Humanis and Night Hunters as the face of racism is deceptively comforting because humans who live in the suburbs and have never had an actual conversation with a troll once in their live can point to those groups, say "I'm not racist", and actually believe it.

The thing is that crazy people who burn giant crosses on front lines are pretty harmless compared to the form that most racism takes. It is natural for people to have a positive initial reaction to people who are similar to them and it is natural for people to have a negative initial reaction to people who are different. This is an evolutionary programed genetic survival trait. Usually, people look similar because they have similar genes and if you cooperate with people who have the same genes that you do then those genes have a far better chance of being passed on to the next generation.

So the human manager is far more likely to ire a human over any other metatype if they all have equal skills and experience. The ork is more likely to hire an ork. The elf is more likely to hire an elf. And the human is more likely to go out for drinks with the human and his network of friends will consist mostly of humans. We end up with a great deal of voluntary social segregation and people point to humanis and say "I'm not racist." The same thing happens today. If you look at social networks that people form you'll find a great deal of voluntary segregation. People don't think much of it. It is an instinctual response. Most of their friends are similar to them. That's just natural. But then they point to the KKK or the Ayrian Nation and say "I'm not racist."

Yes, and that type of racism is difficult to portray in the format that SR books take unless the piece were covering that particular topic.

For the record, a number of the core shadowtalkers have various biases and prejudices, but in many cases there just hasn't been an opportunity to highlight that yet. I suspect that Emergence will show off a few. I know I had a piece in Street Magic that portrayed one core shadowtalkers as a misogynist, but it was cut. Due to formatting, not content.

Hyzmarca, while i guess it might be true in some countries, it isnt in all, so its no inherent to mankind, just to a few cultures.
I dont like such demonstration, but i'll cite my exemple regarding racism : I was raised in a foreign country, and had friends from all over the world there (every religion/race/culture) because it was the norm back there.
Once i came back in my home country at 13, i took me monthes to understand why some people dont get along with some others just because of their colour ... (i know it must sound stupid but i still dont really understand).
Anyway living in a comunity with people being of the same race/culture isnt the norm.
So why assume that people would have natural prejudice against other races in Shadowrun ?
Especialy since for exemple a human could have an orc mother and a troll brother (both having the same father).
Now since most human beings like to find a scapegoat to all their problems, i suppose that SR politicians would put the burden of their failiures on the shoulders of metahumans, and that the people would just follow and buy it.

I think i lack the american point of view regarding comunities (in france it is actualy forbiden by law to have any kind of "official" group based on race or religion or origins : the republic is one and undividable, so is your citizenship.)
Maybe i tend to go on stereotypes when i master a game when it comes to racism : the orc will always be the one to have his ID checked by the lonestar once in Bellevue for exemple.

Again, appart from the elves, i dont see how people could live in race communities : they have nothing in common except from their appearence. They can mate with others, and have family from other races.
Your culture/education is much more important than your aspect, SR's awakening is much too recent to have any kind of subculture specific enought to create race communities.

I'm actually working on that last one at the moment. I remade a bug shaman I had a while back, giving it another stab. Our first job out, we had a J that sold us a terrible line, and we walked, so he tried to have us killed. We got away, hacked his commlink, and posted all his personal info on Shadowland (calling it ShadowSea just feels ridiculous to me). Our new job is from his former employer who cut him lose and now wants us to kill him. It could be a double cross, but I can't see why they would bother paying up front cash to off some runners taht are more than happy to walk away.

So my quandry is whether we can still collect on the guy if rather than out right killing him, I can take him home with me and invest him. Mantis shaman BTW, so he's going to end up dead eventually. Was considering be a roach shaman instead.... frankly they just didn't seem as neat. There is a certain appeal to being the one of the few things left alive after World War III. But being lumped in with twinkies and Keith Richards just ain't my thing.

"Generally" that's true, I agree. One of our players on IWTF, Deva , has been doing a great job of it though. Character was formerly a marine, but he still tries to avoid any sort of blood shed, especially killing. He's been donig a great job off it, and I've been awarding him for good RP. I think the exceptions are the ones that really shine, because they do a good job of it. The PC that just pop someone and walk away better be played as seriously cold hearted bastards, or very good at compartmentalizing. Otherwise it's just very bland.

definitely, definitely. it can be done--hell, it's done all the time. which is why it doesn't interest me, personally. there are all kinds of stories about guys who deal with killing. there are far fewer stories about guys who deal with being spouse abusers, or who deal with working with a spouse abuser. it's hard, to me, to evoke a sense of dirtiness and cynicism when it comes to killing in RPGs.

