Well, you could always aim your minigrenade so well that it bounces down someone's shirt or into their mouth...  That might stage it up 

That'd be quite a shot, especially since a truly l33t grenadier would be aiming at the ground and hence would have to make extensive use of ricochet to accomplish it. Anyway, I kind of thought the staging up thing was a tiny bit silly as well, especially since damage is already affected by proximity and chunky salsa anyway. What really irks me about it is that you could make an argument that a grenade has a larger and more damaging effective radius once it's DV has been staged up- Remember, frag and HE grenades don't have a set "template" in this game, they merely start from a DV which is then eventually staged down to nothing the farther you get from ground zero. Anyway, I let grenades stage up their DV rather vs. their "primary target" (firing a burstlinked HE grenade perfectly into the windshield of a Citymaster should count for something) but use the grenade's default damage code for determining range and damage to anyone who didn't get bullseyed. I think it's more in keeping with the spirit of the rules anyway; it really wouldn't be the first time that fanpro's gotten sloppy when differentiating between DV and modified DV.

Yeah, I've thought pretty much along the same lines.  You stick it in the guy's mouth or in his plumber's butt crack.  Not very realistic.  Heh. 

I also agree that staging up the power of a grenade based upon the throw.  I've never seen a thrown explosive device have a bigger explosion just because you get a good through.  Although, I also don't think that's what they mean.  I think it just stages up for the person you're throwing at.  So, to use your example, it would do more damage to the citymaster, but it wouldn't do more damage to the passengers.  Well, maybe if you consider the windshield to have less armor.

  You could still consider the radius of the explosion to be the same.  If you added 2DV to the blast, it could just do 3 damage at the edge, rather than 1.
  As to the ever-popular question of aiming at the ground, the intent of the thrower very much does determine the target.  The thrower, however, is the character, and not the player.  If the character aims at the ground near someone, he's still doing it in order to hit that person.  That person, then, would still get their defense.  Even though they're not the target of the throw, they're still the target of the attack.

Grenades don't stage up.  The more successes you get the less scatter creating, for all intents and purposes, a staging up like effect.  Instead of getting 1d6 - 3d6 meters away from your target (and potentially killing yourself and anyone else around) you instead don't scatter it and quite likely might force the explosion to explode in the mouth of your target.  That's ground zero.  That's what the 10P on an HE grenade relates to... YOU not missing and getting SUPER close to your target.  Grenade launchers normally can scatter up to 3d6 meters!  That's insane.

Downsides to grenades.  AOE, meaning you might just cause tons of collateral damage.  AOE, you might just catch yourself in the blast and seeing as you aren't the target guess what?  You can't dodge.  Super dangerous, you pull a grenade or grenade launcher out in combat and guess who's the next target?

Since we are running with grenades as they are there is a strategy.  Delayed actions.  Delay your action if you are the top most initiative person.  Never take your action on your time, and just wait.  If someone else declares pulling a grenade, then you can try and shoot/kill them, but also you can move from their intended location. 

Also, don't attack places defended by heavy weapons!  Grenade launchers, machine guns, missiles...  These are all characteristics you might want to avoid.  There's a reason why attacking miltary bases is suicidal.  Places with normal security aren't going to be packing air-timed HE grenades - even if they have launchers, you're only going to see smoke, flash, and gas, since those don't cause collateral damage.  If there is reason to believe your enemies will be packing heavy weapons, that's a clue that you might want to avoid combat for that run.

I think the place where grenades will really crop up as a problem might be PvP.  In plots, GMs control the action - players aren't going to face the big hardware unless a) they can deal with it or b) they were stupid.  But in PvP, you don't have that kind of check.  I think the remedy for that will be good GMing by the +judge.  Most PvP type situations are going to be happening in places where people gather like bars and clubs.  GMs should be careful to point out that there are plenty of people around when someone reaches for their grenade launcher.  Lots of innocents will die, they will probably have friends and family that will be angry, and there will be plenty of witnesses to point them in your direction.  If GMs do a good job of playing out the consequences of rash player action, we shouldn't have people getting splattered by grenades willy nilly.

As for what you do when the fudge hits the fan - first of all, spread your team out.  This is a good rule of thumb for all running.  If you cluster tightly, not only can you all be 'naded at once, you'll all get caught in the same booby traps, or you might all be sent to sleep by the same stunball.  Take advantage of cover and vision mods - if the attacker has a lower pool, there's a lot more chance that he'll miss, or scatter a lot.  If you're going down a narrow passage, go one at a time and spread out, since even though the front person is dead meat, the others will be able to escape back the other way.

Once again, tear beats me to my own thoughts. (As annoying as that is.)

For those who have not played on Seattle.

NEWS RULES PLAYER KILLING

In response to several complaints to Roleplaying regarding the questionable motives behind certain Pkillings, the RP staff have gotten together to discuss possible ways to track these unfortunate events. As a disclaimer, RPStaff does not condone PKilling in any way, and more often than not, frowns upon it--This being said, we realize that there are some situations where PKilling is unavoidable if responding to a scenario in an IC manner.
So, we recommend that at any time the death of a PC is ordered, requested, or discussed (with intent to carry out), a request be filed via a +qmail to Roleplaying, outlining the scenario and reasons behind the Pkill of the PC.
 
See also +bbread 1/20

HR HOG

Hand of God or HOG cannot be used in situations of directed PvP, meaning, if you're the target of a PvP action you cannot claim HoG. If you are indirectly affected by a PvP Action (bomb, grenade) you may claim HoG. The attacker may claim multiple targets at the disgression of RPStaff

Of course, this must have the disclaimer that it is of the Old Seattle grid.  I'm not saying they will not keep the same mentality for current trends, but HoG was a little different in the last version of Shadowrun.  Anyhow, just wanted to add hat addendum.

That policy's fine, but all it does is change when the review happens.  It should be the same process before the fact as after the fact.  I say *should* because in the past I've seen staffers with an unhealthy aversion to retconning.  In order for after the fact review to work, staffers have to treat retconning as the proper and mandatory remedy for a violation of rules or abuse of GM discretion.  Too often, they treat it like a disfavored solution. 

For instance, in one notable situation, a character got plastic surgery and totally changed her identity.  Then some characters who thought they had IC knowledge of the whole situations (without veryfing this) went ahead and ICly told that person's enemies the new identity.  The staffer handling it had no way to know that the whole thing had been based on either a mistake or deliberate cheating.  But when he found out, he just said that it was too late for a retcon.

That's not how things should work.  Retcon is something that, by its definition, works magical, universal changes.  We shouldn't be concerned with how a retcon will interfere with subsequent RP.  We don't like retcons cuz they interfere with our sense of continuity, but that's the whole point!  They whack continuity with a big hammer, and that's how it's supposed to be.  IC/OOC crossover, even if accidental, should not be tolerated just because it's 'too late' to retcon.

I think that we should just be able to play the game without filing requests in advance - those kinds of requirements just slow things down and move us closer to a legalistic system, which is no fun on a MUX.  But I don't really have a problem with that policy, since it isn't mandatory.  IMO, a player who wants to kill someone else should just explain to the +judge why they're doing it.  A +judge shouldn't port into a PvP situation and just start the rolling, they should ascertain the situation, and do a little investigation if it seems fishy.

An aversion to retconning is the healthy response to the situation.  Retcons aren't supposed to happen.  The events that would bring one about aren't supposed to happen, either.  Even when they do happen, that doesn't mean that you should retcon.  Retconning doesn't achieve anything.  It doesn't prevent cheating, and by disrupting continuity can create more problems than it solves.  The player who was cheated against doesn't deserve to impose himself on everyone else because of another player or players' cheating.  At most, there should be some sort of punishment on the cheater.

Except that doesn't happen in any situation in real life.  We are perfectly fine with retconning the winner of the Olympics and saying, "Because of Country X's contestant using performing enhancing drugs, the silver place winner from Kore gets the gold."  It becomes truth, the other person is written out of the books for winning, their records are removed, and person Y gets the gold.  Has the gold, always was the gold medalist because the judges made a mistake originally.  One, granted, they may not of been able to notice till later, but at least they are reasonable enough to change the facts.

If in your job you are fired and you find out that you were fired unlawfully, you can sue for your job back.  Very rarely do people in the business that fired you get any sort of infliction of punishment, but you get your job back, your retirement back, and if you had stocks that were forceably liquidated you can even sue for any growth of said stocks during the time of your firedness.

In the situation of gaming it imposes no issues to people.  They retcon, and make up time manipulation stories all the time.  When one timestop is taking over a week to complete often times the GMs allow players to go back to the grid, and we all just pretend as if that timestop once ended happened AFTER all this other stuff even though it all really happened before.  You have no health issues from your current combat and you have no knowledge ascertained from that run.  Its easy to keep track of and it takes little to no time to adjust.  Granted some do it better than others.

To say, however, that the player who was cheated and subsequently lost their character over direct cheating is IMPOSING themselves upon the other players because they want the cheater to be debuncted and themselves to come back to life (because they shouldn't be dead), is ridiculous.  It isn't an imposition, what IS going on is the cheaters are IMPOSING upon the player by cheating.  A GM cannot be expected to know EVERYTHING that is going on, plus if you ask the people who want to cheat they will be able to tell you information, make stuff up, etc that will sound very convincing.  And you will have no reason to look through the hundreds of pages of various areas of information like staff notes, player notes, queues, @mails,s etc that could support the Player's claim.  Instead, you just let them roll as long as it all seems to make sense.  However, upon immediately gaining information to the contrary it should all be back tracked, if it is deemed case breaking, as in the new information would indicate DIRECTLY that a player gained information by cheating which was the sole reason for the non-cheater's death... you SHOULD retcon.  It is the only FAIR thing to do.

The cheater should ALSO be punished.  Cheating, to me, in a game based around mutual story telling and fun is perhaps the worst thing you can do to the other players.  A MUX is not a game based upon WINNING, thus cheating makes litte sense except to directly punish someone else.  When that happens, they need to be kicked, and the player who was the victim of said cheating needs to be reconstituted.  You don't just go, "Oh well, sorry, the couple of days of RP that might be a bit weird for vey few characters is too much to ask for your character who was completely and utterly wrongfully killed."  That's just plain mean to the victim of cheating, and it gets the cheater at least a part of their victory.

You do not want to retcon every situation in which OOC/IC crossover existed.  What you DO want to do is find out whether or not that OOC/IC crossover was the only thing that led to the killng of the other character.  That's the problem.  If the cheating acted as the direct an singular requirement for the death of another player you must retcon.  If there was other IC information that was utilized to do the same and the OOC/IC crossover just aided minorly then you don't retcon, but you still punish the cheaters.  If the OOC/IC crossover didn't aid in any way, shape or form to the killing of the other player than there is no need to punish as its just the general OOC/IC crossover that just happens.  It does fall upon the victim often, in these situations, to do their own research.  But if they bring that research to you, all tied up with a nice little bow on it, then check into it.  If they are just whining, then you can't do much as a staffer.  There is a distinction between players who want fair gameplay and those who just whine and bitch... and the ones doing the former ought to be given enough respect to attempt wha they want.

Retconning doesn't HAVE to make a big mess.  It's just a matter of finesse.  Sure, if you say "player x is no longer dead, all of the RP concerning his death over the last six days is void, we will bring everyone killed in revenge back to life and we will take away all karma awards related to the incident," that would be bad.  That would wreck a lot of perfectly good RP for no good reason.  It would be a hell of an imposition.  But what about something like "player x actually never died, he was mortally wounded but then this shaman out of his past showed up, hauled his carcass away, and then magically healed him back to full health?"  It doesn't disrupt anything, except that the wrongfully dead person is no longer dead.  The break in continuity is that, where he had been dead before, now in actuality he was never dead, just everyone acted that way since that's what they believed.

You have to choose.  Retconning is either an available remedy, or it isn't.  You can't have a policy which allows retconning, but then selectively apply it.  That's begging for favoritism.  You can bet that someone the staffers like who engages in productive activity on the grid is going to be more likely to earn a retcon than an agitator who tries their best to stir up discontent.  It's human nature, you can't avoid it unless you have machines for staffers.  Having retconning be optional also makes it easier for people to pull the strings -- maybe there's a staffer who wants a character dead, perhaps because they dislike the player.  If retconning is not automatic, if it's a priviledge, not a right, you can bet your ass that this staffer will use his influence to tilt the odds against bringing that character back to life, even if they were wrongfully terminated.

A system with no retconning at all is preferable to one where it's granted arbitrarily.  At least that way, everyone will get treated the same.  As long as you punish the cheaters, you should in theory deter the cheating, which is the most important thing to do to cheating.

But a system with retconning as the preferred remedy for wrongful character death would be the best.  That way, nobody will be able to cheat and murder someone, take their 1st of 3 strikes, and essentially get away with it.  Don't tell me that people who do that will simply be banned -- unless they're morons, there will probably be enough doubt about whether they cheated on purpose or if it was an innocent mistake/misunderstanding so that they'll just get a strike and not an outright nuke/ban.  A system where there's no retconning and three strikes is basically two free OOC crossover pkills for anyone who wants them, since the target will stay dead and the cheater will come closer to a harsh punishment, but won't really recieve one until their third strike.

