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. "]<<<