Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: JimJungle on <04-24-11/1801:25>
-
What are some of the better/funnier/imaginitive ways you have helped/harrassed your runners? Myself, i enjoy throwing red herrings in front of thier faces. Like 2 foot thick steel doors in an unassuming apartment building, so they spend their resources trying to blow open the door instead of finishing thier mission. And blowing up half the building in the process. I hope they dont read this... ;D
-
I just don't give them a hint that they're way over complicating things and let them spin their own wheels. I pulled a couple of really cleaver twists early on, now everything seems diabolical to them.
Best thing to get them scared is for me to make something be exactly what it seems to be - they just can't believe it and invent something worse then I could come up with and plan for that.
I'm beaming with pride right now, both for the perception they have of my GMing skill and my player's paranoia. I must have done something right.
-
My longest running harassment tradition? Any time a group gets too bogged down in planning, loses focus, lacks direction, and has the game stall out...they get a Commando Attack!
A half dozen mildly cybered guys with suppressed submachineguns, black armor, and balaclavas come rappelling through windows or bursting through doors all around them. The players invariably wipe the floor with them after suffering a little damage here and there, and then -- ta da! -- they manage to find some sort of clue on one of the corpses, that can give them the nudge they need toward the greater objective. They realize all the commandos were sporting Ares gear and Ares augmentations, and it "clicks" that their Mister Johnson was an Ares Company Man who's now betraying them, or the commando team leader's communications system can get traced by the party electronics wiz in order to lead them to the bastards who sent them, or whatever. If nothing else, it tends to remind them that they're criminals in the middle of a shadowrun, and overthinking it and turtling up can be much, much, more dangerous than taking some sort of bold action.
In my games, I'd rather see them acting with an imperfect plan than see my most of players bored and twiddling their thumbs and feeling frustrated while they try to come up with the absolutely perfect scheme.
So I figure out some way for someone to have sent a team of commandos at the crew, and I drop some sort of clue that can give them a little boot-to-ass and get them moving again. So far, it's never failed me.
-
I may have to try that one.
-
Wow had my thunder stolen on successive posts.
@ Tagz I had a long running game where I had some twists along the way and then the players did the same thing and imagined things at every turn. If you want to up it a notch try these two things that I found made them even more paranoid. 1) call for a perception roll then say "Everything appears to be normal." I got the group's mage to spend more edge(it was karma pool at that time) trying to figure out what he missed. 2) Give the characters news feeds of things going on that really don't have anything to do with the situation and listen to them invent tie ins. The best part is that they will eventually tune it back and then the next twist will get them and start everything all over again, but even more so.
@Critias In the same campaign (it ran weekly for almost two years) the players got so used to the commandos or some sort of attack if they bogged things down that there were instances where the party would be arguing and debating and getting nowhere and one of the players would finally say, "Let's do something before the commandos show up." or something along that lines
-
I have the Cards of Doom. Basically, I have various things that can happen and alphabetized using a recipe index and 3x5 cards. At some point each player roles a twenty and a six sided dice to determine the letter they get. Then I pick a card based on that and the incident happens. Good things are in the cards as well as bad. They still have a mission but flat tires, PMS and curses happen while contest winnings are ignored. ;D
-
So you use them just to have randomness in the game, or is there another purpose?
-
I GM quite a bit. I rarely play Shadowrun as the other gamerunners in our group run D&D. So my groups worst issues is that the NPC's get weird ideas from me. The worst may be Loserman. The team, Smileys People, was contracted to snatch a object and there was competition. SP wins out but the merc in the group, Jack, got his comm hacked. He has gremlins and so he smashed it to pieces worried about what could happen but still leaving the hacker with just really one good data pic of Jack. When I told the PC that Jack thought he just got that one pic he said some throw away line like, good luck doing something with that. It stuck in my brain. What could a really good hacker do with sorta decent datafile pic of the runner looking into his comm camera, as Jack had done while trying to figure out what was happening to his comm.
This is what happened: SP crew goes to Germany on a run and comes back a few weeks after the event. They do the drop of the grab in Barvaria, (yeah, Harliquinn), and on the way back to their safehouse the crew in a taxi has a bus pull up beside the crew. Jacks face pic dominates about half the bus in a advertisement. The advertisement ad text pulls up in glowing letters of neon white/green:
"Are you a Loserman?" "Have you never been brave enough to talk to girls? Don't know how to brush your teeth? A little too friendly with your pets?" " Don't be a Loserman like this guy. With our help your better than that." Listed a big Comm-code along side of ad, that went a collection of self-help sites. Then the ad morphs into, "If you see Loserman immediately post to this site to be entered into a electronic drawing for 100,000 nuyen." "Picture entries of you with Loserman only please." Jack's picture never moves as he glares off the bus, now with a Comm-code to the game site.
The crew stare at me for about 20 seconds before they start playing this out. They get out of the cab only to find the cabbie wants to get a pic with Loserman. They let him and its off to the races as people seek out Loserman who just popped up on the big board at the game site. Think Flash mob amateur popparotzzi seek out a street merc. The rest of the crew take him into hiding but it proves somewhat problematic. Everywhere they go they eventually find a new Loserman ad, "Your mom finally caught you in her clothes, cant find anything small enough to measure yourself with, suicide prevention thinks your the exception ... comm- number. Some of his contacts act like they haven't heard of him. Jack spins like a top for awhile til they get a line that it was the hacker from a little back. They spin wheels desperately looking for a lead and hiding place.
Out in the Barrens he finds some solace til the ad zeplins start canvassing Redmond. He goes through several disguises then the hacker has a powwow via a intermediary with Jack. Hacker wants what he made on the job he beat him on and to leave Seattle. Jack puts forth his intention to kill him if he doesn't go away. The next ads have 100 nuyen for every picture of Loserman verified on our site. They go deeper undercover and Jack gets desperate. His team basically goes into hock to a Matrix contact that gives a real world local to the hacker. Jack, who is talked into one last disguise so embarrassing I cannot go into it as that guy is still my friend and is in Iraq right now, goes with two teamers to the lair of the hacker and takes revenge of the caliber variety. The crew who I play with still reference this run with shivered dread and thats one of my favorite reasons I like to game.
-
So you use them just to have randomness in the game, or is there another purpose?
Randomness...and the players really like them and secret rolls to add unexpected twists.
-
RFID tags are my group's worst enemy. They just keep forgetting about them.
Another one I had was an implanted transmitter in a cow they stole that broadcast in huge, bright pink letters:
"I'M BEING STOLEN!!!"
That one made things interesting when they realized that their tag eraser that they finally bought didn't work, and they now needed a signal jammer.
-
RFID tags are my group's worst enemy. They just keep forgetting about them.
Another one I had was an implanted transmitter in a cow they stole that broadcast in huge, bright pink letters:
"I'M BEING STOLEN!!!"
That one made things interesting when they realized that their tag eraser that they finally bought didn't work, and they now needed a signal jammer.
That is awesome! Stealing cows...makes me curious.
My group has an upcoming B&E. It makes me wonder what they'll forget to do.
-
Sounds like this is more common then i thought.
(http://www.weregeek.com/comics/2011-02-23.jpg)
-
But then again......
-
Like I have said in previous posts, in any of my games, especially SR, you reap what you sew. This means you piss someone off, it WILL come back to bite you. Case in point, the rigger who roughed up two off duty 'Star and forgot about their dashcam. Blackmail is a great thing.
Other times I use everyday things that we sometimes forget. Like that reverse alert most commenrcial vans/trucks/etc make when backing up that....well blew all the nice stealth rolls you all just made.
Reminding players of things like dependents works well too. Nothing sucks more than an an inconvenient call from a spouse/parent/child; especially when said runner keeps their activities a secret. I once suggested to a GM friend of mine having a runner with a kid have that kid either show up as a ganger the group had to face, at a club the team was doing legwork at and almost blew their cover, or that the kid got caught in the crossfire. This was in regards to a Merc who kept blowing off his family and ignoring some his flaws (old 3rd ed game).
I think he chose the second, and imagine the Merc's suprise when his young daughter was dressed up in the finest revealing "clubware" and was hitthing on and later hookied up with the group's Street Sam.
