[pseudorandomletters]

Hi everyone, I'm a rookie shadowrun gm running my first campaign m(run a few d&d campaigns in the past) and I'm having some difficulty with the paranoia levels of my players. They are assuming that everything is out to get them, I get that this is shadowrun and being paranoid is essential to living, but it's really slowing down gameplay. I'm talking to the point that they won't cross the street, or open a door, unless one or two players in particular have a 30 minute (no exaggeration) discussion about if they should or shouldn't. This extends into them assuming that every civilian is out to get them, resulting them constantly threatening to kill etc my NPC's and getting upset when I penalize them in future encounters for it (i.e. one player, for no reason, destroyed a security camera with a shotgun, in a civilians shop, because he didn't want anyone watching them, then wondered why the critical npc excluded him from important information). When i suggest that players tone it down, they get upset that I'm telling them how to play their characters, any advice?

[incrdbil]

Talk to them again; tell them that you aren't trying to tell them how to run their characters, but they are, perhaps, misunderstanding the game world, fretting about common situations and that their excessive delay in slowing down the game and in leading to a boring game.  If their characters are acting that paranoid,(ie, not just the payers, but the characters behavior)..then people start treating them as paranoid nutcases.

Handy way to speed things up: excessive paranoia planning takes time.  Whatever real time they spend talking about it is passing in the game, especially once a run has begun.  If they are back in their lair planning, then they can take time. But out on the street, those long discussions pass in real time, with all of the bad consequences that can occur.

 Finally, as a gamemaster, you can say "I need your decision now, what are you doing." A lack of a firm answer indicates the character does nothing, is standing their paralyzed with indecision, and that you continue on resolving the scene as if they did nothing. Don't go back and give them a chance to act once they panic and realized you are passing them up. Too bad; they froze, the world goes on.

Reassure them that not everything is a deathtrap,  and punish excessive time wasting with the natural consequences that come when supposedly bold characters stand quivering at the prospect of crossing the street. The shadows aren't a place for the timid.

[Booze]

Hmmm,... It is becouse they are right!

First thing first:
There are two kind of playstyle in SR Pink Mohawk and Trench Coats. You should propably know them already, but just to be sure: A Troll who jumps on a police car, during car chase, and 'shootin stuff' with Panter XXL in one hand and some HMG in the other, plus a pyro Elf, with a underbarrel Flamethrower under... wait for it... flamethrower,... those are perfect Pink Mohawk examples, right?
While Trench coats,... will do everything to stay in the shadows. They have a target, they gather intel, compose a plan, and proceed with it, and then the extraction plan, of course they will have a plan for few contingencies. But for sure, of nothing will f00ck up no one will ever hear about them,... if they are in the news, it is becouse they either wanted it and it is part of the plan, or the are beeing framed.

Ok, next: Is it really a problem? Yea,... it is not the time for such a question, yet.

Listien, SR is a nasty world, were beeing killed is one of less nasty things that might happen to you. You are a runned, that means, you do illigal stuff. You propably are SINless, thou you are illigal on its own rights. You do things against corporation, goverment and crime organizations. Only thing that keeps you alive is shadowrunners credo. Shadowrunners are friends on the street, with exepction to missions.

This is why you need contacts and street creed. You are resonably safe, as long as you have friends.

If PCs are noobs as well, than it is simple, Johnson will 'gladly' explain the runners etiquette. Including beeing framed and disinformation. Friends [nobody gets into running buisness without proper contacts first] will gladly tell them how to not get killed or captured on the run. And Contacts will gladly take such noob runners as buisnes,... lets say investmen. IE A forger will gladly sel SINs, along with siting down in a Safehouse [for a charge in hands of another contact] is best way to vanish from police and public radar.

But you should remember one thing:
"They are not alone". Assasination? Commiting a abduction [extraction for runner naming]? or just simply snooping for paydata, are so frequent crimes, that no one bothers. Police [mostly Corporate itself, like Knight Errant] are companies, thou they are paid, and they are paid by people, and people whant what media say them they want. Until you are on the news, the is about one division per city, that is looking for low level organized crimes like shadow running.

But:
Propably police will not bother if will find out you are runners. Runners are good, sometimes. If you will catch a runner, propalby you will get paid to let him lose, either by Johnson, another runner, or the Corpo wich needs his servicies.

Running in shadows can be a game about details, and countermeseuring surveilence. As there are lots of them. Commlink? Few Y. Mad scaner? A hunderd Y. Cyberware scanner? Half tousend Y. Magical ward? Few thousand Y. Security contract? From few hunderd a month to bilions a day*. Magical sentry,... Spider,.... and so on... are are really in reach of citizen. And for a corpo, or crime organization? Thay really are capable of *renting a small merc army with altilery and takn support [top 10 merc, pdf].

