Have any of you ever been in the situation where you're presented with a well-paying and relatively safe job, then turned it down on moral grounds?

Yes.

<Hysterical giggles>

Nope.
But the end-payout was negotiated a tad more forcefully than usual.


-Tir

Yes. We had a runner who had a fixer connection, and the jobs started out OK, but then turned more and more racist. It started out with helping some racist people free one of their member from a corp holding facility, then we assisted them doing a distraction run, then we had to annoy somebody (who happened to be orks and trolls), and in the end we were asked to attack the same neighbourhood. We looked into the background of the people hiring us, and turned down the job. The fixer kept coming with jobs, but they were all related and we new accepted any more jobs from this fixer.

I play jaded sociopaths, so no, never refused on moral grounds.

Haven't had a situation like that come up yet. Sure, the team has their arguments but ultimately they've always accepted every job (with high demands of pay)

There are things a patriot won't do, no matter how much they love their country.
There are things a mercenary won't do, no matter how much money is on offer.

A sociopath, on the other hand, will take any excuse to do terrible things that they want to do.

That sums up a lot of shadowrunners I've seen over the years right there.

Always have this problem, of course I always accentuate the backgrounds of the characters in the initial stages of the game. I never allow the orphaned, nobody knows me, no friends, only money motivates me, zero loyalty, sociopath to get anywhere near my games. You want to play that go play a first person shooter, now if you want to claim that and actually have a real person buried under the bullshit, fine, but I as the GM better know what makes the poor bastard tick, i.e. you better write up a very detailed background and series of events, because if you don't I will. So I always have the problem of enticing the characters with real motivations instead of "wad of cash, you go break, you go get" rinse and repeat. I guess that is also why I rarely use Missions or any other published arcs, and when I do they are heavily modified, because like I said there has to be a motivation beyond cash for my players characters. It is a problem I am glad to have.

Plenty, over the years.
One of the questions I ask myself for every character is always "What wouldn't this character do?"

Often it's basic stuff, like the no wetwork thing, or no kids.
Other characters have very specific don'ts.

Money is usually one of the main motivations, but it can also be something more abstract, like e.g. idealism á la "Fuck the corps!", which in turn can mean that the character in question only takes Neo-A jobs.

The more interesting question is, how far is a character willing to compromise his ideals / code of honour / etc, and what does it take to go there.

I hear you there! There is something much more satisfying about games that are deeper than a DMX song.

My official "Break Glass in Case of War" character, Rickson was one mean son of a bitch. He had to be because he was a force multiplication specialist that specialized in anti-corp insurgency groups. He worked for Aztechnology. Take a gutter rat street punk from the worst part of Rio De Janeiro, take him in, educate him, indoctrinate him with only the corp as his sole means of support and survival, train him, and set him loose. He would show up, train a bunch of insurgents once he gained their trust, make them as mean and nasty as possible (we're talking Cartel/Vigilante Death squads here), and sick them on the other corps. Occasionally he would have them blow up an Aztechnology facility that they were planning on tearing down anyway for the insurance money. Torture? Yup! Nasty-ass Viet Cong on crack booby traps? You betcha! Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out? Uh-huh! Collateral damage? Things break. People die.

Of course, he only left after he was tossed under the (exploding) bus when things got a bit too public. He ran to Seattle and thought to himself, "Self? How does one trained in covert ops, assassination, insurgency training and tactics, and weapons get paid up in here? Looks to me like he gets to knowing a few people and then gets to doing dirty deeds for them until you get enough scratch to do something else." Enter new Shadowrunner that dresses like a Cuban drug dealer and carries a Murse (Man Purse) everywhere.

