Earlier today I ran my group of newbie friends through the Food Fight scenario. To get them used to the combat system. Long story short:
Gangers- 3
Runners- -2

Ended up with two PKs before the gangers even got started.

Yeah, the food fight scenario can be deadly in the wrong hands...

Heck, it can be deadly in the right ones too!

What was messed up was they all took the million, used 6 points of essence between 5 characters, and all had 7+ months of luxury lifestyle. Group broke down to 1 troll gun bunny and 4 elven gun bunnies, all with identical skills, and mostly the same gear. I had them make the characters together after explaining what a good team of runners should consist of. They insisted they didn't want me hovering during the creation process. I had a good laugh when I saw the characters, and I almost died laughing as the gangers took them apart.

thats pretty rough on newbs. You should have forced their hands a little more or maybe added a nearby LS cop to help em out a bit. After all, it would give them XP in evading police after the fight was over. hehehe you could do some evil but instructive things with that

I can't recall killing a lot of PCs outright, I've had plenty hit Deady (unconcious) but they always have DocWagon, which helps...alot. In this new group I just had the first guy go to Deadly. He was hit with something basic, a single burst from an SMG with explosive ammo, he declined to dodge, and didn't get any damage resistance sucesses because he didn't bring along his second layer of armor. So he's out, from one simple action, but luckily it wasn't on corp ground, so Docwagon shows and takes him away. After that firefight only one player is left in good enough condition to tail the target, but he makes some bad rolls and loses the target, which makes the run a failure, their first ever. Morale was at a serious low at the end of that last game session, so what am I gonna do now? That's right, I'm bringing back an enemy that's going to eff them up pretty bad because the players knocked him out and stole his Force 4 Weapon Focus worth half a million nuyen. Oh, I love being a nasty GM.

It's entirely possible to throw everything but the kitchen sink at the PCs, and still keep the game both believable and engrossing to all, threat/potential death level notwithstanding. As in most things, it's a matter of balance.

Threats that are avoidable by the PCs if they use some common sense can be scaled up as high as you like. The point of these is that they are threats: potentials, not actuals -- and they'll stay at the level of potentials if the PCs are the least bit careful.

Threats which cannot be circumvented using common sense alone, but which must be met directly to attain a clearly defined goal, should be scaled to just at the level the runners are capable of dealing with, if perhaps above what they think they're capable of dealing with. The challenge exists, the imminent threat of death is real: and winning out over it gives a real sense of accomplishment.

This doesn't mean either that it's necessary to break out the Citymasters, or (conversely) that snipers should never be used against PCs. The instinct is to try to balance increasingly powerful PCs (and SR skews this a little, since it's designed to allow fairly powerful specialists right out of the box) by throwing ever more massed combat at them. Although sometimes this works, this is also where believability can break down in a hurry. It's easier to scale up smaller, covert scenarios than to restore realism/balance to full-out urban warfare. Just imagine what the PCs themselves would do, if they had the chance: and design the scenario so the potential (not the certainty!) exists to use it against them first.

It's easy enough to build self-limitations into situations that, on their surface, are "no win" for the PCs. One common example is the inadvertent "warning" shot: eg. the sniper whose first shot slams just a little off the target, and whose subsequent angles are necessarily limited by the local street architecture, with a few persons worth of on-site back-up. Contrast this scenario against a full team of snipers, plus Ares Guardian drones, plus Citymaster, plus [fill in the blank]. The first can be deadly; but the second almost certainly is.

Sure, it's relatively easy for a GM to kill PCs. GMs control the entire set-up of the situation after all: and it's very easy to slip into a mindset of GM (rather than NPCs) vs. PCs. For any GM who has thought out their scenario not only from the pov of taking out the PCs but also from the perspective of what those PCs are capable of dealing with -- and especially from the perspective of the players' desire to be challenged -- PC deaths should be (thankfully) rare: accident, never deliberate.

It's a matter of story for me. When a character dies it's the end of the story arc for that character and a significant change for the team. Characters die for a reason more often than no reason at all. That means that in some runs I'll say to myself "it is ok to let someone die" and if someone does die then so be it--it's part of the story.

I did assasinate a char once. Barret rifle clean shot to the head. That character had been outpacing his team in power level and was forcing me to up the enemy level just to keep it fun for him which also meant that it wasn't fun for the other team members who were suddenly outclassed by the baddies. When that character died suddenly a bunch of information about his mysterious past turned up and the team ended up on an entirely new campaign based on what they learned about their teammate.

