Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Warmachinez on <05-03-13/0858:19>
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I have GMed SR for my group since 2nd Ed, but unfortunately never played. Luckily I have a new player who is also a DM (DMs Pathfinder for our group one day a week and I GM one day a week). With the arrival of 5th Ed, I can't wait to GM a new camapaign, but I would also love to play a character for once. After a bit of discussion with my DM friend, we came to the conclusion that doin a CO-GM game could be very interesting.
I was wondering if any of you forumites might have tried this and would have sound advice to give or know of Pitfalls to avoid?
Thanks for the help Chummers!
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It can be fun. Just be wary of using your character as an NPC when it is time for you to GM. The best advice is for both of you to create separate story arcs and not tell each other. Then wing it if one of you derails the other.
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We Co-op GM our Pathfinder campaign too (rotate through 4 GMs > 1 per level where they get 4 - 5 sessions to complete their story-arc), keeps people interested in playing and GMing and creates a nice mix of story and play-types. That said, Pathfinder accommodates this very nicely - the PF Society being what it is, it's easy to explain these very modular/episodic adventures as we're all PF Society members so we just go out on assignments or what not. I could see that being slightly more difficult with SR (explaining the sudden changes in direction).
My advice would be; instead of switching each session, let one GM take the reigns for a set number of sessions, long enough for each GM to complete some portion of a story arc. Seems to me like you'd be stepping on each others toes constantly rotating every other session - not to mention what if a Run can't be completed in one session (which is most, once things get rolling IME anyway)? Then again, that's my GMing type preference - story arcs as opposed to episodic. You could agree to end each arc in a certain location, so the other guy at least knows where the players will be. Otherwise, you might have to have some logical story-construct so that no matter where the players end up, they can get to where the next story is (in PF it's the PF Society for us, in SR they could be bank-rolled corp-runners or something?).
Anywayl, that's my 0.02 cred.
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There's rpg systems out there built especially for this type of play. Ars Magica was one that I really loved, but could only convince my friends to play it a couple sessions. (Of course, typical disclaimer on this board, it's not a millionth as good as Shadowrun!) Players switch off as GMs in it and even sometimes share characters. And everyone gets a turn playing a powerful wizard pc.
Anyway, we did some of this at the end of my 2060's campaign. The main reason behind it was to help me out and prevent GM burnout, a constant problem in our group of aging players. (If you can consider the 30's aging) It worked out okay, but right away we found out that despite the best intentions, I'm the really only one that wanted to GM, so it went back to normal. We had tons of GMs when we were young, but nearly all have burned out.
So first, make sure that anyone entering the rotation really wants it and isn't just trying to be nice.
One of the biggest pitfalls I experienced is stepping away from your own player character. I find it impossible to properly roleplay a character without falling in love with the character to a certain degree, and this is magnified if it's one of my favorite characters of all time, which it was in this case. And yes, it's best if you love your player's characters too, but I think quite often most of us love our own player characters best. Just Human nature.
I consider myself an ethical and fair GM, but even so I struggled with this. It wasn't that I was scheming to get my character some mad loot or some stupid drek. No, it's just that it's hard to do nasty things to a character you really love. And then worse, you can over correct and prove how ethical you are by really being hard on your PC, perhaps unfairly so.
It's a bit like the situation where a family member is someone's boss and is unfair to their family member employee, because they don't want to be seen as favoring them. It's not undoable, but it's one of the hardest things I've ever run into as a GM.
As far as plots and story arcs go, we found it worked best with two GMs running two separate arcs, and neither GM knew what was going on with the arc behind the scenes. We used the same group, including the GMs having a PC. Sometimes the GM's PC would be there when the GM was at the helm, sometimes not. The two arcs were fairly easy to keep separate because we each created a different fixer contact and the PCs all got these 2 contacts free. So all stories related to each story arc went through the fixer created by each GM. And not all runs were arc related, but even then each GM used his own fixer and we never touched each other's fixers or johnsons. I asked the other GM to request permission before using my major npcs and agreed to do likewise. it was never an issue though.
I recall it was a gourmet chef/hotel and restaurant owner that was a Johnson the runners worked for a couple times that I didn't want the other GM to touch. The main reason being he was a Corrupted Mage and had a secret kitchen full of Wendigo chefs. None of which the other GM or any of the players knew about or ever found out. And yes, they ate the food. And no, my PC didn't, since he's a salad eating giraffe shaman. See what I mean, favoritism! No, not really, wasn't planned that way.
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Some people apparently leave out the GM's character and just let them get equivalent rewards behind the scenes.
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Some people apparently leave out the GM's character and just let them get equivalent rewards behind the scenes.
