How would you run a campaign with two different Police forces? Eg Lone Star and another AA Law-Enforcement Corp in the same city?

I don't know what your intention is for the campaign, but as for how it came to pass.

The city council is (and has been for some time) evenly divided on which provider should be awarded the contract. The deciding vote was hospitalized shortly before making his decision known. [Hospitalized by runners?] A residents activist group (which is represents a specific section of the city) scraped together the funds to sign a contract with one corp to provide coverage for the specific section.

The city council, sensing a coup [and possibly a bribe or two] decides on corp #2 and signs the contract. The council and corp #2 try to push corp #1 out of its section of the city, but corp #1 and the activist group fight in the legal system. They argue that at the time that the contract with corp #1 was signed, the council was deadlocked and did not have a valid contract.

The judge decides in favor of a compromise. There will be a competition between the two corps for business for a period of time [one or two years at most] and at the end of that time, the corp who 'patrols' the larger percentage of the city wins the new contract for the whole city. Corp #1 can sign up any business or neighborhood as a customer. Corp #2 (The city's choice) gets the rest by default. Public events do not count as they are temporary. Crime or emergencies on public streets such as highways and bypasses (not residential or downtown surface streets) are 'neutral ground'.

This will result is some chaos and confusion. It will also be fertile ground for some basic runner activity.

See what happens is after Ghost Cartels, both KE and Lone Star are having their law enforcement contract issues looked at by HK and Seattle respectively.

Now I have a self-created AA Private Security Firm which specialize in providing really expensive yet highly efficient bodyguard services for high profile clients. Magic, Spirits, Cyberware, Matrix, you name it we have it.

And what makes my AA Private Security Firm different from KE and Lone Star is that each of my AA Private Security Bodyguards looks as beautiful as an elf. So the clients are not only paying for protection but really "beautiful" protectors as well.

Think playboy bunnies who accompany you on shopping trips and business lunches yet keeping you well-protected against assassins. Celebrity Bodyguards as in Bodyguards who are Celebrities in themselves.

I am thinking that my AA private Security Firm will snag the law enforcement contracts for the poshest parts of the cities while leaving the poorer suburbs to KE/Lone Star.

So that means in Seattle, Bellevue and some parts of downtown Seattle would fall under my company's jurisdiction while the poorer neighborhoods will fall under KE/Lonestar's jurisdiction. In hong kong, that would means downtown HK and eastern HK, the main HK island being under my jurisdiction while the northern poorer parts of HK would be under KE's jurisdiction.

Because my bodyguards look so hot while doing their jobs, it makes sense that the richer areas of Seattle and HK and any other cities would want the best and the most beautiful guarding them. The poorer grunges have no such money of course.

But the problem here is what happens if a criminal crosses the border from KE's jurisdiction to my own jurisdiction while being chased by KE?

What happens if a criminal being chased by me crosses the border from my jurisdiction to KE's jurisdiction?

What happens if my private sec corp tried to shake down some mafia members who are hiding out in KE's jurisdiction but who committed some crime in my jurisdiction? Also vice versa with criminals who committed crimes in poorer areas of seattle/hk and then hide out from KE in my jurisdiction?

This situation gets real tacky in Seattle where Lone Star is still hanging around. So you might have three law enforcement firms screwing each other around while chasing after one criminal. Think FBI and local state police and homeland security fighting each other to break down a particular gang.

Good roleplaying opportunities if you ask me.

Well it sounds like your private security is more of a select few, KE & LS are out on the streets everyday looking for crimes & whatnot same as any other police system. It sounds like your company would just be hired out exclusively for specific events, not every day city security. besides, if your people are celebrities themselves, I imagine they have to continue to go out & do their own work otherwise their fame will dry up. Simplest just to say that you handle private contract stuff, not the protection of the whole city.

Bodyguards are NOT Law Enforcement. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

My corp is handling the protection and law enforcements of the rich areas of the cities. Where the rich lives.

