The Johnson Interview, Professional Etiquette Options

[kzt]

SR sleep gas has pretty much none of the drawbacks of real "knockout gas". It's pretty darn safe and extremely effective and predictable.

[Yerameyahu]

Yeah, unreasonably so. I assume they put that in for the same reason Star Trek has phasers (plot magic).

[Ascalaphus]

Maybe your group just has different tastes than ours, but actually we find party infighting to be pretty uninteresting—it gets in the way of things and it's hard to play a confrontation you're not invested in when the other side is also a real person (the GM is too diffuse for me to consider anyone he or she plays "real" unless there's some bad GMing going on).

Why can't you be invested in the confrontation? If you're having fun playing a character who's not a total monster, then getting invested in that confrontation shouldn't be a problem.

And why should such a confrontation be so terrible? Suppose it's about how to do a certain job - the Principled Guy doesn't want the orphans shot. The other team members dislike it, so they take the price for the sleep grenades out of his share of the payout. Or certain types of jobs - if a character really refuses to wetwork against environmentalists, then just tell the Fixer not to call the team for those kinds of jobs. There'll be other jobs.

It gets more interesting if the GM doesn't start out by offering a morally unacceptable job, but it only becomes apparent later on. This can create a good party conflict, or a challenge to find a morally acceptable solution to the problem.

More significantly, this conflict is forced because of OOC considerations—realistically, if someone is costing you money by complaining about jobs you and the rest of the team are fine with, you're going to stop working with them. That's a little harder to do when, again, you're basically telling a player "go off and make a new character", but the fact that this doesn't happen means you've got a tension where it's no longer possible for everyone to play their characters reasonably.

If your group had a highly effective hacker - one of the most reliable you've ever worked with - but he doesn't want the group to take orphanage butchering jobs, would you ditch him for that? Or suppose it's the only guy that the mage trusts with his body when he's astrally projecting, and he objects to a torture job, would you ditch him?
A total do-gooder doesn't make a good SR character, but that doesn't mean you have to willing to take every job. Personally, I'd trust someone with principles with my back a lot more than the sociopath who's willing to do whatever it takes.

Principles don't have to be total; you can play a guy who's okay with killing the target, but not innocent bystanders. It limits your options a bit, but you can take comfort that he's less likely to kill the rest of the team so he won't have to share the payout.

Many things. First, you've got an excellent chance of still ending up with a bunch of corpses from your sleep gas grenade. Second, it's harder to use—unless you're packing a respirator, chemsuit, etc. you need to either wait for it to disperse or make sure never to use it in the direction you need to go. Third, it has few of the advantages of a gun—you still create witnesses, the opposition has a full combat turn to do things, etc. If you find yourself in this situation you can still make it work, but if you let the J know in advance that that's what you're going to do it's not at all unreasonable for them to think that maybe someone who might take a more straightforward approach would be a better choice.

I'm not saying it's as easy as the brutal solution, but it's still playable. The game has a lot of ways to make it work; it doesn't force you to play the butchering psycho. The wealth of nonlethal solutions in Shadowrun is one of the game's strong points in my opinion.

[Kagetenshi]

SR sleep gas has pretty much none of the drawbacks of real "knockout gas". It's pretty darn safe and extremely effective and predictable.

Not really—I guess it hinges on whether staying in a cloud from a gas grenade during the same turn counts as additional doses. If you say that it doesn't then Hyper works better than I'd remembered; it has an Immediate damage code but less than Deadly Stun, so the fact that gas grenades make a cloud that sticks around for two turns doesn't make people dead; at the end of the first turn the targets probably take S stun, then at the end of the second turn they take S+3 Stun from the additional damage effect of Hyper, leaving them at a 5-box Physical wound and in no danger of bleeding out (but being caught in the edge of an additional exposure will probably kill them outright).

On the other hand, if you don't interpret it that way anyone who doesn't manage to evacuate the cloud immediately will be taking Overdoses on both turns of exposure, so they're both D stun for a total of 25 boxes of damage (10 Stun, 15 Physical). That'll outright kill most humans.