Ive killed a few characters, but I have a favorite. One of my power gamers created a sorcer with a force 6 weapon foci sword, and after a run against renraku, snuck away from the other players a power foci.

So now he is running around with a force 6 sword and a force 4 power foci, and hes still a relative newbie.

I had another character make a mage that he was roleplaying as very evil. He didnt have a johnson and I was trying to think of a way to work him into the run when it hit me: A newbie with so much power is going to attract attention.

The evil mage was offered this by a talismonger: Ill let you in on a job if you promise to kill this sorcerer and bring me her weapon foci... you can keep her power foci.

The evil character jumped on it, and after the job was done, 'had to pull over to pee'. He had already spoke with the mage(conjuring specialist) and paid him 50k to provide spell defense, and talked the other runner (a cyber sniper) to stay outtah it.

He blasted the sorcer with a lightningbolt (injuring her and using up her combat pool) then jumped her with a staff and gave her some stun. After that they both had enough spell defense that they just meleed it for 3 rounds until finally the injured sorcerer dropped. (the only hit she got in was with a kung-fu multistrike, but the mage had a pain editor and ignored it).

The mage executed the sorcerer to be sure there would be no retribution. Everyone walked away happy, cept the dead gal.

Do i feel guilty? Maybe a little, but I warned the sorcerer that she should be ultra paranoid trying to hold on to that magical stash.

As a Gm I have killed characters many times. I kinda felt sad, but most of the times the players got killed themselves (or worse, sometimes they got a completely innocent team mate killed because of a stupid decision)

It is very easy to waste a character in SR, but I believe that it should happen rarely and most of the times It has to be in an important moment of the run.
If characters die too often, then the players are not acting professionally or you are just a nasty Gm.

That said, I remember a player who died quite regularly when my first group started playing SR back in 1994. This guy averaged a character every 1.5 sessions. (i.e he would come up with a new character, played one session, then died in the midst of the next one, and so spent the rest of that session making up a new character, and so on...)
I didn't really feel happy killing him every time, but (most of the times) I (and the rest of the team) just could not let go by some of his gross miscalculations and/or lacks of common sense. Eventually, he turned out to be a very professional SR player -actually, he is contributing in some of the books and all. The point here is: don't feel bad if you really have to kill a character for stupid playing, hopefully, the players will learn from their mistakes and that will make gaming richer, better and more enjoyable for everyone. (including yourself)

Cheers

Max

I had to pop in.

I just wasted 4 PC's. After that, the last one standing surrendered and gave the assailant the info he was looking for. Luckily, she made some sweet biotech rolls and (including the use of a trauma patch) managed to save everyone's ass. Magic loss proliferated (not too crippling for the initiates), and one guy lost an arm, but all were humbled by the smackdown and seemed to have a genuinely good time fighting the good fight.

Great Times for All! (even me who felt a little bad afterwards)

Seriously. Seems like the GM was just arbitrarily trying to take some toys away, which isn't neccessarily bad in itself except for the fact that they plotted with another player to do it, in a way that pretty much prevented that player from getting to continue playing their character.

I'd be thinking, "What the hell did I do to you!?"

...That one seemed harsh to me, who just deadlied 4 PC's last week!

Two player deaths have really stuck with me. One was the very first PC I ever killed off, the other was a character of mine killed off by the GM at the time.

My first kill came about with a group that had already been roleplaying with their current characters for a few months, not exactly newbies either as players or as characters. The two things that set up the situation and inspired me to essentially murder a character in a manner that gave them no chance to survive was that they were somewhat messed up from their last run and recuperating in their separate safehouses, and they had ticked off but not killed a Mantis shaman some time back.

I had one of the characters possessed by a female mantis spirit.

Then I told noone, not even the player of the possessed character, for several more game sessions until an initiated mage they had worked with cryptically informed them one of their number was an insect spirit. The character group began to disintegrate from justified lack of trust and the players themselves seemed to enjoy the intrigue, suspense and mystery the situation created. After several attempts to figure out who was the bug (attempts that the insect spirit secretly sabotaged without anyone knowing) they finally learned who was possessed and this lead on to the big confrontation with the Mantis shaman.

All in all the players, including the one killed off, seemed to enjoy the events. But looking back on it I realise it was a mistake to do this because I never gave the player even the slightest chance to save their character, no GM should have that kind of control over the player characters.


The death of my own character came about in an SR adventure involving aliens, wierd magical yet not magical crystals, real honest to god 'slug' guns, and a host of other bizzare things that made the game less enjoyable for me. Our group found themselves in the subterranean levels of the main villain's abode running from a maniac with a gyromounted LMG who at one point was a member of our group. At one point Mr LMG fires at one of the other fleeing player characters, said character does not successfully dodge and has nowhere near the body, nor enough karma, to have a hope in hell of surviving the hit. The GM informs him that he slipped on the floor at the last second and the entire ten round burst missed him.

Later, after losing Mr LMG for a while and getting busted up a bit, we find Mr LMG charging down a corridor about to turn the corner leading to where we are filing out our escape hole one at a time. My character, as badly injured as everyone else, is bringing up the rear. Realising there is no way he can get out the hole before a ten round burst of explosive ammo tags him from behind I elect to move up to edge of the corridor, wait for Mr LMG to round the corner then jump right into his face so he cannot bring the barrel of the gun around to hit me (melee combat is also my character's area of expertise and his best chance of winning a fight).

I explain both my actions and the reasoning behind them to the GM. He says fine. Then when it comes time to actually perform the action he informs me I can't do it. "The corridor is actually too wide, you don't cover enough distance. Make a damage resistance test for the ten LMG rounds hitting you". I failed the test. My character died. Needless to say the rest of the evening was not very pleasant.

Hell Hound, I think your last example, and DamienKnight's story, both illustrate the biggest no-no for GMs; playing favorites.

I have lost PCs before and not complained, but I would be upset if the GM let one PC off the hook, then let the same situation kill my character. And it's an even bigger no-no for the GM to essentially plot with another player to kill a PC.

Now, I understand that Shadowrun games can involve some paranoia and back-stabbing, but in that situation, even more than others, the GM needs to be impartial.

You're right Glyph, playing favourites is a bad move. The thing is I don't think the GM in my case was actually playing favourites. Conspiring with other players maybe but I don't think it was meant to be playing favourites.

The crazed character with the LMG was still being roleplayed by his player, the GM had taken him aside earlier in that game when he became separated from us and the main villain gave him the option of joining the bad guys and killing his teammates, which he jumped at a lot faster than the GM expected him to. The character that the GM saved from LMG induced death was the group's mage, and since the GM had already planned the finale of the game involving a three storey tall ball of man eating jello (don't ask) that could only be killed with magic then losing our mage would have finished us all off. My character had already taken care of the melee fights, which is why we were just injured rather than dead when Mr LMG found us again, and so was no longer necessary for the group's survival.

What annoyed me was the GM's absolute refusal to consider any outcome except my character's meaningless death, a dramatic death I could have been satisfied with. Nothing could persuade him that I might have a chance in hell of avoiding being shot, or of changing my actions. By the end he was making up excuses such as "I know your quickness is 6 and no the corridoor is not 12 meters wide, but maybe Mr LMG was running flush up against the opposite wall in case someone jumped out and tried to engage him in melee combat before he could shoot them". But it never seemed to be a case of playing favourites. More his refusal, or inability, to admit a mistake or allow a player to dictate how part of the story would go. There was a precedent for that.

It's kinda neat to see people's stories about the killing of players. When I first started this thread I was agonizing over my first kill - it's been months now and I still have only truly KIAed three player chars - but I've done everything else possible - including two being drafted into the UCAS Military for storming the castle (errr the Arcology post Shutdown) and a couple other quirks.

I still feel a little bad killing chars because my players are the true dedicated type - they pour their soul into the char to make them realistic - believable DETAILED backstories, a char flaw or two which explain their every action (I.E. they never do random acts just for the heck of it unless the char was DESIGNED that way)

Of course, the flip side of that is the longest running character just got her 19th Karma point...Initiate level 5 shaman with quickened increase cha, will at force 7...

Update: Doc's up to 4 KIAs now!

i'm going to assume you meant karma pool, not karma point.

Yeah, I meant 19 Karma Pool.

And the group managed to escape from a nasty trap with only one of the newbie chars dying. The experienced people held together.

