Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Gamemasters' Lounge => Topic started by: raggedhalo on <11-28-11/0959:08>
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OK, so my PC group are, on average, very interested in the ethical side of things. To be specific, they're really against violence if they can possibly avoid it, and definitely against killing of any kind - wetwork most of all.
I'd like to really push them on this, trying to find the exceptions to the rules that change killing from a regrettably necessary evil, over time, to an option that's always on the table. I've just started them on Ghost Cartels, and I'd really like it if they took the wetwork job against the oyabun as the way into the international portion of the campaign.
Any ideas of how best to push and challenge their ethics/morals and encourage them to be worse people gratefully appreciated!
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Sure. When you get to the wetwork job, have the Johnson detail how the target is a sick and demented person. Pedophile usually works.
Of course, whether or not that is true, and whether or not the team finds out before killing him makes it all that more interesting.
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It's a good start, but at this point I'm not convinced the PCs wouldn't just come back with "it doesn't matter how vile he is, he doesn't deserve to die." I want to break their metaphorical cherry before we get to that point, so it's a smoother transition.
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It's a good start, but at this point I'm not convinced the PCs wouldn't just come back with "it doesn't matter how vile he is, he doesn't deserve to die." I want to break their metaphorical cherry before we get to that point, so it's a smoother transition.
Lots of "accidental" deaths. When they are fighting, keep track of glitches. Makes it nice that when they are trying not to kill someone, the glitch actually does.
For instance, they roll to hit on their Pistols. They want to wound the target so that he's out, but not dead. They roll a glitch and the shot that was aiming at the target's shoulder instead hits them square in the forehead.
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The "no good options" meme exists for a reason.
A clumsy version: They've caught a Bad Guy. They learn that if Bad Guy goes free, bad things -- sorry, BAD THINGS -- will happen. They can put a permanent stop to the BAD THINGS by eliminating the BG. Oh, and they can't hand the problem off. BG is owed major favors or isn't on Law Enforcement's radar or...
The tough thing for you, the GM, is when the players choose to risk the Bad Things Happening. You have to make it personal then. It helps if you can decide what the personal things will be before the choice. You don't have to make it obvious that it's personal, but it's useful.
If you let him go, your residence gets destroyed. If you let him go, that talismonger you had? raped and tortured, no longer a source. If you let him go ... well, you get the idea.
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I find it rather amazing that your group isn't a bunch of hotheads with something to prove. I sometimes wish my group was more interested in not getting themselves in a fight.
I'd exploit this by encouraging them to roleplay to the hilt and then at some point pushing them into a situation where they must make the decision to kill someone to save many lives or even their own.
Question: Did they all take the Pacifist Negative Quality?
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That's what i was going to ask Malex.... xD
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First off, just let me say this: :o
Honestly, I really don't see the point of playing Shadowrun if you're not going to play someone willing to get dirty. My characters would have the guy in Kirk's example dead on the floor before he even finished his rant about how he's going to make us pay.
Still, to each their own, right?
I'd have to agree with Kirk's handling, though. Stack the deck so that the characters are totally screwed if the guy lives and double-down by making him as much of a scum-sucking ass as you can stand to play him.
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Alternatively, if they refuse to kill someone, have him hunt down their friends, families, and loved ones and do things to them that make Hostel look like Disney. That should get their attention.
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Lots of "accidental" deaths. When they are fighting, keep track of glitches. Makes it nice that when they are trying not to kill someone, the glitch actually does.
That's definitely something I'll be doing - as they often load Gel rounds, having a glitch turn that Stun damage into Physical might do just the trick. Likewise allergies to Narcoject poison, etc. etc.
The tough thing for you, the GM, is when the players choose to risk the Bad Things Happening. You have to make it personal then. It helps if you can decide what the personal things will be before the choice. You don't have to make it obvious that it's personal, but it's useful.
If you let him go, your residence gets destroyed. If you let him go, that talismonger you had? raped and tortured, no longer a source. If you let him go ... well, you get the idea.
Indeed I do - thanks very much! Making things personal, threatening their contacts, etc. should work nicely. They just ripped off a Yakuza brothel for 30,000¥, so I figure a bit of payback is probably on the cards anyhow.
I find it rather amazing that your group isn't a bunch of hotheads with something to prove. I sometimes wish my group was more interested in not getting themselves in a fight.
I'd exploit this by encouraging them to roleplay to the hilt and then at some point pushing them into a situation where they must make the decision to kill someone to save many lives or even their own.
Definitely. I think I'm going to start with a "backs against the wall," kill-or-be-killed kinda situation (fighting enemies with Hardened Armour would be a good one for this, I suppose*) and then step it up to the kind of difficult "one life for several" decisions you're describing.
Question: Did they all take the Pacifist Negative Quality?
Nope, none of them did. I'm actually pretty glad about that, because the Pacifist Negative Quality takes away a lot of the roleplay aspect of this, IMO; it's much harder to pose an ethical challenge to a character who can hide behind the rules of the game for why they can't change their view.
Honestly, I really don't see the point of playing Shadowrun if you're not going to play someone willing to get dirty. My characters would have the guy in Kirk's example dead on the floor before he even finished his rant about how he's going to make us pay.
Well, quite. I pitched the game to my players as being themed around professionalism, and that killing should rarely be the first resort but should be something that's always there as an option, but they seem to have fixated on the first part and not spotted the second!
*: ISTR that Hardened Armour never lets Stun damage through. Is that right?
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ISTR that Hardened Armour never lets Stun damage through. Is that right?
Actually, I'm not sure if there's actual "Hardened Armor" in 4th ed. If there is, I'd love to get a book/page number from someone so I can check it out.
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Actually, I'm not sure if there's actual "Hardened Armor" in 4th ed. If there is, I'd love to get a book/page number from someone so I can check it out.
Critter power, pg. 295, SR4A. And the description of it mentions no immunity to Stun damage.
Perhaps drones are the solution - they don't suffer from Stun damage. Does that mean that passengers in vehicles are protected against attacks doing Stun damage?
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Wait... Your group actually has morals? How the hell did that happen?
Closest thing my group ever came to it is laying a major beatdown on a spouse abuser.
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Perhaps drones are the solution - they don't suffer from Stun damage. Does that mean that passengers in vehicles are protected against attacks doing Stun damage?
Okay, anyone inside a conventional vehicle is considered to be under Good Cover, for purposes of aiming. Additionally, they get the vehicle's Armor (plus ranks of the Personal* Armor mod, if any) added to their own Armor value.
My suggestion would be to do something custom-designed based off the Iron Will exoskeleton (Attitude, p154), which is armor that is treated as a vehicle, basically turning the wearer into a drone with a squishy human center... or at least that's how you can declare it via GM Fiat to make things go your way.
The armor has a Body of 6, so you can give it Armor 12, Life Support 2 (aka, hermetically sealed, so forget CS Gas), Improved Sensor Array (from Vehicle to Extra-Large Vehicle), and a mounted weapon up to LMG in size.
*Is it just me, or would Personnel Armor be a more appropriate name?
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Wait... Your group actually has morals? How the hell did that happen?
It's probably my own fault. The initial pitch for the game went like this:
Theme: Professionalism
The idea is to look at the demands of being a professional criminal, often asked to do morally repugnant things, and the consequences this has on your interpersonal relationships and the rest of your life.
Influences:
TV: Burn Notice
Chuck
Human Target
Leverage
Smith
White Collar
Film: Collateral
Domino
Grosse Pointe Blank
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Lucky Number Slevin
Miami Vice
Ronin
Smokin’ Aces
Strange Days
The Transporter
The Usual Suspects
Way of the Gun
Concept: I want to run a Shadowrun game heavily influenced by the films and TV shows above. The idea is that cleverness is more important than brute force, or more simply: tact is more important than dakka. I envisage that most people will not use weapons bigger than pistols with any regularity whatsoever.
I’m keen to use the rules to create the atmosphere of a crime-based TV show or fairly clever action film. I love heist movies and so I’d like to make legwork and planning a big part of the game. I’m also keen to emphasise that your characters are criminals but should probably not be sociopaths, unless that’s a feature: killing should not be an easy option and particularly visible acts of violence or murder will certainly be met with police investigation. So each and every time you kill someone in the game should be a conscious decision that you’ve made. It may sometimes be a necessary evil but it is certainly never a good thing or an easy out.
You will start play as a group of criminals (with the appropriate flaw) who are in transit between two prison facilities in Seattle, along with a number of other criminals. You might just be starting your sentence, or on your way to your final parole hearing. You might be innocent, or you might be proud of your crimes. You might have been imprisoned for two months or twenty years. All that matters is that your character is in the transfer vehicle when it’s attacked, and left behind after the guards are killed and the target of the extraction is removed. Your characters should be the sort to work together and go into business as a shadowrunning team, as you don’t have any other options.
In that line of work, you can mostly expect not to get totally betrayed by your employer but you should be aware that you are likely being used, manipulated, lied to and kept in the dark at any given point. Over time, I hope that the campaign will develop in such a way that there will be much international travel and involvement in many high-stakes activities that challenge your characters’ morals and capabilities, with the end result being lots of fun for everyone.
Somehow, from that, they got to this place where they obsess over not killing people. I should stress that one member of the party doesn't really have the same qualms; the houngan managed to summon a Force 10 Guardian Spirit during the last mission, and selected Natural Weaponry as one of his optional powers. He killed every single person he attacked on the first blow; when the other PCs found out, they (verbally) tore him a new one for going so far off-plan.
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Somehow, from that, they got to this place where they obsess over not killing people. I should stress that one member of the party doesn't really have the same qualms; the houngan managed to summon a Force 10 Guardian Spirit during the last mission, and selected Natural Weaponry as one of his optional powers. He killed every single person he attacked on the first blow; when the other PCs found out, they (verbally) tore him a new one for going so far off-plan.
I still want to know how they got form a list including Burn Notice, Human Target, Collateral, The Transporter, and The Usual Suspects (just ones I've seen where I know, for sure, where the main characters are willing to kill if needed) to "never kill anyone".
Pass along my congratulations to the Houngan for actually acting like a real professional, would you?
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There's "No unnecessary casualties" and then there's Twist-Like "No Geeking". I agree, how did they take the Tao of Twist? :P
On the bright side, they're not making like Kane. ;)
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Wait... Your group actually has morals? How the hell did that happen?
It's probably my own fault. The initial pitch for the game went like this:
Theme: Professionalism
The idea is to look at the demands of being a professional criminal, often asked to do morally repugnant things, and the consequences this has on your interpersonal relationships and the rest of your life.
Influences:
TV: Burn Notice
Chuck
Human Target
Leverage
Smith
White Collar
Film: Collateral
Domino
Grosse Pointe Blank
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Lucky Number Slevin
Miami Vice
Ronin
Smokin’ Aces
Strange Days
The Transporter
The Usual Suspects
Way of the Gun
Concept: I want to run a Shadowrun game heavily influenced by the films and TV shows above. The idea is that cleverness is more important than brute force, or more simply: tact is more important than dakka. I envisage that most people will not use weapons bigger than pistols with any regularity whatsoever.
I’m keen to use the rules to create the atmosphere of a crime-based TV show or fairly clever action film. I love heist movies and so I’d like to make legwork and planning a big part of the game. I’m also keen to emphasise that your characters are criminals but should probably not be sociopaths, unless that’s a feature: killing should not be an easy option and particularly visible acts of violence or murder will certainly be met with police investigation. So each and every time you kill someone in the game should be a conscious decision that you’ve made. It may sometimes be a necessary evil but it is certainly never a good thing or an easy out.
You will start play as a group of criminals (with the appropriate flaw) who are in transit between two prison facilities in Seattle, along with a number of other criminals. You might just be starting your sentence, or on your way to your final parole hearing. You might be innocent, or you might be proud of your crimes. You might have been imprisoned for two months or twenty years. All that matters is that your character is in the transfer vehicle when it’s attacked, and left behind after the guards are killed and the target of the extraction is removed. Your characters should be the sort to work together and go into business as a shadowrunning team, as you don’t have any other options.
In that line of work, you can mostly expect not to get totally betrayed by your employer but you should be aware that you are likely being used, manipulated, lied to and kept in the dark at any given point. Over time, I hope that the campaign will develop in such a way that there will be much international travel and involvement in many high-stakes activities that challenge your characters’ morals and capabilities, with the end result being lots of fun for everyone.
Somehow, from that, they got to this place where they obsess over not killing people. I should stress that one member of the party doesn't really have the same qualms; the houngan managed to summon a Force 10 Guardian Spirit during the last mission, and selected Natural Weaponry as one of his optional powers. He killed every single person he attacked on the first blow; when the other PCs found out, they (verbally) tore him a new one for going so far off-plan.
Wow, gave him that much crap for summoning a F10 Spirit. The man's brave as balls. Recently I was DMing and a mage basically outright killed himself summoning a F8 spirit, after taking about 3 drain from an overcasted spell earlier, it was the second one he was overcasting and thought he could easily get a few hits on his drain test with edge. I rolled 4 hits 8 drain and he had 10 HP. needed just 2 hits. <.< he got 1 and the spirit manifested, looked at him telling him it was reaally bad situation and the only chance was someone hitting this spirit good. Well they managed to hit the spirit for 11 Physical before it's turn came around again and then it tore up the mage and left. :/
Anyways, i believe in most of the movies/TV shows you mentioned if something went off plan they mostly say something about it being done by someone stupid and then they move on, not a lot of focus on the mess up but rather focusing on what are we going to do now.
Also Professional's know when to kill, it's not their first option but you know where's the fun in the game if you don't get to let loose some of the time. xD
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I actually like the sound on this team. Killing, unless neccessary, is unprofessional. Leaving a trail of dead bodies attracts far more attention and thus the likelyhood of retribution. Also, if you ever run against the same enemies and they remember you? Stun rounds away, explosive rounds out, flash bangs away, frag grenades out. Killing is just trouble most the time.
My team actually surprised me by focusing on stick n shock and stun bolts, but the lower body count does make sense, specially if you mix it up in public. A bloody massacre at a train station attracts a lot more heat than a few goons shocked uncouncious.
That said, the team has taken some wet work recently, but they did the precise action (which left no one dead) and then set in a go gang they hired to do the rest. For them, its not about morals, its about profesionalism and not be associated to directly with anything they will attract attention.
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Make it personal. Nothing gets players "kill'em all and let *** sort em out" up like making it personal.
- If they have a favorite bar, have the NPC be ultimately responsible for its closure/destruction etc
- Have him hurt favored NPCs, contacts etc.
- Have him responsible for destruction of their toys.
- If that fails, have the PCs confront the results of their not taking him out. Have him order a purge of a rival meta gang, or kidnap friends and family for a bunraku parlor, or just generally be evil.
- Let them meet him and be exposed to the fact that he is deserving of what I like to call "retroactive birth control." Give them reasons to want him dead, and if they don't bite, give them more. Shadowrun is a game that is really really hard not to kill in, at least one in a while. And if they have the negative quality of pacifist, make'em bleed for it.
Just my 0.02$
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Make it personal. Nothing gets players "kill'em all and let *** sort em out" up like making it personal.
- If they have a favorite bar, have the NPC be ultimately responsible for its closure/destruction etc
- Have him hurt favored NPCs, contacts etc.
- Have him responsible for destruction of their toys.
- If that fails, have the PCs confront the results of their not taking him out. Have him order a purge of a rival meta gang, or kidnap friends and family for a bunraku parlor, or just generally be evil.
- Let them meet him and be exposed to the fact that he is deserving of what I like to call "retroactive birth control." Give them reasons to want him dead, and if they don't bite, give them more. Shadowrun is a game that is really really hard not to kill in, at least one in a while. And if they have the negative quality of pacifist, make'em bleed for it.
Just my 0.02$
You would be an interesting DM to play under. +1 for your sadisticness. :D
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Hardened armor is a critter power, and it's effect is simply any damage equal to or under the level of the Hardened armor value before damage calculation is deflected without doing anything whatsoever. Also, hardened armor acts as standard armor for tests and for converting damage, adding to worn armor.
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Meaning that a Force 5 Flesh form Insect Spirit with a lined coat would reduce any damage taken by 10, before rolling to resist. And then they'd roll 16B/14I armor + Body to resist the remainder.
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Meaning that a Force 5 Flesh form Insect Spirit with a lined coat would reduce any damage taken by 10, before rolling to resist. And then they'd roll 16B/14I armor + Body to resist the remainder.
o.O
That is different than Immunity to natural weapons right?
A F5 Water spirit for example you need to breach 10 to damage it but it still has to resist that amount of damage just with 10 extra armor if it suceeded the 10 damage. Say (11 DV)?
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No. Hardened armor does NOT reduce the damage taken directly*. It adds it's Rating to worn armor to determine effects, plus COMPLETELY negates all damage from attacks which are equal to or less than it's Rating.
Immunity to Normal weapons is simply Hardened Armor twice, but has no effect against nonmagical attacks.
*Personally, I think it should, but it does not.
EDIT: Accuracy, spelling.
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To be honest, I've played in both types of groups. I've played in groups where everyone died that saw us (and the bodies were taken, gotta love organlegger contacts), and I've played in groups where if someone died it was completely accidental.
I usually push it up to Professionalism, but I can see where they are coming from with some of the shows you mentioned. Chuck, Human Target, Leverage, White Collar, these are all shows about Good Guys and for the most part they don't kill people. Sure in Human Target Guerrero was the odd man out, but the rest really didn't like to kill people. I think you're players seem to have taken on the "We're the good guys hitting the corporations, and we won't sink to their level" vibe that was really strong in earlier editions of the game.
I haven't actually run Ghost Cartels, so I don't remember the job mentioned off the top of my head, but if they are insistent on sticking to their morals, don't try to break it. Just take it in stride, let it bite them in the ass (decisions always come back to bite us in the ass in SR), and possibly let them make a counter-offer.
I remember one particular run with The Guys (before they were renamed The Guys You Call When Everyone Else is Busy) were offered a job to ice a local Yakuza jazz dealer that was selling almost exclusively to school kids in the area. We turned it down, but we offered to leave him rotting in a Siberian Prison for 80% of the pay. A few calls to contacts, a bribed guard, and some minor fingerprint reconstruction and this guy was out of the picture.
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To be honest, I've played in both types of groups. I've played in groups where everyone died that saw us (and the bodies were taken, gotta love organlegger contacts), and I've played in groups where if someone died it was completely accidental.
I usually push it up to Professionalism, but I can see where they are coming from with some of the shows you mentioned. Chuck, Human Target, Leverage, White Collar, these are all shows about Good Guys and for the most part they don't kill people. Sure in Human Target Guerrero was the odd man out, but the rest really didn't like to kill people. I think you're players seem to have taken on the "We're the good guys hitting the corporations, and we won't sink to their level" vibe that was really strong in earlier editions of the game.
I haven't actually run Ghost Cartels, so I don't remember the job mentioned off the top of my head, but if they are insistent on sticking to their morals, don't try to break it. Just take it in stride, let it bite them in the ass (decisions always come back to bite us in the ass in SR), and possibly let them make a counter-offer.
I remember one particular run with The Guys (before they were renamed The Guys You Call When Everyone Else is Busy) were offered a job to ice a local Yakuza jazz dealer that was selling almost exclusively to school kids in the area. We turned it down, but we offered to leave him rotting in a Siberian Prison for 80% of the pay. A few calls to contacts, a bribed guard, and some minor fingerprint reconstruction and this guy was out of the picture.
Wow you know some real movers and shakers.... o.O
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There are two rules to a good Shadowrun game I've found.
A.) It works best if the guy that usually comes up with the crazy plans is the GM. Things get derailed a lot less and usually the same guy can think on the fly to come up with challenges for everyone else's crazy plans.
B.) Anything the GM can imagine and plan for can, and most likely will be, one upped by the players.
I miss SR3. Contacts were so much cheaper back then.
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You would be an interesting DM to play under. +1 for your sadisticness. :D
Thanks much for the kind words. My thoughts, having run SR for a long time, are that while the world is really deadly, its more fun for all involved to minimize the accidental PC deaths. Every once in a while sure, but as a general rule deaths in my games are earned rather then bad luck. I prefer to make the characters hurt and see where that takes the story. Of course that really comes from the fact that I run Campaigns rather then just run after run. heh!
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There are two rules to a good Shadowrun game I've found.
A.) It works best if the guy that usually comes up with the crazy plans is the GM. Things get derailed a lot less and usually the same guy can think on the fly to come up with challenges for everyone else's crazy plans.
B.) Anything the GM can imagine and plan for can, and most likely will be, one upped by the players.
I miss SR3. Contacts were so much cheaper back then.
Recently i've been thinking of having them go on a Run with an NPC to kind of offer suggestions and move things along. We are still quite new but sometimes I think they get "stuck" on what they can do. Bribery for example almost never comes up, but I never can judge what amount is a good bribe anyways so it might be a good thing.
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See i have the opposite problem. Usually I'll come up with a plan that causes the GM to sit there, head twitching, with a sound of broken gears for a few minutes. There are few things that the appropriate amounts of briber, threat, or torture (illusion of torture for those goody good characters) can't accomplish.
I remember one run where I was playing one of my meanest characters (the one with the organlegger contacts) where I had captured an enemy mage and was torturing him for information. Between the wounds from capturing him, the Hyper I injected, the photo of his family that he was positive we had captured also, and the fact that I kept slapping stim patches on him to keep him awake (which could cause magic loss in SR3 but I really didn't know at the time), he told us everything we wanted to know and offered his help.
Then of course there was drone with a mounted troll fire mage incident. That ones is fairly self explanatory, but needless to say, the GM did not see it coming.
Some things money can't buy, but there are always other options ;D
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See i have the opposite problem. Usually I'll come up with a plan that causes the GM to sit there, head twitching, with a sound of broken gears for a few minutes. There are few things that the appropriate amounts of briber, threat, or torture (illusion of torture for those goody good characters) can't accomplish.
I remember one run where I was playing one of my meanest characters (the one with the organlegger contacts) where I had captured an enemy mage and was torturing him for information. Between the wounds from capturing him, the Hyper I injected, the photo of his family that he was positive we had captured also, and the fact that I kept slapping stim patches on him to keep him awake (which could cause magic loss in SR3 but I really didn't know at the time), he told us everything we wanted to know and offered his help.
Then of course there was drone with a mounted troll fire mage incident. That ones is fairly self explanatory, but needless to say, the GM did not see it coming.
Some things money can't buy, but there are always other options ;D
I should probably incorperate Torcher to give it to them as an option because my group doesn't do that either!
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Torture one of them once, leave them bloodied and crippled for a few days/weeks and they'll remember oh to well when they next try to do information gathering on a hostile force.
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You would be an interesting DM to play under. +1 for your sadisticness. :D
As one of the folks that has lived through this experience, I can indeed confirm it is very interesting. A rip your heart out with a spoon and makes you ask for more kind of interesting. A throw you through the meat grinder and leaves you saying lets do it again kind of interesting.
By the way mr.DM.. what time is our next game?
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There are two rules to a good Shadowrun game I've found.
A.) It works best if the guy that usually comes up with the crazy plans is the GM. Things get derailed a lot less and usually the same guy can think on the fly to come up with challenges for everyone else's crazy plans.
B.) Anything the GM can imagine and plan for can, and most likely will be, one upped by the players.
I miss SR3. Contacts were so much cheaper back then.
So, you want Mr. Welsh as a GM, then? ;)
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Then let the hounga agree to the wetwork on behalf of the whole group.
Maybe as part of a bet or something that leaves them no option of backing down.
Or would that be evil?
Rasmus
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The group wakes up to a really bright light, an anonymous voice can be heard:
"You've all been fitted with a cortex bomb. There's a list of names on the floor in front of the door out. They all need to die in 24-hours, and have biomonitors installed in them to make sure they're alive or dead. If you fail... The bombs go off. Your time starts... Now."
The lights go off.
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With so many people chiming in on how you can achieve this goal, I feel obliged to mention that you have on your hands a very unique concept. In a game world that is bent on destroying a person's humanity, sometimes quite literally by carving away little pieces at a time, you have a team that is determined to cling to their ethics and morals... and in the end to themselves. Koodos to you as a DM that your world can inspire your players to take the much more difficult path through life. I would be more interested in how long or how far they can go rather than the end result of slipping. Enjoy the choices they make and reward them for walking the path of most resistance. Now I'm not saying go easy on them, quite the opposite. What I'm trying to say is not to consider your efforts a failure if at the end of the day, they are still holding on.
With that being said.... *evilgrin* If you can get your hands on a couple of the season 2 mission modules, I would reccomend reading SRM02-03 "The Grab" and its sequel SRM02-08 "Chasing the Dragon" I wouldn't run them back to back, but they really do explore some very dark content.
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With that being said.... *evilgrin* If you can get your hands on a couple of the season 2 mission modules, I would reccomend reading SRM02-03 "The Grab" and its sequel SRM02-08 "Chasing the Dragon" I wouldn't run them back to back, but they really do explore some very dark content.
