[prismite]

Hi guys!

My last session (today) went rather poorly, despite everyone having some fun. After the run one of my players had some questions about why I chose to do what I did and I was curious as to your thoughts and opinions.

Scenario: Party is hired to steal a car and bring it back, undamaged, to the employer.
Difficulty: The car is owned/operated by a super savy team of street racers who constantly shift between 3 different garages every day, so its difficulty to know where to strike (so to speak)
Complication: The party has already killed one of the super savy team in a shootout at a stuffershack.

The party decided to host their own street race and reached out to a couple of their contacts to try to make it happen.

1. One member of the party has a mechanic who (as luck would have it) is somebody in the street racing world. Now, the party slipped up here and did not ask the guy if he knew anything about the super savy team. Instead they asked him to reach out to some people and arrange a street race on their turf. The race would be for "pinks" (again, so to speak) with the ultimate winner getting another $1,600 on top of his new rides. To sweeten the deal, one of the players decided to put up his own car ... a C-N Jackrabbit. Knowing that this wouldnt be much of a draw, he decided to try a little photoshop action to make the car look souped up. I, as the GM, called for either an Artisan or Forgery check. The player didnt get upset, but felt that a "Computer" check was more appropriate. I disagreed for 2 reasons ... firstly, the skill "Forgery" illustrates a specialization of "Image Doctoring" and secondly, I know tons of people who are good with computers but shit with Photoshop. What would you rule, and why?

2. Later, during the races ... one of the racing players was about to lose and asked his team mates to shoot at him so that he could declare a default and thus not lose the ride. One of his team mates walked out into the middle of the road and took a pop shot at both his team mate (on a bike) and the opponent (in a Shin-Hyung). Both the biker and the car driver were unaware of the shot (determined by surprise roll) and thus got no dodge. Shooting player was using a Predator V and successfully hit the bike. The bike (a Mirage) only has a body of 5 and Armor of 5 (once the -1AP) is factored in. I rolled 10 dice for the bike and got 8 1's. Yes ... 8 ... 1's and no successes. In our games with play with a more hollywood type of action, and always have. When someone critical glitches a soak, the damage is increased by a number equal to the glitches. Yes, its ugly, but it happens rarely and thats why Edge is so important, but thats neither here nor there. The bike thus takes 9 (base damage of the gun) PLUS 8 from the glitch. I indicated that the gas tank (right under the driver's chest, essentially) is hit. Essentially the bike explodes and the driver takes fire and falling (at 150mph) damage. He lives ... but the shooter argued that he doesnt think the bike would explode. In real life, yes, this is true ... but in our hollywood style of play its been the norm then when a vehicle has its boxes filled, it blows. What do you do when a vehicle is damaged beyond its hit boxes?

3. Finally, the shooting listed above really scared the shit out of the racers and they all bail quickly ... especially with an angry cop now visible in the area. Those people are now pissed at the mechanic who told them that this race was both safe and legit. I ruled that the mechanic contact would likely suffer a great shot to his rep (and thus his business) for 'lying' to his customers and lost one point of Connection. This in turned pissed him off that his buddy whom he stuck his neck out for would screw him over so bad ... so he also lost a point of Loyalty. Someone at the table thought this was a little steep. How do you handle it when collosal tragedy befalls a contact because of the careless actions of the group?

Sorry for the wall of text

[Lethal Joke]

Hi guys!

My last session (today) went rather poorly, despite everyone having some fun. After the run one of my players had some questions about why I chose to do what I did and I was curious as to your thoughts and opinions.

Scenario: Party is hired to steal a car and bring it back, undamaged, to the employer.
Difficulty: The car is owned/operated by a super savy team of street racers who constantly shift between 3 different garages every day, so its difficulty to know where to strike (so to speak)
Complication: The party has already killed one of the super savy team in a shootout at a stuffershack.

The party decided to host their own street race and reached out to a couple of their contacts to try to make it happen.