Also there are many ways of becoming celebrities without actually doing the work of being celebrities. Or they might not be celebrities 365 days in a year. Maybe 6 months doing music/acting work with the other 6 months being bodyguards. Or they might even be celebrities because of some bodyguard reality shows.

Just imagine justin biebers hiring one of my bodyguards. Then having a reality show or music videos creating works of justin bieber w my bodyguard in them or something.

Oh btw, my model/escort/bodyguard corp are handling all the security issues for Horizon. In fact, they are one of the major shareholders of Horizon. So there are plenty of artistic works featuring Horizon artists and my celebrity bodyguards.

Due to the fact that I have more celebrity bodyguards than clients themselves, if the client hire my corp's services for a year or more, he will have rotating celebrity bodyguards.

So say Justin Bieber hire my services, and I have Lady Gaga, Selena Gomez, Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson working as celebrity bodyguards in my company. Justin Bieber will have each of the ladies guarding him 3 months in a year and the rest of the 9 months in a year will be spend creating MVs, acting, advertising as such.

Same goes for law enforcement work in the richest areas of the cities. Think MTV cribs but in my case it will be MTV rich suburb law enforcement. Which audience would shut off a tv reality show of Lady Gaga actually using kung-fu or her gun to take down a twerp trying to break into a corp exec's mansion?

Get the picture, omae? Don't think in such a linear fashion.

interesting that you have hundreds of celebrities with nothing better to do than patrol the streets of Seattle. Anyway, you'd have no choice but to contact a KE or LS representative assigned as intercompany liaison & have them dispatch a KE or LS cruiser to intercept, or ask for permission to continue your pursuit into their territory, you may have to share the collar, but if you really want it thats how it works. If they said you can't do anything, you can pursue maybe, but you can't arrest you'd have to detain them until a KE or LS unit arrived, then you could petition to have the prisoner sent to your station in Seattle.

Hello? Didn't I say that they don't patrol or do security work all the time?

I might even have a 1000 model bodyguards with only 100 celebrity bodyguards among them. Most clients will not be assigned a celebrity bodyguard unless he pays millions and millions of nyuen for the privilege. This millions of nuyen represent profit lost while the celebrity bodyguards takes time off from her schedule creating artistic work for profit.

If the client can't pay up millions of nuyen then he only gets assigned a normal model bodyguard. Someone who has graced the covers of some mags or tv ads but who isn't a major celebrity by any means.

You know there are thousands of female celebrities out there around the world sleeping with rich men for money. I am just turning the concept on its head and adding the bodyguarding services.

I mean if a rich man is willing to pay a million dollars to sleep with a celebrity, how much more would he pay to sleep with a celebrity who can guard his life as well?

But you are missing the point here, I think. Bodyguard services are private contracted, so you are fin in that regard. BUT, Bodyguards ARE NOT Law Enforcement. Your idea works great, for Bodyguarding/Escorting/Modeling Services for the rich and famous, by the rich and famous. It completely falls apart when you say that they are Law Enforcement Officers.

Secondly, there is nothing wrong with Private Security Contracts. But do not confuse them with Law Enforcement. A Client may hire your people as private security, but unless they are on Extraterritorial property of their own, then the City Contracted Law Enforcement has jurisdiction. And if you are on Extraterritorial property, then whomever owns that property has the right to enforce law however they choose.

I think part of the confusion is how you are presenting yourself.


First you say that you are going for the law enforcement contract, but only cherry picking select sections while leaving the cast offs for KE/LS to fight over, but then you go on to say you bodyguarding/personal protection.

If you were just wanting the latter you don't need the law enforcement contract, you are just private security whether it's for the person or his home. Your not enforcing LAWS, your protecting those who are paying you. However you will still be bound by those laws of the land, at least while caught on camera or tracked by evidence.

Law enforcement means just that, enforcing the laws as written down by the city/state/government, none of which seems to be what you are looking to do as you are catering to an ultrarich elite who are just needing bodyguards to look good and keep them alive if something bad does go down.

