Organlegging, Justifying It In My Game, With Magic Options

[Nifft]

It has come up before on this forum that "organlegging" is kind of stupid, given that it's usually cheaper to just buy a new part cloned from your own DNA, and using your own clone also eliminates all sorts of health risks. However, the idea of human chop-shops is phenomenally dystopian, so I want to keep it in some form.

Here's what I came up with:

Talisma are made of people! Specifically, Awakened metas and critters. Well, not all of them are, but enough that it's an intensely profitable grey market for some operators, and those operators make it dangerous for mages to go around slinging magic casually. I rather like the side-effect that mages become a paranoid bunch who tend to avoid publicity.

Anyone see any problems with this?

Thanks, -- N

[Rubic]

It has come up before on this forum that "organlegging" is kind of stupid, given that it's usually cheaper to just buy a new part cloned from your own DNA, and using your own clone also eliminates all sorts of health risks. However, the idea of human chop-shops is phenomenally dystopian, so I want to keep it in some form.

Here's what I came up with:

Talisma are made of people! Specifically, Awakened metas and critters. Well, not all of them are, but enough that it's an intensely profitable grey market for some operators, and those operators make it dangerous for mages to go around slinging magic casually. I rather like the side-effect that mages become a paranoid bunch who tend to avoid publicity.

Anyone see any problems with this?

Thanks, -- N

That's actually not far from setting a written. There are some telesma that come from the earth and plants, but meta-critters are probably the more reliable source already. As for organlegging, it profits in part from people who are too poor to afford vat-grown replacements (modern day, I'd fall into the equivalent due to low wages versus cost of living), another part from people requiring SPECIFIC matches for nefarious or genetic reasons (biosystem intolerance of some sort requiring cheap deltaware), and in part from ghouls that require such limbs for sustenance.

[suoq]

it's usually cheaper to just buy a new part cloned from your own DNA

As usual, can someone point me to the fluff/cruch that says this?

My gut feeling is that cloning probably isn't quick and requires you to have access to such a facility, where organlegging is potentially fast, can be done by people willing to ignore things like laws and ethics, and may be necessary to keep you going until the cloned part is ready.

[Fringe]

I don't see anything about costs with respect to organlegging, but the primary concern seems to be time. SR4A, p. 54, talks about organlegging, as does Augmentation, pp. 16-17. Compare with the cost and (especially) time to grow replacement organs, Augmentation, pp. 126-7. You're looking at 2-4 weeks for most body parts, or 8 weeks for a full-body clone.

[Fatum]

First, it's telesma, not talisma.
Second, yeah, awakened critters can be used for it, so no reason for awakened metahumans not to. It'd not be widespread, though, minding that there's not that many awakened to begin with. So I think it's better to just handwave it without going into the profitability details too much with your players.

[Summerstorm]

Eh, there are PLENTY of reasons for organ legging. And i already thought that having "awesome" organs is a good reason to murder someone and sell his orgens to dark mages or shadow spirits or something.

For example "Heart of a fearless slayer of monsters" could be a great telesma... where do you get it? By killing that ghoul-hunter Adept in your neigborhood.
Or "Brain of a Psionic", "Legbones of the fastest kid in the city".. a "newborn babies smile"... whoa... this is DARK.

But seriously cloned stuff is: EXPENSIVE (sure not by runner standards). But if you can scrape together 2500 bucks with all your friends to try and save the life of your little daughter, who is SINLESS and has no insurance. Do you really care when some shady doctor says: yeah, i do it for 2500 now and 2500 in three months?

Also sometimes you need to have the cloned stuff NOW, but it takes months to grow. Only those with a good insurance/docwagon contract have a cloned wimp on standby. Organlegging is very legitimate for the poor and desperate. Since medicine is so advanced that people can transplant stuff in a backroom of a bar with minimal education/equipment costs can stay low.

[CanRay]

Although, with magic involved, I think we found another shady deal for Aztechnology to be involved with...

[Summerstorm]

Eh... with aztechnology i always more think about abductions. It is important people are still alive if you need to squeeze the life out of them. Ritualistic symbols are not enough.

I wonder: Does aztechnology have some meat-grinder like machine, where you throw in dozens of people per minute and the machine perfectly rips out their hearts... just takes a bit of time so they can build up sufficient fear? And all of the blood fuels a giant spawning pool for bloodspirits or something? With punchcard executioners and bloodmages emotionless doing their work?

[CanRay]

No, that's at the other end of the sacrificial alter for the Soy-Sloppies.

[Rubic]

No, that's at the other end of the sacrificial alter for the Soy-Sloppies.

