So, a little background. I'm currently dieting, and it frankly sucks. But, this got me thinking. I don't often take advantage of the mechanics of hunger in my games. Let me elaborate.
Say you have a group, and they are stalking a mark. They've got some downtime parked in the team Riggers van. As the hours pass the team gets hungry, tired, thirsty, has to find a restroom. Their effectiveness wanes. They, quite simply, aren't as fresh, or observant, as they could be.
I thumbed through the rules last night and I couldn't find a good set of modifiers for being hungry. This seemed like an oversight to me. If you have a character with a Squatter/Street lifestyle, meals might be few and far between, and most likely not terribly filling. How does that effect the player?
This lead me to another great thought. We've all had that player that picks up a month of Squatter lifestyle to begin the game, simply to 'get by' as he didn't want to spend the money on something better. So, he shows up to a meet, unwashed, clothes are wrinkled, he's most likely unshaven, and rank. He's hungry, and cold, running on minimal sleep this should, in my mind, effect his rolls, how he's perceived, and even if he can get to the meet.
For example, Mr. Johnson is at a corner table in a swank restaurant. A scruffy looking bum isn't even going to make it past the door, let alone to the table. Heck, in certain parts of Seattle a reasonably well dressed middle-aged man wouldn't make it to the table without jacket and tie.
So, here's the challenge I have. In the comments, let me know if you handle hunger, or appearance, in your games? If you do, what rules do you use? What's your gut feeling as a GM?
I think, at the very least, it might help to toss some ideas around. Remember, as always, comments are moderated but I try to keep up on them, so there shouldn't be much of a delay.
Information for GMs, and gaming groups, targeted for Shadowrun 5th Edition.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Monday, October 13, 2014
Run Hooks: Monster of the Week: Ghouls
This is the second part to my discussion of how to build a game arc out of separate pieces. What I want to talk about today is an issue that I see all too often in Shadowrun, and one I've had to deal with a number of times myself in my groups.
Shadowrun, unlike D&D and Pathfinder, isn't built to encourage a single play style. This is the biggest draw of Shadowrun in my mind, but it poses some interesting challenges for a GM. If you have a group of players with separate focus, it can be hard to keep the entire group happy. let me explain.
Take the following party: A troll ganger, with a heavy combat focus. A dwarf Rigger, with a mixed focus on vehicles, and drones, a elf Decker/face, and a human ex-Corp Shaman, with a focus on Conjuring. This is a great party, good diversity, tons of run hooks, and no obvious gaps in capabilities. However, with that diversity comes the challenge for the GM to keep the players who are combat focused, and not combat focused, both happy.
My previous run hook, 'The Long Con : Part 1' allowed the group Rigger, Face, and Shaman to flex their muscled, but it left the ganger in the cold. Simply put, a good, well-planned run, shouldn't involve a lot of shooting. This is great if your party doesn't like combat, but every now and again it's a lot of fun to simply shoot things.
So, as a GM, with a vested interest in keeping everyone happy, what do you do? You have an old fashioned monster hunt. This is a run hook with a million variations. Pick your favorite metacritter, and your resident fixer/talismonger/magical contact, and voila! You've got a run.
Simply put, your contact needs pieces from a certain critter. Or, your police contact is having issues on his beat with a pack of devil rats/ghouls/random hell hound etc. The variations are limited only by your imagination. The result, is a shorter, action-packed session that's sure to leave your combat heavy characters grinning, and the rest of your team thinking how nice the quiet runs are.
I'm going to give you my favorite setup here. One of the players, at least in my group, always has a safe house in the Redmond barrens. It's become a bit of a running joke, right along with the 'local dive-bar bouncer/bartender' contact. One of the locals around your safe house has started complaining about the local pack of ghouls. I, frankly, love ghouls. A local talismonger heard the griping down at your local dive bar, and the bouncer/bartender slipped them your card.
Simply put, you're going hunting. Every kill is worth a certain amount of money. Usually, in my games, a few hundred ¥ for a corpse, and a smaller sum for pieces. Makes it worth the team's time to be surgical and not simply blow up everything that moves.
