Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Gentleman Snow on <05-11-14/2153:22>
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^That was the advice a seasoned Shadowrun veteran gave to a completely new player when they both sat down at my table. Neither had ever run with me before, but the veteran's experienced led her to warn our mutual friend that characters DIE in Shadowrun. All the time. Left and right. Do NOT get attached to them.
That was August. They're still playing the same two characters, and the veteran has since darned me unto the black gates of heck for breaking her rule and making her care about her character. :P The same goes for the new addition; she'd never done RPGs before -at all-, and she's just as invested in her gunslinger.
I do remember the lethality of Shadowrun and especially in the new system, farmland comes cheap for buyers in 2075. What I want to know from my fellow GMs:
1) Do you have players who also believe that getting attached to a character is bad news? How do you feel about this?
2) How do you handle character death when it occurs?
3) Do you have a long term game going? Any long running characters? I'd love to hear about them.
As for how I got them invested, I spent a heavy chunk of time exploring their backstory as people and how they connect as a team. I've gone for the soft spot of their emotions as often as I could without becoming too overwrought. This is in between regular runs, of course.
I would love your feedback.
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Shadowrun has had the Hand of God as long as I can remember - which has made it one of the most survivable games on the market for pretty much its entire life.
Of course... it is a game in which "you got shot, so you are down for the count," is a pretty common thing, though the newer editions have actually trimmed that back just a touch.
1) I do not have players that believe getting attached to a character is bad news - just the one, but he is a pretty weird guy and has only been back in our group for a while after years of shunning for his crappy "games are competitions" attitude... the rest of the group, however, all feel that you should get attached to characters even if (possibly especially if) there is a good chance they are going to die.
2) My group handles character death however they feel like it at the time... oddly enough, this tends to mean they just leave them where they lay and move on with the game - except for if I am actually a PC for a change, in which case my character honors the dead despite my PCs that fall also being just left to lay where they fell (and I tend to have characters die a lot because the rest of my group seems to think that I don't need anyone's help even when I ask for it - or they are just not used to working with me as a player rather than me being the GM).
3) I only do long term games, so yes, I have one going right now - it actually just started 3 sessions ago and is going pretty well so far.
I can't really share anything worth while about the characters without writing way too much, though, so you'll just have to deal with this: They are street punks making the change to legit runners, and I intend the game to carry these 7 "kids" through 25 years of setting history.
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I've been playing Shadowrun since January of 1990, and I've yet to lose a player character. Some folks come into games with their walls up, ready to lose a PC; some of them make bad choices, some of them misunderstand rules, some of them have terrible luck with dice, some of them had really brutal GMs, some of them just find it easier to adopt an "everything is disposable" attitude.
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I've had some really good GMs over the years (IMO) - so I'm probably spoiled. We've always taken the approach that if you have invested a lot of time and effort into your PC that a bad roll of the dice is typically not the end of the character --- that doesn't mean your invulnerable. Sometimes you wake up with a new cyberarm --- cool right? - yeah, not when your the mage... ::) Other times your imprisoned or now owe someone powerful a few favors for saving your hoop.
It is good to have a discussion with your GM and group at the start, or as your game progresses, so everyone knows how player death is handled.
Other times, it makes sense for your character to go out in a blaze of glory or saves the day by sacrificing themselves -- and that's okay too. Ultimately, everyone has to work together. Building trust in a group is important -- I trust that my GM isn't going to outright cap my characters, but on the flipside, I don't take advantage of the game in ways that would be unrealistic and unfair to the GM and other players.
Aside from that - play smart, have fun! ;)
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I've got a group of four players - two new, two experienced. The new players love their characters, and hate when something bad happens to them. The experienced players have very different mentalities. One of them could care less about his character - he's just numbers on a page to him. This irritates me, but that's a different issue. The other experienced player takes a great deal of care in making and molding his character. And then makes and molds three more, just in case. For him, each of the characters has a story to tell, but their story might get cut short at any time. I think this is the ideal mentality as it blends the care and concern of the new players with the grizzled acceptance of reality that the other veteran expresses.
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I've been playing RPGs (not only shadowrun) for over 15 years now and in that time I've not lost many characters. Of course, in some games we stopped quite quickly and I'm also not counting one-offs, as there you don't care. But in long term campaigns it has been close a couple of times, but I've had it only once and that was in Legends of the Five Rings, where dying gloriously to save the empire is actually a good thing. It was the campaign finale and the whole party (all of us died in that battle) unanimously agreed it was a very good ending.
So yes, I've become attached to most of my characters, even the one that died. In fact, I beleive that you have to become attached to your character to better play it. How can you play a character if you don't feel at least some emotional band with it and if you don't care what happens to him/her/it?
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I had a great game of Werewolf back in the day with some good friends. They all played well together, developing a real-world bond that mimicked the one in their in-game pack. Unfortunately, one of our players had to leave the game, and he was quite sad about it. So we did a proper finale for him. He dove onto an incendiary grenade, killing his character but saving the pack. Afterward, we had a little funeral service in-game for him, and I'm not afraid to admit it but we all cried a little.
Sometimes getting attached is just perfect.
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In my current game we've had two PC deaths.
One blew himself up after spending some quality time with the Great Dragon Ghostwalker, physically harming the bastard and killing some trusted lieutenants.
