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tjn
QUOTE (Pelaka)
too interested in the bottom line.

Err... too interested in the bottom line in the cyberpunk genre?

The bottom line is the bedrock that cyberpunk is built on. The themes of economic slavery and the dehumanization in the pursuit of the almighty nuyen lies at the very core of cyberpunk.

Whether a SINless in the barrens or a Corper in the towers, cyberpunk and grit applies to both, equally.
Arethusa
Bit, just to add to what you said, it really should be noted that a million nuyen thrown into a character by no means has to have any relation to the character spending a million nuyen on himself. In fact, it rarely does simply because it's such an unlikely proposition.
Apathy
QUOTE
Bit, just to add to what you said, it really should be noted that a million nuyen thrown into a character by no means has to have any relation to the character spending a million nuyen on himself. In fact, it rarely does simply because it's such an unlikely proposition.

Yeah, It always bugs me when somebody hands me a character that's got half a million in cyberware, half a million in armored vehicles, but is living out of his van because he's got a street lifestyle.
Synner
That's the thing though. These supposed wretches and underdogs of society in "gritty games" have no problem looking up their local fixer or arms dealer and forking out a few thousand for ammo and specialized gear for their next run.

Personally I don't buy it. Like bit said shadowrunners have always been professional criminals. And any criminal who's good enough to make it a profession is going to make a pretty decent living. That doesn't eliminate the grit element, it just means it isn't inherently associated with a street-level, dirty, hopeless existance where you're a bug waiting to be squashed. Everyone knows bugs always find a way of hiding in nooks and crannies and coming back later anyway.

I consider my games pretty gritty. "Ronin" style gritty, "The Big Sleep"-type gritty, "The Big Red One"-type gritty, "Get Carter" (the original)-type grit, but none of this society is falling apart and existance is hopeless stuff. Society might be fraying at the edges (morally, physically, politically and spiritually) where the runners, the SINless, underworld types and the hopeless never-do-wells live but it isn't all bad and it isn't hopeless.

It's just that life turns into a constant struggle to keep their heads above water. Everything they want has a price. Everything they need costs them something. Everyone has an angle. And trust is the thing you can never really buy. It has nothing to do with the location, the "level of play" or even the players involved (my guys are currently being dragged around Europe doing a french aristo's dirty work) and it has everything to do with the spirit and atmosphere being played. As someone said above grit reaches from the filthy sidewalks to the polished marble offices of the corporate sharks.

Used to be my players would refuse a run into Aztlan on principle. Now they've added Poland to that list and the dangers they faced there were nothing like the dangers in Azzieland. These were the most fundamental and personal things: human despair, destitution, chaos, treason, loss, hopelessness and the feeling that they are very small redundant cogs in a very, very complex machine. Stuff you can't shoot with a Panther assault canon or out-speed with Wired Reflexes. That's "grit". Coming face to face with the dark side of human nature that is integral to life in the shadows. There is no darkness without light and no light without darkness. Grit is just the fuzzy area where they meet.
tjn
notworthy.gif
Arethusa
You can have Ronin gritty, though. Move the movie into SR and there's nothing stopping Sam from having a million nuyen in cyberware shoved in him. That doesn'ts top him from being dirt poor, on the run, whatever. When you move into riggers, however, that shit gets much harder to buy real fast.

Now, simple economics aside, grit is a much bigger element of the story, obviously, and ultimately resides at the human level. All I'm saying is that it's not unbelievable to have a gritty setting with a 30 million dollar weapon stuck in the middle of it, trying to stay alive. A lot of how easy that is to believe rests on execution more than anything else.
Skeptical Clown
The gritty streets of shadowrun aren't really about money. It's about power and freedom. No, shadowrunners are not economically depressed bums. If they were, they couldn't be shadowrunners. But they DO inhabit dark and dangerous streets; all the money in the world can't change the fact that they're ghosts in the system. They can't exist in the normal system, and the reason is dualistic. They are criminals, and thus cannot have SINs, and cannot function in the chrome light of the "normal world." But the reason they are criminals is because they have rejected the controlling, decaying corporate world for a less glamorous but more liberated streets of the hopeless. Shadowrunners aren't cogs in the machine; they reject the machine. They'd rather be the wrench in the gears.

