[HobDobson]

Your contacts taken a nasty pasting from some gangers it looks like his spinal cord is damaged and he will never walk or use his arms again.  When he comes to he begs your group to kill him, he clearly does not want to live like this.

you used the example of someone with a spinal cord injury as someone who "clearly does not want to live like this".

How have I misconstrued that?

You miscontrued it by ignoring the (now-)highlighted qualifier that the injured person, for whatever reason, is begging for death when he regains consciousness. Their choice as a plot device, not necessarily yours as a person.

So your character walks away from the sad, depressed chummer. On the positive side you've demonstrated to your fellow players the evils of ableism. On the opposite side, he's of no immediate use to you or your character anymore and as a player you will eventually forget all about the NPC.

Unfortunately, a HUGE aspect of the SR setting is that people are only worth the nuyen they can spend on or earn for others, and not a micropayment more. Maybe the gang members, maybe the NPC's loan shark, maybe the clinic itself, but someone's going to realize that the guy's still good for a few nuyen, delivered fresh to Tamanous, once the news is out that no one's watching. Or, maybe someone places a call, and the GM brings the paraplegic back as a "brain in a jar". Do you really think he's going to thank you for his new life?


This brings us back to the in-game ethics of what a "good guy" in this (deliberately dark for the purposes of example) setting might want to do, and the in-game mechanics of what that good guy might be able to do. 

Let's leave the hypothetical paraplegic in his hospital bed for now.

In my current tabletop game, my character recently managed to save a few bystanders from an explosion. Not everyone, and by "save", it turns out that one PC now needed professional treatment to reduce the severity of the nightmares he now suffers. One NPC ended up with a (wiz!) bone armor/carapace in addition to his skeleton - we sent him off with a free spirit who was interested in him. Another NPC ended up with acidic(?) drool pouring out his mouth, burning his own clothes and skin away. My character opted for a 9mm dose of lead anesthetic in that case. "Good guy" or "Bad guy"?

I'd think there are any number of stories that can be told in a lighter setting and still be fun, and goodness or kindness need not be penalized. In a darker setting, or even one hitting too close to home IRL, clearly the GM and players need to establish which elements need to be left out.

[Mirikon]

You don't have to be a bad person to be a shadowrunner. However, you're going to have a hard time of it if you're trying to be a Lawful Good type. After all, a large part of the job is breaking laws, stealing other people's property, and sometimes having to shoot your way clear. There's a REASON that Pacifist and Code of Honor are NEGATIVE qualities. They make your life harder.

This doesn't mean you have to be a completely amoral rat bastard, though. In fact, that's also going to make your life harder, in the long run. (See Clockwork for details.)

Most runners are somewhere in the middle. As it was said in one of the books, "Sometimes you do the right thing. Sometimes you shoot people in the face for money. Sometimes those are the same thing." So do you have to be BAD? No. But a level of moral flexibility is definitely something you may want to consider.

[FastJack]

All right folks, let's take a breath and relax before I have to lock the thread and get out the banhammer.

[Sterling]

Deep Breath, count to 10.

Yes, I'm probably touchy about the whole subject of spinal cord injuries.  As a result I jumped on the post.  Mea culpa. My apologies to the forum.

As to the actual subject, whilst playing a completely amoral bloodthirsty anarchist can be fun on occasion, after a short while I find such a character to be terribly shallow and boring.  I far prefer to play a more rounded, "real" person.  Such a character will have to face the consequences of his decisions and will usually try to avoid committing the very worst deeds, but will occasionally find himself in a situation where, as a Shadowrunner, his reputation and his life are on the line.

I find if I play a character with a SIN (other than Criminal) I play him as a more law-abiding type who tries to avoid taking runs involving wetwork or mass destruction.  Having a SIN means he is still part of society and subconsciously or otherwise bound by societal norms.

The SINless character, by default, has fallen through the cracks, and as such is required to sometimes commit heinous crimes just to survive.  He may not set out to be a killer, or to knowingly ruin someone's life for a simple payment, but that is the kind of job Corporations turn to the shadows for. The SINless are disposable tools, the HR equivalent of a burner phone.

Playing a good person faced with bad decisions is probably the most enjoyable type of character for me, and allows me to explore actions that I couldn't in real life even consider. 

[DeathofVirtue]

  *Sigh* Are we good now Sterling?  As I originally stated, I'm sorry if this post offended you, I wasn't expressing my own opinions but creating an example to demonstrate a point.  I can however see why it's a touchy subject for you.

  *Offers a handshake*

Get to know me sometime, if you still feel I have a negative view then by all means tell me to get lost but I promise you I'm not the biassed individual you thought, on the contrary I detest opinions like that having several addmitedly less severe lifelong disabilities of my own.

  Shall we clear comments from the thread?

  To the rest of the thread my apologies to anyone exposed to this.

[DeathofVirtue]

Deep Breath, count to 10.

Yes, I'm probably touchy about the whole subject of spinal cord injuries.  As a result I jumped on the post.  Mea culpa. My apologies to the forum.

