Level of Lethality, GM Decisions Options

[mmmkay]

Hello ds, I've been thinking about this and could have sworn I had read about it before, but I was incapable of finding the right thread.

How do GMs decide the the response to lethality vs. non lethality? Are the PCs suppose to clean up the evidence somehow? When is it acceptable to kill? What campaigns lean more towards lethality vs not? I've been having some trouble figuring this out and I'm not sure how this question varies on the pink mohawk (PM) scale. Any light on this topic would be wonderful.

Do shadowrunners feel guilt over murder? On one hand they are criminals, but on the other they are "human". Hence I'm guessing you see a spectrum that on average is more acceptable of murder. Does this change with setting and PM scale?

What type of police (insert correct terminology here) response is expected over a murder case? Who cares if it's a slummer or a corporate executive? Does that only depend on the level of influence of a character? Again how does PM scale and setting matter? And if a store clerk is murdered, do you send a few people to investigate the murder and then send a large enough force to deal with it if enough evidence is found? Or if you find out that the perps are SINless do you just bomb their house? How does that work and who takes over when it's the difference between SINners and SINless, or shadowrunners or not, or high vs. low notoriety, etc.?

What typical measures do runners make to remove evidence? Or do they just attempt to never generate evidence in the first place (seems ideal but not always possible)? Again setting, PM scale, etc. matter.

I guess as a GM the first thing you need to decide is: what shadowrun are we living in?

[The Dragon Girl]

..Ah, this is going to be another one of ~those~ debates.

Every single person on dumpshock has a different opinion on this one, sorry to say. We also like to loudly tell each other that the opposite side is ~doin it wrong~ and flail a bunch.


So really its a milage may vary thing. Shadowrunners, aside from being 'runners, are also people. Each one of them is going to draw their line in a different place. Are you all non lethal? Do you kill only if attacked? Do you kill for pay but only for pay? Do you casually kill all bystanders? Are you a serial killer?

Personally in the game I'm in, with the characters we use, we do as little killing as possible. My girl shaves and scrubs (including hair) before every run, wears a full body suit and gloves, Uses various wigs, voice changing, face changing, chameleon tech. If someone notices that she did something to their drek.. she did it wrong. The chameleon tech also insures that if someone does get suspicious, she can knock them out and go on her way.

Other tricks include always paying with random credsticks, never buying your stuff from the same place.. never keep any clothing with blood or chemicals from the scene on you. Burning works good for that.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Just remember, the people you hit today, may wish to hire you to hit the people you were last hired by back. Try not to piss them off. And if you give them too much incentive to find you, no matter how good you are, they ~will~ do it, between tech and magic. Try not to do that.

[Ol' Scratch]

It's all situational, really. There is no single right answer without knowing all of the important details for each individual case. I'm a big fan of repercussions; I let the players do pretty much whatever they want, however they want to do it. They just have to live with the results of those actions. If they get carried away and start leaving behind bloodbaths due to random killing sprees on a run, there will be consequences. If they instead manage to sneak in and out with nary a trace and maybe only a few knocked out guards, not so much. Depending, of course, on what they were actually doing there.

In this regard, I do reward non-lethal attacks more often than not. If you knock out a guard rather than kill them, there's going to be less motivation to hunt you down. Not only by the company in quesiton, but law enforcement and both family and friends. Sometimes you do need to kill people, though, and as long as you handle it with some thought rather than just planting a bullet in their skull and leaving them for dead, chances are you'll wind up okay. You may need to lay low for a while or visit some other metroplex if things get too hairy, but it'll eventually pass.

And hell, sometimes leaving behind a bloodbath is the right thing to do. You will still have repercussions to deal with, but they're ones you should have anticipated beforehand anyway, so you should be able to know how to deal with them or at least expect them when they come.

Like I said: It's all situational.

[toturi]

The way I run my games, it all depends. You can get away with a killing spree during a run - the Kowloon Massacre is one example. Depending on who you kill and how public the killing was, there may be certain consequences. A SINless who was known to be a drug addicted criminal? A dozen SINless who were known to be a drug addicted criminals killed in Kowloon Walled City? There may well be no repercussions. A corp citizen, even if he is a sec guard? Well, the corp may want to be seen to be looking for his murderer/s. A dozen police killed? Well, the police would certainly be out for revenge and the mayor and prosecutors could be persuaded to look the other way.

So it depends on who you kill, how you kill him and where you kill him. It could even matter when you kill the guy and what you kill him with.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Not really touching the specifics of the main post above, but I will point out one thing.

CYA to the crazy crazy extent, is one way to play, but Shadowrunners are basically Mercs that work on word of mouth and their rep.

Never ever leaving evidence that can ever be attached to you is DEFIANTLY one way to go, but if you do your job 'too well' then noone knows about you and you never get hired. Shadowrun is a fictional place and the willing suspension of disbelief has to factor in at least a little.

You can't 1) never leave any trace of your deeds ever and also 2) Be well known as a Shadowrunner and get lots of jobs.

[koogco]

I reward non-lethal means in general, but its nice to put runners in situations where there is no avoiding killing, sometimes its more fun to go all the way.
As a player, it depends on the risk involved for us. If the opposition is really fierce, you may not have a choice. (recently we went to town with another (technically) stronger shadowrun team, there was no room for holding back) If the opposition on a run is relatively low on the other hand, stun weapons of various types are the way to go (not to mention various gasses, magic tricks and general deception)

[Nixda]

As has been said before, opinions on this vary quiet a bit, so it is usually a good idea for the GM to talk to his group about it before he starts a campaign and give them a general idea what degree of violence will be considered "normal" in his campaign, i.e. when will corps/the police etc start to consider the runners behaviour to be more violent than other runners and start to use more corp/police resources to catch them or hunt them down.

Generally speaking though, in my opinion shadowrunners should try to keep the body count as low as possible - theirs is a buisiness that should stay in the shadows and not be broadcasted via every news feed.

Corps can try to save face and pretend their security was never compromised if they do not have to cover up piles of bodies. They also are being targeted by shadowrunners regularly (and employ them too) so while they will try to retrieve what was stolen, this usually is buisiness to them. Probably not a good idea making it personal or being the one runner group they decide to make an example of.

In the long run, corps will probably prefer to hire quieter runners as well, because other corps will be a lot more upset if you send them a team that goes on a killing spree first and then sets half a block of corp property on fire to help getting rid of evidence.

Basically they're shadorunners, not a mercenary platoon in a war or a mafia drive-by-shooting crew.

However, if the players like some more bodies, there are a few missions even in shadowrunning buisiness that can easily satisfy that. Normal wetwork, or taking out some other runner group that made a corp seriously mislike them, defending an installation against intruders or classical ghoul bounty hunting offer the opportunity for a lot of bodies without too much repercussions.

[Ascalaphus]

I try to make it somewhat clear on the outset of a mission what to expect. Legwork is good for that.

Last mission, they were hired to retrieve a kidnap victim from some environmentalists. The corp (A) didn't want a bloodbath or martyrs among the environmentalists; it didn't want to become a target for revenge by other environmentalists. The environmentalists were actually fairly friendly, they didn't use any lethal weaponry. The runners eventually persuaded the environmentalists that they'd be able to slaughter them if there was no deal possible, so they got a deal; steal some incriminating data from another corporation. Corp B was known to have a zero-zone policy ("Zero Intrusions.. Zero Survivors.."), which made it clear to the PCs that this was going to be quite a different operation. Mayhem ensued. It ended with the Face having an environmentalist contact on his list.

[koogco]

I try to make it somewhat clear on the outset of a mission what to expect. Legwork is good for that.

Its not bad for Johnson to make his wishes clear either. I sometimes offer a bonus for zero casualties (this can make for funny situations of the team trying to save the life of some security guard after hitting him a bit too hard)
Also, there is always the notority from killing innocents to desuade players from leaving huge piles of bodies in their wake.