The other was killed by my character to use as a patsy for a number of high profile crimes we'd recently committed including a daisy-chain of grenades and a riot in the rich part of town. The weird part was the guy was about to commit suicide having finished all the work he wanted to do. Which... messed with Vicar more than if he'd fought back.
I mean, it's one thing to kill a guy to cover your tracks. That's just business. But when the guy not only doesn't fight back but spent considerable effort implicating himself in your crimes for the express purpose of taking heat off you... that's just messed up.
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^That was the advice a seasoned Shadowrun veteran gave to a completely new player when they both sat down at my table. Neither had ever run with me before, but the veteran's experienced led her to warn our mutual friend that characters DIE in Shadowrun. All the time. Left and right. Do NOT get attached to them.
That was August. They're still playing the same two characters, and the veteran has since darned me unto the black gates of heck for breaking her rule and making her care about her character. :P The same goes for the new addition; she'd never done RPGs before -at all-, and she's just as invested in her gunslinger.
I do remember the lethality of Shadowrun and especially in the new system, farmland comes cheap for buyers in 2075. What I want to know from my fellow GMs:
1) Do you have players who also believe that getting attached to a character is bad news? How do you feel about this?
2) How do you handle character death when it occurs?
3) Do you have a long term game going? Any long running characters? I'd love to hear about them.
As for how I got them invested, I spent a heavy chunk of time exploring their backstory as people and how they connect as a team. I've gone for the soft spot of their emotions as often as I could without becoming too overwrought. This is in between regular runs, of course.
I would love your feedback.
We had two players kick the bucket in our last session (both burning edge but one will probably retire in the near future after his unpleasant experience with a Hellhound finding his astrally projecting body. It all just went a bit pear shaped.
The good thing about Shadowrun is Burning Edge, they die, yet they don't. So I'd be happy to get proper attached to my character because you can always legitimately bring them back in some outlandish fashion.
But the game is lethal so there's always that chance. I don't think a GM should actively try to kill a character. Generally death should happen because of poor choices or extremely bad luck.
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Shadowrun is like the Warhammer RPGs; very lethal, but your characters have extra "lives" represented by a certain special attribute. On one hand, I like this, because it lets the setting be dark and dangerous without making it impossible to play. Players should be attached to their characters, because they should be playing characters they put effort into making who have (or develop) interesting personalities and backstories.
On the other hand, it does make the game feel a bit like it is holding your hand, as it's literally impossible to die until those things have gone away, unless your GM simply says otherwise.
I recently played a game of Pathfinder where the GM expressed his desire to be cold and unfeeling because he wanted the game to be as dangerous as the situation really would be in his mind-- A sentiment that sadly doesn't hold up once everyone gets past level 1, because it was Pathfinder, but I understand what the words he was saying meant.
To answer your questions in order... I think players absolutely should get attached to their characters. I think it's necessary for good roleplay; someone who doesn't care about their character isn't as invested in that character's story. They won't care as much if bad things happen to that character. Similarly, they likely won't empathize with other players if bad things happen to their characters. In order for the best stories and drama to develop, I think it is very important that the players grow attached to their characters.
Character death has happened a few times in other games; I haven't really played SR enough for it to happen in this game. In other games, it either was blown under the rug (a function of the setting, the group of PCs being generally heartless towards one-another) or else it often leads to the disruption of campaign entirely (as one player is out, loses interest, and the group is one man short). Even if the character is to be replaced by the same player, it still takes time (sometimes a long time) for the player to make another one and for the GM to find a way to bring them in to the story, especially because almost no deaths happen anywhere but right in the middle of an event, where you could not have a new ally just show up, even if the PCs were willing to suddenly trust this stranger right after their ally died.
I have been trying so hard to get a long-term campaign going for Shadowrun, but the issue is that I learned about it maybe half a year before 5th edition was released? Maybe a year, I dunno. It didn't happen in the first few months (I and everyone I showed it to were still learning the system) and by the time we heard of 5th edition it was like... "Why start a long-term thing now when we may as well start with the newest edition?" Right now the only problem is the lack of material for 5th; it's hard to really aim for a serious, indepth long-term campaign when I am waiting for a bunch of things to allow more indepth characters to be made. Some of it can be kind of done now, and then altered later (like if someone wants a different magic tradition), but other things (like technomancer and rigger stuff) just really can't be transferred well.
The longest character I've had is firebug, who's only existed since a few months before 5th edition. In the time she's only gained a handful of Karma, so I haven't got much to report... Most of what I use her for is writing a backstory and RPing on this forum (she posts in VU 93 every once in a blue moon). I have plans for her though, and hope to see her get enough experience to stop being an immature ex-ganger and grow into a confident and skillful professional.
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I tend to be a bit of an old-school player, to a degree. I always have a back-up character waiting in the wings. Of course, this is due to the sheer number of characters I've lost over the years; between bad rolls, selfless sacrifices, times when the GM was actively trying to kill the group, times GMs have killed my player simply to prevent the idea I just came up with from being attempted, times I've done something stupid in-character, and the times in Cthulhu my character suicided and took the enemy (and, often, the rest of the players as well) with them out of sheer spite... I've lost a lot of characters.
I also get attached to them. Which makes their deaths either tragic or awesome, depending on how they go out.
Even my SlowDeck character that I use on here will probably die at some point. Just because narrative realism demands it. And I will be very sad when that happens.
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What a great question! Here's my thoughts on the subject...
1) Shadowrun is the most lethal RPG ever printed. This is because the original creators of the game were some really sick and twisted people who played way too much D&D growing up. Most players come to Shadowrun through D&D. I bought Shadowrun 1st Ed when I was 17 and didn't play another D&D game till I was 37 lol. I was so sick of the same formula of all RPG's back then. At early levels the players were bored out of their minds! One hard slap could kill the teams tank and the mage needed to take a nap every time he cast a spell. The poor priest had to fill BOTH his spell slots with heal or the party would mutiny. Most GM's just let their players start out at lv4 or 6. BUT. Then when they got to lv 10 the same main tank would have to stab himself in the chest around 36 times before he MIGHT die. The only way to truly challenge the party is to open the planes of hell and unleash the hordes. The biggest challenge is figuring out how to carry 40,000 coins back to town.
Shadowrun is different. I made a combat mage in March of '89 named Mortimer Bane. When I made him he had 10 "hit points'. 25 years later I'm still playing him. He's been everywhere and done everything and you know how many 'hit points' he has now? 10. You can be the biggest and baddest guy on the block, but on the right day even the guy bagging your groceries can take you out of the game permanently. But even at creation the guy could take out anyone else on the block if he played smartly. This leads to my next point.
2) Shadowrun makes players better gamers. Because the game is inherently so lethal the players absolutely MUST play smart at all times. Knowing that you can easily die just crossing the street makes you play with more 'awareness'. It also makes doing even the most mundane things dangerous. This amps up the energy at the table and gives the players something to focus on. In D&D, unless we were in the middle of a major fight we were bored as hell and that made everybody goof off and not focus on the game. In Shadowrun, just a trip to your local stuffer shack can be an adventure. Oh wait, wasn't the very very first adventure printed in the very very first rulebook just that? A trip to the local Stuffer Shack? Yup. So now that the players are better gamers...
3) Players naturally get attached to their characters in Shadowrun. A starting character in D&D sucks, plain and simple. You need to age it like a fine wine and you have to do it in game. A Shadowrun character is awesome and fun and playable right out of the box. How can you not LOVE him you MADE him! You didn't roll some dice and take what you get or feel like crap because the GM just gave you 3 points so your rogue had an 18 dex or look like a 'tard at the local thieves guild. You put every single point in place and chose every single skill he had. Not skills off the "ranger-usable" list, but whatever the hell you wanted. I bet if you asked 10 people on this forum to each make a warrior and post them that they would all be almost identical. Ask those same 10 to each make a Mystic Adept. Nuff said.
4) Infinite character improvement. Shadowrun has no level cap. Thus there is no built in ceiling to what you can imagine your character becoming. I think this alone is what really begins the love affair between the player and the character. What's the line from Jerry McGuire? "I love the man that he almost is." You can absolutely love your character and be totally satisfied with him and at the same time, still be excited to see 5 karma at the end of a long run.
5) One game - One map. In D&D, and most other games, there are multiple game campaigns. Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Birthright etc.. So, your characters are spread out all over the place and most will never meet. This means most of your characters will never meet players of another group if you go to play somewhere else. "Oh, your playing Forgotten Realms. Bummer. We've been playing a lot of Dark Sun stuff so my guy won't really fit." Or, "What level are your players? Hmmm, well my guy is lv 12 but I guess you can just downgrade him and take away some of his stuff to fit the group." You know what happens... you just make a new guy to fit their campaign. "Meh, it's just a character sheet, I'll just make a new one... no biggy." That is such BS. You can almost always take your character from game to game. Why wouldn't you... we all play in the same world at the same time in the same year. If I go to your house to jump in on a campaign and you guys are in Germany, I don't need a long drawn out story of why I ended up in 'your' Kingdom. I just need a plane ticket. And I can acquire that in about 30 secs on my commlink.
6) They say cowboys don't die, they just fade away. Well I say Shadowrun characters don't die, they just convert to the next rules version. Shadowrunners grow old just like everyone else. My character was made in first edition... that makes him about 23 years older now... 45? Ugh! He's for the most part retired from everyday running now. When I created him, I wanted him to create a shadowrunning empire. And that's just what he did. He has an army of runners and fixers working for him. He is the center of my contact 'spider web' and is behind or involved in everything that goes on in my campaign in one way or another. But so is Grey McKreegan... a dwarf tech-wiz that I made and never played. He ended up being so huge in the campaign just by placing him on the campaign-wide contact tree, that I was never able to play him without possible messing up something huge if he died. I love that character to death.... and he never has and will never see table play. The prospect of having a super-character like this is enough to make the players want to protect that character at all costs. This means playing smart all the time. I don't know a GM alive who wouldn't want a whole table of smart focused players at his table, hanging on to every word, attacking challenges with logic and confidence. I don't know a GM alive who would kill this table of players just for the fun of it. In Shadowrun, the GM should be just as attached as the players. I think this dual-attachment is the reason less Shadowrun character sheets end up lining the bottom of your hampster cages as the character sheets of other games.
That's just my 2 nuyen chummer.
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I had a long post ready, and I thought even submitted, but I lost it somehow.. ah well.
I am going to have to start by disagreeing about Shadowrun being the deadliest RPG ever. I don't think I've ever had a starting Shadowrun PC die because a rat bit him, and did more than his 1hp of damage. That, and Shadowrun has the Hand of God feature, that makes it very hard, actually, to kill a PC that the player doesn't want to let die. When I want deadly, I usually go with Cyberpunk 2020 over Shadowrun, but that's just me.
But anyway. Many of my players get very attached to their characters, and I actually like it when players are attached to their PCs. It makes them think better. When you aren't attached to your PC, it's real easy to do dick things that are likely not only to screw your own PC, but the group as well. When players are attached to their PCs, they flesh them out more, give you interesting backstories, adventure hooks, and world building even.
As for handling character death. I think I've only really had 1 PC die in games that I have run. I've had my own PCs die in games, but usually in temporary death games, where something in the world existed to either prevent outright death, or to bring back from the dead. So, this one is a hard one to answer
As for long term games. My current shadowrun started not too long before the physical book of SR5 came out, and we're still playing it. We go every other week, and I have been putting them through 1st edition stuff. They've done Silver Angel, Mercurial, part of Harlequin, I've had longer running games in other systems, and the length of a campaign, in my opinion, depends heavily on just how attached players are to their PCs.. if they are too detached, then the game probably won't last very long.
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1) Shadowrun is the most lethal RPG ever printed.
Having played a single Ars Magica session at my games' club 20th anniversary, I disagree.
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1) Shadowrun is the most lethal RPG ever printed.
Having played a single Ars Magica session at my games' club 20th anniversary, I disagree.
I have to disagree as well.
I have seen exactly zero Shadowrun characters die, and I've been running and playing it since 1998 or so.
I have seen 93 Dungeon Crawl Classics characters die, and I've only been running it since 2012.
Shadowrun is the least lethal game out of all of them I have ever played - including the above, the world of darkness (both old and new), call of cthulhu, hackmaster, and various version of D&D, all of which have had far more characters end up dead - though no other is quite so lethal as DCC.
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I'm with farothel on this one. The lethality of Shadowrun is nothing compared to the lethality of L5R.
Shadowrun is deadly-ish, and if you're coming from the decidedly undeadly world of D&D, it can be quite a transition. Hand of God keeps allows you to keep a character to whom you've grown attached, but the frequency with which you find yourself down for the count drives home the stakes of the game. I think 5e does a pretty good job of balancing fun and risk.
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I think 5e does a pretty good job of balancing fun and risk.
I agree. Out of my games in Shadowrun, only a few characters have died. This is because there's that lovely overflow box, automatic stablization with patches and medkits, and of course the Hand of God. If I'm going to kill someone in my games, I have to really work at it. Beheading and immolation work well.
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As a guy who started GMing back in the day for Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition (a real meat-grinder rpg imo) I often have trouble with rules that bail players out of trouble. For example, in my last group we played 4th edition SR. I banned any rule of edge that didnt directly deal with rolling dice. That meant that "Hand of God" and buying a critical success were off the table. That was because In that group it (hand of god) seemed to encourage people to plan poorly (if at all) then do something that would have normally lead to death. (Example: player leaped off the top of the Space Needle and splatted on the ground ... then activated hand of god. It was this action that made me ban it going forward).
I like to run my games with a gritty and lethal feel to the world. I enjoy the sessions more when the players are running and gunning with the knowledge that 1 bullet could make a difference. 5th edition is much more suited for that than 4th because all guns have increased damages. Despite that, my death count as GM is something like SR4: 4 vs SR5: 0 so far. Typically, my mindset is that you (as a character) must have been through the mud and blood before you can be considered seasoned.
However ... lately I've been trading the GM seat with another fellow at the table and he seems to have a "let the players have whatever they want" mentality. I both like and hate it. I like it because as a Player its more fun to stampede through things and be successfull with outrageous plans. I hate it because as co-GM it's like an 'easy-mode' for the players.
Dont get me wrong, I realize that its mostly my tyrannical sense of oppression that has caused my view of things so I dont fault him at all. I have tried to lean more towards his style so that when I GM for the same group, things are little more light-hearted. Its not going well but I'm trying :P
Our game has been running for a while now and we have characters that are nearing the 200 karma mark, where a true "Prime Runner" is (again, IMO).
Characters of note:
Meter Maid: Earned his nickname when he failed to hack (glitched) a parking meter downtown and burned an R6 fake sin. His run-mates gave him the name and took to calling him Meter in front of other people when he was 'good'.
Angry Smurf: a blue Oni with a bad temper whose love for his Krime Cannon and his uncouth nature became the stuff of nightmares (and legends).
Cheshire: The man with a million dollar smile. He was a typical face but his team were all "murder-hobos" ... a term meaning characters designed around nothing more than combat and the willingness to blow people away in the broad daylight. He did NOT enjoy his job.
The Bull: A minotaur Troll variant Ex Military type. One of the aforementioned team and a consumate source of entertainment as he created words on the fly for anything he didnt have a word for. Imagine the confusion.
Friendly: another party face who earned the name "Friendly Fire" when she blasted her whole team with a ball lightning that nearly killed everyone to a man. Called 'Friendly' openly to avoid nasty looks :)
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I think SR is inherently because any guy on the street can kill your super champ if they get the jump on him. Its the thing about only having 10 hps that make it so lethal IMHO.
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I think SR is inherently because any guy on the street can kill your super champ if they get the jump on him. Its the thing about only having 10 hps that make it so lethal IMHO.
