Don't hold back then.



How? There's no magical soldier pill that makes killing for a flag different then killing for money by most standards. Both have decided, based on situational ethics that there are things they will do for a purpose, even if that purpose is there own. A soldier is being paid to kill people and break things, so is a runner there might be other altruistic reasons, but if they can be there for the soldier. It is the soldiers actions that make them noble but at the end of the day their doing a job for a paycheck. Same for shadowruners.



No argument there



No ones saying that they can't be, my point is they are not by default. Otherwise why would there be a distinction for street "samurai". Who were by the way not nice people either, but it is a moral code.




Again no one said that it was, what I am objecting to, and maybe you didn't come across to me like you intended that it is not automatically an aberant or amoral world where things like torture for torutres sake are the norm. If anything it's much like our own world, people do what they can get away with and what is good for them. Usually aberrant behavior is bad for you in one way or another. However you came across as "oh it's a world where torture is A-OK and everyone in the shadows is a complete D-bag. And that's hardly the case.

Well, I'm new to SR as well, but I've been RP'ing now for quite some time. I have been in more than my fair share of OC and IC morality debates. I'll offer my opinion and maybe it will help out. I'm not trying to start or finish anything, just offering an opinion.

I see a couple separate, interrelated problems here. The first is you, OC, and your character, IC have an issue with the direction the other PC's are going, as well as the GM allowing it. The second is you have an idea of SR as a game and this experience isn't matching with it.

OC, if the group is comfortable with a style of play that you are not then express that rationally and work it out. Working it out could mean the group compromises, it could mean you or them back off, or it could mean you leave. Different groups are comfortable with different levels of realism, grit, etc. That doesn't mean they are somehow less or more mature than you. It just means that when they get together and play pretend like a bunch of little kids that they enjoy the game differently. It's not a matter of age, background, maturity, gender, or anything else. Getting into a debate about what RP behavior or theme indicates maturity (or anything else) is roughly equivalent to playing flashlight tag with ten year-olds. "I got you first!" "Nuh UH!"

IC, I think your character's issue stems from yours. That's fine, everyone plays the characters they do because it's fun. However, feel free to play your character's problem to the hilt. I have had IC disagreements turn into great RP'ing opportunities with everyone having fun. If the focus of the game becomes about some characters doing something and others bitching, that gets kinda boring. Unless, of course, that is how you have fun.

In terms of the GM, I wouldn't assume that his hints indicate one path is "right" and the other path is "wrong." You used the word amoral, right?. He is simply giving feedback about consequences. Now he could dislike it, but is willing to go along with it. He could also secretly love telling stories of slow degeneration that end with the powerful characters getting their just desserts in a hail of magic and bullets. Hell, maybe the players like that, too. Like many GM's, maybe he is just hoping he can get his plot back on track soon.

As far as the game, it's just a game. No, really. It's just a collection of systems and fluff designed to aid in creating a gaming experience. It can be used to tell any kind of story you want. People are free to do what they will with it. Is your experience a "Shadowrun game?" Well, apparently for at least two people in the world, it is. Don't use the books to justify your vision over another. Hell, don't use the books as anything but convenient guides in helping you as a group tell a better story.

As to whether your experience is "normal" SR? I have no idea. I don't think it matters.

I haven't really played SR much yet, but I can speak to morality in RP. I have played saintlike characters. Hell I had one that became a literal saint. I've played evil characters. They have done things IC that I would never do or consider doing, because I know they are wrong. I have played everything in between, from amoral mercenary to hardened criminal with a heart of gold. Currently I'm playing a guy whose powers revolve around being The Destroyer of Worlds, and he doesn't eat because it's an unnecessary (to him) loss of life. So, I guess what I'm saying is...

Rule 0: Have fun.

TeknoDragon, it sounds to me like you are the odd one out in your group.

With all due respect, if you are the only one taking exception with this style of game perhaps it is best you find another group?

It is very hard, if not impossible to run a game that caters to every player's taste.

I suggest you chat to your GM about it but if he's not willing to change - and neither are your players - then I think you need to spend your time with another group or activity that gives you a greater degree of satisfaction.

- J.

PS: We have one player in our group exactly like you. He's a great friend of ours but he always plays strongly Lawful Good types - and cannot abide games where lawlessness abounds. Oh and he hates games where there isn't a chain of command. As a result he doesn't play much with us regrettably - for all the reasons I've outlined above - we enjoy the way games go, he doesn't and we're not inclined to change the way we play. Its sad and unfortunate but we thankfully all accept each other for our differences.

