[WARNING: The following is for GM Eyes Only! Non-GMs KEEP OUT! The GM knows all!
Fear the GM's wrath!!!]
[spoiler]
Even with veteran players, I tend to ease new characters into it with a couple of easy fights.
Maybe some gangers. Someone you know that they'll kick around. Just as a warm-up.
Due to the complexity of SR, our group (which are all veteran gamers) ran a whole series of mock battles with everything from gangers to Red Samurai, just to shake down our builds and our team for glaring deficiencies. We hadn't played this system since SR1, so it helped us grok the system better, as well.
In the case where you realize you've really overdone it, though - you're the GM, so you can always salvage the situation. The cavalry can arrive in the nick of time, the Bad Guys can have orders to take them alive, weapons can malfunction or run out of ammo (those gangers buy the cheap stuff, you know
) or...well...you're the GM. The dice are not the final arbiter -
you are.
Yup. That's right. You don't want your players to catch on, but if it tells a better story, you don't even have to look at those knucklebones. Oh, you can make a big show of rolling them, maybe even exclaim in surprise over the ridiculous luck of the PCs (don't overdo it, now
)...but the dice aren't carved in stone.
If the players dig themselves into a situation, I generally let the dice fall where they may (unless there's a really good story in nudging things), but a player's death should really mean something. Oh, I'll kill a PC...I've killed my share...but I try to make it dramatic.
If I just miscalculate the opposition and am looking at a player going out big, because of my mistakes rather than his own, I'll step in...either with story or with dice...(unless it's STILL just too good a story...then they're on their own.
).
Oh, and I almost forgot - in the first few sessions is the
very best time to kill a PC. Now the players know you've got the grit to do it...giving you a lot more leeway to step in and tweak things later on with no one the wiser. I mean, you've already iced a couple PCs...if they survive another too-tough encounter by the skin of their teeth, it must just be an amazing escape...right?
[/spoiler]
-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist