Well there was this ONE time, when players knew who I was, and sat down at the table anyways...

A good idea if you want an excuse for a cyber-hand.

A good excuse if you want a chuckle.

I approve of giving a version of common sense to new players.

Things that are clearly stupid (standing in the middle of the road gesturing for a car to stop when it already ran somebody down) are excluded.

Things that any RPG player should know is stupid are only covered if the player doesn’t play any RPGs (taking on great dragons with starting characters)

Things unique to the SR world are covered as much as your character should know until the player is used to the world. (2 trolls with a modicum of skill beats human ninja PC, taking on great dragons with 300 karma characters).

This would normally be given free to any new PC wether they want it or not, but I have seen players complain about railroading when told “you will loose this fight and your character should know he will loose badly” I have seen the same players complain 15 min latter when there character is dead.

Edward

The way I see it, Common Sense is more like "Common Knowledge" as a knowledge skill. Common Sense is still a deus-ex-machina either way you look at it, so I would think of treating it as a knowledge (after all, common sense -is- only common because we accumulate the common and make sense of it. And that was cheesy.)

Each die you throw of common sense gives you a chance to realize the error of your ways. "Maybe I should kill this lone star officer in front of the camera while inside the base?" TN 2. Maybe 3. Roll.

Plus it allows a GM to permit a defaulting to intellegence in the case of a REALLY stupid move, especially for new players.

But then again, that's me.

Good thing to brag about. You must be a badass.

Players should get the benefit of the doubt. Since they're not actually in the game world that the GM has in his or her mind, and can't see things firsthand the way that the game world creator can, a little leeway is in order.

I also game online exclusively with people who I have to assume have the rules with them. And if they don't read them, I'm not going to help them out.

You can know the rules and still not know whether any given idea is a good one, according to the GM. Feeding them misinformation isn't being a badass, it's being an asshole.

IMHO, sometimes players always need some common sense, because we all forget things, or are not paying attention, (it's a great dragon not a cat), like using grenades on space stations...

but, sometimes If the character would do the stupid thing (like out of instinct or that is just what the character is used too) then you should play it that way. I'm a firm beliver in playing your character, and limiting the meta-gamming.

amadeus

If my PC's are about to do something totally stupid, I will ask for an INT check. If they pass, I say "you realize that action X is pretty dumb". Grabbing monowire with bare hands is a perfect INT check.

so, which part of "susan is a bastard" are you guys not getting?

Instead of telling a player if something is a good idea or a bad idea, just explain things to them. If a player wants to grab the mono wire, the poor guy probably dosen't know what mono wire is. That way they learn 'Oh, that is what mono wire is. . .' and they can figure out another way around the problem.

But if you really want to get Crimsondude 2.0 going all you have to do is post twice in succession for no reason he can tell. (It doesn't matter if there is a very compelling reason or not, he doesn't care. It makes him angry.)

And, of course, everyone's purpose here is solely to NOT piss off Crimsondude 2.0.

Just PM a mod to delete the second post, if it's such an issue.

Or, alternately, lock it up inside your Box Of Hatred and dwell on it every time CD is brought up. That works too.

Ooooh! themz fightin w3rdz!!!!!!!!!!

You are correct.

I was wrestling an ornery 3 year old who wanted to sit on my lap and use the emoticons while I was typing, therefore editing was going to be more difficult (and less efficient from my perspective) than making another post at the time.

The reason it stuck in my mind is because it was just "one more thing" during an already stressful situation.

Being efficient is relative to the user and depends on the situation.

My first shadowrun session invovled a lot of stops for me to ask a further explanation of what certain things and mechanics were, because, well, I was new. I knew what monowire was, but that's because I'd read some Gibson and extrapolated. However, when I was told, "You see a doberman at the top of the hill." I went:

SS:"They have a guard dog?"
GM: "No, it's a drone."
SS: "Does it have legs?"
GM: "Wheels."
SS: "It's got big guns on it, doesn't it?"
GM: "Yep."

Since my first character was also an adept, I had a lot of questions about astral space.
GM: "You astrally percieve, and see a fire elemental. It's huge."
SS: "Crap! Um... I wave hello at it?"
GM: "That's probably not a good idea."
SS: "Is there any sort of non threatening, "Hey, I'm awakened, you're awakened, how's it going?" thing you're supposed to do?"
GM: "You should probably just run."
SS: "Ah, gotcha."

If any of that had resulted in summarial hand removal or head incineration, I think that would've killed the game pretty quickly for me right there.

My first Shadowrun PC made a couple of bad decisions in his life:

1. When I first joined my current group, I new very little about the system, but really wanted to play a decker (one of the most complicated subsystems, IMO). Anyways, although I had read up quite a bit on the decking rules, the other players believed (rightfully so) that my character wasn't really as good at decking as he made himself out to be.

One day, another member of the team wanted to throw us a "party" of sorts, at her luxury-class estate, and treat us all to some of the finer things in life in an attempt to make us all more friendly (to her, specifically).

I arrived fashionably late, having spent most of the day finishing up the last (or so I thought) of the programs I would need to try my hand at a paydata run. Since this was sort of a "downtime" game session, I figured it was as good a time as any to try them out. So, I immediatly asked the hostess if she minded if I used her telcom, just for a second, to do a little matrixing. Wanting to please her guests, she agreed, but knowing me, she warned me not to do anything illegal, since it could be traced back to this address.

I sat down and jacked in, and everyone else enjoyed themselves at the party. Until, a couple of minutes later, when I calmly removed the cord from my head, stood up, and walked out of her estate. Everyone else fell silent, then quickly followed suit. we all stayed someplace else that night... and most of us never went back to that estate. The woman who used to live there got the courage to go back a couple of days later, after it became obvious that I hadn't set off any real alarms.

2. While on that same paydata run I just described, I discovered my second stupid mistake with that character. Feeling rather cocky that my shining new rating 6 programs would get me anythign I needed, I chose to target the matrix host of a well known law firm in Seattle (*cough* hard *cough*). Anyways, the new programs did work pretty well. I got in, I found the data, I made sure they wern't scrambled, etc... everything was going peachy-keen until I went to actually download the files.

The one utility I forgot to write, was read/write... I couldn't download for shit. I must have tried for like 10 turns before deciding I had risked enough tally, and it was time to give up. Like I said above, nothing really bad came of it... but, damn, what kind of decker goes on a paydata run and forgets to bring a program to let him download the data when he finds it. Took me a while to live that one down.

While I am at it (and taking a break from my final projects) I once played a rigger/gun-guy who specialized in driving fast bikes, and shooting automatic guns. He was, in my opinion, totally awesome. Not the most effective character ever created... but, c'mon, he drove around wearing a blood-red longcoat with ripped off sleeves so people could see his shiney metal arms. Frigging sweet, right?

Well, I thought so. He also didn't take shit from anyone, and in one particular case, maybe he should have.

A week or so ago, he raced some punk kid through some streets. The DM was getting used to the whole rigging system, too, so he decided to see how well an adept would do who focused on bike riding and didn't have all that VCR nonsense going for him. Needless to say, not only did I win the race, I went around the block, lapped him, and then drove by again steering with my legs, flipping him off, and laughing at him. THen, of course, I was waiting for him at the finish line, with a friend of mine, who was goign to take this punk's bike home.

By the time his dad showed up to ask for it back ("read: demand") I had already started taking it apart, removing transponder chips, and all that other fun stuff riggers do to legal vehicles to make them usable. So, of course, the dad was even more pissed than he already was... since his son had basically stolen his bike, and raced it away.

Against all of my character's instincts, I decided to let the old geezer have it back. I had thought about making him race me for it, but the group was already chomping at the bit to get on with the adventure, and I thoguht about just gunning the guy down where he stood for having the audacity to show up at my garage, and start demanding that I give him things... but, again, the group didn't seem to share my sense of pride... and they urged me to just give it back. So I did. (Between you and me, I don't think the GM intended to just hand me a $100,000 bike like that, so he was taking it back - which is cool).

