Hi there, long time lurker first time poster and all that. Forgive me if this is a stupid question.

My character concept (Former Corporate Johnson/Social Adept) more or less requires a Corporate SIN. But as a relative newcomer to Shadowrun, I'm trying to figure out what exactly makes a Corporate SIN so terrible (-25 points). A National SIN (-5) or a Criminal SIN (-10) seem to carry more drawbacks in a lot of ways, since all the megacorps and governments have access to your biometrics and such if you get arrested. With a Corporate SIN, there's only one megacorp out there that does. It seems like the smart choice would be to just avoid doing runs against that one mega.

Sure, the book says that there's strong, violent prejudice against people who are known to have Corporate SINs, and nobody ever really trusts them, but...

1.) There's strong, violent prejudice against half the character types in the book. So it's not that unique.

2.) What smart runner ever really trusts anybody?

3.) How is anyone on the street ever going to know you have one if you just turn it off and broadcast a high-quality Fake SIN instead? It's not like your biometrics are on file in a readily accessible place.

4.) The biggest downside, really, seems to be that you're a walking extraction target if a random crew figures out who you are and decides you have secrets. But, hell, that seems fairly mild in comparison to other drawbacks that give fewer Karma back. It's not like being a Shadowrunner is that safe of a profession, anyway. And if anything, it's cool plot fuel for when the GM gets bored.

The obvious answer is that it is a really terrible, terrible thing, but I just don't get why yet because I don't really get the setting. So explain it to me. Tell me about all the horrible things that a GM is going to do to me if/when I take Corporate SIN. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

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P.S. While I'm at it, what skills are required/recommended for a former Corporate Mr. Johnson now working as a Face? I was thinking about having him be a former associate counsel for one of the megacorps' internal security divisions, so I was going to max out Law, Corporate Security, Shadowrun Techniques, a second language (not sure which), Con, Etiquette, Negotiation, Perception, Intimidation, and Computer. Adept-wise, I was thinking about Astral Perception, Enhanced Perception, Kinesics, Spell Resistance, and Voice Control. Anything I should be sure to add, whether at high or low levels? Also, which corp would make for a good former employer? And should I consider taking the one-point Essence/Magic hit to get some augmentations like Tailored Pheromones or something combat-oriented?

Thanks!

1: Maybe, but some places are worse than others, and some are better. Having a corporate SIN belonging to Aztechnology is likely to get you killed on sight if you're found out in Denver. In Aztlan, you'll be fine.

3: The average person won't know. A higher level security check, however, can bring up two (or more) profiles for matching biometrics, and you'd better be a damn good actor to remember which name you're supposed to respond to (among other things).

4: Not really a walking extraction target, but you're also not really a deniable asset either. If you're an Ares citizen and you get caught on a run for a Horizon subsidiary you're ass is in a sling two ways to Sunday. Maybe three if you were working against a third megacorporation.

Having a corporate SIN on this level means you weren't some ordinary Wageslave. You were an important part of the corp, & you're not just a part of some piddly corp like an A corp, you were a member of one of the Mega's, that means one of the AAA's like Aztecnologies, or Renraku. You probably had some deep corporate secrets or were privy to conversations that should never leave the confines of a boardroom. That makes you a liability to them, & you NEED to be sorted out, one way or another, the AAA's didn't get big by letting loose ends walk out the door after all.

On a good day, you only have every KE officer or LS dog looking for you, on a bad day, you have the personal armies of the Megacorp you bailed on hunting you, & everyone you've met since you left, down & they are asking questions with Explosive rounds.

I don't understand why the karma is so high for those qualities, either. Sure, they're bad, but a corporate SIN is priced the same as exploding into flames whenever you're exposed to sunlight. It's always possible to justify the price by having the GM be incredibly harsh about it, but that seems to me like an implausible stilting of the game world to justify the karma cost of one or two qualities.

From the descriptions, I would have expected the prices to be more like: 5 karma for a national or corporate limited SIN, 10 karma for a corporate born SIN, 15 karma for a criminal SIN.

Two points:

One,
reread what SpellBinder had to say. Point 4 is quite salient.



The assumption in the game is that sometimes your run is going to get hosed. When security catches you, they can of course just waste you but where is the fun in that? The idea is if you haven't blown up too much stuff or shot too many people on corp property, an enterprising Johnson might stop and pay you a visit and offer to let you go in exchange for a difficult job. This is totally GM discretion but it fits with how the world runs. Why squander an opportunity?

On the other hand, your own Johnson has hired you and your own team has befriended you on the premise that you are, as far as teh system goes, a nobody. Deniable assets, right? But if you get caught on another corporation's turf, things are not gonna be easy for you. It is not "just biz, chummers" at that point. It is corporate war. If you are a nobody you can go back to being a nobody (or a corpse, depending on how they feel). But if you are an Ares corporate citizen, and you are caught deep in a forbidden part of a Renraku facility...well, there are gonna be more than just a few naughty words.

Even a hint of your presence there, like a missed thumbprint, a bit of DNA from hair or blood, is gonna be bad. Sure, Ares might not have immediate realtime access to the records at their opponent megas, but you can bet they have a process to release partial records to one another. So maybe not this run, maybe not the next, but sometime in the next month or so Renraku is gonna get a match to your DNA and that of a registered citizen of Ares, and then it is only a question of which company is going to hunt you down first...Renraku, to ask you a few questions, or Ares, to seal your mouth forever...

Two,
another way you can look at it is the trouble that you will have to go through to get rid of the SIN. If it is a national SIN it is fairly easy (5 karma or equivalent resources, in fact) to get someone to go in and muck up relevant records enough that you are out of the system. But what if everything about your ass is on file in a dozen redundant and heavily secured hosts scattered throughout the world? That will take much, much more effort to erase. If there comes a time when Joe Shadowrunner doesn't want to have that criminal SIN hanging around his neck no more, he is gonna have a much easier time getting rid of it that Joe Corpboy would.

Your character's lifespan might not be long enough to make either option much of a difference, gameplay wise. But the risks are there. For a group whose main selling point is anonymity, a corporate SINNER is very, very bad goods.

If you want to think about it another way, yes, someone with allergy to sunlight will catch on fire if they go outside on a sunny day. It is equally bad for you to be traced to your corporate SIN. The guy with sunlight allergies only has to keep himself indoors most of the time, or at least only go out at night. A corporate SIN is a loaded gun to your head, only you will not know if your friends, your enemies, or your former employers are going to be the ones pulling the trigger.

I guess the Devs from CGL wanted ....to "steer" the Gameplay into a certain direction by making some of the neg Quals
more expensive or more.... profitable for a Char than others .
Like they did with the Metavariant cost in SR4 .Some of these could'nt be explained neither but its the same kind of.....arbitrary Pointcost

with a voluntary Dance
Medicineman

Doesn't a corporate SIN imply that you STILL work for a megacorp? Meaning that they are constantly keeping tabs on you and that they will forever be ordering you to do runs for them or at the very least, doing your 9-5 (who are we kidding, this is distopia, 6-9).

I'd imagine that if you had somehow severed your connection with the corporation you'd either have no SIN (had it erased) or have a criminal SIN (therefore you were probably framed and fired). If not then what's mentioned above is true. Expect lots of bad guys to be looking to put you in the dirt.

I won't talk about the qualities directly since I'm...well...anyways, I won't talk about the qualities directly, because professionalism won't let me. What I will say, though, is just to remind people that they're by no means mandatory. Even if it fits your background to be a former Company Man, military-trained professional, corporate spider, convict, or whatever, remember that the quality isn't necessary to reflect backstory. If you want to have a clean break from your former employers/place of birth, you can just insist you've had a decker take care of things for you and clean things up/cut those ties, or whatever. The qualities are there for those who WANT to still be entangled in their old life in a number of social, financial, and legal ways. Don't feel forced into taking them just because they fit your backstory.

Corporate SINs suck because of taxes. That said, I don't understand why Corporate Limited (15) carries a 20% tax while the full Corporate (25) carries only 10%.

Because the corporate rules favour the corporate born. One more way to keep them in.

not by RAW
The disadvantage is that if You use it someone might discover that You belong to a corporate and tells it and every Runner hates You (even those that have a corporate SIN too) and that You have to pay taxes.
nobody prevents a Char from getting a fake SIn and using that instead of his Corporate SIN

with a Sinful Dance
Medicineman

Nope, the character is assumed to have long burnt the bridge: "Then something happened. An unforgivably costly mistake, the machinations of a rival, a supervisor in need of a scapegoat—something pushed the character out of the corporation and into the cold and unforgiving shadows."
Not that this convinces anyone he talks to, because former corp types are so rare in the shadows and mostly traitors, therefore everybody is just waiting to torch them..


To add insult to injury, word from Bull is that this was fully intended and justified by a magical database. Which does not get used to track down people, correlate IDs, or anything else easily possible with such data, it only gets used for taxation. Because fuck you, that's why http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index....21691#msg221691

Never mess with the tax office . They are badass.

Interestingly, the Corporate Limited SIN doesn't have the same implication. I think there is one reference to no longer working for the Corp, and it's an "Even If" statement. Just weird.

Because if you have a NUMBER you're part of the MACHINE, you're being tracked by the MAN, man. You got a collar 'round your neck you just can't shake off.

Hey omae, I wrote a song about it. I'll be playing down at Dante's. Check it out.

You're a born, bred and life'd Corper with the 25pter. You also had (or are assumed to have had) major connections and access to Family Only type information or secrets. This is, in the world of the Shadows, an Albatross around the neck. The Megas are typically despised by the SINless and you didn't Just work for them (thats why the stigma is less at the lower cost, because Runners work for them) you are one of THEM, you know, the People you hate that make your life harder by their actions, inactions or greed. With that flaw you're playing one of Them.

Now, it gets better... Sure you can run a fake SIN in the DataBase. You can hide your identity. But when the SIN you're pinging fails or fluffs, well, your Real SIN is likely to be flagged (true, this is the universal truth of the Flaw) but for the national or minor (Wageslave) Corp SiN that's only likely to get local Security involved (if on a Run maybe launch a minor shadow war) and get you interrogated (or indeed just shot). It also means law enforcement can trace other things you have done and places been (once they start sifting through SIN registry records). But when the BIG one flags, early results are much the same but some Corps may want to interrogate more, worse though is that it's likely that Momma Corp will Ping that a certain SIN has been logged at location X for purpose Y. They will come looking.

I think the reason some folk would feel that a Corp SINner is untrustworthy is to them you have a way out, though that is not really true.

Most of the rest are SINless so have no option other than what they can claw for themselves.

Others have burnt their bridges and can't go back.

To the general SINless, it's like a Rich Kid slumming in the Barrens. Yeah it's a hoot for the kiddie daring to rub shoulders with the real baddies, but end of the night they hop back in the limo and off to their vaunted estates. And while they mock them as wageslaves and worse, a part of them also envies the fact they have a steady roof over the head and 3 square a day even if they hate the rest of the ratrace that goes with it.

Granted, most of the ones with the Corp SINs probably can not go back for a variety of reasons, like burnt by the Corp or backstabbing by a department rival, but to the rest it has to look like your slumming and they have to wonder when you will just be whisked away by that chariot back to the promised land even though in truth you can't, unless of course you somehow buy your way back into the Corp good graces. Which probably means everyone thinks you might sell them out to do just that.

And then gave them the finger, like so many did before. The Ex-corp [insert profession] has been an established archetype since 1st Edition rules or the Secrets of Power novels, and now they suddenly get run over by the rape train ruleswise and fluffwise turned into outcasts slightly above ghouls. Because why exactly?


Nope, a "reverse lookup" of [biometrics]->[any matching SIN] or [SIN]->[any other SIN with the same biometrics] does not exist. I'd guess this is a meta decision, if one burnt SIN burned every current and future SIN with the same biometrics, the only way for runners to exist would be swapping bodies like in Eclipse Phase. Say they only store hashes in the SIN DB (cryptography gets ignored all the time, why not once more?), or maybe the powers that be simply do not WANT it to be possible for their own ends...
Now, if SINs cannot be connected to each other, even by biometrics, doing it with less uniquely identifying features like monetary transfers obviously would be even more than absolutely impossible. Except for taxes.

It does not mean you ARE still working for the corp but you could be. Maybe you are not because you were a bad boy, maybe you still work for them. If you are dealing with a group of street criminals or even A level runners, the fact you were a part of that world and still could be is the social problem. It was something they do not want and the taint lingers.

As an example think of how people responded when they found out the last pope had been a part of the Hitler youth. He was required to join and deserted from the army and was good friends with JP2 who was famous for his opposition to the Nazi so we can say he was clean but people still looked at Benedict and said "remember what he did before..."

So you walk in with your Aztechnology SIN and tell them you left the company, but anyone who has been in the biz long enough will still look at you and wonder if you last name is Johnson.

Correction: How people outside Germany and Austria reacted to headlines about Ratzinger having been in the HJ. Over here, the reaction was basically "what else did you expect, stupid?", because (neraly) everybody has ancestry who were in the HJ, NSDAP, or served as a soldier. And given the number of ex-corp types in the shadows (again, since First Edition and the first novels), I'd somehow expect the general attitude to be akin to that

OT: Originally I wrote "everybody knows somebody" instead of "everybody has ancestry". Then I realized I'm getting old...

The excorp types with That kind of SIN since first edition? Six, I think, which is 0.0003% of the runners in Seattle, and that's including Argent (who's a national SIN) and in all but or case that past has come back to be them. Big time.

Also, when your Fake SIN fails (and burns) I think it's totally reasonable that your Real SIN will flag in the system, it IS a disadvantage after all and that's Part of the disadvantage, plus the reason the Fake SIN fails is a lack of DataMatch, which for most Runners comes back as a blank in the info chain, for a SINner though that isn't a blank anomaly it's data that Does match to the biometric query, retinal scans or even image logs.

Again, it does what the GM and a certain amount of logical reasoning allows. Now the reason that the other FAKE ids don't burn is because the Real SIN will be the only bounce back in the immediate info chain. Of course once someone has your biometric, retinal or image log data they CAN search the Matrix to find your fake SINs, IDs, licences and so forth.

For the 25 one, the premise appears that you were such highly vetted that you start off with a disturbing amount of personalized data being stored. Until you scrub it, that means there's a shared database with pretty much all your secrets. I'd say its not just biometrics, but psych profiles and the like. So they'd know your preferences, sex habits, food habits, what types of people you'd be inclined to hang out with etc. What do you like to do when stressed, what are your vices, what type of social engineering works best against you, etc.

I like this take on it. A lot.

Now to pick a corp... I don't want to do Aztechnology (too evil), Horizon (too fluffy), or Ares (too stereotypical). NeoNET, maybe? How about Evo or Wuxing?

NeoNET are cool. Whenever we steal a helicopter, we do so from NeoNET.