moral relativity, slip-slidin' down the slope Options

[mfb]

morality is an interesting thing in any RPG, because the premise of most of them is that you spend a lot of time killing things. it's pretty easy to bypass the weirdness of a character who can put an entire village of intelligent beings to the sword and not be impacted emotionally or psychologically in the least, but it is weirdness if you think about it at all. in SR, it's especially interesting because you can't fall back on the old "they're evil" crutch. the gangers or secguards you wipe out aren't any more "evil" than the PCs, most of the time.

but the whole killing thing--honestly, that's old ground. it's been covered over and over again. what i'm really interested in is the other immoral activities runners could conceivably participate in, and how players would respond to a character who does so. i'm not, generally, talking about crime-related stuff; selling bodies to ghouls is as boring as killing people. and, likewise, i'm not talking about the extreme stuff--serial killing, bug shamaning, blood magic, whatever. that stuff is too over-the-top to be really interesting.

but how about beating up your wife/SO/kids? this can't be uncommon in the shadows. it's rampant today, when there's law enforcement that nominally cares, hotlines to prevent abuse, big societal pressure, and so on. how about in the shadows, where all of your friends are multiple murderers? think they'll give two shits about giving your pregnant girlfriend a shiner? moreover, if someone at your gaming table decided to play a character who beats his wife, what would you think?

how about racism? racism in SR is all cute and fluffy, partly because it's applied only to things that don't exist (orks, trolls) and partly because most of the material on racism presents it as "bad". even the voice for the 'reasonable Humanis guy' is patronizing and fake--you can't generate any sympathy for him at all, possibly because he's presented as the 'reasonable Humanis guy'. shadowrunners are, for the most part, presented as being equal-opportunity guys who buck the system by accepting their trog brothers. the only racism in SR is in the corporations and some of the governments--not us, not anybody who'd actually be playable. hell, racism isn't even an available flaw. so what would you do if someone sat down at the gaming table and said "my ex-ganger character is a card-carrying member of Humanis. he'll work with metas, but he won't like it."

there's other "bad" behaviors that the shadows should, reasonably, allow or encourage. what of 'em? would you have a problem with them at your table? would you play them? understand, i'm not criticizing anyone who chooses to keep their games "clean". but is there anyone else who likes pushing the moral envelope in realistic, believable ways?

[fistandantilus4....]

I've had a few games where things went into the gray areas and a bit beyond. Characters who have killed S.O.s for cheating, characters that have been raped, or raped, pressured in to putting out, putting out for drugs, using people for their own ends and discarding them. There's a lot of room in SR, especially with tech, for controlling people, exploitation,and abuse.

You really have to know your players but I find it really interesting to push in to these gray areas. I never make things just out right happen to characters. But I give them the moral slide, where they have the oppurtunity to make moral choices and can go farther and farther down the scale. Some have gone down, some have come back up, some have died from it. Makes for very interesting games.

[knasser]

The thing with someone giving their girlfriend a black eye is that it is uncomfortable. People will quite happily play someone who machineguns security guards. That player is never going to actually do it, no-one at that table is going to wonder if the player is really living out his fantasies in doing so. If the same character belittles his girlfriend and says "I smack her around a bit to teach her a lesson," then you can almost see the chairs edging away.

Of course it's not realistic. A lot of the characters that get played are certainly the sort that could also do such things. But because of its immediacy to our very real lives, it's very much does not lead to a fun game. Speaking from personal experience, when you have seen a man kick his girlfriend in the stomach, it's just not something you want to include in a game.

At least for a lot of us. You can run a very dark game successfully which is fine if you have strong role-players who are comfortable with that.

As to racism, no-one who plays with me is conciously racist, but I'm comfortable with them playing a racist character. Racism occupies a special place in my game. But I think it's realistic that Shadowrunners would generally not be racist. They are on the whole marginalised sections of society and don't get the opportunity to isolate themselves in little racially "pure" communities. And racism is about isolation, whether the walls are built out of national borders or violence of extremist members of different groups. A humanis shadowrunner might be racist when they join the team. I don't see it surviving a fight or two. At least not where the particular metahumans in the team are considered.

[treehugger]

Very interesting thread.
I used to game master 7thsea, a cloak and daggers game with pirates magic and mousqueteers ... It was all about being a heroe, but once you had some experience, players had to think about their actions their motivations and their consequences.
Not all players like it, they sometimes want just to chill out and not think about that stuff.
Shadowrun is in my opinion not a game where you can just blast everything with little consequences (like in D&D style of games).
I always push my players to have a clearly defined code of conduct, not in an honorable sense, but just to think about who his/her character is and what he's willing to do or not.
Having a racist character is imho the same as a drug addicted character : its in a way a "flaw".
I always say that the more flaws and problems a character have, the more interesting it is to play it.
So i always encourage it.
All my players and myself used to do a lot of LARP, so if a player creates a racist character, then i know he'll play it to the end even if it could harm his character.
In exchange, i always try to reward this sort of good roleplaying : a player that plays his character to its limits deserves some kind of reward.
As rewards i dont mean karma or cash (well not necessarely), but i've noticed informations and contacts usually where more than enought for the characters.
Lets say you have a racist character.
The player makes good roleplaying, risking his char's life for his beliefs.
On the long run, he'd meet important humanis npcs. He could meet Alamaise, or general Yeats and be part of the grand scheme of things.
You could give him the opportunity to go far into his way of thinking.
As for roleplaying, it could be excellent, the player could find out that humanis is really really bad and messed up with powers above imagination, and try to get out of it. Again good RP possibilities :)

For more "mundane" misbehavior, i'd go for a totally different approach.
I'd push the player to go farther and farther on the "dark side" giving him some opportunities to do meaner things.
Once he starts to be really "dark" then i'll go to the first option i mentioned.

