@Jack that is perfectly fine.

I'm ready to go.

You see me confused - wasn't your plan to come from above?

In any case - everyone roll ini please.

1 Ini: 17+4d6 28
2 Ini: 18+5d6 34
3 Ini: 12+2d6 14

That was just Taurus' suggestion, something he will certainly be reminding them of later.

Initiative: 2d6+15 21

Spending Edge for first action.

Taurus is taking a big step into the room and find a likely target to put a cannon shot into, then doing so.

Wait, of course it is still the plan. But we wanted to take both ways simultaneously to surprise them at least on one of the fronts.





We then decided to take the saw rather than explosives but apart from that, no one objected or suggested something else. Obviously, James can't both hack and cut simultaneously, so one of the others would cut the whole. That's what the countdown was for, by the way.


Also, what just happened? I asked what I need to roll to remove the lid safely and you said it was just an ordinary case, easily removable without checks or tools.



I even declared that I bring my hardware toolkit for the occasion - which you then said was not necessary.

And it worked without a roll.
There just happened to be a trap that you couldn't disarm beneath the cover. The thing was welded shut for this very reason. You couldn't get to the innards without activating the alarm. Those vampires are devious and clever and there is a reason the local hunters fear them.

Blowing the door inwards with explosives would have given you surprise, as would cutting your way in from above.

You're kidding me, right?
There is no such thing as an alarm trap that is both unnoticeable and/or disableable. Also, there are rules for mantles on maglocks. You can't just make up impregnable security features that are impossible to crack. In a game that focusses on the exact very thing.
Also also ... I don't know how to put it more clearly.

We.
Are.
Cutting.
Our.
Way.
In.
From.
Above.
while parallely opening the door. You didn't even wait for Anna and/or Nova to post. In how much more detail do we have to describe what we're planning and doing?

Since Taurus is ready to jump in, I guess Nova will have cut open the floor, in order to get the drop on them. Hopefully, the door works as a fine distraction.

Initiative 22

Bye
Thanee

I'm referring to

Bolded by me.
Which indicates for me that the rest of the team was also stationed at the door.

In regard to undefeatable traps: Yes there are such things. That's the reason in RL most bomb diffusion is just a controlled detonation.
The rules for normal anti-tamper protections assume that an authorized user can open the case with a key or a token.

Core p.356
"When designing a trigger, the defenders need to think not just about when the trap should be triggered, but when it shouldn’t be triggered as well. So, unless the trap is set up to protect an area that no one is ever expected to go, it will need some sort of method to avoid triggering the trap for authorized personnel."

This trap did not have a designed method to avoid activation for authorized personnel.

You could have taken it out by shooting through the cover with high AP - but then you couldn't hack the door.
You could have taken on the Security Host to hack the door without triggering the trap
You could have blown the door inwards by explosives

And at no time did I tell you that it was without danger to open the cover. I only told you, that you wouldn't have to roll to remove the cover or need any specialized equipment beyond a micro welder.

Let's not quibble over such little things. This is supposed to be heavily protected and I don't think any of us really expected to catch them completely by surprise.

But we specifically bought the chainsaw, in order to get through the ceiling, so that part of the plan should still be in effect.

From my understanding, at least, it was never even considered that we all go through that door.

Bye
Thanee

Fine by me. I'll post a map sometime tomorrow, so you all know what's what in relation to everything else - also consider that wireless boni (especially smartgun) are likely not available for most gear, unless you have sufficient noise compensation

I also wanted to get through the ceiling, and even use a spell against the sound of that approach. I assume that cutting through the ceiling is very loud otherwise.

Stealth spell is effective, Weathercontrol indoors does not work.

So we'll take Energy aura/elemental attack for the combatish features (though the spirit would likely remain astral as it deals with dual-natured beings). I wanted it to be able blow up winds to clear smoke or prevent myst form, but I guess that won't happen

and p 356 continues with:
"This could mean some sophisticated system where the
trap’s sensor identifies friend from foe, or that the trap is
just not set up when authorized personnel are in the area.
The various sensory devices that can be used as part of a
trigger are listed under Security Devices (p. 362)"

So this door doesn't need a sophisticated fof recognition system and isn't deactivated. Did I miss the section in the rule book where it says "Oh, and lest we forget. Once you decide you actually want traps to just work, they are undetectable."?

