I've been browsing the Reddit Shadowrun board a lot at work lately. Don't judge me the've got Dumpshock blocked. This little gem was out there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments...ner_team_trust/

There's a lot of interesting stuff here and people could infer a lot about the nature of online games and their increased likelihood of potentially falling to dickery.

That is some interesting reading.. will be sure to follow this.

Thanks for sharing

My post vanished in making, but I agree with Glyph and Sengir on this one. Have fun playing alone with the GM, FNG player.

I wouldn't call that "Bastardy at its finest". The problem I have always had with PVP is that it is easy, and cheesy - just attack by surprise when the other players are unsuspecting and vulnerable. Especially when you are a more experienced player bringing in a combat-oriented character because the group needs some muscle. To me, it reads like a griefer setting out to deliberately ruin a game, then justify it on the grounds of the (newish) group playing the game wrong.

Even from a black trenchcoat perspective, the glaring flaw, to me, is that this guy betrays the team, then doesn't get betrayed or blackmailed in turn when he hands the technomancer/shifter off - they just apparently smile and hand him close to half a million Nuyen, rather than just shooting him, or getting him on audio/video and blackmailing him. Not to mention, if he set the deal up with his fixer, why isn't the fixer getting a cut? How is he getting this amount with no negotiations involved? And his fixer, the guy who gets him jobs in the first place, now knows that this guy, who works as a shadowrunner, will turn on the rest of his team if given enough financial incentive. Of course, the twin problems with the GM were that he was a new GM, and too nice about not nipping shenanigans like this in the bud.

So basically, the OP has his own ideas on the SR universe, with bounties on changelings and TMs, and his own ideas on roleplaying which seems mostly centered around griefing others. He joins another group as a guest, sees they don't share his vision, and proceeds to ruin the game for them.
Sure, like all griefers he will claim to have merely acted in character -- as seen when his character goes alone and without any ace in the hole to a meeting with Tamanous types, because he is so in character as a paranoid type who believes everybody is just waiting to backstab everybody else...


Also, there's people taking Dark Resonance as an authoritative source for anything?

I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Jokes aside: It's interesting and telling that the author starts playing "spot THAT guy" before the griefer is even introduced.

What#s so interesting about that, the writer makes no pretense that he does not support Mr. Asshole (who may or may not be the same person).

Yea that was pretty much my read, it's not that there arn't bounties out there, it's just they arn't that high with so few strings attached to make even some of the more amoral runners really come down on the negative side of selling out of their teammates.

I mean realistically a combat character will almost always run roughshod over a non combat character, especially with the benefit of suprise. If every team has to be that paranoid no one can get any work done. Setting stops working. So certain liberties have to be taken even if the book suggests very often that there is a certain level of healthy paranoia.

But honestly a lot of these guys are young, poorly socialized, and in an online setting. It's not a huge suprise they are going to be little bastards and think they are doing the world a service.

Interesting read. I concur with a lot of the stuff people have commented on so far.

I would think that if someone were a well respected runner back in Seattle they would walk away from the poorly planned low paying job instead of backstabbing their team.

I mean, who would want to work with a known backstabber? Better to work with an honorable idiot than a smart sociopathic backstabber.

That's just common sense.

I can’t believe some of the defenders of this jerk over at Reddit, who excuse or even endorse his griefing behavior as being not only justified but essentially required by the setting. They’ve apparently appointed themselves the guardians of The One True Way to Play Shadowrun ™, and are out to enforce their vision of the SR world/game with fanatic devotion.

“The setting is what’s important! You’re only allowed to play according to the canon version of Shadowrun, with no deviations! (As interpreted by us, naturally, not you.) Your “fun” doesn’t matter! Who cares if you’ve spent hundreds of dollars and invested much of your personal time on this game? You owe it to the setting to show up to the table every gaming night and play according to the strictly canon interpretation of the game even if you’re completely miserable doing so! Your silly “enjoyment of the game” doesn’t matter in the slightest! And if you don’t, then you’re just not real Shadowrun players, and shouldn’t even be allowed to own the books!”