And that's why Shadowrunners can come off as heroes to the masses. They live outside the system, but strike at it. There's a certain level of cynicism and hypocrisy involved in that heroism, but that's not a bad thing. You can tell me that you don't like that, but you certainly can't tell me that's not what Shadowrun is, or was. Because once upon a time, that was fairly understood. The sort of Robin Hood nature of many shadowrunners, the complete corruption and in adequacy of police coverage, the complete dominance of corporations over the government, are not just stuff people are making up. This stuff has been written in the core rulebooks!
BitBasher
QUOTE
And that's why Shadowrunners can come off as heroes to the masses. They live outside the system, but strike at it. There's a certain level of cynicism and hypocrisy involved in that heroism, but that's not a bad thing. You can tell me that you don't like that, but you certainly can't tell me that's not what Shadowrun is, or was. Because once upon a time, that was fairly understood. The sort of Robin Hood nature of many shadowrunners, the complete corruption and in adequacy of police coverage, the complete dominance of corporations over the government, are not just stuff people are making up. This stuff has been written in the core rulebooks!
I have to say I disagree completely with this.

The characters are not heroes, the general public will not be behind them. The general public doesn;t know them, and all they know of shadowrunners is "uncle bob the scientist had his life work destroyed/stolen by those bastards" or "my brother the security guard was killed doing his job defending a facility against those greedy (&^(^*s" Shadowunners have nothing altruistic abaut them. They are as a whole felons paid to do jobs. There's no reason to romanticize that unless the GM or the character's are delusional romantics. You cannot shadowrun without wrecking people's lives. Don't use lethal ammo? You still leave a permanent mark of failure on a sec force that kills their job promotions ect. Don't do wetwork? you still destroy/steal the life's work of working scientists/engineers. There ripple effect means they SR's by their nature negatively impact MANY people in the very nature of their job. Let them know it. It's gritty.

[edit]Furthermore, the megas own virtually all media, and SR's are portrayed as unwashed and incompetent, stopped by the glorious sec forces. It's good for morale and makes people feel safer. megacorp media (all except one channe;) portray SR's in a negative light.
Skeptical Clown
You can disagree, but that doesn't mean you're right. There've been plenty of instances in past Shadowrun products that indicate that Shadowrunners may have a certain amount of cult hero-worship attached to them. (Exhibit A: Shadowrun, 3rd edition.) I'm sure corporations are going to portray Shadowrunners as corrupt, but that doesn't mean that's how all the masses see them. As I said, this doesn't mean they're entirely benevolent; they're very human, even dare I say, gritty heroes. But you can't rely deny what's been there all along.

People attach a lot of baggage to words "Hero" and "Gritty," but I don't think there's a lot of communication going on here. A Hero isn't a demigod, it's just the person in the story who you are meant to identify with, because they are the most human characters and because they are the ones in the general ethical right int he context of the story. Shadowrun is dark, but it's not depressing, because it's an exaggerated darkness. Corporate security guards who are corrupt, hateful, and oppresive are dark. Average Joe corp security guard falling over dead with a picture of his wife in his hand as a means of guilt-tripping the players isn't dark or gritty; THAT is depressing.
BitBasher
No, not every story has a hero. Some stories have an antihero or simply a protagonist, the person on which the story is centered. I don't believe there's an ethical right anywhere, not just in shadowrun. "Right" and "ehtical" should never ever even be used together, as it's nothing more than perspective.
Skeptical Clown
An antihero IS a hero. They're heroes who defy the typical notion of the hero. Not a non-hero. Even the darkest antihero is a hero within their context. You can think whatever you want, and run the game however you like, nobody's going to stop you, but every fictional universe exists with some sort of ethical construct in mind, because everybody has a take on ethicality. Even if that take is that there is no ethicality. And Shadowrun is NOT an example of a universe that believes there is no such thing as ethicality; it's simply a universe where ethics have broken down. Very different things.

As people have said, Shadowrun is influenced by Noir. But Noir is not an absence of morality or idealism; the noir hero is very frequently an idealist who has been crushed by his own inadequacies and by the ruthless nature of the world he's living in.
BitBasher
I think your definition of hero is a little bit off of one I'm familiar with. From dictionary.com

QUOTE
Hero
"A man of distinguished valor or enterprise in danger, or fortitude in suffering; a prominent or central personage in any remarkable action or event; hence, a great or illustrious person."

Anti-Hero
"A main character in a dramatic or narrative work who is characterized by a lack of traditional heroic qualities, such as idealism or courage."


in literature a hero and an anti-hero are very different things, but I do understand what you are saying.

Also, I was not making any statement on shadowrun's ethical views, those were mine, meant to be applied to everything including the real world.
Synner
The point of my post was regarding the bleak and hopeless nature and street-level setting several people on this thread have suggested

QUOTE
The sort of Robin Hood nature of many shadowrunners, the complete corruption and in adequacy of police coverage, the complete dominance of corporations over the government, are not just stuff people are making up. This stuff has been written in the core rulebooks!

While you are correct on your first statement - which in itself is one element that counters the bleakness and hopelessness - all the rest is at least partially incorrect. I can play this game too and can call up quotes to counter those assertions from all the way back to the first releases in First Edition. In fact I'll take this opportunity to dispell some of these references you've been making over the past few days as to how "Shadowrun used to be".

The original BBB says nothing on Lone Star's ability and Seattle partially counters your first statement with several comments throughout and its security zones - feel free to count the number of Z areas compared to A thru C. Later material like Corporate Security Handbook, Lone Star and New Seattle go further in detailing how corrupt or ineffectual security forces aren't. I can't help but quote a line from the Seattle description in the SR3/BBB (which goes back to 2nd Ed) since it such an obvious contradiction of your statement, "Lone Star does an adequate job of policing the streets under most circumstances and in most neighbourhoods." (p.314)

London, NAN1 & 2, Tir Na nOg, Corp Shadowfiles and even parts of NAGNA (all 1st Ed books) openly contradict your third statement about governments being completely under corps' thumbs (I can point to specific sections if you really want - the LPO and the government section in London, the several sections of the native governments in the NAN books, basically all the government and economics sections of TNO where corps don't even have extraterrioriality, Corp Shadowfiles indicates that while the megas basically rule the world they couldn't be bothered with the minuate and leave that to governments and in NAGNA the UCAS government is defined as having certain powers which could cramp a corporation's operations if it so wanted or was allowed to).

Note this isn't to say these governments aren't actually complete sell-outs and the corps couldn't have their way if they wanted to, but rather that the price the corps pay for having someone else (ie. governments) maintain the basic infrastructure of society is conceding them limited powers (to the point that they still pay taxes to said governments - a reference that also dates back to Corporate Shadowfiles). Plus the very fact that corporations vie for control of governments means no one corp's control cannot be absolute, and when they're at odds governments can play one side against another.

A good example of this state of affairs is how things are set up in Shadows of Europe - not only do the corps control (or squabble amongst themselves to control) the governments from behind the respective thrones (ie. AGS, Austria, Finland, Portugal, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, UNL, etc...) and the false legitimacy of democracy but now they've set up the NEEC which gives them both direct and indirect influence over all major trans-European decisions. In return governments get local powers, control of the civic infrastructure, military forces, taxation and the appearance of true power.
Skeptical Clown
I agree, governments are there, but they are mostly non-players in the Shadowrunner's scene. Governments are supposed to be struggling just to get the basic needs of a society met, which is why there are desolate urban wastelands like the Redmond and Puyallup barrens. Governments might hire shadowrunners, but not with the frequency of corps; for one thing, governments have their own dirty men who can handle most of the things governments are interested in, and for another, the government itself probably doesn't have the funds to regularly send shadowrunners out the way that corps do.

Examples like Tir Tairngire and Tir na Nog aren't really good examples at all though; they're bizarre magical things that are kind of interesting, but they're the exception, not the rule.

I don't want to get into silly quotation wars, but I'll offer this From SR2 as well:
"The typical law enforcement contractors in Shadowrun are stretched thin trying to keep the people they protect from going under in a wave of crime. Widespread corruption often leaves the clean cops powerless..."