So, everything was fine, until one day, a couple of runs later, I get a call from a guy telling me to meet him at some biker bar. I don't know this guy, and it doesn't dawn on me right away that this is the same bar where I met the punk-kid. So, as a group, we go to meet this guy, and see what he's all about.

As soon as I get in the door, I see that punk's dad and he is all in my face "What did you do to him! Where's Timmy" (or whatever the punk's name was, I didn't remember then, and I don't remember now). Well, at first I was just sort of annoyed that we came all the way out here for this, but then the motherfucker pulled a pistol on me. He was waving it around, and it was pretty obvious he wasn't going to shoot me, since he thought I knew something about the wereabouts of his kid.

So I tell him "Put that gun away, or I am going to kill you!". After all, I had a reputation to maintain in this place. I couldn't have some old man pointing a gunat me, and making demands.

Of course, he just kept yelling and waving his pee-shooter around, so I pulled up my twin SMGs, and full auto'd into his face. Blood went everywhere. The bar patrons hit the floor. The rest of the group couldn't believe it. The dude was dead, of course. The GM threw karma pool, combat pool, everything... there was no hope for this guy, he pretty much didn't have a head anymore.

Well, the rest of the group wasn't so happy about my victory. They were piss-scared someone was going to call Lone Star (which was probably a valid concearn) but I maintained that he had pulled a gun on me first. However, in light of the fact that he probalby owned a permit for his gun, whereas I do not have a permit to exist, I decided to follow them, and high-tail it out of that bar.

Turns out, not only did I commit manslaughter in front of a dozen or so witnesses, I killed the plot-hook VERY early in the night.

I learned very early in my SR career that it is a very bad idea to start shooting in the open without cover against a gang trying to rob a store. Forgetting to pay attention to my surroundings, thus starting shooting at bad guys when one of them was behind me. Also, I shouldn't waste combat pools to help shooting when they are more important to dodging/resisting, which would've come in very handy when I got shot in my side from an SMG burst, and then a shotgun slug through the chest.

That'll teach me to remember that I can't use the same tactics in D&D in Shadowrun. I've learned a lot since then..not to mention I bought bigger guns

/me strokes his IWS launcher and SAM Missile.

Soon my pet, you shall be fired.

Uhh..gotta go.

(Kinda hoping that I don't have to use it, although it's a good thing it has a 5k range, since as soon as I fire it i'm going to get the hell out of town for a bit)

Sounds like Food Fight. Aside from a deadliness far above what I'd put against n00bs who probably aren't armed/armored since they are just going to get food, and high heels that miraculously do M physical damage, and pointless extra rolling on tables which makes life hard for n00b GMs, it's a fun scenario.

Yeah, that's the one. I was the only one with a good weapon, a Ruger Super Warhawk, the rest were unarmed or had light pistols. One character made the mistake of accidently challenging the katana wielding Sammie-wannabe. The GM simply stopped the game and declared a total TPK. We ran the scenario again the next week with much better results. And in order to protect one of my team members from getting shot by a rigger customer (because they accidently shot the Mr. Coffee machine when they shot the smg woman) i grabbed the microwave and held it hostage. Despite the utter insanity of my actions, it actually worked.

I have flashes of brilliances mixed in with things that sounded like a good idea at the time..

Because his GM was named Weredigo?

When the only two combat characters are killed in the first few opening shots and the rest have no weapons or unarmed skills, there was only one possible ending.

Except for the GM, we were all new to Shadowrun, so none of us knew what we were getting into.

Yeah, in the game I started in, the GM wouldn't have screwed us like that. I knew the difference from D&D fighting right from the get go: predominance of ranged weapons makes standing in the open bad, but we would've gotten some hints about the fact that we were going to need guns, or what acceptable level of armament is when walking down the street, so we didn't end up completly unarmed when the fight in the shack started.

For my bit of stupidity, I was playing a human street sam named Legion. He was basically built to live. Survival was his overriding goal in life, which makes the following lapse of judgement all the more puzzling.

We were playing through a module in Corporate Punishment. It's the one where you go to Portland then get framed by the Tir as Saeder-Krupp agents. Well, we had made it to Portland, and our little team was Legion, Toad--a troll adept, and a fenrir shaman whose name I can't recall. Well, we stuck out like sore thumbs, so we played it cool until the run. We had to get new weapons in Portland, because we couldn't smuggle our old ones in with the IDs the johnson gave us. Well, the run against the corp went down without a hitch. A couple wrinkles here and there, but we made it through and we were rather pleased with ourselves.

Since we're in hostile territory and we just commited a crime with a bunch of racist elves running about, we decide to ditch our guns and van. I think the Fenrir shaman set it ablaze. How no one noticed, I'll never know. Anyway...

It turns out there was more module. We got back to our doss, and saw our pictures on the news--the frame job written into the module. So, weaponless and IDless, we were stuck in the Tir. We caught wind of the location of the Johnson who set us up, so we went to "talk" her into getting us out of this mess.

Little did we know that the friggen Ghosts were after her, too, and decided to waste her accomplices (us). So the Ghosts attack. Toad was tough as nails and had Killing hands at some ridiculous level, probably D. The Fenrir shaman was also a wolf shifter and a powerful combat caster to boot. Legion ... well... he could brawl, but he was useless without his guns. So he enters melee with two ghosts with knives. They kept stabbing him, but his layers of armor and protective / damage absorbing cyber and bioware kept him up. It got to the point where I stopped trying to counter attack and just let them stab me.

I suppose they meant to keep me tied up while they eliminated the real threats. Toad was dishing out some damage and the shaman was holding his own. I thought we might actually make it out alive. That was until the enemy mage winged the Fenrir Shaman with a light wound from some spell. He failed his berserker check and immediately turned upon the closest target--Toad. He cast a deadly manabolt at the troll, instantly killing her and KOing himself. With my friends both down, they were all free to concentrate on finishing me--which happened the next turn. A couple caps in each of our skulls to finish us off, and that was the end of the run.

Morals of this story:
1) A good sam doesn't abandon his weapon
2) A good sam doesn't run with berserker shamans.

So how did the character die?

Suicide by Ghosts.

heh. what happened to the J? (throwing her character into the path of a bunch of Ghosts--Pistons is as suicidal in SR as me and Critias put together!)

Okay, how the character died...

So, we were on this mission. I don't think it was a module or anything, probably something the GM cooked up on his own - but it could have been. We were breaking into some building run by some company who was being careless about its wastes, and our goal was to cause as much damage as possible. Now, that was a run I could get into. Under my jacket I had exactly two grenades, and I had been itching to throw them at SOMETHING for a few sessions... now it looked like I would have my chance.

There are like four of us, we have our bases pretty well covered. We have a covert-ops guy, covered in ruthinum, a large irish swordsman, complete with dikoted greatsword. We have a young decker (not an Otaku, but young none the less) and a mage of some sort. Oh, and my guy, of course, the ultra-cool biker / SMG fanatic.

We get to the building, and of course, the covert ops guy goes invisibile and slinks off on his own. He loved doing that, even though it never worked out for him, but in retrospect, I don't really blame him, since we were about the least stealthy team imaginable. My character's only plan to get inside was to eitehr ramp a bike laden with explosives into the side of the building, or to drive past the guards, guns blazing.

The rest of the group hated those ideas, but since we were here to cause major structural damage, I figured the jig would be up soon enough, and we might as well shoot our way in rather than have to shoot our way out. In any case, the convinced me to wait until we had tried a few other things first. Our covert ops guy was already inside, and looking for a way that the rest of us could get in. The only thing we found was that there was a ventilation shaft going from one of the larger rooms out to the roof.

Now, in retrospect, when breaking into a place that is a known polluter, one should probably avoid breathing in the fumes that they feel they need to "vent" out of their complex... but this wasn't, in fact, where my character went wrong.

We got up to the roof (via levitate and possibily invisibility I believe) but the mage was irked, and now a little drained. I got the hatch on the roof's ventilation shaft open, using a little elbow grease, and we had our covert ops guy on the floor of the room we'd be entering into (although we would be dropping down onto a walkway above some vats).

So, I decide, I'll go first, and begin to shimmy my way down this pipe. Things go pretty good, but it takes a little longer than expected, since I can barely move my limbs. Also... not silent. Somehow, me and my friends banging around inside an enclosed metal space wasn't nearly as sneaky as we had thought it would have been... my cyberlimbs didn't help that a whole lot, either.

So, by the time we get near the vent that we were going to exit from, there are like three guards waiting for us with machine guns and security armor. Yay. We get warned by the covert ops guy, who is hiding below them, and aiming at one of their heads, ready to open fire, but not wanting to take on three guys by himself. So, over our (unencrypted) radio, we coordinate the attack. Now, I can hardly move my arms, so I definatly can't reach behind me or under me to get to the (good) SMGs I have strapped to me, so I have to use the cyberSMGs I have in my arms - which happen to be loaded with ExExplosive ammo. So, I plant my hands on the bottom of the vent, aiming where I beleive they *might* be, and switch them to full-auto... and ... Ready, set, go!

One of hte three guards drops from a well placed silenced shot. The other two look in that direction for jsut a second before the vent explodes with gun-fire. Now, with no recoil compensation, and shooting blind through a very thin sheet of metal, I had no hope of ever hitting these guards, but of course, I didn't realize this unti lthe GM told me my target numbers. So, bullets shoot out of the vent in every direction EXCEPT where the guards are, and having ripped the vent apart, its no longer able to hold my weight, so I fall through and land at their feet. The rest of the group is behind me, making "oh shit" faces, and getting ready to move forward a little, and see if they cant' help me from up in the vent.

The remaining two guards begin to unload into me. I think they had bonuses since, although I had fallen, the GM felt I needed some sort of "prone" modifier, such as the "standing still" modifier. Luckly, my armor, and the increased body from having cyberlimbs (and chucking all my combat pool at it) allwoed me to survive the 4 bursts I had come my way. I was able to get to my feet in the time it took the covert ops guy to take out one more of the guards, and someone from the vent took out the other.

Okay, not the sneakiest mission ever - but I did get us in, right?

Well, I think by the end of it, I had taken a light wound or something, which the mage volunteered to take care of, though my essence was low, so by the time he got it right, he had a little more drain - he was not having a good day.

We explored the place a bit, set up some explosives, and then, boom - in one room, we walk in and see a big-ass fire elemental coming at us. Force 6 or something. We have a history of force-size-elementals causing party-wipes, so we're all a bit freaked out, and pretty much we all panic and split up a bit. The thing hurls some fire at us, and manages to set off a bunch of explosive ammo I have in my arms. Ouch. I take some more damage, and so does the covert ops guy. We decide we can't do anythign to a force 6 elemental, so we begin to retreat back into antoher room.

The mage is really the only one that can hurt the elemetanl, so he tries, desperatly, to stun-bolt the thing away, failing due to all his stun wounds.. .but eventually succeeds, even more drained then before.

Now we're in a pretty bad situation. Most of hte group has suffered wounds, and our healer is too drained to really take care of anyone. We've set two of the buildings to epxlode, but still needed to explore two more areas, and find a way to wreck those.

What would any good shadowrun group do in this situation?

Split up.

So me and the covert-ops guy head off in one direction, and the drowsey mage, the swordsman, and the decker go off in another. I don't really remember why we thought this was a good idea, or why we chose those groups... but we did.

Me and the covert-ops guy enter the next building, and find a bunch of cubicles, and hear more guards coming, so we both duck back into a cubicle, and hope to get the jump on them as they run past.

Apparantly they heard us (me), though, so rather than run by, the begin moving slower, trying to search the cubicles for us. So, I decide the only way out of this scenario is to do something heroic and action-movie-star-ish.

