NOW PLAYING 4

Wrong. For two things. First of all the players, as I said are as important as the gm in having fun. If the players are not interested in the game, not because the game lacks hooks or interesting things (that's the gm's problem) but because he doesn't listen and overall don't care about what is happening, then they definitely cause problem. Think about the last time you rented a good movie to watch with your friend, but he kept talking all along because he really wanted to chatter and not watch a movie. That was boring and transformed a good movie into a bad experience. That's exactly that same thing that happens when a player doesn't really want to play. That can be easily solved: if you don't want to play, don't. They'll thank you later.Of course, make sure you want to play sometimes, else you'll just get bumbep out of the game.

Another problem with the way some people play, is how they want to be in the spotlight: the most important person of the show. Even though the gm usually tries to give equal opportunity to everybody, sometimes it is not possible. If a character keeps doing things alone, while the other characters can do nothing except wait for him, then it's problem. Note here that I don't try to advocate the disparition of some types of lone works, which happen a lot in Shadowrun because of the great specialty of characters, but I consider they shouldn't happen too often. If you play a decker and want to bust in the megcorp your team is trying to get into to get some security info, great. It may take some time playing alone, but that's what the character is, among other things, made for. If your decker wants to go in the middle of a game to run into XYZ Inc.'s HQ just to get some paydata, and does it often, then you'Re disrupting play. There is a thin line between what is correct and what ain't, and it's position depends heavilly on the tastes of your players.

Of course, there's your character itself that may cause a problem to the fun of the game. If your character is too strong or too weak, it will disturb the game balance and as such make it less interesting. That paragraph will be short because I've said it thousand times it seems: don't make too strong characters, it sucks.

The second reason why the last statement in the first paragraph (long time ago isn't it) was wrong is because the gm doesn't make the story up, the players do. If it is the gm who's in total control of the game, then he's badly railroading his players, which is evil. Of course, the gm has his say on the story, and that's fine, but overall the players are the most important in it. The players, with all their actions, make the story as the game go. This may come as a shock to some gm, but yes,the players are more important than the gm in the story. The gm should adapt to the players, not the other way around.

What does that mean for you, players? Well, that means that if nothing interesting is hapening in the game, it might be because of you not doign anything interesting. If you wait for things to come that are interesting, chances are it will be bad for your character (gms hate to have to make things up to interest  amorphous players, so they use some Darwinism and kill the ineficient characters. Life is cruel). So what should it mean? No, not that you should go into the nearest troll bar with your racist elf and throw some grenades in (chances are the gm and the troll characters won't like that...). What you should do is be active. Usually, if the gm is any good, you have a goal of some sort, so try to get to it. Talk to contacts, do some legwork, get some spying gadgets and use them intelligently to get those goals achieved. Even there seems to be nothing to do, do something, that will mak something happen. 

Of course, some times you don't have a goal (or you have a crappy gm, or he's adept of the really freeform style, which means you gotta do things or your character'll just become a couch potato). What do you do then? You go into goal-hunt mode! Search the street of the city you're in for a job, or for some hints as where to go to achieve your long-term goals (which you have, of course, if you've read all I've written so far in these columns...). Btu don'T stay passive, that'S the wrong thing to do. It's uninteresting and gms tend to send ugly stuff at characters when they get unintersting.

So as you can see, each players is very important in the overall fun of the game. By thinking about the fact that you're not alone in the game and it's your job too, not only the gm's, to get the game interesting for them and for you. To do that, you shouldn't stay passive, because the story is made by the characters, hence their players, and passive characters make boring stories.