Comments interspersed

On 9/12/21 07:47, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk
(via tml list) wrote:
> <snip>
>
> > taken into account and /then /rolling <6> and <6> on the little
>
>     > classic Travelleresque table I’d created, I figured they really
>     ought
>     > to get the couple of really juicy things they’d not found
>     previously.
>     >
>     You have a _golden_ opportunity knocking here to get your players'
>     (unwitting) help in roughing out future plots. Retroactively
>     promote a
>     few (three to four) of those "red herring" messages you cooked and
>     that
>     the players found interesting up to actual importance. Doesn't
>     have to
>     be immediately in the future, but will give a nice callback (and save
>     you some effort).
>
>
> Yes, I've kept them - and the one or two other things I've thrown out
> at different times as possible things to go chasing subsequently if it
> comes to that.
When in doubt, rock out.
>
>     As for the lack of plans... this was a great opportunity to have
>     their
>     complete lack of planning jump up and bite them in the glutes.
>     Frinstance one of the more switched-on guards radioing Their
>     Lordships
>     and blowing the lid clean off?
>
>
> This is where I have a feeling maybe I don't make my baddies, or at
> least opponents, intelligent enough or nasty enough.  I think I ought
> to up my game in this area.  Though that may mean more combat.
>
Before I go further, I will say this is an area where there's a lot more
error margin starting low and turning the dial up, rather than
overshooting and coming back down.

With that said, even though you're a librarian by trade (I think),
rather than Colour Sergeant Collinson, RM, Badass Moustache and Bar, it
would behoove you to pick up a _basic_ understanding of small-unit
tactics in an era of ranged weapons. This will give you some background
knowledge to have your opposition play smarter, as per their situation
(rather than your omnipotent-GM perspective).

It should not surprise anyone that, me being a 90s kid, I picked this up
initially by computer gaming - first, UFO: Enemy Unknown and its
rebadge-for-the-Cousins, XCOM: UFO Defense, and then first-person
shooters (especially the original Counter-Strike). The former has an
open-source remake available, OpenXCOM - is a great price (free).

In a case of path dependence, I followed on as Shadowrun GM from
Ceilingrat, who cited a very understandable desire to "actually bloody
play".  She had run Shadowrun very Mirrorshades/Black Trenchcoat - the
cyber in cyberpunk, the black ops, the perfect runs, the stealth, the
completing the job without firing a single bullet and getting paid
because you're a total ghost and know how to be a professional.  Self,
Eddles, and Herr Sweep had lapped this up (and triggered a few rants). 
One character I played under CeilingRat's GMing had a gun, but never
drew it, let alone fired it the entire time he was on screen.

I had to follow that sort of approach (but a bit less Black Trenchcoat),
so the opposition the PC Murder Hobos run into is a lot smarter (and
more bent on self-preservation) than it would be in a Pink Mohawk game
(the punk in cyberpunk, the rockers, the flair, the noise, the boom, the
jobs where you kick in a door, shoot the place up, blow it up on the way
out and then have a car chase in downtown to wrap up the night). 
Ambushes, traps, smear campaigns, joe jobs ("Let's You And Him Fight!"),
etc to avoid the _need_ to fight said Murder Hobos head on.  And when
that inevitably happened, mundane stuff like cover, comms, non-LOS
weapons (grenades, longbow arrows, super soakers, etc), magic (if
available) and keeping in mind their mission.

The mission of (frinstance) low-grade guards at corporate sites _isn't_
to fight the PCs to the death - it's to slow them down and buy time for
heavier/more specialised forces to swing in. Depending on the
controlling entity and the site, the heavier forces might be aiming to
_capture_ the PCs rather than kill them.

In Trav, this might be due to the designs of a Zhodani agent by name of
Pornstache....

If you can get a hold of it somehow, "Listen Up, You Primitive
Screwheads!" (a GM-tips guide for Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0.) has a reasonably
digestible intro to such tactics.

Practice against intelligent opponents (Eddles, Herr Sweep, Ceilingrat)
helped me hone my understanding of small-unit tactics, but it's nowhere
near a soldier or bootie's level, especially one who's actually been
shot at.

Another trick that I've used and have seen used, in HAYUUGE Spycraft 2.0
games (think 9 PCs was my record/limit), is the GM recruiting someone as
an Adversary.  Said Adversary (subject to their briefing from the GM)
actually handles the opposition (die rolling, decision making, etc),
letting the GM worry more about the overall story.

>
> It's certainly possible Jim has as he's here on TML (although I
> believe he very dutifully avoids the TML write ups for the moment). 
> But unlikely that the others have been, I'm afraid.  Of course, they
> *could* be on TML and either lurking extremely silently or under
> pseudonyms!
One can hope...
>
>     As I said above, industrial-scale mineral processing rarely
>     recovers all
>     the values, so it does make sense to let the rare earth
>     concentrates the
>     PCs swiped have a chance of containing sparkles.
>
>
> Yay!  I wasn't off beam there then!
>
> cheers
>
> tc

A somewhat extreme example of this is Anglo Platinum's Western Limb
Tailings Retreatment Project in South Africa.  They're mining tailings
dams at Klipfontein that were laid down in the 1920s or earlier,
managing ~50,000 troy oz of platinum in 2005 out of roughly a megatonne
of tailings.

Somewhat analogous to my example of coal-fired powerplant ash piles
becoming uranium ores.

In the past century, technology has notably advanced (such as the
IsaMill and Jameson Cell, developed by Mount Isa Mines, here in AU), and
real prices of platinum-group metals are significantly higher than a
century ago.

Alex