Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: Coldbringer on <11-09-10/2024:56>
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So in a previous session the players captured an NPC who had been working with the team but was in on their fixers plan to use them as pawns/expendables in a scheme he was plotting. There was quite a lot of arguments on what to do with their prisoner, eventually the consensus was to kill their captive (a former CAS Marine sniper). Then there was the argument of what to do with the body. One player wanting to sell the corpse off for parts and the rest of the team thinks just get rid of the body but doing that to anyone is cold and to someone who had worked with them in the past was just evil. Business is business but this ghoulishness was beyond acceptable for the rest of the team. The lone wolf player went off and did what he wanted to when the rest of the team was not around, oddly enough this player also plays him self as a defender of the weak and what not.
So last session during a meet in a bar frequented by CAS expats the pregnant wife of the sniper was putting out fliers looking for info on her missing husband. The general reaction was I am evil. It seemed like it actually bothered by having to face consequences of action that don't involve automatic weapons.
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While every group has it's own personal limits, Shadowrun is a dark game of consequences. People should expect to be faced with the consequences of their cold and calculated "business" decisions, it's part of the game.
Next time, maybe the "defender of the weak" will reconsider butchering and selling a former compatriot instead of flipping him with diplomacy or other means. Don't get me wrong, sometimes, business is business and you kill your (former) friends. But, man up and deal with the consequences.
However, it sounds like you and your players should consider sitting down and discussing just what your respective limits are on the dark and emotional issues. Everyone has their limits and the game is supposed to be fun. Sometimes, those emotional consequences that feel "mean" are fun, because they give their actions meaning. Other times, it's a step too far.
I know a lot of that is repetition, but for something that could be hitting nerves, it deserves to be repeated.
EDIT
I'm going to have to remember / steal that consequence for my own players sometime. . . They do appreciate feeling the repercussions of their actions.
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There were some intense IC discussions as the session hit less frantic moments. A couple of players just were bothered. It left me second guessing my self. I am looking forward to the post game character journals that start to filter in the days after the game.
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I wish I could get my players to write character journals. Ah well, we all have fun.
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I ran in a fantasy hero game and we keep a party log that rotated each session and you got a experience bonus for writing the journal for the week. You could try something like that to get players into the idea of doing journals
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I do give karma bonuses for that sort of feedback. Usually 2 points or so.
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Too mean my butt. That's awesome. Kudos to you for the pregnant wife and flyers. I may just use that one day. Shadowrun is supposed to be dark, gritty, and just plain dirty. Consequences included.
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I would say its absolutely mean, bordering on psychotic, to kill a captive in cold blood and sell him for spare parts. To make the characters face the fact that their action was inhuman and basically psychotic isn't a bad thing. If your players are disturbed by the fact that life besides their own has value, maybe they'll be less likely to take another life in the future. If anything, the pregnant wife is the least of their worries. What happens when some other CAS Marine decides to help her find her husband? Once a Marine, always a Marine. Any ex-Marines in a street clinic that gets parts from that body bank? They might notice similarities between their parts and the missing guy. Worse yet, how many ex-Marines are there in Knight Errant's Seattle PD?
As a side note, this is how mob wars start. Hiro caps Vinnie in a "business" dispute over turf. Vinnie's underboss is pissed at losing a good collections guy so he sends a mob hit man to whack Hiro. Hiro's the nephew of a friend of the oyabun who talks him into sending a hit squad after the late Vinnie's friends to settle the score. Lather, rinse, repeat.
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Too mean my butt. That's awesome. Kudos to you for the pregnant wife and flyers. I may just use that one day. Shadowrun is supposed to be dark, gritty, and just plain dirty. Consequences included.
+1
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"Seems a downright shame...
Seems an awful waste...
Such a nice, plump frame
Wot's 'is name has...
Had...
Has!
Nor it can't be traced...
Bus'ness needs a lift,
Debts to be erased...
Think of it as thrift,
As a gift,
If you get my drift!
Seems an awful waste...
I mean, with the price of meat
What it is,
When you get it,
If you get it..."
Yeaaaah There aren't too many people in my party right now that would object to... "recycling." Code... would probably be the reason the random captive is dead in the first place. Considering he has to be babysat around people that need to not be dead, especially if he's just sitting around and any higher than usual. Nathan would be the one divvying up the parts and suggesting reputable buyers. Usda probably just wouldn't want to watch and would grouse about the guy being dead in the first place unless he screwed us over, and I can see Piati thinking of it (as well as possibly having a hand in random captive's death, especially if the guy crossed us in the slightest way). Dust I have no clue. Codac is an AI wtf does it care what us meatbags do? Not too familiar with Codac yet.
As for the guy's wife. Hell. Code would probably suggest just getting rid of her, too; purely on the basis that she'd annoy him. And he was bored because the rest of the party was too busy guilt tripping to, "come have fun." I can see it at least unnerving everyone else, the worst of which probably being Usda and Nathan.
