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> corp and cop responses to runners
rel
post Feb 17 2016, 03:16 PM
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I'm looking at running a game. I want to focus on the things that happen between runs. Part of this will be the response of corporations, law enforcement and the like to the shadowrunners.

By this I mean long term responses, not the dramatic chase out of the facility but what happens next week after detective gumshoe has been put on the case.

I am looking for corp responses that do not include knowing who the shadow runners are or where they live. Preferably something with mechanical bite

e.g.

Evidence has been gathered resulting in an item license or a fake SIN deteriorating

A contact has been questioned and spooked or put under surveillance, they won't be available for a while

can anyone suggest similar responses an angry corp would try assuming they cannot simply track the runners down?
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Blade
post Feb 17 2016, 05:34 PM
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Usually I like to consider that runners are more or less safe as soon as the mission is over.

Since the runners live outside of the system, they're hard to track, which means expensive. Whatever they did, as soon as the mission is over, the corp has nothing to gain by catching whoever did it. And for corps high cost + no return on investment = no go.
Some could argue that the corp might want to catch them to save face or to show that they care. But in that case all they need is to catch somebody. It would be more cost-effective to blame it on an easier target.

For cops, it's mostly the same. If the run only hurt a corp and it's not their job, if something happened in an area under their protection, it's be easier to blame it on some gang and arrest/kill a few orks. The job of the detective isn't to solve the case, it's to close it as soon as possible. That's the metrics on which the service will be judged.

I like this, since it avoids having the players spend too much time caring about being tracked (as long as they don't go overboard).

There are some exceptions, of course, like the runners being partially identified, attracting too much heat, having made some enemies (even in the criminal world, don't forget that for criminal syndicate it's sometimes more efficient to have the police handle the troublemakers than to do it themselves), or if it became personal or a question of honor for someone (usually a MCT suit).
And if for some reason they still have this hot stolen prototype/blueprint/dangerous virus, then they will be tracked.
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Wakshaani
post Feb 17 2016, 06:18 PM
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In general, corps view Shadowruns as par for the course. It's just a cost of business an dthey don't get *too* bent out of shape about it. Captured 'runners will be given basic interrogations, but assuming that they don't really know anything, are more likely to be coerced into employment than locked up.

This, of course, changes if they score a bloody nose. If you go ahead and, say, extract the divisional heads daughter, or worse, their top decker, they will move Heaven and Earth to find you. Sometimes, you have to make an example of people. Small nibbles aorund the edge? WHatever. The Eight Ball Crew killed 88 researchers? They gotta be brought in and executed.

As always, It Depends ™.
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post Feb 17 2016, 07:01 PM
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I think the lockdown of a contact is a good one. And you can make the players sweat, thinking about the loyalty level of the contact and whether they should have been nicer to them lately. Just try to make it a logical consequence – if they used s ewer entrance to get into the building, a street contact that might know about such things, or someone at the planning office might make sensible contacts who are being watched, but their talismonger less so (although it could be if they used a bunch of reagents that they left some trace that forensics was able to narrow down to one of a few talismongers …. )

Another one I’ve thought of (but not used yet) is word gets back to the runners that description of them, in a general sense, is going around. Word that there is money for information about a group of four runners (2 humans, 1 elf, 1 troll) of about these heights, they make their approach in a black van of such-and-such model and year, use these precise weapons, favor those spells, the mage was chanting in latin, the troll tends to yell “ka-BOOM fraggers” on a regular basis, etc. The group can avoid matching this description, but it may mean changing weapons and vehicles, taking new approaches, disguises, etc.
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rel
post Feb 18 2016, 01:30 AM
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I like the Description thing, that's the sort of thing I'm looking for.

Any ideas on what sorts of mechanical penalties might be levied on a team that doesn't change their style?
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Zednark
post Feb 18 2016, 01:36 AM
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QUOTE (rel @ Feb 17 2016, 08:30 PM) *
I like the Description thing, that's the sort of thing I'm looking for.

Any ideas on what sorts of mechanical penalties might be levied on a team that doesn't change their style?

Roll for Public awareness. There's rules for that in Run Faster. That way, cops will start to try and arrest them when spotted, etc.