As to the actual subject, whilst playing a completely amoral bloodthirsty anarchist can be fun on occasion, after a short while I find such a character to be terribly shallow and boring.  I far prefer to play a more rounded, "real" person.  Such a character will have to face the consequences of his decisions and will usually try to avoid committing the very worst deeds, but will occasionally find himself in a situation where, as a Shadowrunner, his reputation and his life are on the line.

I find if I play a character with a SIN (other than Criminal) I play him as a more law-abiding type who tries to avoid taking runs involving wetwork or mass destruction.  Having a SIN means he is still part of society and subconsciously or otherwise bound by societal norms.

The SINless character, by default, has fallen through the cracks, and as such is required to sometimes commit heinous crimes just to survive.  He may not set out to be a killer, or to knowingly ruin someone's life for a simple payment, but that is the kind of job Corporations turn to the shadows for. The SINless are disposable tools, the HR equivalent of a burner phone.

Playing a good person faced with bad decisions is probably the most enjoyable type of character for me, and allows me to explore actions that I couldn't in real life even consider.

  You make a good point here, It reminds me of the opinions of a character from a Dan Abnet novel.  Truly good individuals are ground down or killed  by their moral code and the situations it puts them in.

 Truly evil people are quickly limited in power by the fact few trust them and are eventually hunted down by the good or stabbed in the back.

  Those who live on are the ones who live in the grey, that shady middle ground between good and evil where you may need to abandon morals and make difficult decisions that often leave you questioning if you made the "right" choice long after acting.

  A good gm wont force a moral code on a character but let it develop it's own lines that shouldn't be crossed and views and then gradually place them in situations which test that boundary and what they are and arent prepared to sacrifice to stay within it.

  A good example is a bug city survival/horror run I played with my group a few months ago.  I was playing a troll merc and one of my players had volunteered to take over gm for the night so I could get a game in.  The rest of my group was already dead at the point where we start (The run was mirrorshades and lethal) and I'm sneaking down a street some ant spirits had just been in, unarmed, with my legs effed up, when a young child (About 6) runs at me bawling her eyes out just as the "ants" come back, headed my way, naturally I tried to keep her quiet but she would not stop bawling her eyes out and in a couple of seconds more she was going to get us both killed when the ants noticed (My legs were too effed up to run let alone carry her).  I did the only thing I could, I knocked her out with my fists, a cybered up troll vs 6 year old girl, yeah, drekky move but better than both of us dying.  I tried to drag her unconscious body with me to cover but the ants were gaining ground too fast.  I had nothing to distract them with, no cover in range dragging her and they were almost on us, I left her there, blessedly unconscious considering what was about to happen and dragged my usless ass out the way.  The last thing I heard was a single high pitched squeal that ended in a bubbling gurgle.  I made it out of that hellhole somehow, but I left my pride behind...

  Things like this.

  (Sorry for any typos it's bloody hard to see letters on my tv, the sooner my replacement laptop battery arrives the better)

[Wakshaani]

Shadowrun is a ruleset. The world in which you play, and the game that's shaped from there, is up to your GM.

Case in point, the Seattle Underground in the Seattle Box Set. You have an opportunity to find employment there either working for Hard Corps, where you kick people out of their homes, track down and arrest resistance leaders, or burn down illegal buildings, making good money in the process, or working for the oppressed underclass, breaking up heavy-handed police action, passing information to the media, or helping people escape before the bulldozers arrive. The choice is up to you and your GM, and dovetails into the idea that everything has a price.

Want to make good money and take relative easy jobs? All it'll cost you is your soul.
Want to do good works for the community? You won't get paid much, and you'll be sleeping with the rats, but you'll rest easy.

Which path do you walk?

In my personal game, I encourage people to be the last candles in the dark, the small flicker of hope that things can get better, if not for the world as a whole, then at least for one little section. They aren't big wins, but you take what you can get. It's cyber noir, after all.

[Stoneglobe]

For me a big part of Shadowrun, or any other similar setting, is playing to and upon the moral ambiguity of it. Knowing the lines your character, or you personally, won't cross and dealing with the repercussions of such beliefs makes the game more interesting and less 4 colour comic book. As has been mentioned several times there really is no true black and white in the world so everyone must decide for themselves what is acceptable and what isn't.

I've played the pure mercenary who will do anything for a nuyen and, in the long run, for me it's far less fun than actually having some form of moral compass for my characters.

But the reality of things is each to their own and if you and your GM have very different visions of what the game should be you will either have to find a compromise or agree to go your separate ways before the friction causes a more permanent rift. I actually had this exact situation a few months back where 2 of my players decided that there were no boundaries and everything was fair game both in and out of character. It ended up destroying the group and several people, myself included, walked away from the group because of it. I didn't walk because of their character actions but because of their actions as players and the way they treated people at the table when they didn't get things their own way. This wasn't a new group and I've played with these guys for well over 10 years so the change in attitude and behaviour was unexpected and totally destructive.

[Maddo]

   *Sigh* Are we still using Proextender now Sterling?  As I originally stated, I'm sorry if this post offended you, I wasn't expressing my own opinions but creating an example to demonstrate a point.  I can however see why it's a touchy subject for you.

It is very hard to play as a good character in this game, I'll say that. But that's why I like it.