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[FuelDrop]

Have any of you ever been in the situation where you're presented with a well-paying and relatively safe job, then turned it down on moral grounds?

[Shortstraw]

Yes.

[Tiralee]

<Hysterical giggles>

Nope.
But the end-payout was negotiated a tad more forcefully than usual.


-Tir

[Larsine]

Yes. We had a runner who had a fixer connection, and the jobs started out OK, but then turned more and more racist. It started out with helping some racist people free one of their member from a corp holding facility, then we assisted them doing a distraction run, then we had to annoy somebody (who happened to be orks and trolls), and in the end we were asked to attack the same neighbourhood. We looked into the background of the people hiring us, and turned down the job. The fixer kept coming with jobs, but they were all related and we new accepted any more jobs from this fixer.

[Elfenlied]

I play jaded sociopaths, so no, never refused on moral grounds.

[DamHawke]

Haven't had a situation like that come up yet. Sure, the team has their arguments but ultimately they've always accepted every job (with high demands of pay)

[ShadowDragon8685]

There are things a patriot won't do, no matter how much they love their country.
There are things a mercenary won't do, no matter how much money is on offer.

A sociopath, on the other hand, will take any excuse to do terrible things that they want to do.

[binarywraith]

There are things a patriot won't do, no matter how much they love their country.
There are things a mercenary won't do, no matter how much money is on offer.

A sociopath, on the other hand, will take any excuse to do terrible things that they want to do.

That sums up a lot of shadowrunners I've seen over the years right there. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Faelan]

Always have this problem, of course I always accentuate the backgrounds of the characters in the initial stages of the game. I never allow the orphaned, nobody knows me, no friends, only money motivates me, zero loyalty, sociopath to get anywhere near my games. You want to play that go play a first person shooter, now if you want to claim that and actually have a real person buried under the bullshit, fine, but I as the GM better know what makes the poor bastard tick, i.e. you better write up a very detailed background and series of events, because if you don't I will. So I always have the problem of enticing the characters with real motivations instead of "wad of cash, you go break, you go get" rinse and repeat. I guess that is also why I rarely use Missions or any other published arcs, and when I do they are heavily modified, because like I said there has to be a motivation beyond cash for my players characters. It is a problem I am glad to have.

[bannockburn]

Have any of you ever been in the situation where you're presented with a well-paying and relatively safe job, then turned it down on moral grounds?

Plenty, over the years.
One of the questions I ask myself for every character is always "What wouldn't this character do?"

Often it's basic stuff, like the no wetwork thing, or no kids.
Other characters have very specific don'ts.

Money is usually one of the main motivations, but it can also be something more abstract, like e.g. idealism á la "Fuck the corps!", which in turn can mean that the character in question only takes Neo-A jobs.

The more interesting question is, how far is a character willing to compromise his ideals / code of honour / etc, and what does it take to go there.

[psychophipps]

Always have this problem, of course I always accentuate the backgrounds of the characters in the initial stages of the game. I never allow the orphaned, nobody knows me, no friends, only money motivates me, zero loyalty, sociopath to get anywhere near my games. You want to play that go play a first person shooter, now if you want to claim that and actually have a real person buried under the bullshit, fine, but I as the GM better know what makes the poor bastard tick, i.e. you better write up a very detailed background and series of events, because if you don't I will. So I always have the problem of enticing the characters with real motivations instead of "wad of cash, you go break, you go get" rinse and repeat. I guess that is also why I rarely use Missions or any other published arcs, and when I do they are heavily modified, because like I said there has to be a motivation beyond cash for my players characters. It is a problem I am glad to have.

I hear you there! There is something much more satisfying about games that are deeper than a DMX song.

My official "Break Glass in Case of War" character, Rickson was one mean son of a bitch. He had to be because he was a force multiplication specialist that specialized in anti-corp insurgency groups. He worked for Aztechnology. Take a gutter rat street punk from the worst part of Rio De Janeiro, take him in, educate him, indoctrinate him with only the corp as his sole means of support and survival, train him, and set him loose. He would show up, train a bunch of insurgents once he gained their trust, make them as mean and nasty as possible (we're talking Cartel/Vigilante Death squads here), and sick them on the other corps. Occasionally he would have them blow up an Aztechnology facility that they were planning on tearing down anyway for the insurance money. Torture? Yup! Nasty-ass Viet Cong on crack booby traps? You betcha! Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out? Uh-huh! Collateral damage? Things break. People die.

Of course, he only left after he was tossed under the (exploding) bus when things got a bit too public. He ran to Seattle and thought to himself, "Self? How does one trained in covert ops, assassination, insurgency training and tactics, and weapons get paid up in here? Looks to me like he gets to knowing a few people and then gets to doing dirty deeds for them until you get enough scratch to do something else." Enter new Shadowrunner that dresses like a Cuban drug dealer and carries a Murse (Man Purse) everywhere.

The funny part was that the other Shadowrunners were looking at him in the beginning like "WTF?!? Did that psycho really just do that?!?" but as he toned his shit down (because he was no longer forced to do it by corp directive under pain of a slow, agonizing death), they were ramping their own nastiness up. The penultimate evil chuckle + drywashing hands moment was when Rickson was about to give someone a couple of 9mm aspirin for a clean kill and the Elven mage, the most vocal about the earlier atrocities and unnecessary killing suddenly blurted out, "Wait! I'll do it with my katana! I haven't had a chance to use it yet!" and three bloody, spurting, coughing and gasping chops later dispatched the helpless enemy.