Edit: Saw the SR4 tag. Well, is there any similar stuff in the 4e player's handbook type deal?
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rel
post Feb 18 2016, 05:51 AM
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Not that I know of.

How about:
A runners description has been circulated. Relevant authorities (e.g. Lone Star contractors) have a chance of recognising the runner for the next month.

Also, does anyone have any ideas on matrix based responses? What kind of mischief can an enemy hacker cause.
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sk8bcn
post Feb 18 2016, 08:55 AM
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This is how things are perceived by corporations :

"Renraku has planned a run into our Saeder-Krupp facility stealing our new toy. They did this through random shadowrunners ofc. What do we do now?"
"Anything we could learn from the runners?"
"Nothing I can think of, they probably been hired by a Johnson and doesn't even know for whom they worked for."
"Ok, what do we do now for Renraku?"

And runners are already forgotten.

Well unless they made it personnal:

"But there's something else..."
"Yes what?"
"the runners did their best to cause a maximum casualtie and deathes in the facility"
"Mmm, send a team and geek them"



For cops, it's a different matter. They're looking for justice so they have to try to catch runners BUT remember about extraterritoriality: What happens in an extraterritorial zone is outside the cops juridiction. For our SK facility-run, they wouldn't go after the runners.
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Kren Cooper
post Feb 18 2016, 10:38 AM
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For corps, I would always take it back to "where's the bottom line". Sending a team to geek another team, just because they caused lots of damage incurs expense, and makes no profit.

Instead think - let's hire the messy team, set them up for a job, tell them it's easy, and send them in against a glacier/UV/milspec target. They'll fail, but they'll make lots of noise, lots of mess and cost our opponents lots of money - and we don't have to pay them, so there's no loss for us. Much more worthwhile, from the corp point of view.


As to the original post, I think there are a number of things you can do:
Word on the street - have the runners overhear people discussing their last run - whether that be with admiration or disgust. Make them aware that people are talking about them, maybe even go so far as to have them hear "man, if I ever knew who those guys were, I'd turn them in to the Star in a heartbeat. 10K reward money? I could go on that holiday I always wanted...."

Fixers - have either more jobs appear, or certain jobs dry up as Johnsons get word of the teams exploits and reputation. If the team have a habit of loud, messy, violent jobs - have more and more of that type of job appear, as the people who want a quiet, discreet and subtle team look elsewhere.

News reports - have KSAF or other journalists turn up in the team haunts looking for info / the next big scoop. That should bring all sorts of unwelcome attention down on them and let them know they need to change their ways... after all, if the tabloids can find them, the cops and corps can't be far behind.

Fans - depending on the team and how they handle stuff, having an 8 year old kid who was playing silly buggers on the fire escape and "saw the whole thing" turn up out of the blue with a towel tied around him like a cape and wanting to be part of their gang can be amusing. What do they do - geek the kid for being a kid and not realising what he's gotten in to? Bad karmic juju if they do (at least at my table). Or if they do, how long until mum and dad come looking for little Timmy. Oh, and mum works as a Lone Star dispatcher, and pulls some strings to track his journey across town towards the runners location where people remember a bunch of folk talking to some little kid. Time to call in the FBI on the child abductors!
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Koekepan
post Feb 18 2016, 05:01 PM
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Let's pretend we work for SpyCorp. We make spy toys for adventurous kids, and use the data we get from those to generate advertising to their parents. This is very profitable, so we make a lot of money.

Unsurprisingly, someone (perhaps a group of outraged parents - really, who knows? Or cares?) pays for a team of runners to make a run on us. We discover the run. Now what?

What are our motivations?

We want to be a hard target. So hard, so nasty, so pitiless that runners will refuse runs against us. We want to be well-defended against runs during the runs as well as known to be remorseless in our vengeance after the fact. Bear in mind that we are not a mom-and-pop, but a corporation easily clearing a few billion a year, we could afford to establish a department of runner misery for this express purpose.

