I was reading an article in The Economist (sadl in print, so can't link to that) that was talking about the RL Mexican drug cartel known as La Familia.

Zomg, this is straight out of a Shadowrun plot, I tell ya. Here are some wiki articles:

La Familia



Los Zetas (which is even MORE shadowrun... ex-special ops that turn drug dealers!)


You can't make this shit up.

Except these guys are pure evil. They kill women and kids too. Kind of brings the ethical quandaries of Shadowrunning into clearer focus, doesn't it? Shadowrunners in SR are presented more as Robin Hoods than as drug-dealing, torturing, heartless, murdering thugs.

Depends on teh group.

He didn't say play, he said presented.

My agreement is hinged on the edition to which he refers.

BlueMax

that have to make a living selling their services to amoral corps or downright evil criminal syndicates, and risk being used as pawns in some great Machiavellian chess game...

Not to mention that most of the "hooding" that I remember stems more from the Runner in question getting pissed off than any real aturism, I don't remember reading about very many charities that were run by the Runners.

i suspect most charities got swamped into oblivion by the awakening.

and then there was that brotherhood issue...

all in all, i would say altruism i near forgotten in shadowrun...

Exactly my point, Runners are not and never were the "good guys", at best they were the "less bad" guys.

That's how nearly any anti-hero fantasy (the action movie kind) works, though. You have the ostensible anti-hero, who is gritty and sassy and bucks authority and does things his own way, grrrr. He does things everyone fantasizes about doing, like running someone off the road when they cut him off, or punching out that loud guy talking on the cellphone. But the opposition usually consists of loathsomely bad people - drug syndicates who mutilate people, serial killers, and other assorted utterly unsympathetic villains. So it's really easy to cheer for the anti-hero, because the bad(er) guys are such scumbags.

That's kind of how shadowrun can be, too. Shadowrunners are morally ambiguous grey hats who do questionable things for a living, but still try to fight corruption in their own way, still struggle to do the right thing (or at least the lesser of two evils), and hold on to a few tattered shreds of honor.

Glyph,

Please accept one internets.


BlueMax

Even criminals can do "good" things, but that doesn't stop them from being criminals.

I'd use the Cartels as examples of NPC criminal drug syndicates as I create them for my own game.

And remember it was the drug cartels that founded ORO-which became Aztechnology.

Also-in some instances the drug cartels do charity work to win over the local populace.

Which ironicaly actually makes them better than Shadowrunners.