Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Outsider on <02-14-11/1828:57>
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Now most of us that play Shadowrun know that it's not all rainbows (or even a double rainbow) and sunshine. So as an on again, off again GM for Shadowrun I like to see how low my runners morals will go. When I play I like to keep things in reason and also try to get the other player to "toe the line". The characters are pragmatic at best but never lowly. So share your stories of just how low your character went or your team(s) and if you're a GM how low your players went.
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Where do you live that plane tickets are cheap? It's a couple hundred bucks here for the ticket then thousands more in therapy after the TSA molests you.
Also, my runners are pure angelic beings who commit no wrong, do not pass gas, and help lil old troll ladies across the street.
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Erk, errr...ahem *cough* well.... things have gone from bad to worse for my free spirit PC recently :-\
We're running through the Ghost Cartel module of adventures (centering on Tempo distribution and intrigue), and my PC who started out as an explicitly 'no wetwork or drug distribution' runner, has slowly spiralled further and further into a mass-murdering drug dealer.
*Ack. I was going to post examples, but didn't want to list spoilers :-X *
I must note, however, it's been a fun slide for me as a player, doling out the visible regret and moral decline as the PC realises they're diving further and further into the nasty stuff.
However, the PC is holding onto a bright light at the end of the tunnel. As it specialises in infiltration and deception, it's playing along with the fixer and adventure modules as a self-employed undercover agent, intent on destroying the source of Tempo (and has convinced at least one other PC to go along with the new end-game in mind).
Is pretty interesting to play in the group, but WOW are there a lot of regrets.
Idealistic entity that I'm playing, have even donated a lot of run-money to 'Victims of Crime' Charities and institutions.... you know..guilt money :-[
I'm loving the game ;D
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Seen the moral spectrum from white hats to black hats. Whatever works for the group and makes for a good story, go with it! :D
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I have a player that has taken Pacifist. Not the hardcore 10 pt version, "just" the 5 pt version (I think it's 10/5, no books at work, but yeah). He's running with a pistols aptitude street sam, and a katana/broadsword wielding adept of death. So long as the Pacifist and the mage of the group can talk things down...no problem. But we've yet to get into combat...next game night perhaps. I hope to test the Pacifist over and over and over again :)
If I get the Pacifist to kill...yay, I win! If the Pacifist keeps to his code...yay he wins! Either way, should be fun.
Of course it's not just the players that can take the low road. GMs can be pretty nasty as well. I haven't hit my (mostly new to SR) players with anything bad yet (we've only done Food Fight and now about 1/2 way through On the Run). But by last game I had finished a book on the history of cannibalism (long story, but I like cannibal jokes, friend got it for me, I read it, now I've got real life cannibalism (very disturbing) on my, well, mmmm braaaainnns...anyway), two of the players took a taxi to a dive bar in the barrens, on the outskirts really, but deep enough they had to pay up front and more than usual for the ride. So they're passing through burnt out slums with pimps and pushers and everything else and then they hit one particularly lifeless and quiet block. One player looks out the window and sees a flash from an oil-drum fire down an alley. As the taxi passes by, the player sees one humanoid figure pull up the seemingly lifeless arm and torso of another humanoid up off the ground, rip off the triceps flesh with its free hand, and begin to lower the meat down its throat. Then the alley is gone, passed by like every other alley on their trip.
I like keeping my players aware of just how bad things can get, but they don't always have to be in the middle of it :)
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It's definitely a hard road to follow, especially if you like your Shadows dark and your Punk dystopian. It can lead to all kinds of issues, not just whether or not to kill, but whether or not to preach to the team, and what to do if there's a serious falling out.
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My group is a little bi-polar when it comes to morals.
They will risk it all to save the ass of a guy they barely know, and get 3 members killed in the process. They'll go out of their way to help contacts, some of whom are just using them.
And then they will do things like nearly beat the crap out of a 7 year old ork girl who led them in a circle in Caracas's La Rinconada. There was going to be a point to following her, but they decided to just levitate her and pound on her for wasting their time. I had the local gang that gets paid for protection show up.
I try to find their character's moral center and find the compass spins in circles.
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Depends on the character, to be honest. When I create a character, before stats and whatnot I come up with a concept. That concept determines how said character will act. For example, my "favorite Merc" has a strict personal code of conduct. No deliberate targeting of civilians, avoid collateral damage whenever possible, go for the precision hit, honor the contract.Granted that last part can get a bit tricky. He has no qualms about blowing away people in their sleep provide they represent an actual tactical target.
Now, on the flip side, I have also played a cybered out hitman who honors only one thing: the contract. Blow away an orphanage..sure! Poision kittens and puppies in the pound, when you need it done by? Didn't matter as long as he was paid. He simply didnt CARE. He was SO about the "contract" that other members of the group had to promise payment in the middle of a bar fight before he would help.
Only once did I play a truly psycho-killer type. And to be honest, I found it boring. Its easy to just kill everything in sight just to be a badass, its much more fun to have the limits because the challange is in keeping whatever code you have.
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It has been my experience that whatever type of campaign the group decides upon at the beginning, it will flow the opposite way very quickly.
A lot of my players were excited to play Shadowrun because we had been playing VtM for a year or so before and I was a pretty big stickler for the Humanity rule, not wanting my players to start murdering everyone in sight. That game slowly deteriorated into the group committing mass murder across several states and my players constantly bemoaning the fact that there were repercussions for killing people.
In Shadowrun, they did a run in an office where the street sammy said "No one leaves alive." and proceeded to kill every wage slave on the floor. I think he did this to get a rise out of me, seeing as I was very no-kill in Vampire, but I didn't really react because it's Shadowrun, people die all the time.
Sure, now the players have a bit of a rep for murder and he created one heck of a background count, but there were no mechanical consequences and I told him most people on the street didn't care.
Then, all the players were left starring at the totality of what they had done. From then on out, they aren't nearly as kill everybody crazy, and have actually developed a bit of a conscious for caring about those widows they've created.
I don't know if it's because people are contrary, the setting is bleak so the players want to fight that, or if the "naughtiness" of being bad fades when no one cares, but I've found the best way to truly test my player's morals is to have no moral prejudgments of my own and simply describe the events as they unfold.
It turns out, they aren't as bad as they think they are.
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I've GM'd a few Shadowrun street-level games for six teens of age 14-17. They've taken out a kill-squad of humanis, killing them all in one round, without even letting them pull a trigger... And they did discuss things afterwards, obviously feeling wrong even about killing a bunch of racist murderers in a game. I was surprised, because it was strange, I'd expect more trigger-happy, less moral restraints. But they did well, saving lives when it would have been easier to just loot the corpse, and then even defending the guy from his gangmates, and trying to clear his name. And in the grande finale they almost got wiped out, because they didn't want to hurt the spirit-possessed troll more than it was necessary.
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The group I played with was more of the 'If it can get me on the news I'll do it' variety...
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The group I played with was more of the 'If it can get me on the news I'll do it' variety...
Ack!
We had a player like that. His smiling face after mono-whipping a few Lone Stars was the last thing anyone saw before the HTR team Assault-rifled him to death.... (Yes, the verb, to Assault-Rifle...it means 'to perforate with multiple sharp metal projectiles, from range, at high speed)
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The Characters by in Large try to go the non-lethal route (attracts much less attention (and hardcore motivation) from KE and other Corporate types), but there are times when I've pushed to see if the monster will come out. They also have an NPC merc (Sonny) who encapsulates the trope "Good Is NOT Nice" and goes out of his way to make examples of people who make others lives miserable for his own personal giggles.
A notable bit in his background is that when the Japanese pulled out of Yomi, he led a raid to deal with the hardcore IJA, IJN troops left behind and is rather famous in the Japanese metahuman community in that they know about him, and aren't saying who or what he looks like if the Japan-a-corps come asking.
He has a severe dislike for Japanese Corps and particularly the Imperial Japanese Military and has been actively hunting in the background for troopers who had been stationed on Yomi that were subsumed into the corps. He's been leaving a trail of bodies behind him that the players are somewhat aware of (he's good enough to cover his tracks), and only recently have they become aware of his reputation as the Jiyu Senshi by his exploits in CalFree.
He had called in a favor from the players during a down time period for getting patched up. They found him in a Seattle warehouse in Tacoma that was under control of the Japanese Meta-human controlled Yakuza, (name escapes me at the moment) with an older but still physically robust Japanese gentleman bound and gagged, both pretty bloody and messy. As the groups mage medic patched him up, they asked who the guy was. He stated that he was former governor Saito of San Fran and he's been tracking him for a long time. He also stated the man had some ties back to Yomi, which was simply a tack-on from his decidedly infamous reputation in Frisco.
He also stated that he'd contact some Yomi and Frisco survivors about them man through back channels and that they were coming to thank him. Personally. I played this one calmly as after getting patched up, he had a lunch pail brought in by, what they found out to be much later to be his GF (Japanese elf with the pearly skin variation) who had been used as a "comfort woman" while she was in Yomi, as other japanese metas filtered in.
He stated he was going to send the head back to Japan and needed it intact. The rest was the survivors to play with. He put on a bit of uplifting bapitist music while the metas did to him what the Fremen did to 'The Beast' Raban from Dune, and he silently sipped his tea, smiling.
The female players were appalled as were some of the males. Sonny simply shrugged and said, "This way, no lawyer gets paid, no life sentence, no weaseling out. And some deserving people get a bit of therapy. Win Win."
The characters haven't made as much light hearted comments around him since then.
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If we're fighting CorpSec Usda will use JustForce (trying hard to not kill) If we're fighting "Evil" CorpSec, If they die they die. Usda does have that tiny personality quality glitch "Berzerk Rage". But he doesn't start out wanting to kill everyone in a 3/4 mile radius.
On the other hand my "Face" has no problems with shooting whoever he needs to negotiate information out of the oposition.
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I like it as low as you can feasibly go. I once had a heavy weapons Ork make swiss cheese out of an old lady a mom and baby in a subway to get away from the cops.
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I like it as low as you can feasibly go. I once had a heavy weapons Ork make swiss cheese out of an old lady a mom and baby in a subway to get away from the cops.
Cold.
I really find the 'Kill 'em all' PC's the most one-dimensional (and, well, boring).
If you have free reign to do anything, with no consequences, then we may as well play the game with Nukes and be done with it....
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Thats not how it was. He would kill anyone when he was drugged up on kamikase and it wasnt free for all. He got put in jail and died in a prison fight
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When I allowed players to drink alcohol while gaming. The game would go south really, really, really fast. Sometimes it was fun to watch and sometimes I hated it.
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When I allowed players to drink alcohol while gaming. The game would go south really, really, really fast. Sometimes it was fun to watch and sometimes I hated it.
It's a 50:50. My group drinks a bit, but after one incident where players could not coherntly advise any course of action (and bear in mind, one of us is always remoting in via webcam), we put a 'tanked limit' on players.
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The moral ranges of PCs in my group swing wildly. From a team that wanted to save the world to another that was willing to use a tac-nuke at the prompting of a more straight forward evil PC.
My current band of runners is morally a mixed bag and that has created a lot of dramatic tension.
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Mine varies pretty wildly from character to character. I have a tendency to make their morality loosen the higher their Magic or the lower their Essence, though; with great extremes of power comes a sort of "inhumanity," whether that increase in ability is coming from losing parts of yourself to technology, or being able to perform wildly superhuman feats from magical power.
Coincidentally, of course, the lower your Essence and the higher your Magic, for the most part, the farther in a campaign things are going; so the morals have a tendency to be slipping anyways, as a long-lived criminal gets dirtier and dirtier just from the nature of the business.
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My former group seemed to have a 'no wetwork' rule, though killing in a firefight/close quarters was perfectly acceptable. Our shaman had a custom spell called Urban Renewal, which basically collapsed buildings. Never saw it cast though. I think the most morally/ethically dubious i ever got was taking out a Humanis sentry at close (heavy) pistol range.
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Mine varies pretty wildly from character to character. I have a tendency to make their morality loosen the higher their Magic or the lower their Essence, though; with great extremes of power comes a sort of "inhumanity," whether that increase in ability is coming from losing parts of yourself to technology, or being able to perform wildly superhuman feats from magical power.
Coincidentally, of course, the lower your Essence and the higher your Magic, for the most part, the farther in a campaign things are going; so the morals have a tendency to be slipping anyways, as a long-lived criminal gets dirtier and dirtier just from the nature of the business.