There’s a reason I call these guys “The Cult of the Holy Rulebook.” Their dogma is simple: “Yea, verily, for the rulebooks are holy writ, and the developers sacred prophets. Thou must play strictly according to their rules, and never question them. He who shall deviate from this holy law is a heretic and a blasphemer, and shall be cast into the Outer Darkness, wherein there are neither gaming shops nor other gamers available to play with. So says the sacred law!”

And what kind of crack is the OP smoking with saying there are bounties on changelings? I’ve never come across that in any of the books. I’ve seen bounties on TMs, and Infected, and Shapeshifters, but never on changelings.

It echoes a lot of the attitudes I've seen on 4chan, actually.

@ JanessaVR: I wonder if you might have felt the same way if the party had turned out to be all emo-vamps and he had staked and baked the lot.

Just teasing, I know you would have either played along or told them politely to go sit out in the sun before departing for greener tables.

As for the Changeling bounty, it's not so specifically spelled out but there are questions raised.

In Year of the Comet, pg 31 ALL Yamashima corp changelings up and vanished and their records erased after the corp instituted a ban on them.
Whether they were shown the door or buried in R&D remains a question.

There are references scatterd around about 'nicer' corps line Wuxing and Yamatetsu approaching the changelings and offering them special employment oppurtunities, which implies that the not so nice corps (really? like anyone can tell them apart most of the time) might not have been nice in their approach.

Also remember SURGE brought about a slew of new paracritters like Demon rats being SURGED Devil Rats and o on, so the OP's/Killer Player's table may have been lumping all changeling types, both metahuman and critter, into the same category in regards for bountys.

I'd have been on FNGs side.

LOL. Indeed, I'd have tried to keep a civil tone, and not actively sabotaged them, but I'd not return for another game.



Huh. I always assumed that meant they were quietly fired for the "disgrace" of turning into metahuman freaks (and no Japancorp wants that), but that's certainly a valid theory.

Of course his fixer doesn't do business with any of the other characters' contacts, who don't now have a serious axe to grind with this asshole... I mean, there's a reason Hung out to Dry is a flaw.

Really, the whole thing reads as the FNG player needing to have had a more in-depth discussion with the GM and his fellow players to determine what kind of game they were trying to play. The fox shifter's player chimes in partway down the thread and runs their character down, and it's pretty clear that the story vastly misrepresents the actual characters at the table to make the poster look good.

Well, I completely agree with most of the people on dumpshock. I refrained from commenting one way or the other on the post to avoid showing my bias. But FNG is a dick and the GM is an asshole for playing along.

I have no problems with snowflake characters, and if everyone is going to have one, you might as well play along rather than derail everyone's fun because your bias of the Sixth World makes it so you think that snowflake characters are dumb. I mean, seriously, what the hell does it matter? And it's just being a dick to demonstrate your mechanical mastery of SR4, which is easy to game but difficult to make a believable character.

I debated just removing the post. But I felt the discussions in the comments had some merit. So I left it for people to come to their own conclusion, even if I strongly disagree with some people.

The only snowflakes I get angry about are ghouls, because as written HMHVV makes it too easy for everyone in the team to end up as snowflakes.

Well, that's the problem with people who want to follow some text without the slightest deviation: The corollary of such a belief is the belief that there must only be one correct interpretation of what that book says, there cannot be a "some read it this way, others that way, they all have valid arguments".


@Lurker

Insufferable players have probably been around as long as the hobby exists, no reason to start ranting about them youngins with their techno-doodats

FNG is an asshole who should be shown the door.
GM is an asshole for letting it happen.

It is pretty funny how some people on the thread are articulating in so much detail how the characters "should have" acted, or that what the turncoat guy did was "realistic".

Dude, we're talking about a fantasy setting that only exists in the imaginations of the players and the GM. It's not science. Nothing "should" happen except that the people gathered to play a game are able to recreate.

I mean, I wonder what they'd say if some people got together for a party, got drunk, and stumbled through Food Fight with pregenerated characters, getting plenty of rules wrong along the way. Would they be outraged and spraying spittle on the internet, explaining why logically Food Fight "should not have" been run in this manner, or why if you play drunk you're at odds with the official Shadowrun fantasy world, so your game was wrong?

