Pirates!, Considering running a pirate campaign, ideas? Options

[Ascalaphus]

I think the number of pirate crews that stay in business for decades on end will be exceedingly rare, but all it takes to start being a pirate is a fast boat, some AKs and desperately poor people, all of which SR is chock-full of. It's likely that it's cheaper to outfit a pirate crew than to kill a pirate crew.

Of course this is also up to the GM to make it work. The whole premise of SR isn't entirely realistic ("we're not keeping records on non-citizens", "despite super-surveillance you can do top-level industrial espionage for a living", "we think the new AIs are cuddly", "NAN"). As a GM, you pick the elements of the setting you think are cool, and you find rationalizations to make them work.

I think piracy would be a volatile environment. Corp A, B and C are all shipping stuff around. A believes in secure transport, B in retaliation, C does neither a lot. Corp A pays a lot for more secure ships; 90% of the pirates stand no chance of capturing their ships, and even the remaining 10% don't try it randomly, only if they know the cargo will be unusually worthwhile. B sends in HTR or bombs the pirates out of the water if they get robbed. Many pirates don't try B, the rest try to make it look like someone else did it. C just hopes that 90% of their ships get through safely, they ransom 8% for a reasonable fee, and 2% is just a loss, but if all goes right, they save so much on security that they still compete with A and B.
Now, pirates really need to know if the ship they've sighted is A,B or C - time for legwork/hacking. Of course, now and then a new manages at a corporation changes the policy around, which has everyone scrambling to adapt tactics. All this can be fuel for an interesting game.

Not all pirate attacks are equal.
* Some hold captured ships for ransom.
* Some demand a toll to pass safely through particular stretch of the sea, kind of like a protection racket. If they really do keep other pirates away, corporations could like these guys, because they make costs predictable.
* Some steal aboard to thieve some of the cargo.
* Some steal the entire ship, cargo and all, tow it back to a pirate port and sell it to the highest bidder.
* Some crews do all of the above...

Thing is, each of those tactics has differing optimal responses for a corporation. Especially the protection racket type merits just paying off - if you wipe those pirates out, a new crew will set up shop in a year but they won't be as reasonable.

If you want to make it work as a GM, you can.

[toturi]

Come on guys, 50+ posts and no mention of Jack Sparrow and the Black Pearl? What kind of pirate thread is this?
THIS. IS. DUMPSHOCK!

[Manunancy]

Go through the other containers. It's only physical matter, not an impenetrable barrier...

Let's face it: a good pirate crew needs a hacker to select targets and provide overwatch during the attempt to capture a ship.

There's an extra complication : the containers you'e moving though are usually full. Which means yoy need to pull at least par of teh content out of the way. Repeat that through several layers and you'll start moving several cubic meters of stuff around. that's perfectly doable, but it takes time. which is something the pirates usually don't have much.

And even a corp that paid a to prevent one of it's ships from getting blown up is likely to consider pouring some real money to get rid of wohever did it and ideally send a strong message to whoever might feel like doing the same.

You can probably get away with the 'pay or we blow the ship up' gig if you do it only once in a while. Do it with any sort of regularity and visibility, and odds are the corp will fork out what it takes to wipe you out in a graphic fashion because you're starting to cost them a lot. Not only the bounty, but things like compensations for killed crewmembers, damage to the ship, penalties for delayed delivery and the like can pile up quickly. The image loss from getting your ships pirated doesn't help there.

Like shadowrunners, the trick for sucessful piracy is to stay at nuisance level. Get too big and noticeable and odds are the corp wil drop the hammer, and they've far biggers hammer to play with than pirates.

[Shortstraw]

Come on guys, 50+ posts and no mention of Jack Sparrow and the Black Pearl? What kind of pirate thread is this?
THIS. IS. DUMPSHOCK!

Poor movies need not be mentioned.

[toturi]

Like shadowrunners, the trick for sucessful piracy is to stay at nuisance level. Get too big and noticeable and odds are the corp wil drop the hammer, and they've far biggers hammer to play with than pirates.

Even when the corps/governments do attempt to drop the hammer, all you need to do is to make sure they can't find you. A canon NPC seems to do that quite well.

[CanRay]

Come on guys, 50+ posts and no mention of Jack Sparrow and the Black Pearl? What kind of pirate thread is this?
THIS. IS. DUMPSHOCK!

*Cough*

In some countries, hijacking a airplane is held under the old Piracy laws, and they still hang them. It's for this reason that Hijackers don't ever land in Greece, from my understanding.

...

Well, they didn't. Now that the country doesn't have the funds to pay for their SWAT teams, they might start again...

[toturi]

Well, they didn't. Now that the country doesn't have the funds to pay for their SWAT teams, they might start again...

Well, now the country would say that they need to raise taxes to pay off the hijackers and let the mob deal with the pirates.

[CanRay]

And Canada's answer to pirates.

[kzt]

You're probably just trolling, but... seriously? You want to kill millions to catch a few hundred pirates? What, because they are poor? So you wouldn't want to shell a north-american town because you got mugged there, or someone stole your truck full of goods, but because these are just nameless (read=unknown) towns in africa it's ok?

Governments have an obligation to keep their citizens from waging war on other nations or engaging in piracy or terrorism. If you fail to do this then bad things may well happen when your citizens annoy people with a lot of guns.

And not millions, probably just a few dozen. The objective is to make pirates unpopular. Leveling the town that the pirates are based out of will probably achieve that, one assumes that people will leave when your leaflets that warn about the attack are dropped on the town. Eventually the pirates will run out places that will shelter them.

And you should really read more history. Shelling a town over an attack on your people happened. Not often, because it was disproportionate and and a real threat that tended to result in people not pushing things to that point, but it DID happen. For example the Namamugi Incident. Where in response to the murder of Charles Lennox Richardson a British naval squadron bombarded Kagoshima and burned about 500 houses in addition to several ships and damaging the fortifications. The RN commander was awarded Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath for this.

The next year the RN and allies bombarded and invaded Shimonoseki due to attacks on Western shipping.

[Paul]

It's threads like these that make me realize how different my world view really is from so many people.

[Kirk]

Governments have an obligation to keep their citizens from waging war on other nations or engaging in piracy or terrorism. If you fail to do this then bad things may well happen when your citizens annoy people with a lot of guns.

And not millions, probably just a few dozen. The objective is to make pirates unpopular. Leveling the town that the pirates are based out of will probably achieve that, one assumes that people will leave when your leaflets that warn about the attack are dropped on the town. Eventually the pirates will run out places that will shelter them.

And you should really read more history. Shelling a town over an attack on your people happened. Not often, because it was disproportionate and and a real threat that tended to result in people not pushing things to that point, but it DID happen. For example the Namamugi Incident. Where in response to the murder of Charles Lennox Richardson a British naval squadron bombarded Kagoshima and burned about 500 houses in addition to several ships and damaging the fortifications. The RN commander was awarded Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath for this.

The next year the RN and allies bombarded and invaded Shimonoseki due to attacks on Western shipping.

Just as a couple of points of fact, shelling towns was the exception, and in most cases where towns were shelled, piracy continued.

Kagoshima's bombardment -- Charles Lennox Richardson's death had nothing to do with piracy. Richardson and a couple of other Englishmen came close to the Daimyo Shimazu Hisamitsu, regent of the prefecture. The Daimyo's bodyguards attacked these foreigners who wouldn't back away, killing Richardson and wounding two of his companions. The Daimyo refused to pay reparations, and so the Brits sailed and bombarded the city.

The reparations demanded, by the way, were for approximately 1/3 of the total annual revenues of the nation, not the daimyo or the prefecture.

[kzt]

Pretty much. A couple of foreigners were attacked, one died. In SR we'll assume they work for Ares. The foreign government took offense, ie Ares. Negotiated settlement failed, and the Ares dispatched a small force to repossess some mobile assets as partial payment. Events escalated and shots were fired, culminating in the use of overwhelming force from Ares local and orbital assets to destroy the defenses and much of the surrounding town. "Ultima Ratio Regum"

[CanRay]

It's threads like these that make me realize how different my world view really is from so many people.

Could be worse, Paul.

You could have my world view.

[Tiralee]

CanRay - the Arrogant Worms FTW.

"And even if you're only going after some of the containers (you'll need to cargo manifest and loading plan), there's the basic problem of physically accessing the container. When they're stacked ten-high, reaching the one in the middle isn't exactly easy... "

-We're going to need a pully system

(I tossed that in in case my players read this thread - we had the same issue while trying to knock off a shipment of Fairlight Excalibers and this "cunning plan" accompanied by the requisite stroking of the proto-goatee had us rolling.)

And more fun - Disproportionate response.

Quoting Brainpiercing:

"Ships are ALWAYS worth that much."

This is totally correct.
And that's a surface smoker/oilier, what NUC ships used to go for in SR3 was pretty damn obscene. That's why they developed heavily-automated cargo subs with bubblefusion reactors (I'd have to crack open the fluff again, but I'm pretty sure that what they were).

Tramp haulers won't be laden with tones of the latest hard-to-source shiny things - that's what the secure undersea and sky-ship herds carry.
The Tramp will carry the second and third rate guns, drugs and frenchware, the stuff that a skilled local with contacts could get their hands on without too much of an issue...and more importantly, market and profit without too much trouble.
...Unless of course that someone's moving this stuff on the sly, then it's smuggling and not really "stickin' it to da man![tm]"


The world of SR does make a few things more difficult:
- You can't hide it. (But that's already the case now. A huge cargo ship can't be hidden, the companies always know where it is.)

Correct for surface ships, and zeppelins. Cargosubs would be hard to spot via satellite unless they cruised near the surface and that's not very cost-effective (surface turbulence and drag coefficients)

- Hostages are only semi-effective as a deterrent
This is Shadowrun. Since when have hostages ever worked? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

- killing some pirates won't raise any eyebrows anywhere
This is Shadowrun. Unless it affects the bottom line, or it's more profitable to make an example out of you, your team of hotshots are simply targets of opportunity whenever the situation arises.

- there are nasty things like drones and flying tanks that could hunt you down
See above. Also, having a target ID is pretty important, otherwise someone just spent this week's ammunition allotment hosing down a fishing trawler and now the trolls in accounting want an itemized expenditure list.

Conversely:
- As a runner, you are 300% more awesome
And 3000% more expensive to maintain than those rag-tag Africans mentioned. Shakespeare needs to be paid, son.

- you can get detailed info about what ships are worth-while, you have a clear information advantage
Aha! Information warfare can be as simple as bribing the security slug to go for an extended toilet break while you back the truck up to the loading dock, or having your 700 karma TM set up false datatrails and bills of loading to get what you need from the company you're spoofing from the other end of the world. And the same applies. (Note: this is a stumbling block only if the GM's not being a bastard. Don't be that guy. All issues are plot hooks.!)

- you have lots of technological toys to aid you (but so has the other side)
Use of toys = use of weapon of choice. The right tool for the right job. Sometimes the tool is the guy with the scoped-in sniper cannon, sometimes it's the guard with a momentary confusion spell and his hand on the "open all paracritter cages" button.

- in an asymmetric conflict you are the strongest weapon - if you play it smart. That's your bargaining chip. The point is not to use it.
Yep - but don't forget that a bargaining chip is another way of saying "an expendable asset". Use your friends wisely...(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

- mounting an extensive operation is also really expensive - if they can buy the ship back for 2 million, but their op costs 5 (and it very quickly will), then where is the gain?
By making sure there's noone to sell the stolen gear to, it makes piracy and pirates uneconomical...and unsafe to know. (Goodwill, you know?)

- as long as you keep it business, you can get away with lots of things. You're not a terrorist, you're a businessman asking a reasonable price.
And companies are people too...they bleed, become irrational, get a little hate on and suddenly it's all burning cars and bayoneted families in the streets.

- ships are insured, probably also against piracy
Unlawful Loss, I think. And there's something to be said by an Insurance strike team hitting your prize as it's going to cost them less to mount a search-and-destroy with chromed ninja-adepts with monowire chainsaws for hands than it is to pay out the loss price. And it WOULD make sense for these "assessors" to be the very best money can buy...each mission they're on will save a company 100 times more than a payout would be.


So, the money's in the informed crew with the right connections to move the gear safely and without fuss. The choice of target is immaterial, as long as the payout is 2 x greater than the expenditure...minimum. It's about seafaring accountants...

-Tir

[CanRay]

So something like this, Tiralee?

[Shortstraw]

So something like this, Tiralee?

That how Dead Money entered the shadows?

[CanRay]

That how Dead Money entered the shadows?

Nope. He got home one day from work as a wageslave and found his home wouldn't let him in (His SIN had been wiped), and an assassin waiting for him. A lot of luck and combat pragmatism (And being in the gymnastics team in University) allowed him to kill the assassin, and it went from there.

[Brainpiercing7.6...]

So something like this, Tiralee?

Someone had to bring it...

@Tiralee:
You make some good points. I maintain my point that you CAN make a pirate campaign work - simply by keeping it fairly low-key. Also, the game world isn't nearly so fixed - who says there aren't a lot of ships from others than Ares, S&K and MCT around? If the big ones ferry their goods with subs and airships, or suborbital, whatever, then there are still a ton of little ones to harvest from. Shadowrun is still an essentially "20 minutes into the future" game, in spite of moving on with every edition. So taking stuff from now and extrapolating a bit can easily create good campaigns. Quite frankly with every non-standard campaign idea the first thing that needs to die (if it's in the way) is canon.

The other option is SUPER-pink-mowawk (i.e. black beards, hook hands and eye patches). Because now you've already signed an unconditional waiver on ALL realism, so it won't matter that the corps bring in the commandos, they will just need that much more ammo...

[Tiralee]

Hey Ho!

Just a quick note: Most brownwater nations who have an issue with pirates (that aren't in Africa) ARE Pink Mohawk. Seriously. Check out some of the Thai and related countries in regards to anti-piracy. These guys bring along 50 cals to look over vessels as they KNOW that the first time they don't, some "independant businessman" is going to hose them with an AK-knockoff and scamper.


I agree there will be surface craft - but the choice bulk haulers are going to do it secretly (subs) or safely (Zeps).
Unless someone's playing shadowgames with cargo or someone's fucked up and ran out of cargo space (A very bad thing for the shipper) tramping a shipment is the last resort.

...Which should be some solid Shadowrunning for the creative GM.
ie: Make sure the order's stuffed on the shipping end, make sure you know where the shipment's being delivered, and what tramp is carrying it, locate and edit/obscure monifest, arrive at port with your Custom's Declarations and import fees and delivery truck, collect the cargo and profit.


-Tir.



A flamboyantly-dressed pirate swaggers into the local bar with a mulitcoloured parrot on his armoured shoulder and the barman, looking up from polishing his one-eyes, asks him, "Whoa, where'd you get that?"
To which the parrot replies, "Oh, there's a whole boat-load of them outside."


Description: "On boarding the vessel, it's bloodily obvious that there has been a massacre of the crewmen. Some tried to make a stand at the aft of the vessel, but it looks like someone air-burst anti-personnel grenades amongst them."
Player: "Oh god, why is there seamen splattered over the poop deck?"

_Arrrrgh!

[CanRay]

Um...

I live in a city that has a Brownwater Navy that is anything but "Pink Mohawk".