So, the classic shtick when we're talking about RPGs including Shadowrun is how there's a primal and eternal conflict between the "storygamers" and the "munchkins" which may never be reconciled. Part of this paradigm includes the fundamental idea that "storygamers" spend all their time talking about their character backgrounds and writing 10 page backstories only they care about whereas "munchkins" all invariably role play the T800 and spend all their time writing 10 page long character sheets where nobody but themselves actually knows all the rules referenced by that character.

Clearly, we have a philosophical imperative to create an ultimate munchkin character AS A FLESHED OUT PC. Thus we can have munchkin in stats, munchkin in tediously fleshed out 10 page backstory, and thus make non-munchkins cry by kicking them in the philosophical jimmy.

Today, no joke, I felt a little bit sick, so I went to a Borders bookstore, sat down with a cup of coffee, and I actually red Grossman's "On Killing" in its entirety in one sitting in a couple of hours. I realize that Grossman has been criticized for an un-scientific method of data collection but I'm not actually writing this post to critique or exonerate Grossman. The point was rather that a person could use Grossmanian ideas about psychology, calling briefly on Freudian concepts (which always make for good storytelling) and write up a character which psychologically would be the ultimate fictional killer.

There are many better men here on Dumpshock who will always write a better statistical character than I. But just in terms of the wishy washy background crap, I've thrown together the following outline you can use to justify your super munchkin terminator in storygaming terms and resume your honest roll-playing.

1.) The character must not have recieved "proper" social conditioning regarding the restraint of lethal behavior in any way, shape, or form. Therefore, the character should have been a small child growing up in a brutal African civil war at the height of its bloodthirsty atrocities and inducted as a child soldier.

2.) The character must have continued the lifestyle of the child soldier, complete with intense quantities of combat experience, successfully for years. According to Grossman, US soldiers in WWII started to come apart mentally after more than 2 months of constant combat without breaks. So we have to frame this character in the sense of being normalized to precisely these sorts of long spells of killing, death, and stress. The concept is that rather than having been forced to shift mental gears and endure stress, the gears never had to be shifted in the first place. As Hyzmarca has pointed out these child soldiers probably have seen more combat than just about anyone on the planet.

3.) Perhaps the character should be female? There's be no questions of pride, ego, or biological behaviors associated with violent conflict (fight, flight, submission, posture, all from Grossman). It'd just be pure, clean reality of violence without social filters or biological pre-programming towards non-lethal outcomes. No surrender, no expectation of mercy, no attempt to mitigate the horror. Zero to surreal nightmare machine in 1 second flat.

4.) The character needs to have a reason to have left or been able to leave the conflict which spawned him/her, and appear in the setting of the game campaign. Perhaps the character, living in a world of completely normalized violence and terror, just doesn't think much of risking life and limb on a whim just to walk somewhere else and see something different leaving a trail of bodies behind if necessary. Perhaps the character is just being very calculating and ends up seeking out places where violence is safer to commit in the long run and has bigger payoffs.

5.) Very importantly, I think the character must be a perfect strategist and tactician. It's one thing that can be used in terms of story or character development to explain why this particular character survived as long as he or she did. You can also argue that an almost superhuman detachment from normal emotions in combat situations has allowed for a nearly contemplative perfect distillation of essential strategies.

It's worth pointing out that, in the Shadowrun setting, African child soldiers are hardly the only young people thrust into violence that never stops. You could easily do the same thing with someone brought up as a second or third generation member of any Barrens gang.

Yep. We might change to the Yucatan conflict. We have perfect loyality to the own group with hardly any care for everyone else. He was captured of course, and avoided the blood mage faction only to be put into an Universal Omnitech experimental bioware-lab.

Is the goal to have people make a legal starting character or a progressed character?

In any case, I do think Africa is the best place, because it can go cleanly from the reckage of Zimbabwe to the Universal Omnitech enhancement lab and then back to the wilds without ever leaving a fairly tight cultural area. You can also have her leave fairly easily after joining with the pirates.

You may also want to give her a deep seated fear of leadership positions after seeing her family executed RUF style and then outliving all her commanders in all the fighting. This way you can help justify her Intelligence of 10 and her Charisma of 1.

