Yet Another moral question

[AIM-54]

Interesting responses. Evil, eh? Well yeah, runners would fit most people's definition of evil. Ruthless? Definitely.

What happened was the GM (and his wife) got upset with me that I killed him "in cold blood" and got on my case about it. The GM then inflicted the man's ghost on my character, trying to drive Joe insane, keeping him from sleeping, driving him into exhaustion. For the rest of that session and the next two (which is the point at which the game fell apart), they kept making mention of it, "jokingly" calling _me_ a "murderer" and "killer" way beyond the point of any "joke".

Did I mean to kill him? No. But I meant to stop him from directing the truck's weapons against us, from setting off any kind of distress beacon.

Let's put it this way. An Orc turns and runs for the alarm gong that will bring the entire complex down on you. Is shooting him in the back to stop him from doing this an act of evil?

My question is why is your GM running Shadowrun? My experience with my group back home and from tooling around dumpshock is that SR is a brutal, gritty game and that's what its aficianados want. What you did was, seriously, not that bad (especially considering certain of my friends unbridled glee at that nebulous morality of the setting).

If you want evil, we once, as part of getting into a house to do an extraction of a corporate executive, went around summarily executing the security guards who worked on the property in their homes. Some we didn't kill, but instead drove insane with the mage's ally spirit. And we raided every fridge. Just because we could. And it worked, they had serious problems rotating watches and what-not.

What fun!

 

[Chimera]

My question is why is your GM running Shadowrun?

Good question.

He'd been playing RPGs for 15 years or so and had never GM'd before. He chose SR as his first GMing experience because he liked the setting.

To tell the truth, it seemed that he wanted us to be a Lawful Good group trapped in situations of moral ambiguity. Then got upset when I didn't act Lawful Good.

GM "Why did you kick the executive in the face?"
Me "Joe wanted him to know he was serious."
GM "You didn't need to do that."
Me "Perhaps. But he might not believe that fluffy bunny shaman over there will actually shoot him in the middle of corporate HQ. Now he's sure that Joe means business."

 

[Zimri]

I'ld call runners mostly Chaotic nuetral. Whatever is BEST for them (and if part of a long running team with friends then the team as well) is what gets done. You do a job you get paid.

What you did is par for the course in any SR game I have been in. I think your DM et al over reacted.

That being said: Just like I posted to Vindicator "Odds are if the DM is warning you and giving you an out you should take it"

 

[Talon5]

Chimera-

After twenty odd years at this I am still working at getting the GMing rules down.

A GM is a neutral party, not to pass judgement on what you did, but to tell you what happens because of what you did.

Meaning the GM should have said something like- "I missed something, was this strike meant for leathal damage or subduel?"

You- "umm- I didn't say."

GM- "what was your intent?"

Now the guy is either very out or your trying to get his body parts off your sun glasses.

Also- your GM wanted to run SR because he liked the setting, and yet he doesn't quite get the nastiness of the world (by your description- I am assuming here however).

What Joe did wasn't evil- thou it was wrong. He killed a guy, which is always wrong. It however is his job to kill and that means... well- I guess that one has been said.

As far as the GM and his wife calling you "murder" and "killer." That is uncool. Asking them to stop the name calling might be a good idea- if they don't then I think a smiling and laughing (good natured)- umm, I guess I can't or shouldn't use those word in this forum. Needless to say calling them nasty insulting names should be in order, until they get the point of what they are doing to you.

Sorry, it just seems that you were treated unfairly and I don't like that. Take care, and have fun.

 

[Dogbrain]

Mostly, I get pissed at excessive collatoral damage, and the lack of consequences thereof.

This particular damage wasn't collateral. It was "part of the job". The initial job was hardly goodness and light, after all.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I'ld call runners mostly Chaotic nuetral. Whatever is BEST for them (and if part of a long running team with friends then the team as well) is what gets done. You do a job you get paid.

