:(....
That's my emoticon for tears. In case you didn't know already.
Full Version: I want Grit!
Looks like it's drooling.
.... it does...
| QUOTE (emo samurai) |
| Dude... the whole "doing bad things for money" angle has totally destroyed my view of shadowrunners as righteous nonconformists in the neo-technocratic age. |
It's all up to the campaign. Our group generally avoids wetworks or straight-up kidnapping but were fine with extractions or corporate dirt jobs. Let the big boys screw each other over.
Our altruism, at least in the last major campaign, was keeping one area of the barrens relatively clean and safe. We kept the nutso gangers out and made sure the costs of organized crime moving in were were too much for the potential rewards. We tilled some of our profits into the local church & school and had one of the best armed neighborhood watches. We knew insect & toxic spirits were out there and would get involved in those jobs on our own dime (though we'd often try to find a backer like the city or LoneStar once we had solid proof).
I've also been in a few "anything for cash" games so meh, it varies.
| QUOTE (kigmatzomat) |
| Our altruism, at least in the last major campaign, was keeping one area of the barrens relatively clean and safe. We kept the nutso gangers out and made sure the costs of organized crime moving in were were too much for the potential rewards. We tilled some of our profits into the local church & school and had one of the best armed neighborhood watches. We knew insect & toxic spirits were out there and would get involved in those jobs on our own dime (though we'd often try to find a backer like the city or LoneStar once we had solid proof). |
That's great !!
Nice to see someone not obsessed with 'all shadowrunners are bad people, therefore it's justified that we can do whatever bad things we want' mentality !!
Especially, as many of the characters in SR novels are people on the fringes who do good things.
Just my thruppence..
Yeah. Prisons are just crowded full of misunderstood Robin Hood types, right? No one ever becomes a professional criminal because they're a little unhinged, don't respect the law, and just want to look out for number one. They're all in it for the little guy! Every professional criminal in every game has to be a tough guy with a heart of gold, or you're "obsessed!"
Seconded Critias, in fact about the only thing that I'm more tired of then "heart of gold hooder crowd" is the "ice cold pro cliche".
Give me Pink Mohawks and forehead tattoos that reads, "Bite my Snake" anyday of the week.
Give me Pink Mohawks and forehead tattoos that reads, "Bite my Snake" anyday of the week.
i like playing it grey. i play characters who have a certain moral flexibility--but not infinitely flexible. my main char is the cold professional type, with a very strong work ethic. he's killed a lot of people--a lot of people, and it doesn't bother him for the most part. but he's not a robot; he's seen and done some things that have gotten to him. the Arco run; a run where he dumped gamma-anthrax into the water supply of a remote research outpost; a mundanocidal war in Indonesia where both sides were dumping thousands of bodies into mass graves. things like that--death on a large scale--have come to bother him. so much so that in his most recent job, he accepted a run where there would be a strong chance he wouldn't get paid, because it involved stopping production on a highly communicable bioweapon. and when that run was not enough to shut down production, he volunteered for a second run--without having been paid for the first one, and with no guarantee at all that he would get paid.
and what i like about it isn't the altruism. he's not altruistic--he's god damn well going to get paid for both runs, and if he doesn't, he's going to hunt the J down and kill her. stopping production on this particular virus isn't going to make the world a better place; there are who-knows-how-many other projects to produce bioweapons at least as lethal and communicable as this one out there--he's not going to expend time and/or resources to track them down and stop them. but he knows about this one, and he's found that his conscience won't allow him to let it go.
or another char of mine, whose first run was killing a bunch of Tir expats--kids explicitly included. she did the job, or at least tried to, and when she got done the J beat the crap out of her and stole all her stuff. the whole incident was almost enough to break her (partly because i lost interest in the char for a while), but she eventually recovered and got back to work. she mostly went back to her old ways, taking violent jobs, doing them well and with relish. but she wouldn't do kids, anymore. no big proclamations, no soul-searching, no light dawning--she just found a line, saw what was on the other side of it, and decided not to cross it anymore.
and what i like about it isn't the altruism. he's not altruistic--he's god damn well going to get paid for both runs, and if he doesn't, he's going to hunt the J down and kill her. stopping production on this particular virus isn't going to make the world a better place; there are who-knows-how-many other projects to produce bioweapons at least as lethal and communicable as this one out there--he's not going to expend time and/or resources to track them down and stop them. but he knows about this one, and he's found that his conscience won't allow him to let it go.
or another char of mine, whose first run was killing a bunch of Tir expats--kids explicitly included. she did the job, or at least tried to, and when she got done the J beat the crap out of her and stole all her stuff. the whole incident was almost enough to break her (partly because i lost interest in the char for a while), but she eventually recovered and got back to work. she mostly went back to her old ways, taking violent jobs, doing them well and with relish. but she wouldn't do kids, anymore. no big proclamations, no soul-searching, no light dawning--she just found a line, saw what was on the other side of it, and decided not to cross it anymore.
| QUOTE (Critias @ Jul 25 2007, 07:17 AM) |
| Yeah. Prisons are just crowded full of misunderstood Robin Hood types, right? No one ever becomes a professional criminal because they're a little unhinged, don't respect the law, and just want to look out for number one. |
In an affluent and just society, the people in prison are most likely to be there for reasons of being unhinged, naturally violent, etc. In a corrupt society such as Shadowrun 2070, where power and wealth is hoarded by an elite and the majority of mankind are either the dispossessed or verging on indentured servitude, all backed up by corp-bought laws and a private police force, there will be a much greater proportion of the criminal population being criminal for precisely the reason that Synner667 gave. In the Shadowrun 2070 setting, Good does not equal Respect for the Law.
EDIT: Does it today?
[Insert big long post that I just highlighted and deleted because I don't care quiet enough to really argue it.]
Whatever. You're not going to convince me more professional criminals than not are Chaotic Good, and I'm not going to convince you that there is something inherently wired wrong in the head of anyone who runs the Shadows.
Have fun playing Robin Hood in the Sprawl. I'll have fun playing my way instead.
Whatever. You're not going to convince me more professional criminals than not are Chaotic Good, and I'm not going to convince you that there is something inherently wired wrong in the head of anyone who runs the Shadows.