The point is, if we have arrived at "And at no time did I tell you that it was without danger to open the cover. I only told you, that you wouldn't have to roll to remove the cover or need any specialized equipment beyond a micro welder.", then there can be just virtually no trust in my GM anymore. When I, as a player of a professional shadowrunner with a dice pool in electronics and virtually every associated skill way beyond 12, ask how to undo the lid, and you answer with "Ah, just do it, no test involved" and then that happens - it's like if I had asked with demolitions 12+ "How do I undo the bomb", and you say "Ah, easy, just pull out the blue cable" - and then the bomb blows into my face, which essentially undoes the bomb in a fashion.

There has to be a certain trust that I get important information if I specifically ask for them and my character is fully capable of retrieving it. I even declared that bnc
She has the knowledge, the sensors, the gear, the everything to circumvent such primitive measures as that.

I suppose, what really was going on, is: You wanted us to go through the roof, so you punish every other way. Like you did on so many occasions before.

I'm done. I'm too frustrated at this point to continue having fun in this game any more. I expect bullshit like this after every step we take.

That said, thank you for GM'ing so long. Your storytelling is definitely the best I've ever seen in any RPG, and I'm playing RPG's vigorously since I've been an eight-year-old child. Thanks to you, my favorite character in all time has experienced a ton of fun and interesting stuff. I really appreciate that.
It's just - if I want the author to predefine what's going on, I'll read a novel. I want a GM to do this with their players together, not on them. I don't think your approach to this is worse than mine. It's just different to a point where it's too exhausting for, I guess, both of us.

Feel free to play bnc as an npc or let her fade away into oblivion like Krestov. Or else, she can just panick at the sight of the first vampire, being reminded of Kerstin and what happened to her, feel unable to move against those creatues and chicken out, fleeing the scene and never to be seen again. Whatever suits your story best, I suppose.

Thanks also to Thanee, who has always been a good chummer, and especially gilga who has accompanied bnc longer and deeper than anyone else. You guys were awesome.
Enjoy the rest of the story!

Goodbye!

There is some challenge with the PbP setup where we play by interval and are not in complete agreement about the situation, and the common sense/ the way the world works, etc. E.g., I never considered an alarm system that cannot be disabled an option, not because of realism but because there are specific skills to disable alarms that require heavy investment, and breaking and entering is part of the game. The idea that cutting a hole through the ceiling takes as much time as opening a door is also quite funny to me, but such as games. When I had a guy drill a little hole through the ceiling for a cable it took him like 20 minutes to get through. Sure he had no futuristic SR tech but the thing is - what makes sense to you as a GM does not always make sense to everyone. So we sometimes need to make explicit assumptions about the world/implications of certain actions.

Here is another case of a way of action that made sense to Volker at least in the sense that he had some chance to succeed, and made no sense to you as a GM. In a real table, an 'Are you sure' or some interrupt from the other player saying wait we wanted to go through the ceiling or something would have prevented such a misunderstanding, but here we all come and go in odd hours, and some of us even read slightly different SR books (e.g. German/English) so that and considering it is a very complicated game mechanics, allowing for a lot of hacks and tricks making such situations unavoidable.

I assume that Volker did not want to butch the situation because bnc *is stupid*, but would have been alright to butch it because of a failed hacking roll, or some other thing and the thing is bnc is a professional so she should at least be aware that there is no way to open the lid without triggering an alarm, or at least if she look carefully or pass a knowledge check or something. I feel that aside from the mess of combat, Volker does not want to read about his character doing stupid stuff for irrelevant reasons like player and GM are not in agreement on the situation - he has no problem with bnc doing stupid things because she is unstable or broken and so forth.

So I hope we can somehow overcome this GM/player trust issue because the role is to have fun rather than become the most sophisticated SR players out there knowing how to counter every trick/hack in the book, and when Volker feels it is too much than I would suggest we try to find a solution. It is different than a game-breaking from lack of interest or commitment issues or 1000 other reasons, I mean we've been doing these things for years, and on my side, it survived all phases of kids, apartments, job changes pretty much everything.

So it would be a bit sad that the reason for splitting up is some misunderstanding about the situation of a combat scene. My two cents is that there is no right and wrong here, it is a question of how comfortable you are with the way the GM resolves your actions. I remember some other occasions like shooting someone through a closed door that Jack did with bnc that Volker did not plan to do. For me these are mostly okay to get the ball rolling, but we all have some sensitive points.

