Is There Anything That You Wouldn't Do?, as a character or gm that is Options

[fool]

this is a tangent from another thread. Is there anything that you wouldn't have your characters do. Personally, I have really pissed off one of my GM's when I flatly refused to participate in hit jobs. Generally i prefer to play the good guys. AB+, terra first that kind of thing. When I GM I like to develop moral conflict for my characters, having them hired to do things that they wouldn't normally do; usually by having the johnson screw them over by not telling them what is really going on. Then the pc's have to figure out how to clear their names.
So my question is is there anything that you wouldn't have your characters do?

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Search Missing Person jobs.

Honestly, those are totally annoying, usually boring, completely depending on GM fiat - and you are not even allowed to torture & kill the fucker when you find him.

[Ancient History]

Never had a player raped. Well, quite.

[Fuchs]

No rape, no detailed torture scenes, and such.

[mfb]

what my characters will or will not do depends on the character. as a GM, there's very little i wouldn't include in a game, as long as its presence serves some purpose and isn't just gratuitous. i have yet, for instance, to play or run any game where sex of any kind wasn't best handled by a closing paragraph and a scene change.

[hyzmarca]

As a GM, I wouldn't have an NPC slice open a PCs abdomen, yank the PCs intestine out through the hole, and use it as a masturbation device. As a player, it really depends on the character and the whole group's feelings about PvP ostomy rape but it is usually a no.

[Lionhearted]

Never had a player raped. Well, quite.

In our last shadowrun campaign we had following scenario
Troll & Orc get very high on Novac and Cram
Troll & Orc decides that Cram must be like Amphetamine a.k.a. you become horny.
Male Troll & Male Orc, hooks up Male Elf to a Dreamchip (He is BTL addicted anyway)
Troll & Orc Throughoutly rape Elf then in midprocess violently unplugs Elf, Elf suffers from dumpshock while being raped
Troll & Orc finishes their business and Blinds elf with their "Products"
Elf got permanent mental & psychical thraumas..
Elf find Orc, Elf Beats the crap out of Orc (who is currently burned on cram and novac), then carves his eyes out of his skull (now this is a adept orc) Cuts his mandom and leaves him to slowly bleed to death
Elf finds troll, Blows his mandom of with a doublebarreled shotgun, then forcefully inject Troll with all the cram & novac left
Leaving troll OD'ed

So in lack of better things to do we ended up with

A psychopatic chiphead elf with well, he couldnt sit for some time..
A castrated blind orc adept priceboxer (who btw, survived but refused to get cybereyes)
A castrated severly cram addicted Troll who lost his girlfriend and life
A Lone elf hottie who went to the other side of seattle to prostitute herself

That was when i decided that my char (Sammy/face without social skills) would tip his old A20k mates about the rave we were going to the next evening, hell I think half the party died that evening

[Snow_Fox]

My main character has po'ed the group several times because she won't do wet work.

[Kyoto Kid]

...Wetwork, plain and simple.

Organlegging is another that comes to mind and sort of goes hand in hand with the above.

Acts of terrorism that involve innocent victims.

Stand by idly and let other team members "have their way" with a captured prisoner beyond the purpose of interrogation.

I agree, my characters too like to feel their the ones with the white hats (well maybe light gray)


This post has been edited by Kyoto Kid: Feb 4 2008, 01:36 AM

[nezumi]

Hmm... I'd probably have to agree with Hyz on this one.

I have had players who say they won't do particular jobs. In my current group, one guy refuses to do wetwork unless it's a really bad guy. Another refuses to do babysitting jobs unless he's allowed to kill whatever he's babysitting. That's fair, everyone has their preferences in regards to game style, so it's good to get them out in the open to begin with.

[Fortune]

See mfb's response!

[Ravor]

I sit my players down before I start a campaign and explain to them that NOTHING is off limits, rape and murder and organlegging included whether it is in that order or not. Now with that said, I also explain that I do tend to "fade to black" as necessary.

[DTFarstar]

I have had a lot of weird things happen in my games. One thing I do, that my players really like when they do something right and hate when they do something wrong, is I make timelines beforehand and I stick to them unless they do something that would make whoever is doing whatever either hesitate or rush. So, I have done a fade to black with sex that picked back up with the character naked and riding her partner when the door was literally blown off its' hinges and a ganger mob came in to ruin her day.

Basically, I go with the flow and as I have stated many times and in other places there is literally nothing that is off limits to myself or my group.

Hell, I once had a player that was a serial pedophilic murderer. His partners never found out, but he would lure small boys into out of the way places, gag them, rape them, and then over the course of about 30 minutes slowly tortured them to death. He got kind of creepy and detailed with it, to be honest, but his character was careful and no one ever found out. He ended up taking a sniper bullet to the face after failing an infiltration test so we'll never know if he would have gotten caught eventually. He had very specific preferences and methods so, eventually he probably would have worked through all the 4-6 year old elven males with spare builds and blonde hair in the Barrens and had to go hunting through areas that actually have cops. There were alot of gangs looking for him, though they didn't know it was him. Dystopian as shadowrun is, I would imagine most people would be thoroughly disturbed and pissed off by the ritual rape, torture, and murder of a young child that they know personally.

Chris

[Daddy's Litt...]

I think I would draw the line at cannibalism.

[ElFenrir]

As a player? They won't rape or do sorts of sexual felonies.

I tend to wear the grey(sometimes dark) grey hat. It goes from character to character, but ive had a few white hatted ones, usually in the middle, but alot of the grey/dark greys don't shy at wetwork.

As a GM, whatever kind of game i'm running, but again, i tend to shy away from the sexual felonies again. However, I've used joygirls/joyboys, as contacts, people in campaigns, and the like. The scenes(if any), aren't described and it isn't forced. (Hey, they make good street contacts.)

Im pretty open as a player and GM, basically.

[deek]

Hell, I once had a player that was a serial pedophilic murderer. His partners never found out, but he would lure small boys into out of the way places, gag them, rape them, and then over the course of about 30 minutes slowly tortured them to death. He got kind of creepy and detailed with it, to be honest, but his character was careful and no one ever found out. He ended up taking a sniper bullet to the face after failing an infiltration test so we'll never know if he would have gotten caught eventually. He had very specific preferences and methods so, eventually he probably would have worked through all the 4-6 year old elven males with spare builds and blonde hair in the Barrens and had to go hunting through areas that actually have cops. There were alot of gangs looking for him, though they didn't know it was him. Dystopian as shadowrun is, I would imagine most people would be thoroughly disturbed and pissed off by the ritual rape, torture, and murder of a young child that they know personally.

Chris

The rest of my table would veto that...I mean, I don't think anyone of my players is getting together to live out dark fantasies...and if they did, I think they would get some weird looks...and that is enough to keep it off the table for most people. As a GM, would I allow it? Yeah, but I wouldn't want to get into gritty details...I'd keep it as surface as possible and keep on moving with the story...it could stay as part of his habits and background, but I certainly wouldn't feature it in the game I ran.

[Stahlseele]

...Wetwork, plain and simple.

Organlegging is another that comes to mind and sort of goes hand in hand with the above.

Acts of terrorism that involve innocent victims.

Stand by idly and let other team members "have their way" with a captured prisoner beyond the purpose of interrogation.

I agree, my characters too like to feel their the ones with the white hats (well maybe light gray)

aside from the wetwork and organlegging . . and if i decide something goes boom, something goes boom . . i do send a warning and everybody who does not leave deserves to be blown out of the gene-pool anyways . . nothing sexual from me(well, aside from using RRRRRodgerrrr as an visual aid in questioning people), but i once got information by telling the GM to give me whatever information i wanted in return of me NOT describing in Detail what i was gonna do to the very unfortunate NPC to be questioned by me . .