Retconning gives us the best of both worlds: the cheater can be punished, and the ill effects of their cheating can be fixed.  After all, who is the victim here?  It's the character who died because of cheating.  You're trying to tell me that the real victim is the MUX, since a retcon hurts the precious continuity.  I don't buy it.  GMs are the gods of the game.  Continuity is just a toy in their toybox, for them to bat around and break at will, in furtherance of the game.  GMs altering time and space is part and parcel of the job of GMing.  The only injury to any players when they do it is that maybe their sense of continuity is jarred a little.

And, as I said, retconning need not shatter continuity.  All it takes is a clever GM, and reviving a recently deceased character won't have any undue impact.  I agree that telling people that a week's worth of RP never happened would be bad.  But just telling them that the outcome of one scene where someone died turns out to be different from what they thought it was?  To that I say meh!

PS:  btw, mathematically, it's impossible for you to win this argument, Jackstand.  You have put forth 92 words, while NES and I have buried you in 1590 in just the last two posts.  That's a ratio of 17:1.  According to Euclid's Theorum of Internets, the side with the most words wins.  We have the most words, so we win.  QED.

Dammit, Tear, before I even got down to your last post in reading the recent responses I was already formulating a response based on 'good' and 'bad' retcons. The good using finesse, such as 'You thought you had the real disk, but you accidentally picked up a decoy instead, which you find out as soon as you put in a queue to find out what is on it' and 'You don't get the disk, because they wouldn't have left it unguarded, so we're going to go back and re-RP the scene, you need to disregard 1 week of RP.' But you beat me again to most of the points I planned to make, anyways.

Damn you, damn you to hell. Now I feel forever like a mental copycat, with an inferior word count.

Creative retconning is a given.

Retconning when you are unsure that someone cheated is not okay.  I am a firm believer that cheaters need to be removed from games at all costs.  However, I also believe that you do not call a person a cheater unless you have undeniable facts that they were cheating.

I've had a lot of characters killed in the past.  All of them except a few from either A) Really bad GM calls, that were not consistent with core rules nor houserules of the particular MUX being played on at the time.  OR B)  Cheating from other players whom made up the character base and usually some of the staff base.

In every situation in which my character has died, I let it go unless its from cheaters.  If a really bad GM call kills my character I attempt to appeal that call right then and there (like I do with any bad GM calls whether or not my character's demise is the ultimate result) and then I let it pass.  That character is dead, time to make a new one.  In every situation in which my character has died because of cheating, cheating I've known about solely through undeniable and unavoidable evidence to said cheating, I have attempted to fight it.

Even when a GM agrees with me, only minutes after their bad GM call has caused my character's death, no retcon occurs.  They don't even change their way of GMing, or update their knowledge on rules.  They just go, "Well, I suppose you're right, but too late now."  Literally sometimes minutes after the death.  Two combat actions later... wow, tons to retcon.  /sarcasm.

In every situation of death by cheating that I have ever seen (mine or otherwise), the character's death has never been retconned.  Not once.  I have this rule when I'm GMing, if I make a mistake on rules and it benefits the players I will not retcon it.  If I make a mistake on rules and it causes disadvantageous situations to my players I do retcon it.  I utilize that whenever I've staffed on a MUX and whenever I'm GMing TableTop.  It keeps me in line as the GM, and it means that no player is ousted because of my lack of memory.  I have never had to retcon a death because I take a player dying seriously.

Excuse me, I must correct myself.  I do recall a situation in which player death was retconned.  I ran a plot for some staff alts, and 4 out of 6 of them died because they were stupid.  They were all 400+ karma characters, I ran them against 4 80 karma NPCs, and they died cause they were stupid.   Quite literally, they had already won the mission and they wanted to go and kill the NPCs who were retreating just cause.  And they got killed by impromptu traps and deciding to run down a corridor up stairs into an environment where the enemy had cover and they had none.  Stupid.  But, it was deemed overpowered and the staff alts magically came back to life.

Other than that one situation though.  Never before nor since has retconning occured, and in response to things like cheating.  I say this because it feels to me as if there is a policy against retconning.  That would fulfill Tear's requirement that you don't or you do.  I say, DO IT DAMNIT, it doesn't take much to retcon, and we are all smart and creative folk, we can handle discontinuity for a little bit to benefit the playerbase.

Punishing cheaters does very little, eventually they resurface even if you kick them off, but you should anyways.  It doesn't deter other cheaters because the new batch always thinks they are smarter and better, and might not even be a new batch.  Plus, they have little investment in their character's existence HERE, they are more concerned with the power level of their character.  So they'll move MUX's till they find one they can cheat at with fewer consequences.  So, you ban them, and try and keep them off like using bug sprays on Ants.  You attempt to kill them for now, but you know they'll be back.