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Posted by: fool Feb 3 2008, 09:31 PM

this is a tangent from another thread. Is there anything that you wouldn't have your characters do. Personally, I have really pissed off one of my GM's when I flatly refused to participate in hit jobs. Generally i prefer to play the good guys. AB+, terra first that kind of thing. When I GM I like to develop moral conflict for my characters, having them hired to do things that they wouldn't normally do; usually by having the johnson screw them over by not telling them what is really going on. Then the pc's have to figure out how to clear their names.
So my question is is there anything that you wouldn't have your characters do?

Posted by: Rotbart van Dainig Feb 3 2008, 10:18 PM

Search Missing Person jobs.

Honestly, those are totally annoying, usually boring, completely depending on GM fiat - and you are not even allowed to torture & kill the fucker when you find him.

Posted by: Ancient History Feb 3 2008, 10:19 PM

Never had a player raped. Well, quite.

Posted by: Fuchs Feb 3 2008, 10:27 PM

No rape, no detailed torture scenes, and such.

Posted by: mfb Feb 3 2008, 10:31 PM

what my characters will or will not do depends on the character. as a GM, there's very little i wouldn't include in a game, as long as its presence serves some purpose and isn't just gratuitous. i have yet, for instance, to play or run any game where sex of any kind wasn't best handled by a closing paragraph and a scene change.

Posted by: hyzmarca Feb 3 2008, 10:52 PM

As a GM, I wouldn't have an NPC slice open a PCs abdomen, yank the PCs intestine out through the hole, and use it as a masturbation device. As a player, it really depends on the character and the whole group's feelings about PvP ostomy rape but it is usually a no.

Posted by: Lionhearted Feb 3 2008, 11:07 PM

In our last shadowrun campaign we had following scenario
Troll & Orc get very high on Novac and Cram
Troll & Orc decides that Cram must be like Amphetamine a.k.a. you become horny.
Male Troll & Male Orc, hooks up Male Elf to a Dreamchip (He is BTL addicted anyway)
Troll & Orc Throughoutly rape Elf then in midprocess violently unplugs Elf, Elf suffers from dumpshock while being raped
Troll & Orc finishes their business and Blinds elf with their "Products"
Elf got permanent mental & psychical thraumas..
Elf find Orc, Elf Beats the crap out of Orc (who is currently burned on cram and novac), then carves his eyes out of his skull (now this is a adept orc) Cuts his mandom and leaves him to slowly bleed to death
Elf finds troll, Blows his mandom of with a doublebarreled shotgun, then forcefully inject Troll with all the cram & novac left
Leaving troll OD'ed

So in lack of better things to do we ended up with

A psychopatic chiphead elf with well, he couldnt sit for some time..
A castrated blind orc adept priceboxer (who btw, survived but refused to get cybereyes)
A castrated severly cram addicted Troll who lost his girlfriend and life
A Lone elf hottie who went to the other side of seattle to prostitute herself

That was when i decided that my char (Sammy/face without social skills) would tip his old A20k mates about the rave we were going to the next evening, hell I think half the party died that evening

Posted by: Snow_Fox Feb 3 2008, 11:14 PM

My main character has po'ed the group several times because she won't do wet work.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 3 2008, 11:18 PM

...Wetwork, plain and simple.

Organlegging is another that comes to mind and sort of goes hand in hand with the above.

Acts of terrorism that involve innocent victims.

Stand by idly and let other team members "have their way" with a captured prisoner beyond the purpose of interrogation.

I agree, my characters too like to feel their the ones with the white hats (well maybe light gray)

Posted by: nezumi Feb 3 2008, 11:18 PM

Hmm... I'd probably have to agree with Hyz on this one.

I have had players who say they won't do particular jobs. In my current group, one guy refuses to do wetwork unless it's a really bad guy. Another refuses to do babysitting jobs unless he's allowed to kill whatever he's babysitting. That's fair, everyone has their preferences in regards to game style, so it's good to get them out in the open to begin with.

Posted by: Fortune Feb 3 2008, 11:31 PM

See mfb's response!

Posted by: Ravor Feb 4 2008, 01:05 AM

I sit my players down before I start a campaign and explain to them that NOTHING is off limits, rape and murder and organlegging included whether it is in that order or not. Now with that said, I also explain that I do tend to "fade to black" as necessary.

Posted by: DTFarstar Feb 4 2008, 01:35 AM

I have had a lot of weird things happen in my games. One thing I do, that my players really like when they do something right and hate when they do something wrong, is I make timelines beforehand and I stick to them unless they do something that would make whoever is doing whatever either hesitate or rush. So, I have done a fade to black with sex that picked back up with the character naked and riding her partner when the door was literally blown off its' hinges and a ganger mob came in to ruin her day.

Basically, I go with the flow and as I have stated many times and in other places there is literally nothing that is off limits to myself or my group.

Hell, I once had a player that was a serial pedophilic murderer. His partners never found out, but he would lure small boys into out of the way places, gag them, rape them, and then over the course of about 30 minutes slowly tortured them to death. He got kind of creepy and detailed with it, to be honest, but his character was careful and no one ever found out. He ended up taking a sniper bullet to the face after failing an infiltration test so we'll never know if he would have gotten caught eventually. He had very specific preferences and methods so, eventually he probably would have worked through all the 4-6 year old elven males with spare builds and blonde hair in the Barrens and had to go hunting through areas that actually have cops. There were alot of gangs looking for him, though they didn't know it was him. Dystopian as shadowrun is, I would imagine most people would be thoroughly disturbed and pissed off by the ritual rape, torture, and murder of a young child that they know personally.

Chris

Posted by: Daddy's Little Ninja Feb 4 2008, 08:06 PM

I think I would draw the line at cannibalism.

Posted by: ElFenrir Feb 4 2008, 09:24 PM

As a player? They won't rape or do sorts of sexual felonies.

I tend to wear the grey(sometimes dark) grey hat. It goes from character to character, but ive had a few white hatted ones, usually in the middle, but alot of the grey/dark greys don't shy at wetwork.

As a GM, whatever kind of game i'm running, but again, i tend to shy away from the sexual felonies again. However, I've used joygirls/joyboys, as contacts, people in campaigns, and the like. The scenes(if any), aren't described and it isn't forced. (Hey, they make good street contacts.)

Im pretty open as a player and GM, basically.

Posted by: deek Feb 4 2008, 09:59 PM

The rest of my table would veto that...I mean, I don't think anyone of my players is getting together to live out dark fantasies...and if they did, I think they would get some weird looks...and that is enough to keep it off the table for most people. As a GM, would I allow it? Yeah, but I wouldn't want to get into gritty details...I'd keep it as surface as possible and keep on moving with the story...it could stay as part of his habits and background, but I certainly wouldn't feature it in the game I ran.

Posted by: Stahlseele Feb 4 2008, 10:30 PM

aside from the wetwork and organlegging . . and if i decide something goes boom, something goes boom . . i do send a warning and everybody who does not leave deserves to be blown out of the gene-pool anyways . . nothing sexual from me(well, aside from using RRRRRodgerrrr as an visual aid in questioning people), but i once got information by telling the GM to give me whatever information i wanted in return of me NOT describing in Detail what i was gonna do to the very unfortunate NPC to be questioned by me . .

Posted by: DeadLogic Feb 4 2008, 10:32 PM

No pedophilia or rape in my games. I even take it so far as to make sure that a good runner knows what killing a man means, that Joe Security just might want to go home to his wife and kids each night. Stuff like that. I love to give my runners moral qualms about what they're doing sometimes, but I'd never allow them to make amoral or mentally deviant characters, my campaigns are very underdog heroic and I expect professional Runners! As for my character's, I did make an NPC in a game of Vampire: The Masquerade who was Malkavian, and fucking batshit nuts. She would go on dates, seduce men, and take them home and get them ready for sex just to chop them up with her trusty fire axe. She's then eat their organs. I imagine a similar character may work as a ghoul or vampire in SR, hehe. Especially if she has information that forces the runners to keep her twisted self alive. That's what I call moral quandary.

Posted by: Whipstitch Feb 4 2008, 11:01 PM

Uh, but that's exactly why Joe Security will shoot you. Joe Security's got a gun; he needs to be shot. To quote cheesey John Wayne movies, "All battles are fought by scared men who would rather be somewhere else." It's either poignant or a load of bull depending on your perspective, but either way it inadvertently makes the point that being in the same boat as the other guy won't stop you from catching a round. Anyway, I suppose you could say my characters tend towards the amoral, but it's more of the self-absorbed greedy type rather than sadism for the sake of sadism. They tend to be somewhat hypocritical; they've got little problem with Blood Magic or organlegging in theory (It's really just another flavor of wetwork), and may even delve into it themselves if given the chance and the right rewards, but that sure as hell doesn't mean they'd trust a blood mage or organlegger. After all, such types are guaranteed to make a profit one way or the other from killing you; bad biz to trust guys who always could make a li'l something on the side by killing you. Generally they don't really see the point of rape, torture, or cannibalism though, since you can't really profit by such things and it's tremendously risky behavior. They do tend towards the whole "honor among thieves" thing though, and typically won't sell out their contacts. They also tend to be overcautious when dealing with things outside of their sphere of talents but filled with (often unfounded) bravado when dealing with things they consider their specialty.

Posted by: DTFarstar Feb 4 2008, 11:18 PM

We didn't dwell in game, but he had all the specifics and should he have lived longer than he did then eventually it would have started getting around via contacts and later Lone Star. I present moral quandaries, but honestly most of the people that I play with are.... not immoral precisely, but we largely don't give a damn what happens to anyone who is not related to us directly in some way. We are largely selfish people in that way, I guess. Also, none of us are living out sick fantasies. We know each other very well and one thing that I tend to promote among my friends is absolute honesty. There is literally no question they can ask me that I will not answer. I encourage all of my friends to do the same and largely they do. So, we have no reason to be nervous when gritty things come up, we generally know how each other truly feels about the subject. It also helps that we have nicknamed ourselves "The Jackals" for when anyone shows weakness the group binds together to pull them down. Which isn't to say we kill each other, of course, but we do force each other to face things we otherwise might prefer to avoid and as a whole it makes us all stronger people. We also have a very acerbic sense of humor as a result. In general it has made us capable of facing without discomfort anything at all that is not completely real.

Chris

Posted by: CircuitBoyBlue Feb 5 2008, 03:55 AM

There's nothing I wouldn't do, ever. But there's tons of things I've had characters do, and had the rest of the players look at me funny. Depending on which character I'm playing, and the situation, I'll either stand by it or feel bad. And it usually has more to do with how many of the consequences the character is confronted directly with. I'm not sure I've ever had a character who's balked at the idea of blowing up a building that "needed" to be blown up, and accepting some collateral damage. But even if the other guy's a fully-armed assassin specifically out to kill my character, if I sneak up behind him and slit his throat, that's gonna scar me.

And things have changed now that I play a shaman. Theoretically, I'm probably supposed to be protecting the city. So far, it's been a rather loose interpretation of "protect," but I'm at sort of a spiritual crisis point that will either turn me entirely bitter, or give me something to fight for.

Posted by: arathian Feb 5 2008, 04:42 AM

As a GM, I never make the NPC opposition too weak. The cops all use Jazz and have an assault rifle and ballistic shield in the trunk.

I have yet to have a hot female elf NPC that didn't have better cyberware than the PCs.

If PCs are bloodthirsty, Aztechnology tries to "recruit" them, leading to retirement if they don't change their ways.

So, there are no limits or rules, but certain behaviors lead to consequences.

-E-

Posted by: kzt Feb 5 2008, 04:48 AM

It really depends. Most of my characters (as in the vast majority) have considered themselves good guys and been pretty careful how much force is used, what jobs they take and how they carry them out. Blowing up buildings full of bystanders was something they simply wouldn't do. One had a duty to the emperor bit that would have had her do pretty much anything given valid orders, left on her own she was pretty reasonable. My outlaw biker character wasn't a nice guy at all. Pretty much amoral, a misogynist with a mean streak. There wasn't much he wouldn't do, either for money or just because he liked it.

Posted by: Rajaat99 Feb 5 2008, 05:06 AM

As a GM, I won't allow my players to rape anyone. It's just wrong. Although, they have killed a baby before. Some how that seems less wrong. Trust me, the baby was asking for it. (I'm sure it's because I'm tired, but I find that hilarious).

