[Icarus]

So I did finally GM my first game of Shadowrun (doing On the Run as was suggested). It went pretty well overall, though I had a couple of issues.

For those of you familiar with the adventure guide, the combat where they are chasing after Loomis in the junkyard is supposed to be moderately difficult. Instead, the players took no damage and managed to kill all the opposition in 2 rounds of combat. While it wasn't supposed to be super challenging, they weren't supposed to be pushovers either. Do you have any suggestions as to how I might up the difficulty of future combat encounters so the party doesn't just breeze right through?

Another issue encountered with combat is that it is a pain to track initiative, with it constantly changing between and during rounds of combat. How do you more experienced GMs keep track of the player's and NPC's initiative?

[tzizimine]

Actually, I just finished putting together a GM screen with separate IP and Combat Turn trackers along the top (and cut-out pieces from index cards to slide left-right). As for the individual Initiative Scores, I use index cards (one per participant), but some people will use small magnetic white boards and wet-erase magnets


As for the difficulty, the actual combat session take advantage of good tactics? Tactics, more than stats, is what increases difficulty.


For example:
- Ganger with an assault rifle: Full-Auto, regardless of recoil and mostly regardless of his allies
- Security Guard with the same assault rifle: Assuming the assault rifle has the recoil comp for it, two Burst Fire Wide to eat up the Dodge quickly
- Assassin with the same assault rifle: Called Shot (Bypass Armor), Take Aim (negate range penalties), Semi-Automatic Fire (and taking advantage of the Surprise IP since he is ambushing)

[Joush]

Tips for increasing challenge / excitement of encounters:

More bad guys. More then anything else, having the party outnumbered slows combat down. A handful of people with machine pistols and cram can be an exciting and dangerous encounter without being overpowering, as the machine pistols low base damage means they will pretty much never crack the player's armor. Have the bad guys try to use cover and fire at the party with a lot of ammo.

In Shadowrun, one elite target is a really bad challenge for a group. Always have the opposition have equal or greater numbers. Giving the bad guys machine pistols allows you to get an exciting amount of lead in the air but most of the time do stun damage that won't take long to heal or result in a lot of funerals after a run.

As to your second question, make several cards, simple ones with the name of each PC in an easily readable color, along with cards for opposition. When you do initiative, put the cards in order on the table, flipping the cards face down next to the pile when someone's turn ends. Flip the whole deck back over for the next initiative pass, and reorder the cards when you roll initiative again.

You can use multi colored index cards for this and fill in the player character's basic summery for GM quick reference as well. If that is too Arts and Crafts for you, cutting a bit of cardboard and writing on it in a high visibility color can work too.

[Phylos Fett]

Must agree with the others vis a vis combat - Tactics, tactics, tactics. Play the NPCs like they were your PCs, and act accordingly.

As for the Initiative thing, I've always just used a scrap of paper. Been GMing for over 20 years and it's worked for me.

[Crash_00]

Keep in mind however that if you are the player at the table that comes up with the ideas that everyone finds unique and often stumps the GMs of other games, it will be easy to stump your group even without meaning to.

My group absolutely hates my tactics, even more so than most groups hate the GM.

[Phylos Fett]

Keep in mind however that if you are the player at the table that comes up with the ideas that everyone finds unique and often stumps the GMs of other games, it will be easy to stump your group even without meaning to.

My group absolutely hates my tactics, even more so than most groups hate the GM.

I'd love to hear about some of those tactics!

[tzizimine]

Agreed. Any thoughts on tactics appropriate to their professional rating is good for new GMs.

[Phylos Fett]

Agreed. Any thoughts on tactics appropriate to their professional rating is good for new GMs.

Well, I always play it organically. Which I know doesn't help, but let's have a Q & A, and we can show the kiddies how it's done?

[tzizimine]

Alright...


Question 1: What do you arm your goons with (sorted by type)?


For me, I try to make sure the goons I use are noticeably different for each group. The gear they have directly affects their tactics.

Knight Errant Beat Cop

• Armor: Armor Jacket (8/6)
• Weapons: AZ-150 Stun Baton, Ares Predator IV w/ 2 clips Reg
• Commlink: Basic Novatech Airware w/ Iris Orb (F: 3 R: 3 Si: 3 Sy: 3) w/ Basic User+, Encryption 3, Scan 3,
• Peripherals: AR Gloves, Skinlink, Subvocal Mic, Earbuds (Rat: 1), Glasses (4) w/ Image Link, Smartlink, Flare Comp & Visual Magnification
• Gear: 6 doses of Jazz, Flashlight, Gas Mask, 1 Trauma Patch, 1 Stim Patch (Rat: 4), 2 Plassteel Handcuffs, 1 iBall roller drone, Biomonitor, Handscanner (Cyberware 6, MAD 3, Geiger), Separate Trideo-Camera w/ Low-Light, Thermo, Flare Comp, Visual Magnification, Audio & Visual Enhancer 3
• Vehicle: 2 beats cops share a Chrysler-Nisson Patrol 1 w/ 1 Medkit, 1 Survival Kit and 2 Defiance T-250 Shotguns (w/ 2 mags Regular, Shock-Lock & Gel each)

Since Ares got the Seattle Contract largely on the idea that Lone Star was sloppy and unprofessional, they wanted Knight Errant to visibly well-trained and well-equipped, take a no-nonsense approach. Each beat cop has at least 1 rank in the Electronic Warfare group to be on guard for illegal or hidden commlinks. The separate Trideo-Camera is constantly recording what is in their field of view and the feed is link-able to the Glasses in case the specific beat cop doesn't have Low-Light or Thermo naturally.


