I've received a few E-Mail messages from people who are having trouble getting their friends, or even themselves, into the gaming mood. As would be expected if nobody feels like playing, the game is going to suck. This is not to say that said people don't want to play, as if they were being forced at gun point or something, it simply means that, for some reason or another, they can't slip into the Shadowrun "mood", the alternate reality necessary for enjoyable play. You want to play, but something isn't letting you.

The following are a few suggestions for helping you get into the Shadowrun mood.

Pre-Game Dialogue: Just because the gamemaster isn't ready yet, the rest of the players aren't there yet, or you're not even there yet does not mean you can't roleplay your character or, if you are the GM, your NPCs, through dialogue. Convincing dialogue is essential if the game is ever to get past the basic I shoot him, he shoots me format and if the character is ever to develop a well rounded personality. During the game you often don't have time to converse to a degree which exposes your character's personality quirks, interactive tendencies, and so on. For this reason it's a good idea to set up some conversations between characters, NPCs, or characters and NPCs before the game even gets running. When driving to a roleplaying session a friend and I would converse as if he was his character and I was an NPC. We would set up various circumstances under which this dialogue was taking place and talk the situation out as if we were actually in the game. Obviously there are no real consequences if one individual pisses off the other because we couldn't exactly fight it out while driving down the road, although on a few occasions we came close to trying. It may also be beneficial to critique the dialogue for flaws ("It felt like I was talking to you, Frank, not your Troll rigger.").

Meditation: Ok, this sounds a little bit hokey but bear with me. When you're gamemastering and sitting in a activity room, or cafeteria, or convention hall, or wherever you might be playing there are usually multiple distractions which can prevent your mind from slipping into the game mode. You may not be able to picture the street in front of you, the noise of a gang fight, and the roar of a Seattle downpour, because all your mind wants to focus on is the idiot with the hyperactivity disorder doing jumping jacks behind your players. Or it could be something as simple as a wall with a nifty picture on it. Your mind prefers to stay in the real world because sometimes it's a lot easier thank making stuff up.

Sometimes, right before a run, it's good to take some time out, close your eyes, and picture exactly where the heck you are. If you know you'll be in the streets and then in a corporate outpost and then on the subway simply take a little walk in your mind to all of these places. Say hello to the guard at the gate or the old lady sitting next to you. Concentrate on the details; the sound of cars passing by, the size of the moon, or the shouting of nearby residents. Make sure none of the players bother you while you're doing this. After a few minutes, when you're ready to play, your mind will be more closely aligned with the fantasy plain and many of those distractions will no longer bother you. Your mind has already been where you're going and therefore doesn't have to try as hard to get back there. Players may also wish to do this, to sit back and picture their apartment, their possessions, what they look like in the mirror, and what their characters are feeling. You can't just instantly switch from playing pool or Nintendo to playing Shadowrun. It takes more than a few seconds to switch realities.

Gamemaster Pep Talk: Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of goading by the GM to get players into the roleplaying mood. One method is to bring up past examples of how they had a blast playing the game and exactly what transpired that made it so enjoyable. Another is to bring up a few cool things the players might want to do during the game which may not necessarily be related to the actual run. For example, if the character has an interest in art let him know there's a new exhibit in town and that the curator has heard of him. Sure it borders on bribery, but so what. The players may also be reluctant to participate because of a particular thing the gamemaster did which ruined the game for them in the past. This is a good time to resolve such problems. The gamemaster should still stick to his guns, however. If a player states that he or she did not enjoy themselves because the GM sent the cops after them every time their character blew up a nunnery the GM, in my opinion, shouldn't budge. And, on a side note, I've found that another good way to deal with the slaughtering sammy types is to have them captured, possibly by radical psychologists, and then interrogated for answers as to why they're so maniacal. It keeps what would otherwise be a GM lecture in the form of a roleplaying event.

Activity Integration: If it seems the game is never going to get off the ground because there are too many other activities distracting the players, be they video games, the internet, pool, Axis and Allies, cooking, or whatever, it is sometimes possible to integrate these activities into the Shadowrun world so, although you're sitting around playing Killer Instinct in the living room, you could roleplay the situation as if was occurring in the game itself. Again, it sounds kind of weird, and should probably be restricted to non-public activities unless you wish to suffer significant loss of respect, especially if you're playing pool, in reality, at a bar called Dirty Frank's against two large motorcycle oriented people. In any case, a game of pool played in somebody's basement could be roleplayed as if it's being played at a shadowrunner bar. Killer Instinct could be roleplayed as if you're in an arcade. Even Axis and Allies could be played as if it were in the matrix, with each country being represented by a different node. Or maybe not. Just have your shadowrun stuff set up near by so, if it seems like the pool game is going to get ugly you can roleplay, and roll for, the fist fight that ensues.

Temporary Insanity: Finally, if the reason for your unwillingness to play revolves around the fact that the game has, for one reason or another, simply grown boring, the group may wish to have what I call a Temporary Insanity session. The way it works is that an exact duplicate of the players's character sheet, stats, etc. is made and then used in a shadowrun which usually involves few rules and even fewer consequences. Since the player is not using his or her real character, only its stats, they can engage in some wildly insane and, perhaps, idiotic activities which would normally put the character at grave risk. They can try things that they would never try in a million years with their actual character and, in the process, learn what would and would not have gotten them killed. The gamemaster can also try some stuff that, during a normal game, would be illogical and maybe even stupid. Switching back into the normal gaming mode can be a bit difficult but the increase in morale usually makes up for the rough transition.