OK, I figure a little background will help.

A while ago my players were hired by Renraku to hit a Fuchi facility, they failed...big time. After their capture and interrogation Fuchi sent them back into the world with a small mission - to find out who and why Renraku was interested in the facility.

To add a little twist I had Fuchi brainwash them (just a little) so they felt compelled to complete the mission. I gave each player a separate handout briefly explaining their particular part of the mission but didn't tell them that once completed it would enable another player to complete their part and so on.

However, one of my players read his handout and promptly walked into the street and started shooting pedestrians...! After I got over the initial shock and gunned him down he moaned his part was 'too tough' and promptly whipped out another character he had been dying to play.

This left me with somewhat of a dilemma as one part of the chain was broken the other players would not be able to finish their own sections of the plan. I hastily re-jigged some of my GM notes and came up with a couple of ways in which they could free themselves of the burden.

The problem I now have is that I would like to reward those players who stuck with the mission (as a sort of punishment to the the selfish player) but I can't for the life of me think how to reward them.

So I turn to the creativity pool that is Dumpshock in hopes that you can succeed where I have failed.

Can you help me find a suitable reward?
A couple of things that might help or point you in the right direction:
- I would like the reward to be unique, something that would benefit the players as individuals.
- I really don't want to revert to giving them gear and/or money - they are currently in the Arcology and have ample opportunity to get both.
- It is currently mid-2060 in case any of you had ideas about future stuff.
- They remaining players are mundanes although I can't see a megacorp, even one on it's last legs, handing out magic items.

(Oh yeah, I uploaded a few goodies to my Street Samurai Catalogue over the weekend check out the 'Gear Listing' page for details, see sig for URL)

an appointment at a deltaware clinic that they know won't be filled. for security reasons, the original appointee didn't provide much info on himself, or even the implant type.

An anonymous penthouse overlooking the Amazonian city of Metropole, which was hidden by an executive as his/her private getaway and purchased through several shell accounts and so on. All of the links to Fuchi have dissolved along with that particular executive. They can't sell the suite because it would unveil the complicated lease scheme used to scam it from the Hilton.

Some suggestions.

Don't reward the players that stayed with it. They haven't done anything to earn an extra reward. Never give players something for free, it reduces the satisfaction they might get in the future when they get something by working for it.

Perhaps make the character that was gunned down survive. Perhaps a toxic or corrupted shaman or a street doc or a corporation (any "Dr. Frankenstein") stitched him back together. He becomes a major NPC in the campaign, out to get his former teammates or although hideous and mind-broken he still wants to help them. Or perhaps they find two-thirds of him alive and wired into some machinery in a corporate experiment.

Do confront the problem player. He did not role play his character well, unless he'd hinted at being suicidal in earlier adventures. Instead he essentially tore up his character sheet in order to avoid the consequences of character actions. Ignore the fact that he screwed up your nicely laid plans. Fuchi would take anything in stride, including characters failing in their individual parts, and find a way to make things continue.

Your problem player is challenging your authority to have consequences to character actions. Tell your players that they can create and run any character they wish in your campaign, subject to your approval, but once in the campaign you're in command. If a player deliberately takes his character out of play, his replacement character must be a lesser character, created using something like Add-to-7 or a reduced point system. Either one still allows full cyberware or full magicians or full riggers, but something will be missing.

Reward the players who stick with it using karma. dock the player who doesn't roleplay.

Buy them some delicious cookies. For the players, not the characters.

I'm going to agree with OurTeam here, at least in principle. The other players did not do anything to deserve a reward. Would you have considered a special reward for all of them if they all successfully completed their missions? If not, then why provide a special reward simply because one of them didn't?

Instead, you should convey that the sort of thing the uncooperative player did is absolutely unacceptable. There are numerous means by which you can do this, the most obvious one (to me) would be to simply not let him play unless he can be more mature about it. One possible alternative, if, for whatever reason, you do not see excluding him from the game as a viable option, would be to say that his character didnt die - as OurTeam suggested. Rather than turn that character into an NPC, make him keep playing the character - who now has a police record and has suffered some ill effect from having taken a deadly wound. If he doesnt think thats very fun, perhaps he shouldnt have gone out in the middle of the day and shot random pedestrians.

Finally, you could simply respond in kind. You can present the idea that if the players believe that metagame thinking is appropriate, you can play that way as well - only, as the GM, you have much more power in that regard. "Ive always wanted to see how hard it is to resist the damage from a firelance... so you just got shot by one! Resist damage!" "I dont think its fair that you thought of a way to break into that facility that bypasses the traps I set in place... so a pack of grave 4 initiate ghoul adepts jumps you!" I think they will find it an acceptable trade that if they expect you to GM reasonably, that you get to expect that they play their characters reasonably.

