So, what kinds of morally justifiable shadowruns can last an entire campaign? how do you play good guy shadowrunners?

It's less a matter of being "good" and more a matter of being "not evil". "Good" Shadowrunners avoid killing except when absolutely necessary and always avoid innocents when they can (most common manifestation: "I don't do wetwork."). "Good" Shadowrunners also try to make sure what they're doing isn't going to have unexpected consequences (ie, if you're hitting a biotech firm, you make sure you're not stealing a bioweapon that's going to get used on gangers or something).

"Good" Shadowrunners should have a motivation aside from greed. Greed might play a part of it, but aquiring a big mound of cash shouldn't be their end goal. Instead, the pay from the run should be used to further some other, less selfish, goal.

Good guy runners?

Like the old tv show "Equalizer?" Inflicting grievous and swift retribution upon the deserving?

How much good versus bad do you have to perform to be counted on one side or the other? Does one act of heroism absolve all my acts of villainy? Or does my one act of villainy stain all my good acts?

Then you get into the issue of relative morality -- is it always wrong to take a life? If not, how do you grade lives? Who should and shouldn't be killed?

Illegal and immoral can be two different things -- not to raise a flame war on any particular current topic, but harboring Jews during the Nazi reign was illegal. I don't know of anyone who would call it immoral.

I just opt for what doesn't bother me as much and hope that standard remains a relative constant.

-Siege

I started playing a voodoo shaman, I choose Ghede. Well SR doesn't go much into the world of voodoo that deeply. After a little of my research to ake my character more authentic. I found a little blurb on Ghede and what he is believed to have domain over. Strange but I found a piece that says he is also the protector children. It seems a little odd that before I knew that a few children in our game were put in perile and I came to the rescue even though it put the run at risk. Well after that and reading up on Ghede I have been going out of my way to incorporate the protector of kids as MO.

It has lead to some great role-playing, since also the girl in our group has in her characters back ground she was abused as a child had taken it upon her self to be a protector of children. That little tidbit of info has been a long running thing for our group. 9 times out of 10 we take trade in payment instead of money. My character is looking ot set up a church of Ghede so most times I just ask for help in my soup kitchen from the people who required my services. Another more wealthy guy we did work for, I traded getting his son back for donations to the church in the form of food and some money to pay the utilities. I don't hold the child hostage or anything like that, I actually give the child back and when the "customer" breaks down in their crying fit,"What can I do to ever repay you?" I just tell them what I need at the time according to their ability to pay. I figure it works for my religion and I get things for my church and then it may also lead to converts. I mean in this shitty world with nothing to look forward to, a man from a "crazy" religion gets their kid back from really evil people, so something in his religion must be working, right?

As trade to my more money hungry team mates, I give them my services as a mage. I go on regular runs, I still need cash for my church and liveing but I also make no bones about helping friends. If a runner mate shows up at my pad shot up I make sure he gets the healing he needs and what ever. I make sure I have afew of my church people give help to them. I am like a leader of a gang, though my gang doesn't fight, they are like a support group for an under ground movement if you will. I give them spirit back and all the thigns that go along wiht beign a mage. My little brother plays, and plays a very weak willed troll. He is trying to improve those stats but it is slow going. So I make sure all my spell defense stays on him so we don't get a troll in our midst that is now on the enemies team shotting us to hell.

Other then that most of the other characters are pretty blood thirsty. I think they don't mes with my character first becasue he is a mage and has a lot of friends, almost followers. So they tolerate his objections to hurting kids or takeign pro bono cases, for now.

Edit: One of my longest running characters makes it a point not to kill people he sees as people just doing their job. Like security guards or wage slaves. He figures they would not be hurt if it was not for his tresspasses, so why should they pay for his wrongs. Then their comes gangers, mafioso, and the like, he gives no quater to them. He delights in the slaying of whole gangs. Which has made the group just shake their head at his antics. He has also protected wage slaves form harm during runs, he even goes as far as takeing a bullet running rather then returning fire on guards as it may kill them.

Though accidents happen and I want to live more then I am willing to let a guard smoke my ass after not killing him. So it happens once in a while a guard is killed. So after "makeing" it in the shadows, haveing enough money to live very comfortably on he has tracked down all the families of his victims and has set up trust funds and shit for the families. It doesn't make it right but, it lets him sleep at night. He even drops in on them once in a while to make sure things are going ok. He doesn't actually stop and talk to them, he more like taps their phones and listens, reads their mail and stuff, so he can fix what ever problems they be haveing. I guess he feels he needs to protect the family he left defenseless when he took away the the money maker in the family. A guardian angel in the shadows if you will.

Frag: That sounds a lot like what this new character I'm making is going to be doing. He's a mundane monk, and its taking me like a week to make him because I keep agonizing over every single skill.

As for me I don't view good and and evil (IE: moral an amoral) as straight up "look at me! I saved a kid! I'm a good person!" and "Look at him! He killed a kid! He's a bad person!"

Its all about relative good and relative evil. I don't know how else to put it so I go with this definition: To do good is to commit acts of selflessness moreso than acts of selfishness; you do and care more for others than you do for yourself. To do evil is to do the opposite; caring for yourself more than others.

That would be generalized good and generalized evil. Both 'sides' can commit acts in line with the other, but when its all said and done after you've died and gone off to get your soul judged the determining factor is how much you have done over the course of your life. If the sum total of the impact of all your 'good' and 'bad' deeds falls into one field or the other that's what you are. You may be a saint, or you may be a guy who was a bit above total neutrality, but both would qualify as a 'good' person.

And then there's like, personal good and evil. Personal good is what I define as doing what you feel is right and personal evil is doing what you feel is wrong. Not what you THINK is right and what you THINK is wrong. Its all about getting to know yourself, figuring out where your purpose lies and going with it.

If walking around kicking children and slapping people across the face feels like the correct thing deep down in the recesses of your body and soul then you are doing personal good. You are helping your soul do what it wants to be doing with your body. The mind only gets in the way after a certain point. Once you've thought about what your purpose and how to go about doing it, the mind is probably going to confuse and delay the rest of you.

Using the aforementioned kicking children and slapping people across the face example, your mind has a good shot at mucking this up. "polite society" says you can't do that. It says you should listen to the government/church/whatever's the major player in your society because they're right and you're wrong. 'society' doesn't want you to be an individual because then you don't need society. They want you to be a sheep who's way is lost without the shepherd guiding you.

You feel good when you're doing 'evil' both in body and in spirit but your mind is constantly beating at the door saying "you can't be doing this! Its wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong!" If you start to believe that then you get pretty screwed up and I imagine the effect is similar to a mid-life crisis.

That's not to say you shouldn't think about what you're doing or periodically examine and re-examine your life to make sure it all makes sense to you, but don't let the waves of the masses wash over you and drown what you know to be right under a sea of confusion, befuddlement, and just plain wrongness (as it would apply to you, for the notion of wrong is personal and should not be collective. If YOU agree fine, but don't agree because everyone else does too).

So what types of shadowruns are morally right? The type that you yourself feel deep down good about. Sure anyone'll be happy not getting nabbed by the corp security or lonestar goons, but after that's all said and done if you can look back and say "I did something I know was right for me" then you my fine fellow have a bona-fide 100% guaranteed morally justifiable run.

This is probably why morality is such a taboo. People have their own personal beliefs, get some book written by some marketing people of a couple thousand years ago that may or may not be in line with this and then go gung-ho on the unbelievers because they get all fired up that their idea can't possibly be wrong because its written in a storybook that a bunch of people believe in.

I'm talking about religion of course and it makes about as much sense to believe that the religious text of your choice is the one and only thing that should be around.

Talk to people about it. Explain your ideas. Ask them what they think. If they say "hmm yeah that sounds cool" that's fine and dandy like sugar and candy, but if they say "hmmm, this is bulldrek and I can't believe you buy into this stuff" that is JUST as fine and dandy.

Running around with a bible touting that its the word of God (I'm poly-theistic btw) makes about as much sense as saying Little Red Riding Hood is the word of God. At least millions of people haven't died arguing over whether the big bad wolf was really such a bad guy afterall whereas most every other religion has resulted in millions dying for no reason when damn near all of them teach acceptance, love, and peace.

If what I'm seeing and what's happened in the past is what Peace Acceptance and Love (hey! It spells PAL!) are all about I am not impressed. Please try harder next semester human race because you've failed at life for ages now.

To wrap up this ball of yarn (as if that were possible at this point)...

If you around thinking you're right and everyone else is wrong with the added notion that they couldn't possibly be right you have a huge problem. We all think what we think is solid gold but most of its just really shiny copper. I know it and you should too. Listen to everyone, accept their views. Try to help them find what works for them and don't force your beliefs on them if you can manage it. If they don't want help, just accept that for what it is and let them know that should they change their mind they know where to find you.

Maybe if we all figured out our individual purposes in life (or at least the really really big one that drives us), cut out all the excess baggage, and ran our lives the way we wanted to we could stop asking "why are we here?" and switch that over to "Can we live in peace and prosper?"

If it turns out we're all money grubbing dirtbags who'll do anything for a shiny nickel well then I hope we blow ourselves up PDQ because the universe doesn't need a confused and destructive race such as ourselves running around.

If it turns out that by working together we can live in harmony with our world and ourselves well, we should pack our bags and spread the message across the universe. Balance in All Things is something everything can benefit from.

There are actually lots of options, but most of them require you to get away from the "Corp A hires you to do something nasty to Corp B" stereotype. Though even those can be "good", as in the "Corp A hires you to do something nasty to Corp B to stop them from doing something even worse (and, incidentally, bad for Corp A's profit margins)" scenario.

For example, our current groups runs, as I recall them, and my personal take on which side of the line they were on:

1. Wiping out a Humanis-affiliated gang sect. Paid for by the mother and neighbors of one of their meta-bashing victims. GOOD.
2. Helping someone who was being hunted (still don't know the whole story there) move house. GOOD.
3. Knocking out a cell tower. EVIL, but not terribly so (just property destruction... we didn't hurt anyone).
4. Bug hunt. GOOD (and even legal, I think).
5. Truck hijacking. EVIL (I would have felt bad about that one if we'd killed anyone, but thanks to the wonders of Stunball, we got away with it without using lethal force).
6. Extraction of a voluntary subject. GOOD (though our force level was probably a bit excessive to qualify as squeaky-clean... but in our defense, the bad guys started the shooting).
7. Food Fight. GOOD, I guess... though there probably would've been less collateral damage if we'd been able to stay out of it.
8. The premise was slightly evil, but not terribly relevant, because what it actually was was a setup by Humanis friends of the guys from 1. We defended ourselves when ambushed, and I'll even claim my awarding blood eagles to the treacherous bastards afterwards as justifiable. Overall, call it a wash.
9. Protecting a client on a road trip across NAN. GOOD.
10. Killing the Humanis scum who set us up in 8. I'm not sure I can call this one "good", but I think it was at least justifiable... he needed killing anyway, and gave the wrong people an excuse.
11. Extraction of multiple voluntary subjects. GOOD (and I don't think we actually killed anyone on that run... though we certainly did give a couple of the Renraku boys our best shot, which, given what they were shooting at us with, I consider entirely acceptable).
12. Casing a possibly Triad-linked restaurant for the Yakuza. Probably EVIL, though we didn't actually do anything to anyone, and I'm not going to lose any sleep over anything the Yaks do to the Triads as a result. Or vice versa, come to that.
13. Hired by the Star(!) to do a little B&E on this sicko's house to give them an "anonymous" tipoff so they could get the warrant to do it legally. GOOD (fragger's house had a fragging background count... if I'd been able to personally take his head off with my battleaxe, I would've walked away feeling like I'd just made the world a better place).
14. Defending a MOM clinic during SURGE-triggered rioting. GOOD.

Helping bad people do bad things to each other isn't necessarily evil. It's not exactly good, but I wouldn't dock any karma for it (there might just be fewer opportunities to ear good karma).

Group of runners come together after friends or relatives of theirs have died from BTL abuse and go on the bloody warpath killing eveyone associated with Seattle's BTL supply. Dealers, suppliers, smugglers, whole gangs, organised crime booses the whole supply chain. Now depending on how you look at it this could be a very good thing, a very bad thing or very much a grey area.

A quote-unquote MORAL CAMPAIGN isn't that far out of the realm of possibility. I've been toying with the idea of starting a Robin Hood-esque sort of Boondock Saint "right the wrongs that those bound by the rules can't or won't" campaign. Like in any other kind of campaign, it's all about the players. We'll see how it pans out. Like the man says, the best laid plans of mice and men...

There are lots of ways to play good runners. I like groups that are experts in handling magical threats (imagine if the guy from Burning Bright worked with acouple adepts and sammies). Your clients might not all be highly moral, and might even have "unleashed" some evil demon or someething, but its generally a good thing to fix the problem.

Depending on your viewpoint, various politcally active runners can be "good". You can even justify doing some morally ambiguous runs to fund the cause.

I like to play characters who have at least some moral compass (even if its a flawed one as in the case of a ganger loyal to his "family"). I feel the totally amoral pragmatic characters tend to be unrealistic and can lead to metagaming.

I think the point of Shadowrun isn't so much playing "good" runners, but more playing runners who try to be good, but often have to compromise their principles for the greater good, or sometimes simply to survive. Also, good versus evil isn't the only type of conflict. You can also have bad guys fighting each other, or even good guys fighting each other (a group of radical eco-activists target a polluting corporate factory, but it's one where one of the runners' relatives works. The eco-activists are trying to stop pollution, while the runners are trying to save innocent lives). Heck, the best confrontations can arise when both sides think they are in the right.

All confromtations are when both sides thing they are right, why else would they fight? If one side had an idea they might be wrong I don't think they would fight. But I understand what you are saying.

I don't believe he meant right as correct. He was suggesting that the best confrontations occur between two sides who [firmly] believe they are correct, just, heavenly mandated, etc.

I think just about anything could be construed as morally "good/correct/righteous/just" under the correct set of circumstances, same for the oppositte.

That does not mean you necessarily believe it. One can find the cause repulsive but fight for duty anyway. One can find one's own actions terribly unethical— evil, even— and simply not care. One can fight in a war and take enemy lives as a justifiable action without finding it just. Likewise, two sides can engage eachother, each (perhaps wrongly) believing in the absolute truth of each's True Message. It all depends.

Good runners...hmmmm. Lets see, four highly trained Spec-Ops guys. One van. One Corvette. Lots of trash can lids (back when they were metal ). Usually a chopper or two. And a plan.

"If you have a problem and no one else can help, and you can find them, maybe you could hire..." Well, you know the rest.

Thats about as "good" as it gets. Several thousand rounds of ammunition expended and only two people ever got shot. I don't think anyone ever got killed. Roughed up a bit, sure. But that's about it.

As for SR...where do I start? Its all about the game you run. I let my players get away with all kinds of stuff and don't dock them karma. But when the karma wheel comes back around...those 'bad' guys will be directly under it.

Oh, you thought it would be fun to rape that girl? Go for it. Just don't get captured by that Troll Go-Gang...

PCs can have the lousy 3 or 4 KPs for all I care. Taking it from them won't do anything but piss 'em off anyway. But if they have to be the owner of the char that got nailed by a Trog....well, tends to stay their hands, as it were.

Killing? Couldn't care less most of the time. The best roleplayer I have is an antisocial sam that splits his time killing everything in sight and whinning about how "chics don't dig [him]" because of all the chrome he has jammed in his hide. Its all relative. As long as the sam above keeps his killing to those that deserve it (read: have a gun) I let the ladies talk to him. When he goes on a spree that annoys me, the ladies take an interest in the "teddybear trog" of the group.

Then there's the sec guard question. Was he just earning money to put food on the table? Was he into kiddie porn? Did he deserve to die? Who cares? Thats why those NPCs are (barely) two dimensional. It doesn't matter most of the time if that guy deserved it or not. It just worked out that way. At that point its about the players you have.

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If you do something "good" but you're doing it for selfish reasons, you haven't actually done very much good at all. It'll still count, but not for much.

You know you didn't do it because you genuinely cared and whatever's influencing this world is certainly going to know about it.

I believe people should get what they deserve too. Doesn't always happen, but for the most part I think its fairly on the ball.

Of course I also believe everything happens for a reason, even if that reason is for "no reason". Some things just aren't meant to be figured out, and oftentimes what we think we've got down pat we find out that the exact opposite is the case.

Thus I think that the people who get what they don't deserve, people like Bill Gates and George Bush got what they did as some sort of test for the rest of us to puzzle out. Maybe its meant to enrage, or sadden, embolden, or what have you.

As for religious, neither am I by any standard means of measure. I don't attend a church, or pray to my deities, but I have a supreme faith that somehow everything will turn out allright. Even if that means the universe as we know it going kaput and starting from scratch.

Frankly if you ask me people who pray and attend church are in the wrong. If I want something I ask. I'll generally get it, but I try not to ask for much and I don't get bitchy or angry if I don't. If I feel the need to commune with my gods I can do so just by thought alone. Either they or one of their spiritual messengers will listen and take it from there.

I probably make no sense. Most likely due to I'm way past overtired and really can't put too effectively into words what I know, think, and feel on the matter. Sure I can do a sorta good job on most days, but its never everything I want.

I'll shut up now.

"Well, he ain't so much a good guy as he is just a bad mother f____r. I mean, he gets paid by people to f__k guys up."

Part of running a moral campaign depends on the GM. If the GM wants to throw assassination runs at you by every Johnson you meet, you just can't work as a pacifist. The GM and players must work together to create a moral campaign.

Mr. Johnson: "We need you to kidnap this man's 12 year old Daughter and arrange a very artful death for her."
Dove Shaman: "I stunbolt Mr. Johnson and walk away."

Next Week:
Mr. Johnson: "A certain Mr. Jacklyn owes me money. Please Break his knees for me."
Dove Shaman: "I stunbolt Mr. Johnson and walk away."

Next Week:
Mrs. Johnson: "I run a fetish shop. We're having a sale on Catholic Schoolgirl Panties, I need you to break into the St. Anatoliy's School for Girls and steal as many panties as you can."
Dove Shaman (Has lost 40 pounds from dieting): "Ah what the frag, I'll take it."

The A - team.