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Usda would be against shooting a captive. Now seting him up so someone else (much more evil than the jerk) kills him is fine. He's also probably send s healthy amount of Nuyen anonously to the wife.
Piati would shoot video of the bloody horrific execution and send it back to those the corpse worked for with a notice saying "Frack us and you're next." As for the wife...How sexy was she? >:-D
Duality is a bitch ain't it? :o
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Points for good GMing. That's what makes a game interesting.
If the players are saying you are mean, that's a compliment, bask in it.
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Points for good GMing. That's what makes a game interesting.
If the players are saying you are mean, that's a compliment, bask in it.
I don't know about going that far Welsh, BUT I do like how the GM handled this one!
"Seems a downright shame...
Seems an awful waste...
Such a nice, plump frame
Wot's 'is name has...
Had...
Has!
Nor it can't be traced...
Bus'ness needs a lift,
Debts to be erased...
Think of it as thrift,
As a gift,
If you get my drift!
Seems an awful waste...
I mean, with the price of meat
What it is,
When you get it,
If you get it..."
Sweeney Todd... Hav a Lil Priest?
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But of course! It had to be said.
And I give props to the DM too. If the players are saying you're mean but they're not leaving, it's fine. Now if they take you aside and say it made them as a player uncomfortable, well, then cut it back or ask them to find another DM.
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I have to agree that you handled this wonderfully as a GM. It really drives in what Shadowrun is.
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That was well handled in my mind. A very creative and different approach than the old somehow one of the dead guys friends/coworkers/barrista magically knows you killed him and is out for revenge plot a lot of gms seem to pull.
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An organ harvested is a life saved.
What do you think they do with fresh corpses at the body shop?
There's a lot of sick people growing up in toxic corridors in the 6th world.
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An organ harvested is a life saved.
What do you think they do with fresh corpses at the body shop?
There's a lot of sick people growing up in toxic corridors in the 6th world.
So the plan is to kill people until no one needs a transplant? I'm down with that, but you have to take the pregnant wife to the hospital and introduce her to the people her husband "saved". ;)
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So the plan is to kill people until no one needs a transplant? I'm down with that, but you have to take the pregnant wife to the hospital and introduce her to the people her husband "saved". ;)
Just make sure "pregnant" isn't code for "massive quantity of C-4 strapped to the belly. I'd consider going there as a GM, I really would. But, probably not.
Nothing says "I forgive you" like blowing up the recovery wing of a hospital.
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This from a dwarf with rat ears and a chainsaw. ;D
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An organ harvested is a life saved.
What do you think they do with fresh corpses at the body shop?
There's a lot of sick people growing up in toxic corridors in the 6th world.
The player was only interested in selling the headware in the guys skull, that is all he took in, not enough of a profit margin on a non O blood type corpse.
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Good move. Hey, they should have consequences for their actions. Nice GM work there.
I would already be setting up a ex-Marine ambush for their asses. ;)
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The player was only interested in selling the headware in the guys skull, that is all he took in, not enough of a profit margin on a non O blood type corpse.
And that's why everyone needs an organlegger as a contact. . . where there's a corpse, there's a profit.
Somewhere, someone needs a lung, either can't afford legal clinics, or can't afford the attention of legal clinics, and the street Doc don't always got handy type-O's to toss at every patient he sees.
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That was well handled in my mind. A very creative and different approach than the old somehow one of the dead guys friends/coworkers/barrista magically knows you killed him and is out for revenge plot a lot of gms seem to pull.
I've done that before, but it was the former relative who hired the runners who went after the runners.
Still, love the twist. I also like to remind my players who have dependents to be careful every now and again.
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That was well handled in my mind. A very creative and different approach than the old somehow one of the dead guys friends/coworkers/barrista magically knows you killed him and is out for revenge plot a lot of gms seem to pull.
I've done that before, but it was the former relative who hired the runners who went after the runners.
Still, love the twist. I also like to remind my players who have dependents to be careful every now and again.
If I follow what you're saying, that's brilliant. Al goes with the party on a run. Al dies and gets sold for bits. His brother Bob hires the runners to find Al or, if he's dead, to take out whoever killed him.
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It's not mean. It's life-like. There are always consequences. One of my players started to mess with a few mob legbreakers, when they paid him a visit, to get them 'protection'. Those guys got killed in the end, but it almost cost the life of his female co-worker NPC (whom the other player barely managed to save with First-Aid), and in turn caused some more violence. On other occasion the players didn't really care what happened with another 'background' NPC (and a lover of one fo the PC's), and they had to hit a vampire blood farm (WoD) to get her out, kill one of the bloodsuckers, release some unusual prisoners, and go through the Hedge to get out. It was only sheer luck noone lost a soul there. Especially since the only human prisoners they've released (exept the girl they went in to save) turned on them as soon as they could (releasing them was a bad, bad judgement call). Well, they were lucky. Really lucky. Too lucky. I didn't cheat though, since they were in a place where 'dumb luck' is one of the elemental forces.
So, in my games there are always consequences. And they're always comming back to haunt/reward player's for their actions. It's only fair when there are.
