I want Grit!, SR4 is not Cyberpunk as I know it. Options

[emo samurai]

:(....

That's my emoticon for tears. In case you didn't know already.

[FrostyNSO]

Looks like it's drooling.

[emo samurai]

.... it does...

[kigmatzomat]

[Synner667]

[Critias]

Yeah. Prisons are just crowded full of misunderstood Robin Hood types, right? No one ever becomes a professional criminal because they're a little unhinged, don't respect the law, and just want to look out for number one. They're all in it for the little guy! Every professional criminal in every game has to be a tough guy with a heart of gold, or you're "obsessed!"

[Ravor]

Seconded Critias, in fact about the only thing that I'm more tired of then "heart of gold hooder crowd" is the "ice cold pro cliche".

Give me Pink Mohawks and forehead tattoos that reads, "Bite my Snake" anyday of the week. :cyber:

[mfb]

i like playing it grey. i play characters who have a certain moral flexibility--but not infinitely flexible. my main char is the cold professional type, with a very strong work ethic. he's killed a lot of people--a lot of people, and it doesn't bother him for the most part. but he's not a robot; he's seen and done some things that have gotten to him. the Arco run; a run where he dumped gamma-anthrax into the water supply of a remote research outpost; a mundanocidal war in Indonesia where both sides were dumping thousands of bodies into mass graves. things like that--death on a large scale--have come to bother him. so much so that in his most recent job, he accepted a run where there would be a strong chance he wouldn't get paid, because it involved stopping production on a highly communicable bioweapon. and when that run was not enough to shut down production, he volunteered for a second run--without having been paid for the first one, and with no guarantee at all that he would get paid.

and what i like about it isn't the altruism. he's not altruistic--he's god damn well going to get paid for both runs, and if he doesn't, he's going to hunt the J down and kill her. stopping production on this particular virus isn't going to make the world a better place; there are who-knows-how-many other projects to produce bioweapons at least as lethal and communicable as this one out there--he's not going to expend time and/or resources to track them down and stop them. but he knows about this one, and he's found that his conscience won't allow him to let it go.

or another char of mine, whose first run was killing a bunch of Tir expats--kids explicitly included. she did the job, or at least tried to, and when she got done the J beat the crap out of her and stole all her stuff. the whole incident was almost enough to break her (partly because i lost interest in the char for a while), but she eventually recovered and got back to work. she mostly went back to her old ways, taking violent jobs, doing them well and with relish. but she wouldn't do kids, anymore. no big proclamations, no soul-searching, no light dawning--she just found a line, saw what was on the other side of it, and decided not to cross it anymore.

[knasser]

[Critias]

[Insert big long post that I just highlighted and deleted because I don't care quiet enough to really argue it.]

Whatever. You're not going to convince me more professional criminals than not are Chaotic Good, and I'm not going to convince you that there is something inherently wired wrong in the head of anyone who runs the Shadows.

Have fun playing Robin Hood in the Sprawl. I'll have fun playing my way instead.

[NightmareX]

[raphabonelli]

I know that this post should be on "Cyberpunk on the Media" topic, but i guess that, maybe, it shall help here.

On the "describing" side of GMing Shadowrun, i like to use some ideas from two brazilian movies (not cyberpunk movies) called "Cidade de Deus" and "Central do Brasil" (i guess that the first, at least, would be easy to find in the US). I like to describe the sprawl the way you see in these movies... with a few people that is good, even less few that does something good, many people doing bad things and even more who just go with the waves.

Background noises is a good way to create a depressing mood. While the players walk through the sprawl they should "see" life in the sprawl (other ideas i get from those movies). Looking through a windows they see a couple fighting and the husband punching the wife to a pulp... a guy and a bitch discussing because he didn't have the money to pay... kids running dirt and free, no one paying attention to where thet go while spoiled rich childrem come to buy drugs.

The powers, the police, and the private police don´t care for what happens on sprawl while what happens don't threat the "status quo". So the crime run free there... people use guns on the street... the gangs and mobs runs the shows... drugs are everywhre... and people shoots people for very stupid reasons.

I hope you can get those movies. Really a "must see" on the grit side.

[Blade]

The funny thing is that you need "good guys" (at least compationate) to fully reveal the grittiness of the universe.

Philip Marlowe ("If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive."), Sin City's heroes, Snake Plissken (Escape from NY/LA), Deckard (Blade Runner)...
If these characters didn't have any soft spot, we wouldn't see the grittiness of the world they live in.
Whereas, in Dr Adder, none of the main character really have this soft spot. In the end you see a violent and twisted world... but you can't really say it's gritty.

However it doesn't mean that the PCs should be superheroes saving the world (except if they save the same corrupt and rotten world). All mentionned heroes might do what they can to make the world a better place, but in the end they can't do much. They don't change the world, but they at least can prevent the world from totally crushing them.