But let us suppose you have leveraged yourself into say taking the law enforcement contract for some cherry picked zones across Seattle. Your area of enforcement would end at your borders. If your forces pursue someone off that jurisdiction into KE turf, well you are out of luck as you are outside your jurisdiction and while you could contact KE/LS and request permission to pursue if you have stolen the plum spots you can expect KE/LS to be less than helpful on any requests.

And if you say fuck it and chase them down anyway, KE/LS could and probably would intervene and tell you to get your skinny elf ass back up to paradise before they drop kick it into jail for illegal pursuit. Or if you are already shooting it out with the guys who ran from you, KE/LS might just shoot you and mark it down as 'friendly fire', though that would be an extreme case, but again if you are off your turf don't expect a warm reception.

It's basically the same thing the mega run into when runner cross from extraterritorial areas into public areas and vice versa. If I am running from LS and run into the Aztech pyramid, LS would have to request permission from the Azzies to pursue or just ask them to hand me back over. Whether the Azzies do or do not is another story.

Also, why bother with the originals? If Horizon owns their contracts they probably have ownership on images and they could crank out duplicates so say you want Lady Gaga Twin bodyguards, that can be a thing.

Actual bodyguard work is not fun and fairly risky as the whole point is your supposed to actually guard that body paying for it. So would your prima donna actress actually step in front of a bullet and possibly end their own career a bit early?

The MTV Security idea is cool, but again it would be staged and rehearsed six ways to Sunday and should not be confused with actual security/law enforcement.

But you could probably milk a good few adventures out of it with it, maybe even dragging some of the player in front of the camera..

I rather enjoy having the two going about their pissing match for the city contract. In my game, I keep this as a very real tension between the Star and the Knights. In fact, one of my characters was an ex-Lonestar who landed himself in prison for fireballing the competition when their contract was up for grabs. The backstory was that a rival detective on Knight Errant and he kept going head-to-head on some cases and this guy, the Knight dick, always ended up a few steps ahead of my runner. Naturally, he wasn't gracious about this and rubbed it in at every opportunity. That ended up with some blood and crispy Knights.. also with the Star detective getting put away for five years (until a prison break, which is the focus of my campaign).

In any event, my Seattle is run primarily by KE with LS still working neighborhoods and select businesses. It's actually important that I keep it like this as there a good many enemies and buddies on the force that are going to pop up in a game or two down the road that now my runner.

One corp has a contract with the city or metroplex and are like local police or sheriff's department. Another corp has a contract with UCAS and are more like state troopers, FBI or federal marshals.

To answer your question before I point out any hiccups:

The Denver sourcebook/missions season is an excellent look at multiple law enforcement agencies within the same "city", ranging from completely privatized to entirely public sector.

Now, the hiccups:

1) AA implies a sprawling multinational that is shy of the corporate court. Modern day companies like McDonald's, Coke, and Sony would qualify. Its not a matter of quality, its of size and raw gross revenue. Lone Star, for instance holds nearly 2/3rds of the contracts on the North American continent (minus the azzies of course). there are entire mercenary corporations that do not cross into A, let alone double A. If you say your firm is AA, you are saying they are a significant player with clout surpassed only by the big ten.

It is important to realize that the corporate size rating does not imply inherent quality, nor vice versa. Your bodyguards might be the very best there ever was, but that in its own right does not make them AA.

2) Law Enforcement contracts are inherently public sector except for whenever you go onto sovereign corporate land. So, unless the city of Seattle is paying your bodyguards to be bodyguards as an auxiliary to the police...which per your millions of nuyen fee, they are not likely to be doing...you are not law enforcement. You are a private security contractor, and you are only allowed to use force in a situation where a normal citizen would. Your shooters will be even more careful about public display of force, because a bad rap can lead to you being de-licensed and barred form operation in the metroplex, as well as forfeiting whatever bonding requirements the city had for you to operate.

The flip side is that if you maintain good connections with the local police and the administration, you can tacitly get away with more so long as it is in the execution of your primary job.

But if you don't, go ahead, stray one time and watch how fast your rival firms arrange for you to be gutted contractually. The bigwigs will cackle as your loss is their profit, your political enemies will pay for their next series of attack ads with the money you lost in liability and the city bond, and the cops on the streets will tell stories of those overpriced SOB celebrities who didn't know a thing about REAL work. The lawyers will get rich though.

3) If you do manage to pull jurisdiction despite the overwhelming financial and legal reasons you wouldn't, expect anti-cooperation. Beyond just data blockage and obstruction. As a matter of fact, any time one your "officers" crosses over the jurisdiction, you had best hope they are not carrying a single damn thing they are not personally licensed for. And heavens forbid you break a law...like shaking down those good citizens over there (who happen to be in the Finnigan family), because its amazing how long it can take to process someone, and the legal costs for that case as it drags on and on with injunctions. Man.

4) You realize that KE is going to hire a runner to splatter Justin Biber's cranium all over the pavement, and then Selean Gomez and Lady Gaga are going to seriosuly reconsider this gig?

5) I don't know where your operators are living off work, but if its near a Humanis Policlub, issues. "Its not enough that those elves are deceitful! that orks and trolls took yer jobs! Now them elves want to run the police all by themselves too! Yaaar!!! they start with the rich because they don't care about you folk!"

6) The Brackhaven administration, a very pro-human organization, is going to want this elf-cop nonsense crushed. See 3.

7) You think the UCAS is going to be in favor of an all elf force that near the border with their Tir friends?

You all explained the issues better than I could, thank you, your idea could work, if they were just pretty people, & not always all elves (I don't think famous Orc's will want an Elf hanging on their arm, they might prefer a "pretty" orc to do that) also not all of them famous in their own right (pretty people do work for police departments even in our day & age).

Well, in theory you could hire people with the right skillset, then biosculpt them to be pretty enough to qualify. I can see high-end gated communities hiring these guys, but I don't really see them having the experience or resources to snag an entire city's contract.
However, having 3 jurisdictions in one city isn't a bad thing at all from a player's point of view.

Yes, I had already thought about what you said. See my escort model bodyguard AA corp is already body guarding the families, relatives and inner circle of more than one Justices of the Zurich Orbital Habitat so they are building plenty of clout.

I was going to run things in such a manner that my corp has jurisdiction to go into KE/LS territory as those territory are the lower poorer neighborhoods but KE/LS do not have the right to chase criminals into my jurisdiction unless my corp allows it (rarely). As my corp has really powerful magical forces.. ahem.. at its disposal, this is why their effectiveness are much higher than KE/LS at taking down twerps.

So imagine local state police guarding the poorer suburbs of LA while CIA polices the richer suburbs and downtown. The local police can't chase criminals into the richer suburbs but the CIA can chase criminals into the poorer suburbs. That would make the local police/KE/LS really pissed off for sure as it places CIA/my corp above them which of course makes for great enemies and greater role-playing opportunities.

Think of it as an income gap/class difference between different police forces if you will. You have police force A with greater privileges and powers and guarding the posh areas than police force B who have lesser powers and guarding the poorer areas.



First of all, my prima donnas have extremely power magical .. ahem .. powers which give them greater combat capabilities than 10 of KE/LS's best put together.

Secondly, do you know how many millions of celebrities wannabes are there in the world or in Hollywood alone competing to become Lady Gaga?

See I wanna create a studio which specializes in promoting shadowrunning shows. Cos Shadowrunning is supposed to be the hip/dangerous/cool thing right and yet there are no major studios or fashion lines dedicated to Shadowrunning.

I mean if you are a celebrity, you can't do too much offensive shadow work. You can only concentrate on defensive shadow work which place you within the legal limits of any country or city. Then you create reality shows or movies or dramas based on such defensive shadow work like bodyguarding or extraction of clients from dangerous places. Industries associated with the media industries like fashion and advertising also brings you billions of nuyen.