OK, best PC kill ever.
My friend was running a game with 4 friends. I rolled up an phyAdept with katana. Useing a few non-fasa resources i ended up with a super samuri, but that is not the funney part.
the others were already on a run, forget what it was.
The GM Gave me a Run. Kill the other 4 players. Mwhahaha.
My first and Best hit was a cybered out troll. He was easy to find because we was a bouncer for a day-job. I followed him when he got off work.(we were both on bikes) He sptoed me following him, and used his eye-zoom X3 on his rear view mirror to get a better look at me.
well. it was decided he needed to make a drive check to see if he could stay in controll of his bike while doing this. BOTCH! He layed his bike down on the freeway. Took a M for his effort. it was a good enough of a wrech to draw a small crowd.
I pulled up and anounced that i was an off-duty paramedic. I did a decption check and rolled well. they believe me, Yay!
I tolled the battered up troll "i'm a paramedic, just yay down" as soon as he layed down I pulled out a HE offencive granade, pulled the pin, let the spoon fly, and shoved it down his pants. Rolling quickenss i rolled aou of the blast best i could. I took a L after all the dice. He had no success on his soke. he died. i got out of there.

I ended up killing two others, and then i got nuked by the mage.

And just so you all know everyone in that game agreed that it was one of the best runs ever.

Y'know, that reminds me of a Super Milk-Chan episode. Or at least, what I could remember of it before it liquefied my frontal lobe.

Agg...never bring up that demon show again. EVIL!

Probably the only thing that occured to me when I saw it for the first time was "YOU DUMBASS!" for watching it. Bleth.

Yeah... that show still gives me nightmares. Nightmares filled with belgian waffle counterfeits and incredibly annoying pink-haired girls... and drop bears.

Hey, nothing wrong with drop bears.

*mourns for his poor thread*

When the player was making his character, I warned him that giving himself a force 6 weapon foci was dangerous. He was making a sorcerer with a body of 3 and very little armor, with a weapon that costs alot more than most runs pay their entire group. The character was not initiated, so could not hide the power of the weapon from view... every mage and dual natured creature that saw him instantly knew he was a relatively low powered mage (uninitiated so MAGIC attribute of 6) with a SUPER powerful item (force 6 sword, worth more than a million considering street index). I told him he should NOT trust any other mage, and should always be wary of others trying to take his sword. He said he was ok with that when he made the character. Fine fine... his choice.

After that, in a later run from a book, they confronted a team of Renraku Red samurai. With a lucky spell (and even unluckier spell defence... 36 dice TN 6 and not a single success on spell defence!) roll, the players took out most of the Samuari foot soldiers with a stunball. The players chased down the surviving mages and managed to kill one before they escaped. The player with the weapon selfishly palmed a force 4 power focus before the other players realized (they were more worried about dealing with their wounds and escaping). After the run I told him he would be better off to sell the power focus than keep it. It is an item of great power that is desired by most mages and shamans... He ignored the friendly advice and bonded the power focus.

During the run where another player was bribed to ambush and steal the magic items, the player with the two ultra powerful foci treated the other runners poorly... to the point of alienating them. When it came down to it, none of the other runners wanted to help him out... and one of them even decided to go against him after a 50k bribe.

There were no favorites played here... just an important lesson taught. The things the player was aware of but did not consider:

- Never bite off more than you can chew. He was warned over and over that the foci were worth an astounding amount of nuyen, and would be dangerous for him to carry around.

- Treat the other runners professionally... your life could depend on it. He chose to roleplay a jerky character, despite his already precarious situation.

- Last and most important... Paranoia is a runners lifeblood. The player walked into the ambush despite many clues that things were not as they seemed.

The player did not give my sack a 'walk', nor did he give it a 'kick'. (at the time he may have wanted to though He kept playing with us and has since grown greatly in both his understanding of roleplaying, and of the nature of the shadows.



No favorites were played here. Rolls were not fudged. I merely planted the idea of theft into the mind of a player whose character should have already had the though in her black black heart. The situation of the ambush, the alliances made prior to it, and the results of the combat were all played out by the players. I merely sat back and ensured the rules were followed. Had the player with the power focus and weapon focus won out the fight and killed the ambushing character, I would have been equally satisfied... The lesson of not biting off more than you could chew would be taught to someone else, and the Pimped foci weilding character would have still learned how dangerous his items were.

I went above and beyond the call of duty for a DM, nearly to the point of coddling the Foci-Pimp character. He was warned over and over... he was given clues to the deceit... he had many opportunities to avoid the ambush... or even leave the run. Even when the fight started, he could have tried to negotiate, but instead he fought blindly... even after it was apparent he was outmatched.

Shadowrun is meant to be a dark place. The players are not super heros on a crime fighting team... they are hardened criminals working outside the law. They are often working with other criminals that they have no ground to trust, and should be ever watchful of betrayal. For many runners, the only things keeping them in line is the purpose of gaining more money and protecting their reputation. When the rewards are suddenly massive, the reputation lost from killing another professional suddenly takes on a price... a price easily paid when pawning off items worth over a million nuyen.

I have a house rule... attacking a fellow runner costs the player 1 good karma at the end of the session. Successfully killing another runner costs 3 karma. Multiple instances of this will buy you the bad karma flaw. Its bad stuff to betray your teammates, but for some immoral characters, it is sometimes still the right thing to do.

Betraying other players is never the right thing to do.

I'd have told you all where you could shove it, and walked.

I felt bad like many do, then figured out that a PC has to die in order for the rest of the players to take your combats seriously.

Now, rarely anyone dies and my players work a system over trying damn hard to not die.

Which leads to all that damn rules lawyering....

You can't have it both ways.

If the players genuinely fear death, especially in a game where it's not as easy a problem to fix as a pop down to the local Pelor's House o' Ressurections, then players are (rightly) going to invoke any and everything possible to keep their players alive.

Want less rules-lawyering? Play fast and loose with combat and getting dead.

Want to play hardball with combat and make players take combat seriously? You can do it, but the inevitable result is that the players will take combat very seriously. Deadly serious, in fact, and will become walking encyclopedias of all the relevant rules.

DamienKnight,

You didn't have to let the character have a rating 6 weapon foci. You as the gm could have vetoed it from the get go. As for the power foci you gave it to the opposition and of course a mage is going to jump on it. Why is it such a big deal for the victim to have a power foci but it be perfectly fine for the assassin to have it? Because the victim decided to play a jerk? You said in your first post that the assassin mage created an "evil" character. So "evil" is in your games more desirable than jerky? As for the repeated warnings about the desirability of foci that can be said about all other high end items. Do you give the same warning to deckers? How about million dollar samurai? Do they get PKed in your games for their goodies?

Do you even see how blatent your favoritism was?

Or be my group, they like it lethal, but the trust me not to make it insane, if I say it's a penalty, they trust me to apply it on my side of the screen as well. No huge rules lawyering, but fear of death definitely applies.

Chris

My mage recently died in the arc (so hate that place ) to a horde of drones and blues.

Had a player in my game sacrifice himself so the others could get away. Feel kinda bad about that one, but I did my best to make his death cinematic.

I have yet to kill a PC, that's largely because I don't I don't like to kill PC's unless their being stupid or it's for dramatic effect. I for one have long hated the Cancer Causing Game's instant death rules and have strove not to replicate them in SR. That said, if a player tries to run infront of a bus (or a gauss autocannon), their next action should start: "For my next character I want to.."

My personal experience was when my character was convined that KE was going to drop chemical or bio weapons in the Blight. He showed up, MOPPed geared up, and waited, secure in the knowledge that he was ready for ANYTHING.

That's when the fuel air explosives went off.

One Hand of God later my character plummeted out of the sky three blocks over, bounced off the hood of a car, and made unhappy sounds towards the nearest group of PC's.

One of the most memorable PC deaths in any game I GM'ed was one that I had nothing to do with. A ghoul PC with the vindictive flaw decided to reveal himself in a swanky hotel lobby because some beefy ork security guards were talking shit about ghouls.

The player said "I'll whip off my disguise and attack the nearest one in an attempt to tear out his throat with my teeth, at which point the other orks will drag me into the alley out back and shoot me in the head." Then he matter-of-factly tore up his character sheet and got out the rule book to generate a new one.

He took his role-playing very seriously.

You didn't have to let the character have a rating 6 weapon foci. You as the gm could have vetoed it from the get go.
Yes, I could have, but a starting character with a rating 6 foci is legitimate. I am not in the habit of disallowing features of the game because they are dangerous for the players. I like the danger... as do the players in my group. If their characters were not in danger it would be a different game. I warned him of the danger and sincerely hoped he would be able to pull it off.

Why is it such a big deal for the victim to have a power foci but it be perfectly fine for the assassin to have it? Because the victim decided to play a jerk?
Really it is not safe for ANY character to hold onto an obvious item worth so much, but that is the way of the shadows. Big risk but big reward. The point was not that one character was more suitable for the item than the other... I did not bend rolls to pull any special outcome that I secretly desired. I merely pointed out to the self-professed evil bastage character that his running companion was sitting on more than a million nuyen worth of gear and had no apparent ability to keep it. Contacts are dangerous, missions are dangerous, and your fellow runners are dangerous. That is the way of the criminal, and the nature of the shadows. I really enjoy a group of tightly bonded runners who always have each other's backs, but that is not always the situation.

Oh, and not that it was the reason for what happened, but the other player (the assassin) WAS more suited for items for three reasons. First, she was initiated and capable of masking the foci, so she would not be advertising it like the other character did. Second, she wasnt greedy. She sold the sword to her talismonger on that very same day and only kept the power focus, so that she was not sitting on more gear than she could protect. And third, she was wary of others. She never would fall for the kind of trick she pulled on the victim.

You said in your first post that the assassin mage created an "evil" character. So "evil" is in your games more desirable than jerky?
Evil is not desirable. It is punished with a reduction of karma. People who save old ladies in back alleys gain extra good karma that evil characters lose out on. Characters that attack or kill other players lose karma. Repeat offenders get the bad karma flaw. Clearly I am not rewarding Evil. Evil is simply the way some players decided to role play, and I am not for stifling peoples role playing.

In a general sense, I think evil criminals are more rewarded that jerky criminals. Evil affords you conscience-free doublecrossing, while jerkiness just makes people not like you.

Do you give the same warning to deckers? How about million dollar samurai? Do they get PKed in your games for their goodies?
I do. Just like its dangerous to wave around a wallet stuffed with cash in bad part of town at night, it would be unwise to walk around brandishing a 1 million dollar deck while going on illegal missions with morally corrupt associates.

I would say the thing that makes this situation extreme, however, is the runner's inability to hide her foci. She had a force 6 sword that she brandished proudly wherever she went. And a force 4 power foci... and since she had no masking, she could not conceal either of them. As expensive and rare as those two items are, when they glow like a christmas tree on the astral plane jealous mages are going to lust after them. At least a decker can hide his deck in a case or backpack, or a street samurai doesnt carry around a price tag stamped on his forehead.

Do you even see how blatent your favoritism was?
As much as I warned the foci hoarding victim about the dangers, and with all the hints I dropped that he was about to get doublecrossed, and with the hints I dropped during the fight that he might wanna try and negotiate a comprimise (or bribe other players to save him)...
Yes, I think you are right. I was a bit too kind to the victim. Two or three warnings should have been enough...

And that, right there, is the crux of the problem.

But I love how killing someone, looting an expensive magical focus from them, and selling another one for big bucks, is described as "not greedy."

This is the problem. It didn't simply occur to the other teammates that this one item was worth more than they make in a year, it was very directly pointed out to them that someone would make it worth their while to do so. It wasn't a natural occurrence, you provided the Johnson with the job.

I remember my first PC kill....I was playing the rigger, and the samurai pulled a gun on me while I was jacked in. Admittedly, I was a bit paranoid, so I had bucket ejector seats instead of the bench seats that te Eurovan came with. And, so, I just triggered his ejector seat...That time, it did not kill him, but he got captured by Lone Star and "lost" in their facilities. This happened two more times, from the same player, playing a Samurai. The third time, though, his ejector seat, dubbed the Samurai Seat, was loaded with explosives and ball bearings, and a delayed explosion so that when I ejected him, it would blow up halfway to the ground....

This has become a common factor for all my Riggers since. I always have "The Samurai's Seat."

Now, for GMing...well...right now, te other players in my group are glad I am not GMing..our current GM is a killer GM....me? I am a Serial Killer GM. I like to end games with a run on a Zero Zone...

Bah, Runners should always be at least somewhat paranoid of their "friends", everytime I see a ( Loyality 6 ) Contact, especially a Fixer who "would die for us" (From the Living out of a Airplane thread.) I want to vomit. If the slitch was flaunting around extremely rare magical foci then she got what she deserved, sounds like a good game to me.

I know this is a hard concept to get for you, but I am persistent so I will keep trying.

Having a million dollars in your bank account... not dangerous.

