Profesionalism, ...or lack thereof... Options

[Shrapnel]

[Kagetenshi]

Maybe not "high performance", but two days' hard walk in an hour? That's certainly high speed.

That being said, if we leave it up to the designers every magazine will be high capacity. Sounds better on the marketing literature, y'know?

~J

[Ed Simons]

[Kagetenshi]

[tisoz]

[mmu1]

[Angelone]

That's what misdirection for. You decide to off a J. You make it look like you were hired for a hit, even though you just didn't like the fact that he wore white after labor day and popped him.

EDIT- Was replying to tisoz but got lag from hell and Didn't see Mmu 1's post.

[Jrayjoker]

As has been said, offing employers is a gamble. If you kill off too many, then there is no income source. If you kill off too few, they get uppity.

In my games, offing the one-time Johnson for a perceived betrayal would probably go over very poorly unless there were extenuating circumstances. Offing a long-term Johnson would carry a much higher risk. Your fixer is going to take a hit of you interrupt one of his main income sources, and you aren't going to work for a while.

In short, it better be worth it.

[Kagetenshi]

To put it another way—it's probably a good idea to ask if the guy's one of the Fixer's regular contacts. If no, he's fair game. If yes, the bar gets set a bit higher.

~J

[Talia Invierno]

[Kagetenshi]

Again, not if the run is set up properly. The entire point is to prevent organizations with incredibly vast resources from being able to track back the actions.

~J

[Clyde]

Or to make it not cost effective to track those actions. . . Actuaries can do wonders these days

[hyzmarca]

[imperialus]

Personally I see Johnson’s as a sort of fixer for the corps. Sure you are going to get the occasional one who is just some ticked off hubby who wants his cheating wife dead or a middle manager who knows the only way up the ladder is if the rung above him becomes vacant but if you ask me when it is an actual corp job then the corps are going to employ a Johnson from a list of trusted agents who have knowledge of the shadow community and a rep developed within that community. The corps also know that Shadowrunners like it or not fill a valuable roll within their culture and will pay and treat them as such. The first few runs are likely to be the ones you are most likely to get screwed over on since the characters don't have much of a rep and thus the team’s fixer is more likely to set them up with the Johnson’s who don't have a rep.

Everyone has to start at the bottom somewhere and lets face it beginning runners might have to deal with a Johnson who's knowledge of the shadow community comes from watching Dateline which of course is going to focus on the worst aspects of runner culture including the teams that screw the pooch and end up with half of Seattles Lone Star FRT's responding. The best runs never make the news. The runner’s world is a vicious one and only the strongest, smartest and fastest survive. I expect most fixers have rolodexes filled with the obituaries of dead runners they hooked up but I'd also expect that 99% of those dead runners were on their first or second run.

Once a team has pulled a few simpler runs without royal fuckups it is easier for a Fixer to justify hooking them up with a Johnson that he knows and knows well. A runner team, praticularly an inexperianced one is a great deal easier to replace than a well-connected Johnson and the fixer knows this, thus he saves his best contracts for the best teams in his stable.

A fixers rep might take a bit of a hit for getting a team fresh off the streets killed but imagine how much bigger a hit his rep would take if he hooked them up with one of Renraku's favorite Johnson only to have them bring an Ares Alpha and Light Combat Armour to a meet in a nice restaurant and gun down the bus boy along with a half dozen patrons when they try and take it away from him.

It would be even worse if in order to give the new team the job with the aforementioned Johnson he gave one of his best teams a job with the ticked off hubby who then gets cold feet and calls the Star on them at the last minute.

On the flip side if he hooks up the new team with a questionable Johnson and they go gun crazy and kill him or completely bugger the run it's not such a big deal either. The Johnson had no real rep with the shadow community and the Fixer can just refuse to deal with the team again while posting a warning on Shadowland that they are not to be trusted. If he’s feeling particularly nasty he might keep them on file just in case he gets a call from a Johnson looking for some fodder to serve as a diversion for a real run. The fixer really doesn't need to worry too much about the new team coming after him since quite often fixers are retired runners and probably has more tricks up his sleve than an hooker. Besides any fixer that gives out his home address or phone number to a new runner is just as stupid as a runner giving out his LTG.

At the same time since he gave a prime run to a good team that he trusts he can probably count on it being carried out quietly and professionally, which will improve his rep.

[fistandantilus4....]

I think what Talia is saying is that there's little point in going after the runners in most cases for a run, becuase they don't have any info on who the Johnson is, so there's no point in moving against them. If it's likely that they do on the other hand, hell yes the corps going to go after them to get what they took back (or whatever ). Where in the case of Runners cacking Mr. Johnson, they do know who is wholly responsible, and can therefore take action, just like they would if there was reason to believe the runners employer could be traced through them in the case of a normal run.

[tisoz]

That is what I was getting at, too.

I fail to see how Ares could not figure out that Renraku stole their prototype or extracted scientist X, when Renraku releases the product based on the prototype or scientist X's work (or scientist X gains acclaim for Renraku for making some breakthrough.)

I am pretty sure I recall reading how the corporate court could require Renraku to compensate Ares in some way to avoid corporate hostility over incidents like this. Usually the corps were said to offer compensation on their own to avoid a corporate court decision.

Whatever, it seems mmu1, and some others, envision their universe operating on different principles than I. When I join a group or game, I try to ferret out these assumptions. It is why peoples ideas of professionalism in this thread are varying a bit.

[Shadow]

When SR first came out they pretty much said the Shadowrunners were not held responsible for the actions of other corps. If Ares hired a group to hit Renraku, Renraku didnt get revenge on the runners but Ares.

It had to do with knowing, but not proving.

You can know that Ares is behind it, but you can't prove it. Now if Ares used in house Spec Ops to do it, and one got captured there would be a line back to Ares. But if they use shadowrunners the line stops with them.

They even said that Corps wouldn't take out a sr team because they had the philosophy of using that team against another corp.

Now that was a while ago and we have all grown up a but. This idea in the real world seems a little naive. The corp with the same power as a govt. would take out the runner, her family, and hell, her dog too. But in the universe of Shadowrun, they don't do that. It is like watching a movie. you have to suspend your disbelief.

[hyzmarca]

Corps usually know who went after them but usualy can't provide any substantial supporting evidence. Evidence matters. The Corporate Court won't make a judgement based on insubstantial allegations.

Public retribution without CC sanction would probably result in that corp becoming the Sixth World's Iraq. Not even a AAA can stand for long when all 9 other AAAs are legaly obliged to wage war agaisnt it.

The point of using shadowruners isn't anonymity; the point is deniability.