At first, I was goign to try to shoot through a cubicle. I mean, that material can't have that high of a barrier ratting, and now I could use my good guns - but, I thought better of it, as I remembered those huge target numbers. So, instead, I decide to wait until I hear them nearing my position... then I dive, Max Payne style, out of the cubicle, firing both SMGs full-auto, down the hallway at them.

Boy, that was a bad idea. In addition to my wound modifiers, my GM decided that such a rediculous stunt would give double the running modifiers. Needless to say, I dived out in front of the enemies, unloading in their general direction, but not able to hit a single one of them. My target numbers would have been about the same had I just tried to shoot through the cubicle walls.

So, at the end of that round, I figure I am pretty well fucked. These guys are carrying SMGs I think, and they begin to shoot at me, while I am (again) on the ground.

So I am rolling around, trying ot get up, bullets reflecting off of my arms and legs, and a couple grazing my torso. The covert ops guy manages to take out two more of the guards (Since they used up their combat pool shooting at me, I guess) but by the end of the round, I am dying from my wounds (still have a few rounds though, right?).

For some reason, he thought it was important to save my corpse... like, maybe that he would run into our heavily drained mage-friend in the next 30 seconds and he would be able to revive me. So, for his next action, he decided to drop an incendary grenade on the ground with one action, and pick up my body with the other.... giving the remaining guard the option of firing at us while we ran away, or running in the other direction, and saving his own life.

Being a kind and genrous GM, the GM decided to have the guard decide to save his own hide, and make a retreat, but what the covert ops guy didn't calculate was just how far away from his own grenade he would be able to run in a single phase. So, at the end of the phase, his grenade went off, and lit us boh on fire.

I died, of course, and he took some wounds. So the GM rolls again for some remaining ammo and grenades he has, and boom, some of his gear lit up and took him out too.

I believe the other team actually made it out of the run... and since we managed to light all the cubicles on fire (ruining their computers, and whatever physical documents they had), they got credit for destroying our building as well.



I felt tbad that the covert ops guy died trying to save my daredevil's life - especially when I was doomed to die anyways... but, to this day, I joke around that he was the one that killed my awesome rigger character with his careless grenade.

This is from last week.

Myself (a one armed mage)
A gun bunny adept (Mr. Sinister)
Wolf Shaman
Dwarf Decker
Dwarf Rigger

We are on floor 178 of the Arcology when we are attacked by Bumblebees.

A lot of things are going on here, and I don't want to give away any spoilers to anyone who hasn't played this scenario.

The thing to take notice of, is that some bees did get to us.

Everyone stung had rolled melee combat dice to hit the things, with a plus 4 modifier to do physical instead of stun damage while in melee. The Rigger, a long time player who wanted to try playing a rigger for once, had so specialized that he had forgotten to take an unarmed combat skill.

He decided to shoot the thing instead. It had stung him in the very same combat phase and was still on him.

GM: "are you sure?"
Rigger: "yep"
Everyone else in the room: "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THAT??"
Rigger: "Yep, target numbers are lower"

Including a moderate wound he had sustained earlier, his target number was 6. Now the GM recognizes that the chance of doing damage to himself is much greater than in a normal shot or botched roll so he lays out the rules.

GM: "We are going to count the sixes AND the ones that you roll. More sixes than ones, you hit the bee. More ones than sixes, your hit yourself. Tie, you hit both. Are you sure you want to do this?"
Rigger: "Yep"

So while running for our lives, spells and shots going off all around him, our drone rigger, stops, pulls out his pistol, concentrates, and shoots himself in the shoulder.

We’re all alive. I used up most of my elemental services and the wolf shaman will have a headache for a week.

I think it is theoretically possible to survive the aftermath of a bumblebee sting - but the damage doesn't take hours to take effect - it takes combat turns to take effect. With a wound modifier already that rigger should be dead dead...

And I dunno about the whole 6 and 1 thing - that strikes me as making things harder than it already is.