The first thing I would do as an executive responsible for this sort of thing, after a run, is convene a meeting, during which I demand some things from my underlings:

[*] All details, including eyewitness accounts, video and audio recordings, building sensors such as mass, airflow, released heat - the works. All this shall go through gait and pattern analysis for accumulation of all possible forensic data. Since we're not constrained by rules of evidence, I'll have specialists comb the affected area for any remaining evidence (dropped shell casings, blood flecks, torn clothing, footprints) that can be gathered. We want results, not to argue in court.
[*] A profile of consequences. What was taken, duplicated, altered, destroyed, injured, maimed, killed? What did the runners or their employers ostensibly want and what did they do on the way there?
[*] A security review of how the runners got in, which systems they compromised, how they left, and why they got out before the wrath of the corporation turned them into toxic puddles. If they got in and out slick and fast, I want a plan to slow runner progress. If they weren't detected until after the fact, I want an analysis of how that detection could have been improved. If they took advantage of sloppiness on the part of some personnel, I want a plan - not to make personnel less sloppy, but to improve detection and correction. Lessons learned, plans for the future.
[*] Using all of the above I want as detailed a profile as possible of the runners. Everything from gait analysis and blood sample DNA analysis to RFID scans and voice patterning. I want to know who they are, who they want to be, who they love, everything.
[*] I want a plan to unearth the runners, and publically humiliate them. Possibly lethally, but not necessarily.

Fast forward forty-eight hours. I have reports back.

[*] The details are fed to an analytical expert system for automated correlation and analysis. This is a detective tool that halfway exists today, and will be gosh darned sophisticated by 2050. A gumshoe's best friend.
[*] I will have a darned good idea of who wanted this and why, so I can keep an eye on my back.
[*] I will have capex plans for improving corporate security. If those runners come back, things will emphatically not be the same.
[*] Chances are I will have a solid idea of who hit us, or at a bare minimum, identifying features. I could send out FunVans to sell surveillance and candy to kids .... and monitor a huge area for anything resembling my targets.
[*] I will have a plan to make nobody on earth want to associate with my targets, and nobody on earth want to hit us.

What would the consequences look like for the runners?

In the first forty-eight hours, assuming they're substantially unwounded, they might think that they got away free and clear. They might even buy some celebratory frozen soyghurt from a FunVan.

Then the matrix trids start cropping up. "World's least discreet shadowrun." "These thugs broke into a children's toy maker - you won't believe what happens next!" "Seven ways this infiltrator proves she's an amateur (can you spot them all?)" "Eileen mcShootypants, of Apartment 14, 2865 East 15th Court, Tacoma, did you have those three abortions and wreck the dreams of children in a toy maker for medical reasons or because you hate children? We really would like to know."

Yeah. Some runners gonna need new IDs.
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rel
post Feb 19 2016, 12:14 AM
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QUOTE (Kren Cooper @ Feb 18 2016, 11:38 AM) *
For corps, I would always take it back to "where's the bottom line". Sending a team to geek another team, just because they caused lots of damage incurs expense, and makes no profit.

Instead think - let's hire the messy team, set them up for a job, tell them it's easy, and send them in against a glacier/UV/milspec target. They'll fail, but they'll make lots of noise, lots of mess and cost our opponents lots of money - and we don't have to pay them, so there's no loss for us. Much more worthwhile, from the corp point of view.


This is the first time the hire the runners that robbed us (and johnsons inevitable betrayal) has made any sense to me, well done.

QUOTE (Kren Cooper @ Feb 18 2016, 11:38 AM) *
As to the original post, I think there are a number of things you can do:
Word on the street - have the runners overhear people discussing their last run - whether that be with admiration or disgust. Make them aware that people are talking about them, maybe even go so far as to have them hear "man, if I ever knew who those guys were, I'd turn them in to the Star in a heartbeat. 10K reward money? I could go on that holiday I always wanted...."


Rewards for info / capture, I like it.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 06:01 PM) *
Then the matrix trids start cropping up. "World's least discreet shadowrun." "These thugs broke into a children's toy maker - you won't believe what happens next!" "Seven ways this infiltrator proves she's an amateur (can you spot them all?)"


Bad publicity, that is brilliant. We don't know who they are but we know they are drek at shadowrunning.