Either way, far from what I'd call safe or predictable. Effective, sure.

Why can't you be invested in the confrontation? If you're having fun playing a character who's not a total monster, then getting invested in that confrontation shouldn't be a problem.

You know, I'm going to have to punt on replying to this bit for a bit while I figure out what on earth I meant with that phrasing. I think the general line of the idea was mostly just "maybe we just don't like intra-party conflict as much as other groups".

And why should such a confrontation be so terrible? Suppose it's about how to do a certain job - the Principled Guy doesn't want the orphans shot. The other team members dislike it, so they take the price for the sleep grenades out of his share of the payout.

Right, but it's not just about the cost of the equipment—as mentioned, the less-lethal approach is less reliable, carries more risks, etc. It increases odds of job failure and of blowback. You need to start practicing your actuarial skills to make a serious attempt at putting a nuyen value on all of this, which simply doesn't sound fun to me.

Or certain types of jobs - if a character really refuses to wetwork against environmentalists, then just tell the Fixer not to call the team for those kinds of jobs. There'll be other jobs.

But again, you destroy believability when the rest of the team that doesn't care suddenly decides to pass up all the nuyen they could be making just to keep the squeaky wheel greased. This is solvable only through actions that aren't fun (the character gets kicked out of the team) or blatant metagaming (the GM doesn't offer jobs that the player would turn down up front, and increases the number of other jobs to compensate).

It gets more interesting if the GM doesn't start out by offering a morally unacceptable job, but it only becomes apparent later on. This can create a good party conflict, or a challenge to find a morally acceptable solution to the problem.

How is it a "good party conflict", though? In the general case, this just devolves into the aforementioned actuarial exercise.

If your group had a highly effective hacker - one of the most reliable you've ever worked with - but he doesn't want the group to take orphanage butchering jobs, would you ditch him for that? Or suppose it's the only guy that the mage trusts with his body when he's astrally projecting, and he objects to a torture job, would you ditch him?

The first can resolve the issue, but it's difficult—in particular, it relies on being exceptionally good at something very useful, which generally takes a fair amount of cash and karma to do. It's simply not reasonable to take a typical (or even fairly well-optimized) starting character and say "but he's so good we can't afford to lose him", which means you're back to explaining why anyone sticks with the character until they get those skills. The second raises the stakes, as now you're talking about replacing two people, but it also changes the original situation—you now effectively have two people following the code of conduct (the character and the other character who won't run without the first character).

A total do-gooder doesn't make a good SR character, but that doesn't mean you have to willing to take every job. Personally, I'd trust someone with principles with my back a lot more than the sociopath who's willing to do whatever it takes.

Sure, you don't have to. Having a firm and firmly-followed set of principles, though, not only eliminates whole classes of jobs but also eliminates classes of "watching your back"—I'd rather have someone who doesn't like killing bystanders but will than someone who simply won't.

Principles don't have to be total; you can play a guy who's okay with killing the target, but not innocent bystanders. It limits your options a bit, but you can take comfort that he's less likely to kill the rest of the team so he won't have to share the payout.

Apropos of nothing, but this really doesn't follow—the rest of the team aren't innocent bystanders, and in many reasonable moralities they certainly count as "in the game" and thus fair targets. It's much better to rely on self-interest to protect you against your teammates than scruples.

I'm not saying it's as easy as the brutal solution, but it's still playable. The game has a lot of ways to make it work; it doesn't force you to play the butchering psycho. The wealth of nonlethal solutions in Shadowrun is one of the game's strong points in my opinion.

Right, sure. The part where I think it gets much messier is when you try to take this route in the face of a team with no motivation to join you in it (well, assuming you try to make the entire run go like this rather than just letting the other characters kill the bystanders).