Think of a reality show where a celebrity shadowrunner belts out top tunes while returning bullets to assassins coming after her client. LOL. Possibilities are endless.

Actually my corp is AAA size but they are preferring to stay at AA status because they prefer to appear much weaker than they already are. My corp is powerful enough to take down more than one AAA corp at the same time.


Actually My SOB celebrity bodyguards take down entire platoons of criminals or rival cops with ease.


Which is why I will make sure my AAA .. i mean AA corp .. will do everything to ensure they are far more jurisdictional rights and powers than their rivals. CIA would definitely have more powers than local state police, wouldn't they?



I think the runner had best worry about his own cranium being splatter over the pavement first. Magic resolves everything.


They are gonna live where the rich folk and elves are.


I never said that my corp is full of elves. Sure there are plenty of elves AND changelings but hardly elf and changeling dominated.


My corp isn't an elf corp. It is more of a magic corp than anything else.

EDIT: I should say that my corp is recognized for its magical capabilities more than its celebrities, elves, changelings, and what not.

At first i run this idea on my corp trying to snag the whole city's contract but the more I think about things the more I realize it makes sense for my celebrity cops/bodyguards to only police the juicy areas of any city while leaving the dregs to KE/LS.

I do see Lady Gaga and Selena Gomez policing Bellevue and making MTV shows about it but to ask such high-priced cops to police Redmond? Cmon, Redmond ain't gonna even have the money to pay for Lady Gaga's toilet paper. LOL.

And yes 3 jurisdictions in a city make for wonderful roleplaying opportunities.

Yes you are right.. Lots of elves and lots of changelings but not all of them are elves and changelings .. also say my corp has one hundred thousand cops/guards.. only the top 1% of the corp are the high-end celebrities like lady gaga or selena gomez while the rest of the cops/guards might only occasionally grace the covers of magazine ads or tv ads..

there are hundreds of thousands of women trying to make it to the top in hollywood but only a few hundred make it to the top.. what happen to the rest of the hundreds of thousands?..

well in my corp, at least they have a job being escort bodyguards who not only sleep with their clients but guard their client's lives as well..

prostitution is a billion dollar industry also the oldest industry in the world for a reason.. second oldest i imagine might be bodyguarding.. put number one and number two together and you have a winner..

there is a niche in this market.. how many clients in the shadowrun world or our world would wanna shag their bodyguards? .. it is a bloody fantasy to be milked for all its worth..

its also Rule number 1 of being a bodyguard, Don't Sleep with the Client. The time you are spending in their bed, my sniper has already lined up sights to kill you both a dozen times over.

I wish you luck in your plan, I personally don't see such a plan as being viable in the world with people who have perfected the art of killing celebrities if the contract pays right. No city I can think of would spend millions on sexy cops when they can spend less & get cops that do their jobs quite well, its just not smart money.

Are you the GM or a player? 'Cause all of this sounds like a 10-13 year old's make believe Mary Sue-ish type world.

"Wouldn't it be cool if we were all super-elves that looked fantastic and ran our own super-duper AAA security company that could just nuke anyone that messed with us. And everyone loved us and wanted to give us money? Wouldn't that just be absolutely AWESOME?"

Seriously, the question you ask and the scenario that you sketch out bear almost nothing in common. And, you don't provide any back story on how you became such an uber-elite pimp. Were these gods and goddesses just sprung fully formed from Zeus' head? Are these 2000 BP characters? Have you been playing for 20 years realtime?

Vlad

That's the idea. Provided your bullet can go through my bodyguard's skin in the first place.

My corp is making its money off the snubbing of rule number 1.

GM and part-time player.

The back story stretches all the way back from Earthdawn and I am still working on it.

ex-explosive ammo tears through Elves like butter coming out of a Barret, can even drop some well buffed trolls in the right circumstances lol