Yeah, me too. Seems we're horrible people ^^

This made me go "WTF?!", not because of the Snipers reaction but of the damn kid.
Thinking about it, it actually makes sense when the relationship between the actual target and the kid was close.
Then there's the topic of kid soldiers...
What a fucked up world are we living in *sigh*

Kerenshara: I don't mean to crap on your thread- I was intrigued with the idea, and really wanted to contribute- but I really can't bear to read it. I've seen a few of your posts over the past few days, and I gotta say the green is killing me. I suspect I'm not alone. I'm all for using a touch of color in the sig (see below) or for emphasis, but seriously. You might consider changing it for a few reasons:

1.) Its hard to read.
2.) It sets a bad precedent- we don't want everyone posting in Technicolor Clown Text.
3.) Its really not that original. Its been done.
4.) It can be considered poor etiquette to come into an established online community and ignore the standard formatting.
5.) It takes away all emphasis when you have something important to say.
6.) It has a tendency to detract from your otherwise thoughtful and well written posts (which I suspect is exactly opposite of your intended effect).

I mean no disrespect. Just please give this some thought.

Once I've had my players discover a ship where experiences were made on street kids (genetic experiments trying to find a way to give the elves longevity to other races : "what's wrong with that? These kids were to live miserable lives and probably die young anyway! This way they won't die uselessly!"). After being used for the experiments they were sent to organ leggers/ghouls/brothels (the players had seen them, that's what led them to the ship) depending on their state, to pay the experiments.

After getting rid of the scientists working on the project, they wondered what runners could do with 300 children, some of them with deadly cancers. They argued for several hours about whether they ought to give them a quick death or let them have a slow and painful one on the streets, hoping that at least few of them would survive. In that case, killing people might have been the best solution.

300? Do a new Version of the Movie, reap in the Money.
Or make them Work in a Sweat-Shop for you, use the income to cure their cancer.
Congratulations, you have enough Stock to start your very own small Corporation.

Also, killing Children is justified in my eyes, especially, if something like THIS can happen:
http://archive.lfgcomic.com/lfg0252.gif

Depends on the character. Does every character have to be worried about sin? Because that is what killing is.

Most Shadowrunners and a few D&D characters I have played have all lived in the now. Surviving the next paycheck is more important than the confessional of retirement. The question is not about how immoral, but how much money are they going to offer to go beyond what Mr Johnson considers on the menu.

The other things which I have found when I play angst ridden characters, no-one has fun. I play to escape not to play myself as psychodrama.

Maybe it also reflects on me as a player

I do have to say that I find it rather curious that all of the other PCs in my group just love my axe-murdering ork with strong psycho/sociopathic tendencies and the former Aztechnology death squad leader with Intimidate(Torture) - 4(+2) and Demolitions(IEDs) - 4(+2). These are distinctly not nice people but the other PCs don't seem to have an issue with working with such obvious monsters in their midst.

Kind of weird now that I think about it...

PS: Except for the girl in our group, now that I think about it. Her characters tend to be the only ones who go "WTF?!?" whenever these two guys get a bit "jiggy".

Gross-m0wned!

To answer the OP, if you shadowrunner plays FPS video games, he or she was a "super predator" ever since the 80s, and is immune to remorse.

I think, considering the SR profession theres probably a high percentage of sociopaths than the normal population. Also a higher number off paranoid people as well. Both of which have fewer qualms about killing.

Add in VR combat training or games, and many are desensitized to the violence in the world.

Me..I'd say it depends on the PC's back ground. that is how I deal with it.

I don't see runners as sociopaths, psychopaths or any other type of -paths. Sure, there are some remorseless killers; assassins and there ilk, but not all shadowrunners are murderers. Flashbangs, gel shots, narcojet and a ton of other gear can keep shadowrunners non-lethal.

But back to the original post. Yes, I've thought what it would be like to murder someone. I like to write short stories, after all. I imagine that I would be fine with it, depending on the circumstances. I believe that, if I felt that this person needed to die, I would sleep well. I may even feel proud of myself. If I'm killing for any other reason then I would probably go crazy. Crazy would probably manifest in suicide or a block on personal success. You know, self sabotage.

Of course this is all speculation. I've never killed anyone. I have points of reference: I've hurt people badly for minor trespasses and I felt bad; I still do. But then again, I've brought terrible vengence on others who I felt deserved it and I feel quite proud of those instances. I guess after I kill someone I'll let you know how I feel.

