KIlling in the name of, How different is from murder Options

[Chrysalis]

Greets,

It is a bit of a moral dilemma for me and I am trying to figure it out. What makes a runner a professional killer? Is it that they take money for it, or is there a kind of steely professionalism that creates mental barriers so that you are not killing Smith, but the henchman that got in your way.

If the runners are hired to kill someone in a club. In one version of the scenario one of the character's seduces him so that he drinks from a poisoned cup, dying of what might be a stroke or heart attack (until the autopsy of course). In a second version he is lead to the back alley of the bar where the PCs wait and confront him and kill him and his bodyguard in an action movie style hale of bullets. In a third version the PCs corner him in the back alley and beat him to death with tire irons and fists.

It seems to me that the difference between killing and murder is that killing seems to involve James Bond like adversaries and methods and is murder involves plebian weapons with plebian motives.

Am I off base here? Is there a limit to what you consider to be acceptable violence? Is it really about seeing the sensible guns, but not seeing the senseless act?

[Fuchs]

I don't see the difference in those examples, to be honest. The legal definition is pretty clear in all those cases - if you kill someone for money you committ murder, no matter how you do it. Poison use by itself is actually a rather common sign for murder (murder as in the worst kind of killing).

(I am differing between manslaughter, killing, and murder, I think in the US you judge them by degrees.)

[Ryu]

Murder as opposed to Killing is a question of the law. "Professional" is a can of worms on its own. It´s not the method that counts, its the effect. Guranteed death, no witnesses, no unwanted collateral damage come to mind.

[Fleming]

Once the death of another person is planned, deliberately, it's murder. Whether professionally or privately, whether I hire a hitman to arrange an accident for my wife, or push her down the stairs myself, the result is the same. The target's bodyguard, or any innocent bystanders, would - legally - be manslaughter, I think, since you didn't plan for their deaths, but willingly committed actions that led to their demise.

It's a matter of every character's personal ethics, what they're willing to do. Mostly, my players use Tasers and Stun spells for guards and other innocents that get in the way, reserving the killing for those they feel "deserve" it.

[Critias]

The capacity for such work -- and by this I even mean gunning down an unlucky security guard while in the middle of a b&e style job, not just pure wetwork -- is one of the reasons I've long been of the opinion that your average Shadowrunner is somehow fundamentally flawed. Much like I can't help but view "adventurers" in D&D as murderous hobos, there's something wrong with most Shadowrunners, that they end up with the lifestyle they adopt.

Whether it's a glamorous James Bond high-end sort of ritzy Shadowrunner pro, or a gutter-dwelling thug with a crowbar and a stolen Ares Predator... killing, outside of self defense or the defense of others, is killing. People with strong morals don't tend to sign up for that sort of thing as a career path and a lifestyle choice. Soldiers and police officers use violence as an "in defense of others" method (in theory), but I'm sure a stroll down your local death row will introduce you to all sorts of people with character flaws that are not unlike those you might expect on your average Shadowrunner.

That's part of the challenge of making a character, to me. You've got to walk a fine line. You want to -- most of the time -- make someone who's likeable enough to feel like some sort of protagonist, but at the same time they've got to be the sort willing to go on Shadowruns, hang out with the people Shadowrunners hang out with, and do the sort of thing Shadowrunners do (IE, shoot people right in the face for money).

[Fuchs]

What may help in D&D, but maybe not in SR, is to not use our own moral compass, but the setting's. In my D&D campaigns, morality is defined by the world the characters live in. Killing someone over an insult is in many cases expected behaviour, even good and honorable in society.

In SR, it's a bit more difficult, since it's so closely related to our own society and time. But even so it can help if one goes a bit into "how would this be judged by the SR world/society, or in an action movie?" mode.

[Chrysalis]

I think you really do have to have a bit of psychopathy to be able to work as a Shadowrunner. To be able to go to violence from zero to a hundred demands a certain type of personality. The kind that scares people more than any intimidation roll might.

There has to be some kind of statisfaction in being a Shadowrunner for it to become a lifestyle choice, more than simply wearing the trappings. The idea that the Shadowrunner shapes his/her body and mind to be weapons demands something more than posing.

[Apathy]

I saw a documentary once where they had a psychiatrist give Richard Kuklinski (a notorious Mafia hitman in prison) a series of interviews. At the end, the psychiatrist gave his professional opinion that Kuklinski possessed two unusual traits that made him particularly skilled at his job. One, he showed strongly sociopathic tendancies. Two, he had an diminished ability to feel fear. Apparently this 'fearlessness' trait is common among people who chose high risk jobs. Those with a strong social conscience became cops or firemen or similar, and those who grew up in dysfunctional households with violent role models, etc were ideally set up for jobs like his.

Link for those interested: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5740692213665972395

[knasser]

Most evils begin with emotionally detaching oneself from the victim, and killing someone depends on this more than most. Premeditated murder is commonly perceived as more evil than killing someone in the height of battle because the emotional detachment required is both more sustained, lacks the immediate and attributable cause of a momentary anger or threat and, particularly, indicates a lower threshold for achieving the mental level of intent to kill. I.e. if you kill for money as opposed to because you found someone attacking your partner, that indicates that the necessary level of intent is arrived at too easily as far as society is concerned. Therefore it's considered a greater problem to be rectified with punishment.

In your poison - tire iron progression, one might consider the beating to death to be worse because it demands a greater degree of emotional detachment. It might even indicate a pleasure in such methods if it is chosen over the method of poison. But I think all distinctions are heavily over ridden by the simple fact of pre-meditated murder. If some bizarre circumstance (such as only happens in movies and RPGs) happened whereby someone murdered another for "the greater good" etc., then the quick poison method would be considered a lesser evil than the tire irons, because it would be kinder. But you can't tell the difference between two shades of grey when you're standing in the bottom of a coal mine. (Figuratively speaking).

[Critias]

I imagine sociopathy's pretty common amongst Shadowrunners. *Good* for them, in fact, if you look at it purely from a "these are traits a sociopath exhibits," and hold that up next to the job requirements for being a Shadowrunner.

[john_doe]

Although, in the D&D line of thinking...D&D rewards you for killing things. The tougher the monster you defeat, the more XP you get, so the murderous mentality is dumbed down or desensitized in the name of character advancement.

Where in SR, you can successfully complete a run and not kill anyone (except wetwork jobs of course) and still gain just as much Karma (or more if the GM deems so) as if you had killed everyone along the way.

But then again, in D&D you are the heroes that come to save the day.
In SR, you are a nobody trying to make it to tomorrow.

In my groups games, it's just mutually accepted by everyone that due to the nature of the biz of running in the shadows...killing someone is all in a day's work. Would you be a shadowrunner otherwise?


Didn't SR3's Shadowrun Companion have a flaw that prevented you from killing people, or at least made it so you didn't have to or something like that?

[Heath Robinson]

If some bizarre circumstance (such as only happens in movies and RPGs) happened whereby someone murdered another for "the greater good" etc.,

Bizarre circumstance that only happens in movies and RPGs? It's done every day by all manner of people; religious, secular, professionals, amateurs, Americans, Europeans, Britons, Africans, Asians, Australians, New Zealanders. Intelligence services do this on a regular basis, although you can claim that it isn't murder because it's done to protect others from misfortune - in which case nobody can ever get murdered for the greater good either.

I'll now contribute to the topic constructively; the world of 2070 is full of people that value the lives of others little, as you might expect in a world that is so full of problems and low living standards. The kind of person who is willing to kill others in order to survive is not going to be rare, the only abnormal thing about Shadowrunners is the amount of effort they're willing to put into this earning their pay and the amount of danger they accept as part of their lives.

[Siege]

In D&D, typically you're killing non-humans - specifically, non-humans that don't even resemble humans all that much. Dwarves? Short humans. Elves? Skinny humans. Orcs? Goblins? Not so much.

I distinguish between killing and murder thusly:

1. Murder is killing for "bad" or "evil" personal pleasure. You have the desire to kill, be it for money or sexual gratification and so on. Example: I torture someone to death because I like to listen to the screams.

By comparison, a Soldier might take pleasure in keeping his buddies alive, so he's glad he was able to kill the hostile before the hostile was able to attack. That would be an example of a socially acceptable (generally speaking) reason for being glad that someone is dead and that you were able to successfully kill him. While this can be argued as being selfish, it is generally acknowledged as a good reason, versus the bad reasons as listed above.

What are the good reasons? Ordered to do so (sometimes), in defense of self or others (usually).

2. Killing is the act of taking a human life. There are no judgments or evaluations as to the motives or situations underlying the act - just the nature of the act itself.

To paraphrase: all murder is killing, but not all killing is murder.

-Siege

[Spike]

I have a lower opinion of humanity in general, so I don't necessarily think shadowrunners must exibit signs of sociopathy or psychopathy.

May help them adjust if they came from a nice suburban corp family, but if they came from the barrens then killing and dying are just how they were raised, its a fact of life.

Human life only has inherent value if you were taught to give it one, and a LOT of people never learn that. More in Shadowrun than today, but I don't think exceptionally so.

[KCKitsune]

Actually, unless you're playing a "Evil" campaign, then most, if not all, of the killing in a D&D adventure are evil creatures that have it coming.

In Shadowrun I would try to have my character use non-lethal methods of taking down the corpsec... if for no other reason than they might take you alive rather than geek you instantly.

[Wesley Street]

I know what the legal definitions are but when Vorstedt flashes his diplomatic immunity papers at the end of Lethal Weapon 2 and Riggs shoots him in the head anyway everyone cheers. That's total murder in the first degree and plays off of the notion of a "moral majority" overriding the rule of law but you can't help feeling satisfied that the bad guy was getting what he was due. So if a shadowrunner takes a wetwork assignment to off a corporate exec who has been conducting genetic experiments on innocent children that's a "job." If he's hired to off a priest who refuses to sell his church property to a developer, that's "murder". So is shooting someone who doesn't get off "your" barstool. Anyone but a complete sociopath or dissociative psychotic would know the difference, no matter what the upbringing. Thugs in the ghetto know that murder is wrong but that it's also one of the costs of business and killing of innocents, while sometimes unavoidable, is reprehensible (if only because it brings the law down on you).

[PBTHHHHT]

And there's always felony murder when you're committing a dangerous felony and there's unintentional killing.

[Wesley Street]

I think a way to wiggle around the corpsec security guard thing is to view them as enemy soldiers, which is really what they are. They are extraterritorial and the rules of law and the rules of war create a clear distinction between the two.

Killing Old Gus who is protecting his family gas station with a shotgun? Bad.
Killing Joe Sixpack the Mitsuhama Security thug? A-OK.

[Critias]

Which is why some GMs go out of their way to give corpsec guards some personality (inasmuch as it's possible, depending on the situation).

Remember the cop in Reservoir Dogs? When it was a hundred boys in blue lined up outside the jewelry shop, he was just a cop. When he got his ass tied to a chair, his ear cut off, and the gas can came out, he started crying about how he's got kids, and a wife, and blah blah blah blah blah.

Which...still didn't work on that particular "Shadowrunner," but, hey. It was the actor (to an extent) ad-libbing some low blows at Michael Madsen (who'd just had a child), and the same basic principle.

[kzt]

No, it's murder. Like most criminals, you can make all sorts of arguments about how "she had it coming" but murder is what it is. Your character is a the same moral level as the guy who shoots people in a 7-11 for $213.

[knasser]

Bizarre circumstance that only happens in movies and RPGs? It's done every day by all manner of people; religious, secular, professionals, amateurs, Americans, Europeans, British, Africans, Asians, Australians, New Zealanders. Intelligence services do this on a regular basis, although you can claim that it isn't murder because it's done to protect others from misfortune - in which case nobody can ever get murdered for the greater good either.

People murder each other for the greater good everyday in these countries and these professions? I require evidence of that.

As to the view held by several here that murder is only murder if condemned by society, I disagree completely. The act remains the same act regardless of whether your culture or leader congratulates you for it. The argument extended above exonerates every Nazi perpetrator of the Holocaust, Ariel Sharon and countless others. And to say that a soldier is not murdering someone because he's "defending his buddies" in no way changes that he has just shot someone dead. That he may or may not be able to justify it (and if he is not defending someone that did not themselves force the attacker to resort to violence, then he probably cannot without recourse to personal profit), does not change what is done.

To define murder as "unlawful killing" is to declare the legal system an arbiter of morale action. We have seen repeatedly throughout history that this is hopelessly fallable.

[knasser]

I think a way to wiggle around the corpsec security guard thing is to view them as enemy soldiers, which is really what they are. They are extraterritorial and the rules of law and the rules of war create a clear distinction between the two.

Which works so long as you have convinced yourself that there was no moral blame for having invaded the country and put your "soldiers" there in the first place:

Shadowrunners break into high-security Aries corporate enclave.
Get surprised by guard. Shadowrunner A shoots guard dead.

Later, Shadowrunner A: "Hey, it wasn't murder. I had to protect my buddy."


Dubious. Very, very dubious. What were the motivations for the run again? If it's money, I think you've failed at morality.

[Critias]

They are extraterritorial and the rules of law and the rules of war create a clear distinction between the two.

The rules of law and rules of war only do so for other soldiers, though.

Shadowrunners aren't.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

I'd also say that murder is murder. Even if it's justifiable (and I won't get my hands dirty in a debate about what's justifiable and what's not), it's still murder. Part of what makes a cause "the greater good" is that people are willing to accept consequences in pursuit of it, and that includes moral consequences. Say I believe in Cause X. If I'm willing to kill for cause X, but I'm not willing to start thinking of myself as a murderer for Cause X, then maybe Cause X isn't really all that great, because it can't trump whatever moral self-image I have. But if I go into the situation knowing it will require the absolute self-sacrifice of my conscience, and ruin my chances of ever being a good person, and I'm still willing to do it, then obviously it is the greater good, at least in my mind.

As far as SR goes, most of my characters are pretty selfish, and believe that yes, they may be murderers, but if the "might makes right" system can be used against them most of the time, they should be able to use it in their favor once in a while. As a person, I'd take issue with that, but just as I wouldn't make an RPG character with my RL skillsets of "Meaningless Paperwork/3" and "Watching Cartoons/6*," I also wouldn't make an RPG character with my set of morals and fears, because then wouldn't be going on runs, I'd be working a government job and watching cartoons all the time. My current character is probably a bit less selfish. He's an urban shaman that uses the ways of the city (which involve killing) to protect the city. I envision him using lethal force more when the murder rate is up, and less lethal force when it's down, but such fluxuation doesn't really happen in the game, that I can tell (the GM has never said "murder rates are down this week!"). So a lot of times I kinda just do something really violent, and then see how the group reacts, and base his future decisions off that. But I feel extremely flaky for doing it this way.

*this would be a specialization in "Futurama," if we were talking about an RPG set in the present era, and I have no idea what it would translate to in 2070.

[Heath Robinson]

People murder each other for the greater good everyday in these countries and these professions? I require evidence of that.

Let me first ask you how you so define the "greater good" with regards to scope. Is it that you believe that the "greater good" requires that the whole world benefits? Or that some small part of it benefits?

For the former, we are dealing with fewer people; those that believe that the world would be improved by the group they kill in the name of. Muslims with the unquestioned belief that only Islam can save people from eternal torment can be said to be killing for the "greater good", as can Christians or Hindus that do the same. Patriots that believe that their country is beneficial for humanity in the military or intelligence services that are ordered to kill are doing so for the "greater good". The racist that is also a patriot that kills "those durned black folk" because they believe that only a racially pure country is stable (and therefore best able to benefit the world) and the ecological extremist that blows up buildings for their cause because they believe that humans are killing the earth both are doing it for the "greater good".

For the latter, anyone who kills for the interests of a group is killing for the "greater good". One can make an argument that since any benefit to one small part of humanity still benefits humanity as a whole, so this position is valid.

You can take issue with my definition of the "greater good" as a purely subjective phenomenon, but there can be no agreement as to what the "greater good" entails in universal practical terms and whether one goes for a utilitarian sum of all or individual benefits is something else that not all will agree upon.