This is going to be meandering because I'm once again dissecting how I run games mixed in with the recap.
The session setup: The Draco Foundation needs the party to deliver $2 million in credsticks, and an ornate, dragonwing key (roughly half a meter long) to an uncovered estate in the Himalayan mountains.
Here's where I took a shift from the canon Tibet, because in the book, it's completely cut off from the world by a magic border, and the entire nation is a magic Buddhist place that hasn't changed at all apart from the barrier. I turned the capital into a tourist spot, but the mountains were sealed off, except with explicit permissions. The capital Lhasa, is a very magical city that blends the sleek lines of the other cyberpunk city, but polishes it with a an air of magic, sanding out any rough edges. Almost a sanitized version of every other city out there.
They opted to get a hotel though on the outskirts of town so they could smuggle in their heavy artillery.
That's fine. Works for me, because in the 8ish months the game is running, I'm becoming more and more aware that my descriptions of things are absolute dogshit. Absolutely function over form. I have these images of the place in my head, but I am awful at conveying this to players. This comes up also with NPC dialog as well. Putting a pin in that.
Upon the mountain they passed through a village where a loudspeaker told them to drop their valuables and leave. Naturally, they entered the village, ignoring the warning. This village was under the control of 3 warlords, who commanded the impoverished people living there to attack with things like makeshift clubs, pitchforks, kinives, and homemade guns.
Even after a bark from the leader of the warlords that they "either die by their hand or die by his", the party went lethal immediately. Force 6 Fireball took out one of the warlords and like, 5 villagers. The sniper cleaved out another one, and the brawler followed suit.
This is how the fight continued for a bit, as Mike tried to rush the main warlord. He got into melee range, and dealt some damage, but took a pair of shotgun blasts that really did a number on him, sending him into Overflow. Rodge was in super spell sustaining mode to keep him alive, himself invisible and armored.
To hammer home how helpless these villagers were, one tried to run after seeing the turn 1 fireball. He got blasted by the head honcho right away.
All in all, 9 villagers, their two dogs, and the 3 warlords were slain. Only 7 survived.
I tried to hammer this home how these people were acting for survival but I don't know if I conveyed it well enough because there was no hesitation, as soon as the villagers raised their weapons, in fear.
They avoided a future encounter with a Piasma and harpy. A piasma being to brown bears what orks and trolls are to humans. A big fuckoff mean bear. Rodged used a spirit to act like a distraction to let them slip by where they delivered their payload and took a night's rest.
Next day, they went to a less traveled path, as indicated by Rodge's mentor spirit. Here, the mist swirled to form a giant yeti, who was supposed to act as a judge to them.
Here's where things get dicey and I'm not sure if I overstepped a bound. Nobody said anything but I am always overanalyzing myself. I made this monster's rolls in private. Every time he was damaged, I just ticked a single box. I had them make a composure check against his intimidate, and if they failed they took the entirety of their Stun track - 1 in damage.
You can see where I'm getting annoyed at myself.
Shadowrun prides itself on rules symmetry, but man, I wanted to be able to sort of confront them with a mystical thing about their wanton murder across the campaign. The spirit asked them various questions about their motivations, and what they were going to do, because talk is cheap, yadda yadda yadda. Once the monster went to them one at a time and made mirroring opposed tests with them, the party was able to inflict net hits damage to them while reiterating things they were fighting for, why they felt compelled to kill, and what was important to them.
And it had the desired effect, people actually had to stop and consider their character going forward, what's the next step for them. This was the first real mission following the EVO raid, and it was a bit of a straightforward one. My hope is that I could maybe prompt them to talk and think about their character more as a character and less like a MOBA hero.
Here's the issues I am having though.
- I could have sold this spirit thing way better. In retrospect it's so incredibly hamfisted it would make any writer laugh their ass off.
- On the other hand, this party hadn't really been doing much characterwise so maybe a direct approach worked.
- Maybe the party doesn't WANT to have to think about the ethics of their characters or actions.
- Maybe it's my fault the way the players are acting like they do. I'm very much a popcorn/chips style GM. No substance, some style, kick the door down, do some shit, get out, no consequences really. Even though the enemies never really resorted to lethal force right away, I might have reinforced "Hey alpha strike these bitches, before they deal ANY damage to you".
And I'm annoyed. I'm annoyed that the type of game I wish I could run is not the same type of game that I'm capable of running. I'm someone who runs a fuckin' Borderlands or Diablo style game so far. I guess I treat it like a wargame and the players have picked up on it. I'm just annoyed that I fostered this sort of game.
And I'm most annoyed that I'm annoyed by this instead of just accepting what I am and what this game is.