The Stop Having Fun Guys just can't stand Snowflake characters, they piss them off to an irrational degree.

Eh, I get them on that point to an extent, but it really doesn't apply in this particular game. Everyone involved knew what they were playing except for the FNG.

Snowflakes only get really problematic when they come with players who can't play nice with the spotlight, or by their nature make the game all about themselves.

From the other accounts, it sounds like FNG did enter the game knowing what it would be like. And I think the other accounts sound a lot more plausible - the original post has a distinct tone of trolling and hyperbole.

Snowflake characters can be spotlight hogs, but to me, they are a lot less so in forum games, where instead of possibly interrupting other players, all they do is make posts that might be a bit long and overly-detailed.

My dislike of snowflakes comes from personal experience wherein almost no one who has ever tried to play one did it for 'interesting story' or character reasons. They just wanted a bunch of stat boosts and to play something no one else was. Generally they would shoot for things like Formori (why are these things even an option in 4th ed? Seriously overpowered for the cost.) These same players got right annoyed when they got hit with distinctive style penalties and weird NPCs suggesting very inappropriate things of them. But hey, you wanna play a freak, you gotta deal with the other freaks.

Now if someone came along with a cool concept that called for a snowflake and had previously demonstrated an ability to play interesting characters, I'd be all for it. In fact the only really good snowflake character I've ever GMed for was one I forced on the player. Sort of. He thought he was making a sacrifice for the team and it would result in his death. Instead he became a banshee. But he also played the hell out of that.

Oh yeah, GM and FNG, assholes, yadda yadda yadda. Honestly, don't people communicate when setting up a game? Like establish parameters and expectations? That should be where you start, not something that gets mentioned after the game has gone to hell.

This thread made me look it up, and I note I can't find it. Does anyone have an actual page reference for there even being a bounty on shifters, much less a 200k one?

Apparently Shadows of North America has places that don't have bounties on them. It is also at least 10 years old in setting, so that might have changed.
I found it weird the thread mentioned a specif love by the Yakuza for fox people, which seems weird with the Yakuza massive amount of racism and human superiority, I wouldn't think selling actual foxes to people would be in their interest.

Yeah, the only reference I can find in anything recent, someone brought up in that thread. Qubec apparently has a bounty on all sorts of paracritters, sentient or not, but that's the only thing I can find and is from early 4th edition.

http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Harmful_Paranimals_Act

sorry to tell you, but you're wrong. What actually happened was




I couldn't help laughing at the whiny "Please respect the lore" and the obvious consternation about people who dare to "disrespect the setting and the game". It's like putting a cat in front of a mirror, you can see them trying to cope with something their brains just can't parse

PS: Of course, the guy in question asked fro help building his first character a year ago. The late converts make the worst zealots...

Like I said, I call them The Cult of the Holy Rulebook for a reason.

Amazing how metaphors of religious fanaticism fit this topic, huh?

I gotta say that "snowflakes" bug me, because my characters usually end up carrying them. Sometimes literally. In my experience, snowflakes are usually very good at one thing, and a liability at many others.

---THAT SAID---

That table had a way of playing Shadowrun that worked for them. A new player does not get to dictate tone and setting to the table.

It is one of the GMs jobs to head this kind of thing off immediately. The instant the new player PM'd "I betray the team!" to the GM, he should have immediately PM'd back "We don't do that at this table. Lets talk more about this later."

There goes any possibilty of me visiting /tg/ in the near future.
What an asshat this GM is. Those are still YOUR players even if you don't like their playstyle. From what it sounds like he was doing a pretty good job as the GM up until this point. People where having fun even if they sound like the crew from Fairy Tail, to the GM's credit Fairy Tail fragging SUCKS, and you allowed them to die. And even if we are using the rolls rule over everything excuse he did NOT need to be such an utter dick about it. And I personally think he is the biggest loser of them all here. You have a party of players you don't like and yet keep coming back to them? Who is the loser here? At least none of these guys sounded Sasuke Uchia edgy level. I have stories about guys like those for days and I assure you this team could have been a lot worse. Further EVEN if they suck from a gameplay perspective shouldnt it be your job to go out of your way to educate them to maybe invest some karma? Sucky GM. The way he describes the setting makes me question whether or not HE is the edgy one in all this.

