Hey,

I have a player in my group who plays a Zoroastrian Mage (p.43, Street Magic). While he's describing his character as some kind of paladin, fighting against evil powers, he's actually acting like a cold blooded killer.

Some examples:

• He killed two guards in Egypt. Those guys weren't hostile. They were walking toward him, waving hands friendly, weapons down. He didn't even think about a peaceful solution for a second. His decision was a fireball, force 6. Both guards dead.
• He killed a mechanic in Egypt because this guy tried to sell a fucked up car to him. Flamethrower, force 6. Mechanic dead.
• He kidnapped a young woman in Seattle to get some information about a Johnson. The woman managed to escape after she gave him all information he wanted. He instantly fired a flamethrower, force 6. The woman died two seconds later.

Now, in my opinion, a Zoroastrian Mage who fights the ultimate evil, should not kill harmless or innocent people - at least not quite often. It's very bad roleplaying IMO and I'm not satisfied with giving less karma to this player. I need something to punish him. The character already got jailed, so this is no option.

What would you do?

Have his superiors send a pair of mage-killer adepts after him with a request that he take on a major task - or they kill him.

The problem with this player is that he'd simply try to let his character leave the country. That's what he's always doing if consequences have to be faced. He'd simply use his money to flee. This character would then vanish somewhere in Iran. Then the player would present a new character. Slightly different story, same paranoid, psychopatic behaviour.

Even if he wouldn't flee the country... he'd face those mage-killer adepts and try to kill them with an overpowered fireball, force 12 - even if this would mean certain death to himself.

It's difficult for me to handle such kind of players.

Give him a mentor spirit of Gator. [Call it crocodile and have it have a different tradition than Zoroastrian]

Not only would a devout Zoroastrian want to get rid of it, they'd be offended by it. If he doesn't get rid if it through penance have him become haunted and introduce him to the rules for sleep deprivation. THEN let him learn of his order's disapproval when an archvillain of the Zoroastrian's Order's mentor spirit is now attached to your runner and put some real thumbscrews on 'im.

Another option is an OOP option: let your karma awards reflect good roleplay and problem solving. Greed for karma will handle the rest.

Well, you could have an adept of Ahriman come along and congratulate him on the fine job he's doing. Or you could have his accounts frozen by his superiors until he makes amends.

You can have him receive a vision where a daeva tells him that his character is becoming toxic and unless he mends his ways, he will be lost down the dark path - out of game, warn him that if he continues to violate his tradition in this fashion his character becomes an NPC and he has to start over. That's a bit dickish, but well within normal limits. As a lead-up, you could apply a geas or temporary Magic reduction during critical junctures that reflect a waning magical ability because he's not following the tenets of his tradition.

On a carrot level, you can have an initiatory group offer to allow him to join - with some really posh benefits - provided he can prove himself by his actions. Carrots work better than sticks with some people.

Thank you for your suggestions so far!



Sounds great.



Never.



I like that.



I think a mixture would be a good idea. A mentor spirit AND a temporary reduction of his Magic.

To be honest, I don't really like punishing players. Especially in this case... the problem with this player is, that he ALWAYS play the same stereotype. Paranoid, psychopatic killers. Again and again. Over and over. Sometimes I think, he's playing himself - or better said - what he would like to be...! It's very frightening.

Then I don't think the in-game route is the way to go.

I think your best bet is to sit down with the player, and discuss the problem.


If this happens with every character he plays, then it's a deeper problem than just one character - so punishing that character might not actually get the player to understand that there is, in fact, a problem.

A bit of paranoia when playing Shadowrun is normal, playing every character as a '...psychopathic killer' is not.

Well... is the player conscious of what he's doing? Or is he just powergaming and likes to play a bully? Just to play devil's advocate, the world, the Shadowrun world in particular, if full of delusionnal people who think of themselves as Good People, fighting for Goodness. But their actions are of the utmost vilest kind. Witness the Inquisition and much of Christianism.

Granted, though, killing poeple you really don't have to, especially just cause you're power tripping, is a bit hard to justify as "breaking eggs to make an omelette". Like I said, if the player really isn't trying to roleplay, you have another problem.

Out of curisosity, have you brought this up with the player? Or are you just hoping that you smaking him without telling him why won't result in a confilct escalation?

Might not be what you want to hear, but my advice is to not play with this player anymore. It sounds as though no matter what you do he's going to act the same way. The way you describe it, no matter the situation he'll make the same character and have the same reactions; this means you'll have the same dillema. Only way around it is to not be involved in the same game.

I had many conversations with this player. He always has "specific reasons" to justify his actions. Although these reasons are illegitimate (IMO) in almost every case, he does actually really believe the bullshit he's talking. I spent two hours and tried to explain that killing an innocent woman is a very awful crime. His answer was: "Well, this woman worked for a bad guy and even if she didn't know that he was a bad guy, she deserves death just BECAUSE she worked for him". eek.


Sounds weird, but this isn't an option (at the moment).

Perhaps I should change to "the dark side" and let him kill as much people as he like. Who knows... After 50 or 100 dead bodies he could be tired of killing...?! Would also mean less work for me. I'd just have to design a room with 20 opponents in it.

Talk to the player and group about it. Peer pressure can work wonders. You might also find out that the other players might actually want to play that way too.

It looks like you've gotten some great suggestion for some in game natural consequences. Keep piling them on.

Another option is the have the PC encounter the exact same kind of response in turn. Probably get killed for looking at someone funny.

But I'd seriously look at not playing with this person if they can't manage to work things out with the Gm and the group.

And then there's always the Orbital Bovine Bombardment.

Used that twice in the last two years. Also magically pinned genitals into faces...! oO



The truth is, that HE actually is the GROUP. It's a one man show at the moment.

home rule ... give your players bad karma points when they do somethings way out of their concepts.
after few bad karma points ... as a GM exchange those well earn bad karma points for a nasty drawback that fits the character.

hung out dry is a nasty one if the character scare the shit out of is contacts


or impose a geasa break .. like UNJUSTIFIED killing, when a mage must atone for something before casting again it's generaly a good way to make him think twice before do it again

and most important give him BAD REP points ... those are nasty if your playing with it

johnson won't be so willing to give jobs to runners who are killers ... there's one thing between ingaging to battle opposition and free murder... corps will take a few nasty punch when it's being ripped of their favorite new secret reseach toy ... but if the corp don't do something about the murder of her employees... they will all go work somewhere else.

so HUNT DOWN a psychopath... corps love sharing those video footages with law enforcement AND sell it to medias (at lease corps won't loose all ... they get a few bucks and free advertisement from medias) groups to later call extradition right to be judge on there corporates grounds

Sounds like the player might be unreasonable to deal with. Which is unfortunate, because there's a great Zoroastrian storytelling opportunity here. Zoroastrianism believes that when a person dies, their soul spends three days reliving their sins and virtues. Then they travel to the Chinavet bridge, where--depending on the myth--they are either met by their own conscience or by the three judges of the dead (Mithra, Sraosha and Rashnu) and their soul is weighed on the golden scales and deemed worthy or unworthy. The player could face this on a metaplanar quest (with the three judges standing in for the Dweller on the Threshold) or at a scene where the character is hovering between life and death. If his soul is deemed unworthy (which it clearly would be), he suffers penalties to his magic until he redeems himself.

Unfortunately, that only works with a player who gives a damn. Like the others have suggested, you will probably have to deal with the player directly if they aren't likely to respond to in-character attempts.

This makes things a little difficult. Here's an option that might require a little trickery on your part.

Tell him you have an idea for a 2nd story-arc that is going on at the same time and you need him to make a new character. Very subtly describe some of the atrocities he's committed and hire his new character to hunt down his old character. Get him excited that he's going after this scumbag since he can use whatever means necessary. Right before he catches up with his 1st PC, take a break. Go get food or something. While you're eating, fish for info on which character he prefers. Then try to fish for which character he thinks would win in a fight. Then, using that info, when you get home, rip up the character that lost based on his own narrative.

Just a thought, and as I said it would take some careful, and very subtle, work on your part. Hell, it might be easier to get the which does he like better and which is tougher before you start the adventure. That way even if he figures out that he's hunting his own PC, he doesn't realize that he's already sealed the fate of a PC he's spent time making.

When all is said and done, you can then point out that from this point forward, you'll just have NPCs hunt his characters down like that and not let him take part.

Good idea, the judgement thing.

I will probably use a bit of everything from all suggestions and a final conversation with the player.

Thanks guys!



LOL, great! If the final conversation fails, this will be the way to go.

If he is the only player you need to go game elsewhere, man. GM's should ENJOY running the game and while you may like running, it really doesn't sound like a healthy hobby entertaining someone obsessed with violence and moral ambiguity. Don't get me wrong, I've played Azzies and treacherous gov't guys as well as paladins and pacifists all within the SR world, but I always asked the GM what kind of game he wanted to run and it sounds like this guy neither gives two shits nor has any desire for character depth.

We can give advice on how to encourage the character to want to be redeemed but a player beyond redemption needs more than a GM can provide...

Right.

I'm not convinced that it's a terribly huge problem. Shadowrunners are allowed to be bad people. And many bad people come up with bullshit justifications to explain why doing what they know was the wrong thing was actually right *coughdickcheneycough*

The way to teach this character to behave better is to use the notoriety system. It sounds like he's kind of a boob -- if he's been jailed before, it means he commits his crimes in a random, unplanned way where his identity is not protected. That means that not only can the cops find him, the shadowscene knows who he is. Most Js will refuse to work with him, because he's such a loose cannon. Other Js will use him like a disposable weapon, sending him on suicide missions, because he's not good for anything else. Many Js will probably force him to accept lower compensation, and they can threaten to turn him over to the cops to coerce him. He's also got a huge problem in that his MO is known. He uses fire magic to kill? That means no J or squad of police will go after him without a counterspelling mage as backup. Also, every time a random person is killed by fire magic in broad daylight, he's immediately a suspect.

Anyway, there's no requirement that runners be good guys. There's no requirement that they be sane, either. It's perfectly legitimate to have a psycho character who thinks he's not evil. Have evil organizations recruit him to do evil things. He can go on thinking he's a good guy even as he toasts witnesses who threaten to testify about corporate crime, and sets buildings on fire with everyone inside for the purpose of letting the owner collect insurance money. If he refuses to work for evil people, pull the ol' switcheroo. The J tells him that his target is a dangerous pedophile murderer, and he's supposed to conduct vigilante justice. Then he finds out that she was a lawyer fighting for the rights of orphans against a megacorp. The J tells him that the building he's burning down is empty, and then he finds out it's full of retarded people. In these situations, he has to go back to the J to get paid, armed with the knowledge of what he's done. Will he take the money, or will he burn the J? If it's the former, then he'll have to confront the fact that he's not a good guy after all.

Having played in a pretty eclectic number of groups over the years, I've found the fortune to more often than not, be in the GMs seat. Most of the groups I've played in have included at least one player that fits the description of the player you have. A freaky group of Rifts fanatics comes to mind. Occasionally, I've been required to run single man games and these can be the most rewarding storytelling oppurtunities since no one has to wait their turn. To get to my point, I've found that the easiest way to stem powergaming psychos, is to limit the availability of books and alternate character classes, skills, spells, gear, weapons, etc. Even when the players have access to all the books, or have played with me countless times, a new game always starts with ONLY the core book available to the players. As a campaign progresses, access to the new books are great and exciting rewards to go with karma/experience. The more books and their inclusive gadgets that get introduced, the easier it is to unbalance a game. Unbalanced games cater to psycho powergamers and their ridiculous egos. Crazy powerful mages and whacked out weapons freaks are easy to prevent by simply using veto power on such archetypes. That being said, such restrictions may not suit the cut of your jib, and as such I would apply an anti-bully protocol. Any bully, real or roleplayed, only gets off on the attention that comes from acting out. Shutting down kill sprees, senseless destruction, or any other such attempts at gamebreaking, can be achieved by a variety of deus ex machina styled defences.
Psycho Samurai wanna blow the brains out of an important NPC for no reason? Totally outta character? Whats to say that the NPC isn't being protected by unseen bodyguards? Maybe remote deckers who hack into the sams smartgun or cybereyes and prevent the attack.
Maybe that goofy killer mage wants to roast your Johnson (snicker) instead of accepting your obviously planned out offer of a mission? Couldn't the corporate mage astrally protecting the Johnson offer some form of vile spirit or debililtating spellward to... further nudge your player into playing along?
These tactics have worked for me, more than once quietly altering the players behavior and making them much better participants.
And once, although shortlived for other reasons, a powerplayer and I switched places at the table and found success that way too.

Nib Shuggarath Bahim

Nib Shuggarath Bahim

Nib Shuggarath Bahim

Nib Shuggarath Bahim




Watch Wishmaster 2 if you don't understand the reference. For a Zoroastrian mage who needs an excuse to purify himself, the Wishmaster 2 route is definitely the way to go.

Start with a fire opal falling into the PCs laps. This fire opal is the enchanted prison of an extremely powerful djinn, who is accidentally released and who proceeds to wreak havoc. Physical and magical force are all useless against him, victory requires putting him back in the gem. The only problem is that putting him back in the gem requires a magician who is pure of heart. Emphasis on pure. This means that the Zoroastrian mage, in order to win, must go through a great deal of heartfelt ritual atonement.

There were rules in SR2 where if you violated your tradition long enough you actually started to lose magic (a sort of f@#$ off from the magical powers that be). Now you can't just cut off his powers without warning him but I would say the next time he is about to fireball some innocent person you should say to him, "a voice in the back of your head is say, do this and you will be punished!" If he continues then give him one point of temporary magic loss. Continue till he gets the point and starts more along the lines of his ethos.

I have no problem with people who can roleplay wild, bat-shit crazy justifications for their actions. The problem is when they take the argument out of game and ACTUALLY argue for philosophically questionable positions.

"I know he gave us room and board for the night, but did you see the way he talked to his henchmen/wife/children? He DESERVED the fireball in his face after he cooked us breakfast, because it was obvious he was a BAD man and was going to KILL us." (borrowed from a recent D&D game)

A double problem is when you don't have other players to argue with the problem player. If it's just one dude calling the shots, then arguments only erupt between the GM and that player. If multiple players are arguing, then at least you get to sit in and hear their fears, worries, and complaints. Mega bonus points if they can keep IC and OOC arguments completely, 100% separate. Sometimes you can even get some good ideas from the arguments!

Fortunately, Shadowrun doesn't have a silly alignment system to worry about (in D&D, we would get into constant arguments about "what is good", especially among dumb religious players who more often than not argued for an "ends can justify the means" system), so without alignments, you are free to institute street morality. By street morality, I mean only this: WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND! Hell, you even have Notoriety scores built straight into the rules, so load him up with penalties.

I don't have a problem with bad guy characters. I also played hitmen and the like. The problem is, that he chose a tradition that isn't evil at all. If he'd play a corrupted black mage, I'd be happy. But he doesn't.

I thank you for your suggestions and comments and think that I'll be able to get along with this character now. If he wants to be a killing machine, I won't stand in his way. In the end I make runs to please my players in the first place.

Cheers!

Reminds me of something. There were some rules for Negamagi. Anti-Magic Guys, quite rare. Wonder what happened to them.

Edited. Caught the final post at the last second.

If the player is saying "I'm a paladin" then the character thinks he's a champion of good. That's good old delusion, and it fits Shadowrun perfectly. Just have the game world react appropriately.

One thing to note as well: While RL religions have a moral or ethical compass, it does not necessarily follow that SR religions or the traditions that are derived from them have such distinctions. While a GM can penalise character for not roleplaying his tradition, it does not necessarily follow that the character was taught the moral compass that comes with the tradition. Buddhism and some religions tend to have pacifistic leanings, does that mean that a runner from that tradition cannot resort to force? While every tradition has its traditional practitioners, there are exceptions to the rule and player characters should be able to break such barriers. Afterall, many runners are an exceptional segment of the 6th world population in the first place, else they would not survive for long.

The mage may have been taught Zoroastrianism but he could view the ultimate struggle between good and evil beyond the mundane evil he commits. Killing is evil but he makes no pact with dark forces(no spirit pacts), does not use the forbidden arts(no blood magic). I would refer to the call out on p138 Street Magic as a guideline for the GM to follow with regards to good and evil in the context of Shadowrun magic. I do not think that any Tradition in SR does not have a darker side to it, but in the context of Shadowrun, I would not think that such casual acts of violence would actually qualifies for the dark side. In fact, if you try to penalise him for it, you are just pushing him towards a game that a normal SR game does not cater to (again p138 SM).

This is an interesting point. You say, he can be a real bad asshole, but still follows his tradition by not accepting pacts, not using blood magic and the like. Would mean different rules for mundane and awakened believers of this religion. Would mean that awakened Zoroastrians are free to do whatever they want to do unless they violate some arcane rules. I don't like the philosophy behind this, but it's a very interesting point.

And I'm not pushing him to anything. I just want that he sticks to his character description. He never said "I play a guy who believes to be good but in fact he's a misguided paladin." He said "I play a good guy, defending the ultimate good against the ultimate evil." PERIOD. If you say, you're a good guy and play a bad guy (probably because the player is pissed by some NPC actions), it's a) bad roleplaying and b) a charter to do whatever you want. You'd never need to provide a background story then. In fact it would make background stories obsolete. It would be an ambience-killer.

I can think of a thousand ways in game to stop this sort of behaviour but that won't help.

It's a PLAYER issue, not a CHARACTER issue.

Your solutions are simple. Follow this order:
1) Explain to the player (privately so there is no loss of face publicly) that he is not acting in accordance with his character concept. Furthermore, he is being an unprofessional psychopathic killer in game. While you'd probably be fine with him playing an assassin or similar character where such behaviour would be less likely (note: I said less likely - not exempt) to be faulted, the fact remains this behaviour is unprofessional, even for the most evil of killers and will draw undue attention. Explain that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

2) Then just let the chips fall where they may. He wants to fireball people. No problem. Police then determine his astral signature, use that to track him down. He kills security guards. No problem. The entire attack is on surveillance footage and his image is plastered all over the trid, with Interpol and local PD - along with a 20,000 nuyen reward. Would his own team mates not turn him in for that cash? He powerbolts a key NPC in your campaign? No problem - said NPC's powerful brother with ties to organised crime is now after him. You get the idea. Seriously - I've had players do this before. After making a few examples, all I need to now is ask said player "Are you sure?". This is usually enough to make even the dumbest player pause. You can't just go around doing things indiscriminately. I used to get really upset years ago about this sort of behaviour. Now I let PCs do whatever they want. Experience has shown this sort of self-regulation works best.
If you keep capping off randoms in game, sooner or later, you will piss off the wrong person. The universe is quite good at establishing its own equilibrium like that. Call it karma, fate, whatever. If he keeps re-making new characters, he may get the hint when they don't last a single session and you refuse to allow him a new character in that session until he's developed a suitably detailed backstory (i.e. invoke a one character/session rule).

3) When all else fails, use cows from space.

- J.

This is another method I have used with mixed results... double karma rewards for roleplaying in character/good roleplaying. When he starts getting significantly less karma than other people he may wonders why. My only caveat is that you have to watch them like a hawk to ensure they don't fudge the karma totals on their sheet....

- J.

This guy sounds like one of those people who actually believes it would be a good act to kill 100 babies so we can kill one terrorist, even if we had the option of not killing those babies. No, especially then. And what, you're running a game for him by himself? Here's my advice: buy a video game, play that in your spare time instead of interacting with this guy. Either that, or get some more players for your Shadowrun game to balance him out.

EDIT: removed insulting language.

What I meant was that a Zoroastrian mage may not necessarily be an adherent of Zoroastrianism. Tradition =! Religion, so to speak.

Actually the only thing I see that differs from his description is that you claim he said he is playing a good guy. The player could actually think he is playing a good guy though. The other part about ultimate good and ultimate evil is just window dressing.

Actually it could be. If killing those babies could kill that one terrorist who is about to kill millions. You have the choice of killing the terrorist who has a bomb strapped to each of those babies with a dead man switch or doom millions to a painful agonising death. You always have a choice, the alternative may not be very platable but it is still a choice.

Except this is irrelevant.

Killing innocent people on a whim, as the player is doing, is clearly not even remotely in line with his character description.

Sure, but there's like a 1 in a trillion chance that any such scenario would ever exist. Anyway, your scenario is twisting my hypothetical. In yours, the babies are pretty much already dead, because either they die when we disarm the bombs by killing them, or they die when the bombs go off. My hypothetical was that we could choose to kill 100 babies along with the terrorist, or we could kill the terrorist by himself. Both ways would be 100% safe, there would be no downside to killing him and letting the babies live. I was positing that there might be someone who would say that killing the babies was the right thing to do, since it doesn't matter how many innocents we kill as long as we kill one "bad guy." I don't know if there's anyone who actually thinks like this, it's partly a parody. But based on what we've heard about this particular player, there might be.

There is a concrete advantage to acting without regard to the safety of hostages, all things being equal. With such a policy in place and applied consistently, no rational actor would spend the time and effort required to take hostages, as there would be no advantaged gained and much lost. As a result, the number of hostage incidents will drop dramatically in the long term. Furthermore, the rare hostage situations that do occur are more likely to result in successful hostage resistance, since the hostages know that waiting for police response is an unacceptable risk.

It is a mathematically sound effort toward greater good.

Does your mathematically sound solution factor in public outcry - or an ensuing riot, powerful interested parties, escalation of violence/blood feuds or vigilante justice?

Lay off the insults. Just because the guy isn't posting in the thread doesn't mean that the TOS aren't in effect.

You're assuming that terrorists are rational to begin with. That's an awfully big assumption, IMO.

Right, that's what I was going to say. Theories based on rational utility require humans to be rational utility maximizers. And regardless, you're talking about hostage situations. I was talking more about human shields. Bad guys hide in a maternity ward, and we either have to wait for them to leave and kill them then, or blow it up and kill all the babies. And blowing it up wouldn't make them stop, because they don't give a shit about babies. We would be blamed for killing the babies, not them, and their recruitment/funding would swell. And we'd be deserting our values while simultaneously giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

If he would fudge his karma, I'd probably go berzerk.

Does your public outcry, rioting, powerful interested parties, escalation in violence factor in even more powerful corporate/greater government crackdown on protests and other forms of social disturbances?

When brute force doesn't work, you aren't using enough.


Actually I read your initial scenario as killing the terrorist along with the innocent babies or let the terrorist go without being able to stop him from doing what he wanted to do.

In your new scenario, I would say that it'd depend on your civil society and culture. Not all societies value life as highly as the Western world. If you do not have those values in the first place, what is there to desert? Or rather if your society chooses to place a higher value in another cause and this can be seen as acceptable losses, what then? The Tamil Tigers are holding a lot of civillians as hostages, you think the Sri Lankan government/military cared until the Indian government gave them a quid pro quo to appear to back off. You think the Han Chinese government/society actually cares how many ethnic Tibetans they have to kill to ensure that Tibetan "seperatists" do not succeed?

What about willing human shields? How about them? Mothers and sisters actually surround the Hamas HQ and rocket launchers to prevent Israeli counter attacks on Hamas after Hamas fires their rockets on civillian targets. I have often wondered what would Westerners do if the Gaza was within rocket/mortar range of New York/Paris/London and people were killed by rockets instead of by suicide bombers and their own civillians protected the terrorists with their bodies.

And what would be the alternative? Assume that they are irrational? You have a group of hostages held by a group of irrational people. Better people than I have beat their heads silly against the wall trying to solve this problem. Assuming the terrorists are rational is a big assumption, but it is the only assumption where you can actually do something about it.

@toturi: Now you're just playing devil's advocate. What about willing human shields? I'll tell you what about willing human shields: it's off topic, and it's entirely irrelevant to our discussion. My argument is this, and only this: killing an innocent when there is absolutely no need to do so isn't converted into a good act because a bad guy also died. You can't dispute that and still be a human being. Don't change my hypothetical, don't argue about insane corner cases for no reason, you're wasting everyone's time. My one point was that, if someone actually thinks that killing innocents for no reason is good if a bad guy also dies, then that person is not worth playing with. And that's the only thing I was trying to contribute to this thread. I think the OP should ditch the player we're talking about if his morals are indeed as twisted as they sound.

May I suggest that arguing personal scopes of morality doesn't really have much to do with the topic at hand? I don't think anything good will come of this. The "answers" to any of these questions, even when explored in a game, are solely the purview of the individual, and nothing will come of trying to argue otherwise. At least, not on an internet forum.

Of course.

This discussion is degenerating into irrelevance. The ethical or mathematical questions regarding killing a terrorist by any means necessary has no bearing in relation to the OPs original question. It was also well covered in a very bad John Travolta movie.

Can we move on please?

- J.

Ok guys, just wanted to let you know what happened the last game session. Perhaps you are interested.

It was an interesting evening. First I spoke to him and explained my point of view (again). He agreed that he tends to be a very cold-blooded player and he atmitted that this is no appropriate behavior for a "good" character. He promised to work on it.

Then we started to play. I wrote a run, where he would meet one of his enemies (the guy who was in love with the girl that was murdered by the player's character). The enemy had taken the character's parents as hostages. Then he linked his biomonior with auto-injectors he had implanted into the parent's bodies. The auto-injectors contained a deadly dose of cyanide. The enemy then told the character that he has to choose one of his parents an kill either his mother or his father. Otherwise the enemy would kill both of them.

It was very interesting to see that the player had absolutely no idea what to do. If he'd killed his enemy, his parents would have been killed because of the biomonitor/auto-injector link. But he also didn't want to choose one of his parents. Dilemma. The player thought about killing everyone, including his character with an overpowered fireball, but he didn't. Instead he stunned his enemy (by taking a very high risk for his own life) and then he managed to transfer the biomonitor to his own body.

What really impressed me was, that he didnt kill his enemy in the end. He said that this wouldn't be any better than what his enemy did to his parents. I was REALLY impressed by the player. I think he's on the right way now.

I didn't expect that it would be such an easy ride.

Cool, now send him on a run where he's being paid to kill everyone. Including the puppies.

Well, it sounds like he's not as bad as he seemed. It sounds like you could have fun using more moral dilemmas, and ones that aren't quite as stark in terms of railroading -- it sounds like in yours, it was inevitable for the enemy to set up his whole choice trap thingy, and the player's only issue what how to resolve that. Though I think railroading was fine based on the problems you'd been having with his roleplaying, you needed to set up a scenario where he'd actually have to think about doing the right thing instead of just killing and rationalizing it later.

But yeah, you might do well with some of my earlier suggestions, like runs where the J doesn't fill in all the details, and it turns out that the player is being used to do something very bad, and he realizes it just before or just after doing it -- does he still want the money? Will he save the people he was sent to harm? Will he take revenge on the J? Giving him the opportunity to do good deeds would let him restore his image, he can be a guy with a haunted past of bad, violent decisions who becomes a hero after he sees the error of his ways...

How did he get in that tradition anyway? Why would they accept a psychopath? My guess it, was pre-game.

You have 2 options: Retcon or Roll with it.
Retcon:
He can't handle the RP of Zor, so make up a tradition with the same crunch.
Strip the Zor fluff from him, and have him make up his own fluff for the tradition.

Roll with it:
Have the Zor leave him. Or some other in game option.

Fin.