Tried to list them in order of magnitude, well, atleast as I see them. Ok, so it's a game of criminals, but still...

The groups I've played with have more or less consisted of two types of PCs:
1) the ones who'll do anything just because it's possible, including killing thousands.
2) the other ones, who feels it's a bit strong to doublecross an employer etc.

How are your games? Does your friends cling to their moral values or do they enjoy total freedom of social restraint?

Well, it depends on the game we're playing. For example, we had one game where we played paranormal critter hunters. The total of dead human/metahuman opponents in that entire campaign equalled about three...and we dealt with MUCH more. It's just our PC's didn't like to kill others. Hell, I rememeber Aries, my troll hunter, eventually had to kill an opponent with his rifle in self/party defense(the opponent was starting to heave grenades at party.) If I were to play him in a later campaign..he'd STILL feel bad about it...it was the first...and as far as he's concerned...the last time he'll ever kill anybody.


But i have played assassins before, I've played the 'middle ground' folks(like the middle option...will kill if things go down badly but won't instigate it), and the whole lot. It depends. And of course, things that happen in a campaign can test people...if Aries hadn't taken that shot that offed the merc, he may have seriously hurt/killed the party, and himself.(he had an FN-HAR as well as the grenades.)

The current character i'm still building, Skald, has a background that involved some pretty brutal attackings/killings...but he tries to put a lid on it now, unless push really comes to shove, he tries nonlethal at first, but should that fail, he does try to preserve himself and his teammates. And there are certain types of people that will raise his violence levels a bit higher than others.


For the most part, though, our games don't have mindless blasting of nuns and orphanages.

I think the big gap is between 'shoot guards when they aren't expecting it' and 'shoot people who look at you funny'.

My group had a split when the enemy came under a white flag, saying one of their team mates was being held hostage. Half wanted to geek the baddies anyway, half didn't. But I think that's right around the line where good runners begin to ask questions.

Are you willing to lose hostages?
Do you obey the rules of war (no shooting surrendered troops, no shooting medics, nothing especially cruel, etc.)
Do they torture?
Do they fight anyone who can't fight back (not to be confused with surprising someone who can fight back)?

Whoosh -- now there's a wide-ranging question! Would I automatically be considered to be playing absolutely immoral PCs if I said that my answers to nearly all your options depended on the situation? and thus that I can't answer the question as it stands?

But I'll also link in Kagetenshi's thread, since it contains so much discussion directly relevant to the current one.

One of the group is seriously into honour and so on. Very moral.

One of the group has shot his way through a mob, and then shot a helocopter down onto it. Long story. He couldn't afford to get captured by the people chasing him -- but he suffered no pangs of conscience for it. But he can't stand leaving someone behind. If you're under his protection (that includes friends with him) then he's exceedingly moral, up to a point, usually defined by stupidity. 'You want me to fight a toxic great dragon?' At that point.. well.. there will be a fight... but it won't be the one wanted. Although he probably would fight a toxic non-great. (What can I say, it's a very high powered campaign)

The last of the group is very moral -- but obeys an entirely different moral code. Dualistic Totem that he follows completely, Hunter/Healer. Has no problems killing -- everything dies eventually. Doesn't like senseless slaughters of large numbers though -- what's the point? Doesn't mind scaring people half to death. (Hey, he's a shaman of Darkness -- darkness is scary to some people). More than likely to heal people after fights too, for no reason other than he can though. Especially children, but generally, anyone who wasn't trying to kill him.

Edit: Rereading the pole.. what happens when you can't lie without flinching, but you can blow up crowds of people? (He's not a good liar..)

Already bringing up some good points. Look at some Toxic Shamans. The one kind...Avenger i think it was called...thinks of humanity as a bunch of parasites that do nothing but kill the planet. So, they want them dead, being ready to die themselves so the planet can heal. They protect nature...but kill humans in the process. They aren't moral by normal society standards...but they think what they're doing is right. 'The planet was here first, what right do we have to destroy it'..and they do have some merit in their argument...however their methods are a bit extreme.

And take some other people...a runner might have no problem gunning down a room ful of people, but sustain a deadly wound trying to get a kitten from out the way of a speeding truck.

Or like mentioned...be fiercely loyal to their friends to the point of they'd rather kill themselves than betray them...but anyone they don't know? Tough, bang-bang.

Thinking more about it, it is kind of difficult to answer. Again, it all depends on the situation that arises.

Erm... I did point out that he'd shoot the friend instead of the great dragon... but hey, he's got a reason to live. A rather short (5', but charisma 9) one.