It's entirely possible that the group simply thought it was the most efficient thing to do. If it turns out that it isn't (and in reality, it seldom is) they may stop doing it. As noted upthread, most people with any loyalty to their cause will sooner tell you plausible lies.

Even people that were going to tell you the truth might not after you chop three of their fingers off.

As a form of intense intimidation, torture tends to be less effective than pointed threats, blackmail or plain ol' gun-in-face action. Interrogation relies on fear, and as Hitchcock reminds us, there is far more terror in the anticipation of the bang.

Please remember that discussions of real-world politics unrelated to Shadowrun remain a violation of the Terms of Service.

Stripper.

It's been said already, but I think it can bear repeating: there are many ways to play Shadowurn. In some of them, Shadowrunners will be good guys, in other they'll just shoot people in the face for money. I don't think you could say that one way is better than the other, or that one way is the way Shadowrun is meant to be played. It's just a matter of taste. The problem arises when players have different expectations. Always make sure you're aiming for the same style when playing with a new group (or in a new setting).

Well, if it offends you as a player, talk to them as a player. The game should be fun for everyone.

However, leaving the morality of the torture aside, I don't get the whole "consequences!" shouts. If grabbing and interrogating one man from the street has consequences at all for a group of runners, how do you expect them to commit crimes people in power actually care about and get away? Is this like in those CRPGs, where killing a lone NPC in the woods somehow worsens your reputation with everyone despite there being no witnesses at all?

Another point is that I don't know how you run your interrogations, but in my games nameless NPCs don't hold up to pressure from armed criminals, and usually do not get tortured during interrogations since they spill whatever they know, and the PCs usually are skilled enough to know and notice this - that's what the skill in interrogation is for. And if the mage has mind probe, or detect truth, it's even easier, and only an absolute fool or someone who would have something to hide would not spill any info faced with that.

That all changes completely once you have magical ways to detect truth. Then all you need is make the subject talk - you know, not guess, know if he's telling the truth. In my games, interrogations with magical assistance usually are a foregone conclusions, I do not require players to roll for them, jus as I do not require them to roll to open an unlocked door. Only in special cases - kill-switches, implanted memories, magical attacks - do I describe the scene.

Torture is needless, crab a target,dose or two of Gamma-Scopolamine, ask questions backed with mage's
Analyze Truth Spell,then dose target with Laes,drop target to discreet place..
Everybody is happy,except target is wondering W****** happened??.. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

The Jake: You're a little bit off the mark with your assessment; I'm a paladin-type only loosely as while I try to ensure I clearly define my personal boundaries, said boundaries are more lax than pegging on goody two-shoes. On the flipside, you may well be quite accurate within the Shadowrun setting and how I relate.

Totentanz: The GM is, as far as I can see, fair and impartial as he can manage on all levels. As you say, he isn't pushing ethics or morals, he is 'only' going to apply the consequences and reactions of the denizens of the game world to what the player characters do. Executing an undercover Lone Star cop poking into corp business (target affiliation 90% certain at time of killing) put the team, or at least several members of it, on Star radar in a big way-- keep pulling things like that, and the team will run out of places to go.

A large part of my character's reaction is my own, yes. His background, however, also suggested to me that he'd be against torture for stupid reasons. I think part of it is from settling more and more into the 'intelligence/information' role of a hacker, and judging people and leads with regard to what they know and value of knowledge. Call it justification, but my character's response was regarding several levels of issues with the action: ethics/morals, professional, and reputation. Were I to be a little more detached, it would have been an amazingly great roleplaying session. It was headed that way, in fact, until my personal reactions were tripped and combined (badly, in some ways) with extreme annoyance to the OOC understanding of what was going on.

Oddly, the more I think about it, the less upset I am with the act itself, and the more upset I am with the logic and reasoning behind it.


Replies in general: I am pleasantly surprised at the responses to my posts. Those of you who were down on my reaction and/or preferred game style, I anticipated that sort of comment. The surprise was there were less of those than I thought. We have different game styles, and probably would not enjoy being in the same game that each would consider most fun. No problem with that at all, and your perspective helped me consider my own preferences.

