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Black mohawk, pink trenchcoat.

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Lorebane24

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« on: <04-08-18/1534:39> »
I know I've heard these terms used to describe alternate styles of games from the two traditional ones, but I cant find much in the way of agreement on what they mean.  Does anyone have perhaps a more solid idea?
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Kiirnodel

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« Reply #1 on: <04-08-18/1643:50> »
The different descriptions often have a variety of meanings to different people, but here is my interpretation.

This form of description can be broken down into mission style (trenchcoat/mohawk) and play style (pink/black).

Mohawk missions are ones where being loud is allowed (if not encouraged). And by loud I don't necessarily mean noise. This is about how much attention is being focused on the group. In a society where everyone wears trenchcoats, the mohawk stands out. So a mohawk game is one where that style won't be discouraged.

Trenchcoat missions on the other hand are ones where conformity is expected.

Black vs Pink is how you expect the players to work their own styles. Pink is more outlandish and black is more subdued. It can also be thought of as the amount of realism people might be expected to run with. Pink is more the munchkin-style while black is taking a more realistic approach.

So: black mohawk would be outlandish or heavily styped runs done in a realistic or straightforward way. Pink trenchcoat would be more straightforward runs done in unexpected or out-of-the-box ways.

Lorebane24

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« Reply #2 on: <04-08-18/1814:32> »
Pink trenchcoat would be more straightforward runs done in unexpected or out-of-the-box ways.

So, for example, kidnalping an executive for extraction by stufffing them inside a life sized model troll?
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SpellBinder

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« Reply #3 on: <04-08-18/1900:52> »
Pink trenchcoat would be more straightforward runs done in unexpected or out-of-the-box ways.

So, for example, kidnalping an executive for extraction by stufffing them inside a life sized model troll?
Depending on how that's done that could go either way, actually.

Close to as Kirrnodel put it (and my take on it), the difference is how much you're standing out and being outlandish.  The Pink Mohawk way of "Open Carry" is walking around Downtown Seattle with your assault cannons and machineguns in hand and Knight Errant (and everyone else) not really noticing it.  The Black Trenchcoat way would be a shoulder rig for your registered Beretta 201T, your commlink quietly telling Knight Errant that you've got a license to carry it.

Cruising the strip, Pink Mohawk is driving your modified BMW I8 Interceptor painted dayglo-green with an RPK HMG and two Enfield AS-7s mounted and showing for the world to see and no LEOs take notice or pull you over (multiple times).  Black Trenchcoat would be in a Hyundai Shin-Hyung painted navy blue.

On a job, say hitting a secret Azzie facility near the edge of town, Pink Mohawk is roaring in guns blazing, stereo pounding, and everyone yelling "LEROY JENKINS!"  Black Trenchcoat is casually driving up in a non-descript GMC Bulldog and the team sneaking in dressed as janitors.

Marcus

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« Reply #4 on: <04-08-18/2346:33> »
Exactly as said ask 10 players and get 10 different answers.

To me Pink Mohawk, is High Adventure Cyberpunk, the games/runs where purposefully going over the top, where you fight a gang war along side the ancients, or go after a Yama king in Kowloon itself.  It's not that you disregard all limits, but where your going everyone agrees its gotta get done and looks the other way.

Black Trench Coat on the other hand, Should be a more Gritty Cyberpunk. The Runs where you do everything right and ya still get screwed. Where even with all the caution and all the skill, the rain in settle just never stops, and with it misery is sure to follow. The runs where your drug dealer sold you baking soda, the target was fake, the drop off was a trap, and the Johnson, stiffed you from the word go.

To me every game should have example of both these concepts. But I think it's important for a GM to recognize where they rest on the spectrum. Do you run Shadowrun as High Octain thrill ride? Or Is your Run the Dark Dystopian future we all fear it could be?

Like all games no side is "right" having fun is only meaningful answer and which ever side you choose, don't loose sight of the other.