Ooh. Murderous hobos. I like that.

Generally I tend to agree with this post and it basically reflects most of my own characters. But that's because I tend towards the shooters and other people who embody the concept that shadowrunners are people who shoot others in the face for money. Been there, done that. As far as backgrounds/motivations go, they're fucked up. That's it. It's no mystery or secret that needs to be explored. They're fucked in the head. That's why they are now professional criminals who tend to take jobs where wetwork is expected or required. Do I care? Yeah, sort of. Is it because they're psychotic, a psychopath/sociopath, or are they just fucking evil (by my personal metric)? As it happens most of them have backgrounds that would be described as antisocial with pyschopathic tendencies. Some of them are just racist. To some of these hypotheticals, it's a simple matter of them being indifferent to metahuman life because trogs aren't human (or whatever, but almost universally trolls are pretty low on the Sanctity of Life scale because I don't think they're human). But the tendency is that to a one they all sleep at night soundly no matter what awful things they've done; because life doesn't matter to most based on their experiences, or because some just hate humanity, or because they have abstracted their reality very well.

I don't care how it affects them. I mean, I don't know about you all but I came into this game aware that shadowrunners are sick, evil fucks. And as it happens they tend to get killed by other sick fucks because that's just the way shit rolls in their world. I think it's best summed by how someone recently described the Parker novels. It's about criminals, and aside from them you have victims and innocent bystanders. But that's the way things go in crime fiction, and in espionage (good espionage, anyway). They have their own world and they have their rules and norms and in both genres murder tends to be a significant part of that culture and how everyone relates to each other. That's justice to them. And the best part is the futility most of the characters don't ever seem to get that nothing they do is going to change the world. But it doesn't matter, especially to the ones who get it, because fuck the world.



Then that just makes the PCs stupid. Which probably explains the car bomb. That's amateur hour shit.


That's ridiculous. I play the game for entertainment. If I wanted preaching I'd go to church.



Yes. But they'd worry that the people entering the target might disarm the bombs or something, so who knows how that'd play out. They might have just had to follow the squatters returning home from work or whatever and kill them just to make sure the building went down when it was supposed to go. Of course, assuming they did some decent legwork first ^^^^ the ideal situation would be to have hidden the explosives well enough not to worry about such a messy contingency.



Everyone dies. Who cares? Something like that. Like I said, runners (the shooters, especially) are horrible, probably mentally defected people. They shouldn't care.

It's not just the runners that feel that way either. The world of Shadowrun is not our world, and not just because of the timeline and the magic. People think and act differently from how thye would in our world - as can be seen in so many of the WTF situations that arise from applying real-world thinking to the events of the SR timeline. The SR world is a cartoonish caricature of ours, with the exaggerations being somewhere between comic book action movies and Tarantino-style violence - and angst over shooting people is just not a part of it.

You know, I read this last night and had to go away and think about it. This morning, I have an idea what I want to say, but I know I will mangle at least part of what I intended. It will render down to this:

Video games that focus on violence DO in fact de-sensitize those who play them extensively to the concept of violence. If that violence leads to the loss of life, that will still probably allow them to cross the line. But your comment mentions "remorse" and remorse is always a feeling after the fact. I would respectfully disagree with the very last part, because in the morning, they will realize it wasn't REALLY like the game, because the other person DIDN'T respawn so he could taunt him for being a "NOOB" and how badly they had been "PWNED". The blood and other things were real, and cooling on the pavement, and I believe that it would catch up with them after the fact, in the morning as the sun rises to begin the day. Our soldiers overseas have described euphoria and triumph after a firefight, and most of them grew up playing these games, as well as ones the Army wrote to help further "de-sensitise" them and prime them to shoot-to-kill. But afterwards, days or weeks later, they have expressed doubts, second-thoughts and a concern for their souls because killing WAS easy to actually do and they exulted in the act.
Anyhow, there's my first pass at it, and I am sure I will have to refine it further.

Right. But even if you have remorses (does a plural exist? Looks odd), it won´t change your life. Little people run the shadows because they like the fun, they do it because they have no other choice. So they couldn´t even stop it if the HAD remorse. Basically the life of a runner is always "me or them", and you know which side wins. Accepting this kind of job, should erase this little hero-gene that "normal" people have. But if your runners blow up houses without looking and caring if somebody is in, they are either stupid or really sociopathic. If the second reason kicks in, your a poor troubled gamemaster. Come in our team^^

Are you saying then that a "shooter" lacks the capacity for empathy? Do you consider it that black and white a case where the ability to distance themselves from a target deprives them of the ability to form close friendships (not acquaintinces) or even fall in love?