I can't deny that there are contradictions in Shadowrun; it's a fact as well. 1st edition and Early 2nd edition shadowrun was plagued with inconsistency. If people are trying to iron out the kinks though, I think they've missed the ball.
BitBasher
QUOTE
I don't want to get into silly quotation wars, but I'll offer this From SR2 as well:
"The typical law enforcement contractors in Shadowrun are stretched thin trying to keep the people they protect from going under in a wave of crime. Widespread corruption often leaves the clean cops powerless..."
That was supplanted by the Lone Star Soucebook and hence no longer valid.
Skeptical Clown
I realize people worship the ground Findley walked on, but for that very reason, Lone Star has to be one of the least useful SR books I own. I just can't find much use for the LS described therein. If I recall correctly, Lone Star did pretty miserably, and I'd imagine that is why.

Anyway, we're discussing the historical context of the game, so SR2 quotations are perfectly applicable.
Synner
Agreed. Quote wars are useless because a lot of the original material is indeed inconsistent in parts. I was just pointing out that other interpretations of "what Shadowrun used to be" are possible depending on what grabbed your attention back then and what focus you put on it. For the longest time I played high power campaigns to please my players and got so it turned into a rut. The dark, ambiguous and (dare I say it?) gritty side of Shadowrun society was lost on these guys who just wanted to nail the next big critter and tackle a cyberzombie. My outlet became coming up with intrigue-heavy stories and writing stuff for my own benefit... this eventually led to stuff like the New Seattle Intelligencer and later to my freelancing proposals which came from my desire to influence SR in a certain direction - which is one of the reasons I'm disappointed that you and others don't think SoE was (another) step in the right direction (at least as regards the contents if not the format).

I also agree that governments do not play with shadowrunners as much as corps nor do they have the means or ability to keep things working without the corps support. The issue remains that a country like the UCAS still has huge military assets, is still a economic powerhouse and is still capable of slipping out of the corps' harness when it real needs.

Speaking for myself, and the people who worked on SoE (as an example), I think you'll find that we realized the futility of trying to iron out inconsistencies and instead chose to "creatively reinterpret" stuff. Looking at SoNA I believe this is the norm amongst the regular freelancers too.
Req
QUOTE (Skeptical Clown)
You can disagree, but that doesn't mean you're right. There've been plenty of instances in past Shadowrun products that indicate that Shadowrunners may have a certain amount of cult hero-worship attached to them. (Exhibit A: Shadowrun, 3rd edition.) I'm sure corporations are going to portray Shadowrunners as corrupt, but that doesn't mean that's how all the masses see them. As I said, this doesn't mean they're entirely benevolent; they're very human, even dare I say, gritty heroes. But you can't rely deny what's been there all along.

Don't forget simsense mega-hits like Sapphire: Shadowrunner for Hire. I don't think too many of us really think of contract killers as good people, per se, but how many of us played the Hitman games, or enjoyed watching The Professional, etc etc?

That's where I put Joe Q Public's perception of 'runners in my game - everyone knows they're out there, and everyone knows that they're probably not nice people, but all the same there's a fascination with them. Mr and Ms Wageslave in their shiny townhouse think how nice it would be to be free from the oppression and drudgery of their job for the corps, free to do whatever they want; they don't think about the downsides of shadowlife. They'd hate the real thing, but they idolize their Hollywood version of it.
Glyph
I think one of the things that I like most about Shadowrun is that it doesn't go too far with the grit. It's a world where the corporations are ultra-powerful but don't own everything yet, where there is widespread cynicism and corruption, but still lots of decent people doing the best that they can. You have Mothers of Metahumans and Tamir Grey. You do dangerous work for a living and have to do some things you're not proud of. Sometimes you are running panicked through an alley with security guards shooting at you. Sometimes you are desperately trying to suture up your arm while huddling behind a dumpster. Sometimes it seems like you can only choose the lesser of a number of evils, and sometimes it seems like nothing you do matters. But you might actually do a few things that make a real, and positive, difference in the world. Despite your gruesome adventures and relentless enemies, there is still a chance that you might survive to retire to some nice place where you have a lawn with real grass, or find some kind of semi-legitimate work that you don't have to sell your soul for.


