Shadow Economy Options

[KnightAries]

So, at this point in time, is there an official designation on whether the runners are more like a special forces team, or if they are more like an angry pirate team willing to accept missions and carry out the objectives in a semi-professional manner?

Because if they're more like angry pirates, I can see the lower pay and also the corp possibly hiring multiple teams for the same goal figuring that many of the runners will get bumped off.

Shadowrunners are more like an elite mercenary group nearly equivalent to a spec ops team. They will do any mission their morals/training/time/equipment/pay allows them to do. I'd like to think mission impossible and blackwater team up in the underworld.

[Wakshaani]

So, at this point in time, is there an official designation on whether the runners are more like a special forces team, or if they are more like an angry pirate team willing to accept missions and carry out the objectives in a semi-professional manner?

Because if they're more like angry pirates, I can see the lower pay and also the corp possibly hiring multiple teams for the same goal figuring that many of the runners will get bumped off.

Spec Ops team? "Top men."

Angry pirates? Everyone else.

[Wounded Ronin]

Spec Ops team? "Top men."

Angry pirates? Everyone else.

The more I think about it, the more my hunch is that you'd have a few "top men", and then lots of pirates, who would be enabled by zones of lawlessness, weak governments, bottom-line driven law enforcement, and jurisdictional questions.

I mean, there would be so many nihilistic angry people out there looking to stick it to "the man"; that would be like a pirate factory. I figure the closer you are to valuable urban centers the more "top men" congregate there, and the further out you get the more pirates you have.

[Sendaz]

Because if they're more like angry pirates, I can see the lower pay and also the corp possibly hiring multiple teams for the same goal figuring that many of the runners will get bumped off.

But I do not think many corps would hire layer upon layers of teams most of the time.

Remember part of hiring runners for a shadowrun is its not traceable back to papa corp.

The more bodies you are throwing in, the more chance something leads back to you and it only takes one group getting caught and rolling over on the hiring corp and the CC comes down and smacks the offending corp with penalty fees for getting caught.

And that is not counting them just tripping over each other as it would be safe to assume they would not be informed who else was in the field and this could lead to some interesting, can't call it friendly fire since they are not cooperating, but something similar.

Now obviously there are times when the corp may go all out and just hire every body in sight, but those are special situations. like an Omega Order where they get to dogpile the poor target.

[Wounded Ronin]

But I do not think many corps would hire layer upon layers of teams most of the time.

Remember part of hiring runners for a shadowrun is its not traceable back to papa corp.

The more bodies you are throwing in, the more chance something leads back to you and it only takes one group getting caught and rolling over on the hiring corp and the CC comes down and smacks the offending corp with penalty fees for getting caught.

And that is not counting them just tripping over each other as it would be safe to assume they would not be informed who else was in the field and this could lead to some interesting, can't call it friendly fire since they are not cooperating, but something similar.

Now obviously there are times when the corp may go all out and just hire every body in sight, but those are special situations. like an Omega Order where they get to dogpile the poor target.

Well, I could see it both ways. If a well known professional assassin gets caught, everyone will know right away that he only works when hired and someone paid a lot of money for his services. The guy will also probably have a trusted circle of contacts that can be investigated and multiple transactions back to him that might show a pattern.

If a scraggly group of armed nihilists gets caught, as long as they weren't paid in a way that can be traced back to the corporation, they plausibly could have just been terrorists or lunatic fringe malcontents. If they claim that, say, Ares paid them to do it, that's not really an inherently plausible claim, because you figure they'd just say anything to try and deflect blame after they were caught. Even the certified credsticks they have got their payment on (assuming they carried them when they got caught) could have changed hands multiple times in the barrens or possibly been acquired by a third party terrorist group prior to having been given to the team, so that wouldn't really link them to a particular corporate pay source. Maybe corporations could pay runners in certified credsticks but report the credsticks as stolen after a certain period of time passes, so that they can later claim that the credsticks were trafficked and the funds spent before the theft was detected.