Ethics, White-hat, Grey-hat, Black-hat

In addition to generating Karma, runners significant actions also generate scores based on their competence, how they conduct themselves and act towards others. These are known as White-hat, Grey-hat, and Black-hat scores. White, and Black-hat scores represent a runner's morality, and are in opposition to each other, whenever runners gain two points of one, they loose one point of the other. Grey-hat score represents the dimensions of competence and reliability. Below are descriptions of the principles underlying each.

White-hat score

White-hats are basically the “good guys”. Shadowrunners commit crimes as a matter of course, live double lives, and are often violent, but that doesn't stop White-hats from helping where they can and having a positive influence overall.

- Improve the world
Perhaps the most important aspect of White-hat runners is that they work to make the world a better place. White-hat runners try to avoid causing suffering and to alleviate it when they find it. They promote happiness and pleasure where they can. White-hat runners take satisfaction in leaving things better than when they found them.

- Protect civilians
White-hat shadowrunners respond in emergencies to rescue or protect people in danger.

- Use minimal force against incidental targets
White-hat runners may engage in wetwork, particularly against Black-hat targets, but they tend to require a good reason for killing anyone, and to avoid lethal force against targets that are simply doing their jobs or "in the way", preferring instead to use nonviolent means of bypassing incidental personnel, or nonlethal force where violence is necessary.

- Fight against injustice, help the downtrodden
White Hats actively seek out innocent victims and those who have been wronged, and come to their aid. White-hat runners like to set things right, and to help the weak or oppressed.

- Benefits of White-hat score

The primary benefits of White-hat score are in interactions. People will be more likely to trust White-hat runners and will offer them far more benefit of the doubt. People's responses will generally be friendlier, both because of the White-hat's enhanced magnetism, and more importantly because of the fact that the runner will be interacting with White-hat's more often and more in-depth. White-hat runners are known for great feats of luck and unity.

- Drawbacks of White-hat score

White-hat score is both more difficult to generate than Black-hat score, and more easily lost. White-hat runners' ethical restrictions, soft-heartedness, and need to help others can lead to mission complications, meaning that they will often have a harder time accomplishing seemingly simple mission objectives, and may have to abandon some objectives entirely.

Grey-hat score

Grey-hat score is simplest, and indicates competence and reliability. It is awarded for successful interventions, and deducted for failures. Flaking out on allies and employers can negatively effect Grey-hat score, while going above and beyond for them can enhance it. All missions have at least some Grey-hat value. Everyone desires a high Grey-hat score.

Black-hat score

Black-hats are unrepentant, and typically indiscriminate murderers, villains, and thugs. They're typically part of the problem, doing anything for money and stooping to any level to accomplish their goals. Black-hats will trample anyone or anything.

- Ruin the world

The definitive feature of Black-hat runners, is that they make the world a worse and more miserable place to live in. Black-hat runners sew pain and suffering where they go, and have little or no empathy for others. Few Black-hat's actually want to ruin the world, they just don't care if they happen to; most are utterly mercenary, though some actually do enjoy seeing people cry.

- Endanger Civilians

Black-hat runners create dire emergencies that put innocent bystanders in harm's way. They will throw a grenade into a crowded elevator if it's the easiest way to kill one target.

- Use excessive force, kill casually

Black-hat runners need no more than a paycheck to justify wetwork, and will kill anyone who gets in their way during the course of a mission. Black-hat runners are notorious for the use of torture where convenient, and easily resort to murder as a means of eliminating witnesses.

- Perpetrate injustice, tread on the downtrodden

Black-hat runners don't care what the job is as long as the pay's good. More money = better than, at least when it comes to choosing Johnsons and who to help. Black-hat runners couldn't care less about someone's sob story.

- Benefits of Black-hat score

The primary benefit of being a Black-hat is that it's easy. Black-hats do whatever gets the mission done and don't really care about the consequences to anyone but themselves. They have no particular restrictions on their actions and mission complications are rarer. Black-hat points are trivially easy to earn, and black hats have an easier time intimidating people.

- Drawbacks of Black-hat score

Black hats tend to encounter more negative reactions, distrust, and suspicion. People rarely give them the benefit of the doubt. Furthermore they live in an unyieldingly cutthroat world, both because of their relations with others, and because they tend to be surrounded by other black-hats. It's likeley that anyone above a black-hat exists to be subverted, and that anyone beneath them exists to be used as a pawn. Betrayal and backstabbing are a way of life.

Game effects

White-hat runners get better reactions from people, and generally find themselves in a friendlier crowd, forming friendships and alliances more easily. Their actions tend to generate contacts and allies who like them and may come to their aid. They also generate substantially less heat, and smaller, sometimes even token, responses from third-party authorities.

Black-hat Runners don't have to worry about mission complications stemming from ethical concerns and will often find themselves able to make more money more easily. People react more negatively to them however, and they constantly have to watch their backs, as they attract a rougher crowd, and their associates are likely to use and dispose of them if it proves advantageous. They generate substantially more heat, and larger, sometimes hard-core, responses from third-party authorities.

Alignment Edges and Flaws

Volunteer
You have a number of charitable obligations that eat into your time, similar to a day job. The value of this flaw depends on the amount of time and money that you spend on charity, helping people out, and general goodwill. The upside is that you do gain White Hat points equal to the value of the flaw on a monthly basis.
10hrs + ¥500   = 1pt
20hrs + ¥1250 = 2pts
40hrs + ¥2500 = 3pts


Dirty Work
Whether it comes from working for an unscrupulous employer, or just being immoral on your own initiative, you spend a lot of your time away from shadowruns getting your hands dirty. This can be lucrative, but takes up a lot of time both in planning out and executing your crimes and schemes, and in running from or covering up the consequences. Your lifestyle doesn't make you friends, and at the end of each month you must roll a Karma check vs a TN of 4+ the value of the flaw in order to avoid gaining flaws such as Enemy, Hunted, or others appropriate to your character. You gain black hat points equal to the value of the flaw on a monthly basis, along with a bit of nuyen.
10hrs + ¥500   = 1pt
20hrs + ¥1250 = 2pts
40hrs + ¥2500 = 3pts