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Message no. 1
From: pf_mc@*****.ca (shadows within)
Subject: good? bad? I'm the one with the gun. [was RE: New Run]
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 15:45:04 -0400 (EDT)
> Our characters don't see the point in killing
> folks who are "just doing their job", unless
> they're coming at us for blood.
> Nice & tidy from my PoV.

Oh, if only all groups were like this. Ours is an even
split between the soft touch attitude and "kill 'em
all, let God sort 'em out." I have to admit, when I
began, I was pretty solidly in that latter group
myself, but I also found that the more successful and
experienced a runner becomes, the less they tend to
fall into bloodthirsty frenzy everytime there's a
possibility of combat.

All that said, do you consider your team to be 'good
guys'? We don't consider ours that way. Far from it.
"Hello, we're the bad guys," was something I once said
(as my character) and it's pretty much our motto. Even
those with the softest touch acknowledge and revel in
the darker side of being a bad guy. One member of our
group targets 'evil-doers' a la 'Boondock Saints', but
he isn't really a good guy either.

Who are the good guys in your games? Who are the bad
guys? Why?

Just curious.

====Shadow

The future is painted on a canvas of infinite reach.

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Message no. 2
From: allura@***********.org (Allura)
Subject: good? bad? I'm the one with the gun. [was RE: New Run]
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 19:25:44 -0400
I think your title says it all, actually <g>. "Good? Bad? We're the
ones with the guns." We consider ourselves professionals, well paid
ones. We chose to go out of our way to use non-lethal tactics this time
b/c we were going to be on an aircraft. Holes in airplanes = BAD.

In general, we don't often take straight wet-work jobs, we don't believe
in excessive carnage (unless it's paid for), and we try not to kill
LoneStar ("the cops"). The last is b/c it is all too likely that a
shadowrunner will end up in jail some day, and the cops aren't known to
be friendly to cop-killers. We regret it if we shoot someone who wasn't
shooting at us, and if we have time, might toss a Treat spell in the
general direction. Our focus is on being professional. Johnson knows
that when we're hired, we'll do exactly what we're asked to do, and
don't talk about it after. We do *not* open "the box".

Of course, there's exceptions to every rule, and if it looks like we're
going to get betrayed, our butts come first, and all bets are off. :)

Joanna

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Message no. 3
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: good? bad? I'm the one with the gun. [was RE: New Run]
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 10:44:01 +0200
According to shadows within, on Tuesday 29 July 2003 21:45 the word on the
street was...

> Who are the good guys in your games?

When I GM, hardly anybody is the good guys in SR. I let player characters
get away with pretty much everything they want, provided it doesn't cause
trouble between players (note the absense of the word "characters" here),
and many choose to do things that wouldn't exactly fit into the "good
guys" description. Similarly, any NPCs in the adventure who are on the
side of the players may be innocent or neutral, but I don't normally see
them as the good guys, either.

> Who are the bad guys?

Nominally, whoever is working against the PCs is the bad guy, but the way I
like to work is make the opposition seem like the bad guys, and then when
the PCs think they have them, and then give the adventure a twist that
suddenly turns the situation through 90 degrees to lay the blame with
someone else.

> Why?

Mostly because I don't think having definite "good guys" and "bad
guys"
doesn't work for a setting like SR's.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Don't you know you know what's right?
-> Probably NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
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Message no. 4
From: korishinzo@*****.com (Ice Heart)
Subject: good? bad? I'm the one with the gun. [was RE: New Run]
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 02:57:09 -0700 (PDT)
> > Who are the good guys in your games?

Well, the Player Characters are the protagonists. That does not make
them the "good guys", not by a long shot. It makes them the main
characters in the story, but often not even the hero of it.

> > Who are the bad guys?

Anyone who opposes the Player Characters is the antagonist. Again,
these are rarely "bad guys". They are the hook, the challenge, and
the reason we game. But, they are not even always the villain.

> > Why?