That reminds me... When I wrote up some rules for d20 Shadowrun, I used Charisma as the character's Essence score. Your score didn't actually change, but you had an adjusted score minus the 'ware cost (which, since d20 is based off 3d6 scores, 'ware cost 3x essence costs in the book). That meant that the more 'ware you had, the lower your Charisma and Charisma-based skills (except Intimidation--that was figured differently ;)).
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FastJack, don't you know d20 gives you cancer?
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How low?
I (my character) personally hailed a cab, had him drive me to a street doc, then killed him and sold the parts to the doc and the cab to a chop shop.
I was low on cash that week.
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That's pretty low...
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How low?
I (my character) personally hailed a cab, had him drive me to a street doc, then killed him and sold the parts to the doc and the cab to a chop shop.
I was low on cash that week.
I wanna do that!
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I once walked out of a restaurant without paying.
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I had a long in character argument with the entire ~7 other team members about killing the 12-16ish year-old technomancer girl of a prime runner team trying to kill us. We'd just slaughtered the rest of the team with an IED and short gunfight after reverse-ambushing them.
Eventually the GM had to say they just got away somehow (despite the IED taking out the one way in or out, and a free shadow plant spirit-possessed NPC Noxious Breathing the whole area.).
One success off banishing that spirit too. I got revenge a few sessions later though.
Never did get to kill the Technomancer, Their main argument was "But they're too young to know any better." My Ghoul Ork Mage, Chrona, still doesn't understand why if orks can mature so fast mentally why cant other Meta's.
"She's old enough to be fragging trying to kill us and running with the lot we just killed damnit."
A suggestion to hand her over to some Shinto Priestess HMHVV Infected Hunters out Street Sam knew from Japan, who'd tried to kill Chrona once already, was not well received by him.
Next session after a quick break out from the Free Spirit's prison I gave a lengthy, gruesome description of Chrona turning one of the guards into "Rations".
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Shooting people in the face for money. Sometimes supplies Bubba with merchandise if low on cash.
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How low?
I (my character) personally hailed a cab, had him drive me to a street doc, then killed him and sold the parts to the doc and the cab to a chop shop.
I was low on cash that week.
Guess your GM's not big on real-time broadcasting security cameras inside cabs, huh? ;)
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First, it was the Barrens in 2050. Second, my illusion spells disguised my face. Third, he never saw it coming.
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I once walked out of a restaurant without paying.
If this is in Shadowrun, I hope it wasn't an Italian restaurant. Those Mafia types can be an unforgiving bunch. Come to think of it, I hope it wasn't a noodle place(Triads) or sushi joint(Yakuza) or seafood restaurant(Seoulpa Ring.) God help you if it was The Big Rhino!
If this was in real life, seriously uncool! Some of us work in restaurants and we have Shadowrun books to buy. You steal from me, you steal from Catalyst.
First, it was the Barrens in 2050. Second, my illusion spells disguised my face. Third, he never saw it coming.
But you never saw that hobo hiding in the shadows and that cabbie's brother was a made guy in the O'Malley family...
In any event, I'm sure that cabbie was going to drop you off at the organ leggers while he thought you were under sedation and sell you to some ghouls. Good thing you got him before he got you!
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It was run by a werewolf, I think. Something that shrugged off an antivehicle sniper round to the head. I got eaten later.
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All you need now is a kill counter display on your chest, drones to collect your kills, and three names...
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What's that from?
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What's that from?
kill counter display Came from Cyberpunk
drones to collect your kills Came from my 9 o'clock news player, mentioned above
three names Came from the US media on how they label killers (serial and assassins), like the recent attempt on the AZ Senator (It's easier to say Senator, since she was one prior to currently being in Congress... Besides I'm not sure 'Congress-Woman' is correct terminology). The entertainment industry also likes to use it, like in the movies: Conspiracy Theory and Assassins; and the TV shows X-Files and Dollhouse. The list could go one for a very long time...
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Congresswoman is correct. Or Representative. As she was a sitting representative, it is more accurate and deferential to refer to her by her current title.
Though that psycho isn't technically a serial killer, as there was no significant time in between the killings. He is technically a mass murderer. Not that it matters with a bag over your head and a paralyzing agent running through your veins.
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Hopefully no runners have ever tried this. Because that would be pretty low.
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I remember a time when Shadowrun was about fighting the corps and standing up for the squatters. Street samurai's were defined by their code of honor, not by their body count, Street Shamans defended the natural world. Shadowrunner isn't suppose to mean the same as killer and murderer..... I really miss "real" shadowrunners.....
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I remember a time when Shadowrun was about fighting the corps and standing up for the squatters. Street samurai's were defined by their code of honor, not by their body count, Street Shamans defended the natural world. Shadowrunner isn't suppose to mean the same as killer and murderer..... I really miss "real" shadowrunners.....
That's just the flavor of campaign you play in(me too generally). Shadowrunners are criminals tho, some only a little bad(ie, those prone to hooding) and some are very, very bad.
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Usually it's only a single player with issues that would be better off working through them at the gym or going to the shooting range than warping the flavor of the game... I wish I could find a gaming group that doesn't end up having one of those players! It's no fun when you have to make new characters after a single game. At least I've got weird stories [as I cry myself to sleep].
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honestly, I think it is the new generation of gamers-i've had to educate my players about what Shadowrun is about. you are not mercenaries, although sometimes you will act like one. You are not soldiers but sometimes you'll have to fight like one. It's not just about nuyen, having the toughest character or the best cyberware-it's about honor and living by a code. That's the difference between wantabes and prime runners......here endith the lesson.
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honestly, I think it is the new generation of gamers-i've had to educate my players about what Shadowrun is about. you are not mercenaries, although sometimes you will act like one. You are not soldiers but sometimes you'll have to fight like one. It's not just about nuyen, having the toughest character or the best cyberware-it's about honor and living by a code. That's the difference between wantabes and prime runners......here endith the lesson.
I got tired of educating the local college/high school kids on what role playing actually is (vs the roll playing, MMO style gaming they were raised with). I think that's ultimately why I took a break from gaming.
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Educate them the way I do, with a prime runner street samurai that hunts down dishonorable acting characters and makes examples of them. Have contacts stop doing business with them or start charging them more for stuff. Doing amoral things also attracts the attention of Knight Errant.
