Street Violence, and the consequences thereof Options

[MaxMahem]

In most 'classic' Shadowrun campaigns the players play criminals for hire, which means they take on all sorts of varied tasks, many of which involve murder and death. Inevitably some of this spills out onto the streets as the players find the need to wack somebody in a public situation.

My question is, how much of this do you guys tolerate in your campaign? At what point do you drop the heavy hammer of the Star/police pursuit of the players and public awareness of the deeds they have done? I guess this is more of a setting choice as some campaigns any public deed is cause for concern and the PCs are something like 'super spies.' While in other public violence is a fact of life, and the PCs are ganger's or something. I always tried to have my campaign fall between these two extremes, in the classic Shadowrun tone.

That is the occasional public death is okay, depending upon the circumstances. Gun somebody down in Redmond (or your campaigns equivalent) and the Star/police will probably never get involved and it will never make the news. Kill someone in a better neighborhood (like Trenton) and the Star will investigate, and there will be a news blip, but little more (unless the death was spectacular in some way). Police response will be delayed. Kill some one downtown or in Bellevue and the police will respond immediately and with force.

I ask this because my last camping 'session' my players started to engage in violence in a very public way (in one case chopping a guy in two in broad daylight). Culminating in an ill thought out plan to assault an ambulance and a lack of foresight into the consequences there off. I was unsure how to respond (poor planning on my part I guess), though was planning on dropping the hammer later on in the run. We never got that part though :P

The recordings online at my podcast if you want the blow by blow, but my real questions is this? What would you guys have done? I tend to feel guilty whenever I whack a PC.

[Kalvan]

In all of my games, that never happened. Wacking people openly and publically is for gangers and the less sophistocated of syndicates. All of the groups I played in drew the line at deliberate wetwork of anyone other than Blood Magicians, Incect Shamans, Toxic Shamans, and anyone deliberately trying to spread VITAS, AIDS V, or HMVV. This means even deliberately offing a member of Humanis, despite the fact that only one runner at most was Human in any given team we played, is an absolute taboo.

[Ravor]

In a world where it is common that a wageslave in one of the better parts of town will see at least two murders, three muggings, and one rape while walking to work and the "police" are more akin to a legalized gang then law enforcement public violence is a simple fact of life ...

... Of course remember that the knife cuts both ways and that if the Runners are smart they'll make sure that their brand of violence doesn't stand out in the normal background noise of life in the sprawl.

[Siege]

For my group, violence was a tool, but not a form of recreation.

Wetwork was never really an issue because all the targets usually did something nasty enough to warrant our own particular sledgehammer.

For all the nuns, do-gooders and pesky reporters, contracting with the local go-gang was a helluva lot cheaper.

-Siege

[Critias]

It all depends on what streets you're talking about, and who got killed.

[Synner667]

[Fortune]

[Synner667]

[Critias]

[MaxMahem]

[arathian]

So, chopping a guy in two or attacking an ambulance is a pretty extreme example, but violence in public can actually go unnoticed or without a police response for a surprising amount of time.

For example, take the 1993 CIA Shootings. Search Wikipedia if you want the full story, but basically a guy shot 5 people with an AK-47 in front of CIA headquarters at 8 am in the morning, and there was no armed response.

Also, based on my RL experience, even violence in public downtown does not draw an immediate response (having seen a bit myself), and a death among the transient population would probably go unnoticed for some time, or even if it is noticed be attributed to drug overdose ('cause it is like a 99% chance) until an autopsy was done.

The police presence downtown is highly variable, with a high concentration during rush hour (morning and evening), but very little at night or on weekends, mostly because there is hardly anyone downtown at all during those times. On a holiday weekend downtown Seattle is like a ghost town.

Shadowrunners are inhumanly fast, use silencers (and Seattle has a ton of ambient noise), tend to look like businessmen on the streets (at least in my game), use magic, spirit concealment, etc., so it is not out of line for them to get away with quite a bit for a while at least.

All that said, breaking and entering into any high value corporate property, or extracting a high profile individual is likely to draw a quickly escalating response.

[Method]

Because I'm bored...

[Backgammon]

[Moon-Hawk]

[Blade]

[knasser]

[djinni]

[crash2029]

I figured I would add my two cents here. In my game the dystopian setting of Shadowrun causes there to be a large disconnect between the concepts of law and justice. When the laws are made by subjective organizations aimed at only improving their own situations to the exclusion of the "little people" justice is a rare commodity indeed. In fact most people in my game hate the corps to some degree or another, and often secretly champion Robin Hood style runners. I mean lets face it almost everybody secretly (or not so secretly) loves it when events turn to the disadvantage of "the man." As such many of the runners in my games have quite a sense of morality that they have to rationalize when they pursue their careers. They try to help the downtrodden, but not so much as to endanger their own livelihoods. In this vein my games do not usually have a problem with gratuitous public displays of violence. When such displays do occur I levy penalties against the runner in question, however I do only insofar as the game remains fun. After all it is just a game, and one where cooperation is necessary to achieve a pleasurable outcome. In the situation of the runners chasing the ambulance and publicly bisecting a guard I probably would arrest the runner(s) and then a run to either break them out or a "repayment" to the mysterious benefactor who engineers their freedom. Anyways thats just my two cents.

[Riley37]

In such cases, I recommend dropping out of the usual cycle of "Player declared action, GM declares immediate result", and calling a time out. Ask the player, straight up, what their plan is, for the medium-range time frame (not IP to IP, but more how the scene will end); listen; then advise the player that this plan seems reckless and likely to result in PC fatality, and, if applicable, to endanger other PCs. Tell the player that the PC gets a bad feeling about their plan.

If you give fair warning and the player sticks to their plan - either because the player wants to test the limits of the game world (like a teenager finding out the limits of their body by going without sleep for a day or three), or because the player decides that the PC would ignore the bad feeling - then if the PC dies, the guilt is not on the GM.

If you are thinking "wow, this player is gonna get his PC killed" but you're NOT SAYING SO, then the guilt is on the GM.

See the thread a month or two back on the player who had their PC go alone into an Invae lair. The PC's body is now home to an insect spirit; the PC's soul is gone. Every post said that the GM had made the right choice for the circumstances. (Some encouraged the player to start playing the insect spirit as a new PC, but that had complications.)

There's a Shadowrun-ish novel, "Oath of Fealty" I think, in which an arcology marks certain doors with "IF YOU GO THROUGH THIS DOOR, YOU WILL DIE". And those signs are largely accurate.

[MaxMahem]

Wow a lot of good advice here.

[deek]

What I have done is just apply slow pressure. My players know they don't want to get caught by any law enforcement from the start. So, if they did something like that in public, or even something a little less public, but able to be seen (basically everything can be seen), then I apply some pressure.

I do that by bringing up a newscast a runner or two hears about it. Or it gets brought up by their contacts, saying they might be getting too high profile for this sweet money run. Sometimes I bring some detectives around, just to ask a few questions, put them on the spot.

These are several things I have done to show what they did was not okay. And if I felt like they improved their outlook, tried to avoid needless murder, or struggled a bit on the next run or two, I let things blow over.

I suppose that instead of dropping the hammer, and make the police an all or nothing proposition, I apply pressure.

Heck, if all else fails, you could always start to drop the hammer and then have the Star force bribe money for a while...there are always creative ways to push or pull the players into the feel of campaign that everyone is going for.

[Pendaric]

I started to warm up the players to the Star being on to them by rumors of Star snitchs asking questions about them. Information brokers contacting the PC's with interesting data, about the Star having a case file that was not going away involving them, contacts remarking on the heat they pulling after the ambulance heist etc
Let them know they is a time and place to get away and they nearly missed theirs.

Edit
Ja what deek said.

[martindv]

[Fortune]

[kzt]