[X] My Assistant

[Witness]

[ShadowDragon8685]

[Platinum]

Some people crave brilliance and some don't.

[nezumi]

I have to agree with 2bit. That would make an awesome campaign, and the games I've had the most invested in emotionally are more like that than just going on random runs and saving up more cash for cyber.

[X-Kalibur]

[nezumi]

The point is either they compromise their lesser values (family, self-respect, body, etc.) or they compromise their driving goal (enough money to get out of this hell-hole, a cure for his terminal disease, saving his wife).

If he chooses not to compromise his lesser goals, he doesn't achieve his greater goal. If his greater goal is something stupid, that's okay, the PC will just be left floating without ever achieving anything of note. If his greater goal is something good or cool, then he just wussed out and basic lost.

[Forever Zero]

[nezumi]

[Glyph]

Or maybe you'll still achieve your goal, and it will just take a bit longer. But when you do, you will not have any regrets about how you got there. Shadowrun should have moral dilemmas and temptations. However, a GM who tries to make players sell out with plot hammer contrivances is not being "gritty" - he's just being an asshat. Not every player wants to simulate Dogfight.

[Brahm]

The keys to a brilliant campaign, Shadowrun and otherwise:

Ninjas, pirates, and MP-5s. :)

[Wounded Ronin]

[Kalvan]

In the games I play, grit is what happens.

It's not that Mr. Johnson screws you over, it's that even he is kept out of the loop about the true purpose of the run and he's left out to dry even more than you. It's about taking a midnight run for what you think is the Draco Foundation, and finding out that it really benefitted Humanis, or worse, the Bugs. It's about having to chose between either kowtowing to (insert crime syndicate here), turning your best friend over to General Saito so that he can take an all espenses paid trip to Yomi, or else resorting to Blood Magic to get the meds that just might (no guarantees) cure the terminally ill stepmother of your significant other.

I's not IMPOSSIBLE to make that big score (or whatever your big goal in life is) without compromising your principles, but the opportunities to do so are of a blink-and-you'll miss-it nature so fleeting they make John Woo gun battles in real time feel like bullet time.

Thenkfully, except for a certain Swiss Army Magic Munchkin who shall remain nameless (I'm almost sure he's a lurker here), most of my players have more realistic expectations (like opening up a restaraunt, runner bar or magic shop, or graduating from running to fixing or fencing, or that sort of thing. My own charecter wants revenge against Aztechnology (long story) but since he's an elf, he's willing to wait a while while more pressing matters (like food, clean clothes, and a nice [for Pullyup] roof over his head) take precedence.

[Wounded Ronin]

For me the biggest problem with the compelling idea of everyone having to compromise on their goals is that whenever I GMed, and because of my no-fudging GM style, I cannot tailor the campaign to the characters. In my experience, people change their characters often, and every single game I've ever planned has been generic rather than tailored to certain characters. I've really not ever spent a lot of time on any one character's motivtions or background because of the high turnover rate.

It's the same thing with myself as a player. I get bored with my characters after a few months and then change. I actually like turnover better than keeping the same characters because 1.) it keeps karma pools at a reasonable size and 2.) there's less pdeath drama.

[SL James]

[2bit]

-thanks nez-
Look:

In cyberpunk, the world is an antagonist. It's called The System.
You just treat it like one.
The System's goal is to eat people's souls. It's that simple. It uses the threat of poverty to keep them spinning their wheels in the rat race, ultimately accomplishing nothing. It reserves wealth, power, and security for those who breed violence, poverty, and depression in others. It uses your players' goals as bargaining chips to hollow them out.

If you have a player that wants revenge more than anything else in the world, then the system's goal is to take everything else from them until they cease to be a person and become revenge. Present them, subtley, with choices that further their goal but cost them something they cherish.

The system can't really be "beaten", unless one is powerful enough to turn the world upside down; but plenty of people fight it, and they do so using love, self sacrifice, truth, and all those other goody good things that don't pay the bills.

[Wounded Ronin]

[SL James]

[nezumi]

[Wounded Ronin]

Besides, your girlfriend might be submissive.

[Glyph]

[knasser]

I'm all for a gritty game, but I don't enforce the players reactions and I don't use "gritty" as a justification for preventing a character's actions from making a difference. If anything, I think that a dark setting makes the light stand out more. Someone mentioned Ravenloft. The original supplement was very well written and above all it was gothic. And I mean that in the literary sense. You might have been pursued by werewolves, but you'd be fleeing through the most beautiful mountain gorges and moonlit-valleys that Nature could provide. The same can be applied to a Shadowrun game. It may be wild to run your game in the dark steaming streets most of the time, but you should also use that as an opportunity to get a wow from the players when they're on a roof and get a rare moment of beauty, looking down at the glittering city from on high.

As to 2bit's notion that Shadowrun is about "losing your soul to get ahead." You can shoehorn sammies into that, but it really doesn't fit with magicians. Initiation clearly reflects greater enlightenment and insight. And it rewards you with [a player goal] more power. I see Shadowrun, as most of my games are, as a very positive experience. When I make the World dark, it is so that the light of a few can shine even brighter. Some players like high fantasy where their actions will shape a kingdom. Other players (usually older) can't believe in that degree of sunshine and need something a bit more overcast... but they're still looking for a game where they can make a difference. A game where the PC leper seeks to bring down the local corrupt police chief before he dies will work. A game where the office manager buys a big TV to watch the football on, will not work. Grit or fantasy doesn't matter, player consequence does.

[2bit]

That's a good point about the magic system. When I read through SR4 initiation I was disappointed to not see any mention of groups, their (IIRC) spirit patrons, or trials. Mmm, don't remember if trial is the right word, whatever you call it when you cut on yourself, fast, go on a metaplane quest, or what have you for initiation. It got hammered down into a simple karma cost and "time spent".

Is anyone interested in discussing how to bring some of the sacrifice back into magic? I feel that under normal circumstances it's better to offer the player a "favorable tradeoff" than a gift.

[hyzmarca]

Sanitized: The PCs slaughter a cave full of pitufully weak kobolds and are praised as heroes when they return to the villiage.

Gritty: The PCs slaughter of cave full of pittifully weak kobolds and are confronted by dozens of helpless kobold toddlers cowering in fear and weeping over their parent's corpses.

[SL James]

Solution: Cleansing fire.

[ShadowDragon8685]

*whistle* Alignment infraction! Ten-Thousand XP penalty!