Re: So why would anyone become a shadowrunner, anyway?

On 11/16/06, pentaj2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 <pentaj2@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>
>
> Why would *anybody* become a shadowrunner, actually?
>


Maybe you need a lot of cash in a hurry; reasons could range from sick (or
possiblly 'sic' *g*) granny who needs an operation to being blackmailed
for
whatever.  And hey, aren't you lucky, you just overheard a couple of
chummers at the bar saying how this big pay-off would be a lot easier if
they just had *insert your character's special talent* to help them out.
They only call it cliche because everybody uses it, and everybody only
uses
it 'cause it works *g*

Then there's the accident method, he didn't set out to become one, he just
did after a series of events, as others have suggested.

My first SR character, I just used the PI archetype to see if I liked the
game, with just the briefest of histories (I think, just name and age
LOL),
before going to the effort of creating my own; during the course of an
investigation into some stolen data, he had to kill somebody in self
defense, who turned out to be the nephew of some local bigwig who didn't
buy
the 'in self defense' ploy and set him up to be killed, and he ended up
working with the same 'runners he'd been originally hired to find in the
first place, helping them out until he could clear his name.

The first one I created, who became my favorite and most-played, became a
'runner by accident as well; he saw a group of thugs ganging up on
somebody
on the subway, and helped the guy out; the guy turned out to be a 'runner
on
the way to a meet and liked my character's style, and invited him along
because they were short on magical sup****t.  "Hey, some friends and I were
just hired to rescue a kidnapped girl, and could use the help... we could
really use your help."  Some adrenaline rushes later (bullets whizzing by
the ear really make ya feel *alive*, doncha know), there's the gooshy
feeling of rescuing a little girl, followed by the "Holy drek, my share is
*how* much?!  Hmm, need help with anything else?"  It really didn't take
too
long for him to go from pacifist ("It's a lot easier on ME to stun
somebody
than to fry him, and gets 'em out of the way just as effectively as
killing...") to semi-pacifist ("We can always kill them later if need
be...") to pragmatist ("Look, you get them out of the way before slicing
their throats so we're not tripping over them on the way back out, and I
won't look over my shoulder to find out exactly what you're doing to the
stunned guards...") to taking out a ganger who knocked his burger out of
his
hands by shoving a stun baton into the ganger's crotch... ("Hey, I was
*hungry*... and it's not like I killed him...")

And the great thing about this is, you can either RP it out (if the other
'runners in the party - and the people playing them - are appropriate
fits)
or just have that be in the backstory and now you're about to be hired for
your first real 'run...

As others have said, once you start on the slippery slope, it's a lot
easier
to keep sliding than to get off it.