After everyone had a chance to calm down (especially me-- hard to reason when one is in a 'righteous rage' or close enough to make no difference), I apologized to the other players for my OOC behavior; what I said to them was fine, but the tone (and volume) had not been. I was then rather surprised-- the two whose characters I'd the most problem with (both IC and OOC) told me they'd been thinking on what I'd said in character, and told me they'd gotten carried away and gone outside what their characters would do for metagame issues-- an attempt to get a bonus on a check to counteract lack of skill. We then sat down and finished part two of an obscenely long adventure involving a fantasy setting that uses a certain popular game system and had a good time; the next SR game will be in a few weeks, delayed due to GenCon. Probably a good thing, by then things should have cooled off and I'll have had a chance to work up a spare character.

That discussion of consequences, good or ill, regarding our group's character actions? The 'extraction' target is on the other side of the tortured guy's buddies in the ork underground. And they know what we look like. A street samurai, a mage, a spec-ops with some Face skills (those more or less stock from the book), and a cybered up 'combat hacker' designed by a newbie (my character). 400 build points for the custom characters, and 8 karma earned so far. Potential upside: we might not have to worry about our reps... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

The consequences, in this case, are that the team kidnapped an ork, in front of two others from the ork underground who were explosively objecting to it, and one was left alive to tell their friends. Who the team must now get past. When there are witnesses, when there is evidence, people react to what happened. No witnesses? No problem.

The kidnapped ork teen was a lead, and the team botched things in two ways-- one, they were supposed to /follow/ him, not capture him. Two, they declared they were going to interrogate him by way of skill usage, and screwed that up. Different GM, different play style as well, I think. Thanks for the tip on mind probe, etc.-- I'll strongly suggest the mage pick that one up, provided the characters survive what they're about to do in the next game session.

I already walked away from that one.

Which novel, short story or guest appearance of Striper are you refering to?

Yes, she works as an assassin, so her killing someone is obviously her line of duty and her perspective as predator surely makes her actions "inhuman" in a certain way ... but then again ... she ain't human in the first place.
However, even her killings aren't callously as another day at the office, she just has no remorse to kill "prey" or those who endanger her mission or safety, but I just can't recall any instance where she killed or tortured just for the sake of doing that. So refresh my memory there ... please.

I seem to remember Striper handing over a female opponent (part of a lesbian street samurai/mage couple, IIRC?) to an all-troll gang, bound hand and foot, for them to rape to death.

As for my take on it? It all comes down to -- like almost everything else we bicker about -- the game table and the players in question.

In some games, I've put a stop to torture. I've had a character initiate combat against a fellow party member because a Goblin was being tortured, in a D&D game, once (my character hated Goblins like you wouldn't believe, but he saw a difference between killing one in combat in a masterful display of arcane might, and meticulously breaking each limb of one, after the fact, with a club). To him, there was never a time when something like that was appropriate.

In another game, my Ork Adept cuffed a Mitsuhama security officer to some secure steel grating, and opened up his belly with a knife while asking him, softly and insistently, where a van full of kidnapped women and children were going. Raised by Triads as a terrorist down in the San Francisco area, that was how he knew to deal with a problem like that.

Both times, at each game table, it was what was (a) appropriate for my character, but (b) appropriate for the folks I was playing with. None of us got our feelings hurt, we talked things over -- if they needed talking over -- after the fact, and everything was kosher the next time we sat down to sling dice and have fun.

Sometimes justification is a perfectly valid RP tool. Were I in your position, I would disagree with the action in question (OC) on the simple grounds of effectiveness. I can also see your character angle of caring about the quality of information, not just the quantity.

As for killing cops, anything that nets the team enemies is a bad thing.

The reality of our hobby is occasionally we run into an IC situation that triggers OC feelings and issues. The important thing is to talk it out, and it sounds like everyone involved did. Bravo. I am continually amazed at the damage people are willing to do to their relationships just because they can't work relatively small stuff like this out.

Finally, were I the GM I'd let them go through the time and effort to torture him, let them roll it out, and let them spend the next few hours trying to sort out the agonizing (pun intended) mess of information they got out of the poor kid. Without going into a long argument about the efficacy of torture, eventually the poor teen orc just wants the pain to stop.

Everyone has their own personal line were the game stops being fun. My personal boundaries are pretty large, but I play with some people with pretty tight ones. It works out so long as everyone is clear and open with each other.tee

Something to remember is that in the cyberpunk genre "Bullets are cheap and life is free." is very often true, if there were no witnesses that cared then there really isn't anything wrong with what they did.

However, be advised that if your team is smart, the moment they find out that you can mindrape people they will take you out without warning, without pity, and with plenty of overkill.

Interesting topic. As I am the de facto GM for shadowrun in my normal gaming circles, I don't have a players perspective. As a GM I would love to see your character in game attempt to try and pursuade your companions why you think the questionable acts should not be done in the future. Part of the enjoyment of role playing for me is the drama between characters, which can be done if everyone is mature enough to handle it. If you enjoy other games with that group, just let it be known of your aversion and in the future such unpleasantless might be avoided. As far as me as a player goes, I usually play moralely ambiguous characters. I like villains, especially complicated and flawed ones, classics like Iago from Othello. I like playing "the bad guy". Sometimes, If played long enough I can "redeem" them into something greater, and sometimes they come to a bloody and justified end (which is cool by me as well). As far as criminal codes of conduct go, there are plenty of examples of organized crime sindicates and even street gangs having codes they must obey. But to quote a great line from "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (the movie, not the song) Reformed gangster to the crippled crime boss,"You gave me your word!" Crime boss to ex gangster, "I'm a criminal, Jimmy, my word don't mean shit." In the end, most runners are criminals because they choose to be. Most are certainly "skilled" enough they could get legit work if they tried hard enough, but Wage Slave the RPG just wouldn't be as exciting.
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

Things like this need to be discussed before a game begins, particularly on the GM side of things. It's perfectly acceptable that some lines just cannot be crossed (sexual assault comes to mind), but I think that it's equally unfair to punish players when there's no clear standard. It can be fine to bring down canon-legitimized repercussions on players who are acting sociopathically or derailing the game, but I think it's kinda silly to drop the hammer on someone for beating someone tied to a chair.. in a game about shooting people in the face for money, where both are institutionalized concepts.

• So ultimately it wasn't her herself who did it - although ofc. she knew what the outcome would be
• said duo was an obstacle for her business and I seem to recall that said female opponent threatened to kill Striper due to what she already had to do to the other half of the duo. In her eyes said female opponent simply wasn't able to stay professional, so why would she have to stay professional? Removing her from the scene wasn't uncalled for and the rape situation at least gave a slight chance of survival ... Others who crossed Striper's path (like the call-boy in her first appearance) didn't even get that chance.
• It still wasn't something she did without reason or need and definitely not as casual as a day at the office

wasn't that when she was out for blood, looking for her stolen cub/kitten/kid/WHATEVER?

The group needs to talk about what the game expectations are before the game. There's the SR game, and then the group of people getting together and playing it. Every group of people is different and needs to work it out how they will play.

I GM a lot at cons and I'm always adjusting to what the random group of players expect. There's a huge difference in what happens in an ad hoc GMs only game and one where I have a table with teens dropped off by their parents.

You asked for an example, and I gave one. You can justify it however you want to and toss in the "casual day at the office" nonsense to constantly change the goalpost you set, but the fact remains that the plan was to have a woman gang raped to death by Trolls -- if that's perfectly kosher in your book, but mundane torture/interrogation a-la 24 is somehow beyond the pale, I really don't know what the point is in having a conversation with you.

I think i might be a bit desillusioned by the general youth of today, so excuse me for asking but:"how so?"

Striper actually tortured her beforehand to get information on where the woman in question had brought stripers own child, which was stolen from her.

One of my player is in the same place you are. Their character is looking to level the karmic balance and is sick of the death and violence inherent in their background and life style.

That is part of the plot line I am running for them as untimately coming to terms with where your are from, where you are going leads to who you are.

Sometime you can be clouded between what your character wants and the game, the vehicle which you enjoy playing may by natural evolution of the plot, effectively write itself out of the game. Their story stops as surely as if they had died, that is the risk you take for the experence. It is not easy but necessary to accept then you move on to the new character and their story.

Understanding what you like and dont is great to indicate to everyone at the begining, but in this case the discovery was part of your play. Which is plus point of roleplaying.
Adv your group of this, it is sign of your maturity to be open and honest without critism. No point doing something that you dislike unless the necessity/fun out weighs it.

Like others have said, talk with the group and let them know of your concerns. I see no problem with how your GM is runing things; he's letting the players do what they want and it sounds like eventually, karma will rear its head and they'll get theirs. Part of the problem seems to be that several assumptions may have been made on everyone's part about how the group would play and what would and wouldn't be allowed, but a serious chat should solve the problem, even if the solution is for you to leave the group. Hopefully it won't come to that, but don't be afraid to take that choice if that's the only viable one available.