[AlexHaze]

I just ran my first Shadowrun game the other day and I seem to have over done my enemies, I was wanting to know what kind of criteria others go off of while making enemies for their players. Any advice will be helpful. I admit to over doing the enemies a bit but three of the players I have are well seasoned and I’ve seen them do a lot of crazy things in the past and I was not about to make it easy for them in my game I just over did it a little. Advice?

[wylie]

was it the "boss" fight?
Did you give players chance to burn karma to survive?
were the characters without any combat skill or just real low?
players just have bad dice rolls?
were your dice hot?
was it a close fight? had everyone on the edge of their seats?

remember in SR, everyone only has 8 to 10 "HP" on average
I use the stats out of the book, unless I need a character for a specific player or storyline

[JoeNapalm]

[WARNING: The following is for GM Eyes Only! Non-GMs KEEP OUT! The GM knows all! Fear the GM's wrath!!!]

Even with veteran players, I tend to ease new characters into it with a couple of easy fights.

Maybe some gangers. Someone you know that they'll kick around. Just as a warm-up.

Due to the complexity of SR, our group (which are all veteran gamers) ran a whole series of mock battles with everything from gangers to Red Samurai, just to shake down our builds and our team for glaring deficiencies. We hadn't played this system since SR1, so it helped us grok the system better, as well.

In the case where you realize you've really overdone it, though - you're the GM, so you can always salvage the situation. The cavalry can arrive in the nick of time, the Bad Guys can have orders to take them alive, weapons can malfunction or run out of ammo (those gangers buy the cheap stuff, you know  ) or...well...you're the GM. The dice are not the final arbiter - you are.

Yup. That's right. You don't want your players to catch on, but if it tells a better story, you don't even have to look at those knucklebones. Oh, you can make a big show of rolling them, maybe even exclaim in surprise over the ridiculous luck of the PCs (don't overdo it, now  )...but the dice aren't carved in stone.

If the players dig themselves into a situation, I generally let the dice fall where they may (unless there's a really good story in nudging things), but a player's death should really mean something. Oh, I'll kill a PC...I've killed my share...but I try to make it dramatic.

If I just miscalculate the opposition and am looking at a player going out big, because of my mistakes rather than his own, I'll step in...either with story or with dice...(unless it's STILL just too good a story...then they're on their own.  ).

Oh, and I almost forgot - in the first few sessions is the very best time to kill a PC. Now the players know you've got the grit to do it...giving you a lot more leeway to step in and tweak things later on with no one the wiser. I mean, you've already iced a couple PCs...if they survive another too-tough encounter by the skin of their teeth, it must just be an amazing escape...right? 

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[AlexHaze]

Well I had lower dice pools than they did but I think it may have been my quantity of enemies that did them in. The only one with no problems was the AI who just destroyed his opposition. I do not feel bad for one of them because he kept overcasting to do stupid things in an awesome way. The other one who died got caught in the cross fire of automatics which is the part where I felt bad because I may have given them too many enemies in the first place. And of course they didn’t do what I expected and the melee fighter ended up with the automatic enemies and the gun bunny ended up in a brawling match with a troll (he was an elf he was the new player so I cut him a little slack). And my second mage hit the dirt after her first roll was a critical glitch….

I killed the guy mage and the melee fighter in the very first initiative pass, I could have killed the gun bunny and the mage at the same time to but again they are brand new players so I gave them a way out. I knew they all made combat heavy characters and that was what I planned for and then I railroaded through them. So I guess my real question is how do you decide how many enemies you would send at a player?

[Critias]

Did no one think to burn Edge to stay alive?

[AlexHaze]

No after looking over all of my things I am doing a hand of god thing and they're going to wake up in a hospital next session, however I will be taking an edge from both of them for it.

[Zilfer]

Well I can tell you it's easier to build up, then build down while in game.

I've had a situation in a D@D game where i thought it was going to be difficult and turned out i had forgotten about X Y and Z that the players had so it made it uneven so i simply had the orc take out a horn and blow on it to call in reinforcements to even the odds. It would have been much harder if the bad guys had been kicking ass to come up with something to suddenly make them weaker or some of them disappear. (without the characters suspecting divine intervention xD)

Just a tip.

[PH_dungeon]

I've found that Shadowrun can be a pretty swingy game. Firearms and magic are all deadly enough to potentially waste a PC with one shot, and even it that doesn't happen, once you start wracking up injury penalties it can go down hill quick. I think that's okay though, it teaches players to play smart and find ways other than combat to solve their problems.

[Walks Through Walls]

I agree with Joe Napalm's thoughts especially the last paragraph. I have killed very few characters in my games. Actually my players have killed other players characters more often then I have killed a character. However, I put the fear of everything in them often.

Alex Haze I like your solution of burn the edge for them this time. It is a hard fine line to walk with how much to throw at a group. You will get the hang of it I'm sure, and just be careful not to overcompensate in an effort to not do it again. The one thing I really like about Shadowrun is its grittiness and the fact that characters can die and you don't want to accidentally take this away from your players.

Hope this helps

[Crash_00]

One thing you really have to nail down when you first start GMing a new system is what style of play you want, and what style of play your players want. Here's my general list of GM styles that I've played under/run:
God Mode: PCs rarely get scratched, they are practically gods.
Feather Duster (Oh that tickles): PCs will occasionally take damage, but never more than a quarter of their health or they are considered seriously injured.
Action Movie: PCs will get shot up and hurt on a regular basis, but they don't die. When they hit 1/4 of their wound track left, they're horribly hurt.
Die Hard: PCs rarely die without a good dramatic reason, but they're used to walking away with one box of health and two rounds left in the gun.
Who's intestines am I tripping in: PCs die so often they're required to have multiple back up characters in case they "burn" through several in a session.

I lean more toward the die hard style myself, but it took some getting used to for it. I can count the times that I've killed PCs on my fingers, but I do leave them looking like they just had bath in razor blades more often than not. I'm really hard on equipment though. Especially vehicles, so I always feel bad for the riggers.

[Phylos Fett]

One thing you really have to nail down when you first start GMing a new system is what style of play you want, and what style of play your players want. Here's my general list of GM styles that I've played under/run:
God Mode: PCs rarely get scratched, they are practically gods.
Feather Duster (Oh that tickles): PCs will occasionally take damage, but never more than a quarter of their health or they are considered seriously injured.
Action Movie: PCs will get shot up and hurt on a regular basis, but they don't die. When they hit 1/4 of their wound track left, they're horribly hurt.
Die Hard: PCs rarely die without a good dramatic reason, but they're used to walking away with one box of health and two rounds left in the gun.
Who's intestines am I tripping in: PCs die so often they're required to have multiple back up characters in case they "burn" through several in a session.

I lean more toward the die hard style myself, but it took some getting used to for it. I can count the times that I've killed PCs on my fingers, but I do leave them looking like they just had bath in razor blades more often than not. I'm really hard on equipment though. Especially vehicles, so I always feel bad for the riggers.

I like those categories. I used to aim between Action Movie and Die Hard, myself, which was fun (well, as "fun" is listed in the GM dictionary) because one of my players wanted more God Mode success for himself, and another wasn't happy unless he was in Die Hard at the end of every session. Ah. Those were good times...

[AlexHaze]

Die hard is a little more my style i think. I intended to put a little fear into them with my game because in the past another GM I'd run with was really easy on us and that was fine. I just didn't want it to be that easy for them I just went a little too far I guess. Thanks for the advice.

[KarmaInferno]

I have found in writing for Living campaigns that it often helps the GM to have a low-intensity combat early on. It lets the GM get a feel for the power levels of the players without flattening them, so in the later combats you can better gauge how much you can trow at them.




-k

[Crash_00]

For living campaigns, I feel that most combat should be between Feather Duster and Action Movie. A good GM can tweak the odds for a challenge mid-battle and play it off like the baddies were rolling poor at first, and if the characters can't hack Feather Duster, they shouldn't be running. I actually liked the Table Ratings because they let the group choose where they were at and how rough they wanted it.

[bigity]

Don't be afraid to kill characters in any game system.  Without the possibility of losing a character, you lose much of the edginess of the game, especially one as 'dark' as SR.