R 2!

Then I recommend you check in with more gamers.

Shadowrun is geared towards a 'standard' set of games. Games involving criminals in a cyberpunk world. You really can't deny it (at least not if you've read the rulebooks). The literature is all about criminals in a cyberpunk world. The rules all apply to criminals in a cyberpunk world. The history is written from the viewpoint of... Well, you get the idea. That's what the game is written to support. In fact, I daresay, that's the ONLY situation the game is really written to support (it can support other situations, but that wasn't its intent).

The same can be said of WoD and D&D. I suppose you can't really say that of GURPS, but that's really an exception because it was made not to have a 'standard game'.

I suspect you say that term doesn't exist to you not because you really don't understand it, but because you wish you were above that, having achieved gaming nirvana.

As I said before, many of us (I daresay, the vast majority of the people who post here) have played the sort of situations you describe, or are familiar enough to know if they like it or not. You're simply not telling us anything new. I don't encourage my PCs to rape, but they find themselves in morally unclear situations. However, I still enforce the rules as written. Why? Because I enjoy it, and so do my players. I've run games (and soon will run again) a freeform game. Why? Because that's what my players want. They know the options, and they know what they like, so that's really all there is to it. It's not that they don't understand your gaming mecca, they simply don't see it as all that.

No, not really.

Hard is writing a convincing story of a PC literally walking away from his boyfriend forever. Porn--be it sexual or some other sort of fetishism (e.g., technological fetishism of any Tom Clancy novel)--is easy to write because there is no requirement (or in many cases, attempt) to delve beyond the superficial. Indeed, it's preferrable not to delve beyond the superficial for the author and reader. Critias is really good at writing both. I can't do descriptions very well. But the more I think about, the more your style seems to emphasize the fetishism over the substance. Just because you describe actions doesn't mean it's actually more substantive than when I describe actions after rolling the dice like the dice and rules-whore I am.

Yeah, that's it. Even your description of your kiddie campaign is lacking. It's so... WOD. The thing is, the rules and the stats and the dice play such an intrinsic role in the development of characters (remember, I'm the person who values game mechanics above all else. I think most of the SR setting sucks) that by ignoring the rules it's artificially distorting actual RPG character development. If you don't WIN, and by win I mean succeed in your PC's personal and professional objectives, and don't engage in activity to earn karma other than through storyteller fiat, you're hindering your character's developments. Diceless play is no good when you want to do something extraordinary and have to take a chance, or do occassionally fail in a task your PC should be capable in.

You're sacrificing it all for the fetish of graphic descriptions of your characters' actions and angst without actually writing anything of substance.

Yes, quite a bit actually. Writing the actions is the same, it's all just superficial fetishism of guns, gore, or facile narrative. Actually putting substance to the actions, though, that can vary tremendously.

I don't even understand what you're getting at here.

tell it straight instead that you have a such despice(?) towards the whole storytelling genre. Youre saying sthat stats is almost the only thing in character development. What about insight? What about empathy? what about remorse? To you character development is all about the stats, you're telling it straight. You're saying that that's the only thing that matters. numbers on a piece of paper. And that you can't earn Karma in discovering something new. It is so far from your reality that you can't even think out of the box.

I don't think I said that diceless play is the only way to play. I don't think I even played a RPG where we didn't use dice, we just used it sparely. to 'us' (i mean our groups) it's not all about the action, it's not all about the doing all the 'cool' stuff. I don't need to know that my firearm's skill is 6. I need to know that I'm a crack shot and would probably pull off killing most people on this planet.



What I don't understand is why everyone is so defenisive 'still'. I know I came off at the beginning. but it seems 'all' you guys feel attacked and are very uneasy that there is even people that want to play the way I want to play. Excuse me for saying so but I see similaries in homophobia. Just by knowing the guy beside you is homosexual makes yoy uneasy even though he wouldn't want to bang you anyway.

It's very hard to keep a dialogue with defensive people

It's on page 3 of the New World of Angst ™ manual.

He's saying that writing over the top, superficial nonsense is easy. Even Tom Clancy can do it. Whether that superficial nonsense is (1) Logjammin', the story of the buff electrician and the two scantily clad roommates down on their luck (obvious joke: successfully resisted!); (2) Rainbow Six, the story of a bunch of carboard cutouts armed with fake guns and fake facts who fight fake enemies; (3) or your heroes, raping and strangling 12 year old kids, it doesn't matter.

Without depth, without substance, without intelligence, all your attempts at horrifying me with the worst stuff you can come up with will be nothing more than palid attempts at Shock and Awe. And it doesn't work. The further you reach for the inhuman, the more angst you try and inject into your narrative, the better your writing has to be to support it; without substance, without intelligence, with only the superficial, it is nothing but pretentious nonsense.

you 'all' seem to think that all of the 'actions' (or inactions) i described in my first post were to be used. they were just examples, like pick and choose one.

You're talking about soldiers, you are still talking about shadowrunner characters, like die hard core battlehardenes characters. How the fuck did they get there? Not all of them are militrary trained, where did it all start, they we're just borned, turned 18 and became unstoppable killing machines.

are you seriously questioning my english abilities? oh man that's low.

Are you a multilanguage prodigy?

are we even talking about the same thing? I'm not talking about playing angst and morbid destruction. I'm talking about learning about the human psyche.

As mentioned in another thread, my current job as a salon booking coordinator is not paying nearly well enough. pm to discuss rates. Prices start a 10/h and no laughing at my current job.

Oh baby. I think my irony meter just exploded in my pants.

No, you're not. There is learning, there is no exploration of the depths of the human condition, there is no insight into the line between human in inhuman in what you are talking about. What you are talking about is pornography— and, ok, it's not pornography of sex, but it's about as mindless. You can string together all the inhuman acts you like; without any of the aforementioned depth, it's sterile, facile, self indulgent, and entirely meaningless.

hence the questions about seriousness.

I won't laugh at it, but i'm not sure how good that is going to look on a resume sent applying for a wetwork job.

An excellent reason to not keep your irony meter in your pants. I keep mine at home in a jar on the shelf. Once you are married for a few years you stop seeing a need to carry it around with you.

Dude, Seek help. You are one sick bastard to come up with that scenario. Please don't EVER post any kind of horribly sick scene here again. DSF is my bastion of sanity in this world, I don't need some psycho Whitewolf refugee who thinks hes a vampire saying that kind of crap here.

Really, seek help. You need it. This just made me sick to my stomach.

No. If I was going to insult you, I'd make it pretty clear I was doing so. But I didn't. I was talking to Arethusa.

Well, that's the whole point of character creation. Depending on what skillset and stats you pick, you can start out playing a hardened ex-Special Forces soldier turned street mercenary. So, yes, your starting PC can be a hardened killing machine, effectively tabula rasa.

Oh, yeah. Some light "direct action" may be required. Because sometimes the substance of what I post has to be beaten into people.

A moment of silence, please.

*Begins to sing "Danny Boy"* as they carry off the Irony meter.

This thread like other annoying things, such as pop music, is growing on me the more I drink.

There's the spirit!

I just spewed rum and coke all over my keyboard *shakes and fist and falls over*.

That's what you get for drinking rum and coke. God is giving you a sign: Drink more clear spirits.

a little queezy there?

You should read some Chuch Palahniuk novels (the man behind Fight Club) he has a short novel how he explains very graphical about a guy (true story) masturbates at the bottom at the pool where the intake for the water cleaning pup is, he put's his little anus just over hole and starts to jerk it. after a while when he needs air he starts to go for the surface only to be chased by a redbrownish snake. turns out that the pump has sucked his intestines right out and turned them insideout.

the novels is right here http://www.seizureandy.com/stuff/guts.html

I'm back, have no fear -.^
it's 11 am here now. leaving for a photoshoot momentarily

Amusing, but irrelevant.

Let me add that going back to my point, the point is lost in the overuse of graphical descriptions to the detriment of actual substantive character development. Explore all you want about your PC, sure. But the rules help one do that more easily and more effectively within the context of the entire game system than simply storytelling without any frame of reference. Otherwise, it's just using SR as a setting devoid of considerable aspects that make it a unique environment to develop a PC.

I think a lot of rollplaying has contributed more to the development of my PCs than just telling stories for the sake of telling stories. Be it a contest of wills, or a PC and group of NPCs staring each other down through just their hearing enhancements penetrating the door separating five armed men, or blowing a stealth roll so badly people three floors up hear you, but later just barely winning a Surprise Test against a NPC with a delayed action by 1 success to drop him at such a short distance that their assault rifle barrels could have touched.