Rickson eventually got his money scraped together, banded with the rest of the group to to make D4C (Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap), a private investigations and paramilitary company, and retired from Shadowrunning...kinda.

[Curator]

i'm designing my first campaign atm. it involves alot with working with a prominent multi-national club owner. he likes results and if the team asks questions on the mission or 2 with a possibility of ethical dilemma's, i'm planning on throwing more nuyen at them. no nasty stuff, more like vengeful wetwork.

[psychophipps]

One time we did do a really nasty one. Something like using stolen fetus and babies as the basis for a clone bank and spare parts. Really down n' dirty. We played along for a while, the GM wondering the whole time how far down the rabbit hole we'd go for money, but we ended up turning on our organlegging employers at the perfect moment by silent consensus and hunted down everyone that was involved to die the death of a thousand dogs, Amen.

The GM was actually grateful because now he could focus on the stuff he wanted to do rather than trying to come with worse and worse atrocities to have us be a part of...

[KarmaInferno]

That's silly. Babies are for throwing! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I have always found that playing with sociopathic characters is a lot less disturbing that playing with sociopathic players.

Always found a quick reason to leave such groups. Not my cup of tea.





-k

[Elfenlied]

I have always found that playing with sociopathic characters is a lot less disturbing that playing with sociopathic players.

Indeed. A certain amount of sociopathy is normal for characters whose jobs include killing in cold blood for a living, but that doesn't mean you have to play with creepy people living out power fantasies.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

We had a job (it as Denver's Mission) to kidnap a little girl whose mother was a high echelon sarary woman. I asked beforehand if the girl would be return alive, otherwise I wouldn't do it.
In the end she was murdered by an unknown shot and that really pissed me off. I asked the GM to start as much legwork as I could to find out who did it, but he said that I would get my answer because one of the other missions was about this.

[X-Kalibur]

I don't remember this mission in detail, at first it wasn't anything that sounded worth turning down. Find runaway girl, bring her back to daddy. Said girl ends up being magically active and daddy is a bit of a... I can't think of the word I want so we'll use xenophobe. So we bring her back and she gets capped by him. Supposedly the three of us on the team missed the obvious clues that would happen. I wasn't terribly affected by it but if I'd known that was a potential outcome I would have likely changed some things... on second thought, that character was slightly sociopathic, so maybe not.

[HeckfyEx]

Yep. Walked out of a run, because team wanted to do wetwork.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

I mean, there's wetwork and there's wetwork.
If it is to bring down the axe on a Tamanous Operation or a Bunraku Parlor, hey, I'm being paid and get to kill some really [daffy duck mode=on]dethpicable people.

[Elfenlied]

Yep. Walked out of a run, because team wanted to do wetwork.

I really can't understand this attitude. Wetwork is part of what Shadowrunners do, and outright refusing anything wetwork related is a good way to earn some notoriety.

[bannockburn]

I really can't understand this attitude. Wetwork is part of what Shadowrunners do, and outright refusing anything wetwork related is a good way to earn some notoriety.

Or a reputation for not being a stone cold killer.
It cuts both ways, and while wetwork are often shadowruns, not every shadowrun entails wetwork. In fact, I'd say that the majority doesn't.

There's a reason why there are (albeit often blurred) distinctions between shadowrunners and assassins.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I really can't understand this attitude. Wetwork is part of what Shadowrunners do, and outright refusing anything wetwork related is a good way to earn some notoriety.

But not all Shadowrun Stories need even go into Wetwork territories. Played some Awesome SR2 campaigns where Wetwork was HEAVILY frowned upon.

[X-Kalibur]

I really can't understand this attitude. Wetwork is part of what Shadowrunners do, and outright refusing anything wetwork related is a good way to earn some notoriety.

You see that very attitude echoed regularly by the jackpointers, save for Kane and a couple of others. Wetwork is the job of assassins, not 'runners.

[ShadowDragon8685]

The characters I play don't have a problem doing wetwork, as long as they're liquidating obvious and reprehensible bad people.

If you want me to whack some middle manager to open room for a promotion for you, get fucked.

If you want me to whack some lunatic who's earned an epithet like "The Rapist of Redmond" or the "Pulverizer of Puyallup" honestly, though?

Well, hell, do you want it splashy, or do you want it subtle, or do you not care as long as they meet their end? (The price goes up if you want to dictate terms.)

[Ryu]

There are things a patriot won't do, no matter how much they love their country.
There are things a mercenary won't do, no matter how much money is on offer.

A sociopath, on the other hand, will take any excuse to do terrible things that they want to do.

A true sociopath does not need an excuse, take explanation as a privilege. A socially adapted sociopath will at least consider the (known) acceptable range of reactions to any input.

A socially adapted sociopath will perform actions many normal persons will be unable to carry through with. This might be to the benefit of society.

So what if our sociopath is an SR runner? Not performing to expected behavior can be a strength. A wageslave does not remove bad superiors. Who defines "evil"?

What I expect from character descriptions is getting to know the motivations of both character and player. I have no interest in running an evil campaign (violating the group consensus on good). If I test reaction to evil within that boundary, I expect a strong reaction and will (in the end) let them (the players) carry through.