Too much grit turns the players into bored killers who learn to make disposable characters and not trust or get too attached to any NPC. It turns the game into an angsty cartoon. Like others have said, better than I have, you need to have some hope, or grit doesn't mean anything. If the players know their characters can die, it heightens the tension and immerses them more deeply into the game. If they know their characters will die, then they will start treating Shadowrun like they would treat a game of Paranoia - which is not good, if that's not what you were aiming for. biggrin.gif
Skeptical Clown
I realize I've been playing up the angle of despair and hopelessness, but that's more of a general feel than a literal lack of any hope at all. Of course there are going to be individual decent people. And of course hope isn't dead in the literal sense; people feel hope. But I'm adamant in believing that what good element is left HAS to be an underdog; you can have activist groups, even extremists like eco-terrorists, that have a somewhat heroic bend to them, but having megacorps or governments or dragons that are too effectively benevolent really kills things. (One Dunkelzahn was enough; don't need another.) Because again, I can't stress enough, the game is about the runners. Other decent people should almost always be peers at best.
Wounded Ronin
I just read something that made me think a very effective way to show grit would be to describe what the player characters find should they visit a morgue.

From a mailing list I'm on:

QUOTE

"My Brush With Morbidity" by Erro

"I work as an embalming apprentice in a very high volume funeral home, so I see
things everyday that would probably qualify for tons of Brushes With Morbidity.
Though they'd be more like Bludgeons With Morbidity, considering our case load!

"I could talk about the 22 year old girl who OD'd on heroin and left a very
pretty corpse. Or the equally young and pretty girl who fell and hit her head,
and died from an allergic reaction to something the ER gave her to control brain
swelling...

"Or last week, when I picked up a body at the morgue of a large hospital, I
looked to my right while inside the cooler. There was a rack loaded with plastic
bins. I noticed small white bags in the bins. Based on their labels, there were
about 20 babies in that cooler. Knowing that and seeing it are two different
things, though. Small white bags just don't have that much impact unless you see
what's in them.

"Today (1/1/2006) kind of topped those.

"This afternoon I picked up a two year old boy from the M.E.'s office. It was my
first child case.

"His DC (death certificate) listed cause of death as 'blunt force trauma' and
the 'Homicide' box was xx'ed out. Quarter sized bruises covered his entire body
and it appeared that either his collar bone or neck had been fractured. He had
an apple sized fresh bruise on the right crux of his neck/shoulder area.

"It was hard to ignore the sight of the huge gaping Y-incision that dominated
his entire torso. When you looked at his little face, you were distracted by the
incision along the back and sides of his head where his calvarium was cut away
in a wedge during the cranial autopsey. You could see inside his skull, past the
freshly barbered hair, rudely sliced skin, inner musclelayer, and then his
brain. Usually the brain is included in the chest contents bag, but I guess he
was so small (about 20 lbs) that there wasn't room for extra.

"There was ink on his fingers and soles of his feet where he had his prints
taken. There was blood clotted at the back of his head, where it leaked out of
his barely attached calvarium and scalp flap. We will take care of this later,
when we embalm him. He will be lovingly washed and cleaned up. We will also sew
up all the incisions in his body and cover his bruises with makeup. By tomorrow
he will look peaceful, like he is only sleeping.

"I had wrapped the body bag in a sheet when I loaded him into a van. When I took
him out of the van I didn't get a cot for him. I carried him into the prep room
in my arms. I laid him on a dressing table and proceded to check him in to the
system so we could take care of him.

"He was two years and one month old.

"He had a birthday last month.

"He had Christmas last week.

"And then on New Year's Eve, someone beat him to death.

"Happy New Year."





In my opinion, if the runners visit a morgue and they find dead babies and/or child abuse victims, people who are dead from drug overdoses, people who are dead from BTLs, then that would really convey a sense of grit. I was really amazed when I read the above descriptions and I'll be that if a good GM was able to really bring something like that to life it could do something similar for the players.

Another interesting thing you could do is have the morgue also have people who were killed in gang beatings. Many years ago I saw an autopsy photo of someone who was killed by a large gang beatdown and his testicles had swollen up really huge due to protracted (and ultimately fatal) stomping. If I recall correctly they were the size of a grapefruit or something. If a GM described that in the morgue (once and only once, or else it would become comedy) I think it would also drive home the urban grit.
RunnerPaul
Thread Necromancy on a thread who's previous last post was two and a half years ago, using a post about a two year old in a morgue? How Apropos.
eidolon
WR, you find the most..."diverse" articles. wink.gif

Oh, and RP, any chance you could get the cat to expound on that? (I've never noticed your sig before, but knowing my cats' penchant for keyboarding, they might be able to help.)
RunnerPaul
QUOTE (eidolon @ Jan 2 2007, 10:02 PM)
Oh, and RP, any chance you could get the cat to expound on that?  (I've never noticed your sig before, but knowing my cats' penchant for keyboarding, they might be able to help.)

I just changed the sig a few days ago. The link to RPG.net's review of SR4 was getting kind of tired. I actually had to edit down what Zephyr (the cat in question) had originally typed in the post box to get it to fit in the sig window. The full question was:
QUOTE
""""'''/';;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;p[
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
oooooo??????????????////////

[edited from the original to add a carriage returns after the [ and before the oooooo? to avoid breaking the board's formatting.]

"Cat-like Typing Detected" indeed. I'd try to get Zephyr to expand on it, but I imagine she's off meeting her fixer or something, because she's nowhere to be found.

Knew I was in trouble when we first got her and her sister when they were kittens, First time we left them alone in the house by themselves, we came home to find that they'd left the help window to Windows XP open on my girlfriend's machine. They were eager to learn.
SL James
There used to be a time when people posted details like that on Shadowland, five, ten years ago.

Then most of the remaining users collectively grew up about four-five years ago and realized it was just porn by another name.

BitBasher's Jul 29, 2004 post is spot-on. It means more to be rough and survive in a rough world. It's in how the occasional reference to how running the Arc has left a PC mentally scarred, and yet he still soldiers on and does his job, kills people, faces death, and then goes home to make strawberry pancakes for his boy in the morning.
Fix-it
If you guys REALLY wanna see grit, there's really only one place to go.

Africa
SL James
Lots of sandpaper in Africa, eh?
nezumi
QUOTE (RunnerPaul)
QUOTE
""""'''/';;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;p[
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
oooooo??????????????////////

[edited from the original to add a carriage returns after the [ and before the oooooo? to avoid breaking the board's formatting.]

"Cat-like Typing Detected" indeed. I'd try to get Zephyr to expand on it, but I imagine she's off meeting her fixer or something, because she's nowhere to be found.

My wife who is currently caring for our own two cats reports the answer as:

ishfdfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff,

(Although apparently the answer was penned by my four month old, but he spends enough time conversing with the cats that he may have reason to know).
Wounded Ronin
I suppose there's grit in your litterbox?
hyzmarca
In D&D, valiant Paladins will slaughter entire tribes of orcs just because they are orcs. Grit is PCs doing the same thing in Shadowrun.

If your PCs aren't the good guys and they aren't the bad guys, that's grit. The NPCs doesn't matter one bit.

If your PCs are the good guys and they come up against evil child abusers, that itsn't gritty. That's purely back and white. Good vs Evil. If your PCs are the evil child abusers with no redeeming qualities, the same thing is true. Evil vs Good. When your PCs become moral or immoral paragons the other guys are automatically of the opposite moral alignment, even when they are not because that's just the way it is. Anyone who stands against a good guy is a bad guy, even if he is just a comic relief bad guy. Anyone who stands against a bad guy is a good guy, even if he was a bad guy in the last scene.

The grit in Shadowrun comes from the fact that the PCs are people with lives and the NPCs are people with lives and no one is really disposable. When you kill the security guard you are killing a parant, a child, a sibling, a friend, someone who will be missed. When the security guard kills you the same thing is true. There is no right or wrong, there are just different degrees of screwed.
Wounded Ronin
Hmm. With that description I suppose you could argue that having gel rounds be a viable combat option because they're almost as effective as lethal ammo is a significant de-gritifier. "I didn't kill Uncle Bubba, I just gave him a D stun!"
emo samurai
OH yeah. That's definitely degritified.

Oh, oh, oh, and to add to the grit, have all the sources of hope be false. All the art serves the powers that be, and all the religions are insincere and evil.
Moirdryd
The note of Riggers Wealth ect.....

