Okay, so Johnson calls me -at home- and says show up at Franscisco's at 6 PM, without any friends, and not carrying any artilliary. So I leave my minitank and my predator at home, and show up twenty minutes early. Another player showed up five minutes early.

The third said she was "Fasionably late." At this point, alarm bells start going off. Showing up late to the meet is likely to piss of Johnson, if not get you killed.

More on her later.


So J outlines the Run - the pay is 30,000 each. Paid after the mission, in the form of art objects and magical fetishes and other such stuff. At this point, I'm going "woah, waitaminute here."

I'm suspecting Rat here, and I don't mean the Totem. Think more along the lines of "plauge-infested devil rat with satanic fleas" rat.

The Run itself - it seems that J has in his possession a number of research faccilities a few hours' plane ride from Seattle, researching the Great Ghost Dance. It seems that one of those faccilities has gone offline, out of contact. So he wants to send in some professionals to find out what's wrong, whether or not it's just a rat chewed through the cable.

Did I mention that J is a troll of uncommon size, even for a troll?

So he and his compatraits (two trolls of more contemporary Troll size,) depart to allow us to speak it over. At this point, I'm telling the others, characters who apparently know each other ICly, but I don't, that I'm smelling a big rat here.

The dwarf woman (The one who was 'fasionably late') starts berating me, telling me not to 'piss my britches' and saying that if we talk about it, Johnson's in deep doo, so he'll pay us to keep our mouths shut.

At this point I'm just staring at her in shock. I take the time to remind her that if that's the case, then the price of bullets is certainly cheaper than the price of our silence. She tells my I'm being over paranoid and continues to berate my character.


So I walk. I tell the other elf woman, who had been quiet until then, that it would have been nice meeting her under other circumstances, but that I refuse to work with such unprofessionalism. (It's clear that I mean both Mr. J and the dwarf.) And I walk out. I go to a Stuffer Shack, buy a disposable cell, write it's number down, return to the bistro and give the number to a waittress, tell her to deliver it to the elf. Then I go home, bundle up my dependant and my rigger tank, and start driving. Going to ground, to lay low for awhile.


Was I reacting incorrectly? It smelled fishier than one of those giant floating canneries, and the level of unprofessionalism displayed by the dwarf made me uncomfortable, as a player and ICly. I instant messaged the DM on AIM, wondering if I was going to be making a post to the Stupid Player Death's thread after the game.

It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you.

I'd have ran.

Great Ghost Dance research? Ee-ook.
Bigger than normal Troll and more trolls acting Johnson? EE-OOOOK!
Dwarf moron? *Click* *splat*

I have personally had my characters run like hell away from stupid parties.

Like when our cleric caught a rogue stealthing toward the evil stronghold and proceeds to tell said rogue everything we, as a party, have surmised and learned about the evil. Yeah, I polymorphed and snuck away from the ijits.

Depends entirely on the game. If the game is meant to be more fun and silliness, then unprofessional characters and sneaky, underhanded Johnsons may be the order of the day. However, if the game is more professional, then I may have done what you did.

I've run into the situation, too, when some of the players what generally sillyness and some others want more professionalism. Usually makes for good tension at the gaming table as long as everyone is big enough to remain friends afterwards.

All in all, based on what you wrote above, I'd say it was healthy paranoia. Hell, if I was a paranoid runner, I may have just moved when the Johnson called me at home. That's what middlemen and anonymous matrix addresses are for, after all ....

Yeah, about that...

My Fixer called me after I got home, and started yelling at me for walking out on J. I told him that J called me at home, and the Fixer told me he gave him the number.

I hung up on him. I think I'm going to be finding a new Fixer.

Absofuckinglutely. That fixer has no reason to give out your home number. And why did you give your home number to your fixer? You aren't paranoid enough.

Jray - I didn't realize I had. The DM made that call for me. I never said my Fixer knew my number.

You handled this completely the wrong way. By this point I would expect the Johnson, Fixer, and possibly Dwarf to be suffering high-velocity lead poisoning. What's causing the delay?

~J

Because I wasen't carrying my Predator at dinner, and I didn't feel like picking a firefight with three LARGE trolls in the middle of an upscale Bistro.

As usual, Kag and I are sympatico: these drekheaded amateurs should have met their makers, like yesterday.

I do not understand why you acted like you did.

-The Johnson is a big troll and uses other trolls for bodyguards. Who cares? There's no rule that says all Johnsons must be average-looking humans.

-You are being paid in art and magic fetishes...for investigating a magical situation. By a Johnson that apparently owns some magical facilities. Why is this surprising? I consider it quite normal for Johnsons to pay in barter, partially because it's just easier and more deniable to the Johnson. After all, who really knows where that gold came from?

-You should push for some up front and strongly consider walking away from any run that doesn't involve you gettign some up front, both so you can cover pre-run expenses and as a security deposit. Inquire as to why he wont pay you any up front. It's OK in some cases to not get some up front, such as if you're being hired for a job where minutes count STARTING NOW.

-I would remind the dwarf that it's implied in all Shadowruns that you don't talk about it with others about it afterwards and that blabbing your mouth is a quick way to get black listed. Also berate her for being late, she'll probably get the point. If she actually follows through on her plan or continues being chronically late, just cut her off from the team or kill her.

Edit: As for the Fixer calling you - I just specify on all of my sheets how contacts and such call me, such as having a specific business number. If the GM forgot, just remind him and move on. He probably thought nothing of it.

and I echo the poster before me.

Well, sure. If you are lookng at the metaplot. I think what SD8685 did was perfectly reasonable from that character's perspective. Too many unknowns. Next time bring ina character with hooks into the other PCs lives and it is easier to trust them.

When you're at a game with other people trying to create an experience fun for all, its more important to 'get along' and 'play well together' than to stick to hard realism and character.

It is even more important when your notions of realism and character are out of genre. In this case, the genre is dungeon crawl with guns - which means you have to gloss over a lot of things to get into the dungeon. The tavern scene is just there to set up the delivery of that dungeon - it's the 'table cloth' - don't pull it out from under the silverware without expecting a mess.

Both in this case.

Mysterious figure gathers a group of rough protagonists in a shadowy drinking establishment to get paid a lot of money to do something dangerous and ethically dubious in the name of 'loot' and 'adventure'.

That scene is so well played out people should know to just go with the flow. And the concerns are true of any RPG gathering - number one issue on the table is providing fun for all. Its a group dynamic and you have to let realism and character take a second seat to 'getting along and accepting the genre tropes'.

You're there to form a team and get into an adventure. You can roleplay bickering it out with the blind old wizard with a knife in his back who dies in the next scene all you want, but at the end of the day, the rules of the format mean you accept the mission and join the adventure.

Players will try to do all sorts of silly things in this intro scene to 'impress the coolness of their characters' upon each other. The mature player just grins, bears it, and works to move things forward to the next scene where actual play can begin. Its kind of like putting up with people's references to Star Trek, B5, Buffy, Hitchhicker's Guide, and so on - you have to accept that there will be a certain level of 'geek ooze' at the table and just let it slide off of you like you were teflon. These is no different from the characters with mirrorshades on and all blacker colored trenchcoats the PC at left. It's just geek ooze - not worth destroying the game over.

Character and roleplay are important, but keeping the game moving comes first.

If I walked into a game and expected professionalism and money, but got lip and questionable rewards I would walk that character away from the table. That being said, I would then make bubba the ubertroll physical mage and come back next session and enjoy my D&D SR conversion game.

I convinced my team to refuse to meet with the J at his specified location last game. Made him switch venues to a place that seemed less like a trap. The run before that we got set up.

Being paranoid isn't a bad thing. You never know when your GM is going to take to heart that 9/10 rule. 9 out of 10 Johnson's aren't out to fuck you, but that tenth one is.

Arcady: While I agree with your larger point--that fun should be the #1 priority for a gaming group--I have to say I don't play Shadowrun as a dungeon-crawl at all.

Obviously, each gaming group has their own style of play and everyone's entitled to do whatever makes for a fun evening. If "meet in bar, accept job, raid corp, steal treasure" is what a group likes doing, then more power to them.

However, I know several groups in my area--including my own--that does things quite differently. We don't string together episodic one-shot runs: we link stories together in a larger campaign with steady NPCs, recurring antagonists, recognizable themes, etc. The characters work together because they know and "trust" each other (insofar as any 'runner trusts a peer) and the've developed an effective chemistry.

The group I GM probably would have walked away from this run, and that's their prerogative. I always have at least one backup run tucked away in my GM folder for just such an emergency anyway.

I'm not knocking the "dungeon-crawl" style of playing Shadowrun, I'm just suggesting that there are plenty of groups for whom that model is not only foreign, but undesirable. I've been playing Shadowrun for a decade and I've never run it as a formulaic hack & slash genre-piece.

Just my .02

I'm not a fan of the dungeon crawl myself, but if you put a group of PCs together in an intro scene - a good player plays along and accepts a certain level of geek-show-off-ish-ness.
You don't get your undies in a wad over it all.

You know you're there to get slotted into the events for the evening and bring all these unlikely companions together. You know you're supposed to go on that adventure. Play along - it's a social event. RPGs are about being team players. Tweak the scene, have fun with it, but in the end you get on the train.

Its a very awkward moment. Expecially for a new game - the GM doesn't have a good feel for the PCs yet, even if (s)he knows the players. Even if (s)he made the PCs as premades. The same is true for each player with regards to the other players at the table, the campaign, and perhaps even that GM. Even their own character - no player knows their character as well as they think they do during the first few sessions. These are extremely tough scenes to put together without resorting to 'formula approaches' like the one described in the first post. While during the game you always need to give over some slack of 'your perfect character' for the good grace of the table and group, in this scene you need to do it more than ever.

Your job, as a player, is to get along and join in - to buy into the campaign and/or adventure the GM has proposed so everyone else as well as yourself can then proceed to getting to know each other and/or each other's character better and then later learn what works for you all and what doesn't.

But on day one, just give it as much grace and slack as it takes to make it run smooth.

And quite often, during the game, you need to give over with regards to your characterization to make it fit the overall grace of the table better - whatever that might be.

Its really annoying when the GM waves his hand and declares that some Johnson knows exactly who you are, where you live and what jobs you've done.

I mean, even my character has a hard time remembering all his crimes. Done all over the place, in many names, always disguised and commonly alone or with a closeknit team.

Basically my characters are now homeless wanderers, always keeping on the move and one step ahead of the GM. And I don't even have the Hunted flaw.

Point being, you can never be too paranoid. I disagree with the people advocating instant ganking of J and team. Just walk away and go underground. J has no real motivations to move against you at this point. It'll be too expensive.

Teammembers blabbing off to contacts and strangers, in some incessant quest for brownie points, tick me off bigtime. If my character is known to run with a certain crowd, and elements of that crowd keeps leaving hints to their current jobs with their contacts, then thats more people who by association know too much about Me. Don't do that, people who feel guilty. To the rest, do not allow it if you ingame find out. Discuss it with the team and make them accept that noone gets into the loop without the entire team knowing who gets the info.

Back to the original post: the whole thing is reading to me like an inexperienced GM trying to rope a group of inexperienced players into their first run.

Two things really rub me wrong about this scenario. The first is the payment, sure 30k in magical items is cool if you can use them, but art? SD was a rigger, if you're going to barter in trade barter in things each character can use, more or less, such as guns and ammo. If my rigger had even been at the meet (more on this in point 2) I'd have told Mr. J where he can shove his telesma. This is most likely due to an inexperienced GM who didn't realize that you can only get 10-20 percent of the items true worth when you fence it (unless (s)he compensated for that). So that's 3-6k that's not going to cover the replacement cost of a drone.

Next unless the team is being put together just for this run, which this sounds like. Not everyone should be at the table with the J. There should only be the face and a guard (who should keep quite and look intimidating, but not threatening). These two should be the only ones there 20 or so minutes early. The rest of the team sans rigger should be there ATLEAST two hours early blending in with the crowd, looking out for trouble, and ready to turn the place into an excellent imitation of a slaughterhouse incase something goes wrong. The rigger should be a few blocks away watching the place with a condor drone and be ready to bring the vehicle around darn quick when needed.

This entire situation -- from the IC gameplay to the OOC reactions to the DS-bystander's reactions to those reactions -- boil down to the fact that there are two extremes of Shadowrun style play.

D&D with guns. Cyberpunk with elves.

Most published adventure (tries to) fall somewhere between the two extremes. Most players, though? Most players and GMs are firmly in one camp or the other (and don't even realize it), based on the level of reality, the flavor of reality, the amount of lethality, the accepted levels of paranoia, the tech vs. magic commonality levels, etc, etc, etc, of their own personal game world. Some people like a Shadowrun game that plays like D&D, involves your average dungeon crawl mentality (just with dusters instead of cloaks, IE instead of archmagi, research facilities instead of dungeons). Some people like a Shadowrun game that plays like Heat, but with a metaracial spread and magic as another factor that a professional team has to account for and use to their advantage.

