GM help please, Major in-game campaign event I'm not sure how to deal with Options

[Moomin]

I'll spare you all the build up unless anyone's interested but in the last session of my game Horizon took a huge hit that may well lead to them losing AAA status or even going under.

Basically I've gone off-canon on this, in my world Horizon set themselves up initially with a lot of brainwashing, and conditioning and through a series off assasinations and shadowruns that got them as big as they are and onto the Corporate Council. This has just been discovered by everyone thanks to one of my PCs who's an investigative journalist for KSAF. His uncovering of what happened has been a thread running through the entire campaign so far, it's not been a few small events. The other AAAs and nations (California, Pueblo and the Tir) that took the hits that Horizon exploited to get to the top will be properly torqued at them but I'm not sure how much the fallout should be.

I want to have them taken down a load of pegs and off the AAA list. Their security personnel are currently very compromised as a result of their conditioning that can now be exploited if you know how so they'll be easy picking for a heap of runs... and I imagine there will be a lot of revenge and opportunistic runs.

Can anyone give some helping pointers of what they think reaction might be to this and how badly they could really be hit as they're a AAA and will have a whole heap of resources? What kind of punishments or restrictions can the corporate court put on them?

[DireRadiant]

It's your story, have it go however you like.

Perhaps Horizon will survive through strong counter propaganda? Perhaps the other corps will parcel it off or destroy it. Or the corporate court could order a limited set of punishment in a secret session (This has happened before in Canon). It all can happen.

What would be most fun for you?

Think of every shadowrun scenario you can think of. Do them. And every single one of them has Horizon as a target.

What do you think happens when three gang up on one?

[LurkerOutThere]

Here is the way I would run it. If evidence of corporate wrong doing has been brought to light the nations who are harmed will likely emmediately evict corporate assets from their lands. For horizon this could be a huge blow as they rely heavily on their friendly relatiosn with the NAN and Calfree at least in canon. Additionally in light o this the corporate court might issue an Omega Order against them allowing corporate assets to back the government forces and in the process seize a peace of the carcass.

[Malachi]

The problem is that Horizon is a AAA, so any facility they own of appreciable size is the country of Horizon and not the property of the nation. The sole exception being in the CAS where extraterritoriality is granted on a Lease basis (which can be revoked). So a nation can't just "kick them out" of their country. Nations could revoke Horizon's business license within their country and effectively declare an embargo against the nation/corp.

Every two-bit shark lawyer looking to make a name for himself/herself would start up a class-action lawsuit against every party they can possible solicit to try and extract some "damages" out of Horizon. Crops with competing interests, like MCT with their Media division, would run all sorts of sensationalized stories about the "evil" stuff that Horizon did. Everyone who has interest in taking Horizon down a few pegs will air prime-time interviews with "victims" or "insiders" of all the nasty stuff that Horizon has done. All of it is a scheme to drive Horizon stock prices down, with the public smear campaign being combined with a few shadowruns disguised as "public outrage" (like the firebombing of local Horizon-affiliated trid stations). Once the stock prices of Horizon owned companies and subsidiaries have sufficiently bottomed out, competitors will move in with hostile takeover bids and start snatching up the best of Horizon's assets. Finally, the other AAA's with the biggest bone to pick against Horizon will file suit against them in the Corporate Court and try to get them removed.

From there you have a whole new plot hook: who gets to take the vacated seat on the CC? Ooooo, intrigue!

[LurkerOutThere]

If france violates american citizens or sovereignty the french ambassador will be evicted an the french embassy will likely be seized. It is sovereign territory yes but that territory can be revoked or taken. There's nothing special about a AAA mega that changes that. THe trick to AAA's is they normally don't screw up that bad and that publicly and neither do nations.

[maeel]

Horizon could also run a really bad smear campaign against that KSAF reporter combined with hit squads and massive PR campaigns, its a media corp after all, which is deeply layered into society.