Thank you and thank you, keep it coming people (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
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Iduno
post Feb 19 2016, 03:15 AM
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You also might want to make sure the GM and the players have the same ideas about how the game world should run. If everyone decided to go full professional and one person decided to go nuts (or failed a roll for a negative trait they shouldn't have taken), this is all good advice. If they players are all expecting beer-and-pretzels pink mohawk goodness...

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post Feb 19 2016, 10:05 AM
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QUOTE (Kren Cooper @ Feb 18 2016, 05:38 AM) *
Instead think - let's hire the messy team, set them up for a job, tell them it's easy, and send them in against a glacier/UV/milspec target. They'll fail, but they'll make lots of noise, lots of mess and cost our opponents lots of money - and we don't have to pay them, so there's no loss for us. Much more worthwhile, from the corp point of view.


This is an insanely stupid thing, for two reasons.
1: If they beat the odds, they're either going to:
1a: Expect to be paid,
1b: Realize it was a set-up, and now you have made things personal with them, which means they're the ones who are going to be looking for payback.
2: Almost all Runners in the 2060s and 2070s won't lift a goddamn finger anymore unless the money is in escrow. Meaning that, in fact, you do lose the money. They do this for exactly this reason: if the money's in escrow, all the Johnson can do is tell the escrow guy to release it or not to release it. He doesn't get it back no matter the circumstances. This encourages Johnsons not to double-cross, because there's no longer that financial incentive (although really, with what the book payouts are, the idea of trying to doublecross a runner team for that shitty money is ludicrous,) and it encourages them not to hire teams for jobs way above their skill level and send them in kamikaze style, since they still lose the money, even if the team fails.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
Let's pretend we work for SpyCorp. We make spy toys for adventurous kids, and use the data we get from those to generate advertising to their parents. This is very profitable, so we make a lot of money.

Unsurprisingly, someone (perhaps a group of outraged parents - really, who knows? Or cares?) pays for a team of runners to make a run on us. We discover the run. Now what?

What are our motivations?

We want to be a hard target. So hard, so nasty, so pitiless that runners will refuse runs against us. We want to be well-defended against runs during the runs as well as known to be remorseless in our vengeance after the fact. Bear in mind that we are not a mom-and-pop, but a corporation easily clearing a few billion a year, we could afford to establish a department of runner misery for this express purpose.

...

Yeah. Some runners gonna need new IDs.


Yes they will. And you, personally, the SpyCorp executive behind this, are you going to need the following: A pine box and/or an Eclipse Phase style ego backup.

Seriously, you're making this shit personal. They will come after you, and like Liam Neeson, they will find you, and they will kill you. If you're lucky, that's all they are going to do. If you're unlucky, what they're going to do is provide some kind of credible threat of raining down such a world of hurt on SpyCorp that your own employer will turn you over to them and/or simply terminate your contract (ballistically,) themselves, for bringing this kind of trouble down on them. Or they might get creative and brutal in ways you don't like. Your 14-year-old daughter goes missing from her exclusive boarding school, and turns up in a Bunraku parlor in Hong Kong getting spit-roasted, for example. Humanis "finds" evidence that your saintly grandmother actively sheltered trogs during the Night of Rage and now her house burns to the ground. You mysteriously find yourself 25,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) richer and an "anonymized" email from a competing corp thanking you for your excellent work and the well-done job scapegoating the schmucks you hired and some dumb bitch means the nuyen will keep flowing, and congratulating you on subverting the company IT so none of your managers will ever see your correspondance history with them.

Etc. Etc.

By all means, launch an investigation, tighten security, but do not make the mistake of making it personal. MCT can get away with that because they're a AAA with orbital weapons and nigh-limitless money to burn, you cannot.

Remember, if you make it personal, it's personal both ways. And, while it may be true that a single team off pissed runners isn't going to bring down a corp, a single team of runners who have nothing left to lose can cause you an extraordinary amount of damage before they go down.
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Fabe
post Feb 19 2016, 04:52 PM
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Another thing to consider about going overboard with death and destruction then I don;t think any one has mentioned is the corp who hired the Runners coming after them. A Corp who got hit by a group of runners who make Kane say "Thats going too far" they might decide to to find out who hired them and take vengeance. If they do find out who hired them the hiring corp might decide to try and make restitution to prevent the retaliation or maybe even a corp war and open negotiations by serving up the offending runners heads on a platter as a peace offering
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KCKitsune
post Feb 19 2016, 06:55 PM
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QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] All details, including eyewitness accounts, video and audio recordings, building sensors such as mass, airflow, released heat - the works. All this shall go through gait and pattern analysis for accumulation of all possible forensic data. Since we're not constrained by rules of evidence, I'll have specialists comb the affected area for any remaining evidence (dropped shell casings, blood flecks, torn clothing, footprints) that can be gathered. We want results, not to argue in court.