It sounds like a Cyberpunk with Elves player got tossed into a D&D with Guns game. No biggie. It happens.

I found a solution, though one that could only be used in spurts: freaky magical drek.

~J

I would definately have been suspicious of the Johnson. After all, if he tells you you are going to a facility owned by his own corporation, he is either lying to you or letting you know who he works for. If you know who he works for, you know too damn much. Either way, he was probably screwing you over.

Just play it like Shadowrun. Shadowrun is neither D&D with guns nor Cyberpunk with elves. At the very heart, SR has a set of rules governing gameplay and gamemastering, just use them.

I blame the GM in this case. While ShadowDragon was maybe paranoid, i doubt that he misinterpreted the scene so badly. Ask the GM some time, if the Troll Johnson was gonna be a backstabber. Walking away is an IC reasonable thing to do. The GM, if he wants to run the mission he has planned has to overcome it. In my mind the go to move would be to something like:

"Ah.. I was afraid you'd say that MR. ______ which is why I took the liberty of Kidnapping your precious pet Cuddles."

That might be a little heavy handed, there are probably other (basically similar) ways to effect a similar result.

OK, I'm going to call this one two ways:

As a GM/ST: The person running the game has a very odd style. The actual run sounds normal; lots of opportunity for it to be not what it seems, lots of things to pre-run research, interesting Johnsons. Personally, things I would have changed about it as ST:

*Have Johnson react to the "fashionably late" part somehow. No J's gonna let it just slide, even if all they do is quip "ah, so glad you could join us."
*Never assume contacting details. No runner would EVER give a home number for ANYTHING. Hell, IRL I always give my mobile number and I have nothing to hide!
*The Fixer should have told the character "look, the run goes down in this many days. Get your shit together and contact the group on ______ if you want in." That way, there's a way back in, and some time to do research on the run. That regains player confidence, and brings them back into the fold with some handy stuff for the group.

As a PC: You ain't paying me in traceable, likely stolen goods. You pay me by credstick, chummer. No stick, no deal. A nice, no strings attached, blank stick with 30k:nuyen: on it. And I give my home number to nobody, so how my Fixer got it to give to you is beyond me. However, I take it from your lack of reaction the lateness of this slitch is OK. Their attitude, however, is not pro, and I work with pros. Me and my colleagues here will need a few days to gather gear; we'll ring you in 3 days to say if it's on. Leave a 5k:nuyen: deposit at this location along with any access keys you have (hey, you own the place, so we may as well go in legit), and we'll see you a few days after at ______. We'll call you when we get there and when we leave.

That's just me, though.

hmm, i like this...

i might as well step up and admit, wholely, that i'm the GM of this game. However, with SD's charcter "issues" that were were sorting out and helping with, the game didnt get rolling until an hour late, so instead of doing anything "planned" I wing'd it.... and appearently, right into a mountain side.

I will admit, i made more goofs than i should have. One thing i would have stuck with, would have been the payment method. As a point though, i would've made sure they would've gotten enough in telesma/art to make the 30K each, net, not gross. I also offered to let the charactersact as "sellers" for the corporation to sell the works, instead as independant sellers of their own goods. The reason is that i forsee this particular research company (the same the J works for, they're not major, or even named at this point) didn't forsee the need for something this catostrophic as this happening... as they were told in the meet, there are defenses there, so any sort of "natural" occurence should have been able to be dealt with.

As for the reaction, the J sort of expected someone to be late, so the "greeters" outside waited for a bit longer, and this would've been en exchange the others already inside wouldnt have seen.

The J had no intention of backtabbing them, oh and for upfront money, they never asked, IIRC, and if a J can get away with not paying anything up front, and potentially lossing that money to deaths, why would he?

And besides, now i've got a kickin reason to unleash some real hell on the game if i want to.. "so, uh, you guys remember that one run you turned down to investigate that research facility? uhh yea, well, what was there, got out..."

It does help to have multiple characters per player with different priorities and such. That way, when the professional PC you first picked decides to walk, he can comment "I know this ork who is much less picky about his employments. Give me a finder's fee out of his pay and I'll see that he meets up with the rest of your group in time for the planning phase." Then, put away your professional character sheet and pull out "Neil the Ork Barbarian the Player Character" (not to be directly confused with the trid show).

