General Shadowrun Questions III: Ya like that, Chummer?

[Lacco]

Blackjack's Guide to Bitter Gamemastering?

Or just overall Blackjack's Guide to Shadowrun

[Floret]

Meh...

I need some advice.
We started playing a 5th ed. campaign some time ago (I'm the GM), and it started off pretty well.
Unfortunately, once my players got a hang of the rules, the power gamer in the group created a new combat monster character.
This was fine by me, except that all the other characters then felt useless in combat and created their own combat monster characters.
The result is that a year into the campaign the mage of the party, who is the only one who didn't create a new character, is the only one capable of performing any non-combat tasks.
She is the face, the infiltrator, the manipulator, the information gathering specialist, but not really comparable to the rest of the party when in combat.

So far I've let it slide and let the dice fall where they may, hoping that would wake them up.
They are incapable of making any excellent negotiation tests, so they make less money from contracts, and they make lousy first impressions on Johnsons.
They are incapable of stealthing an entire run, so they usually lose any low-profile bonuses.
They don't have many or high quality contacts, so they are mostly incapable of getting better gear than what they started with.
They are not very good at collecting information, so they usually miss important stuff, making even their succesful runs half-assed efforts.
They have no matrix capability, so they just brute force. Successfully thus far only because they haven't run into anything really serious and they don't mind murdering prodigous amounts of wage-slaves to make a quick getaway.

The players are reasonably smart, even if their characters aren't, so they have been able to scrape by thus far,
I'm setting the next run up to be low-profile, meaning no pay if they blow anything up, but I fear that it won't be enough to get them to reasess the situation.

I feel like the entire campaign is beginning to skate on thin ice. Does anyone have some ideas that could help us out?

Well. Seems like your players want something different out of this game than you do.
Or, at least all of them who jumped at the opportunity to create combat monsters. Because, really, if they did that, then probably because that's what they have fun playing...

As for ideas on how to handle this?
Talk to them. Suggest building a more balanced team, discuss the problem, tell them that your fun is being limited by their style of play (At least, it sounds like it is). Maybe even allow them to create their new replacement characters with just as much Karma on top of the regular as they have earned so far - that makes letting go a lot easier (And maybe allow the mage to respec a bit, otherwise She'll end up utterly screwed).
If the thing attracting them is not combat, but minmaxing, maybe try looking up and suggesting how you can minmax other areas of the game. The resident minmaxer in my game has a Face/social infiltrator (Mundane, cause "An adept would be too easy"). And those are some rather impressive dicepools going on there... (Not to mention the fact of rolling two pools, against different limits, summing up the successes, and having the enemy roll against that result with one single pool is just mean.)
With the right Chrome, or even the sweetspot between chroming up and using the rest of the magic left in you, lots of things are possible to minmax than just combat.

If the result is not "okay, let's try something different"... well. Maybe you need other players. I mean, that sucks, but if playstyles diverge so drastically, one of you is gonna end up not enjoying their time.
Or, alternatively, go for a different style of campaign where their style shines. Maybe a desert wars style thing. Or Combat ops in one of the many places needing mercenaries.

[DigoDragon]

They are incapable of making any excellent negotiation tests, so they make less money from contracts, and they make lousy first impressions on Johnsons.
They are incapable of stealthing an entire run, so they usually lose any low-profile bonuses.
They don't have many or high quality contacts, so they are mostly incapable of getting better gear than what they started with.
They are not very good at collecting information, so they usually miss important stuff, making even their succesful runs half-assed efforts.
They have no matrix capability, so they just brute force. Successfully thus far only because they haven't run into anything really serious and they don't mind murdering prodigous amounts of wage-slaves to make a quick getaway.

