Shadowrun
Shadowrun Missions Living Campaign => Living Campaign Discussion => Topic started by: Deacon on <10-12-13/1221:16>
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I've had a ... situation ... arise, recently, that I need some clarification on, because this is quite frankly mystifying to me as to how I should proceed. Let me explain.
The other day, I'm running Missions for a group of new (to me) players. Character creation is done, and they've assembled themselves into a coherent team -- they've worked together before. I set up the scene, they get into the meet, the Johnson tells them how much they get paid...
Face: "No. We want ten thousand apiece."
Okay, this is a joke to the Johnson, so I laugh and tell them the pittance they're getting paid to do a simple job, and the face doesn't budge. Ten thousand, or the team walks. He isn't going to roll Negotiation. This isn't up for discussion. They either get paid way more than the Mission will give them or they aren't playing.
Okay, fine, I can't give them that kind of cash, so I tell them this flat-out. They don't budge. They don't care what the adventure says. 10K per person or they all go find something else to do for the day. Leaving me with all my preparation, hanging. They want 10K or no one gets to play. I'm not going to be bullied by players, so I tell them that no one gets to play. I always have Shadowrun Returns, after all.
It gets better.
Five minutes after they leave, the store owner comes to me with concerns that I threw everyone out of my game and was generally not a friendly person. This reflects badly on the store, and those five players represent a potential loss of revenue for the store, in the snacks and drinks the store could have sold them if nothing else. Seems my ex-players went to him and told him they were going to buy stuff, but since I was mean and nasty and threw them out, they were leaving and taking their money elsewhere. So now I have the store owner telling me to either give the players what they want, or I can find a new venue to run games.
Okay, now what? I have players who refuse to play under the guidelines set in the adventure, and I have a store owner telling me to make the players happy or else I get thrown out of the store. But I can't break Missions pay scale guidelines, otherwise when these players take their characters to a convention, other GMs are going to wonder why their characters have so much money. I know it's blackmail, but I'm stuck.
What do I do?
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You did the right thing, you stuck to your principles.
As for what you could do; did you explain to the the Missions rules, and why they couldn't get what they wanted?
Did you give them the option of playing the Mission, but clearly stating that you would not sign off on the Mission Summary if they didn't want to follow the rules?
Could you have done anything differently in arguing with the rest of the team, or were they all set on allowing the Face to basically ruin the game?
If you did, in your opinion, all you could do to try to reason with what seems like fairly unreasonable players, I don't think you could have done much more. Explain it to the store owner, and if his focus is more on revenue (fair enough, he runs a business) either toe the line and run Missions without using the strict Missions rules or move on and find another store.
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I agree with Martin.
When it comes to running a game in a store venue, it really comes down to being clear about whether you are playing by the established "league" rules (in this case Shadowrun Missions) or are playing however you desire (a home game that happens to not be at home).
...of course, most store owners that I've met know the difference between a disagreement on the sort of game to be played and a group of obnoxious people being obnoxious.
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I'm not all that familiar with the GM rules, but Nuyen Awards are one of the things the Missions FAQ says "you should never change". This means that if you change them, it doesn't count as an Open Play Event (so no GM rewards for you even if you're part of the Shadowrun Demo Team), and according to page 3 of the FAQ, it means the players can't use those characters at any official events.
So if you plan to offer official Missions sessions, you should probably explain to the store owner and the players that your hands are tied. If they don't budge, your options are, like martinchaen said, limited to "run stuff that doesn't count as Shadowrun Missions" or "find a different store".
And of course, if you are a member of the Shadowrun Demo Team, I'm guessing the people at Catalyst might get pretty frowny if they hear a shopkeeper is telling an Agent to break the Missions guidelines.
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Five minutes after they leave, the store owner comes to me with concerns that I threw everyone out of my game and was generally not a friendly person. This reflects badly on the store, and those five players represent a potential loss of revenue for the store, in the snacks and drinks the store could have sold them if nothing else. Seems my ex-players went to him and told him they were going to buy stuff, but since I was mean and nasty and threw them out, they were leaving and taking their money elsewhere. So now I have the store owner telling me to either give the players what they want, or I can find a new venue to run games.
Okay, now what? I have players who refuse to play under the guidelines set in the adventure, and I have a store owner telling me to make the players happy or else I get thrown out of the store. But I can't break Missions pay scale guidelines, otherwise when these players take their characters to a convention, other GMs are going to wonder why their characters have so much money. I know it's blackmail, but I'm stuck.
What do I do?
Tell the store owner what they were doing, and that you made a call as a GM to enforce the Mission rules, that you were not unfriendly. They demanding a ridiculously out of scale, game breaking award for a living campaign, and then lied about it to him. Tell him they are demanding to cheat, and that you wont do bend to it. Don't back down to these crybabies.
