How Sociopathic should Shadowrunners be?, Was just wondering what ya thought. Options

[Pyritefoolsgold]

I've noticed a trend in shadowrun for it to be taken for granted that your character is out for number one and no one else, that they will quite willingly kill anyone, endanger anyone, or destroy anything if it makes life easier for them, or even for their own amusement. I agree that some characters should be like this, but I also think most shadowrunners should have some kind of limits.

So what do you think?

[Demerzel]

How sociopathic would Shadowrun players be? I imagine it's a similar ratio... At worst they may share the ratio with Shadowrun GMs...

But, I agree that it's easy to get the impression that they are worse than average. I personally don't subscribe to the theory.

[Ravor]

Well, personally I think that the true limit on what most Shadowrunners are willing to do isn't in the action itself but in the motivation. Murder, rape, torture? All these things are very much present in the shadows and in my opinion its the rare Runner that would have any quams about taking part in those for the right money. However, once you climb above the level of Gutter Runners, I don't think that you'll find many that will partake in them for amusement since the real fragging sickos will tend to die off from mistakes.

[Luddite]

I honestly don't think that most true sociopaths would survive too long as Shadowrunners. The things that, over time, will build a good street rep are loyalty, self control, and forethought. While a sociopath can definitely demonstrate the latter two, they don't really feel loyalty to anyone. A runner who constantly betrays teammates, contacts, and employers is going to end up in Puget Sound.

I know that they've kinda dropped the whole Neo-Anarchist theme, and while I entirely understand why the various publishers did so, I think that the game is poorer for it. The idea that most shadowrunners identified with a positive, idealistic movement gave players and GMs something to gauge a character's actions by, other than sheer effectiveness. It also explained why your average shadowrunner wasn't gunning for a cushy, well supported and highly paid permanent job with a megacorp.

[Serial_Peacemake...]

Obviously most if not all shadowrunners are outside of normal society. However that doesn't neccesarilly make them a sociopath. Depending on how they look at it 'running could almost be viewed as a kind of trade. After all society as a whole in Shadowrun is completely warped. So you could have an otherwise healthy individual that approachs running as a high risk/high reward job. For someone with no SIN, and no legit education? The choice between starving, a wage slave job if your lucky, or running? This excludes people who are idealists, revolutionaries etc. The people that look at running as a way to get the system to give you the rope to hang it with.

[TheOOB]

A true sociopath wouldn't last in the shadows. While it is true that shadowrunners need to have...flexible morals, they also, perhaps more then anything else, need the ability to at least tolerate working with others. Between their fixer, their fence, their arms merchant, their street doc, their Mr. Johnson, and their running mates, a shadowrunner needs to work with a lot of people to get the job done, and sociopaths don't really work well with others(there is a reason it's called antisocial personality disorder).

[sunnyside]

The old sourcebooks generally figured that runners would be anti heros. As in they'll generally look out for number one. But when obvious heroing is needed they'll step up.

Also during chargen as I recal sometimes it would ask what your character wouldn't do and where they draw the line.

Also the game for a while figured if you were really evil than you'd have to use the special "amoral campaign" rules. Where getting karma was different.


Personally I like a bit of idealism in my characters, but it's a dark wold, and often they won't really get that until the see what others will do.

That being said I personally won't ever let a femal player get raped. The guys had best stay out of jail though :(

[Scope_47]

Well, the character I'm playing in a campaign right now is sociopathic (by design - I'm a sociology major, so I thought that making a character who for whatever reasons failed to be properly socialized in the moral system we've developed as a society... of course, people often confuse sociopathy with psychopathy - which is what I think most people think of), but she is also in the team considered the most dependable and trustworthy of the bunch. I should note that what many consider a 'true sociopath' rarely exists - that would be one who completely embodies the symtoms. Sociopaths essentially have their own moral code that doesn't jive with the code of society - the more the two codes differ, the more sociopathic that person would be considered. The particular character in question has a very twisted code - essentially she is a romantic (classical literature sense), and her 'code' can be boiled down to a few points: 1. if she takes a job then the job will be done. 2. she will take care of those who she is responsible for (usually her teammates) unless doing so endangers the job. 3. Violence against Law enforcement is wrong unless it interferes with the job or the saftey of those she is responsible for. (That last point wouldn't be present except for the character's backstory and the reasons for her sociopathy)

Now, that code might not sound very sociopathic at first, unless you think of what it excludes. By it, it is not wrong to kill, torture, rape, maim, pillage, etc unless doing so will endanger herself or her team. So random violence is wrong - but its only wrong because it draws unwanted attention that could harm her or her team. So if a waitress 'might' have overheard a conversation or taken a picture - then the character would think of the liklihood that that information could be traced back and endanger her or her team. If it is plausible, then she kills the waitress to cover their tracks.

