I think its good you're coming up with an alternative character based on your past experience, however, let me put this another way -

If you make up another character with a different background - one with perhaps a more 'loose' moral compass or at least one better able to get along with those PCs (more to the point) will you still be having fun with the game?

If the answer is no, then it isn't worth the stress. Don't try and make a square peg fit into a round hole. It just leads to frustration.

If, however, you honestly believe you can, then go for it.

- J.

Nobody ever does something without reason or need. Such action is called an "acte gratuit" (gratuitous acte). It can't happen since doing something for the sake of doing something is still doing something for a reason (which is doing it).
If André Gide wasn't able to have a character do a gratuitous act, I don't think any of the Shadowrun authors were able to pull it off. So if what you're looking for is an act of violence commited without reason or need, you're right but I doubt the actions that you complained about were such actions.

Damn, now I want to play some Dungeon and Discourse.

The teens are way scarier.

ah, i see

Indeed ...



I beg your pardon, but that "casual day at the office" nonsense wasn't my premise in the first place
I don't have to change any goalpost here at all, since the callousity as well as the casuality of such actions as part of the standard runner behaviour was LurkerOutThere's question to which Striper was named. I'm more than willing to accept that your example could be seen as an indication of such behaviour as standard. However, having a non-human protagonist doing something the like once and that - as you might put it - even being justifiable in terms of reasons behind it instead of more or less rampage torturing as described by the thread opener in his experience is something that I would deem "two different things".



And that fact isn't doubted by me ... nor am I saying that her doings there would fall in the realms of ...



.. "kosher", but I see it as still being very different to the described torturing. So as in prevoius encounters with you it's me who has to ask himself why I should bother having a discussion with you when you start making assertions on what I might or might not find "kosher" and then make your usual exit statement where you blame me for the conclusions drawn upon your false assertions. ~sigh~

It sounds like, and you admitted, that you blurred the OOC and IC lines and let one cross into the other.

There's nothing wrong with your character opposing such tactics, but you've made it sound like you took it to OOC which is bad form. However, I would grant concession based on the reasoning for taking it OOC being that the concern was over the descriptiveness of the act rather than the act itself. I notice that sometimes people have problems separating themselves from their PCs and get really upset over IC occurrences.

The question becomes one of given the backgrounds of the PCs, would the action be something they would commit? I imagine that most Shadowrunners have an enemy or two they would bit itching to get at which would drive them out of their normal morals of acceptable behavior.

For example, my character (former military spec ops) is completely opposed to harming most unarmed civilians. I say most because there will be some unarmed civilians that are greatly dangerous. However due to his background and the causes for him leaving military service (it was forced, not willful), he has very low regard for governments, still has a high regard for military, has a low regard for corps in general, and has a severe dislike towards Saeder-Krupp. By severe dislike, I mean if he could drop ordinance on their headquarters, he would do so. 99% of the time he will be a rather moral individual, except when presented with a situation where he could hurt SK without it being easily pinned on him. If this means trading a few civilian lives to severely damage a SK production facility, he would probably do it.

Personally, I don't have much of an issue with amoral campaigns, but I want the characters to be consistent with their stated personalities and background, and I generally don't care for gratuitous details.

GM: Ok, you say that you torture him for the information but not to the point of death.
Player: Yeah, we start by cutting off his fing..
GM: I don't need to know the specifics. Roll your interrogation skill, with +2 dice for injuries and +2 dice for the advantageous position... Hmmm, two hits? He tells you x and y.

Sometimes [especially if the players are sloppy] immoral actions have consequences. I try to make those consequences ones that would likely happen in the real world, and not the ones I'd 'like' to happen. Capture a street bum while no one is looking and torture him to death? Probably no one will know, and you'll get away scot-free. But if you're observed capturing bums [by another bum hiding in the trash to keep warm, maybe?], eventually word might get around about you in the street community. Try the same stuff with the Ares security guard and the consequences might be more long lasting. Every victim out there has a father or a daughter or a brother who might come looking for revenge, and if motive and opportunity happen to meet up it could go badly for the player.

Details aren't always gratuitous. If the character isn't a hardened torturer, or has a little bit of empathy left, he might not feel great about cutting people to get them to talk. In such cases, details are exactly what you need to stress the fact.

For example, in the campaign I GM, the runners had to destroy somebody's business in a spectacular way and then kill the guy. Most of the PC agreed to do the former but refused to do the latter. One of them accepted to take care of the killing part. He might have been more ruthless or have less moral sense than the others (or different morals), but he was still metahuman. He took the body of the guy (he had been knocked out), brought him near the river and put his head in the river to drown him (he didn't feel like killing him directly). The problem was that he needed to get rid of the body, and now that it was soaked he couldn't burn it easily. He had to go to the nearest convenience store, buy some inflammable material (lighter fuel or spray bottle), have some small talk with the guy behind the counter, take it back and spray it on the body before burning it and smelling the stench of burning flesh.

Describing the actions with a lot of details was useful to make the player uneasy, and convey how the character was feeling in a more subtle way than just saying "you don't feel good about what you're doing.".

I think that's a good way to go about it, and about the level I experienced in the session I posted about. Glossing over too many details reduces the immediate impact of the actions of the team. Heck, that level of detail is what I'd consider a good descriptive combat-- hit locations and physical damage depictions to bring home the meaning of the numbers just rolled. Hm. Might be a good idea to have a shady construction worker with a backhoe as a contact, and buy a few tons of quicklime for him to hold for a character.

Heh, in retrospect, I find it ironic that the group's mage and IIRC low-augment members were acting in a more gratuitously psychotic manner than the street sam and the 1.6 essence hacker/rigger/tough. There's some other ironies about the OOC makeup of the group, but going into them will exceed the board rules on posting content regarding politics and possibly religion.

I'm definitely going to be better-prepared for future sessions, and the things I've been thinking about will definitely help me be a better player, both IC and OOC.

Just my two centinuyen:

In D&D "Evil" is comedic. You play a mage who decides to become a litch, succeed, and suddenly are the villain of the campaign and almost succeed in killing the rest of the party. Twice.

That's about as much as I remember from when one of our group did actually do that. I wish I could remember more than just an excessive use of Contingency, but then, that player always knew how to plan in advance. Another player, who was actually neutral, different game:

GM: You enter a room, there are celestials everywhere. First time you've seen non-evil creatures, other than the one lantern archon.
Ruke: "We are here to slay good! Er, I mean evil!"
GM: And what are you wearing?
Ruke: The black robe of the archmagi and carrying the necronomicon...

In ShadowRun "evil" is a basic fact. You play a guy who shoots people in the face for money.

You're escaping a warehouse with stolen cargo and there's a Lone Star chopper putting dinner plate sized dents in the van. "Get underground!" shouts someone, and the driver takes the nearest underground entrance...into a mall...taking corners at excessive speeds you run over a few people, smash through a support column, a glass window display, a few customers, careen down the isle, through another glass structure, sideswipe a car in the other parkinglot and burn rubber taking a corner back onto the city streets. Now there's a cyberzombie who's new at the whole "cyberzombie" thing in the backsea--one of the chopper's shot blew open your unknown cargo--what do you do?

One of my favorite movies was Grosse Point Blank:

Reading this thread I get the sense that some people on the board have a different concept of evil than I do. I make a big distinction between evil and amoral. Generally in my games SR has an amoral background but not an evil one.

An amoral character kills people because he was paid to, or because they're in the way, while an evil character kills people because he enjoys it. An amoral person won't torture someone unless he thinks that there will be some advantage to be gained from it, while an evil character thinks it's hilarious to see that baby wriggling and trying to get off the end of his bayonet. I've run lots of amoral campaigns, but I've never run an 'evil' SR game, and I don't think I'd like it much.

