Life in Shadowrun: The Cyberpunk outlook Player and Character interaction Shadowrun has a unique circumstance among Role Playing games, excluding the other cyberpunk games. It is a game that does *not* promote or even necessarily support "party unity". Most games encourage the players to have characters that can work together, if not actually get along and enjoy each other's company. But not cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is a world where life sucks. No, life doesn't just suck. Life is the absoulte shits. My favorite phrase to use to describe cyberpunk is this one: The gap between the haves and the have-nots isn't just a gap, it's a fraggin' Grand Canyon. Those that have it rarely have even the slightest interest in those who have not. And the have nots have only the remotest chance to make it from mediocre poverty to comfort and wealth. The technology of cyberpunk is wonderful. Medicine can prevent all but the most obscure diseases' holds; death from anything other than accidents is most uncommon. Entertainment and work are both vastly enhanced by the technology available; computers, robotics, electronics, mechanicals. All enhances and eases the daily effort to make the world go round. But this technology is only useful to you if you have it. And the have-nots live up to their name; they *have not* the technology to make their lives easier. They work the grunge jobs, things accomplished cheaper through human labor than through automation in one form or another. Sanitation, housekeeping, data-entry, secretarial, construction are but a few of the jobs that the lower classes, making up most of the global population, have to accept for employment. These jobs are very unfulfilling, tedious and menial. There is little oppoturnity for advancement, littiler still for satsisfaction in making a difference for the better, and even less for making a good living. You get up, ride the tube or take a robobus to work for about an hour to an hour and a half, work an eight to nine hour day, then ride back for an hour or an hour and a half; five days a week. You get home to a small apartment or rental unit with too little sound insulation, rationed power and water during certain times only, bland less than real and tasteful food and few options for real enjoyment. Electronic entertainment is about all that's available, and even that costs more than the lowest of the lower classes can afford. In short, life sucks on the streets. People with marketable skills and the right connection or two turn to the shadows in a desperate attempt to better their existance. A few are in it purely for the excitement and thrill, a few more in it after humanistic efforts to better the world; but most are looking to make some serious nuyen and retire to a better place than where they are now. And just like in the real world, shadows have their class system too. All the way from the minors to the professional leagues. The splitting factors are generally ability and competence; the skilled and reliable runners are in the upper strata while the bumbling and questionable runners ride the bottom of the shadow stack. As you might expect, the higher you are in the shadows, the more nuyen you're worth. A runner with a solid dozen runs under his belt is worth more than a neophyte trekking the trecherous for the first time. A runner who shoots dead bullseyes no matter the range or conditions, even if he's never ran before, is worth more than one who barely knows how to draw his weapon. But rankings in the shadows aren't as simple as individual skill. There's more, much more. It's not so much the individuals who are judged as it is the people these individuals run with, hang with. You run with solid runners who can back you up and let you work your special brand of excellence and you get the higher levels. You run with incompetents who couldn't extract a dog from the local kennel during a power outage and no matter what your personal ability; you will be dropped in regard. As people judge like this, runners have a very intense interest in who they're seen with, who they're connected with, who they're running with. No one wants to run with people who don't know their jobs, who can't stay quiet, who can't make the grade. Not only does it endanger the mission and everyone on it, but it jeopardizes future earnings signifantly. So, having set everything up, we get to the initial question. Party interaction in Shadowrun. Now a note right now, this is not referring to *player* interaction; this is referring ot *character* interaction. This has very little to do with personal player feelings, or even the GM's personal feelings. This is a character to character play here. Incompetent or inexperienced runners come in many types, but they can be generally broken down into a few catagories. Do they know that they're inexperienced or incompetent? Do they have the potentional to rise further? Incompetance but good intentions is judged worlds different from incompetance with indifferance. Someone who can't handle it and doesn't care gets no respect and is asking for a bullet, blade or spell in the back of the head from his "fellow runners". He endangers everyone, least of all himself. Even similar people will dislike him, recognizing in another what they fail to recognize in themselves as dangerous. Someone who can't handle it but is aware of this and willing to work to better himself gets treated differently. Rather than get axed, they'll get helped by all but the most callous runners. They won't be taken on high stakes runs, but they'll have simple jobs funneled their way, personal training sessions and so forth. In short, they'll be helped along towards that next level; to where they'll be an asset to the team rather than a burden. Then you move into another catagory. Mediocrety. Some will be mediocre but aware of it and willing to learn. Some will be mediocre but indifferent to it, and uncaring of learning. Some will be mediocre and both unable and unwilling to learn. The first is treated much as someone inexperienced but able and willing to learn, but not as coddled as he'll have a bit higher skill level. The second, indifference to ability and learning, get treated much different. They're religated to a low to mid level of shadowrunner strata, not banished completely because they do have some ability; but not enough to work on important or sizable jobs. The type who works as pure muscle under the strict direction of experienced runners. The third, inability and unwillingness to learn, are treated similarly to the second catagory, but at a lower level. These types of individuals are considered dangerous because they very nearly often have death wishes, or won't care if they endanger themselves or those around them. Their inability to learn and their unwillingness to learn even if they could combine to give them an attitude of "oh well". Under close supervision, they have uses, but not for anything big. Then we get into the highest levels. These are the runners who have top grade skill and ability. The highest levels will be those who are proven in competence and reliablity. But they too will have differing members. Some will be ever striving to increase their abilities, themselves, to even higher levels. These will be the best runners. They'll have skills and resources up to most tasks they might encounter, and have the contacts to meet nearly anything else. They will not make mistakes of any serious consequence more than rarely, and never leave team members high and dry to get zeroed by the opposition. In short, they'll be the types who lead and ride the top. Others will be different. They'll have skills and resouses and contacts, but they'll use them much differently. Rather than do the right thing for the situtation, they'll often do only the easiest. This won't always be something that will ensure safety for the team or the mission, and their fellow runners won't appreciate it. It sometimes will be something that garuntees nothing but disaster for the team and the mission, and will earn them much discord. The question is, again, how do you handle such things as a player? For the sake of the game, you are "expected" under generic Role Playing Etiquette to overlook your fellow gamers' errors, whether resulting from the player or the character, and continue on with party unity. But then you get into other areas of "Role Playing Etiquette". For the sake of good roleplaying, do you do "the right thing" and act as your character would to eliminate sources of danger and bad press? Consider this typical situtation. You're a member of a five person runner team, each with varying skills and abilities in a range of areas. On one mission the PhysAd gets enthralled in his holding action and before the rest of the team realizes, he's lost them and gotten into a very bad situation tactically; about to be captured. If you play as people who don't wish to have anyone from the team taken, alive or dead, you have to jeopardize yourselves and the mission to go back for him. But if you're the type that won't care about individual characters who get themselves throughly fragged; what if he has the target item you were sent to retrieve. Don't have that, you don't get paid. So now you *have* to extract him from his own stupidity for the team's own well being and reputation. Now the question is, was it the player or the character. If the player was the reason that the PhysAd screwed everything up for both himself and his teammates, what do you do? Ignore him and hope that it doesn't happen in the future? Talk to him and attempt to help him grasp a bit of tactical and cursory respect to the rest of the players and have him "do as they do"? It's just as complicated if it was the character. The player kept in his role, and got into a situtation as described above. It wasn't the player's fault; he was merely roleplaying the character well. But how do the other characters feel about this? Will the player be able to "keep in character" if the other characters take him out or exclude him from the team in future missions? Or will he become upset, and threaten *player* unity? This is a problem that has plagued many campaigns, for sure, but it has a tendacy to come up more in cyberpunk games than in any other genere's. As the setting indicates, everyone is out for number one. It is very rare for a character to be phillantrophic or compassionate towards his fellow man. Unless you have a character like this, you should have few compulsions towards either geeking or suspending association with a problem runner. Players have a habit of becoming attached to their characters. Frankly, I don't think I want to game with anyone who doesn't feel some bit of "love" for the character(s) they're running in the game. Someone who doesn't consider the character they're playing a "keeper" will not be terribly inclined to act as someone who wants to live. I don't send my characters out on missions with characters who are living with a death wish; I don't think I'll want to send my characters on missions when one or more players are indifferent to whether or not their characters live. It endangers my character, who I do want to keep around because I like what I've built. So I know how I'd react if the rest of the party told me that either I or my character was gonna have to shape up or ship out. But I know that unless I felt the accusations were (and really were) totally groundless, I'd shape up. I always strive to correct faults that I can recognize, and don't often fail to see a problem with me or my "work"; whether in real life or in gaming. But other players don't necessarily have the same outlook. You have no assurances when you talk to a player that he won't get offended at what you say about either his play or his character. Now, he's more likely to get upset if you tell him it's him who is playing poorly, but some won't like it if told that their latest "brainchild" character isn't measuring up either. There are two possible results if it's a player who's the problem. He'll either work to correct his "problems" and the group will continue, or he'll refuse to recognize that there is a problem, and not change. In the latter case, eventually one of two things will happen. Either the group will get tired of it and kick him out or he'll get tired of being treated (unfairly in him mind) like a low skilled person and leave himself. Now it's never fun when players have problems amongst themselves. Conflicts between two players have split entire groups, even shattered entire groups, before. They will surely continue to do the same, because there will always be people who can't handle their own abilities or lack thereof. The character situation is a little "easier" to handle, especially if it's competent, mature, roleplayers involved. A solid roleplayer who is told that his character is causing problems with the other characters, or recognizes it, won't become upset when the character is treated accordingly. When the character is killed by the others, run off by the others or similarly left out to dry, the player won't take it personally because he was merely staying in character and recognized that it was due for the person he was portraying. But when you have a gamer who takes it personally when you treat his character in certain ways, things get about as sticky as they'll get when it's a player problem. Even if the player knows that he's causing problems for other characters with his character, he'll not like it when said characters react accordingly to his. This too has split groups before. So the whole point of this entire montage. If you're a gamer, remember that it's *role playing* gaming. You are acting out a part, playing someone else. Actors don't take it personally when their character is killed by another character (though when it's a soap opera writer killing off the character at request of management, they'll get upset!); they understand that it's not them and it's not personal. Players too should be competent and mature enough roleplayers to understand that what is done to their character, good or bad, isn't something personal towards themselves. If they're playing a character that is causing problems, even if they didn't know it, then they should not take it personally when the other players' characters take action against that character. Good groups, composed of atleast mature individuals, if not mature and skilled roleplayers, will not have problems like this. They will all be able to talk to each other about the problems that might arise, if any. They won't be taken off guard, or have a moody gamer explode one session at the problem player or character. In short, they'll be able to handle problems with themselves and their characters. I offer this piece of advise. If you're a "bad" gamer, make it a point to better your gaming or your roleplaying or both. I've never taken an acting course or read books on the subject, but perhaps they would be of use to a roleplayer. Study a bit of tactics and logic to help your gaming itself. Never mind honest, critical advice offered with a sincere goal of helping you. If you're a good gamer but have a "bad" character, don't mind when your character is singled out. Play it up, make it a session to remember. Turn the "death" or "alienation" of a character that you were fond of into something very dramatic and memorable. Make it a session that everyone will enjoy immensely, and result in a very good story to tell at conventions. If your character lived, perhaps we have the possibility of plotlines involving this character against the others in the future; talk to your GM about it! In short, be a good and mature gamer, and keep the fun formost.