Essentially, the character in qustion is an extremely low-essense cybered out covert-ops specialist / kick artist. Corporate training and forced emotional desensitization BTLs intended to make her able to follow any order she was given without the emotional baggage that often gets in the way (she worked for Ares, but used the Crash 2.0 as an opportunity to go freelance).

At its core, sociopathy's primary symptom is an inability to form emotional attachments/associations that are considered 'normal' for society. So the character (Sarah, BTW) is glib while doing things that would turn some of her team-members' stomachs, but she realizes that what she is doing is considered wrong - she just doesn't 'feel' that they are wrong. She'll do anything to get the job done in the quickest and most effecient way... coldly calculating would be a good way to describe it. Now one might think that this would lead to issues, but lets present a few hypothetical situations.

Situation One:
Hot-headed Freddy and Sociopathic Sarah are doing a run. Freddy is a normal runner, but has a bad temper. They go into the office building while fully masked etc. Freddy keeps a gun on the wage-slaves while Sarah opens the vault with her electronics skills. A wage-slave gives Freddy a dirty look, and he loses his temper, grabs the wage-slave, and is about to execute him. Sarah stops him, because his execution would have escalated the crime and brought down more attention from the law. Here, the sociopath would be considered the 'better person'.

Situation Two:
Freddy and Sarah need to place and later retrieve a bug from a guard's commlink (so that when he goes to work they can get a recording in spite of the anti-wifi paint) without anyone learning of it. Freddy watches outside while Sarah goes into the guard's home. Sarah plants the bug, but the guard's wife wakes up - so Sarah makes a silent, nonlethal takedown (you'll see why). Thinking quickly, she takes the wife's commlink and uses it to leave a text AR message on the guard's saying "left early to go shopping - the mall is having a clearance sale - be back late." Then she takes one of the wife's outfits, a pair of shoes, and her commlink, and she swaps the guard's pistol with an identical one (a fichetti 600... very common gun). She leaves carrying the unconscious woman. She gets Freddy to drive them out to the Barrens while in the back of the van she dresses the unconscious woman. Once in the Barrens, she dumps the woman and executes her with her husband's gun. The next night Sarah sneaks in, retrieves the bug, and swaps the pistols back. Afterwards, she calls in to Lone Star with an anonymous tip about a domestic disturbance the night before. The Star runs ballistics on the murder, and arrests the husband since he has no alibi - he was asleep at home alone at the time of death. Sarah did this to tie up all loose ends, but Freddy is apalled because he thinks it was just a sick thing to do - killing someone is one thing, but the kind of emotional trauma done to the guard is something else entirely. Here, Sarah is about as 'evil' as one could think, and Freddy - who would have just kept the wife imprisoned until the bug was retrieved then let her go - is the better person. The thing is, Sarah's plan - while evil - was safer for herself and Freddy than what Freddy would have done.

Now, for the analysis, we'll introduce a control character - Reliable Riley. Riley is a normal shadowrunner. He'll do most jobs, but shuns wetwork unless the money is just too good. He'll take his ball and go home if a job requires him to go 'too far,' but too far can be subjective based on how much money he makes. While he'll do it, killing people who didn't pose an immediate, physical threat to him makes him lose sleep at night. Riley will have a good rep as a loyal, dependable runner, and he'll likely be rather successful - but he'll lose out on some jobs.

Freddy is like Riley, but his temper causes him to do things that he regrets later. He'll develop a bad reputation because his hijinks draw the star and cause problems for the rest of the team. Eventually, he'll get caught, dead, or worse.

Sarah - the sociopath - will develop a solid rep because she always completes the job and protects her fellow runners. She'll have a good bit of notoriety as being heartless when it comes to doing the job - and possibly as being the one who put down runners like Freddy who endangered the rest of the team. Some runners - primarily those who have the 'Robin Hood vs the Corps mentality - won't like running with her, but so long as the job doesn't entail something they won't do, they'll probably tolerate her because of her rep for loyalty. She'll likely be successful a long time until either an enemy tracks her down or she makes a mistake (like any runner) - but since she is ruthless in covering her tracks, she has a bit of an edge there. The only place she loses out is on who will work with her - but those people shy away from the jobs fixers would send her on anyway.

So, short answer... sociopathy isn't necessarily a hinderance to success in the shadows. Its depending on the brand of sociopathy as well as other personality quirks.