:o
-
I generally make 3-6 Time line based plot lines per character Plus the main plot line and 2-3 fluff stories then I make news reports involving the activity's of my other SR groups I run 3 different games and I like to try to keep them all on the same time line.
you would be amazed how often you can use the same plot line just change the names and the order of events.
-
Lately (when I've got time) I've been trying to throw in something not related to The Job for every character in every run. So far we've had:
- Rudy, the quintessential hot elf chick Face, came home to find that a local ork kid had hacked her house. Dinner came out charred in the middle with the phrase "D SHNZ WZ HR" (Da Schnoz Was Here) cooked into her Lasoygna patty. When she connected to her home's PAN to do some research she got flooded by pictures of the same large nose. She did some street work to find the kid, got her stuff fixed, and has turned him into a contact. He's even come on a run with them (though a really crappy roll made him more of a detriment than a benefit that time).
- Big Ben, ork street sam, is ex-Mossad (Israeli intelligence). A local rabbi with an oddly Irish accent noticed Ben's distinctly Israeli accent and wondered why the ork hasn't been to synagogue (while at the same time chastising him for "helping a friend move" on the sabbath). Since then Ben has started going to services more and pondering tha nature of morality and free will (spurred on by the multiple times he's been mind controlled).
- Blackjack, jaguar-shifter gun-toting physad, once put a gun in a Johnson's face and would have killed the man if the rest of the group hadn't talked him out of it. The Johnson, who also happned to be the assistant governor, didn't take kindly to that and has hired a professional prankster to put the shifter in his place. The first "strike" was a bomb-like box under Blackjack's car that turned out to be filled with streamers, confetti, and a phone whose other end gave the foreshadowing phrase "that was number one."
- Doc, ork wiccan mage, was approached by a magical group to determine where he stands on the philosophy of information. It turned into an in-road for a job and a possible magical group for him to join if/when he's ready to start initiating through a group.
Future plans include (SPOILER ALERT FOR MY GROUP):
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
- Da Schnoz's mom is in trouble, because the runners were inadvertently hired to kidnap her.
- Ben is headed to the synagogue when he sees it's on fire. Who set it, and why target a synagogue?
- Blackjack's sprinkler system is corrupted with silver nitrate and remotely activated. The floor has been painted in a halide solution so that when the two compounds mix the words "that was number two" are spelled out. What started as a confusing prank turns serious, since the shifter reacts to silver like it was acid and won't be able to live in his apartment any more. Sure, they can clean it up so that a normal Joe would enver know, but that much silver sprayed everywhere makes it a major irritant at best and a death trap at worst.
- On the current run Blackjack murdered a security guard in broad daylight when the guard realized he was wearing a disguise and asked what was going on. The police don't have a elad (they're looking for a mage with the shapechange spell) but the shadows have a good idea what happened. Blackjack will be disinvited from a run whose goal would be hampered by too much violence.
- Doc has been going out of his way to treat his spirits well, even buying rare reagents to give them as thanks for their services. He'll be awoken by a wounded water spirit and, if he accepts (bypassing the naturla urge to need payment that his Gator/Crocodile mentor imposes), he'll be taken on a minor metaplanar quest to help a sick water spirit retrieve some essence of fire to purge it of its illness.
-
I actually usually don't mess with the players. Worst case scenario is a chase scene as they drive through go-gang territory or some side-line stuff just to fill in the space. I think that with six people and only meeting once a week, we do our best to stay on topic because, otherwise, things just take for freaking ever and nothing would ever get done!
-
I should add that I don't tend to mess with them while they're on a run. It's restricted to short pre-run vignettes that are there to try to keep the world feeling alive instead of an unrelated series of missions, as well as give them something to deal with that can't necessarily be easily solved with a pistol and a silencer. Blackjack's current problems are tied to the character's actions, while the other PCs hadn't really done much to trigger reactions from NPCs (good or ill) so they were there to give the guys a chance to react to stuff so I'd have that first fallen domino to use when making future scenarios.
I'd love to have a session that didn't involve a run at all, or perhaps had them using something from a run to work out their non-runner problems.
