Full Version: More dystopia!
True, although I'd say that anyone with John Q StreetSammy's skills and cyber should also be able to find a place in the corp world, after all in a world where the average human has 2-3 in his Stats and 1-3 in his Skills, virtually all of the characters are going to stand head and shoulders above the crowd quite easily and would be noticed by the Corp Headhunters unless there was some reason that they were unemployable.
The other problem is that a very large subset of the guys with that skillset who are unemployable you don't want to run with either.
Which is one of the reasons that I've always been a fan of the 'Pink Mohawk Crowd' as opposed to the "Ice Cold Pros" not only are they more fun to run with, they also make more sense to me because I can't see why many of the "Ice Cold Pros" aren't employed. 
Actually I seem to recal rough rules, maybe in the corporate sourcebook, on runners working for corps on retainer and all that. So they're still running the same, just for a single corp.
However most sammies probably can't get a more normal corp job than that. They're far to untrustworthy to make a head of security or something similar, they'd probably charge too much for just doing regular guard work, and when you need shadowrunner type work done you need deniable assets. If they guy has a corp HMO and 401(k) the deniability gets a little weak.
We'll, OK, they'd probably be great in desert wars or something like that.
I guess maybe similar stuff could apply to other runner types. They spent some time running outside the corps, and now the corps don't trust them to design their new matrix security or perhaps even do their warding.
(But I think dudes with issues tends to play better).
However most sammies probably can't get a more normal corp job than that. They're far to untrustworthy to make a head of security or something similar, they'd probably charge too much for just doing regular guard work, and when you need shadowrunner type work done you need deniable assets. If they guy has a corp HMO and 401(k) the deniability gets a little weak.
We'll, OK, they'd probably be great in desert wars or something like that.
I guess maybe similar stuff could apply to other runner types. They spent some time running outside the corps, and now the corps don't trust them to design their new matrix security or perhaps even do their warding.
(But I think dudes with issues tends to play better).
| QUOTE (Blacklisted ex-corper combat mage) |
| I'm a pretty good magician but all the big corps have blacklisted me because I refused to eat a child's still-beating heart on the grounds that I'm a vegetarian back when I worked for Aztechnology. |
Nice quote, I like it.
| QUOTE (hyzmarca) | ||
|
I love the grounds he used for refusal. Not morality, not even "ichy", not even "I won't touch that stuff", but "I'm a vegitarian".
Either he's CLEVER, or he's a jackhole who happens to be a vegetarian.
Naw, I'd say that he's just a normal everyday citizen of the Sixth World.
| QUOTE (sunnyside) |
| "Can't stand being bossed around all day" is sufficient. |
No it's not! How do you go from not wanting to be bossed in a corporate setting to "Hmm, think I'll shoot people in the face and steal shit for a living"? There's plenty of people that don't like authority. Usually they end up doing menial jobs all their lives and become bitter people, or they run their own small businesses. It is not a normal thing to decide to do crime. You need a lot more on your background than "doesn't like to be bossed around".
Yeah. "Doesn't like being bossed around all day" gets you a thirtysomething slacker job like the dudes from Clerks. It, alone, doesn't turn you into a professional B&E artist/kidnapper/killer/data-thief.
I think "not being bossed around" is a sufficient explanation for turning to crime as long as "not being bossed around" is something the character in question happens to be passionate about. Perhaps most "normal" people aren't bothered by it so much that they turn to theft and violence, but I don't think that shadowrunners are supposed to be "normal" people anyway.
But of course, if "not being bossed around" is your character's rationale for turning to crime, then you'll have to consider how your character would react to taking orders from teammates or Mr. Johnson.
But of course, if "not being bossed around" is your character's rationale for turning to crime, then you'll have to consider how your character would react to taking orders from teammates or Mr. Johnson.
The question is highly complex.