I think maybe you should talk with them out of the game and bring this up. Combat shouldn't be a major aspect of Shadowrun, unless that's what they really want out of it. I'd discuss expectations and see if maybe they're thinking something on a different page than you.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

Combat shouldn't be a major aspect of Shadowrun

Citation Needed. Dedicating the second-longest chapter in the corebook to combat alone, plus all the purely-combat related stuff in the other chapters, not to mention the freaking front cover, seems pretty indicative of a major aspect.

[LibraryOgre]

Change the nature of the campaign.

They're combat monsters? Start sticking them in warzones. Their fixers aren't going to offer them a quiet job unless the Johnson WANTS them to frag it up (don't have to pay if they screw everything up, even if screwing everything up was the secret objective). "We need you to extract this person from Chicago. We don't really care about collateral damage." "Here's some linguasofts for Farsi. Your job is to go blow up Iran. Watch out for the sirrush!"

If your team is full of blunt objects, find them a nail. Continuing to use them for surgery is going to result in broken limbs and shattered dreams of being a pianist.

[Misereor]

Well. Seems like your players want something different out of this game than you do.
Or, at least all of them who jumped at the opportunity to create combat monsters. Because, really, if they did that, then probably because that's what they have fun playing...

As for ideas on how to handle this?
Talk to them. Suggest building a more balanced team, discuss the problem, tell them that your fun is being limited by their style of play (At least, it sounds like it is). Maybe even allow them to create their new replacement characters with just as much Karma on top of the regular as they have earned so far - that makes letting go a lot easier (And maybe allow the mage to respec a bit, otherwise She'll end up utterly screwed).

I did. They created more combat monsters.
I haven't got a clue why they're sofocused on their combat abilities. The only two fatalitites we've had was when they met their first toxic spirit, and when one of them critically glitched a demolitions test. My fun has mostly been about them experiencing the awesomeness of the Sixth World. None of them are very familiar with canon, so I started them off in 2050, and we're just about up to the Universal Brotherhood storyline. I suppose I could use their combat-mindedness for an all out bug hunt scenario.

I guess I'll ask them what kind of campaign they want to play. I don't mind playing a merc type campaign, it's just annoying to play a "normal" campaign with their current characters.

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone.

[Telok]

I've run into this sort of thing in other games. Usually it's people who mostly only play the last three editions of D&D who go "combat, combat, combat, what's negotiation? I've got a gun!". It either takes them a few sessions to discover that combat isn't the majority of the game or they get really confused and just sort of flounder around until you talk to them.

Suggestion: If it's their first SR game and they've only ever done hack and slash D&D before talk to them about the tone of the game and the setting. Point them at media (probably heist movies) that's similar to what you're trying to do. If they really want an all gun-bunnies game then you can go ahead and give it to them. Just warn them that it's going to be pretty high casualty rates, because guns.

[DigoDragon]

Citation Needed. Dedicating the second-longest chapter in the corebook to combat alone, plus all the purely-combat related stuff in the other chapters, not to mention the freaking front cover, seems pretty indicative of a major aspect.

Meh, fine. Combat shouldn't be a major aspect of Shadowrun in my opinion.

The rule I follow is that the law is going to expend an amount of resources to hunt the PCs down proportional to the body count times the collateral damage left behind. :3

[Lord Torath]

Meh, fine. Combat shouldn't be a major aspect of Shadowrun in my opinion.

The rule I follow is that the law is going to expend an amount of resources to hunt the PCs down proportional to the body count times the collateral damage left behind. :3

I've always been in favor of making heavy use of Narcojet ammo and Stunbolt/Stuncloud spells, combined with hijacking the security system.

You do need the occasional Powerbolt for dealing with the odd drone, but on living targets, usually either Body or Willpower is low enough for non-lethal methods to be effective. Concussion grenades are also useful, but you still need to be careful: We once killed two people in a small space (with reinforced walls and door) with a pair of concussion grenades and the Chunky Salsa effect. (We didn't feel too badly, though, as they'd tried to assassinate us several times without cause. Stupid double-crosses!)

