My game is SR*3 and my PCs started off at Pro levels this time (125 pt buy as per the Companion Rules) and as opposed to an earlier run at this where I introduced them to the Shadowrun world and story ideas with my own conversion to the D20 Modern rules (and don't think that wasn't a stone biatch...because it certainly was one ) that we carried on from there...an uber powered game because that is what the bloody D20 Modern system creates when re-converted to SR*3 rules; this time they are getting to see the grim and gritty streets.

I had one of my players sit there stunned as his new PC Face Man went investigating after a guy the Yaks wanted the head of (and JUST the head mind you, but that had to be in good condition) for reasons unrevealed and trailed him in to the Rat's Nest. When I started describing the conditions these people lived in, his words were something along the lines of "oh my god...my wheezy old trailer in Ponderosa Estates is the Taj Mahal compared to this."

I stressed how out of place he felt...how alien, with his good clothes on and many a thousand of Nuyen worth of gear on or in his armored long coat's pockets and a pistol probably worth more than any of the "structures" in sight a dozen times over. I stressed the stale rot smell, the even stronger scent of despair; but also how these people acted. They weren't fawning on him. A few turned their hands up in a taciturn and desultory manner, one of the younger women tried to turn on a trick with him, but many acted with a sort of dignified hopelessness and as he was wandering around asking people about the target of the run one of the most ragged offered him a dirty, half cracked cup with coffee in it, obviously a BIG sacrifice for the old man who did it...and to preserve the old mans dignity, because the act touched him, the Player, his character drank it and thanked him for his hospitality.

There had been no prompting on my part. And it turned something about the whole game for him.

My Player in that situation, Peter, had seemed down a bit about the decrease in power between this new game and the Shadowrun/D20Modern back to Shadowrun game. His character there was an elite. Wealthy, with a few million Nuyen worth of cyberware and bioware in him, he lived a High life style in London and a Middle lifestyle in Seattle, had occasionally lived at something that was basically a Luxury lifestyle for a bit and had never had to see the Rat's Nest or anything quite like it. He'd been sheltered and his money and power had meant that he had never really seen, never tasted desperate.

The Player, after the encounter was over got really quiet for a moment and said to me "Remind me when we play Eric next to do something about that place. God that was awful!" Right away he realized the futility of that statement, as one character, without regard to their wealth would never be able to do anything about the Rat's Nest. It would take far more than money alone and he realized this quickly. You could see the realization of it in his eyes. It shook him though.

And from there it was on to the Plastic Jungles.

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Back in the day, I ran this game for years back in the 90's, we did allot of Street Level gaming. The characters were often squatters in the beginning and my Players (an incredible group, four of whom were FANTASTIC role players) used that angle to make for some really memorable games.

Shadowrun in the Seattle setting especially is a morbid, horrible place. The game can be so rich, so full and so improved (IMO) by simply remembering this and stressing it from time to time in it's proper place. Yep, there are tech toys galore. Yep, a successful Runner CAN sometimes live like a Rock Star. But this IS a cyberpunk nightmare game too. And it gets forgotten so often.

So, do YOU do Grim and Gritty? If so, what techniques do you use? How do you manage to make the Players feel the setting? Let's share and compare and get inspired.


Isshia

Not sure poor = gritty
gritty, for most people, is just being more realistic


But kudos to your Players, for getting into Character

In a similiar manner to you. I show the jux-position between the have and the have nots. Simply being from the street, the characters remember that all they have can disappear and again be left with nothing. The price of clawing your way up and not sliding down can be high.
Contacts that still live in the Barrens, dispite being 'retired' causally mentioning they had to geek someone today due to their lack of respect. High end hotels being immaculate but steril, offering any service for a price.
Style and fashion meaning different things and everything speeding faster and faster in the changes of life.
Classic cyber punk really.
I also put alot of effort in to highlightiung the cost of personal choices in the world. How 'hooding often nets less than souless corp work but has the moral highground. Choosing to kill another so that you can survive and the cost of doing so etc.

I do tend to play Shadowrun with a large portion of 'grim and gritty' (although not quite as good as all that!) Some players have come away and said 'wow, how can this exist?' and their characters actively try and change things. Some players ignore it. Some players see that as an opportunity to kill lots of people without getting caught. I tolerate them all, and none of them make a huge impact in that world of have-nots.

You're right poor = gritty. But in this case it certainly did equal grim.

The gritty for us isn't realism, per se, but rather it is verisimilitude. It's never going to be "realistic", but stylistically it feels good.

and Pendaric...personal choices...that may really be the big one.

This is almost the theme of Shadowrun. The characters are criminals; yet in a very Robinhood style they are also usually the heroes...not anti-heroes, but actual heroes. That is if they make the right choices. People often bend over backwards for a hero. They still appreciate anti-heroes, but few folks will really go out on a limb for the antiheroes.

For instance: It's soooo easy to give in to temptation. It's sooo tempting to give those mindless corp goons exactly what they deserve. No second thoughts. Then you realize that this is precisely how THEY think. >Then you start second guessing, or first thinking. Maybe there's a better way? Narcoject. Neuro Stun VII gas. Gel rounds. Passing on a Run because it's too likely to get wet.

Word starts to get around. Some people won't touch you with a ten foot pole now. You miss out on some contracts. In some places they think you're weak. In others though they now start calling you: Professionals. Maybe even someone uses the term: Heroes.

Grow a social conscience while you're at it. Write e-mails in support of the ORC. Show up at rallies for them. Find someone who really IS trying to help those who need it and throw money...and more importantly, help, at THEM. Go collecting among your fellow Runners. Get THEM involved. DO something. That is Eric by the way. And Scarlett. And Tom. Those three characters, all humans, got introduced to the Orcs of the Wilhelm Park enclave via DNA/DOA and since then...

That campaign is another story stylistically, but it highlights the effects of choices. These guys ARE seen as heroes by many people. Even during the worst of the race rioting they could walk the alleys of some of the worst parts of the Tacoma dock region and not get sniped. For me that in and of itself says allot. How big an impact do they have? Not big in terms of material goods, but not at all small in terms of the way some of the people in some of the places they've touched think.


Isshia

i mostly sabotage the grim and gritty feeling with my sense of humor . .

is it a goofy humor then? because if it's a dark, macabre sort of humor I find it helps.

I try to emphasize the sour, oily smell that certain alleys in New York City as well as Cairo, Egypt have to them. I think you'll know what I'm talking about if you've ever smelled it.

goofy humor at it's best . . and mucho sarcasm, irony and dark macabre too . . and black humor too . . i make the most inappropriate jokes most of the time . .
Don points at casket:"that's my son"
Me:"so his mother was a big old book-shelf?"

I switch out the cheesy-old-80s grim and gritty with a healthy dose of sarcasm, satire, perversity, and a sense of humor.

The humor I instituted in my last game was a man who got thrown out of a casino for suspected cheating. He got all his teeth knocked out and then beaten to a pulp. Then the hobos in the alley stripped him of everything he had and shuffled away. Ha ha ha, ahhhh... good times... good times. Damn now that I think about it I should have had a dog widdle on him and maybe a hobo merchant selling his goods. Se la vi.

"C'est la vie". I apologise, it just bugged me.

In real life, my mom once saw someone run out of a casino and immediately try to get hit by cars on the next-door highway. Your thing reminded me of this.

Come to think of it someone trying to get hit by cars after losing big on a casino could "work" for a Shadowrun encounter.

Be sure to end it with organ-leggers.

Ahhh, organ legging. That's another pretty piece. It's not bad enough that they shot Uncle Tony a dozen times. The buggers then stole his head because it had a few toys installed in it.

Isshia

Not sure if this counts as grim or gritty but we had this one game where a player was playing this real hardass of a elven sam and he rolled into a section of highway in Spikes territory. The end of that litte adventure was a couple spikes gacked and the elf trapped in the foam of his eurocar dying. He called out to some of his newly formed (that same day) teammates, but by the time they arrived he was beyond help...well, close enough anyways. So they carted him off to one of the faces contacts to be carved up for parts

Yep, that definitely counts as grim. It may not foster much group unity, but it does demonstrate grim right nice.



Isshia

Comedy, even goofy comedy, can actually help the environment. Too much grit and you become immune to it. Comedy is the way that humans naturally cope, and it breaks the players out of their shells a bit. The problem is when EVERYTHING is funny. The comedy has to have borders. Macabre being the exception (since by definition, it's on both sides of that border).

Agreed. The best comedy is that which contrasts its setting. You can have organ-legging and whatnot but if you don't throw a ridiculous NERPS! ad-jingle into the mix once in awhile (just as an example) the dystopian setting becomes... tedious.

Oh god yes. We have our favorite Troll bar tender in my game, Ugly, a guy who really earns his name, even for a Troll, who sometimes seems to be Jeff Foxworthy reincarnated, or the newbie Johnson who forgets you are there for just a sec while answering his cell phone by saying "Yes sir, Monohan here", or the coroner contact of one of the Runners who they caught dancing with a corpse as he tried to show his assistant how to waltz with a utterly graceless (ahem, ahem) partner. Too much of anything gets boring. Including too much comedy. It's just that when the grim and gritty gets ignored or relegated to tiny and insignificant bits that the feel of the genre gets left behind.


Isshia

Yeah, even RoboCop had "I'll buy that for a Dollar!"

RoboCop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers are probably the best dark sci-fi satires I've ever seen. Thank you Paul Verhoeven, you little Dutch pervert, you!

[mutters darkly]



Silent Running
Dark Star

Part of the Grim and Gritty I'm going to have are the Wandering Homeless Madmen.

People walking around about being tracked by Shoes, cybered up burn-outs who walk around in a pair of boxers and chanting "METAL IS BETTER!" at the top of their lungs, Doctor Hobo.

You know, the traditionals.

Yep, I'm a big fan of the traditionals. Blacklighter, a former mage detective, turned burned out cyber junkie, 0.015 essence left in his little old cyber sickened carcass, now terminally confused and living like an animal in the barrens, where he supposedly preys on Ghouls ...

Sounds like a fun guy, no?

Thankfully they never last long once they get that bad.

Ohh, Peter, if you read this, do NOT unhide the following text.
I had one run where the Runners were convinced they were dealing with a somehow heavily cybered up Dzoo Noo Qua..turned out to simply be a cyber sick troll who had his appearance permanently altered and was gonzo gone on BTLs at the time. I plan on running this old idea at my new group. *evil grin*

Sometimes the Street Monsters end up as exactly that. It gives my Players pause when they consider cybering themselves to the ears and beyond.


Isshia