So what?

First of all, not 5 session in the campaigns, I'll have plenty of people with a 'personal' interest in the PCs. By that time if I keep using the PCs flaw-bought enemy in order to balance out for his edge, I underuse other story stuff.

Secondly, it might be personal but it's still gonna splash on his team mates more often than not. And they didn't get flaw points for that enemy...

Thirdly, even if it's not personal, it's still lethal, it's still opposition. Storywise, it changes the flavor but not the risk.

Well, or story-wise, you get to die, which seems to be how it most often ends, from what most GMs seem to post around here. The more intelligent and less obnoxious players don't seem to abuse it, and it if creates a compelling narrative and enjoyable (or at least engaging) game, I don't see what the problem is if the shitstorm initially comes from one character instead of following the whole group.

Lethal but not persistent. There's always the question of whether or not it's worth it. Moreover, there's also the question of whether or not in-game enemy possibilities can track the character down; that's already taken care of with the flaw.

And he doesn't get flaw points when one of them takes Hung Out to Dry and offers nothing to the team contact-wise. Or takes Uncouth and alienates a Johnson. Or when their cranial bomb goes off in the middle of a run. Or when their color-blindness makes them slap the Kamikaze patch onto them instead of the medpatch. No flaw exists in a vacuum, not even the inextricably personal Bad/Cursed Karma.

So now they have another source of potential harm. Moreover, one that will exist regardless of whether or not the players are careful.

I guess I just don't see taking a flaw to bring your character into the limelight to be an advantage. It's only rewarding to make your character the center of focus through roleplaying, not to mention the fact that most of the fun is making the enemy (and most of the rest is in defeating the enemy, which is explicitly forbidden in any permanent sense by the flaw).

~J

You know? That reminds me of an episode of Gargoyles cartoon. The one where this guy, on a vendetta, buys on hell of a big bazooka looking thing and goes hunting for Goliath. And he shoots a cream pie at Goliath and happily cries,"I creamed him!"

"This Guy"? That was supposed to be none other than Vinnie Barbarino from Welcome Back, Kotter.

It is not "not a bad thing". But it is "can't get worst than before".

Merits and Flaws in SR are defined in relation to the character. If one of those is a bonus to the character, it's a Merit. If one of those is a problem for the character then it's a Flaw. I don't care if the player is thrilled to no end by the character's enemies - how the player feels about the enemies is irrelevant in defining enemies as a Merit or Flaw.

If the enemy is someone trying to kill the PC every damn session, I'd say that's a poster child for Flaws. A few extra karma points and the good-tingly-carebear feelings that the player experiences from good roleplaying don't really make continuous attempts on the PC's life worth a Merit. It's a drag on the PC. Therefore, it's a Flaw.

See, the thing is that I'm gonna 'drag on the PC' every session and design situation where they might get killed anyway.

Also, crafting a Shadowrun session must abide by the same economic law as any other activity : resources are limited. In that case, the expanded resource is time.

I have X amount of time in any given session. The story will be designed usually with a beginning, a middle and a tentative ending (which usually must be adjusted once the session is over thanks to wacky players ).

Between the beginning and the end there will be a certain amount of set obstacles. Let's say for a planned session I have a player with a powerful senator as an enemy. I design obstacles ; let's call them A, B and C. C is the senator. I leave myself some room for the obstacles players will inevitably drum up for themselves through bone headedness, bizarre tactics or sheer bad luck.

Now let's say the player with the Senator enemy is abducted by aliens and disapear from the face of the Earth. Using the Senator as is no longer makes sense but I still want to run the adventure. Do I run it with only obstacle A and B? Hell no. That would be a run lacking in the tension department. The story would be too decompressed, the twists too few. I'll adapt the scenario so there is still an obstacle C that is hopefully as engaging and fun.

But maybe the player with the senator enemy doesn't get abducted by aliens. Stranger things have happened. Instead, I get a new players with his own personal nemesis. Do I integrate his nemesis as obstacle D in the story? No way. I might foreshadow this nemesis for next session, but I won't involve him in that one. Using too many obstacles makes for a session that lacks focus, where all obstacles are rushed through and were narrative threads get all tangled for no good reason and no appreciable benefits. If I compress or decompress storytelling (add or remove obstacles from what I normally can handle in a standard session), I try to do it for a good reason. To achieve a specific effect.

So, to resume : you can only do so much in one session. If you use a personal enemy, it's part of the story. If you hadn't decided to use that enemy, you'd have used something else or would have had to improvise filler material for the run. OTOH if you spontaneously decide to use a personal enemy in addition to what you've already planned, you are not really adding anything. You are just cutting in the time you'll be able to allot to all the other things you had planned. Most likely, all obstacles become a little easier as a result since you can't really add complications ; it'll bog down a session already running late.

No matter how the GM uses personal enemies, a 4h session still only last 4h. The optimal number of challenges you can throw at your PCs while still crafting a good story doesn't change.

And that's why personal enemies aren't really flaws. They are just cues from the player that he would like to have certain elements added to the campaign.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind enemies. I just don't reward players for it with edges. The reward is having a story you want (the tale of your PCs struggle with his nemesis) included in the campaign. Come on, name one great hero who didn't have his nemesis!

Remember ; we're not playing for nuyen and karma. We're playing to tell good stories and have fun. A good nemesis is fun, no matter how much pain he visits on the character.

Ah, the use of double negatives for clarification purposes.

"I'm not *not* licking toads"
- "Humanitarian" Homer
Missionary: Impossible BABF11

YMMV

I see it more as a collaborative agreement between players and GM: I give you (the GM) the right to mess with my character in this way (less Body dice for disease, Hounds that Shoot Bees when they Bark are chasing me, etc.), but in return, I get to have this bonus. It's exchange of control, permission to do one thing in return for another. Then again, we have a group with rotational GMs and we are very careful not to step on the players' storylines and each other's GMing. In some groups, the trust in the GM and between players is implicit, and I respect that. But we did away with "Rule Zero" a long time ago, and it has led to much greater enjoyment of the game.

Well, yeah. The point is, it's in-session. If an enemy strike at that point, it's no different than if he strikes during a mission from the player POV.

What I mean is that's it's resolved the same way in either case.

BTW, it's funny you mention hospitals. My PCs hate hospitals and clinics of all ilk. It's my favorite place for enemy to catch up with them... Not that it happens every time, far from it. But it has happened enough to make PCs consider all kind of wacky alternative for their recovery!

Ok, so you settle this through e-mail. Interesting. Not sure it would work with my group, though.

We tend to be tolerant of short interlude that only involve one PC. On one hand your character isn't doing anything for a shortwhile but OTOH you get to witness often very entertaining pieces of drama/comedy/action. So most prefer to see these interludes for the entertainment value as long as it's not too long.

That's part of what I mean.

When you see the same flaw turn up again and again, you have to wonder if it's really a flaw, or at least if it's not severely overevalued.

Until I cracked down on enemies, I too had enemy flaw on every damn character sheet passing my way. Nowadays, when a PC mention he wants a nemesis, I know he really mean it. That's the way I like it.

Well, that's your style of game.

I've rarely taken either the 'Enemy' or 'Hunted' flaws, because in the games I've played in, my PCs would've had to deal with it. In no way would it've been free points.

Come on, be fair. You might not agree with my opinions on enemy but I'm positive that at no point in this thread I implied that my players don't have to deal with their enemies in my campaign.

First of all, there is no "Enemy" Flaw. There's Extra Enemy, which can add yet another Enemy on top of all your others, or make one more powerful. There's also the Hunted Flaw, which focuses specifically on one enemy being realled intent on getting you. And if that isn't a constant crippling handicap, then it's been run poorly. Being Hunted, especially at level 2 and 3 deserves every BP you get because their lives are going to be Hell all of the time.

Yeah, why can't they all be perfect like us?

Same thing as above, and echoing Kage's post If you pick Amnesia, you're asking for more trouble than a couple of BP are worth.

But... the one time I saw Amnesia used created what could have been a distressingly mediocre PC, and then he was RPed for a couple of months and has become one of the most badass PCs I've ever seen in the last umpteen years and having played with a lot of really cool PCs run by several different players.

I usually find that if the GM is complaining, the GM is the problem though.

Do you GM or play?

You haven't straight out said so, but the point you're argueing, as well as the statement:

imply that in the games you play, Hunted and (extra) Enemy don't count for much. Given the responses here, that puts you in more or less in the extreme minority. They way I play (and the games I usually play in) we don't have many specific enemies, because our PCs don't leave calling cards on runs, and don't go out of our way to piss people off. That's why actually having extra someone(s) out there who know our name, face, and actively want to do us harm counts as a flaw.

Hmm, seems like everyone in my group has one or the other.

Are you going to tell us the story?

Huh? I can remember a passage where I explicitly stated that I've had PCs enemies track them down while they were in the hospital but instead you take a passage where I state that too many PCs where choosing the enemy flaw and infer from it that I run enemies in campaign to be softies?

I don't get your reasoning.

For the record, the very first personal enemy I ran was maybe 5 sessions into my very first campaign. A Player wanted a vengeful ex and I gave him one in the form of a Shark Shaman (he was a Wolf Shaman). The player loved thoses session when his ex was trying to nail him in a bad way (bad pun intended) even though it cost him in various way (most particularly a wrecked home he was building in Salish land). And this was maybe 4 years before before the first SR companion came out, way before edges and flaws. He wanted that nemesis just for the sake of having good stories involving his PC. Isn't that the point?

And then SRC comes out and now suddenly everyone wants a nemesis in order to be ambidextrous or some such crap. To hell with that!

As I said, if I'm involving a personal nemesis, I'm doing that instead of introducing some other thread to the story. There is a cost of opportunity. I'm only doing that for players who are really into the idea of having a nemesis. And these are the players who wants one despite not getting edge point for it.

It just gives them more incentive to turn the goat over to his/her enemy.
"I don't remember saying we wuz life partners when we agreed to do a few runs together. " Bang!
"How much is Tamanous paying for slightly damaged internal organs?"