-
I encourage PCs to take Judas, In Debt, Lost Loved One, Prejudice, and other interesting negative qualities. If the PCs take them, that is what they want to happen in the game. It is really easy to pick on a player who buys a shiny new gun—but denies to spend the money on their sever NovaCoke addiction; what is the PC going to do there? go into debt with the local dealer, or do a job for 'free' with the local street gang or organized crime group?
When players make contacts with 4-6 Loyalty, have them show up and want to hang out. What is the PC going to do? blow off his friend to continue legwork (the PC knows he has not seen his buddy in a while) or go out for a night of drinking and be hung over for the run?
Exploiting what the players put on their character sheets is the easiest thing to do, especially since it costs Karma to get rid of Negative Qualities. Often times, the sheet will expand into the rest of the game and make extra complications: "Oh, you insulted a group of dwarves and had to leave the casino you needed information from. Next week the metahuman rights group shows up to try to fix you of your ways. You close your door in there faces? Cool. They hire a Horizon spokes team to change your mind: get ready for non-stop Horizon education ads spamming your inbox for the next week."
-
In a SR2 game, ccasionally, almost randomly, a group I was with in college would start having trouble from the Mob, or the Yaks or the cops would come looking for us, or a corporate strike team would hit one of our safe houses. There was no reason for it, the trouble would be entirely unrelated to what we were doing or had done in the past. then cryptic warnings woudl start showing up that turned out to be correct. Thsi went on for month of ingame time before a player realized what was goingon.
The GM had noticed that our current characters were very similar to our previous ones (from SR1). When we'd changed editions we basically "reboooted" the characters in the new system but altered their names, backstories and such. The GM was having a bit of fun with us by having us mistaken for the previous group we'd played and the opposition from each run we'd done then, coming after us now thinking we were the same guys.
It was a funny little bit of quasi-metagame harassment to keep things amusing.
-
One time my group was going out to get a few kegs of beer for a bar in the deepest, darkest Barrens. (The bar ran out, and their tabs were the highest.).
They were harassed by various groups shooting at them from various vantage points, as they were "Rich" (They had a vehicle), and turned down the wrong alley, the headlights showing a meet between two groups in dark suits, AK-97s, and suitcases.
Both of those groups, already keyed up, shouted "YOU SET US UP!" and started shooting at each other and at the SUV the group was in.
Just completely random.
-
I had the Yakuza leave them an "invitation" to a meeting in the form of an orgami crane with the note written on it and left in the middle of their apartment. That freaked them out.
Also making it part of the plot that only the 2nd Ed. Rigger could do something and had to leave his vehicle was fun, too. For some reason he always got paranoid when he got out of the truck...
-
Those are all great ideas. I like the cow scenario. I was already thinking of introducing some Genetically Engineered Super Cows. For unkown (to the runners) reasons a AA Genetech company has created a breed of cows capable of being magicians and adepts, along with cybered mundane cows. Thier idea was that if you are going to make a Super Soldier, why not make one thats tasty as well as efficient. Not only would they make great soldiers, but if any die, then the higher ups in command got dinner. The ultimate in expendable fodder. Cows With Guns. And Attitude. Scary.
-
Those are all great ideas. I like the cow scenario. I was already thinking of introducing some Genetically Engineered Super Cows. For unkown (to the runners) reasons a AA Genetech company has created a breed of cows capable of being magicians and adepts, along with cybered mundane cows. Thier idea was that if you are going to make a Super Soldier, why not make one thats tasty as well as efficient. Not only would they make great soldiers, but if any die, then the higher ups in command got dinner. The ultimate in expendable fodder. Cows With Guns. And Attitude. Scary.
A little silly, but not all campaigns have to be dark and dirty. Still, don't forget how much high or even low explosives you can pack into a cow. Each Super-Soldier Cow can also be a fairly high yeild bomb.
-
Advanced Chemical Plant disguised as a Milk Farm all the Cows have had their udders replaced with chem glands that reproduce a difficult to make chemical....
I am not sure to laugh at my own idea or give it some serous thought
anyone else think it is even feasible or cost effective?
-
Advanced Chemical Plant disguised as a Milk Farm all the Cows have had their udders replaced with chem glands that reproduce a difficult to make chemical....
I am not sure to laugh at my own idea or give it some serous thought
anyone else think it is even feasible or cost effective?
It is certainly feasible to have the cows being used to biologically manufacture different chemicals. With the advent of symbiotes, it would be as simple as replacing the mammary glands with a gland designed to manufacture what you need. However, cost effectiveness might be an issue. I suppose it depends on how the chemical is processed now. But a cow farm would require the normal scientists that a manufacturing plant would require plus a staff of veterinarians for the cows and farm hands to feed and clean the cows, not to mention "milking" the cows. Then you have to include the cost of feeding the cows, which you don't generally have to do in a manufacturing plant. On the other hand, the fact that it is a hidden asset may make it worth the extra cost.
-
I don't mess with them very often. They're good enough at screwing things up and getting sidetracked on their own. But, on occasion, I'll toss in a monkey wrench if things are going unusually smooth or if they're just blowing through something with little effort. What I hit them with depends on what they're doing and what seems logical at the time. Though once I caused an accident with a falling satellite just to cause some chaos.
-
Advanced Chemical Plant disguised as a Milk Farm all the Cows have had their udders replaced with chem glands that reproduce a difficult to make chemical....
I am not sure to laugh at my own idea or give it some serous thought
anyone else think it is even feasible or cost effective?
It would all depend on what you feed the cow and what you want coming out of the cow. If you could alter a cow so that it could feed off of toxic waste or other hazardous materials, and turn those into usable bi-products, well then you got a money maker right there. Hell, why not kame one into a walking nuke? Now there is a mission, trying to difuse or dispose of a Toxic Cow before it goes nuclear.
-
Never did tell you guys about the cow my group stole.
That's my way of harassing you. :P
-
One of the other things I will do is use names to mess with the group.
Like Rando Nomè. Obviously a terrible play on "Random Name". And I'll say it like this:
"His name.... uhmmm.... crap... ... ok, Rando Nomè. Ok, back in character. 'Yeah, this guy, Rando Nomè, I think I heard him talking about the fellow your looking for over beers the other day.'"
Little do they know that Rando Nomè is fully stated out and has his own interests in this.
;D
-
Forgot to mention that I chose my e-mail address on yahoo as the name of a villian in the game...
-
My bioboy and shaman were not advancing the main run while being on a dead line. So, I attacked my players with ninjaesque characters to drop clues and give motivation. The duo had a back and forth during the fight whether or not these ninjas were posers. After the fight, they search their attackers and find some clues. They immediately started legwork to trace the ninjas, because they wanted to know if their interference solicited real ninjas. *sigh*
-
A shadowrunner team (street sam, hacker, mage, adept) was hired to kidnap an ork girl from a party celebrating her 14th birthday. Their plan was for the hacker to slice through Matrix security and turn out the lights to cause havoc. Meanwhile, the mage and sam would grab the girl and haul ass out of the building. The adept was there to serve as interdiction, cutting off any hostile attacks made against his teammates.
The PCs were assigned to protect that girl without casualties.
Without telling them, I had decided that once the drek hit the fan, the PCs making ranged attacks that crossed a certain area of the party room would endanger the prone guests there if they failed to strike the targets - an Edge test (1) to avoid a subsequent attack test made at an innoncent bystander. No one took that bait, and in a way I'm glad they were paying attention to their job description. ::)
-
Narcojet is another way of never having to say "I'm sorry for shooting you." :P
-
Narcojet is another way of never having to say "I'm sorry for shooting you." :P
The street sam from my scenario carried a suppressed ceramic pistol with DMSO/Narcoject capsule rounds. If the PC adept had engaged him while he was taking a bathroom break, he would've put it to use.
Of course, this is an ace in the hole I'm not willing to spoil to my PCs until they have experienced the sweet joy of tranquilizer torpor.
-
My players usually get dizzy about how conspiracy theories prove out to be tools of a grander conspiracy in my games...
Also, it's always nice when a character is working with it's commlink in hidden node and starts receiving messages similar to Icarus ones in Deus Ex...