Street Violence, and the consequences thereof Options

[kzt]

[kzt]

[martindv]

[Ravor]

Although I clearly remember reading it in a Shadowrun book somewhere a while back, I fully admitt to the possiblity that my aging memory is playing tricks on me again. :cyber:

*Edit*

I'll add more later.

[fistandantilus4....]

[Fortune]

I'll concede the possibility that it could have been early shadowtalk, but I don't remember it.

[Kremlin KOA]

I am checking Neo Anarchists guide to real life for it
I think it might be in sprawl sites tho
it was definately shadowtalk
so not truly official but close.

I am gonna look over my books until i either find it, or have to open the storage shed to get some more of the older books

[Critias]

The only incident (off the top of my head) of such casual violence that I can recall was in one of the Dirk books, when a loonie on a street corner randomly decided to hose a bunch of people at a bus stop with an SMG -- and was promptly blasted under the karmic wheel by a nearby mage who didn't feel like getting hosed by aforementioned SMG.

It's been, y'know, probably fifteen years since I read it, but IIRC for the most part everyone just shrugged and went on with their day after the screaming and flailing died down.

[martindv]

I do concede one fact. As I recall, It was a shadowrunner making that comment about the Barrens.

[Fortune]

[Method]

I'm with fistandantilus3.0. That much violence sounds bad for productivity. The corps wouldn't put up it.

And as far as the omnipresent surveillance, I tend to agree with the ideas Frank put forth in his Alternate Matrix Rules. If the security surveillance was really that effective (even if that reflects the RL trend) ShadowRun might as well be called ShadowIncarceration which doesn't sound all that fun to me.

[hyzmarca]

One thing to remember though is the old adage that the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Lone Star, municipal police, and even corpsec need murders and rapes and security breaches. They need them in good neighborhoods and top secret facilities. They need them because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If the wheel doesn't squeak then that grease stops flowing.

If there are no terrible crimes in ritzy high-class neighborhoods, then it would be obvious that the local police are overpaid and overbudgeted so budgets get slashed and salaries get slashed and people get fired and last year's SOTA police vehicles and drones get sold at auction because the PD can't afford the fuel to run them anymore.

On the other hand, a wheel that squeaks to much gets replaced, so it is a delicate balancing act. There must be enough heinous violent crime to keep the people in fear so that they will throw more and more money at the police but there must not be so much that the people become outraged by the lack of police response and hire someone else to do the job instead.

[martindv]

[Fortune]

Ah, my mistake then. Still no idea as to which book it's in?

[kzt]

[hyzmarca]

The real question is whether or not the local authorities have the inclination and the budget to pay the exorbitant licensing fees required to obtain footage of crimes from extraterritorial security cameras, given that the footage of the driveby is copyrighted and could make a a decent profit as part of Faces of Death 97 and could potentially contain proprietary trade secrets.

[kzt]

That's easy. They offer a trade. If you help us we won't stonewall when someone attack you. Shooting up the pyramid isn't a crime in Seattle that the Star has to care about. So no video footage for Azzies of the suspects running out and hopping in the waiting car. And no BOLO or gridlink tracking for the car that drove away. Hell, you could blow the damn building up and a decent lawyer could make a claim that no felony was committed in UCAS territory.

[Ravor]

And the fact that the corps don't play nice together even when 2007 sensabilities screams that it would be in everyone's best interests that they do so is the only real reason that Shadowrunners can even exist.

[kzt]

I think that it's a game has a lot to do with that as well. . . The PCs in most games (including one's I've played in and run) tend to get cut a lot of slack as long as they don't do especially stupid things, like have a shootout in the Knight Errant visitors lobby.

Having the PCs killed or captured by the cops just doesn't help the game typically, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

[Ravor]

Personally I try not to run my games with the characters runnnig around with neon signs flashing "I'm a PC", but then again I try very hard not to break the Fourth Wall.

[kzt]

Yeah, but the players don't live there and are not professional criminals. So if they take some pains to not get caught and don't do stupid stuff I'll assume that the lone star adept who who has 23 dice in Detective isn't on their case.

[Ravor]

Not as big as a problem in a low dicepool world. :wink: :silly: :facelick:

[Kremlin KOA]

[Method]

And I think all that is the point of Frank's musings. Realistically everything you do would be captured on surveillance cameras, even in some of the worse neighborhoods. If all that footage was used and/or shared effectively your PCs would be caught at the end of every game session and you'd be generating new characters at the start of the next one.

Yes players should be deterred from doing obviously stupid stuff. If they like wearing tee shirts with their SINs printed on them while robbing a De Beer's Gallery in Bellevue they should get their asses handed to them.

But the point of the game is to have fun while role-playing a criminal (as antisocial as that is). Getting caught can make for an interesting story every once in awhile, but it shouldn't be the default ending. Thus surveillance has to have some inherent problems that allow runners to operate.

[Blade]

I don't like the idea that corps have everything they need to monitor everything but that they're too stupid to do it.
A high security corp facility with security holes just because it should allow PC inside is too much for my suspension of disbelief.
I don't really like the idea that they do it willingly, either.

I mostly consider that criminals (shadowrunners but also gangers and all others) can always find out a way to go around security. They exploit holes in the systems. For example, they avoid being tagged by being SINless, and there's nothing the governments or corps can do (or want to do) about SINlesses. They avoid the problems that being a SINless cause by having fake SINs. They have fake SINs which work because there are too many SINs to make sure that each and every one of them is really valid.
Likewise, they'll be able to go inside the high security facilities because it's impossible to have a 100% secure place. Electronic devices can always be fooled, so you'll need humans to check. And most humans are actually much less reliable than electronic devices.

But I wonder why I'm writing that, because in the end it's still the same old thing: if you prefer it when players can go in guns blazing through the front door, play it that way.