And yet the player plays within a group, in a setting that is (professionally!) supposed to be team-oriented.

Edit: Oh, and agreeing with that last part, Kagetenshi: although I'd question any character that is made so tightly that there are some jobs one PC can accept and not another. I'm more of the school of creating a single PC that is compatible with the group (crucial! including the GM) and is flexible across scenarios that the group is likely to play. Creating multiple PCs so as to have specific compatabilities in different scenarios (to me!) feels like cheating your way out of a potentially challenging situation.

Aku: you might remember me better as Sedna.

It's the player's job to play his character. If his character if of the attitude that that's not how to run biz then he's within his bounds to look for another job.

Here's an example of a set up for a run a GM tried to do over AIM with myself and a few buddies. The J calls our fixers, tells them that if we don't show up for this meet he'll break our legs. Right off the bat my character is pissed about this, but he shows up for the meet anyway, expecting trouble. After the initial meet, and some quick discussion with the rest of the team, we decide to go back in immediately and show these chumps what's up. Break my fraggin legs? My character laughs, loads up his Ares Alpha, and gets ready to tear this Barrens Bar into a slaughterhouse. Did it ruin the GMs plans for the night? Surely. Was if fun anyhow? It would have been had the GM not vanished completly before we pulled it off.

Aside from that, in our TT games we used to do the whole team at the table thing. After some convincing and with some patiance I've gotten the crew to work more cohesively. We send the team leader, the adept, and the face to the table. We've got a number of high end runs under our belts so we also feel we can afford to be upfront with the J about what we expect payment wise, both upfront, and after the fact. Starting off we didn't work that way, but now we do.

Aku's right though in one regard, it's up to the characters to ask for payment upfront, if they don't the J's within his rights surely to not offer.

Can't help but notice that your example used the word "we" throughout, Edge2054, and not "I". That's the only point I'm trying to make.

And definitely yes to that last: if the characters don't ask, there is no requirement by the Johnson to give. A recent team of my acquaintance recently discovered this truth for themselves

IMO, it was well played. In the course of the game I ran, I didnt ever have a charcter (IC or even a player in ooc chatter) mention about stepping away. If you think that is what a reasonable professional would do, then thats what should have happend. There was too much that was just flaky about how things where comming tougther.

However, it is also imperitive that you let the GM know (either at the time, or afterwards) that it was something that was just begging for a setup, and your charcter thought hed much rather stay poor and alive.

"I" becomes "we" when the characters are all compatible enough to stick together for future jobs. It should never be the default unless declared so previously by the GM, which was not the case here (which, incidentally, isn't really a style I'm keen on most of the time—though for one-shots and non-shadowrunning games it's often the best method).

~J

Possibly focus on individual characters and not team intended then; and possibly not intended but just a side-effect of inexperience. We don't know enough to be certain which.

I'll also link this in: as a Dumpshock cross-section examining creation priorities from a player vs. group perspective.

*chuckles* Alright, I'll give you that.

Brandt, my current character, has worked with a few chummers he didn't consider to be quite on a proffessional level. One of them has become a consemate pro over the course of the campaign. Another ended up getting ditched in Vegas.

So for initial party cohesiveness, I agree, be flexible as a player, as a character, give the rest of the team the benifit of the doubt. If they screw you later have a backup plan to take them out, (I know Brandt does).

On the phone call thing, I think that could have been handled differently. Brandt's paranoid about that shit. Uses email and a beeper to let people get ahold of him. Then either emails them back or takes a hike down to a payphone to return the call. If our GM would have said, Brandt's phone rings, I would have said, You mean his pager? He doesn't give his number out otherwise. Now, after the game's gone along, when our GM says, Brandt, your phone rings, I know it's his cell and I know it's his wife calling, which is how I set it up to begin with. Just had to let the GM know that was the case and since then it's been all gravy.

As far as walking Talia, you're right, most teams don't walk, most players don't walk. Still though everyone is in there right to do that. With how our group is now it would be a we thing, but if Brandt would have felt he was getting set up on that very first run, he would have walked. with our without the rest of the team. He would have warned them first, told him why he felt sketchy about it. If they would have walked with him, maybe in the future he would have pulled them together as a crew. If they would have told him he was being paranoid, he would have simply shrugged his shoulders and left anyhow.(As a matter of fact we did get set up, had no clue though, and pulled our asses out of the fire together.)