You may have to come form the Uk to understand this, But i do know a number of `Boy racers` who have spent multi thousands of £ stirling upon their cars with paint jobs, body jobs, mods, speaker systems, cd player systems and racks, absorbers, more mods, changing things form year to year. Upgrading to newer alloys, buying a new vehicle to have some variety ect.

Most of these young lads still live at home with family 9which is true for alot of us in the Uk these days, we just dont have the hundred thousand + for a house available) Or are leaving in bedsit or cheap flats or other rented or council housing.

I can readily believe the amount i see on a Rigger's sheet vs the lifestyle the may have (and I do note alot of the Riggers my group used to present me actually had at least a low lifestyle, to make the full garage avaiable for all their toys and their heavy tools and machinery ect. You have to keep the Helo somewhere too you know...)
SL James
QUOTE (Moirdryd)
The note of Riggers Wealth ect.....

You may have to come form the Uk to understand this, But i do know a number of `Boy racers` who have spent multi thousands of £ stirling upon their cars with paint jobs, body jobs, mods, speaker systems, cd player systems and racks, absorbers, more mods, changing things form year to year. Upgrading to newer alloys, buying a new vehicle to have some variety ect.

Most of these young lads still live at home with family 9which is true for alot of us in the Uk these days, we just dont have the hundred thousand + for a house available) Or are leaving in bedsit or cheap flats or other rented or council housing.

I can readily believe the amount i see on a Rigger's sheet vs the lifestyle the may have (and I do note alot of the Riggers my group used to present me actually had at least a low lifestyle, to make the full garage avaiable for all their toys and their heavy tools and machinery ect. You have to keep the Helo somewhere too you know...)

Nope. None of those people live here.
tisoz
QUOTE (SL James)
QUOTE (Moirdryd @ Jan 6 2007, 08:34 PM)
The note of Riggers Wealth ect.....

You may have to come form the Uk to understand this, But i do know a number of `Boy racers` who have spent multi thousands of £ stirling upon their cars with paint jobs, body jobs, mods, speaker systems, cd player systems and racks, absorbers, more mods, changing things form year to year. Upgrading to newer alloys, buying a new vehicle to have some variety ect.

Most of these young lads still live at home with family 9which is true for alot of us in the Uk these days, we just dont have the hundred thousand +  for a house available) Or are leaving in bedsit or cheap flats or other rented or council housing.

I can readily believe the amount i see on a Rigger's sheet vs the lifestyle the may have (and I do note alot of the Riggers my group used to present me actually had at least a low lifestyle, to make the full garage avaiable for all their toys and their heavy tools and machinery ect. You have to keep the Helo somewhere too you know...)

Nope. None of those people live here.

I don't know...

On eBay, I sometimes see nice vehicles parked in front of houses worth not much more than the car.
mfb
you must be at least this tall to catch sarcasm from SL James!
tisoz
D'oh!

One of my favorite things as an adolescent was pulling up next to one of those guys who happened to be going shirtless, complimenting their car or a part of it, letting them accept the compliment, then remark that it was too bad they spent so much on it or they could have afforded a shirt. (I even got pulled over by some shirtless, redneck cops one night. Talk about undercover.)
Glyph
QUOTE (emo samurai)
OH yeah. That's definitely degritified.

Oh, oh, oh, and to add to the grit, have all the sources of hope be false. All the art serves the powers that be, and all the religions are insincere and evil.

But that's just making things black and white again. Grit is when you think you know who the good guys and the bad guys are, then it gets turned upside down. Like maybe you "rescue" your terminally ill uncle from the clutches of a cult that seems to be using the promise of a miracle cure to bilk him of his money. Only you find out, too late, that the cult leader is a delusional but well-intentioned magical oddity who really is capable of miraculous cures... and you just killed him.
hyzmarca
If you turn things upside down then you still have good guys and bad guys, they are just not clearly defined. There is still a correct choice it is just that that choice is obfuscated.

Grit comes when there is no objectively correct choice and no objectively moral choice. Grit is being trapped in a room with a serial killer, his very loving family, and the angry families of his victims and knowing that no matter what you do you are going to be causing undue pain and suffering, that every choice you can possibly make is wrong in its own way.

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