Setting the stage for the environment of the Grid Destinations is somethine we'll need o do.

Descing is obviously a part of it....but I also think that one possibile way to help spread the word about what each destination is and what should be expected there is to have a news topic posted on the IC Information board for each one that outlines that destination and it shares what would be common knowledge for the IC world.

There's really no way to enforce PCs expressing it to PCs.  The main way to do it is, in time, train people and they can encorporate it into RP. The only other way is to give additional incentives/benefits to those people that are doing an extremely good job at it -- perhaps by having a J notice them for a plot before the others since the others stick out like a sore thumb ICly, perhaps having them receive a discount on a purchase for some gear due to the gangers watching them and being treated with the fear that they want, etc.

- X

I agree with enforcing the Redmond setting, but I like Xandar's idea over most of the others.  If you reward people for upholding what Redmond really is all about, encouraging PCs to shun and exclude those who do not fit the environment, and ask GMs to essentially withhold runs/plots that revolve around Redmond and its populace from those who not normally be there anyway, then I think people would get the hint. 

By creating an IC event/spectacle around some high class PC in Redmond, because s/he is a "stranger in a strange land", and taking IC actions to repel that person, then you are in fact rewarding that person for behaviors you wish to discourage.  Simply put, if some high class PC is bored and knows that s/he can create a ruckus and a possible IC event which might involve some excitement, simply by zoning into Redmond, then you are creating a thrill for the person.  If this person survives the event, the exciting tale will then be shared with his/her friends, and thus copycats creep out of the woodwork.  This leads to the final state whereby you have inadvertently stumbed into an the infinite loop with no ^C to be found anywhere in the vincinity.

Hmm ... so maybe PCKill is not such a bad option afterall ... even though I voted for 3+4 ...

Seeing as how the new grid will only have the Redmond/Barrens enviroment (possibly more to come later), we are basically saying to players you have to play this way and if you don't, we'll punish you.

I'm all for enforcing theme. I'm not for excluding others based simply upon my own personal opinion on how the game "should" be played. Ask ten people on theme and you'll get at least 8 different answers. If anyone should enforce theme it should be the GMs, and they should all enforce the same theme, in the same way.

Even well informed players tend to over- or under-emphisize(sp?) certain parts of theme and have their own view of how a scene should be played out. This can lead to very confusing scenes where theme is based on whoever poses it. I've been in scenes where NPCs were gutted alive, hung from the ceiling and used as a punching bag, all with the air of casual intrest from the rest of the room. While this may be in theme for some parts of the grid, in a bar it might not be as 'casual' as the poser made it out to be. Overkill is just as bad as too subtile.

My suggestion (like most of the previous suggestions) is to post very specific theme on each area of the new Redmond/Barrens. Details on how the NPCs react, what not to do/wear and what is considred 'normal', and just what will happen to your PC should they violate something major, etc. Don't award players for simply playing to this theme. Its what they should be doing. Award players for helping others into this theme, not excluding them or enforcing their own views upon them. Be helpful, not spiteful. Not everyone is going to get it right off. Excluding or punishing them will probably just drive them off.

If a player proves to be totally incapable of 'fitting in' due to their own unwillingness to try, then they should be respectfully punished in a way that fits the theme.

Also, if the new grid lacks places for people of all types to RP, then perhaps we shouldn't allow anything but Redmond/Barren Rats out of Chargen.

-Hades. Can't we all just get along?

I didn't mean to imply that PCs should exclude other PCS.  That was not the goal nor would I agree with such a concept.  Even those players who do not play within the theme as appropriate  -- regardless of 'view', if you're in the Barrens in a 10k suit and driving a Phaeton, you should either A> be seriously feared cuz you have cajones or you should be mugged -- can be taught theme -- but I do believe that those people who uphold to the theme /as dictated by @desc, +view, and theme files/ should receive rewards, especially if they are the minority as historically exist on M*'s.

