Game Morality, the casual shuffling of mortal coils Options

[Nerbert]

My first in depth experience with roleplaying was joining a D&D campaign about halfway through, right about the time the character were coming into easily available resurrection spells. Soon after that I convinced them to try shadowrun and few things became immediately apparent.

Firstly, in Shadowrun when you die, you're dead forever. This is an interesting dynamic, not only for the players, who now have an actual reason to run away instead of illogically fighting to the death with every creature they encounter, but also because the players invariably end up killing a large number of NPCs, which is clearly a morally questionable act with its own set of philosophical quandaries.

Secondly, without the alignment system of D&D in place, there's nothing to stop characters from "misbehaving". This is simultaneously a good thing and a bad thing. Its predominantly good in that it allows players to diverge from a prescribed archetype without penalty, its basically just more fun to be able to have your evil days. The downside to this is that its much harder to predict how characters are going to react to a given situation. In a morally ambiguous situation its truly difficult to predict where your story is going to go.

I was just wondering, how do people in your games handle this kind of thing?

[Digital Heroin]

Most of my players in the past have been either irrational killmongers, or low key people. I handle the two extremes with a simple measure. The later players simply live longer.

[Herald of Verjig...]

[Crusher Bob]

Remember that there are no 'all knowing' forces present in the SR world, so if you are 'bad' and don't get caught then that's that. Notice IRL how long it took to catch guys like Ted Bundy, don't come down on one of the characters like the vengance of the gods just because they've done something you don't like. But do pay attention to what kind of evidence they leave behind, who would find that evidence, and what they would do about it.

[Kagetenshi]

I handle morality by using the four-round uncompensated burst on my MMG to hit the guy with no limbs.

~J

[Crusher Bob]

I trump your MMG with a dose of narcojet and an organlegger contact.

[shadd4d]

Actually, Shadowrun, depending on the GM, does a wonderful job of beating in the idea that actions have consequences. That part really is one of those things that makes Shadowrun one of my all-time favorites.

Don

[Paul]

I like the lack of constraint that not having alignments gives me. not every character is completely "Good" nor are they completely "Evil". Good people make mistakes-an example is one of our more heroic style characters taking a shot and missing, killing an innocent bystander. It wasn'tt hat he was indiscriminately killing people, he made a tough call-take the shot at a risk, or let a truly bad man go.

He took the shot.

[blakkie]

I'll assume you are talking 3e D&D. Some of the classes in D&D have nominal alignment limitations. Barbarrians must not be "Lawful", and Monks must be "Lawful" (actually more like they pick a code to adhere too, which makes more sense than alignment), and Druids have to have the word "Neutral" in their alignment descriptor. Clerics do have to worry about keeping within the confines of the teachings of their choosen god...until they follow a new one. Of those classes only Paladins need to worry about good vs. evil, and even with that there are rules for Paladins switching over to the "darkside" (and picking up some cool powers to boot).

All in all that amounts to a big fat whoop-tee-doo unless you wanted to multiclass Druid/Paladin, or Barbarrian with Monk or Paladin. Outside the Paladin only the Monk comes close to a tough requirement. Once you get into prestige classes you start seeing more limitations, but those are more inherent in the flavour, motivation, and purpose of the class than anything.

At it's root any real restraint created by alignment in D&D come from either the subjective GM choice about the alignment of given actions, and the inherent rules of conciquence the GM chooses to implement in how he models the world. Personally i find D&D better off if you more-or-less toss out alignment spells affecting non-outerplaner creatures that are not a Cleric, Druid, or Paladin of at least level 9. Then you can toss out any alignment tracking makework projects, the GM has a lot better use for limited time.

As for death, SR does tend to have the deadliness level of D&D played with 1st level characters. But SR has the Hand of God, the royal trump second chance for the 'runner to retire. D&D itself has plenty of effectively permanent death senarios, even at higher levels. It is GM and players choice whether to bring those possibilities into play.

P.S. Note the quote in my tagline. ;)

[Voran]

I tend to play more conservatively in SR than in D&D. But that may also be a function of getting older. Don't have as much time to invest in making up new characters and starting over, so I try to protect my existing characters as best as I can.

SR does tend to be a bit more consequence-oriented than D&D. In D&D you seem more likely to end up roaming all over the continent/planet/planes. In SR its fully possible that you'll end up sticking to one general region. Smaller area to romp around, the more you have to be careful about long-term consequences.

[Abstruse]

In Shadowrun, there are a LOT more shades of grey. There's no one who is truly good or evil in Shadowrun with possibly the exception of the Enemy/Horrors. Everyone has a motivation for their actions and, from their own perspective, are doing the right thing. Lofwyr wants power because, as a powerful, ancient, and highly intelligent creature, he is most fit to rule. The Insects feel they are bringing people into the Hive, which is a good thing. Tir Tairngire's Princes feel that, with their age and experience, they are most fit to rule and their form of government worked well in the past, so it should work well now also. And so on.

Even the so-called "good guys" aren't good guys. Harlequin is a drunkard, overconfident, and apparently lazy (he could've done big things to change the world, but hasn't). As revealed in PoaD, Dunkelzahn regularly and violently had people killed. All of the corps kill people regularly, and they often value nuyen over human life.

The only thing that enforces any sort of morality is logic. You go around killing people constantly, eventually you'll hit someone that someone powerful cares about (watch The Sopranos, the lawn mower you beat up might have sentimental meaning to a Made Man who wants revenge when he is attacked...) Security guards have family, cops have each other (nothing makes a cop want your blood more than knowing you're a cop-killer), etc. Someone will eventually want revenge, and they'll eventually screw up.

Also, Johnsons like dealing with professionals. Messy work does not a professional make. If Corp A hires you for an extraction from Corp B, and you go to Corp B shooting up the place, killing sec guards and secretaries left and right, then Corp B figures out Corp A pulled the run (or if they think Corp C did it), they'll have no problems doing the same to Corp A or C or D or whoever. Then things get bad as secretaries and security guards are expensive to train, thus making profit margins go down. Thus when given the option of two shadowrunning teams, one who killed 2 people and one who killed 74 people on the same type of run with the same level of results, who do you think the Johnson will call?

The Abstruse One

[mfb]

depends on the job. my main character, his job is killing people--he doesn't really enjoy it, but that's where his skills lie. the only real line he won't cross is taking out people who aren't involved; not out of any real sense of justice or right, but because revenge is an overly-complicated, unprofitable business; besides, if he doesn't cross that line, hopefully no one else will, either, which keeps his wife and kid safer.

but, yeah, he wonders about some of the things he's done, and he genuinely wishes he hadn't done some of them. one of those things was dropping gamma-anthrax into the water supply of a corporate military research outpost he and a team were hired to raze. most of the people survived (hilariously, we thrashed them so completely that the entire outpost surrendered inside 24 hours), which assauges his conscience quite a bit--but it's not something he'll do again.

[Abstruse]

I'm not saying a shadowrunner who kills someone isn't professional -- esp. if it's their job -- but they aren't if they're killing people they don't have to. Sure, kill the mark, kill his bodyguards, kill the security...but don't kill his girlfriend/secretary/ass-kisser/random pedestrian unless said person tries to attack you and you have to defend yourself or they're part of the deal too. I try to play up professionalism as much as possible in my games, trying to talk my players into watching movies like The Professional, The Killers, The Transporter where the main characters have a very strict ethical and/or professional code.

The Abstruse One

[toturi]

A professional shadowrunner has only 1 ethic: the :nuyen:

Survival is a secondary concern since he needs be alive to spend or acquire :nuyen:.

He will only do what he is paid to do. To do any extra is the cost of business.

[mfb]

it depends on your situation, and the people you deal with; professionalism, as defined by Abstruse, only works if most of the people in your circle of associations abide by the same rules. to a certain level of gang, mafioso, yak, etc., it's "professional" to kill a man's entire family and a couple of his friends, if he wrongs you. the reason that's professional is because, in that circle, anything less is taken as a sign of weakness, which invites other groups to attack you. you have to show everyone exactly how bad life--or death--will be, if they mess with you; anything less is 'unprofessional' in that it will end your place in the profession by means of a double-tap to the face.

[Voran]

Things get especially more murky in SR, because 'the cops' aren't really 'the cops' like they are in real life today. Whack a cop today, and its highly likely (almost certain, I would imagine) that the shared brotherhood thing would have dire consequences. In SR, you've got competing security corps trying to vie for that position of 'the cops', none of which in canon have demonstrated themselves to be ethical or law-abiding citizens themselves compared to real life standards. I could well imagine Lone Star itself having the characteristics of mafia families working together:

You whack a particular lone star corper/cop and you'd probably definately pick up drek from his immediate buddies/squad whatever. But it's up in the air whether or not you'd get the full LS organization ticked at you. So many of them are apparently described in canon as corrupt and fragmented in their loyalties, that you probably have factions within LS Seattle itself that don't get along and likely don't mind if one of the officers of another faction get geeked. They might put on a public face of 'brotherhood' but I imagine there's alot of wiggle-room for a GM to determine overall response.

Dead bodies, in general, do up the ante for responses. Generally I would its nearer to an all-or nothing kinda situation. Either you do your damndest to keep the body count to a minimum or waste them all and literally leave no witnesses. Stunning those you come across and leaving piles of stunned bodies, is probably better than leaving piles of dead bodies, but failing to make sure everyone is dead.

[sidartha]

If you want to see a true shadowrun movie go out and rent Ronin, The Score, Boondock Saints and Oceans Eleven.
One question that is always asked at my teams meets is how much collateral damage will you accept? We've had runs where we are given hunting licences and told go forth and destroy, and conversely we have been told no one can know that you were there.
As for the lethality issue. I totaly agree that D&D is a much less leathal game than SR. I am playing a D&D campaign now and members of the party have died several times and suffered only a loss of gold to pay for spell components.
However the difference is that in D&D combat is enevitable. It's how you get XP. In SR however, the best runs come off without a shot being fired. If you plan well enough then you avoid the leathal bits and skate on by. So in the game world it fits that combat be much more deadly.
My 2 :nuyen:

[blakkie]

Hey! True Lies is soooo Shadowrun, at least how our party plays it. :)

[TinkerGnome]

[kevyn668]

[Voran]

[Kagetenshi]

[BitBasher]

[RangerJoe]

Obviously, every player and every SR character has thier own set of ethical and/or moral codes, even if it's just that of the player spilling over, or a handful of arbitrary metagaming rules ("My dude is, like, a pacifist. Yeah"). What is important is that those rules be explained or somehow elucidated to the members of the runner team and/or the GM. Otherwise, someone tends to get geeked. I think the following quotation from an online game sums it up best:

One mage to another mage: "So we can't kill him, but we can leave him to suffocate and looting corpses is okay? I'm willing to play by your rules they seem fine, I'd just like to have some vague idea of what they are."

[draco aardvark]

I just had this discussion on a D&D forum. We basicly agreed that alignments were a restriction, that prevented you from roleplaying your charactor how you think they'd react in order to maintain that "neutral" part of your druid, or make sure you don't become "evil" or something.
Then I found shadowrun, which actually works correctly without alignments.

I just finished running a game in which the players stopped fearing death because they could get raised easily, the only way to way to get the party to be afraid was to threaten to kill the entire party, which would kill the game. Granted, the DM can make it a pain to get raise dead scrolls, but that puts restrictions on the type of world you can have.