Black Hat Runners, Newtons Third Law of Shadowrunning Options

[Androcomputus]

So one of my players is playing a ganger while another one is playing as the clone of a soldier from the Euro Wars...

The Ganger has the following mentality

Us or Them: This is a step below the standard runner morality. You'll almost always take Wetwork and if some folks die during the run, well, better them than you. A job would have to be utterly morally reprehensible for you to even consider turning it down. They only loyalty you have is to your team, and even that's flexible when enough nuyen is flashed your way.

The Clone has the following mentality

Black Hat: Nothing is off limits, no matter how morally bankrupt the offer happens to be. You'd sell your own grandmother to the organleggers for a bit of cred. You are barely a step above the worst monsters that prowl the sprawls.

So this leads me to what happens when they keep killing the guards to facilities? Reality dictates this will perk the interest of Corporations as they have to benefits to fallen guards' family members, pay hospital bill for people wounded but no killed... not to mention the grudge beholden by other guards... Is there anything else I could do to provide consequences for their actions...

[Penta]

Remember that not every corp is extraterritorial. Not every facility of an ET corp is itself extraterritorial.

Every dead guard is a murder charge.

Now, after about 5 murder charges the cops, whomever they are, start perking up and wanting to hunt for you, regardless of who you killed. Why? Because that's when the news starts to take notice.

After a few runs, we're probably talking *multiples* of this.

Oh, and here's a good thought. The moment they set a toe outside of the original jurisdiction, in the US/UCAS it becomes a federal offense. That brings in the FBI.

And since runners can generally be classified as terrorists?

...Well.

[kjones]

Give them each a job to take out the other.

Seriously, this sort of behavior is exactly what the Notoriety stat is for. Sounds like they'll be earning it in spades.

Additionally, you should play off of their mutual distrust, among each other and the rest of the team. Distrust within a team is a critical liability. If the Clone is serious about being willing to turn on his own team, give him the opportunity to do so, and see how the rest of the team reacts.

EDIT: Also, what Penta said. Killing lots of people will anger more than just the corps.

[Androcomputus]

Interesting... Interesting... anyway I could show that the cops are taking interest?

[Androcomputus]

Interesting... Interesting... anyway I could show that the cops are taking interest?

[kjones]

Interesting... Interesting... anyway I could show that the cops are taking interest?

Have them show up on the evening news trid feed - faces, names, SINs. That'll get their attention.

[LurkerOutThere]

Have them think their being followed or shadowed by drones, some of which may or may not have LS or KE markings. Their contacts won't deal with them saying too many people are asking about them. If you want have a LS detective show up at their safe house to ask them a few questions. (If they do the stupid thing and try and kill the detective, backup shows up shortly and kills the runners, their next PC's may be smarter and less trigger happy).

[DireRadiant]

They only loyalty you have is to your team, and even that's flexible when enough nuyen is flashed your way.


You'd sell your own grandmother to the organleggers for a bit of cred.

Offer those runs sometime.

Even better, offer them a job to sell one of their own team to the organleggers.

Find other jobs they would define as "morally reprehensible" and offer those to them, because soon those are the only jobs they get.

[Critias]

Have them show up on the evening news trid feed - faces, names, SINs. That'll get their attention.

Only if there's a reason or way for the evening news trid feed to HAVE their faces, names, and SINs. Otherwise it's the worst (and lamest) sort of heavy-handed metagame-GMing around.

Just like came up on another recent thread about "evil" Shadowrunners -- just remember that actions carry consequences. If they're still taking appropriate precautions, there's absolutely no reason to be a dick about it and just have SWAT teams miraculously find them. If they're being sloppy and violent, though...well, maybe a warning from a Fixer or other contact to give them a fair chance to get their crap together is in order, and then you call down the thunder and the violence. They're making their beds, let 'em sleep in 'em.

The game's go notoriety mechanics for a reason...use 'em.

Above all, though -- to me, at least -- the trick is to keep it about the actions of the characters, not the morality of the players. Murder is murder. Arson is arson. The cops, soldiers, corporate security, Johnsons, media, and Fixers don't have any reason to know or care about the intent of the characters in question, and shouldn't be judging them any more or less harshly because of it. The mindset of the characters isn't the issue, their actions (and their evidence trail) are what counts.

[Androcomputus]

The main problem lies with the other two characters in the group who lean more to the following.


Firefly Standard: The name says it all. You're mostly the good guys, but sometimes a man needs killing and dirty deeds need doing. You're still likely to refuse Wetwork and other dirtier runs, but you might consider them if you get desperate enough.

Strictly Professional: You'll probably take most jobs that come your way, unless they're obviously socially harmful or downright evil. You conduct yourself in a professional manner and avoid killing unless it's necessary.

[Whipstitch]

What Critias said. Outsiders see consequences, not motives. Good intentions alone should count for nothing. I don't care if one of the PCs runs a soup kitchen on weekends or if he's got a stake in a bunraku parlor; if he fires on the Star, they're going to fire right back.

