GMs know to balance who gets a chance to shine in the spotlight. However, GMs are human and sometimes we make mistakes and let one player have too much time or have a build that is way better than we thought or whatever. The majority of the time, we can fix it without having to resort to extreme measures. Other times, we have to take a more heavy handed approach.

A real life example: Recently my hacker has had way more than his share of the spotlight, often outright eliminating the need for the face to do anything because all of the legwork had already been done digitally. I decided to remedy this with a better-than-average maglock on the rear door to the facility the hacker couldn't just pop open. This would necessitate the face talking their way in and sneaking to the back to let the rest of the team in. This was all supposed to go down without either player knowing what had happened and all would be good. However, Lady Luck had other plans and the hacker rolled an ungodly amount of hits. I still wouldn't let him in. He knew that by all right and reason he should have beaten the lock and started to argue. I told him we'd deal with it later, and moved the scene to the face (and accomplice) at the front door, talking their way past security in a tense scene with excellent roleplaying. The two managed to con their way inside and to bluff and sneak their way to the back door and let the rest of the ream inside. This took a significant amount of time away from the rest of the party, but everyone save the hacker was deeply enthralled by what was happening. After the game, the hacker came to me more than a little angry. He knew I basically failed him on a whim and he was rightfully pissed. When he called me on this, I blatantly told him that I personally felt that he'd been getting way too much time in the spotlight and that the face and accomplice hadn't had much of a chance to do anything significant lately. I'd love to say that he was understanding and forgave me, but he didn't. He pitched a bit of a tizzy fit and proceeded to bitch about it to me constantly for the next few days. While he was whining at me via random texts, I had two of the other players approach me and tell me how cool it was that the face got to do his thing. First was the face himself who had been feeling useless lately and was grateful he got a chance to shine. The other was a member of the second group that thought the tense cat-and-mouse with the face was way cooler than the hacker popping the lock and everyone sneaking inside the back way yet again. Eventually the hacker stopped being butthurt and I was able to explain what I did and why. After a lot of discussion, the hacker came around and agreed to share the workload a bit more.

I know a lot of you, especially players, won't agree with what I did and that's okay. There's a reason I'm talking about this.

Like I said before, what FD's GM did sounds like something isn't right. FD, you need to sit down and talk with him. You also need be willing to accept the fact that you might be part of the problem. I say this because a lot of your threads here deal with walking out of games, complaining about how unfair your GM is, and planning ways to take down killer GMPCs. I'm not saying that to be rude or anything, it's just that I find you saying and doing things that I found myself doing as a player when I was being a problem and didn't realize it. So, good luck with your GM, keep an open mind, and listen to what he tells you back.

Honestly? Yes, I would.

The system has rules for skills and social interactions for a reason. Whole character archtypes are based around this. By not using dice outside of combat, you are massively favoring the combat-based characters, as they are in a position for their character sheet and random chance to matter much more. Assumed difficulties and successes means that the non-combat characters have only their own luck to work with, they will never get a success because their opponent failed.

This is also an advantage to the game world and NPCs, as they only have to worry about the player's successes, not their own failures.

It depends.

And it largely depends on how consistent those fake-rolls are. If the player's are rolling a stealth check and will still never roll better than the opposition, then yes, you're a bad GM. It's as much bad GMing as the players kidnapping a hobo on the street and interrogating him about the villain's plans because, "He's an NPC played by the GM, the villain is an NPC played by the GM, therefore everything that the GM knows any given NPCs also know" would be bad roleplaying.

Does a shadow taking out the remote scout without being seen never fly? No. But you need to have a good reason for it when it does happen. It's supposed to be an "oh shit, this thing is way more badass than we thought" kind of thing. If it happens all the time all the players are going to do is stop trying, aka lose agency.

Why would he assume that his hack would work? I mean IRL many businesses back doors do not open from the outside, no key, maybe a push to talk intercom, and a surveillance camera. Even if he hacked the lock, how does he know it is not bolted from the inside. Was it previously determined that the back door on an out of sight alley, in the world of Shadowrun was somehow the primary entrance for the building. In my experience the door with full access via a keyed lock is usually the most visible one, just so the junkie in the alley, or some gangers don't get any silly ideas.