1. One member of the party has a mechanic who (as luck would have it) is somebody in the street racing world. Now, the party slipped up here and did not ask the guy if he knew anything about the super savy team. Instead they asked him to reach out to some people and arrange a street race on their turf. The race would be for "pinks" (again, so to speak) with the ultimate winner getting another $1,600 on top of his new rides. To sweeten the deal, one of the players decided to put up his own car ... a C-N Jackrabbit. Knowing that this wouldnt be much of a draw, he decided to try a little photoshop action to make the car look souped up. I, as the GM, called for either an Artisan or Forgery check. The player didnt get upset, but felt that a "Computer" check was more appropriate. I disagreed for 2 reasons ... firstly, the skill "Forgery" illustrates a specialization of "Image Doctoring" and secondly, I know tons of people who are good with computers but shit with Photoshop. What would you rule, and why?

Sounds like good reasoning to me, though I probably would've gone computers myself.

2. Later, during the races ... one of the racing players was about to lose and asked his team mates to shoot at him so that he could declare a default and thus not lose the ride. One of his team mates walked out into the middle of the road and took a pop shot at both his team mate (on a bike) and the opponent (in a Shin-Hyung). Both the biker and the car driver were unaware of the shot (determined by surprise roll) and thus got no dodge. Shooting player was using a Predator V and successfully hit the bike. The bike (a Mirage) only has a body of 5 and Armor of 5 (once the -1AP) is factored in. I rolled 10 dice for the bike and got 8 1's. Yes ... 8 ... 1's and no successes. In our games with play with a more hollywood type of action, and always have. When someone critical glitches a soak, the damage is increased by a number equal to the glitches. Yes, its ugly, but it happens rarely and thats why Edge is so important, but thats neither here nor there. The bike thus takes 9 (base damage of the gun) PLUS 8 from the glitch. I indicated that the gas tank (right under the driver's chest, essentially) is hit. Essentially the bike explodes and the driver takes fire and falling (at 150mph) damage. He lives ... but the shooter argued that he doesnt think the bike would explode. In real life, yes, this is true ... but in our hollywood style of play its been the norm then when a vehicle has its boxes filled, it blows. What do you do when a vehicle is damaged beyond its hit boxes?

It is a critical glitch (a very bad one, too) so the one in a million bad thing is perfectly valid in my opinion. I don't know about the house rule of yours, but it is yours, after all.

3. Finally, the shooting listed above really scared the shit out of the racers and they all bail quickly ... especially with an angry cop now visible in the area. Those people are now pissed at the mechanic who told them that this race was both safe and legit. I ruled that the mechanic contact would likely suffer a great shot to his rep (and thus his business) for 'lying' to his customers and lost one point of Connection. This in turned pissed him off that his buddy whom he stuck his neck out for would screw him over so bad ... so he also lost a point of Loyalty. Someone at the table thought this was a little steep. How do you handle it when collosal tragedy befalls a contact because of the careless actions of the group?

I agree with the players on this one. Don't take away connection. Give the Mechanic a couple of points of Notoriety and apply it liberally.

Sorry for the wall of text

It's alright. I've seen and posted longer things.

[ScytheKnight]

First part completely agree, I've done photoshopping myself and I can attest that it is an art. (one I'm not especially gifted at)

The bike explosion was a little crazy, remember most vehicles in Shadowrun are electric or hybrid biodiesel. That said it was a massive critical glitch... I myself have had a troll ganger body checking a boarded up window at a full run because they critically glitched against a Fear power.

I can see where you're going with the loss to the contact's connection and loyalty, but I think in that situation they'd be making it clear that it was the group who broke their word... I think a point or two of notoriety each should drive the message home, especially as they where trying to cheat out of loosing.

[PiXeL01]

1 - Peronally i would have allowed either, possibly with a slightly higher threshold on Computers to simlulate the lack of expertise or knowledge in the field. An argument could be Computers can be used to scour the matrix for a suitable service or solution to the image editing problem or simply code one

2 - While your house rules might state it would blow I wouldnt let a vehicle blow from a gunshot. Explosions come from special weapons. Also full boxes would mean the vehicle is incapacitated/ wrecked, not necesarily in flames. That being said 17 boxes is 4 over the 13 the bike has, still I wouldnt rule it that severe.
Also if a player was riding the bike, why was it not he that rolled for the soak? It would have direct influence on his performance so it would only be fair that it would be his dice ruining his day and not yours, but this is a minor point though.