Even then, there's a lot of ways to be pretty safe. The street samurai, for instance, can often end up more or less immune to small arms fire while naked, due to his augmentations. Combined with the fact that a significant amount of "armor" is close enough to clothing for someone to sleep in (especially if that someone already has plates of armor inside their body), a PC is rarely going to be unarmored.
However, where the lethality comes in is that not everyone in the group can be that. Deckers don't usually have that level of augmentation, though some is quite possible, and magicians could be caught off-guard, as no mage can really afford to constantly walk around with a glowing Armor spell. Faces and TMs are often even worse off; a Social Adept won't have armor augments or spells, and Mystic Armor is extremely costly. A mundane Face can offset much of penalty to Social Limit caused by low Essence with Tailored Pheremones, but still generally avoids heavy augmentation. A TM has no supernatural way to increase their armor and avoids augmentation like a magician does-- In terms of physical damage, they're the most vulnerable archetype.
Still, the fact that you can sit around in your house wearing enough armor to make it so you couldn't die from a random ganger drive-by makes it better.
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I think SR is inherently because any guy on the street can kill your super champ if they get the jump on him. Its the thing about only having 10 hps that make it so lethal IMHO.
Still, the fact that you can sit around in your house wearing enough armor to make it so you couldn't die from a random ganger drive-by makes it better.
True enough. I did play with a guy who would consistently bad mouth the local gangs, in character, and the GM out of character.
One night the gangs waited until he went to sleep at his low lifestyle in the barrens, blew out his bed room window, then lobbed incendiary and frag grenades inside.
A guy in a game I was running decided to split off from the group, then when two guards decided to question him, instead of playing innocent, or running, he mana bolted one of them.
Initiative was rolled he got less than both guards, the first guard opened up with two short bursts, and his character died on his first run.
I asked if he wanted to use hand of god, and add a rescue goal for the team, when he left the table.
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Death in Shadowrun may be rare, but it can be really funny.
For newer players, I give Karen's (in)famous CLUE files. Lots of death, always well deserved.
http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/shadowrun/clue-files.html
Seriously, give it 5 minutes of your time. You'll be amazed.
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Still, the fact that you can sit around in your house wearing enough armor to make it so you couldn't die from a random ganger drive-by makes it better.
True enough. I did play with a guy who would consistently bad mouth the local gangs, in character, and the GM out of character.
One night the gangs waited until he went to sleep at his low lifestyle in the barrens, blew out his bed room window, then lobbed incendiary and frag grenades inside.
A guy in a game I was running decided to split off from the group, then when two guards decided to question him, instead of playing innocent, or running, he mana bolted one of them.
Initiative was rolled he got less than both guards, the first guard opened up with two short bursts, and his character died on his first run.
I asked if he wanted to use hand of god, and add a rescue goal for the team, when he left the table.
Well, there's no armor against stupidity.
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90% of player deaths in RPGs I've played can be attributed to stupidity. Usually it's player stupidity, but sometimes it's GM stupidity too. There are GMs out there that just cannot balance an encounter to save their lives.
That said, SR4/5 are some of the least lethal games I've played. SR3 was a much more lethal if you botched a job. D&D at lower levels is much more lethal. Deadlands (classic at least) is leaps and bounds more lethal.
Of course, I've seen more PvP character deaths in Shadowrun than the rest combined. It really seems to come down to player and GM style more than system.
Shadowrun has had the Hand of God as long as I can remember - which has made it one of the most survivable games on the market for pretty much its entire life.
In SR3, hand of god was an optional rule. If the GM did choose to use it, it was a once in a lifetime (character not player) option.
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I tend to spend a lot of time on my character creation with adding fluff, so I do tend to get attached to my character, but if they die, that means I get to make a new character (which is something I love doing anyways).
But I've been playing off and on since 3rd Edition, and I've only had two die. One I was disarming a bomb and rolled 13 1's, and the other sacrificed himself for the team.
And as a GM, I've killed 3, and forced one into retirement (mage gone burnt out), and out of the 3 deaths, 2 were due to players doing really dumb things, and the 3rd was the team just had some really bad rolls, and tried pushing their luck too far anyways.
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In SR3, hand of god was an optional rule. If the GM did choose to use it, it was a once in a lifetime (character not player) option.
That is true.
At the same time, however, it was also a lot less likely that things would go so far south on you that you had to ask if you could invoke the Hand of God rule - primarily because of how quickly Karma Pool would grow to significantly high numbers, and it refreshed every gaming session (unless the GM decided otherwise - but lets be honest, if you have a GM trying to kill characters and changing the rules to make it easier for him to accomplish, then there are going to be a mighty sum of dead characters).
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lets be honest, if you have a GM trying to kill characters and changing the rules to make it easier for him to accomplish, then there are going to be a mighty sum of dead characters
Hmm. When I initially banned the use of "Hand of God" it was solely to make my players start thinking instead of relying on a "get-out-of-jail-free" type of mechanic.
I don't (nor have I ever) went after a player with the sole purpose of killing them. Thats just not fun. More often than not I find myself having to pull back the difficulty or trying to bail out a character (on the back end) because of a night of crappy dice rolls or another player being stupid.
Example: One mission I put a party on was to track and eliminate this "world-class" elven hitman. One of the party handed me a folded note saying that he was putting a bounty (and a large one at that) on one of his co-runners. It was an effort to draw out the assassin. It took all of my being not to be a d-bag to the unsuspecting player.
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lets be honest, if you have a GM trying to kill characters and changing the rules to make it easier for him to accomplish, then there are going to be a mighty sum of dead characters
Hmm. When I initially banned the use of "Hand of God" it was solely to make my players start thinking instead of relying on a "get-out-of-jail-free" type of mechanic.
I don't (nor have I ever) went after a player with the sole purpose of killing them. Thats just not fun. More often than not I find myself having to pull back the difficulty or trying to bail out a character (on the back end) because of a night of crappy dice rolls or another player being stupid.
Example: One mission I put a party on was to track and eliminate this "world-class" elven hitman. One of the party handed me a folded note saying that he was putting a bounty (and a large one at that) on one of his co-runners. It was an effort to draw out the assassin. It took all of my being not to be a d-bag to the unsuspecting player.
I apologize if something I said made you think I was talking about you - I never meant to imply that the only reason someone could possibly house-rule a character-life-saving rule out of the game was because they were making an effort to kill characters.
I mean, I've played entire campaigns of D&D were all spells and magic items that would bring a character back from the dead were house ruled out for reasons that weren't me trying to rack up a kill count.
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1) Do you have players who also believe that getting attached to a character is bad news? How do you feel about this?
I don't think it's possible to not be invested in your character. I had a longer write-up, but apparently the post disappeared so I'll just point to Firebug's post.
2) How do you handle character death when it occurs?
I created a new character and the game continued. As a GM I've never seen one of the PCs die, and as a player I've only had 1 character die (it wasn't in a Shadowrun game anyway), but I'm a writer and take my PC the same as I'd take one of my original stories' characters - they're not expendable, but if they have plot armour that means they will never die then they'll become boring. I detest plot armour and stories where Status Quo never changes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StatusQuoIsGod). There has to be that possibility for the full range of exploration of humanity, existence, and life - that includes growth as well as death, because if only one of those exist then the other is soured by the absence.
3) Do you have a long term game going? Any long running characters? I'd love to hear about them.
Most of the games I've been in were long-running, all of them having the games die before the characters. Since I view characters in role-playing as an experimental opportunity I shrug and move on to the next set of data collection.
I think it's necessary for good roleplay; someone who doesn't care about their character isn't as invested in that character's story. They won't care as much if bad things happen to that character. Similarly, they likely won't empathize with other players if bad things happen to their characters.
Better put than I could think of.
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...because if only one of those exist then the other is soured by the absence.
Thats on the verge of dark poetry right there. Beautifully said, sir!
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There are GMs out there that just cannot balance an encounter to save their lives.
I reject your proposition that all encounters should be balanced. There are some things that the characters just aren't going to be capable of doing, and hopefully the players will be smart enough to figure that out:
"How do we kill the giant wizard cyborg mecha-tank?"
"We don't. Run away!"
If not... well, that's natural selection in action. And it can be beautiful to watch :)
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2) How do you handle character death when it occurs?
I created a new character and the game continued. As a GM I've never seen one of the PCs die, and as a player I've only had 1 character die (it wasn't in a Shadowrun game anyway), but I'm a writer and take my PC the same as I'd take one of my original stories' characters - they're not expendable, but if they have plot armour that means they will never die then they'll become boring. I detest plot armour and stories where Status Quo never changes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StatusQuoIsGod). There has to be that possibility for the full range of exploration of humanity, existence, and life - that includes growth as well as death, because if only one of those exist then the other is soured by the absence.
I agree, and I would add to that something that I've found very bothering. People who go too far into the opposite and think characters have to die in order for a story to be good. Usually this is people trying to ape George R.R. Martin's style, and it instead ends up feeling forced and immature.
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I have no problem maiming or really fucking up anyone else's PCs/NPCs, but I've gone out of my way not to kill them or let them die because of a bad dice roll or something similar. It ultimately depends on the player and the GM coming to an understanding. Since almost all of our dice rolls were "public," my players had the option of just letting the dice speak for themselves. I do not show that kind of mercy to my characters, but to others' characters I am hesitant to destroy their investment without some forewarning or planning.
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I'm running another Shadowrun campaign soon with players bringing in old characters from previous games. Though there needs to always be the threat of lethal repercussion to a parties actions there just is no alternative to a group that is playing characters that they really love and have reason to want to see succeed for other reasons then 'winning' the game. I mean look at us, most of us have forum avatars based off of successful characters that we've grown attached to.
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Exactly. And if they die, (try to) give them heroes' deaths.
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There are GMs out there that just cannot balance an encounter to save their lives.
I reject your proposition that all encounters should be balanced. There are some things that the characters just aren't going to be capable of doing, and hopefully the players will be smart enough to figure that out:
"How do we kill the giant wizard cyborg mecha-tank?"
"We don't. Run away!"
If not... well, that's natural selection in action. And it can be beautiful to watch :)
Sure, if the fight is supposed to be overwhelming, you can run an overwhelming fight. But there are GMs out there that somehow get the impression that Street Gangers should have 200k of ware, toss 17 dice to shoot, and attack in hordes of twenty as a low powered encounter.
As for my supposed proposition, that's entirely your creation. Not every encounter has to be balanced to the characters. If the GM can't balance any encounter though, it causes balance issues and stupid deaths. This is pretty much common sense.
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I totally agree that not every fight needs to be winable. I mean that in a roundabout way, of course, but the players need to know that they are strong, but there is always someone out there that is just THAT much stronger. That way, if nothing else, they still have a reason to continue playing their character(s).
On the other hand, though, I've played for multiple GM's who like to give a character with 20 karma a mission where the payoff is rediculous. In one example we brought down a hotel, but not before I found the vault underground that JUST happened to have 500,000 in jewels and such. Or the island we were hired to assault. We went in knowing that a Panamanian military force was already occupying the island and we would have a fight on our hands. My excitement wained when the GM ruled that the immense heat would have made them (the militia) NOT wear body armor and only carry SMGs. We took the island in 30 minutes with absolutely no challenge.
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There are GMs out there that just cannot balance an encounter to save their lives.
I reject your proposition that all encounters should be balanced. There are some things that the characters just aren't going to be capable of doing, and hopefully the players will be smart enough to figure that out:
"How do we kill the giant wizard cyborg mecha-tank?"
"We don't. Run away!"
If not... well, that's natural selection in action. And it can be beautiful to watch :)
Sure, if the fight is supposed to be overwhelming, you can run an overwhelming fight. But there are GMs out there that somehow get the impression that Street Gangers should have 200k of ware, toss 17 dice to shoot, and attack in hordes of twenty as a low powered encounter.
As for my supposed proposition, that's entirely your creation. Not every encounter has to be balanced to the characters. If the GM can't balance any encounter though, it causes balance issues and stupid deaths. This is pretty much common sense.
Exactly. Balance does not mean equal balance.
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I'm surprised you guys haven't had more Shadowrun deaths. Although my group stopped using "The Hand of God" rule because it just felt lame and allowed people to live too easily. Not to say that once someone goes down in our campaigns it's 100% over, but it very well could be. If there is any game PC's should occasionally die in, it's this one. Imho.
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I play since 2nd edition and i have seen many death either from my runners companions, or me as runner or from my players
Most were caused by player stupidity like going in small group... Some where caused by unlucky trends...
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Exactly. Balance does not mean equal balance.
Really? Because that's pretty much the definition of the word "balance". I'm interested to know what you mean by that.
@WellsIDidIt, I admit, I read some bits into your post. I agree that while a particular encounter doesn't need to be balanced, the PCs should at least have an even chance of reaching their goals over the long-term (vagaries of the dice notwithstanding). A GM who thinks the point of the game is to kill off all of the PCs as quickly as possible isn't going to be a GM for very long before driving off all his or her players (unless you're playing Paranoia, of course).
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Really? Because that's pretty much the definition of the word "balance". I'm interested to know what you mean by that.
You gotta get some context here. Crimsondude is saying that not every encounter has to be perfectly balanced for the players. Sometimes it's worthwhile for the players or the NPCs to flee a battle that's overwhelming - too often people stand their ground and lose their character (or NPC) because of the idea that everything will always work out for their side in the end. That stubbornness will get your character(s) killed.
I'm tangenting. The point that Crimsondude and Wells were making is that not every situation should be ideally balanced.
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Really? Because that's pretty much the definition of the word "balance". I'm interested to know what you mean by that.
You gotta get some context here. Crimsondude is saying that not every encounter has to be perfectly balanced for the players. Sometimes it's worthwhile for the players or the NPCs to flee a battle that's overwhelming - too often people stand their ground and lose their character (or NPC) because of the idea that everything will always work out for their side in the end. That stubbornness will get your character(s) killed.
I'm tangenting. The point that Crimsondude and Wells were making is that not every situation should be ideally balanced.
On that, I think we all agree.
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[NOTICE: This post is designated GM'S EYES ONLY. Players advised to move along.
There is nothing to see here.
Non-GMs reading beyond this point should immediately report to the nearest Player Re-Education Center for RETCON treatment.]
As a silver-back GM of the Old School Dojo, I'll drop my two nuyen into the well:
Just between us GMs, it's a good idea to kill someone on the 1st or 2nd Run. Just to show them that you've got the stones to let the dice fall where they may.
I'm not suggesting just up an offing a PC. Not at all. But someone screws up, someone rolls a bunch of skulls, my advice is - let the mechanics of the game grind them in its cold, heartless gears.
This is probably the most important thing you can do as a fledgling GM. Done right, killing a PC is the best damn thing you can do for your game.
Sounds callous, neh? Cruel? Maybe.
But I've had players THANK me for killing their favorite PC. Not right away, mind you...but once they saw objectively what it brought to the table, indeed they did.
If you kill a PC early in the campaign (and to be clear here, by "KILL" I mean "allow to be killed legitimately through their own series of bad decisions and poor rolls") your players will immediately grok that their Fate is uncertain. Any die roll could go sideways, and you...a heartless bastard born of the loins of Hades and Lady Luck...will not save them.
Thus freeing your hands to step in, when the story requires, and maybe fudge a little. *Grin*
And killing a PC early in the game is easy to fix - they're only a few points of Karma behind the rest of the group, and the only real investment they had in their character was whatever bond they developed during CharGen. They'll do the same (grudgingly, but they will do the same) during the next CharGen, and probably build a better character from what they learned.
Think about it. If I run a game for ages, and I never kill ANYONE they care about...where's the risk? Where's the challenge? Where is the fear?
Your job, as GM, is to be a good storyteller. The job of the Players is to meet you half way, by suspending their disbelief. But how can they live up to that if they know...really know, deep down, that you don't have what it takes to pull the trigger?
The best thing you can do for your players is to tell them, right from the start, that you are an impartial arbiter - you tell the story, but the dice are sacrosanct and you will abide by their ruling. This is a LIE - but they can never know this. They must believe - they must KNOW for a cold hard FACT - that you're a killer.
Once they know this, you remind them, from time to time, by killing an NPC they really love. These sacrifices make your game better, in the long run.
If there's one thing I know about GMing, it's the long run. ;)
-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist
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[NOTICE: This post is designated GM'S EYES ONLY. Players advised to move along.
There is nothing to see here.
Non-GMs reading beyond this point should immediately report to the nearest Player Re-Education Center for RETCON treatment.]
As a silver-back GM of the Old School Dojo, I'll drop my two nuyen into the well:
Just between us GMs, it's a good idea to kill someone on the 1st or 2nd Run. Just to show them that you've got the stones to let the dice fall where they may.
I'm not suggesting just up an offing a PC. Not at all. But someone screws up, someone rolls a bunch of skulls, my advice is - let the mechanics of the game grind them in its cold, heartless gears.
This is probably the most important thing you can do as a fledgling GM. Done right, killing a PC is the best damn thing you can do for your game.
Sounds callous, neh? Cruel? Maybe.
But I've had players THANK me for killing their favorite PC. Not right away, mind you...but once they saw objectively what it brought to the table, indeed they did.
If you kill a PC early in the campaign (and to be clear here, by "KILL" I mean "allow to be killed legitimately through their own series of bad decisions and poor rolls") your players will immediately grok that their Fate is uncertain. Any die roll could go sideways, and you...a heartless bastard born of the loins of Hades and Lady Luck...will not save them.
Thus freeing your hands to step in, when the story requires, and maybe fudge a little. *Grin*
And killing a PC early in the game is easy to fix - they're only a few points of Karma behind the rest of the group, and the only real investment they had in their character was whatever bond they developed during CharGen. They'll do the same (grudgingly, but they will do the same) during the next CharGen, and probably build a better character from what they learned.
Think about it. If I run a game for ages, and I never kill ANYONE they care about...where's the risk? Where's the challenge? Where is the fear?
Your job, as GM, is to be a good storyteller. The job of the Players is to meet you half way, by suspending their disbelief. But how can they live up to that if they know...really know, deep down, that you don't have what it takes to pull the trigger?
The best thing you can do for your players is to tell them, right from the start, that you are an impartial arbiter - you tell the story, but the dice are sacrosanct and you will abide by their ruling. This is a LIE - but they can never know this. They must believe - they must KNOW for a cold hard FACT - that you're a killer.
Once they know this, you remind them, from time to time, by killing an NPC they really love. These sacrifices make your game better, in the long run.
If there's one thing I know about GMing, it's the long run. ;)
-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist
Good post. I tend to agree.
These days I handle things a little differently though. I let the dice roll true and if someone dies, they did. However, if I was going to cheat on a roll it would be in a less important scene, perhaps against grunts. It's a bit of an anti-climax to have some low level gangers geek a pc. It's much better if they go down to a major npc. I generally do a good job balancing my combat encounters but from time to time I do screw up and overestimate what my pc's can handle. If I feel I screwed up and I don't like the way the combat is going, I would consider bringing in reinforcements or some other equalizer to give the pcs a more fair chance, or even the upper hand. Ultimately, for me it is all about creating a good story and gaming experience. GM's that refuse to kill pcs are not really doing a good thing. The reason we make characters and use dice is because your character is supposed to actually have a chance to die. If you can't die, how do your decisions matter? It becomes more of a story than a game. There is no challenge when everything comes free.
Having the reputation as a GM who is willing to kill characters is a good thing. It makes everyone enjoy the game more and when they win a hard fight, they know they earned it. Player deaths can be very rich and they can even change the story of a campaign entirely. There are so many good things that come with it that it's a shame if it never happens. Any gm that miraculously manages to not kill a pc after decades is cheating on rolls or lining up extremely easy fights. Even then, eventually someone would probably die if the dice were honored.
Of course, a GM that is a bully out to kill characters is not a good thing. GM's should try to be reasonable in their approach. One last note: It is occasionally a good idea to pit the players up against a fight they have no real chance of winning. Make them realize that running is an option. Combat should not be perfectly balanced 100% of the time. Sometimes you have an edge, sometimes you are at a huge disadvantage, that is the best way to keep things realistic.
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a pacifist GM is often worse than a cold-hearthed, bastard of a GM... If the player don't know that any error can lead them to death, they will be overconfident...
Players must fear for their character's life every now and then... they will think for better plan and will run for their avatar's life....
My group of players fear me as i have killed nearly each of them a few times... the last time, i got a new players the others started to list several of the multiple wrong thing they have done that have costed them death or "hand of god"
They have started as a band of loose amateurish shadowrunner that will fail half their missions and tend to become a group of fiable runners...
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One last note: It is occasionally a good idea to pit the players up against a fight they have no real chance of winning. Make them realize that running is an option. Combat should not be perfectly balanced 100% of the time. Sometimes you have an edge, sometimes you are at a huge disadvantage, that is the best way to keep things realistic.
This is pretty much the point where we were talking about balance and equal balance not being the same thing. The players can be outskilled, outgunned, and ill-equipped for the situation, that's fine. However, if they're getting slaughtered before they can run or even see the opposition, there is a balance issue with the GM.