So, really, why the fuck bring this up? I'm curious. What's it have to do, really, with anything you've said? Or are you just trying to show how HARD CORE you are?

Why would you "play out" a brutal rape/murder/pedophilia act? What place has it got in a game? What sort of GM, player, and player group would have any sort of desire to sit through that? What sort of game are you playing in, and why? What do you get out of it? Do you wonder what that means about you?

And yes, there's a huge difference (both legal and moral/ethical) between the two examples you've given, even in real life (much less the Shadowrunner-riddled streets of the 2060's). A security guard is just doing their job; so is a Shadowrunner. If the security guard is between the 'runner and the 'runner's objective, the security guard gets moved aside or run over (or, at least, that's a common 'runner and PC mentality about it). It's the security guard's fault, in a way, because they're between the 'runner and his food (so to speak). The security guard is armed. The security guard is armored. The security guard is, at least in some fashion, trained to, capable of, and willing to fight back. The security guard's job is to stop/hurt/kill your character. Your character is just doing unto others first. It's something that can very naturally occur during the execution of a standard Shadowrun -- fights happen, and someone ends up dead when/if that fight involves gunplay. Combat is a staple of RPGs, in the same way it's a staple of action movies. Shit happens, and you want to be the guy breathing when it's all over.

The double rape/murder/pedophilia commited on a pair of twelve year olds? That has no place in a Shadowrun game, except as something mentioned in passing (and not looked at with too much detail) as something a really psycho batshit piece of crap NPC does (right before the PCs get hired to kill him, or something). That's not something that needs to be "played out" in a game. It's not something a PC should do. It's not something a GM should encourage by offering to run it. It's not something a group of friends sitting at a game table should take part in. It's cruelty for cruelty's sake, adds nothing to a game, and speaks volumes about the psyche and morality of anyone who'd want to "play" it. Even glossed over and not looked into in detail, an act like that should only be handled with a group of gamers who understand there's nothing fun or funny about it, a group that's perhaps worked it's way slowly towards such adult issues in the past, and a group that you're certain -- OOC, here, I don't give two tugs about your characters, just players -- will handle a situation like that the right way. There's no call for it, and the risks of trying to introduce shit like that to a game, in my opinion, far outweigh any sort of benefit you think it can bring to a gaming table.

There's a difference between Shadowrun being dark in order to add to the overall feel of the game, and darkness/depravity for darkness/depravity's sake. Having the characters attack the Yakuza in retaliation for a string of white-slave trades (that are mentioned in passing, rather than having a bunch of glossy eight by tens you give to your players over pizza and Mt Dew) can have a place in the game; it lets you know the depravity is out there, it leaves it to each player to think about on their own (if they want to), and it grants the charactes a sense of moral high ground before they start wacking people. It shows them that there might be a difference between being a criminal and being evil, it shows that Shadowrun isn't always a nice place to live, and then it moves on to traditional Shadowrun game play without trying to steal the limelight and show how adult and edgy you are.

You've got something wrong with you, something not cool wrong with you, to offer up "playing out" a double rape/homicide on a pair of children as any sort of viable or valid gaming experience. Shadow called you on it. As some sort of childish way to get back at him (I guess?) you felt like describing in detail a morbid, apparently pretty stupid, shock-tastic piece of literature. You're like a twelve year old that wears all black and cusses for no reason. Shock-jock. You're acting like the stereotypical LARPer loser, who gets his jollies "scaring the norms" because nothing else he ever does with his sub-par life gains him any attention or recognition.

You, both with your "twin twelve year olds" and your "I'm going to ramble about this gratuitously edgy violent/sexual/mature book for no real reason, to show how cool I am" example, are obviously in the camp that favors being adult for being adult's sake. In addition, you are smug about it, thinking that being adult for adult's sake is better than any other style of gameplay, any other game, any other gamer. You think you're right. You think you're hip. You think you're cool, and we're all kids (regardless of real age, maturity, gaming experience, intelligence, etc). And, most of all, you thought you had to come here and enlighten the unwashed masses.

You are, to the core, everything that's wrong with being a WoD fanboy. That's not a compliment, just so there's no confusion.

And you think HE has issues? What do you do that DSF is your 'bastion of sanity'?