Have fun playing Robin Hood in the Sprawl. I'll have fun playing my way instead.
| QUOTE (Ravor) |
| Seconded Critias, in fact about the only thing that I'm more tired of then "heart of gold hooder crowd" is the "ice cold pro cliche". Give me Pink Mohawks and forehead tattoos that reads, "Bite my Snake" anyday of the week. |
Definitely! Hooders and pros should, in all reality, be the exception not the rule. Otherwise, it's just not cyberpunk.
I know that this post should be on "Cyberpunk on the Media" topic, but i guess that, maybe, it shall help here.
On the "describing" side of GMing Shadowrun, i like to use some ideas from two brazilian movies (not cyberpunk movies) called "Cidade de Deus" and "Central do Brasil" (i guess that the first, at least, would be easy to find in the US). I like to describe the sprawl the way you see in these movies... with a few people that is good, even less few that does something good, many people doing bad things and even more who just go with the waves.
Background noises is a good way to create a depressing mood. While the players walk through the sprawl they should "see" life in the sprawl (other ideas i get from those movies). Looking through a windows they see a couple fighting and the husband punching the wife to a pulp... a guy and a bitch discussing because he didn't have the money to pay... kids running dirt and free, no one paying attention to where thet go while spoiled rich childrem come to buy drugs.
The powers, the police, and the private police don´t care for what happens on sprawl while what happens don't threat the "status quo". So the crime run free there... people use guns on the street... the gangs and mobs runs the shows... drugs are everywhre... and people shoots people for very stupid reasons.
I hope you can get those movies. Really a "must see" on the grit side.
On the "describing" side of GMing Shadowrun, i like to use some ideas from two brazilian movies (not cyberpunk movies) called "Cidade de Deus" and "Central do Brasil" (i guess that the first, at least, would be easy to find in the US). I like to describe the sprawl the way you see in these movies... with a few people that is good, even less few that does something good, many people doing bad things and even more who just go with the waves.
Background noises is a good way to create a depressing mood. While the players walk through the sprawl they should "see" life in the sprawl (other ideas i get from those movies). Looking through a windows they see a couple fighting and the husband punching the wife to a pulp... a guy and a bitch discussing because he didn't have the money to pay... kids running dirt and free, no one paying attention to where thet go while spoiled rich childrem come to buy drugs.
The powers, the police, and the private police don´t care for what happens on sprawl while what happens don't threat the "status quo". So the crime run free there... people use guns on the street... the gangs and mobs runs the shows... drugs are everywhre... and people shoots people for very stupid reasons.
I hope you can get those movies. Really a "must see" on the grit side.
The funny thing is that you need "good guys" (at least compationate) to fully reveal the grittiness of the universe.
Philip Marlowe ("If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive."), Sin City's heroes, Snake Plissken (Escape from NY/LA), Deckard (Blade Runner)...
If these characters didn't have any soft spot, we wouldn't see the grittiness of the world they live in.
Whereas, in Dr Adder, none of the main character really have this soft spot. In the end you see a violent and twisted world... but you can't really say it's gritty.
However it doesn't mean that the PCs should be superheroes saving the world (except if they save the same corrupt and rotten world). All mentionned heroes might do what they can to make the world a better place, but in the end they can't do much. They don't change the world, but they at least can prevent the world from totally crushing them.
Another thing that can be interesting to see is that their actions are often destructive for the world they live in. They may help people, but they do it by killing, destroying... It's the same with runners. They might be righteous neo-anarchists who want to save people from oppressive megacorporation, but in order to do so they destroy things. Megacorps might be oppressive, but without them who'll feed the population? Do you think the world would have survived all the troubles it went through without them? What's the difference between being a righteous neo-anarchist and a member of Winternight?
It even goes further than that, because harming a megacorp just means helping its competitor. An anarchist runner might think he's helping free the world by running against megacorp, but he's just another cog in the machine.
To sum it up, you can have hooders and grit, and you might even enhance the grittiness with them.
Philip Marlowe ("If I wasn’t hard, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t ever be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive."), Sin City's heroes, Snake Plissken (Escape from NY/LA), Deckard (Blade Runner)...
If these characters didn't have any soft spot, we wouldn't see the grittiness of the world they live in.
Whereas, in Dr Adder, none of the main character really have this soft spot. In the end you see a violent and twisted world... but you can't really say it's gritty.
However it doesn't mean that the PCs should be superheroes saving the world (except if they save the same corrupt and rotten world). All mentionned heroes might do what they can to make the world a better place, but in the end they can't do much. They don't change the world, but they at least can prevent the world from totally crushing them.
Another thing that can be interesting to see is that their actions are often destructive for the world they live in. They may help people, but they do it by killing, destroying... It's the same with runners. They might be righteous neo-anarchists who want to save people from oppressive megacorporation, but in order to do so they destroy things. Megacorps might be oppressive, but without them who'll feed the population? Do you think the world would have survived all the troubles it went through without them? What's the difference between being a righteous neo-anarchist and a member of Winternight?
It even goes further than that, because harming a megacorp just means helping its competitor. An anarchist runner might think he's helping free the world by running against megacorp, but he's just another cog in the machine.
To sum it up, you can have hooders and grit, and you might even enhance the grittiness with them.
i don't think it's necessarily true that you need good guys in the story to expose the world's grittiness. i think the reader is often capable of playing the part of the good guy.
Not exactly, because the way the reader/spectator enters the story is through the main character... At least for good stories.
To really touch your feelings the book/movie/whatever has to establish an empathic link with the main character. Once this link is set, you'll share the perception of the main character and will feel what he feels as deeply as he does.
Well not exactly as deeply because the point of empathy is that you still are yourself so part of yourself will still maintain the distance with the character... But if the character is really close to you, it can be quite deep. (on the other hand if he's really different you won't be moved that much, which might also be a good reason as why players will be more at ease playing hooders).
If you don't have that empathic link (or if it's poor), you'll just be a passive spectator. You might think to yourself "this is awful", "this is sad" but you won't feel it that deep.
To really touch your feelings the book/movie/whatever has to establish an empathic link with the main character. Once this link is set, you'll share the perception of the main character and will feel what he feels as deeply as he does.
Well not exactly as deeply because the point of empathy is that you still are yourself so part of yourself will still maintain the distance with the character... But if the character is really close to you, it can be quite deep. (on the other hand if he's really different you won't be moved that much, which might also be a good reason as why players will be more at ease playing hooders).
If you don't have that empathic link (or if it's poor), you'll just be a passive spectator. You might think to yourself "this is awful", "this is sad" but you won't feel it that deep.
This is a really interesting thread. I think it will help me improve my game. I think it is very important for characters to have morals. I actually don't really care what they are as long as there's some line they don't want to cross.
Grittiness, to me, has to do with giving people choices where it's not between morally right and morally wrong (as subjectively defined by them), but where what would be morally right clearly has very negative effects for you personally and then give the choice between two evils (also as subjectively defined by them).
Basically it's not about avoiding getting screwed or avoiding doing bad things. It's about getting screwed the least and minimizing the bad things you have to do in order to survive. This kind of thing isn't possible if the characters are cold emotionless professionals. If the character doesn't feel bad about crossing whatever line you've put into the adventure, then it's pretty uninteresting.
I just ran On the Run and I thought it was a pretty good example of this.
Basically, the choice between good and evil is not an interesting choice. Choosing between evils is a very interesting choice. To me.
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- Post edited to use spoiler tags by eidolon.
Grittiness, to me, has to do with giving people choices where it's not between morally right and morally wrong (as subjectively defined by them), but where what would be morally right clearly has very negative effects for you personally and then give the choice between two evils (also as subjectively defined by them).
Basically it's not about avoiding getting screwed or avoiding doing bad things. It's about getting screwed the least and minimizing the bad things you have to do in order to survive. This kind of thing isn't possible if the characters are cold emotionless professionals. If the character doesn't feel bad about crossing whatever line you've put into the adventure, then it's pretty uninteresting.
I just ran On the Run and I thought it was a pretty good example of this.
[ Spoiler ]
Basically, the choice between good and evil is not an interesting choice. Choosing between evils is a very interesting choice. To me.
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- Post edited to use spoiler tags by eidolon.
you have to MAKE it as you want it. who the fark says you have to follow the book fluff?
| QUOTE (OneSeventeen) |
| Basically, the choice between good and evil is not an interesting choice. Choosing between evils is a very interesting choice. To me. |
Choosing between evils is one thing - choosing between lose-lose is another. A very good example of this is one of the run ideas in Runner Havens, where the runners are handed this video evidence of someone up and powerful doing bad things. They have the choice of releasing it to the media or selling it back to the powerful guy,
If they release it to the media, it causes civil unrest which plays into the hands of the corps who were looking for an excuse to tighten security
If they sell it to the powerful guy, then he burries it and gets away with it.
So while the 'right' thing to do is release it to the media, doing so cause the the poor to get stepped on even more.
That's awesome.
I like the choice between two evils too, but most adventures you can find such choices are far too simple : "Get more money or save the children ?" is much too easy to decide. Most players will instantly know which one their character would choose and losing money isn't much of an evil.
My favorite choice is the one I gave my PC one day, I think I've already explained it in another thread: the PC found a boat full of heavily sick children (about a hundered of them). There was nothing they could do to really help them (what can a shadowrunner do in that case?) They spent a lot of time trying to figure out if it was "better" to end their suffering now or to let them live, hoping that at least some of them would be able to have a not too miserable life.
I've got some ideas about others tricks such as offering a morally right (if a bit shady) choice which will turn out to be bad one with awful consequences ... With the PCs realizing too late that they could have seen it coming before but were blinded by thinking that they were morally right.
My favorite choice is the one I gave my PC one day, I think I've already explained it in another thread: the PC found a boat full of heavily sick children (about a hundered of them). There was nothing they could do to really help them (what can a shadowrunner do in that case?) They spent a lot of time trying to figure out if it was "better" to end their suffering now or to let them live, hoping that at least some of them would be able to have a not too miserable life.
I've got some ideas about others tricks such as offering a morally right (if a bit shady) choice which will turn out to be bad one with awful consequences ... With the PCs realizing too late that they could have seen it coming before but were blinded by thinking that they were morally right.
OneSeventeen, to put something in spoilers:
| CODE |
| [spoiler] Super secret ending! [/spoiler] |
And thanks for warning people. I know I hate having things given away before I get a chance to read/see them.
Here's my deal about the goodness/evil of PCs: I hate soulless bastard characters. It's not that I think that most shadowrunners wouldn't be soulless bastards, it's that I think that those guys make awful protagonists. I'm not fascinated with evil. In fact, I'm bothered by those characters in part because they never seem to have moral dilemmas.
Quite frankly, if I'm hoping for a PC to die, we've got a problem.
Quite frankly, if I'm hoping for a PC to die, we've got a problem.
Good way of putting it, Eryk (and Blade, btw).
It's the same problem I have with characters that "are" their stats, but just one step up. "Look! My stats have a personality trait! He's amoral! How refreshing!"
It's the same problem I have with characters that "are" their stats, but just one step up. "Look! My stats have a personality trait! He's amoral! How refreshing!"
Which is why I have fun (just speaking for myself) sometimes making almost soulless evil bastards. Make them me-first assholes, but with a but... attached. Give them an out, almost. An excuse. A reason. Give them that one little thing they use -- consciously or otherwise -- to rationalize what they do and why they do it.
Give 'em a goal besides "because I like money," and all sorts of heinous and illegal acts can suddenly become almost righteous. Do they just want the money for their next hit of Bliss or that Muscle Replacement upgrade they've been pining over? Or do they send the money to their folks to pay the hospital bills for a sibling that's on life support? Do they spend all their time (and half their nuyen) between 'runs working at a local church, manning a soup line for the homeless? Did they choose the super-slick life of a bloody handed Shadowrunner, or was it thrust upon them by trying to do the right thing at the wrong time?
Or, of course, you can always take the Frank Miller route. And just make sure the bad guys are worse than your PCs. It works for me, when all else fails.
Give 'em a goal besides "because I like money," and all sorts of heinous and illegal acts can suddenly become almost righteous. Do they just want the money for their next hit of Bliss or that Muscle Replacement upgrade they've been pining over? Or do they send the money to their folks to pay the hospital bills for a sibling that's on life support? Do they spend all their time (and half their nuyen) between 'runs working at a local church, manning a soup line for the homeless? Did they choose the super-slick life of a bloody handed Shadowrunner, or was it thrust upon them by trying to do the right thing at the wrong time?
Or, of course, you can always take the Frank Miller route. And just make sure the bad guys are worse than your PCs. It works for me, when all else fails.
| QUOTE (Critias) |
| Which is why I have fun (just speaking for myself) sometimes making almost soulless evil bastards. Make them me-first assholes, but with a but... attached. Give them an out, almost. An excuse. A reason. Give them that one little thing they use -- consciously or otherwise -- to rationalize what they do and why they do it. |
Right. And actually, I'm sure that a lot of people that are "guilty" of playing the single-faceted "I'm amoral rawr" characters are actually doing just that.
I think the single most important thing is "how much does that come up/out in play?
If your character is tortured or driven, he's still boring as hell if all the GM and other players ever see is "haha I have no qualms and I kill stuff".
The human animal is a nigh on infinitely corruptable creature. We have a short memory, are emotionally driven, and have a taste for violence that seems preternatural. We shew danger for the sake of comfort and would prefer to live it easy than to live it right. The world of Shadowrun understands these concepts in very basic ways: everything is corrupted, everyone has sold out, nothing is sacred. Amoral characters are boring because there are so few amoral men. In fact, the very idea is self-contradictory. People invest themselves in the world around them and when that world fails them, they turn to escapism found in AR or drugs.
To say that one gives players choices between Good and Evil is to say that these things can exist in a world where the Bottom Line™ the is one true god. Which is cheaper? Not which is more morally right. If there is one standard trait that should stand out in the world it is a difficult trait to characterize due to its low-key nature: apathy. Moral behavior takes effort, it is demanding and requires people to hold on to things, hold them close and never let go. If my cat is an AR pet what exactly am I holding on to?
The world of Shadowrun can be characterized by NPCs that do bad things day in and day out and don't really even think about them as bad. Thinking requires effort, as would a judgement and it takes strength to render judgement and stick to it. People have short memories, afterall. It is easier to forget that something is the way it is, that you are complicit, that what you did was wrong, than it is to do what is right. Spinelessness should be the norm. Everyone is a snitch, everyone has a price. A little nuyen here and there ought to let you do anything you god damn well please. A few hundred nuyen might let you get close enough to set off a bio-car bomb in a packed public area. Why would a security company use so much electronic security? Because it saves them money? Certianly. But also because it removes the human factor from what they do. Discretion is lost for the cold 1-0 of the machine. The trick to bombing a park with a bioweapon is not paying off the guards, its duping the machines. Odd that morality in this case seems to be seated with a drone.
Don't think that the most "moral" and "altruistic" men running the security company don't know this. They do. These men know that it is not right to trust men with right and wrong. They are even more cynical than you or I. They deny them the right to choose. Maybe Damien Knight doesn't give a fuck, but I imagine that there are a few goldensouls left out there that want to make it right... Too bad the right they fight for is corrupted, twisted and malign. A right that denies basic freedom and responsibility. A right that condemns first and asks questions later...
Someone already mentioned the concept of having players choose between "the lesser of two evils" and this was repainted into "screwed and less screwed". I would consider the latter to be much closer to the truth. Runners are not even a line on a quarterly budget. How much can they get away with before someone buys their heads? Is it better to just buckle down and march to the tune of the nuyen, do what your paymasters say you should do, even if its illegal, dangerous and maybe even wrong? If you do, aren't you just a wageslave with fancy clothes?
Players should very rarely ever come into contact with a "right thing". In a recent game I ran, players had to bring in a smuggler to the mob who had dumped his load (a SR standard mission). He has kids, adopted kids. He also exposed his family to the dangers of his lifestyle when he failed his mission and he should have known that. Everyone here is guilty. The kids and wife are ignorant, a form of weakness that gets them implicated. If the wife had taken the time to find out what her husband did for a living, how the soybacon got bought, she might have decided to leave rather than be exposed to that danger. There is nothing sacred. The family unit was corrupt even at its most altruistic point. In the end, the players had to deal with a begging man (few organisms in this world die well, it is usually a very messy affair) and the option of digging their own graves to help him out of the country. Help a man who knowingly screwed over his employers while in the midst of double dealing them. He had this coming.
The next run that I have planned will involve the players trying to find a woman. Well, when I say woman, I mean whore... which is much closer to an object or chattle than a person. This piece of merchandize walked off with something that does not belong to them. Players will be diving into a world of drug dealers, pimps, organleggers, crooked cops, sadistic mafiosos, mean as wounded animal gangers, vapid wageslaves... the list goes on and on. Everyone on it is guilty. Everyone on it is self-interested. None of what the players will be doing is "good".
At the end of the day you come home and say "gee, I just tracked a girl for the past week and had to talk to a BTL dealing pimp that is a spineless welp portraying himself as a predator (I know, I am the predator), blow the brains out of a mafioso who likes to cut up and nibble on girls he fucks, dealed (literally cut a deal) with a man that sells parts of people like cuts of meat..." God damn, I am tired.
- der menkey
"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemmingway
To say that one gives players choices between Good and Evil is to say that these things can exist in a world where the Bottom Line™ the is one true god. Which is cheaper? Not which is more morally right. If there is one standard trait that should stand out in the world it is a difficult trait to characterize due to its low-key nature: apathy. Moral behavior takes effort, it is demanding and requires people to hold on to things, hold them close and never let go. If my cat is an AR pet what exactly am I holding on to?
The world of Shadowrun can be characterized by NPCs that do bad things day in and day out and don't really even think about them as bad. Thinking requires effort, as would a judgement and it takes strength to render judgement and stick to it. People have short memories, afterall. It is easier to forget that something is the way it is, that you are complicit, that what you did was wrong, than it is to do what is right. Spinelessness should be the norm. Everyone is a snitch, everyone has a price. A little nuyen here and there ought to let you do anything you god damn well please. A few hundred nuyen might let you get close enough to set off a bio-car bomb in a packed public area. Why would a security company use so much electronic security? Because it saves them money? Certianly. But also because it removes the human factor from what they do. Discretion is lost for the cold 1-0 of the machine. The trick to bombing a park with a bioweapon is not paying off the guards, its duping the machines. Odd that morality in this case seems to be seated with a drone.
Don't think that the most "moral" and "altruistic" men running the security company don't know this. They do. These men know that it is not right to trust men with right and wrong. They are even more cynical than you or I. They deny them the right to choose. Maybe Damien Knight doesn't give a fuck, but I imagine that there are a few goldensouls left out there that want to make it right... Too bad the right they fight for is corrupted, twisted and malign. A right that denies basic freedom and responsibility. A right that condemns first and asks questions later...
Someone already mentioned the concept of having players choose between "the lesser of two evils" and this was repainted into "screwed and less screwed". I would consider the latter to be much closer to the truth. Runners are not even a line on a quarterly budget. How much can they get away with before someone buys their heads? Is it better to just buckle down and march to the tune of the nuyen, do what your paymasters say you should do, even if its illegal, dangerous and maybe even wrong? If you do, aren't you just a wageslave with fancy clothes?
Players should very rarely ever come into contact with a "right thing". In a recent game I ran, players had to bring in a smuggler to the mob who had dumped his load (a SR standard mission). He has kids, adopted kids. He also exposed his family to the dangers of his lifestyle when he failed his mission and he should have known that. Everyone here is guilty. The kids and wife are ignorant, a form of weakness that gets them implicated. If the wife had taken the time to find out what her husband did for a living, how the soybacon got bought, she might have decided to leave rather than be exposed to that danger. There is nothing sacred. The family unit was corrupt even at its most altruistic point. In the end, the players had to deal with a begging man (few organisms in this world die well, it is usually a very messy affair) and the option of digging their own graves to help him out of the country. Help a man who knowingly screwed over his employers while in the midst of double dealing them. He had this coming.
The next run that I have planned will involve the players trying to find a woman. Well, when I say woman, I mean whore... which is much closer to an object or chattle than a person. This piece of merchandize walked off with something that does not belong to them. Players will be diving into a world of drug dealers, pimps, organleggers, crooked cops, sadistic mafiosos, mean as wounded animal gangers, vapid wageslaves... the list goes on and on. Everyone on it is guilty. Everyone on it is self-interested. None of what the players will be doing is "good".
At the end of the day you come home and say "gee, I just tracked a girl for the past week and had to talk to a BTL dealing pimp that is a spineless welp portraying himself as a predator (I know, I am the predator), blow the brains out of a mafioso who likes to cut up and nibble on girls he fucks, dealed (literally cut a deal) with a man that sells parts of people like cuts of meat..." God damn, I am tired.
- der menkey
"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemmingway
I don't get people who want to play a setting that is irredemably evil with players that are likewise. Aside from the lack of hope being unrealistic, unvarying black paints a very dull picture. I run a dark world, but I run it that way so the light appears brighter. The game is made by those moments of humanity and hope, when the wrong is put right. You don't strive to do right because the problems are easily overcome. You strive because they're not.
Players play role-playing games ultimately, because they want to experience being someone different to themselves. That includes being someone who has the courage to break an innocent person out of jail or take on a street gang who threaten the neighbourhood, because most players aren't these people. Who wants to go to all the trouble of playing a character that submits to opposition just the same as they themselves would or have? If you shrug and say "that's the way of the world, can't change it" how are you playing a character that you really respect?
At a moment in my game, after slugging their way through a long, dark session in back alleys and rain-soaked streets, there came a scene where they found themselves on top of a skyscraper with space all around them and a clear moon in the sky. The NAAN shaman they had rescued transformed into an eagle and flew into the night. All the dark and the crime and the claustrophobia I'd carefully constructed, was there to make this moment a release for the players.
You can't make a song with one note. You can't engage the heart without hope.
This is how my game is.
-Khadim.
Knasser, you hit the nail on the head.
The goal of all of the grit is to have something to escape from, something to redeem, for the layers of this shitty world to be peeled back and see that life is a beautiful and wonderful thing.
Transcendence.
Shadowrun, in general, achieves this by very strong juxtaposition of these themes. Of amorality, darkness and corruption with salvation, positivity, beauty. As I said in the earlier post: being moral takes strength.
Who better to have and exercise this strength than the player characters?
- der menkey
"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemmingway
The goal of all of the grit is to have something to escape from, something to redeem, for the layers of this shitty world to be peeled back and see that life is a beautiful and wonderful thing.
Transcendence.
Shadowrun, in general, achieves this by very strong juxtaposition of these themes. Of amorality, darkness and corruption with salvation, positivity, beauty. As I said in the earlier post: being moral takes strength.
Who better to have and exercise this strength than the player characters?
- der menkey
"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemmingway
| QUOTE (Critias @ Jul 25 2007, 12:20 PM) |
| Give 'em a goal besides "because I like money," and all sorts of heinous and illegal acts can suddenly become almost righteous. |
I was always partial to freeing our people from Zionist occupation and forcing America's Evil Crusader Army out of Mecca.
The choice between "evils" is probably one of the better ways to go, because it does lead to some interesting situations and generally exposes the weaknesses of any moral philosophy. One of my favorites is the tragic tale of Lucy and Morgord.
Lucy is a cute blond-haired and hazel-eyed four-year-old toddler living in a nice middle-class suburban neighborhood with her mother and her father and her mother's live-in lesbian lover (hey, it's the 70s). Her family loves her and she loves her family; but, most of all, she loves Morgord, her "imaginary friend". She often regales her family with tales of their exploits together in fantastical magical lands.
Morgord is actually younger than Lucy, barely a year old. He was born in picturesque Aztlan, in a dingy cell of a maximum security prison, when the Aztec priest who was ritually executing the worst serial murder in that nation's history (as prescribed by law) accidentally knocked himself out with drain from the accompanying government-sanctioned invoking ritual. Morgord's first act in this world was to suck that priest's brain out through his eye sockets.
