Trust and betrayal in Shadowrun ?

[silva]

Stahl, a sandbox is characterized by the players driven the game, not necessarily their characters.

Don't you agree ?

[Mistborn]

silva shut up. Seriously just shut the fuck up. What ever you are on about we don't care and have no interest in helping you because you are a smarmgargler.

It's clear you are just here to gargle smarm at this point. Remember the last stupid thread you started about "muh immersion", you know what kills the immersion? The exact scenario that you are just wanking off about now, that's fucking what. Either you are dumb and incoherent or you are trolling us.

Which one is it?

[Stahlseele]

Stahl, a sandbox is characterized by the players driven the game, not necessarily their characters.

Don't you agree ?

Err . . no . .
That is, basically, the paranoia approach of throw away characters, one clone afer the other, players stay the same and carry on their agenda, because the clones want to do their thing and they all know it . .
But that does not work in the universe of shadowrun.

In shadowrun, each character is supposed to have his or her own agenda, depending on the player. True. For a really dumb example:
Character one is in the italian mob/mafia and wants to further the goals his capo has set for their group, because he will be rewarded for that.
Character two is in the japanese mob/yakuza and wants to further the goals his oyabun has set for their group, because he will be rewarded for that.

In your approach, the player would have one end goal, but for some reason, both of these characters are supposed to be working towards that same goal that the player set.

The PLAYERS goal is to have fun. That can mean many things. It could mean following the rails to see where the train will end up at. It could mean killing the train driver and driving the train backwards off of the rails completely.

The group can't work of there is no group because the characters are meaningless and interchangeable in this kind of game you propose, if i understand that correctly.

[Sakuya Izayoi]

This theoretical game sounds insanely dull to run. If I'm at the helm of the game, I want to present a scenario with an achievable win state, and an enemy that doesn't pull punches, with cooperation and coordination being key to victory.

If they wanna say "fuck your wannabe novelist bullshit," that's their prerogative, but instead of running a game where we all go to Pizza Hut instead, or everyone murders each other for the lulz, we could just play Magic Tea Party LARP and I get to make a character too. The rules would probably be an improvement too.

[silva]

@Sak: so, you dont like sandboxes then ? (not making any moral judgement here, just an honest comment)

@Stahl: I'll comment your post when I get home. My cell is a chore to write big texts.

[Stahlseele]

You do that, i'll go to bed now.

[Dogbert]

What about this:

A cut-throat Shadowrun campaign would be all about the story (or a specific location) not necessarily the characters.

That's basically the way people used to play in 1993. Not my cup of tea but hey, "old is new again" and all that, so you're sure to be able to find people who'll be all over that.

[TiaC]

Remember the last stupid thread you started about "muh immersion",

The immersion thread wasn't started by silva, he just came in to shit in it.

[Longes]

Thanks for the input, guys. It's pretty in line with my own experience, aka its almost impossible to do in long-term campaigns. The games where I've seen this work more or less well are games prone to short to mid-length campaigns. So perhaps one could apply that logic to Shadowrun.

What about this:

A cut-throat Shadowrun campaign would be all about the story (or a specific location) not necessarily the characters. So each player would create a character having in mind this character could die or walk away from the group at any minute. This char would be working with the team out of obligation or necessity, but his primary agenda would be personal (and possibly at odds with the rest of the group). Then, when PvP takes on and shit hits the fan for this character, he would walk away ( probably having betrayed someone else in the group) or simply die in the process, and another char takes his place in the group.

The end result is a sort of "troupe play" where in the long run each player has a "stable" of characters whose lives intersect each other players characters through temporary teams, marked by betrayals, rivalries or even camaraderie and friendships. The story wouldn't be about the characters, it would be about the locale or aspect that bind those characters, so it could be "Chronicles of the Barrens" or "Corp Hitters" or whatever. Perhaps XP is given for accomplishing personal goals, while money and rep are gained by accomplishing missions, so the players should reach for a balance, which ensure betrayals would continue happening some times.

Thoughts ?

Beyond all the possible player problems, there's a story problem as well. Why would anyone competent agree to work with the remaining group members after their first few missions? They are either backstabing bastards, or unlucky enough to always work with backstabing bastards. Either way, there are better teams to work with.

