[Argent]

As a serious response to the question of how to encourage your PC's morals to slip: Don't.  Never do this; they're only resist, and feel noble doing so.  Simply show them the inevitable results of their choices in a world that isn't only as bad as our current one, it's worse.

Didn't kill that corrupted mage while rescuing the Johnson's 5-year-old daughter?  Have the weak Shadow free spirit he's made a pact with wake him up before the transfer is complete in the police station, and let them watch on the news as K-E tries to figure out the horrid deaths of everyone inside.

Saved the serial killer from falling off the roof?  Have him break out of prison six months later and go after a much-loved contact -- or the family of that facility's head of security.  THEN have the head of security come after the runners with a vengeance, because THEM he can find, and he blames them for letting the guy live.

There are other great ideas in this thread, but the basic idea in most of these is to make them lie in the bed they've chosen.  If they did the job they were hired to do ... or made real choices instead of trying to imitate Batman's twisted psyche by saving the bad guy. (Seriously, which of us wouldn't have killed the mass-murderer-in-the-quadruple-digits Joker by now, or even any of his OTHER Arkham Asylum cronies?)

I completely agree with this. In addition I'll say that if you put your players in situations where they are forced to make touch decisions that show the moral character of the environment they are in, you'll likely get a better response than if you just try to force it on them.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

I completely agree with this. In addition I'll say that if you put your players in situations where they are forced to make touch decisions that show the moral character of the environment they are in, you'll likely get a better response than if you just try to force it on them.

Exactly.  Shadowrun -- like almost every other game system* -- rewards doing good things and making hard decisions in favor of the good.**   Don't put them into situations where they have to choose the bad; make the 'bad' to be a more merciful and good (if more personally damning) choice than the 'good' one.  Kill one captive so that he won't kill one more, or many other people.  Do the job, wiping out the scientist's memory, because that was the deal and if you don't then you are breaking your word.

And if they choose 'merciful over honorable', as in the second example, punish them for it.  Bump up their notoriety as Johnson spreads the word.  Have their contacts start making jabs at them about 'so when are you gonna screw me over, huh?'  Introduce them to the fact that 'professional' does not mean 'pacifist' -- it means you do what you say.


* -- Please don't start listing the ones that aren't.

** -- This is in part because of how people have to deal with real life, where there are few clear-cut (or even muddled but discoverable) good/bad decisions.  In essence, we want to be good people, and be directly rewarded for it, which is the part we usually miss out on IRL.