If that is the way you choose to see the 6^th world, it is your viewpoint and you are entitled to it. I think it fails to take into account the amazing diversity of motivations and emotion in human nature. I consider myself a cynic when it comes to the question of humanity's capacity for selfishness and self centeredness, but even I can't make myself see the 6^th world through glasses quite so darkly tinted. Others here seem to share your opinions, and I will not dispute your right to them. But I have seen other posts here which lead me to believe that there are at least a few who share my view that shadowrunners are still people, trying to find some kernel of happiness and whatever safety they can in a dystopian world. There IS a higher percentage of dysfunctional, damaged and broken people amongst those running the shadows, but I don't believe that they encompas the whole or even a representative selection of that community. Many runners have friends, family, hobbies and even faith.

In any case, an interesting STORY has characters who must deal with the challenges set before them by fate (or the GM, take your pick), and if their lives can be described as one running gun battle, that becomes a single long and unresolved (until their death) challenge with little variety besides the targets. Why spend the time and effort to craft a character, get together with others and bother doing the math involved with rolling dice if the only result is to be a rough analogue of a plot-driven first-person-shooter game? The computer offers a far quicker and more effortless means to reach the same goal. If you answer that you play because of the people at the table with you at the table, for the experience of socializing with a group, then you prove that there is more to a story than simple facts and figures: there is motivation and emotion.

Successful shadowrun teams grow over time to work together, but often they will spend time together between missions because they draw comfort and solace from being with each other. Veteran soldiers congregate together, even if never a word is spoken, because they share a bond. That bond is part of their humanity. Without that humanity, we're nothing more than a bunch of clever chimpanzees who have managed to cobble together some pretty neat tools capable of killing each other very effectively.

To be perfectly honest, I think a lot of people who make a living on the street doing criminal activity, especially those who are more intelligent and who could have made it in "respectable" society if it weren't for some specific issues blocking them from doing it, would be very likely to just rationalize that away as "they were all trashy people anyway".

And more than likely the squatters were disingenous manipulative drunks, the pregnant women had needle marks in between their toes because their veins in their arms had collapsed, and the children were all on their way to being lil' sociopaths.

In other words, I could see a clean-cut air force man getting traumatized over that. But not a street mercenary who fights to stay alive all the time for tiny compensation.

In other words, "If they don't have a SIN, you're not committing one by blowing them up!"

Pretty much, but whereas that statement sounds boisterous and upbeat, "they're all trashy people anyway" sounds more hard-boiled and depressive.

But I like sounding boisterous and upbeat while I'm murdering people. It really hits home the casual, "inappropriate fist pound" sort of sociopaths I sometimes play.

I suppose it's a lot better than the diametric opposite, which would be the skinny vampire/elf/anime gay man who stands on a rocky craig with moonlight and wind and has little sparkling teardrops fly off into the darkness.

It's funny because it's true. I blame a lot of this conversation on the whole "angst = depth" movement that started amongst RPGers due (in no small part) to Vampire and the various other White Wolf games.

I think teams stick together because they are like a fist. Easy to break individual fingers, but as a team they all survive or all die. Most of the characters I know and have played do not spend time together, they do not get invited to team member birthday parties. They do not go out on bingers. Looking at team-members means being on a job, and that means being on edge.

I thought the reason why veterans congregate at the NAAFI for the camp bikes and the cheap lager?

How about if we are nothing more than a bunch of clever chimpanzees who have managed to cobble together some pretty neat tools capable of killing each other very effectively.

*snaps fingers*
Aha!

Now I know why the label "angst" has been attributed to discussions of the morality, ethics and basic feelings surrounding death. And if they really are linked with White Wolf in the gamer forebrain, then I suddenly understand a couple conversations with friends that had previously left me baffled.

No, angst does not equal depth. To quote James Kirk "How we deal with death is at least as important as we deal with life, don't you think?" But that only encompases one part of the equation. I am interested in more than just what characters do "in the spotlight". I want to know what they do off-camera. I want to know where they stay, and why. Who they associate with, and why. If a team member dies during a run, is the reaction "oh well, bigger split for me", or your "angst" over the death of a friend, or even anger over a "mistake" the character takes either professionally or personally to heart? What kind of alcohol do they drink? Is there a reason?