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Educate them the way I do, with a prime runner street samurai that hunts down dishonorable acting characters and makes examples of them.
I love this idea :) +1 for you!
I had a prime runner vampire phys-ad enforcer NPC in my campaigns many, many moons ago (SR2 perhaps?)... he was the perfect bogey-man. Wouldn't take many tweaks to set him up like your suggestion....
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One of my PCs (the Hacker) made a spirit pack with a Grim Reaper (from running wild) he gains immunity to Aging for the ritual sacrifice of a sentient life each week, he always picks orks and Trolls
Another PC is a Mystic Adept BTL additct that turns tricks as a joy boy to make ends meet
The PC that plays the sammie is a card carrying member of M.O.M. and donates half her earnings to the cause and saves lives when ever they can
the Face is also the PCs street doc and likes to go in to detail about what he puts in or takes out of bodies
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One of my PCs (the Hacker) made a spirit pack with a Grim Reaper (from running wild) he gains immunity to Aging for the ritual sacrifice of a sentient life each week, he always picks orks and Trolls
Another PC is a Mystic Adept BTL additct that turns tricks as a joy boy to make ends meet
The PC that plays the sammie is a card carrying member of M.O.M. and donates half her earnings to the cause and saves lives when ever they can
the Face is also the PCs street doc and likes to go in to detail about what he puts in or takes out of bodies
Very interesting Group :)
I stand by my statement on the Hacker though. Such a PC cannot remain in the shadows with such a high profile. The Grim Reaper pact just makes things worse by inviting Astral scrutiny (by giving this otherwise Mundane hacker a glowing presence on the Astral plane), which simply invites attention from unfriendly spirit entities....
Can you imagine a casual spirit or mage walking past going, hmm, what's that...WHAT THE HELL IS IN YOUR AURA :o?
It's the astral equivalent of walking through a mall covered in blood and carrying a steak-knife...people will notice....
Edit: If the hacker is lucky, it's only PEOPLE who'll notice. Other astral forms will have zero reservations about manifesting and taking action immediately....
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One of my PCs (the Hacker) made a spirit pack with a Grim Reaper (from running wild) he gains immunity to Aging for the ritual sacrifice of a sentient life each week, he always picks orks and Trolls
Another PC is a Mystic Adept BTL additct that turns tricks as a joy boy to make ends meet
The PC that plays the sammie is a card carrying member of M.O.M. and donates half her earnings to the cause and saves lives when ever they can
the Face is also the PCs street doc and likes to go in to detail about what he puts in or takes out of bodies
Very interesting Group :)
I stand by my statement on the Hacker though. Such a PC cannot remain in the shadows with such a high profile. The Grim Reaper pact just makes things worse by inviting Astral scrutiny (by giving this otherwise Mundane hacker a glowing presence on the Astral plane), which simply invites attention from unfriendly spirit entities....
Can you imagine a casual spirit or mage walking past going, hmm, what's that...WHAT THE HELL IS IN YOUR AURA :o?
It's the astral equivalent of walking through a mall covered in blood and carrying a steak-knife...people will notice....
They do the last run was messed up because of the Hackers aura.
also note that my PCs like the fact that I will let them kill each other not that it happens that often and when something like this happens I talk to everyone individually after the game to see if they are all right with what is happening and make sure no ones feelings get too injured
also to note the team hacker is a para pelagic at the moment because of actions done by the sammie
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I guess I really am an Old Fart, I just remember the appeal of Shadowrun being to bring a small amount of light into a world full of darkness.
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"Game's the same, just got more fierce."
Educate them the way I do, with a prime runner street samurai that hunts down dishonorable acting characters and makes examples of them.
Heh...Hachetman?
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Educate them the way I do, with a prime runner street samurai that hunts down dishonorable acting characters and makes examples of them.
Heh...Hachetman?
Didn't he get Cyber-zombie'd in the end?
They do the last run was messed up because of the Hackers aura.
also note that my PCs like the fact that I will let them kill each other not that it happens that often and when something like this happens I everyone individually after the game if they are allright with what is happening so no ones feelings get too injured
also to note the team hacker is a para pelagic at the moment because of actions done by the sammie
I'm similar. Let the PC's do what they will, and certainly get away with it in the short term. But building up a regular sacrificial body-count should likewise build up some intense long-term consequences
Edit: Not dissing Paraplegia, but that's hardly a detriment to a PC that can perform their Shadowrunning role via remote...
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Educate them the way I do, with a prime runner street samurai that hunts down dishonorable acting characters and makes examples of them.
Heh...Hachetman?
Didn't he get Cyber-zombie'd in the end?
Yeah, unfortunately. But hey, that'd just make being an object of vengeance even more batshit terrifying.
Hah, the Dread Samurai Roberts? Immortal scourge of evil?
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I guess I really am an Old Fart, I just remember the appeal of Shadowrun being to bring a small amount of light into a world full of darkness.
it is more about what mood the PCs are in some times even in 1st edition some days they just didn't feel like having a single shred of humanity then other times they wright up a rocker singing about the good fight or a pirate news caster telling the truth. so do not despair
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Educate them the way I do, with a prime runner street samurai that hunts down dishonorable acting characters and makes examples of them.
Heh...Hachetman?
Didn't he get Cyber-zombie'd in the end?
Yeah, unfortunately. But hey, that'd just make being an object of vengeance even more batshit terrifying.
Hah, the Dread Samurai Roberts? Immortal scourge of evil?
No one would surrender to the Dread Samurai Wesly ;)
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Edit: Not dissing Paraplegia, but that's hardly a detriment to a PC that can perform their Shadowrunning role via remote...
until he gets his new cyberlegs hunting down that sacrifice will be more difficult beside there will be something more interesting over the horizon for them
Ares found out that they stole the factory manufacturing specs(a run in Detroit) for the Ares Predator IV and the Ares Alpha combat gun and have manufacturing and selling knock offs in Seattle made out of Plasteel 7 for the last 6 months.
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Hah, the Dread Samurai Roberts? Immortal scourge of evil?
No one would surrender to the Dread Samurai Wesly ;)
I'm so incredibly pleased that even in Shadowrun, the Princess Bride can be casually integrated into the conversation. Bravo and +1 to you both!