3 - Way too harsh call. Of the two contact stats a player can only really affect one of these after character creation and that is Loyalty. Connection represents the contact's reach and leverage into the rest of the world, not the level of service the contact is willing to provide for the player. THe only way players can influence Connection would be to actively destroy a contact's assests or work hard to promote the contact to the rest of the world.
Unless it was the player's contacts that were participating in the race then even loyalty would not take a hit as the player is not directly backstabbing any of his contacts.
Notoriety is what should be giving but no more than 1 or 2 at most.

[Herr Brackhaus]

On the first part, I'd allow either as others have stated. As a GM I'd like to encourage players to come up with creative solutions, and if the guy is a tech wizard he's likely to either be able to use Photoshop himself or find someone who can.

On the second, I probably wouldn't have gone quite that far. While a bullet certainly could cause merry hell with the right piece of kit (be it gas tank, or more likely the injection system, or the vehicle's batteries), even with Hollywould physics your players clearly felt that that was a little out of whack. I'd also probably have given the players a choice; either actually shoot the bike, or pretend to and let the rider roll his Performance and Piloting skill to indicate how real a crash looks and how well he handles it, respectively.

On the third, I think a hit to Loyalty is fair, personally. The players asked this contact to arrange an illegal street race, and when they realized they could lose a race they intentionally sabotaged it by attacking racers and damaging property (not the intent, sure, but that's what happened), drawing attention to themselves by alerting the cops. If I was that mechanic and I saw the evidence (with millions of mefeeds I don't think this is outside the realm of possibility), I'd be pissed. Loyalty represents how close a contact is with the player character; if the player character does something to jeopardize the contacts livelyhood, dropping a point of loyalty seems appropriate to me. what Adder said!

[Adder]

1: I would say that your forgery interpretation was correct, but I would probably allow the player to use Computers with a -2 dice pool modifier. I like the "Rule of Two" from D&D: when it doubt, apply a positive or negative modifier of 2 to a roll. It's a lot stronger in Shadowrun due to the dice mechanics but it still serves well in most cases. I would not increase the threshold because that makes the objective seem more difficult, vs. your process of getting there (and again it affects the dice mechanics in probably undesired ways).

2: I'm a little confused why players were trying to hit the bike. Wouldn't merely firing at them (and intentionally missing) suffice? Regarding the actual outcome, I would accept that. It's a critical glitch on behalf of the bike, so the bike should suffer some horrible structural damage as a result of the bullet. Typically I run crit glitches as "what's the worst thing that X would want to happen?" and do that. In this case it also seems to have hurt the players as well, which is unfortunate. I would likely not have let the driver survive- I can't imagine a metahuman surviving a 150mph crash, much less being flung from an exploding bike.

Personally, I would have probably ruled some crazy event that benefited the players (since it was the opposition's critical glitch). Like the bike spins out from the damage and happens to tap the player's bike, propelling them forward (and possibly putting them into position to win the race?). It sucks when the "bad guys" get a critical glitch and it hurts you too.

3. I agree with Herr Brackhaus's interpretation of the events. However, I think that a few GMing principles apply here:

a. Never do things capriciously, or appear to be doing so
b. Players hate having things taken away- instead, try to make them give it away instead
c. Always provide a way to remedy their actions

One of the biggest derailments to a player's enjoyment is when they feel things happen for reasons outside of their control, or something occurs as a result of their actions that does not logically follow (and thus their understanding of the world feels incomplete, and thus causation appears arbitrary). In this case the players seem to understand the general result of their actions, but feel the punishment is disproportionate. Would they have felt this way if you had warned them this was a possible outcome at the beginning? I expect most groups would then find the final consequence much more palatable in that case (see a. above).

Players hate losing things. It feels like moving backwards on the advancement track (even though RPGs are not supposed to be just about advancement). In this case, rightfully or not, the players are upset about going backwards. I could see two ways of dealing with this:

1. Tell the players their contact calls them in a huff, upset about his loss of cred and the blowback. He asks for either a large ¥ sum (say, 5,000) to spread around to help soothe feelings, or the players call around and personally offer their apologies and kiss up to make things right (loss of Karma, possible open-ended granting of future favors which could lead to a run hook later). Either solution has no Loyalty loss (but notice how we still "punish" the players?). Make it clear that the contact thinks they are responsible for this and list why.

