Tim Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Originally posted by Klytus I've not seen anyone mention this yet: a GM who gets bored with the present campaign, and decides to have players make up characters for an entirely different game, and then start that game before the last one was finished! I can't count the number of times our former GM used to do this too us. And once, he did it just before the climactic much-anticipated big-battle in a Werewolf game. Campaignus Interuptus. Roll 1d6, that is the number of seesions, including character creation session, that it lasts. As you can see, Its happened to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormraven Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 One of my pet peeves from any GM is when they have a set expectation of how everyone (in their minds, anyway) should respond to a situation, and if the PC has a different response, the GM calls it 'bad roleplaying'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klytus Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Originally posted by Von D-Man If the GM treats the players like a bunch of PFCs, however... The GM had a very specific story he wanted to tell. Our characters, although were were all fighter pilots, were treated like PFCs, and were essentially window-dressing as his "adventure" unfolded. Forgive me, this experience still leaves a bad taste in my mouth... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomeAsianKid Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 I can entirely sympathize with the interupting of campaigns. For several months my gaming group kept switching game systems, gm's, storylines, etc. Finally I kept insisting that if we switched, we would have to start out high levels. Everyone thought I was powergaming, but I was just sick of starting out at level 1, hitting like level 7, having hopes and aspirations of building up and getting to do stuff, and then we would switch campaigns. It's like getting stuck doing gradeschool over and over again, and never getting to go on to highschool. I just wanted to play with the big boys, damn it. =/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zed-F Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Is this the type of thing you are talking about? If so, I don't really see a difference except in scale and scenery. To some degree, yes. The PCs should at least have the option to do things that would give them some purpose beyond mere existence. Whether they choose to is of course up to them. Escaping with your skin is part of it, and there may be sessions devoted to just that, but it shouldn't have to be the be-all and end-all of every or even most sessions. Maybe we should start a different thread for this...No need, I think we're done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuckg Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Originally posted by Klytus The GM had a very specific story he wanted to tell. Our characters, although were were all fighter pilots, were treated like PFCs, and were essentially window-dressing as his "adventure" unfolded. Forgive me, this experience still leaves a bad taste in my mouth... OK, now *that's* wrong. Not because it was a military campaign, but because it had a railroaded script. Any campaign, even if it's six random characters meeting in a bar, dies like a dog with that railroaded a script. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghost-angel Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Originally posted by Von D-Man I don't. Anyone who pays for illicit services up front from untested criminals with no insurance policy in place is... unwise. Especially when the business is assassination. The scenario sounded extremely realistic to me. Now, if the GM wanted to he could decide the executee was fronting for a more powerful organization, or was very well liked and respected by some hard to amuse types, and give the PCs a world of trouble for the murder. Just like its unwise to give killers you don't know all the money up-front, its unwise to kill an idiot if you don't know who he works for... It's not realistic. In fact it's the complete opposite. Illegal operations like assassination survive on one thing and one thing only: services paid for = services rendered. Hollywood has so thuroughly screwed the cyberpunk genre I start foaming at the mouth whenever I start hearing people go on about some idiot tanget regarding the half now/half later bs. Go purchase the services of a real assassin, I gaurauntee that 1) nothing gets done until you pay in full, 2) the payee does not shoot the payor. At worst case you say, "thanks" and walk away with all the cash - no need to shoot anyone - because that's STUPID! you do not randomly shoot anyone in a genre designed to be excessively lethal - Bad Things happen. Go read some cyberpunk books .. at no point is anyone shot like this. Even in Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties the uber-assassin does not kill his employer (who paid UP FRONT) until after said employer start messing with him. RPGs are killing cyberpunk dammit - and I'm mad as hell about it. back to the game .. were I the GM I would have said "ok, too bad each of you took a round to the head from the smipers he had covering him. Make new characters - take off fifty points." But I'm a bastard that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuckg Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Well, in the real world, it might go down the way he said. It is realistic that amoral scum who kill people for money will, well, kill somebody for his money. In the genre world, on the other hand, shooting and looting the client out of hand does not happen -- and if it ever does, the guilty party suffers instant professional ostracism as soon as the word gets out. Four-color superhero worlds assume 'Codes vs. Killing" on all the PCs as a default, and cyberpunk worlds assume "Code of Honor -- Stays Bought" on the PCs as a default. Not to mention what the gentleman said -- "Johnsons" (as us old Shadowrun players used to call clients) tended to make a habit of bringing security cover to meets, precisely so that any belligerent would-be hirelings got themselves dead. One of the reasons *why* it was in your best interests to stay bought. Not to mention the old standby of meeting in public places. As an aside, my favorite meeting place for Johnsons is an airport cafe. a) You can't bring guns into an airport. Assuming that you're a red-shot weapons smuggler, there's still the fact that you damn sure can't show or use weapons in an airport. c) You have absolutely no idea if your Johnson lives in your city -- or just got off a plane from Abu Dhabi -- or is very shortly going to get *on* a plane to Abu Dhabi. Or anywhere else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supreme Serpent Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Originally posted by Chuckg c) You have absolutely no idea if your Johnson lives in your city -- or just got off a plane from Abu Dhabi -- or is very shortly going to get *on* a plane to Abu Dhabi. Or anywhere else. That's what your Deckers are for. Ok, now entirely off topic... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomeAsianKid Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Deckers? Who needs those losers? My 6yr old Otaku could outhink an army of them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug McCrae Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Originally posted by ghost-angel Go purchase the services of a real assassin, I gaurauntee that 1) nothing gets done until you pay in full, 2) the payee does not shoot the payor. How do you know? Err... uh oh. Sorry to question you. You just say whatever you want, Mister Ghost-Angel sir. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vondy Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Originally posted by ghost-angel It's not realistic. In fact it's the complete opposite. Illegal operations like assassination survive on one thing and one thing only: services paid for = services rendered. I'm not talking about genre. I'm talking about real life. If you are a professional criminal (and have half a brain) you don't do business with people you don't know, haven't done business with before, or don't have a reference from someone you do know or have done business with before. And if you do have to do business with someone under those circumstances you bring muscle with guns in a neutral environment. Yes, sane people in established, long-terms criminal operations understand the "rules," but not all criminals (especially violent ones) are sane, and not everyone has the cliched criminal's code of honor. Real life history is rife with examples of criminals or groups that don't abide with this fictional sacrosanct code. There is a reason contraband and illicit property exchanges are cash on delivery, and there is a reason violent crimes are half now, half upon completion - even when you know the guy. Its not because everyone trusts one another. Its because the criminal world is not a place for trusting idiots. Double crosses, especially when large sums of money are on the line, are not unheard of. The guy hired assassins he had never worked with before with no muscle present, and no insurance policy in place, and gave them the entire amount up front. As a genre consideration I understand what you're saying, but as a person who spent several years investigating felonies for the defense I can tell you the criminal world contains a lot of amoral bastards who don't live by nice, clean genre principles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckB Posted March 17, 2004 Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Originally posted by ghost-angel It's not realistic. In fact it's the complete opposite. Illegal operations like assassination survive on one thing and one thing only: services paid for = services rendered. Hollywood has so thuroughly screwed the cyberpunk genre I start foaming at the mouth whenever I start hearing people go on about some idiot tanget regarding the half now/half later bs. Go purchase the services of a real assassin, I gaurauntee that 1) nothing gets done until you pay in full, 2) the payee does not shoot the payor. At worst case you say, "thanks" and walk away with all the cash - no need to shoot anyone - because that's STUPID! you do not randomly shoot anyone in a genre designed to be excessively lethal - Bad Things happen. The PC who did this is also putting the other PCs in a bad situation. Besides losing a possible recurring client , who knows who he is/was connected to ? The smart thing would be for the PCs to kill off the loose cannon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Mind Master Posted March 17, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2004 Originally posted by Von D-Man I'm not talking about genre. I'm talking about real life. There is a reason contraband and illicit property exchanges are cash on delivery, and there is a reason violent crimes are half now, half upon completion - even when you know the guy. The guy hired assassins he had never worked with before with no muscle present, and no insurance policy in place, and gave them the entire amount up front. As a genre consideration I understand what you're saying, but as a person who spent several years investigating felonies for the defense I can tell you the criminal world contains a lot of amoral bastards who don't live by nice, clean genre principles. Regardless that such a thing might well happen in real life, it is by no means the only thing that could happen in real life. In other words, the player didn't have to take this route to remain "in character". Anyway, it seems to me that the discussion IS really about the genre of a game, and whether this was fair to the GM, and not about whether there might be some crazies out there who might actually do this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayday Posted March 18, 2004 Report Share Posted March 18, 2004 Originally posted by Klytus I've not seen anyone mention this yet: a GM who gets bored with the present campaign, and decides to have players make up characters for an entirely different game, and then start that game before the last one was finished! I can't count the number of times our former GM used to do this too us. We didn't get to finish that campaign either. Wow. I cant recall EVER a game that didnt end before the end. Never ended them just before a climactic battle or anything, but none where we could say "My leige, here is your daughter safe returned" and ride into the sunset. All of our games are on hiatus, IE dead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomeAsianKid Posted March 18, 2004 Report Share Posted March 18, 2004 Back to the premature death of games, I can't tell everyone here the amount of times I have made a character, spent hours on character concept, write up a back story, a psy. evaluation, drawn three character sketches, and on the day of the game be told, "oh, we're not gonna run it." That and the several times my group tried to run a campaign with multiple gm's (one gm would run an adventure and then pass it to another) one gm would just stop doing anything and then end the campaign. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KA. Posted March 18, 2004 Report Share Posted March 18, 2004 Originally posted by Von D-Man I'm not talking about genre. I'm talking about real life. If you are a professional criminal (and have half a brain) you don't do business with people you don't know, haven't done business with before, or don't have a reference from someone you do know or have done business with before. And if you do have to do business with someone under those circumstances you bring muscle with guns in a neutral environment. Yes, sane people in established, long-terms criminal operations understand the "rules," but not all criminals (especially violent ones) are sane, and not everyone has the cliched criminal's code of honor. Real life history is rife with examples of criminals or groups that don't abide with this fictional sacrosanct code. There is a reason contraband and illicit property exchanges are cash on delivery, and there is a reason violent crimes are half now, half upon completion - even when you know the guy. Its not because everyone trusts one another. Its because the criminal world is not a place for trusting idiots. Double crosses, especially when large sums of money are on the line, are not unheard of. The guy hired assassins he had never worked with before with no muscle present, and no insurance policy in place, and gave them the entire amount up front. As a genre consideration I understand what you're saying, but as a person who spent several years investigating felonies for the defense I can tell you the criminal world contains a lot of amoral bastards who don't live by nice, clean genre principles. Von D-Man, I agree with you on the "real world", but I see it as a problem in a game. There are also plenty of rapists in the real world, but unless a Character had a boatload of Psych Lims that added up to: "Rapist with no Self-Control" and "Death Wish", (not that I would want a character like that in a campaign I ran anyway) if the group was supposed to be recovering the kidnapped daughter of a crime lord, and as soon as they found her one Character said: "I'm raping her.", I would figure they just wanted to screw the campaign too. Criminals double-cross each other all the time, but if you create a climate where you have to be utterly paranoid at all times, it is hard to get anything done. And, if a player pulled what was originally described on me, I would feel totally justified in kicking up the "realism" as much as the players seemed to want. Which means that after a few sessions, (enough time for the family or associates of the first employer to find out what had happened), they would be lured into an ambush. Not an "unrealistic" ambush with some chance of escape, but a "realistic" ambush, with 3 to 4 snipers per character, waiting for simultaneous head shots when they were at DCV 0. Give the players what they want, that's my motto. KA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghost-angel Posted March 18, 2004 Report Share Posted March 18, 2004 Originally posted by Doug McCrae How do you know? Err... uh oh. Sorry to question you. You just say whatever you want, Mister Ghost-Angel sir. cute Common Sense. let's apply a few factors and see what we can conclude. 1) All persons known by the Victim are immediately placed on the Suspect List. As are all persons connected to the Victim. They are removed from the suspect list with varying degrees of quickness. 