moral relativity, slip-slidin' down the slope Options

[Moon-Hawk]

[mfb]

yeah, Moon-Hawk pretty much nailed it. relative to murder, racism and spouse abuse would generally be considered lesser sins. i mean, how about this for a character concept: a wife-beating Humanis pacifist?

[Skeptical Clown]

Whoa. Did I say it was unthinkable? Sheesh.

I simply questioned what the purpose was. I think it's pretty well-established that killing people is, generally speaking, not cool. But in the context of stories, sometimes violence is a part of the story. This is a no-brainer--a signficant portion of entertainment these days is devoted to people killing each other. Better there than in real life, I suppose. Shadowrun is generally one of these types of entertainment. In violent combat, there is some inherent drama--who lives, and who dies, and how successful are they?

In contrast, the dramas of racism and spousal abuse are not so--cinematic. What exactly does an effectively roleplayed session of Shadowrun about spousal abuse look like? Do my friend and I sit there and yell at each other about who takes out the trash?

I guess what I'm aiming at is that these ideas in and of themselves are not very interesting. You say "What about a wife-beating Humanist pacifist?" and I say, "Yeah, and now what?" A character trait in stasis is only interesting insofar as it illustrates something about the character or the character's development.

[mfb]

depends on how you want to do it. personally, i'm less interested in rping a guy beating his girlfriend than i am rping a guy who beats his girlfriend. but yes, you could yell at each other about who takes out the trash. say you've been hired for something, and you stop by the apartment to get your good armored jacket, and on the way out your shrieking nag of a wife starts bitching about how you haven't taken the damn garbage out for three weeks. not a character-defining moment, sure--just another piece in the mosaic of scenes that comprises your character.

[Kyoto Kid]

...though it is not a true quality in that it is not worth any BPs, KK has a moderate distrust of elves due to what she experienced growing up human in the TT. I have played her wary of both PC nd NPC elves in that she rarely turns her back to them and if she doesn't know them that well will not let them approach her too closely (even if it is to cast a healing spell). On the other hand, she doesn't purposely go out of her way to argue with or pick a fight with elves just for the hell of it.

If there is an elf member of the team, she will help him or her (such as covering them during fights, pull them out of harms way if they're injured, etc.) inasmuch that it benefits the team as a whole and she does have a sense of honour. However they shouldn't expect to receive a card from her on Dunkelzahn Memorial Day.

[Moon-Hawk]

[mfb]

that's definitely one point i was trying to make. mostly, though, i'm just interested in discussing it, seeing if other people do it and talking about why.

[Moon-Hawk]

I would definitely like to try a campaign with some darker elements, but the tough thing for me is rounding up an entire group that would be comfortable with that. It seems like there's always at least one person who would be uncomfortable with that sort of thing, so it always gets pushed off.

[Skeptical Clown]

What I'm getting at is that the more... mundane aspects of spousal abuse and racism probably hit closer to home than fantasy violence does to a lot of people. Most people have not affected by running gun battles with ork gangers, or coprorate assassins, and it probably doesn't faze most people. Spousal abuse on the other hand is a very intimate betrayal, far more likely to unintentionally strike a nerve than more stylized violence. Throwing it in just for kicks might be crude for a mixed audience.

In a group of friends who are comfortable with each other, no harm no foul. I can see why it's not something that comes up in published materials much though.

[mfb]

i agree, to some extent. and i'm not advocating forcing this sort of thing onto groups that don't want it. i'm kinda lucky, in that by playing online, i've got a really big group of players and GMs. if some of them aren't comfortable dealing with stuff like this, i can simply not interact with them using that character.

one of the problems i have to deal with is that in the past, when i've seen people 'exploring' behavior like this, it's generally been a thinly-veiled excuse to fantasize about taboo behavior. participating in someone's murder-rape fantasy is not something i want to do, and fantasizing about abusing women is not why i'm playing a wife-beater. so i kinda worry about people getting the wrong idea.

[Ravor]

Well Skeptical Clown I guess I approach it from the other direction, the very fact that racism or spousal abuse isn't the 'fantasy violence' that is dime-a-dozen on TV and Video Games is exactly why it should be mined and explored in the dark, gritty, corupt, and quite simply broken Sixth World.

It should shock, offend and distrube the sensabilities of my players (In fact I'd be worried if it didn't.), but to simply gloss over the fact that metahumanity has fallen so low that the fact that Little Sally's drunken father sells chips of himself molesting her every friday night is so mundane and common that it doesn't even raise eyebrows anymore is to do a grave diservice to the genre of Cyberpunk which Shadowrun is still a part of.

[Skeptical Clown]

Yeah, ok. That's great. Except for two things.

One, what the heck does it add to a character or game? I'm serious. Does any shocking or depraved act inherently add something to character? If my street samurai molested children on the side, does that effective communicate some sort of useful or interesting character aspect? Or does it just disturb my fellow players for no particular reason? Does the argument over the garbage that culminates in slapping the life partner add a meaningful context to the game?

It's a game... not a movie or a novel. Most games I've been in rarely have the kind of narrative arc which allows individual characteristics and moments to build up to some sort of conclusion or point. They just sort of go on, serially, until people get tired of the game. And even in novels and movies, a certain economy is used for fictional elements--we don't follow our character into every mundane aspect of their lives. We focus on the elements that are interesting. So, what is it providing that is interesting?

And two, not inconsequentially, is it fun? If these things DO add something to the game, I wonder what exactly they would look like. The infrequent domestic squabble might offer a small bit of variety, but the novelty would quickly wear off, for me. If Method Gaming, however, is popular, I wouldn't try to dissuade anyone. I probably just wouldn't partake. De gustibus non disputandum, I suppose.

[mfb]

if it doesn't add anything to the character, or especially if it's not fun, it shouldn't be in the game. i completely agree about that. being fun includes not disturbing my fellow players more disturbed than they want to be.

what's it add to the game? in my case, i'm trying to add flavor. not a pleasant flavor, obviously, but i don't see SR as a pleasant place to live. the fact that there isn't any narrative structure makes adding flavor more important, to me, not less.

is it fun? dunno yet, i haven't been playing this character long. what i do know is that i'm bored with playing 'good' characters--nice guys in a bad profession, hardened professionals with a secret soft streak, stuff like that. i wanna play an asshole. a womanizing, drug-abusing jerk. not, as i've said, because i want to roleplay doing bad things, but because i want to roleplay a person who does bad things.

[fistandantilus4....]

You should really join my mob game mfb.

[mfb]

yeah, well, you should really join my Entourage ga--er, wait...

[fistandantilus4....]

Yeah, then I could play a racist punk slowly trying to turn him self into a cybered killer, and ... hey ... wait...

[Ravor]

It adds to the cyberpunkish flavor of the Sixth World, you know the one where the following are true...

'To the death Bloodsports' from Aztlan are number one sellers on Pay-per-View.

People actually have to worry about being kidnapped off the street and persa-fixed/body sculpted into custom ordered whores.

The 'police' are nothing more then the lowest bidding jackbooted thugs who will smile and do nothing to save you if you aren't covered under one of their contracts.

The corperations are really nothing more then feudal kingdoms waging a neverending cold-war against each other.

If you don't have a valid SIN you are a non-person and have less rights then a stray dog.




Now if you want to avoid the logical conclusions of such a broken society in lue of meaningless 'fantasy violence' where the characters are otherwise good, moral, and upstanding citizens who just happen "to shoot people in the face for money" then whatever floats your boat, but I still say that you are doing a diservice to the setting and genre, Cyberpunk worlds are supposed to be dark and distrubing places that make normal healthy people's skin crawl.

However, don't think that the irony that playing characters who "shoot people in the face for money" is somehow less distasteful then playing a racist or wife beater just because the popular culture is flooded with such violence is loss upon me. The only difference is that in the Sixth World the filth that floods the popular culture is much, much worse, with corasponding results in the people's attitudes.

[hyzmarca]

The difference between beating one's spouse and shooting a stranger in the face for money. No one really cares about strangers. If you hear about a stranger being killed on the news, you might just think that it is terrible but it won't change our life and you'll probably forget about it the next day. While you may know intellectually that the stranger's life has value you can't know it emotionally because you don't have any emotion invested in a stranger.
And really, there is a very short leap between not really caring if a stranger lives or dies and not really caring if you kill a stranger. The only thing that stops this leap in most people is their own self-images. Murdering a stranger changes the way that people see themselves.

Spousal abuse is quite different because there is a strong voluntary familial bond. Presumably, you love this person and would be extremely upset if this person were hurt in any way. It is so disconnected from emotional norms that most people can't accept it.

[mfb]

of course, what's 'funny' is that it works out the exact opposite. familiarity breeds contempt as often as it breeds love, which is one reason spouse abuse is way more common than murder.

[Skeptical Clown]

[Ravor]

To each their own then, because I have a very hard time imagining wanting to play a classic 'good guy' in a Cyberpunk game myself, in my mind heroes and classic morality belong elsewhere, but your mileage may vary.

[mfb]

[Skeptical Clown]

What's the point of illustrating a dark future, if not to illustrate something that we shouldn't want? We don't stomp on the rose-colored glasses to the future just to get a kick out of crushing someone's dreams--we do it to shake people and say "Hey! If things keep going this way, we're screwed!" Or occasionally just, "We're screwed!"

But most working in the genre don't do that simply by painting as bleak a picture as possible; even the darkest story has to have contrasts. To abandon any notion of justice or possibility of redemption, however faint, is not cyberpunk--its nihilist fantasy. If there's no justice or idealism whatsoever in humanity, why should anyone care if the future is bleak?

Cyberpunk sometimes makes a pretense of nihilism, but I don't think that it really is nihilist. Pessimistic, yes, but not nihilistic. Its protagonists are proponents of a much different brand of beliefs and justice than we might agree with, or beliefs that are incompatible with the world they live in. That's where some of the ambiguity comes from.

I don't disagree that a cyberpunk hero could have such dire flaws though. It could be a very good character for a cyberpunk story. I just have a hard time imagining it playing well in a tabletop RPG setting. I don't get the Vampire LARPers either though, so I may just lack imagination. :spin:

[mfb]

maybe it wouldn't work in a tabletop setting. the venue i play in is more of a long-running collaborative fiction than traditional tabletop, which allows for a lot of character development that a tabletop game might not see.

the reader retains his or her own ideas about right and wrong, justice and injustice, happy endings and sad endings. that means that the characters in the story don't need them in order for the writer to illustrate something unpleasant--he can just make it unpleasant, and leave it to the reader to react to it.

[Kagetenshi]

Cyberpunk is fundamentally about tearing down the social order. That's it (from an interaction-with-society-at-large perspective, at least). Sometimes the people doing the tearing have higher principles in mind, sometimes they don't.

~J