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I guess I really am an Old Fart, I just remember the appeal of Shadowrun being to bring a small amount of light into a world full of darkness.
It's just a fact that the young 'uns are raised on GTA and "Kill them all" games anymore... <sigh>
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I guess I really am an Old Fart, I just remember the appeal of Shadowrun being to bring a small amount of light into a world full of darkness.
It's just a fact that the young 'uns are raised on GTA and "Kill them all" games anymore... <sigh>
Indeed...where's a good game of 'Risk' when you need it?!
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I guess I really am an Old Fart, I just remember the appeal of Shadowrun being to bring a small amount of light into a world full of darkness.
Don't worry. It's not gone entirely. 8)
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Speaking as one who has played the game since release (1989, for those not in the know) I remember that the whole bit about "honor" and "bringing some light to the darkness" were done only when a paycheck wasn't on the line. The street samurai in our group had no compunction about murdering masses of people, even squatters or other down-and-outs, as it sometimes fit into his "personal code." That's always the kicker about those codes, they are different with each person, and honor is what you believe it to be.
The cabbie killing I mentioned earlier was in that first 1989 campaign. As my character was a former wage mage, his moral code wasn't terribly up to snuff (nominally better than the other corp goons though it was), but he did have his moments. When some guys were robbing a plain jane bank that catered to the less than affluential, he moved to bust it up. But, as always, his needs trumped everyone elses needs. Pretty much like everyone else in the world (needs are funny things, everyone's are different, too).
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Speaking as one who has played the game since release (1989, for those not in the know) I remember that the whole bit about "honor" and "bringing some light to the darkness" were done only when a paycheck wasn't on the line.
Not always, though that may have been how your group saw it. Only being honorable when it's convenient to you isn't, well, being honorable. It's easy to be good when being good is easy. It's doing the right thing in the face of adversity -- be it financial inconvenience, taking the more dangerous of two jobs, trying not to kill folks who don't have it coming -- that really makes a moral code tick.
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Speaking as one who has played the game since release (1989, for those not in the know) I remember that the whole bit about "honor" and "bringing some light to the darkness" were done only when a paycheck wasn't on the line. The street samurai in our group had no compunction about murdering masses of people, even squatters or other down-and-outs, as it sometimes fit into his "personal code." That's always the kicker about those codes, they are different with each person, and honor is what you believe it to be.
Couldn't agree more. I don't know where all the "being good in a bad world" stuff got to be such a huge issue. Been playing since the mid '90's and it was always mainly about surviving the next run with your team intact (or at least your own hide). Not going crazy and gunning people down willy nilly was just good business because it drew too much attention. Capping a bad man at the end of the run to close off loose ends was well within the moral code of a shadowrunner. Even the newer published missions nowadays are set up to encourage or trick people into doing wetwork, getting involved in the drug trade, body snatching, organ legging, and the whole gamut of totally bad things that only sociopaths do for a living in real life. Becoming a hero comes later in a campaign when you become awesome enough to pull yourself out of the muck and maybe bring a few of the innocents along with you to the good life, but that road is paved with a whole lot of bad.
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Forget Risk, what about Global Thermonucular War? Pacifisim is the only option. And I seem to remember killing more people with the lousy driving controls in Grand Theft Auto than I did deliberately.
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Speaking as one who has played the game since release (1989, for those not in the know) I remember that the whole bit about "honor" and "bringing some light to the darkness" were done only when a paycheck wasn't on the line.
Not always, though that may have been how your group saw it. Only being honorable when it's convenient to you isn't, well, being honorable. It's easy to be good when being good is easy. It's doing the right thing in the face of adversity -- be it financial inconvenience, taking the more dangerous of two jobs, trying not to kill folks who don't have it coming -- that really makes a moral code tick.
I lean more towards the Firefly side of morality versus the Leverage. When you're hungry, it's tough to turn down the job that will feed you.
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My morality is flexible depending on the character concept
The mage I'm playing at the moment thinks of himself as a good guy but he is willing to go further then some if it gets the job done.
One time he was walking down the street and walks into some guys robbing a stuffer shack, he stopped them only after being told they had some hot food with them (the SS he went to up the road was closed due to a robbing that morning and he couldnt get anything to eat). He stunned them till they were drooling and chucked their commlinks and weapons down into the sewers before taking their food and walking off.
But then another time he threaten to torture a physical adept with some FAB3 until he got information from him. The guy cracked after a very in depth explination of the FAB3 eating away his magic until he was a husk of a man.
So swings and roundabout's really.
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Oooh, good threats will get you a long way. "So, mr Pianist, do you want to talk or do you want me to crack those slim, strong fingers for ya?"
My team was morally split in half for a while. The street-shaman and adept very much pacifists, preferring stun bullets (locally dubbed "rubber gloves" one late night after quite a lot of alcohol) and stunbased magic. The orc gunlugger on the other hand always had violence as his first plan, our first game with this group ended up with the adept and shaman mostly staying out of the blood-splatter as the orc brutally went about killing a good dozen of low-level security (curbstomping two mages in the process). Other members stayed somewhere in the middle, but never really seemed to have any problems with killing enemies.
The current team line-up is more last-retort killers, except for the cybered face with Neo-anarchist tendencies. "Kill the cops, it´s not like they´re people!"
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Educate them the way I do, with a prime runner street samurai that hunts down dishonorable acting characters and makes examples of them. Have contacts stop doing business with them or start charging them more for stuff. Doing amoral things also attracts the attention of Knight Errant.
When I started playing RPG's in Junior High the answer was to hit 'em with the self explanatory 'Stupid Stick,' but I can't do that anymore with potential legal ramifications and all. I use to dismember/maim characters to teach the more thick headed, but that really only works in games that can't easily fix those problems. Then when I got the 'news' player I started man hunts, most wanted, bounty hunters, black listing, etc. It just became such a pill. I wish my dogs had known the command 'sic gamer' at the time. I had one player who could push his buttons to keep him in control, but he moved and then it became tedious.
Speaking as one who has played the game since release (1989, for those not in the know) I remember that the whole bit about "honor" and "bringing some light to the darkness" were done only when a paycheck wasn't on the line.
Not always, though that may have been how your group saw it. Only being honorable when it's convenient to you isn't, well, being honorable. It's easy to be good when being good is easy. It's doing the right thing in the face of adversity -- be it financial inconvenience, taking the more dangerous of two jobs, trying not to kill folks who don't have it coming -- that really makes a moral code tick.
