Loot and its consequences, ie ... are runners getting too much Options

[raggedhalo]

The fluff of the game has organleggers reviled as ghoul-lovers and freaks (e.g. Tamanous) and specifically says that runners who work with Tamanous find it hard to work with anyone else.

And, yeah, you could extend the RFID thing with that. Looting bodies should have consequences!

[Mercer]

Organlegging and cyber-reselling aren't the same thing though. (Organlegging is what you do after you take out the cyber.) And any street doc, who by definition usually aren't worried about the standards and practices of the AMA, can take cyberware out of a person. That money can be made at it, and that the cyberware can be put to use, means that there are people out there that will do it. That there are rules for second hand cyberware backs that up.

Let's say a group was chasing a guy who stole a 300k diamond, and he's shooting at them and they're shooting at him. The last thing he does is swallow the diamond, and the street sam shoots him and puts him right through his physical damage overflow. Now, they have a dead guy with 300k in him. Are they going to leave it for Lone Star, or are they going to figure out how to get it out? Someone is going home with that money.

Cyberware is more complicated to remove than a diamond, but surely the moral objection isn't related to the complexity. I mean, what are we saying here? Shadowrunners can kill people, they can even profit from killing people, but once they kill them they aren't allowed to do anything else? Would it be acceptable if they tasered people, took them to street docs, removed all their cyberware and then dumped them off at the ER? (Why does that seem even meaner to me?)

I agree that looting bodies, or looting anything, or shadowrunning itself for that matter, should have consequences. Minimizing those consequences are what the runners do. Shadowrunning is one long calculated risk (or a bunch of short ones strung together, however you want to look at it).

[noonesshowmonkey]

I was planning a reply but Mercer pretty much smashed the nail on the head.

The only addendum being that

[raggedhalo]

There's still a bit of a moral jump from killing someone to defiling a corpse, you know?

[Buster]

Not for a Raven mage. :D

Besides in 2070, yoinking a corpse's cyberarm is no more heinous than stealing a corpse's wallet.

[Lagomorph]

The fact that it can be done quickly and cleanly with the petrify spell makes mages in the used cyber business very scary.

[Ryu]

Pros use "Turn to Goo" and wash the pieces with "water blast". :D

[Mercer]

I never really understood why Turn to Goo doesn't affect cyberware, other than the book says it doesn't. It seems like if they paid essence for it, it would be considered a part of their body. If a guy with a cyberarm gets Shapechanged into a wolf, does he have a meat wolf leg, or a wolf cyberleg, or a human arm attached to a wolf body, or no arm at all? Granted, that's not the meeting we're having right now, but its something I'm unclear on.

[HappyDaze]

[Fortune]

Turn to Goo just does not exist in my games.

[baburabi]

as for the morality of it ....

it happens like this, the opposing team is down for the count but not dead, the mercenary walks up to the downed runners and proceeds to put a bullet in their head, then loads said bodies into the back of the truck so the street doc/runner can take them back for dismantling.

to me that is simply more than looting what is there, that is straight up cold blooded butchery.

any one else see it that way, or is it just me.

all in all i just dont like it, and i plan on punishing them in some way for behaving like this, just got to figure out how exactly.

[Fortune]

I absolutely hate that kind of attitude in a GM. Realistic consequences for a character's actions is one thing, but out-right 'punishing' them merely because the GM doesn't like something is, to me, quite distasteful.

As far as I am concerned, this whole thing is only a problem when there is a lack of communication between the Players and the GM. If the GM envisions the world in a specific way (or has a specific 'pet hate'), they should sit down with the Players and discuss the game world. Hell ... all GM's should do this anyway, as all of them envision the Sixth World working in a slightly different manner.

[Riley37]

Mercer, your example rocks!
Menkey, now I have to look up "transcendental signified" and might become smarter as a result.

YMMV; I prefer "let's think this through for a moment, of all the many, many ways this story could go, which ones are both plausible and fun".

Characters who kill, squeamish about handling bodies? Maybe. In my group, my character is and others aren't and thus a good roleplayed debate ensued, ending in compromise. Fine with me.

Killing people just to profit from their body is exactly the same as any other killing? Not for me. If the body-handling is incidental to a case of self-defense, or even stumbling across the aftermath of someone else's firefight, that's not the same as "hey, he looks valuable, let's kill him". Because the latter is clearly a broad threat to MANY people, and triggers the same thousands-of-years-old defensive responses that resulted in wolves being kinda rare in Europe after the Industrial Revolution, and smallpox now being extinct except for lab samples.

Selling to Tamanous necessarily means bad rep? Not plausible to me; Tamanous must have some way of keeping their business contacts low-profile. Don't brag about selling to Tamanous, and they won't tell anyone that you dealt with them, and trust THEM to have guaranteed some privacy when they told you where to drop off the materials. Also, if you sell to them, you're not a competitor. Downside: they pay low rates to outside suppliers, and they get the 'ware.

Selling bodies necessarily means doing the extraction yourself? No; although handling a body at all, especially if it's bleeding, means forensic evidence issues.

Cyberware is valuable when taken from a corpse? Not so sure. For Wired Reflexes, I bet that 10% of the cost is materials, and 90% is the delicate work of surgical installation, so the materials aren't worth much after the extraction, even if you allow Goo. For a cybereye, the parts are perhaps a higher percentage of the cost, but of the 500 you pay Evo to get Eyes 1, the labor to install something that connects to your optic nerve HAS to be part of the cost. (Heck, I'm amazed that you can get neurosurgery for 500 even without electronics to install.) For decked-out Eyes 4, well, the baseline cost of surgery is under 500 so the parts must be worth thousands.

[Buster]

[HappyDaze]

The big problem with looting bodies of their internal contents (natural and tech) is that you now have greater incentive to kill everyone that's not an ally or contact. Why take prisoners or leave 'em alive when you can kill them and pull a bit of cash from their dead body?

Running the setting to encourage bloodthirsty behaviors like stripping organs and cyber is not something I recommend for a GM. Your world will get very bleak really fast as soon as NPCs notice that the PCs have more cyber than most, they'll take their chance since that's just what people do in that sort of setting. One bribed bartender to slip them all poisoned drinks might be all it takes for the PCs to wake up missing cyber, organs, limbs, and even life (in which case they don't actually wake up). Such a thing is not punishing the players - it's rewarding them by showing that you accept their views on the game!

[Fortune]

Accepting that something happens and encouraging that behavior are two different things.

If the PCs are discrete about their endeavors, then there is little reason for the GM to 'punish' them for their actions in contrived or non-realistic ways. An tense encounter or two during the normal course of doing business, just to show the dangerous side is more than enough to demonstrate that it might not be a good career path.

Personally, I don't see the problem. I also don't necessarily think that it automatically follows that the occasional organ or cyber-legging will lead to a more blood-thirsty game. As has been testified to by several people (in this and other threads), it has actually led to some very good, satisfactory role-playing experiences for all involved. I know this has definitely been the case for my games, from both sides of the GM screen.

[Whipstitch]

Just because murder and organlegging happens doesn't mean everyone has the stomach for the job. You can go ahead and rationalize it however you want, but it does indeed sound like punishing the PCs to me. Fortune beat me to it, but yes, there IS a difference between exposing your players to the dangers of dipping their toes in dark waters and going after them because they pursued a part of the setting you dislike. The characters did something wrong, but the players are just seeing where the game takes them. Just talk to them instead if it bothers you that much.

[baburabi]

ok, i may have spoken a little hastily, as punishing isn't my true intentions its more as i want to make sure that their actions will have impacts on the campaign either from other organleggers or black market cyberware 'dealer' or simply just from the effect it will have on their reputation, because as it may seem reasonable to do from the money raising aspect it just not the same as it is too fence whatever gear you may collected along the way.

[Simon May]

Why does everyone assume that it's equally easy to uninstall cyberware as it is to install it?

If the cyberware has been in there for more than a few days, muscle and scar tissue will wrap themselves around each installed piece making it that much harder to pull out and salvage.

In addition, the reduced cost that second-hand cyberware has means it's that much less lucrative to take it, especially considering you'll be paid less than 2/3rds what it's worth second hand. Doctor's buying used cyberware will take money off the selling price due to the cleaning cost, the testing cost, and all sorts of other fees so that they still make a substantial profit as well. With all that, you'd be lucky to make a 30 percent return on the full book price of a new piece of the same hardware.

Considering that it'll take several hours to remove most pieces of cyberware, excluding arms and legs, which are custom built to fit a body (also lowering the value), makes it not worth it to try and pull it out.

And don't mention turn to goo, because even as a goo, you have to essentially dig through a gluey substance, which, while easier, is also more likely to affect cyberware and require an even more extensive (and expensive) cleaning to remove. It may save you time, but it should cost you money in the long run.

[Jaid]

indeed, it should be noted that turn to goo is not the great organ-harvesting spell that everyone seems to think it is.

note that the resulting goo has a barrier rating equal to the target's body + net hits (which will be at least 1 if you succeeded in casting the spell).

i don't think it's *too* far-fetched to suppose that most people with cyber worth stealing will have at least 3-4 body (that is, while the average person may have ~2000 :nuyen: in 'ware, the people with 50k :nuyen: in 'ware are probably going to have above-average body, unless your team is regularly killing corp execs for their 'ware... which, for the record, is not generally a very good idea).

as such, the resulting goo will be somewhere between a door and a lightpost in terms of hardness (more in the case of orks and trolls). so if you're saying you can just shove your hand through a door, grab someone/something on the other side, and drag them through the door (gently, mind you, since you don't want to risk damaging it) then i guess you might be able to just pull 'ware out of the goo.

otherwise, you're not really looking at anything particularly useful (though, on a side note, i also consider that ruling to be dumb, and would houserule that goo is just goo, and wouldn't have any kind of intact 'ware in it)

[Fortune]

You could carry around a really big sieve ...

[Jaid]

[Fortune]

I wasn't really intending on arguing this point, it being a joke and all, but technically, despite its barrier rating, it is goo. Being viscous, it would be conceivable that it would flow as pretty much any liquid does, and thereby Saeder Krupp's 'Mega-Omni Goo Sieve™' could possibly be a way to separate that substance from the solid cybersubstance embedded in it. :P

[DireRadiant]

Whatever it is, not all people think the same about it. Whether it's turn to goo, or killing people just for the material wealth in their bodies. It could be for 2 cents, or two million, does how much you kill for matter if you only do it for money?

What you personally think of what the runners do, the rest of the game world can and will have lots of different opinions about it, and may act accordingly.

[Jaid]

sure, and you could get a door through a sieve too... you just have to modify it first ;)

my point being, turn to goo is not all that awesome when it comes to extracting 'ware. you're still pulling it out of something that is tough and presumably sticky, since it *is* goo. in fact, it's probably *easier* to pull it out of a metahuman body, for 2 reasons:

1) there are techniques developed for just such procedures.

2) the human body won't ooze back into place to fill any gaps you might make in it... or at least, not as readily as goo most likely would.

i just wanted to make the point that turn to goo is not really all that great for harvesting cyber, when you really get down to it.