Let's discuss the moral vagaries of SR. Options

[emo samurai]

I'll start. If a person had a really traumatic childhood, would it be right to modify his memories?

Does loyalty to one's company/tribe/gang/Johnson justify what you do in any way whatsoever?

Is corporate espionage okay? What justifications do people use?

[mfb]

you may mean vagueries, which isn't really a word. but we'll set english aside for the moment.

part of moral vaguery is the fact that there isn't a single answer for moral questions--sometimes, not even a single right answer for one person. if there were an answer, morality wouldn't be vague anymore.

a more relevant question, for most runners, would be "can i live with having done morally questionable action X?" does loyalty to your gang allow you to look in the mirror the next morning? does the fact that you're making fat sacks of cash money off your rival's prototype assuage any feelings of guilt you may have?

[emo samurai]

Dude, "vagaries," plural of "vagary," is a word.

In my campaign, I'm sort of avoiding the question by setting them up to take out bad people. I'm not sure if this is right; and the thing is, in Shadowrun, and maybe even RL, there isn't an effective way to work for the good of all humanity; the work you do will benefit only your family/company/gang/Johnson, not humanity as a whole. There is no unifying force of good, only a whole host of large self-interested entities that happen to be made up of people.

Follow-up question. Do you think this balkanization as essentially a good/necessary thing, with people finally able to live as their traditions see fit, (For example, the NAN, Manchuria, the Australian outback) or is tradition really no more valid as a unifier than rational selfishness? Is it, perhaps, more oppressive?

[mfb]

yes, but i'm not certain that vagary means what you think it means. it has nothing to do with vagueness, a word which seems a more germane to the questions you're asking.

regardless. moral grey areas--or, rather, the near-complete lack of moral shading to any action--is a staple concept of cyberpunk in general. cyberpunk is all about doing bad things and then maybe wondering whether or not you should feel bad about it. though just as important, if more subtle, is the idea that there's something wrong with people like that--people who commit crimes for money. there's something fundamentally flawed in their mental makeup.

i don't view the Balkanization of the SR world as 'good' or 'bad'. in terms of the sheer number of people who could be negatively affected by a few big countries versus a lot of small countries, the scales seem pretty even. in practice, at least in SR, i suppose i would probably say that the Balkanization as been bad for humanity as a whole. everything in SR has been bad for humanity as a whole. that's cyberpunk.

[emo samurai]

But vagaries are items of whimsy; that pretty much encompasses what I want to say.

Anyway, here's another question. The megacorporations do "good" stuff, like aquaculture, and they make the tools that runners and gangsters use on a daily basis. On the other hand, these exploits are mostly PR blitzes to cover up the fact they are polluting and exploiting like hell. Would helping the corporations be a good deed, or would it be a bad one? And is it even rational for a runner to hate the corporations while he/she praises it for its products and ingenuity?

[mfb]

one of the main 'points' of cyberpunk is that there is no right or wrong. you're asking about good and bad as if they're absolute concepts. in a cyberpunk setting, they're not.

[Nidhogg]

[mfb]

good? bad? i'm the guy with the entree.

[Glyph]

A lot of the conflict from shadowrun comes from the 'runners being people who try to be good, but have to make moral compromises to get ahead, for the greater good, or just to survive. One of the other themes is that they can't always change things that much.

And Emo, setting up the PCs to take out "bad guys" isn't really that non-canon. There is a very strong "Robin Hood" flavor to how shadowrunners are presented. And heck, nothing wrong with romanticizing them a bit. Make them too "realistic", and you would have a bunch of unpleasant criminals that would be utterly unsympathetic as protagonists. Although some people play that way.

One of the keys, though, is that it isn't good guys against bad guys, so much as morally ambivalent but sorta-good guys against the much-much nastier guys. The runners may be criminals, but they do some good, and have some lines they won't cross. Their adversaries, on the other hand, are bug shamans who have sold their souls to humanity's enemies for power, or corporations who dump toxic waste and perform evil experiments on captured squatters, or criminal organizations that implant personafix chips to create slaves for the sex trade.

Of course, different people approach SR in many, many ways. Some play idealistic crusaders like your campaign, some play lowly street punks doing nasty things just to survive, some play cold pros who minimize damage but don't have many high ideals either. So the degree of moral ambivalence can vary a lot, depending on the game.

