So I'm writing runs for my new group, and it occurs to me that some of the potential outcomes are almost ridiculously evil; bodies stacked like cordwood at the hands of entirely pragmatic sociopaths trying to incite racial hatred, for instance. This causes me to wonder if, in all the dystopian goodness that makes Shadowrun so fun, other groups assign limits on just how disturbing things can get, whether as actual in-game events or as distant specters used for hypothetical, illustrative purposes only.

Thus I ask: do you limit or otherwise sanitize the world of Shadowrun relative to the real world, de-emphasizing those things we as a society consider especially heinous, or do you find them acceptable for use as plot devices?

In my games the darkness of ther events is based on the maturty of the group I'm running. My current group are rather mature and most of them are my close friends so I can run ALMOST anything and they will be ok with it. In the past though I had one player who got offended at a male NPC making a pass at his male PC. He shot the NPC outright in the middle of a crowded nightclub. It surprised the whole group because the dude was usualy quiet and we had trouble getting him to participate but aparently he was quite clear on how he felt about homosexuality. So I steered clear of any mature content while he was playing.

But that doesnt mean even with my current group I can get away with emotionaly heavy content. especially if its without reason.

The way i see it introducing such heavy content MUST have a purpose. Not just get the runners some money and move on.
My train of thought usualy goes like this:
A: Millions of mission options available. If i pick something with HEAVY content then WHY? If no purpose then PICK SOMETHING ELSE.
B: Mission purpose MUST satisfy 2 criteria.
1. Evoke an emotional responce to test the player characters (whis inadvertently tests the players too so be carefull) and see how they respond.
2. Players must be given full oportunity to make nice, tie off loose ends and/or finalise the problem.

so basically IF i chose to introduce such content for the purpose of emotional responce (which always follows) THEN the players MUST be allowed to sort the mess out completely.
say if i allowed them to go kidnap some kids for purposes of sex slave business then i cant just let the mission end and tell them "oh btw these will be my new slaves..thanks alot". the runners will not accept any more missions and will be on permanent free form and work to find THAT johnson and kill him. if i dont allow them he whole gaming group will be over. so letting them have the oportunity to make good with themselves is PARAMOUNT.
at the very least if you let them know by some trick play that they were part of some heinous activity then let them have the chance to make amends OR never let them know (in which case the whole mission was just for the GM's pleasure and then you are one sick sick puppy)

Putting aside questions of basic decency and humanity for a second (assuming, falsely, that automatically criminals-for-hire are all people who are okay with pedophile sex slavery), let's just look at some professional reasons: Because they were lied to, because he gloated to them about it, or because a kidnapping job should pay more than a retrieval job, since the legal risks are greater, right off the top of my head. You don't get paid the same to drive someone across town as you do to break them out of a secure facility and drive them across town, right?

Hell, they should probably have a few choice words with their local Fixer, too, for setting them up with such a client in the first place (without researching him at all), and with their team tech wizard for missing some clues, while they're at it.

regardless of how they find out. if you the GM decided they MUST know that they were played with then you are introducing problems for yourself. Basic human nature and decency will take over and you now have the working of a free formed mission that has no guaranteed payment for the runners except emotional tying of loose ends.
Whoever double crossed them now earns Enemy for Life and this time the enemy has nothing better to do then devote 100% of time, effort and resources into making amends.

You better be good at making mission plots on the fly as any prewritted jobs you had are out of the question until your runners sort this mess out.
and if they are good at finding some randomly insiginifcant data about usual jobs you give them rest assured they will find the person who double crossed them.
at times like that you end up feeling sorry for the Johnson because he may be tortured for days (happened before so i try not to run too HEAVY content)

Which is fine. I just want to get to that point because it makes good story.

I didn't say they were ok with it, but there's a big difference between being ok with it and turning down the job, and an even bigger difference between being ok with it and being willing to go out of your way to extract revenge (and additionally reverse-extract the target).


Those are all reasons not to take the job, or not to complete it. They could even be reasons for hunting down the target. Getting the kid back involves additional exposure for no gain—you're getting into some serious robin-hooding there.

It should be noted, the position I advocate is distinct from encouraging characters to be devoid of conscience. What I find dubious is when Shadowrunners end up listening to their conscience so much, particularly when it results in so much additional effort, expense, and most especially risk.

~J

It's kind of hard to turn down the job, or to not complete it, when the scenario as presented tells us the "got'cha" moment comes at the end of the adventure, after they've handed the kid over. I think "parting comment" from Mr. Johnson was the exact turn of phrase used.

Right. My point is that they're considerations at that stage, if you get the opportunity. Being lied to is expected. Being gloated to suggests that the J is leaky as far as information, and killing him might be a good call. The pay issue depends on the details. None of this is making a case for doing anything about the kid except maybe killing him (I was going to say "or Laesing him", but that stuff's expensive), since he's now a potential witness against you.

~J

Which, again, is assuming that the characters are the sort, and that the overall feel of the campaign is the sort, where "yeah, murder the little kid that we thought was a runaway, but that we actually kidnapped and delivered to a pedophile" makes perfect sense to all the characters involved. If you're running a game where the response to Mr. Johnson winking and thanking them for delivering them a fun new fucktoy is for them to laugh, flash him a thumbs up or share a fist bump, and eat some Ment-o's, that's cool.

But I'll just say that I don't think that's exactly the norm. At least, I can safely say it isn't with the groups I've gamed with.

At any rate, I guess we're just demonstrating that the "limits to the dystopia" vary from player to player and GM to GM.

That's an entirely different kind of group from the one I'm describing. You did catch the part where I've been encouraging killing the Johnson as a reasonable response, right (at least in the contrived gloating-with-maniacal-laughter scenario)?

Edit: if you're reading this out of my statement earlier that "he sounds like he's a businessman", that wasn't to say that oh, it's all right then, but to distinguish three different (possibly overlapping) types of people: pedophiles, direct child sexual abusers, and child pornographers. The first is a characteristic of arousal, and need not (indeed, does not—literature's available) imply or be implied by the second or third. The second is often conflated with the first, which I think is worthy of correction, but all we actually know from the setup is that the Johnson is the third. Money and a sufficient lack of scruples (implied in the fact that he's hiring Shadowrunners!) are reason enough for that, with no jollies needing to be involved.

Remember, if people needed to be monsters to do horrible things, the world would be a much better place.


This is certainly true.

~J

Mmm...shooting messengers...my new favorite hobby.

Remember, just because the J hired you doesn't mean he's the one wanting some result, he could be working for someone else. So go ahead and kill him, you still handed over a child to a pedophile and killing Mr. J didn't fix that.

But that's not the part that needs fixing. The part that needs fixing is that you've done business with someone who can't keep their mouth shut.

~J

The scenario, as presented, had Mr. J making his smug comment as the players handed the kid over to him. So, well, yeah. If you shoot him in the face as he's smirking at you, ta-da, the kid's no longer in his hands, right? You handed him over to a pedophile long enough to collect credsticks, but unless he was doing something nasty to the kid under the table while handing you your money, I don't think it really counts as "handed over a child," because killing Mr. J does fix that.

All that's left is thanking the corpse for being dumb enough to break character as a "loving father" and say something like "Excellent, he'll make a wonderful sex slave." to end the conversation, and then maybe hollering at your hacker for not doing his homework/legwork. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

That's kind of what was supposed to make the "Mr. J says ______, huh? Well, Mr. Predator says blam!" funny in the first place, before it got turned into a whole side argument that several of us decided to start nit-picking over and adding to, or taking away from, the little scenario that was presented in your original post.

I guess I see SR's dystopia as best used as dystopia with a purpose: the dystopic aspects are directly related to the domination of the world by the corporations, the ravishing of the global environment and so forth. It gives the setting some thematic meat if it connects to real issues like that. If you add grimdark for grimdark's sake on top of that, then you kind of lose that connection. The dystopia no longer has as much of a point, and you wake up one morning and realize you're playing WH40K.

First off, let me emphasize quick example a little bit more. I'm pretty sure I devoted about 5 words to each step.

Second off, the J wouldn't even make such a comment until the point at which the kid is 1) no longer in the bloody room and 2) where the runner's can't get to him/her.

The point is regardless HOW or WHEN the runners find out they are part of something nasty they will take measures to do somethig about it. I know my group of players would.
The other point any such Johnson worth his life would NEVER gloat as he may be willing to use the naive runners again and again feeding them plausible different stories.
IF the johnson never reveals the REAL story and the runner NEVER find out then the whole WEIRD aspect of the whole deal is in the GMs mind. Think about it. If there is a twist to the story as laid out in the Con of the job given then if that twist is never revealed then its simple GM satisfying his own weird desires as far as the players are concerned they just did Job A which was a simple retrieval etc etc etc.
They may even feel good about themselves. This is all fine.

Whats not fine if you chose to present such vile content and never let the player know about it. So we are back to the GM being a twisted fuck satifying his own desires.
I'm a firm believer that anything twisted must have a reason and allowed to be atoned for if you so chose to let it play in the world you are running. Unless you are GMing for a group pf sociapaths most humans will pause any gaming and engage in severe metagaming once the hard content gets introduced (unless they are said sociopaths).

i'm just saying. dont bring content just for the sake of it. there are million and one mission options you can run. WHY pick THAT ONE? (whatever it may be)

So you deny the existence of roleplaying?

~J

we are all a results of our experiences. and from my GMing experience seriouslt twisted content breaks the group out of character and into more D&D style goody goody two shoes character until the said twisted content has been dealt with.

other GMs and group may have better experience. i just have not been so lucky.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned something about letting the players in on what was really going on. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/indifferent.gif)



My goal here is to create an adventure that pushes the limits of the players' ability to "shoot people in the face for money" and "drive recklessly down the street, running over pedestrians" along with the occasional demotions job of the Slurm bottling plant, but never "murder small children" or whatever weird morals gamers seem to employ for their characters (killing off Mom and Dad is ok, but god forbid we kill children with direct gun-in-face actions).