[LibraryOgre]

I've always been in favor of making heavy use of Narcojet ammo and Stunbolt/Stuncloud spells, combined with hijacking the security system.

You do need the occasional Powerbolt for dealing with the odd drone, but on living targets, usually either Body or Willpower is low enough for non-lethal methods to be effective. Concussion grenades are also useful, but you still need to be careful: We once killed two people in a small space (with reinforced walls and door) with a pair of concussion grenades and the Chunky Salsa effect. (We didn't feel too badly, though, as they'd tried to assassinate us several times without cause. Stupid double-crosses!)

I made an adept once who used stun batons... with surprise, I would frequently get enough successes to kill someone with them.

[Lord Torath]

That was generally not a problem in 2E, unless your GM decided to use the over-damage rules from the Shadowrun Companion. We opted not to. But yeah, our PhyAd really loved those stun-batons as well. Our rigger had a taser mounted on her combat drone, in addition to the twin sniper rifles - one loaded with explosive rounds and the other loaded with Gel rounds.

[comicshorse]

I've always been in favor of making heavy use of Narcojet ammo and Stunbolt/Stuncloud spells, combined with hijacking the security system.

Yeah in a game one of the P.C.s played a pacificst ( but not too bright) Ork Shaman who was such a useful, self sacrificing 'Runner we went non-lethal to keep him part of the group *. Between stun spells, gel rounds and narcojet we were able to make our jobs pretty much entirely non-lethal

* Unless the job specifically called for it in which case we lied through our teeth
" So know we set up the camera to film the drug lords house "
BOOOOOOOM
"Oh my the house mysteriously blew up. What a strange coincidence. "

[DigoDragon]

My dog shaman accidentally killed someone with an over-cast stunbolt spell.


I once ran a mission where the PCs were hired to help a Johnson fake his own death. The PCs figured it's fake wetwork so sure, why not? They stake out the hotel where the Johnson was to give a speech at a conference, set up their plan, the sniper nest, their getaway vehicle, and a safehouse. They tell the Johnson their setup, outfitting him with blood packs to make the sniper shots look realistic and donning their own disguises of hotel staff and security. The Johnson tells them he'll arrange what happens after his "death" with another team. Doesn't tell the PCs what that arrangement is because they don't need to know. Their job is just ensure the Johnson looks dead and then disappear.

Well, funny thing about that...

See, the Johnson hired a second runner team to impersonate a Doc Wagon response unit to claim him for the hospital (but of course they actually will be driving him to the airport so he can catch a flight out of the country). After the PCs "assassinate" their Johnson, they decided to stick around rather than leave. And then they saw the Doc Wagon unit. And then they panicked that those med tech were gonna figure out that the Johnson was faking his death. And the PCs wanted to ensure the Johnson didn't go to jail so that they could get paid.

So the PCs attack "Doc Wagon", which confuses the hell out of the convention because they're still wearing their hotel disguises, and the second team defends themselves and their Johnson. And this isn't like, kid-gloves stick-n-shock and gel rounds kind of fighting. The PCs are committed to kill mode here; half the team manage to torch the Doc Wagon ambulance (which was a legit borrowed vehicle mind you, so when the oxygen tank ruptured, it went up spectacularly in flames), kill part of the medical team, injure a few bystandards, and one PC managed to lob a grenade into the elevator that the two remaining "Doc Wagon" medics went into with the Johnson. Just the door closes.

Let me repeat that last part.

One PC. Managed to throw a high-explosive grenade. In, past the closing elevator doors. Where their Johnson was.

Long story short (too late), the PCs didn't get paid and they had to leave town for about six months until the heat died down. I think the insult to injury came many sessions later when a group of terrorists tried to hire them for their expertise in causing collateral. The PCs (smartly) declined a meeting. XD

[Corsair14]

Anyone ever try to run a long term Bug City campaign in the ruins of Chicago?