[Saint Sithney]

Golden rule it.

How far down on the list of Plans is the "Kill Everything That Moves" plan?

That should be about how far down the "Hunt Them and Kill Them" plan should be for their enemies.

So for runners if it's:
A) Sneak in and grab what we want.
B) Create a distraction snatch and run.
C) Kill our way in/out.

Then for corps it's:
A) Apprehend intruders on site for interrogation/remuneration.
B) Follow intruders and capture offsite for interrogation/remuneration.
C) Terminate with extreme prejudice.

So, if they can accomplish their goal, without even raising an alarm, then corps won't even know where to begin finding them.
If they cause a major rukkus and scuttle off, then the corps will put out feelers and try and hunt them down within an operating budget (think THX-1138 where if the cost for recovery exceeds 10% of the value of damage, the retrieval attempt is ended.)
However, if they just do a "kill 'em all" sort of thing, then, not only will the retrieval budget likely be higher, but they'll also probably just put out a contract where there are multiple kill teams competing to mess up your crew's business.

[Ascalaphus]

Golden rule it.

How far down on the list of Plans is the "Kill Everything That Moves" plan?

That should be about how far down the "Hunt Them and Kill Them" plan should be for their enemies.

So for runners if it's:
A) Sneak in and grab what we want.
B) Create a distraction snatch and run.
C) Kill our way in/out.

Then for corps it's:
A) Apprehend intruders on site for interrogation/remuneration.
B) Follow intruders and capture offsite for interrogation/remuneration.
C) Terminate with extreme prejudice.

So, if they can accomplish their goal, without even raising an alarm, then corps won't even know where to begin finding them.
If they cause a major rukkus and scuttle off, then the corps will put out feelers and try and hunt them down within an operating budget (think THX-1138 where if the cost for recovery exceeds 10% of the value of damage, the retrieval attempt is ended.)
However, if they just do a "kill 'em all" sort of thing, then, not only will the retrieval budget likely be higher, but they'll also probably just put out a contract where there are multiple kill teams competing to mess up your crew's business.

Very elegant!

[Yerameyahu]

Well, maybe not 10% (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) They wouldn't want a reputation for not punishing people.

[Kazuhiro]

Shadowrunners are horrible people who kill for a living. An assassin can at least use the excuse that Thane Krios does, i.e. that someone else desires the target to be killed and he is the tool, the method. Shadowrunners, however, will gleefully slit throats, shoot faces, and blow up cars just because the victim might end up being a threat later.

This is of course with a group of "kids" compared to the typical Shadowrun (and, I would assume, Dumpshock) demographic. We torrented Planescape Torment, the first games we played were 16-bit, and our idea of "roleplaying" was shaped by D&D 3.5 and all its niceties. As far as my party is concerned, corp-sec guards are goblins and kobolds that exist to be killed in spectacular and show-offy ways. The best way to get them to tone down the mindless destruction, I've found, is for Johnson to give them the vague warning that he will deduct collateral damage from their pay.

[koogco]

Its nice to roleplay some sort of remorse. but at the moment, only one of my players is doing this, and mostly by being against the general idea of wetwork, (in contrast to your "assasin excuse" he thinks that a kill in a heated situation isnt as bad as a cold assasination)
But then again, it all depends on the character. he is the only character in the team with daily family connections (at least untill thursdays run...) and i suppose that might make for a somewhat "softer" character.
Things also depend on the grittyness of you universe, but i think that even in the grittiest of settings, many people are still somewhat reluctant to take a life (but ofc most are quite willing to do so if the pay, or the risk avoided, is big enough)

[Draco18s]

..Ah, this is going to be another one of ~those~ debates.

Every single person on dumpshock has a different opinion on this one, sorry to say. We also like to loudly tell each other that the opposite side is ~doin it wrong~ and flail a bunch.

The way the GM I have runs things is pretty Pink Mohawk in terms of lethality and the need to clean up, but is very Black Trenchcoat about everything else.

"Shooting up everyone inside" is rarely a valid plan, but if people die there generally aren't too many consequences. Shit will still hit the fan on occasion ("You guys killed everyone in the building! Of course they'd send a hit team after you!") but not to the level of "I'm sorry, you left a drop of blood on a doorknob, a cabal of mages just nuked* you--and everyone around you--for 36P."

Anyway, its right around the level I enjoy it: I don't have to be super-paranoid about every flake of skin, I get to shoot people in the face for money, but still worry that someone might come after me for it.

*The only time he's actually cast ritual fireballs at someone the person who "foxed up" and left DNA behind happened to be extremely magic resistant and the cabal only tossed a dozen F1 fireballs^ at him: "a lot of F1 fireballs generally kills people eventually, and the drain is low enough that the group can resist the drain safely."

^They were low-force spells, I don't recall if it was "F1 Fireball" or something else.

[nezumi]

How do GMs decide the the response to lethality vs. non lethality?

Personal taste and the group. The big question is, do you want to spend game time asking about cleaning up fingerprints afterwards and shaving your head to avoid leaving DNA evidence? Most groups say no. To a degree, being SINless is supposed to address this - there's no record of you to match against.

Are the PCs suppose to clean up the evidence somehow? When is it acceptable to kill? What campaigns lean more towards lethality vs not? I've been having some trouble figuring this out and I'm not sure how this question varies on the pink mohawk (PM) scale. Any light on this topic would be wonderful.

Depends on the job, depends on the group. Who are you working against? A B-rated corp? Meh - you can be sloppy. A triple-A corp with a reputation for revenge? What are you stealing? Is there incentive for the corp to retrieve it? To exact punishment? Is the crime high-profile, or should it be kept quiet? I think not leaving evidence is almost always (note: almost) ideal, but at what cost?

If my group is doing a 'standard' run, they normally go to the level of using common firearms and picking up their brass. But very often the run is either necessarily smash and grab, without time to worry about evidence, or the sort of thing where the evidence gathered isn't on the runners, but on who hired them. So those concerns don't always apply.

I've had one runner have problems with killing, and it was with any killing other than self-defense. It's really an individual's choice. There are long discussions on whether it's better to kill or stun. I'll let you find those on your own (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) But that's a business decision.

Do shadowrunners feel guilt over murder? On one hand they are criminals, but on the other they are "human". Hence I'm guessing you see a spectrum that on average is more acceptable of murder. Does this change with setting and PM scale?

Depends on the character. Some characters are just too messed up to feel guilt. Generally I've never seen guilt from killing during self-defense, but outside of that, yes, it happens.

What type of police (insert correct terminology here) response is expected over a murder case? Who cares if it's a slummer or a corporate executive? Does that only depend on the level of influence of a character? Again how does PM scale and setting matter? And if a store clerk is murdered, do you send a few people to investigate the murder and then send a large enough force to deal with it if enough evidence is found?

Really depends on the 'who'. The bad guys in Shadowrun are motivated by the cold rationality of profit, tempered by inefficiency. If a slummer dies, there's no profit from pursuing it, so no money is really invested in it. If a mid-level exec dies, he's easily replaceable, but you have to consider deterrence. Find an ork in the barrens, try and punish him. If the president dies, the runners are clearly working for a larger power. That needs to be investigated. The runners are just tools - punishing them is like punishing a hammer. You are willing to crush them, but only because you're trying to get to the hand that wielded them.

IMO, whether PM or BT, that stands, more or less. The difference is in BT, they're more likely to be trying to deter the runners too, and there's more likely to be more convoluted politics, and better CSI methods brought to bear.

If a store clerk is murdered, that's an attack on a store, which is worth money. It must be deterred. Funny enough, I think Aztechnology would spend more money on finding the precise guy responsible for knocking over a Stuffer Shack (and making that guy's life living pain), than they would on finding the killer of a mid-level exec. If they have a squad of high-level guys sitting around on payroll doing nothing, I don't see any particular reason NOT to use them for that. There's no case the guy you're targeting is another mid-level exec (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Or if you find out that the perps are SINless do you just bomb their house? How does that work and who takes over when it's the difference between SINners and SINless, or shadowrunners or not, or high vs. low notoriety, etc.?