The goal is to find some job that the cumulative result of which is so abhorrent that IF given the choice between doing the job and not doing the job the choice should always always be "not do the job" but that's the cumulative result and that it isn't apparent until after it's too late.*

I'm perfectly OK with the players wanting to extract their revenge later, that's not the issue. The goal is to get them to do it in the first place of their own free will through the use of half-truths and concealed information.

*Did anyone play the flash game Mastermind: World Conqueror? The end cut-scene is the Mastermind (you) hopping onto a spaceship with the last words to his minions of, "Thanks for all your help, it's been fun, I really owe you guys one." And then blasting off as the planet explodes. The minions go, "Wait, what?" as they realize that they just helped a guy destroy the world and they didn't get to survive. This is the kind of "too little information, too late" result I'm looking for.

Well I hope you succeed seing your plan through to the end and seeing the faces of your players when they catch on to what they just 'accomplished'. I envy GMs that can pull off such awesome twists of gameplay and NOT have their players break into "We wanna save the world D&D style" even though their characters woudlnt give a flying fuck if the world burned today.

If i pulled off something similar to that Mastermind you mentioned my players have ways of metagaming any future encounters to teach me not to do it again. kinda like when i did a double cross once before in SR3 and then they doublecrossed the next 5 or 6 Johsnsons until i had to end the campaign with "no one will work with you in seattle. game over. someone else GM next several sessions."

I know someone who could pull it off. Maybe even two people.

Problem is:
The first one works for the secret service now (or so I've been told) and the latter is under "house arrest"* due to an FBI investigation.**

I know *I'd* never be able to pull it off.

*Can't leave the state
**From what I understand, he's on the "witness" side of things, but then, I haven't been able to speak with him directly since I last saw him, and the friend I have who does isn't sure how much he can tell the rest of us. So I have no idea.

I think you need to get different friends, if they're involved in, or witnessing things to that extent. i dont care WHAT side of the FBI's fence they're on, lol (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Shadowrun is a dystopia, but from the very beginning it has had some Robin Hood "sticking it to the man" aspects to it. And shadowrunners who are the more callous type, or even the thrill-killing type, will still have some lines they won't cross. The limits to the dystopia are organic ones - there is only so grimdarkbad that you can make things before the group turns from grey hats struggling with moral dilemmas, into apathetic, callous thugs who don't care, because nothing they do will make a difference anyways.

GMs who set out to screw with the players should expect them to drop everything to singlemindedly pursue revenge, not giving a damn about any other plots until the issue is resolved. They play to have fun, and it's not really fun when your characters are turned into an NPC's bitches, or get forced out of the role the players envision for them. So a GM doing this is being a dick, and asking for blatant metagaming. If you want to play White Wolf style angsting or Warhammer style grimness, then get the players on board with it first. Game atmosphere or tone can only be properly done with everyone's cooperation. If you don't get everyone on board, then they will constantly metagame, or leave in disgust, at what they see as the GM being a dick for no good reason.

Keith....is a strange man.

When we first met him he couldn't speak (issues with his vocal chords). The last time I saw him he was headed home for major surgery (the second time since I met him) and wouldn't be back for the next term, then his co-op came up, so he stayed home and got a job working as a night time repo man (Keith had a locksmith license, among others) and due to his surgery he couldn't talk again (not until he healed, at least) so his coworkers called him Silent Pete.

Keith was someone who you could be talking to (face-to-face) look away for a second (keep talking) and turn back and he'd be gone. As in "not in the room" gone. Likewise we were waiting for him to show up one day (sitting in a large circle of chairs) for him to run his game and someone said, "It's 6:30, where the hell is Keith?" at which point Keith goes, "Hi, right here, been here 15 minutes now." No joke he was right next to the person who asked and no one saw him arrive.

Anyway, it was six months after that that I expected to see him again and found out that he was currently being confined to his home state because of some investigation that I never got details on.

I may borrow some of those traits for an npc lol

The Players just completed the first of the 'Dawn Series' of modules. I made Lagos out to be the complete disease infested hellhole that it is where the players have the options of Bad Or Worse to pick from. The ran across the Brothel in the Igbo area where a target was holed up and when I finshed describing the level of human misery, I could tell I had most of them wanting to burn the place to the ground, but I pointed out what would probably happen to the girls inside if the place was leveled (sold to the human traffickers who would sell them to ghouls). After a few amushes and backstabs along the way, one of the female player characters said, "I fucking hate this place." To which the Redoubtable Sonny (the games gunsel and Jayne Cobb Expy) said, "I was here ten years ago and the place sucked worse. This is when it's nice."

Suffice it to say, the players don't want to go back to the place if they can avoid it. The Redmond Barrens look positively inviting at this point.

There's Dystopia. Then there is Lagos. Dystopia is mild compared to a Feral City