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?

[Blade]

Yes killing is bad, even if it's an objective "Greater Good", it's still bad. Yet it in some cases, it can be better than another bad solution.

But to switch the focus back to Shadowrun, I think it'll depend on the GM and players. If they play in a cinematographic way and don't have any problem with action movies, killing a horde of bad guys won't be a bad thing... as long as it's done with style. If they play in a black and white morality setting, killing bad guys won't be a problem either, because they don't have any family or when they do they beat their wives and fuck their children. But in a setting with shades of gray, there probably won't be any real "bad guy" and killing someone will have much more meaning.