- X

I think that the emphasis should be placed upon generating compelling stories that involve corporations waging shadow war on each other.  The players should be kept busy with that, not with surviving in the Barrens.  If the site becomes so active that there are enough people needing to lay low because of the consiquences of their running actions, then an admin can be appointed to the Barrens.  That admin can deal with corporate search teams searching for runners, as well as gangers taxing the runners not to rat them out, gangers providing the runners with protection, and runners making contacts so that maybe they can have a safe place to store that Landrover with 250,000Y worth of modifications on it.

This relies on constant admin attention. 80%-90% of the time, PCs are left to find entertainment on their own. Its not the admins fault, they can't be on 24/7. And seeing as how the only area coded at the moment is the Redmond/Barrens, surviving it will be the priority if you wish to RP any.

The concept is sound, but the execution is possibly improbable at this point in time. A quote from Noor's post:
http://shadowrun.dnaco.net/forum/index.php/topic,43.0.html

Characer development and situations that arise from inter-character actions are what occupy the majority of our time.

And while PCs can RP their involvement in a plot, it usually dies when there is no support to keep it up. Again, not anyone's fault, just the way it goes. Some plots even die because the PCs fail to keep up with it. We all have to work sometime.

Ganger NPCs is a good idea. Admin controled gangs can be there to keep the PCs on their toes and spice Bar RP up a bit every now and again. I think there are plans to have rentable 'spaces'. Paying gangers to house your vehicle is a good idea.

-Hades

It's not to say that the 'rens are free from corporate influences. ;-) The beta story arc will open up more possibilities and locations than just the 'rens. Something to keep in mind.

In the case of a PC with a hero complex. Let em get involved. If they end up in the morgue (DPR) or hospital-like facility, then they asked for it.

These all sound good. Sum up? Hello by the way I am new!

1. Post -Beware- Redmond.

2. Consider having a consent flag needing to be set to enter Redmond zone. A flag that says "Yes I understand this is a flaming toliet and entering it in my ferrari is considered suicide."

3. Encourage bored staffers to peek in on any action in the Redmond Barrens if/when they feel like it, and adjust victims life expectancy as needed.

4. Upgrade the Barrens in the list of places runs can happen. If people are shown in staffed runs that this place is a Mexico City waste dump, and are treated to it in runs then they're more likely to carry that theme over into everyday.

5. Make a list of people who ignore theme, check it twice...

OMFG

I was writing a long post on this, and i acidentally right-clicked and moved the mouse, causing Opera to execute the "back" function and erase it all ._.

To put it breifly, players should suffer no consequences whatsoever that are not a direct result of their actions.  If harassment or death could result from a particular person going to a particular place, that MUST be specifically detailed.  And not in 1 out of 200 bboard posts ("It's your fault for not reading and memorizing every single rule, they're clearly posted"), I'm talking about right freakin there in a desc where if you miss it it's your fault.  There is no way that staffers doling out consequences that players couldn't unambigously anticipate and absolutely avoid if they want to is a good thing.

If a bar doesn't say that women might get assaulted for dressing too sexy, women can't get assaulted there by NPCs for dressing too sexy.  If a street doesn't say the orks are killed on sight by aggressive human supremacists, then orks cannot be killed on sight by aggressive human supremacists.  The only time a staffer should drop a scene right on your head is when a) you had fair warning and disregarded it or b) it's part of a plot/arc which can lead to something cool and rewarding c) the staffer is trying to enhance fun rather than hijack a scene.

As for cars getting stolen, you would do well to recognize that barrens car theives aren't master lockbreakers; if they had real skills they wouldn't be stuck in the barrens.  If you have a 200k car, people are going to WANT to steal it, but are they going to be able?  You can't smash a window and hotwire a eurocar westwind, it will call its owner on the phone if it's attacked (and the police if they're legit) as well as lock down all control functions, etc.  That isn't to say it's uncrackable, but street level skills will top out at stealing bikes and crappy sedans.  And of course a bike can simply be taken inside your squat out of view of the street or wrapped to a street lamp with huge thick chains.  A sedan is a bit harder to protect, but you could do something as simple as buying a rating 6 lock for it in chargen (which no street punk is going to defeat) and call it good for most purposes.  If we have travel code that virtually requires vehicles, it doesn't seem fair to just take anyone's vehicles away arbitarirly.

