There is no wrong answer here, but we all have things we don't like in our games. In my own I generally speaking don't allow the following:

• No Vampires. I had one guy run one once. Once was enough to ruin it for...well it's been 19 years now.
• I swear to the gamer gods if you name a character Venom, Nemesis, or Shadow you'll pay. Oh you'll pay.
• If you're going to play any character based on anime, furries, or a movie you'd better do it with style, or you'll find Corporate Security has no soft spots for you.
• If you ever pitch a character to me by saying "I played this guy once before in another campaign", I'm betting you'll want to make a new character real soon. In fact I'll help you!

I'm sure I have others, but what's not allowed at your "table"?

no bitching about the "intent of the author" or "how the game should be played" or "balance".

Mind control spells. Mages are powerful enough.

Sound suppressors that wear out after 300 rounds... fuckin recockulous. Or any other equipment behaving as though it's still 1965.
Rules-lawyering during play.
Incredible behavior without consequences.

Other than that, just about anything goes.

A) Ghouls ,especially if they want to explore their "Emo" Side
B) Shapeshifter,specially with Technical Knowledge, or no explainiable Reason why they're in the Shadows
C)Powergaming Multipurpose Chars (Mages that also hack better than the Hacker ,or Riggers that put all the Streetsams to Shame)
D) Completely unsocial Chars that can't interact with other People much less the Group (A little "Rough around the Edges" ist totally OK though)
E) generally total inept Chars ,that depend upon other Chars to save them or to purposely
put the Group in danger for the "sake of the Story"(In German called "Taschenlampenfallenlasser")
(The SR-World is dangerous enough,no need for "Fouls Play" amomng the Runner)

with 5 forbidden Dances
Medicineman

No PCs with toxic shaman, twisted agendas, black magic, etc. And I'm a stickler for availability rules. You are gonna have to really really work for that Ares Gauss rifle.

It's rare I'll flat out say "no" to something. I'll allow almost everything and anything, but there are some caveats that I make sure I'm upfront about.

1) "Equal Response".

I like combat in my SHadowrun games. I told someone not long ago that I firmly believe that to most players, whether they will admit to it or not, in their head they see Shadowrun as that scene from The Matrix, where Neo & Co "sneak" into that Office Building loaded down with guns. That said, don't expect to be lugging around giant assault weapons willy nilly.

When I plan out a session, I plan for X Amount of challenge. And X is fluid. If the PCs are all packing little more than Pistols and Armored Long Coats, I balance the opposition based on that. If they have layered form fitting armor underneath armor jackets and assault rifles with APDS or EX EX rounds, I plan around that. What gets the team in trouble is when one or two players steps outside the group party balance and decides he wants to start playing rough. When 4 or 5 characters are in light armor and small arms, but one guy starts kitting out heavy arms and armor, that throws off the party balance, and means I have to plan the bad guys accordingly. Which means the other players either have to step it up or the one player needs to tone it down.

To put it simply, my rule is "If you have it and use it, they can have it and use it". When appropriate. Just cause you own a sniper rifle doesn't mean the gangers will always have snipers aiming at you. But if you're bringing assault cannons to every firefight, more often than not the enemies will have appropriate responses. I like my games cinematic, I run it that way, and like I said, I'm upfront with my players about it. So there's generally no complaints. They know that if they want to escalate the game, they can, but it's not going to make things any easier.

(THat said, there's also a certain logic applied. A small 6-man local street gangs not gonna have military hardware, for example. And just because you walk into Renraku's HQ unarmored and carrying knives doesn't mean the security guards won;t be packing and armored. )

2) "The world doesn't abide the Strange and Unusual"

Vampires and Ghouls and the like are considered monsters. Many of these creatures have a bounty on their head. I downplay SURGE a bit, so outside of a few very specific locales, if you're a freaky looking Surge mutant, you stand out. I don't usually play up the racism aspect too much for most characters, other than to set certain moods or in specific circumstances where it's plot appropriate. But in my mind, playing something weird, unusual, and that stands out in a crowd is a FLAW, and gets treated as such.

I play very "Mohawk" style, so a little weird is fine, but I generally assume that's more in the lines of personal style. I have a very 80's image of Cyebrpunk and Shadowrun. But if, even after taking that into account, you still stand out. Well, it's not a good idea to really stand out.

3) "Flaws re flaws for a reason"

You don't get free points in my game. If you take a flaw, it will effect you somehow. Color Blind characters will find themselves needing to "Cut the blue wire" or meet the "man wearing the red tuxedo". I'll play up negative social flaws if you don't. If you took the flaws for some free points, make it a point to acknowledge and play with those flaws yourself, cause if you don't, I will.

4) "Be a team player"

RPGs are a group game. They're generally a cooperative game as well. No one wins, and if anyone loses, chances are the whole group loses. So don't be that guy, and don't play that character. It's fine to have your own motives, your own goals outside the group. Just don;t mkake those goals and qualities counterproductive to the group. When you have 3 elves and a troll at the table, don't play the intolerant racist. Don't be an asshole, don't ruin the game for anyone else. Otherwise, you'll find yourself making a new character, or even looking for a new game group, real quick.

Bull

Most of the time, I houserule things I have a problem with (emotitoys, common overcasting...) the only thing I explicitly forbid are:

* characters who don't fit the setting/mood I've given the players
* characters who can't work in a team or don't fit in the team
* characters who don't/can't have a life outside their runs
* characters who don't make sense (have things they can't explain, can't explain why they are Shadowrunners...)

I get the first two and agree with you on that position, but what's wrong with Black Magic? It's just another tradition besides Hermeticism, Shamanism and all the others.

Technomancers and Free Spirits do not exist in "my" Shadowrun. It's my opinion that they don't mesh well with the setting, so they don't exist in games I run. Therefore, no one is allowed to make them as characters.

I'll second that. Frankly, this is a pet peeve of mine, especially when the character wasn't originally from the Shadowrun setting. I once had a player try to convince me to let him convert what was originally his Spelljammer character to SR (it was a mindflayer if I recall correctly). I kid you not. And when I refused, he got huffy and said that he always plays that character, regardless of the game system/setting. I recall him rattling off a dozen or so games that the character has been played in (Rifts, Space 1889, Star Trek, Dark Conspiracy and quite a few others that escape me at the moment... it was a long time ago). I still refused, so he created a new character but spent most of the time pouting about it.

Emotitoys. The street samurai gets one, and now he's a face. The face gets one to keep from becoming obsolete. Now everybody has the emotitoy bonus, which is like nobody having the emotitoy bonus, but we did just spend twenty minutes screwing around about it.

Stick 'n' Shock. Dumb. Bad for game balance.

• 5th IP: It's game breaking to allow them in - especially for riggers.
• Spcial forces characters in a 400pt game - or any other concept that would realistically need more than 400BP/750 Karma.
• Emotitoys: as others said its dumb/broken/not thought out - Though we do have a houserule that makes them less broken - they only add dice to Judge Intent which makes a lot more sense and fits the fluff better.

This has been pretty interesting! Thanks for the replies folks!

Fabulous post Bull, you and I appear to play very similar games. I want to comment on this one that I've quoted specifically.

I've heard some people claim that they play "simulationist" games and I think it's a mistake to go down that road. It will lead to no fun. In my games I run a style I call BBB: Balance within Broad Brackets. It is essentially what you are describing here. I partition up potential opposition in the game world into broad categories of power. For example: gangers, elite gangers, syndicate members, low-level corp security, megacorp security, government/corp strike teams, hyper-elite units. I define each category in relation to the players as: inferior, roughly equivalent, superior and then I balance them according to those broad categories. This allows some variance in the balance based on the capabilities of the party, as you suggest. For example, corp security guards should be "roughly equivalent" to the players, but that allows for variance to give them Pistols and Armored Jackets if the players are packing low-power armaments, or SMGs with EX-EX and Full Security Armor if the players are bringing in the big guns.

Generally, I try to challenge my players "just enough" in their run and this means keeping my hand constantly on the challenge "knob" (so to speak) while the run is happening. The writeup from my last run "Extraction Reaction" is a good example of my style of play. I varied the opposition just enough to give the players that "we barely escaped" feel. Sure, I could've dropped half a dozen combat drones with LMG's spitting EX-EX full bursts, shredded them all, and said "boy, where you guys ever dumb" but that's not fun. I think its far more fun to play a game of "equivalent challenge/response" as you describe, Bull. Again, great post.

Not too much I won't allow. Some things that make me cringe.
The above mentioned mind flayer character. Is possible with Surge (cringe) tentacles,beak, dietary requirement brains, slimy skin and psychic tradition from digital grimore.

As for the emoti-toys my group never gave it much thought until reading DS posts. I've since said if it bothers them that much we can treat it as a teamwork test instead of a flat bonus.

I'm good at working around problems so as long as you willing to give me a good reason/background I'm willing to bend. No cross over game pc's or non canon abilities though.

It is an error to assume all groups' ideas of "fun" are identical, or that all people are playing RPGs for "fun."

Ok, I'll give you the first one, but the second? Are there people really playing an RPG to not have fun?

Yes. I know, I know, it's called a "game" and you "play" it - you can bet I've had this conversation before! - but there are other reasons to game than simple enjoyment. Think of a flight simulator, or chess.

AI's, they're just too foriegn for my group
The Infected, I have enough trouble getting the dwarf and troll toe get along, now you want to toss a vampire in the mix?
Free spirit characters, see AI's

Yeah, I see where you're going, but I think that is contrary to the design intention of the game. What you describe is the design intention of a tabletop war game.

I don't allow:
Rules abuse - just because the rules say you can build a character who "auto-succes" soaks 6 spell casting drain doesn't mean I'm allowing it (same goes for dice pools over 24 in practially anything aside from "gun", its kinda easy to hit 24 dice in gun...). This does apply past character creation but all the best examples are in character creation.

Carte Blanche on the Supliments - if I don't know the rules for it, it requires my approval. If I don't own the rules for it, it requires my approval. If I don't like the rules for it, it requires my approval. Shorter version: all charaters get looked over by moi for a basic "I understand you character sheet" check.

Total Illogical Results - See the coloision rules RAW... seriously... weird stuff happens.

Irrelivant flaws - If you take "scorched" or simialr situational flaws I expect you to use the points on matrix skills or edges so you will actually feel the need to expose yourself to the flaw. (What the heck does the greater point value for "hacker" mean anyway? at what point do you stop being a Sami with some computer skills and become a hacker and vice/versa?)

Background free characters - seriously, I don't care how "lite" you want it but give me SOMETHING to work with people. Everyone had parents and even if you are an orphan raised by Shadowrunners to do Shadowrunning thats SOMETHING (actually a full write up on such a background would probably be quite awesome). Be something other then "this is my name and this is how I kill things".

That's entirely possible. I've never let that get in my way.

My point is twofold: first, the specific, that it isn't necessarily a mistake to be simulationist, or that you can't have fun doing it; myself and my group are proof that neither is necessarily true, since being simulationist not only hasn't been a mistake, but we've also had fun [even when "fun" wasn't necessarily the point].

The second is a more esoteric point, which is that we shouldn't assume everyone is getting the same thing out of the game we are, or that they'd want to; all-too-often, on this board and others, I see people making these absolutist statements about why you should roleplay and how you should roleplay, and this rule should be changed in this way because it doesn't work for our group so therefore it won't work for anyone. I think statements like these are unnecessarily limiting of possibility and irrationally self-centered of presumption.

I don't mean to pick on you, personally - I like you, personally! - but I wanted to remind people that no two groups, no two players, are identical, and what works for one may not work for many, and what works for many may not work for one.

1) FFBA, as written.
I have found that FFBA causes more problems than it solves, and that the game as I run it is plenty survivable without FFBA. Adding it tends to cause armor values to balloon outward and make damaging anyone an exercise in getting ridiculously large dicepools and withholding some for extra damage. No thank you, I would like gangers to be able to hurt each other, and not have 14-15 soak dice. So FFBA follows ordinary everyday stacking rules, just like if you wanted to wear an armor jacket over an armor vest.

2) Emotitoys, as written.
No. There's no way that a toy with Empathy Software will cost a fraction of the software itself. That is illogical and nonsensical. So instead of what they do as written, I go with the interpretation that an Emotitoy will add dice only to see if the subject is feeling whatever emotion it's keyed to. Congratulations, you now have +6 dice to see if your Johnson is feeling nervous/happy/sad, not +6 dice on all social tests. And also, your emotitoy will try to play/comfort/entertain the Johnson, cuz that's what it f'ing does.

3) Totally Ice Cold Pros, All The Time.
Sometimes in my games, shooting a guy in the face IS the best way to solve a problem or send a message. While my games tend to be more Splinter Cell than The Matrix, let us never forget the PCs live in an awful world where people will bully them, take advantage of them, or try to kill them if they believe the PCs to be weak. Sometimes you need to let the rest of the underworld know you mean business - and if the Yakuza kidnap a friend of yours to strongarm you into doing a free job, sometimes it IS best to demolish one of their brothels and kill 10 of their soldiers... and then offer your services to a different kyodai, to make a point. Because if runners could easily be strongarmed without danger, they wouldn't be working for money...

4) Rampant Destruction
...But if you do that too often, SOMEONE is gonna bomb your safehouses, because nobody lives in a vacuum. Nobody. Eventually you'll piss off the wrong people if you act like a high and mighty dick who's always waving his Predator around, and if you burn the wrong bridges, you WILL end up face down in a ditch. If not from an underworld figure, then from some Lone Star cops that've had enough. They can't prove you did those crimes? So what! They might just kill you to get you out of their hair.

I'd allow pretty much anything else, with a reasonable explanation. I run really wide-open games most of the time.

That's another thing I don't allow in my game: Designer's Intent. If they want to show up and try and change how I game, well I have a lot of ammo.

?

For us, the no-go-zones are Sniper Drone Wars (as much as it makes sense, skies full of drones with high-powered rifles don't make for fun campaigns), Monkeyright (effective program piracy breaks the decker economy in ways that in-game price lists clearly indicate doesn't happen), and the Watcher Attack Pack (Friends in Melee rules with a horde of Watchers).

This is for SR3, of course; I don't know if they apply in SR4.

~J

Big brother. Roughly equivalent to "made man", at last I recall. Vs shatei, the "little brothers", which are the street punks and soldiers who don't have anyone kicking up to them. I could be wrong with my terms, though, since it's been 3-4 years since I read anything about the yakuza.

Because I figure no wakagashira or shateigashira is gonna be dumb enough to kidnap people to strong-arm heavily armed professional criminals into doing free work, unless they are really new to their job. Even if it works, those guy's will hold a grudge.

Sure, everyone should play to their own style. That's fair. I suppose I should rephrase to say that everyone should take a good long look at their play style, and discuss it with everyone in the group. I think some people have the sense that "simulationist" is the "correct" or "best" way to play and they might be inhibiting their fun by not considering other options.

I won't just happily agree with that, I'll Q it for FT. Well-said, all around.

"Fun?" I forbid fun.

Everything 4th edition

Definitely agree here. If you're GMing for a new group, or even one or two new players with an established group, before you ever roll dice the first thing that should happen is a discussion of what you all want out of the game. Everyone has to have fun. Or, as 32 pointed out, on rare occasions "not have fun", though even then I'd argue that it's simply a different, and potentially foreign, use of the word fun.

Either way, everyone needs to approach the game from the same direction, or you run the risk of it falling apart.



And I forbid you to forbid fun. So Nyah!

Bull

P.S. Good thread Paul! I like these kinds of discussions

You probably want "ani" or "aniki"; "kyoudai" (兄弟) means "siblings" and would refer to both parties or their relationship, not the senior member.

("kyodai" or 巨大 means "huge", but there's a long tradition of dropping length cues when transliterating.)

~J

It was definitely kyoudai, not kyodai - I have a terrible habit of not transliterating the う. It's in reference to "siblings" of the family, rather than junior members. I don't have the book it was referenced in any more, but I think it was written in the early 90s, and was translated from Japanese, so I assume it was the correct term the guys used. Then again... early 90s.

It's the oddest thing - throughout my entire college career, I think I learned three or so times more about nepotism in big business and the Diet than I ever did about the yakuza.

Shatei is 舎弟, btw. Not 射程. Though I think there may be some jokes made about that at the expense of the soldiers...

What I don't allow:

Gimmicky characters. I know a few players can take a gimmicky character and turn it into something with real RP, but I'm sick of saying "okay, we're playing a realistic low level horror campaign" and having the person show up with "I'm an awakened dinosaur!" That was D&D of course. But I've had people show up asking in Shadowrun to play a werewhale or megaman. Ugh. Prove yourself on something more reasonable.

Other than that, I'm okay as long as the character should be in the shadows for one reason or another.

Though one thing I hate seeing DMs do in Shadowrun is having a million mages everywhere. God, why does every security company and gang have half mages? I know the DMs want to deal with the mages in our party (we've got four, though usually only one or two show up to a session) but seriously, it's rediculous. I just ran a run (we cycle through DMs) with only one adept and no other magic users as the opposition just to prove it could be done (it was the hardest they've dealt with, and one runner almost died).

JaronK

great thread, ok, what's not in my games?

1) girls (just kidding)

2) exploited flaw points. like sensitive system with no cyberware.

3) players killing players (without consent). I believe Bull touched on this with the whole "if one person loses, we all lose", and chargen takes forever.

4) dead parents. unless your character is 50 years old(or metavariant equivelent), its boring to hear"my parents are dead". I'll allow it if its really intergral to the background, but really? com on.

The word is used to refer to fellow members of the organization, but I can't find an attestation for it referring specifically to full members—my 国語 dictionary collection has no meaning of that kind, nor does a quick google search.

The answer, obviously, is for me to watch Yakuza movies until I hear it being used like that or run out of movies. See you all Monday

~J

I don't want to derail the thread, and I agree about the lone orphan being something I dislike, but there are lots of reasons for people getting killed if they were born 2010 or abouts. VITAS a couple times, natural and other disasters, displacement, etc.. I can see no parents, but not really no family.

Maybe the no parent crowd wants to have a reason to be in the shadows instead of a loving home (or not having potential hostages) and should be coaxed into coming from a broken home with abusive parents? Ones if they were used for leverage the runner would hand over his weapon and tell them to put them out the PC's misery.

That's sweet, but in my experience, their side of the conversation usually goes like this:

"No, no parents. They, uh, died. No, I'm an only child. Grandparents? Uh, already dead, I guess. Yeah, I grew up on the streets, all alone, and had to kill to survive. Can I kill stuff now?"

In short - and this is me speaking solely from my [unpleasant!] experience - most of the "dead parents" crowd seems to really be looking for excuses to not bother thinking up a background, because they're in the game to blow shit up, not to simulate the existence of an actual person in an actual future. Which is fine, but doesn't really fit in my game.

I agree, but most of my characters have no parents, but usually do have siblings or family. Though they usually are older, too. (30's or 40's to 70's for an elf.)

On topic,

I rarely allow non-canon gear. The last instance was something that was 5 times as good and cost 1/2 as much as anything in the book. Every stat but 1 was better than book equipment, and that one was almost the same and kind of inconsequential.

This is Sad...

Keep the Faith

Had a player take SINer but in his history, his parents are dead, his family is dead, everyone he used to know is dead.

And? Did it work out for the Character?

Keep the Faith

I asked him in what way should that quality be a disadvantage if everything that someone with a SIN has to hide or protect from his new lifestyle as a criminal is gone.

So I thought about it for a few days and wrote him a new background: He became a data carrier for a UCAS spec ops called "Operation Looking Glass," all his cyberware was given to him with an agreement that he would continue working for them. Eventually he decided to defect into the Shadows.

But both his high loyalty contacts either work for the same outfit he used to or are directly involved with the military. Only they know what he has done and where he has gone. And they have both stuck their necks out to cover his tracks.

First... SINner is more than a quality that involves his family or background... with it you can be royally screwed... You are a legal citizen, complete with all that entails...
Just Sayin'

Second... Your solution sounds like a Win-Win for the group... did it work out that way?

Keep the Faith

It's funny that you should ask, because the whole game will be revolving around his character for awhile. First of all, he (actually his character is a she) has TLE-X and he failed his roll at the end of last session. The way that I interpreted that quality is probably different than many people would. Basically he's screwed. His character is now suffering from the symptoms of TLE-X until he undergoes brain surgery or gene therapy.

He will be playing an NPC (a free spirit who has been hanging around them, helping on occasion). There will be a series of runs cumulating in the team having to break his character out of a Fort Lewis mil lab as she finishes her gene therapy. They won't know its her till the very end, in which point they will have to decide whether to give her up to Mr. Johnson who hired them to extract her or to let her free. She has info in the Data Lock she used in her old data carrier days.

Sounds interesting indeed...
Good Luck

Keep the Faith

In my game, I don't allow Paul. Other than that, pretty much anything is fair game. But Paul, that's...that's a bridge too far.

Awesome...

Keep the Faith

The only two things I would really ban from a game would be empathy software/emotitoys (I would consider keeping them if they only added to gauge intentions tests), and distance strike.

Empathy software, because it is ludicrously cheap to get, because being able to use such software in real time doesn't make sense to me, and because it is monstrously overpowered - maxed out empathy software is double the effectiveness of glamour! Kinesics is capped now - at half of that bonus! And as I have said, and someone else said in this very thread, all it does is add pointless dice pool inflation. Everyone gets it, because if they don't have it, they are 6 dice behind everyone else.

Distance strike, because it lets you completely negate the other fighter's defensive ability - it's a "subtract your enemy's skill and reaction from his defense test" ability. It's too overpowered, because anyone with it has too huge of an advantage over someone who doesn't have it. Anything that becomes a "must-have", because you will get wiped out without it, is too overpowered. I don't have a problem with adepts firing chi bolts, or what have you, but as written this power is too unbalanced. It wouldn't be any worse than a gun, except that it lets you combine the devastating damage codes you can get with unarmed combat with the negation of your opponent's blocking.


Also, while I am a big softie on flaws, I still think that any flaw should be an actual disadvantage - doesn't have to be a big one. So I wouldn't allow, for example, a mundane character to take incompetence in awakened skills.