Which costs more, bombing the house or sending some guys with shotties to bust in? Which one has a stronger deterrence effect? SINners don't exist. Do what you want with them. Collateral damage is fine. Just don't rile them up so much that they start rebelling. Anyone can pick on the SINless. Notoriety doesn't matter either, if you're SINless. You STILL don't exist.

What typical measures do runners make to remove evidence? Or do they just attempt to never generate evidence in the first place (seems ideal but not always possible)? Again setting, PM scale, etc. matter.

My group picks up their brass. I've had evidence collected (security tapes, for instance) be used to create a dossier and match them to other crimes, or used against them when they had the specific Hunted flaw. It's never been used for law enforcement running an investigation (usually because the people the runners ran against were also doing dirty work, or were spinning the incident to make it look intentional, so inviting LE would be bad).

[Draco18s]

My group picks up their brass. I've had evidence collected (security tapes, for instance) be used to create a dossier and match them to other crimes

Eventually my group gets that kind of stuff down to "standard operating procedure" the same way "and search the ceiling for traps" got added when we played the World's Largest Dungeon.* Which we do to speed up game play so we don't have to keep asking the GM questions/tell the GM trivial things we're doing that only bite us in the ass if we don't do them.

*It should be noted that there was only 1 trapped ceiling, and that was the one that made us put it on the list of Things That Happen When We Open A Door. We only ever found 1 additional trap because of it, and it was a "trivial to avoid" "why are you in this empty, dead end room" "obvious" "can't disarm it" trap (it was a crushing room, ah la Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom, only the door didn't close and lock, and there was only one entrance).

[sunnyside]

Personally I like mixing it up.

But the underlying message is that in the SR world if someone has the reasources they'll be able to find you, between magic, the matrix, and the fact that if someone offers pretty much any of your contacts (or even the J that hired you) enough money they'll talk.

So you have to carefully consider who you're going to tick off.

I also use this to explain why they sould actually do shadowruns instead of just stealing stuff and fencing it. If they're a runner, than the person that the target really wants to get ahold of is the preson pulling the strings. Killing the runners might just let their real foe out of having to pay them, or to clean up the loose ends themselves. If they're operating on their own, than THEY are the prime target.

[The Dragon Girl]

My group picks up their brass. I've had evidence collected (security tapes, for instance) be used to create a dossier and match them to other crimes, or used against them when they had the specific Hunted flaw. It's never been used for law enforcement running an investigation (usually because the people the runners ran against were also doing dirty work, or were spinning the incident to make it look intentional, so inviting LE would be bad).

Our hacker usually takes care of this, but we run in LA, where you have to be hyper aware of the cameras anyhow (We actually have two hackers, one whos sole job is to take care of the cameras (both the ones that don't belong to us and the ones that do) and gather footage, and the other to do everything else.)

[Yerameyahu]

I just get Erased and forget about it. That quality probably shouldn't exist in your game if you want that kind of careful track-covering to be important.

[Saint Sithney]

My group picks up their brass.

I'm going to assume that this is just a figure of speech. Otherwise, why don't they just use caseless ammo? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)


I consider such measures all to be part of infiltration. As long as they're infiltrating, cleanup is auto. Digital cleanup is another matter though, and if they're blasting, then they're going to be leaving a trail of sorts. Enough to generate some leads.

As for Erased, that only counts if one of your SINs is attached to the info. If it's just "Subject 233451q43c" then Erased isn't going to matter.

[Acidsaliva]

Like everyone else has said this is a favourite topic to debate.
Check Out This Discussion and the links contained within.

I like to run BT-ish. With general hand waving of the nitty gritty CSI crime scene stuff but with the undertone that things should be done discreetly and with a low body count* if you want little to no repercussions.

I disagree with Pepsi Jedi.