Finally, this whole goddamn mux is in the barrens!  It's one thing to say "If you go to the barrens and get messed with, it's your own fault," if there are more than two zones (touristville and the barrens) to go to!  The beta is centered on the barrens, and to say that bad shit happens if you live, work, travel, or look at someone funny there is to essentially confine all RP to the safe blandness of Touristville.  After all, how many people are going to risk ganger attack just to hang out at a really shitty bazaar mall biodome thing when they could go to a nice safe bar in touristville?

This is not Denver.

As Melkir has posted elsewhere, the environment is out to get you. Especially in the Barrens. That is not to say that any player who strays out of their TS crib in the altogether because they forgot to change their desc is automatically going to be attacked. The purpose of the original post was to give players notice that this will be a more active and interactive grid than people have been used to in SRS.

There should be no blame involved here. This is what the game is. You go out into a dangerous world and maybe you'll RP friendly stuff with your pals, and maybe a hoard of toxic ork mages will attack you. It's part of the excitement of the game.

For every argument "no" you come up with, I'm sure there are others who will come up with a "yes." But what it all boils down to is this is not a consent MUSH. Your PC may be attacked, killed, etc. etc. without your permission. For those who choose to play here, that's one of the main appeals: the danger, the chance you take walking out the door of your hovel.

RPS has a story board; judges will have one as well. Any interactions they have with PCs, be it a run or a scene they drop at the last minute, will be recorded there. These boards are not open to the PB. But they allow the Chiefs and myself to review and maintain balance. You can be 'harrassed' even if you're doing nothing. You can die. You have to have faith that staff isn't just going to walk into a bar and shoot you in the head. We are here to provide the players with challenges and fun. There's no fun for anybody if we don't allow you to participate.

Don't misunderstand me- I'm not one of those "omgconsent" players who are terrifeid of player death (though with my BG at 19 pages and not yet finished, I'm starting to feel like it).? Players NEVER die for reasons beyond their control; there is always a way to choose life in a good scene (which is not of your own making anyway), be it taking cover, surrendering, or running the hell away.? GM's playing the grim reaper where one of the PCs in every scene they start has to die is just... not cool.? GMs present a scene and then should let players choose how to respond, they should never enter with a predetermined notion like "You are railroaded into my plot arc" or "You are all dead."

That's getting off topic, though.? What I'm trying to say is not that you should be safe just walking around no matter what; what I'm trying to say is that there needs to be some well defined notion of what things are more and less safe so players have at least some say over what happens to them.? Certainly, that already exists insofar as less bad things happen in tourstville than the barrens, so if you're concerned you should stay there.

And most importantly, there are the topics that were deleted in my intended post, things that are incredibly sketchy and do not help a game in any situation.? Those things are: Attacking players because of their gender or sexual preference, attacking players because of their race (unless they're in a notoriously racist place), and attacking players because their characters decided to exercise some fashion sense and not go out in a black trenchcoat.

To elaborate on those:? Attacking characters based on gender is 99% of the time a male staffer dropping a scene to punish a female character for going to the wrong place (very often a queer female character cuz that's incredibly common and lots of people hate it) is a sexist and often homophobic way to view the game world.? Yes, sexual assault happens, very often in bad slummy places.? But on the issue of fairness and appropriateness, NPCs attempting to gang rape every female character without an equivalently common and dangerous threat to male characters is just completely bogus and displays staff favoritsm for males.? Realism, my ass; the game is about fun.? Danger should introduce excitement and fun, and I don't think that participating in a staffer's troll gang bang fantasies is in any way fun.

