Honor in the Shadows, Is it real? Options

[Kyoto Kid]

[Mr.Platinum]

no one told me Karma was being handed out.

[Kagetenshi]

[Dog]

You sure about that? (mostly kidding)

Anyway, the karma is still up for grabs. The Freudian "steam-engine" model of human psyche is passe, in my opinion.

What I was thinking of was power. The essential root of male-adolescent stories is a power fantasy. (Okay, I'm thirty, so sue me.) So why play a cold-blooded, merciless, super-pragmatic person if you're enacting a power fantasy?

[Mr.Platinum]

Honor is just a word.

[Lazarus]

I don't know Kagetenshi. I agree with you but I can see how one can make the argument that video game training could be used for violent behavioral conditioning. Grossman's argument is that the basic purpose for military training is to condition a person to kill in combat and the consequences of that conditioning. I agree with him on that. I don't think it's the spin they throw out that they train people to "survive" combat not necessarily to kill people. Bullshit. As a Marine I wasn't trained to survive combat so much as I was trained to break things and hurt people in a sound military manner. That is how I "survived" combat by killing them first.

And Dog I wasn't throwing out a Freudian approach so much as a more Aristotelian notion. For me role-playing is cathartic experience similar to when people watch a play or a movie. It's a purging of emotions that I normally wouldn't be able to do. It's not so much a power trip. I think for your munch players it's that, but the moment you give a character faults and weaknesses it's not so much anymore. If I wanted a power trip I'd a play a dragon or D&D. Shadowrunners are more like Ronin in Feudal Japan. They live outside of society and are really tragic characters and to most people, myself included, there is something romantic about that.

The motives as to why people play and what they play are going to inevitably be as varied as the people who role-play these games. Some do it for power, some for escape (ME! :D ), some because… well they don’t know why. Like most human questions I don’t think there is a single universal answer for that question.

[Mr.Platinum]

Some put to much thought into this, but i just post to make post's.

Don;t worry Dog, i'm an older runner my self.

[emo samurai]

I'm saying that the "pragmatic" part is merely a compromise, the most basic and shallow compromise that is necessary to exist in the world of Shadowrun. And wouldn't the whole "power fantasy" be the same as the "steam-engine" view?

[mmu1]

Grossman's major point - that in previous wars, a tiny percentage of soldiers actually fired their weapons to kill, compared to how many did so once they were "trained to kill" in more modern times - is, I believe, based on the writings of one S.L.A. Marshall ("Men Against Fire"), who made his "conclusions" based on research he claimed to have conducted by interviewing soldiers during WWII, post-battle.

To say Marshall's methodology has been revealed to be garbage is to be kind... Among the least of his sins is the fact he didn't even try to differentiate between soldiers who had a shot at the enemy but didn't fire, and those who were stationed at a point of the battle line that saw little action, or had no clear view of the enemy forces, when coming up with his figures of how many people actually fired in combat. The worst would include never actually conducting the huge bulk of personal interviews he claimed to have made.

[Grinder]

[Mr.Platinum]

after seeing this thread a couple of times, honor does not belong in the shadows, it will only be bound to get you in trouble.

[Grinder]

It will maybe bring you in trouble, but for some runners that's fair deal.

[Dog]

Lazerus, maybe we are thinking of different things when we refer to a power fantasy. My current players aren't munchkins. (If you got that impression it was my faillability, not theirs.) Rather, I've never met a player who played someone weaker and less influential than themselves.

Every player-character I've ever seen has had the ability to do things that the player could not: fast-talk angry trolls, shoot a sniper rifle, seduce rich/powerful/gorgeous women. Through the magic of fiction, they all have a lot more influence in their little world than any of us expect to in real life. That's where the power fantasy comes from, not from playing the most powerful character, but from playing a character with "powers" other than onesself.

Having said that, I agree with you otherwise. Catharsis I understand, although I don't know much about Aristotle. (Perhaps not even enough to spell it correctly!)

Anyways, what I had in mind were the folks who frequently claim that their characters are invariably "get the job done at any cost" types who claim that morality has no place in a scenario where the stakes are high and assault rifles are being aimed. I sometimes see these folks posting on Dumpshock, and occasionally, one joins my gaming group. In the latter situation, they usually don't last long. I don't think they contribute much, so if they keep it up, I stop inviting them.

Where I was going with this was here: I suspected that perhaps these folks just can't relate to situations that challenge their sense of right and wrong when it involves fantastic amounts of power and challenges. As a result, we can't apply our morality and somehow "default" to logic (or what passes for it.) For me, this isn't a fully developed idea yet, so I threw it out there incomplete to see if anyone else would draw the same conclusion.

What the hell, everyone gets karma.

[Lazarus]

Oh O.K. Dog. Sorry I didn't understand what you trying to convey. :|

Yeah but you do bring up some good points. There is a running joke that people in a D&D world play a game called "Lawyers &... something" <crap can't remember> Anyway it was sort of a parody of what you were talking about. High Level mages would play office workers in our world.

I have played games where we stat our RL selves and play it, but you always try to improve yourself once the game starts. It's funny to see a couch potato go from never working out to doing it everyday, taking hardcore martial arts, and playing with guns.

I think at that point it would be more Darwinian. You have to do things as a character in order to survive in that world or you die.

The power fantasy as you described is a valid point. I wonder though how many people play characters that are not in line with their basic personality.

I actually played Lazarus as a character who has a "get the job done at any cost", mentality but it really f**ks with him. Lazarus didn't go to the shadows by choice and his ethics come from his career as a Force Recon officer in the CAS Marine Corps. I play it that his mentality is sort out of step in the SR world. In reality most runners aren't running for higher cause than themselves. Lazarus won't refer to himself as a Street Samurai. as he would say "A Street Samurai would imply that I am a loyal servant to the Street. An abstract concept that is certainly lacking in merit. I am a ronin, pure as simple." He's a flat character <And trying to play that seriously is tough!> I do understand your frustration though it that seems to be sort of the default shadowrunner mold, and I go with that when I GM games. However I make as though that ideal is something you see in Sim Movies and not how life "really is" on the street. That is why for Lazarus I play it as a hindrance.

<Note: Catharsis is described by Aristotle in the Poetics. Basically Catharsis is why people come to see plays, and philosophers have debated its meaning ever since. Its most popular interpretation describes it to being a purging of emotion that wouldn’t or couldn’t do in normal everyday life.>

[FrostyNSO]

Just face it: You're Neutral Evil.

[Critias]

I am.

[hyzmarca]

Neutral Evil gets the chicks but Lawful Evil has a harem of unwilling slave girls.

[emo samurai]

It all comes down to how you want your vanity stroked; do you want your love life to be a testament to your intangible seductiveness or your ability to coerce massive amounts of people?

[Nidhogg]

Clearly the latter

[Mr.Platinum]

[hyzmarca]

When most people, male or female, come home from a long hard day of stealing souls, slaughtering babies, and writing briefs they don't want to have to bring home flowers and romance their partners into performing horrific perversities. No, they want dinner cooked, the TV tuned to their channels, and their slaves entangled in a Cthuloid sexual position straight out of the Necronama Sutra.

[Mr.Platinum]

[Lazarus]

So what kind of chicks do the Lawful Good aka Lawful Stupid guys (or gals if that's your thing) get?

[RunnerPaul]

[FrostyNSO]

The ones that are saving themselves for marriage.

...But, give the Neutral/Lawful Evil types a little time with them and they'll shake 'em of that little formaility.

edit: Paul beat me to it...sortof. Damn websense won't let me see his linky goodness though.