[Shane Granger]

I just bought a copy of shadowrun and I'm planning to have a game tonight, I've played Iron Claw and a little D&D when I was younger but I never tried being GM. I'm expecting the session to be mostly character building and some basic questing.  I'm just looking for any suggestions or words of wisdom anyone has to offer.

I understand the character creation and combat, but I'm at a loss when it comes to the matrix and the astral world. Well I get the concept but I have no clue what to do with it as gm.

Me and one of the players played the shadowrun games for the genesis so we understand the world and basic ideas pretty well already

[Shane Granger]

Also I can't seem to find the character sheet they show in the book, and the other ones are a little too confusing at this point.

[Fizzygoo]

I would suggest keeping things "simple" in the beginning, have the characters make non magic / non matrix focused characters (cyberware, physical adepts, faces, infiltrators, etc.) and maybe run something along the lines of a small time gang in the barrens (where people don't rely so much on wireless technology and so on). This way the focus is on just getting the basic rules down and as you become more familiar with astral and matrix you can slowly integrate aspects of it.

Then when a box of commlinks falls off a truck and the PCs start playing with it, the PCs and the players will be on the same level of understanding (or at least the Players will know more than their characters will).

Check out the first link on the Game Resources page for shadowrun4.com: http://www.shadowrun4.com/game-resources/ for downloadable character sheets.

[beowulf_of_wa]

similarly, i'd strongly suggest a session of character gen followed by the food fight scenario, and maybe a few games that fit along the same lines before expanding out to the more indepth stuff.

[Alex]

If I got this right, you are GMing for the first time ever?

Well welcome to a living hell, a incredibly rewarding and fun hell.
First rule of GMing for me is: The players WILL fuck your plans over and/or do something you haven't planned for. So plan ahead, but be prepared to just throw your plans overboard and just improvise. Or tell you players as it is if you cant deal with it, you haven't planed for this and you cant do something good with it. Ask them nicely to return to the tracks you have laid and everybody will have a nicer time. Some of my best times as a GM have been when the players went really off track and i just had to start pulling stuff from my ass. On the other hand some of my worst moments are also related to said pulling of things from dark areas.

So in short If your players do stuff you aren't prepared for, roll with it if you can. If you cant don't be afraid to tell them that.

Or well first rule of GMing really is everybody around the table should have fun. But that one fells kinda obvious.

[kirk]

For now, for the matrix, run with this.

Picture your smartphone. Take all the neat things in ads, even the ones that are definitely beyond what they're really able to do, and consider them as given. You've seen the ads where they look and every store has a tag box, every restaurant a menu you can open? It's there. You've seen the ads where the pretty lady pinches things in the air and moves, expands, changes them? It's there. It's now got a holographic projector. It can be voice commanded. Oh, and it's got all the power of that monstrous gaming computer you all drool over.

Now after you're comfortable with the physical and ready to bring in the matrix, you get to add to that. Instead of looking through your holoscreen, you can dive in. You can manipulate what others see. You can steal info, change data. You can cause machinery that's linked to the matrix (which is just about everything) to obey your every whim. There are foes to fight, and ways to fight them that are unique to the matrix. But again, not till you are comfortable with the physical.

[beowulf_of_wa]

and then realize you can do the same thing with magic, only without the phone, and only whatever tiny percent of the population. once you get comfy with the physical.

[Zilfer]

Also a little bit on the astral from what i've gathered. Everything in the Astral plane is shadows. Everything that is not living that is. Everything that is living is a bright becon. You can pass through shadows (Walls', side's of cars, fly way up to the top of that skyscrapper ect) if you are astral projecting from your body. Good way to scout on low magical defense areas. Careful, because there's always spirits' roaming around, as well as other mages that might be astral precieving and can see you.