2. Same call, but tell the players the contact has to "go to ground" for a while to avoid the mob of former friends out for his head. He tells them he feels like his cred is trashed and he'll have to spend a lot of time rebuilding. Instead of an accusatory tone, go for a resigned/upset one. "How could this happen? I'm ruined!" It'll explain the Loyalty loss and guilt trip the players, too. If they have a shred of decency and any regret for their actions, they'll ask what they can do to help... which can lead into a run. Maybe they help upgrade his mechanics garage. Or get him a high-visibility deal fixing some bigwig's vehicle. Or help host another race (one where they aren't participants) with a big payout that will entice people to try again, despite the previous problems. In this scenario, the "punishment" is still there (time the runners need to spend fixing things, and likely not a big cash reward) but it's used instead of the straight Loyalty loss.


To be clear, I do believe in punishment for players who make clearly reckless or stupid mistakes. I just don't think punishments need to take away from the fun, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to turn them into a run to fix things.

[prismite]

Thanks for all the replies, everyone! You guys and your feedback are why I keep coming back to this forum!

1. In regards to everyone's suggestions ... yes, in retrospect I could totally have let him roll a computer check with a minor penalty. That does make absolute sense to me, and in normal circumstances I would have done this. All I can say is that I guess it slipped my mind. I will try to be more focused and mindful of alternatives in the future! Thanks for all the great advice here!

2. The "Hollywood Action" thing aside, I do still feel like a critical glitch (especially one of such magnitude) should have a spectacular result. As someone pointed out, a Critical Glitch is supposed to be the worst scenario possible. However ... Someone else pointed out that I should have let the player roll the vehicle. Once again, I didnt think about that. Given that a vehicle is usually a cherished/desired object it really should have been the player that was ultimately responsible for the roll. I failed to notice that. I will be mindful of that in the future. Someone else also mentioned that vehicles of 2075 would not likely use the standard flammable fuel. Once again, something I forgot to factor in. Someone mentioned that a bad guy's glitch shouldn't cause the party harm ... maybe I crossed my words there, but it was a party member that shot (and destroyed) the players bike. Why they didnt "pretend" to shoot at each other then act it out is beyond me. Heat of the moment? I dunno.

3. Truly, I had mixed feelings about docking the contact so hard. I guess its important to note that our table doesnt use Notoriety or Public Awareness. Not in the traditional sense, anyhow. We had an issue a few years back where some of the players refused to do any mission because they were racking up too much Notoriety and P.A with their rough and rowdy playstyle. So, to make it so that everyone could just keep playing without feeling like they had to 'sit out' we created a bounty system. Every time a character gets caught on-camera or does something worthy of Notoriety, there is a bounty put on their head. First time is $500. Every infraction thereafter doubles the fine. At some point the game stops becoming the players doing runs and becomes the players on the run (lol, so to speak). The group will then have to go through a hellish mission (depending on their current bounty) to get the bounty removed. Usually this is an epic "feel good" mission with no financial payout. Yeah, its weird, but it works for our group. That being said, handing out notoriety for the street race thing just wasnt a factor. Hitting them on the contact was (in my mind) a good slap on the wrist to say "You shouldn't do this."

I hand out Contact improvements frequently when the player(s) does on the occasion help their contact, so its not a 1-way street.

Once again, guys, thanks for the input and feedback. I will put this to good use!

[Herr Brackhaus]

To be clear, I do believe in punishment for players who make clearly reckless or stupid mistakes. I just don't think punishments need to take away from the fun, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to turn them into a run to fix things.

Awesome post, I like your approach to #3 far better than my own suggestion.

To the OP: What Adder said!

[Adder]

Someone mentioned that a bad guy's glitch shouldn't cause the party harm ... maybe I crossed my words there, but it was a party member that shot (and destroyed) the players bike. Why they didnt "pretend" to shoot at each other then act it out is beyond me. Heat of the moment? I dunno.

Sorry, I misinterpreted your original description.

That actually makes things much worse. If I was a runner and my own teammate was shooting at me, I'd be furious if he was trying to actually hit my (probably very expensive, treasured) bike. Like, what the hell? I'm going 150 mph!

