Publishing 'Runs, In simsense, that is. Options

[Zeitgeist]

Alright, runners live exciting lives, and they do remarkable (/crazy) things. Yeah, there's more big budget shadowrunner sims than you can shake a boomstick at, but with when it comes to the emotive tracks, nothing beats the real thing. After catching a serial killer and dropping him off at a nut house covered in RFID tags, and the Star taking credit for it (sort of a given, I know), I figured that if there was any doubt when it comes to my character's rep, he could just give them the trid feed from his cybereyes. But hey, he's edited human on metahuman porn into a Humanis chapter's security footage so the head guy would be considered a "trator" for nailing a dwarf and a troll chick, so anyone can basically fake the stuff. So then I think, "isn't it vastly harder to fake a sim?" So you implant a simrig, record your runs, and you've got proof. But wait, after a couple of months you're sitting on a bunch of major sims. Why not make some money off of them?

So let's say that you edit them so that any distinguishing details are either changed, or removed entirely. Still, something could go very, very wrong. But what? Getting a following won't be that hard. Look at Youtube as real-life proof, and William Gibson's Pattern Recognition for how a cult following could be developed.

Would you be able to scrub everything clean enough, and get the original poster info so lost in bounces so that someone couldn't feasibly trace it back to you? It could be the next big thing, but then again, there could be a reason it hasn't been done yet.

[Ravor]

<<<<< Aye, I'll tell you why it hasn't been done yet. If I found any run that I'd been on in that file I'd track down the fragger and sell the resulting snuff sim to my Fixer. >>>>> -Bot

<<<<< For once Bot we agree. >>>>> -Rabbit

[Zeitgeist]

<<<Snuff? Buddy, black beetles are what I'm FIGHTING against. Funny, though, how so many people have died because they made a chip where people die...Life is not without its irony.>>> -Malachi

In all seriousness, not ALL runs are about killing. I mean, the shooting and maiming and exploding just kind of HAPPEN, you know? It's not like I've ever gone into a run saying "I'm going to blow off someone's hand, and shoot another guy in the gents." No, that's just a Newtonian reaction to THEM shooting at US. Yeah, there might be serious, messed up demand for wetworks, but perhaps there are a bunch of emasculated middle-aged corporate stiff looking to feel all tough by shooting it out with a street gang, or some wanabe kid hacker who wouldn't know a 1 and 0 from a hole in the ground who wants to shatter IC and grab the data before they all come down on you and you've got your brain melting out of your ears. You do scenes, not whole runs, and that leaves 'em wanting more, and its safer. Highspeed chase along the freeway at breakneck speed with a gogang on your ass, or some corporate drones looking to blow you and your ride to your component parts with full emotives? Hmm, I don't think ANYONE would want something like that...[/sarcasm]

[Baphomet69]

I think what he was getting at was that no 'runner that ever wants to work again wants to see his work distributed for any/all to see. And if a corp got wind that the run they hired you for is the next big sim...you'd best be finding a new sprawl and a new name...

[Ravor]

<<<<< Well as fair warning I'll repeat myself, whether you sell your package by the scene or in entire runs, if I ever find anything that I was involved with posted I will ... 15 MP Deleted ... so slowly that your ... 5 MP Deleted ... and their children will ... 10 MP Deleted .... You scan? >>>>> -Bot

<<<<< Well I think what our colorful friend is trying to get at is that for alot of us it doesn't matter how careful you are when wiping the tracks for identifing evidence. The mere chance that you might miss something is enough to turn you into Ghoul fodder. >>>>> -Miss Understanding

*EDIT*

Yeah Baphomet69, but I was trying to be humorous and do it in an IC fashion, in all seriousness, I do honestly believe that if any of your team-mates found out about your little production studio, the nicest thing that they would do is deliever you to Mr Johnson along with a recording of you being sodomized by trolls in hopes of saving their own skins and reps...

[TheOOB]

Selling tapes of runs is unbeliably risky, but the payoff for doing so could be good.

A safer alternitive might be able to do "runs" for the purpose of recording and selling it. Think of it as high risk urban exploring.

[Thane36425]

Shades of Queen Euphoria. There was also a mention in the Pirates book about some of the pirates selling trid and such of their "missions."

[Anymage]

The public's preoccupation with shadowrunners and all things relating to them is an artifact of the system that I do my best to scrub out in my own personal games, so YMMV. But the full emotive rush of high speed racing or kickboxing or what have you can be gotten from a legit driver or fighter without being overlaid by the "grime" that life as a career criminal will tend to leave on one. Some of the more socially conscious gangers might get a following doing what you're mentioning here, but it'd be a niche market rather than anything that deserves a good deal of commentary.

The only reason it's conceivable that a "professional" shadowrunner would pull such a boneheaded move is because starting characters can be technically "professional" without any real background in the lifestyle. Failing that, it would take some really nasty simsense feedback for anyone who'd honestly made their living running to come up with such an idea. In the ideal shadowrun, the target doesn't even know what happened until well after the hit. True shadowrun sim would probably include the layout of the site, hints as to who else was along with you, what the objective was, and how it was done. In one smooth move you've told the target exactly what happened, you've told everyone how you did it (other targets will improve their security, and LS now dislikes you for publishing a criminal training video), and you've put your friends at risk. It's possible to edit bits of this out, but you'd then be selling a shadowrun sim without any of the actual shadowrunning.

