Crumb
c/shadowrun · by INeedMana@lemmy.world · 3y

How to roleplay MCT exec conflicted about his extraction?

My characters are organizing an extraction of local (country) MCT head of security. He is Japanese, raised by the corp from birth, but not completely beguiled as his son is an orc and he had to pull some levers to get him into school etc.
He's aware of extraction and agreed to it.

But the twist is that he decided to get extracted because he's taking the fall for a secret lab getting blown up in the middle of MCT office campus. So in a way he was made responsible for actions of some shadowrunners and now he's hiring (technically it's his mother organizing this but that's a detail) another ones. I think that can evoke some ambivalent emotions.
They are going to meet in secret soon to get some of his blood, pass the details of the plan, etc.
What are your thoughts on how to roleplay his attitude towards the characters and the whole thing?

P.S. He doesn't know that but, of course, it was our jolly bunch of psychos that have blown the lab up.

6 points · 7 comments · view on lemmy.world

7 Comments

Barbarian@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 3y (3 replies)

There's a few different directions I can think of that you could go:

  • The consummate professional. He doesn't particularly care about his reputation, but the idea of not being allowed to work in the field anymore is why he's ok with it. Calm, collected and well-spoken.

  • The craven. Scared of the punishment for the lab blowing up and knowing that he's going to take the fall, he wants to avoid the corporate retribution. Jittery, anxious and nervous.

  • The family man. Maybe he thinks that post-extraction, he'll be in a better position to help his son. Empathetic, polite and helpful.

There's obviously many more ways to think about a character in his position, but these are the ones that immediately sprung to mind for me.

sbv@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 3y

That's a great set of options.

INeedMana@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3y (1 reply)

Good point. Although their life in SK should not be bad afterwards, he is loosing something in this process.

I think I'm going to go rather emotionally-distant route. The thing I am not sure about is which emotion is behind the facade

  • anger - loosing position; being treated unjustly
  • fear - how can he trust other runners?
  • relief - he is going to live with his family, afer all
  • mistrust and maybe feeling hypocritical? - he spent his life trying to make sure what he is trying to do be as hard as possible

Of course it probably should be all of them but then if I start switching from one emotion to the other he'll come out panicked

Barbarian@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 3y

I think anger/fear would be more interesting and easier to base things on as the root emotion than relief/mistrust. They are properly primal emotions, after all. It's much more difficult and less interesting to have relief leak through than anger or fear.

Tzig@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 3y (2 replies)

One way would be to have him very differently with the runners compared to basically any other NPCs:

  • Since he's head of security and he was raised by MCT he probably knows everyone in his team personally, maybe some of them would be people he'd call his friends. Maybe he has the occasion of saying goodbye to a colleague, and as he's one the verge of breaking down the colleague doesn't quite understand why he's making a scene since they've been saying goodbye for each other for 35 years now. Maybe he has a moment when he leaves the armory when he remembers all that happened here, maybe he refuses to leave without the drone that saved his life... You know, show that he cares about people, about places and things
  • When he talks to the runners, have him be as cold as possible, if the runners argue or don't seem coordinated enough have him give snarky comments. If the runners' lives are in danger have him not care at all and leave them behind...

For that added bit of realism if you have metas in your group have him stop mid-sentence while saying some anti-meta comments, to represent how his son is slowly changing him.

INeedMana@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 3y (1 reply)

For that added bit of realism if you have metas in your group have him stop mid-sentence while saying some anti-meta comments, to represent how his son is slowly changing him.

I like that ideat. Unfortunately no metas in my group. One is black and maybe I could use it but I think I read somewhere that meta-racism replaced color-racism in SR

rasist@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 3y
[ removed ]