The funny part was that the other Shadowrunners were looking at him in the beginning like "WTF?!? Did that psycho really just do that?!?" but as he toned his shit down (because he was no longer forced to do it by corp directive under pain of a slow, agonizing death), they were ramping their own nastiness up. The penultimate evil chuckle + drywashing hands moment was when Rickson was about to give someone a couple of 9mm aspirin for a clean kill and the Elven mage, the most vocal about the earlier atrocities and unnecessary killing suddenly blurted out, "Wait! I'll do it with my katana! I haven't had a chance to use it yet!" and three bloody, spurting, coughing and gasping chops later dispatched the helpless enemy.

Rickson eventually got his money scraped together, banded with the rest of the group to to make D4C (Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap), a private investigations and paramilitary company, and retired from Shadowrunning...kinda.

i'm designing my first campaign atm. it involves alot with working with a prominent multi-national club owner. he likes results and if the team asks questions on the mission or 2 with a possibility of ethical dilemma's, i'm planning on throwing more nuyen at them. no nasty stuff, more like vengeful wetwork.

One time we did do a really nasty one. Something like using stolen fetus and babies as the basis for a clone bank and spare parts. Really down n' dirty. We played along for a while, the GM wondering the whole time how far down the rabbit hole we'd go for money, but we ended up turning on our organlegging employers at the perfect moment by silent consensus and hunted down everyone that was involved to die the death of a thousand dogs, Amen.

The GM was actually grateful because now he could focus on the stuff he wanted to do rather than trying to come with worse and worse atrocities to have us be a part of...

That's silly. Babies are for throwing!

I have always found that playing with sociopathic characters is a lot less disturbing that playing with sociopathic players.

Always found a quick reason to leave such groups. Not my cup of tea.





-k

Indeed. A certain amount of sociopathy is normal for characters whose jobs include killing in cold blood for a living, but that doesn't mean you have to play with creepy people living out power fantasies.

We had a job (it as Denver's Mission) to kidnap a little girl whose mother was a high echelon sarary woman. I asked beforehand if the girl would be return alive, otherwise I wouldn't do it.
In the end she was murdered by an unknown shot and that really pissed me off. I asked the GM to start as much legwork as I could to find out who did it, but he said that I would get my answer because one of the other missions was about this.

I don't remember this mission in detail, at first it wasn't anything that sounded worth turning down. Find runaway girl, bring her back to daddy. Said girl ends up being magically active and daddy is a bit of a... I can't think of the word I want so we'll use xenophobe. So we bring her back and she gets capped by him. Supposedly the three of us on the team missed the obvious clues that would happen. I wasn't terribly affected by it but if I'd known that was a potential outcome I would have likely changed some things... on second thought, that character was slightly sociopathic, so maybe not.

Yep. Walked out of a run, because team wanted to do wetwork.

I mean, there's wetwork and there's wetwork.
If it is to bring down the axe on a Tamanous Operation or a Bunraku Parlor, hey, I'm being paid and get to kill some really [daffy duck mode=on]dethpicable people.

I really can't understand this attitude. Wetwork is part of what Shadowrunners do, and outright refusing anything wetwork related is a good way to earn some notoriety.

Or a reputation for not being a stone cold killer.
It cuts both ways, and while wetwork are often shadowruns, not every shadowrun entails wetwork. In fact, I'd say that the majority doesn't.

There's a reason why there are (albeit often blurred) distinctions between shadowrunners and assassins.

But not all Shadowrun Stories need even go into Wetwork territories. Played some Awesome SR2 campaigns where Wetwork was HEAVILY frowned upon.

You see that very attitude echoed regularly by the jackpointers, save for Kane and a couple of others. Wetwork is the job of assassins, not 'runners.

The characters I play don't have a problem doing wetwork, as long as they're liquidating obvious and reprehensible bad people.

If you want me to whack some middle manager to open room for a promotion for you, get fucked.

If you want me to whack some lunatic who's earned an epithet like "The Rapist of Redmond" or the "Pulverizer of Puyallup" honestly, though?

Well, hell, do you want it splashy, or do you want it subtle, or do you not care as long as they meet their end? (The price goes up if you want to dictate terms.)

A true sociopath does not need an excuse, take explanation as a privilege. A socially adapted sociopath will at least consider the (known) acceptable range of reactions to any input.

A socially adapted sociopath will perform actions many normal persons will be unable to carry through with. This might be to the benefit of society.

So what if our sociopath is an SR runner? Not performing to expected behavior can be a strength. A wageslave does not remove bad superiors. Who defines "evil"?

What I expect from character descriptions is getting to know the motivations of both character and player. I have no interest in running an evil campaign (violating the group consensus on good). If I test reaction to evil within that boundary, I expect a strong reaction and will (in the end) let them (the players) carry through.

I generally played 'runners with very little morals. Mostly I figured that my highly trained, exceptionally equipped, hardened professional had to be pretty broken to be living a street existence instead of in a corporate sponsored high rise.

Especially my mages, considering how rare they are.

I don't think you can paint them with a broad brush.

Living and working in the shadows means that things start grey and grow darker, but that doesn't mean you can't have heroic or good characters. Even the most mercenary characters would have lines they wouldn't cross.

Like,

"I won't hurt innocent people and I won't do wet work."
"I'll do wet work, but no children and only bad people, drug dealers and murderers and stuff."
"I'll only take theft runs and only against criminal families and megacorps."
"I'll take any job, but I won't let people suffer. Kills are quick and clean and as painless as possible."

The more stipulations you put on your work, the fewer potential jobs you'll have. But there will be people out there (especially since this is a game with a GM running it who presumably wants to play) who will share your convictions and be more willing to hire you. Someone who wouldn't hurt children themselves would probably prefer hiring someone who wouldn't hurt children over Killgore who goes into a run indiscriminately firing a semi-automatic grenade launcher at the target.

Personally, I don't see why a character that refuses to accept jobs of premeditated murder is necessarily a good person.

Notoriety probably isn't the word you should be using here. It's not like they're accepting the job and then changing their mind, or accepting the job and turning in their Johnson to the cops or something. Simply turning a job down is totally a thing professionals should be expected to do from time to time. Turning down wetwork in particular, all the moreso.

Shadowrunners don't actually really "shoot people in the face for money" very often. They get hired to extract a target, capture a McGuffin, or what-have-you, and sometimes people get in their way and get hurt. But raw body count? You can hire joy-killer gangers for carnage. Specific assassination? That's for assassins, who may or may not otherwise be "shadowrunners."

Turning down wetwork isn't anything all that remarkable, and certainly shouldn't result in "notoriety."

Usually we accept every contract, but on the last run, even we did an exception to that rule. We were hired by a community, which wanted to restore their low-style neighbourhood but got problems with local gangers that destroyed their gardens, mobbed people etc. So they shut down their territory a bit and secured it with armed patrols etc. The only problem they faced was a “haunted house” that had a strategically important location, but could not be inhabited because everybody who entered it disappeared mysteriously. So we went in and found an old shaman with his mentally retarded troll-chummer, that only wanted to be “left alone” and therefore protected their house (which belonged to them officially) from all the intruders. Their explanations showed, that the “nice community” actually was a gang of mobsters, that wanted this turf for themselves, but got stopped all the time by these two guys. So they hired us for this contract. But of course, we helped the shaman instead, kicking the gang in the nuts and it was quite fun. We didn´t get payed, but that was the price for our morality

I don't see it as being about 'good' per se. It's about being true to your own set of ethics, which is much more important when it comes to building a reliable reputation that will get you hired. Becoming known as a psychopath who'll kill anyone for the right price and is indiscriminate about bystander casualties will get you runs, but generally the sort where Mr. J doesn't much care if you survive to get paid. It makes you disposable, and as much a threat to your employers as to their targets.

Mages are as common, if not more so, than Doctors are in the Real world. I know dozens of doctors (Some even within the extended family). How about you?

The problem isn't so much that Awakened are rare (about 1% of the population) because they aren't. It's because few of them would have a level of magic that would be worth it to risk your life as a runner.
For instance, let's assume the mean value as 3 and standard deviation as +-1 and that the distribution of magic follows a standard normal distribution (because, why wouldn't it?).
This would mean that: 2,375% of the 1% (0,02375%) would have Magic 1, 13,5% of that 1% (0,135%) would have Magic 2, 68% of that 1% (0,68%) of the entire population has Magic 3, 13,5% of that 1% (0,135%) would have Magic 4, 2,375% of the 1% (0,02375%) would have Magic 5 and about (0,006%) of the ENTIRE population would have Magic 6, people with Magic 7+ are pretty much outliers.

Then you must see how many of the Awakened are Magicians, Mystical Adepts and Adepts. If you consider an even distribution of 1/3 each, then you can see that 0,002% of the entire population in the world are magicians with Magic 6.

Now, I know I'm rounding numbers where I shouldn't, my calculations above go a little further than 100% but you get the drill.

Now, that would mean that there are 6 people with Magic 6 for each 100 thousand people, giving a 100000:6 ratio. What is the ratio of professional medical doctors in your country? I'm pretty sure it's above this one, but I'm only comparing Magic 6 guys, if we go for only Awakened people, then the ratio is indeed 100:1.

Doing a quick search, the M.D ratio on the United States is of 10000:25, meaning that in Shadowrun there are 4 Awakened UCAS citizens for each UCAS M.D.

the thing is, the only reason any given mage doesn't have magic 6 is because they haven't chosen to put the work in to get there. magic isn't a static thing. it's not "you have this much magic and you will never have any more magic".

also, it's a bit ridiculous to suggest that you must have magic 6 to be worth hiring in the shadows. a magician with magic 6 is amazing, but so is a magician with a magic of 3-4. the magic 6 guy is certainly better, particularly when it comes to having higher force spirits on call, but it's not as if having "only" a force 4 spirit is some sort of detriment.

magic 6 magicians are certainly rare, but no more so than maxed out melee tank trolls, or hackers with 6( logic and all hacking skills at or near max, or expert infiltrators, or heavily wired street samurai.

the fact of the matter is, almost any min/maxed chargen build you make that has nearly the highest level of ability possible (starting off, at least) in their area of specialty is going to be rare. so if you're going to enforce some sort of extra rarity on magic 6 magicians, i hope you apply some limits to your mundane characters too. that street samurai or combat adept who is able to take on two red samurai and win is every bit as employable as a magic 6 magician.

For Magicians? Sure, you can certainly accomplish a lot with Magic 3-4. The same can't be said for Adepts. I mean, an Adept with Magic 2-3 can be quite the awesome athlete, but as a runner, the street samurai would quite possibly outrank them in every situation.
And yes, Magic isn't static, but unless there's an official statement about magic rating distribution, standard normal distribution is the best we can use to compare.

I play awakened (Mages, Mysads, and Adepts) in your expected range of 3 all the time. They work well as runners.
In my opinion, it is the assumption that you can only run at exceptional levels that is the issue. It is a PLAYER issue, not a WORLD issue.

Well, sure, but my favorite archetype is by far Adepts. They are playable* with Magic 4 at the least. Then again, in some cases, the only to actually get competitive is to add drugs, which, in my personal case, goes contrary to the idea of Adepts and being mens sana corpore, treating the body as a temple, etc..

*by playable I mean they can actually do the thing they are supposed to quite well without being overshadowed by another character who should be secondary at this.

LOVE Adepts.