Been a while, but as I recall, part 1 is pretty easily non-lethal if you know what you're doing... well, except for the freakin' helicopter.
As for the sequel... yeah, that one's got pretty dark and messy.
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Just read through the second one and o.O' if you've played the first one well than bleh no monehz!!!
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With that being said.... *evilgrin* If you can get your hands on a couple of the season 2 mission modules, I would reccomend reading SRM02-03 "The Grab" and its sequel SRM02-08 "Chasing the Dragon" I wouldn't run them back to back, but they really do explore some very dark content.
Been a while, but as I recall, part 1 is pretty easily non-lethal if you know what you're doing... well, except for the freakin' helicopter.
As for the sequel... yeah, that one's got pretty dark and messy.
You're absolutely correct with regards to the first mission. Its not for the run that I suggest this one. Its for the... "give the players handout #3" ... in which the fallout of the mission, (something that
they had no control over but are in the end morally responsible for) is described as only the media can... clinical and painful
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With that being said.... *evilgrin* If you can get your hands on a couple of the season 2 mission modules, I would reccomend reading SRM02-03 "The Grab" and its sequel SRM02-08 "Chasing the Dragon" I wouldn't run them back to back, but they really do explore some very dark content.
Been a while, but as I recall, part 1 is pretty easily non-lethal if you know what you're doing... well, except for the freakin' helicopter.
As for the sequel... yeah, that one's got pretty dark and messy.
You're absolutely correct with regards to the first mission. Its not for the run that I suggest this one. Its for the... "give the players handout #3" ... in which the fallout of the mission, (something that
they had no control over but are in the end morally responsible for) is described as only the media can... clinical and painful
Ah, right, THAT handout. I remember being pissed as hell about that, yeah. Especially since we went through a lot of trouble to get the target without inflicting even a single box of Stun on her.
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The group wakes up to a really bright light, an anonymous voice can be heard:
"You've all been fitted with a cortex bomb. There's a list of names on the floor in front of the door out. They all need to die in 24-hours, and have biomonitors installed in them to make sure they're alive or dead. If you fail... The bombs go off. Your time starts... Now."
The lights go off.
This is sort of the same motivation I've used to force my PCs to work together. They all woke up with a Cranial Bomb attached to their brainstems and were told that if they didn't do the job or if they tried to kill the man responcible for their situation... boom, dead. ;D
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I've got a story back from when I was a player, playing the hacker. It's been a while so I've forgotten a few of the specifics but it's pretty good.
Anyhow, we're on a job to investigate a series of murdered kids in the Redmond barrens. After tons of legwork, favors, asking questions of the wrong people (the kind who respond in gunfire), it turns out the perpetrator is a upper-management piece of work for Mitsuhama. I won't get into the details of what he was doing but suffice to say it made us motivated to stop him.
We set up surveillance, take shifts, and wait days for a chance to nab him. We finally get our chance and it goes off without a hitch. Skip scene back to the safehouse, we're arguing what to do with him. I had figured that the solution was obvious, kill the slot. The rest of the group hadn't thought that far ahead and now that he was defenseless and bound to a chair they started to lose their nerve. We had been doing some Robinhooding up to this point, doing bad things sure but only to bad people to help good people. Cold blooded murder was something that (besides myself) the group wasn't quite ready for, regardless of what he had done.
In character I lose my cool and take off saying "Do whatever the frag you like!", partly because I felt it made the scene awesome and partly because I wanted to see what they'd do without me (I had much more experience and the group often turned to me for solutions, so sometimes I would opt out of the decision making process. It only felt fair.).
So, after some talk they decide that they just need to get a bit more evidence and then they can go to Lone Star. Some gamma-scopoline and a little time and the face has gotten more info then he wanted to know, but now they can get the videos the sicko made and have him eye and ear recording telling them where to get the trids. They get them and come back, telling the sicko that it's all over for him, that he's going away for a long, long time and he should just cooperate and make it easier on everyone.
Everyone but me goes to the police station, evil NPC in tow. They're smart enough to only bring stun weapons, have their most up to date fake SINs, and I'm still in contact with them via commlink, begrudgingly reminding them about other things to remember so they appear to be good little UCAS citizens.
They turn him and the evidence they aquired in. My GM asks them "So, there are a few open seats. Do you want to stick around or take off?" He was giving them a chance at escape, but they didn't realize it. They decided to wait, they wanted to see sicko get his karmic reward.
So they wait about an hour when sicko, and two very well dressed men walk out from the hallway laughing politely. "Haha, Well the next eighteen holes I won't go so easy on you!" one of them says to the sicko.
Everyone in the group has the same reaction: their jaw drops. They snap a photo of the guys and ask me to try and look them up. I find them. One is a high priced lawyer for Mitsumama, and the man who was joking with the sicko was the LoneStar-Mitsumama liaison.
They talk for another minute then sicko and lawyer walk up to the group (minus me). He looks at them slyly then pulls out his commlink.
"Hello, cleaner? Ah, yes. I'm in desperate need of having my suit cleaned. Yes, a few troublesome... stains... that need to be ... removed." As he says that he turns to each one of them in turn, spending a few seconds looking at each one. They realize he's taking pictures of them with his cybereyes. "I'm ever so busy, you do pickups at home, yes-oh-you don't have my address on file now do you? Hold on just a moment while I forward that to you." The lawyer then pulls out a manilla folder and hands it to the perv. The perv holds it open in a manner that the players can see, clearly wanting them to know it's contents. It's a dossier on THEM, it's all the info Mitsuhama was able to pull on them. He reads off the address of their safehouse right in front of them. "Same fee as always? A rush charge? Very well, that's reasonable. Very good. Goodbye."
It's now they realize what just happened. This guy is getting off scott free and is now contracting a hit on them, right in front of them, in the middle of a Lone Star precinct, surrounded by two dozen cops. And if they try to stop him right then and there, THEY would be the ones the cops throw to the ground, taze, beat, or worse. They effectively can't do anything at the moment.
He puts the commlink away and walks past them with that sly-smug smile. The group is pissed now, they start after him to follow but get stopped at the door. Lone Star has a few "questions" for them.
They each get thrown into separate interrogation rooms and questioned. It's clear from the questioning that they suspect them of creating counterfeit material to blackmail the sicko NPC. And after checking and rechecking everyone's SINs, sure enough two of them come up as fakes.
The GM is feeling somewhat merciful at this point, instead of killing the SINless or due process, the investigaters decide to "teach these bums a lesson" and just beat the two who failed the SIN check until they overflowed to just one or two physical boxes left. The other two were just harassed emotionally and kept being given the chance to "Make this all go away, we know it was those two SINless that put you up to this. Just give us a confession... nothing bad will happen to you, we promise."
Eventually my character comes down to bail them out. Literally. They're car's impounded and the two who failed the SIN check are black and blue, the two that passed have court dates (they know they'll have to ditch the SINs), nearly all the money thats been made running to this point was spent on posting bail and bribes to let the SINless go, the safehouse is no longer safe, we're now on Mitsuhama's radar and not in a good way, and there's a hit out on four out of five team members. Oh, and did I mention that the sicko was going home safe and sound?
Now the team is ready to kill.
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Now the team is ready to kill.
Excellent (Mr. Burns style)
Rasmus
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It's now they realize what just happened. This guy is getting off scott free and is now contracting a hit on them, right in front of them, in the middle of a Lone Star precinct, surrounded by two dozen cops. And if they try to stop him right then and there, THEY would be the ones the cops throw to the ground, taze, beat, or worse. They effectively can't do anything at the moment.
Give your GM a cookie on my behalf. As a newbie GM I'm always struggling to engender hatred in my players. I'm going to have to /steal that.
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Yeah, indeed that was a great story there. :D
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Yeah, my GM was incredible. His style of play is what inspired me to GM my own game and I try to bring as much of his style to my game as I can.
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Yeah, my GM was incredible. His style of play is what inspired me to GM my own game and I try to bring as much of his style to my game as I can.
My first GM (Star Wars D20) was horrible, he didn't encourage morals to slip, he grabbed you by the short hairs and dragged you down the dark side. I try to distance myself from him as much as possible. His disastrous gameplay is what encouraged me to GM my own games. I've a lot to learn but my players have fun and they're saying I'm getting better. That's all that matters.
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My first GM (Star Wars D20) was horrible, he didn't encourage morals to slip, he grabbed you by the short hairs and dragged you down the dark side.
You mean the Prequels didn't do that?
"Wait... The Jedi Order hides in Pedospeedervans around preschools waiting for force attuned children to kidnap and take away from their families? THESE were the 'Good Guys'? Vote Vader, man!"
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You mean the Prequels didn't do that?
"Wait... The Jedi Order hides in Pedospeedervans around preschools waiting for force attuned children to kidnap and take away from their families? THESE were the 'Good Guys'? Vote Vader, man!"
But Force Attuned is now just another way of saying medi-chlorian imbalance. *Kicks the wall* Why did they have to be THAT bad. I mean I didn't expect them to be as good as 4, 5, and 6, but come on.
Back on topic. Another bit that I've learned from GMing is that players hate "nice" bad guys. Now I don't mean mis-guided or for a good cause types, I mean genuine grad A villains that are just nice. If you're having a hard time picturing it, think the Mayor from Buffy Season 3 (although he's a bit over the top).
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Back on topic. Another bit that I've learned from GMing is that players hate "nice" bad guys. Now I don't mean mis-guided or for a good cause types, I mean genuine grad A villains that are just nice. If you're having a hard time picturing it, think the Mayor from Buffy Season 3 (although he's a bit over the top).
You mean the kind that will use a Cambridge accent and use a very sincere tone when saying he hope the guards didn't hurt you too badly when they were capturing you?
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There's been a lot of excellent stuff on how to twist players by hitting them emotionally, so I'm going to suggest another way that can be used supplementarily or seperately - hit their characters in the wallet
Their fixer calls, saying he's got two possible jobs on the line. Would they be willing to put things to one side and kill? No? Ok, right, onto the job that will only pay half as much...
Then follow that with a job for a high-paying, good value client. Maybe give them two or three missions with this guy before pulling the stunt here, just to make clear that they're on a good meal ticket here. Things go smooth, they come back happy - and then when they go to collect their pay, he starts screaming at them because one of the guys they left alive had a copy of the research and what they've stolen for him is no longer worth nearly as much. He stiffs them and tells them to get out of his sight before he spreads the news about how much they ballsed up. Or maybe he just spreads that news anyway.
Maybe the job after that the Johnson lies and neglects to tell them it will mean going straight through a crowd of high armoured pain tolerance modified psychos.
Or maybe the key snitch will hand over the info after a bit of wetworks. Or their highly trusted, highly connected contact needs a cop taken out. Or maybe they've had no work for three weeks and the only thing on the table is killing.
And so on. You get the idea. Its great they want to be professional. But sometimes professional means killing. And sometimes, not killing, means not eating. Just a thought anyway.
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You could always go the route of your pacifistic runners begin hired to do a bunch of little tailchasey type things. Get some doors unlocked, re-route power around an electrified fence, compromise a camera or two, and finally, disassemble a rifle and place it in a case in an alley.
They'd be acting as the support structure of a team of cold-blooded murderers and are getting set up to take the fall.
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Reminds me of an intro-run I did back in SR3 where the group was providing Get-a-Way assistance for another team. The Johnson willingly left out, because they never asked of course, that the other team would be coming out hot. When they realized all their subtle ways of sliding into the shadows were ballsed right out of the box, their brains slid into overtime. They find out much, much, much later that the other teams job was to take out the young daughter of a corporate CEO...messily.
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A bloody massacre at a train station attracts a lot more heat than a few goons shocked uncouncious.
I swear, it wasn't my fault. I didn't have a choice. I had to rip those guarde to shreads...
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My group used BODY PARTS to pay for TAXI FARES!
...
Admittedly they called Ghoul Cab... ;D
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Yeah, but Ghoul Cab will go anywhere, man. D'you hear me?? Anywhere. Do you understand how freaking valuable that is?!?
;)
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Yeah, but Ghoul Cab will go anywhere, man. D'you hear me?? Anywhere. Do you understand how freaking valuable that is?!?
;)
"Ghoul Cab: We cost an arm and a leg, but they don't have to be yours."
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A bloody massacre at a train station attracts a lot more heat than a few goons shocked uncouncious.
I swear, it wasn't my fault. I didn't have a choice. I had to rip those guarde to shreads...
