In the Joint, ideas to entertain jailed birds Options

[MaxHunter]

Hi! I am just returning from a gaming session where THINGS DIDN'T GO AS PLANNED and the runners ended up in jail.

I am going to describe what happened in quite some detail because I want to have an idea of:

a) what the charges would be for the crimes they commited
b) how long they would have to spend in jail
c) and this is the most important; how to make their life in jail interesting

I already have some ideas for them three, but first things first:

what happened

[ Spoiler ]

A group of three runners: mage, ork sammy and hacker were hired by the Boston mob to find evidence to release a hacker who was convicted of a crime he didn't commit. -this is an adaptation of "Through a rose colored display link" from SR missions. The group is from Seattle.

The runners were doing some research and had already met and talked to a KE detective. En route to a warehouse where they would find more evidence, someone hacked a big truck which crashed the runners car and nearly killed them. [six boxes of damage each]

The mage came out of the car first and, limping and furious went to the wreck of the truck, there he interrogated the dying truck driver and found out that the truck had been hacked. He shot the driver in the face out of spite later with a Slivergun. [the driver was going to die anyway, the truck was on fire and he was seriously hurt]

Immediately, the runners tried to flee the scene so they wouldn't have to answer any questions but were caught by a KE drone. The drone started going after them and a couple of cruisers later joined the chase. The hacker spoofed the drone and made it crash, the sammy drove the car at high speed and tried to shake the cruisers off, but failed and so the mage fireballed them [he used a similar spell called sandstorm, a fireball with sand elemental effect] He didn't roll too well. The two police cars took some damage but continued pursuit and called some astral and physical backup. The ork sammy tried a 180 with their damaged Mercury Comet and pulled it off, but the two cruisers had an amazing reaction [I got really lucky] and the three cars ended up stopped and locked in the middle of the elevated freeway.

The policemen came out of the cars, pointed guns at the runners and waited. The mage tried a HUGE levitation spell and lifted one of the cruisers into the air. The sammy took advantage of the surprise to speed his car into the gap and towards an exit. Unfortunately, the two cops in the other car shot their predators into the speeding comet and succeeded in filling its condition monitor. The runners' car crashed. Three more drones and medics were arriving to the first accident scene. Of course, in this second crash the mage lost concentration and the flying KE cruiser crashed into the freeway again. (the cops inside got bruised and a helluva scare but nothing serious)

The hacker got into overflow in the second crash, she flew through the window and was bleeding in the concrete a few feet away, the ork sammy, who was also quite damaged came out of the car to help her, the mage tried to cast an invisibility while still inside the car. The ork was arrested by the lucky KE cops. He didn't offer any resistance and got that the medics tend to his fallen companion. The invisible mage tried to get near and make the ork invisible so they could slip away but failed, then tried to flee but was spotted by the astral backup.
The "astral backup" was an astrally projecting mage and a summoned fire elemental; the moment the mage was spotted he surrendered and acted very cooperatively.
Before being searched he casted low force "destroy guns" spell (a restricted target version of a wreck spell) and made his slivergun sludge. He wasn't spotted doing this.

When interrogated the runners admitted being shadowrunners and they were quite forthcoming in the talks. They had even met and exchanged some info with a KE officer earlier in the run (Jack Diamond), this officer remembered them.Their fake SINs and Fake licenses held tight in the heavily modified rolls. However, they refused to tell who they were working for and what they were doing in the city. The sammy had cyberspurs which are an "f" item and that wasn't listed in his Fake SIN.

A while later the mob sent them a good lawyer to help them through the case and also to remind them not to be too friendly with the cops.

The players and their characters decided they would rather spend some time in jail than lose their reputation as straight shadowrunners, they know they have a very good lawyer and nobody was too hurt. So, now, what's next?

first: the counts; I have no knowledge whatsoever of legal procedures but I believe the will be charged with reckless endangerment, resisting arrest, destruction of property, possession of illegal weapons (cyberspurs), possession of illegal programs, hacking a police drone, and the most serious; attempted murder because of the spell the mage casted at the policemen. I have decided that the truck driver's body got burnt in the fire that followed the first crash so there is no evidence of the mage shooting at him,. Also, the 2 cops from the levitating patrol car weren't hurt . I have also decided that the lawyer they have will help them convince the prosecutor to drop the attempted murder and settle for something less dramatic. We all had fun today.

So... would a sentence of a couple years be too unrealistic? I am thinking of the runners maybe getting out in half the time for good behaviour in the joint and some cooperation.

Also I would like to run a session about life in jail, it could be interesting, there is already a mob guy in there and I am sure they will have people watching them all the time. I would like to come up with one or two "cutscenes" or "minigames" inside that would have some consequences afterwards, like the runners getting a couple new contacts, maybe getting involved in something or the "Guts" quality for free. They already got "Criminal SIN" for free as well, a couple points of Notoriety (getting arrested, blatant runner behaviour), KE has ritual samples of the mage, the hacker lost his commlink and the sammy got his cyberspur surgically removed.


I accept ideas and suggestions. Looking forward for that.

Cheers,

Max

[kzt]

In order
Conspiracy
murder
fleeing the scene of a personal injury accident
Resisting arrest
Assorted traffic citations
Attempted murder 4 counts each
Assault with a deadly weapon 4 counts each
Destruction of public property (damage to the street, etc)
maliciously damages of a vehicle (1 count per each patrol car & drone damaged)
Illegal possession of concealed weapons
Possession of fake IDs
concealing evidence

I could probably go on for a while

See http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/gl-pt4-toc.htm
I think that MA is a shared guilt state, so they can all share the murder charge too. The penalty seems to be death or life without parole.

Essentially they can be imprisoned for the rest of their lives. And if they don't talk or cooperate they probably will get to spend lots of time thinking about their decision.

I'm sure they would remove/break cyberware, cripple magicians, etc before sending them to prison.

[Nychuus]

Straight shadowrunners, professional criminals, preferring to take jailtime over using the "get-out of jail" free card? I must be taking crazy pills again.

Furthermore, I think you should note down what the fuzz saw them do or have evidence to.

*reads what really happened*

Forget it, tell em to roll up new characters as they're going to be "strung-up-at-dawn".

[kzt]

Yup, the idiot who shot the trucker is going to get them all fried. Murdering a citizen is the kind of thing that makes it hard to cover up the events. They could have been the innocent victims and instead turned themselves into crazed murders and got their pictures in the papers and outraged citizens calling for their heads.

There was a psyco street gang member here who got crashed into while running from a robbery he commited (he ran a light). When the guy he hit got out to check on them the gangbanger shot him dead. This tends to make the news in a big way, and get huge jail time.

[Fresno Bob]

If they like their characters, have someone spring them on the way to their hearing or something.

[Nychuus]

[Riley37]

A good lawyer could raise the question of whether the Sandstorm was really a lethal assault against the officers, or just an attempt to damage the police cruisers.

If the Mob sends a skilled lawyer, who spends major time on the case, sure, two year plea bargain is plausible, but that's the Mob investing a major resource on hirelings who fucked up due to poor impulse control. If the mage hadn't shot the truck driver, none of this woulda happened, and maybe KE investigation would have even helped them figure out who hacked the truck.
Speaking of which, if the truck-hacker still wants them dead, then they might get further attacks while in prison. But maybe the truck-hacker figures they're harmless until they get out, and won't bother.

What does the State do with imprisoned mages? Do they have a big Ward over the prison? That makes sense, but on another hand, they probably have only a few Warded prisons, and keep all the mages and other security risks in those ones. Can the mage Project from his cell to elsewhere in the prison? If so, then he can be useful to Mob, to guards, to anyone. If he can heal, then they'll want him busy in the prison hospital - healing VIPs who go in for that service, eg relatives of guards, occasionally healing inmates on a slow day.

From what I hear, California prisons have a lot of racial segregation. Black prisoners generally don't hang out with Latinos or Asians or whites, and so forth. If the same principle applies to metatypes, the ork will have a hard time keeping much contact with the others. He can maybe do some tasks as pure bruiser muscle, but I bet his reflex enhancer is inhibited if not removed, and any major task involves the guards letting him move around freely, for their reasons or a Mob bribe.
The hacker can't do jack unless the guards give him access, again for their reasons or a Mob bribe. But sure, he's got useful skills so something can be arranged. Side thought: are there special prisons for technomancers, with absolutely no computers at all, keeping their onsite records on paper and counting with abaci?

What if the framed guy, without benefit of their getting him any defense evidence, gets convicted and sent to the same prison... and the Mob assigns Our Heroes the job of keeping him alive?

What, if anything, serves the overlapping interests of the Mob and the guards? Intimidating prisoners affiliated with Yakuza or other organizations that rival the Mob? Running recreational drugs (to prisoners who can afford them)?

Prisons might be attractive to certain entities that are generally the enemy of all metahumanity; insect spirits or blood spirits, for example, might find that prisons are a great concentration of desperate souls, and although the Wards are a tough access factor, the Wards also prevent Draco Foundation from finding them. Or perhaps a Deus-style AI has taken over the trid programs used for "rehabilitation" and job skills training, and is using them for brainwashing. If ghouls or vampires come feeding, the guards want to be in control of countermeasures, but might have to deputize some of the tougher prisoners as cannon fodder.

If you need a silly session, do yet another remake of "The Longest Yard". If you need a gritty session, well, there might be Urban Brawl kinda games, or sheer pit fighting, in prison.

Corps that develop new augmentation methods may need a supply of volunteer test subjects, and prisoners are one such source. "Buggy ware" barely begins to cover the possibilities. Human biodrones, rogue nanoware, the next generation of drugs like Nitro, it gets worse from there.

You got options. Play rough. As I mentioned, if the mage hadn't shot the truck driver, none of this woulda happened... perhaps that player needs a venue for fantasies in which rash, cruel actions don't have major consequences; he isn't named Leroy Jenkins, is he?

[cx2]

You forget he said that he decided the truck driver's body got burned beyond use as evidence.

[Glyph]

As it stands, the characters will either be locked away for life, or will face a few years of prison time as well as being so crippled (cyberware removed, commlink confiscated, LoneStar has a ritual sample and knows your astral signature) that they might as well roll up new characters.

Normally the old standby for captured characters is the old "We can give you back your gear and let you go, if you do this dangerous, unpleasant job for us." That keeps the characters playable, without letting them off scott free. And you can run a bleak session or two of life in the joint, to show them how desperate their circumstances are.

Unfortunately, the mob doesn't seem to have quite enough pull (or, to be frank, enough reason to care) to out-and-out spring the runners, and LoneStar won't cut a deal with them if they are trying to gut it out/rely on the mob lawyer. You could always run a session or two, then fast-forward them through the rest of their sentence, but again, what's the point of playing such ruined characters, as opposed to starting over?

[kzt]

[Wounded Ronin]

Eh, I don't agree necessarily that sociopathically shooting one burn victim in the face should equal instant death/failure.

I mean, it certainly complicated the situation in this case.

But I disagree with sentiments like

[psychophipps]

You know, I feel the sudden urge to watch "The Dirty Dozen" again... *evil grin*

What state wants to pay for life in prison when they can simply sell the estimated costs of imprisonment as a contract to a corporation? These guys (and/or girls) obviously have a talent for mayhem and general carnage and that is worth something (think of the scene where the blond guy was being shut out by The Firm in the movie "Payback") to the right people looking for 100% disposable assets.
Black ops anyone? Maybe a cortex bomb or implant poison device for compliance?

Maybe even worse? *dry washes hands while chuckling evilly*
Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )

[hyzmarca]

The mage could argue euthanasia, which isn't a defense for homicide, legally, but does tend to limit convictions to lesser includeds. However, if he went with this he would have to let the authorities check his spell list.

My suggestion, make them cryocons. Hook them up to UVVR, lower their metabolic rates, and psycotropically program them to knit when faced with stress. Then, decades in the future, ever worse shadowrunners are mistakeningly released and go murder-death-killing throughout the metroplex and they're the only people who can stop them.

[Grinder]

For a rundown of life behind iron bars in 2060+, I suggest checking State of the art: 2064.

[cx2]

[MaxHunter]

Good discussion so far everyone! I will try to make comments in an orderly fashion...

[MaxHunter]

... A football game inside prison would be fun too.

Also, the ork character was into illegal boxing before getting into shadowrunning, there could be a comeback!

Cheers,

Max

[deek]

My first thought, assuming everyone wants to keep the characters and continue the storyline, is with the land. Meaning, they were en route to a warehouse, who owns that land? If it is a corp, well, the rules could be very different. Maybe you take them through court and give them a max sentence, 50+ years a piece (make them feel like they will be in jail for a while, maybe even play a few days in jail), but then the corp that owns the land comes in and forces a release, because it was under their jurisdiction.

Now you have some runners that are forced to make a few runs for the corp (which obviously can be anything) and maybe if they successfully complete them, they are let go (to be called upon at a later date, or course).

I would really try to scare them with a life in prison, maybe they might start thinking about ways to get out, but in any case, I wouldn't spend too much time trying to think of a "realistic" sentence or all the laws they broke...as that's really not important to the story, IMO. Just send them away for a long time...and then a nice little loophole plays out that gives the group a second chance.

[MaxHunter]

@deek. That's creative.

[Yoan]

Watch a few episodes of HBO's "Oz".

8)

[Zhan Shi]

"How to make their life in jail interesting"? Let them encounter Bubba the Love Troll. Nothing like an eight foot tall, 400 pound, horned-an-horny metahuman to make shower time interesting. If the runners are metahuman, they'll have the Free Human Brotherhood to worry about. If they're human, they'll have to keep an eye out for the Sons of Sauron. Also, there's a section in one of the SotA books about life on the inside...can't remember which one.

[kzt]

[hyzmarca]

Buba the Love Troll works best if he is kept in the background. The meme loses its power if you attack the PCs with it head on. Just have him stand around stoically looking like a giant love-troll and leering at teh PCs occasionally. Never have an ymore interaction than that. But, occasionally have him sodomizing someone in the background.

Don't forget to require an Agility x 2 (3) roll to not drop the soap. (Agility x 2 (1) if it is on a rope.)

[Grinder]

[cx2]