No surrender!, What's a GM to do? Options

[Wounded Ronin]

Considering how dangerous a captive mage is, and considering how relatively complex it would be to burn one out, I have to agree that rationally it would seem that summary execution would be the most common "under the table" treatment of captured mages.

[fistandantilus4....]

Don't forget taht there are prison facilities that specialize in holding mages . Like Blackstone (I believe that was the name) The place exists in an astral ebb, and has some nasty background count due to it's nature of a prison, making magic very difficult to use. There's good money in locking up dangerous people, and there are corps that run those places. Also, not everyone is comfrotable with jsut out right executing someone, even if they can, and even if it's a criminl. Locking them away some place cold and dark however works just fine for many of them. Just look at all the places in the world today that outlaw or fight against capitol punishment.

[Calvin Hobbes]

I agree in part:

Ultimately, it's not the corp's decision as to what to do about a mage. It's an individual's. And they might have the budget to have somebody locked away in a Mage Prison for eternity, or have a cranial bomb installed. Or they might decide to kill them, because 2 :nuyen: is cheaper than incarceration. I think it depends on who the prisoner is. A dead shadowrunner can't squeal on their friends or be tortured for your amusement after all.

Who runs Blackstone?

[fistandantilus4....]

Check out SOTA 64, it's all in there IIRC. I don't think it's a AAA that owns it though

[SL James]

MCT owns Blackstone. sota64.93

Revlup owns several automated prisons for mages (amongst others) in Antarctica. twl.63-64

[fistandantilus4....]

thanks, hate not having my books handy. There's supposed t obe a few research labs in space where mage prisoners are used as well, but I don't remember any specific ones. For the most part though, a mage in any one of those places may be better off dead. But a break out would be an awesome game.

[Kozbot]

This is a great thread and I'm glad it was brought back up, I've enjoyed reading threw all of it.

That said I find there are a lot of reasons a character could be a 'no surrender' type. It could be the players belief that in Shadowrun the cops are more likely to put a bullet into a sinless killing machine rather then deal with the problem of trying to take them in. It could originate from an OOC attitude that the player doesn't like to 'lose'. Or it could be part of the character's attitude, ie the Street Samurai who really does follow Bushido, especially that 'death before failure' part.

All of these have been mentioned before, what's been touched on but not fully mentioned is when it's an attitude that's come from the GM and now is part of the player's understanding of the game. Some players are just dicks and treat Shadowrun and pen and paper Doom, but so are some GMs. I've played with some GMs where NPCs just come into existance when it's most inconvenient for the player, you can't here them in the next room because they don't actually 'exist' until you go in the room and they need to shoot at you type of thing.

If your players never surrender ask yourself how often do your NPCs? If all NPCs are treated as fight to the death psychos why shouldn't the players have the same attitude? I played with a GM who would have NPCs fight on no matter how much damage had been done to them or even if they'd just seen our team wipe out 30 of their buddies in a few seconds. If the NPCs never back down, surrender, and always have infinite and increasingly more dangerous back up to call on just like in a video game why not play yoru character in the same way? If that's the type of game you think you're playing go for it.

That said there can be more practical concerns. I was running a game where the PCs didn't surrender because of how quickly combat goes, they thought they were OK but by the time the realized they were utterly hosed half the team was already dead as was the first round of opposition but the surviving players didn't think they'd have much chance of survival having not only wasted a crapload of security guys but having gotten the CEO's daughter killed in the firefight.

[Wounded Ronin]

[mfb]

hot teenaged mages with no powers!

[Wounded Ronin]

[Nyxll]

It is pretty simple for corps to incarcerate mages safely for a long time, just stick a datajack in their head, and override their sense of reality. I would think that alot of this would be done with violent criminals as well, kind of a demolition man idea where they are programmed in their sleep .. or whatever.

A corp could also use some paranormal animals to start sucking away their essence to reduce a mage's magic rating. There are probably some spirits out there that could siphon off the rest of the mages magic, (entry level horrors, even)

[ShadowDragon8685]

Yeah, but the problem is...

While those characters may make for a good story, they don't make for a good runner, and they don't make for a fun experiance to play.

"Initiative. Okay, Neo goes first, Neo always goes first. Don't bother rolling Neo, I just have the average of your init dice. Nobody can beat it. Then we have Spectre, our PhysAd. Then Silver Bullet, our mage - oh wait, that's right. Lone Star burnt you down to Magic rating 1. You can't use boost your init that high. Nevermind. Then Skate. Then the bad guys. Then Snake, right."

*Much rolling happens. Snake's player plays craps with himself and his notebook. Bad guys are all dead after Skate's turn.*

"Right. Good fight. Now, you've just pissed them off, and set off alarms in doing so - Skate, did you really have to use a frag grenade? Let's see... Oooh goodie, here come the paranamals backed up with drones. You all have the INT to realize those drones are packing MMGs, and might want to run. How fast can you move again? Right..."

And so Snake gets run down and tackled by Hellhounds, mauled horribly, and captured. Again.


Once you've lost what makes your character function mathematically, no amount of roleplaying can compensate for the fact that you'd probably be better off with a new character. A burnt-out mage might get cybered and start down the path of the Sammie or the decker or the rigger, but that's going to cost a whole lot of Karma and Nuyen he probably dosen't have. His contacts in the magery field are going to be secondary at best. When you don't have the powah, having three Talismongers and a Mage as level three buddies only goes so far. It dosen't make up for the fact that you can no longer use any of the stuff they might be willing to sell or give you, and it dosen't make up for the fact that these are not sammie/decker/rigger suppliers. Your Talismonger will not be able to supply you with an MPCP 9 cyberdeck, and your mage won't be able to get you a full set of MBW and an SGL with a very illeagal complimentary assault rifle. Your stats probably aren't set up for gunnery or decking/rigging, either, so you're going to be at a MAJOR karma hole disadvantage actually trying to become proficient up to the level of a starting character in your newly forced field of occupation.

About all you do have is all your mage skills, now filling the role of background/knowledges. It's nice to be able to know the Force (8) of the Great Form elemental you're up against, so you know just how fragged you are, but woulden't it be better to be able to, I dunno, do something OTHER than shooting useless lead at it, with a bazillion less dice than the sammie can.

[Calvin Hobbes]

Which is why you can make a big quest out of trying to, say, initiate to get that power back.

[Maltaltin]

I would have to say that no surrender play styles is more of a group or single player attitude then it ever is a character. Most of my friends play with the no surrender policy This causes a quick game and an even faster conclusion to the story "your all dead" However this never really allows for people to develop in depth bonds with NPCs or each other.

[Wounded Ronin]

[ShadowDragon8685]

With the mage, at least Ronin, you can do his astral questing and initiating on the side, out of the real game, as it were. Meet later in the week, one on one, or possibly with a few others, to do his thing, while between runs.

The decker has no such luxuy. ^_^

[Kozbot]

OK so we can agrue forever if a burnt out mage is worth playing or not, but regardless of that would the character think that surrender was a good idea anymore after what happened last time? Even if such a character turned into one of the best burn outs turned street sam wouldn't he still sit at the bar and think about how he'd been better off fighting to his last when he had the Power? I'd seriously argue where most characters having gone threw that hell would think that a 1% chance at survival would be perferable to surrender anymore.