[trunglefever]

After a few weeks of introducing my players to Shadowrun 5E after it released (they are long time D&D/Pathfinder players with no experience in Shadowrun), we finally took the dive into the game last night.

It turned out pretty good. Most of them were ready and excited to play. The group is made up of a Human street samurai, Human face/rigger, dwarf technomaner, Troll hermetic mage and a Human mystic adept (with the applicable errata for power points). I opted to just run them through Season 4 to get a feel for the world and to understand what kind of runs will come their way. We started with Copycat Killer and they actually almost completed the full run (just short of confronting Shawn Walker) and they managed not to get themselves killed or hated by the Ork Underground.

There weren't too many instances of players being left out. I did find myself having to make a mental note of making sure to re-read some of the ways to utilize contacts again for their legwork purposes.

The single encounter they had ended very quickly and this is where I was most surprised from Shadowrun and D&D combat. The rigger had a drone lay down suppressive fire on the group of gangers that were hired to take out the runners and he ended up hitting all of them (Yes, all the gangers failed the Reaction + Edge test, granted they were mooks). The mage threw out a Powerball after that and essentially knocked them all out and one of the gangers died from overflow. I'm probably going to upping some of the difficulty for them as the combat associated people are pretty monstrous and I know they enjoy fighting encounters.

Not too many problems and a lot of them are enjoying the game immensely so far.

[Volomon]

Sounds like it should be gangers have no chance against Shadowrunners.  These guys are the professional BAs of the shadows.  They blow up megacorps, walk in to death zones, and fight dragons on a regular basis (ok maybe not dragons) all without making it on the news. 

I'm about to put my guys through a death gauntlets of a dreked up part of town were all the gangers are fighting turf wars, their about to forget their turf war and go to war with the PCs as they attempt to except ala The Warriors style.   Honestly I don't expect them to die against 40 or so gangers (not all at once).  So much so that I'll probably through some ghouls in an alley for them.

[Crunch]

Great to hear you had a good time!

SR combat is more lethal and faster than D20, which is one of the things I love about it.

[trunglefever]

Great to hear you had a good time!

SR combat is more lethal and faster than D20, which is one of the things I love about it.

Definitely got that feel. They were taken for a loop when they remembered that combat turns are only 3 seconds long. When they do the big encounter, there is a mage present for the bad guys, so we'll see how they deal with it. I will also have to bust out the gaming map and do some drawings, something that I'm not that great at. I anticipate them running into issues when it comes to movement since they're used to movement taking up an action (which it does if it's sprinting/running)

[Michael Chandra]

Make sure to use visibility modifiers, cover and distance when you want to make an encounter last a bit. And don't let all the enemies get caught in a single area blast.

[trunglefever]

Make sure to use visibility modifiers, cover and distance when you want to make an encounter last a bit. And don't let all the enemies get caught in a single area blast.

Just so happened that the gangers got crappy initiative and the rigger's drones and the mage got to go before they did. It was one of those "Epic speech!" and then 20 bullets later and one expanse of mana later, the runners are loading the unconscious body into the truck bed of a Gopher and going to "have a chat" with the leader.

I'm looking forward to the later encounter where the arena is a little larger and there will even be some opportunity to use a Surprise test. As a long time believer in fire-and-maneuver tactics, it will be exciting to see how the encounter unfolds when they're up against some heavier hitters and not just hired muscle.

[Crunch]

One thing to note about encounter design in SR is that it's much harder (short of high force spirits, Dragons and Military grade combat vehicles) to increase durability when compared to damage output. By nature SR (like any even vaguely realistic firearms system-I'm an old Cyberpunk 2020 player so describing SR as "more lethal" makes me chuckle quietly to myself) is a "glass cannon" system.

If you want fights to last longer look at staging your fight in a dark warehouse with the fire sprinklers going, or as a running firefight with new mooks appearing as old ones go down. Look at action movies for ideas. Rarely in action movies do the good guy and the bad guy shoot it out while standing still 5 meters from each other.

One thing to realize as you try to make things more challenging is that as a GM in SR your challenge is to find ways to make the characters feel threatened in ways that don't TPK them. In a world where the cops routinely operate UAVs with sniper rifles circling major metropolitan areas, corporate security departments run initatory circles that crank out some of the most powerful mages in the world and due process is a thing of the past it would be "realistic" for the entire party to be gunned down by an unseen opponent as soon as they did there first run. That however would not be fun.

[trunglefever]

One thing to note about encounter design in SR is that it's much harder (short of high force spirits, Dragons and Military grade combat vehicles) to increase durability when compared to damage output. By nature SR (like any even vaguely realistic firearms system-I'm an old Cyberpunk 2020 player so describing SR as "more lethal" makes me chuckle quietly to myself) is a "glass cannon" system.

If you want fights to last longer look at staging your fight in a dark warehouse with the fire sprinklers going, or as a running firefight with new mooks appearing as old ones go down. Look at action movies for ideas. Rarely in action movies do the good guy and the bad guy shoot it out while standing still 5 meters from each other.

One thing to realize as you try to make things more challenging is that as a GM in SR your challenge is to find ways to make the characters feel threatened in ways that don't TPK them. In a world where the cops routinely operate UAVs with sniper rifles circling major metropolitan areas, corporate security departments run initatory circles that crank out some of the most powerful mages in the world and due process is a thing of the past it would be "realistic" for the entire party to be gunned down by an unseen opponent as soon as they did there first run. That however would not be fun.

I was reading through Cyberpunk 2020 a while ago and I thought it was pretty brutal. I knew my players would probably not be apt to try a system where they would die incredibly easy. Though, I did like the feel of the world.

I will definitely try planning out some encounters in some very interesting terrain types. A lot of my players are so used to just regular "me smash monster til dead and there are no hazards" encounters. I was definitely doing what I could to add/subtract from their dice pools in social situations. Negotiating with the Ork boyfriend of Rebecca McCallister was rather interesting. I've got some ideas to try and make the junkyard fight a bit more tense; trying to figure out a way to have the cars be more hazardous. I don't want to go so far as to have Walker place bombs in random vehicles, but I did establish his UCAS background. However, I wasn't able to go into more detail before we broke for the night.

[Crunch]

CP 2020 was ridiculously brutal. The first time I ran it the party's Medtech got shot in the ankle with a .22 Zip gun, failed his shock save and died in the first round of combat. SR is not nearly at that level, but it is lethal when compared to D20 and the magic balance point between "hard enough to be interesting" and "Oh god we're dead" is a bit trickier to find.

[trunglefever]

CP 2020 was ridiculously brutal. The first time I ran it the party's Medtech got shot in the ankle with a .22 Zip gun, failed his shock save and died in the first round of combat. SR is not nearly at that level, but it is lethal when compared to D20 and the magic balance point between "hard enough to be interesting" and "Oh god we're dead" is a bit trickier to find.

My mage learned that the hard way last night regarding Drain. He said he had familiarized himself with the rules and then cast a Force 9 Powerball at the group and when he made his DR test, he still took 4 stun and was surprised. I'm picturing him passing out from recklessly casting or even just regularly casting.

I am trying to work with him and others with understanding rules (specifically Area of Effect/Scatter). I do want them to have fun, but I also want to prevent them walking into or creating situations that would result in unnecessary casualties on their side or even.

I've been looking at Extraction for an example of a pretty epic encounter (even more so with the time limit) and it looks pretty amazing.

[trunglefever]

Had the second session recently and they finished Copycat Killer without a hitch and they all enjoyed it mightily. I think they only issue I really ran into was dealing with combat: Theater of the mind v. Battle Grid. We were using both and the battle grid didn't really seem to add all that much when I was just telling people when/where they could take cover. Seems like Shadowrun isn't as reliant on a battle grid like D&D or even Cyberpunk (where those who flank are king).

Suggestions, opinions, and discussion are always welcome.

[Crunch]

I tend to prefer battlefield of the mind style play. I find that, in any system, characters become more concerned with mechanical tactics when they're counting hexes or squares for movement and more creative and cinematic when the adventure is happening in their head.

[JackVII]

Battlefield of the Mind makes it easier to adjust combat to PC abilities through GM fiat. "Are all three of the gangers within the AOE of that Manaball or is it just two?"

With that said, I don't mind miniature play, but don't like battle grids for games like Shadowrun. Basically laying out miniatures or markers so players have a rough idea of what the layout looks like but never breaking out a ruler to measure. As long as you're fair, no one should really care.

[lazlo]

I have a number of small dry erase boards (each about 9x11) that I use for writing temporary things, including a quick sketch of the battlefield.  I'll mark the locations of the party and the NPCs (those they are aware of) to give everyone (especially me) an idea of the layout, with the understanding that it is not to scale.

[Xenon]

re supressive fire. you can have some of the mooks take an interrupt action to hit the dirt and avoid getting hit at all.

re mage los(a) spells. they are aoe, yes, but unless other wise noted they don't affect targets the mage does not have line of sight to (even if the target is just behind a thin screen, for example).