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Message no. 1
From: "Lindblom Fredrik, Training" <fredrik.lindblom@*******.TELIA.SE>
Subject: Re: Honesty and Incompetence. Shoot them
Date: Fri, 9 Jun 1995 17:39:00 PDT
> My Personal Gripe
>
>
> Ok, here's my gripe that belongs in the Shadowrun area.
>
>Situation 1: I'm doing a run and I have to keep bailing everybody else
out
>all of the time, because they're such pathetic liars. Here's me, lying
>blatantly through my teeth everytime a lone star asks me a question (
>and most importantly,getting away with it), and then my associate gets
>the evil eye and crumbles.

You mean he couldn't stand the star's interrogation-technique? Whatta
sissy...
My players stick to the basic credo: "Thou shalt not get caught" and they're
damn good at it. Not so hard anyway, being the basic sprawl use of the
'survival'-skill :-)

>Situation 2: Another player wants to you a public telecom. Someone's
>already using it, so he sticks an Ares predator in his knee joint. Then we
end
>up having to bust him out of jail for illegal possesion of a cyberdeck.

This sounds pretty amoral to me. Not something your average knight in shiny
armor would do. Was he decking from a public telecom??? (as far as I'm
concerned, that is not possible. too law baud-rate, or whatever. Not to
speak of really stupid...) To get caught is, I admit, truly incompetent.

>Situation 3: I'm GMing a game of Shadowrun, and having been a PARANOIA
>player in the past, I decided to give every player an ulterior motive. Two
>of them confessed and the other two totally ignored their extra run.
>Naturally, they had to be hunted to get a reaction.

That is simply bad roleplaying. Not much else. Confessions make me sick,
though... Give 'em something worse, some really dark secret they just cannot
tell coz if they do they'll get hosed big-time...hmmm...Yakuza or
something...and if they blow it, well, character generation time, everyone!

> My point is essentially that your average player (or at least the
>ones I know) is
>about as amoral as Jesus Christ. Personally, I can do without Honest Joe's
in
>my
>group. Sure, I'll admit that an honest shadowrunner can be amusing, but a
>partyful?
>I'd rather drown in battery acid.

If I get your point right you are complaining that your players are acting
like heroes all the time, right? Well, all I can tell ya is that in my group
of players, ONE is honest as hell (the shaman) the rest is a bunch of
double-dealing, hi-cybered, cruel criminals with a sick sense of humour. I
don't understand how the team even manage to stay together for any length of
time. Quite unbelievable, really. I mean, interrogating people with electric
trodes is one thing but torturing info out of them with a monowhip and a
sandbag? Or always killing the ones they promised to spare if they talked?
(This did bad, bad things to their rep.) Shooting twelve year-olds in the
back with automatic fire coz the kids thought the runners were cops when
they flashed their nifty comm-units? Having competitions about who can steal
most jackrabbits? Launching HERs in densely populated areas? And after all
that the clever bastards still managed to get away from the star... (Ok ,
these sins are from different runs, but...)

Well, I guess it is all my fault, being the GM and all...but they sure were
smart, and that ought to count for something, even if they were
unnecessarily cruel now and then. (The guy that shot the kids didn't get any
karma, and the rest of the team kicked him out on the street.) (The
monowhip-torturer was the team's decker (!!!) and a guy-playing-a-girl at
that...)

My opinion: Shadowrunners should be shadow-heroes. "Screw the laws, screw
the cops and the corps. The people we are trying to protect is the street
scum we grew up with. And we don't have no time to sue nobody."-sorta thing.
However criminal, the runners _should_ be the good guys. Kinda like the
Rambo-morale, you know. Kill them before they kill us.

I'm not against killing from an ambush, or beating someone for information,
or booby-trapping peoples cars, or even mass murder. As long as the ones
that get ambushed, beaten, blown to bits, or murdered are the 'bad guys'.
How to define 'bad guys' is up to every GM, but at least they should "work
for the corp that killed my best friend." Innocent bystanders are not bad
guys.

I still think your players (or was it co-players) are spineless maggots,
though. See to it that they learn the hard life in the sprawl. The air will
do them good, hehehe...

The GM should always encourage good role-playing. Especially when players
manage to incorporate their characters well into the game world. Your
(co?)players seem to be playing AD&D or some other heroic game. Breeep -
wrong answer! No extra karma this time either. What do you mean 'mean and
evil GM?' I just work here...

Don't get me wrong now. Im _NOT_ a moralist. I just think the players can be
cruel up to a certain point. Too much cruelty is really sick (unless you're
playing a comedy game :-) and the ones showing such tendencies should see
the shrink. Right now in fact. Thank you for your cooperation.

MxM

>>>[" I know there is a light at the end of the tunnel, but I can't see it
through all the gunsmoke and my mirrored shades. "]<<<
Message no. 2
From: P Ward <P.Ward@**.CF.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: Honesty and Incompetence. Shoot them
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 1995 11:52:42 BST
Wow man, and I thought my runners were bad.

My runners are extreemyl violent, nasty, but they have their own code
of honour (thou shalt not frag with a member of the party, lest their
next character take a suspicious dislike to you ;-) )

Read the back of the game, Shadowrunners are corporate mercs, the
job description ought to say "heroe's don't apply". unfortunately,
most of the SR runs are hero-types only, so you tend to get this
fuzzy image of the heroic shadowrunner. Uh-Uh, they do it for the money.

Mind you, that doesn;t mean they have to do stupid things like
launch HER's into urban area's, ethat's just asking for a SWAT
head shot or a paassing yellowjacket to return fire from well
outside man-portable missile range.


