Not getting caught, a post about suspension of disbelief Options

[irinoxx]

-Splitting from the "Exoware" thread-

[WhiskeyMac]

Key points against remote jobs: WI-FI retardant paints and wallpapers and wards, as well as hardwired systems.

Those things basically rule out most of the actions you suggested. Bribes only work so far and what if the person gets greedy and holds out on ya? What then?

I hear ya about the living beyond a week thing. I just started and stopped a session with a player who's character was borderline psychotic. I knew from the second he told me how many guns he wanted to carry on him ( :eek: ) that he was going to be trouble.

[irinoxx]

[ornot]

I agree that with the many potential data trails having your runners get away with half the stuff they usually do requires a degree of suspension of disbelief. However, as most runners lack a SIN they cannot easily be traced by the authorities and there are an awful lot of people in the city that The Man oversees. Couple this with a lack of cooperation between competing companies and it's not too much of a stretch to say that a runner can get away with a few jobs before the Star or other enemies start to close in on him.

Provided my runners make an effort to conceal their identities while on a run (masks, disguises, spoofing data trails) and don't expect to keep their SINs for more than 3 or 4 runs I'm prepared to allow them to keep the law at arms length.

[Aaron]

It is true that the scene of a (recent) shadowrun will offer up clues about the perpetrators. Investigators can scoop up DNA evidence and fingerprints, and astral investigators can discern an astral signature if they arrive soon enough. On its face, it would seem that a shadowrunner would get tracked down and arrested.

However, I don't think this is a problem. It's in the way 2070 is set up. Most shadowrunners don't have SINs. An investigating body can collect the data, sure, but without any other data with which to associate it, the data is meaningless.

Consider a forensic drama where the stars of the show collect fingerprints that are not on any file. They've got a fingerprint, but unless they can track down its owner, they can't use it.

Also in the runners' favor is the fact that the world of 2070 is far more fragmented, not only in governments but in corporations, none of whom share their information willingly. I imagine that when you offer an Ares SIN to a Tir system, that system sends an inquiry to Ares, but only gets a confirmation in return, just like a modern-day request from one government to another. Nations are reluctant to share any more data than necessary, and megacorps even more so. It takes significant diplomacy and cooperation in the real world to get governments to share such data, and diplomacy and cooperation are lacking in the world of Shadowrun.

These are just a couple of the issues with the "back end" of forensic analysis in the Sixth World. I haven't even mentioned that such tasks as cleansing astral signatures and covering data trails require only seconds to perform, or that the number of hacking runs on such a popular target as the databases that hold forensic evidence must be annoying, if not staggering.

It is true, however, that a shadowrunner will leave scraps of evidence; no ship passes without leaving a wake. But unless a runner takes jobs against the same target repeatedly, or has the SINner quality and a SIN with a target, such evidence builds slowly over her career. The game already has a mechanic for this phenomenon: Public Awareness.

If you're looking for extra rules for the "forensic effect," I suggest slapping a runner that has been extra sloppy about leaving evidence behind with a point of Notoriety (which also, incidentally, raises Public Awareness).

[irinoxx]

Insightful, Aaron. Thanks. :)

[Derek]

[CradleWorm]

I have a couple of comments here. We can't really draw a strait line between technology and security. I would say that your right and a shadowrunning team is probably going to be picked up on 20 camera's for just walking down the block. The real question is: Is anyone going to look at the footage.

If no one ever suspects any thing went wrong, no one will ever look at the camera footage. When someone eventually does see something wrong they may try to pull up the footage, and if you have a decent hacker you have already taken care of it.

But lets just assume that eventually your team makes a mistake and gets caught on camera. Biometric tell tale signs could be used to identify them, if they were in the system. DNA could be used if they had a SIN and had a reason to ever give a DNA sample to the bank (ie they were super rich and most runners aren't).

So shadowrunners don't leave much of a trace even if they are on camera. Also, even if you were able to identify a shadowrunner, perhaps from past encounters, what are you going to do about it after the fact? Shadowrunners are hard to find. They don't leave credit trails to follow around and frequently live in uncontrolled area's of the city (ie lone star doesn't go there without an army).

Shadowrunners also have contacts on the street that can hide them, help them generate new identities overnight, they will use plastic surgery to change their appearance and so on.

So from a corporate standpoint, you are able to identify a shadowrunning team that has managed to infiltrate your security and steal some precious widget. Unless you can get that widget back before the team hands it over to their unknown employer and disappears back into the shadows your out of luck unless you are willing to spend millions to track them down. From a bottom line standpoint, stolen stuff is a historical cost once you can't recover it. You don't spend the opportunity to generate future profits by wasting resources finding a shadowrunner that may one day be able to improve your bottom line by running against your competition.

[sorcel]

[Jagdcarcajou]

Heya,

Good thoughts on this thread so far. I agree with the folks saying that having some info on the runners is not a disbelief-breaker.

As others have pointed out, a runner might have to evac a site quickly and leave some trace (camera image, DNA, electronic signature, whatever). So Corp security starts up a file on "Mr. X." Let's say they have DNA and a fingerprint. Well, having that isn't going to suddenly make Mr. X surface from the shadows. Let's assume they extrapolate that Mr. X is an Elf male, approximately 6' tall, originally with green eyes. That doesn't actually give them a whole lot more to work with. If Mr. X took any sort of precautionary measures (wore a mask, erasing camera records, fake SIN, secured Commlink, etc.), then they won't exactly have a strong lead to go on. If he didn't then he won't last long as a shadowrunner.

Mr. X might have similar files with 6 corps, and the mafia, but its all the same sketchy information. Sharing (as unlikely as that is) wouldn't exactly shed a lot of light on the situation. Unless Mr. X really pissed someone off on the run, they will likely chalk it up to the price of doing business in 2070, and let the insurance cover the losses.

As often as data changes, that trail would be worthless in 2070, and every corp would know it. They might have a 3-4 hour window to trace electronic trails before they get erased, spoofed, or otherwise misdirected. Unless of course the hacker in question wants a name for themselves!

Mr. X might eventually have an MO on file if he keeps hitting the same Corp using the same methods (always uses that custom Ares the guards talk about, or a custom painted drone used to garner street cred). That would let them know that they have a repeat offender, but it still doesn't give them an address to hit from orbit to get rid of him.

The long and short of it is, without really giving the corp (or whatever target) a real reason to expend resources coming after you, then the average cautious runner could be believed melting back into the shadows, while still remaining nervous that maybe they left another piece this time, and over time the corp might have enough to act on. Time to get a new ID...

If you can get past the trolls and elves, believing the criminal underworld is still alive and kicking (in person and via remote) shouldn't be too difficult! ;)

Chris

[Aaron]

[Cheops]

It doesn't cost a corporation millions of dollars to track down shadowrunners. It only costs them either a retainer fee to their "standby" shadow teams or else several thousand nuyen to a runner team that is slimy enough to take the job--and there will always be one willing to take the job. These are the people that sit there and look at the security footage and talk to the streets to track down the runners.

If you don't believe me then take a look at "Best Served Cold" the second SRM adventure. This one is official for SR (since it's used at tournaments) and the whole premise is that the team is hired to basically track down another team that pulled an extraction.

That being said, with the way that the matrix works now, any team with a hacker (or especially a technomancer) worth its salt should be able to destroy any security systems the team encounters and erase any trace. I just can't believe how easy the matrix is now.

However, if the team leaves behind DNA in large enough quantities or an astral signature they'd better be hiding behind double-digit Wards or else the security mages will get them.

[Clyde]

Another thing to recall is that these security systems are only as good as their maintenance.

The AAA zones of the mega rich will be able to track your every move, sure. The C zones will have a lot of places the cameras don't cover, and plenty of people will let a fake ID and cash slide by on expenses (paying your bills is one of the easiest ways for the authorities to find you). In a Z zone you won't have any trail at all.

Moreover, what would a corporation get by chasing you down? Sure, there's the rep effect; "you screw with Aztechnology and we'll eat your soul" but that's not a lot to go on. I mean, if they've had a shadowrun against them then obviously that ploy didn't work for them all the other times they did it!

Usually, the Shadowrunners have no idea who hired them. Sometimes they have know idea what they're stealing or destroying. Frequently they don't care. So even if the corp tracked down and arrested the runners, there'd be no way to make up their losses. Really, they'd just be throwing good money after bad.

I figure that the forensic stuff is of most use when the corporation actually catches a runner in the act! This way they can go into their incident files and beat you over the head with everything you've done in the past to them. And it's not necessarily a bad thing! If you go out of your way to avoid killing and torturing their employees and have done some pretty good quality professional work in the past they might be more inclined to hire you (albeit with a cortex bomb or some such). That'd beat getting shot in the neck and dumped in the sewers for the ghouls any day!

[underaneonhalo]

Good points on both sides, I've always ran it as unless corp-X got enough data to track you down in a matter of hours they'd probably let you slide with a profile on record. Seeing as within an hour you'll have dropped the goods off with Mr. Johnson and he'll be sleaving his way back to corp-Y with it, a better use of resources would be to get that team on retainer to try and intercept him. A decent hacker (which corp-X has a few of) could look at their major competitors recent transactions, and maybe even the transactions of a few Johnsons known to work for said competitors.

In the end it's all a matter of how you want to run your game really.

[Vaevictis]

At the risk of repeating what has already been said -- which I will do because it is important -- try to keep in mind that these days, corps pay for their own law enforcement.

They have to pay either their own internal security forces, Lone Star, or *someone* to track down security breaches. There is a real cash cost laid at the corp's feet for tracking down the runners and dealing with them once the job is complete. They have to weigh this real cash cost against the value gained by doing it.

A lot of people think that the whole Mr. Johnson system protects only the Johnsons; the thing is, it protects the Shadowrunners as well. If the runners don't know who they're working for, there is little value in trying to interrogate them for that information. And even if the runners know something about the Johnson, a competent Johnson will have intermediaries to act as buffers. Throw in the fact that the target often already knows exactly who stands to benefit from the run, often times the only value that a corp can derive from tracking down the runners is the whole "Don't mess with me" reputation factor.

There is also sometimes value in leaving the runners alone. If you kill them, more will just pop up. If you don't, then you now have a dossier on their capabilities, which can be useful in both defending against them in the future (better a known enemy than an unknown), and for selecting possible teams for your own runs at a later date.

There are certain circumstances in which a corp will definately need to respond to runners. Any runners that exhibit some kind of vendetta against a target are likely to find themselves targetted in return. Any runners that do one too many high profile, high value runs against any one target are likely to trigger a "Don't mess with me" response.

EDIT: By "high profile, high value", I mean stuff the corp can't cover up. The corps, being corps, won't want to admit that some Shadowrunners just caused 100 million nuyen worth of losses; the shareholders would frown on that, so the corps will try to bury it in the fine print. If the runners do a couple runs that the corp can't deny, the corp will be forced to move for appearance's sake.

And of course, sometimes, the executive with whom you f*cked with may just have anger issues, and you may have made yourself a high profile enemy who will mess with you when convenient or excusable in the line of his duties. (This is often more fun than crushing runners like bugs when they leave evidence behind -- the corp can't justify the expenditure, but the executive who gets dragged over the coals will remember and deliver payback whenever s/he can).

Ultimately, it's not suspension of disbelief. It's just a factor of the setting. Law and order are not important anymore. The corps are in charge, so cash is king.

[ornot]

I'd like to comment on the camera footage point. As has been suggested runners are likely to appear on cameras someplace, but the footage is not particularly likely to be linked with the run as there is so much to dredge through to find a possibly blurry image that might be the running team.

The exception to this is if the runners have done something really major. Consider the CCTV network in London. You literally can't get away from it, but this doesn't help control petty crime unless a perp has already been caught and the footage can be used to tie him to the crime. After the July 7th bombings however, the footage was scoured by an organised group of police officers to find the bombers every movement.

Another reason to avoid too much notoriety or public awareness.

[Aaron]

Vaevictis's post reminded me of another thing about the Sixth World. Even if, say, Wuxing wanted to pursue shadowrunners, they would (probably) have to leave Wuxing property to do it. Then there's an icky bureaucratic tangle called "jurisdiction" that comes into play.

[Lilt]

Hmm... If you are caught on camera all the way from your house to the run and back then in all likelyhood you're caught. If what you do shows-up on the corporate radar then they can have a hacker obtain the appropriate footage in a few seconds, maybe an hour if the runner's particularly evasive (dodging into non-surveyed areas and switching a nanopaste disguise ETC).

Still, I think this just hands another advantage to mages. An invisibility spell that's good enough to fool cameras isn't too hard to pull-off, and you can even check if you did it well enough with the camera on your commlink. There can only be a limited number of spirits and watcher spirits around, at-most (Cha*2)+1 per awakened character, but that's not going to be enough for a spirit at every street corner. Essentially, there are still shadows for people to slip away into, but probably only for mages.

[Cheops]

I think that just about any run that involves stealing a prototype and all files related to it or extracting key, non-replaceable people will result in an attempt by the corp to recover those assets. Basically, if it is irreplaceable and expensive (as any prototype or best-in-the-business scientist is going to be) then expect fast response.

As for jurisdiction that's just another reason to use shadowrunners against you. That's also why corps would be interested in keeping runners on retainer--to have a team in the area ready to go at a moment's notice.

"Dr. X just got extracted by a rival team. Mobilize your team to track them down and then call us in for backup. I'm sending you all the necessary files as we speak. It happened half an hour ago. Go!"

[Geekkake]

[Lilt]

[Abbandon]

I think they have injected to much reality into it. Having to make such an effort to stay in the shadows is a pain in the ass.

They say everything is all high tech and you can be tracked 50 different ways from sunday but take a step back and look at the big picture. I dont see shadworunning slowing down one bit.

I think they would devote most of their security bucks on prevention instead of tracking.

[HappyDaze]

[HappyDaze]

It might be possible for corps to abduct a faceless bum and get the same mods installed along with the needed skillwires and skillsofts to create an "instant disposable runner" for when they need a totally deniable asset for a few :nuyen: more than typical runner rates. This makes gunbunny runners especially replaceable.

Of course, runners with cash can do this too to build their stable of redshirts.

[Samaels Ghost]

Redshirts?