What if the 'Runner team was professional? Hacker covers the Matrix tracks. The Gun bunnies use caseless ammo. The Mage uses a sterilize spell to clean up forensic evidence and astral traces.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] A profile of consequences. What was taken, duplicated, altered, destroyed, injured, maimed, killed? What did the runners or their employers ostensibly want and what did they do on the way there?


What if they took a number of things just to cover up the fact they used your place to launch a cyber attack on another corp?

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] A security review of how the runners got in, which systems they compromised, how they left, and why they got out before the wrath of the corporation turned them into toxic puddles. If they got in and out slick and fast, I want a plan to slow runner progress. If they weren't detected until after the fact, I want an analysis of how that detection could have been improved. If they took advantage of sloppiness on the part of some personnel, I want a plan - not to make personnel less sloppy, but to improve detection and correction. Lessons learned, plans for the future.


If this was so simple to do, then EVERY corp would be doing this.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] Using all of the above I want as detailed a profile as possible of the runners. Everything from gait analysis and blood sample DNA analysis to RFID scans and voice patterning. I want to know who they are, who they want to be, who they love, everything.


If you got this information, then the hacker didn't do his job very well.


QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] I want a plan to unearth the runners, and publically humiliate them. Possibly lethally, but not necessarily.


Unless you got some SERIOUS muscle, then expect a VERY large body count... for YOUR guys.


QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
Fast forward forty-eight hours. I have reports back.

[*] The details are fed to an analytical expert system for automated correlation and analysis. This is a detective tool that halfway exists today, and will be gosh darned sophisticated by 2050. A gumshoe's best friend.


The hacker should have destroyed enough data to make what you do have worthless.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] I will have a darned good idea of who wanted this and why, so I can keep an eye on my back.


Again, who said the 'Runners hit you to hit you? Maybe they used your place to hit another place.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] I will have capex plans for improving corporate security. If those runners come back, things will emphatically not be the same.


This costs a LOT of money. If you're a AAA corp you have the money, otherwise good luck.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] Chances are I will have a solid idea of who hit us, or at a bare minimum, identifying features. I could send out FunVans to sell surveillance and candy to kids .... and monitor a huge area for anything resembling my targets.


This is assuming you know what they look like and "anything resembling my targets" is a LOT of people.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] I will have a plan to make nobody on earth want to associate with my targets, and nobody on earth want to hit us.


Who said the punks on the street would give you the time of day? You're corp They could shoot you in the head and cops won't really care.
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Koekepan
post Feb 19 2016, 11:53 PM
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QUOTE (Fabe @ Feb 19 2016, 06:52 PM) *
Another thing to consider about going overboard with death and destruction then I don;t think any one has mentioned is the corp who hired the Runners coming after them. A Corp who got hit by a group of runners who make Kane say "Thats going too far" they might decide to to find out who hired them and take vengeance. If they do find out who hired them the hiring corp might decide to try and make restitution to prevent the retaliation or maybe even a corp war and open negotiations by serving up the offending runners heads on a platter as a peace offering


This goes double for ShadowDragon's proposal. Runner kidnapping a corp exec's family on business? Is business. On a personal vendetta? Holy cow, the magnitude of the propaganda would make the peak of the last Bush administration's antiterrorist rhetoric look reserved.

"IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING, CALL 1-800-DOOMDEATHDIE!!! Information leading to the arrest, capture, or termination of these subhuman rapist torture slave trading subhuman monster scum baby pornography blowfly larvae feeding on the living morals of humanity will pay in NYtoomanyzeroes."

