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Message no. 1
From: Simon Nixon a_9365@*******.com
Subject: Roleplaying Question
Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2000 15:07:22 BST
I recently got bored playing the same old 'stone killer/ultimate pro' type
PC as half the world seems to. For a change I decided to make a PC that was
still fairly new to the shadows - one year and counting, he still gets
depress/distressed when he has to kill people personally and is still trying
to reconcile running the shadows for a living.

On the last but one run the group was trying to infiltrate a corp building
with my guy as point. So he's creeping down a corridor, SMG out ready for
trouble. The deckers in the security system and says all clear. So half way
along this sec guard she missed walks round a corner-about a meter in front
of my PC. There's a moments pause as we both freeze then he starts
scrabbling at his holster for his pistol whilst I automatically give him a
three round burst to the face killing him. It's straight after this that my
PC realizes that the guard was about 18 or 19, and from the look of him was
fairly new and didn't have a clue about what he was doing. So he manages to
pull himself together till after the run.

Once the runs over and we've been paid off the group splits up and the GM
asks what we're going to do during down time. I decided my PC who's only
just holding it together, took his money, called by his building's super to
pay the months rent then barricaded himself in his flop with a case of newly
bought synth-scotch and got wasted for the next four days.

To make my PC a bit more of a real character I had a talk with our GM to see
if we could take this somewhere. I decided that my PC was going to get
really depressed and turn into a borderline/functioning alcoholic. He keeps
getting really nasty nightmares replaying the incident, insomnia from not
wanting to go through it again during sleep, he keeps seeing the young sec
guard he killed all over the place e.g. on the street, anyone who looks
slightly similar. We even gave him the flashback flaw for no benefit as
well. He's turning to the booze more and more to get through. In short, he's
going to shit. He also can't get any real help. His team is still fairly
new, a group of individual runners put together by their fixer so no help
there. As long as he functions- fine. If not they'll drop him, no help
offered. He also doesn't have any real close personal friends in Seattle.

There's no real rules for alcohol addiction in M&M so we'll be playing this
by ear as a pure roleplaying element. Any pointers or helpers in how I
should play the PC and how he might react to stuff would be gladly welcome
as I don't have much experience of alcoholism either personally or through
people I know. The depression part I've got covered from personal
experience.

Cheers.
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Message no. 2
From: dbuehrer@******.carl.org dbuehrer@******.carl.org
Subject: Roleplaying Question
Date: Mon, 07 Aug 2000 08:56:38 -0600
Simon Nixon wrote:

>There's no real rules for alcohol addiction in M&M so we'll be playing
>this by ear as a pure roleplaying element. Any pointers or helpers in how
>I should play the PC and how he might react to stuff would be gladly
>welcome as I don't have much experience of alcoholism either personally or
>through people I know. The depression part I've got covered from personal
>experience.

I would strongly suggest that you continue to roleplay it, and stay away
from using dice and numbers to represent the characters alcoholism.

There's a great black and white film noire movie with Jack Lemmon called
Days of Wine and Roses that you might find helpful. On a less serious
note, the movie Stewart Smally (Saves His Family) could also provide you
with some insights.

There are many flavors of addiction. You can portray alcoholism through
your character any way you want and you won't be making any real
mistakes. Your character's use of alcohol to avoid confronting the fact
that he is sick with guilt and shame for killing someone is fine. On a
side note, your character might start using alcohol to prepare himself in
advance if he thinks he will be going into a situation where he might have
to kill someone again.


To Life,
-Graht
http://www.users.uswest.net/~abaker3
--
"Warm nights, good food, kindred spirits....great life!"
Message no. 3
From: DemonPenta@***.com DemonPenta@***.com
Subject: Roleplaying Question
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 11:07:14 EDT
In a message dated 8/7/00 10:57:23 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
dbuehrer@******.carl.org writes:

> >There's no real rules for alcohol addiction in M&M so we'll be playing
> >this by ear as a pure roleplaying element. Any pointers or helpers in how
> >I should play the PC and how he might react to stuff would be gladly
> >welcome as I don't have much experience of alcoholism either personally
or
> >through people I know. The depression part I've got covered from personal
> >experience.
>

Actually...you mention you have the depression part covered from personal
experience. The two are similar, and one does lead to the other....RP it like
that. Don't go for rules with this...just play it by ear. Do it how it feels
natural. You really can't do it wrong; I *personally* have known people who
went from alcoholics who couldn't keep a job til they went to AA (at an
employer's...insistence), and I've also known people who you would never
suspect were alcoholics...they still functioned fine, but they drank a lot.
Remember though; Alcoholism is one of those things people, even if they get
help, don't come out of like they were when it began. It tends to break
people horribly. Of course, that is why AA always knows a few good
psychologists.:-)

John
Message no. 4
From: James Mick sinabian@********.net
Subject: Roleplaying Question
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 12:40:43 -0400
>There's no real rules for alcohol addiction in M&M so we'll be playing this
>by ear as a pure roleplaying element. Any pointers or helpers in how I
>should play the PC and how he might react to stuff would be gladly welcome
>as I don't have much experience of alcoholism either personally or through
>people I know. The depression part I've got covered from personal
>experience.
>

Sounds like a pretty kewl little sub-plot you've got going there. Real
characters...ahhh...must be nice. Anyways, I don't know about the newer
books but didn't Shadowtech cover addiction in general? I'm fairly certain
one or more of the 2nd edition books did touch on this at the least if not
give pretty clear rules on how to handle it...
Message no. 5
From: James Mick sinabian@********.net
Subject: Roleplaying Question
Date: Mon, 7 Aug 2000 12:47:02 -0400
On a
>side note, your character might start using alcohol to prepare himself in
>advance if he thinks he will be going into a situation where he might have
>to kill someone again.
>

I've had characters under me who had an amusing habit of just drinking a lot
before a run just for the hell of it...just because. On some of my more evil
days and whenever I remembered to just for drek and giggles I'd usually give
them like a -1 modifier for all their tests to represent their innebriation.
It works great for a little bit of comic relief as well.