I ostensibly wouldn't. You say you communicate with your players. That's the entire thing. FD's GM effectively said "rocks falls, drones die" when FD went to scout.

With eight players, I think it'd be natural to look for shortcuts to speed play and allow the game to move along at a quicker pace. If everyone's on board with this, then no harm's done. However there are those that really just want to roll dice. This where the art of the compromise comes in. You say it's your job as GM to make sure everyone's having a good time; I would modify that: it is the responsibility of everyone at the table to ensure everyone has a good time. If Bob is the only person out of nine people that want to dice everything out, it's Bob's responsibility to realize this and not try to ruin the experience for the other eight people by demanding everyone needs to dice everything. As a compromise, as a GM you can say that when it's Bob's time to shine, you make a specific point to dice things out, but not as a regular deal. Or if that's not enough for Bob, Bob should find a group that's more fitting to his playstyle.

There's a couple maxim's I try to follow regarding rolling dice, and they're all related:

Say Yes or Roll the Dice. This goes to stakes. If there's no conflict, there's no dice to roll. Further, by saying yes, you're enabling the players to have an active roll in shaping the story.
Only Roll if Failure is Interesting. Take the ubiquitous locked door, the standard rpg framework is if the player fails to pick the lock, the door remains closed. That's boring and it stalls the game. If there's nothing at stake if the player fails but to try again... and again, go back to the above maxim. There's no point to making the player roll to open the door other than to institute a false sense of challenge. Instead, a failed roll means a guard happens by and asks if he needs help. Which leads to the next maxim.
Fail Forward - Resolve the conflict with the player's roll and keep the story going. Make the scene transition so that one conflict leads to the next. If the PC's fail, make sure the story progresses naturally from that failure, don't keep the players stuck in limbo guessing at the right answer.
Roll for Conflict Resolution, and Eliminate Rolling for Failure. Two related concepts that I tend to lump together. They are a bit harder in SR, as the nature of the system encourages players to roll to roll to see if they can roll. I'm looking at you Matrix... yeah, you know what you did wrong. Anyways, as an example I once was in this game that had an assault on a castle. This was awesome in theory, but it was a roll to get the grappling hooks up the wall, roll to climb, roll to sneak and surprise the guard, roll to take out the gaurd, roll to climb back down the other side, roll to sneak across the grounds, and on and on. None of the rolls were all that hard individually, but you roll enough times, and you're going to fail at some point. If the entire story is predicated on the players making it to the keep to face the big bad... all of these little rolls are at best a distraction, and at worse can actively derail the game. If the interesting stuff is in the keep, don't bother with rolling to scale the wall.

As to your specific example, I sympathize with your hacker: hacking's what he does best and he got an amazing roll in his specialty and it was taken away from him without any obvious rational. This was your bad. There never should have been an opportunity to hack it, even if you think it has a 0.1% chance of happening... it'll happen. Set it up such that the only way it opens, for whatever reason, is physically from the inside and thus is unhackable. By setting up a hackable maglock, you are setting an expectation that the hacker can hack it, and you violated your hacker's expectations when it suddenly wasn't hackable. If you violate those expectations, players will be mad, conversely if things turn out better than they expected, they will be happy. It's a elemental human bit of psychology. That said, once you explained that you were trying to share the spotlight with other players, his lack of caring about the other players having a good time would not go over well at my table.

Essentially, you did the wrong thing for the right reasons. Again, to reiterate, communication is the most important thing, as it sets expectations and allows a consensus of the table to be built such that everyone can agree to those expectations.

I don't want to edit this into my previous post, but binaryrwaith's points made realize I wasn't exactly clear about a few things. First, to be clear, my tendency to not roll only applies to non-dramatic situations. In the example about the hacker, the face was consistently being rolled against by everyone he saw for both social and disguise tests. Any time I make a ridiculous roll (either really good or really bad), I will also show the players because I feel they deserve to know.