-Frank

...hmmm, the original Leela (#89) almost fits most of the criteria

For one she was orphaned at 8 when her family was killed during the Serbian Invasion of Croatia. She was taken in by the Resistance with whom she spent a good part of her preteen - teenage years.

Leela had no qualms over handing a Serbian soldier a grenade she had rigged with a micro radio detonator while innocently saying she found it while playing, only to set it off after he went into whatever facility he was guarding. She often shot first & asked questions later and her weapon of choice was an FN AAL Gyrojet she took off the body of a dead British mercenary. Her leaving was not of her own accord, having been pulled out of a mission gone bad by a UCAS merc group who took her to the UCAS. (as a PC she never really learned the reason why they saved her). While in Seattle living with the niece of the merc group's leader, she looked at the shadows as being a just a different type of resistance movement and often drew parallels between the SINless vs. Corp struggle to what was happening back home.

The only condition she doesn't really meet is the strategist/tactician unless her demolitions skill, related knowledge, and ability to pull off the "innocent little girl" act would suffice.

She was a dead shot with the Gyrojet, an expert demolitionist (including related Knowledge skills), and a very resourceful individual for someone her age. To the Serbians she was a mysterious and elusive figure known only as as the "Queen of Diamonds" which was the code name the SSID assigned to her.

Leela also struggled with flashbacks relating to the invasion and a performance block that kept her from playing piano with an audience present (the attack came during a family celebration at an outdoor café following a phenomenal piano recital that she performed).

Even after her retirement from the shadows (and as PC) Leela has no regrets for her actions while with the Resistance.

As to backstory, 10 pages is the "Reader's Digest" condensed version.

KK, we have heard of the epics you write.

The namesake is the closest thing I have to the above nut case. Mostly do to poor impulse control, and a rather twisted sense of humor.

...yeah, the Short One (#90) is pretty unique. A Dain Bramaged 4'10" kid running around with two nasty ass revolvers and a Katana, I'd definitely give her a wide berth.

Now Leela (#91) on the other hand is a product of her environment and when discussing the child soldier, I think she comes even closer to the model put forth in the OP. While KK is also a product of the environment she grew up in, her outlook and attitude is based more on the treatment she received living in the TT rather than being forced to take up a violent lifestyle just to survive.

On a slightly similar vein, having watched Dexter avidly I wanted to see what the group thought about the following.

Sociopaths (now more correctly known as those with Antisocial Personality Disorder), in the simplest terms, think of people as objects and cannot either connect emotionally with people nor have strong connections with particular emotions within themselves.

Ignoring the whole chicken and the egg debate about adept powers, I am creating a character at the moment who is a sociopath face. The reason this is not quite as insane as it sounds is I am giving this character the adept power Empathic Sense.

My reasoning is this. The character has a background of being a sociopath, disconnected from emotional connections with others from a young age and so on. In his early teens he expresses magically, and learns/gains the adept power of Empathic Sense. Now he can disguise his sociopathy because whilst he does not himself feel emotions, he can detect and assess the emotions of others. This combined with acting talent means that he becomes highly adept at understanding the emotions of others and is able to fake normal emotional responses with great skill because he has experienced them from others through his adept power.

Given the focus and drive which is often part of a sociopath's psyche he develops this ability to mimic or act emotions he does not himself feel, and the huge advantage of being able to sense and coldly assess the emotions of others, he develops significant skill as a face. The background includes intelligence training which recognises this unique skill and ability set and enhances it.

Any thoughts on how outlandish this idea is?

the evidence i've encountered suggests that no, you don't necessarily need to be able to empathize in order to manipulate the emotions of others. my understanding is that guys like Dahmer can be fairly good at eliciting from others a desired emotional response--getting their victims to like and trust them, for instance. not to say that everyone with antisocial tendencies has the ability to fake a connection with others like that, but it's not at all outside the realm of possibility.

I'm going to concur—we're wired to pick up cues from other people, and that wiring is independent from the wiring that makes us give out cues (and the wiring that makes us feel things). Consider, for example, the opposite issue—the reduced (sometimes drastically so) ability to interpret emotional cues that can come with disorders in the Autism spectrum, while no reason exists to believe that individuals with such reduced ability have reduced range of emotion themselves.

