[AlexHaze]

.I posted here earlier about how I almost killed two of my players in the first mission, well in mission three I have killed all of my players except for one who in no way did what I was thinking he would do. Anyway I killed 5 out of my 6 players, and part of it didn't even seem fair, they rolled well but I rolled better. I also believe that many of them only saw dollar signs. For the last two jobs the payout was often on the lower side but this job was playing a game for the entertainment of the rich. Basically an all out kill all of your opponents. First off I split up the group one was in a two on two match the other was a three on three match, (the AI/ guy who didn't die didn't count because his presence was never found). They got 10,000 for each kill but only the person who made the kill got the money, then they could also gain another 5,000 if they killed a teammate and it looked cool and made the audience happy. The team burnt edge right and left and not all of them had edge to burn to stay alive. So ya I ended up destroying the party (thank god I made all of them make alts in advance). The enemies were not super-powered or anything of that nature. I am bringing back one character because this was her first RPG and she did much better than the rest of them. I just wanted to know if this is a normal type of situation. I don't really feel too bad about killing them after talking about it to one of the player, they in no way worked together nor did they go in with any plan despite have some planning time.

I might also add that my one who did actually survive completed his character goal (kill party members and join terrorist group then save the techno cat) so he has to bring in his alt as well.

[MadMaddy]

Runners die it happens, to me it seems fair. No one ever likes everyone in their team but that doesn't mean you can throw team work out the window. Did they work together at all? Not even a little bit? I would have worked with them then take them out if they weren't useful anyway. They should also realize the pay difference often means a difference in how hard the job will be. It sounds like you just ran into a every man for himself sort of deal and as much as I don't trust my team runners work in teams for a reason. It sounds fine to me and it shows that this team hasn't been working together long or probably even in the shadows that long since the whole team aspect fell apart as soon as the money was introduced.

P.S.
Techno cat? AI wants to kill everyone and be a terrorist but wants to save the cat? 

[AlexHaze]

No they didn't really work together at all, I mean in the two on two team the mage and the gun bunny had an agreement not to kill each other but other than that they didn't really work as a team. I really thought that they would too, but then again one of the NPC was just rolling high all the time.

[MadMaddy]

Again runners work in teams for a reason. What you did seems fair to me, you planted that seed of betrayal and then totally went for it. That is up to them, you can’t make a group of people into a team if they don’t want to work with each other. Betrayal is a beautiful thing if done right and they just didn’t do it right and when you don’t then bad things happen.

[Tex Muldoon]

Player POV:  I thought it was fair. We had no teamwork or any kind of leadership. 3 runs together and no one was looking for the good of the team. I hope for some of the others it shows them that they can't be the ones with the biggest dice pool and get things done. Plus I hope it reminds them of their own mortality.

GM POV: They fell for the oldest trick in the GM book. We were over confident and under-estimated their opposition. The cash card got played and we took it. It was way outside our pay grade and we should have known it. Our own greed was our downfall.

[FastJack]

Hold on. You offered them money to kill each other and then seem surprised they didn't survive?

Did you give them any opportunities to force them to work together? Put them in situations where they had to rely on each other's skills? The group I'm currently running started off complete strangers to each other. A elf gun adept, elf sword adept, human bear shaman, troll melee fighter, ork rigger and human technomancer. I ran them through Food Fight! as a introductory piece where it ended with the TM hacking the store, wrecking the lights and contacting the police of the attack, then leaving before anyone else (including the other players) saw him. He's the outsider that wants nothing to do with the team and is in it for the nuyen. Over three adventures, I now have him integrated with the team by giving him reasons to care about them and work with them. Most of the group started up playing selfish mercenary types that were looking to simply make buck. By challenging their morals and providing runs that they know they couldn't do alone, they are now working as a well-oiled machine (to the point where I'm going to have to start getting creative to challenge them in combat).

What other types of runs did you offer the team besides this last one?

(And, I'm trying not to sound harsh, because that's not what I intend. I'm trying to see if there's something that we can fix.)

[Critias]

Also keep in mind shadowrun's a pretty lethal game.  A mission that's nothing but straight up FPS-style shoot 'em up combat can be a lot of fun, sure, but to a group of players who are new to the rules, and a group of characters who aren't being given much reason to work together...a death-match lethal brawl might not be the best way to go, unless you're trying to kill the whole party.

Even experienced, combat-oriented, characters can get worn down and slaughtered pretty quickly in scenarios that are just straight up fights, over and over again.

[AlexHaze]

Well in the two on two match their enemies were obviously a team, and they both knew that this was a not a match they could win on their own but when the buzzer sounded they ran different directions. In the three on three even the ones who lived together ditched each other. One player who I have killed every game (which is why he had one edge which he spent before he got knocked out) should have no better, I keep trying to push him to take help from the group instead of just jumping in head first before I even say go. The jobs before this one were hunting down a hacker and defending a smuggled in shipment from a rival group. They did well against enemies that I had made before which were above them (they picked a fight with the wrong guys) and they didn't die because they did work together. (Exception being my melee fighter who always wants to do things on his own and he died) But the second they found out they were being paid on their own performances any ties that they had before disappeared.

The group had one two fights to do, the first was just to thin the herd of the weak, and they blew through their enemies like they were made of paper, none of them even took damage. But when the actual fights started no one worked together. I excepted them to betray one another after their enemies were dead and everything, but they spent more time debating how they were going to kill each other than on how they were going to win the match and live to collect the money.

Even experienced, combat-oriented, characters can get worn down and slaughtered pretty quickly in scenarios that are just straight up fights, over and over again.

I only had one new player all the rest of them have played this game before, and she did extremely well but she couldn't win a three on one match. I've seen one of them fight a dragon and live, another two have been playing for probably the better part of 10 years, one of them as an elf punched a combat troll and won (that was actually in my first session I about fell over), the other one (before this game) played it smart  almost every run.

The part that got me was that when they did put down an enemy and I told them they were not dead but knocked out, they spent their only other pass to kill them right there instead of worrying about the other people still trying to kill them. I even pointed it out in the middle of the game. My male mage had knocked out another mage and then told me he wanted to finish her off, I told him he could do that but he needed to remember one of his teammates was already out and that the other was about to lose the fight she was in. He didn't care he wanted to KO the other mage, he knew well in advance that the guy still standing had killed one of his team quickly and that he could not take him alone but he never took the chance to kill him while he was busy with a teammate. Maybe I am in the wrong here, to me it seemed fair, maybe I didn't give them enough incentive to work together.

[Mason]

I had a team like that. They didn't want to play as a team, even when directly addressed about the issue. I simply wound the game to a conclusion and moved on with my life. I run with a much more cooperative group now.

[Bull]

Moving thread over to Gamemasters Lounge since it's not Shadowrun Missions specific.  (SR Missions is the Shadowrun Living Campaign.  General Shadowrun adventure discussion should take place in one of the other forums)

[Zilfer]

Well i'm not saying the group is stupid or anything like that just to make it clear now, however I'll tell you what i would have done from a standpoint of my characters.

10,000 for each kill paid to the person who gets the kills? Easily fixed.

All the players agree that no matter who gets the kills they are going to put it into a pool at the end and split it evenly. 5 enemy kills? 50,000 Nuyen? Split it evenly no matter if 1 guy got 4 of the kills. Probably fixed. That's what I would have done. Anyways obviously the group didn't think of that or thought their characters wouldn't do that I'm not sure which. It was fair. It sounds like your players deserved that a bit.

I just have two questions one for FastJack and one for you.

Fastjack, would you mind sharing a few examples of the missions you had to convince this mercenary technomancer to work with his team? I just recently had a problem where I gave the team 3 possible missions to take and they couldn't decide so I basically ran 2 missions at the same time during the same session because they couldn't make up their mind which to do. <.< Personally, that got me frustrated so examples would be VERY much welcome.

Also to AlexHaze.

I really would like to know how they killed a dragon curious. It's been debated at my table. I am currently captured by a dragon in Ares property. <.< In a room and they are in human form. From reading the book it sounds like they get the average stats of a human while in human form so I'm thinking the DM over played the Dragon's abilities when I fired at it with 2 pistols. My hits were 3 hits, 4 hits, 4hits, and 5 hits from one initiative pass. The Dragon dodged the first one, the second one used edge and passed. Next one had to use edge. (still didn't make it so rolled damage and used edge). Next, tried to use edge (DM rolling horribly by the way) still hit, and then used edge on the damage soak. (he was usuing the stats for the body of a dragon in dragon form however) I was using a Slivergun from Ares. (ironic no?) on an unarmored humaniod. (i don't know if dragons get natural armor and if that counts to the +5 dice armor gets against fletch anyways) I think I should at least damaged the dragon . The DM told me however the real reason for this was that he just wanted to get the characters that had some bad notoriety gone so he could start a new campaign. (which he hasn't been able to get running yet xD) Anyways the dragon after dodging that broke my weapons with 35 str roll. (again dragon form amount i think it would be different as human form correct me if i'm wrong.)

Sorry, I may be going off topic I appologize for my questions but still a newish DM starting. If I need to post this somewhere else I will. Gomenasai!

[FastJack]

Actually, it was pretty easy to convince the Technomancer to join up due to his backstory. He had the Erased quality, since his parents had paid a hacker to remove all trace of him from the 'trix when we first heard the Resonance and they didn't want him to become a lab rat. So, they did this, then shipped him off to Seattle. He was free and clear, but he felt obligated to send money back home to repay his parents. Wave a bit of cred in front of his face and he was hooked for the first mission. At first, he kept the loner outlook with the group, but his lack of combat ability meant he had to at least trust them when he went full VR. Using that as a building block, I structured the adventures to show that no one person the team could pull these missions off by themselves, and that by joining up, they were much stronger than they were separate. Eventually, the character has began to understand this.

A good example (and the one I used) was the TV show Leverage. Yes, it's cheesy and rips off A-Team and such, but I love the show and, fortunately, so do most of the players. The pilot and first couple episodes after that show the team as a bunch of mercenary loners that worked with Nate Ford because he is a mastermind that was able to make them enough money in the pilot that they could retire early. But, they got a taste for "doing good" and figure they can give something back and actually make the world better. By forcing themselves to rely on each other, they see how the team is way stronger than the individuals.

[ARC]

I can't say anything ARC my Technomancer once tazed a guy on his team because he didn't want the "mad bomber" character one of the players created in the ensuing fight.  Tazer to the Testicles, just another way of saying "DIE you SOB!"

[ARC]

And yes it did kill him.  I didn't mean for it to.  I had inadvertantly not heard him say he was pulling out his "two glass vials of 'crazy purple knockout gas'" as our resident Neko called them.  I rolled edge with my shot and he biffed his soak roll so that he ended up rolling one point of physical damage when he passed out.  Well when the glass vials broke, everyone who didn't have a gass mask had to resist the knockout gas.  Well he biffed that too and it killed him.

[Zilfer]

And yes it did kill him.  I didn't mean for it to.  I had inadvertantly not heard him say he was pulling out his "two glass vials of 'crazy purple knockout gas'" as our resident Neko called them.  I rolled edge with my shot and he biffed his soak roll so that he ended up rolling one point of physical damage when he passed out.  Well when the glass vials broke, everyone who didn't have a gass mask had to resist the knockout gas.  Well he biffed that too and it killed him.

OUCH. XD