I tend to think of Astral projecting as your spirit coming out of your body, (which i think thats what it is IRL if you believe in that) and traveling around. You can travel really fast, my mage for example could almost travel across the whole world. (I say almost because you can stay out of your body without dying for hours = to your magic score. I now have 7 magic out of the 8 magic i would need to go around the world) I believe it was something like you can go 2,000 kilometers per hour or some number like that.

Anyways hopefully that gives you more of a picture!

[tzizimine]

First time GMing? and you start with Shadowrun? You, sir, have big brass clangers and I congratulate you.


GMing can best be described as the art of making your players work very hard for a win, but ultimately making sure that they do win. If the players don't 'win', then they aren't really having fun, but if it is too easy, they get bored.


First, read the SR4A book from cover to cover at least once. Make notes of things that are not immediately clear and go back through the book to try to find your own answers. Note page numbers. Any questions left unanswered can be asked here. Morale: Know the mechanics.


** SHAMELESS PLUG **
Feel free to download the cheat sheet pdf in my sig. I tried to simplify all of the rules into straight forward tests with modifier lists and it has served me well.
** /SHAMELESS PLUG **




Second, remember that unlike D&D or other fantasy settings, Shadowrun has no method of ressurrection, so be careful about throwing out massive damage you can get a total party kill (TPK) really quick. Likewise, healing in Shadowrun takes time and it's as simple as casting Cure Light Wounds. Even the Heal Spell takes time to make it work. Morale: Don't start at full throttle.


Third, for your first game, keep the background setting simple. Let the players know that yes everything in the books is out there somewhere, but ultimately it is as important as billboards a mile from the highway. Keep your opponents simple and straight forward. Morale: Choose your setting


Fourth, concerning running combat. Personally for a first time GM I would recommend that you enforce that everyone has the same number of IPs. The reason is going from person to person, each with different IPs can cause someone to get skipped easily... For example:



Bob has 3 IPs and Initiative of 15 (11 + 4 hits)
Joe has 3 IPs and Initiative of 12 (9 + 3 hits)
Sue has 2 IPs and Initiative of 13 (9 + 4 hits)
Ann has 1 IP and Initiative of 11 (8 + 3 hits)


The Combat Turn would go like


Bob's First IP
Sue's First IP
Joe's First IP
Ann's First (and only) IP
Bob's Second IP
Sue's Second (and last) IP
Joe's Second IP
Bob's Third IP
Joe's Third IP


And that's not taking into account the enemy or changes to Initiative during the combat round. As you can see Ann only got to 'go' once vs. Sue's 2 or Joe & Bob's 3. Unless Ann is fine with this, it's not really fair for a starting game. Morale: Be fair to all your players


Fifth, make notes of what kind of tests to expect to ask for (Attribute + Skill, Threshold, Modifiers). It helps significantly keep the game flowing if you do not have to pause and look up a rule over and over again.... Morale: Do not let the GM screen be a buffering screen.


Lastly, read the Anatomy of a Shadowrun from the Runner's Toolkit. It does a decent job of showing a step by step process of a game session. Morale: Learn from other's mistakes.






I have been GMing for 20 years now and my players are always looking for ways to make me take my well planned notes and toss them out the window. And ultimately, that is the fun part of GMing. Not running the same session over and over again or having a bunch of players that follow every railroading plot line. That gets boring quick. Reward your players for ingenuity.


If fact, in the section on rewarding Karma, the point of "Right Skill, Right Time"... I let my players know that I read that to mean...


"Have and use a skill in a way that I, the GM, did not expect."


If I have a plot written around some player's affinity for Combat Biking or Urban Brawl, that doesn't really count, because I wrote the plot that way. But if the player manages to find a way to use his knowledge in 20th Century Comedians to distract the guards when a Con check failed, that is worth the point.


Ultimately, good luck

[Shane Granger]

Wow, thanks a lot everyone learned a lot just glancing over the page.

MY first session went better than i expected. I told the players that i was still pretty unfamiliar with the game and we all agreed to make tempo some basic character for a test run, I also made a npc to start but that was too much for me so i got rid of him pretty quick.