I don't know. This is decidedly too sexual to just be a "darker and edgier" gone bad. Every flaw except the sammie's has a deep sexual component to it.

I reckon age may play into it, my players had some proper power fantasies when we tried to run SR the first time, even though they never indulged in such things otherwise. Now, it's fine... Nerds coming out of their shell and meeting the other gender tend to do that.

I think it will ultimately come down to whether or not a 'darker and edgier' game was proposed to the players before it kicked off. If it was pitched as a dark and edgy game, fine, although it's still a bit much for my taste. If this was a surprise thing, then your argument loses a lot of weight, lionhearted. Springing things like sudden rape fantasies into an established PC's concept is just not cool.

All Im trying to get across is that just because someone act out his power fantasies in a game doesn't default him to a terrible person that should be disowned.
It's something that need to be adressed however...

If you are going to have the conversation, offering a solution that meets part way may help. Being uncomfortable with compelled actions (forced murder, rape, etc) in the game, offer instead that the character when faced with their trigger that they make their Composure test. If they fail the test, have the emotion hit them full on, causing negative dice pool modifiers to Social tests and the like.

We can all imagine (or have seen first hand) someone who could not help but stare at someone's endowments, or who was so spitting angry they couldn't finish a sentence. If the characters are at -4 dice to all Social and Perception tests for as long as the trigger is there and until they have found a way to get it out of their system--cold shower, self-indulgence etc--then the obsessions are still a distinct detriment, but they no longer steal all free will.

Well thought, Bishop.

Lionhearted mentioned it in passing once or twice, but I'll just come out and ask OP directly: "How old are the players and GM in this game of yours?"

Darker and edgier is just a "cooler" way to say horror. The entire purpose of horror is to make you feel uncomfortable. Whether that is achieved via fear, disgust, or invoking some other emotional response. It is entirely normal for people to be repulsed by horror.

To many people, when you say horror they think of slasher and zombie flicks. It's such a low level of horror that really only appeals to the fight or flight instinct on its most basic level and very rarely strays above it. Periodically you'll hear someone say Hitchcock. Rare is the person that will suggest Irreversible.

It's far too easy for gamers to treat characters as Marty Stus and Mary Sues that are 100% in their control. Take away even the tiniest bit of that control that they start to sweat. Take away a much larger portion and they freak.

There's a line between horror and exploitation. Simply being gratuitously violent (much like the awful film you referenced) and full of disturbing imagery doesn't make something horror. It may make people uncomfortable, but that's extremely easy to do, because there are a couple nearly universal buttons you can push if you want to. Mashing those buttons over and over (much like the awful film you referenced) is juvenile. It's entirely normal for people to be repulsed by things that are repulsive.

Whether or not horror is exploitative or not has no bearing on whether it is horrific. Most media must exploit those responses to generate an effect. Horror is not a positive genre and it does not subject the person observing it to positive emotional reactions. Horror is something most people actively avoid because of those negative emotional responses unless they can experience it in a controlled environment. That's why people creating horror have to be creative and try to pull people out of that comfort zone. Fail to do so and the audience is not subjected to true horror. It can be done through multiple manners. It can be done through violence. It can be done through sex. It can be done through mind-screwing the viewer. It can be done through suspense. Most importantly, it can be done by shattering preconceived notions that the viewer has about how the world works. That last one is one of the most powerful when combined with the other elements of horror. That is one that ends up causing people to walk out of a theater or shut the movie off. That one is so damn powerful that many people can't simply cope with it and the only way is to do so is to avoid it. That is the one and only element of control they have over that horror. Horror is not nice. Horror is not friendly. Horror is the dirty, disgusting, ugly truth about humanity and that is what makes it so.