Being out and out _evil_ is bad for your business and reputation,
if the playders continue to do it, then start a session by asking
them what they do! No one wants to hire them any more, so they
hjave to make their own jobs, or get their rep back. If nothing else,
it'll be a good test of you improvisation skills (heck, half of my
games are impro'd on the fly, the players just take these wierd angles
at things ;-)).

If they persist, take no prisoners ;-)

Mind you, that;s not to say that being a good-guy is not bad for your
bank-balance, it is.... there just has to be a middle ground.

Phil (Renegade)
Message no. 3
From: "Patrick D. Little" <pdl@******.NET>
Subject: Re: Honesty and Incompetence. Shoot them
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 1995 13:01:17 PDT
---------------Original Message---------------
Wow man, and I thought my runners were bad.

My runners are extremely violent, nasty, but they have their own code
of honour (thou shalt not frag with a member of the party, lest their
next character take a suspicious dislike to you ;-) )

Read the back of the game, Shadowrunners are corporate mercs, the
job description ought to say "heroe's don't apply". unfortunately,
most of the SR runs are hero-types only, so you tend to get this
fuzzy image of the heroic shadowrunner. Uh-Uh, they do it for the money.

Mind you, that doesn;t mean they have to do stupid things like
launch HER's into urban area's, ethat's just asking for a SWAT
head shot or a paassing yellowjacket to return fire from well
outside man-portable missile range.


Being out and out _evil_ is bad for your business and reputation,
if the playders continue to do it, then start a session by asking
them what they do! No one wants to hire them any more, so they
hjave to make their own jobs, or get their rep back. If nothing else,
it'll be a good test of you improvisation skills (heck, half of my
games are impro'd on the fly, the players just take these wierd angles
at things ;-)).

If they persist, take no prisoners ;-)

Mind you, that;s not to say that being a good-guy is not bad for your
bank-balance, it is.... there just has to be a middle ground.

Phil (Renegade)


----------End of Original Message----------
Well, I guess I play with the opposite type, then. Our group had a
detective mage in it. He is very honor bound and loyal, also happened to be
a former Knight Errant. Of course, the run was against KE security forces
and he made us promise not to kill any KE. It did make the run a challenge
and we didn't lose any money on the run either.
-------------------------------------
Name: patrick
E-mail: pdl@******.net
Date: 06/10/95
Time: 13:01:17

This message was sent by Chameleon
-------------------------------------
Message no. 4
From: Marc A Renouf <jormung@*****.UMICH.EDU>
Subject: Re: Honesty and Incompetence. Shoot them
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 1995 15:59:16 -0400
On Sat, 10 Jun 1995, P Ward wrote:

> Wow man, and I thought my runners were bad.
>
> My runners are extreemyl violent, nasty, but they have their own code
> of honour (thou shalt not frag with a member of the party, lest their
> next character take a suspicious dislike to you ;-) )

Honestly, I wouldn't allow this sort of activity unless it was
*way* in character. I have no problem with PC vs. PC strife, but
vendetta characters just piss me off. I had one guy who (when slain by
several other party members) wanted to bring in the proverbial
"brother bent on revenge." I asked him how this brother knew jack shit
about what happened to his original character, and why he would be so
bent on revenge. The player's reply was, "well, he and his brother were
really close and they told each other everything." Keeping in mind the
fact that the original character's bent brother had not been mentioned
in character creation (20 questions) and that in over a year of
playing the game the character had never had an interaction with his
brother, I said, "I don't think so." End of story.

> Being out and out _evil_ is bad for your business and reputation,
> if the playders continue to do it, then start a session by asking
> them what they do! No one wants to hire them any more, so they
> hjave to make their own jobs, or get their rep back. If nothing else,
> it'll be a good test of you improvisation skills (heck, half of my
> games are impro'd on the fly, the players just take these wierd angles
> at things ;-)).

True to a point. It's not so much that people *wont'* hire you,
it's that you tend to get different kinds of jobs, and your employers
tend to treat you more and more like the expendable scumbags you are.
I must agree wholeheartedly on the improv thing, though. If you
are familiar with your game-world as a dynamic *place* rather than as a
staged series of runs, you are much more prepared for your players'
oddball schemes and you can really do some neat things. I have one
player who is idly planning a bank-heist on the side. In between doses
of Thorazine, that is...

> If they persist, take no prisoners ;-)

Awwwww, shucks. Take away all my fun. :(

Marc
Message no. 5
From: P Ward <P.Ward@**.CF.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: Honesty and Incompetence. Shoot them
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 1995 08:09:12 BST
> Honestly, I wouldn't allow this sort of activity unless it was
> *way* in character. I have no problem with PC vs. PC strife, but
> vendetta characters just piss me off.


Oh yeah, I agree, I try to discourage it, and usually do so _very_
effectively. It happens some times, that's all....


> I must agree wholeheartedly on the improv thing, though. If you
> are familiar with your game-world as a dynamic *place* rather than as a
> staged series of runs, you are much more prepared for your players'
> oddball schemes and you can really do some neat things. I have one
> player who is idly planning a bank-heist on the side. In between doses
> of Thorazine, that is...

Heh, I won't ask who's doing the thorazine.

I put together a rough idea of the plot, get some of the set-piecs collected
together in my had, and that's it. Oh, and a few hand-outs, like the scream-
sheets that for some reason, all the PC's want to see their names in!

I keep telling them, a runner with his name in the papers is a dead runner,
but they don;t listen... ho-hum.

It's good this way, I've DM'd for about 6 years, played for 12, and I find
that 75% of my runs come off the top of my ehad, on the spot... It's just a
matter of knowing enough of the source material to make it up when you have
to :-) :-)

Phil (Renegade)

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Thwap!