Creepwood, yeah, Crimsondude was talking about something else. The only people we insult about English is people who were raised on it and can't use spellcheck. You have superb English.


I think the point people are getting at is you can have your scenes of gratuitous violence and walk away saying 'yep, I did that. I guess I'm a bad person.' Or you can have long stories about how you consider yourself a good person in a bad situation, fighting for whats right and good, but when the bad guy, a twenty year old in a situation much like your own, refuses to tell you where the hostage is, and you spend half an hour torturing him, mercy-kill him, the rush off and successfully save the day, you have to stop and ask yourself, 'am I really a good person? This guy was also in a bad place, and just trying to get by. Could I have been in his shoes? Was I justified in torturing, TORTURING this guy, so I could save the hostage from a painless death?'

Alright, that's a light example, but I think it's believable. The point is, there is a scene of gratuitous violence, the torture. I do lose a little by glossing over it, but really, would have writing it out added much to the questions at the end? Ehhh... Not as much as everything around it. Would doing it 'by the rules' have detracted from it? Not really.

So the question is, what is more important in YOUR story telling? Is it the individual scene? Or is it the big questions about self, absolute morality, the balance of lives, good and bad in difficult times? If you did it for the former, well, I guess we're done then. I describe scenes for shock value sometimes as well, I think most of us do. But it's not really substantial. If you did it for the latter, how does this preclude having people who use the rules extensively, or who know how to handle themselves in combat?

(Just as a side note, since Storyteller was mentioned, and I know she's so popular... I have read Anne Rice, and I don't consider her a really good story teller. Interview with a vampire was good, but really, the 'help I'm an angsty vampire. I should be vegan, and I'm going to be angsty until the end of time' thing gets old quick. Her characters are mostly static, her stories contrived, her minor characters silly. If you like your stories like hers, well good for you. If you like stories that leave you thinking, pondering deeper philosophies or questioning your own values as a human outside of the game, then we're talking.)

(edit: Oh, and sorry about the long-winded run-on sentence earlier. I guess I really am a bad person )

Kid must have just turned 21. Can't wait to show how big a man he is.

Lighten up, man... He's Swedish, they're really liberal about sexuality up there...

so the setting in Shadowrun isn't unique cyberpunk going mojo and elves? looks pretty unique to me.

it's the setting (in most cases) that makes a game unique. (except for maybe amber, where the system is diceless, not a very good game if you ask me)

and again. nezumi s pretty much right on the spot of what I'm trying to say. It's not the shocking value I that is the interresting party, it's the abnormalities that exists in our world. Could you ever OOC have sympathy for a serial killer? (i took one of the most degenerated fictious scenario and describied it to you as an example. (I can really think of way worse fictious scenarious, not pedophilia och sexual at all in the context but just as something as adultery, very interresting topic))





sidenote: I'm not a fan of any of the vampiric fiction.
sidenote 2: I do not believe in murdering people be it either the persona or the government (i.e. execution). I just think it's cultural differencies. and as someone else said in this thread that swedes are more sexually liberal, yes probably. I don't believe in saving for marriage, I don't believe in even staying with the same partner for the rest of your live, I don't think there isn't one right person. I'm not leaning towards any religion although someone told me that I have the philosophy of a budhist satanist, I somewhat agree.


I thank nezumi for his non deregatory non flaming comments in this thread.

I am reading your posts but I choose not to answer them because I think you're answeres aren't answers at all, as I see it you are misreading my posts and answering to something totally different.

for you the scene and roleplay stopped where my description ended. I'm talking about repurcursions, to the mind (and body by vindictive relatives maybe) You only see exactly what's in front of you, portionfed. You didn't even think past my description.

It may very well be a cut as well. I just meant that there could be something in the story like this. not neccessarily play it. Although it confirmes my suspicons that many in this forum are not very open minded on 'new things'.

talented ^.^


to all: tell me one thing, does it matter how good you play a realistic (to your skillpoints) dialogue of coercion(?) för exampe. do you always roll a skillcheckroll anyway? what if you were convincing in a RPG dialogue, would it matter?

What you were suggesting are not only not new but incredibly dated as well. They belong in the section marked "been there, but didn't want to do that". Your provocative ideas had been brought up from time to time by other people crouched in less adversarial and egotistical manners and filed away after due examination as "Sick Ideas".