[Dimers]

That seems like it'd be very combat-heavy. And/or "tainted".

Haven't tried it, no ... I've been subconsciously assuming that what Shadowrun players enjoy most is the setting, which Chicago would not provide. It's too different from the rest of the world. Maybe I should reconsider.

[Corsair14]

Burning Bright was by far my favorite SR novel. If I ever get around to running another SR campaign I think I will make it a run up to the bug takeover. Maybe have the PCs doing a parallel investigation around the country and maybe a quick trip to Columbia then end up in Chicago when it goes down and have them try and survive and get out.

[TeChameleon]

Towards the tail end of 4e (2072-ish?), Chicago is a surprisingly busy place- while I didn't do a long-term campaign there (or a long-term campaign at all ), a significant chunk of the campaign I did run ended up being there, complete with blood-spirit-animated dolls that only moved when you weren't looking (you have no idea how happy it made me when Lord Torath made that offhand comment last page...), and I ended up doing a lot of reading about Chicago in preparation for it, since I had no idea how my players were going to proceed.

I'd say that you could probably maintain a fairly respectable chunk of the 'standard' Shadowrun flavour there, with a significant overlay of survival-horror, courtesy of the bugs and all the wonderful things the megacorps are trying to do with them. And the roving female biker gang of mantis spirits

To put it another way- Chicago may have been blown to h-e-double-hockey-sticks and gone, but a minor incident like that will barely slow the power players in the sixth world down- the megacorps and the dragons were jockeying for position before the rubble stopped bouncing.

[Lord Torath]

Towards the tail end of 4e (2072-ish?), Chicago is a surprisingly busy place- while I didn't do a long-term campaign there (or a long-term campaign at all ), a significant chunk of the campaign I did run ended up being there, complete with blood-spirit-animated dolls that only moved when you weren't looking (you have no idea how happy it made me when Lord Torath made that offhand comment last page...), and I ended up doing a lot of reading about Chicago in preparation for it, since I had no idea how my players were going to proceed.

What can I say? It made quite the impression when you first shared that story!

[Corsair14]

Reading this thread has me nostalgic for SR now. I played a disastrous game of 4th about 10 years where the players so over thought and took time planning the heist and arguing in their safe house it literally put me(the GM) to sleep. Before that my experience was with 1st and 2nd edition which were so much better played. So I have a few questions.
I was thinking of basing my players locally here in FL and perhaps some runs to the Caribbean. One of my early missions I have bare bones bullet pointed in my brief campaign outline is a item extraction on a freighter moving up the coast for delivery to one of the bandit kings in the Caribbean. Then slowly working my way through the campaign to a Bug city kind of thing in the Orlando megaplex pretending the original didn't happen. My players know nothing of shadowrun and shadowrun lore. Ill probably have The Big Mouse and his megacorp play a role too. Disney might as well be a mega corp now, biggest non federal employer in the country, owns multiple TV channels, movie studios, commercial interests, and of course the most famous theme parks in the world.
Now
-Is there any real info on the Confederated States or FL in any of the books?
-Which edition? I have read good reviews of 5th ed. 4th was too flipping complex I think. Granted I have a lot of books on 4th but mostly informational and not rules. I love Feral cities and War!

-Trying to avoid the mountain of books and rules everywhere issue, in addition to keeping hackers and matrix activity as an NPC thing, which books do I need? I limit the matrix thing as I really dislike having to plan out a whole different world which is nothing but dice rolling over and over that only one PC might ever see and have to run that while everyone else twiddles their thumbs. So I what are the best say three books for magic, guns, cyberware, and I assume there is a riggers handbook? Is there a players book for 5th yet that has the different meta-human races, giants gnomes, minotaurs?

[DigoDragon]

There's not much in any of the 4e books I know on Florida, but making the "Mouse Corp" into a mega for Shadowrun isn't far fetched. A thing a lot of folks don't realize is that much of their land is incorporated with all the statuses of a city (Celebration, Disney Springs, etc). If you're arrested by an office in the park, that's a city police officer. It's about as close to real world extraterritoriality that I can think of.