Ahh, but how many of those awakened are ALSO doctors?

that depends. a combat adept is likely going to need to carefully consider whether they're going to have improved reflexes, or try and work around the problem.

most any other kind of adept can do their job just fine on 3-4 power points, especially with the help of a qi focus. most non-combat roles you're doing just fine if you have a good skill rating and you can boost it a bunch.

furthermore, even the combat adept can get by better than you would think; there's a power that lets you boost your initiative, it costs relatively little to use, but causes drain. plus, in times of desperate need, you can always spend edge for initiative.

drugs are an option, but in 5th edition, they're an absolutely terrible one. using drugs in SR5 is dooming your character to a gradual death spiral for pretty much anyone, even the corporate designed combat drugs. i mean, jazz (which iirc was designed by lone star as a solution to heavily augmented opponents coming up against normal beat cops) is pretty likely to get you addicted just from taking it once, ever. not exactly the sort of thing you would want to issue to a police officer...

The thing to keep in mind is that violence is just a tool in the criminal toolbox to get what they want. They could work for their money but they see violence as a more...expedient...approach to the problem. That said, cold blooded killers are a distinct rarety. It one thing to be scared shitless and kill someone to save your own skin. It's entirely another to roll up on someone and calmly cap them in the face and walk off to grab a taco.

In SR5, you can get 12 points in adept powers fairly easily, but the lower end isn't bad, either - you are basically the equivalent of a lightly/non-augmented character. And they have a lot of those in the archetypes.

On the subject of evil, it seems like SR5 wants to encourage characters with "honor", since the Code of Honor NQ gives such a lavish amount of points, and so many of the archetypes seem to have it.

12 points in adept powers easily?

....

how?

Guessing 3 initiations, then using special points to increase magic to 9.

Not sure that actually works, but it's my best guess.

Married one.

But yeah, I meant my world class powerful runner mages, not just any awakened. How many world class surgeons choose to live on the streets, or in low income housing because they don't want to take their lucrative salaries from "the man"? Without something really broken in their heads, naturally.

Get Exceptional Attribute: Magic (needs GM approval) for 7 Magic, take the Raven mentor spirit, which gives 1.5 points worth of bonus powers, and buy/bond three rating: 4 and one rating: 2 qi foci which give you 3.5 more power points (14 points in foci is the maximum that you can bond to start out with - also, you need resources: D or better). This will require taking some NQ's, since it costs a total of 47 karma for the two PQ's and bonding the foci.

The downside is that you can't have all of the qi foci active at once without succumbing to focus addiction in short order. So this works best for an adept with multiple specialties, such as a covert ops/face/combat type, with one of the force: 4 qi foci for each area. Not my cup of tea, personally - I usually prefer more focused builds, and I prefer having more of my starting karma handy to shore up weak areas of the character.

I'm not sure that exactly counts as "easily," but yeah. The point stands with a crazy build focused on "have all the power points!" you can, well, have lots of power points.

It's like any other "max out this thing at character creation" thought exercise. The main balance is the opportunity cost. By "easy", I just meant that you don't need any creative rules interpretations or exploited loopholes to do it.

I wouldn't necessarily limit it to the players. If the DM expects PCs to perform like perfectionist professionals, players are taught to bring a certain mindset and dicepools to the table.

Unfortunately moral arguments usually end in sides calling each other names like sociopaths and babies. So let me do my share by calling some people's reply a lack of roleplaying

You are talking about a world where the price of life is much lower than the one you (the player) currently lives in. In addition, the same circumstances that formed the shadowrunner's background to move him in the direction of his chosen/picked career are different that the circumstances that formed your (player) career, and moral code. You are probably a student/engineer/nerd (I know I am).

As such you can't just use your moral code for all your characters. It is not "you" in a post apocalyptic world, and not what would I do if magic existed. "You" would not be a shadowrunner. "You" would be a wageslave. A shadowrunner's moral code on average should start out gray.

Controversial part: If you are ending up playing "paladins" who have the perfect moral code in every character you play, I would submit that you are a bad roleplayer who cannot draw a clear line between fantasy and reality. You need to be able to -become- a different person who has a different personality than you. By the way, the same goes for someone who is always playing psychopaths.