Carrying around a million dollars that glows like a small sun on the astral without any way of hiding it... DANGEROUS.


Well, first of all, I would not consider a Talismonger who offers to buy a foci if you get ahold of it a Johnson. Lets not throw the word around needlessly. If I pay my neighbor's kid to mow my lawn, I am hardly considered a 'Johnson'. It seems like you are trying to overemphasis your point with language.

I think its perfectly reasonable for a Talismonger to point out that there is a cocky runner with more gear than she can handle running around, and that if someone procured one of the items she would pay good $ for it.

What is not reasonable is to assume that someone could be waving around two powerful foci while hanging out with criminal mages and expect to never have anyone notice.


Thanks Ravor. I glad to see someone else is enjoying Shadowrun for what it is... a game where a team of criminals get paid by untrustworthy people to go commit crimes.

If you people want heroic players performing heroic missions given by honest employers, you need to go play D&D. SR was meant to be gritty cyberpunk, and is better when played that way.

Just try reading Buzzkill, the short story at the front of the SR4 book. Its a great story to introduce you into the type of game Shadowrun is... and includes players getting killed because the Johnson screwed them.

My games are going to play out more like 'Heat' and 'Resevoir Dogs', where paranoia is the lifeblood of the runner, and gritty is the strongest flavor.

I'm glad this thread got going again.

My new thought: one player betraying the other players can be okay, as long as it's understood that the given campaign would probably be a dramatic short term one, as after the betrayal it would be tough to keep that campaign going long after either the death of the traitor, or the deaths of all the other player characters.

One time a GM I knew ran a steampunk style campaign using SR rules. My character was an evil Anglican priest whom was arranged as the one who would betray the party and who was secretly working for the bad guys. The GM approached me before the game and explained to me that I would be playing the traitorous role.

So we played through the campaign, and my character was doing his best to act helpful and trustworthy so that he could betray the rest of the party in the coming final battle. However, since we were using the SR rules, as soon as the final battle started the guys with the best initiative scores blew away my character's evil boss before he could do anything, and by the time my character's turn came around in fact almost everyone was leaky and bleeding on the floor. I decided that my character, being overcome with despair, would cast a really big Manaball on himself and kill everyone in the room as a final nihlistic gesture. And he did.

I thought it was a pretty fun one-shot campaign. And an example of how you can have player vs. player betrayal work.

I know this is a hard concept to get for you, but I am persistent so I will keep trying. <chuckle>

I never said having a Force: 6 focus wasn't dangerous. I said killing another character for their stuff is the very definition of "greedy". Whether they are sensible about it or not is another matter entirely.


You're assuming an awful lot in flamebaiting everyone else's playstyles, based on their disapproval of something very specific that you did. Namely, abdicating the impartiality that all good GMs should have, to essentially collude with one player against another one. No one has posted anything decrying grit, or paranoia, or in-character backstabbing. It sounds to me like you have a guilty conscience. You brought back a thread that had been dead for about half of a year to make another pleading attempt to justify yourself. It's really not working, and your shrill ad hominem attacks aren't doing anything to prop up your argument, either.

Not everyones, just the people that suggested player betrayal should not be perpetrated by the DM. Good point about flamebiting though. I removed the comment. It was a bit rude and that is not constructive.


I am not sure where you are going with this. Maybe you should state your point again. It seems like you are disagreeing with symantics and ignoring the actual discussion at hand.

Killing another runner for their gear is definately Greedy. My point was:


The point being, one character was greedy in a dangerous way, the other greedy in a safe way... reinforcing my point that one character WAS more suited for the item than the other.

And I do think that as a mage, binding every powerful item to yourself that you come across is a kind of 'Power Greed' as opposed to knowing what would be more than your character can handle and selling the rest off. Still greedy to steal, but not the kind of 'power greed' that is going to get you noticed by other mages... the kind of problem that started the whole issue.


No guilty conscience, just a desire to show my side of an argument. Its a pretty rudimentary and ineffective method to accuse someone of feeling guilty if they defend their position. As far as not posting for more than a year... you will notice I did not post -anything- for more than a year. I submitted my rebuttal as soon as I read your reply... which just happened to be a year and a half later.


Are we even talking about the appropriateness of DM's aiding in PC death now, or are you just arguing for the sake of arguing? I dont see that this comment is appropriate or helpful to the discussion. Please stick to discussing the topic, not attacking the other participants.