Let me put it this way: our team recently acquired a chemical weapon of sufficient size and apparent potency to, by all accounts, render lifeless several city blocks at a minimum. We did not have to acquire this weapon, and it cost us money to do so. We made the specific choice to acquire it, knowing that we would likely make the choice to use it at some point in the not-too-distant future, probably on a target with bystanders (as most targets do have them hanging around. Annoying, really).

I guess what I'm saying is if that makes me wrong, I don't want to be right.

~J

My current character definitely isn't a big fan of indiscriminate killing.

Anyone who - as far as he's concerned - is willingly "playing the game" like mercenaries, violent gang members, rival runners, company men or security types whose primary responsibility is armed response he'll kill without a second thought if the run calls for it, but still generally prefers not to.
He only really gets vicious if someone threatens a friend or a family member - a couple of sessions ago a guy who tried to hold the group rigger hostage got shoved face-first into a burning thermite charge.

He'll go out of his way to avoid killing anyone else, and in fact might decide not to do something if it'd require him to use lethal force against random bystanders - and he'd absolutely draw a line at any sort of violence involving children.

Morals themselves are not situational. Either something is right or it is wrong. There are times when a person is forced to do a wrong thing in order to survive, it doesn't make it right it just makes it forgivable. that being said I have played the full gamut of moral and immoral characters.

Samson: Troll Physical Adept and devout Christian. He performs Shadowruns becuase that is the only work he can get. He tithes all the money and gear he earns. Has not learned killing hands. Has killed, several times, but has gone through incredible bouts of guilt becuase of it. Mostly he uses normal hand to hand, SMG's loaded with Capsule-PepperPunch/Hyper rounds. His last kill was a bandersnatch in hand to hand and he feels guilty even for that.

QuickDraw: Human StreetSamurai, more of his body is metal than original, but this guy doesn't show it. he's funny, even tempered, and terribly charismatic (an 8 ). Has a real sense of honor, will do anything for a friend or acquaintance, but if you cross him you'd be better off blowing your own head off. he has no problem shooting a guard in the back. He wouldn't choose to endanger a crowd, but sometimes those are the breaks.

Lorthazar: Elf Magician Way adept. As dark as they come, even toxic shamans have more endearing qualities than him. He'll capture you, take your form, hump your wife, kill your kids, get it on video and make you watch as he vivesects you. That is if he decides to be nice. He, of course, has very few friends, but to them he is a very sweet person. Everyone else, he'd kill as soon as look at.

You just know Seiler's going to throw some child Good Merges at us.

Regarding the chemweapon, you've got a point. On the other hand, I think we're going to be seeing a great deal fewer bystanders very soon (I wonder if the stuff works on bugs?).

GM: "You see an innocent young woman being attacked by unarmed, low-life gangers."

PC looks at his character sheet (plays a huge Troll with OMG unarmed skills) "Gee. I forgot take the skill 'Nobility Factor'. Where's the nearest pub so I can get drunk?"

Frag the woman, the gangers will know all the good places.

~J

hm. "moral", no. my main character once dumped 500 doses of gamma-anthrax in the water supply of a corporate military outpost. he has, on one or two occasions, shot kids without thinking about it (or, at least, not thinking about it at the time), but those were special occasions--you know, arco runs, shedim invasion, 30th birthday, that sort of thing.

he is, on the other hand, very ethical. when contracted for an assignment, he will complete that assignment to the best of his abilities. in relation to the afore-mentioned shedim invasion, he's developed a substantial complex over the fact that he "failed" his mission there--one of the people he was supposed to be guarding voluntarily defected to the bad guys' side, which my character counts as a failure despite the fact that he led the other people through an invasion of thousands of shedim with no casualties among the principles and only one casualty among the runners (the guy lost a banishing contest against a force 12 shedim with 9 SE; he survived, but as i recall, he lost a point of magic). on the other hand, he got over the fact that he had to mow down some shedim-posessed kids with a machine gun relatively quickly.

as for innocent bystanders, if killing them would be an intelligent means of achieving an objective, he'd probably do it. depends on the situation.

My current group WOULD have been a 'throw a hand grenade into a crowd of innocent bystanders', because they DID.

However last session they raised the bar by firing explosive rockets in an office block, in a confined space, which consequently collapsed the building.

How could they do worse? Thanks to this poll I think I know.

I'm probably strange.

My characters generally will try not to kill people unless that's either the point of the mission, or they're using lethal force themselves.