Attacking a character based on metatype, while more legitimate, is still iffy.? Obviously meta hate exists in a lot of places and there definitely are anti meta (or anti human) gangs around.? There should be definite consequences for certain areas that are specified as racist, that's going to be an important part of having a gritty kind of environment.? However, for random anti-meta NPC attacks, unless this sort of encounter is universally played out equally for all metatypes, it again makes favoritism; from MU experience the victims of meta hate are usually elves, FEMALE elves, which goes back to the whole gender thing above.? If orks have as much chance of being accosted by humanis thugs as elves do by ork gangers, then fair is fair.? You'll forgive me if I'm skeptical about that, however.

Finally, style.? I've seen a number of players on different MUs attacked because they're wearing the wrong clothes, supposedly.? I think this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Shadowrun street culture.? Street culture isn't like today's, because today's street culture is dominated by a few racial minorities who tend to follow general trends in deciding what 'ghetto' look is in this month.? That's a very unjust and unforunate circumstance of the inequities inherent in our society, but it does not translate directly into SR4.? In SR4, there is an enormous explosion of SINless 'street' types, and the underground scene goes in all directions.? No longer do gangs dress exclusively in hip hop wear and listen to rap; every subculture we see today from retro to punk to goth has its extrusion on the SR4 street scene.? That's not only a consequence of the world's history in 2070, though, but also a green light by FanPro to play a stylistic character.? Hell, in SR3, distinctive style was a FLAW.? They wanted it to be a black-trenchcoat grey ops kind of world, but that shit is out with yesterday's bathwater.? EVERYONE has some style in SR4.? People who wear black trenchcoats are LOSERS.? Gangs don't attack you for wearing expensive fashion, because expensive fashion is cool.? Gangs are not old war veterans complaining about how kids these days wear the dumbest things- they ARE kids, and they LIKE things that are cool, they don't try to murder people whose clothes make a statement.? Unless of course that statement is offensive, like "Not only am I wearing a suit, I don't have any troll bodyguards or obvious cyber enhancement, so I'm probably an idiot who got lost."

So, by all means, drop dangerous scenes on the players and establish that gritty dystopian feel.  It'll probably get me more karma and notches on my... magic wand?  It's hard to use cliches when you're a shaman    I don't expect staffers to force players into head-on combat with odds they can't beat, but to be fair people whose goal is to stir things up and give everyone a good time.  It's just when things come down to gender, race, and style that we need to be careful not to ruin things with sexism, favoritism, and narrow minded ideas about how 2070 resembles 2006.

Uhh... cool clothes don't make you cool. They make you a walking cash machine, take a moment and lookup how many people are killed for their shoes. Perhaps I'm making too broad an assumption, but if I were a punk, I'd take your shoes and sell them in 2006, or 2070 :-)

As for 'attacking a character based on sex'. I.. uhh.. well.. I don't even think I would do that. I'm not about to have a gang jump on a ninja mattress kitten just because they walked into a troll bar without knickers on. It may be thematic, but, it's not something I'm going to or have done. It seems like an odd thing to do. And hell.. the mattress kitten might enjoy it, and that's just wrong.

I get your point about 'pointless voilence', but let's not confuse the 'reality' of the situation with the 'random stupid crap that sometimes happens'

e.e? Welcome to Denver Melkir.

...is what you should be glad you're not reading on your MUX client screen right now.

But if you're going to talk about 2006, cool clothes do not make a gang member a target; they earn him respect.? Chances are the guy's got no money, but if he can somehow get his hands on real high fashion expensive street gear, that's a status symbol.? Being in a gang is about, at least in part, exerting your power through a group, bettering your crappy bottom rung place in society by banding together with other disenfranchised youth.

Now, the gang scene is very different in 2070.? The instance of go-gangs (pretty damn different from our aging 50+ hell's angels population today), ripper gangs, thrill gangs, etc combines to make a much more clockwork orange sort of street setting.? People DO go out for a night of the ultraviolence sometimes.? They might not kill you for your shoes, they might just kill you because they think it's fun.? But what does it add to the game to have gangers who kill you because you made your character unique and awesome?? It gives a strong incentive towards playing characters that are homogenous and boring.? Boring is shitty.? Giving incentives for shit is the job of a toilet, not a MUX.