Posted by: Whipstitch Feb 5 2008, 05:41 AM

The whole "bloodthirsty" talk always makes me nervous, but that's mostly because I once had a GM best described as a Vengeful Old Testament God. Now, if players are stupidly bloodthirsty that's one thing; notoriety and contacts no longer giving you sensitive assignments because the last wetwork job you did caught more headlines than the Mayan Cutter is one thing, but the vengeful Old Testament GM approach to thing like PCs who decide against leaving a witness always hit me as inane when it's easy just to Fade To Black away from the awkward parts of the scenario. Hell, the Vengeful GM once offered us a wetwork job and then promptly got pissed when we accepted. Honestly.

My all time favorite example of this phenomenon happened about the 3rd session I ever had with the Vengeful GM (who I barely knew at that point) and involved the PC that is my forum namesake. I'll be blunt: ol' Whipstitch as I imagined him was the kind of guy who wouldn't have much qualms about selling some poor dead slot's organs if they got cacked in a firefight. It had never came up, but frankly, he was a former Crash Cart implant surgeon who got addicted to painkillers and ended up as a runner, and he had a rather expensive drug habit to fund (he liked speedballing Bliss & Novacoke). He wasn't a bloodthirsty character, per se; actually, he was the only one in the group who consistently used stick 'n' shock and actually stabilized a ganger he got into a fight with on one occasion. It's not like he was jumping people in alleys and selling eyeballs out of the back of his van; he just figured if someone happened to die he could make some cred out of the otherwise unfortunate situation. Anyway, Whipstitch got attacked by an overconfident hitman (more of a friendly rival prior to the attempt on Whip's life) in his apartment and took him out with his monowhip. I decided to to toss him in the bathtub, pulled out my Tag Eraser and MAD scanner and announced my intention to get rid of any RFID tags and to rip out his Cybereyes and implanted commlink while calling up my Fixer for help selling/disposing of the body and to arrange for a place for the team to lay low for a while until he knew why this guy came after him. The GM's reaction might charitably be described as going apeshit. The dumb part is he easily could have easily greased my character simply for waiting around so long to get his ducks in a row rather than simply fleeing the building immediately after the attack.

So really, there's only three things I won't do as a GM: one is punishing my players for doing horrible, terrible things successfully in a reasonable manner. I hate to put it so bluntly, but were a character to rape or torture someone in one of my games they'd likely be better off killing the victim afterwards to avoid leaving a witness. Second, I will never leave my players in the dark as to what kind of social contract will be accepted at the gaming table; we agree to more or less live by a general "alignment" for lack of a better term or we don't play. This, btw, basically means that the aforementioned rape/torture scenario typically won't happen in the first place. Third, I will not throw moral quandaries in front of my players and then viciously punish them for doing something perfectly sensible but morally reprehensible. You gave them an option and they took it; now don't screw them over unless what they did was stupid.

Posted by: Daier Mune Feb 5 2008, 07:32 AM

with my current Face character, there is little he wouldn't do for the right price. sexual assualt is on his taboo list, but torture, defiling corpses and organlegging are not. he's not a guy who really thinks about consequences, and relies on his social graces to get out of trouble. he's even taken to messing with his fellow runners (taking personal cuts of the profit, lying to contacts). i really don't expect him to live for too much longer.

Posted by: Kremlin KOA Feb 5 2008, 12:07 PM

hmm, sleep spells + concealment power + astral cleansing = team kept in Jazz, assault rifles and ballistic shields for life

Posted by: Kremlin KOA Feb 5 2008, 12:18 PM

It varies for me, depending on the character. I have played total white hats, and scum who I would never have worked with IRL

My curent fun character is a hacker/sammy who has absolutely no qualms killing somebody. He has a thing about protecting children though. His first kill in the campaign was when he found out that a Triad underboss was threatening a Made Man's son (it was search and rescue for that Mafia's Don.) so he hacked the controls of the Triad's vehicle and left a backdoor, keeping it quiet until the last second, he waited for the guy to be driving over a bridge and then suddenly locked the doors and made the steerring swerve, while accelerating at full speed off the bridge into the putrid sound.

Posted by: Rotbart van Dainig Feb 5 2008, 12:30 PM

On the other hand, given the guaranteed 100min memory loss caused by Leäl, killing is only cost-efficient for people nobody really cares about.

Posted by: Cardul Feb 5 2008, 12:32 PM

As a player: It really depends on the character. I mean, I played a troll rigger who had a dedicated Samurai Seat in his Eurovan..a seat loaded with explosives and ball-bearings, and consisently kept any modifications made recently on the Eurovan from his team. (in fact..when I play a Rigger, there WILL be a dedicated "hot seat" for a Samurai...why do they ALWAYS pull a gun and try to tell the Rigger how to drive?) But, then again, I also played an Ork Sam who had no problem blowing up a wall where the guards were hiding behind..but killed 10 'weeners to save a kitten. I also played an Orkess Shaman(celtic, used the Wise Warrior to represent The Morrigan) who tended to not kill "grunts", but would kill anyone who she thought "worthy" of facing her not holding back.

As a GM: Well, I go by what the quisiest of the players can take. If they can't take being asked to pay for their new AR with a 10 year old girl? They won't get that demanded of them. However, as a GM, both me and my current GM both agree on one thing: your life expectancy is directly proportional to how smart you are. And, I admit, I tend to LIKE players who come up with daring schemes to do a run, so much so that, when we had a team of Runners once BASE jump off one building to get to their target building...well..that was just so crazy, that I gave it a Karma award, and had them surpise the guards wwh were not expecting something like that...that time. Of course..it never worked that good again

Posted by: arathian Feb 5 2008, 12:47 PM

LOL. If they can get away with them before the SWAT team arrives. In my game, the Lone Star response to an Awakened threat includes their own Awakened officers. But, if the players do well against them they might score some foci as well.

Posted by: Fuchs Feb 5 2008, 01:05 PM

In our first SR1/SR2 campaign in 1992, we had the weirdest team limits: No wetwork job was ever taken, but there were no qualms at all about collateral damage ("go get some more C-12" was the answer to many a problem), or bloodthirsty revenge. The team called themselves "Firestorm", but the rest just called them "psychos".

(Never to their face, of course, which led to an amusing session the player characters (and the players) spent chasing after this elusive new team on the scene called "psychos", "who are copying us!" Paranoid, the runners assumed the "psychos" were after them, since they supposedly hung out at the same places, but were never seen by the runners...)

Posted by: Prime Mover Feb 5 2008, 01:21 PM

I leave no subject off limits the world is a dark and horrible place and I make sure my SR world is just a little bit darker. I do however hold the players responsible for there actions and thankfully theres a few in the group who act as moral compass for the rest of the team. We've had some very dark scenes of retribution and I try to keep wetwork to a minimum or aim them at targets that "derserved it" or there lead to beleive they did. In that respect I'm lucky, if my players didnt have a group morality I would probaby inject some via an npc.

Posted by: FriendoftheDork Feb 5 2008, 02:39 PM

I don't think it's the GMs job to decide what a PC can or cannot do morally. You can of course set an "aligment" prior to the campaign, but if you don't you shouldn't suddenly tell a player that his PC can't chop someone up, or even rape because it is "wrong." Too much hippocracy for me, considering what you would allow killing, causing excessive collateral damage etc.

Some players and DM's can't handle certain topics, and if so it's best to deal with that before playing if possible, or have group agree to what can/can't be done.

And really, if someone does play a pedo and want to describe his rape in detail I'd just speed forward. "Ok, you kidnapped the kid, raped and abused him. So what do you want to do now?"

No player has the right to keep the spotlight on his PC for too long doing things that is not connected to the mission at hand or involves the team directly.

Posted by: BFaolan Feb 5 2008, 03:42 PM

I generally play with an unspoken contract, because most of my players know each other reasonably well, but some are new.

I dislike, in general, black hat characters. That said, my current campaign has one amoral bastard who occasionally does good deeds when its easy, a troll that is now technically as well as practically insane (critically glitched an addiction roll, and burnout would have literally killed her, so I gave her a mental disorder from Augmentation), and a troll who cheers the fact that his brother is an outright terrorist. (Of course, said terrorist is a metahuman rights terrorist, and currently the teams major employer, so I guess its a wash).
I was planning for a bit more of a white hat campaign (and the other characters are mostly gray, generally due to not defining themselves), but the players wanted grey. So they got it!

I will generally allow most things - if its included in the expectation of the campaign. Which leads to the fact that I try and keep the expectations clear all around. When everyone's on the same page, a lot fewer problems happen.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 5 2008, 03:54 PM

...well so far for Violet's purpose, our team has broken the #1 tenet as we were sent on one wetware job and another shapes up to end that way. Not the kind of thing she's into. Second, while she's trying to keep a low profile (paranoid delusions about a certain Corp.) the last couple missions wound up more like terrorist ops which garnered a lot of press coverage with one causing civilian collateral damage.

Looks like it's time for her to say �'וטן ט×?ָ�' (good bye) and slip back into the shadows for a while.

Posted by: Whipstitch Feb 5 2008, 04:00 PM

Yeah, Leal would work too. Depends on the scenario. It was really a hypothetical example, honestly; nobody in my group is really interested in roleplaying such scenarios anyway, which is nice, 'cuz I could certainly think of better things to do with my time than roleplay such scenarios. My group's not really big on making sure the security guards or other witnesses are dead either anyway; it's been made clear that there's so many surveilance methods in SR that they quite sensibly figure that if you're seen by security guards you've likely been seen by an image linked set of cybereyes, contacts anyway, hand scanner or security camera; best thing to do is just wear disguises and move fast.

Posted by: Hank Feb 5 2008, 04:33 PM

This one time, I had my players kill a puppy so it wouldn't give away their position.

But that was an evil campaign.

Posted by: Feshy Feb 5 2008, 04:40 PM

Some of my favorite Shadowrun moments where with teams that did not agree on "how far was too far."

One of the best was a team of three people -- myself (playing a former bodyguard turned street sam), an elf adept, and a shaman. The street sam was would go to great lengths to avoid killing people, and would outright refuse any wetwork. He eventually earned the respect of the adept, who joined him in his "no killing if at all avoidable" ways.

What the two of us didn't know is that the shaman was the most deceitful, scheeming, mercenary, dangerous psychopath in the sprawl. Two of the three of us didn't realize it, but our team was constantly being hired for wetwork. After the adept and I had neutralized the opposition, and were busy with our objective, the shaman would be slitting people's throats, or far worse (and usually far more intricate.)

This sometimes backfired, and dramatically so. The "last straw" was when we were hired to retrieve the ears of a group of gangers. The adept and I, at great expense and personal risk, managed to trap them in a building and flood it with nerostun gas. (Being a Street Sam can be awful, as every risky situation that we aren't prepared for is the sam's responsibility. "Uh... I guess I have two dice I can roll for that 'deploy dangerous chemical without training test'... with a huge modifier.") So, we knock them out, take the ears, and head upstairs to steal some goodie that I'm now convinced was only a diversion that the Johnson and the shaman contrived. The shaman keeps 'lookout' down stairs. The adept and I return, and check the gangers to make sure the shaman hasn't killed them in their sleep. They are alive -- but we fail to notice the invisible can of gasoline, and (because of our gas masks) the smell of gasoline fumes all throughout the building.

We get in the van, and start to drive off, when the shaman steals my shotgun, and opens the back door of the van and fires at the gas can. Conversation goes like this:

Shaman: I wip out the sam's shotgun from its hiding place under the van's floor, and fire it at the can of gasoline you can all now see *rolls dice*.
GM: (GM had previously ruled that firearms cause movie-like sparks in the future) The gas can ignites, setting off the built-up fumes in the building. It explodes in a tremendous fireball --
Me: No it doesn't.
*everyone stares at me*
Me: That shotgun is loaded with Gel rounds.
Shaman: No... it can't be. Even you aren't that much of a pacifist wus.
Me: Points to character sheet
*everyone bursts into laughter*
GM (still laughing): Okay, the round hits the gas can, and with a dull "thwump" knocks it over.
The shaman, once he recovers his composure, is forced to manaball them to get paid, and is promptly thrown from the van by the adept.

That was the last run we thought we did with that shaman -- though the player went so far as to have the character undergo a sex change to re-infiltrate our team and hire us up for more wetwork. You have to admire that kind of determination to evil -- or to whatever the Johnson had on him.

Posted by: Nightwalker450 Feb 5 2008, 04:45 PM

That is awesome.

Posted by: Spike Feb 5 2008, 06:06 PM

Irony: The first every Shadowrun Game I played (way back in 1st ed...) it was the RIGGER who pulled the gun on my Sammy during the actual RUN... of course, he was the worst munchkin cheese, taking rigger implants as cheap wired reflexes... before they wisely made that specifically illegal. I was proved 'in the right' by the GM amusingly (was going to kill a guard we had just beaten before he hit the panic button, rigger drew down to stop me (gun shots are loud, sayeth he, I have a silencer, noob, sayeth I...) and the guard hit the panic button during the Rigger's moment of glory.

Man, I hated that group...


More recently I was the one everyone (if they were smart) hated. My 'bio-adept gunslinger' kept anywhere from 25% to 50% of the rest of the teams pay on every job, sent fellow runners into 'die gloriously so that I might keep your share' numerous times, and on the very last run (escort a sealed cargo van to Portland) I actually drove the real van an alternate route while visibly sending the team down I-5 as decoys. The Minigun that lit them up was... amusing (my character was already in portland at a coffee shop listening to their screams over the network... if I'd been really sharp I might have recorded it for sale...).

I sold salvaged equipment, organs, cyberware. I was a hitman... and my team was mostly disposable meatsheilds and ablative armor... in short, I was a bastard. Sadly the GM was fighting with his wife and the game died before anyone caught on... you'd think not actually BEING on the run with them might have clued them in....

Posted by: Whipstitch Feb 5 2008, 06:20 PM

I dislike things like that since they tend to bypass dice mechanics and rely on metagame presumptions. Unless your PC's a Face or something it just generally rubs me the wrong way when the OOC "We're all buddies!" thing leads PCs have an easier time screwing fellow players over due to the general assumption that the PCs are on the same side. I'm fine with running a game that way if people want to, but as a GM I'd prefer some warning prior to the games and would basically require that the characters don't necessarily know eachother all that well in their backgrounds and would likely let people know that anything goes prior to the start of the campaign.

Posted by: fool Feb 5 2008, 06:35 PM

especially if any of other players ever read this post

Posted by: Spike Feb 5 2008, 06:58 PM

Weirdly, the Metagame was what should have made this sort of thing impossible. I wasn't 'passing notes' or conferencing with the GM on the side, everything I did I did in full view of the other players.

In CHARACTER my character was right in the game. I was playing him, near the end, like a johnson, calling up the team and offering them a stripped down version of the deal my character had been offered. Money and contacts flowed through my character, giving me the leverage necessary to run these scams.

I wasn't a 'face', but I had the charisma and connections to be believable in this secondary role.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 5 2008, 08:11 PM

...A Sammy kept doing that to my Rigger Josie one campaign. She finally got so annoyed that she stopped the vehicle in front of a bar, jacked out, grabbed her M22-A2, got out of the vehicle & then told the Sammy, "OK Homme, you say you can do better? Then y'all do it, Ahm gonna get myself a drink." After tossing him the keycard, closed the door, slung the rifle over her shoulder, & walked into the bar. About a half hour later, one of the other team members came in and told her everything was fine. Indeed, the Sammy finally had ceased his backseat driving as they impressed on him it wasn't a good idea to piss her off like that, especially if she was flying a plane instead. [and yes, in such an instance she would have jacked out, set the controls on autopilot, grabbed her chute & jumped leaving them to fend for themselves.]

Of course this was in 3rd ed when Riggers commanded a bit more respect as few if any characters knew how to fly a plane and everyone inside a vehicle was limited to the driver's initiative (which without a VCR was 1d6 no matter what other boosting one had). .

Posted by: knasser Feb 5 2008, 08:15 PM

Kyoto Kid - Please tell me that your avatar isn't what I think it is.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 5 2008, 09:20 PM

...why yes, yes it is one of those cute cuddly little guys who'll rip your throat out.

...wanted something to convey the nature of my namesake ('cept she doesn't drink blood...at least I don't think she's a follower of that Adept way.

Posted by: Grinder Feb 5 2008, 09:23 PM

What's the problem with it?

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 5 2008, 09:37 PM

...seen Fisty's Avatar yet?

Posted by: Grinder Feb 5 2008, 09:41 PM

Of course and I love it (and him )

But he is one of the DBC....

Posted by: Rotbart van Dainig Feb 5 2008, 09:58 PM

Technically, a driver with MBW or SA gets his initative bonus while driving in SR3, as RAW only excludes spells, adept powers, and the specific implants in the main book.

Posted by: knasser Feb 5 2008, 10:06 PM

AAAAHHHHHH!!!!

Posted by: Kremlin KOA Feb 6 2008, 01:40 AM

Response? what response? the officers get sleepified from a concealed ambush position, then have their gear nicked
they don't get time to call for backup

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 6 2008, 02:02 AM

...not that I recall, unless that was buried somewhere on a back page in Rigger 3 I missed seeing. They do get their full Reaction but not the additional initiative dice.

Posted by: DTFarstar Feb 6 2008, 02:43 AM

Kremlin, I just assume that all officers are equipped with external biomonitors because it is a lot cheaper to do so than have things like what you described happen all the time. All the officers go to sleep at once and suddenly another team is sent to investigate, or possibly a HTR team depending on the cities political climate and what else is happening that night.

Chris

Posted by: kzt Feb 6 2008, 05:41 AM

Nah, a mage and a set of spirits arrive astrally 15-30 seconds later, with concealment. At the same time a drone gets directed to loot at the area and all the cameras around it get looked at to see if they have a view. Mage stays high, sends a summoned spirit in to use their assensing to look at the cops and people around. If anyone hostile is there mage bounces back to office, leaving heavily concealed spirit on watch, makes a call and lots more mages from the local office with spirits show up a few seconds later to start the party. Followed by the heavy hitters from regional and national, who start arriving a few minutes later if needed, about the time the HTR units arrive.

Carrying out high profile attacks has its drawbacks. LS or KE can apply a very large amount of firepower rapidly once a threat is localized, and can apply an overwhelming amount within several minutes. They do this for a living and have 50 years experience in how to do it right.

Posted by: Whipstitch Feb 6 2008, 06:10 AM

lol. Okay, your group's just awesome then.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 6 2008, 06:43 AM

...thought you'd like it.

Posted by: Critias Feb 6 2008, 10:13 AM

My "what wouldn't you do" varies wildly from character to character, but normally only the extreme ends of it. Pretty much all of my Shadowrunners, ever, are a-okay with everyday Shadowrunner junk; killing for money, stealing for money, looting, burning, sniping unsuspecting targets, forced extractions, the occasional bit of torture, yadda yadda yadda. Because, well, they're Shadowrunners, and in much the same way you don't get a job delivering pizza if you're morally opposed to driving or findind street addresses, you don't get a job as a Shadowrunner if you can't get your hands dirty. I've long been of the opinion that (much like the murderous hobos that D&D players call "adventurers") there is just something fundamentally wrong with most Shadowrunners, somewhere deep in their psyche and/or background, and I create my characters with that in mind. There has to be some reason they're working the side of the shadows that they're working, so most basic "roll up your sleeves and fuck over the innocent wageslave" work is not beyond them.

When GMing? There's pretty much nothing that's off limits. Because I (and most of the people I play Shadowrun with) believe what we do about the innately flawed/scarred/dark nature of professional criminals, the opposition in my Shadowrun games is a little bit worse than that. I'm from the Frank Miller/Sin City school of GMing Shadowrun (and CP:2020, when it comes up); in order to keep fundamanetally dark player characters as the protagonists, the antagonists have to be even worse. There's nothing like breaking up a bunraku ring to make hired killers feel like they're still good guys, y'know?

Posted by: DocTaotsu Feb 6 2008, 12:03 PM

Metagaming preferences:

No missing persons.

In character preferences:
I'm one of those sick bastards who usually tries to play a "good guy" in Shadowrun. As such my characters usually don't jump for wetwork or other such "black hat" affairs. Although I've been known to go in for the Sin City style revenge kill if my team gets particularly boned. I have no problem being screwed because I didn't ask enough questions. One of my favorite games more or less ended when my angelic white hat doctor character took part in a Humanis sanctioned fire bombing of a metahuman squatter hovel. Poor guy never did get over that.

As a GM:
-No rape RP. If players want to go to that place they can go there on their own time and without me moderating. I've occassionally used it as a thematic device but I've never RPed it.
-Torture I'm less squemish about but I've never played with a group of people who wanted to spend 2 hours describing exactly what sort of surgical tools they apply to what parts for how long and at what temperature. I'm usually fine with players saying "We do very very very bad things to him for no less than 4 hours and make first aid/medicine rolls to make sure he doesn't die. If we can get bonuses here is a list of the things we purchase at the hardware store." If I torture players (in game, not out of game because I've written some really awful flavor text or didn't bother to learn the magic rules) I usually just give them a general idea and have them roll a series of willpower checks. I'm also a big fan of 'The villian lowers the trodes over your head and slots a chip that appears as a cackling daemon in your AR" Mangling someones body seems so much less efficient than mangling their mind with some modified Black IC and a hot sim of being fed into a meat grinder turn by turn.
-Creepy sex stuff. If your character has creepy sex needs, just give me a general idea and I'll let you know how much all those gerbils add to your lifestyle costs. As a former MUX administrator I can tell you that my interest in reading 20 page tinysex logs evaporated after I got out of puberty. Now if you're knocking boots when a Firewatch team burst through your door, I find that intensely amusing and encourage you with karma.

Posted by: Rajaat99 Feb 8 2008, 01:17 AM

That's just wrong.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 8 2008, 04:43 AM

...DocT, I'm pretty much on the same bus with my PCs. Maybe the hats turn a few shades grayer at times but never black.

As to GM-ing, About the same too, though I do do love intrigue mixed with a healthy dose of suspense. One thing I try to steer completely clear from is the whole GD & IE metaplot. Based on the experience, when they show up, the PCs tend to become rather superfluous as the GD or IE usually always wins.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Feb 8 2008, 06:02 AM

hehe, I'm sure that, given the right situation, my players hats could be turned very very dark grey indeed. I look forward to providing those "opportunities".

GD or IE?

Posted by: Critias Feb 8 2008, 06:22 AM

I'm not sure if it's what you're asking, but "GD" is Great Dragons, "IE" is Immortal Elves. Some big conspiracy/behind-the-scenes metaplots (mostly from previous editions) that some people feel were overplayed, or just don't fit in very well. So some folks ignore 'em, while some folks adore 'em (just like everything else).

Posted by: DTFarstar Feb 8 2008, 06:24 AM

Great Dragon or Immortal Elf.

Or Immoral Elf, if you happen to play with Fortune.

Chris

EDIT: Scooped of course, dammit.

Posted by: BishopMcQ Feb 8 2008, 06:44 AM

I wear the black hat a lot of times, with shades of grey and rarely a white hat. As a GM, I've had an NPC who was a sexual sadist before becoming infected with HMHVV--the players got to relive a moment as a joygirl got what she was paid for and a whole lot more. PCs have called in contracts on other PCs, they've sold their souls to Threats and Corps to gain more power, but there are always consequences.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Feb 8 2008, 12:58 PM

Ah... I usually shy away from putting those into my games. They need a fine touch and they are by definition, not a fine touch.

Unless my players trounce traditional corps/orgs they probably will never come into any sort of meaningful contact with that sort of thing. And if you they do it will probably be the last thing they see.

Posted by: Dashifen Feb 8 2008, 02:11 PM

I don't think there is anywhere I wouldn't go. I've had targets of wet work be Down Syndrome patients, I've had Mormons show up in the middle of a run attempting to proselytize, I've had the players attempt to forcibly abort a pregnant woman using drugs fired at range from a modified rifle. While I've never really gone in for rape, torture, etc. that's more because I don't see those as being interesting plot developments. I like my morality to be a bit ambiguous and rape/torture/molestations/etc. are all pretty nasty and reasonably difficult to justify (well, torture can be justified, but it's just not very reliable in my games).

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 8 2008, 04:25 PM

...dealt with the scaly ones on several occasions. The worst experience was Survival of the Fittest (3rd ed). In that one the Dragons win no matter what the PCs do.

Posted by: Ravor Feb 8 2008, 05:16 PM

Although it sucks to for the player, at least it is fitting that in the Sixth World the Dragon always wins.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 8 2008, 05:29 PM

...which is why they remain as background color in my campaigns. I want the PCs to feel they have some relevance.

Posted by: Ravor Feb 8 2008, 05:37 PM

True, but I figure that Cyberpunk is supposed to be at least somewhat hopeless, so I don't ahve as much of a problem which dashing the Character's pitiful illusion of freewill when it makes sense.

But then again, as I've said before, I sit my players down before I agree to run a campaign and explain what it means to live in a Cyberpunk world.

Posted by: Slymoon Feb 8 2008, 07:44 PM

As a player I am typically reserved. My charactes always seem to have a healthy dose of morals, however, they are also reactionists. In such a way as though I wouldnt think about skinning someone, but say if situations occured to piss the character off enough he would lose it and do such a thing. But really that is such an extremely rare case that It may have happened 3 times in 15 years of playing. And each time was a GM twist to make me lose it in character.

As a GM though, I will stoop to any depths to make the players/ characters feel how I want them too. Whether it is making a potential vamp pawn (player) prove his loyalty by capping a child in the street and carrying his little sister to the vamp for food. (and the player does have a little girl)

To describing in detail a torture session where Tamanous dismembers a character and feeds his limbs to the ghouls infront of him. One piece at a time while concious (it took awhile). Finally delivering his still oozing body in a burlap sack to the bar in which his runner friends were hidding.


Overall, I can be quite evil, but largely I do not want to kill the players, just journey with them to create a very memerable story. Positive and negative for the characters.

Posted by: swirler Feb 8 2008, 07:59 PM

GM: I ran some games where the team was sent to rescue children being held by organ leggers. After they deliver the kids to the Johnson and get paid and he leaves they find out he's actually a pedophile who thinks he's santa "claws" (arm claws and all). I was proud they actually went after him and rescued the kids again. I had left it up to them to decide.

I had a nemesis in a game for awhile who was a "runner killer". He would get hired into runs and take out the team during the job.

as a player I usually go the good guy route, can't help it.

actually in the D&D campaign I'm running atm the players haven't realized it yet but they may actually be figments of the main villains imagination. He's essentially a "frankenstien's monster" and his parts are rebelling against him, creating enemies for him. IE: the players.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 8 2008, 08:47 PM

...ahh but hopelessness is one thing. You can put someone in a setting that appears hopeless but they may still feel there is still that chance, as small as it may be, that they can still achieve some sort of goal. Now uselessness (which was how I felt while running in SotF) is another matter as it tends to discourage the player by letting them know they will have no effect on the final outcome and are nothing more than pawns in a chess game between "superior" beings.

Posted by: Ravor Feb 8 2008, 09:33 PM

Very true, but when apporiate I believe that uselessness is also a legitament Cyberpunk theme, when the day is done despite all of your hard work and spilt blood nothing has really changed other then a minor shift in the stock market that will be quickly erased by tomorrow's salvo in the unending war between the powers that be.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 8 2008, 09:53 PM

...OK to rephrase: a feeling of uselessness from the perspective of the character in the game, that I can agree with as long as it is done well and there are smaller "victories" along hte way the character can be distracted with now and then.

However, from the metgame aspect, when the player feels his character is absolutely useless he begins to wonder why he is taking the time to show up. That was where SotF (and ot a lesser extent Braisnscan) left me.

Posted by: Sir_Psycho Feb 8 2008, 10:40 PM

I understand if a player wants to be a good guy, and I don't necessarily punish him, but in the sixth world, it's never easy. Sure, so you've got a drop and a bunch of security goons and have an opportunity to pick them off with some less-than-lethal tech, whether it's a chemical grenade, hand-to-hand knock-outs or a stunball. But when a character I gm'd, Vaziel, heard the sewer-dwelling ghoul growl behind him, or the troll physad charge him at the end of a dock, he pulled his Browning Mp and sunk Karma Pool into nailing both of them through the brain. I understand that ghoul's are in a very difficult situation, and personally I wouldn't make a ghoul hunter character "ten points!", but when you're shit scared, the white cap tactics should dissapear.

Also with the exception of my first character, I've never done one of those "won't won't won't" moral qualm characters. Most of the characters I create are conflicted, yes, as most of them have trained their whole lives to assassinate, torture, blow-up and ruin people's lives through various crimes or morally bankrupt professions.

Kestrel was a young Sioux who enrolled in the armed forces as a scout/sniper because of nationalistic pressures and because it suited his love of his home wilderness. They trained him in information warfare and riflery, so his job was to jam/decrypt/triangulate the enemy's communications and then watch through his scope as their heads explode with the pull of his trigger. One day during a long stint of scouting near his home town, he managed to pick up a team of Tir Ghosts, practically right on top of him. Wide-spectrum jamming stopped him from calling in back-up or air support, so he managed, with his Electronic Warfare skills, his high calibre rifle and moving stealthily through the familiar terrain he managed to kill them all one of them he had to kill with his bare hands. This performance instantly qualified him for the Wildcats, but he felt claustrophobic throughout the arduous training and removed from his home environment. He turned his back on the military soon after, choosing to live in a valley near his birthplace, but it was soon that corporate interests threatened the ecosystem of his home, and eco-terrorists approached him, knowing of his skills, to murder the supervisors of the project and sabotage the machinery with a bomb. So he ended up a Shadowrunner. He doesn't enjoy killing, but his skillset and training suit him to assassination and merc work.

Abraham Baruch, an Israeli troll, left high-school due to prejudice and claustrophobia, and the IDF was happy to have him, due to his physical strength and endurance. He just wanted to be a quartermaster, not being a particularly violent person, but the army was the only job other than physical labourer that would take him. When an islamist terrorist detonated a bomb on a bus Bram was on, he watched several of his fellow countryment turned to chunky salsa, and he lost an arm. He spent decades of his life as a special forces operative for the IDF and Mossad, participating in assassinations and unconventional warfare operations across the middle-east, as a weapons specialist/tech. He tortured countless people throughout the operations, justifying it with his memories and nationalistic fury. About When his baby daughter was born, and the agonized faces of his torture victims began to outweigh the memories of the bomb victims, and his wife was killed in a retaliatory strike by a foreign intelligence service, he took his daughter and left Israel.

When Bram begins play, he's living in Seattle with his 20 year old daughter, who resents the fact that he's turned to Shadowrunning to support them. She's moved out. So he sits in his crappy house amongst his stockpile of fire-arms, oiling his old military issue cyber-arm, casually gunsmithing and having to go do another reprehensible and violent job when he hasn't got enough money to pay for his rent, cigarettes and various addictions.

Another (very lame) character I put together when I was younger was a Ninja. (I had been watching a whole lot of Lone Wolf and Cub, Rourouni Kenshin and Kurosawa films). Shinji Mitsurugi was a young adept born into a ninja clan (well they actually recognized his powers as a young child and murdered his parents, scattering his orphaned siblings about the globe). When he left, he was nineteen. Literally his whole life had been training to kill people. His magical powers did little but facilitate assassination. When his only friend in his clan, Misato, fears that after a failed mission, she will be killed, Shinji sneaks into the restricted areas of the dojo and finds the file on his parents, goes berserk and makes his escape, killing his master, and several other lesser ninja.

The interesting thing about roleplaying Shinji was that while he hated Ninja and killing, they defined him. He had nothing else (he was even a virgin) He had the compulsive: Killing flaw. As a role-player, I would try not to kill, but Shinji instinctively moves to eliminate opposition. And despite a white cap attitude of "i hate killing killing is wrong", what choice did he have but become a Shadowrunner and do wetwork? In a fit of Lame-itude in the "are there any quotes from your character" in his 20 questions I wrote.

Also, in my games, I'm not going to openly punish you for doing morally reprehensible things. But if you shoot that guy in the torso, he's unlikely to give a movie style "ugh!" and drop dead, he's got an equal chance of falling to his knees, spewing blood, convulsing, and screaming to god and about his wife and kids. I was GM'ing my young neighbour, who came across two gangers mugging a woman in an alleyway. They told him to back off and turn away, and he shot one ganger in the head with his Manhunter and fried the other one (holding the woman with a knife) with a manabolt, but not before the ganger saw his friend's head explode, chips of bone and chunks of bloody grey matter thrown across the alley and the wet thud of his open skull hitting the pavement. Understandably the ganger, before his brain was fried with a force 5S Manabolt slit the woman's throat from ear to ear and ran for his life.

My neighbour comments to me afterwards, that I was being a bit harsh, especially with my description of the bullet fucking up the ganger's skull, and the woman being cut open. I replied that it was he who made the moral decision. The gangers were most likely going to take the woman's purse, and maybe sexually assault her. And my neighbour's call ended up being to murder the two guys, and risk her life in a hostage situation. Luckily he had a heal spell, and knives do shit all damage anyway.
“I hold this blade and loathe it, for the blade is death yet I cannot cast it away because I am empty without it, and I cannot replace it with the artists brush nor a farmer’s tool, because I can’t use them. So I hold this blade in my hand, and I hold death close to me because I cannot exist without, but what existence is this?�

Posted by: DocTaotsu Feb 8 2008, 11:41 PM

Hopelessness and powerlessness are both very valid cyberpunk themes.

That I don't like to use except for the occasional dramatic effect.

I mentioned in another thread that one of the worst games I ever played was set in Russia and basically devolved into Depression Run where all the character should have probably tried to suck start their Pred IV's (II's at the time?) The GM did an excellent job showing us how powerless we were and did such a great job we just lost all motivation to run. We just couldn't catch a break, why bother? Everything we know and love will just be taken away from us in a heartbeat but some malevolent god...

If I wanted that I'd play Real Life and move to somewhere awful.

But as in all things it's a balance. SR isn't D&D, runners aren't really heros, and things are supposed to go south in a hurry. Nothing is pure, no one is innocent, and everyone has a price. But even in such a dark world, people can make a difference, even if it's just a small thing. Truly lucky and motivated people /can/ make a difference, but it will cost them.

Generally I like to use that cliche story about the child and the starfish on the seashore. "Good" runners might not be able to make an appreciable dent in the shit storm that's the 6th world... but they can make a difference to the people they /can/ touch.

Wow, that got really preachy didn't it? Sorry folks, I'm projecting again.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Feb 9 2008, 12:52 AM

...that is pretty much the approach I take for my characters. SotF and Brainscan were admittedly extreme examples (both pre written scenarios that dealt more with moving the Metaplot along than offering the PCs a chance to shine on their own).

As Sir_Psycho mentions when it comes down to the PC or the threat, even the character with high morals needs to bury the pride and start a hosin' if she wants to be the one who walks away alive. In a recent run Violet ended up black hammering a LoneStar Matrix Specialist until his brains dripped out his ears. Now while normally a nice kid, she doesn't think twice about decision she made for it was either him or her (as well as her being fairly paranoid to boot). She knew he would soon have backup and possibly her location if she didn't keep him on the defensive and then take him down.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Feb 9 2008, 02:08 AM

Absolutely. A Shadowrun who has a problem with killing or maiming people should probably be doing something else for a living.

It would be interesting to see a group of players try to play a "Saint" game where they don't kill a single person through an entire campaign.

Posted by: Angelone Feb 9 2008, 03:32 AM

There is not much I (my character) wouldn't do to stay alive and continue to make . I agree that those who find themselves in the shadows are fundementally broken on some level. That doesn't mean I'll go around eatting babies in broad daylight. Killing, torturing, selling opposition for spare parts is all fair game. I have never really tried to play the part of the white hat, even in the other game, I could be better classified as someone put it a "muderous hobo" rather than a hero.

Posted by: Critias Feb 9 2008, 06:23 AM

To clarify, "murderous hobo" is my job title for your average D&D character (they aimlessly wander from town to town, never settling down except for maybe two night's stay in an inn, they kick in doors, murder whoever's in the room, take their things, and then move on to the next dungeon. As presented, regardless of alignment, they aren't terribly heroic when you look at their actual patterns of action).

It works for some Shadowrun characters, too, mind. But I originally came up with the phrase to describe most fantasy adventurers. I'm trying to talk the other Iron Kingdom rpg guys into making it an official prestige class, but the whole "4th edition is coming" thing is disrupting my schemes.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Feb 9 2008, 01:39 PM

Please... let us not speak of coming of the RPG equivalent of the Horrors.

Posted by: Ravor Feb 9 2008, 04:28 PM

And here I was thinking that D&D 4.0 might actually be worthy of playing if they finally did away with memorizing spells and fire & forget wizards.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Feb 12 2008, 12:23 AM

I haven't actually sat down and played 4th ed.

I doubt I ever will though.

The thing that got me in a brief rundown of the rules is how much the game sounds like World of Warcraft without graphics and having to roll all the dice yourself. The traditional division of labors of D&D have somewhat gone out the window because the designers wanted to democratize that playing field. Everyone gets a once per day piddly ranged attack, some special move, etc etc. All the crunchy obscura I've tolerated since 2nd ed has been replaced with this bland "Elves no longer have any negative attribute qualities, having an elf in your party immediately grants EVERYONE IN THE PARTY a bonus to search and listen tests." (not actually sure if it's search and listen or just search).

I honestly think I'll stick with 3.5 rules which I consider the "optimal" d20 rule system for hack and slash fantasy.

That said there is a reason I'm playing Shadowrun regularly these days. And it's not just because I can spend 10 pages talking about bunraku parlors.