Organlegging, Commonality of Shadowrunning and Organlegging Options

[Chrysalis]

Hi all,

We had a heated debate about organlegging in our last session.

Is it something that is usual in your games?

Are there limitations on what is acceptable behaviour in your games?

What about if those being organlegged are still alive?


-Chrysalis

[Dayhawk]

So far my players have stayed away from taking the time to get organs from their enemies.

But they have no problem grabbing their guns and such.

What exactly do your players plan on doing?

[Ravor]

I explain to my players before I agree to run a campaign that NOTHING is off-limits IC, but that I will "fade to black" as I deem fit. If you want to rape, torture and force your fellow teamates to eat the gentiles of infants then that is between the IC actions of your character and the IC actions of their characters. (My players are mature enough to realize the difference between IC conflict and OOC conflict.)

With that said, organlegging isn't something that happens very often simply because it brings too much risk compared to the payoff, but then again I believe the same thing applies to looting equipment as well, Runners should very, very seldom have a chance to even think about general looting.

[Spike]

In my last campaign, my character would regularly grab casualties, enemy vehicles and weapons, whatever and just drop them off at a yakuza owned* chop shop as part of 'disposing of the evidence'... and a source for extra nuyen. Then again, none of our runs really involved infiltrations, so...

However, the general rule was: Never take longer cleaning up than the firefight you are evacing from... no climbing buildings to grab that sniper's corpse/gear.

The actual work of cutting stuff up and figuring value was strictly handled by NPC's... off screen.








* obviously my character had extensive Yakuza ties, and most of our runs came from my contacts in the Yak, so this was just SOP.

[BRodda]

Hi all,

We had a heated debate about organlegging in our last session.

Is it something that is usual in your games?

Are there limitations on what is acceptable behaviour in your games?

What about if those being organlegged are still alive?


-Chrysalis

In our games we tend to refer to them as "ghouls" and the shadow community looks down on them as "Not being able to hack it". They are not professionals and only the lowest rung fixers have anything to do with them. Runners tend to avoid them like the plague because it is a HUGE street rep hit.

"He might look like a street sam, but he ain't nothing but a ghoul. If he's so quick to stop and chop up someone for the extra few (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) he gets for the parts how is he going to control himself if someone shows him a big stack and wants him to roll on his team. Drek!!! Never trust a ghoul, all they think about is making money. Not about the team, the mission or even even what the street thinks of him, jsut the loot and how to scrape together a few extra cred for junk. You can have all the cyber in the world man, but that don't make you a samurai. He an nothing but a punk ass ghoul."

[paws2sky]

In the past (circa SR2), one of the characters in my group had an organlegger contact. We used him to dispose of all kinds of incriminating "evidence." We'd get a price for the "parts" as well as any undamaged cyberware they could reasonably remove and resell.

These days, I tend to avoid describing graphic violence and gore for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, my players are smart and they use their imaginations. I don't need to describe to them in detail the little bits of brain splattered all over the wall when someone shoots their victim in the head with an Ares Predator at point blank range. The've seen Pulp Fiction; the can imagine it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Second, I think it tends to detract from what's going on. Excessive exposition about the droppled of blood and gore spalttering against the wall blah blah blah snore tends to take away from the action. Third, it seems like its actually somewhat immersion breaking. The things that we in 2008 find disturbing are probably less of an issue for those in 2050+. People are more jaded. They're used to a world where you neighbor could turn into a monster or accidentally level the aprtment building by castign a powerball in him sleep. (and if you didn't tl;dr that, here's an eCookie.)

And all that aside, my players tend to stress the idea that they are professionals, not common, underworld slime. This has been strongly reinforced by the group's Face who is a veteran player (I remember pouring over the SR1 rulebook with him trying to make sense of damage codes the day he got it). In their view, they'd have to be extremely desperate to consider organleggin anyone, unless that was one of the condtions of the job.

As for a live victim... They'd probably be more inclined to p-fix someone and sell them to an underground Bunraku parlor. Unless the victim was a complete bastard, that is. I don't typically penalize people for being "creative" or vigilante in their methods of disposing of people. Especially when the victim is dangerous or a blight on society.

[ArkonC]

Anything goes in my games...
I'm not GMing a SLA Industries game and one of my players is playing a complete psycho (who gets the job done so why bother pulling him in for psych eval) and every session he does several things that makes the rest of us go "Damn you need help"...
You should have heard his description of how he tortured a subversive for info last time...
I called for a 5 minute time out so I could go pet my cats and get some of the gore out of my head...
But as long as everyone is "enjoying" the description, I see no need to fade to black...

