And some shared projects might be done by two or more corps.
Wuxing and Aztechnology worked togeter to build the Guatemala Canal. Azttechnology got some geomancy tricks out of it and Wuxing got the Triad's "break your oath and die horribly" Blood Magic ritual out of it.

And much less sinister cross marketing might be done regularly, Aztechnology and EVO aren't going to miss a chance to cross market a hot Sim-Star and Stuffers at Stuffer Shack that can make both of them piles of (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) just because they compete in other areas.

I dunno, I like him. he was a great Law-enforcement viewpoint that seems to be missing in 4e. I want to know more about the cops! We need a Knight Errant Book! Something to help us GMs handle Law-enforcement.

Well, sure, but what is the fun in that?

There IS a Lonestar sourcebook, but it's about 15 years out of print and super hard to find, and it's pure gold if you can get a copy.

Mine is sitting on the shelf behind me. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) That said I seem to recall saying the SPD character was offed somewhere along the way. Forget who said it, or how it happened.

*Pours a 40 on the curb* Good thing I got these in bulk.

I know, been trying to track that down. I'm hoping for a modern one. Something to take the wireless world and Emerged into account.

Also,
*pours 40 out for SPD*

He was part of the inspiration for my favorite NPC. Someone needs to find out how he died so we can hold a proper funeral.

One of the Seattle source books? Do you recall which book it was mentioned?

I dug out my old Corporate Shadowfiles book because I always liked the fluff on extraterritoriality. pg 20

"...to this day in the UCAS, many of the NAN, Japan, and most other developed countries any "continuous and cotiguous, recognized and long term" corporate site is extraterritorial regardless of property and building ownership.

Translation follows; "continuous and cotiguous" means that the area must be recognizable as a single area distinct from its surroundings. Throw a fence around a tract of land or lease an entire floor of an office building and it's "continuous and cotiguous". As long as you can see some kind of intuitively obvious distinction between the corp property and the surrounding territory; like "the 10th floor as opposed to the 9th floor" or "all the offices that can only be reached via the Gaetronics lobby" the area will qualify as extraterritorial. A hypothetical Yamatetsu rep who shares a bullpen style open office with reps from other corps couldn't claim her desk as extraterritorial because you can't see a clear distinction between her territory and everyone else's. It sounds complicated but the intuitively obvious rule makes a good guideline.

"Recognized" means that the area must have official and public recognition as corp territory. For example MCT can't open up a secret office under the name of a local sole proprietorship and then claim extraterritoriality for it. It is not recognized as MCT turf so it does not get those benefits.

"Long term" means an official lease must exist signed by a duly authorized officer of the corporation. couple of court cases tried to hash out exactly how long a lease has to run to qualify, but the corp has to have the lease with the officer's signature. That means a Renrauku suit can't stand in the middle of his living room just as Lone Star goons kick down his door and claim his apartment is Renrauku corp territory. That's how extraterritoriality works." ...

Just FYI.

No. As I recall it was someone on this forum. They may have referenced a book but I don't know.

The worst part is that I can't search for SPD because it's too small a word.

I'm Pretty sure one of the books has a brief sidebar summarizing the level of corporation between the Corps and Government organizations. Arse I think is pretty cooperative with UCAS law enforcement when it comes to the extradition of criminals.

What I see is that unless the GM makes the cooperation a part of a specific plot (oh noes, people are cooperating to find you! Go do a run to spread distrust!), it is assumed that corporations don’t share data. Remember that some things (killing a Knight Errant officer is specifically mentioned), are crimes against Knight Errant and not the corp who hired them, so Knight Errant can use data from all of it’s security contracts. Also, it is implied (if not specifically stated) that one of the ways that security megacorps ensure monopoly is that they will pursue criminals through other nations that have also hired them (so if everyone in a block hires Knight Errant, they will chase you down that block).

The way I've always looked at extraterritoriality & how corporate/governmental information sharing works is through the lens of the "Alphabet Soup" of the US government on a federal level. This is similar to how CanRay put it: corps will gladly share data and info with each other, up until they won't. Just like the DEA, FBI, and local law enforcement will usually work together if the need arises, so too will various corps and civil governments work together... but also like the DEA/FBI/Local PD, as soon as one of them has something they think is "too important" to give up to another group, they'll withhold that info and possibly even throw other groups off the trail if it's valuable enough. Or maybe if you're really valuable, they'll cut a deal to bribe other corporations & agencies to do their work for them. Two examples:

A runner group pulls a job on Renraku, extracting a guy in upper management from their Seattle offices. Renraku has some basic data on the runners - basic appearances, enough to check to see if there are any possibles who're already in the system ("She's an elf with a pink mohawk, a spider tattoo on her neck, and he's a Troll with only one tusk who speaks in a Russian accent."). It's in Renraku's best interests to share info with Knight Errant, Lone Star, and anyone else they suspect may know who these people are. They won't get anyone actually running an investigation for them - KE's more worried about that Halloweener firebombing that's making the news - but if some enterprising KE cop wants to make a name for himself, get some juice with the bosses and an external corp, it's in his interests to keep an eye out for elves with pink mohawks. If KE picks this person up, they have every reason to hand them over to Renraku for interrogation, since keeping them would fuck up KE's quarterly stats and require paperwork they don't have time for. If for some reason they DID need to keep the suspect - maybe she shot at some KE cops - they could always share data remotely with Renraku, or invite a friendly rep down to "observe" the KE interrogation.

Now let's suppose the guy who this elf extracted has a lot of dirt on Renraku - shit like tax code violations (be they lack of payments to the Seattle Metroplex gov't or corporate court) or unauthorized waste dumping on other people's turf, or maybe he liked to have his way with 10 year old girls that he had his staff kidnap for him. Fact of the matter is, that's not info Renraku America wants getting out - that makes Renraku America look bad, and they can't have that. If the suspect gets picked up by Lone Star or somebody else, she might know something, and she might blab it, which would let Renraku's enemies know how to attack them. Even if she doesn't know much, it could start people looking into things Renraku would rather they didn't. So in this case, it's in Renraku's best interests NOT to share any info with KE or other corps. They want to get this elf, but they don't want anyone else to get at her first.

On the other hand, what if the exec had committed all these crimes at his prior job with Knight Errant... and KE wanted to unload him but couldn't outright fire him due to contractual obligations or dirt on HIS bosses, so instead they cut a deal with Renraku. "You take our guy," they said, "And we'll give you discounted policing in your non-extraterritorial locations in Seattle for the next five years. Saves you millions." So if this exec has been extracted, it's a risk to KE for similar reasons as above - maybe someone stole him to use him as leverage against Ares. In that case, Renraku should definitely alert KE and suggest that maybe they want to get these runners bad enough to open up a task force to find them... unless they want Renraku to maybe start spreading around WHY KE got rid of their guy.

Corporations share data when it's in their interests to do so. I would suggest, however, that the default sharing setting for any corp with any other is "yes but in a clinical or unfriendly fashion". Because if it's not "yes", then the entire concept of SINs is meaningless, since that data HAS to be shared between corporations and governments. But it can't be too much "yes" or Shadowrunning becomes functionally impossible.

This thread has been an interesting read. Thanks everyone.

I firmly believe that corporations, security/police, and governments would likely share information with each other in the Shadowrun setting. Sometimes through back-channels, often through official channels. Hell, there is probably more information sharing going on in 2072 than we could fathom in this day and age. I would admit that a lot of it would be related to "common" criminal activities. Simple auto-theft, muggings, etc. Evidence of regular crime by regular criminals, which is more common than now in many areas, would definitely be shared. People want to feel safe in their homes, and the government and security companies are there to offer security. On the average a regular SINner can live a relatively peaceful existence if they so desire.

There are exceptions though. Say some runners are caught on camera... in a top secret MCT engineering facility. Is MCT going to give video footage of those runners to KE, when their new whiz-bang prototype drone is visible in the background.... not a chance. Sure, they may clean up the video but that takes time. Also, if said runners are being chased, carrying hot pay-data about said drone, and they run through say... NeoNET extra-territorial property getting caught on more cameras, do you think NeoNET will blindly hand over information garnered, or try and figure out what happened? If they figure it out, they may be likely to help, or they might also try to buy said info from the runners in question... Or kill them and take it. Or kill their Johnson (from Evo) once he has the goods. Johnsons are easier targets than runners sometimes.

The corps, especially the megas, are not blind champions of justice. Because that doesn't help them, or hurt their competitors. If it accomplished at least one of those results, then they might. Instead, any data will go through various filters and processing for usefulness, and any action taken will be done based on how it affects the decision-maker and his superiors(for better or worse, depending). Once you get past the low-level managers, everyone left has at least a little Machiavelli in them, or else they'd still be in the lower ranks. As is said in the books, bureaucracy is slow. Inter-organizational efforts could crawl at a snail's pace before becoming useful in bringing in a group of shadowrunners.

I believe even that would be spotty outside of the "safe" zones, though. There are places like the Redmond and Puyallup Barrens that exist in Shadowrun, where the law does not always reach. This alone makes it easier for Runners to exist. Should a particularly unlucky, or ignorant, runner get APB's out on him from every corp and PD in Seattle, he can still hide in the Lava Fields, or Glo-City if needed. How many street cops, or even FBI agents, are going to risk radiation exposure, or volcanic ash, or possible insect hives, or unopposed go-gangs, or Tamanous/ghouls, etc. to go after a someone, because they all know he whacked a couple of guards, and ran off with some SOTA gear. Sure, they'll pick him up if he's seen in the city proper, but it's like finding the needle in a haystack of info... in a timely manner.. before he ghosts into the Barrens again... or slides across the border into S-S or PCC territory.

This does bring me back to another point. Shadowrunners, at base build, are NOT regular criminals. They are closer to trained mercs, well-trained thieves/criminals, and/or professional covert operatives in skill, ability, and luck. I generally tell my players that things like nano-paste disguises, extra SINs and commlinks, tag erasers, vehicle spoof-chips/morphing license plates, etc. should not be considered optional. If your going to leave things behind, sanitize them. Keep your daily gear to the essentials. If you are going to do really bad things with restricted or illegal goods, consider those goods to be disposable. And most of all, real runners DON'T use their customized, personalized, daily-carry Ares Predator IV on runs. You either carry a second one, which is only for runs, or (better) you carry one you just picked up off the black market. To be truly thorough, you drop the gun in a crucible of liquid iron at a foundry/steel mill as soon as possible (without making a spectacle of yourself).

It really IS possible to run with realistic levels of law enforcement, if and only if, you can expect realistic levels of professionalism from your players characters. Another plus is also understanding the "Me first" mindset that prevades the corporate culture of the setting.

Keeping some thermite or a dose or two of demolishers may also be a option...

You can never have enough explosives. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

In doubt, always go te method 'P for Plenty'.

And that leads to the problem of seperating the good data from the unnecessary. A smart runner can overload the system with multiple hits with conflicting information (He was in Berlin and Seattle on the same day at the same time?) Look here PICs of both, which is accurate. Also with the availability of masking spells, nanopaste disguises and other tricks is that video feed accurate (maybe, maybe not). As for sins, you have the same issue, but with fake ones you could come up twice and then con the guy by saying"that is the third time I've called them about that error this week!".

This is much easier than living off the grid.

What better way to mess with the competition by sharing information through normal channels, but sometimes "loosing" some information, or sharing the wrong information (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I think both CIA and KGB seeded known bogus data, both to weed out double-agents and trip up the other side.

Think? SOP, man.

In logical terms, the answer to the question is: how big is your 'hawk?

On the pink mohawk side of the spectrum, there must logically be little exchange of information; oh the black trenchcoat side there will be more. My game world is more on the black trenchcoat side of things, but while morphing licence plates and regularly changing the barrel of your gun are almost a must for runners, they won't necessarily need the nanopaste disguise unless they are planning a social infiltration.

In my game world, runners are pawns in the covert cold wars between the megas. Because the runners don't know who the Johnson is, once they have handed over the McGuffin or whatever, the Johnson's mega won't care 2 shits about the team. If the hacker was clumsy enough to have been traced to the node of a local McHughes, so be it ... and let's face it, because of the covert nature of the corp Johnsons' work, even if McHughes were behind the run almost nobody in the company would know not to cooperate.

Saying that, as per SR canon, most megas will not spend the man hours and money to track down a runner team that has hit one of their facilities because they know that the info/McGuffin will be gone by the time they find them.

Of course, in my game world it may be a different story if the PCs have overtly blown up a facility or cold-bloodedly murdered surrendered company employees or done something else that makes pretending the infiltration never happened impossible - if the Corp can't hush things up, they will have to be seen to be tough on crime and go after the runners themselves and/or report events to KE in which case all bets are off.