To put it another way, for most of my life I didn't know how a calculator worked, and even now I certainly don't operate like one, but I could press buttons to get specified numbers just fine.

~J

Hmmm....gears are turning, here. Ok, im not too busy, well, save for a couple videogames and usual work stuff.

Ive skimmed this thread; i have an idea here. Ill re-read all of the points thoroughly first, and then, i think by Saturday before i leave for Stockholm for a weekend getaway, i might just have a character ready.

i'll try, anyway.

Yes, you're quite right..
..And those stories do highlight, to some degree, the levels of poverty and lack of facilities such people have - food, shelter, availability of items.

However, gangers with guns are hardly deprived or poor as they actually have food, clothes, ammunition and shelter..
..They are, in some ways, the poor person's family - the next level up from being very poor and deprivedd.

Ok, i re-read the thing, and while i had a concept, it had more to do with a hired killer than a soldier, and a male rather than female(since i already had this basic concept from before,minus the child training part, im just going to twink it out.) However, in this updated version, he was starting his training as a child, so maybe it counts.

I'll still post it when im finished up, though, if anyone is interested.

The difference between the African Child Soldier and the Barrens Child Ganger is really one of mission and purpose. The barrens child gang is more Lord of the Flies. It is self-organizing and ultimately focused on individual survival and prosperity. Multi-generation gangs become more like street tribes or street families, with the older members taking a real parental role. Thus, while violence is certainly present, the young members of such groups are socialized normally, loved and cared for.

With the African Child Soldier the child is taken away from family life and thrown into a semi-rigid military hierarchy. They are generally the lowest grunts, disposable fodder for the war. They don't have any sort of parenting and their life is based entirely around accomplishing missions and winning battles, no matter what the cost.

Why, though? I mean, you've read the books, semi-rigid military hierarchies exist in the Barrens. The scale tends to be small enough that you don't get the same level of disposability, but otherwise…

~J

The big issue is that a second generation barrens ganger is likely to have a real parent and a real extended family who would be motivated to at least try to raise the kid right, even if their only concept of parenting comes from a trideo show. Ubiquitous matrix access makes this even more likely. At the very least, they'll have some idea of what parents are supposed to do. This also means that they'll protect the kids from violence as best as they can, rather than sending them out to be slaughtered. Most importantly, the parent-child bond encourages the development of empathy, which also encourages an aversion to killing. While they may be taught violence and may experience violence, it is less likely that they'll become desensitized to it compared to the child who has been forcibly separated from all parental figures.

i'd agree that most Barrens kids aren't going to end up anything like child soldiers. but i think the potential is there for some of them to end up that way. their parents' gang gets wiped out when they're only a year old or so; they get raised by the gang's kids, who are struggling to survive and get revenge. survival and fighting are all they have time for, so that's all they teach the kid. there are plenty of chances for the process to get derailed, sure, and have the kid end up relatively normal. but there's also a solid chance that the kid will spend enough time in what is effectively a low-intensity warzone that s/he ends up with the kind of mindset that's being discussed.

On the subject of sociopathic / antisocial behavior-

I worked for years in behavioral health with all kinds of messed up kids. I'm talking teen sex offenders and kids that watched their parents kill each other and shit. Usually at an early age they are diagnosed with "reactive attachment disorder", which is a profound impairment of their ability to form normal human relationships, a fundamental component of empathy. It should be noted that having parents doesn't save you from this if they are crappy parents- having parents that are abusive or act violently can be just as bad as having no parents.

Also, I always found it interesting to work with the real sociopathic / antisocial kids, especially sex offenders. The predatory psychology of a sex offender is very interesting, and it is very much about faking empathy so that people like you. In the mind of such a person trust is a power game and their goal is very often to build trust by faking empathy until they can offend without people suspecting them. Most of the time this has nothing to do with sex. It also has a component of narcism because you spend so much time trying to be everything to everybody that you start to define your identity by what people think of you. Its all very complicated.

Point being, yes, some people that lack empathy can understand and fake it very well to manipulate others.

And having parental figures doesn't necessarily enable healthy attachment and empathic development.

[edit]: Reactive Attachment Disorder
Narcisistic Personality Disorder

without getting into a lengthy discusion, they have empathy, they can empathize, they just don't beyond what it gets them. they get ar eward for acting that way so they continue to perfect it until they are scary.

