[X] My Assistant

[Larme]

Things like "four Dryads and a Fomori" being thrown together as someone's professional urban criminal dream team are why the metaracial subtypes make me shudder. For most players, they've got nothing to do with role playing opportunities, exploring new regions of the background material, or appreciating and enjoying the background material as presented enough to worry about the stated and repeated rarity of those subtypes -- they're all about scraping together that extra +1 die here and there. Ungh.

Ooh, I've got it! Pixie mage, naga physad, Xapari-Thepe streetsam, Vampire actuary, Nartaki chef. Best team evar! The nartaki can quad-wield utensils and roll wicked bad on on his sammich making rolls! And what team goes into battle without their actuary? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Mäx]

Things like "four Dryads and a Fomori" being thrown together as someone's professional urban criminal dream team are why the metaracial subtypes make me shudder. For most players, they've got nothing to do with role playing opportunities, exploring new regions of the background material, or appreciating and enjoying the background material as presented enough to worry about the stated and repeated rarity of those subtypes -- they're all about scraping together that extra +1 die here and there. Ungh.

I admit that my team was pretty power/meta-gamey in racial choises, butthe one Dryad character i have actually made, my Sasha was changed to Dryad instead of vanilla Elf the moment i read the Symbiosis negati quality in the book as that fits and partly explains few thinks in her backround.

[Knight Saber]

Fair call.

I am not a fan of the "corporations would never retaliate" mentality. I'm of the view yes they could (and may well do so - for too many reasons I won't go into). If, for no other reason, to act as a strong deterrent to other runners or at least the wider world, creating the perception that "nothing escapes THIS company". Certainly not in all cases but there are many cases I can say yes they would.

As for the no evidence, it depends. I weigh it up based on the multiple factors - the type of run, the opposition and their resourcing, reasons for reprisal (and are they strong enough to warrant a response), the level of response, etc.

A bunch of mobsters won't have a the forensics skills necessary to track down runners for blowing up a gambling den based on a hair sample (maaaybe if they have magicians on hand). NeoNet OTOH will have teams of these guys pouring through their lab that has been ransacked of the latest prototype and corrupted the data, setting back the company 2 years and millions of dollars in wasted research.

- J.

The value of forensics is a bit overrated for Shadowrunners... the whole point of their existence is that they aren't in the system at all, they don't exist legally. "SINner" in both normal and criminal and "Records On File" are both disadvantages, and ones that most runners don't have. You aren't going to be able to track them down in the public databases with a hair or blood sample. They buy their guns through illegal sources or with fake licenses and can change fake SINs with a minimum of effort... cosmetic surgery to change appearance is easy enough to do as well.

Furthermore, it doesn't solve the problem that the runners caused... it wasn't their idea do break into an R&D facility and steal a prototype or extract a researcher, it was some other corporation who set it up. The best course of action for a company would be to hire those same runners to do a run on the company that wronged them, since they've clearly demonstrated their skills.

[Adarael]

That's very true. Forensics is only useful for tracking SINless runners in terms of determining if they are repeat offenders, or if they have a habit of hitting the same target. Or things like that. It's not like having a sinless guy's prints on file is gonna tell you anything about that guy unless he aquires a criminal sin at some point.

[DWC]

That's very true. Forensics is only useful for tracking SINless runners in terms of determining if they are repeat offenders, or if they have a habit of hitting the same target. Or things like that. It's not like having a sinless guy's prints on file is gonna tell you anything about that guy unless he aquires a criminal sin at some point.

It gets better. If you've got a set of fingerprints, two hairs, and a spot of blood and they don't match anyone in the system, you can just issue them a SIN and name them John Doe. Essentially, you can issue someone a criminal SIN (albiet with incomplete biometrics) without even catching them or charging them for the crimes you're investigating since not having a SIN is a crime.

[Adarael]

Well, that's not a SIN so much as a database entry. It can't be a SIN unless it tracks your purchase patterns, medical history, shit like that. I mean, it would be a SIN in the database, but if data is only added when Corporation X creates it or when you drop blood on something, it's essentially a dead record.

[DWC]

Well, that's not a SIN so much as a database entry. It can't be a SIN unless it tracks your purchase patterns, medical history, shit like that. I mean, it would be a SIN in the database, but if data is only added when Corporation X creates it or when you drop blood on something, it's essentially a dead record.

A criminal SIN doesn't have any purchasing or medical history when it gets issued. It just has the biometrics collected, the personal data they confirmed, and the stuff you did to earn yourself a criminal SIN. It's a mechanism law enforcement uses to keep track of potential repeat offenders. There's nothing more to a SIN than a series of database entries. A proper "issued at birth" SIN will have a complete medical record, purchasing history, tax records, employment history, credit history, and so on and so forth but that's a function of them living their life and using one SIN all the time, not a function of the SIN itself.

[Adarael]

Not when it's issued, but thereafter, it's your SIN for daily life. If a normal citizen is convicted of a crime, I would imagine they'd just flag the SIN with a criminal flag. I'm just saying that a criminal SIN assigned to a John Doe with fingerprints and DNA data isn't that much more threatening in 2070 than it is now. They don't know anything about you other than that data, and have no means to collect more unless they have more to go on.

[DWC]

They don't know anything else about you until they notice that the fingerprints match those found in three similar crimes. Then they get an image from the camera of a security guard's smartlink that tells them how tall you are. Then they match everything to the biometrics of what they determine is the fake SIN you've been using the last few weeks.

Suddenly, everything attached to that fake SIN gets attached to the real criminal SIN that they've attached to you. You've now got a criminal SIN, complete with a personal history (full of fabricated information), a purchasing history (mostly fake, but supplemented with the real data from using the fake SIN for a few weeks), and a fake medical history. A lot of the details are wrong, but now you're in the system, and the next LS camera drone you walk in front of immediately knows who you are, and what you've done.

Edit: Too much Big Brother does make Shadowrun lame.

[Adarael]

So you're saying you keep your REAL fingerprints on a fake sin? That seems like a stupendously bad idea, unless you're doing some kind of deep-infiltration job where a company has hired you, in which case you should have changed those prints anyway.

If you have my DNA and fingerprints - god knows why I wasn't wearing gloves, but ok - and my height and a general appearance...

Great. You know I'm about six foot to six foot four, white, and have brown hair, and operate in the Seattle area. How many people in Seattle match those? At a guess, probably about 30,000.

Unless they get more data, they don't have jack or shit to tag me to my fake sin. Even if they did, what if I have more than one fake sin?

On a personal level, I'm of the opinion that 'the system', such as it is, is set up so that people won't care if your SIN checks out. How many people actually check the face on your work ID badge outside of high-security areas? As long as the computer says you're good to go, you're generally good to go. It's analagous to how many people check what you sign on your bill vs what's on your credit card's back end. It happens once every blue moon, but no more often.

[DWC]

If your fake SIN has fake biometrics that don't match your real ones, you can't actually use it to do anything useful. If you try to get on the subway and the ultrawideband RADAR system's scan of your teeth doesn't match the listed dental record, it calls Lone Star or, at the very least, doesn't let you on the train. What do you do when someone asks you to supply a fingerprint scan to check into a hotel, or get on a plane, or walk into a bank, or buy something at a legit retailer?

Either the SINs biometrics need to be real, or you need to be able to alter your biometrics to match the fake ones. The rules for forging SINs in Unwired specifically mentions that part of burning a fake SIN that you no longer want to use is removing the biometrics so that no one else can get their hands on copies of yours.

And there might be 300,000 people who fit that general description, but the system can verify where 299,500 of them were at the exact moment that the picture was taken, because they have a SIN that they're broadcasting from their easily trackable commlink, and leave an easy to follow datatrail.

They won't get it immediately, but over time, a pattern gets built, and as that pattern gets built, it all gets tied to a criminal SIN. Eventually, the pattern hits critical mass, and it gets matched to a fake, and then you're done. I like to ignore that level of surveillance because it makes the game unplayable, but the technology supports it.

Edit:
Right now, most of the world has gotten complacent about identification security. No one flips your credit card over to check that the signature matches. Bank authorization systems for debit cards don't require a PIN for transactions under a certain value because it's a pain in the ass to type in your PIN to buy a cup of coffee.

But when the guy behind the counter making your coffee has a camera in the bill of his Starbucks visor tied to the local nexus that takes a picture of your face and runs a match versus your SIN as he's taking your order, the security comes right back.

[Adarael]

See, this is the fundamental area we disagree. In the SR4 books, it never indicates the subway scans your teeth. It also never indicates you should be providing basic biometric data for daily stuff like that, or even for checking into a hotel. That's how I envision the system checking against your fake SIN: the reason it rolls is because your biometrics do NOT exactly match the SIN's. The more effective the forged SIN with stolen biometrics (or made up ones), the harder it is for the scanner to spot all is not as it seems. If you're actually using YOUR biometric data on a SIN, things shouldn't even get to test unless they're checking your purchase history or whatnot, because there ISN'T anything amiss.

Additionally, how will the system verify where those 299,500 people are? The purchase history tracking supports point-to-point location, but why would Ares indicate where in Complex X you were at 2:15pm if MCT wants to know? Node-to-node tracking and triangulation is not only processor-intensive, but generally shouldn't be saved because it takes up a ton of storage space - while said storage space isn't tracked within the rules, I think tracking position, speed, and time for tens of thousands of people is a bit much. Evidence for this is Los Angeles' ACPS - it's worth distinctly mentioning, which means other cities generally do NOT have this level of tracking. Or what if they're at home? Or at work, in a wifi-inhibiting room like most office buildings will be?

Which brings me to another point: there will be times when corporations WILL want to do all of this, and will want all this shit recorded. But the theme of SIN information in SR4 definitely seems to be that there is SUCH a density of information about people that it is overwhelming, and there aren't enough people to accurately track it. It's not like a Scanner Darkly where one in ten people is a Scanner. It's like the UK is now, where there's 1 camera for every 14 people, yet only 3% of all crimes are aided by the CCTV system, and it doesn't seem to have helped that much at all. Corporations are not beholden, or even encouraged to share truthful SIN data about their employees with each other. Anti-spam software and hidden mode go a long way toward spoofing what you were doing at a given time, because you don't want to be physically tracked by spyware and targetted advertising.

I think this is primarily a different way of seeing the information presented in the base books.

[Apathy]

I don't get it. Corporations are about the bottom line. How is the bottom line helped by retaliation?

Many people in the US believe that the death penalty is a deterent to serious crimes.* Those same people would say that building a fierce scary rep for your corp decreases the number of runs against you.

You could even argue that punishing shadowrunners is more likely to deter runs than punishing criminals would be to deter standard crimes, because there's an assumption that most runs would be coolly evaluated on a cost/benifit scale (as opposed to crimes in general, which are often committed on impulse).

If you want to assume that all runners are rational, then the added risk of retaliation increases the cost of any run against that corp. So now the street level team that would have cost 4,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) now won't do it for less than 10,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) , the mid-level team that would have cost 15,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) now costs 40,000, and the elite team which would have cost 50,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) now won't touch it for less than 100,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) or refuse to touch it at all because they no longer need to take jobs that they don't want. In any case, the hiring johnson has a set buget available for his mission, and if the costs of the runners go up it may no longer be a good return on investment.

*Not intended to imply any personal position either for or against capital punishment. There's reasonable arguments for both sides. And getting sidetracked on this wouldn't do anything useful for the thread.

[Mäx]

building a fierce scary rep for your corp decreases the number of runs against you.

That what Aztechnology does, hasn't helped them that much.

[Larme]

The value of forensics is a bit overrated for Shadowrunners... the whole point of their existence is that they aren't in the system at all, they don't exist legally. "SINner" in both normal and criminal and "Records On File" are both disadvantages, and ones that most runners don't have. You aren't going to be able to track them down in the public databases with a hair or blood sample. They buy their guns through illegal sources or with fake licenses and can change fake SINs with a minimum of effort... cosmetic surgery to change appearance is easy enough to do as well.

Furthermore, it doesn't solve the problem that the runners caused... it wasn't their idea do break into an R&D facility and steal a prototype or extract a researcher, it was some other corporation who set it up. The best course of action for a company would be to hire those same runners to do a run on the company that wronged them, since they've clearly demonstrated their skills.

Hehe, yeah I forgot about that. You leave your DNA behind, they analyze it, and they figure out who done it! "Sir, we have the perpetrator's DNA mapped!" "Good, show me the bastard who did this." A blank outline of a person, with a question mark over the face, appears on the holoscreen. Beneath the image are printed the suspect's name: "Jane Doe #58696."

[Typhon]

Hehe, yeah I forgot about that. You leave your DNA behind, they analyze it, and they figure out who done it! "Sir, we have the perpetrator's DNA mapped!" "Good, show me the bastard who did this." A blank outline of a person, with a question mark over the face, appears on the holoscreen. Beneath the image are printed the suspect's name: "Jane Doe #58696."

Hehe, if this was the case, you know every hacker and his brother would be breaking into these data bases and spoofing new images into the IDs for giggles.

"Show me the bastard who did this!" A crudely doctored image of a drop bear shooting lasers out of his eyes and setting a building on fire appears on the holoscreen. Beneath the picture the name reads :"I wuz in ur base!" or "I can haz paydata now?"

[Apathy]

That what Aztechnology does, hasn't helped them that much.

How can we really say that? How do you know that it wouldn't be even worse for them if they didn't have a scary rep? Trying to prove the effectiveness of a policy of a fictional corporation in an role playing game is going to be at least as nebulous as guaging the effectiveness of real-life policies, and we're still arguing about whether trickle-down economics or supply-side economics works better after decades of analysis. I could always say "Yeah, but if no one was afraid of them, there'd be twice as many shadowruns to uncover the secret recipes for their stuffer shack soy-slurpees..."

[Larme]

How can we really say that? How do you know that it wouldn't be even worse for them if they didn't have a scary rep? Trying to prove the effectiveness of a policy of a fictional corporation in an role playing game is going to be at least as nebulous as guaging the effectiveness of real-life policies, and we're still arguing about whether trickle-down economics or supply-side economics works better after decades of analysis. I could always say "Yeah, but if no one was afraid of them, there'd be twice as many shadowruns to uncover the secret recipes for their stuffer shack soy-slurpees..."

Well, no matter your take on the fluff, it's one of those handwaving issues. Runners are NOT typically dragged away with hoods over their heads every time they do a job slightly imperfectly. Otherwise Shadowrunning wouldn't be such a vibrant industry. However you explain it, Shadowrunning is a viable thing to do, not automatic suicide.

[DWC]

See, this is the fundamental area we disagree. In the SR4 books, it never indicates the subway scans your teeth. It also never indicates you should be providing basic biometric data for daily stuff like that, or even for checking into a hotel. That's how I envision the system checking against your fake SIN: the reason it rolls is because your biometrics do NOT exactly match the SIN's. The more effective the forged SIN with stolen biometrics (or made up ones), the harder it is for the scanner to spot all is not as it seems. If you're actually using YOUR biometric data on a SIN, things shouldn't even get to test unless they're checking your purchase history or whatnot, because there ISN'T anything amiss.

Additionally, how will the system verify where those 299,500 people are? The purchase history tracking supports point-to-point location, but why would Ares indicate where in Complex X you were at 2:15pm if MCT wants to know? Node-to-node tracking and triangulation is not only processor-intensive, but generally shouldn't be saved because it takes up a ton of storage space - while said storage space isn't tracked within the rules, I think tracking position, speed, and time for tens of thousands of people is a bit much. Evidence for this is Los Angeles' ACPS - it's worth distinctly mentioning, which means other cities generally do NOT have this level of tracking. Or what if they're at home? Or at work, in a wifi-inhibiting room like most office buildings will be?

Which brings me to another point: there will be times when corporations WILL want to do all of this, and will want all this shit recorded. But the theme of SIN information in SR4 definitely seems to be that there is SUCH a density of information about people that it is overwhelming, and there aren't enough people to accurately track it. It's not like a Scanner Darkly where one in ten people is a Scanner. It's like the UK is now, where there's 1 camera for every 14 people, yet only 3% of all crimes are aided by the CCTV system, and it doesn't seem to have helped that much at all. Corporations are not beholden, or even encouraged to share truthful SIN data about their employees with each other. Anti-spam software and hidden mode go a long way toward spoofing what you were doing at a given time, because you don't want to be physically tracked by spyware and targetted advertising.

I think this is primarily a different way of seeing the information presented in the base books.

Extraterritoriality really does throw a monkey wrench into the whole system. Hadn't considered that angle. That really does put a damper on things. The fighting among the megas does create a great place for people to hide.

[The Jake]

In the end, the fluff states that Shadowrunning is the coin of the realm. If Shadowrunners were the target of corporate execution squads just because their face was seen or they left an eyelash, that wouldn't be the case. The fluff cannot support truly venegeful corporations. There is obviously some measure of retaliation, but it is not a given, it is situational.

If you read what I wrote very carefully, I think you'll find that is exactly what I said.

- J.

[Red-ROM]

Lets not forget this is a game. we want it to be fun. I make a gun bunnie because I want to shoot things. I have 6 shadowrun books, and 80% of the text is dedicated to dealing or recieving damage. also, in my experience, things always seem to go horribly wrong (or they do if you want it to be excitning). you need a killing machine when the drones are beat up and out of ammo, and you're trying to collect from a double crossing johnson. Why make everything so sneaky and bland in a system that has panther cannons and cybertails? this is an 80's dystopian future. Big brother, lawless corporations, savage concrete jungles. its supposed to be a mash of every action and fantasy flick worth watching. turn on any movie that people on here have recomended as a "shadowrun" movie, and see if someone gets shot, or has a distinct style. in the words of amy pohler-

really? no street sam? really?

[Traul]

It gets better. If you've got a set of fingerprints, two hairs, and a spot of blood and they don't match anyone in the system, you can just issue them a SIN and name them John Doe. Essentially, you can issue someone a criminal SIN (albiet with incomplete biometrics) without even catching them or charging them for the crimes you're investigating since not having a SIN is a crime.

It cannot work like that: how do you know whether all the samples belong to the same person or not?

[Angelone]

I cannot work like that: how do you know whether all the samples belond to the same person or not?

You don't that's another thing street sams are good at making sure there's enough carnage to make csi a pita.

On a more serious note sure drones and those robots are tough and shiny and such, but they can be taken over, emp'd, or inhibited. While guy/girl with gun can work perfectly well. There are situations where the drone is a better choice. Doesn't make one or the other useless. Right tool for the job and all that. You wouldn't try to surf on an ironing board or iron on a surf board. It's pretty much the same thing.

Traul you do csi work?

[Traul]

No I don't: sorry for the typo (IMG:style_emoticons/default/embarrassed.gif)

[The Jake]

The value of forensics is a bit overrated for Shadowrunners... the whole point of their existence is that they aren't in the system at all, they don't exist legally. "SINner" in both normal and criminal and "Records On File" are both disadvantages, and ones that most runners don't have. You aren't going to be able to track them down in the public databases with a hair or blood sample. They buy their guns through illegal sources or with fake licenses and can change fake SINs with a minimum of effort... cosmetic surgery to change appearance is easy enough to do as well.

I was about to launch into a rant about how magicians can track based on ritual samples, but I've only just noticed this seems to have been abolished in SR4 (or if I have missed it, someone please provide me with a page reference). If nothing else, forensics can help build a pattern on a SINless person on the premises and use blood, hair, fingerprints, etc, to build a profile and do a forensic reconstruction of the events. From that they could piece together an MO, genetic profile of the people involved, astral signatures, etc.

Furthermore, it doesn't solve the problem that the runners caused... it wasn't their idea do break into an R&D facility and steal a prototype or extract a researcher, it was some other corporation who set it up. The best course of action for a company would be to hire those same runners to do a run on the company that wronged them, since they've clearly demonstrated their skills.

No but it comes back to what I said earlier: if the runners stole something of significant value it stands to reason that their mark may want it back and may take extraordinary actions to do so. Certainly not in all cases but in some situations for sure.

- J.