I have to agree with OurTeam. He sounds like a smart dude. Backgammon makes a good point too, but I don't know how you could reward the good players and not the bad without being unnecessarily mean. If you give them cookies IC, however, I think you could say the bad player doesn't get any, and that way he'll feed sad and hungry.

It sounds like this group hasn't been running for long, otherwise losing an experienced character becomes really debilitating.

Firstly, I would definitely talk to the player about the fact that he's being selfish and silly. I would seriously consider penalizing him, but not too severely. It sounds like the guy doesn't really understand RPing fully yet, and kicking him in the nuts will discourage him from playing. Sum-to-9 or docking him 10 BPs or just a monetary fine could be sufficient for a first offense. It's not enough to cripple the character, but he'll still feel it.

In regards to rewarding the other players... If he wants to play, he's sort of obliged to hang around with the party on their current mission. However, he's not going to get the same amount of karma for completing the mission, and he's certainly not going to get paid (Fuchi didn't put it in their contract to pay this random guy!) He could perhaps make it up by contacting Fuchi independently and getting hired to complete the old character's mission. If you talked with the player OOC and he regrets what he did, this would be an easy way to make things right again.

THEN give everyone cookies.

Of course, you can't make a player play a game, so sticking it to him and saying "here's your PC, keep with him" might not be the best solution. A fair solution would be to explain to the player that you can't "just write him in" to the adventure you've alredy put so much effort into, and that if heis not interested in playing it, then he should take a session or two (or n) off, while the adventure plays out. If he still wants to be part of your group (I know I like running with my buddies, and would be annoyed if I was told I was to be excluded), you can offer the player the chance to play an NPC or two (to add variety to your story-telling).

Couple of nice ideas...just to address a few points:

At your next game, have two large men in black suits carry the offending player away screaming, never to be seen again. Your players will take their continued existence as a reward.

Barring that or the cookies idea, maybe let them find some loot but play up the fact that they've got this new guy that they have no reason to give a fair share of the loot to.

Unsurprisingly, I also like the penthouse suite idea.

~J

Jump forward in time to September 2061 and SURGE the character of the player who didn't follow the fuchi plan and don't SURGE the others. Seems a little obvious, but it's also not cliche so I thought I'd toss it out. Or the new character could be amoung the few people Ghostwalker munched when he clawed his way out of the Dunkelzahn Rift

Maybe the former player was killed in a hail of gunfire, but then gets possessed by a shedim, and shows up at the hideout, annoyed at the FNG that's replaced him?

Have the Fixer for your established players tip them off that the new guy used to be a member of the UB.

In my opinion a mega corp. would be just as wiling to hand out magic items as any other item of similar cost. The monetary value dose represent the value of an item.

That said piking rewards that would benefit the players as individuals is almost imposable without knowing the players.

I dislike giving rewards that are not well earned and your players did not earn any special reward. The only reward they should get is the karma they got already.

First you should tell the player off for bad RP (unless it was in character but your post did not suggest that). If he takes the telling off well then make his new character significantly less powerful than his old. If his old character had significantly advanced then a standard starting character will surface. If not then take it down a lite at the start. If he takes your comments about his RP badly then make his new character worse of don’t play with him any more (I have this easier because I play at a club) even if you want to keep him I would ask him why he was so certain he would be invited to create a new character.

I would also make a nasty non-death prolog for the PC that started killing people in the street. He didn’t die but he had all his cyber striped out by the authorities (I hope he had limbs) and went to gaol where he did not have a fun time. He tried to commit suicide 134 times before dying of dementia in prison.

As to how to integrate the new guy into the plot he was heired by fuci as a ringer to replace the teem member that was taken by the star (give him the same copy of his mission description)

Edward

You did brainwash the PC... and his mind broke from the stress of the mission and brainwashing. The OOC reason for the PC running off and killing civillians was the player couldn't handle the task given to him. Nothing pisses me off as a player than when the GM takes away control of my PC and gives him brainwashing/mind control/etc. You might want to remember that.

Taking away a player's choice=not cool.

Taking away a player's dierolls=extremely effective tool, not to be avoided (though not overused).

~J

Taking away character choices is the very essence of gamemastering. The best part is watching, and rewarding them for, successfully taking option number three when presented with only two, and doing so while staying in character.