Finally, even assuming a runner obsessed culture, the public wants action and derring-do and general cinematics. Again, there might be a subculture around true-to-life stories from society's bottom rung, but real shadowrunners can never match up to what a studio can put out. They can't be as good looking, their fights can't be as elegantly choreographed, their magic won't be as flashy, and in the end people don't necessarily get what they deserved. So in other words, a runner fool enough to do this would be putting out a confession and a subpar entertainment chip, nothing more.

[knasser]

I agree with all the other posters who say that it would be an insanely dangerous thing to do... but wouldn't it be fun? :D I think it would add a whole new dynamic and layer of involvement to the game. And a great way for the GM to bring in new interaction with the setting of the game. Imagine seeing an excerpt from your run on the local trid station or over-hearing two fat execs in a bar re-living your gunfight against their corp.

Or the security guard's widow morbidly going through her husband's last moments. Okay, so not all fun. :(

But all interesting, so let us have a look at how this would be possible. First off, getting the payment to you leaves a financial trail for investigation. That's a risk, but we already have extensive examples of anonymous payment and we know that the Shadowrunners have the systems in place to do this. With a decent Hacker or Fixer contact, this should be doable. And you can always involve one of the syndicate players. I bet the Yaks would be happy to distribute illegal SIMs for a reasonable cut and it would take quite some pressure to make them stop or disclose sources.

So moving on from the issue of payments, that leaves us with the issues of being tracked down from it and targets being prepared for your tactics. Well the second one first, I as a GM think that's a plus. It give's me an excuse for the security guard to say "Drek, it's the Barrens Boys - go for the elf, he's a mage." Keeps the players on their toes and forces them to adapt tactics regularly.

Dealing with the issue of identification... yep, there's the possibility of the big slip up. The wizard asks how the sammie's date at the Space Needle went on Friday, etc. The GM can make quiet notes about any incidents he thinks might incriminate. But I don't think that this is too hard to eliminate. The team will inevitably leave behind traces of who they are after any run regardless of releasing a recording or not, whether that's on security cameras, the recording of the cybereyes of a dead guard, etc. A simsense recording may not add much to what the corp already has and Shadowrunners already deal with those issues.

And finally, bear in mind that some employers might really love the mission to be recorded for propagada purposes. Especially those motivated by other than personal gain, such as green activists or political subversives. This can be a time to time thing. It doesn't mean that every run has to be habitually recorded.

Personally, this sounds like a lot of fun that will make the game world a lot more real and it will lead to runs and situations arising out of what the players are doing and player driven plots are nearly always more engaging. Zeitgeist, it's a great idea and I'm all for it. No team lasts forever and it would be fun to remember the one that filmed all their exploits, eh chummer?

[ornot]

I actually had a player whose concept was to go on shadowruns, record the feed, and then post it on the matrix. I allowed this with the intention of utterly screwing the group in the manner described by knasser and the other posters, but my group ended up falling apart due to RL issues (people moving away etc.) so I'll never know how it would have worked out. pity.

[Moon-Hawk]

My last campaign almost went in this direction, but then we decided to do something completely different.

Anyway, the premise we were going to use was that the whole team was part of a simsense production crew. They were like freelance expose reporters. Definitely illegal, but like pirate radio, exposing the truth of corporate corruption, only with simsense instead of pirate radio.

They would all be part of a rogue simsense crew, so like the simsense technician would be the hacker, the stunt driver would be the rigger, the special effects mage would have all sorts of illusions and mind control spells, the stunt team would be the samurai and adepts, and the face would be the star.

Their runs would be getting all sorts of dirt on people, stealing paydata, catching "bad" people doing "bad" things, and then just sending it out. Since they're doing it freelance data-pirate style they're not able to get a whole lot of money selling their recordings (thus keeping money levels for the campaign in check), but they get a little, plus what they can salvage from their runs.
Yes, they have a lot of enemies, but they're not exactly corporate enemy #1 simply because most people who view their sims think that they're fake anyway. It would be possible for them to eventually be taken seriously, and that would probably take the campaign in a new direction, but that's cool too.

The whole premise requires a little bit of suspension of disbelief, but not a whole lot more than we're used to. ;-) I think that it could be a lot of fun, if done right.

[ornot]

hehe... kinda like a guerilla documentary. The Michael Moore of the future!

[Fezig]

Instead of doing it with runs, you may be able to do it with delves into the barrens and interviews or interactions with gangs. The gangs may enjoy the publicity, and a newsnet might be willing to pay for the results, it could be interesting as a sort of running enterprise in and of itself. I dunno, the idea has potential on a lot of levels...but I would be reluctant to do it with actual runs, especially on major corps and the like.

EDIT
Come to think of it, there is a newsnet that I wrote up as just an idea that is run by a bunch of former runners who essentially do that sort of "in depth and on the edge" reporting. I guess it would be like running a campeign as them...interesting...