That said, while I hope we can hash it out and continue, I had a great time, and I think we should at least finish this scene/story, and think how we continue.

It's less the misunderstanding why it's my wish to quit but the way it is resolved. But apart from that, you put it into words way better than I did. This is exactly how I feel. Thank you, gilga.

I would feel all right with at least finishing this attack (bnc is not going to play a role in it anyway) so at least there's a proper end to this part of the story.

Sure, here's your ending: The vampires recognize bnc's avatar, give up and roll over to be curbstomped. Everything works according to plan, there are no surprises or complicatons.

Happy endings all around, the world is safe once more.

Sorry to the rest of you, but my motivation to go on with this story is gone.

New guy speaking up, so feel free to bite my head off, but I really don't see what Volker's problem is. The GM waited until we committed to an action, then told us the consequences. My perception in we were all stacked up to go on that door and the ceiling somehow got forgotten, it happens.

There has to be a certain level of trust between GM and player, and that is a two-way street, a player has to trust the GM too. The GM wants to tell their story, and there may be a hiccup here and there, but if you trust the GM, you get through it.

From someone on the outside of this interaction I see a player who wants to control every aspect of what happens, but that is an unsustainable interaction.

This topic goes years back. From time to time, Volker feels uncomfortable because of the way bnc's actions are resolved. Usually, he bites his lips and carries on. I guess this time is the final straw for him. It is always a very emotionally loaded topic one way or the other with the emotional investment in the player characters and the world-building.

I am sad that it escalated so much because it is such a great game that I enjoy.


@Jack As much as I do not want to say goodbye, you deserve credit and my appreciation for years of running this thread which has been an amazing ride. I immensely enjoy your storytelling abilities and genuinely fear your mastery of every trick in the book.

FWIW, I understand where Volker is coming from. There are rules for anti-tampering, and being told that removing the case is no proplem at all does imply that there is no such system in place.

But, in my eyes, Jack has always been fair (even when throwing rather difficult encounters at us). We cannot always be on the same page with everything, and even if one feels like this should work out differently, I would give him the benefit of the doubt here.

Anyways, it is probably moot to discuss this and just spill more bad blood. This is supposed to be fun for everyone, and if that cannot be guaranteed, maybe it is better to take a step back, as sad as it is.

I can also just say thank you for the hard work that you put into these games, Jack, and also to the players. The games have been a lot of fun.

Bye
Thanee

Don't even pretend you think this is about that. You know it's not.

You could, like the rest of us, have chosen to finish this with dignity and mutual respect. Instead you either don't even take the slightest attempt in understanding the situation, or you just pretend you don't get what happened to blame it on someone else. That's really a shame. There's a lot you could learn from feedback like gilga's or Thanee's (who are way better at this than I am, honestly).

Anyway. gilga, Thanee, if you'd like, I'd love to stay in touch. Maybe we can organize a new run.

@Crossbow If you're interested in it, I'll write you a PM. You only saw the tip of the iceberg and I get how you feel it's an overreaction.

You are not making it easy, that's for sure. You quickly derail into borderline personal attacks like here.

Bye
Thanee

Maybe I don't understand. Spell it out for me.

From my perspective the following happened IP:








On the OOC side:









At no time did anyone ask about security - or did I say there was no security to consider. It was all in the context of access and how long that would take. On the contrary, the caretaker did warn you twice about the occupants and going down the stairs to the cellar.

And you may have examined the door visually, but you certainly never wrote that bnc/the Anthrodrone walks down the stairs to check on the frame or the lock.

It's not as if I didn't drop several hints that using the door would be more problematic than coming through the ceiling.

So far I've read a lot of accusations, but no-one has actually told me how they would have circumvented the alarm trap. It's not like I placed a claymore in the wall and a wired sensor tag. It's an early warning system and I could have designed it in many different ways - most of them undetectable by you, so instead you would have been surprised. I opted in your favor to put a very noticeable alert in there that tells you to be on your guard. This very kindness is seen as a mortal offence, because I did not include labled instructions how to circumvent this obstacle. (For example, I explicitly mentioned that the cameras inside the house were on midlevel security hosts. No-one asked about them).

Yep, still with Jack on this one.

Guess I earned that one.