It is true that brainwashing can lead to mental instability but I would never choose it for my character (not to that extent anyway).

Although you cant really WIN a RPG I do play to win. With win being defined as my character achieving his personal goals and I won’t take any action witch defeats this possibility. A meaningless death is not something I would ever go for. A write out for metagaming reasons you can make a loose case for being in character is still a write out for metagaming reasons.

On the subject of hiding dice roles I have been known in a D&D game to demand a sense motive check to overcome your innate suspicion of somebody that is telling a difficult to believe truth.

If the mission is unachievable for the character (for technical or psychological reasons) he should have discussed it with the GM.

On the other side nothing sh**s me more than mind control on my character.

Edward

And yet there's all these mind-frag spells and mundane techniques out there that the players rarely hesitate to use. It's not like they're even outre. There's an entire section of magic devoted to them: Control Manipulations.

Is this one of those cases where it's "okay" for the PC to pull out a "Control Thoughts" and "Alter Memory", but not for the NPCs to do the same?

If you'd rather your character died during brainwashing, that's a GM/Player discussion that takes all of three seconds to resolve:

Player : "I don't think I can handle him brainwashed. Could I bring in this other character and use him in place of the dead one?"

GM : "Fix his background to match Fuchi using him, and I may change some of his stuff to fit better later."

Player : "Cool, thanks."

By the very premise of the statement, the GM is railroading his players into playing brainwashed PCs who are tasked with completing some mission. I make no statements as to the difficulty of the mission but the very fact that the PCs have no choice but to complete it, smacks of railroading. Yes, the players let their PCs get captured and should deal with the consequenses but who is to say completing this run will free the runners from Fuchi control? Even more plot hooks for the GM to exploit, to the player in me, that is unacceptable.

The fact that you and the GM aren't on the same side disturbes me, Toturi.

I agree with not rewarding the guys who stuck with the plan, byeond usual karma and/or monetary awards.

I also agree that the player who got gunned down needs a bot of comeupance. A technique I have used before is the "freeze-out"....let the player make up a new character, and then have him wait. You can simply tell him that you are waiting for a chance to insert him into the story line, and that he must just wait. Keep him hanging a few sessions, and then give him his entry.

It works to remind the player that ditching a PC is a big deal, not to mention that it screws over your story.

It seems I may have opened the proverbial can of worms.

Once again to address a few points:

I have spoken to the character in question pointing out what I felt was wrong with the way he played (or didn't play) his character. So I feel this particular problem between my player and I has been addressed.

As to the brainwashing thing I didn't take control of the character away from the player, I didn't force him to complete any mission it was merely an annoying suggestion, something that I hoped would get the players involved in the demise of Fuchi. He and the other players could have got together and planned something out and they would have all received karma for doing it. In a nutshell they could have done what they wanted, how they wanted, when they wanted. I guess I didn't make that point too clear earlier.

For those of you who wanted to know what I had in mind for my players here's a brief overview. I had four players involved, we shall call them Player 1, Player 2, Player 3 and Player 4.
Player 1 - Was find the Renraku Johnson who hired them for the run againt Fuchi, follow him and report his current location to Player 2.
Player 2 - Was to interrogate Mr Johnson then give the nod to Player 3.
Player 3 - Was to kill Mr Johnson after being told to by Player 2
Player 4 - Was to look out for Player 2 until such times as Player 2 finished his task.
Player 2 was the one who looked at his task then started killing civilians.

Now that I've had a chance to sleep on it, I'm not just going to give the players a reward I am going to give those who complete their part a CHANCE to earn something extra. Plans have been forming and I think I know how I'm going to write it up, it will probably involve a luxury apartment, a half remembered conversation, some in-house corporate backstabbing, a few favours and a bit of legwork.

Another way to punish the player if you really want to do that is to let the other players do it.

Have the remaining characters' contacts start treating them harshly or with suspicion explaining that they were friends with a guy who just shot up a load of civilians for no good reason. Any contacts who knew about their capture may also suspect that the other player characters could just flip out as well and therefore want nothing to do with them.

The players will likely get a littel miffed and instruct the other player to not go killing off their character in the same manner again.

Of course this isn't a particularly nice thing to do...

At this point, it sounds as though the big problem is a disagreement between the GM and the player. No amount of punishing or rewarding is going to help. The GM and player need to sit down and talk like adults, in private, about what they expect from the game, what's acceptable, etc. The point of the game is for EVERYONE to have fun, and if there's something critically wrong with the setup, the game is guaranteed to end with someone leaving.