Well, yes. Saying they "lack empathy" seems all inclusive (as in all or nothing). Its more of an impairment. I shouldn't imply that they are incapable, just that they don't.

I would submit that there is a rather large difference between what children with extremely abusive parents experience and being handed an Ak-47 and being forced to prosecute a war against the government using a combination of brutal genocide and suicidally ineffective Napoleonic-era shooting formations.

I'd also submit that the point of the such a Grossmanian exercise is not to create a sociopath, but rather to create someone who is not a sociopath but who still has the ability to brutally exterminate anyone without the slightest but of hesitation or remorse by socializing them to accept combat as a normal social activity. Really, they would have to spend their formative years with a parent figure until they were too old to develop reactive attachment disorder. A toddler can't very well be a useful component of an army. Once they have the motor skills to use a rifle and the reasoning abilities to tell friend from foe, they are then removed from the parents and placed in a situation where they are treated as adults and expected to behave themselves as adults, where killing "the enemy" is a social norm that they are expected to comply with, and where rape and torture are socially acceptable pastimes which they are expected to indulge in together for the purpose of building team camaraderie. The child soldiers generally aren't abused, but they find themselves in a situation where there is an entire class of people that wants to kill them and two entire classes of people whom their entire social group encouraged them to kill.

The important distinction is that there is no reason for them to learn how to ingratiate themselves to the people that want to abuse and no reason for them to learn to hide their action or their nature. Quite the opposite. They receive praise for killing enemy soldiers and brutalizing civilians. They're also required by circumstances to form strong bonds of trust with their teammates, as they literally rely on each other for their very lives. Killing and raping and torturing together is a way to build trust and affection.


Now that I think about it, a parent who desired to do so could give a child this sort of experience and the child would probably come out much better adjusted than a regular child soldier, though it still requires a medium or high intensity war zone where you can kill people daily without any problems. The key here that when your daughter hits the little neighbor girl from next door you give her a time-out because we aren't supposed to fight with the neighbors but when the time out is over you give them both guns and take them across the street, because it is good to kill people who live across the street, and capture a little baby for them to practice their knife skills on. Give them the appropriate affection, encouragement, and socialization while simultaneously teaching them to kill "enemies" without hesitation or remorse. It could work, much the same way that children taught to hunt game or slaughter farm animals can do so much more easily than an adult who has never killed anything before can. It is probably even the best way to go about it, where possible. I'm just not sure that many Barrens parents would actually do so.


I also have to wonder about a child of Tamanous members who grows up on a people farm. His life is just like any other farmboy's except instead of cows or pigs or chickens his parents breed, raise, and slaughter for meat and parts, human beings and other metatypes. As he grows up he gets to participate in the workings of the farm. He feeds the livestock, on occasion he gets to see them breed (you know how shameless people can be) and when he gets older his parents even allow him to see the inner workings of the slaughterhouse.

mmm... actually, i find that scenario way more likely than the one i outlined earlier. an 17-year old ganger mom is hanging out with her 4-yr-old kid in one the gang's chiphouses, where the gang has just dropped off a captive enemy ganger? given the level of violence that is acceptable in SR, i don't have a hard time at all envisioning the mom giving her kid a knife and helping him inflict his first stab wounds.

While I see your point, I disagree. I worked with this one kid- at the age of 4 or 5 his dad brought him home a new pair of cowboy boots and then held his mom down on the floor and made the kid kick her in the head. If he'd have given the kid an AK-47 there is no doubt in my mind that he would have killed her. It seems to me that is just as powerful albeit in a more "civilized" setting.

it's worth pointing out that the fact that he didn't have an AK has an impact on the psychological outcome.

Perhaps, but thats not a given. There are plenty of available firearms in the region of the country this kid came from (I'm not really at liberty to say where...).

FWIW, while RAD/NPD I believe is not considered to be mutually exclusive with empathy, there are conditions which are—in fact, antisocial personality disorder (psychopathy) generally involves the inability to feel any significant range of emotions at all, last I checked.