Collateral damage is bad. He believes in what can best be called 'low-impact' shadowrunning; Unless it's supposed to be destroyed, try to avoid destroying it. Unless they're supposed to have permanent wounds or be dead, try to limit how much the target of your fire is wounded. And using stuff that would knock down a city block when you need only destroy one building is just the sign of an amateur. (The classic Just War principle of proportionality.)

At the same time, he won't kill kids. Adults are assumed to know what they're getting into. Kids, not quite.

If he must expose a kid to violence, he tries to use stuff like Laes (carefully dosed) to erase the memory from the kid's mind.

Why all the caveats and conditions?

I'm not sure, actually. My characters use violence with a slight degree of guilt. They won't hesitate, but they don't like it. It's an unpleasant reality.

The way they see it, violence is something you try to avoid unless it's what you're paid to do. Unfortunately, that is what is demanded sometimes. So, when you are paid to use violence or are forced to in accomplishing another task, you limit its application. *When* you are violent, don't hold your punches, but try to avoid throwing the punch in the first place and see if you can use distraction before disabling, or disabling attacks before deadly attacks.

I'm stuck. My PCs were never what I would thinkof as moral people. They were on the other hand very pragmatic. Anything that got in the way of the All Mighty Profit was a bad thing. This included, but was not limited to, using bullets, using their own cars, delays that jeopordized the run, and so on. If they had time to kill they stole anythig that wasn't nailed down. Anything that did not cause a large enough time delay was by definition not nailed down. They never wanted to shoot first, but were always willing to use lethal force if they thought it was the most efficient route. Fun people but I'm not sure if being motivated by the almighty nuyen can be considered moral.

My current PC (Elf pistoladept with reflexes through the roof) is part of a campaign to take over the Redmond Barrens, eliminating or subjugating the gangs, etc. (Why? Our GM is odd; I really don't know.) He's pretty moral-he avoids killing and likes stealth better than the old bang-bang; despite the fact that he's about as invisible as an elephant-but he's prone to making people very dead as soon as they start shooting at him. (A Pistols skill of 11, a heavy pistol, and a reaction of 16 will result in this quite often.)

well I'll tell you most of the characters in our games are not the most moral of people , and a good bunch of us are either bad guys if not down right evil . couple of examples ; while I was GMing one of my players has his Character grab an innocent bystander and use her as a human shield against some very mad corp goons , or another time in a vehicular battle he decided the enemy car that was chasing him was too armored , but the civilian car in front of the enemy car was a prime target , epecially since it would make a much better road block then cover so he quickly dispatches the driver and forces the pursuer to make a crash test ... these are just some of the things just Blitzen has done , not including the times he has sold hostages to gangers/organ leggers either as sex slaves or spare parts


and as for Typhon ... yeah he has taken out some very busy corporate buildings with explosives ... corporate resort building ... the kind exec's take their families to .... during a busy holiday season ...

This gives me an idea for a gun adept who's also a pasifist. (Ala Vash the human typhoon)

i don't think SR supports the kind of reaction time you'd need to shoot an oncoming bullet out of the air--much less do so with a quickdraw.

but, yeah, the basic concept of a total pacifist gunslinger can be... well, hard as hell to play.

After seeing the options presented in this poll, I guess my players aren't too bad.

They shoot to kill when enemy guards start doing the same, but aren't nearly as ruthless as the first few options. A few years ago I made a motion to ban amoral, killing machine type characters from my table. They typically ruin the game for the majority who prefer to play human beings with goals and aspirations...

SR13

I take 5, 6 and 7

The nicest will only kill in the defence of himself or others but prefers non lethal methods.

The worst is a rigger that will happily open up on security personnel from a camouflaged drone at long range mounting grenades or heavy weapons. The spotted dragon (a damnation mounting a great dragon ATGM) is withheld not because of any moral imperative but because it costs 5000 nuyen to reload.

There are several points in between.

Edward

I demolished entire blocks as seeing the post about my last game from my players. I think that I would not be that intense when playing a character though.

Veracusse

I went with "kill guards without warning" as my official poll selection, but only because the question very specifically said "what will your character do without flinching."

My main character's done quite a bit worse -- those people MFB and spiked the water supply of (with Gamma Anthrax)? First we blew them up with big fat FAE's, specifically targeting their command and medical facilities. With the press of a single button, I beleive our official body count was put at about 300.

There's been times my character's killed innocent bystander types, too, quite knowingly. One was in Hong Kong, when a pair of tourists made eye contact and tried to help a member of our group while we were in the middle of a very dangerous, very bold, very broad-daylight job. Without hesitating, my sammie just gave 'em both one to the head -- couldn't risk them IDing us later, couldn't leave them both as one more loose end apiece, one more hint they could give people about who we were and how to find us (thanks a lot, DE).