Alignment is meaningless in the brutal, 'shades-of-gray' dystopia of
SR. That little old lady on the corner pushing the shopping cart
could be a strung out chiphead with an Uzi-III who turns your walk to
Stuffer Shack into a bullet dodging nightmare. The troll with the
torn, black, 'I'm a rebel too' T-shirt and the frightening orange
mohawk headed your way is probably going to offer you a pamphlet, a
smile, and say something like "He loves us all, omae, have you
accepted him as your savior?" That platinum blonde ice queen with
the chrome eyes and frigid smile sitting by herself at McHugh's is
probably a terrified corp secretary on her lunch break wishing she'd
not taken a dare to eat outside the arcology today. The friendly
elven youth who smiled at you and let you through the door of the bar
first is probably out back plotting your demise with a bunch of other
smiling elven youths right now. For no more reason than that your
jacket might fit, your boots looked new, and you probably have at
least one certified credstick worth 50¥ in your pocket. "Good" and
"bad" amount to any number of things, changing from person to person
and situatuion to situation. A flat tire is "bad". So is a
gun-toting maniac who swears you look like the slitch that broke his
brother's heart and made him commit suicide. To that corp secretary,
you (the runner) are very bad. Same is true of the hapless elven
ganger whose life you will shortly be making unpleasant over the
contents of your pocket. The troll evangelist might think you were
bad too. If you are the one who caps grandma before she hoses down
three kids, you'll be bad in her book as well. Those children and
their parents might disagree. And who knows, you might be the one
Miss Ice Queen ends up trusting to get her quietly moved over to her
new position at Corp B without Corp A ventilating her hoop in the
process. Score one for the "good" guys. The Player Characters in a
Shadowrun game live in a world very similar to our own. What makes
you good or bad depends on who you ask and when you ask them. 9
times out of 10, you will be neither. Just another slot on the
street. They don't know you, don't care about you, and that is that.
Now, there is a caveat to all this.

What about the player character who is really "bad"? I mean, the
mentally sick, slotted up fragger who likes shooting kids to hear
mommy cry. The gleeful sinner who thinks live grenades and crowded
churches go together like peaches and cream. The blood-thirsty,
violence-happy, hoop-jammer who caps every single person he can, for
any reason whatsoever? You know, the char gen product of a player
who has played a few too many hours of GTA3 and wants his roleplay to
fit the same criteria. Ever had one of them in your game? I have.
It sucks. It is stupid, pointless, and ultimately unrealistic. To
me, at least. I have seen 'Natural Born Killers', and hate it with a
passion. That anyone can empathise with, or root for, that manner of
bipedal, reasoning animal, sickens me. Fortunately, this is true of
the vast majority of society. And that is not going to change. Even
animals drive off or kill the rabid of their kind. Society in 2060
will be no more tolerant of the sociopath or the psychopath than it
is today. For any number of reasons. Even hardened criminal with
little respect for life know that a rabid dog is bad for biz. It
draws heat, makes the media alert, and scares off employers. So I
feel quite thoroughly justified in wasting any such PC that enters my
games. Not from the word go, no. But, as soon as their actions
would logically warrant it, I have their world turn against them.
Mr. J will even hire the other PCs to take the offending psychopath
out. Unlike the other PCs, I make NO attempt to pull punches or
exercise leniancy about dice results with such characters. An
organized LS SWAT team who learns the psychopath's where abouts can
tear them up with a vengeance. To me, they are the real "bad guys".
The toxic monster, Horror serving, threat to everything that is
sacred in the SR world (the financial bottom line, for almost
everyone, but you get my drift I think). I have even let such PCs
meet NPCs on a level with Harlequinn, just to be mean. I am cruel to
the PC, and not particualrly nice to the player.

In the end, the "bad guy" is the character (PC or NPC) who ruins it
for all other characters (PC or NPC). I don't tolerate them.

======Korishinzo
--occasional cold hearted bitch

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Message no. 5
From: jhubert@***.de (JÃŒrgen_Hubert)
Subject: good? bad? I'm the one with the gun. [was RE: New Run]
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2003 12:57:37 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: "shadows within" <pf_mc@*****.ca>
To: "Shadowrun Discussion" <shadowrn@*****.dumpshock.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 9:45 PM
Subject: good? bad? I'm the one with the gun. [was RE: New Run]

> Who are the good guys in your games? Who are the bad
> guys? Why?