Morgord loves Lucy, he really does, which is why he uses his Astral Gateway power to take her on wondrous adventures to relatively safe and hospitable metaplanes, adventures which do not consume time in the "real" world so no one even knows that she's gone. It is also why he has made a Formula Pact with her and made her his Hidden Life vessel.
But as much as Morgord loves Lucy, he also loves killing people in gruesome painful ways. And he does, often. Which is why there has been a string of disappearances and murders around Lucy's neighborhood. Parts of bodies have been found scattered for miles around her home.
Her parents are concerned about the recent activities and are considering moving to some place safer, having no clue what that Lucy's "imaginary" friend is the cause of all of it and that they'd just be taking the problem with them.
The runners are hired by the family of a victim, which just wants to end the carnage. Of course, there is the problem. Due to the Formula Pact and the Hidden Life, the carnage cannot end as long as Lucy is alive. Of course, Immunity to Normal Weapons, Regeneration, and the protection of a high-force Free Spirit make it very difficult to murder the innocent child.
*blink...blink*
Hey we finally found it: the ONE time Banishing is useful. Unless you have an Initiate, then it's useless again.
hyzmarca - brilliant as usual. It is with great pleasure that I steal the idea for my own game. Thanks for posting that!
-K.
-K.
Yeah, it's not the type of game I typically run, but I do not deny the sweetness of its awesomesauce.
| QUOTE |
| The runners are hired by the family of a victim, which just wants to end the carnage. Of course, there is the problem. Due to the Formula Pact and the Hidden Life, the carnage cannot end as long as Lucy is alive. Of course, Immunity to Normal Weapons, Regeneration, and the protection of a high-force Free Spirit make it very difficult to murder the innocent child. |
So what? Use the girl as spirit formula to gain control over the Free spirit, force him to end the pact, travel to his homeplane and then kill him there. The girl still lives on afterwards, and all she loses is her strange imaginary friend.
Hi,
I got nothing against people being 'evil', no demand for people to be 'good'..
..But people who play their characters as 'evil' just because it 'justifies' their actions aren't actually playing 'evil' characters.
They're just using an excuse for their behaviour..
..'Oh, I can rape and murder and torture. Just because I'm a shadowrunner. I don't need a reason to do those things. And the GM isn't allowed to make me face my consequences. And it's fully justified, because all shadowrunners are 'bad' people'.
Jeeze, how pathetic is that ??
How completely ignoring that many of the shadowrunners in the sourcematerial and books aren't like that ??
How completely ignoring that many of the characters in Cyberpunk books and movies aren't like that ??
Anyways, back to the topic..
Grit is good. Grit darkens the world, so the light shines brighter. Grit brings meaning to your actions.
I got nothing against people being 'evil', no demand for people to be 'good'..
..But people who play their characters as 'evil' just because it 'justifies' their actions aren't actually playing 'evil' characters.
They're just using an excuse for their behaviour..
..'Oh, I can rape and murder and torture. Just because I'm a shadowrunner. I don't need a reason to do those things. And the GM isn't allowed to make me face my consequences. And it's fully justified, because all shadowrunners are 'bad' people'.
Jeeze, how pathetic is that ??
How completely ignoring that many of the shadowrunners in the sourcematerial and books aren't like that ??
How completely ignoring that many of the characters in Cyberpunk books and movies aren't like that ??
Anyways, back to the topic..
Grit is good. Grit darkens the world, so the light shines brighter. Grit brings meaning to your actions.
| QUOTE (Particle_Beam) | ||
So what? Use the girl as spirit formula to gain control over the Free spirit, force him to end the pact, travel to his homeplane and then kill him there. The girl still lives on afterwards, and all she loses is her strange imaginary friend. |
You are assuming that a spirit can simply change Hidden Life vessels at will. This, I believe, violates the original intent of the power. The Hidden Life vessel is like a D&D Lich's Phylactery in metagame purpose, something for the PCs to quest after and destroy in their attempt to defeat their enemy. If the spirit can simply change vessels at will, destroying one becomes pointless .
I also don't believe that a spirit can simply break a Pact once made.
The use of the girl to bind the spirit remains possible, but it is not without drawbacks. While you can order the spirit to refrain from killing, it would constantly attempt to break free, and you would need to use the girl for periodic rebinding, which means that you would need to keep her close, potentially forever, since she would benefit from Immunity to Age. There will always be a risk that Morgord will break free or have his binder killed, or that the binder will die in combat or in an accident.
The purpose of Hidden Life is to ensure that the spirit can still return to earth even if banished or 'killed' on his home plane. Making the girl also the bearer of the Formula Pact is only putting all your eggs in one basket, with the benefit of only having to look out for one thing instead of two, but the drawback that your enemies now only have to hunt down one thing to get their grasps over you.
Sucks to be the evil Free Spirit if the characters manage to get hold of the little girl.
Sucks to be the evil Free Spirit if the characters manage to get hold of the little girl.
actually, if you order it not to feed, doesn't morgord eventually just hit force 0, at which point he is basically unable to do anything?
so maybe a year or something like that, unless morgord is a *really* high force blood spirit to begin with...
so maybe a year or something like that, unless morgord is a *really* high force blood spirit to begin with...
Throw in a small child crying by the eviscerated corpse of it's mother on the sidewalk as people walk by just once, and you won't have your players thinking it's less than punk anything.
Oh my, it even suffers from Evanescence? That only makes it easier to defeat it in the first place.
| QUOTE (Synner667) |
| Grit is good. Grit darkens the world, so the light shines brighter. Grit brings meaning to your actions. |
...and for the RiS team, things are about to get a whole lot darker...
Dobrodošli u [okupiranu] Hrvatsku. Zadovolje, uživaju vaš boravak..
That won't permanently kill it. Thanks to Hidden Life, it will just return in a month with its Force restored.
The entire point of the exercise is that it cannot be permanently killed without killing the child first. You can put it down for a month at a time, but eventually you will fail. You can bind it and rebind it and repeatedly order it to refrain from killing, but that will eventually fail and it requires the presence of the child who will not cooperate against her friend.