He brought up that opponents can never fail, which is really true. Or, put another way, I just assume that most people doing their job under normal circumstances won't fail at their job. Let's take an example using the logic I follow. Conning a barrista out of a free cup of coffee has a variable difficulty. If you're a regular and asking for a plain cup of joe, then you'd be looking at one hit. Basically, all you have to do is say please and not act like she owes you the world. If you've never walked into the shop before and are asking large, double ristretto, non-fat, no foam, extra hot latte with cinnamon in a double cup, no sleeve, you'd be looking at a difficulty of four (Hard from the table on pg. 62) because under normal circumstances no barrista in her right mind is going to go to that much trouble for someone she doesn't know. This still gives you a chance at success, maybe she thinks they have a cute accent or maybe she's feeling particularly nice that day, but it's not a huge chance. Modifiers can affect things too, like how busy the shop is or how well thought out a plan is. Walking up to the counter after standing in line for ten minutes at a busy shop and demanding a free cup of coffee won't work (4 hits). At best, it'll get "No really, what can I get ya?" and at worst (if you push the issue and get belligerent), it'll get you tossed out on your ear. If you hang out for like ten minutes, then in the middle of a rush, ask the girl who's handing out the coffees where the medium mocha you ordered ten minutes ago is (1 hit after modifiers), you're probably going to get that mocha.

@binarywraith: I respect your disagreement with my style. I totally encourage it, in fact; what works for my group won't work for all groups! I disagree with your statement that my style favors combat over non-combat characters, though. When I have stats for a character (like for a canned mission) I'll buy hits for an average roll and use that as a base. That's a 1:4 hits:dice ratio. Players have a 1:3 hits:dice ratio, assuming normal probability. That means my players should succeed the majority of the time against similarly skilled opponents and that is what I find in my game play.

@Dracos18: The shadow thing is total BS, I don't condone what his GM was doing at all. Consistently denying players like that is bad GMing, plain and simple. I was just making the point that perhaps the GM might have a reason and that he might be part of the problem too and should be willing to accept that.

I do try to make my difficulties as consistent as possible, using the book and what I've done previously as a guide. And, if anyone has a question on how a difficulty was determined, as long as it's not game breaking (according to me), we will discuss how I arrived at a particular difficulty after the game. If it will break things, then we pause and discuss, but it that is rare. And I am more than willing, with good argument or evidence from the player, go back and change a decision. If a game-breaking discovery is made after the fact, then usually I will allow the group to choose what to do at the beginning of the next session. Occasionally, we go back and retcon something or even replay a scene or two. I'm not proud of it, but I've made mistakes bad enough that they've chosen to replay entire sessions. Once this resulted in me having to throw out a campaign that had I had been prepping and seeding in game for over six months of real time. I was pretty pissed, but the group was happy, which is what matters.

@Faelan: You're right, although it was glossed over. He rolled something like 10 hits and figured that he should have popped the lock, which is true. I could have spent a lot of time arguing with him about why it was also bolted shut (regular lockpicking roll), why there was a chain on the door (pulls out his bolt cutters), etc. I just said it wasn't good enough and since I didn't feel like arguing with him and spending more time focusing on him, I told him to talk to me about it after game and moved to the scene with the face. He was not happy about that. Yes, I'll admit it could have been handled better.

@tjn: Are you familiar with the illusion of choice? I gave him the illusion of a chance at the maglock so he could feel he made a decent attempt (and I'd already established it was a maglock in a prior session). IIRC, it was a rating 6 maglock and had rating 6 anti-tamper (yes, I know it only goes to 4, hush). The plan was for him to not get the required hits and to just have it shut down. No problem. I can't remember how, but he managed to get this absolutely insane pool (way higher than I expected or even thought possible) and got around it. Usually, when this happens, I will just roll with it, but as I detailed before, I didn't want to. My mistake, which I'll totally admit.

Actually if it is bolted shut on a proper security door (90 minute fire rating steel jamb, steel door, kinda standard for commercial properties) he ain't using lockpicking. Bust out a torch, C4 the thing, or get a Troll with a battering ram...but I get your point.

Like I said, "It depends."

Not everything calls for a roll.