Why would anyone, in any period of civilized society, turn to crime? The situations change, the circumstances change, but the desire for crime remains the same: there has to be a commonly derived reason. I think you can boil it down to something along the lines of "The needs of the individual are not met by society." Those needs could be money, power, respect, sustenance or any of a hundred thousand other things, but the drive to satiate that need drives the person in question to crime.
Whether stealing bread to fight off starvation or stealing millions from a corporate bottom line, the person in questions perceives a need, a desire that cannot be filled through legal recourse. Either the option is unavailable or the route to the objective is seemingly or entirely out of reach to our criminal. Some people cannot afford bread, some people do not wish to strive for years and years to try and make millions legally.
All crime seems to stem from an "I want this, this is mine" urge. Somewhere, the person decides to disregard the law for whatever reason and act on that urge, becoming a criminal. However we might like to dress it up, however we might like to divorce the action from its base origins, any form of crime is the desire we all have as young children to see what we want and take it, regardless of others.
So why be a criminal in 2070? Because you want something and the road to that something is either overly long or out of reach completely. I want to be filthy rich. I'm a Troll. I'll (realistically) never get there by trying for work for the Man - so I take from the man. I want it - money, power - I can't get it any other way so I break the law to make it mine. The same can be said for any other race about many other things, but the basic desire is the same.
Some people are satisfied with the corporate job, the menial to middle pay, the empty life and the total denial of freedom and privacy and decency. The characters we play are not - they want and they take, regardless of the law and others, making them criminals, the same way it's made people criminals for thousands of years.
Why would anyone, in any period of civilized society, turn to crime? The situations change, the circumstances change, but the desire for crime remains the same: there has to be a commonly derived reason. I think you can boil it down to something along the lines of "The needs of the individual are not met by society." Those needs could be money, power, respect, sustenance or any of a hundred thousand other things, but the drive to satiate that need drives the person in question to crime.
Whether stealing bread to fight off starvation or stealing millions from a corporate bottom line, the person in questions perceives a need, a desire that cannot be filled through legal recourse. Either the option is unavailable or the route to the objective is seemingly or entirely out of reach to our criminal. Some people cannot afford bread, some people do not wish to strive for years and years to try and make millions legally.
All crime seems to stem from an "I want this, this is mine" urge. Somewhere, the person decides to disregard the law for whatever reason and act on that urge, becoming a criminal. However we might like to dress it up, however we might like to divorce the action from its base origins, any form of crime is the desire we all have as young children to see what we want and take it, regardless of others.
So why be a criminal in 2070? Because you want something and the road to that something is either overly long or out of reach completely. I want to be filthy rich. I'm a Troll. I'll (realistically) never get there by trying for work for the Man - so I take from the man. I want it - money, power - I can't get it any other way so I break the law to make it mine. The same can be said for any other race about many other things, but the basic desire is the same.
Some people are satisfied with the corporate job, the menial to middle pay, the empty life and the total denial of freedom and privacy and decency. The characters we play are not - they want and they take, regardless of the law and others, making them criminals, the same way it's made people criminals for thousands of years.
| QUOTE (Solomon Greene) |
| So why be a criminal in 2070? Because you want something and the road to that something is either overly long or out of reach completely. |
...probably the best summation yet. The latter part of the above statement is part of what drove my character KK to the life of a runner.
Due to the circumstances outlined in her backstory, she really would never be able to get a "real" job. Basically, there is little out there for 4'10" tall blade/athletic adepts only a bit more smarter than a Watcher and having no legal SIN. Kelly realised in order to do more than just survive, she had only one option. That was to use what gifts she had to carve out her own "occupation" in the shadows even if it meant going against everything she believed in as a young girl and breaking a promise she made to her "big sister" (a runner who took her in after she was abandoned by her father in Portland). In fact, before she was abandoned, Kelly actually held a very low opinion of Shadowrunners, much due in part to the constant propaganda the TT government waged in the media.
...funny how things change.
Don't forget your Hoods!
More than one Runner turned to teh shadows not to get rich but, instead, to right a great wrong. Eco-Terrorists, sure, but also some Neo-Anarchist groups who take from teh corps and give to the poor, running shadow clinics or dropping information to shadow media. "Tear the walls down!" types who want freedom for everyone and an end to the corrupt Corporate Culture.
More than one Runner turned to teh shadows not to get rich but, instead, to right a great wrong. Eco-Terrorists, sure, but also some Neo-Anarchist groups who take from teh corps and give to the poor, running shadow clinics or dropping information to shadow media. "Tear the walls down!" types who want freedom for everyone and an end to the corrupt Corporate Culture.
| QUOTE (Teenage Street Adept) |
| I don't like being bossed around and I have super-powers. I tried the Hero thing but I found that it pays crap. After a while, I started to charge people up front before saving them from certain death, but mugging victims and people who are stuck in burning buildings or people who hanging from a ledge and stuff like that just don't have very much money on them so I usually had to just stand there and watch them die. Eventually, I ran into some guys who were robbing a deckmiester's shop. The deckmiester gave me 10,000  so I knocked out the robbers and he called the Star. After the cops took the robbers away, he thanked me for stopping the robbery and saving millions of nuyen worth of equipment. And I said "Whoa, millions?" and he replied "yeah, millions, this Excalibur alone is worth 250,000 " And so I punched him oput and stole all of his stuff. I didn't get millions for it, though, the fence would only give me a couple hundred crand and a blew it on joygirls and novacoke and joygirls who let you snort novacoke off of their bellies. And that's how I became a Shadowrunner |
It works better in SR3, but it does have style. You can make more money shooting people in the face than you can working at a dead-end job.
In a game I'm running I've got everyone from real obnoxious sociopath who thrives on murder and theft (criminal SIN, so no legit jobs available), to corper who fell through the cracks (SINless, so unable to get a real job), including a PC on the run from a corp that wanted to dissect the PC's brain (has SIN, but in hiding), and finally priviliged corp heir disgusted by the excesses of his elders, and determined to do something to rectify things (has SIN, and is quite frankly giving me a headache thinking of a way to involve him).
| QUOTE (hyzmarca) | ||
It works better in SR3, but it does have style. You can make more money shooting people in the face than you can working at a dead-end job. |
Yeah, that's the kind of character concept I'm trying to avoid. It might be interesting to watch a "cautionary tale" about some loser in a movie, but it just isn't fun to play.
| QUOTE ("Big" Joe Rigallia) |
I grew up with my ma, out in the middle of the state. Every so often, three or four times a year, maybe, these guys would show up for dinner. They wore different clothes, had jewelry, showed my ma a lot of respect and also my grandfather, who I barely knew. That changed when I was about ten, I think. The guys used to sit in the living room and drink after dinner. Not heavy, just social. They spoke this strange mix of Italian and English and were just switching back and forth. I had picked up enough of it that when I tried to be a big man and tell someone he was a pazzo they would slap me on the back, but I was just a kid. That changed when Jimmy died. My Grandfather, Angolino Rigallia, looked at me and said "You're gonna have to be the man of the house now, Joey. You gotta take care of things." I learned a lot since that night and I learned what it means to take care of things - things you love, care for. Hey, sometimes you gotta stand up for your own: ain't nobobdy gonna give you nothin'. My ma is doing well, I'm happy and the boys and me sit and drink three or four times a year and make sure things are going well. It's not a nine-to-five, but I've got more than any of my neighbors and I made it happen with my own hands. None of them can say that, believe you me - it's not really a life if it's handed to you. |
| QUOTE (Buster) | ||||
Yeah, that's the kind of character concept I'm trying to avoid. It might be interesting to watch a "cautionary tale" about some loser in a movie, but it just isn't fun to play. |
I suppose that it is a matter of taste. Personally, I like to throw caution to the wind and shoot people in the face for fun and profit.
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