Interesting stance, and its all down to definition.
For me amoral simply means dillute evil.

Every selfish, hurtful, vindictive and callous action or lack of action is evil. Ranging from petty, every day swearing at someone because you had a bad day, all the way to premediated genocide.

Its a grey scale, were many individuals lie to themselves and justify their actions. Some times with valid excuses, to get by in the moral morlasse of the sixth world.
What is frighting are the individuals on the far side of that scale, whatever their view point.

I am inspired by Wilde's quip that extreme good is as interesting/fasinating as extreme evil. We see petty good and evil regularly but extreme evil is more prevelant, and seen more often, than extreme good.

You have to be careful with the difference between amoral and immoral.
Someone who's amoral is unaware of the notions of right and wrong. He might know they exist, but he can't tell what is wrong and what is right. I think a good definition is given by Corto Maltese when talking about Rasputin (a very good example of an amoral character): "Yes he is a bad guy. But he doesn't know it."
Someone who's immoral is someone who's acting against his (or his culture's) moral principle. Someone who is/has been immoral might feel bad about it or regret it later.

I think its up to the group to set the bar. If someone steps over the line, it needs to be talked about. If no compromise can be reached, some body's got to go. I'm sure I'm rehashing at this point.

I don't want to put the kaibosh on my players mayhem and destruction too much. I like a pink Mohawk game, as its so lovingly called here on the boards. But if I have a player pulling fingernails off a cop within earshot of anything, its gonna cause trouble.

can I also say, as I have in other threads, that If another player wants to kill my character, he/she better talk to me first, or its gonna get ugly.

I don't think either of those is a certainty. I've seen seriously played D&D games that make evil lack all sense of comedy and I've seen SR games that are almost slapstick splashed with murder and torture. I'd say it's all in how it's run and played, and despite the bias of many on this board, SR is no more of a mature game in representing evil than D&D.

Agreed. It can be the other way, but compare Johnny Mnemonic to Order of the Stick. ShadowRun can be slapstick, sure, but my impression of it isn't slapstick. Neither is my impression of D&D evil either, to be fair, but it's hard to have a more serious evil in D&D when torture and murder are somewhat blunted by the existence of clerical magic.

Look at some of the earlier SR artwork - Laubenstein in particular - as well as the cover of SR3.

I have made every attempt to wipe a fair bit of the SR3 artwork from my memory.

In the opposite direction, we have some D&D settings that try to stay dead serious - Dark Sun, the original Ravenloft adventure, and some of the war years of Greyhawk. The most common recent settings - Forgotten Realms and Eberron - are a mixed bag with some very serious elements mixed in with some cartoonish bits. SR isn't really any different.

See, to my mind, good and evil are largely abstract concepts that reek of the supernatural or spiritual. Whereas people are just people, you know? Some people do good things, some people do bad things. Breaking the law isn't always bad and is certainly not always evil. Breaking the law doesn't make you a bad person -- your intention for doing so might, though.

In my view, shadowrunners are made to do bad things for money either because they have no other option (they are SINless with a particular skillset), they have some psychological impairment (they like blowing shit up a bit too much) or as a means to an end (they want to get rich or get revenge or whatever). There's no requirement in any of those things that they be evil or even bad people.

That said, I have recently finished a campaign in which one PC was most definitely evil. He started out with good intentions but ended up hanging out with a bad crowd, learning the Sacrificing metamagic and was then unquestionably evil. He used mind control freely, and lost all regard for collateral damage, but crucially he did this because he enjoyed it (IC) and because he saw no reason not to. Whereas other PCs occasionally engaged in collateral damage, they did so either because they'd not thought through the consequences of their actions (i.e. forgetting that using frag grenades in a busy street will _kill_, rather than injure, pedestrians) or because on balance the benefits outweighed the risks.

One is professional, one is evil. You see the difference?

I find it very interesting that some people take a very moral OOC stance on their characters' actions. I recall in an Abyssal Exalted game I once played (in case you don't know, in the Abyssals variant of Exalted you play supernaturally evil beings devoted to destroying the world) I managed to completely upset another player by engaging in some callous and casual violence. While I can imagine that very squeamish or sensitive people might get very uncomfortable around graphic descriptions of violence, rape or torture (especially if they have direct first-hand experience of these things) and might not want them in their game, I sometimes get the sense from posters on this board that they make a negative judgement about the people saying this stuff.

I'm also very curious about the poster who made the rather belligerent comment that if someone wants to kill their PC, they'd better talk first because otherwise it'll get ugly. Why would it get ugly? Do you have a problem separating IC and OOC? Because I sometimes wonder if that's what's at the root of this extreme sensitivity to graphic violence at the tabletop. So what if someone wants to kill your character? Why is that going to cause friction between you?

I suspect that it would be due to the investment a player might have in their character. Some folk put a fair bit of effort into character creation, backstory, etc. and become rather attached to them. This results in a very unhappy player when that character dies or is otherwise removed from the game; see also unfair GMs. It is also a matter of expected game style at a given table. With one group, the default is everything goes. With another group, well, better bring along a few 'spare' characters. There are, of course, play styles in between as well. Some people prefer all of one end of the spectrum, and some people like to try different styles.

I think much friction comes from a failure to set expectations in a game; my GM will be very delighted when my dino-themed cyber-freak is put aside (or six feet under; cliffhanger resumes in three weeks, one day). I'd be unhappy if he arbitrarily died (oh, look, you forgot to do XYZ and W too, Star catches you, locks you up), but when the dice are rolling, bad things happen sometimes. Recently, in A Certain Fantasy Game, my character died in the final battle of an adventure. It was a shock, but I considered the situation, and decided the game was satisfactory; the character had done all he could, kept the rest of the team alive, and he had been in the least risky place I could think of while properly contributing to the fight. Having him knifed without warning in camp by a companion while asleep would have made me furious.

I know I wasn't the one you were asking, but I thought it was a good question to think about and respond to.

People invest time, effort, and care into their characters. It's part of their vehicle for enjoying the game. Some people would argue they are just pretend, so it shouldn't matter. Personally, I'd argue that because they are pretend, and intended for fun, that crapping all over someone else's fun for the sake of your own is immature and stupid, especially in a cooperative game. Now, if everyone has agreed that killing PC's is acceptable (and some games almost depend on it), then that is part of the fun. However, there is a difference between separating IC and OC reactions and knowledge as opposed to being OC pissed off because somebody on a power trip hurt your enjoyment of the game. Some groups really enjoy that style of play, others don't. As always, the only wrong answer is the one that is unfun. I just disagree with the premise that the OC/IC separation somehow precludes people caring about the game and their characters. It also tends to degenerate quickly into repeated character killings.

I do agree with you that some RP'ers in general, including some on this board, tend to look down on groups that deal with these "mature" themes. I have always chalked it up to the standard geek superiority complex. Take any group of nerds, present them with another form of escapism, and watch them bash it repeatedly for no other crime than being different. Star Wars vs. Star Trek. Tabletop players vs. MMO players. SR players vs. DnD players. Every version of DnD vs. every other version of DnD. That tendency to look down on the other extends into the realm of RP style. Some people think that by handling mature themes the players are somehow demonstrating their own immaturity or their own moral outlook. I disagree The truth is we all like some game styles and dislike others. It's a little like middle school where all the guys are wacking off 4 times a day, everybody knows it, but they all deny it and accuse every other kid of doing the same thing.

I tend to avoid making too much of the distinction between good and evil in RP. Everybody has their own take and 99% of the time it just hurts the fun to over think it. One man's nazi is another man's professional. One man's saint is another's devil worshiper.

Well said Tote.