[kzt]

The main problem lies with the other two characters in the group who lean more to the following.


Firefly Standard: The name says it all. You're mostly the good guys, but sometimes a man needs killing and dirty deeds need doing. You're still likely to refuse Wetwork and other dirtier runs, but you might consider them if you get desperate enough.

Strictly Professional: You'll probably take most jobs that come your way, unless they're obviously socially harmful or downright evil. You conduct yourself in a professional manner and avoid killing unless it's necessary.

If there is enough data I'd hire #4 to wax the first two, or convince #3 that 1 & 2 'needs killing". Or have the fixer point out to him his whole team has become poison and suggest he resolve the issue.

[Ascalaphus]

Well, first off, do you or the other players have a problem with it, or is the problem just in IC one? OOC problems can only be solved by actual communication; IC you have some other options.

Also, are they just morally bankrupt? Or, as it seems to be, are they violently, blatantly morally bankrupt?

Most of shadowrunning involves doing things that aren't nice. You're paid to take the moral fall, but to do it quietly.


* Maybe some corp decides to set up a sting operation

* If they can get footage of the PCs (and with how cheap cameras are, that should be possible), then a public manhunt may be an option. But remember how cheap getting a new face is, too.

* After public hunting stops working because the PCs take surgery, you can send in some nemesis NPCs. Give them names, histories, personalities. Let them stalk the team, gradually getting closer. They collect gait-analysis data, genetic samples, lists of contacts, MO, psychological profiling - all the while sending in goons to try to grab the PCs when they show themselves. The Nemesis NPCs meanwhile should stay out of direct reach most of the time. Think of Mahone in the second season of Prison Break. But the PCs should see them now and then, on the news or at a distance. (With cover, so they can't be shot dead outright.)

* Put a bounty on their head. A 100K bounty isn't unreasonable for interterritorial serial killers/terrorists. While the UCAS can't really do so publicly itself, they can have the Mob do it as "patriotism".

* Some NPCs try to make a name for themselves by "beating the best", killing these notorious PCs.

[Glyph]

Dead guards are, quite frankly, part of the business. You get in a shootout with the guards, and generally the guards will wind up dead. I haven't heard anything to justify any corporation taking more than the normal interest in the runners. These guys sound amoral and unsympathetic, but you haven't detailed anything extraordinarily bad that they have done.

They will only run into problems if they start killing guards by the scores instead of the few, or if they add wanton property damage or killing/injuring normal corporate employees such as office worker or janitors, or if they do exceptionally sick things such as torturing people or strewing dismembered limbs about the place. If they do that kind of thing, then they will start getting a bad rep, and having people take more than the usual interest in tracking them down.

[Dixie Flatline]

Dead guards are, quite frankly, part of the business. You get in a shootout with the guards, and generally the guards will wind up dead. I haven't heard anything to justify any corporation taking more than the normal interest in the runners. These guys sound amoral and unsympathetic, but you haven't detailed anything extraordinarily bad that they have done.

They will only run into problems if they start killing guards by the scores instead of the few, or if they add wanton property damage or killing/injuring normal corporate employees such as office worker or janitors, or if they do exceptionally sick things such as torturing people or strewing dismembered limbs about the place. If they do that kind of thing, then they will start getting a bad rep, and having people take more than the usual interest in tracking them down.

While you're pretty much spot on, it's safe to say most runners will ask themselves "Do I need to kill here?" It may be a snap judgment, but if the default answer is always "there wasn't a question to begin with" it will shape the kinds of runs offered to the runners.

After all, as a Johnson for a corp, who needs something sensitive done, and has the cred to back it up, who are you going to want to employ? The group who consistently clocks out with a high body count (and thus headlines)? Or the group who usually manages a lower body count?

I'd actually end up sending the PCs on distraction missions. It sounds like they enjoy a tussle after all.

They also stand to end up getting sent on suicide missions too. Discretion, knowing when to pull the trigger, is valuable. Otherwise the Johnson could just hire a gang, give them frag grenades and some AK's, and let them go party at the target site.

It's okay for the characters to be morally bankrupt and willing to sell each other out, or view life as cheap. But the Black Hat sounds like a professional, and no ganger would have made it this far without some kind of honor code. There has to be something that they value. Even James Bond doesn't kill unless he has to. Killing is messy and results in unforseen consequences.

[toturi]

After all, as a Johnson for a corp, who needs something sensitive done, and has the cred to back it up, who are you going to want to employ? The group who consistently clocks out with a high body count (and thus headlines)? Or the group who usually manages a lower body count?

That depends.
As a Johnson, there are usually 2 questions being asked:
1) What is the success rate of this group?
2) Can the job be traced back to me?

To some Js, success is paramount. Everything else is secondary. To other Js, certain degrees of failure is acceptable as long as the team is discrete and the job cannot be traced back to the J and/or the party he represents.

Body count, insofar as it attracts police attention, is a factor. But there is another caveat, leave no witnesses that can finger you. Body count may also mean that there is no one left alive who can identify the runners and that may end up as a plus on the "Can this be traced back to me" column.

[Acidsaliva]

Check out the Evil Parties Thread for ideas.

I would say one word : Revenge .
Have a bunch of gangers attack PCs en route to job. The PCs waste them. Next mission their buddies come back bigger and badder.
The PCs kill Joe CorpSec on run, his brother works in Lone Star and starts putting the pressure on to ID the PCs and then pin any crimes he can think of on them.
On the way out with the paydata the PCs come across another Prime Runner group armed to the teeth. The PCs greet them with a shower of lead. The Prime Runners (who were on a completely different run at the time and merely have bad timing) survive, nurse their wounds and decide that payback is in order.

Only really have punishing consequences for your PCs if you want to punish them for their killing sprees. If you are all happy playing a pink Mohawk game with little to no consequences, then don't worry about it. Although with the PCs you have in the team, it sounds as thought you'll have some party conflict before long. See my comments in the Evil Parties Thread .

[Saint Sithney]

Honestly, in a game where roving gangs of mutants spend their nights trying to rape passers by with barbwire cocks, I don't see a few dead guards as a big deal.

There are routine discussions about lethal vs. less-lethal attitudes here on DS, but my feeling has always been that:
1) Gratuitous violence shows sloppy work. Combat is a risk, so excessive combat means poor planning.
2) There's a difference between people who matter and people who don't matter. Guards don't matter.

[Draco18s]

Even better, offer them a job to sell one of their own team to the organleggers.

This. Or put a hit out on the whole team. If they can get paid to kill themselves* and manage to pull it off without killing each other they deserve the nuyen.

*Paid upon completion. Also, the Johnson is not aware that the group he's hiring is the group he wants dead.

[MikeKozar]

If the group want to run a pink mohawk run-and-gun action fest, you can always just find some deeply despicable enemies for them to go after - say you send them into an Aztechnology blood magic research facility that is experimenting on the most effective methodology for human sacrifice, whether torture makes the spell more potent, etc. Fed by kidnappings and corporate executions...team could be hired to extract somebody that is on the chopping block, but all of the guards and staff know exactly what goes on and have more then earned a bullet.

This is assuming that that's the kind of game the group wants to play...it's your job to make sure everyone is having fun, not to make sure they're being moral. On the other hand, if the nutjobs in the group are creeping out the other players, you will need to pull them aside and ask them to knock it off or find another group. First rule: Everyone needs to be having fun.

[Karoline]

it's your job to make sure everyone is having fun, not to make sure they're being moral.

*snicker* Moral Shadowrunners.

Isn't that like a moral axe murderer?

Edit: If you want to make it obvious to the runners that their antics are getting notice, perhaps have one of the companies allow a reporter (Or a reporter finds out somehow) about one of the mass murders that took place and have it be big news.

"Ten guards and two night shift employees were found dead this morning at X corp facility. Families of the departed have made a public outcry to bring the terrorists that did this to justice. If you have any information that might lead to a flashy newsworthy arrest of these fugitives from the law, please call XXX-XXXX. There is a 5k nuyen reward for information that leads to justice^tm.

At this point contacts will start to dry up as word gets around it was them that did it (If not low loyalty contacts turning them in outright).

[Fuchs]

I am with Glyph here - I don't see a problem that needs intervention, as long as all players and GM involved have fun. There's nothing wrong in playing an "evil campaign", you don't have to play cops. You can play evil scum like eco-terrorists, nutjobs who attack the corps for being corps, sociopaths who want anarchy to reign in the city, or people who sabotage careers and end lives for a price.

[Karoline]

I am with Glyph here - I don't see a problem that needs intervention, as long as all players and GM involved have fun. There's nothing wrong in playing an "evil campaign", you don't have to play cops. You can play evil scum like eco-terrorists, nutjobs who attack the corps for being corps, sociopaths who want anarchy to reign in the city, or people who sabotage careers and end lives for a price.

Agreed, being 'evil' isn't necessarily a bad thing for a game (And given how most games have you portrayed as the hero, a nice change of pace sometimes), but it will still have the same reproductions from the world. Just because you're playing an 'evil' game doesn't mean that people will react any more favorably to it than if you were playing a 'good' game. Twelve dead nuns is twelve dead nuns.

[Fuchs]

What I was trying to say is that as a Shadowrunner, you are already playing "team evil". Your characters might fool yourself into thinking they're the good guys, but you're playing criminals who commit crimes for money. Dehumanizing your victims as "corp drones" doesn't make them any less human.

We're only arguing the degree of evil, not whether or not you're evil.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Dehumanizing your victims as "corp drones" doesn't make them any less human.

We're only arguing the degree of evil, not whether or not you're evil.

We are not killing them, we are setting them free of their corporate masters (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)