Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: WeissAllein on <10-07-16/1711:45>
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Recently playing with a group and for most of us this is our first time playing shadowrun. We have had to make moral decisions in the last few sessions where if we make the wrong choice something bad happens. The first decision was whether to leave an injured person behind and the choice we made, and we were supposed to make, was leaving him behind. The next choice was whether or not to leave a teammate behind. I convinced everyone we should find a way to stick together. This resulted in the GM rolling for a random person to get shot, ended up being me. Finally we had the choice to let a non-combatant live or die. The team killed him but after the session we were told that was the wrong choice. The GM then took me off to the side and told me that my character should be less of a goodie-goodie as I have tried to take the moral high ground every single time and that isn't how I should play shadowrun. So I was wondering if I should listen to him and start being more cold hearted about my choices?
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There are no truly good people in Shadowrun. Any "heroes" are usually pretty firmly in the "anti-hero" category, especially shadowrunners. You're going to do bad things for, at best, morally ambiguous reasons.
To quote Sherlock: "I may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for one second that I am one of them."
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There are no truly good people in Shadowrun. Any "heroes" are usually pretty firmly in the "anti-hero" category, especially shadowrunners. You're going to do bad things for, at best, morally ambiguous reasons.
To quote Sherlock: "I may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for one second that I am one of them."
Nonsense. There is nothing about playing SR that says you have to have to hold any particular moral philosophy. There are Codes of Honor in the books that prevent harming innocents, torturing people, or any number of things. Play your character anyway you want IMO.
That being said, if your GM is running a game where he intends everyone to more be "bad", then you are not going to fit in. If the rest of your team is not OK with the choices you make, at some point they could get fed up with your "goodie two shoes" attitude and leave you behind (or even kill you).
I often play characters that are more "challenging", but what I try to do is push the envelope of what the group might think is acceptable, and at the same time, for the sake of playability, try to keep things smooth with the rest of the group.
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There are no truly good people in Shadowrun. Any "heroes" are usually pretty firmly in the "anti-hero" category, especially shadowrunners. You're going to do bad things for, at best, morally ambiguous reasons.
To quote Sherlock: "I may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for one second that I am one of them."
Nonsense. There is nothing about playing SR that says you have to have to hold any particular moral philosophy. There are Codes of Honor in the books that prevent harming innocents, torturing people, or any number of things. Play your character anyway you want IMO.
That being said, if your GM is running a game where he intends everyone to more be "bad", then you are not going to fit in. If the rest of your team is not OK with the choices you make, at some point they could get fed up with your "goodie two shoes" attitude and leave you behind (or even kill you).
I often play characters that are more "challenging", but what I try to do is push the envelope of what the group might think is acceptable, and at the same time, for the sake of playability, try to keep things smooth with the rest of the group.
I have played "good" characters in the past, but even they had to make morally questionable choices for the sake of staying alive or finishing the job. In fact, most of my characters lean more towards the good end of the spectrum.
Short answer: No, you don't have to be a bad person, but it seems that is what your GM wants you to be. It is possible to play by always taking the moral high ground, but if that's not how your GM wants to play, you're going to have a bad time.
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Group/GM dynamics vary WILDLY. Discuss that with your GM and respect (within reason) what they are trying to accomplish (GMs do most of the work, it's not easy creating good, memorable characters and scenarios).
But don't let them push you too far into playing strictly their way. If you're just following the orders of someone else, well all you're doing is filling a space like an NPC.
Finally, don't be so inflexible that it stifles group dynamics. A bit of in-character conflict is GOOD, as that mirrors reality. Your character's "leave no-one behind" is valid in that there are people who think and believe that (and not just the naive; I know plenty of old soldiers who lived and worked by that creed, and they saw more death, violence and combat than most of us ever will).
Just don't let it become out of character conflict...that gets petty and ugly very quickly.
Personally: I keep to the same idea that I do every RPG I run or play in: There are choices, and there are consequences.
A code provides a moral center, but the nature of conflict dictates you will challenge where that center lies either by circumstance or necessity, and making hard decisions means finding ways of living with the consequences.
Success on a run today does not mean fallout from that run won't find you tomorrow. Leaving someone behind to die may not turn out as the group expected even under pragmatic ideals; forensics may turn up a solid material link for a corp with vested interests to find your group. Or that person you left for dead didn't actually die, and has sold their soul to take revenge on your runners.
Taking this idea broader, how you hold onto what you value, be it your possessions, intangible virtues, or your very life is what can separate an RPG from just another stock game experience.
What you will do in pursuit of what you think is right is itself a goal worth striving towards.
(I assume the alternative justification of just playing for dumb fun isn't applicable here; or your GM wouldn't have taken you aside over moral quandary in the first place)
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My current group has a variety or moral compass settings. One is completely new to the shadows and up until a few in-game months prior was a normal law-abiding citizen. She is occasionally horrified by things that happen and tends to try to find the least violent method for accomplishing a goal, but will go along with what happens because she's trying to survive. The next is quite against any form of collateral damage to the point that he will step in front of a gun or try to subdue a team-mate to prevent "innocents" from dying. Third is a combat medic who tries to avoid collateral damage, but understands that sometimes that's what the job entails and his team comes first (he's also recently contracted HMHVV2). There's the guy who usually tries to be nice, but has no qualms about killing someone because that's his job. The decker doesn't go out of his way to kill people, but if he decides it needs to be done he'll make sure that it happens (mostly he just lives in the matrix though). Then there's the stealth specialist who doesn't really value the lives of people she doesn't know and would rather kill anyone she thinks could possibly be a threat rather than let them live. Last is the guy with superhuman psychosis who just likes seeing things burn and would rather shoot you than talk to you.
The interplay between the characters is fun, each of them has different extents that they will go to and sometimes disputes arise over the differing ideas for how the job should be done, compromises get made, and while not every character is happy with the result our somewhat dysfunctional team tends to survive to see the next day. I think that if everyone was completely goodie-goodie or completely heartless the experience would be less interesting.
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Ah yes.. The "Good guy, Bad Guy" debate of Shadowrun :D
Well, first off, SR is flexible enough to allow many play styles and outcomes from the group dynamics. You and you GM are free to come up with any type of adventure you/they choose.
However, Shadowrun is geared towards more of a Grey line in the terms of morals (depending on what you view as morally good and bad)
The "Typical" Run generally involve at least one of the following things
stealing
blackmail/persuasion
combat
lying
How do you feel about those? I mean, most runs usually involve you taking something that is not yours, which is not exactly "morally" correct.... usually you need sensitive info to do your job, so you have to get someone to talk you... which usually involves blackmail, intimidation, threats and/or Persuasion of some sort. Combat happens because, well, combat is fun to the majority of players, yet in combat you are inflicting harm on an other... not really a morally good thing :P
Of course, you can have entire runs where no one get hurt, or steals anything, but they are usually far in between....
But usually Shadowrunners are shades of Grey... They, by their very nature work outside the social morals of their community, but many are not psychotic killers. They have their own moral codes that they try to stick to... Be that not harming children, or never working for slavers... or even never stealing!
But, if you morals do not mesh with your team, you run the risk of inter group conflict..... I you insist that you will never hurt anyone, NO matter WHAT.... then your team can not count on you to protect them from hostiles... and if they can not count on you, why bring you along? At the same time, if your character draws the line at hurting innocents, why would YOU run with a team that insists on shooting everyone in the back of the head?
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Tell your GM to get stuffed. Playing a character with scruples and a conscience is perfectly valid.
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Tell your GM to get stuffed. Playing a character with scruples and a conscience is perfectly valid.
This.
I have a human cat shaman character who only started shadowrunning because his sister was kicked out by their racists parents after she goblinized into an ork. He ripped his parents a new hoop and left home to find her. Disowned, and now without a home, the two worked together to survive, and eventually to fund and protect a shelter for homeless/SINless ork and troll kids. Even now that he's retired from running, he still uses his hard-earned wealth to help homeless ork and troll youth in Berlin.
Speaking of his sister, she's actually one of my NPCs. She now runs a safehouse in Berlin. She's an absolute sweetheart, but she won't hesitate to bring the hate when the safehouse, the shelter, or herself are threatened. For that reason, pretty much everyone calls her "Mama Pip" or just "Mama".
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Ok so then I will stick to my original morals and hopefully things work out. Not sure I can continue to help the team if things keep going wrong. Especially since me being the one who got shot after keeping the team together resulted in me only having 4 physical stress boxes until a mage or a surgeon can fix me up. The sniper having silver rounds did not help either.
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I'll be looking at it from the point-of-view of "Professionally-Trained International Terrorists", or at least that's what our team was called on the news.
The first decision was whether to leave an injured person behind and the choice we made, and we were supposed to make, was leaving him behind.
Let's say you could have healed poor Bob enough that the upcoming hospital bill wouldn't have left his wife and kids living on the street. The SecCorp investigators are going to be really interested in why a bunch of criminals spared *him*: possibly an "inside man", maybe an accomplice, but definitely someone to pump for info about your team. They won't be gentle about it, and his employer won't be "understanding". Congrats on ruining several lives.
So maybe you can't leave him behind. Is he conscious? Is he recording everything for a later reward? Every minute he's with you means the odds of providing a positive ID increases. If he doesn't sell you all out once he gets loose, he's now stuck living in the Shadows like you lot.
Or you could just put a cap in his .... That comes out to a few more seconds delay on the escape, another round for Forensics to analyze, another charge on your growing rap sheet. AND his wife and kids, one of who may need Corp-provided chemo, are out on the streets without his income.
Unless the vic's a mage and inherently in need of geeking, maybe you should just walk away. You're already at the point that Emergency Services are en route, and there's no other good solution.
Our team: notably screwed up and left a magician alive, behind, and very happy to cooperate for reduced sentencing. That nearly led law enforcement right to us.
The next choice was whether or not to leave a teammate behind. I convinced everyone we should find a way to stick together. This resulted in the GM rolling for a random person to get shot, ended up being me.
Will this teammate understand the necessity and take the rap for your team?
If not, you have compromised your team and possibly anyone associated with you.
IF your luck is very good, please say "Hello" to Officer Friendly when he comes knocking at your door.
On the other hand, remember that no matter how justified you are in stiffing one of your own, it may be extremely corrosive to morale afterward. Even a saint would have second thoughts about turning his back on you.
Our team of misfits: The adept that was assensed on the Lansing job, he ended up injured and separated from the team on another job. Instead of going to ground, he got himself caught. Then he killed innocent people trying to break free. See how being nice to one person can turn out very badly?
So, someone may have ended up emphasizing his mental instability and combat abilities and escape route to the law enforcement personnel en route. And, someone else may have dropped a vehicle from the parking garage onto him. We're still not sure who ordered the car to roll back and forth over the body a few times just to make sure.
Finally we had the choice to let a non-combatant live or die. The team killed him but after the session we were told that was the wrong choice.
Unlike the others, was this person a loose end that put you at risk?
Was this person someone for whom others would find a reason to avenge?
He wasn't a police/security officer, was he (that's asking to get the whole team messily dead)?
Many people DO draw the line at involving innocent bystanders, whether from operational security or from moral restraint. You can heal the injured, break out a captured teammate, but you cannot return a soul to life.
So I was wondering if I should listen to him and start being more cold hearted about my choices?
Yes. No. Maybe? Magic 8-Ball say, "Reply hazy try again"
That's not so much the Shadowrun game or the setting, but the mindset of the characters making up the team. Sure, there are laws that are in turn unevenly enforced. There are even things that make or break reputations (Street Cred, Notoriety, Public Awareness). That all goes into deciding what the logical consequences should be for your actions. What choices are morally acceptable for you - that's for you to decide, and may be very specific to your character's background.
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Tell your GM to get stuffed. Playing a character with scruples and a conscience is perfectly valid.
Ditto.
I would be remiss if that doesn’t lead me to this last reminder: Seattle is a vibrant city and a hopeful city. For all of the violence, evil, and mercenary tendencies that consume much of the shadows, some of those corpers, activists, even gangsters do good sometimes, and then there’s us. We can use our skills to murder, rape, and pillage the sprawl until the skeleton is picked clean. That sort of work has made those who were good enough to survive very wealthy. We can also raid offices, datastores, banks, and ships to assist muckrakers exposing public officials’ worst practices, shape policy to keep from killing the world too quickly, or maybe just not abet slavery. Seattle’s shadows have more hooders per capita than any other sprawl. It also has one of the highest mortality rates.
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I agree with those who say there's nothing wrong with playing a 'good' character because the simple fact is that the world of shadowrun from everything I've seen is gray. You have a range from those who shoot the security guard because he may tell someone else what he just told them about an incident through to those who will not hurt anyone and everything in between. Of course the world has consequences but the thing is its meant to be a world and the characters don't know what will happen next. You refuse to leave a team mate behind and all of you get killed, you refuse to leave a team mate behind and all of you escape, you refuse to leave a team mate behind and pique the interest of the dragon watching on CCTV who offers you some lucrative rewards to see how you handle other situations. You just don't know you just have to make the decision you feel suits your character best.