Even if its a non-mission game, don't back down. Do not compromise in any fashion with this type of player. The next thing will be
"No, my attack didn't critical glitch it it hit and killed the guy. If you don't agree, we players are walking and telling the store owner."
Now, in a non mission game..Johnson can always agree to pay them anything. Actually getting paid that amount it is another. Characters taking that absurd line will make Johnson doubt their really professional credibility. So he might agree to their absurd offer, then use them as distraction, disposable cannon fodder, and refuse to pay more than the minimal amount he agreed to for the real mission. In the meantime, bad reputation modifiers should increase, and frankly, if the behavior continues, don't run games for them. Life is to short to waste time catering to people like that. Other Shadowrun GM's and groups, and the community in general will be well served by not having these types of player brought into the community.
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Can anyone at Catalyst help this poor guy out? I mean by the rules of the campeign , he did the right thing.
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The proper thing to do is to contact Catalyst right away and explain the situation. Request that they contact the store owner to discuss the situation.
I run a game store myself, so here is my thought process.
Were these regular customers to the store? If not, they then were likely lying and didn't have any intention of spending money in the store. RPGers are notorious spend-thrifts.
Since all of the players left at the same time, they are likely friends and it was a setup. They wanted to cheat and were willing to break the social contract of the game to do so. Their complaint to the store owner was just a "screw you" when you wouldn't budge.
Again, contact Catalyst and see what they can do to help smooth things out with the store owner.
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I also wouldn't be surprised if they had read the Mission and knew the exact way to "win" it.
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In a non-missions game, there would be all sorts of ways to mess with players who tried this tactic. In a missions game, they simply aren't playing the game. The game is base fee + net hits. They can walk away if they want, but that's the game. It's not like you play Monopoly and one guy gets to pick 2 of 3 dice.
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As it turns out, the store manager completely understood what was going on, and had a talk with the store owner. I received an apology. The owner is not very cognizant of role-playing games in general, and it's the manager who I deal with. And he agrees with me -- if the players don't want to follow the rules, they can find another venue and another GM who might be more to their tastes.
But actually, I should have them have their way -- the Johnson should have agreed to pay them what they wanted. This way I could have seen if they continued their shabby behavior throughout the game, or if they held up their end honorably. Which would have really made what I would have had to do, a letdown -- just because the Johnson agrees to pay you still doesn't mean the Johnson is going to pay you. Johnsons LIE.
I doubt they would have turned around and performed at the inflated rates, though.
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I'm not all that familiar with the GM rules, but Nuyen Awards are one of the things the Missions FAQ says "you should never change".
If they don't go with the pay, let them walk, is what the missions frequently say. The only exceptions have been multi-run missions where they tell the GM to inform the players OOC that there will be multiple paydays in the Mission, as well as a few Missions where the Johnson will be willing to pay more, either because they're getting cheated or because the run cheats them and the extra money comes out of what hazard pay they'd get otherwise.
Free Taiwan and Humanitarian Aid.
"If they deliberate too long or keep demanding more money than their Negotiation roll allows, he will walk away and find a new team to deal with his problem."
"If you have a player who really balks at the low pay, you can either take them aside and explain that there will be an opportunity for more money later, or let them negotiate for more but then take it out of the hazard pay."
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The problem here wasn't the player-characters balking at the low rates; the problem was the players deliberately trying to cheat by breaking Missions guidelines, and then trying to get me in trouble when I wouldn't let them cheat. I had no problem telling the team to go to hell for their obnoxious demands (though as I mentioned above, I should have said "Suuuuuuure, you can have it,' then at the end, paid them what the adventure told me to pay them -- and telling them 'The Johnson lied -- they do that frequently').
They were trying to metagame it -- knowing that if I told them to go to hell, I'd have no game. This sort of thing is why I have Shadowrun Returns on my laptop.
I got everything smoothed out in the end. All's well that ends well, neh?
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Pretty much. Those guys were trying to turn Missions into their own home game and they got told off for it. It's a shame the owner didn't deal with it properly at the start, since now they think they got you in trouble and might try the same thing at other places.
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The problem here wasn't the player-characters balking at the low rates; the problem was the players deliberately trying to cheat by breaking Missions guidelines, and then trying to get me in trouble when I wouldn't let them cheat.
The problem was the players trying to blackmail the GM as a person using his desire to have a game. You did exactly the right thing by not catering to them.
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You did the right thing glad the owner was able to be educated in the issue, I have had some players try that before I informed them this is a shared universe with common rules if they where unwilling to work with the system then the run was over. I started to pack my gear and they changed there tune quickly.