[Corsair14]

That just means I can wing it. Aside from the core of downtown Orlando inside the 417 with be the sprawl, the Disney Archologies who finally got around to doming the theme parks, they have been wanting to do that for years but just isnt technically feasible yet, new Orlando will be east of Kissimmee in the Deseret Megacity(check their 100 year plan, they want to supplant Orlando). Info can be from any edition really. Stats are easy to make up as long as you have the info available.

[Telwar]

The 4e supplement Dirty Tricks (the political book) had a general overview of the UCAS and CAS. I don't remember a lot on Florida, but remember the southern tip (Miami on down) is part of the Carib League, but that may have changed by 5e, there were noises being made about that in 4e.

Conspiracy Theories (my absolute favorite 4e book) had a good write-up of Washington DC. I am mostly amused by (as mentioned in a previous incarnation of this thread) my neighborhood being rendered uninhabitable by a bioweapon.

I *think* I remember Disney being mentioned as an A- or AA-rated corp. Even those have extraterritoriality, and non-AAAs can still be huge players in local markets.

[TeChameleon]

Heh... y'know, it's not really hard to imagine Disney and Horizon fighting a decades-long shadow war as Horizon tries to get at all those juicy Disney IPs and the legendary theme parks, etc. Although, in Shadowrun, you just know that the secret head of Disney would be Uncle Walt's thawed... er, head attached to a cyborg body...

[huttj509]

This seems like a basic question, but hey.

Played SR3 15 years ago. New to SR5. Trying to internalize the mechanics in character creation.

At character creation, what levels of {skill+attribute} would you consider indicative of:

Specialized
Good
Adequate
Not Bad
Inept

As an example, if I want to make a Decker who's specialized in computer stuff, but also adequate (or at least not bad) with machine pistols, what sort of numbers would you consider acceptable?

Not looking for a full build, just trying to shape things mentally.

[Misereor]

I guess I'll ask them what kind of campaign they want to play. I don't mind playing a merc type campaign, it's just annoying to play a "normal" campaign with their current characters.

I'll be damned...
Turns out my players are paranoid about me killing them, and they were not creating combat monsters but "capable of surviving an ambush" monsters.

They're right to be paranoid of course. It's Shadowrun after all, and in my estimation they're nowhere near paranoid compared to the average runner.
Not that I randomly spring ambushes on them. If the scenario calls for one, sure I'll do it, but never for no reason.
But being prepared for faulty info, double-dealing Johnsons, or security leaks is a big part of the SR flavor. As is the fact that the standard SR flavor template must on occasion be broken, just to keep the players on their toes. Noone has actually been killed in an ambush, but apparently the tension was a bit high the tmies they've been subjected to them.

Maybe it's because they're green at SR.
My first SR GM always let us do the legwork, then decided what opposing mesures there were, and if we succeeded. I hated that.
I hated it so much, that I always decide on measures first (varying depending on the antagonists and circumstances), and if the players can outhink them then good for them, even if I made a unrealistic boneheaded mistake I could easily retroactively correct without them noticing (I mostly write them off as bureaucratic screwups). It also means that I'm willing to let the dice fall where they may, most of the time.

Hmm... I should probably try to explain to them, that their lack of legwork skills makes it all the more probable that they run into ambushes, but I doubt that would make them happy. It doesn't provede an out for their perceived problem. We've been playing D&D since the 80's, so I'm guessing they are having a harder time time adjusting to the setting than I thought.

Maybe they need a run template.
I actually started the campaign by handing them all a copy of Blackjacks "Shadowrun 101 - A Basic Run (And How To Not Screw It Up).", but in hindsight it was probably too humerous for them to take to heart the points of that guide.