That said you do need to be aware of the group and what the DM is trying to achieve but there's a lot of roleplay potential in someone slugging through the slime of the sixth world trying to still be a person who can look at themselves in the mirror. One of the few characters I've played refused to be a party to assasinations, if someone got shot or killed on a run that was one thing but they would not take any job who's purpose was the deliberate kiling of somone. Another non-shadowrun character was perfectly willing to lie to their team mates about a sick civilian and leave them to die because it was not their responsibility. However I do have warning bells going off at a GM telling someone how they should play their character as in my experience that's rarely a good sign unless they have a very specific type of campaign they want to play. That is pink mohawk let the blood hit the walls vs general shadowrun.
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Tell your GM to get stuffed. Playing a character with scruples and a conscience is perfectly valid.
+1
It is totally OK to play a morally ....better person.some of my own Chars are ...goody two shoes (is that the correct expression ?)
but some of mine are more shady and have no scruples killing People for Money.
It seems you & your GM have a different View of SR.
Your's is just as good an opinion as your GMs.
but it seems to me (from what I read) that Your GM is in a Power position (and uses his power to get your Chars shot whenever they make a decision he doesn't like) and misuses this position
with a Dance in Grey
Medicineman
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No you don't.
And having morality and limits aren't the same with being a noble knight in a shining armor going around and killing monsters to save a world. (By the way, there IS one person who fits description in Sixth World, and he is a runner.) But really, if you're doing everything just to get the job done, no matter what's the job, and to save your own skin, how do you better that another corp-sec wageslave?
Yes, moral decisions may be costly. But a lot of people used to pay a price.
And a lot of people don't give a shit.
And both are valid to play.
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a noble knight in a shining armor going around and killing monsters to save a world. (By the way, there IS one person who fits description in Sixth World, and he is a runner.)
8)
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Tell your GM to get stuffed. Playing a character with scruples and a conscience is perfectly valid.
Well said Patrick, well said.
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The first decision was whether to leave an injured person behind and the choice we made, and we were supposed to make, was leaving him behind.
The team killed him but after the session we were told that was the wrong choice.
I didn't comment on this before, but this is the completely wrong way to be running a game.
The GM should put forth the scenario and let the players make their choices. It's not really possible for the players to make a "wrong" choice. Perhaps some choices have better results, and the GM will punish certain decisions more than others, but "right choice" and "wrong choice" really have no meaning when you are a GM. Doing what your GM wants or expects you to do is not your "job" as a player. Your job is to play your character. If the GM wants the characters to be a certain kind, i.e. - Robin Hood types, or cold-blooded killers, then he needs to tell people that when they create their characters. But if you decide to shoot or not to shoot someone, that's not a "wrong" character choice, it can only be a bad idea.
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Tell your GM to get stuffed. Playing a character with scruples and a conscience is perfectly valid.
This kind of antagonistic absolutism is really rather cringeworthy.
People certainly should play the characters they want. They should be able to go into a game with a game pitch (often set by the GM) in mind and be able to build characters accordingly. That doesn't mean build the characters the GM "wants" such that it makes them basically characters playing out a set novel, it means characters that can exist in the context provided. This usually provides for almost unlimited options, which the GM should generally approve...unless the character someone wants to play is clearly intended to be totally disruptive, antithetical to the game that was pitched, and looks like it would only cause conflict with all the other players/their characters.
My group is currently playing through Ghost Cartels. We certainly have 2-3 people with Codes of Honor. Those of us with a Code have mostly upheld and sometimes violated them, and have certainly had personality clashes with characters who are much more amoral. That said, a player who built a character that wasn't willing to basically be the go-to Black Hat squad for brutal drug lords, and who constantly complained about the missions being offered, probably wouldn't fit well for the particular campaign.
The first decision was whether to leave an injured person behind and the choice we made, and we were supposed to make, was leaving him behind.
The team killed him but after the session we were told that was the wrong choice.
I didn't comment on this before, but this is the completely wrong way to be running a game.
The GM should put forth the scenario and let the players make their choices. It's not really possible for the players to make a "wrong" choice. Perhaps some choices have better results, and the GM will punish certain decisions more than others, but "right choice" and "wrong choice" really have no meaning when you are a GM. Doing what your GM wants or expects you to do is not your "job" as a player. Your job is to play your character. If the GM wants the characters to be a certain kind, i.e. - Robin Hood types, or cold-blooded killers, then he needs to tell people that when they create their characters. But if you decide to shoot or not to shoot someone, that's not a "wrong" character choice, it can only be a bad idea.
I agree with this. The OP's description sounds like the game is heavily on rails where there are objectively Right and Wrong options. Which sort of begs the question why the GM doesn't just write a short story instead of running it as an interactive game. Certainly actions have consequences but the game shouldn't be 100% rails (honestly this was my issue with at least one canon run, by the end of it I wished I had stayed home because I was functionally treated as an NPC playing through a totally predefined script).
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That 'scripted feel' is generally the reason why my group doesn't use missions (no matter who is GMing)... We perfer a more..... dynamic mussion parameters.
Now I understand why missions are done the way they are (Time frames mostly.). And based on their limitations is understandable.
Generally, and broadly speaking, the GMs in my group are more narrators and arbitors. They come up with their campaign ideas, WE build our characters, and things kind of evolve organically from our actions.
We act like a bunch of douche-bags... and the world responds. We act like a bunch of White Knights, again the world responds. Do moral and ethical choices and situations come up? All the time actually!
But its never a case of 'If players do X then Y happens'... Yes there are consiquences to oyr actions but they are never usually so cut and dry, or even felt. (GM: "So you guys let Fred die huh? Ok. Too bad though - between Us, he had major contacts with the Coyotes and could have helped you get some new gear a little faster. Oh well")
I do however think its a good idea to have characters that mesh well as a group.... if only to avoid interplayer conflict, and for a sense of realism. People rarely work well with people who share diametrically opposite views and morals. (Different views and morals, sure. But it you like animals, you're not hanging around with someone spends their free time kicking puppies and drowning kittens for fun!)
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I do however think its a good idea to have characters that mesh well as a group.... if only to avoid interplayer conflict, and for a sense of realism. People rarely work well with people who share diametrically opposite views and morals. (Different views and morals, sure. But it you like animals, you're not hanging around with someone spends their free time kicking puppies and drowning kittens for fun!)
Yeah it was sort of a relief when the one character whose MO was always "go loud with combat magic, screw group tactics, loot shit stupidly, pull pranks that get Johnsons mad at us" got super killed by drones on the last run. The player built a new character that fit a lot better with our attempts to be mostly mirrorshades and professional. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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And it depends a lot on what you mean by 'good'.
'Good', as in 'doesn't kill'? Tough, but doable, with the right chemicals. 'Good', as in 'doesn't break the law'? I ... don't think it's possible, considering the game, but for every impossibility there's a Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Essentially, make sure you create your definition of 'good' - what your morality is, what gets you righteously torqued off, and what will make you go all John Wick on someone. Keep it in mind, make sure you play it. For player good-vibes, try not to make it so that the other PCs are causing you to blow up at least once a session; that'll lead to SOMEONE storming out at some point. (ProTip - talk to the other players!!)
Typically, things like rape, child sex trafficking, cannibalism (questionable whether or not ghouls trigger this), drug/BTL pushing on the youth, heavy-duty mind-control - that sort of thing makes for good 'no farther' boundaries. Except for the cannibalism, at one point or another Hawatari's taken down a PC involved with that above list.
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Dammit wyrm you beat me to the punch again.
So yeah basically the above. Morality is a wide and almost entirely subjective spectrrum. One persons good is anothers evil, example.
Your contacts taken a nasty pasting from some gangers it looks like his spinal cord is damaged and he will never walk or use his arms again. When he comes to he begs your group to kill him, he clearly does not want to live like this.
Character A decides to kill him because he is clearly suffering and unable to end himself, in his eyes this is what a good person would do.
Character B sees this an evil act, taking somebodys life during a moment of weakness. All life is sacred and killing somone in anything but the last line of self defence is an evil action.
Which is good which is evil?
Character A killed somone, but, they would have suffered enormously if he hadn't. Good, or Evil?
Character B wanted to let him live and by doing so would have caused him to suffer, but he hasnt killed anyone. Good or Evil?
As far as making a right or wrong choice, there's no such thing. Just potential outcomes, some more prefferable than others.
Always find out what sort of group you are running with and what is expected of you in a group, if the gm and others are ok with inter party conflict great, if not there are still many different things you can do that will fit the group and if you feel you are being forced into a playstyle you don't like talk to your gm, it's so important you are all working together and from the same page.
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<- Character C wonders why not just get him cyber/bio/genware to fix him up.
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I deffer to the quadroplegic negative trait which sets a clear example that not all such injuries have cyber/bio or even magical solutions.
EDIT: It may be paraplegic, I don't have my sourcebook handy.
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I deffer to the quadroplegic negative trait which sets a clear example that not all such injuries have cyber/bio or even magical solutions.
EDIT: It may be paraplegic, I don't have my sourcebook handy.
As a real-life paraplegic I say so effing what it can't be healed.
People using the condition as an example of a life not worth living make me want to puke.
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I do however think its a good idea to have characters that mesh well as a group.... if only to avoid interplayer conflict, and for a sense of realism. People rarely work well with people who share diametrically opposite views and morals. (Different views and morals, sure. But it you like animals, you're not hanging around with someone spends their free time kicking puppies and drowning kittens for fun!)
We have had issues with this in my group aswell. We are two characters, who are what you would call "good guys". One of us having a code of honor, the other just having strong oponions on who he wants to work for. So we told our fixer, what kind of work we wanted, and didn´t wanted, to do. Problem is, the two remaining runners couldn´t care less about the moral aspect of the job, they would take pretty much any job they were offered.
So we made a deal with our GM; In case of wetwork, or in other ways morally ambigiuos runs, our two "good guy" characters can turn down the job (or not being asked at all), and we will have "secondary" characters made, that the two other runners can hire.
Ofcourse, we´d have to come up with excuses to ex. "why wouldn´t they just work together all the time and ditch the other two", but it really wasn´t that difficult to get around.
This does actually work as a solution, atleast for us.
And I had a lot of fun trying to make a sort of "evil counterpart" to my primary character.
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Ugh; I wouldn't permit that sort of thing without a quid pro quo - the other players have to make 'more moral' characters as well, because there SHOULD be times when someone moral (the Salvation Army, the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Moonies, some Shinto priest, or hell, just a doctor who actually feels his Hippocratic Oath applies to actions he commissions as well as the ones he personally enacts) refuses to accept your two dipped-in-slime mercenary runners as 'viable employees' and demands someone with actual empathy left in them.
Reputation, good and bad, gets around ...
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Ugh; I wouldn't permit that sort of thing without a quid pro quo - the other players have to make 'more moral' characters as well, because there SHOULD be times when someone moral (the Salvation Army, the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Moonies, some Shinto priest, or hell, just a doctor who actually feels his Hippocratic Oath applies to actions he commissions as well as the ones he personally enacts) refuses to accept your two dipped-in-slime mercenary runners as 'viable employees' and demands someone with actual empathy left in them.
Reputation, good and bad, gets around ...
Heh, that is a very good point. It would also solve the problem with the unequal distribution of karma and ressources - our characters being "left behind" if we are not making runs without the other two. I´ve thought about that, but decided to wait and see if it would become a problem at all.
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I deffer to the quadroplegic negative trait which sets a clear example that not all such injuries have cyber/bio or even magical solutions.
EDIT: It may be paraplegic, I don't have my sourcebook handy.
As a real-life paraplegic I say so effing what it can't be healed.
People using the condition as an example of a life not worth living make me want to puke.
I dont recall once saying I viewed it that way. I was creating an example for demonstration purposes where the affected individual viewed it that way, further i referred to para/quadroplegia trait to show NOT EVERYTHING CAN BE CURED WITH CYBER/BIO, not only are you inferring opinions that simply arent there but if your prepared to make snap judgements of somones character based soley on a fictitious example create purely for simplicity then spew loaded comments like that around your reveal more about the flaws in your on charater than anyone else whos comment you claim to be nauseated about. Get off your high horse and grow up.
Hey Newb, from your own post:
Your contacts taken a nasty pasting from some gangers it looks like his spinal cord is damaged and he will never walk or use his arms again. When he comes to he begs your group to kill him, he clearly does not want to live like this.
you used the example of someone with a spinal cord injury as someone who "clearly does not want to live like this".
How have I misconstrued that?
Oh right, I called you on your bias. Here's a little free education for you kiddo, If you don't intend to insult people try reading your post before pressing that "post" button.
As a bonus, it'll give you a chance to clear up those childish spelling errors at the same time.
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Your contacts taken a nasty pasting from some gangers it looks like his spinal cord is damaged and he will never walk or use his arms again. When he comes to he begs your group to kill him, he clearly does not want to live like this.
you used the example of someone with a spinal cord injury as someone who "clearly does not want to live like this".
How have I misconstrued that?
You miscontrued it by ignoring the (now-)highlighted qualifier that the injured person, for whatever reason, is begging for death when he regains consciousness. Their choice as a plot device, not necessarily yours as a person.
So your character walks away from the sad, depressed chummer. On the positive side you've demonstrated to your fellow players the evils of ableism. On the opposite side, he's of no immediate use to you or your character anymore and as a player you will eventually forget all about the NPC.
Unfortunately, a HUGE aspect of the SR setting is that people are only worth the nuyen they can spend on or earn for others, and not a micropayment more. Maybe the gang members, maybe the NPC's loan shark, maybe the clinic itself, but someone's going to realize that the guy's still good for a few nuyen, delivered fresh to Tamanous, once the news is out that no one's watching. Or, maybe someone places a call, and the GM brings the paraplegic back as a "brain in a jar". Do you really think he's going to thank you for his new life?
This brings us back to the in-game ethics of what a "good guy" in this (deliberately dark for the purposes of example) setting might want to do, and the in-game mechanics of what that good guy might be able to do.
Let's leave the hypothetical paraplegic in his hospital bed for now.
In my current tabletop game, my character recently managed to save a few bystanders from an explosion. Not everyone, and by "save", it turns out that one PC now needed professional treatment to reduce the severity of the nightmares he now suffers. One NPC ended up with a (wiz!) bone armor/carapace in addition to his skeleton - we sent him off with a free spirit who was interested in him. Another NPC ended up with acidic(?) drool pouring out his mouth, burning his own clothes and skin away. My character opted for a 9mm dose of lead anesthetic in that case. "Good guy" or "Bad guy"?
I'd think there are any number of stories that can be told in a lighter setting and still be fun, and goodness or kindness need not be penalized. In a darker setting, or even one hitting too close to home IRL, clearly the GM and players need to establish which elements need to be left out.
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You don't have to be a bad person to be a shadowrunner. However, you're going to have a hard time of it if you're trying to be a Lawful Good type. After all, a large part of the job is breaking laws, stealing other people's property, and sometimes having to shoot your way clear. There's a REASON that Pacifist and Code of Honor are NEGATIVE qualities. They make your life harder.
This doesn't mean you have to be a completely amoral rat bastard, though. In fact, that's also going to make your life harder, in the long run. (See Clockwork for details.)
Most runners are somewhere in the middle. As it was said in one of the books, "Sometimes you do the right thing. Sometimes you shoot people in the face for money. Sometimes those are the same thing." So do you have to be BAD? No. But a level of moral flexibility is definitely something you may want to consider.
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All right folks, let's take a breath and relax before I have to lock the thread and get out the banhammer.
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Deep Breath, count to 10.
Yes, I'm probably touchy about the whole subject of spinal cord injuries. As a result I jumped on the post. Mea culpa. My apologies to the forum.
As to the actual subject, whilst playing a completely amoral bloodthirsty anarchist can be fun on occasion, after a short while I find such a character to be terribly shallow and boring. I far prefer to play a more rounded, "real" person. Such a character will have to face the consequences of his decisions and will usually try to avoid committing the very worst deeds, but will occasionally find himself in a situation where, as a Shadowrunner, his reputation and his life are on the line.
I find if I play a character with a SIN (other than Criminal) I play him as a more law-abiding type who tries to avoid taking runs involving wetwork or mass destruction. Having a SIN means he is still part of society and subconsciously or otherwise bound by societal norms.
The SINless character, by default, has fallen through the cracks, and as such is required to sometimes commit heinous crimes just to survive. He may not set out to be a killer, or to knowingly ruin someone's life for a simple payment, but that is the kind of job Corporations turn to the shadows for. The SINless are disposable tools, the HR equivalent of a burner phone.
Playing a good person faced with bad decisions is probably the most enjoyable type of character for me, and allows me to explore actions that I couldn't in real life even consider.
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*Sigh* Are we good now Sterling? As I originally stated, I'm sorry if this post offended you, I wasn't expressing my own opinions but creating an example to demonstrate a point. I can however see why it's a touchy subject for you.
*Offers a handshake*
Get to know me sometime, if you still feel I have a negative view then by all means tell me to get lost but I promise you I'm not the biassed individual you thought, on the contrary I detest opinions like that having several addmitedly less severe lifelong disabilities of my own.
Shall we clear comments from the thread?
To the rest of the thread my apologies to anyone exposed to this.
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Deep Breath, count to 10.
Yes, I'm probably touchy about the whole subject of spinal cord injuries. As a result I jumped on the post. Mea culpa. My apologies to the forum.
As to the actual subject, whilst playing a completely amoral bloodthirsty anarchist can be fun on occasion, after a short while I find such a character to be terribly shallow and boring. I far prefer to play a more rounded, "real" person. Such a character will have to face the consequences of his decisions and will usually try to avoid committing the very worst deeds, but will occasionally find himself in a situation where, as a Shadowrunner, his reputation and his life are on the line.
I find if I play a character with a SIN (other than Criminal) I play him as a more law-abiding type who tries to avoid taking runs involving wetwork or mass destruction. Having a SIN means he is still part of society and subconsciously or otherwise bound by societal norms.
The SINless character, by default, has fallen through the cracks, and as such is required to sometimes commit heinous crimes just to survive. He may not set out to be a killer, or to knowingly ruin someone's life for a simple payment, but that is the kind of job Corporations turn to the shadows for. The SINless are disposable tools, the HR equivalent of a burner phone.
Playing a good person faced with bad decisions is probably the most enjoyable type of character for me, and allows me to explore actions that I couldn't in real life even consider.
You make a good point here, It reminds me of the opinions of a character from a Dan Abnet novel. Truly good individuals are ground down or killed by their moral code and the situations it puts them in.
Truly evil people are quickly limited in power by the fact few trust them and are eventually hunted down by the good or stabbed in the back.
Those who live on are the ones who live in the grey, that shady middle ground between good and evil where you may need to abandon morals and make difficult decisions that often leave you questioning if you made the "right" choice long after acting.
A good gm wont force a moral code on a character but let it develop it's own lines that shouldn't be crossed and views and then gradually place them in situations which test that boundary and what they are and arent prepared to sacrifice to stay within it.
A good example is a bug city survival/horror run I played with my group a few months ago. I was playing a troll merc and one of my players had volunteered to take over gm for the night so I could get a game in. The rest of my group was already dead at the point where we start (The run was mirrorshades and lethal) and I'm sneaking down a street some ant spirits had just been in, unarmed, with my legs effed up, when a young child (About 6) runs at me bawling her eyes out just as the "ants" come back, headed my way, naturally I tried to keep her quiet but she would not stop bawling her eyes out and in a couple of seconds more she was going to get us both killed when the ants noticed (My legs were too effed up to run let alone carry her). I did the only thing I could, I knocked her out with my fists, a cybered up troll vs 6 year old girl, yeah, drekky move but better than both of us dying. I tried to drag her unconscious body with me to cover but the ants were gaining ground too fast. I had nothing to distract them with, no cover in range dragging her and they were almost on us, I left her there, blessedly unconscious considering what was about to happen and dragged my usless ass out the way. The last thing I heard was a single high pitched squeal that ended in a bubbling gurgle. I made it out of that hellhole somehow, but I left my pride behind...
Things like this.
(Sorry for any typos it's bloody hard to see letters on my tv, the sooner my replacement laptop battery arrives the better)
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Shadowrun is a ruleset. The world in which you play, and the game that's shaped from there, is up to your GM.
Case in point, the Seattle Underground in the Seattle Box Set. You have an opportunity to find employment there either working for Hard Corps, where you kick people out of their homes, track down and arrest resistance leaders, or burn down illegal buildings, making good money in the process, or working for the oppressed underclass, breaking up heavy-handed police action, passing information to the media, or helping people escape before the bulldozers arrive. The choice is up to you and your GM, and dovetails into the idea that everything has a price.
Want to make good money and take relative easy jobs? All it'll cost you is your soul.
Want to do good works for the community? You won't get paid much, and you'll be sleeping with the rats, but you'll rest easy.
Which path do you walk?
In my personal game, I encourage people to be the last candles in the dark, the small flicker of hope that things can get better, if not for the world as a whole, then at least for one little section. They aren't big wins, but you take what you can get. It's cyber noir, after all.
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For me a big part of Shadowrun, or any other similar setting, is playing to and upon the moral ambiguity of it. Knowing the lines your character, or you personally, won't cross and dealing with the repercussions of such beliefs makes the game more interesting and less 4 colour comic book. As has been mentioned several times there really is no true black and white in the world so everyone must decide for themselves what is acceptable and what isn't.
I've played the pure mercenary who will do anything for a nuyen and, in the long run, for me it's far less fun than actually having some form of moral compass for my characters.
But the reality of things is each to their own and if you and your GM have very different visions of what the game should be you will either have to find a compromise or agree to go your separate ways before the friction causes a more permanent rift. I actually had this exact situation a few months back where 2 of my players decided that there were no boundaries and everything was fair game both in and out of character. It ended up destroying the group and several people, myself included, walked away from the group because of it. I didn't walk because of their character actions but because of their actions as players and the way they treated people at the table when they didn't get things their own way. This wasn't a new group and I've played with these guys for well over 10 years so the change in attitude and behaviour was unexpected and totally destructive.
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*Sigh* Are we still using Proextender (https://www.villagevoice.com/2021/09/09/proextender-review/) now Sterling? As I originally stated, I'm sorry if this post offended you, I wasn't expressing my own opinions but creating an example to demonstrate a point. I can however see why it's a touchy subject for you.
It is very hard to play as a good character in this game, I'll say that. But that's why I like it. ;D