This always struck me as a little strange.

Wetwork (Assassinations or just killing in general) is supposed to be rather taboo in the Shadowrun world. People look down on it and tend to scorn it.

WHY!? Shadowrun isnt exactly a world brimming with moral scruples and the rather mercenary attitude that many in the world seem to have doesnt square with a world where hacking into someone's comlink to steal their personal information and cooking drugs is TOTALLY kosher but suddenly you throw in a little "bang bang" and all of a sudden nuts just hit the wall.

Where did you get that impression? There are some runners in the SR world that avoid wetwork on "principle" but no one ever said it doesn't exist. My goodness how many major SR characters have been assassinated in the "canon?"

Peoples morals and tastes differ. Some players do not enjoy playing characters who would easily take a life just in the name of money. And other players might be playing a character who (for whatever reason) also hesitate before taking a life just for pay. And even for players/characters who have no problem with wetwork in general, there still might be ethical lines they wont cross.

I mean really its all about how you like your game. Some players reveal in the though of being bloodthirsty murders with little qualms. Others find that style of play distastful. I don't think either style is wrong necessarily, but it probably isn't a good idea to try and force one set of tastes on the other. I have seen some in and out of game arguments break out over it.

A delicate job it is to balance between these tastes for a group, its GM, and its players.

There are plenty of runner who will perform wetwork, but it is a fairly common place to draw the line. Look at it like this, most runners don't mind killing people on the job if they have to. If a gun fight breaks out and it's you or the corp sec team, I think your character will vote to keep themselves alive and take out their opposition. That said, unless it's a life or death situation, runners tend to avoid killing people on runs. They will use stick-n-shock, gel rounds, or DSMO narcojet rounds instead of lead to take out minor opposition and will only resort to lethal force it their life depends on it. If they kill someone it's a shame, but they never took the job to kill someone, a specific target, they are not an assassin, and as little sense as it might make, that is a significant moral difference for some people. The difference between killing for profit and killing for your life, nevermind that you wouldn't have to do either if you took up a career other then shadowrunning.

There are also professional reasons not to perform wetwork. From a legal standpoint, first degree murder(assassination), is much worse of a crime then second degree. The cops and corps don't usually make an effort to capture shadowrunners unless they are too high profile, as it's incredibly dangerous and once the runners give their johnson whatever it was they where picking up for them, there really isn't a benefit to them. But assassins on the other hand piss people off, assassins cause major loses of face for both corps and cops, not to mention the friends and family of the target will be none to happy with you. Besides, assassins are allready proven to be cold blooded killers, which might put people off hiring you.

Wetwork in Shadowrun RAW AFAIK is not a taboo subject. It is the killing of innocent people that accrues Notoriety, not simply killing someone. Killing someone when the job is to kill that someone is simply being professional. It is unnecessary collateral damage that is frowned upon.

Or you have a group of runners like mine, who gladly will slaughter there way through an entire building, leaving nothing but corpses in there wake.

Short answer: It isn't!

From the core book

"Wetwork is assassination, pure and simple. Many runners refuse to take these jobs and view dirtying their hands for money in this way as vile."

Pot. Kettle. Black.

I think its a bit hypocritical to look down on wetwork when arson, extortion, kidnapping, theft are standard daily fare.

My last character was a pacifist who used stun spells and DMSO laced narcojet rounds. My next character won't have a problem wasting people.

- J.

The other reason is that wetwork is murder. Contract killings & wetwork assignments are the same thing.
IF the law catches you -- maybe a life sentence, but the death penalty is almost a given.

I don't know how many games have played where their runners have gone to jail. But the idea of well make a new character because they are locked up for 5 to 10 years -- isn't that appealing to most players.

Some people don't mind or don't care about the morality or the consequences -- some do. It is a good idea to gauge your party on this subject before the game begins to get a feel for what they will and will not do.

If one of my runners went to jail and was told to make a new character, I know the party would scream to try and conduct a jail break.

As stupid as it sounds (in terms of probability of success), that sounds like it would be fun to GM.

I'd probably let them try for a laugh.

- J.

Oh there would be a lot of adventure ideas that came from that. It all depends on the crime they got put away for and how much of a wanted person they would be. But Arson usually doesn't get the death sentence -- and if it happens somewhere a megacorp has extraterritoriality, that sentence may not be long before the execution.

Was just throwing ideas out there.

