Pros or Pawns Options

[hyzmarca]

Doctors are also hired for their skill and reputation. Still, I think that most people would be a little miffed if pictures of their genital warts showed up on 4chan and MySpace.

Medical professionals have strict confidentiality rules because, without them, people wouldn't get embarrassing problems treated and they'd lie about embarrassing symptoms when they did go in for treatment. Lying to your doctors is a sure way to get people killed, often yourself and sometimes others.

Like medical doctors, Shadowrunners are professionals who hold people's lives in their hands. And lying to your Shadowrunners is a good way to get people killed, usually others, sometimes yourself.

Some duties require more information and more trust than others. Constantly lying to and sneaking away from your body guard isn't particularly conducive to your safety, for example, and bodyguard/escort runs are not terribly uncommon. Extractions, likewise, require damn good information in order to ensure that the extractee remains safe.
No matter what the job, poor intel increases the chance of failure, and it is imperative that the Johnson provide a complete picture to the runners during the initial assessment so that they can make good decisions and good plans.

[Browncoatone]

You make some good points hyzmarca, and you're not entirely wrong. However you speak from the point of view that the Johnson will treat the Shadowrunners as professionals, and that the Johnson wants the run to succeed. Both assumptions are dangerous to make.

[Cardul]

You make some good points hyzmarca, and you're not entirely wrong. However you speak from the point of view that the Johnson will treat the Shadowrunners as professionals, and that the Johnson wants the run to succeed. Both assumptions are dangerous to make.

I know, in my groups most recent campaign, our team was hired to do an extraction. The extraction, though, was cover for the Johnson to try and assassinate someone ELSE at the facility...So, yes, a good run: you can be utterly and completely professional, and still be a pawn..and there is no real way to know that the johnsons is setting that sort of thing up..

[The Jake]

LOL, but when does a dose of paranoia become unhealthy? Two sessions ago our GM made an off hand fluff comment about The skull and Bones Society and our hacker was on it like a pit bull. Even with the rest of the crew trying to convince him that the Tempo trade had nothing to do with the S and B he spent half the session trying to find leads and info that really had nothing to do with anything. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) It was a great moment though, cause now when he gets a little out of hand we just mention it and he gets the hint that maybe he's seeing conspiracies in his Alphabits again. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

I have one player notorious for doing this ALL THE TIME. I let him run amok and smile and let the other PCs reign him back in. I find it hillarious watching him fish for red herrings. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

- J.

[The Jake]

hyzmarca I disagree. Shadowrunners are hired for their skill, reputation and deniability. Neither the Johnson nor the runners trust one another or they wouldn't bother with things like anonymity, half payment in advance schemes or bringing weapons to the meet. I'll allow that there are certain conventions that have sprung up concerning covert work but that doesn't mean the parties trust one another.

Of course successful shadowrunner teams will learn that the exploits of their team will spread amongst the shadow community, and thus the value of discretion, but to expect that a team won't use a Johnson's BTL addiction, Yakuza clan ties or favorite stripper/prostitute to the team's advantage, be it directly or in exchange for information they need on another run, is very optimistic to say the least. Where do you think all that information your leg work yields originates from? They didn't read it in his yearbook.

The only things the team should worry about is their survival and reputation. If a team is hired to blow up truck A before midnight and the team learns that the cargo the Johnson actually wants destroyed is on truck B they are not obligated to destroy truck B because that's not what they were contracted for. Similarly, if the cargo of truck A was supposed to be boxes of simsense chips and the team learns that the cargo is actually refugees from China the team is not obligated to commit the massacre just because it is in the Johnson's best interest.

In spite of being covert operatives, the team's conduct will eventually influence their reputation. If the team spends most of the run stealing everything that ain't nailed down rather than quickly and quietly planting the Johnson's manufactured evidence then they're gonna get a reputation as unreliable. If the team is contracted for $10,000 CFS and ends up accepting half that during renegotiation then they'll get a reputation as pushovers.

But trust just doesn't factor into it.

I think heavily abusing that sort of information will get your ass kicked and reputation trashed eventually.

You say they should be concerned with their rep. How will extorting the Johnson's BTL habit help with that?

- J.

[Browncoatone]

So you finish this run for Mr. Johnson where you put a small BTL upstart out of business. In the course of your run you and your team learn that Mr. Johnson not only helps import BTL chips for the Mob, but has a personal BTL habit to feed. Sometime afterwards you get a call from one of your sources who's calling in a solid favor you owe them. She asks you what you know about Mr. Johnson, or maybe what you can tell her about the local BTL trade, or perhaps who's working for the Mob down in Tacoma.

You give her some info, or maybe you don't, either way she passes on what she gathers from her collection of sources on to her client who's in the middle of their shadowrun.

Later on you're on a run and you need a little intel about this building over in Atlanta. There is no published blueprints available publicly and your team hacker calls no joy. So you and your team start legworking the street for any scraps of info you can find about your target zone.

Luckily for you one of your contacts knows somebody who knows somebody that made a run through that building a couple months back so you get a partial layout of the location and a heads up about the furcoated razorblades with cybernetic enhancements they got patroling the perimeter.

Of course it costs you a solid favor.

[Ikirouta]

Runners are deniable assets, at least that's what I have gathered from a sourcebook for a 3rd edition SR. Johnsons don't much care for what happens to runners as long as they accomplish the job and they do their damnest to keep runners in the dark as much as possible. I don't see why any Johnson would give any more information to runners than they absolutely need to succeed in the run (yes, if Mr. J doesn't want the run to succeed, he gives runners even less or at least less useful intel).

So, to stay alive runners should do their own legwork to know who the Johnson actually is and add all the dirt they can get to their security blanket that they can use later on to prevent Mr. J to sell them or anything else equally nasty.

In a similar vein Johnsons will probably gather as much intel about the runners as possible for the similar reason. "If you take a run against me, I will use this against you.".

Obviously security blankets won't always hold and I don't see why runners wouldn't use their info against the Johnsons that they have worked for. Like someone already said, they might even sell or give the info to their contact because if nobody broke that "trust" then your contacts' would be less useful.