I lean more towards the Firefly side of morality versus the Leverage. When you're hungry, it's tough to turn down the job that will feed you.
I wish I had shows like Firefly that I could point to, back when I last played, yeah it's been awhile for me. My last group would have all, probably, mimicked Jayne...
It seems hard to find a solid gaming group. I've tried to establish three in the last two years and they never panned out. Have MMO's and games like GTA finally knocked out all the potential candidates?! How's that for a moral conundrum...
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Most of the time I think of my characters as people and acording to their skills and history I determine what they'd do
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Short version: backstab is the common hobby in my group.
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Speaking as one who has played the game since release (1989, for those not in the know) I remember that the whole bit about "honor" and "bringing some light to the darkness" were done only when a paycheck wasn't on the line.
Not always, though that may have been how your group saw it. Only being honorable when it's convenient to you isn't, well, being honorable. It's easy to be good when being good is easy. It's doing the right thing in the face of adversity -- be it financial inconvenience, taking the more dangerous of two jobs, trying not to kill folks who don't have it coming -- that really makes a moral code tick.
I lean more towards the Firefly side of morality versus the Leverage. When you're hungry, it's tough to turn down the job that will feed you.
Firefly is a great example. As long as the are only hurting the Alliance (or the Corps), Mal has no problem being bad. But when stealing medial supplies hurts a frontier world, they do the right thing.
Hell, the even get on the bad side of a Crime Boss because of their morals.
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And how many people are depending on the Alliance remaining stable? Ah, I've argued both sides, I don't know where I stand.
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Well, I'm a GM more than a player, but I've done some harsh things as a player.
A favorite thing for one combat hacker was to do the Anton Chigur thing where I told a guy that if he didn't cooperate I would kill him then find his five closest DNA matches on the global SIN registry and kill them too. I proceeded to do so, just to prove a point to a dead man.
As far as how low I can go as a GM, how about this as a counter to the "Uber assassin who kills runners I don't like" concept being bandied about as pure genious:
"If only you'd killed that security guard, then at least his family would have received death benefits.
Instead, he got fired. After all, somebody has to take the blame when a valuable prototype gets stolen, and it sure as hell isn't the management.
Because of your heroic restraint, his whole family was left homeless in the barrens, where they got scooped up by the 405 Hellhounds. His wife got passed around in a five-hour-long session of gang rape, proved too unruly and was killed in a manner involving much stabbing and thrusting. Meanwhile, his kids were set in a pit to fight other kids, hardened barrens kids, for the right to get jumped into the Hounds. Their dead bodies were later sold as ghoul food. The man himself was shot in the back way before all this though. The Hounds stuck some meathooks in his body and drug his corpse behind their bikes, all the way over to the local bodyshop, to see if there was anything in him that they could salvage. Too bad for them, there wasn't. It turned out that the corp took back all their ware when they fired him and threw him out on the street with nothing but corpscript that he couldn't spend outside of the company stores where he was no longer welcome.
Next time, murder every guard. Their families will thank you."
Enforced morality is never a good look..
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Well, I'm a GM more than a player, but I've done some harsh things as a player.
A favorite thing for one combat hacker was to do the Anton Chigur thing where I told a guy that if he didn't cooperate I would kill him then find his five closest DNA matches on the global SIN registry and kill them too. I proceeded to do so, just to prove a point to a dead man.
As far as how low I can go as a GM, how about this as a counter to the "Uber assassin who kills runners I don't like" concept being bandied about as pure genious:
"If only you'd killed that security guard, then at least his family would have received death benefits.
Instead, he got fired. After all, somebody has to take the blame when a valuable prototype gets stolen, and it sure as hell isn't the management.
Because of your heroic restraint, his whole family was left homeless in the barrens, where they got scooped up by the 405 Hellhounds. His wife got passed around in a five-hour-long session of gang rape, proved too unruly and was killed in a manner involving much stabbing and thrusting. Meanwhile, his kids were set in a pit to fight other kids, hardened barrens kids, for the right to get jumped into the Hounds. Their dead bodies were later sold as ghoul food. The man himself was shot in the back way before all this though. The Hounds stuck some meathooks in his body and drug his corpse behind their bikes, all the way over to the local bodyshop, to see if there was anything in him that they could salvage. Too bad for them, there wasn't. It turned out that the corp took back all their ware when they fired him and threw him out on the street with nothing but corpscript that he couldn't spend outside of the company stores where he was no longer welcome.
Next time, murder every guard. Their families will thank you."
Enforced morality is never a good look..
Damn, don't know what to say but you have a good point.
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.......
Next time, murder every guard. Their families will thank you."
Enforced morality is never a good look..
Damn, don't know what to say but you have a good point.
OKie, maybe killing all the Atzlan guards is warranted :P, but even Ares can't get away with this type of behaviour...
@Kontact, I love your counterpoint :) but it's only a sociopath who will murder an innocent bystander, with the rationalisation that 'Hey, there's a slight chance this is the better option for him'.... Your example is way over the extreme scale for Joe Average security guard.
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Ah, it wasn't meant to be serious. ;)
The only point I can hope to make is that, if you look at it closely enough, Shadowrunners, and their actions, hurt people. So, I try not to look too close.
I just play it as a game. As long as the players are on the same page, I can tailor the world to fit them.
Naturally, if they're being obnoxious, and I'm not having any fun, I've got no problem with confronting them with that fact.
Communication is always the best option. The second best option being to brush it off and concentrate on what you want to concentrate on.
"Yeah, sure. You kill them all. They never had a chance. It makes you feel super-important. You now have 80 fewer rounds of ammo. Moving on...."
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"Yeah, sure. You kill them all. They never had a chance. It makes you feel super-important. You now have 80 fewer rounds of ammo. Moving on...."
There should always be a consequence for killing needlessly (or killing in general), especially if performed repeatedly. And some of these consequences can spur on amazing campaign-spanning stories: Whether it's:
- Damage to Rep/Notoriety
- Corps not standing for the loss of PR (and Insurance Costs affaecting their stock price)
- Shedim following the PC's around, enjoying the free hosting service
or even the creme de la creme:
- 'You killed my father. Prepare to die'
These are things that let the logic train leave the station without taking the PC's/GM to Crazytown.
Even a world as dark as shadowrun has consequences.
Actually, ESPECIALLY a world as dark as Shadowrun has consequences...
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Well, I'm a GM more than a player, but I've done some harsh things as a player.
A favorite thing for one combat hacker was to do the Anton Chigur thing where I told a guy that if he didn't cooperate I would kill him then find his five closest DNA matches on the global SIN registry and kill them too. I proceeded to do so, just to prove a point to a dead man.
As far as how low I can go as a GM, how about this as a counter to the "Uber assassin who kills runners I don't like" concept being bandied about as pure genious:
"If only you'd killed that security guard, then at least his family would have received death benefits.
Instead, he got fired. After all, somebody has to take the blame when a valuable prototype gets stolen, and it sure as hell isn't the management.
Because of your heroic restraint, his whole family was left homeless in the barrens, where they got scooped up by the 405 Hellhounds. His wife got passed around in a five-hour-long session of gang rape, proved too unruly and was killed in a manner involving much stabbing and thrusting. Meanwhile, his kids were set in a pit to fight other kids, hardened barrens kids, for the right to get jumped into the Hounds. Their dead bodies were later sold as ghoul food. The man himself was shot in the back way before all this though. The Hounds stuck some meathooks in his body and drug his corpse behind their bikes, all the way over to the local bodyshop, to see if there was anything in him that they could salvage. Too bad for them, there wasn't. It turned out that the corp took back all their ware when they fired him and threw him out on the street with nothing but corpscript that he couldn't spend outside of the company stores where he was no longer welcome.
Next time, murder every guard. Their families will thank you."
Enforced morality is never a good look..
Damn, don't know what to say but you have a good point.
That was br00tal!
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"Yeah, sure. You kill them all. They never had a chance. It makes you feel super-important. You now have 80 fewer rounds of ammo. Moving on...."
There should always be a consequence for killing needlessly (or killing in general), especially if performed repeatedly. And some of these consequences can spur on amazing campaign-spanning stories: Whether it's:
- Damage to Rep/Notoriety
- Corps not standing for the loss of PR (and Insurance Costs affaecting their stock price)
- Shedim following the PC's around, enjoying the free hosting service
or even the creme de la creme:
- 'You killed my father. Prepare to die'These are things that let the logic train leave the station without taking the PC's/GM to Crazytown.
Even a world as dark as shadowrun has consequences.
Actually, ESPECIALLY a world as dark as Shadowrun has consequences...
"Stop saying that!" :D
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So in my lastest game, one of my players aquired a boat from a NPC (ie killed owner during the runner), and kept the boat. Now he is trying to sell it without splitting the money with the group "Its my boat". Even though he wouldn't have the boat if not for the other runners help. Let the Chaos insue.
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So in my lastest game, one of my players aquired a boat from a NPC (ie killed owner during the runner), and kept the boat. Now he is trying to sell it without splitting the money with the group "Its my boat". Even though he wouldn't have the boat if not for the other runners help. Let the Chaos insue.
I predict it'll be at the bottom of the marina before it's over...
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So in my lastest game, one of my players aquired a boat from a NPC (ie killed owner during the runner), and kept the boat. Now he is trying to sell it without splitting the money with the group "Its my boat". Even though he wouldn't have the boat if not for the other runners help. Let the Chaos insue.
I predict it'll be at the bottom of the marina before it's over...
And that's what his ALLIES will do :)
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Even a world as dark as shadowrun has consequences.
Actually, ESPECIALLY a world as dark as Shadowrun has consequences...
Of course this goes for actions of mercy and leniency, too. As Machiavelli said, if you strike against your enemies, do it so that they can never retaliate again. Of course there should be negative consequences for needless killing and the like, but it can also go the other way round...
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Even a world as dark as shadowrun has consequences.
Actually, ESPECIALLY a world as dark as Shadowrun has consequences...
Of course this goes for actions of mercy and leniency, too. As Machiavelli said, if you strike against your enemies, do it so that they can never retaliate again. Of course there should be negative consequences for needless killing and the like, but it can also go the other way round...
I completely concur, but as long as we're hashing metaphors 'You get more flies with honey'.
Also, in several psych-warfare manuals, it states and restates the principal that there is a fine balance between instilling terror, and triggering vengeance.
If you do too much damage to the enemy, they will rise up against you with irrational force. But if you can temper your tyranny, they'll stay in the right docile state of fear indefinitely...
Errr...you know...not that I read this stuff...or anything *whistles innocently*
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"This is why we can't have nice things.". Plus there's always the possibility that The Prince was satire. As I've said before, I prefer arrogant mercy.
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Machiavelli was the first shadowrunner ;)
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So far, my group hasn't tried to eat anyone yet. I consider that a plus.
On the down side, they've beat up Jesus, crippled a nun from the neck down, kidnapped a mentally handicapped child, and doored said child into a tombstone on the drive away from the meet when he turned out to be someone the Johnson didn't like... That was one 'Run.
They pretended to be terrorists to extract Goofy from DisneyLand...
And, finally, used an Improvised WMD as a "Distraction" for the primary part of a 'Run. Luckily, it didn't work as planned... But came very, very close.
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Hey, I remember shooting Jesus. We used a bomb on the crowd to make a getaway.
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To be fair, Jesus did get down off his crucifix first and slam one of the PCs through a wall, starting the fight...
I was kind of disappointed that no one said, "Jesus is back, and boy is he PISSED!"
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You guys have some werid games, chummer......... ;)
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I warned them. The magician went into Astral and told them "Jesus is watching us" when they were about to kidnap that kid at the Catholic Orphanage...
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heh, morals can change quickly...
my team had captured a hackergirl for interrogation: naturally the girl spilled everything, and it was time to ´take care´of her. so, our face took his ingram smg and proceeded to do her: unfortunately, our cyberpsychoed ork booster declared at this point that he loves the girl and took his axe. well, booster vs face....seconds later the poor face was lying on the floor and dying.
at this point our streetsam walked into the room and asked what had happened: the booster told her. she was sympathetic, took out her HK and shot the girl in the face two times, and told the booster to fetch a medkit and patch up the face. the booster nodded, and left to get the medkit....
true love indeed...
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That's jacked...
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"Lower than a cane snake in a limbo competition."