The best thing about this Monster of the Week run is that it's infinitely tailorable. Want it to be harder? Throw a few higher intelligence ghouls into the mix, or some other metacritters. Things going south for the group? It's easy to add a police response to the mix, to let the group grab their bounty and retreat. It's ideal to introduce new contacts, or to flesh out a part of the city for use in later runs.
Runs like this are great to keep in your folio of run hooks for when a session ends early, or you're in the mood for one more game.
Now, how does this work with the wider run arc laid out in 'The Long Con : Part 1'? As the team wraps up the hunt, and gets ready to bag, and tag, their prizes they notice trackers on the ghouls. Monitors, that are reporting via the Matrix.
This is a great way to loop in your Decker, and/or tech-centric character into a combat heavy run. What are the trackers for? Who's monitoring the Ghouls behavior? If the team doesn't notice tyhe trackers, or if the team doesn't have a tech heavy character feel free to have the contact they deliver the corpses to mention the hardware, even in passing.
I've often had the receiving mage grumble about having to remove a bunch of implants from the bodies. Innocuous in itself, but it gives you a point to hook back to in later runs.
In my next entry, I'll tie back to the Long Con, and give you part two of the arc!
Shadowrun, unlike D&D and Pathfinder, isn't built to encourage a single play style. This is the biggest draw of Shadowrun in my mind, but it poses some interesting challenges for a GM. If you have a group of players with separate focus, it can be hard to keep the entire group happy. let me explain.
Take the following party: A troll ganger, with a heavy combat focus. A dwarf Rigger, with a mixed focus on vehicles, and drones, a elf Decker/face, and a human ex-Corp Shaman, with a focus on Conjuring. This is a great party, good diversity, tons of run hooks, and no obvious gaps in capabilities. However, with that diversity comes the challenge for the GM to keep the players who are combat focused, and not combat focused, both happy.
My previous run hook, 'The Long Con : Part 1' allowed the group Rigger, Face, and Shaman to flex their muscled, but it left the ganger in the cold. Simply put, a good, well-planned run, shouldn't involve a lot of shooting. This is great if your party doesn't like combat, but every now and again it's a lot of fun to simply shoot things.
So, as a GM, with a vested interest in keeping everyone happy, what do you do? You have an old fashioned monster hunt. This is a run hook with a million variations. Pick your favorite metacritter, and your resident fixer/talismonger/magical contact, and voila! You've got a run.
Simply put, your contact needs pieces from a certain critter. Or, your police contact is having issues on his beat with a pack of devil rats/ghouls/random hell hound etc. The variations are limited only by your imagination. The result, is a shorter, action-packed session that's sure to leave your combat heavy characters grinning, and the rest of your team thinking how nice the quiet runs are.
I'm going to give you my favorite setup here. One of the players, at least in my group, always has a safe house in the Redmond barrens. It's become a bit of a running joke, right along with the 'local dive-bar bouncer/bartender' contact. One of the locals around your safe house has started complaining about the local pack of ghouls. I, frankly, love ghouls. A local talismonger heard the griping down at your local dive bar, and the bouncer/bartender slipped them your card.
Simply put, you're going hunting. Every kill is worth a certain amount of money. Usually, in my games, a few hundred ¥ for a corpse, and a smaller sum for pieces. Makes it worth the team's time to be surgical and not simply blow up everything that moves.
The best thing about this Monster of the Week run is that it's infinitely tailorable. Want it to be harder? Throw a few higher intelligence ghouls into the mix, or some other metacritters. Things going south for the group? It's easy to add a police response to the mix, to let the group grab their bounty and retreat. It's ideal to introduce new contacts, or to flesh out a part of the city for use in later runs.
Runs like this are great to keep in your folio of run hooks for when a session ends early, or you're in the mood for one more game.
Now, how does this work with the wider run arc laid out in 'The Long Con : Part 1'? As the team wraps up the hunt, and gets ready to bag, and tag, their prizes they notice trackers on the ghouls. Monitors, that are reporting via the Matrix.
This is a great way to loop in your Decker, and/or tech-centric character into a combat heavy run. What are the trackers for? Who's monitoring the Ghouls behavior? If the team doesn't notice tyhe trackers, or if the team doesn't have a tech heavy character feel free to have the contact they deliver the corpses to mention the hardware, even in passing.
I've often had the receiving mage grumble about having to remove a bunch of implants from the bodies. Innocuous in itself, but it gives you a point to hook back to in later runs.
In my next entry, I'll tie back to the Long Con, and give you part two of the arc!
Friday, October 3, 2014
Run Hooks: The Long Con: Part 1
I got talking with a friend the other night, and he was complaining that in Shadowrun, as opposed to D&D, there wasn't a sense of continuity between runs. As we talked, I realized that his issue was not a mechanical one, it was an emotional one. We're asked as players, and GMs to invest in out characters, and in our players but as a GM we're not often well prepared to run a story arc.
I wanted to try and sit down, and over the coming few posts set out a sample series of runs that work as an arc, without turning the game into a railroad. To that end I'm going to follow the X-Files story line formula. Where, I have a series of interrelated runs, interspersed with "Monster of the Week" runs. The advantage, if they are done properly, then my players shouldn't know if the run of the day is a story arc, or a MotW.
Let me set the scene. Mid-tier runners, my usual group sits at four players, good gear, a little money in the bank, my team has run together before. A fixer extends a run, good money, some danger, a chance for a little showboating on the side. In short, it's another day in the business. The hook is simple. There's a shipment coming out of the Tacoma docks, four armored 18-wheelers, the team simply needs to delay them. Trucks are on Grid Guide, and can be tracked easily via the Matrix. The longer the team delays the trucks, the better the pay. However, the truck cargo cannot be destroyed, or damaged.
The advantage here is that the team is left with enough information to do the run, and there's ample opportunities for misdirection. If the team digs deep enough they encounter a shell company, and then another, on both the shipper, and receiver end of the transaction. If the team follows the trucks to their destination they find that, after a drive up I-5, the trucks board a heavy-lift hovercraft in north Everett. If the team is watching from the Astral plane, they see that the trucks cargo is inanimate.
The shipment's Matrix trail is a rats nest of shell companies, fronts, accounts, and dead-ends. This relatively simple run allows for a number of follow-up directions.
In the coming posts I'll explore possible follow-up hooks, how I build a story-arc, and a few of my favorite MotW runs.
I wanted to try and sit down, and over the coming few posts set out a sample series of runs that work as an arc, without turning the game into a railroad. To that end I'm going to follow the X-Files story line formula. Where, I have a series of interrelated runs, interspersed with "Monster of the Week" runs. The advantage, if they are done properly, then my players shouldn't know if the run of the day is a story arc, or a MotW.
Let me set the scene. Mid-tier runners, my usual group sits at four players, good gear, a little money in the bank, my team has run together before. A fixer extends a run, good money, some danger, a chance for a little showboating on the side. In short, it's another day in the business. The hook is simple. There's a shipment coming out of the Tacoma docks, four armored 18-wheelers, the team simply needs to delay them. Trucks are on Grid Guide, and can be tracked easily via the Matrix. The longer the team delays the trucks, the better the pay. However, the truck cargo cannot be destroyed, or damaged.
The advantage here is that the team is left with enough information to do the run, and there's ample opportunities for misdirection. If the team digs deep enough they encounter a shell company, and then another, on both the shipper, and receiver end of the transaction. If the team follows the trucks to their destination they find that, after a drive up I-5, the trucks board a heavy-lift hovercraft in north Everett. If the team is watching from the Astral plane, they see that the trucks cargo is inanimate.
The shipment's Matrix trail is a rats nest of shell companies, fronts, accounts, and dead-ends. This relatively simple run allows for a number of follow-up directions.
In the coming posts I'll explore possible follow-up hooks, how I build a story-arc, and a few of my favorite MotW runs.
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