Also for perspective, terminal velocity of a falling human is ~120mph. I would have a better survival change jumping out of a plane without a parachute than surviving that bike crash. In the way that it was described, I would probably force the rider to burn (vs. spend) Edge to live. Splat. I hate directly harming players (see my previous post) but that's like a really ludicrous speed to expect to walk away from. I would of course explain my reasoning (I think the plane jumping scenario illustrates that well- do the players really think they should be able to dive out of a plane at 30,000 feet and live?) but it'd still be an unpleasant experience.

As a nitpicky just-for-fun tangent, I also think an attack roll against a threshold should be expected due to the speed of the vehicle. For fun I just plugged in some ballpark calculations:

If the shooter was looking at an area 100 yards across (a football field) to take the shot, a 150mph bike would cross that in just 1.36 seconds. Human reaction time averages about .25 seconds. I can't find "start of trigger pull to bullet firing" numbers that don't also include response time, so let's just say .1 seconds as a rough number for start of trigger pull to firing of the bullet.

Assuming the target is not that far away (quarter of a kilometer, or 820 feet) and an average rifle speed of 2900 ft/s (the M4's muzzle velocity), the bullet's travel time is another .28 seconds.

That means from the moment when the shooter sees the rider he has only .73 seconds to start pulling the trigger before the rider is outside of his field of view. Impossible? No, three quarters of a second is actually a fairly long time. But difficult? Yea.

(1.36 - .25 - .1 -.28 = .73)

(edit) More fun facts: if you were aiming at the dead center of the bike, you would have only .02 seconds until the bike was completely out of your sight. Even with an instant reaction rate, the bullet time alone would cause it to miss.

For that calculation I used a random Kawasaki (ninja bike) model, the 2015-KLR650 (whatever that is, I don't know motorcycles). It has a length of 90.4 inches. Then I found how long it would take it going at 150mph to travel half of its body length (halving due to center aiming).

(2nd edit, okay, I'm having way too much fun with this) In order for bullet time to be irrelevant, you would need to have a vehicle the length of 2.3 school buses (~45 feet long each). If you center aimed at that super long, 150mph bus it could not full pass out of your sight before the bullet struck it. 150mph is really, really fast.

[Namikaze]

Prismite, I think you handled the whole thing appropriately.  I agree that Forgery would have been a great skill to use.  Defaulting with other skills is certainly possible though, and you seem to be aware of that option for the future.  The Hollywood explosion thing makes sense too - your table plays critical glitches that way, and all house rules must be applied fairly to both player characters and NPCs.  The third point about affecting the contact...  I think I'd have only docked a point of Loyalty or Connection, depending on how the player plays out the contact's confrontation.  Still, as you pointed out you make the connection and loyalty ratings more fluid than most games so I think it's fine to do what you did.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Someone mentioned that a bad guy's glitch shouldn't cause the party harm ... maybe I crossed my words there, but it was a party member that shot (and destroyed) the players bike. Why they didnt "pretend" to shoot at each other then act it out is beyond me. Heat of the moment? I dunno.

Also for perspective, terminal velocity of a falling human is ~120mph.

To be equally nitpicky, terminal velocity of a falling human actively trying to break his fall (i.e. arms and legs spread out) is about 120mph. In a dive, an expert skydiver can easily achieve over 200mph, and the world record is over 300mph. As a skydiver and motorcyclist, I would also not take any bets on surviving the 150mph fall over the 150mph skid. I've laid down my bike doing roughly 110mph without any injury whatsoever (except a wounded pride, perhaps), because my racing leathers protected my hide as I slid off the track and onto the sand and grass.

To put it this way; under ideal circumstances (on a track and in full gear) the number of people who have survived motorcycle crashed compared to those that have survived falls from height (no real ideal here because it is fatal in almost every situation I've heard of, but assume 13k feet or more) is likely to dramatically favour the motorcyclists. As the saying goes, it's not the speed that will kill you but the sudden and abrupt deceleration.

Since we're being nitpicky and all, I mean

[Adder]

Someone mentioned that a bad guy's glitch shouldn't cause the party harm ... maybe I crossed my words there, but it was a party member that shot (and destroyed) the players bike. Why they didnt "pretend" to shoot at each other then act it out is beyond me. Heat of the moment? I dunno.

Also for perspective, terminal velocity of a falling human is ~120mph.

To be equally nitpicky, terminal velocity of a falling human actively trying to break his fall (i.e. arms and legs spread out) is about 120mph. In a dive, an expert skydiver can easily achieve over 200mph, and the world record is over 300mph. As a skydiver and motorcyclist, I would also not take any bets on surviving the 150mph fall over the 150mph skid. I've laid down my bike doing roughly 110mph without any injury whatsoever (except a wounded pride, perhaps), because my racing leathers protected my hide as I slid off the track and onto the sand and grass.

Fair, I didn't factor in the actual deceleration process at all. If you were bouncing and skidding that would significantly increase your survival rate (well, anything over 0% is a significant increase) compared to just driving into a wall.

Regarding the fall speed, I assumed that the person was trying to survive (most studies I saw showed "random" position had effectively the same speed as well) so I didn't bother using the faster numbers.

[Herr Brackhaus]

Someone mentioned that a bad guy's glitch shouldn't cause the party harm ... maybe I crossed my words there, but it was a party member that shot (and destroyed) the players bike. Why they didnt "pretend" to shoot at each other then act it out is beyond me. Heat of the moment? I dunno.

Also for perspective, terminal velocity of a falling human is ~120mph.

To be equally nitpicky, terminal velocity of a falling human actively trying to break his fall (i.e. arms and legs spread out) is about 120mph. In a dive, an expert skydiver can easily achieve over 200mph, and the world record is over 300mph. As a skydiver and motorcyclist, I would also not take any bets on surviving the 150mph fall over the 150mph skid. I've laid down my bike doing roughly 110mph without any injury whatsoever (except a wounded pride, perhaps), because my racing leathers protected my hide as I slid off the track and onto the sand and grass.

Fair, I didn't factor in the actual deceleration process at all. If you were bouncing and skidding that would significantly increase your survival rate (well, anything over 0% is a significant increase) compared to just driving into a wall.

Regarding the fall speed, I assumed that the person was trying to survive (most studies I saw showed "random" position had effectively the same speed as well) so I didn't bother using the faster numbers.

Fair point; most deaths I've heard of likely occurred because the skydiver was already unconscious; knocking ones head on an exposed part of the aircraft or the limb of another skydiver is why we wear helmets, quite contrary to Jerry Seinfeld's admittedly "the helmet is now wearing you for protection" routine

And yes, "random position" also includes includes "uncontrolled spin", which is what happens if you pass out. Even if your rig is CYPRES (or similar) equipped, an uncontrolled fall is likely to be fatal.

[prismite]

Prismite, I think you handled the whole thing appropriately.  I agree that Forgery would have been a great skill to use.  Defaulting with other skills is certainly possible though, and you seem to be aware of that option for the future.  The Hollywood explosion thing makes sense too - your table plays critical glitches that way, and all house rules must be applied fairly to both player characters and NPCs.  The third point about affecting the contact...  I think I'd have only docked a point of Loyalty or Connection, depending on how the player plays out the contact's confrontation.  Still, as you pointed out you make the connection and loyalty ratings more fluid than most games so I think it's fine to do what you did.

This is how I felt initially, but I always feel bad when I make a judgement call as GM that the player(s) strongly disagree with, especially when that decision is a nasty one. In the end (at least in this case) I have had my eyes re-opened to various other alternative methods to handle these should they show up again.

In regards to the speed of falling and relevant damage ... I tried to keep everything built in a fair manor that I could at least base SOME game premise on. That is ... the bike was doing 150, so when the bike went tits-up, I had the player just roll 1P per 10mph ... so 15P. I also made them soak a 10P fireball (explosion) separately. The player only took 1P from the explosion and managed to blow his initial soak and took 11P. ... or at least he would have but he edged it and in the end took a grand total of 7P for the exploding bike/skid mark creation. Like I said, I wasn't out to bone anyone and I dont actively try to kill people. That being said, I wanted him to feel like he was in deeeeeep caca. I think that came across and he felt like he was given a sporting chance to survive ... and he DID!

Either way ... Everyone seemed to have fun, despite the character earning his new street name of "Ghostrider"