As for tactics, the beat cops always patrol in pairs, watching the crowd and scanning commlinks. If they spot trouble, their first plan is draw the Predator and intimidate the suspect into submission. If they encounter 'soft' resistance, they switch to AZ Batons to stun and arrest. If they encounter 'hard' resistance, they pop a dose of Jazz, alert dispatch and find cover to return fire. In riot or warrant support, they break out the shotguns to pacify people (Gel rounds) or open doors (Shock-Lock).


However, what they have in equipment and training, they lack in area knowledge. The average beat cop is still working off of a street map overlay and doesn't have as many street contacts as their Lone Star predecessors had. This results in the players realizing that while KE beat cops are not to be screwed with, they don't know how to follow them once they slip into the bad areas of town and the local SINless aren't likely to point out where they went.

[Walks Through Walls]

I personally feel that the automatic would be a common issue for the Knight Errant officer. If in light duty without expected trouble then a SMG maybe starting with stick-n-shock rounds. Their opponents will have auto-fire weapons if they are going to survive they need them too.
In trouble areas an assault rifle instead of SMG. Maybe when a pair of officers one with an assault rifle and one with a shotgun.

As far as tactics. If they am trying to hold out until reinforcements arrive with heavier armor/armaments then suppression fire works wonders if you have a decent amount of recoil compensation. Even if they don't and the players/characters aren't aware of it the characters can be pinned down by the fear of the lead in the air. (My last run a gun turret in a tunnel pinned down the team for two combat turns while they figured out how to deal with it.)

Cover and cover fire are two very good tactics. That and if the players are using grenades then have the opposition use grenades. If want non-lethal then use gas grenades with nuro-stun and the characters can quickly find themselves in trouble.

[tzizimine]

Ah.... that's not the point of this build..


These are beat cops that patrol low-crime neighbor hoods... The kind of KE cops you're describing are the next step up from these guys...

[Walks Through Walls]

I would think they might still have an automatic in the trunk for emergencies (heck many cops today do), but it all depends on your point of view on it and the Shadowrun universe in general.

From what I've read and seen it seems that SMGs are fairly common especially in gangs and such and assault rifles aren't unusual. If KE is trying to prove that they aren't "soft" since that is part of the reason they won the contract from Lone Star that they would err on the side of having more firepower available. Again it all depends on how you look at the world.

[Crash_00]

I'd love to hear about some of those tactics!

Well in one situation (back in SR3), the group was hired to protect a retired runner (a sammie) from his old team. They knew pretty much all the details (including the drones the rigger had access to until about a week before, the mage's known spells, and most of the face's connections). They realized fairly quickly that the old face had the connections to find them eventually, so instead of going into hiding they bunkered up in a top floor penthouse with armored windows, thinking that the old team had nothing to penetrate them with (the mage didn't know fly/levitate or whatever it was called then). They just focused on guarding the elevator, stairs, and the window cleaning units.

Well three supply drones strapped to the world's smallest troll mage later, a mage was blasting those windows apart with high force powerballs and a small army of attack roto-drones were penetrating their defenses. It quickly turned into a die hard style scenarior where the group was running down floor to floor trying to avoid getting caught by the roto-drones all the while knowing the police were on their way and that half their gear was highly illegal.

More recently, they were trying to "extract" a little girl that had a hired 24/7 bodyguard. The bodyguard was overly cautious (as they should be) and always kept a rucksack of supplies on hand (nothing extreme, but a chameleon cloak (Thermal Dampened of course), a high rating medkit, a tranquilizer pistol, a few smoke grenades and a gas mask for him and the girl). The group decided to ambush him on a bridge to cut off his escape. So he popped a smoke grenade in the car so that mages wouldn't be able to see him or the girl. The next action he tossed one out the window. At that point the whole bridge (it was a small bridge over a stream running through a culvert) was getting smokey. Knowing they'd keep looking for them, he tranqued the girl and left her wrapped in the cloak  on the roof of the car and dove into the stream. Of course the group thought he had the girl with him and took off after him when they heard the splash. Before they caught up to him, he managed to put a call in to both Knight Errant and the girl's parent's private security. He then proceeded to suppressive fire at them until the police arrived.

[Carmody]

For sure the best option to make some combat harder is tactics.
We should be able to help you better if you describe us how the combat went. Who did what, ....

Regarding how to speed up combats, the first thing is that with combat sessions, both your players and you will know the rules better which should accelerate the combats. There are some other things I do which you may find useful :
   - I only roll initiative for "groups" of foes. For example, if they are attacked by 3 gangers + 1 gang lieutenant. I roll initiative twice, once for the lieutenant and once for the gangers, then all gangers act at the same time
   - for most opponent (i.e. all except elite) I do not roll damage soaking, only dodge (or reaction). For damage soaking I use the average (i.e. 1 success for 3 dices) in order ot accelerate (and this average value is already written down, I do not need to compute it in game)

@tzizimine: I strongly believe that most KE beat cops are former Lone Star beat cops. The number of cops needed for a city as big as Seattle is huge and I really believe that when winning the contract KE hired most of Lone Star guys, especially on the lower levels.

[tzizimine]

While KE did hire a lot of Lone Star, they are having to go through KE training all over again. I figured that would take 2+ years.