"I swear that I will, if necessary, tear apart the whole of Redmond brick by brick if that's what it takes. Every metahuman in there gets inspected, released, or arrested. And the ones who don't leave get BOMBED BACK TO THE FOURTH AGE!!!"

"Last night, when I got home from work I hugged my babies and prayed that beings of pure evil like that never take them from me!"

"Anyone who worked with them. Anyone who knew them and didn't speak up. Anyone who remained silent is an accomplice to their atrocities and will be dealt with to the maximum extent of the law. We will insist on jury trials, because there is no jury that will not look in their eyes and send them down a deep, dark hole with a smile."

... no, seriously, that was a truly terrible idea.
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Koekepan
post Feb 19 2016, 11:59 PM
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QUOTE (KCKitsune @ Feb 19 2016, 08:55 PM) *
What if the 'Runner team was professional? Hacker covers the Matrix tracks. The Gun bunnies use caseless ammo. The Mage uses a sterilize spell to clean up forensic evidence and astral traces.


Then they're obviously ghosts and there isn't much the corp can do except try to improve their setup against the next strike. Moving on...


QUOTE (KCKitsune @ Feb 19 2016, 08:55 PM) *
What if they took a number of things just to cover up the fact they used your place to launch a cyber attack on another corp?


Try to work it out with the other corp and now the team is on both corps's shit lists.

QUOTE (KCKitsune @ Feb 19 2016, 08:55 PM) *
If this was so simple to do, then EVERY corp would be doing this.


Precisely. This is one of my primary contentions. Small corps mightn't have the resources, but any corp clearing a few meganuyen in profit a year can most definitely line up a serious security plan in a world populated with shadowrunners (among other nasty threats) or else face massive problems from shareholders, directors, institutional investors, bankers and others. If every corp is just a soft target waiting to dish out blowjobs and giggle when the shadowrunners blow their wads, then they'll go out of business right quick and be replaced by ones that aren't.
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ShadowDragon8685
post Feb 20 2016, 01:21 AM
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QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 19 2016, 06:53 PM) *
This goes double for ShadowDragon's proposal. Runner kidnapping a corp exec's family on business? Is business. On a personal vendetta? Holy cow, the magnitude of the propaganda would make the peak of the last Bush administration's antiterrorist rhetoric look reserved.

...

... no, seriously, that was a truly terrible idea.


You're the one who started the terrible ideas by going after Runners after the job is over and the damage is done.
You started down this path.

Only a relative handful of people in the world can say that they are truly safe from a team of Runners who decide to go all-in and have nothing left to live for. A pissant executive at SmallMidCorp is not one of those people, and the world of hell they rain down on him will serve as an object lesson to all other pissant executives in why Mitsuhama Computer Technologies gets to make things personal but they do not.

Dealing with Shadowruns is a cost of doing business, and making it personal is unprofitable. That's a setting conceit, and you either need to just accept it, just like your problems with cryptography, or you need to find another damn setting to play in.
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KCKitsune
post Feb 20 2016, 05:01 AM
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QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Feb 19 2016, 08:21 PM) *
Only a relative handful of people in the world can say that they are truly safe from a team of Runners who decide to go all-in and have nothing left to live for. A pissant executive at SmallMidCorp is not one of those people, and the world of hell they rain down on him will serve as an object lesson to all other pissant executives in why Mitsuhama Computer Technologies gets to make things personal but they do not.


ShadowDragon, I think that if the 'Runners have nothing to lose, and they're willing to have an Honor-Guard to the Afterlife (Heaven or Hell, either way), that a good enough 'Runner team could take out ANYBODY. Just like Kennedy said, "If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is to give his life for the President's." So if Mitsuhama Computer Tech wants to make it personal enough that they would have to keep looking over their shoulders because they might see one of these 'Runners there with a knife.
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Koekepan
post Feb 20 2016, 06:54 AM
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QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Feb 20 2016, 03:21 AM) *
Dealing with Shadowruns is a cost of doing business, and making it personal is unprofitable. That's a setting conceit, and you either need to just accept it, just like your problems with cryptography, or you need to find another damn setting to play in.


I'm sorry.

I realise now, I've made a terrible mistake, and I have to apologise to the community for my blindness.

ShadowDragon8685 has pointed out - and I have no response to this - that I must simply accept the setting as it is, without demur, or leave.