@Jack I'm sorry, I can't make it clearer than it has been already said. I think especially these lines describes it best:




These two nailed it pretty much. I do not want the mission to be easy. Quite the opposite, I sometimes think it's maybe even too smooth. We'll always pass, as long as we follow your story. What's bothering me is that there are heavy IC - OoC - interferences. Disagreements, misunderstandings, unclear communication and such on the real world change what is happening within the game. In every other game I've ever played, although most GMs are way rougher than you are, we rerolled events if they just occured out of a misunderstanding. We still get punished by our mistakes. But we get punished by mistakes we make in the game. So I guess that's the core to it.

As I said before:

I figure you are more of a story-teller. I'm more of a simulationist. That can work for a while but eventually the point arrives when the compatibility is exhausted, and I guess, we are at this point.

I'd still be willing to finish this story without any further complaints to at least have a round and satisfying end for gilga, Thanee, Crossbow, and, maybe, yourself.

Being a simulationist only works if you put in the effort. Saying your character is smart and wouldn't make mistakes. But not putting in the effort in describing and thinking things through will always leave me as the GM with having to do both the heavy lifting of thinking of all possible options as well as deciphering what you actually intended to do. This frustrates me to no end, since that obviously can only lead to me being responsible for your mistakes.

Worse, you accuse me indirectly of cheating you out of options and railroading you, while not actually being interested in finding your own solutions. I'm still waiting for a simulationist approach from your side how to defeat the welded shut casing without triggering the sensor within. "I have good hardware skills" is not enough without describing to me what you actually want to do.

Instead of focusing on the problem, you make it personal. If you had said: "Sorry, there was a missunderstanding, bnc would check the casing thoroughly and take care of the problem by [insert your ideas]" I'm the last person that would have not let you redo that.
There are such things as traps that can't be disarmed - I quoted the passage. You are meant to circumvent them, not bash your head against them and complain when they go off.


And I'm stopping the story here because to me as a GM combat is tedious and not particularly interesting. When the reward of this work consists of not being able to tell the story I've been working on, I don't see any reason why I should bother at all.

. I feel that Volker just feels strange having his so-called brilliant decker unaware that opening the lid may trigger an alarm just because he as a player was unaware of that fact. Then he'll have to live with the social implications of doing something silly like that if we survive the combat and it will hurt his perception of his character. I guess this is the big issue rather than succeeding/failing. We could have been in the same situation because of bad dice luck and he would not complain.




The thing is, I am not sure that I agree that to play a smart character you need to be a sophisticated player, but perhaps here is the root cause.

I.e., I thought that all traps in SR would be some skill test to disarm and the more sophisticated traps would just be more difficult to disarm and the creativity is a way to describe a successful roll but not a way to avoid it. Jack obviously sees these things differently and being the most sophisticated SR person I know, I feel that there always will be a gap in understanding the situation. In many cases I feel that the NPCs are just more sophisticated than myself - the shield-walk trick was a classic example of that. In Anna's case, it sort of suits her because she is not a thinker. Volker tries to play a hot-shot decker professional and sometimes fails because he is not such a super sophisticated player.

In this case, Jack wants a creative method to bypass a problem but none of us understood the problem to be solved (e.g., I thought we enter through the ceiling and no need to hack the door -- but i never assumed that hacking it was impossible.).

What Gilga describes is pretty much exactly how I feel about it. I don't want to need know every single book by heart and be a professional criminal in order to roleplay a professional criminal.

Despite this, I agree on your basic sentiment, Jack. I don't want to just reference to my dice pools. As you may remember, I came up with creative solutions a couple of times, earning bnc the nickname Sprinklers. I just didn't realize that there was even the possibility of my being in need of finding a way through a trap.
That's why I don't believe that to be true:
This is the core of the problem. We already had multiple occasions when we asked you to reroll events that only happened because of OoC misunderstandings, and you refused them all.

We all have different playing styles, obviously. For me, e.g., strategizing and planning is a vital part of the game, but it is essentially about roleplaying. As far as I can tell, for you, roleplaying is a vital part of the game, but it is essentially about strategizing and planning.
For me (and I believe, us), rules are here to help simulating reality. For you, from what I can tell, reality is something that is derived from rules. That is why, in our imagination, it takes as much time to clear a building as it would take in the real world, whereas in your imagination, it takes as many combat rounds as movement rules indicate.

Naturally, different interpretations occur, when perspectives are so different. But I believe, these are all things that can be overcome if all players work together. And this is the point where I feel there is a problem. Whenever your interpretation of the scene differed from ours (or mine, as I can only speak for myself), you essentially forced your interpretation on us, and we had to just deal with it and move on.