I do find myself uncomfortable sometimes when dealing with mature themes in game. I recognize that for many people part of the fun is roleplaying someone completely different than themselves, so playing a racist (or a homophobe, miscogynist, religious zealot, pedophile, sadist, serial killer, whatever...) doesn't say anything about the player themselves. But there's some things I'd prefer not to hear even in an escapist game. And sometimes I get self conscious because I worry that other players in the group will be uncomfortable (e.g. how's the girl of the group feel when another player RPs a molester, or the black guy feel about the player RPing a racist?).

Ultimately, the game's about fun, and if the way you have fun craps all over my fun (or vice versa), then we'll either have to compromise or one of us would need to find a different group.

Just to throw in my recent experience with the game.
After almost ten years away from Shadowrun (2nd ed, mind you) ee decided to play the 4ed.
In one of our runs. We took a guard of a AA corp we were going to assault to gather more intel. The group hid at my place. Then, one of the players said he was going to where I kept the prisoner and pluck one of his eyes out with a spoon. I looked at him very seriously and asked if it was a joke. He said "no, this is cyberpunk, we can do shit like that". IC, we had a discussion, because it was my place and I was the one who was going to take care of the mess. Since then, he always wanted to bring prisoners to his place so he would "take care" of them.
Later in the game, the same player tore apart the leg of a dead guard and said he was going to take it home to eat it.
The GM tried to convince him that only NPC's would this kind of thing. Not runners, because the moment you start acting really crazy and getting a notoriety to the roof, people would not work with you anymore. He was temporarily convinced.

All the while, OOC he was saying that this was not D&D and I was no Paladin (my favorite class) and that the Shadowrun world was evil and blablabla.
I said that he world could be evil, alright, but that in shadowrun no one can live by herself and while runners can be amoral bastards, some of their contacts might not.

Breaking the law is Chaotic. Hence the Law--Chaos spectrum in D&D
Example of Chaotic Good: Robin Hood.



How to be a very bad Death mage in Mage: The Awakening:
Talk about necrophilia all the time.

Yes, that really happened. Our Malaysian player was a Death mage who talked about necrophilia and so the entire rest of the group hid dead bodies from him, buried them, then in the middle of the night dug them up and buried them again somewhere else because they were afraid of what the character/player would have done with them.

Good, bad, we're the guys with the Guns. Nothing else to it right?
Also that necromancer? Perfectly done ^^ My groups only hide Tinkertoys from me . .

Nah, Robin Hood isn't Chaotic Good, he's Chaotic Neutral. A chaotic good person would still respect the property of another individual, even if he didn't agree with how he acquired it, unless he was obviously evil. Robin Hood is the one character for an alignment example that I think D&D has constantly gotten wrong. His motto "Steal from the rich to give to the poor", is just there to rationalize and justify his actions.

As if it were quoted right out of "Army of Darkness"



I think that depends on your definition of Good... Good is not exactly synonomous with Respectful. Plenty of "Good" characters, such as the cliched "Stick up the Ass" Paladin are anything but respectful towards others....
And if a "good" character respects other people's properties, then why shouldn't he respect an evil person's property. An obviously evil person might still be a law-abiding person, so it would be the "Good" person who was in the wrong...legally at least...

I'm not saying that Robin Hood is either good or neutral, however, I think that all depends on your own view of things... Though I will say that Robin Hood, no matter his motives, is a character who tends to act for the "good" of the common folk...

He wasn't acting for the good of the common folk. He was acting for his own good. The thefts weren't about giving to the poor, they were about taking from the legitimate authority, who he happened to have a personal grudge against. Since he had no use for the things he'd stolen, he gave them to the poor in an attempt to buy their favor and ensure he'd have a safe haven to run to. If he hadn't needed a place to hide, and men to support his vendetta, he could just as easily have thrown the stolen loot into the sea, or left the food on the ground for the animals.

As I said, no matter his motives. I realize his motive for giving to the poor were not exactly noble, but the act itself did help out the common folk, whether Robin Hood intended it to or not. He may not have actually wanted to help out the poor, but the end result is pretty damn close...

Maybe "acts for the good of the common folk" was a bad way of phrasing it, maybe I should have said "his actions often help the common folk, despite his riginal goal..."

Hello All

I'd bowed out of this thread for a bit mostly due to talking in circles.

First off on acknowledgment. I challenged someone to come up with an amoral Shadowrun protagonist and the Dumpshock Community came through. I am now debating tracking down a copy of Striper. However my rebutal is two fold:
1) One instance in 20 years of material, does not in my opinion overturn my belief that rape/torture/callous murder is outside the norm in the Shadowrunner community. This is further exacerbated remembering that the character in question is a fem fatale shifter wet fantasy of the author.

2. While I didn't read that book I read one of his other books. Stackpole he's not. Knasser even he's not.

It is my personal belief that shadowrunners while criminals are not somehow magically divorced from society as a whole. Extrapolating from current Western values (and obviously this is not applicable if your running your campaign based somewhere else) There is an understand that killing, brutality etc while not the end goal are somewhat the cost of doing business. Sadism for sadism's sake is not. In fact that's one of the best arguments I can make against torture in the Shadowrun universe. There are actually better and more precise ways of getting the same end response.

On playing outside the norm:
Some people, and their usually in my observation male human beings in their late teens to late 20's want to play characters with zero compunctions about the affects of their actions, or even more severely want to play characters who are actively sadistic or "deviant" this is fine as long as it fits the structure of the game. Although it's generally a moot point as I tend to gloss over these details of their more heinous behavior and stand on the disclaimer I have mentioned previously in the thread. But also I have people around them react accordingly, and I never hesitate to tell a person that their actions, good or ill. Have made them unhirable. So far i've "unhirabled" two characters over the years. They were from two completely different ends of the spectrum, one was too "good" for the shadows, he was too picky about his jobs and botched or refused actions because of his devotion to his moral code, and the other because his leisure activities (kidnaping, rape, torture of various flavors) and general infamy reached the point where no one would hire him.

On player VS player combat
Player vs player combat is fine and good if that is the expectation from the get go. However the way I run shadowrun is as a co-operative game, the runners united against challenges I set against them. That's not to say conflicts between characters don't happen and frankly sometimes I engineer them however complicated plots between the players would mess with the flow of the game and I also ask for the players inclusion on this "conspiracy" to keep things from coming to actual bloodshed. It's about managing expectations, surprise bushwhacking other PC's who aren't expecting it isn't "clever" it's showing up to play paintball when everyone else is there for skeet shooting, with much the same kind of response sometime. That's not to say that such games are wrong, just for my part and my groups part for that kind of slapdash kill or be killed antics we go for Diplomacy or Paranoia.


So in other words, i don't run the game world a place where Runner's pop a guys eye out with a spoon to extract them. Such activities have a higher chance of causing "ripples" J's hate ripples.

I can agree with you on most of these things... Criminals are still people... and aren't always, or even often, sadistic bastards who harm for harm's sake.

On the PVP stuff though....I may not like it, but I tend to accept it as inevitable... One of my current characters really gets on the nerves of everyone else and there has been times when guns have been drawn, ready to fight....usually it gets diffused by a third party, either the members of the team not a part of the specific feud, or by others working for the Johnson.... But of course...it's all in how you play the game....

The problem is that if you're using the novels as an indication of the norm, then you should meet an IE every two games, save the world every game, have at least one major NPC in your contacts...

Lawful Good is the -hardest- alignment to play properly in the context of a paladin, and paladin is the hardest class to play properly from a role playing perspective. Most paladins AREN'T like Miko Miyazaki from Order of the Stick. That level of fanaticism that generates the "Stick up the Ass" (no pun intended) is in most cases players who act rather brazenly anyway. The problem that most people don't realize is that paladins are supposed to uphold good over the law, they don't fall from grace just for breaking the law. They fall from grace for committing an evil act. If a law is unjust, seek to undue that which is unjust. The only paladins that tend to adhere to lawful more than good are those that worship Lawful Neutral deities, which tend to uphold duty and the law more than goodness like the Lawful Good and Neutral Good deities. The issue is that until 4th edition, paladins were defined as righteous warriors rather than champions of their chosen deity. When you through a specific fleshed out deity at a paladin to follow it becomes a lot easier to figure out the code of conduct. It's actually a lot easier to play a paladin in Forgotten Realms than in core D&D.

Oh I get that the whole Stick up Ass cliche is just that, a cliche.... I tend to not play paladins mostly because of that stereotype (and because as a class, they don't really appeal to me) I have met some who have played some rather interesting paladins though... including one who would get drunk regularly and have wild parties with his friends...Can't remember his deity though...but it was fitting, as I remember...

Using Faerun deities, I would guess Sune. Though technically in Forgotten Realms a paladin doesn't have to be Lawful Good. It doesn't fit Sune exactly, but that description doesn't fit most of the LG and LN deities, and the NG deities tend to be heavily weighted with nature deities, which you wouldn't likely see a paladin worshipping....

But I digress.

Players need to keep their OOC and IC actions separate and distinct.

I don't think it was Forgotten Realms.... but he was pretty much just a guy who liked fun but still respected the law...
He never really broke the law, or got TOO drunk...but my point was really that not everyone plays a "Stick-Assed" Pally...

oops, wrong setting

Good and Evil: One of the reasons there is so much conflict and death in this world is that people still can't agree on definitions for these terms. Culture and perspective often have more to do with right and wrong than any objective code. More importantly, human language is fuzzy enough that despite thousands of pages people's individual interpretations still lead to conflict. Religion, politics and the law are all full of examples of different groups disagreeing vehemently on the interpretations of single sentences, even words. Despite cynicism, most of the time those groups are arguing in good faith; they believe what they say.

I always enjoy a good abstract debate, but when it comes to RP'ing I find it distracts from playing the game. The way my group solves this is ultimately the GM of that game adjudicates good and evil, if they even need to come up. We take a little time to discuss the situation, then the GM rules and we move on with the game. Generally if there are major mechanical repercussions (paladin's code I'm looking at YOU), the GM states their interpretation and is expected to give some warnings.


When I GM, I do my best to apply believable consequences to PC actions. That means if the characters take to torturing people but hide it well, something like their Notoriety won't go up. If they are sloppy, they can expect losing some jobs, getting certain others, and probably having to deal with the law and at least one crazed revenge mob. I don't use my position as GM to have the world punish them. If they are making other players uncomfortable it can be addressed OC.




I usually shy away from drawing conclusions about a person based on how they like to RP, but I agree there is a tendency among some people to treat the game world as a sandbox. These people are the ones that like to spawn lots of huge weapons in games like GTA and try to wreak as much havoc as possible before they die. That can be fun, to a degree. The problem in RP is that other players often want to enjoy the story and play the game; GM's often dislike this style because it devalues their hard work. Doing off-the-wall, uncharacteristic acts that serve no purpose do a disservice to everyone else at the table. People who derive their fun from making others miserable aren't welcome at my table. I feel there is a distinction between this adolescent crap and playing a character who crosses moral boundaries. The fact that the former is often achieved by doing the latter doesn't render the latter invalid as a play style.

And I, respectfully, have to disagree with your observation about males being the culprits. Two of the three occasions where I as a person became uncomfortable because of mature content in a game were caused by women. Usually guys trying to be "EEEVIL!" results in me chuckling.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Which is why I absolutely love games like SR which have no alignment system....too much controversy over Good and Evil

QFT.

It also leaves game-ruining gumbies out in the cold without the "but I'm Chaotic Neutral" excuse.

Chaotic Neutral. Players that play their character neutral, but use the chaotic as a reason to ignore any laws they don't like.

No the problem is I am using the material as an establishment of the norm. Not this "We shjould do whatever we want because it's cyberpunk and we're all hard core cannibal killers" so I gave the widest net possible, for my oposition to find a counter argument. If I get to disallow the noves based on whether or not their typical of an average runners experience it actually helps my cause more then it hurts it.

That is fairly tame compared to some games I've played in and run. Usually CN is a one-stop-shop excuse for insane, asinine, disruptive, stupid actions that nobody else in the group finds enjoyable, or even interesting. Everything from fireballing the village they saved "because I want to," to stealing all the loot from other PCs and then acting surprised and offended when they figure it out. It's a shame, really. The alignment does occupy a real personality niche.

yea...I've seen way to many of these people...

When I play CN characters, which is rare..... I tend to have a character who is selfish and usually thinks about how something could benefit him first...

He's not going to act insane just because I as player want to act insane. Instead, he'll swing around all parts of the spectrum, depending on what has the biggest benefit to him... He tends to not perform as many "evil" acts as he does good, so he occupies the good spectrum more, I suppose, but he is not above performing a minor "evil" action if he believes it will somehow benefit himself or his friends....

I realize some may say that that is closer to True Neutral, but personally, I've always seen TN as someone who prefers to simply not get involved unless s/he is directly threatened... Such as a druid who won't really do anything until his grove is about to be set on fire by someone, at which point the full fury of nature is set upon the little firestarters....

I've played my share of CN characters, but they weren't the zany "woohoo, look at me, I'm so silly!" types. They were Chaotic Selfish, basically. Half-Elf Rogue types that put number one at, well, number one. They weren't actively evil, and they wouldn't go out of their way to be an asshole -- but they weren't (at the start of a campaign) bending over backwards to help other people, giving generously of themselves for the welfare of a community, or anything like that.

So what if you kill my character?! what are you? the fifth grade bully? what if I want to kill your character too? I die, make a new character and kill your character. Is that fun? I mean, as long as it's in character right? I just happend to make a homicidal maniac. you don't mind do you? That's not going to cause friction between us right? Its just my character thats all...

This brings up an interesting point. Do people percieve selfishness and lack of empathy to be an indication of evil or neutrality? Is a sociopath (arguably a person who always acts in their own best interest without limiting themselves with a conscience or internalization of social conventions) evil? Or just neutral? He wouldn't go out of his way to harm you unless there was some benifit to you. But he'd gladly kill you if he thought it was best for him.

Also, is someone evil based on what they do, or based on their intentions?

Selfishness has nothing to do with Chaos or evil. A lawful good character can very easily be selfish, and a Chaotic Evil very easily believe in something larger than himself. I frequently think that Robinhood could have fit neatly into CN. He hates the establishment so greatly that he will do everything in his power to bring it down. That has nothing to do with selfishness (although it could be added in if so desired). Has nothing to do with madness, another trait that can be easily added to any alignment. The whole point of the alignment system (thank god Shadowrun does not have it) is to define a general tendency. Chaos is one side of a balance with Order. It can be the good rebel against the evil organization, or the lone terrorist bringing down the establishment not caring who he hurts in the process.

In Shadowrun, you can identify with these different ideals without naming them.

I play an Orc Technomancer. He has a hatred of Humanis policlubs. He hates humanocentric groups, and he is ethnic Chineese with a concurrent hatred of Japan and all that it stands for. He takes great pleasure in using his hacking skills to embarass Humanis, and all of the pro-japan corps whenever he can. So in a sense that is very Chaos oriented. He avoids killing (mostly for professional reasons), which could be construed as being Good. That would be extremely simplistic though to say he is strictly CG. He never pays for his lifestyle, preferring to steal. While some of the time that theft comes at the expense of Mitsuhama, or Humanis, sometimes it is from anyone that he can steal from. Definitely not good. People are much too complicated in real life to be pigeonholed into a single alignment, why should My character be different?