Yeah, we strongly considered that and it might be a solution for some people. I just didn't like it though. One, I thought it could get kind of unbelievable that the two characters were always vanishing. (Although it is more workable in Shadowrun than some other game systems) Also, I always felt it strange to give karma and monetary awards to characters who aren't there. They just aren't in the same dangerous and dramatic situations. I guess you could assume they are doing other jobs, but it stretches reality for me that the guy that wasn't there gets the same 20 karma when the party breaks into a high security condo and murders an exec and his cyber zombie guardians.
And we didn't want the two GMs to have their characters punished. So yeah, GMs gming their own player character is a fine line to walk and probaly always will be.
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Probably best if the GM characters aren't the ones doing the heavy planning, I guess. If you simply get bossed around and don't need that much initiative on your own, it's easier on that fine line.
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My group has run a 'round robin' style M&M game for a while now, plus I run a SR campaign that I allow others to GM in occasionally.
I'd highly recommend that ONE person be in charge of characters and approvals. Its often hard to balance games, but gets much more difficult when more than one person is approving purchases or characters. Admittedly its much more important for characters to balance against each other in M&M than SR due to M&M being more free form in power and character types than SR.
I actually learned this my self from the M&M game where we did have multiple GMs and applied it when starting my SR game - I run the majority of games, and approve all characters and such, but I invite other players to run games (or story arcs) on occasion.
If you are co running with one other person, you might have your co-gm vet your character, while you vet theirs, and maybe all approvals have to go through both of you, if you wanted to really share responsibility.
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No, it's just that it's hard to do nasty things to a character you really love.
That's actually a typical thing that new authors have to overcome.
But think about some really good stories that you have read - the main character often gets hurt - badly sometimes. And that tends to lead to the more interesting stories and such.
So hurt your own PC! Hurt the other PCs! And see what new insights into the characters that kind of thing brings.
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Bull killed off his daughter and blew himself up, costing him an arm and confining him to a wheelchair.
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Kinda tried a variation of this last night. One of my players didn't have his character, so he got to play the bad guys. Went really well, and he was much more ruthless heh I would have been. Great game, made my life so much easier and he had lots of fun despite his various thugs getting killed by the other players.
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Kinda tried a variation of this last night. One of my players didn't have his character, so he got to play the bad guys. Went really well, and he was much more ruthless heh I would have been. Great game, made my life so much easier and he had lots of fun despite his various thugs getting killed by the other players.
Hahah, cool idea. Kind of reminds me of the famous semi unethical psychology experiment where a prof had one group of students acting as guards at a prison and the other group of students playing the prisoners. Supposedly it was found that seemingly normal people do surprisinigly sadistic things when suddenly put into a position of power over their peers like that.
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I don't see the problem with having a character step out for a few missions/story arc. You're not a family. It's a working group. John isn't there for this arc? That means you didn't hire him or need him or invite him. No more explanation needed. Why did he get the karma and nuyen? He was working while you guys were busy.
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I don't see the problem with having a character step out for a few missions/story arc. You're not a family. It's a working group. John isn't there for this arc? That means you didn't hire him or need him or invite him. No more explanation needed. Why did he get the karma and nuyen? He was working while you guys were busy.
It's strictly a question of style and taste, which varies by group. That solution may work well for many groups. We're pretty hardcore and have things like the optional magic loss house rule, expensive medical care, and so on. In some cases it can be an advantage to miss a session if it's a particularly hairy one. In fact, the last game in the campaign, one I didn't run, the physical adept had magic loss. I'm aware this isn't to the taste of many players and groups, just our own preferences. But it makes it unfair to give karma and money to someone who isn't there and we aren't just going to randomly assign magic loss or lengthy hospital stays for those off screen missions. Not to mention a host of other negative things that can happen from runs, like vengeful enemies and murdered contacts.
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Alot of great info here chummers, I really appreciate. Some things I am now planning to do:
Vet each one's character and we both approve the other characters in thegame.
We each build our own story arc, but must lead to same BBG/BBsituation
Not give our characters any Karma if they are not there, although we could have them there as acting NPCs, which brings me to ...
Hurt my own PC and the CO-GMs PC ;D
Great Stuff!
Thanks
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I ran a VTM campaign for two years jointly. I had to kill off (albeit epically) my character because I became the main GM. :-[ but it must be done. As a GM you MUST focus the campaign on the players.
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I ran a VTM campaign for two years jointly. I had to kill off (albeit epically) my character because I became the main GM. :-[ but it must be done. As a GM you MUST focus the campaign on the players.
You may have chosen to do it, but no, you did NOT in fact have to. The character wouldn't have had as much focus as before, but there would have been ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong with it remaining present.
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Or there's always the "drops into the background" option, which leaves them conveniently available to pull out whenever you need them - after all, you haven't established what they've been doing.
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Or there's always the "drops into the background" option, which leaves them conveniently available to pull out whenever you need them - after all, you haven't established what they've been doing.
A possibility, but not even that is necessary. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the GM having a character with the party.
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Or there's always the "drops into the background" option, which leaves them conveniently available to pull out whenever you need them - after all, you haven't established what they've been doing.
A possibility, but not even that is necessary. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the GM having a character with the party.
Notionally, no. But some people really don't like GMPC's, because when they're handled wrong it can be an issue. Done right, they're just fine.
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Or there's always the "drops into the background" option, which leaves them conveniently available to pull out whenever you need them - after all, you haven't established what they've been doing.
A possibility, but not even that is necessary. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the GM having a character with the party.
Notionally, no. But some people really don't like GMPC's, because when they're handled wrong it can be an issue. Done right, they're just fine.
I just know that in three different groups, I've never seen one become a problem. We don't always have one, but we do more often than not.
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Nor have I, but I've certainly heard some horror stories.
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Nor have I, but I've certainly heard some horror stories.
Yes, I've lived some of those horror stories. NPCs can be poorly used as well and take the spotlight from the players. But players tend to take it more personally when the favored son is actually the GM's character. The GM's popularity drops down to Wall Street golden parachute guy levels. It's sort of like the infamous favored GM's girlfriend character
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Yeah, I had trouble with managing my own NPC that was based on my player concept. There's a reason I turned him into support in Silver Platter, where the Black Knights and PCs assaulted the compound and the snipers merely covered the area.
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Kinda tried a variation of this last night. One of my players didn't have his character, so he got to play the bad guys. Went really well, and he was much more ruthless heh I would have been. Great game, made my life so much easier and he had lots of fun despite his various thugs getting killed by the other players.
It's a bit like in the old Wraith RPG, where you best had another co-GM to play the shadows (dark side) of the PCs.
As for the two GM characters, give them both the day-job quality. That gives a convenient excuse for them to be away. Another option is to use them as NPC, but not in the group itself. Have them do some legwork that takes a long time and has to be done somewhere else, and you can use them to feed some information to the other PCs if they are stuck. That way their absence is explained and you can use them to advance the plot. Although be careful not to overdo it.
As for the karma and money awards, that's a bit trickier. We have the same problem in a Scion campaign, as we use that if not everybody can show up for the regular campaign. Our GM let the differences build up and from time to time (when we gain a new point of legend) he bumps everybody to the highest XP level at that point. Maybe not fair, but you can't keep the characters too far apart before it's not fun anymore. And always remember, we're here just to have fun, not to nitpick over a couple of karma points. :) Consider the karma the GM PC gets while the GM is GMing an award for the time the GM puts in the story. :)
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I would second (or third or fourth, whatever it is now) the notion that its a mistake to deprive the GMPCs of all advancement while not in action. You're shortly gonna arrive at a power disparity, which will make you more inclined to throw your or the other GM PC a bone, which is what you want to avoid.
Either have them in the back ground or off on another Run completely (I'd recommend the second), but reward them the same. If the point of co-op is so you don't burn out, then you need to have fun too as a PC.
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Either have them in the back ground or off on another Run completely (I'd recommend the second), but reward them the same. If the point of co-op is so you don't burn out, then you need to have fun too as a PC.
This is exactly what we will do, we will give our charcetrs the same amount of cash and Karma as the rest of the players. We also discussed this with them and they have no issues with iit. Also, when my players miss a game I give them the cash and exp/karma award, since I actually play them as NPC's and provide some support to the team.
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Either have them in the back ground or off on another Run completely (I'd recommend the second), but reward them the same. If the point of co-op is so you don't burn out, then you need to have fun too as a PC.
This is exactly what we will do, we will give our charcetrs the same amount of cash and Karma as the rest of the players. We also discussed this with them and they have no issues with iit. Also, when my players miss a game I give them the cash and exp/karma award, since I actually play them as NPC's and provide some support to the team.
We do exactly the same. Miss a week? We send a pm to the group saying what the nuyen and karma rewards were along with a short rundown of the mission. Missing the game is punishment enough, it just gets compounded if you also become weaker than the rest of the team.
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On the subject of GM PC's getting rewards (Karma and some cash) while they are running and behind the scenes, it's not like the GM is 'missing the game' or the like and getting stuff 'for free.'
Could draft up a chart for 'down time rewards' which could even have some hitches or negatives applied (Rough month behind the scene, go 10k in debt due to replacement gear, bribes to Lone Star to avoid the slammer, etc) so there is some fluctuation of fortune.