I know, I know... but stealthy it wasn't. The team has attracted some serious attention in Denver and they've only been 3 days. Framed for the murder of an Ares executive, the massacre at the train station, the chaos at the Unity policlub HQ (though that may not get traced to them), and now deals with Triad bosses and runs against Ghoul owned BTL dens. Actually, only the Ares assasination and the train massacre should attract to much attention, but when you piss of a megacorp or two, you keep your head down until the storm clears.
In the case of your character, dispite the errased, I would suggest you keep yourself cloaked and concealled as much as possible. Also, you can be more than a combat character, using your enhanced senses etc to identify clues the others cannot. And, your raw physcal strength means you can get to places other cannot easily, so you might make a very good infiltrator etc.
Anyways, we're off topic now :)
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As a serious response to the question of how to encourage your PC's morals to slip: Don't. Never do this; they're only resist, and feel noble doing so. Simply show them the inevitable results of their choices in a world that isn't only as bad as our current one, it's worse.
Didn't kill that corrupted mage while rescuing the Johnson's 5-year-old daughter? Have the weak Shadow free spirit he's made a pact with wake him up before the transfer is complete in the police station, and let them watch on the news as K-E tries to figure out the horrid deaths of everyone inside.
Saved the serial killer from falling off the roof? Have him break out of prison six months later and go after a much-loved contact -- or the family of that facility's head of security. THEN have the head of security come after the runners with a vengeance, because THEM he can find, and he blames them for letting the guy live.
There are other great ideas in this thread, but the basic idea in most of these is to make them lie in the bed they've chosen. If they did the job they were hired to do ... or made real choices instead of trying to imitate Batman's twisted psyche by saving the bad guy. (Seriously, which of us wouldn't have killed the mass-murderer-in-the-quadruple-digits Joker by now, or even any of his OTHER Arkham Asylum cronies?)
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I know, I know... but stealthy it wasn't.
I dunno... there's a few different kinds of stealthy:
1) "No Trace" - You glide through the building like a midnight breeze, a ghost of flesh and metal, leaving not a single sign that you were ever there. You carefully avoid, or spoof, the security systems and sneak past guards.
2) "No Alarms" - You don't give a crap if people know you were there, as long as you've got your objective and are out the door before the shouting starts. You hack or EMP security systems and 1-hit-KO the guards you can't avoid.
3) "No Witnesses" - You don't care if they see you coming, as long as they don't have time to scream for help, because you don't plan on leaving them around to tell anyone. Moar Dakka: Silenced Battle Rifles, chemical grenades, and breaching charges are the norm. The heavy troll gets to dual-wield MGL-18s
Seriously, which of us wouldn't have killed the mass-murderer-in-the-quadruple-digits Joker by now, or even any of his OTHER Arkham Asylum cronies?
I'd probably spare a few of them but, yeah, for Joker, Scarecrow, Crock, and a few others... bullet to the brain-pan, squish.
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3) "No Witnesses" - You don't care if they see you coming, as long as they don't have time to scream for help, because you don't plan on leaving them around to tell anyone. Moar Dakka: Silenced Battle Rifles, chemical grenades, and breaching charges are the norm. The heavy troll gets to dual-wield MGL-18s
That's basically how it went.
5 guards and a commander in 1 combat turn, no shooting though, claws all the way.
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3) "No Witnesses" - You don't care if they see you coming, as long as they don't have time to scream for help, because you don't plan on leaving them around to tell anyone. Moar Dakka: Silenced Battle Rifles, chemical grenades, and breaching charges are the norm. The heavy troll gets to dual-wield MGL-18s
That's basically how it went.
5 guards and a commander in 1 combat turn, no shooting though, claws all the way.
Ah, but did you destroy all the cameras and put a satchel charge on the servers?
"No Witnesses" isn't just Pink Mohawk. Pink Mohawk is for amateurs that want to screw around with mayhem and destruction. Pulling off a No Witness run off properly requires professional-grade mayhem and destruction, which is just as much work as No Trace, but caters to a different skill-set.
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3) "No Witnesses" - You don't care if they see you coming, as long as they don't have time to scream for help, because you don't plan on leaving them around to tell anyone. Moar Dakka: Silenced Battle Rifles, chemical grenades, and breaching charges are the norm. The heavy troll gets to dual-wield MGL-18s
That's basically how it went.
5 guards and a commander in 1 combat turn, no shooting though, claws all the way.
Dude, it was a public train station with a ton of screaming civilians, and your relied of 'erased' to wipe the security camera footage (of which there was plenty, and actually come to think about it, I'm sure a civilian or two would have posted something on NeoTube. Mabye not the killing, that was over very, very quickly, but the large tiger running through the trainstation, yep, that should have been posted).
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This is something I see a lot. People, both players and GMs, mistakenly believe that Erased is more powerful than it actually is. Erased takes away your data trail, but it doesn't scour the 'Trix looking for pictures of you to delete.
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This is something I see a lot. People, both players and GMs, mistakenly believe that Erased is more powerful than it actually is. Erased takes away your data trail, but it doesn't scour the 'Trix looking for pictures of you to delete.
I think an AI has the time to scour the 'Trix which it says in the description of the quality that it might be an AI doing this. The threshhold to find something on the whole trix is what.... 24? If it's doing this and reaching that threshhold it wouldn't be that hard. *Disclaimer - I think*
Anyways i know it's not a get off scott free because people remember it, and if yo uhave physical evidence that just doesn't "disappear" a lot of the time. Sometimes you can affect the transportation of physical evidence to end up in the wrong spot. That's just my oppinion though, and even if you have Erased i still think you should be careful.
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Except that is not what the quality does. Erased removes data trails and records, such as SINs, arrest records, purchases, credit history, etc. It doesn't go into systems and erase trid of you shooting up a train station, or that clip of you cracking Lofwyr's office safe. It doesn't even remove your image from them. That kind of cleanup is far more detailed, and requires you actually hiring someone for that specific service, or doing it yourself.
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Except that is not what the quality does. Erased removes data trails and records, such as SINs, arrest records, purchases, credit history, etc. It doesn't go into systems and erase trid of you shooting up a train station, or that clip of you cracking Lofwyr's office safe. It doesn't even remove your image from them. That kind of cleanup is far more detailed, and requires you actually hiring someone for that specific service, or doing it yourself.
Oh yes, i agree editing a image to take you out but leave the rest there would be to much. Why would they do that when they can just delete the recorded file. That obviously makes them think "why would someone delete this file or what didn't they want us to see."
As for the train station how hard would it be to do a search "train station shoot up, on Train 117" and they'd most likely get a video hit on it. Now that ti's found delete it. Now if that video of cracking lofwyr's off the 'Trix on a safe back up onsite and offsite like it probably should be, it can't be hacked from the outside.
Again, I think the Erased quality says something about a "Spider or powerful AI" doing this. It should be woven into your background but I believe it's that they owe you a big favor for some reason and they keep you out of trouble for whatever you did to help them. You have "hired" someone to do this, or maybe they are just a good samratin and believe in your cause against evil mega corps! Or maybe He's your inlaw and doesn't wan't the family to be slandered by the crap you get yourself caught doing.
*shrugs* I'll chalk it up to DM's interpertation. I in no way try to make it over powered, i've even tracked down a PC with erased before. :D
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Again, I think the Erased quality says something about a "Spider or powerful AI" doing this. It should be woven into your background but I believe it's that they owe you a big favor for some reason and they keep you out of trouble for whatever you did to help them. You have "hired" someone to do this, or maybe they are just a good samratin and believe in your cause against evil mega corps! Or maybe He's your inlaw and doesn't wan't the family to be slandered by the crap you get yourself caught doing.
Or the A.I. grew out of one of your favorite childhood toys and is also a Loyalty 6 contact because the two of you are bestest friends? ;)
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In this case, the 'eraser' (Aztec) owns the train station, though I did have Ares hack the footage (as they currently have a task force hunting the runners), only for them to be hacked back by Aztec and loose the footage. So footage gone... but in a way that raises a heck of a lot more red flags than the footage did itself. Now Ares need to consider if Aztec (or at least someone powerful in the corp) is backing the runners (which they are not), a very serious concern given that the team was framed for killing an Ares executive. I actually think the footage being left there may have been less harmful... most the runners ran away screaming like paniced civilians (which made the one that stayed behind understand where they stood in the 'team' :) ).
In this case, it was a 'stuff happens' scenario. But generally killing without gain in a public arena should be avoided at all costs. Having said that, there was a time that a team of runners where screwed by Mr Johnson (actually, that could be the standard intro to a runner story), but he was too well protected at work and at his home... so they worked out which route his car/convey travelled each day, wired the street/sewers with explosives and launched a very public, very explosive hit. Not very discrete, but it worked and they got the message out to the right people.. and then took a holiday until the heat blew over.
I don't think Shadowrunning lends itself very well to ethical people has a career choice. But neither does it go well with psycho killers with poor self control.
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Again, I think the Erased quality says something about a "Spider or powerful AI" doing this. It should be woven into your background but I believe it's that they owe you a big favor for some reason and they keep you out of trouble for whatever you did to help them. You have "hired" someone to do this, or maybe they are just a good samratin and believe in your cause against evil mega corps! Or maybe He's your inlaw and doesn't wan't the family to be slandered by the crap you get yourself caught doing.
Or the A.I. grew out of one of your favorite childhood toys and is also a Loyalty 6 contact because the two of you are bestest friends? ;)
Now I'm picturing a series of missions, only to find out Mr Johnson is aka 'Mr Snuggle Bear' working to ensure that his bestest buddy, Timmy, is looked after and kept protected form percieved threats. Nice...
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I don't think Shadowrunning lends itself very well to ethical people has a career choice. But neither does it go well with psycho killers with poor self control.
Very well put.
You've got to be a professional, well-trained sociopath.
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I don't think Shadowrunning lends itself very well to ethical people has a career choice. But neither does it go well with psycho killers with poor self control.
Very well put.
You've got to be a professional, well-trained sociopath.
So true :) Of course now I am wondering if Hannibal Lector would make a great Face, if he can just control the urge to eat Mr Johnson's liver.
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I don't think Shadowrunning lends itself very well to ethical people has a career choice. But neither does it go well with psycho killers with poor self control.
Very well put.
You've got to be a professional, well-trained sociopath.
So true :) Of course now I am wondering if Hannibal Lector would make a great Face, if he can just control the urge to eat Mr Johnson's liver.
You're joking, right? Hannibal would be a Johnson. And the price for failure is being made the main course.
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As a serious response to the question of how to encourage your PC's morals to slip: Don't. Never do this; they're only resist, and feel noble doing so. Simply show them the inevitable results of their choices in a world that isn't only as bad as our current one, it's worse.
Didn't kill that corrupted mage while rescuing the Johnson's 5-year-old daughter? Have the weak Shadow free spirit he's made a pact with wake him up before the transfer is complete in the police station, and let them watch on the news as K-E tries to figure out the horrid deaths of everyone inside.
Saved the serial killer from falling off the roof? Have him break out of prison six months later and go after a much-loved contact -- or the family of that facility's head of security. THEN have the head of security come after the runners with a vengeance, because THEM he can find, and he blames them for letting the guy live.
There are other great ideas in this thread, but the basic idea in most of these is to make them lie in the bed they've chosen. If they did the job they were hired to do ... or made real choices instead of trying to imitate Batman's twisted psyche by saving the bad guy. (Seriously, which of us wouldn't have killed the mass-murderer-in-the-quadruple-digits Joker by now, or even any of his OTHER Arkham Asylum cronies?)
I completely agree with this. In addition I'll say that if you put your players in situations where they are forced to make touch decisions that show the moral character of the environment they are in, you'll likely get a better response than if you just try to force it on them.
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I completely agree with this. In addition I'll say that if you put your players in situations where they are forced to make touch decisions that show the moral character of the environment they are in, you'll likely get a better response than if you just try to force it on them.
Exactly. Shadowrun -- like almost every other game system* -- rewards doing good things and making hard decisions in favor of the good.** Don't put them into situations where they have to choose the bad; make the 'bad' to be a more merciful and good (if more personally damning) choice than the 'good' one. Kill one captive so that he won't kill one more, or many other people. Do the job, wiping out the scientist's memory, because that was the deal and if you don't then you are breaking your word.
And if they choose 'merciful over honorable', as in the second example, punish them for it. Bump up their notoriety as Johnson spreads the word. Have their contacts start making jabs at them about 'so when are you gonna screw me over, huh?' Introduce them to the fact that 'professional' does not mean 'pacifist' -- it means you do what you say.
* -- Please don't start listing the ones that aren't.
** -- This is in part because of how people have to deal with real life, where there are few clear-cut (or even muddled but discoverable) good/bad decisions. In essence, we want to be good people, and be directly rewarded for it, which is the part we usually miss out on IRL.