I suppose, in this day and age, I should be grateful for the wide variety of settings available to me. Perhaps I can find another that will bring the same challenges, the same hopes, the same vision. Perhaps I can still my protests enough that I will not similarly disrupt and confound that community. After all, to be banished from one might be regarded as the fate of the thoughtless. To be banished from more than one? The fate of the flawed.

In particular, the inherent folly of attempting to bring what vision I have, the unforgivable arrogance of pretending that my approach to a scenario might have value compared with that of the community at large is so clearly counter to the benefit of all that the dissension I sow can only be likened to a weed, hardy but hardly desirable.

And who but ShadowDragon8685 had the clear sight and the open throat, the honour of the honest man, the candour of the just? The community owes ShadowDragon8685 a debt of gratitude; none as great though as mine. Therefore, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for lifting the scales from my eyes and showing me the truth eternal. None could lay claim to have done more, and few, if any, as much.

Thank you.
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Koekepan
post Feb 20 2016, 06:56 AM
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s/dup//g
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Sendaz
post Feb 20 2016, 08:28 AM
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*chuckles*

Nice bit of wordsmithing there Koekepan. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I do envy your eloquence, especially compared to my own meager brute force attempts at words.

In all fairness, BOTH sides have some merit in this.

The corps have to be able to provide a credible threat/ response to Runner activity, otherwise you end up like the Warner Bro. Sheepdog and Coyote battling it out til the End of Day Whistle blows and they go off to have a beer together.
And what business can survive those kind of losses if everything not nailed down is lifted on a regular basis?

The Terrorist group Omega Dawn is sort of a response to the Runner threat, because they are trying to use the same tactics against the runners.
QUOTE (10 terrorists pg 16)
> Don’t be so sure of yourself. Omega Dawn is becoming a new
buzzword in shadowrunner circles. Our activities rely on the
fact the authorities of the world normally have too much to do
with too little funding to make more than a half-hearted effort
to get back at us. These guys, they have the funding, they have
the gear, and they have hatred for us burning in their hearts.

All those security guards you killed on the way in and out of
your latest heist? Their friends remember you. And now, they’re
coming for you.
> Pistons


Meanwhile the Runners have to have a reasonable expectation of being able to get away by losing themselves in the background noise of the world otherwise for every job they do they either pick up a shiny new NQ of Enemy or they go straight to jail, do not pass GO and do not collect $200.
The cost of doing biz and all that, though some will make the extra effort to find your people, but this should be rare.

Edit: Dammit, I just can not make this sound right....

Both views can and do work for different tables, but my own take of SR tends to fall somewhere between the two examples Koekepan and Shadowdragon8685 present.
Because on one hand if you have a setting so heavily Mirrorshade a single mistake effectively becomes a 'game over' for the team.
And now some people love that feeling if a bullet gets fired, they must have done something wrong or enjoy having a master plan beautifully executed.
Which is cool, but damn it can be hard pulling that off because Murphy is a bitch and few battle plans survive contact with the enemy.

Meanwhile the other hand presents us a world where anarchists are actual powers in play, because anyone can kill anybody anytime and literally are waving two fingers at The Man.
And admittedly we as Runners do tend to lean that way sometimes, not necessarily in the killing part, but actually taking matters into our own hands to settle things and effect change or just payback in general.
On one level it's more believable & awesome if CEOs/Dragons/Other can be taken out, but then we come around again to the question, how do these heads of corps/nations/etc keep going when the game can just become SniperRun, and why hasn't it already happened?
Or for that matter how does any big business operate while being constantly ransacked by Runners and other corps?

Sort of like my same argument about asking how the F Clockwork is still around, especially after some of the stuff in Dark Resonance.
Answer being, he is part of the setting and you don't get to blow his head off because reasons.
But that's for another thread.


So what is the final answer? There isn't one that can fit every table or satisfy every player, though one will use a bit of both worlds to spice up their game.
Because here in DS and other forums we have the opportunity to share with one another ideas and concepts, bouncing them off one another.
This lets us tweak and fine tune our games and settings.
And yeah we will butt heads from time to time, even scream a bit at each other, but ultimately we should come away from this with more than what we came in with.
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Koekepan
post Feb 20 2016, 05:31 PM
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QUOTE (Sendaz @ Feb 20 2016, 10:28 AM) *
*chuckles*

Nice bit of wordsmithing there Koekepan. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I do envy your eloquence, especially compared to my own meager brute force attempts at words.


