Remember the number 1 rule of shadowrunning: when the cost-benefit ratio of killing you is better than the cost benefit-ratio of letting you live, you die. It may be a quiet snuffing and your body in the bay, or it may be a year long slow drama of love, agony, hope, and despair punctuated with violence, but once you cross that line your already dead. Its only a matter of time. Your only hope in hell is convincing the offended party or some equally big fish that they should re-calculate based on new value you offer them.

Start by drying up their contacts. The fixer who set them up with the bombs for the downtown kaboom? Dead. The Star/KE who helped them along? Re-assigned to Denver. Anyone else who can get you a job or gear? Blacklist, won't touch you. What, you thought those Ares Alphas really fell off the back of a truck? You can have some of the higher loyalty types drop them hints that hey, people are asking for you...and not in a friendly manner. The lower loyalty types may even invite you to false meets: "yeah, yeah, I got the drone your looking for..meet me at the dump in...2 hours?" This is the opening phase. The Runners probably won't give up, but they know it isn't all men in tights either.

Now that the Runners are isolated, start taking their assets. Safehouses get compromised and cleaned out while your away. Vehicles go kaboom. Houses burn down. The street gang you pay for protection tells you if you ain't off the block in three days, it'll be bad. Warrants start appearing on their heads for major crimes, real or not. You wake up to find all of your nuyen has been cleaned out except for what you have on certified stick. Your fake SINs start getting heat. It seems like every time you do something, the law is RIGHT, FREAKIN, THERE. Pretty much, drive them into the corner where all they have left is the contents of their bail out bag. Any contacts that survived phase I are cut off. Got friends or dependents? Not anymore. Enjoy the Simsense tape of them being tortured, raped, and killed. This is the phase where you should be slapping the runners in the face with the fact that their noble decision has effectively destroyed their lives.

Runners still insist on being good guys? Well, good for them, they're a shining tribute to metahuman dignity and nobility. Unfortunately for them, this is where you can start saying "I warned you." Unleash the beast. Other runners, carbombs, full KE/Star raids where the captured get "shot trying to resist arrest", basically make it clear that if you don't either get out of dodge, sell your soul to the mob or find a big time sponsor, you WILL die in the next three to five days. Then make them do heinous things to shatter their last vestiges of faith in humanity.

I would suggest a different tack and say run with it. Don't think about how to go after them with heavy-hitters (unless they've been noticeably sloppy so as to be easily targetable), think about how to draw them into bigger and more complex runs that suit the emerging ethic. If they save a prostitute, give them a lead on a human trafficking ring. If they beat down a BTL dealer, give them a lead on a snuff film ring. Don't punish them for trying to clean up the streets, just make a deeper rabbit hole. Throw in complications to suit the campaign style. Maybe the rings are dispersed and lots of legwork needs to be done to understand the organization. Maybe the syndicates get real nervous about losing some key facilities and bring in full-on mercs for protection of their big assets. Maybe there's lots of innocent people caught in the mix so they need to be precise. Maybe they've got a bunch of corrupt cops that need to be dealt with without burning their connections to the fuzz.

T, FTFY. Seriously, if the group wants to play a gritty life-is-cheap game style then your post is great. But that's not what the OP sounds like to me. If the group wants to play a Big Goddamn Heroes campaign, then that's what they should do. It may not be your preferred style, but it can certainly fit within the range of Shadowrun genres. Watch a move like Taken or Spartan for a sense of how the "hero in a dark world" motif can certainly fit Shadowrun.

Why not have some organized criminal play the Damsel in Distress card, except their distress ends up being a setup where the runners are caught red-handed with something very illegal. Give'em outs, of course, where if they do their homework they can sniff it out, but don't make it obvious.

Then they gotta find out who was behind it, get revenge, and/or clean up their reputation.

Or some body asks them to do a noble deed...and it turns out it's a corp looking for an edge (i.e. they were lied to, or weren't told the whole picture).

Otherwise, yes, have fun. If that's what they want, let'em do it. There are honorable 'runners, but life's harder for them. But I imagine the Karma's better.

Ok the first thing you do is arrest them and take all their toys away, the lonestar guy they negotiated the blackout with? Snapped up by IA after the mafia either frames him or just exposes some of his own dirty secrets. The team ends up surrounded by a LS and FBI task force (assuming this is Seattle) backed up by metroplex guard, city news camera rolling. Put them in a difficult moral choice, they can now shoot their way through the LS, FBI, and Metroplex guard which will pretty much put them on #1 with a bullet status and vilify them in the eyes of the general public, or they can go to jail. In jail once stripped of all their toys the mafia starts to send people with Shivs at them, first to soften them up and then they actually put some soldati into the prison population to finish the job. Ultimately you want your runners to escape or get free but only with some scars and casualties.

I'm not saying punish them for wanting to be good guys, shadowrun has a fine tradition of Robin Hooding and one of my favorite series of SR stories, Wolf and Raven, is pretty much their organization taking down a local crime boss, but you have to be circumspect about it, you have to cut deals and you have to avoid fighting on multiple fronts. You can pick a fight with a local mafia don and kill his soldiers, but you start to make the organization as a whole look weak publicly and even Don's that are opposed to him will start to close ranks.

Furthermore the Mafia doesn't have any issues with Cyberware and they have a lot more money then your average street sam. In fact per vice they've started putting together in house hit teams outfitted with the best their money and theft can get them which is a lot. Basically any criminal organization that survives and thrives in the sixth world isn't going to roll over easily, they've been challenged before and they've weathered those challenges somehow some way.

Basically there's no reason the mafia or any other criminal cartel should come at the runners head on when the runners are playing the system against them. The mafia will play the system right back, and frankly they've been doing it for hundreds of years longer.

You could use the fact that they are working with LS and KE so much, they begin to be seen as "compromised" by the normal fixers / contacts / etc. Work begins to dry up, except from LS / KE, where they are seen as unofficial, disposable SWAT teams.

Because of the LS/ KE connection, they get called to take down really big, really dangerous threats, including other runner teams.

Have LS have the team work against KE, and vice-versa. Could set up a "Fistful of Dollars" scenario.

Or the LS is IA. Which is why he could do a blackout. And he knows a lot of secrets, secrets the higher ups within the government and LS do not want to make public and is himself so squeeky clean that no amount of manufactured frame can stick.

Basically the runners, if they are really good, are supposed to be the very people that the mafia will turn to play the system. But now the mafia are forced to use second stringers who simply aren't as good. The mafia can't play the system right back, because the runners are the system.

This seems like an interesting direction for your standard shadowrun campaign to go in. Run with it! You don't necessarily have to throw the heavy hitters at them straight off the bat, instead try taking the roundabout approach. ''Cleaning up the streets'' is relative depending on who is doing the cleaning. The mafia does not like being made out to be fools. Remember that this is a serious criminal organization that will generally have far more in the way of backing and support than your standard shadowrun team.

Start out slow. Have the PCs get calls late at night from their contacts or family claiming that a towncar has been sitting outside their house for the past few days, but pulls off as soon as anyone approaches.

Have one of their younger siblings be approached by a nice man on the playground at school who asks all sorts of questions about their older brother/sister. Make it known that the mafia may not be able to deal with them directly, but they can't be everywhere at once and if they don't stop doing what they're doing, the consequences will be dire.

Throw some situations like that at them and see what develops. Perhaps you don't necessarily need to challenge them in a straight fight. Put them on the defensive by threatening the things that they love. Be it from the examples given above, or something else entirely.

In summary, make it personal. Hit them where it will really hurt, in the things that they love and care about. After all, that's exactly what they're doing to the various criminal organizations around the city. Turnabout is fair play.

I have one question to all you people saying really screw over your runners. What if doing that makes them not have fun anymore. When players aren't having fun then the GM has failed his job.

Period.

You have to challenge them, but Daishi's approach would work too.

Oh, they're absolutely allowed to be Big Goddamn Heroes. If they do it right, they can be Big Goddamn Heroes for a long time. At least long enough until someone thinks to shoot the two browncoats in the back.

But deciding to be an underdog hero who sh!ts where he sleeps has consequences. And the consequences to that are the effective destruction of your lifestyle, and eventually the statistics say the destruction of you. You may adapt a new lifestyle, living in a cave/friendly neighborhood houses/etc., but the moment you really buck against the powers that be there is no plausible way that the quasi-stable life you had before is going to stay. And its probably a violent removal.

You can do it. But you'd better be ready to pay the price. And realize that for every happy parent who thinks your an angel, there a dozen BTL junkies who just want a fix, a dozen whores who will keep on whoring because their SINless, skill-less, and in debt, and a dozen kids who are going to join right back up with the gangs because an AK-97 and a tat are the only way out they have. Then weigh in the fact that the majority of the population, be you ever so noble, probably just wishes you'd stay the hell out of their lives and stop causing things to explode around them.

Basically, appreciate that "cleaning up the streets" is going to mean living like a terrorist, and that's the gentlest version.

Once again thats good for YOUR game but what about theirs?

First you need to see what style these players like, then what style their used too, and finally what style they don't want. If the game your proposing turns these players away from Shadowrun then nobody wins. Some people don't like such depressing locals except in small doses where they can do something. We know these players want to be good guys, let them be good guys and unless they want their world to go tits up and be ultra realistic don't take a crap on their parade.

Batman doesn't live like a terrorist. Granted, he's possibly the most munchkinized shadowrunner ever, but still that's a precedent for a shadowrun-fitting style of heroics that is very far from the living-in-a-hole-everyone-you-love-is-dead-GRITTY! style you insist on. There's room for a spectrum here that still fits within the universe. If the team is professional and clean, they can be ghosts. Isolate your contacts properly, have a secure communication system, run all your assets through the scary offshore banks, be meticulous about leaving no evidence, build rock solid fake ids to live behind. Etc. If a shadowrunner is good enough, there's no reason they can't be offing Dons on Monday and sipping chardonnay in their penthouse on Tuesday. If a team wants to roll Miami Vice then do that; don't insist on Reservoir Dogs.

The OP asked what to do in order to challenge his players. We're simply giving him some input on how WE would handle it. If the mafia decided to say ''Eh, they're super-duper power rangers and we don't want to touch them because they might cry'' that doesn't sound like much of a challenge to me. Good guys face opposition too. The idea isn't to ruin their day, it's to place obstacles in their path and force them to adjust to changing circumstances.

Can they keep doing the good-guy thing with half the criminals in the city gunning for their family/loved ones/them? It's a challenge, we're not telling him to destroy them in such a way that there is no realistic possibility for them to recover or turn the tables.

More importantly, this is Shadowrun we're talking about, not Dungeons and Dragons. Being a hero in this game is more likely to get you killed than rewarded. It's the nature of the beast.

There is a huge difference between challenge and wreck. A challenge is not slowly destroying their lives like some of the examples given. I am all for challenge, my groups have gone against everything from a swarm of drug addicts that have to be taken down non lethally (and none of them had stick and shocks) to cyber zombies and some have chosen to be robins hoods. I had their contacts kidnapped (who they rescued), their favorite fixer killed, and their homes firebomed, but in the end they won without having all of their hard work destroyed and forced to turn against what they wanted to do which I must add some of the examples wanted. Yes shadowrun is a hard place to play but making it so the players no longer want to be good guys when the players want to be good guys is hardly doing them any good.

That seems at odd with the fact that he's arranging with terrorists to blow up buildings in downtown Seattle. Buildings that at least on paper were probly legitimate tax and security fee paying establishments. But lets say by some happy accident their dealing with either the cleanest or the most well connected untouchable cop in the city, the mafia arranges for him to die somehow or just arranges a nice big stink and the plan proceeds.




Except the OP's problem wasn't that his runners are really good, it's that he's basically wiffle balled the opposition for a long time and had some very bad dice rolls, in part because for some wierd reason he thinks in 2070+ the mafia hasn't figured out wired reflexes and bone lacing. Shadowrunners arn't hired because their the best in the world (although some are) their handled because their deniable, they fade in and out of the shadows and they keep things impersonal. In a way these runners have nullified all their best assets. While some people do enjoy playing in worlds where everyone without the magical PC tag is full bore retard stupid the OP did come around asking for what to throw at their players to challenge them. My conjecture is that the OP shouldn't be thinking in terms of pure combat encounters and start thinking non-laterally. There are two really good reasons for this 1) It keeps the game from getting stale 2) It forces you into an escalation spuiral where you have to come up with reasons not to have the NPC's just be killed suffer asphyxiation from the huge quanties of lead pressing in on their armor but also that they don't run roughshod over the oposition.

Actually my best advice for the OP? Create some actual real people in the Mafia, some Don's or lieutenants who have fought their way to the top. You can make them as modern or as cliche as you like but above all give yourself a lens to focus your response through rather then just coming up with the next combat encounter.

I want to re-iterate, I'm all for Runners playing good guys, I'm all for them improving the quality of their world, but I'm also against making it easy and not having the status quo bite back a bit. It's there for a reason after all.

Exactly, challenge without complete destruction. This is pretty easy.

