Seriously Pissed Off Yaks, What is the runner team in for? Options

[kzt]

It sounds like the PCs already had it personal with the yaks, and decided they didn't care that the Yaks would react. This is a full out war now. I'd expect the PCs to nuke a Yak senior player at his home or office, or just blow up their money making operations next.

It's likely to be an interesting but short life.

[bibliophile20]

[DTFarstar]

Man, this sounds fun.

Chris

[Ryu]

While the PCs insulted every Yakuza, they at the same time demonstrated that they have no honour at all. They promised seppuku and didn´t deliver. Denying seppuku would have been fine, if slightly insulting.

No traditional japanese contact will continue to work with them. Information regarding your group will be freely and actively shared, if someone communicates interest.

The kumi in question will do whatever damage it can do if the occasion presents itself. Loaning a MCT cyberzombie goes a bit to far, a single sniper can do the job, as can liberate amounts of plastic explosives in the basement of the players condo. Word of mouth can damage the rep of your group, and they could open a matrix site with as much information as they have, compareable to a Criminal SINner quality.

[knasser]

Criminal organisations aren't nations or armies. They survive through the fear they generate in others. Whilst of necessity they make it as difficult as possible to be hurt by others, ultimately there's only so much you can do. What protects them is the threat of reprisal. That threat has been called and in dramatic fashion. An assassination will not be sufficient to redress the balance. In order to salvage their ability to inspire fear, vengeance must be not only in proportion to what has been done to them, but seen to be in proportion. A sniper shot will not achieve this. I would expect sustained torture and targetting of loved ones and community to be visibly going on. The intended audience for all this is not necessarily the PCs, but the entire community, hence reprisals against anyone associated with the PCs, also. People must be shown what happens if you mess with the Yaks or whatever criminal group.

The downside is that this will make for a short, unpleasant game. Shadowrun is a game that emphasizes secrecy and cunning by making clear the vulnerability that comes with exposure and direct confrontation. The players have ignored that balance and put you, the GM, in the awkward position of choosing between the normal balance of the game or killing off the party.

You can abandon the normal balance of the game and say to yourself - the players want Die Hard, I'll give it to them. Lots of firefighting, Yaks die, PCs "win". :)

You can enforce your view on things and wipe the PCs off the face of the planet with snipers which is realistic and depressing.

My preferred option - compromise: Hit the players with something heavy, give them a chance but expect some may die. The loaned cyberzombie may be an option here. Note that I'm not advocating PC-icide, just that they go through a situation where there is a good chance some will die. They invited this situation, after all. The ideal outcome would be the players forced to flee, perhaps abandoning some of their equipment stockpile, probably spend some time recuperating and healing up, at the end of which they are short of cash and need to start doing runs again to get the money together if they want to resume their war. In the meantime, the Yakuza may have recovered somewhat. Or perhaps a rival gumi or the vori will have moved in - never artificially prevent the players from achieving something. If they depart with wounds to lick but they find that their original rivals are toppled, they have (a) learnt not to pick fights without a good reason and (b) achieved a victory at cost over their chosen enemy.

Oh, and thanks for the link and comment on my NPC. I always really appreciate knowing that someone has seen some use out of my NPC rosters. Cheers,

-Khadim.

[FriendoftheDork]

Wow, this is actually very fun. I usually strike down hard on those that defy the "order of things", but this was done with flair and style IMO. They really did the best to piss off the Yaks, and It's pretty obvious they WANT a war with the Yakuza.

And although Khadim has many good points, we should not forget that among all those cowed by or payed by the Yakuza, there are also thousands that don't really like them, that think they are arrogant bastards. I'm betting along of Shadowrunners will cheer this incidient just as people can cheer the decapitation of a percieved enemy or hanging of an enemy leader.

Ans every day the team stays alive they have defied the Yaks, told the world that you can do that to them and get away with it, which could inspire others to do the same (or something similar). The Yaks are going to take their gloves off, and spend millions if not billions of nuyen to take out the PCs - and that leaves and opeing. Perhaps the Mafia think this is a good time to strike at their enemies? Or the Yori? Maybe the Rings come back? The Yaks are powerful but not ALL powerful, and like every other organization they can be beaten.

I say, give the PCs a chance. Let other NPCs take advantage of the fact that the Yaks will be more concerned with killing a few men than fighting a mob war. On the other hand it's time to take off the silk gloves (and silk was used for armor so it's pretty tough) and take on some iron. Think of anything the Yaks can do to take the PCs alive, or if not possible, how they can get killed in a spectacular fashion. As said, a normal sniping is not enough, they need to make an example. 100k per head doesen't seem wrong at all, or even 1 million each person alive.

Then let the PCs to what they can to defend themselves. Ask them in detail on what they plan to do, what kind of security they use etc. In the end, the PCs will lose unless they can team up with the Mob (which isn't that unlikely) or other power.

Have fun!

[Stahlseele]

[Critias]

I would just start up a new campaign set several months later. Have whispered legends about "The Yak/Runner War of '69" and how it thinned the ranks of the city's Shadowrunning elite who were hired and counter-hired, talk about all the bounty hunters that got in the middle of everything, mention the corporate security forces that got drawn into the middle by both sides, play up the explosions and the body count and the Lone Star crackdown as the elusive 'runners and the vengeful Yakuza got sloppier and bolder. The hunt took a long time, the prey fought back and evaded, called in favors and almost did the impossible, but eventually the Yakuza had enough to throw at them that ________________ (insert character names here) had their intestines strung up around Little Tokyo, and their heads on pikes outside the oyabun's home, one day. Have the Yakuza so weakened (in terms of basic manpower and financial expenditures, so concentrated on their vengeance they lost sight of the bigger picture) that there's a Mob War going on as the other major syndicates fight over the scraps and cull out the weak criminals from the herd. Make sure the players know their characters put up a valiant fight. Pick one that killed the most, one that killed the best, and one that killed the longest. But make sure they know all their old PCs are dead now, and you're just saving everyone the time and trouble of role playing out the horrible murders.

...and everyone in the Shadows and their grandmother (and the players) knows now, without a shadow of a doubt, that it's not a good idea to actively piss off people with that kind of power.

And now -- ta da! -- the new campaign kicks off amidst the new underworld chaos.

[Kremlin KOA]

[Ryu]

Make it clear they will die.

Have a high-tech Seoulpa Ring call with an offer they can´t refuse - new face, new ID, new metatype if they want. See Augmentation.

[BookWyrm]

What are the runners in for, when they've pissed off the Yakuza?

Three things:

Pain.
Blood.
Death.

In that order.

[kzt]

If the GM is cool with playing Mack Bolan's "War Against The Mafia" using SR rules this could be a lot of fun. But the players should expect that their characters will likely all get killed in the process.

[Glyph]

The yaks aren't all-powerful. One of the cyberpunk tropes that I really detest is how pathetic criminal scum like the mafia and yakuza are romanticized into invincible entities who crush anyone who messes with them. They have limited resources, and (as others have pointed out) lots of rivals.

The runners will still be in some trouble, though. Runners depend on a web of contacts and illicit businesses to function. The yaks will definitely go after their contacts, either to turn them or to make a messy example of them. Unlike corporations, the yaks exist in the shadows too, and they already seem to know who the PCs are. Unlike a run against a vengeful corporation, the runners won't have the option of fading into the shadows and laying low for awhile.

So the PCs will definitely have their homes trashed, and their current fake ID might get compromised, and there will likely be both a high bounty on their heads, and a big misinformation/smear campaign waged against them. The runners will be literally on the run, as well as hung out to dry, and the only people who are likely to help them will be rivals of the yaks such as the mafia and the vory. Even they might think twice about it, since a group that reckless could easily turn on them, too.

The PCs plan on waging a guerrilla campaign, then leaving the area, which is good, since they'll be burning down all of their bridges here. So what to do with them? I would have their contacts turned or messily killed, have their dosses burned down to the ground even if they were smart enough to be long gone from them, have bounty hunters plague them, have them have to worry about where to get gear or medical treatment, and have some battles with vengeful yaks, some of them near-runner quality. There should be a better than usual chance of PC fatalities, with exhaustion and the attrition of numerous running battles making things tougher for them.



Now, they may think they've left it all behind them when they flee, leaving a fatally weakened yakuza to fend of their rivals. But basically, they have two choices. One, they can make a fresh start, but they will be nobodies in a foreign land, having to build up contacts and establish their reputations all over again - and they will all have the equivalent of the old Dark Secret flaw. Or... assuming they pick someplace without a local yak contingent (not too many of those), they can be more open about their identities. They will get the big jobs, but be working with a black mark on their rep, have contacts who are leery of them (look what happened to their last group of contacts), and the occasional yak assassin or bounty hunter will continue to make life interesting. So either way, ditching Seattle will not result in their leaving all of their problems behind.

[hyzmarca]

Remember that scene from Black Rain in which sword-wielding bikers decapitated Michael Douglas's partner? It is a classic.

[Ryu]

Very Cool!!! Like the whole film.

[bibliophile20]

*facepalm* I just got back from a chat with my players regarding Arsenal; after we were done ooh-ing and aah-ing over all the pretty weapons, Ben (the team leader, the guy who decapitated the Yak) turns to me with this big shit-eating grin on his face, and says that I should start stating up some key Yakuza locations; bunraku parlors, casinos... and the Oyabun's house.

[Stahlseele]

[FriendoftheDork]

[mfb]

if i were an OC boss with access to the kind of resources the OP is talking about, i don't think my first response would be to send more cannon fodder (even really badass cannon fodder) against the runners. if i know enough about the runners to find them, i know enough about the runners to find their contacts, friends, and families. my first move to would be to wipe out about half of the people the runners know, and then take some of the other half hostage and start mailing out body parts. i'll bomb the bars the runners hang out in, burn down the Stuffer Shack they get their morning coffee at, and kill the cute waitress who flirted with them in the restaurant last night. i won't even make any demands for a while, because making demands would give the runners the feeling that maybe they can do something to stop all this. at this point, anybody associated with the runners is probably going to start disassociating themselves really, really quickly. doors all over the 'plex are going to be slamming in their face.

and then, after they've run out of ammo and nobody will sell them more, after they're exhausted and dirty from sleeping on the street because the coffin motels are afraid to put them up, their money's running low because they can't get jobs--then i'd go ahead and kill them.

[toturi]

If the PCs start hitting the yakuzas, they'd be able to feed off the yak operations to hurt them. All the PCs need to do is continue to go on offensive, likely until they die, but the more brutal the crackdown and the more the PCs hit back, the more the yakuza loses face. And more the other other criminal organisations will move in.

If the runners had contacts in the yak areas, then all they are doing is cannabalising their own people to crack down on the PCs, if the contacts are on other people's turf... well, the other criminal organisations won't want their turf messed up by the yaks.

[Stahlseele]

as is the problem with most conflicts . . you lose either way in most cases

[bibliophile20]

Thing is, most of my players' contacts are either:

A) Already dead.
B) Located elsewhere (Aztlan, L.A., N.Y.C., etc)
C) In hiding already
D) In places where even the Yaks won't go without a good reason (Ork Underground)
E) Known over the Matrix only (they actually have both Netcat and Slamm-O! as contacts already)
F) Work for a different OC outfit
G) Already engaged in a personal war on the Yaks himself.

So hunting down the contacts has already been done. And what started this little war was a Yakuza raid on all of their dosses at once; basically, MCT found the amnesiac technomancer, traced her back, did a little digging, found where she was staying, gave the Yakuza dossiers on the runners and said "Hunt." So they've been living on the run for the last several sessions.

[Glyph]

So basically you have put them in a situation where they are in big trouble, but have nothing else to lose. Their actions don't come as such a big surprise to me then. After all, if the bad guys are coming after you, you might as well go out with guns blazing, and take as many of them as possible down with you.

[Stahlseele]

so it wasn't the player(character)s who started this? oooh o.O
in THAT setup and with some ressources on the runners side i'd not be surprised if they basically killed everybody who opposed them in the yakuza and took over what's left of it by then . . once a GM decided to try something like that against our group, where i played a big troll . . so he sent the ancients after me/us after i was done with them the groups elf basically lead what i did not kill. . and because of my ties to the orc underground and the spike wheels and the disassemblers had to live with the fact that i basically ruled the underworld after that *g*

[Ryu]

And does Arsenal change things here! Give them all the toys they want, and then it is indeed time for a new oyabun (And a new face/ID/place of living after that).