User:John

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GM style heavily WIP

GM Style Guide

Run Refusal & Sabotage

While I am not entirely opposed to inter party conflict or run refusal, for the purposes of running games through a public community, it is more trouble than it is generally worth. For all of my runs, even if this information is not known in character, I will designate the type of job (Wetwork, Theft, etc.), and what the feel and employer is like (Good feels or Hooding, Corporate Turf War, Cold-blooded Black Ops, etc.). If your character is likely to object to the run's main objective and premise, please include that in your application, and understand that this is generally going to push me towards not considering your character. With that said, my preferred runs lean more into the "punk" aspects of cyberpunk, and you should expect consistent hooding runs with good feels attached, so I doubt this will be much of an issue.

Approach to the Sixth World

I generally enjoy presenting the bleak cyberpunk future as a fertile canvas for meaningful rebellion and change. The roots of the genre and setting are laid in practices of meaningful resistance, nonconformity, and individuality. While corporate allegiant runners and plots are certainly setting crucial, being anti-corporate is the soul and main message of the genre. As a consequence, my runs will generally be presenting bright moments in a difficult reality, and will often operate under an assumed anti-corporatism (and a corresponding support of the various peoples oppressed by them). I like to take the setting seriously, to create verisimilitude ("immersion", if you prefer), but this does not preclude funny moments and casual gameplay, it precludes things that are contrary to the setting and themes. There is plenty of room for silly and fun moments, but they should reasonably exist in the shared canon.

Difficulty & Opposition

I am generally of the opinion that opfor should have their design centered around loss-prevention and efficiency. It is not the goal of most opposition to kill shadowrunnners. In many cases, stopping runners is not even worth it for corporations, as it costs more to hunt them down than it would to recoup lost items and personnel. I enjoy presenting problems which are potent, but have ready weaknesses to be exploited. Runners are not your average criminals, and their littany of tricks should work against all but the toughest of corpsec (HTR & Spec Ops, generally). I prefer presenting a fair scenario to be understood and broken down, rather than using 'gotcha' or 'cheese' tactics to get cheap wins against the PCs. I will, overall, be very transparent about danger and opposition during and especially before the run.

In this vein, I am especially careful of taking overly powerful PCs, if the opposition is not going to abuse mechanics, then many high power characters are simply going to be operating in a higher bracket than the gangers I'd like to use for, say, a given medium threat. Those characters are more than welcome on appropriate runs, but I will generally try very hard to fit the powerlevel of PCs to the run at hand.

More to come

WIP