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That was well handled in my mind. A very creative and different approach than the old somehow one of the dead guys friends/coworkers/barrista magically knows you killed him and is out for revenge plot a lot of gms seem to pull.
I've done that before, but it was the former relative who hired the runners who went after the runners.
Still, love the twist. I also like to remind my players who have dependents to be careful every now and again.
If I follow what you're saying, that's brilliant. Al goes with the party on a run. Al dies and gets sold for bits. His brother Bob hires the runners to find Al or, if he's dead, to take out whoever killed him.
In a nutshell yeah.
Pretty much how it went down was: Runner team A got "Stan" killed. Stan's brother "Dan" knew his brother was into some shady stuff and hires a PI to look into it. PI finds Runner Team A. Dan then hires his own runners, Team B to take out Team A. Team B happened to be minor league, and eventually everyone got hosed, but not before geeking one member of Team A with a lucky shot. Team A, wanting to know who was coming after them (thinking it was the Johnson from the run where Stan got geeked), go through a lot of crap, intrigue, etc only to find out it was a middle-class schmoe who drained his savings to get revenge for his brother.
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Wait!!....hold up....can someone elaborate to me what that whole "Player Journal" thing is about?? That sounds awesome!
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You never had a game where a player (or players) kept a journal of their character's exploits?
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No, never and i've been role-playing for years...lol. We would just always remember it....but not write it down. I like the idea though....can you tell me a little bit more about it?
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Games like Earthdawn suggest it and even reward the party for having journals like that. There's a library in Barsaive (in the dwarf kingdom of Throal*) that once a year takes in journals from adventurers, and pays for them. And there's also the big Legend Points (exp) award for that.
* I was just thinking, even though Thera blew up, Throal might still be around, buried under tons of rock. Maybe even the Grand Library of Thoral exists still. And you can find tomes on Horrors, Namegivers, magic, and such there. And of course recreate most of the Fourth World languages.
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The journals in games I played were just basically someone taking notes on all the things that were going on from their player's perspectives. Made for some interesting reading. And, usually, the recorder got XP or something for taking the time.
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In all the games I play we keep logs of what we do. Even if it is just so we can keep track of everything and remember what we've done and who we've met. EarthDawn just has a reward mechanic for it. Which is nice.
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Ideally, for D&D games, I like to split responsibilities between the group. One person keeps the journal (recording all the facts, names, places, etc.), another tracks the treasure for the group, another may track healing items/buffs in a "party pool" and it's always nice to have a cartographer as well...
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I give karma for character journals, although only one player is taking advantage of it. It proves useful in generating subplots.
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In my group, we have one guy who is usually designaed the group "secretary". We have given up on trying to get someone else to do it because he seems happy and wants to do it. Maybe he feels he is making up for all his botched rolls.
;)
Nah, seriously, I think he's just an accountant and dosen't want to admit it. Seriously though, if he had made it through basic training, he would have been a killer logistics officer. Takes all kinds, I guess.
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Best journal keeping I ever encountered was when I DM'd a D&D game and the wizard in the party kept a journal...from the wizard's lying perspective. "As the greatest Red Wizard of all Faerun (he wasn't), my fireballs incinerated the rushing horde of mounted Zhents (they mostly survived) as my henchmen (the other players) watched on in awe and horror (were fighting tooth and nail against the Zhents). They fell to their knees and praised me like the god I am to become!" And so on and so on. It was a treat to have him read the events of the previous session at the start of each new one.
Unfortunately I never ran a SR game where any of the players kept journals. But I think that had more to do with the "real world paranoia" of it. If the characters are keeping a journal then that's something that could be stolen and used against them...best not to leave any more records of your illicit deeds than absolutely necessary.
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Personally, I would never use the joirnals against them in an evidence sort of way. To as fuel to explore the player/character's interests and fears oh yeah!
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I'm gonna pitch that to my players....it would help because we have rather long shadowruns.....and are in the middle of kind of a long story arc. I don't like doing the whole session=1 shadowrun. Then it's just like a sky-scraper crawl instead of a dungeon-crawl. Once in a while that's cool to throw in.....but by and large it's cooler to just feel free to make story arcs long and then play them out over several sessions while they pick-up contacts, karma and loot. I do give them karma at the end of each session though and if they want they take time out to train and improve. We get together once a week for the most part and it's been really fun cuz just looking back they've covered a lot of ground. A player journal would organize that more. However I would just make it a meta-game thing, it wouldn't mean they're actually keeping journals in-game necessarily if they didn't want to.
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In my group, we have one guy who is usually designaed the group "secretary". We have given up on trying to get someone else to do it because he seems happy and wants to do it. Maybe he feels he is making up for all his botched rolls.
;)
Nah, seriously, I think he's just an accountant and dosen't want to admit it. Seriously though, if he had made it through basic training, he would have been a killer logistics officer. Takes all kinds, I guess.
We generally give out XP for Secretar(ies), Treasurer, and Cartographer.