Perhaps that's my problem: I insist on trying to see characters as people, with likes and dislikes, strengths and weakness beyond just the RAW numbers (pun intended). I want to know what their hopes, aspirations, dreams, fears and foibles are. I can see how that meets the dictionary definition of "angst": having heavy and sometimes depressing themes, and having the characters suffering emotionally (and sometimes physically) in some way; Looked at that way, I guess it could be argued I am equating angst with depth.

But I want more than how they deal with death: I want how they deal with life. If we avoid the "heavy and sometimes depressing themes" entirely, we deny some of the humanity of our creations. Many times, the outcomes of their "angst" is a new and vibrant outlook, or a dramatic plot twist that will take things in a new direction. Chatacters who are dealing with death don't have to be morose and weepy, I just want some token reaction to know I'm not across from a psycho or a cardboard cutout.

I seem to remember some of the old 1st ed. material and novels had stories of teams of 'runners, as opposed to single characters. And in a couple stories I only dimly remember, there was a common space for the team where they DID in fact spend time together.

In the real world, special forces troops often spend a large amount of time together off-duty as a way to cement the bond that makes their team more than the sum of its parts. How many times have we seen reference to a "scratch" team being highly inefficient because there is an inherent lack of trust, of each other's capabilities, strengths and weaknesses.

Sure, the idea of a long-term team is probably less common than the lone wolf, but in an ongoing home campaign, it would be reasonable to assume that people working together as the same team so often might in fact forge bonds beyond cold, hard nuyen.

That's all well and good, but what people are tending to deal with (in this thread of yours, at least), is the negative feelings that come with taking a life and the emotional suffering that goes with it. Anyone that doesn't express those morose PTSD symptoms after wasting a security guard is -- it's heavily implied -- just a poor roleplayer who's only concerned with the RAW numbers.

Go watch a crime caper flick. Go watch Ronin or Heat. Those films are just as viable, those characters just as deep, as those in any angst-filled teenybopper White Wolf game, where folks moan and cry about the beast within and the horrors of violence and bloodshed and blah blah blibbity blah. The difference is that those characters show their depth in ways besides moaning about how they had to kill someone -- killing someone is just part of the job they've chosen, same as dodging cops and living score to score. Working in a cubicle, you don't bemoan the loss of a staple when you bend it out of shape and twist it into a warped mockery of a staple's natural form so you can stick some papers together. You don't cry over the empty toner bottle you throw away when it's done. It's part of the job.

That's the mindset most of my characters have. When you sign up to be a Shadowrunner, you know what the job entails, you know what you're likely to do just as much as you know the risks and rewards. In the same way you know security might shoot at you, you've got to go into "the show" prepared to shoot back. Metahuman life is cheap in the Sixth World, so why make it this big deal OOC/IC judging them with our contemporary, cushy, middle-class first-world country morality?

I see them as people too. But I played fucked-up people. But I do normal people and non-shooters, and you know what? I still don't focus on killing. That's because there seems to be a fundamental difference between our personal POVs. The OP seems to assume that all killing fucks up people in some way or another. I don't, and that's based on knowing people who've killed/murdered in war and peace, just and criminally. Some regret it. Some absolutely do not. But all of them sleep just fine. They live with their actions, and to assume that somehow a criminal character in an RPG can't is ridiculous.

I think of the question of "how do they relate to the team?" indifferently, like the PCs would. I think of the really good crime fiction, and a movie like Heat, and how the characters are based on real people. Some people just don't care; don't care much; or just hate (certain) people so much that it doesn't register. But then I've had that discussion before regarding racism in RPGs, and it always goes off the rails because the other side of the argument is filled with people who can't get racism, and I've never known how to put words to how alien that seems to me (especially in light of its predominance in humanity, especially historically). But the same thing applies. The true sociopaths may or may not be intrinsically committed to the relationship of The Team, but others do it just fine. Just like regular people. Some of them are killers as a job. Most of our runs are wetwork-centric. You get good at something, and for some people it defines who they are.

The funny thing is that recently I've begun to justify my storytelling ex post facto, and come up with excuses for why almost every PC and NPC I've played dies--and dies a violent death--as because that's what happens. I played an evil, evil PC and as I thought about it later I came up with some justification that in the end she had to go; that's how's the story is supposed to end. But that's bullshit. It's because that's the life. You live it long enough and stay in the game long enough and your life expectancy increasingly approaches zero. You are going to get killed eventually. That's why everyone want to retire to Fiji but no one ever does. And the characters all knew it, and because that's the way things happen and the dice roll, most of them have been lucky enough to find out for sure.

