Okay, so here's the deal. I just got done reading YotC, and this occured to me.

Assume the total drek is coming down. Everyone's gearing up to go at the throats of everyone, chaos in the streets. Danger, excitement, misery, bullets flying and spells frying.

Who do you side with? What 'power' if you will, do you choose to align yourself with?

Stop for a moment. This is a 'moral' excercize. Assume all offers are equally lucrative; to Joe Great Dragon (if there is such a thing,) and Mr. Megacorp, you are a small fry, and not worth all that much, whereas to Humanis Policlub or something of their size, you're big-time, and they pay you what you're worth. (Which is, incidentally, small-fry pay to Mr. Megacorp or Joe Great Dragon.) All offers have an equal chance of surviving the mess; The UCAS is going to tango with people it can tango with, Great Dragons will dance with megacorps and other great dragons, Humanis Policlub and people of their size will be dancing with mafia and other similarly sized and strengthed organizations. You have as much chance of survival siding with any contender in their 'weight class,' and you don't have to worry about inter-weight-class competition.

Who do you side with? Use any and all metagame knowledge at your disposal. Who will let you sleep best at night (or in some cases, sleep 'least poorly' at night,) if you choose to side with them? Not taking a side is not an option, because if you don't pick a side while you can, you're either going to get caught in the crossfire, or pressed into service. And yes, all sides are equally willing to take you on; Ghostwalker is as interested in having you onboard his operation as Stuffer Shack is. (And no, nobody will be deciding to 'extract' you to work for them if you choose 'wrong.')

So character dependant, but typically whoever my closest, most reliable contact is will be the one i'll want to go with. Of course it's a team decision....unless i'm going to dump them for a nice shiny car and 30 pieces of silver. Oooo shiiiiny!

1) The UCAS, because unlike a corporation, at least a government has to answer to its citizens at some point.

2) The DIMR, 'cause they do really interesting work and have some basic ethical framework governing their actions.

Well, since you took out my usual choice of determination, best healthcare (read: run least likely to end me in a pine box or damp ditch), go with the weakest group. Then at least if you find you've backed the wrong party, you can get out without the customary fitting for plasticrete footwear or the 3am call from a fire elemental on remote service.

Heh. The pic that me and one of my friends (independantly) came up with was the Draco Foundation. We pretty much pegged Big D as being the closest thing to a real good guy the 6th world has to offer, and since you can't pledge alliegence to someone who's dead (kind of hard to get orders and paychecks, doncha know,) the Draco Foundation is the next best thing.

Humanis, 'cause I hates me some metahuman scum.

~J

At least you're sticking to your principles.

Of course, so will I be when I put out a hit on you for it...

I would choose either the Anarchists, A pro-meta group (Think Ghoul Liberation or MOM) or an Anti-corp group, I've always had a soft spot for the Underdogs.

plus the anarchists drawing from LA were really damn impressive, they have my first vote over the pro-metas for that.

Well, my street samurai Katklaw would go and hunt down the gang he's got grudge against, then he'd probably go offer physical security to the Seattle Shadowland node, if they'd take him.

If I'm feeling like a "bad" guy, the Ordo Maximus. Now that's some good magical-vampirism.
If on the other hand I'm feeling like a "not-bad" guy, then the Draco Foundation.

Myself. My characters are Shadowrunners, not company men. "Affiliation" is just another word for "sellout."

My last character... I would have sided also with something similar to the Humanis. Well, more like to the organizations that were trying to rejoin the UCAS and CAS back into one country (See Threats 2). Gawd, I loved that one particular group.

First, if it's just turning '61, go buy me some stock in Wuxing and Debeers-Omnitech. Gonna git me some div-i-dends. yup yup

Follow that up w/ some stock buys of Transy and/or Erika. That's gonna pay off in the future.

Then use the excess proceeds to run guns down to the Yucatan, and hunt me up some blood mages in all the chaos. Good times, good times.

UB, it's always been and always will. They're my family

Align?

I pit them all against each other and walk away from the burning embers.

Kind of like what's happening to my main NPC who, post-Crash ('64), is in the middle of a turf war involving actors from multiple New Revolution factions, a couple of new regimes, one that survived, a government-in-exile, some megacorp execs, a runner who wants to rescue her and a couple who want to kill her (She was a Ms. J). You don't survive that by picking sides.

This idea that not picking sides is not an option is ludicrous. Shadowrunners' very existence is not to pick sides. The ones who do are called Company Men.

Exactly. Shadowrunners don't "align" when the big boys go to out and out war. They lay low, and wait to pick up the pieces. Before a big clash, Shadowrunners do the dirty work and the low-key, secretive ops. During the smackdown, a corporation/nation's own forces handle the tanks and air support and blood in the streets. Maybe after, during mop-up, Shadowrunners get called in again (for some post cease-fire "accidents" and hunting people down, dealing with that sort of thing).

I don't see professional criminals getting directly involved in the war itself, though. They sit tight and wait for that shit to settle down, nine times out of ten (in a standard campaign) -- they don't "pick a side."

Alachia is a BIOTCH!

My Earthdawn character, an extremely charismatic (near charisma 30 when using thread-items) Blood Elve Nethermancer seduced her once. At least that's the way he saw it.

If you've read 'The Longing Ring' , she seduces J'role for information. He's like a 17 year old human kid at the time. You might want to have your character visit a questor of Garlen to make sure he didn't catch anything from her.

Most circle 13 Nethermancers do not need questors of Garlen to do a simple health check, don't you think?

Questor could fix it.. nethermancer would just cut it off and replace it.


blood elf procreation must be messy.....

Ghoul Liberation Front. Their message is simple and easy to get behind:

1. Stop killing people because they are different from you.
2. Stop eating people who aren't dead yet.

I support that platform 100%, and I'm willing to kill and eat people for it.

-Frank

No.

~J

maybe

Sort of

Depending on the character ether dig a hole for himself (literally in one case) or sign up to protect somebody to small to be a real target, say a small time producer of simsence documentaries with to small a market to interest the big boys. Relatively safe but I get enough income to eat regularly and don’t think I wouldn’t switch to another such organization if the one I started with got noticed.

Edward

Damnit Ed you ruined it!

"You threw of my groove!"

There is only one force worthy of my loyalty in the Shadowrun Universe...

The Drop Bear Army!!!! Any group that controls the fraggles has my loyalty.

Threadjacking olé!

Oh, good grief. You guys are like a fuckin' plague.

Drop the drop bears already!

This is why I can't wait for the program which allows you to stab people in the face over the Internet.

C'mon folks, stay on topic... stay on topic...

It really depends on what your character is looking for. Some might want to align with a dragon or large corp in hopes of getting them as a patron. Or a get into the whole political/ideological stuff (such as my last character), other things would be the ethnicity/tribal/gang loyalty depending on the character background. Maybe we should also see what a roleplayer, real man, loonie, and a munchkin would do.

Right now siding with Pax is looking better and better all the time. You get to stab people in the face over the internet.

-Frank

Sorry. I see "fraggle" & I can't help myself.

On topic (surprise!), I'd probably jump on the DIMR bandwagon...not because I think they're more worthy or trustworthy or anything like that. I just think they've got a lot of interesting info hidden away somewhere & if I side with them, they're more likely to let me see some of it....