I have had characters on both sides of that debate, and parties divided by it. It can be an interesting roleplaying session or 2.

Considering how many security guards tend to get gunned down in the course of many a run, and the common law felony murder rule, it hardly matters what you go down for, you are getting life either way.

In addition,
1
considering how much of your characters ability is gear based, even a nickel sentence where they take out all your ware is basically just as good as character death.

2
Considering further that the people most likely to catch you (i.e. corpsec) have very loose views on due process. So actually getting caught will probably be worse than life.

So, don't get caught, even if you have to kill a bunch of people to do it.

I think reading any more into this than what it says is a mistake. It is simply meant to describe a relativily common point of view among those who work the shadows. 'Many runners' view wetwork with distain, not all or even most. It doesn't say that those runners are unwilling to use lethal force in the course of other aims (though some might be). And of course the extent to which this hold true is of course up to you and your group, and likely veries from location to location.

The only reason this distinction is important is that this is probably the most common moral line that some runners refuse to cross. They may be okay with destruction of property, theft, or even a kidnapping (of both the the willing and unwilling kind), but may refuse to take assassination jobs, for reasons both ethical and practical.

---

I should also note here, just as a legal point, in most of the US today there exists something called 'Felony Murder' which can have three important implications for shadowrunners (or anyone else who breaks the law really).

Firstly if someone died (accidently or otherwise) during the commision of a felony, you can be held culpible for that death and charged with murder and/or manslaughter. This means if Aunt Pentinua can't handle the stress of and has a heart attack while you are knocking over the local stuffer-shack you can be charged with her murder.

Secondly, if the primary felony you commited was pre-mediated, then any murders that happen during the course of that crime can be considered pre-meditated as well. Which means if you whack the Sam the Stuffer-Shack rent-a-cop during your well though out pre-planned stuffer-shack caper, you can be charged with 1st degree murder, even though you didn't initialy plan to kill him. In fact, in the US most murders committed in the course of a crime like Armed Robbery qualify has 'depraved indifference to human life' and as such qualify as first-degree murder in most cases regardless.

Thirdly, if even if you aren't a participant in the acts which led to the death, but are a participant in the crime itself, you can also be charged with Felony Murder. Which means Joe, the wheelman for your Stuffer-Shack caper can be charged with the deaths of Aunt Petinua and Sam the Stuffer-Shack Rent-A-Cop, even though he stayed out in the car the whole time. In fact in some cases, like if someone was killed for discovering the embelzement sceme you were a part of, the reach of a Felony Murder charge can be quite wide indeed. You may not have ever even heard of the murder or the victim, but could still theoretically be charged with the crime (in some jurisdictions at least).

To what extent these laws still apply in the 6th world is obviously up to you, but it bears some thinking about. I doubt there has been a big push to ease up on laws like this in the future.

Flavor - that's all.

One of my favorite SR characters is Grandpa, an assassin who turned the concept of wetwork on its head. He has an unusual trait - he won't kill unless he has a contract on the person. "Somebody might pay me to kill them later."

Some see misfortune, some see providence...

I see an opportunity to use Target: Wastelands and the arctic jail scenario!!!

- J.

It's all a matter of personal ethics. My current character refuses to kill someone who hasn't attacked him with lethal force, so taking a job to kill someone who he has never even met is pretty far out for him morally. That said he has no trouble with arson, theft, destruction of property, extortion...and if you shoot him, well you should have known better.

And many runners don't. Many is not the majority, many is just a significant number of them. I think the opening post is extrapolation to an extreme if that's the only paragraph you're going off of.

My character, Sonya I play as being scary. As in the rest of the PCs are afraid of her. As Scoot defined his character's job "to be a buffer between Sonya and Cherry to make sure Sonya does not kill her." Sonya not being the most charismatic by a long shot, often has to resort to torture to get things out.

You know I think they should have as a negative trait pacificist or the less negative one refuses to kill an innocent.

They do, its in Runner's Companion

Cool. I actually want to give Sonya the Astral Hazing trait from Runners Companion. But then again I am not the most stable of people and so my characters are a bit helter skelter as well.

My first shadowrunner group, back when we started the game in our teens, had the strict "We do not take wetwork jobs, ever" rule.

Killing during another job was a-ok though, and "slaughtering their way through a building" as well as "leaving no witnesses" was common place, so some of the smarter johnsons just hired the crazy bunch for "sabotage" runs, knowing they'd probably sabotage the target facility by blowing it up with everyone inside, including the person the Johnson wanted dead.

"There is no collateral damage . . there's only those few he is trying to use as a living shield. That's the easiest way to kill someone . . make them believe you won't if they do something like that. Make them believe you care about certain 'Rules' . . Then say 'I lied!' and shoot through whoever he tries to hide behind. Gauss and APDS don't much care for anything between them and their Target. At least, when i am done, they won't suffer for the rest of their lives. The few seconds to minutes they have."

I ususally try not to go overboard with the killing, if i ain't playing sergeant Psycho McCrazy, but SOMEONE has to be the Monster that gets rid of the other monsters. Especially in a Group of Pacifists and sneaky talky people and the GM using this against them.

It varies greatly depending on the runners themselves. I've played in groups where to keep a pacifist PC happy the others used non-lethal means first and foremost. Her respect for metahuman life rubbed off on the others to a certain extent, despite two team members being twisted brutal sociopaths. In my current group one of my players abhores violence, so the others don't tell her about it. Since she's the hacker, and is usually off in VR, they can do whatever they like so long as the blood and bodies are out of sight when she comes back to the meat. Even so, this group is finding that killing people leads to more trouble than it's worth, and have resolved not to take any more wetwork contracts... after the current one that is... and if they get really hard up for cash again!

There have been complaints that the SR devs try to impose a moral framework to the game, couching twisted magical paths and dissonant TMs in uniformly negative terms. I can understand why they might want to do so, and also appreciate the game balance requirements, but in the end it's your game, and wetwork will happen if Mr J. employs the PCs to do so.

and it will probably be a bloody messy loud and flashy spectacle to boot . . if not ordered to do it nice and quiet.

My character are usualy more than a little unbalanced and they refuse to take on wetwork unless the target deserves it (a couple of times a character of mine has been tricked into murdering an innocent, that's why my characters have the tendency to want to know as much as possible about their targets), they also favor stealthy approches and try to avoid to use lethal force (I also usualy play mages, it gives me alot of options), in part for pratical reasons, in part as they try to retain their humanity and avoid falling deeper into insanity (we were not born to kill, every time you kill someone a part of you dies as well).
Obviously if they have to chose betwen killing or be killed they ARE going to take off the velvet gloves, this extendes to harming or threatening people close to them (once they did a little run against Renraku and Red Samurais tooke it personal and started to kill contacts, my mage along with the hacker planted some prooves that the branch director played fool and a number of Samurais were involved, igniting an interdepartmental war that led to the terminations of hers enemies, this involved some wetwork to keep the factions at each other throat.)
Morals are a strange beast.

If you plant a low-yeild thermonuclear device in a crowded shopping mall on Black Friday, you're not actually killing anybody. Sure, plenty of people will die, but you aren't really responsible for that. No one made them shop on that day; everyone could have just stayed home and if they did then they would be safe. That makes it just a bunch of suicides, really. It is unreasonable for anyone to blame you for the inevitable rise in the suicide rate at the beginning of the holiday season.

Yup, bombs are a community service. Think of how many less people society has to support now.

So how much for the little girl?

Cracked.com had a funny, yet insightful article that relates to this topic.

From 6 Baffling Mistakes Every Movie Criminal Makes.

and

There is a line in the sand, basically. While most people can convince themselves that "it was them or me", the actual act of killing is easy for people in general to do but hard for them to handle psychologically. This is why the military and law enforcement teaches that it's about duty, and civilians cover it under self defense. Even then there are long-term issues caused by killing much more often than not.

Finding a person who can kill at the whim of a big enough paycheck is a rare thing indeed and those people tend to be of the worst sorts. Please also note that murderers are generally treated much worse in both apprehension and incarceration if they resist in any way.

As for our games, we don't do wetwork, either. Things break and people die, but our characters won't step over the line of "You're paid to specifically pop this guy (or guys) off and nothing else. End of story."

Besides, why do it for a paycheck when revenge and "general principle" are much more rewarding reasons for capping bitches?

I would like to take this opportunity to give a "public service warning."

Anyone who has a group that refuses to do Wetwork will need to do some re-tooling of the campaign if they are planning on running Ghost Cartels

A wacky question:

If someone is kidnapped, brain-wiped, and re-inserted into society as a completely new person, with completely new memories and motivations, and no connection to their prior life (assume a retinal/fingerprint/DNA "wipe"), does that count as "wetwork" for the purposes of Mr. Johnson?

Many of my characters would take wetwork, but will not kill innocents. That of course begs the question who is an innocent?

To the characters in question an innocent is anyone not "in the game" (working the shadows) and who does not willingly hurt other people. So your average wageslave, child, etc. is not a target, and not acceptable as collateral damage either. However if you hurt people for fun, or hurt innocents for profit, then you are fair game.

This has complicated jobs involving sabotage, since you can't blow up a lab while typical employees are still in it. Said characters also use non-lethal means even against armed security if possible.

A subset of the above characters have gone so far as to tithe 10–50% of their earnings towards trying to make life better for some group, be it the Ork underground, a childhood neighborhood, or a group the player wronged before they developed their moral code.

On the other hand I have played characters that will pretty much do whatever they are paid to do, or in one case whatever their patron asked of them. I just tend to prefer characters who still have moral boundaries.

I am not sure. Does the person stop breathing at any point? Does his or her heart stop beating? Does he or she suffer multiple organ failure? Does it involve placing long surgical instruments in ways surgical instruments are not meant to placed?

If the answer is yes, then I believe we are talking about "wetwork" as you will.

No. If you're paid to kill someone and they aren't dead, you haven't completed the task. Removing the ability to prove someone is alive isn't the same as killing them, much as not having a SIN doesn't mean a person doesn't exist in the most basic physical sense.

Replace "Shadowrun" with "The Real" and see how it all sounds. It's where the players are, and also what the "Shadowrun" world is drawn from.

well . . could the problem not also be the solution to the problem?
tell the johnson the price is high and you want half up front.
then after getting the money, kill the johnson. he wanted someone killed, he paid for it and hey, mistakes happen right?

Just to add my own food for thought:

In the army, snipers are often viewed by other soldiers more as killers then the regular grunt. The grunts use their weapons to "defend themselves", fire back, hold positions, etc. The sniper aims at one dude in particular, then blows his head off.

Talk about a crazy fine line, but if it can apply to soldiers, it can apply to runners. Shooting and killing as collateral is not the same as going out and purposefully killing someone. It doesn't make sense, but the (meta)human mind seems to make a distinction.

how's that different from bomber pilots?
aside from the scale and the "up close and personal" angle? (that's all relative, with 1000m away being middle to far away for the sniper but not even close range for bombers)

There are two reasons for this stance in SR.

First is the PC's are meant to be anti hero's, heros have ethics and do 'the right thing'.

Second, most people in the real world have an emotional aversion to killing. Only two percent of the population can kill without emotional reprecusions. This is why dehumanification is the first step for most if they want to cause harm, to distance themselves from the pain they cause others. "The person asked for it, they are no better than an animal, they had it coming, it was me or them."
Are all terms to justify and shield from something that causes emotional damage to the person performing the act.

If you want realistic take into account human nature's positive qualities as well as the negative ones.

A moral stance hinges on no more than a choice and an action. But it is the one thing that can never be taken from you. In a world where you have next to nothing, giving that most important inch of existence might be the difference between living and being able to live with yourself.

Are there people that do wet work in the Sixth world, yes. Does every runner carelessly remove another human being that has done nothing to them personally from the world. No

Play how you want to play. Just look at all the angles that you can explore.

Read my post far above. Bombers don't kill people, they just drop bombs. It isn't their fault if people get caught in the blast, and they can't be blamed for it.


Heroes are also cool. And there is nothing cooler than assassins.

James Bond: Assassin
The Terminator: Cyborg Assassin
Mr & Mrs Smith: Assassins
Every Other Steven Seagal Character: Retired Assassin
The Guy from Grosse Point Blank: Assassin
Angel Eyes: Assassin
Agent 47: Assassin
The Jackal: Assassin
The Guys from Assassins: Assassins
Leon: Assassin
Nikita: Assassin
The Deadly Viper Assassination Squad: All Assassins
Slevin and Bruce Willis: Both Assassins
Golgo 13: Assassin
The Guy from Wanted: Assassin
Jason Borne: Assassin
Remo Williams: Assassin
Ninjas: Assassins, every last one of them

The fact is that assassins are some of the coolest characters in modern pop culture. They're the sort of characters that most people want to emulate. Professional Assassin is among the top four jobs that kids want to have when they grow up, right behind Astronaut, Rock Star, and Super Hero.

And the dream of becoming a professional assassin isn't one that is crushed by morality. Even as adults we can still watch these films and dream, silently regretting the career path that never was. No, what stops us from becoming assassins is the same thing that stops us from becoming astronauts, the dream-crushing weight of reality.
It is pretty well impossible to break into the business of freelance international assassination. It's not like you can find someone willing to pay you 10 million dollars to kill the President of Paraguay on Craig's List. The amount of available work is extremely low, and prestigious work is almost non-existent. Likewise, building a strong reputation and attracting clients without getting arrested is extremely difficult.

This, however, doesn't really explain the anti-assassination stance of many shadowrunners. They're already in the game.
What does explain it, more than morality, is entanglement. Thefts, arsons, kidnappings, all of these things usually driven a financial motive. Assassinations tend to driven by political or personal motives, which makes things substantially more complicated and double-cross substantially more likely. People who kill for the bottom line are trustworthy, to a point. People who kill for passion or for a cause are dangerously unpredictable. There is no sense in getting caught up in that mess.
Besides, anyone who can afford to pay you what the assassination is actually worth can also afford to do the killing himself and bribe the police to frame a SINless bum. And you have to ask yourself why he doesn't just do that.

technically, snipers don't kill . . neither does the rifle . . neither does the bullet for that matter . . it's only the impact of bullet on body that does the ouchies . .
weapons don't kill, people kill. if the sniper is at fault for pulling the trigger, then so's the pilot for pulling the bigger.

But the bomber isn't aiming at a person. He's aiming at a building or an area. It isn't his fault if there happen to be people in that area, he wasn't trying to kill them.

Well it seems that IRL at least in terms of laws and the like tends to dislike murder more than any other crime in particular. Cooking drugs, Stealing personal information, kidnapping, etc etc won't get get you the death penalty or life in prison (in the US) like pre-meditated murder (which is what most assassinations are). I know there are plenty of exceptions and the legal system is nothing if not absurdly complicated but if you take the long view of alot of governments and you ask alot of peopel on the street, than murder, particualarly of innocents is one of the worst things one can think of. Shadworun representing that opinion by saying that many Shadowrunners (read: criminals) dislike murder seems both plausible and realistic. That's not to say that many Shadowrunners would probably commit murder (Black Mamba comes to mind) but there are some who won't.

This gets my vote for Post Of The Day.

Very well put.

- J.

Then you add the fact that the popular culture idea of the super-cool, shaken-not-stirred assassin really doesn't exist and you further muddy the waters. It's a great fantasy, but it's exactly that...a fantasy.

Real assassins get caught or killed more often than not. Real assassins live lives of paranoid misery. Real assassins, almost to a person, are grade-A psychos (and the others are grade-B psychos).

Most people fall under the category of "no unnecessary killings". They will kill when they need to but will not just shoot everyone in sight. Now based on characters' principals the go from "kill 'em all and let <diety> sort them out..." to "never hurt anyone...". Personally I have had characters that would shoot people just for the principal of it. Then I had others that would go out of their way to try to avoid killing.. They would kill just would rather find ways to accomplish the mission without killing or to minimize it.

So wetwork is not taboo, per se in Shadowrun. Just for certain peoples.

I'd agree with this, and the above position on assassins. There's a very fine line between justified killing (say in war, or self-defense) and murder or assassination. I'm not tryin to stir up that debate save to say that it exists and can often be quite vehement on both sides. The reason I mention it is only to say that there is a great deal of descrimination that goes on both in society and probably in the individual (I've never killed anyone so I'm not speaking to personal experience, not that it counts for much really) in who to kill, why to kill someone, its justifications etc etc. I think most peopel would say killing a child (say below the age of puberty) is morally wrong, but is it as morally wrong to kill the kid if he's pointing an RPG at you, your friends, family or property? (lol thoughts of Shadowrun books being pointed at my house), what if the kid is swinging a knife at you, what about a brick, what about his fists? Is it okay to kill a homeless man who arguably has no utility for humanity but morally wrong to kill the preminent scientist of an era?

Lets see.

The corp that employed Mr. J has now you on its black list.
No Jonhson will wnat to make deals with you (you tend to kill your employers).
Shadowrunners will avoid you because you're bad for biz (for the two reasons above).

Mistakes happen, and the one who mistake in the shadows always pay the price of it.

well . . my plan more or less was pinning a note to him with:"Wetwork, want it done?"