[kanislatrans]

The problem is that Horizon is a AAA, so any facility they own of appreciable size is the country of Horizon and not the property of the nation. The sole exception being in the CAS where extraterritoriality is granted on a Lease basis (which can be revoked). So a nation can't just "kick them out" of their country. Nations could revoke Horizon's business license within their country and effectively declare an embargo against the nation/corp.

Every two-bit shark lawyer looking to make a name for himself/herself would start up a class-action lawsuit against every party they can possible solicit to try and extract some "damages" out of Horizon. Crops with competing interests, like MCT with their Media division, would run all sorts of sensationalized stories about the "evil" stuff that Horizon did. Everyone who has interest in taking Horizon down a few pegs will air prime-time interviews with "victims" or "insiders" of all the nasty stuff that Horizon has done. All of it is a scheme to drive Horizon stock prices down, with the public smear campaign being combined with a few shadowruns disguised as "public outrage" (like the firebombing of local Horizon-affiliated trid stations). Once the stock prices of Horizon owned companies and subsidiaries have sufficiently bottomed out, competitors will move in with hostile takeover bids and start snatching up the best of Horizon's assets. Finally, the other AAA's with the biggest bone to pick against Horizon will file suit against them in the Corporate Court and try to get them removed.

From there you have a whole new plot hook: who gets to take the vacated seat on the CC? Ooooo, intrigue!

exactly what happened to a company here in Pa. they fended off the first three takeover attempts. then the gov cracked down on them and the media jumped in and guess who picked up the pieces? yup company that originaly tried to buy them out...welcome to the 6th world chummers. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Matsci]

The runners die.

It's that simple. Horizon has more resource than runners could dream of. Including secret space based assets, possibly Thor shots. They also have more than expert systems that can pull the ID of a shadowrunner through the mask, ID them, and then figure out they are cheating on his wife and that said wife is pregnant.

Since the runner is a Journalist, it's likely that horizon can pull info on them, and then send other shadowrunners to make them very dead. They would do this the moment they even suspected that runners had proof that could damage them.

[kzt]

The problem is that Horizon is a AAA, so any facility they own of appreciable size is the country of Horizon and not the property of the nation. The sole exception being in the CAS where extraterritoriality is granted on a Lease basis (which can be revoked). So a nation can't just "kick them out" of their country. Nations could revoke Horizon's business license within their country and effectively declare an embargo against the nation/corp.

A nation can always evict Horizon. "Ultima ratio regum." It may not be cheap or cost effective to do so.

[kzt]

The runners die.

Well, there is that. But they obviously waited too long. But I wouldn't be showing up at any press conferences or book signings if I were the runners.

[LurkerOutThere]

Man Matsci it must stink to play in your games since even amidst of the OP asking for what might happen to the company based on a given scenario supplied by the OP you make suggestions that the runners die unsolicited. Must put a quick bend on the fun factor if your that nihilistic.

Not that it's not a possibility, but it is none-the-less not what was asked.

[Blade]

The problem is that Horizon is a AAA, so any facility they own of appreciable size is the country of Horizon and not the property of the nation. The sole exception being in the CAS where extraterritoriality is granted on a Lease basis (which can be revoked). So a nation can't just "kick them out" of their country. Nations could revoke Horizon's business license within their country and effectively declare an embargo against the nation/corp.

A land owned (or rented) by a AA or AAA corporation isn't de facto extraterritorial (at least not in UCAS law). It's elligible to extraterritoriality. And even when it's extraterritorial, the ownership is still dictated by the law of the country it's in, not the corporation's law. This means that the corp can legally remove it from the corp.
Of course, all this is still international relationship, so it's subject to the balance of power and diplomacy.

To get back to OP's question, I'd like to insist on the fact that Horizon is a AAA corp. A AAA corp is big, very big. It doesn't mean that it can't suffer from such revelations, but that it should be able to fight them and, failing that, it might be able to survive, as long as the corporate court doesn't act against it.

So first of all, even if the story is out, Horizon should still be able to do some damage control: if KSAF has no 100% sure proof, all it'll take is a press release from Horizon to shoot down the attacks. Sure, the other AAA and even countries might try to exploit this, but keep in mind that they're all bedfellows, and Horizon going down might not be the best thing for them and even if it is, Horizon might have things they could use against them which would make them think twice before doing anything.

If Horizon can't shoot down the accusations, they might try to silence them: threaten Helena Rossum (KSAF's director, assuming it hasn't changed) to destroy her/her family/her career/her company/all of the above if she doesn't stop the accusation, say it was fake and fire the journalists responsible for this. Since they have a powerful PR department, they could even reverse the accusation to reveal "the conspiracy behind KSAF".

Failing that, there's still an option: blame someone, "purge the company" by firing some people and closing down one division or two, then change the name and resume business.

These are just some things that could happen. They may or may not work... it's up to you to choose whatever you think will be the most interesting to your players and your campaign.

[BobRoberts]

IMO it kinda depends how solid the proof is and how well all the evidence is going to stick...

Thinking the key question is - do you want to kill Horizon?

Anyway, some ramblings:

It's sounds like very solid evidence. I think it would move into:

Failing that, there's still an option: blame someone, "purge the company" by firing some people and closing down one division or two, then change the name and resume business.

I think this would definitely kick in. Thinking the usual Iran Contra style result might not cut it - it was Bobby the orc cleaner what done it! It would be in lots of peoples interests to pin the crime on a specific face or group of faces - a few bad apples in a healthy bushel? I'm guessing there would be amazing turbulence in Horizon as all the execs back bite each other to prove their innocence/frame the competition - lots of run potential!

Meanwhile, like others have said, plenty of other corps diving in to slice pieces off the pie.

What could be fun is a 'Richard Villers' type outcome. A senior exec who can mug the best bits out of horizon and start a new company, big rebranding exercise, lose the past, etc. They'd know where everything is and that should really help the cherry picking?

Guess it might add some real ammunition to people who want to curb the corps to some extent? It's a conspiracy theorists paranoid nightmare come true? Not sure how that would pan out.

Edit: Just wondering... the person/people who did set all this up might have put a Big Red Doomsday Button contingency in somewhere... That could *really* mix things up? One encoded satellite pulse and suddenly lots of VIPs round the world go nuts, top themselves, turn into psionic bombs?

[Warlordtheft]

About the only thing that gets a AAA off the court is the loss of assets. I mean Aztechnology has done things far worse than brainwash its corp citizens. Horizon may loose a few key contracts (like the Tir PR firm), but it would survive as a AAA. The PC KSAF reporter's life will probabaly be forfeit, or knowing how I'd run Horizon as a GM-blame a few division heads-demote/fire them and hire the PC Reporter as an overpriced consultant on Eithical issues (ie speak to the management for 5 minutes about how to not be a bad boy for a speakers fee of 10 million nuyen, and be on tap for the next time related bad PR hits them).

Something to think about. Without the details though this, advice may be moot.

(Side note 10 million nuyen equates to a high permanent lifestyle)

[Moomin]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'll definately take a bunch of that on board.

@BobRoberts - I actually would like to kill Horizon. Personally I don't think they fit among the big 10 corps. I've never seen how a media corp was able to be so big they rival the huge pharmaceuticals, cutting edge tech and arms corps. I think that's basically why I decided to make how they got up there a plot point. I don't think it is going to happen though, people are right, they're too big to just fall like that. They'll take a big hit but save some face with PR stuff, maybe go down to AA which would open up the corp court seat and make things interesting in the shadows.

[Totentanz]

Why isn't it plausible? It's your game. Maybe Horizon is in all actuality a paper tiger and this event is simply the catalyst for the other corps to go on a feeding frenzy. Maybe a few executives at Horizon have been planning their own little endeavor for a while now and rip the company apart while taking advantage of the situation. Maybe a Dragon gets involved. God knows the SR designers use them as thinly veiled plot contrivances left and right; you can too.

If you want to kill them, kill them. Just make sure your players get the opportunity to influence the situation. Nothing sucks more than being a forced voyeur for a GM's psychological jerk-off.

I will quibble a bit about Horizon's ability to be AAA as a media corp. If we take media to be advertising, PR (they are different), music, trid/sim, live shows, merchandising from above, Matrix content, news, and trid gaming all of a sudden they sound pretty big. They might only charge 30 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) for a chip, but they are selling them to every third wage slave on the continent. The gross margin on cyberware and guns might be higher, but a lot less of those get sold.

An example of all the companies/enterprises Horizon could encompass:
Activision/Blizzard
Paramount Pictures
Time Warner
News Corporation
Cirque du Soliel

Note that these are the beginning of their potential holdings, not the full extent of them.


I know DS has a long-held love affair with everything Ares, but certainly Horizon can be a semi-legit threat, at least until you off them?

[Blade]

According to SR history, any big AAA can be taken down, just take a look at what happened to Fuchi. But I think that a lot of SR writers fail(ed) to grasp the idea of how big a megacorp (even a A corp) is supposed to be. Horizon couldn't be a megacorporation if it had just activities in one field (media&entertainement).

[Warlordtheft]

According to SR history, any big AAA can be taken down, just take a look at what happened to Fuchi. But I think that a lot of SR writers fail(ed) to grasp the idea of how big a megacorp (even a A corp) is supposed to be. Horizon couldn't be a megacorporation if it had just activities in one field (media&entertainement).

Actually one of the things about a AAA is that it has its fingers in just about every pie. Horizon's major strength is its media/PR arm. Of which it is top dog. They also have Sec foces for hire, droe manufacturing, wepons manufacturing (I'm sure horizon has it's own version of the APII-you just need to name it differently. THe stats are the same. A

Corporate showfiles--A 2nd Ed sourcebooks--had a detailed ananysis of each of the megas at the time. Rating it in the various fields (sort of an NPC stat block for a corp). You cold use that to and adjust the ratings based on runners actions. Ultimately I think you could use that to affect stock price (should you want to go into that detail).

[kzt]

Part of this is that the people writing SR don't have a gut level understanding of how big a AAA would be either. You can't compare them to any modern corp. Runners attacking a AAA is not like you picking a fight with Microsoft or IBM, its like picking a fight with the People's Republic Of China or the Soviet Union. Except that they are spread all over the globe.

[LurkerOutThere]

I love how people automatically assume that the writers don't know what their talking about. While the megas perform much the same roles as nation in our world they wouldn't have similar sized militaries. Because their simply not profitable, their forces instead take the form of high tech and heavily armed security assetts putting armament and training over numerical superiority. In a world where open warfare can only happen by CC authority there'd be little need for militaries on the scale of China or the USA. So yes a triple AAA is a massive insitution spread out all across the globe but it's primary resource is cube farmers and scientists not soldiers or bombs.

However the most likely way for a corp to fall is for the other corps to smell blood and cut it to pieces swallowing whatever they can get their hands on. Another corp will grab the company that contains Horizon's CC seat (as horizon is really only a AAA by virtue of that holding, it's flat stated there are bigger AA's then horizon) and life will press on.

[Paul]

Well, if you have access to anything that describes the history of Aztechnology, then look up Operation Reciprocity-which can give you a idea of one extreme this could lead to. At the other end could be cover up; ala a bad scifi thriller, or something like the original Universal Brotherhood module.

Can we know more about the PC's, and the group?

[kzt]

I love how people automatically assume that the writers don't know what their talking about. While the megas perform much the same roles as nation in our world they wouldn't have similar sized militaries. Because their simply not profitable, their forces instead take the form of high tech and heavily armed security assetts putting armament and training over numerical superiority.

No, it's that they don't provide that feel in the materials they write. That is failure. They don't provide the players a good idea of just how large and powerful these are. And they personify them them far too much.