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Message no. 1
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Shannon Buys)
Subject: Multi-threaded campaigns and educating new players
Date: Tue Jun 11 08:00:03 2002
After years of same old go on the run get paid etc. I tried a novel approach
with a new group. Please note for future reference NEW.

Anyway, first thing is a multi-threaded story, different things are
happening at the same time like a gang war in the neighbourhood, Renraku
doing experiments on building a better cyberzombie and characters friends
going missing. As well as the characters personal laundry being thrown in
(I'm playing through an addept being chosen by her totem).

Also, the gameplay is open ended. Basically I do research on a whole bunch
of runs, and they decide on which ones they take and which ones they refuse
as some of them are humdingers. Anyway, it seems that I have many of my
players totally confused as to what is actually going on, half of them think
everything is related to one story (after I informed everyone of the
multithreaded story), Some seem to be enjoying it, others complain that I'm
running it too fast and being new players/shadowrunners, they need time to
learn about Seattle and the world around them.

Which brings me to my second topic, how do I educate characters quickly and
bring them up to speed on how to be a big grown up profesional shadowrunner?

I'm thinking of abandoning the multithreaded campaign for a while and
serving them "follow the yellow brick road, kiddie adventures/runs/storys"
where each one familiarises them with one aspect of Shadowrun e.g.
Decking/Matrix/Corporate security/Governmental system/corporations etc.

Eventually when they're all grown up Shadowrunners, I'll take them back to
having to think for themselves. Sorry, I appear really sarcastic here, but I
guess I'm just slightly miffed at this bunch of players that don't
appreciate my well laid plans. They're pretty intelligent, adult rpg'ers
(18 - 27). We've kind of sorted out the 18yrold "Murder Death Kill munchkin
combat monster" by some quiet threatening to force him to play a pacifist,
quadruplegic decker if his bodycount starts becoming an issue or he becomes
out of hand in any way.

Basically I'd like to know if any GM's have tried this approach to games and
or had to educate new players and how they did it.

ok, shoot..

*puts away spraycan, looks both ways and sprints for alleyway*
Message no. 2
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Lone Eagle)
Subject: Multi-threaded campaigns and educating new players
Date: Tue Jun 11 09:30:01 2002
>From: "Shannon Buys" <shannon@******.com>
<Snip>
>Basically I'd like to know if any GM's have tried this approach to games
>and
>or had to educate new players and how they did it.

Educating new players we did fairly quickly (I'm lucky as I'm one of two
Shadowrun GMs running the same "campaign") by simply dropping them in at the
deep end. We set them up, gave them all access to SR3 and left them with the
intel. We switched games the week after, did two months of other things,
mostly AD&D, until we started to have people saying, "I've got a great plan,
when are we doing shadowrun again?" and shifted back. Everyone knew what
their character was capable of, some had an idea what other people were
capable of and everyone threw something into the pot when it came to the
planning, if it hadn't been for the slight cock up with the descent harness
(see Badly Hosed Scenes) it would have come off as pretty close to the
perfect run!

We haven't yet tried the multithread story, although we're starting to come
up to the corp wars (we're way behind the times) and we'll be pulling so
many runs out that the runners will have a choice of loads, they'll have to
turn down lots, some of them real biggies!
One thing we are doing however is occasionally running a cakewalk, the
'runners do all their planning all their prep, all their legwork, they go in
and nothing goes wrong, it's quite fun to watch them getting more and more
paranoid as the run goes on.

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Message no. 3
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Shannon Buys)
Subject: Multi-threaded campaigns and educating new players
Date: Tue Jun 11 10:15:01 2002
Lone Eagle sed:
<snipt>
>We haven't yet tried the multithread story, although we're starting to come
>up to the corp wars (we're way behind the times) and we'll be pulling so
>many runs out that the runners will have a choice of loads, they'll have to
>turn down lots, some of them real biggies!
>One thing we are doing however is occasionally running a cakewalk, the
>'runners do all their planning all their prep, all their legwork, they go
in
>and nothing goes wrong, it's quite fun to watch them getting more and more
>paranoid as the run goes on.

Corp wars? Is that Blood in the boardroom?
Message no. 4
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Gurth)
Subject: Multi-threaded campaigns and educating new players
Date: Tue Jun 11 13:25:12 2002
According to Shannon Buys, on Tue, 11 Jun 2002 the word on the street was...

> Anyway, first thing is a multi-threaded story, different things are
> happening at the same time like a gang war in the neighbourhood, Renraku
> doing experiments on building a better cyberzombie and characters friends
> going missing. As well as the characters personal laundry being thrown in
> (I'm playing through an addept being chosen by her totem).

Good, this should get the idea into their minds that the world doesn't
revolve around them -- it will go on even if they do nothing, and if they
do (chose to) affect it, other stuff will also continue to happen that they
have no effect on.

> Also, the gameplay is open ended. Basically I do research on a whole
> bunch of runs, and they decide on which ones they take and which ones
> they refuse as some of them are humdingers.

That seems like a very good idea, but I suspect it will give you a lot of
pre-game work... OTOH it makes the world a lot more real, and you likely
won't have players thinking to themselves, "I don't like the idea of this
run, but the GM spent a lot of time on it so I'll go through with it
anyway..."

> Which brings me to my second topic, how do I educate characters quickly
> and bring them up to speed on how to be a big grown up profesional
> shadowrunner?

That's always difficult. Your idea of starting them off with simple runs is
probably best, I'd say, especially if you give them runs that show a lot of
different stuff that goes on in the Sixth World. For example, don't base
them all around how megacorps compete with each other, but do one corporate
adventure, one with street gangs, have the next involve a toxic shaman, and
so on.

Also, encourage them to read the books. Not only Cannon Companion, but
rather the "in-world" sourcebooks, as well as the novels. Even if they just
browse through the location sourcebooks, they'll get _some_ idea of what's
going on.

> Basically I'd like to know if any GM's have tried this approach to games
> and or had to educate new players and how they did it.

One thing I did a couple of years ago was type up a short history of the
Sixth World, similar to the And So It Came To Pass... chapter of the SR3
rulebook, but with a summary of the important rules added on, and print it
out for each of the players. The idea was that this way, they would have
the important stuff at hand and could read it when they had the time,
without having to borrow books from me. The only thing is, I suspect most
of them didn't actually read most of it :(

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Little ever changes, if anything at all
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Message no. 5
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Dan Turek)
Subject: Multi-threaded campaigns and educating new players
Date: Tue Jun 11 14:25:00 2002
>From: "Shannon Buys" <shannon@******.com>
>
>Anyway, first thing is a multi-threaded story, different things are
>happening at the same time
>Also, the gameplay is open ended. Basically I do research on a whole bunch
>of runs, and they decide on which ones they take and which ones they refuse

We've always done this, but it does pose several problems.

Creative thinkers handle it well, but people who are used to a (single)
storyline get confused easily. People can learn things, but usually do NOT
change as far as thinking style, becoming a leader rather than a follower,
etc.

It allows the campaign to get VERY messy. In D&D I let my players go
wherever they wanted, (I have almost all the issues of Dungeon and several
other advenures, so grabbing one isn't a problem) but there were 5 main
plotlines. They would encounter one, solve it (or complicate it) and then
move on to somewhere else. Now they have so many uncompleted adventures and
list of bad guys to choose from that they want to go to another continent!

If the players refuse a mission, there should be consequences. Eventually
one power overcomes the others, etc. and the PCs will not have had any voice
in it other than refusing to commit.

The way I've seen it work best is in Bob's campaign. We have had
simultaneous adventures, and most sessions start with him having a tiny
adventure for each character. The decker usually just has to make a couple
computer tests, the rigger makes one driving roll, etc. and each has a
snippet of storyline (almost always unrelated to each other). If the
character wishes to dig deeper, any of them can become full missions in
time. If no one goes after it, then he defaults to the "so and so gets a
call" regular adventure. Since, for a moment each player has to work on
their own it can be a quick way of educating newbies, but keep it simple or
they will get bogged down and everyone else will get bored.

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Message no. 6
From: shadowrn@*********.com (Jane VR)
Subject: Multi-threaded campaigns and educating new players
Date: Tue Jun 11 20:55:01 2002
>From: "Shannon Buys" <shannon@******.com>


>I'm thinking of abandoning the multithreaded campaign for a while and
>serving them "follow the yellow brick road, kiddie adventures/runs/storys"
>where each one familiarises them with one aspect of Shadowrun e.g.
>Decking/Matrix/Corporate security/Governmental system/corporations etc.

This sounds like a good idea, but you don't necessarily have to abandon the
big campaign to do it. Use the simple runs to clarify some of the things
they got confused about, and let them consolidate their world knowledge
while learning the rules, before you advance the story too much. Let it
simmer away in the background for a bit, until you think they are ready.

Jane



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Message no. 7
From: shadowrn@*********.com (shadowrn@*********.com)
Subject: Multi-threaded campaigns and educating new players
Date: Sun Jun 16 23:00:01 2002
shannon@******.com writes:
> Which brings me to my second topic, how do I educate characters quickly and
> bring them up to speed on how to be a big grown up profesional
shadowrunner?
>
> I'm thinking of abandoning the multithreaded campaign for a while and
> serving them "follow the yellow brick road, kiddie adventures/runs/storys"

IMO, you're playing SR the only way you SHOULD play it -- jobs happen, but
the PCs should have interests and pursuits ('hobby' and 'vehicular' both)
outside of the once-a-week (or whatever) corporate hotdogging. For the ones
who complain it's 'going too fast', tell 'em to catch up; they have brains,
use 'em.

As for how to educate them, simply play the rest of the world as a harsh and
cruel place. A particularly useful possibility is to bring them one or two
at a time (if at all possible) into the OTHER group as one-off 'backup' --
presuming, of course, the other group actually play runners as competent
people instead of 'Kiss My Snake'-tattoo'd freakazoid disposable-runner types.

Give your new group tastes of what happens. Hand them street rumors -- you
know, that other runner-wannabe set of punks a few blocks over doing a job
for a Mob boss and doing everything wrong -- dissing the Johnson at the meet,
stomping around doing legwork, blowing the run, trying to fuck the Johnson
over afterwards. Then have them get blown away. Hell, have the team
approached by a 'scout' for the Mob Boss to have them blow away a member of
the other 'punk' team -- then see if they play it better. If they don't,
well, cause-and-effect time. Their fixer does a lot of business with the
mob? Prices go up. Their bartender has a few mob customers? His
'talkability' goes down. Contacts get frigid, their pocketbook hurts,
whatever.

In other words, enforce 'reality'. Don't be selective, though -- if they do
well, things may get a bit easier all around. Of such events is how runners
drift into camps ... towards the mob, away from the mob and towards the yaks,
whatever...


The Wyrm Ouroboros
'Half Russian mathemetician,
half Silicon Valley code freak.'

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