[DeadLogic]

No pedophilia or rape in my games. I even take it so far as to make sure that a good runner knows what killing a man means, that Joe Security just might want to go home to his wife and kids each night. Stuff like that. I love to give my runners moral qualms about what they're doing sometimes, but I'd never allow them to make amoral or mentally deviant characters, my campaigns are very underdog heroic and I expect professional Runners! As for my character's, I did make an NPC in a game of Vampire: The Masquerade who was Malkavian, and fucking batshit nuts. She would go on dates, seduce men, and take them home and get them ready for sex just to chop them up with her trusty fire axe. She's then eat their organs. I imagine a similar character may work as a ghoul or vampire in SR, hehe. Especially if she has information that forces the runners to keep her twisted self alive. That's what I call moral quandary.

[Whipstitch]

Uh, but that's exactly why Joe Security will shoot you. Joe Security's got a gun; he needs to be shot. To quote cheesey John Wayne movies, "All battles are fought by scared men who would rather be somewhere else." It's either poignant or a load of bull depending on your perspective, but either way it inadvertently makes the point that being in the same boat as the other guy won't stop you from catching a round. Anyway, I suppose you could say my characters tend towards the amoral, but it's more of the self-absorbed greedy type rather than sadism for the sake of sadism. They tend to be somewhat hypocritical; they've got little problem with Blood Magic or organlegging in theory (It's really just another flavor of wetwork), and may even delve into it themselves if given the chance and the right rewards, but that sure as hell doesn't mean they'd trust a blood mage or organlegger. After all, such types are guaranteed to make a profit one way or the other from killing you; bad biz to trust guys who always could make a li'l something on the side by killing you. Generally they don't really see the point of rape, torture, or cannibalism though, since you can't really profit by such things and it's tremendously risky behavior. They do tend towards the whole "honor among thieves" thing though, and typically won't sell out their contacts. They also tend to be overcautious when dealing with things outside of their sphere of talents but filled with (often unfounded) bravado when dealing with things they consider their specialty.

[DTFarstar]

We didn't dwell in game, but he had all the specifics and should he have lived longer than he did then eventually it would have started getting around via contacts and later Lone Star. I present moral quandaries, but honestly most of the people that I play with are.... not immoral precisely, but we largely don't give a damn what happens to anyone who is not related to us directly in some way. We are largely selfish people in that way, I guess. Also, none of us are living out sick fantasies. We know each other very well and one thing that I tend to promote among my friends is absolute honesty. There is literally no question they can ask me that I will not answer. I encourage all of my friends to do the same and largely they do. So, we have no reason to be nervous when gritty things come up, we generally know how each other truly feels about the subject. It also helps that we have nicknamed ourselves "The Jackals" for when anyone shows weakness the group binds together to pull them down. Which isn't to say we kill each other, of course, but we do force each other to face things we otherwise might prefer to avoid and as a whole it makes us all stronger people. We also have a very acerbic sense of humor as a result. In general it has made us capable of facing without discomfort anything at all that is not completely real.

Chris

[CircuitBoyBlue]

There's nothing I wouldn't do, ever. But there's tons of things I've had characters do, and had the rest of the players look at me funny. Depending on which character I'm playing, and the situation, I'll either stand by it or feel bad. And it usually has more to do with how many of the consequences the character is confronted directly with. I'm not sure I've ever had a character who's balked at the idea of blowing up a building that "needed" to be blown up, and accepting some collateral damage. But even if the other guy's a fully-armed assassin specifically out to kill my character, if I sneak up behind him and slit his throat, that's gonna scar me.

And things have changed now that I play a shaman. Theoretically, I'm probably supposed to be protecting the city. So far, it's been a rather loose interpretation of "protect," but I'm at sort of a spiritual crisis point that will either turn me entirely bitter, or give me something to fight for.

[arathian]

As a GM, I never make the NPC opposition too weak. The cops all use Jazz and have an assault rifle and ballistic shield in the trunk.

I have yet to have a hot female elf NPC that didn't have better cyberware than the PCs.

If PCs are bloodthirsty, Aztechnology tries to "recruit" them, leading to retirement if they don't change their ways.

So, there are no limits or rules, but certain behaviors lead to consequences.

-E-

[kzt]

It really depends. Most of my characters (as in the vast majority) have considered themselves good guys and been pretty careful how much force is used, what jobs they take and how they carry them out. Blowing up buildings full of bystanders was something they simply wouldn't do. One had a duty to the emperor bit that would have had her do pretty much anything given valid orders, left on her own she was pretty reasonable. My outlaw biker character wasn't a nice guy at all. Pretty much amoral, a misogynist with a mean streak. There wasn't much he wouldn't do, either for money or just because he liked it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

[Rajaat99]

As a GM, I won't allow my players to rape anyone. It's just wrong. Although, they have killed a baby before. Some how that seems less wrong. Trust me, the baby was asking for it. (I'm sure it's because I'm tired, but I find that hilarious).

[Whipstitch]

The whole "bloodthirsty" talk always makes me nervous, but that's mostly because I once had a GM best described as a Vengeful Old Testament God. Now, if players are stupidly bloodthirsty that's one thing; notoriety and contacts no longer giving you sensitive assignments because the last wetwork job you did caught more headlines than the Mayan Cutter is one thing, but the vengeful Old Testament GM approach to thing like PCs who decide against leaving a witness always hit me as inane when it's easy just to Fade To Black away from the awkward parts of the scenario. Hell, the Vengeful GM once offered us a wetwork job and then promptly got pissed when we accepted. Honestly.

My all time favorite example of this phenomenon happened about the 3rd session I ever had with the Vengeful GM (who I barely knew at that point) and involved the PC that is my forum namesake. I'll be blunt: ol' Whipstitch as I imagined him was the kind of guy who wouldn't have much qualms about selling some poor dead slot's organs if they got cacked in a firefight. It had never came up, but frankly, he was a former Crash Cart implant surgeon who got addicted to painkillers and ended up as a runner, and he had a rather expensive drug habit to fund (he liked speedballing Bliss & Novacoke). He wasn't a bloodthirsty character, per se; actually, he was the only one in the group who consistently used stick 'n' shock and actually stabilized a ganger he got into a fight with on one occasion. It's not like he was jumping people in alleys and selling eyeballs out of the back of his van; he just figured if someone happened to die he could make some cred out of the otherwise unfortunate situation. Anyway, Whipstitch got attacked by an overconfident hitman (more of a friendly rival prior to the attempt on Whip's life) in his apartment and took him out with his monowhip. I decided to to toss him in the bathtub, pulled out my Tag Eraser and MAD scanner and announced my intention to get rid of any RFID tags and to rip out his Cybereyes and implanted commlink while calling up my Fixer for help selling/disposing of the body and to arrange for a place for the team to lay low for a while until he knew why this guy came after him. The GM's reaction might charitably be described as going apeshit. The dumb part is he easily could have easily greased my character simply for waiting around so long to get his ducks in a row rather than simply fleeing the building immediately after the attack.

So really, there's only three things I won't do as a GM: one is punishing my players for doing horrible, terrible things successfully in a reasonable manner. I hate to put it so bluntly, but were a character to rape or torture someone in one of my games they'd likely be better off killing the victim afterwards to avoid leaving a witness. Second, I will never leave my players in the dark as to what kind of social contract will be accepted at the gaming table; we agree to more or less live by a general "alignment" for lack of a better term or we don't play. This, btw, basically means that the aforementioned rape/torture scenario typically won't happen in the first place. Third, I will not throw moral quandaries in front of my players and then viciously punish them for doing something perfectly sensible but morally reprehensible. You gave them an option and they took it; now don't screw them over unless what they did was stupid.