The entire point of the exercise is that it cannot be permanently killed without killing the child first. You can put it down for a month at a time, but eventually you will fail. You can bind it and rebind it and repeatedly order it to refrain from killing, but that will eventually fail and it requires the presence of the child who will not cooperate against her friend.
| QUOTE (Fix-it) |
| who the fark says you have to follow the book fluff? |
toturi!
Subdue him when he's at Force 1, and then make him end the Hidden Force Power. Now he's busted.
| QUOTE (Particle_Beam) |
| Subdue him when he's at Force 1, and then make him end the Hidden Force Power. Now he's busted. |
But he can't. Once he puts his life in something, its there until that something dies or is destroyed.
Of course he can. The Hidden Force Power isn't 1 use only.
Nice steady work for a mage. Every year and a day you get paid to true-banish the spirit. A job to last a lifetime, and your children's lifetime, and your grand children's lifetime...
It get's even better. It has Evanescence, which means it becomes weaker and weaker, and then, you can get even more and more services out from him. 
Hidden Life is a permanent power. This is explicitly stated in the description.
Year and a day banishing does sound like a good deal, except that it won't be gone for a year and a day.
It will be gone for a few minutes, maybe a few hours. Upon reviewing Street Magic, I have noticed that anyone with a copy of its formula can summon it back prematurely simply by concentrating on it and the girl (its only formula) will want her friend back. Like most children, she is naturally selfish and lack an understanding of the concept and nature of death.
Of course, the way Evanescence works, a materialization spirit is unlikely to lose a Force point unless you order it to do so intentionally. Or, it could simply disrupt itself, costing you all of your services, and allowing it to come back almost instantly.
And, a strict reading of the rules about Free Spirits greatly limits the types of commands it can be given.
Or you could just say that the blood invoking didn't take and it doesn't have Essence Drain or Evanescence because, honestly, I didn't consider it to. The rules for essence drain allow a spirit to reach the triple-digit force rather easily, and that isn't fair to the PCs.
Year and a day banishing does sound like a good deal, except that it won't be gone for a year and a day.
It will be gone for a few minutes, maybe a few hours. Upon reviewing Street Magic, I have noticed that anyone with a copy of its formula can summon it back prematurely simply by concentrating on it and the girl (its only formula) will want her friend back. Like most children, she is naturally selfish and lack an understanding of the concept and nature of death.
Of course, the way Evanescence works, a materialization spirit is unlikely to lose a Force point unless you order it to do so intentionally. Or, it could simply disrupt itself, costing you all of your services, and allowing it to come back almost instantly.
And, a strict reading of the rules about Free Spirits greatly limits the types of commands it can be given.
Or you could just say that the blood invoking didn't take and it doesn't have Essence Drain or Evanescence because, honestly, I didn't consider it to. The rules for essence drain allow a spirit to reach the triple-digit force rather easily, and that isn't fair to the PCs.
Of course it's permanent. It doesn't end after two weeks or so, after all. And making the girl forget about her friend should be one of the easiest things to do in the year 2070+++, with psychotropic programs, mind-influencing spells and all that stuff. 
| QUOTE (Synner667 @ Jul 25 2007, 06:01 PM) |
| ...But people who play their characters as 'evil' just because it 'justifies' their actions aren't actually playing 'evil' characters. They're just using an excuse for their behaviour.. ..'Oh, I can rape and murder and torture. Just because I'm a shadowrunner. I don't need a reason to do those things. And the GM isn't allowed to make me face my consequences. And it's fully justified, because all shadowrunners are 'bad' people'. Jeeze, how pathetic is that ?? |
I'm not sure what it is you're trying to say (you're using pseudo quote marks an awful lot), but you seem to feel awful strongly about this, to the point of being plenty judgemental, so I figure I might as well try my best to puzzle out what you mean, and reply -- because I think you might be calling me pathetic, and I'm just not wired to ignore that sort of thing.
When I say most Shadowrunners are wrong in the head, I mean exactly that. I don't care what happy horseshit is in the novels or what do-gooder Robin Hood fucks are in the source material; look at what Shadowrunners do. Look at how many people they kill. Look at how much they steal, and hurt, and maim. Look at just an average Shadowrun -- sit down at a convention and just listen in on one average gaming table full of one average, pre-generated, Shadowrunner team! -- and rack up the body count. I don't care if the people dying are corporate employees, and neither should you. Breaking into someone's property and killing security guards is morally bankrupt (and anyone that chooses to do that, over and over again, for a living, is similarly lacking in morals).
Look at the risks your average Shadowrunner takes, the lifestyle they lead, and they payment they receive for it...and then tell me how stable, sane, normal, and rational that person is. They get hired by people to do horrible things to other people. They break into businesses, kill (or just beat senseless) anyone in their way, hack computers, steal someone's life work (or upload a virus, or whatever), and then break back out again. That's the default job, right their. The basic datasteal. That's how they pay their bills -- stealing, taking what other people worked hard for, murdering (or at least assaulting) anyone who tries to stop them.
The name for people that do that in real life isn't "Shadowrunner," and if you meet one you won't think he's a carefree hippy hero that's out to stick it to the man.
Even if you want to take a best-case scenario and say they are all Robin Hood types, that still doesn't disprove the "there's something wrong with their hardware" theory. Normal people, sane and rational and stable people, don't live like that. Period. Take the murder out of the equation by insisting this particular group never kills or that every target of theirs "has it coming" (whichever excuse will let you sleep at night), and you're still looking at a group of people that make their living not only by breaking laws and stealing from others, but that face risks and threats that make even the craziest mountain climbing, hang-gliding, extreme sport junkie adrenaline addict look boring and calm by comparison. Even if you decide their aren't cold-hearted killers, they're still insane. Robin Hood (playing along for a minute that he's, in some way, a historical figure rather than a completely made up one) wasn't sane, or normal, or rational in the same way most people of his time were. He wouldn't be famous if he was!
It's a simple statement of fact -- normal, sane, rational people do not become Shadowrunners. There is something fundamentally wrong with anyone, anywhere, in modern society that chooses to make their living as completely outside the laws and social mores as a Shadowrunner does. Some might be sociopathic, some psychopathic, some adrenaline junkies, some self-destructive...but they can't all be in the Shadows against their will, sorry. Regardless of what circumstances might have initially forced even the most noble and well-meaning of people into it, there reaches a point where you make a choice to live the life of a Shadowrunner, and I stand firmly by the idea there is something fundamentally wrong with anyone who makes that choice.
Moving on. Now, I don't know exactly who you're refering to with your italicized nonsense, about "Oh, I can rape and murder and torture. Just because I'm a shadowrunner. I don't need a reason to do those things," blah blah blah little rant. But I play characters that (no rape, thank you) do murder and torture. And guess what? They have reasons to do those things. First and foremost, they are Shadowrunners and sometimes killing people is very much directly their job. This is like complaining that race car drivers speed "just because they're race car drivers." It's their job, of course they do it. You can insist it's an excuse rather than a reason, but you're making a lame complaint. "Oh noes," you cry, "That professional criminal is doing something mean to someone!"
There are plenty of reasons besides that one to be violent, though. There are plenty of times the job itself won't be a wetwork assignment, for instance, but that the deaths of others will still be completely necessary. Why do you think lethal ammo is the default of the setting? Why do you think every archetype comes equipped, right out of the box, with ways to kill people? What game do you play in, where no NPC ever dies after the clatter of a PC's dice and the chatter of a PC's firearm? Do guards in your game world not wear armor, because they're not worried about violence falling upon them in the middle of the night? Do the player characters in your games not carry weapons, not have combat skills, not know a single combat spell?
People die on Shadowruns. Period. Even in the published books you like so much, people get killed. Sam Verner is the exception, Sally Tsung and Hart and Argent (and even Dodger, with his 5+ in a few combat skills) are the rules. How many of the Shadowrun novels go from cover to cover without one security guard or gang member or corporate cop flatlining?
Torture gets a little fuzzier, sure -- but, what, don't know anyone who watches 24 or The Shield? Never watched an action movie where the good guy punches the bad guy 'till he gets an answer? Neved read a Batman comic? "Torture" happens all the time.
You think the interrogation skill always leaves your hands clean? You think a Shadowrunner never, ever, needs to get some information out of someone, and is such a violent-by-nature person that they've tried to do so by applying violence on a helpless foe? There are people out there that feel torture is never justified, and that's noble, but a bit naive. I can bet most professional criminals -- let's swing by a prison and take a vote! -- don't feel that way, even if most role playing gamers do.
I've had a character torture before. Just recently, in fact. A dozen people had been snatched off the street by Mitsuhama security thugs, and they were being traded to the local Yakuza as sex slaves. They were going to be bunraku fodder (after the first batch of Yakuza thugs got a morale boost out of them).
We had that van's back-up driver. Alive. We got the information from him that we needed in order to go rescue those people. We did it by zip-typing his hands to the rungs of a ladder down in a sewer, and then opening up his belly with a knife, slowly, while stim-patching him to keep him from blacking out, and asking him questions. Then, the husband of one of the snatched NPCs kicked him to death.
Was it right or wrong? What's more, was it in character or not?
We saved a dozen people from a short, brutal, ugly, life of rape-for-money. At the expense of one bad man's life (a person who was in the midst of knowingly and willingly enslaving people to sell into the sex trade), we saved a bunch of women and children. Would it not have been more evil to shrug and say "oh well," like your average professional criminal would? We had no other way (no mage) of getting the information we were after, so "hands-on data retreival" was the only way we could find out where the van was going. Right or wrong? Evil or good? That's a personal question, but I can tell you that all the other characters went right along with it.
In character or not? The character that performed the actual torture has a pathological hatred of most Japanese people (due to growing up metahuman in Saito-occupied San Francisco, and being a member of the Metahuman People's Army down there), and has the skills necessary to torture someone for information. I was reading a lot of Sin City when I made ol' Tyler.
Now, am I pathetic for doing it? Is that just an excuse for "my" behaviour? In my sixteen years of gaming, I've had one character torture someone. For that character, it's completely natural and normal to have some blood under his nails. Nevermind the dozens, maybe hundreds, of other characters I've got that haven't ever done anything like that. Nevermind the characters I've run that have almost come to blows with other party members when they've acted like that. Hell, I've got enough characters in enough games that are morally opposed to one another, I'd say half my Shadowrun characters (just one game, alone) couldn't stand to be in a room with one another for more than a few minutes. If all my characters are just extensions of my will and personality, doesn't that mean I'm schizophrenic or something?
According to you, because one of my characters did something horrible, I'm just making up excuses and justifying my own horrible behavior. According to you, it's impossible to just be role playing, to have a character do evil without the player behind that character being evil. According to you, there is no seperation between character and creator, work of fiction and writer.
Does that extend to GMs? GMs that have evil NPCs are secretly evil people? What about sourcebook writers that include evil organizations? Authors with evil characters? Comic book artists that draw bad guys?
There absolutely is a seperation between character and player, with anyone that really knows how to role play. I'm sorry if you and your friends can't (or don't, or won't) understand that seperation, but if you believe a player always acts like a character, I'd say it's something wrong with you, not with the rest of us. If you can't draw a clean line between the actions of an RPG character and an RPG player, you're the pathetic one.
EDIT -- I've been told by The Man I ended this note too harshly. I don't believe I did, but in the interest of keeping the possibility for conversation going (ie, not getting hit by the ban-stick) I'll try to clarify, just in case anyone's read this far.
If someone cannot tell the difference between the actions of an imaginary character and the person playing that character, then I believe that the observer in question is the one with issues, not the player in question.
If someone genuinely believes all RPG players are doing is using characters as "excuses for their actions," then I posit they aren't a terribly deep role player themselves, might be new to the game, or might simply not have a very strong grasp on the whole idea. Not every RPG character is a Mary Sue, simply the character's player thrust into a game world and given really high stats. The implication that all characters are, combined with the implication that all gamers who then go on to have characters commit evil deeds are, themselves, evil out-of-character? Is ridiculous to me. I stand by my "if you believe this, you are pathetic" statement. If the statement does not apply, do not be offended by it, as I am not calling you pathetic.
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