Soyalent green is MY kind of people! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[CanRay]

"So, how does it taste?" "Meh, it varies from person to person." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Blood Magic and Toxic Magic Talesma is likely to work with human remains. Non-Toxic magic, OTOH, is less likely to please the Spirits...

[Fikealox]

One idea that springs to mind is a dodgy medical clinic in the slums which, unbeknownst to the customers, uses cheap second-hand organs and cyber-/bioware as a way to keep overheads down and thereby increase profit margins.

[Dakka Dakka]

One idea that springs to mind is a dodgy medical clinic in the slums which, unbeknownst to the customers, uses cheap second-hand organs and cyber-/bioware as a way to keep overheads down and thereby increase profit margins.

AFAIK organlegging is illegal even in Shadowrun. While you may reduce the prodction cost, you would probably have a much higher overhead of bribes, security etc.

[Rubic]

AFAIK organlegging is illegal even in Shadowrun. While you may reduce the prodction cost, you would probably have a much higher overhead of bribes, security etc.

Rule Zero: don't get caught.

[Dakka Dakka]

Only if the rewards are worth the risk you would try to create such a large criminal enterprise. I don't see enough profit in organlegging.

[suoq]

Only if the rewards are worth the risk you would try to create such a large criminal enterprise. I don't see enough profit in organlegging.

Not all rewards are financial. For example, the Lambeth Containment Zone (Sixth World Almanac, pg 167) is unlikely to have cloning, bioware, or cyberware. What they do have, in large numbers, is an entire population and way of life they distrust and are actively at war with sitting just outside their borders and occasionally invading them.

In such an area, organlegging could easily become a way of life.

Any area where cloning is hard to obtain and body parts aren't is a perfectly good environment for organlegging to flourish, either for profit or for group survival.

[Fikealox]

Only if the rewards are worth the risk you would try to create such a large criminal enterprise. I don't see enough profit in organlegging.

I wouldn't try it either, but even in the real world there's no shortage of people willing to engage in ill-advised high-risk, low-reward criminal activity. Maybe a dodgy streetdoc gets into illicitly dealing second-hand organs because he's desperate enough to try it 'just this once' to make rent, maybe he's just underestimated the risks (or the expense necessary to minimise those risks) or overestimated the profits, maybe he's been forced into retail by a scary organlegging gang, maybe he's further padding the profits by collecting the parts himself from unsuspecting clients, maybe he just gets a sick thrill from the knowledge that he's secretly violating people in a fairly profound way.

[Nifft]

Not all rewards are financial. For example, the Lambeth Containment Zone (Sixth World Almanac, pg 167) is unlikely to have cloning, bioware, or cyberware. What they do have, in large numbers, is an entire population and way of life they distrust and are actively at war with sitting just outside their borders and occasionally invading them.

In such an area, organlegging could easily become a way of life.

Any area where cloning is hard to obtain and body parts aren't is a perfectly good environment for organlegging to flourish, either for profit or for group survival.

Yes, this is a good point. There are certainly places where the assumptions in the core rules don't apply -- availability of clone parts, for example. If there are no clone parts around, yet there are lots of surgical theaters, and piles of unscrupulous yet trustworthy doctors, then organ-legging may make perfect sense.

However, I'm operating a game within the core rules and their assumptions -- like the availability of clone parts -- do apply. So I'm looking for feedback within that context.

Within that context, I don't think organ-legging makes much sense.

My major change is to add "awakened meta-humans" to the list of things you can turn into telesma.

Thanks, -- N

[Nifft]

I wouldn't try it either, but even in the real world there's no shortage of people willing to engage in ill-advised high-risk, low-reward criminal activity. Maybe a dodgy streetdoc gets into illicitly dealing second-hand organs because he's desperate enough to try it 'just this once' to make rent, maybe he's just underestimated the risks (or the expense necessary to minimise those risks) or overestimated the profits, maybe he's been forced into retail by a scary organlegging gang, maybe he's further padding the profits by collecting the parts himself from unsuspecting clients, maybe he just gets a sick thrill from the knowledge that he's secretly violating people in a fairly profound way.

If the streetdoc is doing it "just this once" -- which seems very plausible -- there's no industry. It's a one-off.

If a street-doc has underestimated risk, he will get caught by those risks. Again, there's no industry, because those who try it fall prey to the risks they underestimated.

If he's forced into it by a gang, there's still a need for customers. The gang may cater to the rich (just like they import drugs for rich kids, and import sex-workers for well-off customers), but then it's in competition with clone parts, which are significantly safer. Or the gang can try to cater to the poor, who can't pay for expensive services... yeah.

If he's getting off on doing horrible things to innocent people, I don't see why he's going to limit his thrills to benefit some people at the expense of others -- unless the ones he's benefiting are rich & powerful, in which case see above.

You need special circumstances to justify organ-legging. You need pathologically specific circumstances to justify an organ-legging industry.

Cheers, -- N

[Dakka Dakka]

My point exactly

[Nifft]

My point exactly

Yep yep. But I still want there to be some dark dealings with illegal wetware chop-shops, so I'm looking for an excuse to justify them. The excuse I came up with is telesma, which are expensive enough to justify shady dealings.

[Fikealox]

Yep, I get your point, but I wasn't so concerned with trying to justify an organlegging industry as how to justify the practice of organlegging within a story. If cloned parts really are cheaper for the consumer than second-hand parts (and I'm not sure about that, given the fluff in Augmentation), a widespread organlegging industry would be difficult to sustain, however the continued existence of the practice isn't difficult to justify in-game.

If you really want to retain the idea of the human chop-shop in a world where cloned organs are the cheaper option, maybe organleggers could be primarily concerned with the illicit procurement and sale of cyberware and bioware. Or maybe it's a primarily one-way industry, with Tamanous voraciously buying up parts to ship to Asamando.

(I don't mean to criticise your telesma idea at all, I'm just suggesting other options).

[Ascalaphus]

The problem with the Tamanous business model:
* You can only sell to those so poor that they can't get a mob loan for a cloned organ.
* You have serious expenses (bribes, smuggling, harvesting).
* The merchandise is almost always poor quality, or expensive to acquire (because healthy people tend to be the people who enjoy actual legal protection.)
* All manner of people get offended by what you do; even hardened criminals often think you're squicky.

I think the profit margins on that are really really low.

---

Niche environments: if it's hard to smuggle in cloned organs, it'll also be hard to smuggle in stolen organs. And if you start organlegging in a containment zone, pretty soon everyone is going to notice what's happening. At that point other groups will probably try to move against you, unless you take complete control of the area; but that's a whole different kind of criminal racket (and probably far more profitable than organlegging!)

---
Now, I agree that organlegging fits the style of a dystopian world, but it just doesn't make sense under the current biotech rules; it's just become obsolete because of cloned organs.

I think that if you really jack up the costs and limit the availability of biotech, you make organlegging plausible again, and at the same time make cyberware more of a standard choice. That might actually work out well.

[suoq]

I'm operating a game within the core rules and their assumptions -- like the availability of clone parts -- do apply. So I'm looking for feedback within that context.

Within that context, I don't think organ-legging makes much sense.

Until the cloned part is available (2-4 weeks?) what does the patient use in place of the damaged part?
For non-awakened, I can imagine some sort of cyberware as a temporary replacement, assuming of course that you have a SIN and the funding to get the cloned part, rent the cyberware, and have the various operations performed.

For the already insanely cybered (shadowrunners with almost no essence left) or for the awakened (who don't want the loss of power that comes with loss of essence), organlegging may be their best option and such people may be best equipped to pay what it takes to skirt the law.

For thsoe with fake SINs, do you really trust your fake sin to survive 2-4 weeks of hospital visits, insurance checks, etc. And OMG, your DNA is on file under that fake SIN forever.

So while I don't have a problem with your solution, I don't see the actual problem.

[Ascalaphus]

TRANSPLANTS AND ORGAN REPLACEMENT
It is a simple fact of life in 2070 that a metahuman can receive
parts of other metahumans and even machines and still make a
functional whole. Thus, when parts wear out or simply are found
to be insufficient for the tasks at hand, they can be replaced with
new parts.
Replacing a failing organ requires the prospective organ, a
medical shop, and the immobilization of the patient. A metahu-
man can only accept two kinds of organ replacements without
downing massive amounts of immunosuppressants: generic and
cultured, though neither costs Essence to implant. Generic (or
type O) organs are grown from a common stock that is hypoal-
lergenic to all metahumans, and are usually available, at worst case,
by next-day mail. Generic organs are not available to non-metahu-
mans such as shapeshifters, vampires, or dragons. Cultured organs
are grown from the tissue of someone with a genetic match to the
intended recipient. Usually, that means that it is grown from the
intended recipient’s own tissue, but could easily enough be from
a twin or previously established medical clone. Cultured organs
are not transferable from one person to another (unless they are
twins/clones).

A suitable Type O organ is actually easier to get than a matching stolen organ. It's only growing cultured organs that takes time to do, so unless you need a Vampire Kidney or something ridiculous, off-the-shelf biotech is way more desirable than Tamanous having your genetic needs on file.