Another thing that can be interesting to see is that their actions are often destructive for the world they live in. They may help people, but they do it by killing, destroying... It's the same with runners. They might be righteous neo-anarchists who want to save people from oppressive megacorporation, but in order to do so they destroy things. Megacorps might be oppressive, but without them who'll feed the population? Do you think the world would have survived all the troubles it went through without them? What's the difference between being a righteous neo-anarchist and a member of Winternight?
It even goes further than that, because harming a megacorp just means helping its competitor. An anarchist runner might think he's helping free the world by running against megacorp, but he's just another cog in the machine.

To sum it up, you can have hooders and grit, and you might even enhance the grittiness with them.

[mfb]

i don't think it's necessarily true that you need good guys in the story to expose the world's grittiness. i think the reader is often capable of playing the part of the good guy.

[Blade]

Not exactly, because the way the reader/spectator enters the story is through the main character... At least for good stories.
To really touch your feelings the book/movie/whatever has to establish an empathic link with the main character. Once this link is set, you'll share the perception of the main character and will feel what he feels as deeply as he does.
Well not exactly as deeply because the point of empathy is that you still are yourself so part of yourself will still maintain the distance with the character... But if the character is really close to you, it can be quite deep. (on the other hand if he's really different you won't be moved that much, which might also be a good reason as why players will be more at ease playing hooders).

If you don't have that empathic link (or if it's poor), you'll just be a passive spectator. You might think to yourself "this is awful", "this is sad" but you won't feel it that deep.

[OneSeventeen]

This is a really interesting thread. I think it will help me improve my game. I think it is very important for characters to have morals. I actually don't really care what they are as long as there's some line they don't want to cross.

Grittiness, to me, has to do with giving people choices where it's not between morally right and morally wrong (as subjectively defined by them), but where what would be morally right clearly has very negative effects for you personally and then give the choice between two evils (also as subjectively defined by them).

Basically it's not about avoiding getting screwed or avoiding doing bad things. It's about getting screwed the least and minimizing the bad things you have to do in order to survive. This kind of thing isn't possible if the characters are cold emotionless professionals. If the character doesn't feel bad about crossing whatever line you've put into the adventure, then it's pretty uninteresting.

I just ran On the Run and I thought it was a pretty good example of this.

[ Spoiler ]

The characters usually have already stolen the disk from Loomis before they realize it's rightfully his and then the choice, having already stolen from someone who has done nothing to them, is between more money and getting a rep for screwing over Johnsons or less money and doing what they said they'd do. Notice, too, if they give the disk back to Loomis the results are clearly negative for them: They have a rep for screwing Js and don't even get paid for it.

Basically, the choice between good and evil is not an interesting choice. Choosing between evils is a very interesting choice. To me.


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- Post edited to use spoiler tags by eidolon.

[Fix-it]

you have to MAKE it as you want it. who the fark says you have to follow the book fluff?

[Backgammon]

[Blade]

I like the choice between two evils too, but most adventures you can find such choices are far too simple : "Get more money or save the children ?" is much too easy to decide. Most players will instantly know which one their character would choose and losing money isn't much of an evil.

My favorite choice is the one I gave my PC one day, I think I've already explained it in another thread: the PC found a boat full of heavily sick children (about a hundered of them). There was nothing they could do to really help them (what can a shadowrunner do in that case?) They spent a lot of time trying to figure out if it was "better" to end their suffering now or to let them live, hoping that at least some of them would be able to have a not too miserable life.

I've got some ideas about others tricks such as offering a morally right (if a bit shady) choice which will turn out to be bad one with awful consequences ... With the PCs realizing too late that they could have seen it coming before but were blinded by thinking that they were morally right.

[eidolon]

OneSeventeen, to put something in spoilers:

[Eryk the Red]

Here's my deal about the goodness/evil of PCs: I hate soulless bastard characters. It's not that I think that most shadowrunners wouldn't be soulless bastards, it's that I think that those guys make awful protagonists. I'm not fascinated with evil. In fact, I'm bothered by those characters in part because they never seem to have moral dilemmas.

Quite frankly, if I'm hoping for a PC to die, we've got a problem.

[eidolon]

Good way of putting it, Eryk (and Blade, btw).

It's the same problem I have with characters that "are" their stats, but just one step up. "Look! My stats have a personality trait! He's amoral! How refreshing!"

[Critias]

Which is why I have fun (just speaking for myself) sometimes making almost soulless evil bastards. Make them me-first assholes, but with a but... attached. Give them an out, almost. An excuse. A reason. Give them that one little thing they use -- consciously or otherwise -- to rationalize what they do and why they do it.

Give 'em a goal besides "because I like money," and all sorts of heinous and illegal acts can suddenly become almost righteous. Do they just want the money for their next hit of Bliss or that Muscle Replacement upgrade they've been pining over? Or do they send the money to their folks to pay the hospital bills for a sibling that's on life support? Do they spend all their time (and half their nuyen) between 'runs working at a local church, manning a soup line for the homeless? Did they choose the super-slick life of a bloody handed Shadowrunner, or was it thrust upon them by trying to do the right thing at the wrong time?

Or, of course, you can always take the Frank Miller route. And just make sure the bad guys are worse than your PCs. It works for me, when all else fails.

[eidolon]

[noonesshowmonkey]

The human animal is a nigh on infinitely corruptable creature. We have a short memory, are emotionally driven, and have a taste for violence that seems preternatural. We shew danger for the sake of comfort and would prefer to live it easy than to live it right. The world of Shadowrun understands these concepts in very basic ways: everything is corrupted, everyone has sold out, nothing is sacred. Amoral characters are boring because there are so few amoral men. In fact, the very idea is self-contradictory. People invest themselves in the world around them and when that world fails them, they turn to escapism found in AR or drugs.

To say that one gives players choices between Good and Evil is to say that these things can exist in a world where the Bottom Line™ the is one true god. Which is cheaper? Not which is more morally right. If there is one standard trait that should stand out in the world it is a difficult trait to characterize due to its low-key nature: apathy. Moral behavior takes effort, it is demanding and requires people to hold on to things, hold them close and never let go. If my cat is an AR pet what exactly am I holding on to?

The world of Shadowrun can be characterized by NPCs that do bad things day in and day out and don't really even think about them as bad. Thinking requires effort, as would a judgement and it takes strength to render judgement and stick to it. People have short memories, afterall. It is easier to forget that something is the way it is, that you are complicit, that what you did was wrong, than it is to do what is right. Spinelessness should be the norm. Everyone is a snitch, everyone has a price. A little nuyen here and there ought to let you do anything you god damn well please. A few hundred nuyen might let you get close enough to set off a bio-car bomb in a packed public area. Why would a security company use so much electronic security? Because it saves them money? Certianly. But also because it removes the human factor from what they do. Discretion is lost for the cold 1-0 of the machine. The trick to bombing a park with a bioweapon is not paying off the guards, its duping the machines. Odd that morality in this case seems to be seated with a drone.

Don't think that the most "moral" and "altruistic" men running the security company don't know this. They do. These men know that it is not right to trust men with right and wrong. They are even more cynical than you or I. They deny them the right to choose. Maybe Damien Knight doesn't give a fuck, but I imagine that there are a few goldensouls left out there that want to make it right... Too bad the right they fight for is corrupted, twisted and malign. A right that denies basic freedom and responsibility. A right that condemns first and asks questions later...

Someone already mentioned the concept of having players choose between "the lesser of two evils" and this was repainted into "screwed and less screwed". I would consider the latter to be much closer to the truth. Runners are not even a line on a quarterly budget. How much can they get away with before someone buys their heads? Is it better to just buckle down and march to the tune of the nuyen, do what your paymasters say you should do, even if its illegal, dangerous and maybe even wrong? If you do, aren't you just a wageslave with fancy clothes?

Players should very rarely ever come into contact with a "right thing". In a recent game I ran, players had to bring in a smuggler to the mob who had dumped his load (a SR standard mission). He has kids, adopted kids. He also exposed his family to the dangers of his lifestyle when he failed his mission and he should have known that. Everyone here is guilty. The kids and wife are ignorant, a form of weakness that gets them implicated. If the wife had taken the time to find out what her husband did for a living, how the soybacon got bought, she might have decided to leave rather than be exposed to that danger. There is nothing sacred. The family unit was corrupt even at its most altruistic point. In the end, the players had to deal with a begging man (few organisms in this world die well, it is usually a very messy affair) and the option of digging their own graves to help him out of the country. Help a man who knowingly screwed over his employers while in the midst of double dealing them. He had this coming.

The next run that I have planned will involve the players trying to find a woman. Well, when I say woman, I mean whore... which is much closer to an object or chattle than a person. This piece of merchandize walked off with something that does not belong to them. Players will be diving into a world of drug dealers, pimps, organleggers, crooked cops, sadistic mafiosos, mean as wounded animal gangers, vapid wageslaves... the list goes on and on. Everyone on it is guilty. Everyone on it is self-interested. None of what the players will be doing is "good".

At the end of the day you come home and say "gee, I just tracked a girl for the past week and had to talk to a BTL dealing pimp that is a spineless welp portraying himself as a predator (I know, I am the predator), blow the brains out of a mafioso who likes to cut up and nibble on girls he fucks, dealed (literally cut a deal) with a man that sells parts of people like cuts of meat..." God damn, I am tired.

- der menkey

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemmingway