Murder in Shadowrun Options

[mike_the_fish]

Hey folks. I am a veteran SR gamemaster, and I am just about to start up a new gaming group/campaign - first time playing 4th edition. One of the things I am hoping to avoid is to have all my characters degrade into evil psychotics. Here's what I mean:

Shadowrunners are not "good" people. Not by a long shot - basically the players are pretending to be criminals for hire. Obviously not your average "shining knight saving the princess" type fare, and that's fine. BUT, one of the elements of Shadowrun (or at least my own take on Shadowrun) is that the characters are - in a way - better or more honorable than the corporations that they work for. Sort of an irony thing; the PC's Shadowrunners, even though they are criminals and are villified in the media, are more "human" than the megacorporations who have a benevolent and positive reputation with the populace.

Don't get me wrong - I have no desire to run with a bunch of Robin Hood goody two shoes (this IS Shadowrun after all). But, at the same time I also don't want my party to be made up of a bunch of psychopathic scumbags who have absolutely no moral compass at all. I don't like "evil" campaigns personally - not that they are bad or whatever, just not my cup of tea.

Most of the time, my groups from earlier SR editions have been just fine, but invariably there crops up some sort of circumstance where they have captured the sec guard, pumped him for information, and then decide to ventilate his head because leaving him behind alive is "inconvenient". Now killing in a fight when the opponent is trying to kill you right back is cool - happens all the time on runs. But I would really like to foster an environment where other alternatives besides cold-blooded murder of helpless prisoners are considered. Know what I mean?

Anyways, I am planning on talking to my players about it, and that should probably be ok (they are a good bunch of guys), but I am wondering - anybody have any other ideas? Bear in mind that I don't want to be all heavy-handed, but I also don't want my campaign to degrade into an "evil" campaign.

[deek]

Well, I'd make the morality a function of nuyen. Meaning, the Johnson or whatever that is picking up the tab, puts those objectives into the job...s/he says that if you have zero body count, you get X nuyen as a bonus. This can be explained a variety of ways...maybe another Johnson doesn't ask for zero body count, but he requests that stealth is important and s/he wants no traces the team was there.

I mean, to me, this is the easiest way to do it...you don't end up needing to talk to your players on the side, but you are rewarding them, in-game, for following behavior that you want them to have.

Also, by making the groups opposition "evil", that portrays the runners (which normally are a group of criminals) as being good, mainly because they are less evil. And honestly, don't make it convenient to kill the helpless prisoners...if you don't put your group in those situations, then you don't have to worry about it.

[mfb]

the most important thing is to tell your players what you're trying to do. changing the tone of the game is a big thing, and it's not something that you generally want to spring on your players unannounced--they'll just end up confused and possibly angry, because they types of responses that worked very well in their previous games will suddenly no longer be viable. you've gotta let them know what's up.

one thing that might help nip the problem in the bud is to prevent them from playing archtypical loners with no friends or family. that's the type of character that easily devolves into an unthinking murder-machine, so don't let them hand you a character sheet until they've told you about who their parents are, who their spouse or SO is, what their kids' names are, who their friends in the neighborhood are.

[Moon-Hawk]

Anyways, I am planning on talking to my players about it, and that should probably be ok (they are a good bunch of guys)

You've already got the best approach. If this doesn't work, nothing will.

[clangedinn]

Aye talk to your players. I am in the same mindset as you. I talked to mine and most of them agreed on the subject.

Normally i attempt to remind players that NPC gaurds and what not are people to. Who is to say the gunshot surgery victims mother is not vengeful enough to hire someone for the sole purpose of finding who killed her little johnny and exact revenge.

They are ultimatly criminals yes but they ahve to be smart one and leaving a pile of corpses is generally not very smart. thats what narcojet pistols are for.

[Stahlseele]

well . . i can't resist . . every time this comes up i somehow have to mention that shadowrunners are usually professional criminals, so technically it's allways an "evil" campaign O.o

[Raven Bloodeyes]

You could always use Laesel or a spell to mess up his memories and all too, instead of killing him....

But yeah, just nicely talking to them is probably the way to go, if they know you won't use every guard they let live to try and kill the whole party, then they lose their incentive to be so "utilitarian" about killing them all...

[Particle_Beam]

On the other hand, the captured guard will tell the authorities all he knows about the Shadowrunners, like behaviour, gender, equipment, size, metatype, characteristical cyberware, and any other peculiarities he managed to lay his eyes upon. Even codenames and faces. And with cybereyes, who do have the possibility to record everything that has happened perfectly for later, it is quite a liability to let the captives go. That is indeed one problem that the Shadowrunners will face in the world of 2070.

[sungun]

part of what makes shadowrun so great is that morals can be so ambiguous. putting some more vexing moral choices than whether or not to kill a corp gaurd will get the players thinking more seriously about all the moral choices their characters make. and making characters make obvious moral choices will force them to see themselves as evil if they make the evil choice.

example of an obvious choice: the runners are hired to steal a crate. during the course of the run, the players find out that the crate is full of medicine needed to combat an outbreak of some illness in the barrens. the runners find out that the barrens community will be in a real hard way without the medicine.

example of ambiguous: someone the runners knows gets killed. they find out that the guy was an active humanis policlub member and subsequently find out that humanis policlub members, particularly politically active ones have been getting geeked. they find out that it's a (vampire/ork gang of runners/something/one meta) specifically targeting these guys. and something like this is nice because it's not a binary choice. they could not get involved. they could report it. they could kill the killer. they could lend the killer a hand. they could mediate (probably the most moral, if perhaps most futile move.)

you might try asking a particular player to play a particularly moral character... pick someone that you think would enjoy the role. that person will be a moral compass for the party, and it could cause some intraparty conflict. i think intraparty is often one of the more interesting aspects of role playing.

also, if the players somehow get a reputation for being brutal, they should expect to be treated brutally when they're the ones who need a little mercy.

[cx2]

Think someone might have already mentioned the drug in Arsenal which screws up memory, that would be a good way to go too. Still talk to the players, but make sure they know such a drug exists and can keep a little on hand just in case. While runners are criminals they don't all have to be murderers, especially not cold blooded. Doing wetwork even gets you notoriety, which implies even in the shadows there is only a certain type of person who does wetwork. Killing a guard like that isn't really any better than wetwork morally, it just won't result in word spreading around.

Hmm alternative idea to create trouble - perhaps a boss in the security division is doing one of these morale things where he spends a day or two working as a grunt. He's naturally in what should be a quiet area, and very secure, but something causes a run to be targetted there. Perhaps the Johnson has bad intel and thinks something valuable is there instead of where it is or something. Thus the guard might actually be someone quite valuable, which the runners don't find out until someone comes after them.

[Cardul]

Well, I don't know..how human are your players? Are they naturally psychopaths? If so..then there is not much we can help you with. However, I like this:

I name my security guards. I give them hopes, dreams, some I give families. And, like all good family men, they carry pictures of their family with them. I still remember the time some runners I was GMing for were decided not to kill aa guard..not because he pleaded for himself or anything like that, but because they had heard him talking to his buddy before the team jumped the sec, about the guy being so glad he was finally going to retire next week, and was looking forward to finally getting to spend time with his grand kids. When the sam was going to shoot the guy in the forehead, he just couldn't bring himself to blow the brains out of an old grandfather who was crying...

Remember, guards are people to..many players will actually stop and not kill someone if they really realize that person is not a threat to them. More, though, I like the Public Awareness and stuff..if a team gets known for using non-lethal force most of the time, then security are less likely to immediately escalate to lethal force, either. If, however, they, like one Samurai I saw ina group, use an assault cannon on a RECEPTIONIST! Then...well...that is what they make Banshees and light security tanks for. Escalate response in direct proportion to the visciousness of the PCs..that's how I always do it..Or..you could run in Neo-tokyo, where, pretty much, using guns is frowned upon, and let them try and figure out how to do runs using firearms and such as a last resort..

[Critias]

More, though, I like the Public Awareness and stuff..if a team gets known for using non-lethal force most of the time, then security are less likely to immediately escalate to lethal force, either.

A ridiculous statement repeated often enough does not stop being ridiculous.

If you're waving a gun around, no one magically knows or cares if you're packing gel rounds, stick and shock, or explosive ammo. You're waving a gun around. Even if you fire that gun, your average security guard is going to hear a bang and see his buddy fall down. While the pee's running down his leg and his adrenaline's up, he's not going to go "Oh, hey, I just noticed, Frank isn't bleeding. Aww, these guys aren't that bad! I don't need my gun for this!"

Remember, stun damage is still the sort you get from beating someone with a bat or a tire iron (which are both certainly lethal weapons, legally). Stun damage is not friendly damage. Stun damage does not tickle. Stun damage does not mean the guards will immediately become aware of the fact that your 'runner team is just a bunch of scrappy underdogs, out to right society's wrongs and do so with as little force as necessary.

You're still criminals in the middle of an armed invasion of the workplace that it's their job to protect, and you just shot someone.

Yes, the radio traffic for something obnoxious like a missile launcher or machinegun will be more frantic than for a pistol (which is why "a weapon is a weapon" isn't quite the phrase I'm looking for)... but the simple fact is an armed intruder is still bad news, and certainly not something corporate security is going to train to take lightly. If someone's got a gun, I promise you the security/police assumption is going to be that lethal force is the correct response. When the shit hits the fan and bullets are flying, no one's going to stop and swap over to gel rounds even if they happen to notice that the shotgun that just downed Charlie was a beanbag round instead of a slug.

[Riley37]

This topic comes up a lot; see also the Power and Lethality thread, and the Organlegging thread, both recent.

I see a difference between "we avoid killing because it sometimes has inconvenient consequences" and "we avoid killing because we sometimes have empathy for the helpless guard as a human being". If what you really want is the latter, then ask for it as such.

Although Critias has some strong points, at a certain level of reputation, it *would* matter. If someone's passing through Sherwood Forest, and they run into Robin Hood's Merry Men, they know that if they surrender, they're likely to get out alive; whereas in the case of unknown bandits anywhere else, they might well fight to the death, on the theory that generic honorless bandits are likely to abuse then kill anyone who surrenders. Closer to reality, I'd bet that a substantial percentage of bank workers in the time and place of Jesse James, knew that he tended not to kill. One could argue that no shadowrunner ever should get recognized in the first place; and if your story *only* includes missions of infiltrating guarded facilities to secretly steal McGuffins, then that's true. On another hand, I'm playing in a Resistance to Occupation themed campaign, and it might indeed be useful to develop a Robin Hood rep such that certain kinds of bystanders are more likely to turn a blind eye, rather than calling for the HTRT.

[Critias]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that in the long(er) run, knocking folks out instead of killing them might do you some good (just like it might do you some harm, because just like in real life any GM worth their salt runs all this stuff as situationally dependent). There's a difference between corp security coming after you and corp security coming after you. Just take a look at the reaction today that your average police department will show, between just another murder case being reported, and a crime scene full of dead cops. When something is made personal, it is generally very bad for the person that has pissed off the security forces involved, as opposed to simply disrupted their normal workaday routine.

But that's a little longer term sort of thing. It was the phrase "immediately escalate to lethal force" that bugged me out of the text I quoted (which was why I quoted only it). Reputation or no reputation, the middle of a firefight isn't the time to bank on someone recognizing you as a cheerful ne'er-do-well instead of a stone cold killer. Corporate security will react (in the "immediately escalate") sense the way they've been trained to react. If you flash a gun, they'll go for their own slice of the corporate defense budget. They won't get a gun pointed at them (much less fired) and go "Hey, hear that distinct ricochet? I'm pretty sure these are gel rounds. Rather than return fire and dive for cover, I'll go for my nightstick since it deals Stun damage, too, and I don't want to escalate this encounter to one full of lethal force."

They'll react like, well, like a criminal just pointed a gun at them. If they react at all, it will be with a level of violence appropriate to the appearance of the weapon being levelled at them (and, because it's a dystopian future and authority figures are the ever-present bad guys, they'll often overreact to that level of violence, one-upping whoever it is they're reacting to if they're capable of it).

[cx2]

Word might spread from the Johnson too, giving a team more notoriety (at least in the shadows if nowhere else) for often creating high body counts. This will influence the types of people who hire the team too, since not all Johnsons are cold hearted either... as well as the ones who just don't want to leave a mess behind.

[Whitelaughter]

You've already got the most important thing - communication with your players.

Another option though - professional courtesy? The security guard is also just a goon for hire. If there's an attitude of "you're hired to get in, I'm hired to keep you out, nothing personal, why make life difficult for each other", why not be friendly? If you see one of the guards at a gig, and he buys you a drink and warns you that he'll have to let his boss know you were here...*tomorrow morning when he goes back to work*...the comraderie should make viciousness unlikely.

Also, with the more rascist Japanocorps, both guards and Shadowrunners may feel they have more in common with each other than with their bosses/Johnsons.

Finally, with huge amounts of crime, you can point out that Lone Star etc can't be bothered with 'the little stuff' - it takes cold blooded murder (or bribes) to get them to care. Dark and gritty, but still encourages avoiding the worst crimes.

[Mäx]

Critias: I can see were you're coming from with the quards not donwgrading the lethality of their response just becouse the runners are using less-than lethal methods of taking then down.
Put i don't understand why you insist that the quards first response is lethal, it is after all very hard to interrogate dead runners (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)
I would say it's more probable that the quards respond with lethal worse if the team has a reputation of killing everybody in their way.

[Critias]

Critias: I can see were you're coming from with the quards not donwgrading the lethality of their response just becouse the runners are using less-than lethal methods of taking then down.
Put i don't understand why you insist that the quards first response is lethal, it is after all very hard to interrogate dead runners (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)
I would say it's more probable that the quards respond with lethal worse if the team has a reputation of killing everybody in their way.

Do you know any cops?

I know more than my share, and am quite friendly with more than most people. I've done citizen's police academies, done volunteer work to assist with law enforcement training, I've gone shooting with them, I've applied to be a cop a few times. Just as much, though, I've talked guns with them (since they're a hobby of mine). You know how every single one of them said he'd respond upon interacting with me, once I identify myself as a concealed carry permit holder? Say, during a traffic stop? With gun drawn and pointed at me. Period.

That's how they're trained to respond to weapons. They want to go home at the end of their shift, period. They don't take any chances, even with a law-abiding citizen who's politely telling the cop he has his legally registered concealed carry weapon on him.

Now look at your average Shadowrunner. Corp security runs into him (a) where he's not supposed to be, (b) normally in the middle of the night, © and look at the sort of gear your average 'runner team carries around with them. How do you think the even more militarized, paranoid, trigger happy, brutish, stereotypically evil authoritarian security forces of the future are going to respond not to being politely informed during a routine traffic stop about a single person's legally registered handgun...but upon responding to alarm systems to find a half-dozen street scum, mohawks and cyberarms all around, dripping with submachineguns?

They're not going to respond to an alarm, sprint there, and go "Hey! You! Hold on a second! I'm afraid we have to ask you to leave, buddy!" They're not going to run at them with a stun baton, or go hand-to-hand, or something.

They're paid, paramilitary, security that are responding to armed intruders, of the sort who are generally positively dripping with very obviously military-grade hardware. Corp security is going to respond appropriately. They're going to cover the Shadowrunners with the biggest guns they've got on them, and if someone twitches wrong when a member of the security detail approaches to start cuffing people, bullets will start flying.

[Whitelaughter]

Sure RW cops will shoot - and then they have to put up with a mile of paperwork if they do fire. Making it much easier to persuade them not to (which is kinda the point).

A consideration that hasn't come up yet - megacorps are huge - independent nation states. The 'rules' will change from place to place. You're crossing into an arcology from a slum district? Expect to be welcomed with open machine guns. You're sneaking through a corp residential area where the teens are famed for opening up the guards with paintball guns...a wildly different response is likely. At least, until you blow one away.

Also, your decker can force the guards to switch to non-lethal by hacking their comms and giving an order to take prisoners; or even that this is a live exercise, and their next pay rise is dependant on how well they do against the elite team that's about to take them down - but only if you're using non-lethal rounds. If there is life fire coming their way, they won't *care* about the fake orders you've sent through, or even the mind muddling of your mage.

[suppenhuhn]

I'd say that if the group has a habit of killing their prisoners they should get a notoriety increase as an execution is pretty easy to distinguish from a gunfight and at least your own mr johnson knows you were there.
also after a while the security forces will be less willing to take prisoners themselves if they suspect the group to be murdering their colleagues and since they can't really say who the murderers are they might already have shot members of other runnerteams which will draw the attention of those to the chars as well.

[Snow_Fox]

the most important thing is to tell your players what you're trying to do. changing the tone of the game is a big thing, and it's not something that you generally want to spring on your players unannounced--they'll just end up confused and possibly angry, .

right, we've never gone that way so you have to consider how you're presenting the world where the players degrade to whack jobs.

film examples of runners who are not pschotic killers are Brandon Fraser in the "Mummy" movies. Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Damn near anything by Bogart (go head try to explain how Maltese Falcon or big Sleep don't look like shadowruns gone bad.)Heck you could argue that Sherlock Holmes is a good example, in The Blue Carbuncle he lets the criminal go free, so long as he recovers the loot. most James Bond movie plots could be shadowruns is the agent is hired by the government instead of being assigned to it etc.

[kzt]

Due to the wackyness of various reporting structures I've had campus police showing up to investigate just what I'm doing at 3am working in a closed building fiddling a half million dollars worth of gear. They don't just just saunter up and say "Hey Jack, what's up!". They come in in pairs moving very quietly and carefully with guns drawn. They haven't ever pointed guns at me, but at the floor a few feet in front of me, which doesn't really slow them very much at all, it just makes me feel better. And these are campus police, who are typically willing to take more crap than the city cops.

If you popped out aggressively with something that looked vaguely like a weapon under those circumstances I think things would tend to get very loud.

However in NM the cops just assume that everyone has a gun in their car. It's fully legal. So they don't get bent out of shape unless you look like you are thinking about getting it. You can't keep doing felony stops on every minivan with mom and the kids. The other cops laugh at you.

[Snow_Fox]

I don't think you're posting in the right htread

[kzt]

No, right thread. I'm agreeing with Critias's message 18. mostly.

[hyzmarca]

If you're worried about eye cameras, don't want to guard to identify you, and want a little extra money on the side, is scooping out the prisoners eyeballs, dosing him with Laes, P-Fixing him, and tricking him out as a 10 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) blind gay whore more or less immoral than just shooting him in the head and selling his organs? This is a very important question that must be answered in order to get a campaign that is more moral.

On the reputation for using non-lethal force, I'd recommend keeping two guns on you at all times, one loaded with gel rounds and one with ex-ex; color code them. Then, pick a cool name for your team and a cool logo. Make up some badges and patches with the team name and logo on them, as well as some uniform jackets and nametags for all of your teammates clearly displaying their streetnames. Then, find a character of the old trideo reporter archetype and offer an exclusive interview. During this interview explain that your team always uses non-lethal weapons against guards unless attacked with lethal force and explain your gun color coding system so that the people watching can tell which level of force you are using if they see you shooting at someone. Also, show off your uniform jacket with the badges and patches give the street names and faces of all of your teammates and carefully explain the many ways how the public can identify members of your team and tell them apart from other shadowrunner teams who might kill indiscriminately. Post this same information on the matrix later.