The film I referenced is heavily predicated on presentation. Exploitation is certainly not a factor either. The reverse timeline narrative is required in order to transform it from simple gratuitous violence into a genuine horror. It wasn't the gratuitous violence that made it horrific. It wasn't the rape that was horrific. It wasn't even finding out that the rape victim was pregnant that made it horrific. Those only served to explain why the atrocities in earlier scenes were committed. It was the fact that a bystander who happened upon the rape did nothing and ran away. That bystander did what most people would do. That was disgusting. That was revolting. That was horrific. That bystander left the victim to be subjected to what she experienced. That bystander's inaction is what permitted the previous scenes actions to occur. Irreversible challenged peoples preconceived notions of the helpful bystander.

There's another film like Irreversible that came out in 2012 called Compliance which made people so entirely uncomfortable because they didn't think it could ever happen despite the fact that the movie is based on true events. We humans like to turn a blind eye to the word around us.

... scored the same as The Phantom Menace on Rotten Tomatoes. Total classic.

EDIT: I'm really not trying to be overly dismissive here, but making something all OMG SHOCKING in such a way that people generally find it distasteful isn't a good thing. It's heavy-handed, it's easy to do, and it lacks any sort of artistry. You're not going to boil down "real horror" into just uncomfortable truths about humanity (or uncomfortable lies, either).

It comes down to this: Before attempting to take a drastic turn in your game, make sure all players can cope with it, or they might walk away.
Whether or not this is artistic, mature, conveying ugly truths (or lies) or simply a try to push players out of their comfort zone, in can quite spook them - and thus maybe ruin their fun. Which is a thing not to do.
I tried something similar once, tried to make things darker and maybe grittier, albeit on a much, much smaller level. Still spooked some players. Will not attempt that again. I also didn't take their freedom to play their characters how they want it.

Gonna try and answer everything as well as I can.

He's pretty dang hard to kill (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) and as dangerous as he is, his closet of chunky salsa keeps him hale and happy (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

We did ask why he did this to us but wouldn't give us a proper answer.

And the Pikachu would discharge the moment he touches ANYTHING, so even if he so much as rubs his eyes when he gets up, he's in for hurt.


Our GM isn't some horrible person with fetish fantasies or whatever that he's making us play out. He's trying to challenge us but I think he has absolutely no idea how to do it. Coupled with the fact that this is the 2nd campaign he's ever run, so inexperienced yes, an absolutely perverse creep no.


Not really, no. Party has always been held accountable for their own actions (esp in our SR 3rd ED campaign with a different GM) and never been given clear cut moral choices. We've had players who acted like total asses in game just because they could, and they were allowed to.


It was likely punishment for derailing the plot, because the Face was trying his darnest to get himself to a doc despite being in the middle of a 'run. To the point of 'here Sammy, go do the stuff I was supposed to do you can keep the nuyen'


Weren't given time to do some research, and our contacts just went 'where have you guys been? I thought you died or something' arguably not the best of responses but I'm hoping next session we get to do a proper investigation at least :\


Thanks for the suggest. I think it might work out pretty well.


We are all in our late twenties to thirties, except for Medic, who's in his early twenties.

Alright, my bad then. It's still rather inconvenient (what happens if he's sleeping on his side, is he his own wake-me-with-a-taser alarm clock?). And I think the GM really needs to get off the idea that tabletop RPG can be scripted like a video game. 90% of the art of GMing (such as there is one) is improvising and shuffling your plot around such actions, to keep it flexible enough to accommodate players going off the beaten path, chasing after whatever catches their fancy raher than where you want them to be. Besides, if struck with such an, uh, affliction, it's rather strange to assume a character just shrugs and doesn't really do anything about it.

I still think it's quite juvenile to go for cheap rape/pregnancy/compulsive killing, though. All the more embarassing if the GM isn't actually 16.

Fixed that for you.

Yeah, I'd be leaving at this point. If I wanted to be railroaded in a game like this I'd fire up my old copy of neverwinter nights 2: mask of the betrayer (Which basically takes your PC and screws them up, then railroads your response). I play shadowrun for the chance to think outside the box, the opportunity to go 'Frag this, I'm out of here' mid-run if the situation calls for it, and of course the social time. If I have to follow the plot the GM has set forth with no variation then I don't see why I'm there.

I find most of this rather pretentious. You are correlating a game with a movie or a story, in which one person has everything to say. Essentially you are elevating the GM to the status of Director or Writer, while ignoring the fact that since it is a GAME, the players are equal participants. What you are describing above is the classic Bad GM who scares the crap out of people because of his complete disregard for his players, not because he has tapped into advanced literary techniques to bring to the table "HORROR". This is the kind of sociopath who brings a world of taboo subjects and decides to expose them in the story because he is such a cool storyteller without bothering to find out, or worse knowingly introducing these elements to people who have actually suffered through them. To them its not called "HORROR" it is called living and realizing that subject such as these are things which really need to be discussed before hand is the sign of a mature GM.

The other problem I have with your commentary is that it ignores the fact that the players have very much given the GM permission to use "HORROR" in the game, except it is that which is already presented in the game setting, and it also happens to be elements that are often overlooked or toned down. In this instance dark and grittier comes from abandoning the Pink Mohawk, ditching the Mirror Shades, and looking at the world around you.

Ghouls are not cool, they are cannibals. They don't all have to be embarrassed about it, in fact I can see some being very in your face about it.

That kid who just killed another kid for a candy bar, you think that is all he is going to eat?

Wonder why you might need chemically resistant clothing? Yeah that acid rain; its not just a PH imbalance. People with scarification from acid rain are not so uncommon.

What is that truck doing over there? Oh never mind that is Big Louie making his weekly toxic waste dump next to what serves as a playground.

Insect spirits, toxic spirits, heck even regular spirits are pretty damn creepy or at least should be. Buttercup should not make you feel comfortable.

Corporations and everything they do.

That is all just the tip of the iceberg. The whole setting has horror dripping out of its pores, especially the whole Dragon, IE, Elder Horror metaplot. If you want to scare your players make them confront the world around them. If you think they are Mary Sues it is probably because you have not confronted them with reality. The guy who introduced the juvenile garbage these players have encountered and the style of play you are advocating by suggesting that PC's are essentially just window dressing, completely ignores the tools the setting has given you to accomplish the same things in a cooperative manner. A good GM can accomplish the things you described without taking people out of their comfort zone by making them revisit the ramifications of rape, incest, abuse, or chemical dependency. I could go on, but I need to get going. (By the way while I agree with much of what you posted, I just don't agree with it in context of a game.)

Bunraku parlors. BTL "studios". Kiddie porn (which, combined with either or both of the prior two, is REALLY scary). Slavery (overt and covert alike). Racism. Crushing, soul-killing poverty.

Yeah. Any -punk setting abounds with stuff like that. Plenty of tools to use, to push player's Horror button, wihtout having to get personal and in-your-face about it.

Hell. Missions, season 4, episode 2 "Hiding in the Dark". First scene includes, among it's locations, a bunraku-parlor brothel ... where a tweenaged girl is beign turned into one ofthe prostitutes:
"At the end of the hall is a large, heavy steel door. When the runners approach it, they can hear faint, muffled screams coming from the other side. This is the operating room, where girls brought in are implanted with the control shunts and chips that turn the girls into living dolls. It, and the entire bunraku operation, is run by a “Doctor” Christopher Tojiro, an underground street doc who started experimenting with cybertech after failing out of medical school.

Tojiro is in here currently with two thugs standing over a young girl no more than 12 or 13 years old. She’s strapped to a table with her back cut open exposing her spinal cord as Tojiro is implanting some of his control chips into her. [...]"

Yeah. Little girl, screaming, with her spine exposed as some S.O.B. installs control circuitry to turn her into a prostitute against her will, in some dingy basement "operating room". That's about as horror as you can get (pushing three buttons at once: loss of self/will, child prostitution, and mutilation). But it's still not something that takes away the players' control over their own characters. And it's not "save or rape someone" puerile nonsense, either.

And from such things come recurring nightmares, deep seated guilts, addictions, and any other dark nook of the conscience the PLAYERS might want to explore. Once again a group of things I would ask about before dropping on them, unless everyone at the table really knows and trusts each other.

Hey everyone I am the medic (or rather the self harming pikachu) in this campaign. I play along side DamHawke and I've been following a lot of what everyone been commenting about our GM's..... railroading i guess (politely that is)?

Anyway our GM has given some of us the reason why he had us grabbed and experimented on. For our Sniper (I'm not defending this act but then again our sniper as a player as always been a loot whore and with no personality (in every game)) the GM gave his charater that affliction because that he wanted to slow his character so that he will interact with the group more ( and to hope he will rp even a little bit).

For my medic, is because for the strange fact that he's shadowrunner code name is VoltOpt or as the group prefer to call him Volty.

While I understand all of you guys have our own opinion and yes i agree that this shouldn't have happen for any reason (even the sniper's and the face's problem) he is a new GM to shadowrun. He Gm'ed one game before this and it was a Section 7 D20 modern game. So yeah.... Its not that he's a nood or anything, he's not. Its just that back in the Section 7 game we were agents with fixed goals and mission, shadowrun.... has a LOT of freedom that I think he is just not used to.

Well this seems to be something of a contentious topic doesn't it!

To provide an opposing viewpoint, I would have no problems playing in this game whatsoever. It's been mentioned that there are tools in the setting for horror, but what is so wrong with using those tools to inflict mischief on the players? Will save or act is no different to the mechanics of any opposed social tests, any number of drugs and some of the psychosis qualities presented in the game. If it's part of a bigger story then it's all good. I'm glad the OP decided to go with it and see where it's going.

If I had a character who's forcibly raped someone because of a failed will save then that's great. I now have my character back and I have a new problem to deal with. Depending on the character my response could range anywhere from repentent horror at my own actions to guilty pleasure. Either way the player has got to deal with the concequences and also I imagine find out what's happened to them. This is the challenging bit.

Saying that though I'd have no problem playing a character who enjoyed raping people, like Thorn for example. One of those especially twisted ones that gets off on the power and control of it. It's dark. I certainly wouldn't play every character like this, but once in a while it's interesting. Each to their own I guess, but I think calling the GM an immature kid is uncalled for. Certainly advising the player to get rid of him is out of order. The GM will know the players a lot better than anyone on here can theorise and this is an avenue he's decided to explore. It may not work but I'd have no problem with him trying.

Edit: To add a quick point as I didn't see the last reply, personally I think if the GM has to explain why he's done something it sort of ruins the surprise. It'll all come to light eventually after all.

Based on my experience, it's always better to talk to the player and not try to change a player's gaming style through in-game/ in-character punishment.

Ah, the long perilous road of turning from a inexperienced railroad bud to a fully blossomed GM, tis not easy. But it's also a group process

Knowing your players well (When I played it, I knew all of them could handle this) or asking beforehand about the topic in general and, if met with disapproval, taking it out, is a nescessity if you want to be a good GM.

I think Sigma is massively misunderstanding the GM's role. The GM's role is NOT to masturbate his poor man's Tarantino's ego and produce in your face shocking narratives under the pretense of honesty/literacy/intellectaul value (which, to be honest, a good deal of so-called high literature can be accused of too). The GM's role is to facilitate the players' narratives. The nature of table-top RPG dictates it is driven by the players' actions, with the GM always being reative. everything else will frustrate and turn away players.


What about th face? That's the most bothersome alteration to me.

I downplayed it, and had her pretty much out of it by the time they got to the door. But Iw as interested to see what they'd do about the girl - leave her, "give ehr mercy" (read: a bullet to the head), rescue her, or what. And, of course, why they chose whatever they did. (They went with saving her, 'cause, you know, "working with the ADA" and all that).


Same here.