Whatever the case, i always tell the players that every actions will have its consequences, for good or bad.

[mfb]

[FrankTrollman]

[mfb]

it's not that they're not playable, it's that the ethical questions surrounding them are boring--pretty black and white, cut and dried. ritual murder, investing innocent people with life-devouring bugs--where's the moral dilemma in that? you could play them as conflicted people with realistic goals and emotions, but even then, the path you're going to follow in playing out their lives/careers is pretty predictable. fun, on occasion, but predictable.

[Wounded Ronin]

I don't know why everyone's so squeamish. I don't really have a problem with the abstract concept of a racist or girlfriend-kicking player character. Hell, I have played a pretty evil character.

Later I wrote some fiction from the perspective of that character for a contest on this board and a lot of the respondants seemed to agree that the character was evil on some level:

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...3334&hl=harvard

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...3335&hl=harvard



I say, the darker and more depressing the better.

[eidolon]

I don't have a whole lot to add at the moment, just this one thought.

Where do SR players get the idea that characters aren't racist? It isn't spelled out in the books. In fact, in the earlier days of SR material, where racism was more present in both rules and the source material, I'd say that it's just as expected that a PC be racist as not. I'd say that any idea that "shadowrunners aren't racist, they're above that" comes from the players' discomfort regarding the subject.

I've played a racist character and GMed for several. Racism is part of the SR world, and so are the characters.

[bibliophile20]

[treehugger]

My opinion always was that "most" runners where more leaning towards a neo anarchist mindset.
A runner need to accept the fact he is a criminal but also that there are rules he must follow (a runner cannot be just a criminal living by the law of the strongest, else his employers would really doubt his loyalty).
A racist runner would have a hard time working for a non-human or a non member of his race, and even a harder time working WITH such people.
Not because he could not get along with them, but that THEY would not get along with him.
Now the racist character could hide his thoughts, but what the point then ? it needs to be played in someway, so other characters would notice at some point.

The philosophy behind Shadowrun always felt very humanist ( in a sense of opposing seggregation of any kind) as shown by comments of people laughting at the 20th century racism when you consider facing an 8 feet tall troll ...
In fact it always showed the idiocy of being racist by pointing out stupid behaviors in shadowrun and making an easy parallel with our world ...

One of my players play an Elf from Tir Nan Og and raised in the belief he was of the superior race etc ... (clearly some kind of neo nazi education)

He's playing quite well and distrusts any non elven person, even if he realises that those that truely mean to harm him are of his kind (he escaped his "educators")
While this is an easier way of playing racism, i dont really think that plain racism is the kind of "flaw" a character could have and stay a long time alive in the shadows.

[mfb]

[hyzmarca]

There are two different types of people who beat their spouses. Idiots with anger management problems and nice people who are making calculated attempts to give a deeply masochistic person exactly what he/she wants.

Take, for example, the third season episode of The Shield in which Vic roughs up a prostitute and forces her to fellate his pistol. Now, we know from previous experience that Vic isn't the sort of dude who gets off on that but it is quite obvious from the scene that the prostitute is getting off on it. And it works. After that, she becomes very co-operative. She isn't co-operative because of fear, however, but out of some bizarre sort of love.

And this is the difference between domestic violence that is stupid and domestic violence that is acceptable at the gaming table. The former type of domestic violence is the hallmark of someone who shouldn't last three seconds in the Shadows. It's the kind of thing that gets you shot in the face in your sleep by your life-partner. The latter is, in some cases, heroic. If she likes being beaten, if it makes her wet, then the only things you have to worry about are knocking her out too soon and causing more physical damage than can be healed with a first-aid or a spell. That isn't being an asshole. Thet's being a nice person with an unusual relationship.

There are two types of people who stay in violent controlling relationships. People who have lost all of their self-worth and people who want to be violently controlled. The former is the kind of person that a nice individual would help up rather than continue to beat down. These are the kinds of people who eventually snap and get off on Battered Woman's Syndrome if they don't commit suicide after. The latter, however, is the kind of person who you have to violently control is you want to have a good healthy relationship and is you don't she'll seek out someone who will.

The former kind of spouse-beater is nothing more than a bully and being a bully is, in general, uncomfortable for players. Bullies aren't smart people. They're idiots just asking to be put into place because they can't control their need for violent ego-gratification. Being a bully is very unshadowrunnery.

[treehugger]

[treehugger]

Excellent point Hyzmarca :)
I'd like to have characters like that on my table :)

[Kagetenshi]

[Moon-Hawk]

I think it would be fun if someone really wanted to explore playing a racist, sexist, whatever character, but everyone at the table would have to be clear that it was strictly play.
I had a player in one game once who submitted a character with the flaw, "Hatred: Fags" which I promptly vetoed. As a matter of fact, that game died shortly thereafter and I haven't gamed with him since. If he had really wanted to explore the issue of playing someone who had a real problem with homosexuality, that would've been fine, but he was just trying to get free points and justify being a bigot with the excuse of "roleplaying" at the same time. Not cool.

edit: Oh yeah, and for our friends across the pond, we're not talking about a hatred of cigarettes, here. ;-)

[treehugger]

Racism is used most of the time instead of the better term of "xenophobia" or even better "ethnophobia".
Xenophobia could be translated as "mad fear of strangness" ethnophobia as "mad fear of different ethnic".
Like other "phobias" it is a pathology, a mental illness, nothing more.
So the average Humanis member is Xenophobic, he just "hates trogs" and that's all.

Racism, is a belief that the other races are evil/weak/inferior/dangerous etc ...
This belief has always been used as a political tool to hide other problems, unite a people to fight another regardless of "good" reasons, make potential rivals dissapear etc ... using hate and fear to drive the masses.

In both cases i dont see how i could take someone racist or xenophobic seriously ...

[Kagetenshi]

Fags are pretty obnoxious, but that's what we have fagging for. That way it doesn't need to be you who gets all fagged out.

treehugger: I'll make a longer answer hopefully after I've finished the work I've got now, but the short answer: look back fifteen years, then look back forty years.

~J

[Moon-Hawk]

[Kagetenshi]

It's the other British use. Look up "fagging"—if it has a reference to British public schools (that being the British use of that phrase, too), you've got the right meaning.

~J

[Backgammon]

[hyzmarca]

There are two different types of people who beat their spouses. Idiots with anger management problems and nice people who are making calculated attempts to give a deeply masochistic person exactly what he/she wants.

Do you have any idea what you're talking about? Really, do you have studies you can point to backing up this idea? Any at all? This smells strongly of the "wisdom" of repugnance.

I think treehugger is also tapping into the same source of "wisdom".

~J

The wisdom of repugnance works very well at the gaming table; after all, it is the repugnance of the act that is at issue. It is, of course, a simplification, just as damage codes are.

I didn't get into things like provocation, violent arguments, and mutually abusive relationships because they are highly unlikely to come up in a gaming session. If the GM has an NPC girlfriend provoke a PC into a violent argument then that is a hell of a lot different from a player just randomly announcing "I make a melee attack against my girlfriend for the fun of it."
When the GM provokes the conflict, it is a very grey thing. If the NPC SO is verbally abusive then many would see physical retaliation to be justified. However, this situation isn't going to come up very often and it is very difficult to roleplay. You need a very good group, not just a comfortable one, or else you risk the players coming to physical blows.
It is easy for players and GMs to be coldly dispassionate when the characters are just shooting at each other. When you have a verbal argument it isn't throwing numbers at numbers, anymore. It is real abusive words coming from a real person's mind and mouth directed at a real person's ears. When that happens, the line between character and player can blur in some very bad ways. Its why heated abusive verbal arguments between characters are most often caricatures of a real argument consisting of lame putdowns that would not anger any real person, rather than a well role-played passionate violent thing.

For the record, my statement that wifebeaters are either bullies or doms in a BDSM relationship assumes a lack or reasonable provocation. The term "anger management issues" was an unfortunate oversimplification. Like bullying, unprovoked domestic violence is mostly about exercising control.

[Shev]

[eidolon]

mfb, James had similar comments in response to my post. Here's my response, since it applies somewhat here as well.

[fistandantilus4....]

I'll give a few examples of characters that have passed through my games, mine and others. A lot of these go around the racist pieces.

The first is Titan, your standard BFTroll street sam. He's nominally connected to the Sons of Sauron, doesn't get along with most humans, and is generally very abbrassive to most non-trogs. He's also one of those closet trolls that really likes the idea of being with the idea of an elf or human woman, and has never been with a troll or ork woman.

He was born a human to a huan family, wage slave type. Younger sister, working paretns the whole bit. When he was 15, he changed in to a troll. The change was a huge drain on his families resources, he was mocked at school, because of the pain coming and going, and the socail problems, he tended to get frustrated quickly. He often broke thing on accident because of not being used to his new bulk, whic of course made more frustration at home. His parents started looking for ways to un-troll him.

He way away at 16, hit the streets. He lived there on the streets in the ghettos with other orks and trolls. Due to his size, he was able to get basic muscle work, going up the scale over the years until eventually becoming a full fledged street sam. He was pretty smart to being with, and invested in cerebral boosters. But everyone expected him to be a big dumb trog, so he acted like it. His actions made people dismiss him as a big dumb trog of course. He'd been refused service at Lordstrom's before in game, he'd had crushes on female human and elf characters that were never even noticed, etc. He became a lot more violent towards humans and elves than he was to orks and trolls, who he'd tend to assume were more likely to be his friends.

Nightshade was from the Tir. He was born to a minor noble family (chivalry) except that due to some freak genes, he was born as an albino human. Rather than just discarding him, they kept him, but ket him hidden. Over the years of hiding, his magical ability began to manifest. of course, it manifested as adept powers that enabled him to "fit in" such as Facial sculpt, melanin control , and boosting stealth powers to hide.

Eventually he joined the Peace Force and did well. All the time he was masquerading as a true elf. His adept abilities (that they knew about) made him more than worth while to have. He eventually decided to go for the Ghosts. He started the training, and then was "found out". Hed had the masking and false siganture metamagics for quite a while , using them to disguise his aura. But the kind of thorough going over they'd given him for that exposed his secret. he was washed out.

Of course, he was kicked out for lying on his applications and deceiving his commanders and comrades. It may have had something to do with the fact that he was really a human, but that he would lie to everyone that had to be able to trust him was the main issue. That wasn't how he saw it. Instead he took his training and went to Seattle, became a runner and an assassin. he would wear other people's faces and use various disguises to do his work. During his "off time" he would be an elf (elf poser flaw and dark secret). He was always the "mroe elven than elven" looking down his nose at others, especially orks, who he had total disdain for. The race he hated most of all was humans, although he didn't show it overtly. He hated what he saw as his own weakness. He absolutely laothed the Tir, but at the same time, wanted nothing more than to prove him self worthy to it. He was extremely racist to a lot of differnet metatypes. Character had very bad social skills when he wasn't playing a role.

Billy Bedlam was just a ganager with the 405 Hellhounds. His story is a lto less complicated. He got his arm lopped off by a troll fro mthe Spikes once, and barely survived (naturally). Ever since, he became a trog hater. he dind't join Humanis or anything, because he very much wanted to be a "real street samurai" one day. he wanted to be a "professional shadowrunner" that everone would take seriously. Of course, on Shadowland, everyone pans the humanis guy, even if what he says makes sense some times. That was his sole reason for not joining humanis, or hanging with the Night hunters from time to time. But when ever he'd get work, he would come down hard on any trolls that crossed his path, and even walked on a run with a troll on the team.


These aren't the rule by any means to the types of characters we've had, just some examples of racism in play. We allow Racism as a flaw similar to allergies in points and effect. It comes up with NPCs as well. The most common racist problems are ususally with trolls and elves.

Another example that covers a lot of differnet areas, one of my player's characters, an elf named Sinn.

He hates orks, lives in New Orleans. Not a good combination. He's a voodoun. He's trashed an ork bar once because they talked trash to him, has a rep across the city as an ork hater. On a run once a group of 5 orks were all ready to take him down as he was coming out of a meet. The ork on the PC team talked them down, being big and heavily cybered with a great street rep (as a kick artist). They came bacl alter and hit him in a drive by. He wound up in the hospital, only two boxes from death.

He was the one that was raped, by a female Grand Zombie of Erzuile that he inadverntantly created. The same Grand Zombie later blew up his house, with his wife and kids inside out of jealousy. One of his kids survived (twins) albeit badly burned. Ironically, he had doted on the one that had died, because he showed a lot of magical potential, and had basically ignored the one that ended up living. Later, he was pressured in to a hmosxual realtionship by someone that had offered to help pull his bacon of the fire, as things were really starting to ocme down on him from a lto of different directins. That one wasn't so bad for him, since the Spraw Surv Guide basically says that hmosexuality in the 6th world is no big deal anymore. Not a taboo in most parts of the world. He played it out well.

The guy has really been through the ringer, but everything that happened to him was because of the character's actions, and moral quandries where he decided one way or the other. The Grande Zombie for example was the result of multiple murders and torture he did after deciding to take a job that called for that. One of the people he killed was possessed by a loa spirit of Erzuille, and he had her in a site he had been using that was aspected towards voodoo magic. He'd been working amateur blood magic there for a while, and never realized it was specifically aligned towards Erzuille.

[mfb]

[fistandantilus4....]

[mfb]

[djinni]

[Shev]

[fistandantilus4....]

My thought was that it actually sort of makes sense. I compare it to dating interracially today. Where I lvie at least, no one's going to think twice about an asian girl and an indian guy dating. No one cares. Go back fifty or a hundred years and in a lot of places, a white person and black person dating would be scandalous. We're at the point now a days where there's plenty of places where homosexuality is no big deal. I see that sort of equating.

I'm sure there will be lots of places where its' still an issue. Really conservative groups for example, the deep south, mafioso, probably radical muslims and christians. I sure don't see mormons changing their views, and I am one! I think it comes down to those "broad statement" things. Like it says about racism about color in the 6th world, when your neighbor has horns, who cares about skin color?

[2bit]

i'm there with ya, mfb! the stuff you mention is all good. I'm a mature person and like the mature themes. What's important to me is that those serious, immoral activities aren't trivialized. It's the sociopath characters that I can't stand.

More humanity, please!

[Thane36425]

All of the Elf characters I would play were born to human parents and goblinized in their teens. The families would freak out and the elf got surgery to look human (Looks Human trait). That way, they wouldn't stand out much in the general public and could explain the situation to any elves that didn't like humans.

A lot of the rest I don't get though, aside from possible legal issues. They say racism and sexism are still a problem but never really do anything with it, aside from having Brackhaven turn up now and then (which in my opinion is mildly racist in itself). Older canon had it that the corp world was so thuroughly indoctrinated that those things didn't happen much, at least not overtly. But out on the street, anything goes. Indeed there even used to be a racism table in an earlier edition to see if an NPC on the street had any biases. I'm sure they probably avoid this issue for fear of offending someone and their lawyer and getting sued.

As for the other things. I've enver played a character with a significant other or a spouse for the simple reason that they would be in too much danger. After retirement sure, but not while actively running. Though I never got dealt with the matter in detail, if one of them needed, shall we say companionship, that's what escort services are for. Runners just have to be careful not to end up on blackmail video or having their proclivities used as a trap. Mages could also project just about anywhere in the world to mage "hook up spots" and do the deed on the astral. I've been on teams where a member's So got taken hostage or killed, so my characters never went there.

[fistandantilus4....]

I don't have a problem with sociopaths. Another player in one of the games I'm in is playing one, and really well. As in, seriously distrubing. Actually did research and such. No, what bothers me is the players that just do random crap and write it of by saying that their character is a sociapath. If a character is goign to kill somone, they'd better either react to it, or have a damn good reason for not reacting properly. I'm not saying they have to go drown their sorrows everytime, but there should be something.

As for lack of S.O. , taht one bothers me, unles it really fits the cahracter. That just stinks of metagaming "I don't want my S.O. used as a plot device in some nefarious trap." That being said, I hate it when a GM uses a S.O. as a plot device in some nefarious trap. There are instances when it makes sense in game, but they're a lot less common than when GMs actually do it IMO.

[Thane36425]

[hyzmarca]

[FrankTrollman]

[djinni]

[fistandantilus4....]

[mfb]

i guess i feel that if sexuality is seen by the writers as a topic that is okay to bring up in a game book, then it's okay to present sexuality in a dystopian light--ie, non-"standard" sexuality is largely discriminated against. if you want to make your game okay for 12-year-olds to play, don't bring up sexuality in the first place, y'know? if they'd left sexuality out completely, and just had metatype be the only discrimination mentioned, that'd be one thing. but to actually bring up sexuality and then not make it fit the dystopian mold seem really weird to me.

[Wounded Ronin]

PC SOs must look like Leah Ayres (sp?) character in Bloodsport. They must have giant blond hair, boxy clothes, and not know what they're getting themselves into. They must also laugh while blind and leaking Van Damme spin kicks Bolo Yeung with his ultra-twisty hips.

[mfb]

[hyzmarca]

[ShieldT]

h - Good post.

[mfb]

i like that take on it. the problem, of course, is that even if it's okay for an RPG to tell 12-year-olds about sex, it's not going to be okay to make them sick of sex. which i guess is okay--i'd rather not see rules discussions on how to handle damage dished out during BDSM sessions.

[Wounded Ronin]

[treehugger]

Seems like i had a vocabulary problem.
When i said i couldnt take seriously a racist, i meant that i cannot follow their idea or give them any credits.
Now i understand what you meant by taking seriously, and i totaly agree.
But on that point, i think that some Shadowrun characters are to be taken seriously regarding racism : Alachia (i dont remember her 6th world name) is truely racist, and truely dangerous. From what i can recall she was associated with Nazis during the WW2 ... (in my campaign i decided she was Eva Brown during the war - Hitler's girl friend - )

[Thane36425]

[Demonseed Elite]

[hyzmarca]

Humanis and Night Hunters as the face of racism is deceptively comforting because humans who live in the suburbs and have never had an actual conversation with a troll once in their live can point to those groups, say "I'm not racist", and actually believe it.

The thing is that crazy people who burn giant crosses on front lines are pretty harmless compared to the form that most racism takes. It is natural for people to have a positive initial reaction to people who are similar to them and it is natural for people to have a negative initial reaction to people who are different. This is an evolutionary programed genetic survival trait. Usually, people look similar because they have similar genes and if you cooperate with people who have the same genes that you do then those genes have a far better chance of being passed on to the next generation.

So the human manager is far more likely to ire a human over any other metatype if they all have equal skills and experience. The ork is more likely to hire an ork. The elf is more likely to hire an elf. And the human is more likely to go out for drinks with the human and his network of friends will consist mostly of humans. We end up with a great deal of voluntary social segregation and people point to humanis and say "I'm not racist." The same thing happens today. If you look at social networks that people form you'll find a great deal of voluntary segregation. People don't think much of it. It is an instinctual response. Most of their friends are similar to them. That's just natural. But then they point to the KKK or the Ayrian Nation and say "I'm not racist."

[Demonseed Elite]

Yes, and that type of racism is difficult to portray in the format that SR books take unless the piece were covering that particular topic.

For the record, a number of the core shadowtalkers have various biases and prejudices, but in many cases there just hasn't been an opportunity to highlight that yet. I suspect that Emergence will show off a few. I know I had a piece in Street Magic that portrayed one core shadowtalkers as a misogynist, but it was cut. Due to formatting, not content.

[treehugger]

Hyzmarca, while i guess it might be true in some countries, it isnt in all, so its no inherent to mankind, just to a few cultures.
I dont like such demonstration, but i'll cite my exemple regarding racism : I was raised in a foreign country, and had friends from all over the world there (every religion/race/culture) because it was the norm back there.
Once i came back in my home country at 13, i took me monthes to understand why some people dont get along with some others just because of their colour ... (i know it must sound stupid but i still dont really understand).
Anyway living in a comunity with people being of the same race/culture isnt the norm.
So why assume that people would have natural prejudice against other races in Shadowrun ?
Especialy since for exemple a human could have an orc mother and a troll brother (both having the same father).
Now since most human beings like to find a scapegoat to all their problems, i suppose that SR politicians would put the burden of their failiures on the shoulders of metahumans, and that the people would just follow and buy it.

I think i lack the american point of view regarding comunities (in france it is actualy forbiden by law to have any kind of "official" group based on race or religion or origins : the republic is one and undividable, so is your citizenship.)
Maybe i tend to go on stereotypes when i master a game when it comes to racism : the orc will always be the one to have his ID checked by the lonestar once in Bellevue for exemple.

Again, appart from the elves, i dont see how people could live in race communities : they have nothing in common except from their appearence. They can mate with others, and have family from other races.
Your culture/education is much more important than your aspect, SR's awakening is much too recent to have any kind of subculture specific enought to create race communities.

[mfb]

[fistandantilus4....]

[FrankTrollman]

[fistandantilus4....]

I'm actually working on that last one at the moment. I remade a bug shaman I had a while back, giving it another stab. Our first job out, we had a J that sold us a terrible line, and we walked, so he tried to have us killed. We got away, hacked his commlink, and posted all his personal info on Shadowland (calling it ShadowSea just feels ridiculous to me). Our new job is from his former employer who cut him lose and now wants us to kill him. It could be a double cross, but I can't see why they would bother paying up front cash to off some runners taht are more than happy to walk away.

So my quandry is whether we can still collect on the guy if rather than out right killing him, I can take him home with me and invest him. Mantis shaman BTW, so he's going to end up dead eventually. Was considering be a roach shaman instead.... frankly they just didn't seem as neat. There is a certain appeal to being the one of the few things left alive after World War III. But being lumped in with twinkies and Keith Richards just ain't my thing.

[mfb]

[fistandantilus4....]

"Generally" that's true, I agree. One of our players on IWTF, Deva , has been doing a great job of it though. Character was formerly a marine, but he still tries to avoid any sort of blood shed, especially killing. He's been donig a great job off it, and I've been awarding him for good RP. I think the exceptions are the ones that really shine, because they do a good job of it. The PC that just pop someone and walk away better be played as seriously cold hearted bastards, or very good at compartmentalizing. Otherwise it's just very bland.

[mfb]

definitely, definitely. it can be done--hell, it's done all the time. which is why it doesn't interest me, personally. there are all kinds of stories about guys who deal with killing. there are far fewer stories about guys who deal with being spouse abusers, or who deal with working with a spouse abuser. it's hard, to me, to evoke a sense of dirtiness and cynicism when it comes to killing in RPGs.

[Demonseed Elite]

[Thane36425]

[fistandantilus4....]

Yes, that all makes sense. Too bad, but thanks for the explanation.

I would say , "would it be possible to list the cut off points before the text and let us find it and connect the dots on our own". But that sounds like it would be rather frustrating for you, and , as you say, keep you from being able to use it later.

Oh well.

[knasser]

It sounds like the only real taboos in Shadowrun 2070 would be love and monogomy. Now that's dystopian.

[Therumancer]

In general the more people you kill the more jaded you become. In a society like Shadowrun's I imagine people become immunized to violence pretty early through the Trid and such.

By modern standards, many Shadowrunners (or even people on the street) are probably clinically insane, and at least partially sociopathic.

It's sort of like how when the Veitnam Vets came back, and how the experience of getting used to clearing people out of tunnels with flamethrowers, and burning villages and such changed them. Shadowrunners are like that, except there is no "normal" society to adapt back to.

Sure, killing his first person might have fazed a Shadowrunner, but it got easier from that point on, and it probably wasn't as hard to begin with as it was for many other people. Since most Shadowrunners are beginning the game "Established" a "first kill" is rarely going to be an RP element unless the player is setting their character up as "talented, but Naive" which is a potential character theme.

Given that in Shadowrun your character usually makes a living by killing/kidnapping/stealing at the request of anyone who can pay, and without caring why, morality is more or less irrelevent.

What's more society is so jaded from the things I've read that only the most intense experiences and images have any effect even on "Joe Average". Hence the heavy trade in bloodsports, snuff, and general weirdness. It's a very dark future.

At any rate, Morality can be inserted into Shadowrun, but usually it requires inserting something really over the top and evil into the game as an enemy (and making it very apparent). That can cause characters to choose sides and usually come out as the good guys. Otherwise, it's more or less irrelevent to the setting. Shadowrunners deal more in honor (keeping ones word, fulfilling the contract, watching the backs of your friends) than actual ethics.

"She's only 15, and already she's aquired a taste for torture..."

Especially in Shadowrun you also have consider that there are other things akin to murder that are also moral issues today that are probably relatively "mild" in the setting. I mean how do your PCs react when they need to interrogate someone? How do your PCs react to the (meta)human trade?

There are places where the line can be draw other than murder. Indeed I've found more than a few groups who won't torture people (under any circumstances) even when it would be to their benefit (and fitting with the setting). I also gave the party the jeebies at one point when a Johnson promised to pay the PCs in "Cash or goods of an equivilent value" and then gave them to 13 year old girls kidnapped from a corp enclave and with their SINS erased "untouched and perfect for resale".

The point is that if you think your PCs are being too callous and evil, you can always introduce situations where they are likely to make a (positive) moral desician if you want to see them reaffirm themselves as the good guys.

>>>----Therumancer--->

[Thane36425]

[Kagetenshi]

Well, the problem with the firing squads (from the accounts I've read, I am not a Final Solution expert) weren't so much that the firing squad was having breakdowns because of how many people they killed, but because of how many people they didn't kill—which makes some sense to me, I can imagine being much less traumatized by painting someone's brains across the wall than by painting some of someone's brains across the wall and then listening to them moan and breathe wetly for a few minutes.

(Most people don't think about this, but killing people on the kind of scale of the Final Solution is very difficult to do in an efficient (both in terms of time and money) manner. One of many cost-cutting measures they tried that didn't work so well was to line people up to get multiple kills off of a single bullet. Most of the trauma stories I've heard have been from either those attempts or from the times they tried to pack a large number of people around an explosive charge and set it off.)

As a result, you can look at it several ways in Shadowrun. The comparative lack of ways to die instantly increases the horror, but the speed with which people die decreases it again (your normal human takes twenty-seven seconds to die, which is long in some ways, but they don't sit around slowly dying over multiple minutes or hours), while the increased accuracy afforded by things like Smartlinks and Improved Ability can reduce the chances further of having a dying-but-not-dead person in a horribly maimed condition.

~J

[youngtusk87]

The title of this topic pretty much says it all; morales are relative. Trying to incorporate common everday ethical questions concerning the shadowrun universe won't work when the ethics of our society are so different, and vice verse. You need to find some strings to stroke that you know the players actually care about. For example, in one mission we had to make sure some cargo wasn't compromised by authorities. We didn't find out until the end of the session(after all our hard work) that the large cargo container was filled with children to be sold on the slave market for labor and pedophilia activity. We could either save the kids and become the most wanted for the next few months or take the cargo to its destination and get a fat pay check. It actually raised some heated debate around our table between those that wanted the money and those who wanted to save the kids. It was a good session.

So leave Shadowrun's social problems for Shadowrunners. If you want your players to strain, you gotta hit em where it hurts.

[mfb]

indeed. that's actually why i view stuff like killing to be basically boring. once in a while, sure, it's fun to play a guy who agonizes over the death of other humans. but all the time? personally, i enjoy putting fictional rounds into fictional skulls too much to waste too much time with in-character angst.

when i choose to strongly incorporate morality into my games, as a GM, i generally make it my goal to make my players want to spit. i want the things their characters do, the people their characters have to associate with, and the situations their characters are involved in to leave a dirty taste in the players' mouths. i want nothing to be clean--i want there to be no right answers, and no clear distinction between bad and worse.

that's just me.

[Glyph]

[Kagetenshi]

Well, the thing is that then actual morals come into play. Do you really feel comfortable helping the Draco Foundation do whatever the hell it is that old wormy wants it to do?

~J

[mfb]

sirrah, are you suggesting that an organization which purports itself to be metahumanitarian in nature could be up to no good? for shame! it's not like Dunk had a huge chunk of Aztechnology in his pocket at the height of their use of blood magic, or anything. no, sir!

[Wounded Ronin]

I remember one of the SR sourcebooks had a little blurb on "the secrets of FASA". I feel smart by association that people on this board have probably figured some of the "secrets" out ahead of time.

[Ravor]

>>>>> Aye, that is one of the reasons that every mage even thinking about considering researching the hidden wonders of Blood Magic needs to explain that no, the Draco Foundation will not pay you even if you manage to survive long enough to bring me to them alive. After all I'm not on any of their lists. <<<<< -Bot

[Skeptical Clown]

I'm a little confused as to what you guys mean when you say "relativity." I'm as much a relativist as the next heathen utilitarian, but what's ambiguous about racism or spousal abuse in most situations? I'm not saying there aren't stories out there that might explore such issues, but a game of Shadowrun usually isn't the place that it happens. When my buddies and I get together, it's usually not to explore racism. Maybe an otherwise decent character could have such traits, and struggle with them. That could be interesting, although it takes pretty disciplined roleplaying to do it justice.

Of course, it's also possible that you just mean characters could have these traits to emphasize their scumbag traits. Or even just for the sake of having them. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it runs the risk of trivializing or fetishizing things that are pretty deadly serious to real people.

[Moon-Hawk]

[mfb]

yeah, Moon-Hawk pretty much nailed it. relative to murder, racism and spouse abuse would generally be considered lesser sins. i mean, how about this for a character concept: a wife-beating Humanis pacifist?

[Skeptical Clown]

Whoa. Did I say it was unthinkable? Sheesh.

I simply questioned what the purpose was. I think it's pretty well-established that killing people is, generally speaking, not cool. But in the context of stories, sometimes violence is a part of the story. This is a no-brainer--a signficant portion of entertainment these days is devoted to people killing each other. Better there than in real life, I suppose. Shadowrun is generally one of these types of entertainment. In violent combat, there is some inherent drama--who lives, and who dies, and how successful are they?

In contrast, the dramas of racism and spousal abuse are not so--cinematic. What exactly does an effectively roleplayed session of Shadowrun about spousal abuse look like? Do my friend and I sit there and yell at each other about who takes out the trash?

I guess what I'm aiming at is that these ideas in and of themselves are not very interesting. You say "What about a wife-beating Humanist pacifist?" and I say, "Yeah, and now what?" A character trait in stasis is only interesting insofar as it illustrates something about the character or the character's development.

[mfb]

depends on how you want to do it. personally, i'm less interested in rping a guy beating his girlfriend than i am rping a guy who beats his girlfriend. but yes, you could yell at each other about who takes out the trash. say you've been hired for something, and you stop by the apartment to get your good armored jacket, and on the way out your shrieking nag of a wife starts bitching about how you haven't taken the damn garbage out for three weeks. not a character-defining moment, sure--just another piece in the mosaic of scenes that comprises your character.

[Kyoto Kid]

...though it is not a true quality in that it is not worth any BPs, KK has a moderate distrust of elves due to what she experienced growing up human in the TT. I have played her wary of both PC nd NPC elves in that she rarely turns her back to them and if she doesn't know them that well will not let them approach her too closely (even if it is to cast a healing spell). On the other hand, she doesn't purposely go out of her way to argue with or pick a fight with elves just for the hell of it.

If there is an elf member of the team, she will help him or her (such as covering them during fights, pull them out of harms way if they're injured, etc.) inasmuch that it benefits the team as a whole and she does have a sense of honour. However they shouldn't expect to receive a card from her on Dunkelzahn Memorial Day.

[Moon-Hawk]

[mfb]

that's definitely one point i was trying to make. mostly, though, i'm just interested in discussing it, seeing if other people do it and talking about why.

[Moon-Hawk]

I would definitely like to try a campaign with some darker elements, but the tough thing for me is rounding up an entire group that would be comfortable with that. It seems like there's always at least one person who would be uncomfortable with that sort of thing, so it always gets pushed off.

[Skeptical Clown]

What I'm getting at is that the more... mundane aspects of spousal abuse and racism probably hit closer to home than fantasy violence does to a lot of people. Most people have not affected by running gun battles with ork gangers, or coprorate assassins, and it probably doesn't faze most people. Spousal abuse on the other hand is a very intimate betrayal, far more likely to unintentionally strike a nerve than more stylized violence. Throwing it in just for kicks might be crude for a mixed audience.

In a group of friends who are comfortable with each other, no harm no foul. I can see why it's not something that comes up in published materials much though.

[mfb]

i agree, to some extent. and i'm not advocating forcing this sort of thing onto groups that don't want it. i'm kinda lucky, in that by playing online, i've got a really big group of players and GMs. if some of them aren't comfortable dealing with stuff like this, i can simply not interact with them using that character.

one of the problems i have to deal with is that in the past, when i've seen people 'exploring' behavior like this, it's generally been a thinly-veiled excuse to fantasize about taboo behavior. participating in someone's murder-rape fantasy is not something i want to do, and fantasizing about abusing women is not why i'm playing a wife-beater. so i kinda worry about people getting the wrong idea.

[Ravor]

Well Skeptical Clown I guess I approach it from the other direction, the very fact that racism or spousal abuse isn't the 'fantasy violence' that is dime-a-dozen on TV and Video Games is exactly why it should be mined and explored in the dark, gritty, corupt, and quite simply broken Sixth World.

It should shock, offend and distrube the sensabilities of my players (In fact I'd be worried if it didn't.), but to simply gloss over the fact that metahumanity has fallen so low that the fact that Little Sally's drunken father sells chips of himself molesting her every friday night is so mundane and common that it doesn't even raise eyebrows anymore is to do a grave diservice to the genre of Cyberpunk which Shadowrun is still a part of.

[Skeptical Clown]

Yeah, ok. That's great. Except for two things.

One, what the heck does it add to a character or game? I'm serious. Does any shocking or depraved act inherently add something to character? If my street samurai molested children on the side, does that effective communicate some sort of useful or interesting character aspect? Or does it just disturb my fellow players for no particular reason? Does the argument over the garbage that culminates in slapping the life partner add a meaningful context to the game?