You flatter this old farm boy.

QUOTE (Sendaz @ Feb 20 2016, 10:28 AM) *
In all fairness, BOTH sides have some merit in this.

The corps have to be able to provide a credible threat/ response to Runner activity, otherwise you end up like the Warner Bro. Sheepdog and Coyote battling it out til the End of Day Whistle blows and they go off to have a beer together.
And what business can survive those kind of losses if everything not nailed down is lifted on a regular basis?

The Terrorist group Omega Dawn is sort of a response to the Runner threat, because they are trying to use the same tactics against the runners.


Meanwhile the Runners have to have a reasonable expectation of being able to get away by losing themselves in the background noise of the world otherwise for every job they do they either pick up a shiny new NQ of Enemy or they go straight to jail, do not pass GO and do not collect $200.
The cost of doing biz and all that, though some will make the extra effort to find your people, but this should be rare.


Actually, I completely agree with you. Somehow my position was understood to be a lot more extreme than it is; presumably by way of contrast with the previous statements. After all, just because a corporation would like to embarass, inconvenience, and generally dissuade runners doesn't mean it will succeed. On the other hand, there's no reason to believe that a security executive with a fatter budget than runners could dream of having would always end up coming second either - all the more so if the runners are sloppy. As I said in my response to KCKitsune, if the runners are that unidentifiable, then the corp can simply try to shore up their defences and hope there isn't a next time.

A corollary is that small companies are always more vulnerable (because of a disproportionately smaller security budget) but as a general rule less attractive (because they have less that isn't nailed down). Part of the risk profile of any targeted group is what sort of backing they have, which leads to an understanding of whether this tiny company is really a front for an Ares/Renraku research joint venture, and while it might be pathetic by itself, some very important people will be very upset if they come to learn that you had a hand in its downfall. Conversely a successful run on the janitorial division of quite a large company is likely to result in a few sighs and mumbles.

My table leans heavily to the black trenchcoat and mirrorshades view. Noir, where second chances usually are trojan horses. On the other hand, it doesn't make every run a suicide run. It means that they are professionals who intend to live another day, and act according.
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Renard
post Feb 20 2016, 08:39 PM
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As was already pointed out, the situation depends o a lot on the table you're playing at. In my little personal world, the Cons avoid going after the Shadowrunners unless they geeked half of the CorpSecs and made their way through the facility by nuking through every wall. A bit excessive for an example, but I think you get the gist. Of course they do improve security and they do collect and store evidence just in case they come across those guys again and get into a position where they can make those dregs an offer they cant refuse.

Of course nixing a high-profile team that has developed a reputation as competent is always a good boost to a corp's 'Dont fuck with us' rep, but all in all, Runners are basically a dime a dozen. 90 % of the time ,killing and hunting them is like swatting the wasps in your living room. Why bother with the little buggers if you can just get the nest on your veranda removed ? Runners are a symptom. The corporate Johnsons are what you are after, as they are among the easiest key to who hit you and why (although if there is little cover-up, the hit itself may be a reasonable hint to that too).
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Koekepan
post Feb 22 2016, 04:32 AM
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QUOTE (Renard @ Feb 20 2016, 10:39 PM) *
As was already pointed out, the situation depends o a lot on the table you're playing at. In my little personal world, the Cons avoid going after the Shadowrunners unless they geeked half of the CorpSecs and made their way through the facility by nuking through every wall. A bit excessive for an example, but I think you get the gist. Of course they do improve security and they do collect and store evidence just in case they come across those guys again and get into a position where they can make those dregs an offer they cant refuse.


Certainly a good point, and this is something I sort of addressed elsewhere, where I spoke about runner havens, how they might come about and what their nature is - and most importantly, how they persist.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=41391

In essence, the runners can run and keep their heads down, as long as there are havens they can reach - and while this does not make them untouchable it does improve their prospects a lot.
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