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The problem here wasn't the player-characters balking at the low rates; the problem was the players deliberately trying to cheat by breaking Missions guidelines, and then trying to get me in trouble when I wouldn't let them cheat.
The problem was the players trying to blackmail the GM as a person using his desire to have a game. You did exactly the right thing by not catering to them.
I certainly agree, and its good to see the store owner got the full information and came out in support. Gaming out 'in the wild' (a way I refer to store/con gaming) carries the risk of meeting players with extreme behaviors.
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What I would've done is adjust the pay to where the players wanted it (10,000 nuYen/player), but also would have upped the table rating of the mission to match the pay change.
If the players want to play in the big leagues, let them... but make them earn their pay.
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There's no table rating anymore, Greenknight, and paying more isn't allowed by Missions guidelines, since it's unfair to other players.
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Also the Johnson could agree to the terms and then short them on delivery.
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So, just for my info, we can't negotiate pay in mission games? I'm not thinking 10kĄ each, but maybe an extra 10%
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What gave you that idea? Every Mission lists "+X nuyen per net hit on a Negotiation Test, with a max of Y net hits" for payments like that.
The problem with the players described in the initial post is that they demanded a certain payment instead of rolling Negotiation to see what they could turn the offer into.
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there is a lot of crappy RPG players out there, believe me I have met my share of them over the years (being gaming in one system or the other since 1981)
For living campaigns, you HAVE to stick to your guns and follow the guidelines of the adventure. But these will always be those that feel they are above the rules and there is only so much you can do about those players.
IF you want to be a "total dick" about the situation, you could make a point to find out which other hobby stores in the area offer living city campaigns and stop by to drop off a list of names and descriptions of the players so that future GMs can keep an eye out for them.... :D
People that have a rep for being asshole players generally find themselves banned from hobby stores as it is harder to find GMs then it is to find players.... and most hobby store owners realize that a good GM will BRING players to their stores.. which means an increased chance to make sales...
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What gave you that idea? Every Mission lists "+X nuyen per net hit on a Negotiation Test, with a max of Y net hits" for payments like that.
The problem with the players described in the initial post is that they demanded a certain payment instead of rolling Negotiation to see what they could turn the offer into.
It's probably just miscommunication. It doesn't clearly follow from the discussion here that those negotion tests are in missions. Most people just mention that the mission payments are set in stone (although Kincaid did mention the negotiation in passing). You and I and other that played missions know that the negotiation test is part of the mission rules (a part that is still set in stone) but it's not unreasonable for a player without mission experience to not get that distinction from this discussion.
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What's not reasonable, ever, is a player pulling the "Unless I get my way I'm going to torpedo your game" card that the players used here.
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In standard games when players do that, I break out the carrot and stick run. I give them a prize too mouthwatering to refuse, then throw their ass into hell and see if they claw their way out. The scenario isn't unbeatable (I've put many groups through it who passed through quite well) but I find players like that tend to miss simple steps and details that end up getting them scorched (literally) extra crispy
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If you're playing season 4: Run Free Taiwan with this kind of players. They're going to LOVE the ending.
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What's not reasonable, ever, is a player pulling the "Unless I get my way I'm going to torpedo your game" card that the players used here.
Oh yes, the players in the OP were definitively unreasonable. I was referring to Attilatheyeon's post only.
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IF you want to be a "total dick" about the situation, you could make a point to find out which other hobby stores in the area offer living city campaigns and stop by to drop off a list of names and descriptions of the players so that future GMs can keep an eye out for them.... :D
As far as I am aware, I am the only GM in town who offers Shadowrun Missions. And I keep in contact with the other public gaming groups and hobby stores which offer public space for gaming.
If they want to come back and play Missions, I'd still let them play. I'm broad-minded like that. They have to agree to play by the rules and otherwise not be disruptive to play (this includes not trying to get me in trouble with the store management again). If they can't do that, I won't run them. (And if they try what they did before, again, I will blacklist them from my games. Fool me once...)
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IF you want to be a "total dick" about the situation, you could make a point to find out which other hobby stores in the area offer living city campaigns and stop by to drop off a list of names and descriptions of the players so that future GMs can keep an eye out for them.... :D
As far as I am aware, I am the only GM in town who offers Shadowrun Missions. And I keep in contact with the other public gaming groups and hobby stores which offer public space for gaming.
If they want to come back and play Missions, I'd still let them play. I'm broad-minded like that. They have to agree to play by the rules and otherwise not be disruptive to play (this includes not trying to get me in trouble with the store management again). If they can't do that, I won't run them. (And if they try what they did before, again, I will blacklist them from my games. Fool me once...)
Good on you for having more class then those idiots.