~J

[Yerameyahu]

You can choose to have it (Neuro-Stun, the actual 'sleep gas') predictably go inert in 1 minute. "Likewise, if a character remains in contact with a toxin over an extended period, such as being caught in a gas-filled room for several minutes, she may receive an additional dose and suffer stronger effects (or have to resist the toxin again)." It's really only by GM-fiat than you can accidentally kill someone with 'sleep gas' in SR4, though the rule fall short of flat saying 'no rollover to Physical'. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Doc Chase]

You can choose to have it (Neuro-Stun, the actual 'sleep gas') predictably go inert in 1 minute. "Likewise, if a character remains in contact with a toxin over an extended period, such as being caught in a gas-filled room for several minutes, she may receive an additional dose and suffer stronger effects (or have to resist the toxin again)." It's really only by GM-fiat than you can accidentally kill someone with 'sleep gas' in SR4.

Or use Russian military surplus gas. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Kliko]

Or use Russian military surplus gas. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

That's not funny

[Doc Chase]

That's not funny

Gallows humor is the best kind there is.

[Kagetenshi]

[…]in SR4[…]

Bah, someone forgot to tag the thread. I guess the lethality of the gas may be different for SR4 players.

~J

[Yerameyahu]

The thread itself is SR*, no? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[kzt]

A good summation of meet Etiquette:
Be polite, be professional, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

[Critias]

A good summation of meet Etiquette:
Be polite, be professional, have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

That's not just meet etiquette, that's getting out of bed in the morning. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

[Kagetenshi]

The thread itself is SR*, no? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

No, as we just discovered—important and fundamental differences exist based on whether you're discussing SR1-3 (possibly with another division between SR1 and SR2-3, I don't remember early toxin rules) or 4, and those differences apply in this discussion.

Really, they apply almost anywhere; the SR* tag mostly shouldn't exist.

~J

[Yerameyahu]

Nope. It's about Mr. Johnsons. Toxin rules are barely relevant to begin with. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Ascalaphus]

Right, but it's not just about the cost of the equipment—as mentioned, the less-lethal approach is less reliable, carries more risks, etc. It increases odds of job failure and of blowback. You need to start practicing your actuarial skills to make a serious attempt at putting a nuyen value on all of this, which simply doesn't sound fun to me.

That's also very GM-dependent. Some GMs think that causing a lot of collateral damage is stupid because it really brings the heat down, while others apply a "less witnesses is better" approach. There have been a lot of threads about this already; groups differ.

But again, you destroy believability when the rest of the team that doesn't care suddenly decides to pass up all the nuyen they could be making just to keep the squeaky wheel greased. This is solvable only through actions that aren't fun (the character gets kicked out of the team) or blatant metagaming (the GM doesn't offer jobs that the player would turn down up front, and increases the number of other jobs to compensate).

There are lots of reasons why a group would do this, mostly they come down to "we want to keep this team member, because he's good/nice/would't want him angry/family/etc.", and there are really a lot of IC rationalizations possible. Why does your party work together, instead of someone killing the rest to keep the whole payout for himself?

Metagaming? A GM always metagames; he has to use knowledge about the PCs to know which adventure would be suitable. That applies to character power level as well as what motivates the characters as well as what they won't do for whatever reason. That's not bad metagaming; that's being a GM who doesn't randomly pick a prepublished scenario hoping all will turn out alright.

Does the GM have a convenient way to whitewash this metagaming IC? Yes: the Fixer will not make himself look bad by setting Johnson up with the wrong team for the job.



The "professionals" you describe have no reason to stick together other than make money. There is nothing they won't do, so how can they trust one another? Anything that might interfere with the party navigating any plot carefully pruned away. To me, they don't seem like interesting characters at all, they're just... miniatures...

[Angelone]

They stick together because they make money. They stick together because they can count on the others to do their jobs and not get cold feet. They stick together because it's better than going it alone or working with people you don't know.

[Shinobi Killfist]

They stick together because they make money. They stick together because they can count on the others to do their jobs and not get cold feet. They stick together because it's better than going it alone or working with people you don't know.