In both those cases, though, I wouldn't call it "without flinching." We worked out the FAE/Gamma Anthrax plan because there was no other way for us to get the job done -- damn those walls -- and I popped the civilians because he had to sever a link in the evidence chain, and it's bothered him (from time to time) since then. He'd probably do the same thing, given the chance to go back through either situation, but it's not as easy as killing a guard without warning.

That?

A shot to the back of the head from concealment? That's just S.O.P. There's no good reason to let the bastards know you're coming.

Actually I just recalled we once utterly destroyed an Aztec tiocali although it was not planed.

The teem went in and disabled some monitoring and control systems on the nuclear reactor in bottom, later my new character (the security rigger, having decided to defect from aztechnology because they wanted to vivisect his daughter) set a sequence of events in the reactor that would cause it to blow in an hour if not stoped, as far as he new only monstering systems had been damaged so within 30min the techs could have stoped it, this would give time to escape as the remaining techs where one of the few remaining security teams capable of threatening the runners. What he didn’t know (and still doesn’t know) is that damage to the control system made reapers imposable. He believes the security/emergency team decided to chace him rather than save everybody in the teokali and thus feels very little guilt.

Edward.

To answer the poll I first need to know where to place a team whose discusions including an ambush plan of "find random squeegie kids, have the mage mass control them, and strap remote detonated C4 vests to them, then when the mark's limo stops at the red light....."

Fortunately that plan did not gain a full majority approval. On the other hand the Car-battoir plan did.....

I have a hard time picking "Wipe out popultaion of entire nations/continents" because [fortunately] the team has never found itself in a position where that is a feasible option.

I'm not going to get into a discussion about the difference between moral/morality/ethics, as english is not my native language and I don't have a dictionary around.

My wording of the question could have been better. I understand people can follow moral codes that let them do things other find immoral, but I was trying to get a feel for another thing: most players will (hopefully) feel it's wrong to steal things or kill people irl. But the players characters? Do people revel in the possibillities that a fictional world gives them, when we after all play criminals and can do things we otherwise hardly even consider without feeling guilt for the rest of ones life?

Or something like that I've enjoyed reading the comments. I think my players are a tad more prone to random violence then the average here anyway.

I was pleased to see a debate between my players over whether killing two lone star guards at an airport was an acceptable course of action. The one maintained stoutly that since they were "police" it was some how more immoral than the gunning down of the Renraku Security people who were in the vehicle they were looking to ambush. But the other player maintained that they were both corporate security, so there was NO moral difference.

Generally speaking my players (or their characters rather) are not immoral as amoral. They have a tendency to act out of convinenece rather than hard moral feeling. Its the rare character who will risk death, rather than do something which might bother Jimminy Cricket. Which I guess is rather like real life in a way. the truth is people DO tend to forget their morals in exchange for success, particularly when coming out of places were casual violence is the order of the day.

I asked one of them about his morals once, and he said,
"hell we're shadowrunners, you want heroes, play D&D"

<chuckle>

I've seen plenty of ubertorture in SR games.

I never said he was advocating evil for evil's sake. But it's a fairly common occurence for people during their first "non heroic" game -- it's a knee jerk reaction a lot of players seem to get as soon as they're not playing the shining white good guys. I've seen it or heard about it more often in Cyberpunk and Shadowrun games than any other, and all I can figure is it's because (a) it uses "real world" guns and explosives and whatnot (some sort of fantastic desire to act out behavior unacceptable to society in a game world more like that real-life society), and (b) CP:2020 and SR both completely lack any sort of built-in character specific moral compass /alignment straightjacket/whatever, so people think they've got free reign to do stupid shit.

So you get lots of stories about football-sized lumps of C12 getting thrown at people, machineguns being used where handguns would suffice, and general antisocial mayhem often replacing any sort of character-driven morality. All of a sudden players find themselves in a game where they can do something ("A 'paladin' in this game is a jack-booted facist elf-racist thug? Sweet!"), so they do it.

And, often, the argument for that sort of action will be something like "we're criminals, not heroes." People like to flex their freedom from an alignment-based system by doing nonsensically destructive stuff -- and the irony of that, to me, is that by celebrating freedom from a restrictive D&D alignment (instead of acting like a real human being), they're just perfectly lining themselves up with a shallow/cheap/easy/stupid D&D alignment (Chaotic Evil).

My comment wasn't so much directly responding to his as directly relating to it.