1] Have their contacts attacked but make it so they can be saved. The players paid for these NPCs out of their pockets with BP. Killing them off without the PCs being able to do anything about it isn't fair. Contacts they earned after chargen is a different matter but I would still give them a chance. Maybe rescue them after they've been interrogated and so they have to mercy kill their ally. A scene like this will probably make it obvious to all of them that this is some serious business.

2] Put them on the defensive for a bit. Family members and allies have to be extracted and relocated. At the same time this kind of chaos will attract attention. During this time more proactive groups on the PCs side may come to town. Knowing they're not alone in this war could do some good.

3] Sometimes just throwing wave after wave of grunts can't do it. Sending other runners after them is a good idea, so is trying to frame them for a crime they didn't commit. This will mean they have to do a lot more then just kill the threat.

4] Crooked cops and corrupt officials may not appreciate all this doogoodery. They may try to use their pull to label the PCs as criminals or terrorists. Now they have other good (ok not all good) guys after them like the straight cops that didn't know these guys were doing good. Now they will have a crisis. Some of these people are just doing their jobs and don't deserve to die. Are they still hoods if they kill them? Bringing these powerful foes down can be huge adventures. Using anything from forged blackmail material to outright assassination or if they find real proof of their connections exposing them and which leads to their arrests.

These are all viable threats which won't lead to the PCs losing interests in being good guys. Make the journey challenging, not a stress causer.

Sooner or later they WILL have to come to terms with the other organized crime groups. Crimes hates vaccum, and an area cleared of Mafia presence is likely to attract others unsavory types. Heck, they are probably already feeding the runners information on Mafia targets ! Clearing the opposition for free is a dream coming true...

Something you can do is to face the players with some moral choices highlighting that there is some grey between black and white and that they are not facing human-shaped cardboard targets but also peoples.

Bombing a building is not really selective, and Mafia hideouts can have "cover" in the form of innocent bystanders/neighbors that are potential collateral damage.

Maybe that orphanage only manage to keep running because donations from a Mafia boss playing good citizen (and remembering his childhood there) are the only thing keeping the books in the black.

That mafia soldati has a family too, people not necessarily knowing what he did for a living. How do you handle an enraged teenager seeking to kill the bad guys who took away his dad and made mommy sink into depression ?

Challenge is absolutely necessary, but I personally have a strong dislike for a reactionary challenge. As both a player and a GM, I find it more enjoyable to have a progressive sense of challenge where its a matter of the next mission being harder, not the last mission coming back angrier than ever. If the players were sloppy (relative to the agreed upon play style), then some blowback makes sense, but if they've been clean then the mafia should be angry as hell at ghosts and rumours of ghosts. (Or angry at the organization you framed for the job. Like, say, the French Catholic Church if you gut the Vory human trafficking operations in Paris. Good times.)

The streets of Shadowrun are incredibly dirty, so there's plenty of material for a GM to keep ratcheting up the stakes without having to resort to arbitrary blowback. Brainstorm up some good scenarios, lay out the plot hooks and let nature take its course. Some possibilities in addition to what I've previously mentioned: Free spirit serial killers. Psychopathic rage inducing BTLs. Organlegging. Actual terrorists. Vampire cabals targeting high schools. Corporate labs in the barrens doing human experiments. Unusually well-financed gang wars. Union corruption mixed with arms smuggling. Government corruption and shadowy conspiracies with ninja assassins. Hell, you can even tie them all together with one leading to the next.

Or if your players want to keep working the mob, then you can still ratchet things up without the direct blowback side. The don calls in some favours from other cities and has much tougher goons (start with orcs with $20k of second hand cyber and an assault rifle) protecting assets. Add some HRT-style hit squads lurking nearby the juicy targets to hit the players from behind as soon as they show up. Or the mob starts leaking false intel to the streets (and thus their contacts) to set up ambushes. "Word is a fresh supply of dope is coming in Friday night on a cruise ship, the SS Murderhole." If they keep pressing, maybe the mob starts calling in big markers and gets uniformed cops to protect their assets with actual HRT backup. At some point you can even blow it all up in their face indirectly by having another syndicate like the Seoulpa Rings coming in heavy to take the turf of the weakened mob.

Now this is all how I would do (and currently am) doing things in a Hooding campaign. If the tit-for-tat Mob War sounds fun to your group, then have at it. I'm just saying that's not the only way it has to be.

I've noticed all the other replies want to discourage the players and get them back to corporate espionage. I think you have two options: turn the game into kick ass, and be brutal to the players, or turn the game into batman. I would have a chat with them and see what they want. But please don't railroad them! As a GM I am always delighted when the players seize the story and make it theirs.