Well, the runners in my group are fairly moral ambiguous for the most part,
but after being partially responsible for the detonation of an enchanted
nuclear weapon that caused some of the events from "Year of the Comet" to
happen one year earlier (the Shedim, the Pacific Rim volcano eruptions, and
everything that happens because of those), they have started to be a bit
more thoughtful...

- Jürgen Hubert
Message no. 6
From: pf_mc@*****.ca (shadows within)
Subject: good? bad? I'm the one with the gun. [was RE: New Run]
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2003 13:25:50 -0400 (EDT)
> Well, the runners in my group are fairly moral
> ambiguous for the most part,
<snip>
> they have started to be a bit more thoughtful...

Is this because they feel guilt? Or just because they
had unintended consequences? Or because they saw their
actions as immoral? Do they see any moral overtones to
their actions?

I've always found it interesting how a character
reacts after the fact to events they set off. One of
our characters almost went catatonic when he
unintentionally burnt down a tenement filled with
squatters. It was a major event in the character's
life.

In our campaign, the events of "Harlequin's Back" had
a profound effect on the characters involved. That's
not to say they all mended their ways. Some were
humbled and became more humane, others acknowledged
their dark natures and made no excuses for it.

====Shadow

The future is painted on a canvas of infinite reach.

______________________________________________________________________
Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
Message no. 7
From: markus.widmer@******.at (Markus Widmer)
Subject: good? bad? I'm the one with the gun. [was RE: New Run]
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 08:27:39 +0200
One of the greatest gaming moments in my career as a GM was a
discussion about morals. The players were on an errand from Richard
Villiers in person, extracting a member of the Renraku Arcology
Resistance from a military refugee camp. After they had informed
Villiers that they had the girl, she began to plead with the players.
She told them that Villiers was certainly not interested in resolving
the Arcology crisis, instead he would use her as a means to get his
hands on Deus technology, or even Deus himself. Since that would
certainly jeopardize the battle against Deus, she would have to be
silent - in one way or another.

The players believed her, but they saw no option for themselves than
delivering the package. When they heard of her suicide, they were very
depressed. The whole affair made them think more diligently for which
side they're actually running.

Markus
Message no. 8
From: jhubert@***.de (JÃŒrgen_Hubert)
Subject: good? bad? I'm the one with the gun. [was RE: New Run]
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 11:28:06 +0200
----- Original Message -----
From: "shadows within" <pf_mc@*****.ca>
To: "Shadowrun Discussion" <shadowrn@*****.dumpshock.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: good? bad? I'm the one with the gun. [was RE: New Run]


> > Well, the runners in my group are fairly moral
> > ambiguous for the most part,
> <snip>
> > they have started to be a bit more thoughtful...
>
> Is this because they feel guilt? Or just because they
> had unintended consequences?

A bit of both, I guess. And because they realize that they are in _lots_ of
trouble now... ;-)

> Or because they saw their
> actions as immoral? Do they see any moral overtones to
> their actions?

Well, now they _really_ want to kick some Winternight butt...

To be quite honest, the explosion wan't totally their fault. They went in
without a clear idea who they were facing (just that a Mafia capo was pissed
off about this group, which had attacked one of his installations, and that
he wanted revenge), and when some guy said: "I have this nuclear bomb, I've
set the timer, and if you geek me you'd better run _real_ fast because I'm
the only one who knows how to reset it", they thought he was bluffing...

Well, it turns out that he wasn't. None of them really felt competent enough
to try to disarm it, and so they ran for it.

And if they hadn't forced his hand, they might have detonated the bomb at a
_real_ magical power spot and created even bigger havoc. But the PCs don't
know that... ;-)


- Jürgen Hubert
Doing Time in Munich

Military Diaries III, or: Bavarian Barkeeper
http://juergen.the-huberts.net

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