Myths in the Shadows

Many people involved in dark future games have come up with many preconceived notions about how things should work in a game like Shadowrun. Unfortunately many of them are just plain wrong. Some of them are based on the idea the opposition lives in a box never venturing outside to check out the world in which the players live. Remember that the enemy is just as capable of thinking in round about ways just like the players. Let’s illustrate a sampling of the common myths that players of dark future games believe in.

1. I don’t have a SIN there’s no way they can know who I am or find me.

Wrong. Just because you don’t have a SIN doesn’t mean they don’t know who you are. They may not know your name or street address but they can find out.

2. I’m a runner, a person of the shadows, they won’t track me down.

Wrong. If you’ve managed to embarrass somebody enough or cost the corp too much—or lose too much face—they will make an example of you.

3. It doesn’t make any difference if they see me, they can’t ID me.

Wrong. If you’re caught on tape the investigation will go something like this. The corp will make a file with your picture. Next they will look for anything like blood, saliva, skin flakes, hair samples, etc… to make a DNA profile of the runner in question. Cross referencing this with any other data like members of the team, fingerprints, voice samples, heat images, height and weight and bits of information from a run. Then the data is stored by the corp and then they wait for other runs to take place slowly adding pieces to the puzzle. If they ever catch you, they’ve got you with your hand in the cookie jar. If you’re ever captured by the police, depending on if they feel like it, they might just go to them with this evidence and send you up the river.

4. I’ve got a Mafia Don for a contact he’ll help me. We’re tight you know.

Wrong. The don doesn’t give a damn about you or your team. You’re his contact and things will be at his/her discretion. Treat them wrong and you’ll be waking up to find out that they’ve given you a frontal lobotomy with a .45.

5. The security guards don’t matter, waste ‘em.

O.K. are you prepared to deal with the consequences? Remember non-lethals work just as well as lethal tactics and sometimes better. If you’re caught, a murder rap will get you life in prison and possibly the electric chair.

6. Killing cops is a part of the job.

Wrong. Killing a cop is bad policy and just asking for the entire blue brotherhood to take care of you with extreme prejudice.

7. It isn’t a run until the Johnson screws you twice.

Only partially. One of the stipulations of the dark future games is that the PCs are supposed to be street scum. Unfortunately this leads to two notions.

One: The PCs are scum too so they will be treated as such. This is correct for the first 3 or 4 runs if the players want to be scum let them and go on making it by in the biz by any means necessary. If they want to act like pros and conduct themselves in such a manner, treat them like pros. Rep’s nice but professionalism will get you farther than a predator loaded with APDS.

Two: The PCs may start on the low end of the food chain, but they don’t have to stay there. Acting like a psycho will get you out of there and right into the graveyard. Acting like a professional will get you out of there for life.

8. I’m a runner, the world doesn’t matter.

Wrong. If there’s no world for the rest of the population to live in, you don’t have one either.

9. They’re a corp so who cares.

Each and every single father, mother, brother, sister, etc. who depends on the corp for a paycheck to keep themselves with a roof over their heads and food in their mouths. Pros keep this in mind, gutter trash consider this often justifying it as “I hate corps”, so everyone in a corp deserves to die. Sure there’s bad individuals in a corp and the structure of the corp and its upper echelons may be the problem but the lowly wage slave, or the security grunt isn’t the problem.

10. I have honor, I’m a runner.

Maybe. Honor doesn’t mean killing everybody who looks at you funny. It also means that there are things you absolutely won’t do. Things like wet work, if that’s abhorrent to you. Generally killing needlessly on a run. Honor means having a rigid code—if it’s too flexible it isn’t a code, just a flimsy guideline. A good idea might be to check out the alignment in Palladium’s games and decide on one for your PC. A checklist of things you won’t do and just how far you’ll go. For more detail check out the codes of chivalry and bushido. While they are extremely difficult to follow they are what was once the pinnacle of personal honor. After that came a looser version of chivalry associated with swashbucklers finally coming to the codes of the gentlemen in the 19th century and last but not least was some of the semi-fictionalized codes of the old west as harsh as the land itself but no less a code.

Dispelling some of these myths will hopefully add a dimension of realism to the games you play in or run. Even I have to admit sometimes playing the odd Duke Nukem style of role-playing is fun. Runs where shooting everything is the norm has its place. Especially in campaigns where the players are gang members or runs which are reminiscent of this scene from my favorite movie.

“Excuse me sir a xeno-what?”

“A xenomorph.”

“It’s a bug hunt.”

Till I get the urge to type again, Ciao.