2) If I am hiring someone to murder someone else I never ever, under ANY circumstances, want to see the person I'm hiring again. EVER. I'm already distancing myself from the murder, why get closer again. I need Mr Albright, VP of RnD, 'removed' so I can take his place. I need someone to do this so I start going down channels. I get a guy to hire some trigger men. The guy I hire doesn't want to see me again, I don't want to see him again. I pay him upfront to get the job done. Mr Johnson (for the Shadowrunners..) goes to the streets and gets Perpetual Criminals (PCs) to be the triggermen. Now, Mr Johnson also never wants to see these guys again if he can help it. If they're caught on tape or if something goes wrong he does not want them trying to come back for their "second half." This sounds like a Bad Idea. He pays them in full up front, because this is what the PCs do FOR A LIVING there is the assumption that they will not stop suddenly doing this for some random reason. Oddly enough, criminals work a odd basis of trust. Yes, there are always those who do not obey the "unwritten rules" and usually those are the ones caught, incarcerated and killed - The System weeding out the useless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrosshairCollie Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 With the cyberpunk thing ... Yes, it is feasible that the characters could have responded in the way they did ... but only if they never had any intentions of getting hired again. The guy who gave them the money was probably a nameless corp flunky, probably wired so that his boss heard everything. So now, all those PCs have names up on the 'Net saying what they did. No jobs until they expend a LOT of effort getting new identities. If they were 'real' mercs, they wouldn't pull crap like that. Though I would probably have gone either the sniper route, or a bomb in the briefcase, myself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hugh Neilson Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 Originally posted by CrosshairCollie With the cyberpunk thing ... Yes, it is feasible that the characters could have responded in the way they did ... but only if they never had any intentions of getting hired again. The guy who gave them the money was probably a nameless corp flunky, probably wired so that his boss heard everything. So now, all those PCs have names up on the 'Net saying what they did. No jobs until they expend a LOT of effort getting new identities. If they were 'real' mercs, they wouldn't pull crap like that. Though I would probably have gone either the sniper route, or a bomb in the briefcase, myself. OK, I could be missing the boat here. I don't play cyberpunk and I'm not familiar with the genre. But knocking off the employer never seems like a good move. Similarly "in genre", why wouldn't other mercenary groups pretend to be an employer in order to get my group into an ambush situation so they can kill us all of and have less competition for future jobs? Seems a fitting result for the "kill the employer" group. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Watcher Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 Originally posted by Hermit Guilty of letting the gods chat occaisionally with the PCs here.. in select campaigns if it fits the setting. *Admits* They seem to enjoy it actually Especially the camparigns in which you're playing a god. Divine beings are a legitimate super hero concept, as Thor has proven. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuckg Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 Originally posted by Hugh Neilson Similarly "in genre", why wouldn't other mercenary groups pretend to be an employer in order to get my group into an ambush situation so they can kill us all of and have less competition for future jobs? Seems a fitting result for the "kill the employer" group. SF reference -- "The Nano Flower", by Peter F. Hamilton. In the opening vignette, one of the protagonists -- Suzi -- the leader of her own mercenary industrial espionage squad -- has just finished a very difficult three-month contract to infiltrate a secure corp facility and steal a valuable trade secret. She goes to her meet, meets her corporate Johnson, hands it over, and gets paid a half million(*). And she's happy as a clam. Until her most hated rival in the mercenary biz -- a psycho called Leol Reiger -- walks on over and says 'Hi, Suzi! That 'corp suit' you were just talking to? He's actually an actor. And he works for *me*. XYZ Corp is paying me *five* million for the gizmo... and I didn't even have to work for it. I just had to subcontract all the hard parts to *you*... for one-tenth of what I'm making. "You never did learn how to do a deep enough background check on a client, did you Suzi? "Have a nice day." Imagine how bummed Suzi felt. (*) Which is pretty big money for the setting -- just as five million is truly bodacious money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
freakboy6117 Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 this is why i always run my cyberpunk payments via third party agents(aka fixers) and digital escrow via data havens. that way no one can rip off the other guy. normally I offer a fixed pre operation expenses via a anonymous electronic cash card. half now half later doesn't work either what's to stop the client disapearing once the jobs done or for that matter the employee taking the first half and then going to the target and letting them know that such and such has ordered a hit against them in exhange for another payment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckB Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 I know that in most cyberpunk games situations are a little more "high octane" , but even with that caveat , it still seems extremely reckless to kill off a potential customer who may represent scary people. Were I one of the other PCs in that game , I'd be pissed off and kind of nervous over the other yahoo's actions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
animemun001 Posted March 19, 2004 Report Share Posted March 19, 2004 hmm well lets see most annoying habit. I would have to say the most annoying habit would be when he giggles before any type of ambush. Then complains when we beat the thugs. Also when he leaves plot hanging out the window before starting a game...not much fun when you create a vigilante NPC that has no motive to be a vigilante Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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