You can't 1) never leave any trace of your deeds ever and also 2) Be well known as a Shadowrunner and get lots of jobs.

Yes you fraggin' can.

Mr J's Boss: Did those denial-able, expendable assets get us the data?
Mr J: Yes. But Rival Corp have no trace of an intrusion, no missing personnel and might not even know that the data has been taken !
Mr J's Boss: ... ...
Mr J: Don't you see ! Because they didn't leave any trace we don't know if the assets we hired actually did the job themselves !!
Mr J's Boss: But we have the data and Rival Corp doesn't know it was our Corp.
Mr J: Well yes. But we don't know how the assets did the job ! We have nothing on them!
Mr J's Boss: I don't want to know how they did it. Its called plausible denial-ability. If you did your job properly the assets and Rival Corp have nothing on us. They delivered the data. End of story. Hire them again for the next job and also you're fired.





*Unless something splashy is specifically called for (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Ascalaphus]

Mr. J.: I need people to do a Job.
Fixer: I know people. Top men.
Mr. J.: Who?
Fixer: Top. Men.


Little Girl: Who's that guy mommy?
Mommy: He's a shadowrunner.
Little Girl: How do you know?
Mommy: He's got money, nobody alive messes with him, and nobody has proof why.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Like everyone else has said this is a favourite topic to debate.
Check Out This Discussion and the links contained within.

I like to run BT-ish. With general hand waving of the nitty gritty CSI crime scene stuff but with the undertone that things should be done discreetly and with a low body count* if you want little to no repercussions.

I disagree with Pepsi Jedi.

Yes you fraggin' can.

Mr J's Boss: Did those denial-able, expendable assets get us the data?
Mr J: Yes. But Rival Corp have no trace of an intrusion, no missing personnel and might not even know that the data has been taken !
Mr J's Boss: ... ...
Mr J: Don't you see ! Because they didn't leave any trace we don't know if the assets we hired actually did the job themselves !!
Mr J's Boss: But we have the data and Rival Corp doesn't know it was our Corp.
Mr J: Well yes. But we don't know how the assets did the job ! We have nothing on them!
Mr J's Boss: I don't want to know how they did it. Its called plausible denial-ability. If you did your job properly the assets and Rival Corp have nothing on us. They delivered the data. End of story. Hire them again for the next job and also you're fired.





*Unless something splashy is specifically called for (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Cute.. but the corp isnt going to tell anyone you did it. Noone knows you did it. Sure you get paid. But you could get that money working at a Stuffer Shack.

I'm not saying they should spraypaint their actions on the sides of buildings or anything but you can't get a rep if you're not known for doing anything.

What? You gonna be super ninja, get in, get out, never mess up. Beat your admin at every turn, the target your hitting so stupid they don't know they've been hit and your corp so secretive they never capitalize on the information you get them.

You might as well have not done it, other than you get to keep your 'lifestyle' at the current level. Which... you could do working at walmart. Or working FOR the corp.

If your guys are so good that they never ever leave any trace and plan so well that they overcome every problem with out ever getting caught, then you're not challenging them enough. Because they're cakewalking though the challenge. THat or their char's are so godlike that your challenges are below them. Either way something's off.

I know some people like playing god chars. But if every run you do ends like that. the challenge isn't there. Then... why play?

[Ol' Scratch]

Reputations aren't necessarily based on the actual activities you do. It also includes, and is probably dominated by, how well you do them, who keeps hiring you because you do such good work, word of mouth/recommendations about your competence from past employers and friends of friends, and how well you can keep your own mouth shut. There may also be rumors about the things you've done, which will persist and spread even if there's absolutely no proof that you were the one who did it. Those are the people who tend to have the legendary reputations that people fear and respect.

And really, if you were going to hire someone to do something absolutely criminal for you, would you want to hire the guys who have a reputation for getting the job done even if you don't know what their jobs were and who have no criminal record, or the guys who have a reputation for being loud mouthed braggarts (even if they, themselves, aren't the ones spreading their exploits) and a rap sheet a mile long?