Hmmm. With the one little addition "no matter who it hurts or how many non-friends it kills" which is entirely accurate to Shadowrun, that would pretty much fit the Neutral Evil description in the PHB. Just saying....

 

[billd91]

The GM's on your case about murder in a Shadowrun game? There's clearly something about the way the Cyberpunk genre is represented in RPGs that he does not understand. Life is cheap and it sucks. Morality is something that the corporate suits yammer about in their heavily fortified 'burbclaves and Cleavervilles. But on the streets, it's all about survival and looking out for Number One.

Actually, this is one reason I'm not a big fan of Cyberpunk-style games any more. The only CP campaign I really got into was the one in which we played cops in a precinct that was mainly on the up-and-up (I say mainly because most of the cops were taking bribes for minor stuff), fighting against the degeneration of society, one perp at a time. It was something I could relate to. I just can't get into the more extreme mercenary element of most CP-style games.

 

[Umbran]

Question: Did I _as a player_ do anything wrong? Was my character EVIL to do this?

Well, Shadowrun doesn't have a universal moral code in it, so the question is of questionable meaning.

That being said, the game and the published adventures do lean towards a certain moral character - yes, you kill the occasional corporate soldier. But you leave as many innocents out of your work as possible. You kill as few as possible. And when you run across something really nasty, you fight it. Runners are often called upon to defend humankind from those that would do it harm. Some call it morals, others call it good business. Either way, many runners stick to such things pretty solidly.

As to what happened - the DM was correct to ask your intent, as it is reasonable to guess that the player might not quyite realize how hard he might hit, while the character should know, and could pull his punch, if desired. That's not metagaming. That's making sure the game results match your original intent.

By accepting the lethal damage result, you've basically declared that your PA wasn't pulling any punches, and was willing to kill. Fine. Is that Evil? No, because there's no real Evil-with-a-capital-E in the game. Was it unnecessary? Pretty much. You could easily have rendered the guy unconscious, and it sounds like he really didn't need to be killed.

Sloppy work. Corps like things as neat and trouble-free as possible. Extra dead bodies mean more ill-will than necessary, and nastier reprecussions.

 

[sellars]

The GM's on your case about murder in a Shadowrun game? There's clearly something about the way the Cyberpunk genre is represented in RPGs that he does not understand. Life is cheap and it sucks. Morality is something that the corporate suits yammer about in their heavily fortified 'burbclaves and Cleavervilles. But on the streets, it's all about survival and looking out for Number One.

Indeed that's cyberpunk. In a CP world what is evil and what is not is highly interconnected with what is stupid or not concerning your own survival.

So the morality of your actions depend more on your intentions than on your actions per se. Of course this is also true for the real world, where you have various degrees of murder, but when survival is put to the test, these you (or your character) has to set these standards for him/herself.

Concerning this specific situation IMHO you did what you had to do. You're doing this job to stay alive in a harsh world, and you directly took this action to stay alive. Your slate is clean

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I'd say it was pretty par for the course for most SR games...

If you were a totem phys. adept with a peacable or friendly totem, it might not have gone down too well. Like there are many of them.

Although, in our last Shadowrun campaign it might have got you into trouble. Unecessary killing tended to result in bad karma: If the guy had any buddies or family then they'd probably try to get on the case of the killer, especially if it looked like it was unecessary.

We tended towards a 'Usual Suspects'/'Heat' (early bits of both!) method. A good plan would involve as little killing as possible. Caused us a lot less bother in the long run. We tended to use stealth, illusion, gel rounds, tasers and other soft kill/avoidance stuff nearly all the time. Along with decent disguises.

Found it made for a more satisfying 'feel' to the game, YMMV.

Of course there were always exceptions - Bugs don't stun too good...

However, given the situation I'd say it wasn't unreasonable. Certainly not in the same ballpark as spraying bullets at bystanders... I mean, the guy was trying to kill you, after all!