Trust and betrayal thing just doesn't work very well in campaigns, because by its very nature it's a one time thing. Reservoir Dogs can't have a sequel, because everyone is either dead, or would never ever talk to the other survivors. And, frankly, it would be boring. Having an interparty conflict after one mission is new and exciting. Having it after every mission is boring and highly unprofessional.

[radthemad4]

I have a semi regular chaotic stupid player who likes attacking the other players for fun. He'd inevitably betray the party, and everyone else enjoys dogpiling him the moment he does as much as he enjoys attacking them (they also like making fun of him for stupid dialogue, actions and/or tactics). Granted, they're always expecting it, it's just become tradition. After a while I just decided to make him, 'assistant MC' and give him a random monster or character to control during an encounter. Everyone wins!

However, if you were to handle this seriously, I'd probably go the Star Wars route of handing over the sheet to the MC (discuss what the character does between when occasions when the party meets them with the MC outside game time) once you leave the party's proximity, and making a new character who hangs out with the party. This requires extra work on the MC's part but if they're fine with it, I think it could work.

[Blade]

A campaign where players have a stable of characters can be interesting, but you need to agree on how players can switch characters and how the GM can use unused PCs as NPCs.

But once again, you need to play in a game universe where this is possible. If the cost of betraying the team is too heavy, no one will ever do it.

[kzt]

Players will normally have their characters drop EVERYTHING else and go hunt down people who betray them. Whether it's another character, the Johnson, it doesn't matter. It's all revenge, all the time. So once you do that you have made that what the campaign is going to be all about.

[Dogbert]

Obviously, this whole Fiasco-like pitch would require player buy-in in advance (much like Fiasco itself), otherwise players will react as intended (i.e pre-emptively shooting each other) and that will be a very short game.

There's a reason why Paranoia is a parody of all things Gygax, not an actual thing.

[Beaumis]

Back when I was a kid Fasa ran promo games. Basically if you clocked time GM'ing SR you got paid in product. Since everyone wanted in on the action, we had a group of ~30 people, all rotating to play and GM. We'd meet once a week and organize into semi random groups to play.

The unwritten rule was that everyone was in the same gameworld. So everything that happened at one table also took place at another. A few times groups of GMs planned overarching stories but for the most part there was no grand design behind it and a lot of runs ended up being character driven because people invariably went off script and did their own thing. Although friendships and alliances between runners formed, this was an enviroment in which every character was free to do what he wanted without being burdened by team loyalties and GMs went for the "Johnson fucks you over" plot quite regularly. The great thing about it was that things that rarely happen in "normal" play happened all the time there. In a friends group, turning down a run means playing something else for night. In that enviroment it meant walking to another table. We had people turn down runs and we had people '"call friends" who would then join their table to fill holes in the team. We had rumors going around, players standing in for or becoming contacts and quite a bit of PvP.

However, despite a complete lack of rules or formal code, backstabbings rarely happened. Not because people were nice to each other but simply because word always got around somehow and someone (or multiple someones) would remember a cool run they pulled with the victim and decided to go bring the backstabber to justice. Some would do it out of sense of responsibility or justice and some because they felt letting it slide would encourage the offender and put themselves at risk.
Interestingly, those rules applied to GMs and their Johnsons as much as they did to players. A GM that made a rep for screwing people over excessively quickly found himself without players (or the wrong kind that noone else would take), while Johnsons couldn't even get people to go to the meet once it became clear it was them.

Long story short, the kind of game silva describes was tried there more than once and all of them met the same fate. Players either died or walked away from the GM until the bad rep preceded both the GM and his NPCs. The moral of the story is: not even the corps can get away with fucking the runners over all the time because if they do they'd quickly find that every professional ever keeps their distance and the only ones that do step up are trigger happy idiots that are about as likely to kill the scientist as they are to extract him.

People play to see progress that they caused. A game were progress means time passes isn't fun. You might as well watch a movie.

[Neurosis]

Sak, Stahl,

I'm not referring to external betrayals (like the traditional Jonhson one), I'm referring to intra-party tension and betrayal, as seen on some heist/criminal fiction on movies and books.

I have inserted this into my Shadowrun games using the bold new storytelling technique I call GMing.