<drunken dwarf merc botches a roll on a grenade attack>

GM - "Hooboy. Well, it went like this. Cliff unhooked the grenade from his
belt. Pulled the pin, counted to three, and then threw it."

Dwarf - "Threw what?"

GM - "The pin. High or low is good for you?" <weg>
Message no. 6
From: Simon and Fiona sfuller@******.com.au
Subject: Roleplaying Question
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 12:02:09 +1000
-----Original Message-----
From: James Mick <sinabian@********.net>
To: shadowrn@*********.com <shadowrn@*********.com>
Date: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 2:42 AM
Subject: Re: Roleplaying Question


>
>I've had characters under me who had an amusing habit of just drinking a
lot
>before a run just for the hell of it...just because. On some of my more
evil
>days and whenever I remembered to just for drek and giggles I'd usually
give
>them like a -1 modifier for all their tests to represent their
innebriation.
>It works great for a little bit of comic relief as well.
>
I had a character who's ritual was to get stinking drunk after the meeting
with the Johnson as well, but then he'd stay sober the whole run.
Message no. 7
From: Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject: Roleplaying Question
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 11:39:18 +0200
According to James Mick, at 12:40 on 7 Aug 00, the word on the street
was...

> Sounds like a pretty kewl little sub-plot you've got going there. Real
> characters...ahhh...must be nice. Anyways, I don't know about the newer
> books but didn't Shadowtech cover addiction in general? I'm fairly certain
> one or more of the 2nd edition books did touch on this at the least if not
> give pretty clear rules on how to handle it...

Shadowtech had rules for addictions, sure, but the problem with them was
that you couldn't live for more than ten weeks after becoming addicted,
since for every week of addiction you lost a box from your Physical and
Stun condition monitors (as well as half a point of Essence)...

Man & Machine has revised addiction rules, but as I haven't used them yet
and also haven't read them often enough, I haven't found any major flaws
in them (for the moment, anyway :) There were no rules for addiction
published in other books than these two, unless you count the Addiction
flaw from the Companion, which didn't fit at all with the addiction rules
from Shadowtech.

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Imagine doing just what the Big Bang did
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

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Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998
Message no. 8
From: Nimster nimster@*********.net.il
Subject: Roleplaying Question
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 17:31:49 +0200
<snippity snip snip>

> Shadowtech had rules for addictions, sure, but the problem with them was
> that you couldn't live for more than ten weeks after becoming addicted,
> since for every week of addiction you lost a box from your Physical and
> Stun condition monitors (as well as half a point of Essence)...
>

Yesm this is a major flaw. If it helps you, I'll tell you what I did. Since,
AFAIK you do not die from addiction, you die from overdose, I told my
addicted players to have another set of stun/physical condition monitors,
where they'd mark the damage as normal, and still be affected by it, but not
die when it reaches D. Instead, you'd be so stoned you'd be unable to do a
thing (besides walk all dope-like and say wierd things), until you get
hospitalized or treated. (Also about the essence I made it different for
every drug - heroin would be 0.5, but stuff like alcohol would merely be
0.15 or so). About overdose - Well that's a totally different matter. I made
it have Drain depending on the strength of the drug, and have effects
respective to the amount of drug taken. The drain level would escelate which
every extra 100% taken, so If you'd have taken 300% of that kamikaze you'd
get something like 8D, IIRC. Long time no play, I'm just back to shadowrun
again after about a year.
Btw - Gurth I'm sure you don't remember me, but I remember you, so just
wanted to say - good to see you're still here. :)

-Nimster
Message no. 9
From: Andrew Gryphon webmaster@*********.com
Subject: Roleplaying Question
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 08:23:28 -0500
on 8/7/00 10:07 AM, Simon Nixon at a_9365@*******.com e-scribed:

> He's turning to the booze more and more to get through.

There's a difference between an alcoholic and a problem drinker. AA's
definition of Alcoholic is something like, "When you have a drink, you don't
know when you'll stop." Could stop after one drink, could stop when
consciousness stops.

Contrast: a problem drinker would, like this character, drink with purpose
and unlikely become addicted in the life-long way. He could recover because
he's not a true alcoholic.

This is a bit sketchy, and it's been a couple years since I've studied the
subject, so don't quote me. I can probably look it up if you want details,
or you could just say he has a genetic tendency toward it, and this was
enough to trigger it.

--
Andrew Gryphon
http://www.Wyrmworks.com
Taking Role-Playing to the next level
Message no. 10
From: Simon Nixon a_9365@*******.com
Subject: Roleplaying Question
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 16:09:39 BST
Andrew Gryphon wrote:

>This is a bit sketchy, and it's been a couple years since I've > studied
>the subject, so don't quote me. I can probably look it up if > you want
>details, or you could just say he has a genetic tendency > toward it, and
>this was enough to trigger it.

Definately yes. More details the better.

Cheers.
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