In the Shadowrun games I've played, corporations generally don't target hired runners for retalitation, unless those runners specifically run against certain corps repeatedly/cause massive property damage/ FUBAR a run in a spectacular way. The general idea of it is, why kill the guy who successfully ran against you when you can just hire him to do the same thing to the other guy?
What's your policy on corporate revenge tactics? Just what does it take to get the corp pissed enough to try to take you out?
Full Version: Runs and Corporate Reprisals
For pure revenge?
Not worth the effort unless the runners have seriously torqued off someone with the pull to authorize such retaliation which is then a personal matter using company resources.
The runners would have to make a serious effort to raise the repeated ire of a fundamentally indifferent entity to the point it makes a good business decision to authorize resources to eliminate a threat. Or that's one hell of a vindictive company if they make a point to retaliate tit for tat.
If the runners have something the corp wants, then its not revenge.
-Siege
Not worth the effort unless the runners have seriously torqued off someone with the pull to authorize such retaliation which is then a personal matter using company resources.
The runners would have to make a serious effort to raise the repeated ire of a fundamentally indifferent entity to the point it makes a good business decision to authorize resources to eliminate a threat. Or that's one hell of a vindictive company if they make a point to retaliate tit for tat.
If the runners have something the corp wants, then its not revenge.
-Siege
If the corp can ID the 'runner/team? Umm, well i'm not sure i'd want a 'runner working for me that left enough evidence for me to trail back. 
Ok, i'd consider it if that's their best way for paying me back for the losses they inflicted on me. 
Of course attitudes are going to vary from corp to corp. You get caught hitting Mitsu, S-K, or the Azzies? Even if you make it off-site before they ID you i believe the "zero" zone still applies. It's part of their policy, that they are not people to be triffled with. Other responses will vary depending on the personal nature of the damage to the person making the decision. The 'runner kidnapps an highlevel exec's family member to leverage the exec to act against their employer? The 'runner just screwed with the exec's own livelihood and family. Odds are the exec will see at least one of those things as important enough to them to extract their pound of flesh (any consequential loss of blood be damned).
Ok, i'd consider it if that's their best way for paying me back for the losses they inflicted on me. Of course attitudes are going to vary from corp to corp. You get caught hitting Mitsu, S-K, or the Azzies? Even if you make it off-site before they ID you i believe the "zero" zone still applies. It's part of their policy, that they are not people to be triffled with. Other responses will vary depending on the personal nature of the damage to the person making the decision. The 'runner kidnapps an highlevel exec's family member to leverage the exec to act against their employer? The 'runner just screwed with the exec's own livelihood and family. Odds are the exec will see at least one of those things as important enough to them to extract their pound of flesh (any consequential loss of blood be damned).
| QUOTE (Eggs) |
| The general idea of it is, why kill the guy who successfully ran against you when you can just hire him to do the same thing to the other guy? |
To discourage others of his kind from running against you in the future.
I dunno, if I wanted to discourage future runs, runners aren't the people I'd put hits out on. Runners are a dime a dozen. But if every Johnson that hires someone to work against you gets decomissioned in freak accidents, that's true discouragement.
Long story short, who cares if runners die? The runners.
Who cares if Johnsons die? Corporations.
Long story short, who cares if runners die? The runners.
Who cares if Johnsons die? Corporations.
That's difficult, if not impossible, to find out.
A professional Johnson will rotate identities more often than he changes his underwear.
And by engaging a rival corp through anything other than proxy is asking for similar, if not escalated, response in violence.
That, boys and girls, is a corp war.
-Siege
A professional Johnson will rotate identities more often than he changes his underwear.
And by engaging a rival corp through anything other than proxy is asking for similar, if not escalated, response in violence.
That, boys and girls, is a corp war.
-Siege
| QUOTE (Eggs @ Nov 14 2005, 09:22 PM) |
| I dunno, if I wanted to discourage future runs, runners aren't the people I'd put hits out on. Runners are a dime a dozen. But if every Johnson that hires someone to work against you gets decomissioned in freak accidents, that's true discouragement. Long story short, who cares if runners die? The runners. Who cares if Johnsons die? Corporations. |
Now the runner is leaving a trail back to not only themselves but even to Mr. J? WTF are these jokers?
If the target of a run, be it it corp, criminal, policlub, or shoeshine-boy, can grease Mr. J and quietly let it be known that the 'runners are the ones that left the big slimy trail back, or better "leak" a little white lie that the 'runners sold out Mr. J, i'd put that squarely in the revenge achived catagory.
::shrug:: I wasn't even saying that any of this was because of a "trail." If runners leave enough evidence lying around to get found out, they deserve to be ganked, and the Johnson that hired those screw-ups probably do, too.
My question was more about the policies of megacorps in individual gaming groups -- how much work will a corp put into finding out 'who dun it?' in your campaign? For example, say you successfully extract some corp R&D genius. Now, no matter how well you do a run, there'll always be some evidence lying about.
I guess I was just trying to look for the things that would cause corporate aggression in different people's games.
My question was more about the policies of megacorps in individual gaming groups -- how much work will a corp put into finding out 'who dun it?' in your campaign? For example, say you successfully extract some corp R&D genius. Now, no matter how well you do a run, there'll always be some evidence lying about.
I guess I was just trying to look for the things that would cause corporate aggression in different people's games.
Generally speaking, in the games I play in, the corps will keep files on the runners that hit them and will generally just leave it to law enforcement (Lone Star, etc) to deal with them, as Lone Star, etc are already being paid to deal with this kind of thing.
It's a waste of resources to pay your standard police force to look after these guys AND commission special teams to go after particular runners. Generally speaking, the corps are more concerned with retaliating for high profile runs than anything else -- they do NOT like to have someone advertise that they're easy marks. They're more likely to move on the 'runners directly if the runners made them look bad than anything else.
Outside of that, we generally expect that corps consider shadowrunners in the sixth world to be a "cost of doing business." They plan for these things and consider them to be overhead, just like some businesses consider bribes to the local organized crime syndicate for "protection" to be a cost of doing business.
It's a waste of resources to pay your standard police force to look after these guys AND commission special teams to go after particular runners. Generally speaking, the corps are more concerned with retaliating for high profile runs than anything else -- they do NOT like to have someone advertise that they're easy marks. They're more likely to move on the 'runners directly if the runners made them look bad than anything else.
Outside of that, we generally expect that corps consider shadowrunners in the sixth world to be a "cost of doing business." They plan for these things and consider them to be overhead, just like some businesses consider bribes to the local organized crime syndicate for "protection" to be a cost of doing business.
| QUOTE (Eggs @ Nov 14 2005, 10:00 PM) |
| My question was more about the policies of megacorps in individual gaming groups -- how much work will a corp put into finding out 'who dun it?' in your campaign? For example, say you successfully extract some corp R&D genius. Now, no matter how well you do a run, there'll always be some evidence lying about. I guess I was just trying to look for the things that would cause corporate aggression in different people's games. |
Ah. Well that often comes down to GM call on how sloppy you were.
Clean run with minimal collateral damage? Afterall sure whatever you took is valuable, but if you also killed a handful of employees ("severance" pay to families), started a fire (lost production), and the fire countermeasures lead to water damage (facility repairs, equipment lost) that could very quickly drive up the pissed off factor. It could also lead them to suspect it was amatuer hour, which greatly increases the odds of a successful investigation.
On the flipside did the team reduce tracable evidence?
- polluted any possible DNA evidence using Clean, bleach, fire (preferably without a lot of collateral damage)
- eliminated video/audio evidence
- lowered BC from spells/spirits
- kept it quiet, or at least out of the public eye (this really goes back to cost, as it costs the corp stature and without reprisal could send off an "open season" message)
If the GM can answer "yes" to both of those questions, then only true dick GM would have a corp create a serious investigation unless it was a HUGE run. Like a retirement haul type of payday. Anything less than a full YES on both questions puts you on a sliding scale, which also starts involving things like "do i think they PCs have too much cash or are getting bored". Then you start doing basic eyeball checks, roughly like you were running a team. But unless it was a very public embarasment to the corp they wouldn't drop anywhere close to total damages into an investigation.
EDIT: Oh, and repeated runs against the same corp without a lot of effort put into changing your signiture starts building a file that'll remove one or both of the YESes. Multiple losses to a single source can be viewed in the cumulative, and the building a file can reveal clues that wouldn't normally be apparent.
P.S. Once again, if you somehow made it personal to someone at the corp that counts you should not be surpised to find that execs personal wealth come at you as well as corp resources relative to his level of motivation. For example if he thinks it's his life on the line (failed assasination) he might divert levels of resources that risk costing him his job to try track down the assasin and eventually the person that put out the hit.
Gratsi. That's the kinda stuff I was looking for 
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