Ok, I have an idea and I need some more input.
I'm now considering an NPC who helps them with a couple of missions, who has his own run template.
This will annoy the players because it is obvious GM fiat, so the template should be made idiosyncratic to the NPC in question.
It should also be slighty flawed in a number of ways that the players can recognize --not too obviously though-- and improve on, and so gain a sense of acomplishment from. (Carrots for the masses.)
Furthermore, the NPC should be made annoying, so that they don't bother scrutinzing that they are actually learning anything from it.
Maybe even someone who eventually turns out to be a badguy which they can kill off at the end of a story arc.

What else could I do?

[TeChameleon]

Dunno if this will work with your players, but one thought I had was a bit of an expansion on the 'annoying NPC showing them the ropes'- if your players have a toy that they really want, perhaps a run opens up that would provide it, but the Johnson basically flat-out tells them they don't have all the skills he needs, so they get saddled with Jerky McTrainingwheels to handle the stuff they can't do, and they're basically glorified bodyguards for the jerk?

Basically, it gives you a character mouthpiece to deliver the bad news to them, and since it's a Johnson that they're only working with because he has something they want, they don't need to like the guy. Maybe even let them try on their own first to get whatever toy it is they want (robbing an R&D complex, maybe?) in such a way that their lack of legwork will blow up in their face- which is maybe how they came to the Johnson's attention in the first place; he wanted something else from the same R&D complex, so figures that some muscle-type disposable assets added to Jerky McTrainingwheels' legwork skills are just what the Street Doc ordered?

And you never know- your n00b runners may end up taking a weird shine to Jerky McTrainingwheels... odder things have happened

[DigoDragon]

That just means I can wing it. Aside from the core of downtown Orlando inside the 417 with be the sprawl

I wonder if the 408/I-4 area will have kicked out the riffraff and upgraded to some fancy housing arcology project (Im' sure the Millenial area would be thrilled to do that to us). It's kinda sprawl right now, so... either someone buys it up and fixes it or it gets forgotten. I could see it go either way.

new Orlando will be east of Kissimmee in the Deseret Megacity(check their 100 year plan, they want to supplant Orlando).

I don't imagine old Orlando would have gone quietly with that plan? What becomes of old Orlando?

Also, 50 nuyen that the Orlando Eyesore is *still* unfinished.

[Corsair14]

HAHA, now that you mention it, yes it is still there and still unfinished.

I was thinking aside from the towers in downtown ORL, most everything inside of the 417 loop is the sprawl. Baldwin park will be orc town. Going to have the areas around Fullsail be devastated by some sort of magical experiment gone bad.

Orange and Osceola counties approved of the Deseret plan either last year or the year before. It will all be east and south of the current Sun city project south of 528. Supposedly an environmentally sustainable city. 250K+ acres to work with, they might be able to pull it off. So yeah I see it happening. I am quite sure part of that giant medical park by Lake Nona is investment for the future based off the Deseret plan. They are about to start building a completely new hospital there to add to the 3 or 4 and the research facilities that are already there.

[Lord Torath]

What else could I do?

I've always been in favor of cancelling a session in favor of "Movie Night" featuring Sneakers. Lots of legwork in that movie.

I also like the idea of Jerky McTrainingwheels though. "No, chummer, we're not going to just charge in! We're going to spend a week talking to our contacts and investigating the place before we even approach the back door! What do you mean "What back door?"!!! You've been slotting way too many BTLs! That's why I'm in charge, and you're the bullet catchers." <disgusted sigh>

[Misereor]

I've always been in favor of cancelling a session in favor of "Movie Night" featuring Sneakers. Lots of legwork in that movie.

I actually created a Shadowrun movie list some time back when setting up the campaign, but I never got around to handing it over to the players.
Sneakers was on it. So was Heat which I know they all like, and more importantly Ronin (lots of legwork and planning, then we blow everything up with grenade launchers. Classical SR! )