[Kanada Ten]

Seriously, these questions can only be addressed from an in-character perspective, and each character will have a different outlook. However, cynicism and apathy are pervasive themes in SR among the poor masses. Escapism merges with nationalism/corpism among the middle classes. And elitism in the most machiavellian sense saturates the strata of the higher class. There is a general "the value of one life is less than a good cup of coffee" mentality, but only if that life is distant and alien. The problem, then, is just how distant and alien everyone is from one another.

[Voran]

While ignorance doesn't shield people from responsibility for their actions, in a way you have to feel sorry for the serfs of the megacorp. They're infused with a twisted sense of 'nationalism' and bombarded with constant propaganda and tests to their loyalty. They're not really evil, cause they make decisions without full knowledge, but their handlers and the higher ups in the corp that decide the actual course of their corps can be held more or less accountable, since they're making more informed choices.

Once you come from that angle, stuff like corporate espionage is pretty understandable, much like spying between nations today.


As for changing someone's memories cause they had a traumatic childhood, hard to say. Some people use their trauma to become better people, some people crack and freak out.

Sorta related I guess, but think about what sorta art, literature, etc we may have missed out on if people we consider great artists were all put on mood stabilizing drugs or given grey humdrum memories. :)

[ChuckRozool]

[stevebugge]

Inconceivable!

[eralston]

I think what you're looking for is "nihilism" (and I know how everyone loves playing English professor around here)

1. Philosophy
a. An extreme form of skepticism that denies all existence.
b. A doctrine holding that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated.
2. Rejection of all distinctions in moral or religious value and a willingness to repudiate all previous theories of morality or religious belief.
3. The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.
4. also Nihilism A diffuse, revolutionary movement of mid 19th-century Russia that scorned authority and tradition and believed in reason, materialism, and radical change in society and government through terrorism and assassination.
5. Psychiatry A delusion, experienced in some mental disorders, that the world or one's mind, body, or self does not exist.

Describe a couple runners you know?

I must certainly shoot the "there is no right or wrong" path because in SR you cannot be tortured or directed by such thoughts (As a character), because that will ultimately lead to you retiring or violently retiring.

Also how is corporate espionage morally objectionable, it's not like they were going to justly compensate the person who actually thought up the original idea

[ChuckRozool]

"Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."

that will be all...

[Platinum]

[John Campbell]

Today I made an appearance downtown.
I am an expert witness - because I say I am.
And I said, "Gentlemen - and I use that word loosely -
I will testify for you.
I'm a gun for hire, I'm a saint, I'm a liar,
Because there are no facts,
There is no truth,
Just data to be manipulated.
I can get you any result you like -
What's it worth to you?
Because there is no wrong, there is no right,
And I sleep very well at night.
No shame, no solution,
No remorse, no retribution.
Just people selling t-shirts.
Just opportunity to participate
In the pathetic little circus
And winning, winning, winning."

[mfb]

sounds more like nymphomania to me.

[Fire Hawk]

There are a number of good points here, but in my mind, if you're that worried about "right versus wrong", then go play D&D, where something as arbitrary as Alignment actually factors in (at least, if taken the way the game was written in previous editions).

Shadowrun is a moral "gray area". Sure, there are a things that might make some of the more well-thought-out characters shudder or lose sleep, but someone like Sturm Brightblade would all but have a damned heart attack if he didn't stick his head in the sand, and focused only on smaller aspects of the Sixth World.

[hyzmarca]

Does anyone ever run for the cause of Antidisestablishmentarialism?

I think a hardcore Antidisestablismmentarialist would make an interesting runner.


The way I see it, every runner is a Robin Hood with a worthy cause even if that cause is the runner himself. Is not a philanthropist who is his own one-and-only benefactor still a philanthropist?

[James McMurray]

[emo samurai]

Philanthropists like people; a runner isn't people.

[nezumi]

[hyzmarca]

The term specificly refers to the Church of England. An Antidisestablismmentarialist is someone who is against the disestablishment of the Church of England.

I don't know what yu'd call someone who is against the disestablishment of any other entity.

[James McMurray]

It started as that, but ever since it became "cool" to know the word it has expanded its usage to more general areas.