I think I got that quote right.
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Lower than a limbo stick at Carnival time. And that's as low as limbo sticks get.
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Sweet three-toed sloth of ice planet Hoth, enough with the Hermes Conrad quotes! ;D
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Yeah that's it thanks Fortinbras.
"It's not your strongsuit woman!" ;D
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Low enough to get a cover bonus.
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I'm afraid to see how far down the rabbit hole of morality I go...
I don't even think my characters will even see the Moral Event Horizon (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralEventHorizon) (Warning: TVTropes!) go past... Even in the rear-view mirror. "Blink and you'll miss it."
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Once, I (GM) set a run for my players to extract an inmate from the Seattle arcology and take him to a specific undisclosed location in Puyallup.
Well, they've done their homework. Used contacts to track his possible locations inside the arcology, set up some destinations for public inmate-escort leaves, used contacts again to promote free-entry social events on these destinations (goblin rock gigs, amateur-league urban brawl matches and even flash mobs) and bribed LS officers to get him and a few other inmates to these events and paid a final contact to monitor to which event they'd take the target.
Arriving on the scene, they've kidnapped him without a fight (lots of toxins and flechettes with poisons and magic) from the LS officers accompanying him, took him to their van, extracted the target's RFID GPS tag and copied its signal, made over 5000 copies of that particular tag signal and dropped them off in various places in Downtown.
Then, with just ten minutes left before the target had to return and the arcology would start to look for the GPS signal, the Face of the group hit his journalist contact and spread the news that a viral NeoNet campaign would pay off 1 million nuyens to the lucky winner of 1 of those 5000 tags. And the winner had to report to a LS office to claim the prize.
The LS office hit the tracking button at the same time the news broke in.
You can imagine the rest.
Man, Seattle caught on fire that night.
I was forced to close my notebook and improvise for the rest of the session. At least they spent almost 10k and a lot of Edge.
Good times.
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I'm running 2 separate teams that I plan to integrate later. One has a phys-ad that avoids killing but won't shy away from the Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique and a technomancer that truly enjoys his taser and blackout complex form. The other team has a street shaman whose only semi-offensive spell is orgy because she doesn't want to leave "lasting damage" and a rigger who orchestrated the extraction of a target by kidnapping his wife and daughter so the target would extract himself. He then sold them for parts. The Street Sam who has been switching between the teams is a member of AB+ and has been strictly following anarchist doctrine.
For 10 points try to guess what the shaman's mentor spirit archetype is.
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"Yeah, sure. You kill them all. They never had a chance. It makes you feel super-important. You now have 80 fewer rounds of ammo. Moving on...."
There should always be a consequence for killing needlessly (or killing in general), especially if performed repeatedly. And some of these consequences can spur on amazing campaign-spanning stories: Whether it's:
- Damage to Rep/Notoriety
- Corps not standing for the loss of PR (and Insurance Costs affaecting their stock price)
- Shedim following the PC's around, enjoying the free hosting service
or even the creme de la creme:
- 'You killed my father. Prepare to die'
These are things that let the logic train leave the station without taking the PC's/GM to Crazytown.
Even a world as dark as shadowrun has consequences.
Actually, ESPECIALLY a world as dark as Shadowrun has consequences...
Know it's a month late, but I've been busy with some fine upstanding citizens of my own.
But, my gaming style, heck my plot in general is based on the idea of: do whatever you want, you will reap what you sew. Case in point, and I think I have metioned it before, a 3rd Ed rigger who decided to beat up some plain clothes cops who DARED pull him over. He never thought about dash cams and actually got pissed when the 'Star actually tried to *GASP* arrest him! Another example, same game, the Merc and Sammie decide to shoot first and ask questions later, accidently killing an undercover FBI agent. Add this with the fact they are actively working with the mafia, the Rigger's warrant; well lets just say the fuzz stayed on their tail for a LONG time and made their lives living hells and had to sell out "the family" in order to get the Feds to back off, who got the Star to back off....but then they live in fear of the family finding out...MUHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!! Oh yeah, and one of the family is ALSO an FBI informant who knows. Nice bit of blackmail potential, ne?
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Choose your enemies carefully.
...
Actually, choose your friends carefully, your enemies will choose themselves in all likelihood.
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One game I had the players where fairly mixed on the moral standards. One was a cold, emotionless killer, but not blood thirsty, just very profesional. The other was a ex-Yakuza adept who had a code of honour for the most part. Anotherwas a rigger who was very moral (and thus prone to getting himself in the worst trouble.) I actually found the contraist made for a much more interesting game, what with discussions on what to do with witnesses etc :)
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Laes is your friend for the moralistic types.
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No Laes is for when you need to dump the newb of the team off in a dark alley and do no want him to remember you or what they just royally fouled up.
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Pixie Dust with cayenne pepper and that unmarked bottle under the sink is for that. :P
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I thought that's what ghouls were for.
Edit- Ghouls not Gould although that is funny in it's own way.
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Crazy what theycan do with those new endosymbionts, huh?
Speaking of morality, I'm considering "Nazi Gold", either for a character background, or a MacGuffin.
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"Why does it always have to be Nazis?"
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"Why does it always have to be Nazis?"
I have pondered your query intently and I have no new illuminations, therefor I.O.U. one witty comment
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It's a classic, and it makes me wonder about the possibility of background count or something similar. Haunted Nazi Gold?
I suppose it could be Nazi Orichalcum or Maltese gold...
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If you want money with a background count how about the Hope Diamond
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Or blood diamonds, Ghoul blood diamonds.
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It's a classic, and it makes me wonder about the possibility of background count or something similar. Haunted Nazi Gold?
I suppose it could be Nazi Orichalcum or Maltese gold...
One of the gold bricks that was made from the gold teeth pulled out of people's skulls while they were being "Processed"? That would have a background count around it if nothing else due to the suffering and indignity involved.
I was thinking about a Shadowrun around a Nazi Paraphernalia Collector that included a bar of gold like that, it's marks worn away by time and hands, and a pitted, old shower head.
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Humanis after NAZI artifacts.
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Humanis after NAZI artifacts.
I don't know about Humanis, but definitely Nationale Aktion . . .
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Nationale Aktion? Where can I find info on them?
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The Germany sourcebook, Shadows of Europe and Loose Alliances - as far as I know.