I'd suggest that you re-read the whole reddit thread because the GM in question certainly had his short comings but being an asshat and not liking the play style of his players was not among them - despite whatever the alleged "friend" who posted the story is trying to tell you.

If anything that GM was (and still is) inexperienced both in terms of dealing with an online role playing game environment of that type as well as with Shadowrun as the played system ... and the FNG-player (simply) abused that lack of experience to the point where he ruined a game session for the others and then directly or indirectly took it further for cheap laughs in that Reddit thread.



And this highly negative judgement of personality - which ironically bears some heavy resemblance to the judgemental antics behind the posting on Reddit and some of the reasoning that was provided for as to why that behavior (and how things went down in the game) is "ok" for some - is mainly the result of your lack of reading comprehension. I once again urge you to re-read the whole Reddit thread ... with particular attention to what the player of the fox shifter had to say about the incident, the truthfulness of the OP's portrayal of events and the relations with the GM in question.

I guess I see your point. I had something of an evil DM once and I can be kinda jumpy on these points. Was a little immature there. I still believe that their was more this gm could have done here though.

There are many things he could - and some will say should - have done. But quite obviously those things didn't happen and that largely because he technically wasn't up to the task of being the GM for that particular situation.

Chances are that we'll never find out what lessons he - as well as the other players - took from the experience except for being told by the fox shifter's player that the next time he should consult with him should another player make a similar move ... and that's actually something that I find just as disturbing as some of the comments in that Reddit thread about the rightfulness of FNG's actions or how that group is "raping" the setting with their "special snowflake attitude".

Following on that we see Changelings continue to be of special interest to the research facilities one way or the other...

Didn't you know? Games are srs bsns. Can't have "noobs and casuals" playing your game all badwrong.

Honestly, while as a player I might see that as disruptive, frankly as the FNG to a new group as a character, he pretty much nails it and the party. How no one has scooped up the fox character off the street yet and sold her off is beyond me. Bad plans, bad planning, no recon and expecting a guy you JUST got off the street to buy in immediately is a bit much.

Tabletop games do not occur in a vacuum, they involve actual other human beings. And as LurkerOutThere noted, "FNG took steps that no reasonable person should really take and expect the game not to essentially stop."

It doesn't matter how "perfectly in character" FNG was, he knew full and well that his actions were going to completely destroy the game, he just didn't care. That's called being a dick, and it doesn't matter how "perfectly in character" his actions were to try to excuse it. Feeble attempts at justification aside, he's a griefer - straight up, plain and simple. We'd have shown him the door, as would most groups, I believe.

That's sort of a meta issue. The real reason the game is occurring is because some people decided to play a game. So the people have to cooperate to some extent in order for there to be a game.

It's sort of like, why would a bunch of runners accept the low pay that is in many printed modules instead of simply stealing and fencing cars? Because on a meta-level there's the understanding the players got together to have fun with mercenary corporate espionage missions, instead of repetitive car thefts.

Or, if you're playing Dungeons and Dragons, why doesn't the thief character backstab the other player characters after a boss fight when everyone is weak and take all the loot for himself? Because there's an unspoken agreement that the people at the table want to focus on adventuring and storylines, rather than having to worry about a TPK generated by a player so that the player can write down lots of gold and loot on his character sheet just before the campaign is forced to stop due to everyone being dead. Most people wouldn't want to defeat the boss but have the story end there anyway because the thief killed everyone. They would rather continue with the campaign and see more of the story.

It's sort of like, "I could backstab everyone and take their stuff, but then the universe would end."

In some cases they do(backstab the player). But thats another game(and another story one could tell). Sometimes that "unspoken agreement" really does need to be spoken and discussed. Because one person's idea and another in the same game may not mesh.

