KIlling in the name of, How different is from murder Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Chrysalis]

Greets,

It is a bit of a moral dilemma for me and I am trying to figure it out. What makes a runner a professional killer? Is it that they take money for it, or is there a kind of steely professionalism that creates mental barriers so that you are not killing Smith, but the henchman that got in your way.

If the runners are hired to kill someone in a club. In one version of the scenario one of the character's seduces him so that he drinks from a poisoned cup, dying of what might be a stroke or heart attack (until the autopsy of course). In a second version he is lead to the back alley of the bar where the PCs wait and confront him and kill him and his bodyguard in an action movie style hale of bullets. In a third version the PCs corner him in the back alley and beat him to death with tire irons and fists.

It seems to me that the difference between killing and murder is that killing seems to involve James Bond like adversaries and methods and is murder involves plebian weapons with plebian motives.

Am I off base here? Is there a limit to what you consider to be acceptable violence? Is it really about seeing the sensible guns, but not seeing the senseless act?

[kzt]

No, it's murder. Like most criminals, you can make all sorts of arguments about how "she had it coming" but murder is what it is. Your character is a the same moral level as the guy who shoots people in a 7-11 for $213.

[Wesley Street]

No, it's murder. Like most criminals, you can make all sorts of arguments about how "she had it coming" but murder is what it is. Your character is a the same moral level as the guy who shoots people in a 7-11 for $213.

I cry a little for Mrs. Greedo's baby boy. Gunned down by some shitbird redneck drug-smuggler in a backwater bar.

Shadowrun deals with more shades of gray than your average RPG but in RL the shades are nearly infinite. When we start talking about absolute morality, we start in with fundamentalism.

[kzt]

I cry a little for Mrs. Greedo's baby boy. Gunned down by some shitbird redneck drug-smuggler in a backwater bar.

Shadowrun deals with more shades of gray than your average RPG but in RL the shades are nearly infinite. When we start talking about absolute morality, we start in with fundamentalism.

Duh, even bad guys can act in self defense. There is a teen (an alleged gang banger) who shot up a car with an AK and killed a star football player without a criminal record and no evidence he personally threatened the teen with with deadly force. Everyone was all upset.

And if I was on the jury he'd never get convicted because: Said star football player got in the car at a party with a bunch of buddies from a street gang who said they were going to "fire someone up" (or words the that effect) and were carrying guns. Said star football was in the car (or the rest of the caravan full of his armed gang banger buddies) when one of his gang banger buddies shot the teen's younger brother (14 iirc) several times. The teen responded to this by running into the house. Car with the football player and his gang banger buddies was still outside (apparently high fiving about their glorious deed) when the teen came out with a loaded rifle. Apparently someone (in the caravan of cars that had just shot his brother) presented a pistol. Shooting ensued. Several people got shot, one (said star football player) died.

Life is hard. And that isn't murder. You show up with a bunch of killers to a firefight (even when your plans called for just target practice on living people) and get shot that's just the breaks. And if the teen was really a gang banger I don't care. You have an absolute right to defend yourself and your family against unprovoked assault by using force to resist it, up to and including deadly force.

If you are breaking into someone else's property or stealing someone else's stuff and someone who is legally allowed to interfere does so it's murder if you kill them. No matter what argument you make, you are not allowed to use violence against other people while carrying out a crime. (I can think of some bizarre and twisted situations in which one could make the claim, but they are following a chain of events in which you are no longer actively committing the crime.)