Given the nature of Shadowrun it's not hard to envision of a few members of a team either having some other gigs or teams they work with so they aren't always available every time the fixer throws a run their way.
Something else to consider is to have 2 locations (seperate cities) where one GM runs one and plays in the other and have 2 campaign metaplots going that are roughly worked out between the GMs, but the specifics in each city are left to the one handling the place. The core PCs either bounce between them for some established reason for work or even have 2 PC's themselves but the action of one group can have ripples in the other location.
A friend of mine plays in a Skype Aberrant game where the GM runs three separate groups that are different affiliations and the whole nine. When plot events warrant it, sometimes players will do guest appearances in the other groups (like cross over issues of comics) and it works super well for them. Of course that example is 1 GM running three tied groups rather than 2 GM's running for 1 group but can be similarly applied. Would cut out all the 'how to advance GM characters fairly without them being left in the dust' nicely as well if there are two sets of characters in play.
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I tried Co-op GMing in 2nd Ed D&D (I think) it was a bit of a disaster really. But then neither of us were really experienced (or particularly good for that matter) at GMing back then. I've since tried a few games rotating GM more recently, which was ok for something fairly knockabout. In that the GM's character was off elsewhere and it worked fine.
In my experience GM characters (and even just accompanying NPCs) are a nightmare to handle whilst GMing. GMs have enough to do to without maintaining a character in the party. All that happens in my experience is that everyone frequently forgets they're there and then occasionally they're remembered, usually just to save someone or move on the plot a bit.
Particularly in Shadowrun, where the party is essentially mercenaries, it's easy to explain an absence of someone for a while. Or alternatively, have them off running a separate part of the mission. Say a distraction, infiltration, hack, sniping cover, overwatch, get-away driver etc. That way if everything goes to hell you can call them in to prevent something like a TPK without it being a huge deal.
Good luck with the co-oping
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Thanks Ghoulfodder,
Me and the other GM are meeting tomorrow to discuss the game... It's going to be interesting.
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I have done that on various levels.
My current campaign we have a primary GM, but as the GM is working on the next major leg of the campaign, real life comes up, or other issues, we have two other GMs that stand in, basically doing really short legs or one shots. I do like this, but at the same time it leads to your character being out for a few runs. The way we handle it is that we still award the money/karma to the down players for that week (although I am going to recommend it going at a slightly reduced rate in the future).
Pros: Its fun, it keeps from GM burnout, you get a variety of story telling.
Cons: There isn't a whole lot of continuity between campaign missions. There has also been some internal conflict that has arisen. There needs to be more overlap in roles, GMs may have different ideas on how the campaign is runing
My 3rd Edition campaign was my favorite though. It was similar, but we had two primary GMs. We each had complete control over our aspects of our missions, but we did end up having an overall story that the GMs agreed and co-wrote beforehand. We did implement a reduced GM's character karma/nuyen reward (I think we took a 20% cut on both during our downtime, and loot sold wasn't split to them necessarily). This did put the two GM characters a little behind, but ShadowRun is developed to a way where you can have a difference in power levels on characters and still get through. And the team also had a community pool for everyone to use, and the GMs tended to mooch a little bit more off of that than the others but nobody really had an issue with it.
Pros Its fun, lowers GM burnout, linked overall story arcs, GMs were on equal ground on decisions
Cons: GMs still get a little behind, still somewhat low drama
I would suggest the 2nd way, if possible. It is definitely viable for some groups, but not for others.
In ShadowRun, there are some decent excuses for being out for a few weeks for your character. For example, I used my character's time away to be completely rewired and training (upgraded or replaced a lot of my ware, did some extensive training etc). And the next GM allowed my character to bypass most of the availability rolls since it would have easily been done in that time.
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Thank you for your thoughts Reiper!
I met with the Co-GM this weekend and defned the following for our game:
1- I will start off the campaign using the SR5 Mission 1 in Chicago.
2- We will be using the Missions Plot as our main story arch. This way we have a theme/story/global objectives that should always flow in the same direction. Basically we also relegate that responsibility to the Missions writers :) This also garantees a stable group of NPC's that we as GM's will not mess with.
3- Since we play every week, Missions will not keep the group occupied full time, as such we will make additional runs where we can introduce new NPC's that we allow each other to mess with.
4- As for loot and Karma, we will simply award our characters the same amount as the rest of the team, since our characters will sometimes help with legwork or background info, as if they are a contact. Plus our group has been gaming together for years and they dont mind that we do this, it just feels fair and fun.
cant wait for SR5... so slow...