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Spooky

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« Reply #5 on: <04-09-18/0012:25> »
Marcus is right in saying that no one style is right and another is wrong. Run your game in the fashion that you and your table enjoy the most. I have run black trench, pink mohawk, and mirrorshades games, and they were all fun, just in different ways. Oh, pink mohawk is the A-Team style (where the guns always get fired), mirrorshades is Leverage style (where combat might happen, but guns are not often used), and black trench is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy style (where combat does not happen, unless things go really bad), at least as a general rule. I'm sure someone will argue, but this gives an idea of the spectrum possible.
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firebug

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« Reply #6 on: <04-09-18/0043:54> »
I also want to add to what Marcus said in that those styles all are supposed to exist, in the game.  It all depends where the characters are, who they are, and what they're doing.  Corp black-op runners exist, and so do the Halloweeners.  So no one can possibly be "right", as none exclude the others.  Like, Chicago is a very Pink Mohawk setting.  Neo-Tokyo seems to be a lot more based on subtlety.  Another more Black Trenchcoat setting is Manhattan.
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kyoto kid

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« Reply #7 on: <04-09-18/0424:55> »
Marcus is right in saying that no one style is right and another is wrong. Run your game in the fashion that you and your table enjoy the most. I have run black trench, pink mohawk, and mirrorshades games, and they were all fun, just in different ways. Oh, pink mohawk is the A-Team style (where the guns always get fired), mirrorshades is Leverage style (where combat might happen, but guns are not often used), and black trench is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy style (where combat does not happen, unless things go really bad), at least as a general rule. I'm sure someone will argue, but this gives an idea of the spectrum possible.
...pretty accurate description.
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Redwulfe

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« Reply #8 on: <04-09-18/2015:43> »
Personally I prefere Black trenchcoat style games. I like the puzzle of the characters being hired to do what may seem to be an impossible task at times and doing it with little to no trace of the team being there at all. To me Balck trenchcoat is very cerebral. legwork and planning take most of the game time and combat is deadly and avoided if possible at all costs. but sometimes I really like to deploy the hawk and let the guns blaze a trail for the team to follow. To me this is the style of game were combat is deadly but common, jobs are muscled through most of the time and brute force is usually the correct means to the end. This is what I thought was great about the Chicago setting. In the burbs you could get some really good trenchcoat style stories and still be able to dance your way with guns a blazing in the CZ with some mohawk tales. both where welcome and you could mix it up for a little bit for every player.

Everyone will have their preferences, none of them are a wrong way to play. In the shadowrun universe you can play both though and it makes the game have an amazing universe to explore.
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Gardensnake

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« Reply #9 on: <04-10-18/2244:51> »
I have to say, I really like the responses here. I tend to prefer Black trench coat games myself. I think too many people play the corps as stupid and that isn't right. A favorite concept from the Shadowrun Returns: Deadman's Switch is where you've caused all this damage to the corp but it's okay because you rescued the CEO's daughter. It shows the corp is smart but had evaluated your worth and now has decided you can lead it's suicide mission because you didn't do too much damage. That to see defines black trench coat. It's realistic. The more real something is, the more players will take it seriously and th funner it will be. Have fun and play your style, just don't go overboard or your players may get bored.

Mirikon

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« Reply #10 on: <04-15-18/1055:03> »
As others have said, the distinction really boils down to the kind of game you're playing. Another way of looking at it is thinking about Punk vs. Professional.

Black Trenchcoat games are more 'professional criminal' types of games. If you watch Oceans Eleven, The Sting, Leverage, Burn Notice, Mission: Impossible, or other such sources, then you got an idea for how things go. The idea is to do the job, get out, and (hopefully) get paid. The best job is the one where you never have to fire a gun, and nobody knows you were there. While not so much going for 'conformity', the name of the game is 'discretion'. If there is a 'loud' or 'outlandish' part of the plan, it is usually a bit of smoke and mirrors. A Black Trenchcoat run can TOTALLY have someone pay the Halloweeners to do a drive-by of the area at a certain time, causing chaos, to be used as a distraction, while the team slips past security.

Pink Mohawk, on the other hand, is more Punk. These groups tend to be more street level than high rollers, if only because the high paying jobs usually involve sneaking through corpsec infested properties, and someone in an armored jacked sporting obvious chrome and a radical hairstyle sticks out. The jobs tend to be either low-level, or ones where the goal is to 'fight the power' in some way. This is where your radical environmentalists, your Neo-Anarchists, and all those types hang out. If you've seen Johnny Mnemonic, Lawnmower Man, Sneakers, Hackers, and other such shows, then you got a good idea. While black trenchcoat teams prepare for violence, and hope it won't happen, Pink Mohawk teams are pretty likely to encounter violence early and often, and their life expectancy is much reduced.
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Lorebane24

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« Reply #11 on: <04-15-18/1221:16> »
Right, but I was wonderig about less common variants Ive heard mention - pink trenchcoat and black mohawk.

After hearing people weigh in on style vs function though, I guess pink trenchoat would be complexity and subeterfuge without a lot of subtley.  Basically a party of Slamm-Os.  And I guess black mohawk would be direct but tactical and professional, like Pistons?
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neomerlin

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« Reply #12 on: <05-27-18/1805:07> »
I've always assumed I run pretty straight forward black trenchcoat games. That's what I like. It is, I feel, what the OG Shadowrun was intended for. I also extend that definition beyond the players to how it describes the world - as a mean, and dangerous, and unpleasant place. Like Marcus said earlier in the thread. Maybe you're professional, maybe you take the job seriously, and maybe Mr Johnson still screws you and there's nothing you can do about it because even in the shadows the corps own you.

And then, in my last session, the magician decided to try and shotcut a run by summing an air spirit and asking it to steal some high grade cyberware from a clinic. It didn't work. It not only failed, it failed embarassingly, it high profile failed, and this unfortunate air spirit was caught on EvoTube desparately trying to escape this clinic with this cyberware. When the laughter stopped I had to ask "Who brought all this pink hair dye into my game?"

Reflecting afterwards about the characters in my game, some more than others, and about how I present the idea of Shadowrun to my players, I've begun to think that I don't really run a straight forward black trenchcoat game. One of my players suggested "Black trenchcoat with pink lining", but I think pink trenchcoat works just as well.

My players are professional and highly skilled criminals who take their work serious and aim to be a well oiled machine of espionage and occasional murder. They make it clear in the meet and on the job that they're here to do business. But they're also all a little eccentric, a little broken, and a little mad. But I always say you've got to be a little crazy to be a Shadowrunner. No truly sane person would do it, not when being a wageslave or a BTL junkie or even a go-ganger is easier and safer. There's other ways to escape the soul grinding mundainity and corporate oppression of the sixth world.

I'd never heard of black mohawk or pink trenchcoat before this thread came up, but this is how I define pink trenchcoat, as, I think, the best description of my shadowrun games: A game set in a sleazy gritty cyberpunk dystopia, where the PCs are highly skilled professional criminals working high risk/high reward jobs, because they're too damned crazy to do anything else; they're eccentric, distinct, and stylistic characters as much defined by their personal foibles and madness as by their grim determination to do the job right. When the pink trenchcoats are on a job, it doesn't go belly up because the plan was bad, they don't have the skills, or they don't care about subtlety, it's because the magician just got splattered with knight errant blood and he hates seeing blood on his clothes and he just cannot even with the mission until he's cleaned it off, even if there's only 30 seconds until another patrol comes around the corner. It's because the samurai ate the decker's last can of SoySpam and now they're not talking but they've got to work together, so every communication sounds something like "Will you guys tell the samurai that she's about to step in front of a security camera and frag us all." "Will you tell the decker that disabling security cameras is his job and I shouldn't have to hide from them if he just turned them off."

That's my definition of pink trenchcoat.

DigitalZombie

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« Reply #13 on: <05-29-18/1333:36> »
I also havent heard the terms before.
But maybe the first word Black/pink is the tone of the setting dark broody or silly.
And the second word trenchcoat/mohawk is the style of the setting ie. Low key professional or over the top crazy with a lot of explosives.

Marcus

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« Reply #14 on: <05-29-18/1346:25> »
Don't sweat it DZ, some folks just have to be unique individual snow flakes. Pink is Not Silly, it's action movie larger then life Heroics, where as Black is professional and Gritty. There isn't anything wrong with mixing and matching terms to increase complexity of definitions, but there also nothing wrong with keeping it simple.
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