~J

I'd also submit that there is a difference between between violence directed within the family unit or other social group (never a good thing) and violence that is directed against an external entity. Violence against people with whom one is bonded, especially a child's caregiver, is always damaging. This isn't just true of children, it is true of battle-hardened adults soldiers, as well. When the Roman Legion employed Decimation it was devastating to morale, not in the least because the soldiers were forced to kill their own comrades.
I imagine that it would be less traumatic if the entire family went out to lynch niggers (or fags or kikes or ragheads or wetbacks or chinks or honkies or whatever the hell it is that they lynch for fun in those parts) together and they all had fun doing it. Of course, the belief that lynching negroes is just good clean fun carries its own problems. They are, however, distinct from attachment disorders or sociopathy. The key is to direct the violence against someone who is external to all of the individual's social groups - the other; the enemy; the racially, morally, or politically different.



The fact that he didn't use an AK-47 had an impact on the psychological outcome.

Kagetenshi: You are correct, but the difference has to do with the age of the person in question. There is a movement in child psychology circles not to diagnose kids with adult disorders before their psyche is fully developed. They use terms like "RAD" to signify similar tendencies and signs in children. Its kind of like proto-APD. These are also related to borderline personality disorder.

@ hyzmarca: Once again, I see your point, but my intent was to say that in both cases there is a fundamental breakdown in the way the child relates to other human beings. In every culture and in every setting human children define their relationship to other human beings through their interactions with their parents. If these are fucked up you get child soldiers or kids in treatment or racists or whatever.

On a fundamental level the underlying mechanism is essentially the same, regardless of what social norms define the outcome.

[EDIT]: And even more to the point, we were talking about the possibility that this phenomenon could occur in multiple SR settings. If you would allow that the mechanism is similar (if not the same) we could come up with numerous SR environments with the necessary butality and inhumane conditions to spawn a pure unbridled (by social norms) killer.


Undeniably, but my point still stands...

I'm thinking metahuman biodrone is the quickest route to achieve Wounded's requisites, except perhaps #4.

What about a Yomi survivor?

My point was that, with racists, the mechanism isn't the same. They bond normally with their parents and are able to bond normally with their peers (their WASP peers, at the very least). They're normal productive members of their society. If their society is ethnically homogeneous, excluding those that they have been taught to hate, then they have no problems at all. Their relationships with other human beings are perfectly normal; it is just that their definition of "human being" does not include a certain class of people. The same is true of nationalists who think that their country is the best in the world and religious individuals who think that all other faiths are spawned by the devil, to some extent. The people in the individuals social group receive preferential treatment while those outside of the social group are, at the very least, kept at a distance.

I suppose the original point, that parent are not necessarily an impediment to children learning to become perfect killers, has been conceded to. The biggest impediment that a parent with the correct attitude presents is to self-sufficiency since the child-parent relationship is naturally one of dependence. The example of the boy being forced to beat the crap out of his mother and developing mental disorders as a result, however, is very different normal bonding combined with the direction of violence against an external group.

i think it actually is a given. in the type of environment that the typical child soldier is raised it, guns are not only available, he has one and he's expected to use it. in the case you described, a firearm may or may not have been available--but the kid wasn't handed a firearm, he was handed a pair of boots.

i understand what you're saying; in both cases, the child in question acquires a disregard for human life. however, the attitudes and expectations that compose that disregard are different in each case. in the child soldier's case, such abuse would be expected to end in death. in the other kid's case, the abuse presented was expected to end in, at best, serious injury.

put simply, i think that a kid who is okay with kicking his mother in the head would be taken aback, maybe even horrified, at the idea of shooting her in the head. it might not take him much convincing to actually do the shooting, but it would take some.

I would conceded that there are contextual differences but then you aren't talking about the kind of character defined previously in this thread. Now you are talking about an individual that kills in certain situations but not others based on the social context (i.e.- the prospect of negative outcomes or punishments if his killing does not adhere to a standard set forth by his society). Really it could be argued that the child soldier's loyalty to his unit/gang is the same.



Well sure...the *first* time... I would argue that the first time a child solider shoots someone he would be taken aback, maybe even horrified. Maybe the kid who kicked his mom would have become a serial killer if society didn't limit his violence. But thats the point isn't it? That the violence becomes normalized through the example set by the adult role model? There just happens to be less limitation on the child solider due to social norms. But just because the child soldier's level of violence continues to escalate doesn't mean the underlying mechanism is different.

--------------

Anyway its safe to say we disagree. I think that you could find Grossmanian killers in many different SR settings, and you gents don't see it that way. Might depend a lot on how we envision the rough parts of the Sprawl in our individual games. Your games vs. my games and YMMV and all that. I don't want to abandon a nice respectful debate but...

To get things back on topic. I'll pose the question again- what about a Yomi survivor? Haven't read much on NeoTokyo but what about a metahuman death dealer that gets recruited (and maybe cybered) by the Yakuza to do their really dirty work? Plausible?

i actually agree with you on that point. i just don't think that kid who kicks his mom in the head has reached that level of psychogical fucked-uppedness... and i don't think he will, unless the fucked-uppedness he's exposed to is taken to a worse level. i definitely think that those worse levels are readily available in SR.

Is there anybody else here who is sickened by a father encouraging a child to kick his mother in the head?

Sickened, no. Angered, yes.

I'd be very tempted to choke him out, tie him to a chair, and teach him a lesson about how to treat a lady using handheld power tools. I'd also be tempted to post a video to youtube for all of those who are curious about what a side-grinder will do to a human face. Such a thing should not be tolerated.

Unless, of course, the mother was abusing the kid herself; then it is just a case of the kid getting a chance to take some of his lost power and dignity back.
I am of the opinion that child abusers should be tied to a chair in a room with their victim and a large number of sharp implements with the kids being allowed to do whatever the hell they feel like doing.

Edit: The irony and the hypocrisy of responding to unacceptable levels of violence with even more extreme violence is not lost to me.

I was getting all set to argue with you ... until I read the first sentence of your second paragraph.

Unfortunately, most abused people do not take revenge upon their abuser.
Part of an abuser's behaviour, and what makes an abuser so dangerous, is they take power/self esteem away from the abusee.
They don't have externalised rage against the abuser - they give up, they avoid, they forget the trauma.

Abusees rarely think of themselves as having the power to change things, or to make changes.


I've read the posts here, and it's been interesting.
However, I'm interested in why the original poster wants to play a character like this ??
Unless they are as fucked up as the character, they won't be able to portray them properly - so won't be able to do the character justice.
Is this just an excuse to be abusive, kill and main, etc - and use Grossman as an excuse ??


And since, no-one exists in a vacuum, why does the character go on shadowruns ?? What do they do in between runs ??


Also, and I consider this to be quite important..
..Who the fuck is Grossman, and what are his theories ??
It's a bit crap, and pointless, to discuss something that's not been mentioned - or is everyone here fully conversant in Grossman, his ideas and can therefore discuss them ??

Couldn't you just create a setting in the Barrens where the exact same mechanisms as those in African war zones exists? Is it beyond reason that there could be a gang that takes children from destitute junkie mothers and turns them into expendable soldiers exposing and conditioning them to do all of those atrocities?

I mean is it just a matter of scale in that open war in the Barrens cannot be as large as war in parts of Africa?

Hyzmarca,

I've always read your posts with interest and none moreso than when you take a hyper-rational and lateral approach to morality. I remember a number of threads where we got into some interesting debates, going right back to the sadly closed one on pederasty in Ancient Greece. And I've been curious as to whether you take the same approach in real life, or if it's a thought exercise.

I'm obviously not asking if you ever have or would take a sander to someone's face, but is your post saying that you think such a course of action would be a good thing, justified, or merely that it's the emotional reaction that tempts you?

No answer required, I'm just interested to know what you think.

-Khadim.

Oooooo! Linkage?

I'm forced to disagree with the second sentence. Forced to by my belief that I can role-play such a character which means either you're wrong or I have the capacity to be a killer. Of course it may be true that I have sociopathic potential and I can recognize some narcissim in me (oops). But on the whole, I'd rather believe that it is possible to understand without condoning. I think from reading about his work, Method would probably agree with that?

That said, I wouldn't want to play such a character. I prefer to play white hats and on the occasion when it was demanded I play a black hat, I did it so well that the group decided to let me go back to playing good guys.

meh. if i were there, sure, i'd get all righteous. as an intellectual exercise, though? there's a lot worse.