It's a game... not a movie or a novel. Most games I've been in rarely have the kind of narrative arc which allows individual characteristics and moments to build up to some sort of conclusion or point. They just sort of go on, serially, until people get tired of the game. And even in novels and movies, a certain economy is used for fictional elements--we don't follow our character into every mundane aspect of their lives. We focus on the elements that are interesting. So, what is it providing that is interesting?

And two, not inconsequentially, is it fun? If these things DO add something to the game, I wonder what exactly they would look like. The infrequent domestic squabble might offer a small bit of variety, but the novelty would quickly wear off, for me. If Method Gaming, however, is popular, I wouldn't try to dissuade anyone. I probably just wouldn't partake. De gustibus non disputandum, I suppose.

[mfb]

if it doesn't add anything to the character, or especially if it's not fun, it shouldn't be in the game. i completely agree about that. being fun includes not disturbing my fellow players more disturbed than they want to be.

what's it add to the game? in my case, i'm trying to add flavor. not a pleasant flavor, obviously, but i don't see SR as a pleasant place to live. the fact that there isn't any narrative structure makes adding flavor more important, to me, not less.

is it fun? dunno yet, i haven't been playing this character long. what i do know is that i'm bored with playing 'good' characters--nice guys in a bad profession, hardened professionals with a secret soft streak, stuff like that. i wanna play an asshole. a womanizing, drug-abusing jerk. not, as i've said, because i want to roleplay doing bad things, but because i want to roleplay a person who does bad things.

[fistandantilus4....]

You should really join my mob game mfb.

[mfb]

yeah, well, you should really join my Entourage ga--er, wait...

[fistandantilus4....]

Yeah, then I could play a racist punk slowly trying to turn him self into a cybered killer, and ... hey ... wait...

[Ravor]

It adds to the cyberpunkish flavor of the Sixth World, you know the one where the following are true...

'To the death Bloodsports' from Aztlan are number one sellers on Pay-per-View.

People actually have to worry about being kidnapped off the street and persa-fixed/body sculpted into custom ordered whores.

The 'police' are nothing more then the lowest bidding jackbooted thugs who will smile and do nothing to save you if you aren't covered under one of their contracts.

The corperations are really nothing more then feudal kingdoms waging a neverending cold-war against each other.

If you don't have a valid SIN you are a non-person and have less rights then a stray dog.




Now if you want to avoid the logical conclusions of such a broken society in lue of meaningless 'fantasy violence' where the characters are otherwise good, moral, and upstanding citizens who just happen "to shoot people in the face for money" then whatever floats your boat, but I still say that you are doing a diservice to the setting and genre, Cyberpunk worlds are supposed to be dark and distrubing places that make normal healthy people's skin crawl.

However, don't think that the irony that playing characters who "shoot people in the face for money" is somehow less distasteful then playing a racist or wife beater just because the popular culture is flooded with such violence is loss upon me. The only difference is that in the Sixth World the filth that floods the popular culture is much, much worse, with corasponding results in the people's attitudes.

[hyzmarca]

The difference between beating one's spouse and shooting a stranger in the face for money. No one really cares about strangers. If you hear about a stranger being killed on the news, you might just think that it is terrible but it won't change our life and you'll probably forget about it the next day. While you may know intellectually that the stranger's life has value you can't know it emotionally because you don't have any emotion invested in a stranger.
And really, there is a very short leap between not really caring if a stranger lives or dies and not really caring if you kill a stranger. The only thing that stops this leap in most people is their own self-images. Murdering a stranger changes the way that people see themselves.

Spousal abuse is quite different because there is a strong voluntary familial bond. Presumably, you love this person and would be extremely upset if this person were hurt in any way. It is so disconnected from emotional norms that most people can't accept it.

[mfb]

of course, what's 'funny' is that it works out the exact opposite. familiarity breeds contempt as often as it breeds love, which is one reason spouse abuse is way more common than murder.

[Skeptical Clown]

[Ravor]

To each their own then, because I have a very hard time imagining wanting to play a classic 'good guy' in a Cyberpunk game myself, in my mind heroes and classic morality belong elsewhere, but your mileage may vary.

[mfb]

[Skeptical Clown]

What's the point of illustrating a dark future, if not to illustrate something that we shouldn't want? We don't stomp on the rose-colored glasses to the future just to get a kick out of crushing someone's dreams--we do it to shake people and say "Hey! If things keep going this way, we're screwed!" Or occasionally just, "We're screwed!"

But most working in the genre don't do that simply by painting as bleak a picture as possible; even the darkest story has to have contrasts. To abandon any notion of justice or possibility of redemption, however faint, is not cyberpunk--its nihilist fantasy. If there's no justice or idealism whatsoever in humanity, why should anyone care if the future is bleak?

Cyberpunk sometimes makes a pretense of nihilism, but I don't think that it really is nihilist. Pessimistic, yes, but not nihilistic. Its protagonists are proponents of a much different brand of beliefs and justice than we might agree with, or beliefs that are incompatible with the world they live in. That's where some of the ambiguity comes from.

I don't disagree that a cyberpunk hero could have such dire flaws though. It could be a very good character for a cyberpunk story. I just have a hard time imagining it playing well in a tabletop RPG setting. I don't get the Vampire LARPers either though, so I may just lack imagination. :spin:

[mfb]

maybe it wouldn't work in a tabletop setting. the venue i play in is more of a long-running collaborative fiction than traditional tabletop, which allows for a lot of character development that a tabletop game might not see.

the reader retains his or her own ideas about right and wrong, justice and injustice, happy endings and sad endings. that means that the characters in the story don't need them in order for the writer to illustrate something unpleasant--he can just make it unpleasant, and leave it to the reader to react to it.

[Kagetenshi]

Cyberpunk is fundamentally about tearing down the social order. That's it (from an interaction-with-society-at-large perspective, at least). Sometimes the people doing the tearing have higher principles in mind, sometimes they don't.

~J