[Whipstitch]

Organlegging is basically a non-issue in my games. It exists and you can do it, but the system set up to support the practice is secretive and arranged so that the only people who really profit are the Tamanous themselves; after all, they're dangerous people and it's rather hard to just "shop around" a corpse to the highest bidder while staying under the radar. The pay involved is really only worth it for those specialized small time gangers like those listed in Runner Havens who have little else for income plus have an inside track with the Tamanous and receive other benefits as well. Although the Tamanous and their affiliated gangs are a great way to dispose of a body, you won't necessarily get paid much because if it's a SINless corpse they're likely not the healthiest and has no useful medical records readily available when you bring 'em in and if they have a SIN the organleggers are basically doing you a favor by taking a "hot" item off your hands. I don't particularly care if the runners get involved with it, but it's typically more trouble than its worth when you consider what else talented runners could be doing with their time. You might be able to get some decent nuyen for something odd like getting contracted to bring in a Type O or other unique person who's useful for more than just ghoul chow, but that falls more under the purview of wetwork and everyday shadowruns than organlegging for the sake of organlegging.

[ToreadorVampire]

In this case (I'm running the game Chrysalis plays in):

The two "victims" in this circumstance are two members of an opposing 'running team. They were both knocked unconscious by the player team and have been hauled off as prisoners for interrogation.

The interrogation is now over, and of course, if they are turned loose, they will make the team's life hell ... so, what does the player team do with them? I have a quite varied group (where it comes to morals) and have characters wanting to cut them loose (minus all of their gear), characters wanting to just shoot them in the head, dump the bodies and be done with it and then one or two who would like to find a good Tamanous contact (or in fact, in the team's case it will be more like a contact-of-a-contact, so reduced rates) and sell 'em the unconscious/sedated bodies.

They might not get amazing money for the bodies, but even if they only get 10% of the 230,000 nuyen worth of implants sitting in that enemy razorboy, they have significantly subsidised the pay for the run.

They're not talking about taking every casualty of combat off to have their bits ripped out - it's only in this case they have prisoners ...

... either way - having two living people ripped open for spare parts (not caring if they survive the process) is a bit nasty.

I'm interested in responses too - what would your characters have done? Assume that player team knows what's inside them, as they have hauled the bodies back to a safehouse and used medicine/cybertech/scanners/assensing to discover which implants were inside (or at least gather a pretty good idea).

The old tabletop group I played with were very much for organlegging, and (if the situation presented itself) would carry obviously cyber-heavy bodies away and stash them in a vehicle for resale later. The really macabre characters would try and get a deal where they get some of that torn-out kit installed in their own bodies ... <shudder>

[Spike]

As a player: Certainly I'd have contacts. I look at Tamanous and even just a Ghoul gang (and street docs who buy 'used' cyberware...) as simply a great way of disposing of evidence. Its professional in the manner of knowing a man with a pig farm is, if you are in the business of murder.

Going out of your way to LOOK for bodies to sell to organleggers specifically for money is rather low rent for Shadowrunners, but using such infrastructure? part of doing business.

As a GM, whatever the players feel is the right way to handle it is alright with me. I provide consequences appropriate, either way.

Either way: its just a step in a process, unworthy of excessive attention either way.

[Riley37]

I care a great deal about whether or not someone kills me. Once they do, I see what they do with the body as a secondary issue. Given a choice of someone taking my hypothetical cyberware (or one of my eyes) and leaving me alive, or killing me and respectfully burying the intact remains, I consider the former as the lesser evil.

There's a current Power and Lethality thread with much discussion of the merits of lethal vs. less-lethal ammo, and whether leaving behind unconscious guards might result in less "heat" than leaving a trail of corpses. I have yet to see a post from someone who makes that choice based on valuing metahuman life, or being squeamish about killing, whether IC or OOC. There was a thread months ago about using the Turn to Goo spell as a way to extract cyberware as loot.

My own PC puts a bit of value on metahuman life. He goes out of his way to kill committed enemies (eg Humanis goons who would kill him for being a troll, or Sons of Sauron who would kill his parents for being human), but he prefers not to kill guards who happen to be working for the installation that he's raiding. He carries one clip of X-X and another clip of Stick&Shock. But he doesn't put any value on traditional burial/cremation of bodies. Every body that he drops off at the ghoul tunnels, means one more meal that the ghouls can eat without going hunting, one less person attacked and killed at random. When his team fought with, and killed, a guy who had bleeding-edge prototype bioware... he would no more leave that behind, than he would leave behind any other piece of valuable technology that happened not to be implanted in a corpse. The team tossed the body into a bag, took it to a street doc who packaged it neatly, she kept a piece for her own research, the big box got sold to a AAA that wants to reverse-engineer the techniques, and my PC donated some of his share to charity. How exactly would leaving the body behind be substantially more ethical?

There is an "ick" factor. We mostly have deep aversions to being around messy corpses of our own species, just as we mostly have aversions to being at the edge of a cliff: both of those aversions helped our ancestors stay alive. As a modern industrial human, I distinguish between "being up high" and "being at great risk of falling" every time I ride an airplane or look out the window of a skyscraper, and I make a parallel distinction between "being around gore" and the associated dangers. The dangers themself are what I avoid, rather than gore as such. I haven't done a lot of first aid, but when I do, it's all about universal precautions with latex gloves, not about avoiding seeing the blood.

[Earlydawn]

Your case is interesting, and I would say that it should be allowed.. but definitely hit the runners with Notoriety, if you use it. You might even want to get a very specialized branch of Lone Star on their case, or perhaps even a Ghoul Hunter Prime Runner opponent.

[Riley37]

Ah, more specifics.

"if they are turned loose, they will make the team's life hell"
Then kill them. If they can't make a reasonable offer along the lines of "if you let us live, you won't regret it", then they're a disgrace to shadowrunning.

Western European military culture developed several traditions to make it viable to take prisoners, and viable for people to surrender when outmatched. There are many failures of those traditions, but I'll take half a loaf over none.

My PC team had a similar situation, and fortunately, a mage with Mindprobe who could assess whether the captives would be grateful for their lives, or come looking for more trouble. We took their gear, and the team doc injected them with something... maybe really it was triggerable doom, maybe just a bluff, but they'll avoid crossing our path again.

Heck, it could be cool to cross their path again and have them react with "Hey, those are the guys who could have just killed us, and went out of their way to leave us alive", kinda like Androcles and the lion.

[Ravor]

In the situation that you've described then we'd take them down to the local friendly Street Doc and sell him their bodies to give to his organlegger contacts.

After all, do you really think that there are more then a handful of Street Docs that don't have Organlegger Contacts? How in the hell do you think he got that new liver you needed a while back after your first one got shot up? Why do you think that no smart Runner would ever go to one without a chummer to watch the Doc?

[ToreadorVampire]

As I always say:

"Friends don't let friends undergo surgery alone"

OK - good to see that in this instance people wouldn't flat-out decry organlegging. I personally was inclined to suggest it to them OOC (since some of them are very new to the game system/universe). Was concerned I might have been leading them *too* far astray as a GM.

[Dayhawk]

If they actually sell the bodies and get some (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) I would be interested to know if those who were "Against" it still took the cash.

"I am against this, it's just wrong. Oh! Pay day. Nice"

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif)

[ArkonC]

I'm afraid to say that harvesting bodies is actually a much better way of disposing of the bodily evidence than dumping them somewhere...
Those usually get found...
Recycled organs are much harder to track... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Kremlin KOA]

if they sell to a street doc have them get undercut a little on price and then give them this for a new contact

A few weeks later one of the guys they sold comes up to them in a bar, club, or diner (where they didn't bring weapons)

As they start to look worried and wonder whether they can manabolt the guy and get away before security hoses them, he walks up and greets them. He then thanks them for what they did for him, and lifts up his hair to show the remains of a scar in the back of the skull.

Turns out this guy got so scragged he thought he was going to have to go cyberzombie, but thatg the razorboy just happened to be a near perfect transplant match. Your street doc performed a brain transplant

[ArkonC]

if they sell to a street doc have them get undercut a little on price and then give them this for a new contact

A few weeks later one of the guys they sold comes up to them in a bar, club, or diner (where they didn't bring weapons)

As they start to look worried and wonder whether they can manabolt the guy and get away before security hoses them, he walks up and greets them. He then thanks them for what they did for him, and lifts up his hair to show the remains of a scar in the back of the skull.

Turns out this guy got so scragged he thought he was going to have to go cyberzombie, but thatg the razorboy just happened to be a near perfect transplant match. Your street doc performed a brain transplant

IF that ever happened to me, we'd have 2 more dead people, the street doc for selling us out and the guy with the new body becuase I don't like these loose ends...

[Kremlin KOA]

IF that ever happened to me, we'd have 2 more dead people, the street doc for selling us out and the guy with the new body becuase I don't like these loose ends...

Note to self, if I ever have you in my group, make it be known that the guy was the brain in a jar that saw the whole thing, your street doc never sold you out. ALso the guy emphasises hopw you quite literally saved his life and he owes you. If you really want to frag your own loyalty 6 contact, be my guest

[ArkonC]

Note to self, if I ever have you in my group, make it be known that the guy was the brain in a jar that saw the whole thing, your street doc never sold you out. ALso the guy emphasises hopw you quite literally saved his life and he owes you. If you really want to frag your own loyalty 6 contact, be my guest

Well, hen the guy would still be dead, he should know better than to start talking to the shady characters that provided the corpse anyway...
I suppose the doc could survive if he talks fast...
He should know better than to have witnesses standing about, especially if he's a lvl 6 loyalty contact...

[Jaid]

i think he means the guy with the new body is your new loyalty 6 contact arkon (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[ArkonC]

Oh...
Well...
I guess I'm too paranoid...

(Wouldn't have been a very useful contact anyway, waiting on a Street Docs shelf till a corpse shows up, bloody unprofessional that is...)

[b1ffov3rfl0w]

Oh...
Well...
I guess I'm too paranoid...

(Wouldn't have been a very useful contact anyway, waiting on a Street Docs shelf till a corpse shows up, bloody unprofessional that is...)

Torgo's Executive Powder: apply directly to the brainstem.

Torgo's Executive Powder: apply directly to the brainstem.

Torgo's Executive Powder: apply directly to the brainstem.