Needing some GM wisdom, Looking for an appropriate responce/show of force to my PC's screw Options

[Beetle]

My group went on a fairly straight forward data steal mission; get in grab the data, get out. I tend to set up an 8 hour shift clock so when my runners go in, I generally know where my npcs would be rather than making it up off the cuff. The group happens to roll in at coffee break time. The building was designed in such a manner that it would be really easy to barricade the lab-techs in anyone of several rooms as all the doors swung out into the hallway and common areas. There was lots of heavy equipment to block them in. Four of my players, rather than just setting up the barricade and letting the hacker do her magic decide to each toss in a frag grenade into the break room. well four frags in a 10x10 room pretty much spelled the techs demise. Slaughtering some innocent non-combatants aside. For whatever reason, the hacker never turned off the security cameras, nor erased the security logs. The entire run is caught on tape. Exploding techs and all. For a crew that tends to dot the i's and cross the t's in terms of covering their tracks and making sure they can't be identified, I'm a little put off..

I'm not really sure how to react to this. Hits to their street cred? Corporate response? Faces plastered all over the 5 o'clock news as being wanted in the the break in at X Corp and murder of several technicians? My group usually plans things out really well, keeps non-combatant/unnecessary body count to a minimum and cleans up their mess. Up til now they have yet to do much that would call any unwanted attention their way. I'm just looking for a fair response to the situation since I've never really had to deal with it before. I mean they pretty much opened the door for retaliation on some level. I'm just not sure if i need to sic a poodle on them or a rabid drop bear.

[Little Johnson]

If it was me id plaster thier faces across the net. Then they would find thier contact were suddenly not answering thier coms ,if they were low loyalty they might even turn them in for the reward.

it would become decidedly uncomfortable for a fw weeks. time to change faces and sins and cultivate a few contacts. good time for you to milk them out of some creds while the work dries up and the they fight off some bounty hunters. and tried to start over.

[Cain]

I agree with Little J, although I think doing *all* of that at once might be a little much. They definitely need a dose of Public Awareness, at the very least, maybe some Notoriety as well. The rest is up to you, but I wouldn't punish them too hard for a first mistake.

[Ryu]

They lucked out, a security spider moved all files to a private node. News about the bloody mess they left reached the greater public, but the vid data is safe.

Unless they don´t want to play "Simon says".

[ArkonC]

IT depends on wether or not the corp they ran against want this knowledge out in the open...
Was the paydata a secret research project they want no one to know about? Do they want everyone to know their security is shit? Then it probably wont be on the news...
Do the assets lost warrant retribution or will the company just file the loss as an expense and move on?
The teams image should change a little, but if this is out of the ordinary, it shouldn't change too much...
Don't exaggerate the reaction, it's usually not worth it for the corp to go after the runners, since they usually don't know what they stole and why and the corp usually doesn't care about their menial employees...

[CultClassic]

This situation could prove to be a eye-opening experience. Why not have a loved one from one of the murdered techs hire a team of runners to exact some retribution. I would also think that CorpX has to do something in this situation; Not only to save face but to also reassure their employees that violence of this magnitude will not be tolerated and that the Company will do everything it can to protect its assets. I would have the responce set a precedent for sloppy runs.

On the Plus side it makes for some paranoid game sessions to follow.

[Wasabi]

Have them blackmailed by the PARENT corp of the labs to 'extract' replacement techs [spawning a series of runs against anyone from AAA corps like Saeder Krupp to Aztechnology] and convince them if possible to willingly switch employers. If they decide to clean up the mess with force instead of agreeing to the runs have one of the runners publicized and a note sent to the others saying something like, "Your friend said no, be smart and you can bail him out. Do the job."

If they jump through all the hoops, allow the screwed player who got publicized to choose to buy the positive quality "Erased" with Karma and roleplay their new guardian angel through some new NPC you can use for hooks later. That way in the end the players will be exhausted but get some finality to their suffering. If you screw a player with Erased, once it gets erased have a note sent to the character with erased that says "You're working hard to get out of a perfectly good job... convince your friends to take it or we publish ALL of them to the 10 o'clock news."

Thats one way to do it. Lots of variation possible too.

And as an aside... your players may read these forums so you shouldn't respond to which ideas you like or dislike. The element of surprise is a beautiful thing!

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Beetle]

And as an aside... your players may read these forums so you shouldn't respond to which ideas you like or dislike. The element of surprise is a beautiful thing!

I'm fairly sure the only person from my group who reads DS is the GM for a different game I play in. He's actually the one who pulled me aside and wanted to check on his rep and the rest of his team after the mission. He wasn't directly involved in the killing aside from association and was busy picking the lock for the server room at the time of the explosions. For my particular method of "retribution" I'll keep it to myself, just to be safe.

Regarding the lab technicians, they were the weekend crew. Mostly sorting notes and going through data charts. No one of particular import or value aside from their loved ones at home. Guess CorpX had to send a representative to their home explaining they had a gas leak and give them the life insurance payout.

[nezumi]

I mostly agree with ArkonC.

Revealing a successful break-in reduces stock value, scares employees and shareholders, hits the reputation for tough security, and may accidentally leak valuable, secret information. Sum all this up as X, cost to corp for revealing they were broken into.

On the flip side, we have a few benefits to revealing this data. Does the corporation stand to regain anything lost? Is its general SOP to turn the issue over to Lone Star? Is it expecting a second hit by this team? Is there a high-ranking fellow who feels his job is on the line unless he 'does something'? This is all in Y.

If Y is greater than X (more likely with small corporations, jobs involving kidnapping or theft, jobs which already were publicized, or low-value targets), they'll likely be put on the news. Their faces will be available in databases for future reference with, possibly, their DNA and/or biometrics. They can expect to gain a permanent point of notoriety, and temporarily be 'hung out to dry'.

If X is greater than Y (more likely with big corps, corps with private security teams, high-profile, low-publicity targets, jobs involving destruction or murder, low chance of a second hit following), things will likely be dealt with within the corporation. They'll now have a corporate file with, again, pictures and, if available, biometrics. Depending on how much information is available, they may expect either people paying for information on them in the shadows, and/or corporate hit teams (or a hired shadowrunner group).

How much they do primarily depends on the monetary value of tracking these people down. If this was really meant to be a 'milk run', it was probably a low-value target, so they shouldn't expect too much retribution.