[Dead Monky]

How do you run your games?  Do you plan everything out in obsessive detail, thinking up every contingency, and mapping out every NPC?  Or do you just say, "Screw it" and just loosely sketch it out ahead of time and improvise the rest as you go along?  Do you take much player input (whether before or during a game) or do you even allow any at all?  Are you obsessive about the rules or do you run things a bit more fast and loose, allowing players to have their characters do questionable things because it's cool (or because you just don't feel like figuring out all the numbers?  For that matter, how obsessive are you about security?  Do you make the players worry about every camera and speck of skin they drop or do you just let things slide?

Personally, I'm pretty loose in how I run things.  I improvise a lot and run things rather collaboratively with the players, using their input and ideas even in the middle of a game.  I'm more interesting in having fun and getting everyone to figure out just how imaginative everyone can get with what their character (and their gear) can do.  I let a story go off on a weird, and pointless, tangent just because someone came up with a fun or interesting idea.

[Casazil]

Read my adventures I put up I put some work into them some more than others true but I do try to leave room for the players to do their thing

[FastJack]

Usually I try to prepare myself for as many eventualities as possible. I don't get obsessive about it, but I do make little notes here and there about what could happen if the runners turn left when everything turns right.

In regards to Security, I kinda leave it up to the players. At the beginning of a campaign, I lay out what I consider the 'scope' of how the game might be (Firefly/Serenity type of style at the low end, Mission: Impossible at the high end). If they want to play like Firefly, then security's going to be a bit more lax since the Sec Guards are just ordinary guys making a living. If they wanna play M:I, they better be ready to bring it all on.

[Tex Muldoon]

I have a baseline, my players come up with the strangest solutions so i need to adapt. Sometimes I have to be like the Hammer of Plot won't let you. 

[Doc Chaos]

I pick up an idea, mostly create some cool NPCs for it and then improvise my ass off all night. Works great.

[Switch]

When I starte Gming I use to plan obsessively to always be prepared but I found I was railroading my team too much. Now I just tend to plan loosely, have a guard template, ideas of what security the team could encouter but otherwise just allow them to run with it. We play a very personal game so I tend to have some random events in place for each of my characters.

XxswitchxX

[Mystic]

I developed my current SR gaming style after years of beating my head against walls when other GMs or players kept getting bogged down in stupid details.

Basically, what I did was took my hometown of Toledo, Ohio and turned it into a 'Plex. Updated the city and 'burbs, created political factions, gangs, places of interests, etc and then created several overall "threads" of stories. The runners would take jobs that would put them on one of those threads and their actions would not only affect their thread, but possibly every other thread in the area. Take out the local Yak boss, well that may be good for the Mafioso who now can go forward with his plan to get his lacky into the Mayor's office and because of that KE gets the new law enforcement contract, and a certain KE officer has it out for someone in our little group...etc etc. Sometimes things have good consequences, sometimes they frag off the wrong person.

For example, the group decided to put in with the local Mafia, which got the attention of the FBI, and long story short, after being played by an FBI double-mole within the family. They are now indebted to the Feds. Do THEIR dirty work, or face federal prison...their choice.

 


Point is, I try to be fluid,rather than strict with the details.

[Critias]

I have broad strokes in mind, but I wing it on the details.  That said, my games tend to be pretty combat heavy.  Not brainless D&D "kick in the door" stuff, mind you, but with a fair number of fight scenes, and with chances for each character to shine (regardless of their favorite type of combat), whenever I can fit them in -- maybe the Yakuza boss is an arrogant martial artist so the close-combat guy will get a chance, maybe the Humanis Policlub guys have a decent shot with a bolt-action set up on some high ground so the team sniper can look cool, maybe the gang boss is a badass Combat Mage that's just itching to spell-duel, mano y mano... 

I'm not afraid to reward folks who make brave/awesome choices, but I'm not afraid to kill folks who make stupid ones (and there's a fine line there).  I like plans and ambushes as much as the next guy, and sound tactics will be rewarded by an appropriately high body count.  Kamikaze charges are likely to BE kamikaze, though, because I let the dice fall where they may.

My one hallmark GM move?  If characters get too bogged down in obsessive planning -- so much so that they're really breaking the pace of the game, overthinking things, and making it work instead of fun, folks are losing interest, or whatever? --  I throw a team of commandos at them. 

COMMANDO ATTACK hasn't failed me so far.

Invariably, there's someone they've crossed -- maybe that adventure, maybe that plot hook, but maybe something older coming back to haunt them -- that has the resources to send some second-rate merc types after 'em.  Sometimes the commandos are obviously tied to a given corporate entity, or a payment trace links them to a bad guy, or whatever (so that they're a plot device delivery system).  Sometimes the commandos are just there to wake them up and sling some dice, get the blood pumping, and get them eager for payback.  Invariably, the group gets a few cheapie SMGs or a shotgun or two out of it, some urban camo, maybe a few extra grenades (yet more prompting for them to go 'grrr' at the bad guy)...

I always run them as kind of second tier baddies, don't use cover and concentrate fire so much, don't handle them as smoothly and tactically as I would a "real" encounter (don't use and abuse Combat Pool, in previous editions, the way I could)...it's just a little nudge, a little danger, a few boxes of damage here or there (ideally, in SR1-3, a few Light and Moderate wounds all over the place). 

COMMANDO ATTACK.  The answer to the Shadowrunners-overthinking-it problem.

[Tex Muldoon]

I have broad strokes in mind, but I wing it on the details.  That said, my games tend to be pretty combat heavy.  Not brainless D&D "kick in the door" stuff, mind you, but with a fair number of fight scenes, and with chances for each character to shine (regardless of their favorite type of combat), whenever I can fit them in -- maybe the Yakuza boss is an arrogant martial artist so the close-combat guy will get a chance, maybe the Humanis Policlub guys have a decent shot with a bolt-action set up on some high ground so the team sniper can look cool, maybe the gang boss is a badass Combat Mage that's just itching to spell-duel, mano y mano... 

I'm not afraid to reward folks who make brave/awesome choices, but I'm not afraid to kill folks who make stupid ones (and there's a fine line there).  I like plans and ambushes as much as the next guy, and sound tactics will be rewarded by an appropriately high body count.  Kamikaze charges are likely to BE kamikaze, though, because I let the dice fall where they may.

My one hallmark GM move?  If characters get too bogged down in obsessive planning -- so much so that they're really breaking the pace of the game, overthinking things, and making it work instead of fun, folks are losing interest, or whatever? --  I throw a team of commandos at them. 

COMMANDO ATTACK hasn't failed me so far.

Invariably, there's someone they've crossed -- maybe that adventure, maybe that plot hook, but maybe something older coming back to haunt them -- that has the resources to send some second-rate merc types after 'em.  Sometimes the commandos are obviously tied to a given corporate entity, or a payment trace links them to a bad guy, or whatever (so that they're a plot device delivery system).  Sometimes the commandos are just there to wake them up and sling some dice, get the blood pumping, and get them eager for payback.  Invariably, the group gets a few cheapie SMGs or a shotgun or two out of it, some urban camo, maybe a few extra grenades (yet more prompting for them to go 'grrr' at the bad guy)...

I always run them as kind of second tier baddies, don't use cover and concentrate fire so much, don't handle them as smoothly and tactically as I would a "real" encounter (don't use and abuse Combat Pool, in previous editions, the way I could)...it's just a little nudge, a little danger, a few boxes of damage here or there (ideally, in SR1-3, a few Light and Moderate wounds all over the place). 

COMMANDO ATTACK.  The answer to the Shadowrunners-overthinking-it problem.

Prime runners for me. love that. past toons come back angry.

[Walks Through Walls]

I tend to work on most details to the main points of an adventure, but leave the specifics open to be done on the fly. Some of my best plot lines in the game I ran every week for 2 years came from when the party just refused a run or took a total left turn from where I expected.

I also had character history I could fall back on when the left turn happened. By the time the game ended a couple of the PCs had made a few enemies that were recurring.

[Irian]

I pick up an idea, mostly create some cool NPCs for it and then improvise my ass off all night. Works great.

Bingo.

[Mystic]

I pick up an idea, mostly create some cool NPCs for it and then improvise my ass off all night. Works great.

Bingo.

Most of the time, with all the screw ups from my players, the story turns into the "how do we fix this now?" session.

[Walks Through Walls]

LOL mystic I've been there. Yeah I've been there a lot.

That and here is the clue to lead you on to the next phase.
Ok you missed that here is a bigger clue........ come on guys pay attention here is another clue
still not getting it I guess it's time to get out the 2X4 and hit them over the head with it maybe then they'll see it

[FastJack]

LOL mystic I've been there. Yeah I've been there a lot.

That and here is the clue to lead you on to the next phase.
Ok you missed that here is a bigger clue........ come on guys pay attention here is another clue
still not getting it I guess it's time to get out the 2X4 and hit them over the head with it maybe then they'll see it

If it doesn't have gear (gold) or Karma (XP) most groups won't notice...

[kinderkrieg]

LOL mystic I've been there. Yeah I've been there a lot.

That and here is the clue to lead you on to the next phase.
Ok you missed that here is a bigger clue........ come on guys pay attention here is another clue
still not getting it I guess it's time to get out the 2X4 and hit them over the head with it maybe then they'll see it

If it doesn't have gear (gold) or Karma (XP) most groups won't notice...

Thats when you leave a shiny engraving on the shiny new toy that just begs the question "solve meeeee" or a trapdoor in the device that something pops out of....