*looks back at the OP*

Hmmmm, I didn't mean to give that impression. I MEANT to simply suggest that taking a life CHANGES a person, for better or worse. Some people, even those with no mental issues, sleep fine after. Others DO experience recurring nightmares, or bouts of depression and/or guilt. And I was asking if/how people dealt with it in their games and for their characters - if it was something they considered and dealt with.

Looked at another way, ok, let's say your (where "your" is any person) character has been killing for years, feels no remorse and sleeps like a baby. They will cheerfully smash an infant's skull against the pavement to get it to stop crying. But have you ever gone back to their first kill? There's always a first. What hapened? Who was it? What were the emotions associated with the act?

First kill.
Ususally i use that to get them into the Shadows.

I always enjoy your insight Critias. This always comes to mind anytime we have discussions like this. It's hard for most of us folks to understand what it takes to actually survive. Sure, some of us have lived on the streets before but theres usually a safety net of some sort (soup kitchens, shelters, panhandling, etc). I really have to work to understand a life with no safety nets. I've seen people on the news live like this but I never have. I think I could but I'd be a different person. And honestly, a somewhat happier person at that.

Also, why do runners need to be unhappy? I imagine some people thrive on this stuff. Who hasn't wanted to be involved in a heist?

Never said they had to be unhappy. Of course, I DID start another thread about what they do to make themselves happy...

Agreed, but it's still a lot of fun to play Wuthering Heights RPG from time to time.

I've read through most of the thread and wanted to make a few observations. (I'm too tired to go back through and pull quotes for everything)

Making the kill is easy, we are fairly fragile beings. Living with the choice, depends a lot on who we are, how we did it, etc. Our society has plenty of people who can be clinically labeled as sociopaths, deranged, except for the key problem that all psychological testing begins with determining whether or not the condition has an adverse effect on the individual's lifestyle. A person can form close bonds with friends, love his family, and be perfectly able to walk past another human being dying in the street without a second glance. The complete lack of compasison for the dying person could demonstrate a low-grade sociopathic nature for the person, but since it doesn't impact his life, he's not a sociopath.

Likewise, a sniper can take the life of an enemy combatant and not feel any remorse for the kill. He did his job and feels proud for it, but the same person may feel devastating grief if he accidentally runs a person over with his car. The sniper was trained and created a schism in his mind about when and where killing is ok and when it's not. In this case, the shooter lacks any form of empathy to the enemy, but deep empathy toward the innocent victim. The question of how personally you acted in the death also changes the matter for a lot of people. Someone who is willing to shoot another person, or blow up a car, may be squeamish about shoving a knife into their target's gut or slitting the throat of a sleeping person. Distance and the ability of the mind to rationalize the other person's death are key factors.

Within the game, as many people have said, the concept of the character and the internal situation will determine how far someone is willing to go and what acts are permissible and what are not. Is your character the type of person who shoots to wound someone and then waits for the victim's buddies to show up so that you can turn one kill into seven, or do you do the job cleanly with minimal casualties?

In the case of the car bomb blowing up the pregnant woman, some people wouldn't bat an eye. (The child wasn't born yet, so it didn't exist as a person, and the woman was a target. Obviously, if someone was willing to pay for her assassination, she must have done something deserving of it.) Others may run forward, seeing her and try to stop before she gets in the car. Still others, may not care about the target but need to stop the car from exploding because a 7 year old is riding his bike down the street and would be caught by the shrapnel as the car exploded.

We can argue the fine points and psychological trauma or scarring for days and never come to a firm decision.

As Finn:
For me, I can pull the trigger and not have a regret on an enemy combatant. The shot will be as clean and quick as I can make it, and I will sleep just fine that night. If the target was instead of a combatant, an innocent victim, it would depend on that persons proximity to me and mine for how I feel. Really, at the end of the day, if me and mine are happy and safe, that's all I care about. Whether that makes me a bad person is up to history to decide.

Wow Bishop, you guys from California are always so violent.

Good post, I totally agree with you. I hit someone whith my car once and I felt terrible, even though no damage was done. I beat someone once and humiliated them while doing it and felt quite content with myself. I'm sure that if someone meant to severely damage me or my friends maliciously I'd be fine with destroying them (and probably a whole lot more).

That's pretty sweet. I always thought Wuthering Heights the novel was pretty much a big joke anyway.