Sorry all, with work, and being completely unable to get a Shadowrun 5th Edition group together I'm going to shelve this blog for awhile.
Given that I live in Seattle, you'd think it would be easy to get a group together. Well, you'd be wrong. With no group to GM for, I'm finding it hard to stay in the mindset to write regularly.
If you're in Seattle, and you're looking for a GM, let me know. Else, I'm sure I'll swing back around to this blog in the future. Be sure to add me to your RSS feeds, so when I come back, you'll be the first to know.
Ciao!
Information for GMs, and gaming groups, targeted for Shadowrun 5th Edition.
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
Off-Topic: Hungry?
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Fireside Chat: Running in the Real World
I recently read a review of Elder Scrolls Online, and the biggest complaint is that the player didn't feel like they were the center of the world, and in previous games that had been a major selling point. The reviewer stated that he felt okay with the idea that when he left a town that the inhabitants simply froze, waiting for his return.
That got me thinking about role-playing games and how we as the GM tend to build the world around our players. For example, what's it matter if the next town over is under attack, if our players never visit? When I run D&D I build my world as a series of points each of them existing as a chain as the party moves throughout the landscape. However, if the players journey off that road I'm left scrambling. Simply put, I didn't build a world, I built an adventure, and when that adventure went an unexpected direction I was left flat footed.
I've been guilty of the same behavior in Shadowrun. However in Shadowrun I feel it's almost inexcusable. I've talked a bit about the value of having a folio of people, and places, and the help that can come from having a standing cast but I want to touch on the idea that maybe the players aren't that important. I know, this seems radical but stay with me.
Let's envision a run, the team is hired by a rookie looking Mr. Johnson, new suit, ill-fitting, he pays too much out of the gate, and flubs the negotiation badly. The team is looking to make a lot of money for relatively little work. So far this sounds like a standard Shadowrun setup. Let's take a moment to step back. Why is the Johnson hiring the team? Why this specific group. Remember there are hundreds of Runners, of various levels of professionalism, and skill set. Why did he pick this group? What is going on in his background to make him need a Runner team in the first place?
Let's assume that Mr. Johnson is running a scam. He owns a business, and needs an out. He's going to hire the team, make sure they damage the business so he can walk away with the insurance, and to top it all off he's going to make sure he doesn't need to pay them. Why? Because he's Mr. Johnson. Still sounds fairly vanilla-Shadowrun.
A day or two after the meet Mr. Johnson gets nabbed. His insurance company got wind of the attempted fraud, and he's been picked up and is currently sitting in jail with no way to alert the team that the poorly planned insurance fraud scheme is not going to work. The world has taken an action outside of the context of the team, at this point there's no way they can get paid, but they don't know that. Maybe they go on the run, and finding no resistance, quickly accomplish the tasks set for them. Of course, they don't know that the reason they don't meet any resistance is because the building has been seized by the insurance company, and when they contact Mr. Johnson he's gone quiet.
This is one of the hardest things for a GM to work with. You have a group that's now most likely disappointed. They had a milk run, and now there's no money. Bills need paid, and there's no payday. However this is one of the reasons I absolutely love Shadowrun. The world, the real world, doesn't have to sit still and wait for the team to come along and give it meaning. Have a contact you really like? He bar tend? Well, now the bar's closed. What do you do now? Or, he's been shot. There was a row at the bar and he ended up on the wrong end of a shotgun blast.
I'm still playing with the concept, but I like the potential of having a living, breathing world, and the party is a tiny, tiny cog. I'm sure this will come up again, but in the meantime, if you've ever thought about the wider world in your games, or have interesting ways of keeping your party from feeling that the world revolves around them leave a comment!
That got me thinking about role-playing games and how we as the GM tend to build the world around our players. For example, what's it matter if the next town over is under attack, if our players never visit? When I run D&D I build my world as a series of points each of them existing as a chain as the party moves throughout the landscape. However, if the players journey off that road I'm left scrambling. Simply put, I didn't build a world, I built an adventure, and when that adventure went an unexpected direction I was left flat footed.
I've been guilty of the same behavior in Shadowrun. However in Shadowrun I feel it's almost inexcusable. I've talked a bit about the value of having a folio of people, and places, and the help that can come from having a standing cast but I want to touch on the idea that maybe the players aren't that important. I know, this seems radical but stay with me.
Let's envision a run, the team is hired by a rookie looking Mr. Johnson, new suit, ill-fitting, he pays too much out of the gate, and flubs the negotiation badly. The team is looking to make a lot of money for relatively little work. So far this sounds like a standard Shadowrun setup. Let's take a moment to step back. Why is the Johnson hiring the team? Why this specific group. Remember there are hundreds of Runners, of various levels of professionalism, and skill set. Why did he pick this group? What is going on in his background to make him need a Runner team in the first place?
Let's assume that Mr. Johnson is running a scam. He owns a business, and needs an out. He's going to hire the team, make sure they damage the business so he can walk away with the insurance, and to top it all off he's going to make sure he doesn't need to pay them. Why? Because he's Mr. Johnson. Still sounds fairly vanilla-Shadowrun.
A day or two after the meet Mr. Johnson gets nabbed. His insurance company got wind of the attempted fraud, and he's been picked up and is currently sitting in jail with no way to alert the team that the poorly planned insurance fraud scheme is not going to work. The world has taken an action outside of the context of the team, at this point there's no way they can get paid, but they don't know that. Maybe they go on the run, and finding no resistance, quickly accomplish the tasks set for them. Of course, they don't know that the reason they don't meet any resistance is because the building has been seized by the insurance company, and when they contact Mr. Johnson he's gone quiet.
This is one of the hardest things for a GM to work with. You have a group that's now most likely disappointed. They had a milk run, and now there's no money. Bills need paid, and there's no payday. However this is one of the reasons I absolutely love Shadowrun. The world, the real world, doesn't have to sit still and wait for the team to come along and give it meaning. Have a contact you really like? He bar tend? Well, now the bar's closed. What do you do now? Or, he's been shot. There was a row at the bar and he ended up on the wrong end of a shotgun blast.
I'm still playing with the concept, but I like the potential of having a living, breathing world, and the party is a tiny, tiny cog. I'm sure this will come up again, but in the meantime, if you've ever thought about the wider world in your games, or have interesting ways of keeping your party from feeling that the world revolves around them leave a comment!
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Fireside Chat: Matrix Topography
I'm in the process of putting together a new story arc, and I decided I wanted to challenge myself and build a Matrix-centric story line. Now, in most of my games the Matrix is seen as a tool, something my players interact with to accomplish the mission, and not as a crucial part of the gaming session. A lot of this is a hold over from Shadowrun 3rd Edition when running the Matrix was a very painful experience.
However, in Shadowrun 5th Edition the Matrix blends with the real-world action a bit better. While it's still not perfect, it's close. So, with that I mind I sat down to think about what I wanted the Matrix interactions to look like. In previous games I always tried to make Matrix hosts ritzy, and glamorous, wild colors, and crazy layouts. However, as I started planning the run I realized that from the perspective of a system administrator, that's the last thing I would want.
A Matrix host is tied to a physical location, so, why would you design your Matrix host to be wildly different from your physical location? Especially in the case of an office building, bank, factory, or other production facility.
I started with the first major location, a boat yard in Everett.I modeled the location on Vigor Industries, a real-world shipbuilder in Seattle. I had a good idea of the yard layout that I wanted, several large dry docs, fabrication sheds, storage sheds, liquid tanks, parking, etc. all enclosed by a high fence, and a legacy drone on rail system, that's a hold-over from Shadowrun 4th Edition.
With the physical layout roughed out I turned over to the Matrix. At first, I envisioned this nautical themed host, with boats, and pirates, and parrot IC. This seemed like an amazing idea at first, but as I played with it more, and the physical location came together, the analogy fell apart. It simply was a pain to remember the pirate-centric theme as I developed the run. I realized, that if I couldn't remember the theme in planning, I wasn't going to remember it at the table.
With that in mind I sat back with a coffee and thought about the problem from a real world view. I've worked in web design, both front end, and back end development, and I wondered if I was handed the challenge of designing a Matrix host for a shipyard, what would it look like? How would I design it if I had to sit and maintain it day after day.
I started with the drones. I wanted legacy drones on a rail, with a smaller number of tracked drones inside, and a large group of worker drones in cradles and on charging pads around the 12 acre facility. All of these were represented in the Matrix by an icon that roughly mirrored their function. Welder drones looked like a MIG set, trundle drones looked like a hand cart, etc. Security drones used their default icon, and so would be immediately recognizable to my team, with a spot check, and possibly a knowledge check.
With the drones sorted, I moved on to the buildings. I theorized that with RFID tags, and smart inventory systems, there's no reason that the security rigger shouldn't be able to see the buildings contents, once he had a mark on the building's icon. With this in mind, I developed a layer-cake model for the buildings. Each building was an icon itself. Once a building was marked, the contents icons would become visible, and the building itself would become translucent. Each of these icons would display their contents, unless the container was secured, then it would have to be hacked, and marked, like any other icon. This lets me handle the large amount of material in a fairly natural way, without a cumbersome analogy.
Cranes, dry-dock controls, tenders, and other large machinery would be represented by their own icons. As if they were large drones themselves. As I thought about the cranes, and other large machines I couldn't think of a reason they wouldn't be rigger adapted. With rigger adaption you run the risk of your players deciding to drive a crane into the sound, which I guess I'll deal with if/when it happens.
As I looked over the notes I'd made I realized I still didn't have the objective mapped out, or the IC that would respond if the team botched something. I wanted to use the shipyard offices as the objective. I played with the idea of making the office building it's own host, or going even further and making the office a cable only, no wireless, location. However, making the office offline didn't seem to fit with the idea of this being a working shipyard.
So, I went with the building being a sub-host, with dedicated IC. When the team's rigger jumps into the building he's going to see a relatively standard office space. Devices, files, feeds, will all be represented as small icons similar to their physical self, and roughly co-located with their real world counterparts. I wanted to keep the feel of the real space as much as possible.
At that point, securing the objective data became trivial, the iconography worked for me, a safe, a digital representation of the data store, and the files within represented by manila folders.
I did take a minute to play with the icons of the IC. I wanted the offensive IC to be sculpted as welders, with the torches being their damage output. Marker IC would be represented by a worker, with a spray can, Patrol, would take the shape of a large junkyard dog, and the analogy continues. However, this is still a relatively natural jump. The IC's icons map to their real-world abilities, while providing some dramatic flair for the game, and the story.
Overall, I'm really happy with the session, and I'm curious if my players with actually play in the Matrix, as I've planned for them to do, or if they will try to scale the fence and simply wander around getting into trouble in meat-space without ever bothering to do more than check AR for drones. Only time will tell.
However, in Shadowrun 5th Edition the Matrix blends with the real-world action a bit better. While it's still not perfect, it's close. So, with that I mind I sat down to think about what I wanted the Matrix interactions to look like. In previous games I always tried to make Matrix hosts ritzy, and glamorous, wild colors, and crazy layouts. However, as I started planning the run I realized that from the perspective of a system administrator, that's the last thing I would want.
A Matrix host is tied to a physical location, so, why would you design your Matrix host to be wildly different from your physical location? Especially in the case of an office building, bank, factory, or other production facility.
I started with the first major location, a boat yard in Everett.I modeled the location on Vigor Industries, a real-world shipbuilder in Seattle. I had a good idea of the yard layout that I wanted, several large dry docs, fabrication sheds, storage sheds, liquid tanks, parking, etc. all enclosed by a high fence, and a legacy drone on rail system, that's a hold-over from Shadowrun 4th Edition.
With the physical layout roughed out I turned over to the Matrix. At first, I envisioned this nautical themed host, with boats, and pirates, and parrot IC. This seemed like an amazing idea at first, but as I played with it more, and the physical location came together, the analogy fell apart. It simply was a pain to remember the pirate-centric theme as I developed the run. I realized, that if I couldn't remember the theme in planning, I wasn't going to remember it at the table.
With that in mind I sat back with a coffee and thought about the problem from a real world view. I've worked in web design, both front end, and back end development, and I wondered if I was handed the challenge of designing a Matrix host for a shipyard, what would it look like? How would I design it if I had to sit and maintain it day after day.
I started with the drones. I wanted legacy drones on a rail, with a smaller number of tracked drones inside, and a large group of worker drones in cradles and on charging pads around the 12 acre facility. All of these were represented in the Matrix by an icon that roughly mirrored their function. Welder drones looked like a MIG set, trundle drones looked like a hand cart, etc. Security drones used their default icon, and so would be immediately recognizable to my team, with a spot check, and possibly a knowledge check.
With the drones sorted, I moved on to the buildings. I theorized that with RFID tags, and smart inventory systems, there's no reason that the security rigger shouldn't be able to see the buildings contents, once he had a mark on the building's icon. With this in mind, I developed a layer-cake model for the buildings. Each building was an icon itself. Once a building was marked, the contents icons would become visible, and the building itself would become translucent. Each of these icons would display their contents, unless the container was secured, then it would have to be hacked, and marked, like any other icon. This lets me handle the large amount of material in a fairly natural way, without a cumbersome analogy.
Cranes, dry-dock controls, tenders, and other large machinery would be represented by their own icons. As if they were large drones themselves. As I thought about the cranes, and other large machines I couldn't think of a reason they wouldn't be rigger adapted. With rigger adaption you run the risk of your players deciding to drive a crane into the sound, which I guess I'll deal with if/when it happens.
As I looked over the notes I'd made I realized I still didn't have the objective mapped out, or the IC that would respond if the team botched something. I wanted to use the shipyard offices as the objective. I played with the idea of making the office building it's own host, or going even further and making the office a cable only, no wireless, location. However, making the office offline didn't seem to fit with the idea of this being a working shipyard.
So, I went with the building being a sub-host, with dedicated IC. When the team's rigger jumps into the building he's going to see a relatively standard office space. Devices, files, feeds, will all be represented as small icons similar to their physical self, and roughly co-located with their real world counterparts. I wanted to keep the feel of the real space as much as possible.
At that point, securing the objective data became trivial, the iconography worked for me, a safe, a digital representation of the data store, and the files within represented by manila folders.
I did take a minute to play with the icons of the IC. I wanted the offensive IC to be sculpted as welders, with the torches being their damage output. Marker IC would be represented by a worker, with a spray can, Patrol, would take the shape of a large junkyard dog, and the analogy continues. However, this is still a relatively natural jump. The IC's icons map to their real-world abilities, while providing some dramatic flair for the game, and the story.
Overall, I'm really happy with the session, and I'm curious if my players with actually play in the Matrix, as I've planned for them to do, or if they will try to scale the fence and simply wander around getting into trouble in meat-space without ever bothering to do more than check AR for drones. Only time will tell.
Friday, March 14, 2014
By the Numbers: Playing the Police
Piggy-backing on my previous post I'm going to go through a combative encounter with the Police, as I would run it if I was in game. This should help clear up some of the questions from my last post. If this goes well, I'll do more of these to help illustrate some of the other GM concepts I plan to cover in the future.
As with my previous example the party is trying to rob a store. Specifically they are looking for financial records related to Mafia money laundering in an other wise unassuming Mom & Pop shop. They choose to force the back door, assuming that the alley will give them the cover they need to work undisturbed. The store's back door is guarded by a keypad lock. The team's electronics guru goes to work on the case, making a Locksmith + Agility [Physical] test, and scoring a number of hits. This gets him access to the guts of the keypad. He then goes to work rewiring the internals.
For tests that may have Dramatic Consequences(tm) I will generally make the roll for my player, which some players don't like this, most enjoy the added dramatic tension, especially when I describe success, or failure, with some thematic flair.
On the second Locksmith + Agility [Physical] to rewire the internals I roll a glitch. Now, when I'm making rolls for my players I'll occasionally fudge a roll in their favor, It helps to keep the game moving, and helps to keep the story tight. However, I won't fudge a roll against a player. If they make a roll, great. This also changes depending on the experience of the group, if I have a veteran group, I don't fudge the dice. To each their own I guess. Anyway. A glitch is rolled, not a critical glitch, so the door does open. However, they have now tripped the alarm.