Sure but even if he was competent I am not sure I want to team up with the manson family. Pay days are awesome, not getting killed by a total psychopath who was supposed to be watching my back is even better. I'd much rather have someone on my team with some ethics even if that meant I had to pass on a job here and there, because I could trust him more when we were on jobs he would take. I think the kill everyone teams are much less believable, but every table is different.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Me and my group just had a discussion about that, last session. The Triads wanted us to invade a ganger's hideout that had just received a HUGE pack of heavy weaponry, so its enemy gang could have a fair fight against, but they wouldn't pay us any money (instead they would pay us with a favor a later time), my character, being a jaguar shapeshifter who did not go to the meeting because it had heard that chinese kill shapeshifters to use their organs as medicine, refused to take the job for a favor it could never collect and would only do it if he got paid (our Face ended up paying 5k to me).

The Face wanted to sell the weapons to the Mafia (without telling who was the interested party).
Our street sam who was a former Lone Star officer, would only accept the weapons sold for a group outside Seattle because he didn't want the city full of assault rifles and grenade launchers.
Our mage, who has contacts with the Ork Underground, wanted to give the weapons to them.

In the end, after a lot of discussion, we didn't get the weapons because the gangers used grenades inside the apartment the weapons were hidden and damaged the rest of the crates.

[Doc Chase]

Wait, let me see if I've got this right.

Triads: We want you to infiltrate a heavily armed pack of crazies and take them all out.
Runners: Doable. What's the pay scale you have in mind?
Triads: *scribbles on a paper, hands it over*
Runners: ...This says 'I.O.U.' And it's on a coupon for a free ice creams at Baskin-Robbins.
Triads: Mm-hm!
Runners: ...Baskin-Robbins has been out of business for nearly fifty years.
Triads: But we'll owe you one! We're good for it!

They're very clearly trying to play the team...and the team took the job?

[Mesh]

Sure but even if he was competent I am not sure I want to team up with the manson family. Pay days are awesome, not getting killed by a total psychopath who was supposed to be watching my back is even better. I'd much rather have someone on my team with some ethics even if that meant I had to pass on a job here and there, because I could trust him more when we were on jobs he would take. I think the kill everyone teams are much less believable, but every table is different.

QFT

[etherial]

If I'm told he is willing and he isn't willing I'm out of there. And I'm going to expect to get paid.

Your extractee has no guarantee your run will be a success. Xe is obligated to resist at every opportunity xyr current employer has to observe xyr. You are therefore obligated to sedate and/or threaten xyr.

Not to mention, just because xe's the target of a willing extraction *doesn't* mean you're the willing extraction.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Wait, let me see if I've got this right.

Triads: We want you to infiltrate a heavily armed pack of crazies and take them all out.
Runners: Doable. What's the pay scale you have in mind?
Triads: *scribbles on a paper, hands it over*
Runners: ...This says 'I.O.U.' And it's on a coupon for a free ice creams at Baskin-Robbins.
Triads: Mm-hm!
Runners: ...Baskin-Robbins has been out of business for nearly fifty years.
Triads: But we'll owe you one! We're good for it!

They're very clearly trying to play the team...and the team took the job?

LOL, it is even funnier if you put it like that. But yeah, it's like that, the Triads say they are honored *cough* men and will respect the deal. I just don't buy it. Besides, the Face owes big money to the Mafia and is trying to get connected to other criminal syndicates who could protect his back in case he decides to stop paying the mafia.

[Doc Chase]

LOL, it is even funnier if you put it like that. But yeah, it's like that, the Triads say they are honored *cough* men and will respect the deal. I just don't buy it. Besides, the Face, owes big money to the Mafia and is trying to get connected to other criminal syndicates who could protect his back in case he decides to stop paying the mafia.

I was rather proud of the ice cream coupon. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I agree. I'm reminded of the 'stock in criminal enterprise' argument from a different thread. You're doing a job on the faith that it'll be paid back, but I've always been of the mind that it'll be repaid only if it's more costly for them to not do so.

[sabs]

It's always cheaper to just kill everyone who did the job for you.

[Doc Chase]

Provided you apply enough plastique to get the job done right.

If you don't, you just entered the pilot of Leverage. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)