But everyone that I've seen in this thread is complaining about the FNG and his moves, but frankly they were well thought out and made sense. To me the sole blame here lies at the DM's feet. Nothing the FNG did or could do or plan could happen without his consent.

Frankly I disagree a bit with alot of that(not that his moves werent dick moves, but I digress). The reason I say that is the blame, frankly, falls solely on the DM. At any point the DM could have stopped it, took him aside and said "thats not the type of game were playing". But that didnt happen even once.



And Unless you have more evidence, I'd say you werent conrrect in he's a griefer. I think his idea of the game and the rest of the party have very DIFFERENT views on how the game is played- its like when i played warhammer 40k- there were painters vs fluff guys vs minmaxers (among others). No one's method of playing is wrong, its just when you mix the two it goes bad fast. Same here.

It does not fall solely on the GM. This dick was being a dick, and he bears responsibility for his own actions. That said, yes, the GM should have kicked him out posthaste.



I read the Reddit thread. He was a griefer, plain and simple. He knew that his actions would destroy the game and did it anyway.

No, "don't blatantly and knowingly destroy the game" doesn't need to be discussed. Any gamers who can't comprehend this very simple concept have no business at a gaming table. Period. If you're the new person and you find that your idea of the game doesn't match the group's, then you leave, and you don't crap all over their game on your way out the door.



They were not-so-well-thought-out griefer moves. Had I been the GM, the contacts he turned over all that "hot merchandise" to would have geeked him and walked off with the merchandise, all of his stuff as well, and then dropped his body off at the nearest Tamanous chop shop for extra nuyen. He may think he's a devious mastermind, but he's just a stupid punk, as I would have brutally demonstrated to him.

Actually, it does. Your blind anger here doesnt do you any good. Its the DM's DAMN JOB TO MAKE SURE PLAYERS ARE RUNNING ON THE SAME PAGE, Its a simple concept you dont seem to understand. Its a conversation you have BEFORE you show up to the table. The FNG and the other players are playing two evry different games. It wasnt going to end well. But the blame, most of it, likes at the DM's feet. NOTHING in game happens without his consent.




You keep saying that without any other evidence of such. You dont know, and frankly CANNOT prove, he consistantly does or is a griefer. he played the part he had. I dont blame him. I blame the DM. Again, you keep saying these thinjgs but the blame lies eslewhere.

And yes I agree, he SHOULD have been geeked as soon as he turned them over instead of getting paid. He went with no backup. He shouldnt have gotten paid. In that I agree with you.

You are flat out wrong. NOTHING in game happens without the DM's consent. EVER.



I did too, disagree.

The fact that the GM is running the game does not absolve every player there of any and all responsibility for their own actions. I don't even know why I'm having to explain this.

This isn’t anywhere close to blind anger. Yes, the GM wasn’t on the ball, but from the thread it seems he’s new to the job; this was probably a very pointed lesson for him. The FNG is the new guy, and as such he’s the who should have asked some questions upon joining. Their gaming group existed before this Johnny-Come-Lately strolled in the door, and it’s not their responsibility to change their group just to accommodate this new guy (who just wants to trash their game to get his jollies). I repeat, if you’re joining a new group, it’s not their job to completely change everything around just to accommodate you.

Again, the presence of the GM at the table does not automatically and completely absolve each and every single player there of all responsibility for their own actions. If it does, then why does anyone bother to show up? The GM can just hold the game all by himself and send everyone an e-mail later letting them know what “they” did last night at the gaming table. No responsibility at all = no presence needed.



This is the very definition of a griefer. If you can’t see that, I don’t know what to tell you. Given the account as presented on Reddit, there’s no way this guy didn’t know full and well that his actions were going to torpedo the game and ruin everyone’s evening. But he still went ahead and did it. That is being a griefer.

I mean, we were just going over how there was limited supporting evidence for bounties on shapeshifters, and even then none for six figures ones. They are playing SR4A, which means shapeshifters have regen, which means giving them implants doesn't work right either, meaning the Yakuza aint gonna want them for their sex doll shop. More surprised she hasn't been prosecuted for walking around doing magic stuff without a license.