Yes, that all makes sense. Too bad, but thanks for the explanation.

I would say , "would it be possible to list the cut off points before the text and let us find it and connect the dots on our own". But that sounds like it would be rather frustrating for you, and , as you say, keep you from being able to use it later.

Oh well.

It sounds like the only real taboos in Shadowrun 2070 would be love and monogomy. Now that's dystopian.

In general the more people you kill the more jaded you become. In a society like Shadowrun's I imagine people become immunized to violence pretty early through the Trid and such.

By modern standards, many Shadowrunners (or even people on the street) are probably clinically insane, and at least partially sociopathic.

It's sort of like how when the Veitnam Vets came back, and how the experience of getting used to clearing people out of tunnels with flamethrowers, and burning villages and such changed them. Shadowrunners are like that, except there is no "normal" society to adapt back to.

Sure, killing his first person might have fazed a Shadowrunner, but it got easier from that point on, and it probably wasn't as hard to begin with as it was for many other people. Since most Shadowrunners are beginning the game "Established" a "first kill" is rarely going to be an RP element unless the player is setting their character up as "talented, but Naive" which is a potential character theme.

Given that in Shadowrun your character usually makes a living by killing/kidnapping/stealing at the request of anyone who can pay, and without caring why, morality is more or less irrelevent.

What's more society is so jaded from the things I've read that only the most intense experiences and images have any effect even on "Joe Average". Hence the heavy trade in bloodsports, snuff, and general weirdness. It's a very dark future.

At any rate, Morality can be inserted into Shadowrun, but usually it requires inserting something really over the top and evil into the game as an enemy (and making it very apparent). That can cause characters to choose sides and usually come out as the good guys. Otherwise, it's more or less irrelevent to the setting. Shadowrunners deal more in honor (keeping ones word, fulfilling the contract, watching the backs of your friends) than actual ethics.

"She's only 15, and already she's aquired a taste for torture..."

Especially in Shadowrun you also have consider that there are other things akin to murder that are also moral issues today that are probably relatively "mild" in the setting. I mean how do your PCs react when they need to interrogate someone? How do your PCs react to the (meta)human trade?

There are places where the line can be draw other than murder. Indeed I've found more than a few groups who won't torture people (under any circumstances) even when it would be to their benefit (and fitting with the setting). I also gave the party the jeebies at one point when a Johnson promised to pay the PCs in "Cash or goods of an equivilent value" and then gave them to 13 year old girls kidnapped from a corp enclave and with their SINS erased "untouched and perfect for resale".

The point is that if you think your PCs are being too callous and evil, you can always introduce situations where they are likely to make a (positive) moral desician if you want to see them reaffirm themselves as the good guys.

>>>----Therumancer--->

Well, the problem with the firing squads (from the accounts I've read, I am not a Final Solution expert) weren't so much that the firing squad was having breakdowns because of how many people they killed, but because of how many people they didn't kill—which makes some sense to me, I can imagine being much less traumatized by painting someone's brains across the wall than by painting some of someone's brains across the wall and then listening to them moan and breathe wetly for a few minutes.

(Most people don't think about this, but killing people on the kind of scale of the Final Solution is very difficult to do in an efficient (both in terms of time and money) manner. One of many cost-cutting measures they tried that didn't work so well was to line people up to get multiple kills off of a single bullet. Most of the trauma stories I've heard have been from either those attempts or from the times they tried to pack a large number of people around an explosive charge and set it off.)

As a result, you can look at it several ways in Shadowrun. The comparative lack of ways to die instantly increases the horror, but the speed with which people die decreases it again (your normal human takes twenty-seven seconds to die, which is long in some ways, but they don't sit around slowly dying over multiple minutes or hours), while the increased accuracy afforded by things like Smartlinks and Improved Ability can reduce the chances further of having a dying-but-not-dead person in a horribly maimed condition.

~J

The title of this topic pretty much says it all; morales are relative. Trying to incorporate common everday ethical questions concerning the shadowrun universe won't work when the ethics of our society are so different, and vice verse. You need to find some strings to stroke that you know the players actually care about. For example, in one mission we had to make sure some cargo wasn't compromised by authorities. We didn't find out until the end of the session(after all our hard work) that the large cargo container was filled with children to be sold on the slave market for labor and pedophilia activity. We could either save the kids and become the most wanted for the next few months or take the cargo to its destination and get a fat pay check. It actually raised some heated debate around our table between those that wanted the money and those who wanted to save the kids. It was a good session.

So leave Shadowrun's social problems for Shadowrunners. If you want your players to strain, you gotta hit em where it hurts.

indeed. that's actually why i view stuff like killing to be basically boring. once in a while, sure, it's fun to play a guy who agonizes over the death of other humans. but all the time? personally, i enjoy putting fictional rounds into fictional skulls too much to waste too much time with in-character angst.

when i choose to strongly incorporate morality into my games, as a GM, i generally make it my goal to make my players want to spit. i want the things their characters do, the people their characters have to associate with, and the situations their characters are involved in to leave a dirty taste in the players' mouths. i want nothing to be clean--i want there to be no right answers, and no clear distinction between bad and worse.

that's just me.

Well, the thing is that then actual morals come into play. Do you really feel comfortable helping the Draco Foundation do whatever the hell it is that old wormy wants it to do?

~J

sirrah, are you suggesting that an organization which purports itself to be metahumanitarian in nature could be up to no good? for shame! it's not like Dunk had a huge chunk of Aztechnology in his pocket at the height of their use of blood magic, or anything. no, sir!

I remember one of the SR sourcebooks had a little blurb on "the secrets of FASA". I feel smart by association that people on this board have probably figured some of the "secrets" out ahead of time.

>>>>> Aye, that is one of the reasons that every mage even thinking about considering researching the hidden wonders of Blood Magic needs to explain that no, the Draco Foundation will not pay you even if you manage to survive long enough to bring me to them alive. After all I'm not on any of their lists. <<<<< -Bot

I'm a little confused as to what you guys mean when you say "relativity." I'm as much a relativist as the next heathen utilitarian, but what's ambiguous about racism or spousal abuse in most situations? I'm not saying there aren't stories out there that might explore such issues, but a game of Shadowrun usually isn't the place that it happens. When my buddies and I get together, it's usually not to explore racism. Maybe an otherwise decent character could have such traits, and struggle with them. That could be interesting, although it takes pretty disciplined roleplaying to do it justice.

Of course, it's also possible that you just mean characters could have these traits to emphasize their scumbag traits. Or even just for the sake of having them. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it runs the risk of trivializing or fetishizing things that are pretty deadly serious to real people.

yeah, Moon-Hawk pretty much nailed it. relative to murder, racism and spouse abuse would generally be considered lesser sins. i mean, how about this for a character concept: a wife-beating Humanis pacifist?

Whoa. Did I say it was unthinkable? Sheesh.

I simply questioned what the purpose was. I think it's pretty well-established that killing people is, generally speaking, not cool. But in the context of stories, sometimes violence is a part of the story. This is a no-brainer--a signficant portion of entertainment these days is devoted to people killing each other. Better there than in real life, I suppose. Shadowrun is generally one of these types of entertainment. In violent combat, there is some inherent drama--who lives, and who dies, and how successful are they?

In contrast, the dramas of racism and spousal abuse are not so--cinematic. What exactly does an effectively roleplayed session of Shadowrun about spousal abuse look like? Do my friend and I sit there and yell at each other about who takes out the trash?

I guess what I'm aiming at is that these ideas in and of themselves are not very interesting. You say "What about a wife-beating Humanist pacifist?" and I say, "Yeah, and now what?" A character trait in stasis is only interesting insofar as it illustrates something about the character or the character's development.

depends on how you want to do it. personally, i'm less interested in rping a guy beating his girlfriend than i am rping a guy who beats his girlfriend. but yes, you could yell at each other about who takes out the trash. say you've been hired for something, and you stop by the apartment to get your good armored jacket, and on the way out your shrieking nag of a wife starts bitching about how you haven't taken the damn garbage out for three weeks. not a character-defining moment, sure--just another piece in the mosaic of scenes that comprises your character.

...though it is not a true quality in that it is not worth any BPs, KK has a moderate distrust of elves due to what she experienced growing up human in the TT. I have played her wary of both PC nd NPC elves in that she rarely turns her back to them and if she doesn't know them that well will not let them approach her too closely (even if it is to cast a healing spell). On the other hand, she doesn't purposely go out of her way to argue with or pick a fight with elves just for the hell of it.

If there is an elf member of the team, she will help him or her (such as covering them during fights, pull them out of harms way if they're injured, etc.) inasmuch that it benefits the team as a whole and she does have a sense of honour. However they shouldn't expect to receive a card from her on Dunkelzahn Memorial Day.

that's definitely one point i was trying to make. mostly, though, i'm just interested in discussing it, seeing if other people do it and talking about why.

I would definitely like to try a campaign with some darker elements, but the tough thing for me is rounding up an entire group that would be comfortable with that. It seems like there's always at least one person who would be uncomfortable with that sort of thing, so it always gets pushed off.

What I'm getting at is that the more... mundane aspects of spousal abuse and racism probably hit closer to home than fantasy violence does to a lot of people. Most people have not affected by running gun battles with ork gangers, or coprorate assassins, and it probably doesn't faze most people. Spousal abuse on the other hand is a very intimate betrayal, far more likely to unintentionally strike a nerve than more stylized violence. Throwing it in just for kicks might be crude for a mixed audience.

In a group of friends who are comfortable with each other, no harm no foul. I can see why it's not something that comes up in published materials much though.

i agree, to some extent. and i'm not advocating forcing this sort of thing onto groups that don't want it. i'm kinda lucky, in that by playing online, i've got a really big group of players and GMs. if some of them aren't comfortable dealing with stuff like this, i can simply not interact with them using that character.

one of the problems i have to deal with is that in the past, when i've seen people 'exploring' behavior like this, it's generally been a thinly-veiled excuse to fantasize about taboo behavior. participating in someone's murder-rape fantasy is not something i want to do, and fantasizing about abusing women is not why i'm playing a wife-beater. so i kinda worry about people getting the wrong idea.

Well Skeptical Clown I guess I approach it from the other direction, the very fact that racism or spousal abuse isn't the 'fantasy violence' that is dime-a-dozen on TV and Video Games is exactly why it should be mined and explored in the dark, gritty, corupt, and quite simply broken Sixth World.

It should shock, offend and distrube the sensabilities of my players (In fact I'd be worried if it didn't.), but to simply gloss over the fact that metahumanity has fallen so low that the fact that Little Sally's drunken father sells chips of himself molesting her every friday night is so mundane and common that it doesn't even raise eyebrows anymore is to do a grave diservice to the genre of Cyberpunk which Shadowrun is still a part of.

Yeah, ok. That's great. Except for two things.

One, what the heck does it add to a character or game? I'm serious. Does any shocking or depraved act inherently add something to character? If my street samurai molested children on the side, does that effective communicate some sort of useful or interesting character aspect? Or does it just disturb my fellow players for no particular reason? Does the argument over the garbage that culminates in slapping the life partner add a meaningful context to the game?

It's a game... not a movie or a novel. Most games I've been in rarely have the kind of narrative arc which allows individual characteristics and moments to build up to some sort of conclusion or point. They just sort of go on, serially, until people get tired of the game. And even in novels and movies, a certain economy is used for fictional elements--we don't follow our character into every mundane aspect of their lives. We focus on the elements that are interesting. So, what is it providing that is interesting?

And two, not inconsequentially, is it fun? If these things DO add something to the game, I wonder what exactly they would look like. The infrequent domestic squabble might offer a small bit of variety, but the novelty would quickly wear off, for me. If Method Gaming, however, is popular, I wouldn't try to dissuade anyone. I probably just wouldn't partake. De gustibus non disputandum, I suppose.

if it doesn't add anything to the character, or especially if it's not fun, it shouldn't be in the game. i completely agree about that. being fun includes not disturbing my fellow players more disturbed than they want to be.

what's it add to the game? in my case, i'm trying to add flavor. not a pleasant flavor, obviously, but i don't see SR as a pleasant place to live. the fact that there isn't any narrative structure makes adding flavor more important, to me, not less.

is it fun? dunno yet, i haven't been playing this character long. what i do know is that i'm bored with playing 'good' characters--nice guys in a bad profession, hardened professionals with a secret soft streak, stuff like that. i wanna play an asshole. a womanizing, drug-abusing jerk. not, as i've said, because i want to roleplay doing bad things, but because i want to roleplay a person who does bad things.

You should really join my mob game mfb.

yeah, well, you should really join my Entourage ga--er, wait...

Yeah, then I could play a racist punk slowly trying to turn him self into a cybered killer, and ... hey ... wait...

It adds to the cyberpunkish flavor of the Sixth World, you know the one where the following are true...

'To the death Bloodsports' from Aztlan are number one sellers on Pay-per-View.

People actually have to worry about being kidnapped off the street and persa-fixed/body sculpted into custom ordered whores.

The 'police' are nothing more then the lowest bidding jackbooted thugs who will smile and do nothing to save you if you aren't covered under one of their contracts.

The corperations are really nothing more then feudal kingdoms waging a neverending cold-war against each other.

If you don't have a valid SIN you are a non-person and have less rights then a stray dog.




Now if you want to avoid the logical conclusions of such a broken society in lue of meaningless 'fantasy violence' where the characters are otherwise good, moral, and upstanding citizens who just happen "to shoot people in the face for money" then whatever floats your boat, but I still say that you are doing a diservice to the setting and genre, Cyberpunk worlds are supposed to be dark and distrubing places that make normal healthy people's skin crawl.

However, don't think that the irony that playing characters who "shoot people in the face for money" is somehow less distasteful then playing a racist or wife beater just because the popular culture is flooded with such violence is loss upon me. The only difference is that in the Sixth World the filth that floods the popular culture is much, much worse, with corasponding results in the people's attitudes.

The difference between beating one's spouse and shooting a stranger in the face for money. No one really cares about strangers. If you hear about a stranger being killed on the news, you might just think that it is terrible but it won't change our life and you'll probably forget about it the next day. While you may know intellectually that the stranger's life has value you can't know it emotionally because you don't have any emotion invested in a stranger.
And really, there is a very short leap between not really caring if a stranger lives or dies and not really caring if you kill a stranger. The only thing that stops this leap in most people is their own self-images. Murdering a stranger changes the way that people see themselves.

Spousal abuse is quite different because there is a strong voluntary familial bond. Presumably, you love this person and would be extremely upset if this person were hurt in any way. It is so disconnected from emotional norms that most people can't accept it.

of course, what's 'funny' is that it works out the exact opposite. familiarity breeds contempt as often as it breeds love, which is one reason spouse abuse is way more common than murder.

To each their own then, because I have a very hard time imagining wanting to play a classic 'good guy' in a Cyberpunk game myself, in my mind heroes and classic morality belong elsewhere, but your mileage may vary.

What's the point of illustrating a dark future, if not to illustrate something that we shouldn't want? We don't stomp on the rose-colored glasses to the future just to get a kick out of crushing someone's dreams--we do it to shake people and say "Hey! If things keep going this way, we're screwed!" Or occasionally just, "We're screwed!"

But most working in the genre don't do that simply by painting as bleak a picture as possible; even the darkest story has to have contrasts. To abandon any notion of justice or possibility of redemption, however faint, is not cyberpunk--its nihilist fantasy. If there's no justice or idealism whatsoever in humanity, why should anyone care if the future is bleak?

Cyberpunk sometimes makes a pretense of nihilism, but I don't think that it really is nihilist. Pessimistic, yes, but not nihilistic. Its protagonists are proponents of a much different brand of beliefs and justice than we might agree with, or beliefs that are incompatible with the world they live in. That's where some of the ambiguity comes from.

I don't disagree that a cyberpunk hero could have such dire flaws though. It could be a very good character for a cyberpunk story. I just have a hard time imagining it playing well in a tabletop RPG setting. I don't get the Vampire LARPers either though, so I may just lack imagination.

maybe it wouldn't work in a tabletop setting. the venue i play in is more of a long-running collaborative fiction than traditional tabletop, which allows for a lot of character development that a tabletop game might not see.

the reader retains his or her own ideas about right and wrong, justice and injustice, happy endings and sad endings. that means that the characters in the story don't need them in order for the writer to illustrate something unpleasant--he can just make it unpleasant, and leave it to the reader to react to it.

Cyberpunk is fundamentally about tearing down the social order. That's it (from an interaction-with-society-at-large perspective, at least). Sometimes the people doing the tearing have higher principles in mind, sometimes they don't.

~J