Once the alarm is tripped I start rolling a threat pool. Adding a die every minute of real time, or, every initiative pass. Whichever is greater. I use the professional rating of the threat as a limit to the test, raising that limit by 1 if a Lieutenant is present, or if combat is underway. Successes on this test determine the amount, of response. Especially for police this pool can grow quite large, and with a limit of 5, or higher, once combat is joined, and senior officers are on site the opposition can ramp up very quickly.
I'll fast-forward through the police response to the actual combat, using the method above the first officer arrive three rolls after the players tripped the alarm. I rolled a single success on three dice, and so a single car arrived, with one officer. Now, the question was asked in my previous post how professional rating effects the behavior of my threats. I'll get into the details a bit later, but at this point the difference in professional rating means that the officer isn't going to be stupid.
Pulling into the parking lot, lights, and spotlight shining into the store the officer takes cover behind the drivers side door, side arm readied. Now, the lights entering the store give a -3 dice penalty, and the officer gets to use the door as a barrier.
Once combat begins, the officer ends up wounded in the opening exchange. I like to view professional rating as a gauge for wound levels. For example, a professional rating 1 grunt is going to retreat at a light wound, anything equal to, or above, a -1 penalty. Simply put, they don't care enough to hang around. However, an officer with professional rating 3 is going to hang around up to a much more serious wound, and a -3 penalty. Also, professional rating determines how a threat will react up to the point where they retreat. For example, in the opening exchange of fire the officer takes three boxes of physical damage, for a -1 modifier. His immediate response is to switch from his side arm, to the shotgun in the cruiser, effectively increasing the lethality of his response.
At a -2 modifier, he's going to move towards the rear of the vehicle, increasing his cover. Also, at the higher professional rating he's more likely to keep calm, and radio effective instructions back to his superiors. This means that other units arriving on scene will arrive in more advantageous positions.
For example, let's take the same storefront. At professional rating 0, the opposition would flee at the first sound of gunfire. At professional rating 1, any backup would simply charge at the front door, and most likely end up in a meat grinder scenario. At 2, they might think about the alley in back, but the focus would still be on the front of the store, at 3, they have the back alley covered, and will work to limit escapes. At 4, or higher, things get really ugly for my players. Specialist opposition, vehicles, drones, snipers, well laid traps.
I always assume that a Runner is professional rating 4. So, at a professional rating 4, you're playing yourself. Anything my players might do, my opposition will do. At rating 5, or 6, the opposition is smarter, faster, better equipped and meaner then my team. I rarely see the need to go above 4 in my games. Police, at 3, with a Lieutenant, or a hardened security team are usually enough of a threat.
Remember, every initiative pass you're making that threat pool roll, each hit means more bad guys show up. Eventually if enough hits are rolled, I usually view it as when I reach a point where I'm losing hits due to the limit, the next group up the threat ladder responds. That might be a drone, or drones, or a SWAT team, whatever is appropriate. At that point the limit for your test goes up, and you keep rolling.
Also, when the team effectively neutralizes the threat, the pool resets. Let's assume that the officer responds, and in that opening volley he's killed. He's not had a chance to radio back, as he's not had his combat turn yet, so all dispatch knows is that he was sent to the store. At this point, the pool resets to zero, and I go back to adding a die a minute. It's a good way to teach players to deal with threats quickly, and cleanly, to prevent them from rapidly growing.
Well, I hope that helped flesh out a little bit in terms of how I handle professional rating in my games, as always, feel free to leave comments and I'll address them.
As with my previous example the party is trying to rob a store. Specifically they are looking for financial records related to Mafia money laundering in an other wise unassuming Mom & Pop shop. They choose to force the back door, assuming that the alley will give them the cover they need to work undisturbed. The store's back door is guarded by a keypad lock. The team's electronics guru goes to work on the case, making a Locksmith + Agility [Physical] test, and scoring a number of hits. This gets him access to the guts of the keypad. He then goes to work rewiring the internals.
For tests that may have Dramatic Consequences(tm) I will generally make the roll for my player, which some players don't like this, most enjoy the added dramatic tension, especially when I describe success, or failure, with some thematic flair.
On the second Locksmith + Agility [Physical] to rewire the internals I roll a glitch. Now, when I'm making rolls for my players I'll occasionally fudge a roll in their favor, It helps to keep the game moving, and helps to keep the story tight. However, I won't fudge a roll against a player. If they make a roll, great. This also changes depending on the experience of the group, if I have a veteran group, I don't fudge the dice. To each their own I guess. Anyway. A glitch is rolled, not a critical glitch, so the door does open. However, they have now tripped the alarm.
Once the alarm is tripped I start rolling a threat pool. Adding a die every minute of real time, or, every initiative pass. Whichever is greater. I use the professional rating of the threat as a limit to the test, raising that limit by 1 if a Lieutenant is present, or if combat is underway. Successes on this test determine the amount, of response. Especially for police this pool can grow quite large, and with a limit of 5, or higher, once combat is joined, and senior officers are on site the opposition can ramp up very quickly.
I'll fast-forward through the police response to the actual combat, using the method above the first officer arrive three rolls after the players tripped the alarm. I rolled a single success on three dice, and so a single car arrived, with one officer. Now, the question was asked in my previous post how professional rating effects the behavior of my threats. I'll get into the details a bit later, but at this point the difference in professional rating means that the officer isn't going to be stupid.
Pulling into the parking lot, lights, and spotlight shining into the store the officer takes cover behind the drivers side door, side arm readied. Now, the lights entering the store give a -3 dice penalty, and the officer gets to use the door as a barrier.
Once combat begins, the officer ends up wounded in the opening exchange. I like to view professional rating as a gauge for wound levels. For example, a professional rating 1 grunt is going to retreat at a light wound, anything equal to, or above, a -1 penalty. Simply put, they don't care enough to hang around. However, an officer with professional rating 3 is going to hang around up to a much more serious wound, and a -3 penalty. Also, professional rating determines how a threat will react up to the point where they retreat. For example, in the opening exchange of fire the officer takes three boxes of physical damage, for a -1 modifier. His immediate response is to switch from his side arm, to the shotgun in the cruiser, effectively increasing the lethality of his response.
At a -2 modifier, he's going to move towards the rear of the vehicle, increasing his cover. Also, at the higher professional rating he's more likely to keep calm, and radio effective instructions back to his superiors. This means that other units arriving on scene will arrive in more advantageous positions.
For example, let's take the same storefront. At professional rating 0, the opposition would flee at the first sound of gunfire. At professional rating 1, any backup would simply charge at the front door, and most likely end up in a meat grinder scenario. At 2, they might think about the alley in back, but the focus would still be on the front of the store, at 3, they have the back alley covered, and will work to limit escapes. At 4, or higher, things get really ugly for my players. Specialist opposition, vehicles, drones, snipers, well laid traps.
I always assume that a Runner is professional rating 4. So, at a professional rating 4, you're playing yourself. Anything my players might do, my opposition will do. At rating 5, or 6, the opposition is smarter, faster, better equipped and meaner then my team. I rarely see the need to go above 4 in my games. Police, at 3, with a Lieutenant, or a hardened security team are usually enough of a threat.
Remember, every initiative pass you're making that threat pool roll, each hit means more bad guys show up. Eventually if enough hits are rolled, I usually view it as when I reach a point where I'm losing hits due to the limit, the next group up the threat ladder responds. That might be a drone, or drones, or a SWAT team, whatever is appropriate. At that point the limit for your test goes up, and you keep rolling.
Also, when the team effectively neutralizes the threat, the pool resets. Let's assume that the officer responds, and in that opening volley he's killed. He's not had a chance to radio back, as he's not had his combat turn yet, so all dispatch knows is that he was sent to the store. At this point, the pool resets to zero, and I go back to adding a die a minute. It's a good way to teach players to deal with threats quickly, and cleanly, to prevent them from rapidly growing.
Well, I hope that helped flesh out a little bit in terms of how I handle professional rating in my games, as always, feel free to leave comments and I'll address them.
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