As far as retaliation goes, its hard to believe that the Mafia are better than the mega corps at tracking people down. Kick ass is about an average guy who goes vigilante. Your game is about crazy hard shadowrunners who can smash their way through 2070 security, and have the skills to wipe all traces that they were ever there. Remember that Shadowrun is three things: a rules system that allows you to run games with cyberware and magic, a setting that describes a dystopian future, and a set of modules / suggested way of playing that casts the players as freelance corporate espionage agents. You can keep 2 of them, and go with the players making your own style of play. Have fun doing it!

Oh, that's easy. How does the enraged teenager handle the other enraged teenagers seeking to take revenge on the mafia soldatos' family who broke up their families?

I want this as a poster on my wall. And a tattoo. And a tattoo of the poster, too. Especially in regards to all this.

That being said, be smart about it. Do hit back, otherwise where would a feeling of accomplishment come into play? Don't kill family and loved ones. Kidnap them. Otherwise you miss out on that great cliche of the hero in action movies of coming to the resuce, beat all to hell, but not letting it stop them from doing what is right.

Maybe have other like minded people out there, who rally behind the runners, and start an underground movement of sorts.

In a game where elves and dragons can be shot at by guys made mostly out of metal, why can't the good guys win once in a while?

The best advice I can give about this is....

Go watch Burn Notice, then steal it for ideas. Hell, just snag the episode reviews and synopsis.

The entire show is based around an patriotic ex-spy and his group of friends helping people in need, when the law can't help or won't listen.

They deal with things like getting people's money back from scam artists, convincing a violent criminal gang to back off from a community clinic, and occasionally making deals under the table to advance their own agenda. That kind of thing. Its kind of similiar to Leverage, but the tone is a lot more.... on the streets, in people's faces, putting the pressure on people to make things happen, with occasional uses of necessary violence(and occasionally explosives). That, and both their clients and enemies feel like real people - they panic, make mistakes, and the team has to scramble so everything doesn't fall apart. Leverage is another good show for this kind of thing, but its tone and theme are more about a grand manipulative Con-of-the-day.

I've noticed people only seem to want SR to be dystopian to explain some group or other not using basic common sense. I don't see many suggesting that the mafia should be better at tracking runners down then the corps. However there is no doubt in my mind if the corps wanted to catch and punish runners they'd successfully respond and eliminate 95% if they threw enough resources at the problem. But usually it's not profitable to do so so it seldom happens that way. It's just business and certain losses to shadowrunners are expected. That's why so many runners in universe hate the Azzies because of all the corps they tend to go for revenge more often then not because it's their policy. But because the group in question brought this beyond just business it can be expected that they will be hunted dillogently and without scruples. That's not punishing the players or trying to force a certain playstyle that's just the way the world works.

It certainly doesn't help their cause that any particular thing a shadowinner wants to buy eat or do that didn't come out of a Corp store likely ce through the mafia or their reginal equivalents hands at some point.

I say run with it. The only reason to fear Organized Crime is that the normal ethical restraints most people have don't exist for them, ethical restraints Shadowrunners break constantly. Their usual escalation of intimidation, and force losses its efficacy when the opponent is equally willing to break all semblance of decency. The tight knit group is much more likely to stick together when the shit hits the fan, where as the Mafia is likely to gather new leadership if things go bad. The Mafia has more to lose than the Shadowrunners, and if the Runners operate smartly they will win in the end. For the Mafia to win they need to gather intelligence and ambush the players, or set up an ambush by making a target look easier than it is. Any of their usual tactics won't work.

Say they kidnap your kid brother. Well any Runner with half a brain knows it is a trap, what do you do? Kidnap Mama Gambino and a bunch of little Bambinos, stick them on a yacht headed to Vladivostok where your contact in the Vory will be ready to sell the kids and have Mama turn tricks, if they don't let your kid brother go. Worst thing that happens is kid brother dies, and you turn a little profit, while the Mafia still wants you dead. Once they want you dead you have nothing to lose. Of course how the hell they found your brother when you have not used your real name in ten years, and not seen your family in an even longer time is beyond me. They are the ones with territory, they are the ones with assets, they are the ones with a semi public profile, they are the ones who have everything to lose, and if they go after the neighborhood, well people can only be pushed so far before they decide to step over that line. Sure you might have avoid your contacts and most of the living for quite some time, but if the, will, the training, and the guts to do what needs to be done is there, I see no reason your Runners cannot win their little Guerilla War. Once they become the man, well then they have everything to lose.