So my advice? Try to speak to theam, to theyer reason, about what would be such world, and why it is still exsisting. And remind them this is a game, that is to be balanced. Yet another advice to you, try to regulate your attitude to their vision of world. It should entertain, right? If they want, or just are expecting that a destroing a securiti camera will alarm guards, do so when they will do something suspicious, like leaving a mag lock wired up with a data tap... opened

[JimmyCrisis]

The GM has a lot of roles, and what you need to emphasize for these players is making the world seem real.  They're approaching the game like a dungeon crawl - around every turn is a trap or a monster.  In part this is because they likely don't trust you to be fair to their characters.  You need to dissuade them of that notion.

So tell them what their characters should expect.  "Dude, you're at a runner's bar.  It's safe for you to be here, everyone's packing and everyone knows it so no one is going to start some drek."  And when you tell them that they're safe, you've gotta mean it.  This might mean their first few runs are milk runs... Not necessarily easy, but no twists.  They do the run, they get paid, they go home.

Out on a run, emphasize what their expectations should be, "People live and work here, there wouldn't normally be traps, but you could expect to find cameras or motions sensors, manned by human or automated security." "You're out at the perimeter, they won't be stringing up mono wire for just anything to find.  The Corp doesn't want that publicity.  They might have security patrols, maybe drones, definitely a fence."

When they start to ease up about it, you can back off on filling in their expectations.

If they don't knock off the paranoia, you'll have to level with them.  "Guys, this is taking too much time and I'm not having fun.  If this keeps up, I'm going to lose interest in GMing.  I promise I'll try to treat your characters fairly.  I won't have you get blown up by a car bomb or shot by a sniper rifle that you didn't see coming.  The police aren't going to get your file just because you bought cheese-its at the Stuffer Shack.  Maybe when you all have a good feel for the setting then I can play with your expectations, but right now things aren't going to get twisted.  Cool?"

[Adeptus Technicanus]

I for one, am all for playing with their paranoia. Have the KE show up and capture them when they go get their Soy'kaf.

Or tell them that if they want to be paranoid, you will run them through the game aptly named, Paranoia, so they can get it out of their system, and explain to them that they have only to worry about The Sixth World looking for evidence connecting them to their crimes, not to buying their Soy'kaf. Explain to them that they are not worth the zip ties to capture, or the lead to kill them, when they are not in the Area of their Mission Parameters.

[decPL]

Firmly tell them that the amount of OOC discussion is getting out of hand and you believe this is no longer a role-playing game, but a tactical squad simulator. If they're doing this in-character let them, just tell them that their discussion takes about the same time in-game as its real-life counterpart. If this doesn't make them pick up the pace a bit, take the time to think what could happen in your world in the meantime. Maybe the guards are getting suspicious of some people on the other side of the street discussing something nervously; maybe their intended target left the building. As the last resort - try a run where timing really matters - there's a live bomb, or any other artificial deadline for completing it. If they waste too much time discussing, feel free to let them fail the run and suffer all the consequences for it.

Alternatively - if all your players are enjoying that kind of play, maybe simply adjust to their pace (when preparing for your gaming session, simply expect you'll do less during a single evening/night), unless it's too frustrating for you.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

If they're going to play like twinks, treat them like twinks.  Think of the store camera at the beginning of the movie 'Serenity' - they shot it, sure, but it still caught their image.  And if they bought something, then the store owner got their ID, and if it was a good ID, then it probably has their Lifestyle identified with it.

So KE sends a basic badge to roust the guy.  But if he whacks the badge, or if these guys KEEP doing this, then they're gonna get a lot of heat.  A KE rigger drops a bug drone into the guy's place to wait for him to show up.  And when he does, they infiltrate a team into the area, and then he gets nailed - possibly literally.

'Stick to the shadows' does not mean 'be too paranoid to cross the fraggin' street'.  If they remain that paranoid, then punish them for it.  Have the Johnson send them away from the table, because it's a decent restaurant and he doesn't mix business with food.  Run their discussion about whether it's safe to leave the place in real-time, and if they take more than half an hour, the Johnson comes across them debating as he leaves the restaurant - and he fires their asses on the spot.

This is stupid stuff OOCly; punish them for it ICly.

[ZeConster]

Your players need to think less like soldiers in an army of occupation and more like intelligence agents. Ask them how they would feel about people constantly threatening them.