Long answer:

At some level, anyone who doesn't feel the innate 'wrongness' of actions that hurt others would be considered sociopathic to at least some degree - just not in the classical sense, so Shadowrunners in general could be considered sociopathic while not behaving in a psychotic manner. The worse they are, the more social mores (that is, social taboos such as murder, rape, theft, etc) that they are willing to break. But just because they are 'willing' to do something doesn't mean that they 'will' do it. Its not the sociopathy that makes a runner a liability - its how that sociopathy interacts with the runner's personality... but usually that interaction just makes an existing problem more apparent. So in the end, its stupidity and short-sightedness that put an end to a runner's life/career.

- Scope

[Habzial]

I tend to view Shadowrunners' role in the game's society as being a nobler type of criminal than a common thug or assassin. Yes, they commit crimes, but they don't cause wanton mayhem. It's a job. It's a very well-paying job. Some are in it for the money, some are in it for the thrills, and some are probably a little touched in the head as far as sanity goes.

The assassination question is a little trickier to answer. We aren't told why wetwork is taboo, so I'll list the distinctions between it and "acceptable" work I usually think of.

When your characters assassinate someone, they're going out of their way to kill someone who was no threat to them. When your characters kill on a normal run, it's usually out of necessity. Even if an opponent isn't an immediate threat, they may give your description to someone who will make your future very bleak. Realistically, there isn't much difference between wetwork and lethal defense on the surface. The key difference is intent. What type of work your character enjoys tells a lot about him/her/it.

Most of the criminal work in Shadowrun revolves around stealing from the rich and moving kidnap victims between kidnappers (a.k.a. forceful extractions). Now someone trying to rationalize that can say, "I'm not doing any permanent damage. I'm stealing from thieves, so it's not stealing. I only killed because it was my hoop or theirs." and so on. The collateral damage of a run isn't that obvious to the runner. They can do a lot of illegal things while maintaining a sense of morality.

Wetwork is the exact opposite. The goal is to kill someone, and the collateral damage is fairly obvious. It's difficult to moralize accepting money for the sole purpose of killing someone simply because your benefactor needs it done. Are you killing an executive for being too effective? Are you killing a scientist for being too genius? Are you killing a noble soul for simply being too political? Basically, your character is contributing to the same sickness that may have made him/her/it turn to the shadows in the first place.

What kind of person do you have to be to do that willingly? Of course, that leads to another question... With so many Mr. Johnson's out to screw you, why would you work with someone with a rep as the most reliable assassin in Seattle?




SPOILER WARNING (Reservoir Dogs)



On a side note, I think Reservoir Dogs illustrated the concept of "criminal honor" pretty well. Around 20 or 30 minutes into the movie there's a scene where Mr. White and Mr. Pink are discussing the disaster their job turned into. Mr. White was especially pissed off at Mr. Blonde, who'd begun wantonly killing hostages. Both White and Pink agreed that if they had to kill someone to escape, that someone was going to die, but neither man was a psychopath. As White says, "A psychopath isn't a professional; a psychopath is nothing but a psychopath and you never know what those crazy fraggers are going to do next."

[Backgammon]

I think a lot of it comes down to this: if you're OK, WTF are you doing running the shadows? I mean, seriously. Being a shadowrunner is just down right aweful. People try to kill you when you go on a job. People try to kill you when you're not on a job. You have to sleep with a gun behind your pillow. You can't have a meaningful relationship with the girl of your dreams because a) you can't trust anyone and b) she'll probably end up getting killed because of you. You can't really have close friends for the same reason. You constantly have to worry about being arrested and spending the rest of your miserable life in jail. You see blood, guts, and the worst of humanity all the time.

Why the hell would anyone, who is fit and able to hold a normal job, ever actually run the shadows? All shadowrunners are there because they have to. Although I do agree, they are the best of the worst. They're smarter and saner than gangers, petty criminals and the rest of the denizens of the shadows, but they are still very much NOT ok people.

[Habzial]

I agree with you, most shadowrunners are scum. They may be the scum that floats to the top, but it doesn't change what they are. That's why, in regards to normal work, I suggested a lot of what they do could be rationalized. You know, they can convince themselves what they're doing isn't wrong, that up is down, less is more, 2 + 2 = 5, etc. With wetwork it's my belief that it is drastically harder to rationalize, so someone specializing in it would seem morally beneath a shadowrunner.

On a side note, has anyone considered running a team of hooders? It suddenly occured to me that might make for a unique experience in SR.

[eidolon]

There has been no 'standard' in my games. This may be because I've only ever really played SR with fairly seasoned role players that had gotten their chaotic stupid characters out of the way in years prior. ;)

As to

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[Aristotle]

It is my experience that most "sociopathic" characters are just played poorly. The player falls into the mindset of kill everything and check it for loot. I've only had a few gamers at my table who had the ability to play a truly twisted character really well. I tend to ask my players not to make murderers. I remind them that people who kill for a living in popular hit man movies (i.e. replacement killers, the professional, sniper) are often much more complex than the kill-and-forget characters they offer up.

I'm known for running campaigns with morals. I admit that, that rubs some gamers the wrong way as they don't want to deal with the complications of real life in a game. The way I see it, if you kill someone you've given me an extra plot hook. Whether it be the cops showing up because you had to take the time to check to make sure all of the security guards were actually dead, gangers taking out some of your contacts in retaliation for you taking out some of their own, or the freshly cybered out wife of an anti-corp activist you killed in cold blood hunting you down to settle the score. You'll likely survive the encounter, but I'll get a night's worth of play out of it one way or the other.

[Serial_Peacemake...]

What SIN amnesty programs?

[Baphomet69]

The way I see it, most are like the majority of characters in both "reservoir Dogs" and "Heat". They generally have no qualms about killing, but only if someone gets in their way or puts them at risk. And the do have loyalty to their long-time teammates. I loved "Heat", that's how I see most Shadowrunners. It really p'ed me off, that ending.

What I hate in films and books (and it happens nearly every time) is when an anti-hero put in a bad position lets a threat go, only to have them frag the main character(s) again later. STUPID! Every time they screw themselves by giving this drek-head another chance. True, it's all to extend the plot, but c'mon! When someone puts your hoop in the fire, are you going to be 'nice' and put it up there for him again? My characters won't. To me this is just a cop-out for writing a real plot and 9 times out of 10 the main character should pay for this 'kindness' with it coming back to bite him and cost him his life.

[azrael_ven]

Crash 2.0 took out most records on all people. So the amnesty program was initiated to restart info collecting and because there was no way to prove who had a SIN and where they belonged in some areas they allowed people to come in and get a legit SIN without the consequence of being thrown in jail for not having a SIN.

[FrankTrollman]

Sociopaths do not value social approval and do not respond well to negative reinforcement. That's not a really grat survival stance in the shadow world in which there really aren't any second chances and it'll take a true friend to spring for a replacement heart for you when your current one has been punctured.

So yeah, runners will accept jobs that involve theft, murder, rape, and torture. But they won't do it because they are socipaths. They'll do it because a set of mercenary ethics allows those activities to be considered acceptable given sufficient payment or long-term agenda advancement.

-Frank

[lorechaser]

I think this is a useful character question, really.

Everyone's played with the "I do what I want when I want cause I want to" runners - they're usually relatively boring to play.

It's the moral dilmenas that make the really interesting moments. When you get to the paydata, and learn that Bob planned to cut the guy's head off and just take his computer, Sally planned to mind control him into forgetting it, and Phil just wants everyone dead. When you're playing Riley, the guy that doesn't like to kill in "cold blood" it's gonna be an interesting few minutes.

I usually tend to have one of two types of runners in mind (I don't play most of them - they're just thought exercises) - the runner that is still attempting to rationalize what they are doing with their innate moral code, and has distinct laws and boundaries which are slowly eroded, or cause huge issues, and the runner who has realized that the distinctions between "Cause he was shooting at me" and "Cause he was in the way" are social lies that people tell themselves to make themselves feel better.

The second one would tend to get in trouble a lot more, I'd expect. Because he won't listen to the arguing and the debating. He'll shoot the hostage, and then explain "You guys were going to either argue your way in to it, or tie him up until he escaped, and then shoot him because he was running. I didn't have the time to wait." These types of runners tend to use the "Hey, everyone is somebody's son or daughter, brother or sister, or husband or wife. If you try to pretend that it's okay to kill some, but not others, you're just saying that you have some divine insight. I'm not that arrogant."

[Wraithshadow]

I don't tend to judge anyone else, but I often have solid rules for what my characters will or will not do. Some of those rules are unique to the character- others are simply things that I will not do in a game. If the GM wants to push the issue, he can get a new player.

[Ravor]

[Backgammon]

[Backgammon]

[Ravor]

Well my problem isn't about including rape per-say, its about the idea that it is somehow 'ok' to rape male characters while its taboo to do the same to a female character.

*Edit*

Or is it the sex of the player that makes the difference, would it be ok to rape the female character of a male player or visa-versa?

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Which is pretty much the point of this thread: Lies people made up to make themselves feel better. :grinbig: