In all important things, rationality is of the utmost necessity. That is certain. Emotional reactions are great but they must be tempered with rationality. It annoys me to no end when knee-jerk reactionaries allow their emotions to cloud their judgment, particularly when they affect social policy.

Absurdly brutal personal revenge is appealing to me because it requires methodical rationality, as opposed to the more knee-jerk versions of revenge which often get the wrong person. It combines emotional catharsis with cold precision. That being said, it certainly isn't good or just, not with the excessive brutality. Still, sometimes justice doesn't really matter. I'm willing to be a hypocrite once in a while. I'd certainly sympathize with a person who took such revenge.

I do know that in some cases revenge isn't just a temptation; it is a necessity. An abused child should be able to exact revenge, even if it is just the opportunity to visit the abuser in jail to gloat. Total excess isn't necessary, but the child must be able to retrieve that lost power somehow. I also support corporal punishment in some cases, because it is often less cruel than prison. Giving a child the chance to turn the tables on an abuser is certainly good. But legally mandated or permitted punishments must not be excessive. There is no justice in excess. Justice is about equity.

I don't have any children but I want to someday. I often think about how I'd react in certain situations. Abuse is something that one can't help but think about these days. I know that I'd avoid doing anything which risks prison, that would be counterproductive and only hurt an injured child more; but if circumstances permitted it without risk then the facial grind would be very tempting. All I can be sure of is that I wouldn't kill the person with my own hands for the simple reason that it would deprive my child of the chance to take back that lost power. If there were no risk. Reality would lead to a more tempered and even response, possibly one that involves buying cigarettes for the abuser's cellmate, Bubba, and talking to him about that happened - without suggesting anything illegal, of course.


Don't let that stop you; we all love a good argument.

Mmm, sexism.

That's ridiculous.

~J

I have to disagree. I think the fundamental difference between the Grossmanian character concept in the first post and the racists, child soldiers, et al that have been discussed since is that the ability to kill, torture, mistreat, and in general be inhuman to the victim/target from a Shadowrun perspective should be able to be turned on and off like a light switch. The character would have normal emotional relationships with other persons, and then upon conscious decision be able to look at someone (even someone he or she has had a relationship of some kind with, friend or family or lover) and think "That is not people" and have no empathy for them whatsoever, and therefore be able to kill, torture, maim, abuse, etc that nonperson.

As a roleplayer I would find it easy to portray this type of character, for the simple reason that any "victims" in fact do not exist. They are merely agreed-upon figments of our imaginations. They are by default nonpersons, and any status otherwise is granted by our interactions with them, revocable at will.

Putting this kind of perceptional switch into a person with a realistic background is the key to the style of character the OP asks for.

Either you are very, very, wrong, or I am very, very, fucked up. I've not only played some characters that'll curl some folks' hair, I've written (and gotten paid to write) short fiction that's at least half again worse than any given PC of mine I can think of. Maybe to you an active imagination and a willingness to (in the land of make-believe) put myself in the shoes of a very dark character for a short period of time make me "as fucked up as the character," but in the meantime I'll choose to believe otherwise and just go on being a productive member of society who's somehow managed not to go on any rapacious sprees yet.

>yawn<
I didn't want an argument, and I'll continue this discussion when you actually answer the points I've raised.

I find the fact that you seem to honestly believe that you can accurately portray people that you are apparently completely unlike is quite humorous.



Ho-hum..

Lt. Col. David Grossman

I don't pretend to be an expert on Grossman's theories, but I get the general concept, and it seems quite relevant to the stated goals of the OP- i.e. to create a super-killy munchkin death machine with a plausible back story.


That was basically my point. I guess in many ways its all a function of scale and levels of violence, which is what mfb was getting at as well.


In deed. All abnormal psychology is defined by normal psychology. Understanding what is normal allows you to extrapolate the abnormal, at least as much as you need to play the game. Rule Zero is have fun. You don't need to be an FBI profiler or an actual sociopath to have fun playing one. As Khadim touched on, why you think its fun seems to be a more pertinent question.

And I think Madrigan brings up an interesting point with the "Kill Switch" idea. There are sci-fi themes you could draw on to explain a Grossmanian killer in SR. We can't forget things like P-fix chips, or the Renraku Archology "experiments".

Yep, that's the great thing about Christopher Walken. Did you know that he actually had his head cut off so that he could get a feel for his part in Sleepy Hollow and he spent several months as an angel rebelling against God to get into his role in The Prophecy. And, of course, Peter Cullen is actually a giant robot who transforms into a semi truck.

And I don't know if I want to contemplate Anthony Hopkins' diet.

what's so bad about fava beans?


the point is the attempt, the process. whether or not you agree that the results of such attempts can be accurate (i think the existence of good actors who are not method actors suggests that they can, and i think you should probably stop trying to speak with authority on concepts which have no objectively provable truth), trying to get into an unfamiliar mindset--even a disturbing one--can be fun. in addition, it's interesting to consider what effect the sixth world could have on different psychologies, and vice-versa.

Oh, it's not those. It's the chianti!

If you don't want an argument, don't say stupid shit. It's pretty simple, really. The best way to avoid arguing with people is to not say ridiculous crap that multiple posters will immediately and vocally disagree with.


I find it ridiculous that you seem to be so incapable of role playing, and in fact that you lack even a basic idea of what role playing is, to the point that you think this is so impossible.

I've read several articles on child soldiers over the years and the "kill switch" alluded to is something that seems like a recurring theme. Many of these child soldiers are indoctrinated with massive amounts of drugs, sleep deprivations, etc. They're pushed into an altered state of consciouness that allows them to purge entire villages and perform even darker deeds. The whole point all their indoctrination is to prevent them from seeing people as people and see them as things that make funny noises when you put bullets into them.

An article I read in Scientific American was particularly creepy since it showed how quickly some of them reintegrated with society. Without ampules of cocaine/heroin being stuffed into slits on the back of their heads, you'd be amazed out how human they can be. The one thing the article didn't get into is what the long term effects were. It was also a very small sample of 6 soldiers of varying degrees of screwed. The article didn't dwell nearly as much as I'd like on how their developing brains handled the PTSD. Perhaps being so young helped them dissociate themselves from the person who charged machine gun nests at 6 and cut peoples hands off at 10.

But back to Shadowrun.

Madrigan and Method both point out the relative ease such a perceptional switch could be placed in someone. I remember a very dark Blackjack piece about a smartlink tied to a BTL simsense rig wired directly into a persons pleasure net. The "better" and more efficiently they killed, the higher pleasure stimulus was applied. In essence they got addicted to killing, and killing well. Without getting that complex a simple p-fix chip every couple of days would probably be able enough to keep a person a sleepy eyed killer for quiet sometime. Hell if you had a p-fix chip that generated some of the basic elements of autism you'd be well on your way.

Before I get into my rambling "Oh god I still have 12 more hours of duty left"-rant I want to toss this out there:

Anyone every played an RPG with an actual sociopath/psycho? Personally I'd think it'd be incredibly boring as the narcistic prick spent 4 hours describing exactly what he does to that nubile and innocent wage slave.
Than I'd probably beat him with the Chair Leg of Justice for a couple of minutes and ask him not to come back for follow on adventures. This may be at odds with what I'm about to say but, I'm often at odds with myself.

To comment on the larger flame war in progress (This rambles, I'm really sorry):
Cyberpunk and Shadowrun has always been about exploring the dark recesses of our society. Cyberpunk has always had the same allure that say, horror has for other people. A world dominated by monolithic corporations, a complacent ignornant society, and so forth, is much more terrifying to me than any simple maniac with a blade.
I enjoy it because it makes me take a long hard look at a fantasy world beyond my everyday understanding and embrace ideals and beliefs that I don't necessarily agree with, perhaps even violently disagree with. It's a mental excercise that's a lot more interesting that say, watching "Boondock Saints" for the thousandth time, or beating a hooker to death in GTA. I believe by looking at these things that bother me, and even playing the part, make concrete my belief that they aren't something I want in my waking life. Or maybe that they are ideals that I could, under the right circumstances, abide by. It's that whole confronting your fears to control them thing I suppose.

That being said I think that my players can attest that I keep my games lite on the darkness. I do that because I don't necessarily want to explore these dark themes for 8 hours a weekend with a bunch of other people. I consider our gaming sessions a chance to unwind and explore fantasies of "sticking it to the man" and other such concepts because, to be honest, we work for The Man. But I won't begrudge someone for wanting to go down those paths, I also don't think that makes them a malevolent sociopath either. How many (great) authors turned out to be serial killers or mass murders? If anything I think the capacity to imagine and "play" are inversely proportional to a persons capability to be a sociopath. If you can look at the darkness, acknowledge it's there, and comfortably label it as "fantasy" your in a much better place than someone who believes "That could never happen here."

(Yes, I know that many serial killers and so forth devote an inordinate amount of time imagining new and interesting ways to destroy human beings. But I think there is a significant distance between someone imagining themselves to be a serial killer and someone who is just exploring the limits of their "professional knowledge". If a capacity to be fucked up was related to thinking fucked up things than the guy who wrote the "Silence of the Lambs" series must have a 200 deep pile of dismembered bodies in his basement. Coupled with a massive back order on chianti.)

I've always played Shadowrun with an eye towards "What would I do?" but I don't think that's the /only/ way to play SR.

So boo on posters who boo other players for trying to play a bit of Heart of Darkness in their games.

http://web.archive.org/web/19991008231638/...n99/Pierson.htm

I recently came across this interesting article regarding "natural killers" and their roles in the military during wartime and peacetime. Apparently, in war, the vast majority of killing is done by a small handful of sociopaths. They also tend to usurp command and lead otherwise docile soldiers into glory. So it is best to put them on crew served weapons in units commanded by incompetent and cowardly officers, both the maximize their killing potential and maximize their "fuck you, Lt., we're going to kick some ass" potential.

One interesting thing is that these sociopathic killers who live for the thrill of battle don't commit atrocities. They aren't the sort of people who systematically rape and murder civilians, abuse prisoners, or exterminate populations. This makes sense because, really, systematically murdering unresisting civilians is incredibly boring, particularly once you've had the pleasure of killing an armed resisting combatant. The entire point of hunting the most dangerous game is the thrill of real combat, the knowledge that you may very well be killed. You just don't have that with atrocities against civilians. Atrocities get committed by frustrated pencil-pushing bureaucrats.

Are there any statistics on how often that sort of thing happens, though? Like, how did they identify the 4 percent, and then how did they attribute half the deaths to them?

Probably the same way they attribute medal-deserving valor - via after-battle reports and debriefings. If soldiers report that a small minority of their comrades consistently take-charge and rack up high kill counts, then it is fairly easy to identify those natural killers after the fact, assuming that they survive the action. The natural killers also aren't going to be PTSDing after heavy combat and probably won't have any psychological issues resulting from such high kill counts. The problem is identifying them before combat, in training, so that they can be assigned to places where a disdain for authority and a love of violence can be a boon rather than a burden.