What to do about that accountant player, I can't mug him EVERY week! Options

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

Exactly my meaning.

EDIT: :eek: UWAAAARRRRRRRGGHHH :dead: they followd me from the Armageddon threat :dead: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRHHGGGH :eek:

[ShadowDragon8685]

Actually, if you wiped out every single Yak in Chicago, the Yak would be pissed, but you just wiped out every single member of an organized crime family in an entire sprawl.

They ain't gonna TRY to touch you, lest you move on to fry their bigger homeland fish. You have, in effect, become a Rival family, one that just achieved a victory of such magnitude that the only sane response is to back the hell off and let you have your turf.

[John Campbell]

If you wiped out every single Yak in Chicago, someone would clearly need to give your GM some lessons in how to deal with rampant munchkinism.

[IAmMarauder]

[emo samurai]

You'd have to eliminate stat and skill caps and increase karma payout, though, if they'll skip the stealth and go for the crazy shootout.

[Kremlin KOA]

[nezumi]

What does a shadowrun team have that an opposing organized crime family doesn't have (keeping in mind that organized crime can generally hire shadowrunners)?

If the mob couldn't beat the yaks when they had the home ground advantage, despite having plenty of runners at their disposal, I rather suspect that a single runner team couldn't beat the yaks all on their lonesome.

[TinkerGnome]

A team of runners probably can't wipe out an entire criminal organization, but they probably could convince the organization to stop coming after them by making it apparent that the cost will be too high. However, that only works if they don't put the crime org into a situation where backing down from the runners means looking weak. Criminals are bullies, and a lot of being a bully is not letting people stand up to you. Once someone does so successfully, then your reign of terror is pretty well over.

[Moon-Hawk]

[nezumi]

No man (or runner) is an advantage. The runner depends on his contacts, and the contacts depend on not getting their fingers broken by angry yaks. Organized crime also has access to significant magical and physical resources to trace you down. You cast a spell? I sure hope you have the half hour required to tidy up after yourself. Lost a button? Watch out for ritual sorcery. Fired bullets? Forensics come into play.

Remember also that Yaks are not a corporation. The individual cells can move and react with some autonomy. There are cells who exist only to beat other people up, including uppity runners. So all the advantages the runners have, the yaks have too. Now don't get me wrong, you could certainly HARASS the yaks for some time. Drive up their costs of operation. That's the beauty of guerilla warfare. But you can't BEAT them, because to beat them that means going onto THEIR turf where they use their rules. I would almost say it would be easier to drive Lone Star out of a city than it is to beat a well-established criminal family because, unlike the criminals, Lone Star is not supposed to randomly kill or torture people, or break laws about mind probes and watchers hanging out in your bathroom.

[Kagetenshi]

Lone Star is not supposed to, but if you'll check the flavour about them, it's pretty clear that they do.

~J

[Moon-Hawk]

I agree with you, Nezumi, that attacking an organized crime syndicate is borderline suicidal, at best. I also agree that the organized crime's advantages far outnumber the runners' advantages. I just wanted to make the point that the runners were not completely without advantages, which could be exploited to make the runners very annoying.

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

Moon-Hawk
My point was, however, that said runners loose a big deal of anonymety and mobility, when they start regular carjacking. They become predictable they rely on contacts (even more than regular runners) and as was said above, the mog can simply convince the runners contacts that it would be very unwise to not stop dealing with them. Then when the runners start fencing thair loot themselves, they will evetually hit the wrong party and be hit by the mobs agents (quiet often to be runners themselves).

[Moon-Hawk]

You know, to be perfectly honest MK, I just completely lost track of the point of this thread.
I had totally forgotten the carjacking aspect of it and was turning it into a Boondock Saints mob-killing-for-the-sake-of-mob-killing type of thing. Yeah, if your carjacking is pissing off the mob, even if they can't lean on you, they can lean on the chopshops that you sell to.
So, my next questions: How many cars are stolen per month in the Sprawl? Does organized crime profit from the theft of those cars, or does organized crime profit from the purchasing, chopping, and reselling of cars that independent individuals (such as runners) might steal and sell to them? Assuming the runners' stealing and selling of cars is cutting into the mob's profits, rather than adding to them because the mob is buying the stolen cars from the runners, how many cars would the runners have to steal each month to significantly raise the number of independent car thefts and impact the mob's profit?
I'm thinking that most cars are stolen by independent agents, and the mob actually makes money by buying these stolen cars, chopping them, and reselling the parts. I also think that, in the entire sprawl, a thousand or so cars are stolen each month (random number), and the runners would have to be stealing a crapload for anyone to notice the difference.

[mmu1]

See, it seems to me that, every time someone lists how easy it'd be for a crime syndicate to wipe out the PCs, their description of the syndicate's abilities is like something out of a John Woo movie, while the PCs are still expected to play the game like it was Reservoir Dogs.

Either everyone is constrained by the gritty pseudo-relistic world, or no one is.

[Moon-Hawk]

In 2000, the population of Detroit was 951,270 as reported by the census.
That year, approximately 27,000 cars were reported stolen, although Detroit police estimate that approximately 50% of these reports were false, so that leaves us with 13,500 cars actually stolen in Detroit that year. Or, one car stolen per 70.5 people.
Isn't the population of Seattle supposed to be something like 6 million? (somebody fact-check me on this)
Assuming Seattle has car-theft rates comparable to Detroit, that's 85149 cars stolen per year, or 7095 stolen every month!
Now, Seattle 2070 might have a different car theft rate than Detroit 2000, but you'd have to steal an awful lot of cars every month before anyone would take notice.

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

Moon-Hawk
Good point! I was assuming the PC´s have thair own chopshop, so they could support a middle to high lifestyle. Jacking a car a week and selling it to your local chopshop (which in turn gives the mob it´s cut) probably won´t get you into trouble (except from LS looking for you, but that´d be minor compared to regular shadowrunning), but it won´t get you much cash either, so there is no problem for the gm.
The gangsterkilling probably will be possible to go for some time, as long as the pc´s dont get too cooky and have some sort of income to support thair cause (probably hooding the mob). This probably won´t rout out the familie or clan or ring however, though it might hinder them enough so other synicates can move in for the kill (which really will only substitute one tyrant for the other, but that may be sufficiant depending on the characters motives).

EDIT:
6M is about right, nowere near as much people in 2070 Seattle are going to be car owners as in 2000 Detroid, however. Allso most cars in Seattle (mor then in other UCAS-Sprawls) are electrified sub-compacts, due to SSC environment laws binding for Seattle by the Treaty of Denver. On the other hand, crime rate is quiet possible higher.

[Kremlin KOA]

there was an incident in Melbourne Australia a few years ago when ONE MAN did a revenge against the mafia there and took out 27 major crime figures befoe the cops got him, he is still alive and in the protection section of the prison system (where they put cops stoolies and pedophiles so that regular prisoners can't touch them) so a runner team can do significant damage

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

What are stoolies :-? My english only takes me so far :please:

[Kagetenshi]

A "stool pigeon", or police informant. A rat.

Reference

~J

[nezumi]

Are you referring to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_gan...ngland_killings

Because there were 5 (from a quick read) people convicted for those killings, 2 surviving suspects who were charged, and it looks like half a dozen suspects who were later killed in retribution.

As for the earlier comment, Yaks don't need to play reservoir dogs, at least not as an organization. Unlike the runners, Yaks pretty much have UNLIMITED RESOURCES to draw upon, assuming that investment makes a reasonable return. Can the runners claim that? Yaks also have thousands, perhaps tens of thousands level 1 and 2 contacts across the world. Runners don't have that either. Sure, if a team of five yaks are caught in a building with the cops closing in, things can be pretty rough. But an organization doesn't have quite the same concerns as an individual.

[hyzmarca]

The Victoria police set up a task force just to investigate the suspicious but probably natural deaths of a few organized crime figures. Surely, someone should be imprisoned for this gross abuse of government resources.

[Kremlin KOA]

So that's what the international news says about it
the killings I refer to almost all happened in 2001-2003
they were all over the national news


EDIT: the funniestpart was some people i knew had... family... over there and they were very scared the killings would spread

[mmu1]

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

Well, the canon mobs are probably inspired by el capone and the good old "family" movies. They are big, organized and powerfull.

If you don´t play it that way, thats ok, but its not canon.

The corps in SR-canon are also way more powerfull and ruthless then todays. RL corps don´t make good villains either.