We're playing Shadowrun5E. Currently, the Shadowrunners are defending Kaurs Farm (I think it's a mission from Sprawl Wilds in English) but even though the NPCs clearly stated that they should only do THAT, they managed to get to the plastic jungle where a Wendigo and her followers are waiting to attack the farm at night.
The adventure did not foresee this happening, but nevertheless I let them be, since they had good (in-character) reasons for attacking them – even though it is not the mission they get paid for.
So they attacked the jungle and got pretty roughed up. I have to say that in the last encounters I (as GM) had pretty bad luck rolling the dice, so they had easy fights until now. I gave them a warning before they attacked (through an NPC), so they knew that this fight would be rough.
I had luck while rolling the dice, so two of them got mashed up pretty badly right at the beginning of the fight. One of them is the "Muscle" of the group and thinks that he is invincible. The other one is a Shaman. I even fudged my rolls, because officially one of them would be dead by now (we started new with the 5th edition, so the characters are new and I don't want them to die right in the beginning)…
Both players were really pissed that they got wounded and lost interest in the game. They were offended and upset and the game began to stall.
How do I handle such players? I already warned them, that this fight would be rough; Shadowrun is rough; and all players agreed that the characters may die.
We talked during the game about their behaviour, but they just sat there and were pissed. Later, when most of my NPCs got killed, they played better and got interested in the game again. I asked them if they wanted a more cinematic battle where they are the heroes, but altogether they said that the current style (it's dark, rough and dangerous) is what they wanted to play.
Best Answer
It seems as though the issue here is not that your players were upset by the fact that their characters died, it's that your players were upset by the fact that their characters died even though they wanted to play a "dark, rough, and dangerous" game in which their characters were at risk of dying.
Sometimes, people just get upset.
Psychology is an odd thing. Humans are interestingly able to want something very badly and then be unhappier once they get it. For many people, having your characters die, be wounded, lose equipment, or fail to complete their objectives is upsetting. It's unenjoyable. It makes them angry or frustrated in the same way that losing at a competitive sport can make people angry or frustrated. Defeat is not always an easy thing to take gracefully.
Personally, I recently felt quite disheartened and frustrated when I lost a game of Diplomacy because I'd been betrayed by another player (note: Diplomacy is a board game almost entirely concerned with betrayal and backstabbing). Even though I knew from the outset that this was part of the game, and knew that it was ultimately fairly irrational for me to feel upset, the fact remained that I did. It was a natural emotional response to seeing all my plans dashed and my chance of winning slip through my fingers. I found I didn't really care about continuing to play anymore, and even though I tried to convince myself that I should still care, my heart wasn't in it.
Would I play Diplomacy again? Absolutely. But that doesn't change the fact that it hurt to lose, and it hurts to lose in Shadowrun as well. Emotion leaks, and not everyone is good at preventing it from leaking. Even if your players want to be punished harshly for their actions... they still might get upset when they are punished for their actions. This doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't punish them.
How to minimise people getting upset
So, it might be inevitable that people get upset to some extent. This doesn't mean there aren't things that can be done to avoid it.
If players cause their characters to make legitimately poor decisions that, based on the information they have and their understanding of it, lead to what they consider to be consequently deserved negative outcomes for their characters (and only their characters), then this is the best possible situation with the least amount of upsetness.
But communication is key in every stage of the process.
If players don't have complete information about the expected consequences of their decisions (even if their characters do) then they'll feel cheated when they get negative consequences they feel they couldn't have known about. Particularly in situations where the stakes are high, it can often be a good thing to clearly and explicitly state to the players, out of character, what you think they should know (based on their characters' understanding) what the expected outcomes of their decision are. For example, saying something like "Are you sure you want to jump into the hole? Just so we're clear, it's a fairly long drop and it's too dark for you to tell what's at the bottom, it could be spikes or something, and even if there's nothing bad you might not be able to get back up again." This ensures that the players are making informed decisions (even if it's the informed decision to have their character make an uninformed decision) and clears up any potential misunderstandings before they happen (maybe when the player imagined that hole, he thought it was just a meter or so deep!)
If the characters have incomplete information, it's equally difficult for the players to make realistic decisions. And it's often difficult for characters to get anything more than incomplete information. I recommend erring on the side of being generous when characters act "stupidly" based on what information they've had access to in-world. Yes, there should be some cost to characters choosing to rush in blindly or disregard signs of danger. But clues that are obvious to the GM are often painfully opaque to the players. See some of the answers to this question for effective ways to communicate danger to players.
Even if the players and the characters have relatively complete information, there may be a lack of shared understanding as to what exactly constitutes "reasonable consequences". To some groups, character death is something that should be completely off the table. To some groups, significant character-altering bad things (e.g, loss of a limb, new negative Traits) should never happen to a character without the player's express out-of-character permission. Possibly your players think they want a "rough, dark, dangerous" game but their understanding of "dangerous" is different to yours.
This is a good time for you and your players to use the Same Page Tool to narrow down what exactly the expectations are.
Okay, I did all that, but they still get still upset! What do I do?
It's not easy to deal rationally with frustrated players. They feel like they've failed and they feel powerless, and consequently they're disincentivised to keep engaging with the game (on both counts: they've been hurt by the fact that they've failed and don't want to be hurt again, and they feel like they have no power to influence events, so why bother?)
If you must make players fail and suffer harsh consequences, you should try to minimise both how hard the failure should hit and how powerless they are as a result. An entirely unrecoverable failure is kind of frustrating even if it's deserved. If they're already frustrated, you should do what you can to give them back some power. If possible, try to do this without entirely eliminating the sharpness of their failure (otherwise it feels like you're just capitulating to their tantrum, which is not what they want and so will not make them feel batter). But show them that even though they've suffered consequences, they haven't lost their ability to achieve their goals. For example, they're badly wounded and they don't think they can successfully contribute to the fight anymore? Reframe the conflict for them personally: give them a chance to get away before the enemy kills them (and oppose them limitedly in that goal rather than in the rest of the party's goal of winning the fight). Or give them a chance to, while wounded, crawl over to the grenade the enemy leader dropped on the ground and toss it. Make them feel like they still have agency.
Finally, if a player is becoming so frustrated and upset that they're making it hard to say that the game is actually fun, it might be time to give them a bit of space. You can: