Hello, I'm new here (really new, I just found your forum) and I'm new to the Shadowrun system... and setting... Ok, I'm really new.

Now that that's out of the way, here is my question: My players refuse to work in the shadows! Just last mission, they were tasked with getting something from a truck that was delivering its cargo to a depot where it would be loaded onto a bullet train. They had no idea what the cargo was, though I don't think that played much of a part in their plan.

Their first idea was to blow the train off the tracks... Thank goodness they didn't go through with that, though perhaps that would have been more subtle than what they ended up doing.

The truck was being escorted by two KE police cars (very low security considering the cargo, but the idea was to keep a low profile and reinforcements were on standby). The party took a hummer, armored it up, mounted a light machine gun (Ingram White Knight equivalent) on it (it fipped up so it wasn't obvious) and loaded it up with explosive rounds and attacked it. The funny thing was, the LMG was used to just blow out the tires. The party technomancer hacked the two patrol cars running one of them into oncomming traffic and putting the other in reverse so it crashed into one of the cars that had just returned to the road after the chase had passed them. The mage killed the guard in the passanger seat with a mana-bolt for no reason.

Well, they managed to stop the truck and got the cargo. Through some good driving, they managed to escape the vehicle with all the KE police in the area chasing after them, and the driver managed to get the car away by driving it into the Rox (crime hotspot of Boston) where they didn't pursue because things had been quiet and they didn't want to be lead into an ambush.

At least they got away without anyone knowing who they were... Only problem was they got too greedy. Two people were offering them the same job, each from a different fixer. They gave the package to their first Johnson because he offered more, then sold him out to the other Johnson. The other Johnson was sent by the corp that they were stealing from once they caught word that information about the shipment was out there, and they had hoped to cover their hind-quarters by hiring their own Runners to get the package for them. It was deemed cheaper to hire them to steal the package (which they could cover the cost of with the security breach compensation that the KE offered) than to hire them to escort, which could lead to problems of its own (like them stealing the package for themselves anyways).

So here is the situation, by the next day the Johnson they gave the package to has been arrested and, of course, after being betrayed rats the runners and the fixer that set him up with them out.

KE was massivly embarrased by this incident, as a vehicle with military grade weaponary (that only shot out the tires, but the media loves leaving that out) just attacked and escaped into the Rox; Lonestar is capitolizing on this by publishing adds that are along the lines of "Lonestar wouldn't let this happen to you" and promising to clean up the Rox (though of course this is just propoganda, Lonestar is no where near equiped to handle such an invasion). It is unlikely that Lonestar could wrest the contract from Boston due to intanglements the government has with KE, but the possibility still exist, and it could prove costly to KE if it happens. They have a huge inscentive to regain popular support by bringing these guys in.

Ok, I'm really sorry for the LONG post, but the reason why I put it all out there was because this happens all the time with my players, not just in this system. They never seem to 'care' about the reprecussions of their actions, which tends to get them into a LOT of trouble since they love to abuse their power. To me it seems obvious that ratting out the guy who gave you work is just bad business, am I wrong? Attacking KE with military grade weaponary, hacking their patrol cars to kill innocent bystanders, and (to add insult to injury) they have magic too that they didn't even use other than to kill some guy who wasn't even a threat to them seems like it would draw a HUGE responce from KE, or would they really not care as much (would the public care that this happened?) It's getting to the point where I feel like I need to give them 'Deliver this teddy bear to a little girl" missions just so they don't go psycho and get themselves arrested or killed, but I also want to make sure that I'm not blowing things out of proportions.

I want to run a game that is more complex than just a simple 'gun them all down' game, and honestly so do my players, but they just don't think at all about their actions. Any ideas how I can get this through to them? I feel like saying something like "stay in the shadows" wont be enough, since I already prefaced this setting with that. The mage is already talking about commiting small-scale genocide of Force 1 spirits to fuel his spells (I have no idea why he wants to spend all that on that), I guess he doesn't think that the spirits will ever care about it or retaliate in some way in the future.

My plan is to have them set up by there fixer to go on a run to a wearhouse where a S.W.A.T. team is on standby to capture them using non-leathal force (unless absolutly nessisary, though they shouldn't need to since they are using gel ammunition). Once captured a 'mysterious benifactor' will help them bail out under the condition that they get the Johnson out too. Not sure where I will go exactly after that, but I'm hoping that this will send the message. I'm also not sure what to do if they manage to escape the capture.

Meh, ok, I'm done. What do you guys think? Am I wrong about this whole situation? I can't help but feel like I'm being a 'bad guy' here by throwing the consequences at them when they are just having fun. Sorry for the rediculously long posting, I'm just a bit overwhelmed.

This comes up a lot. THe simple answer is, warn them once of the potential consequences. If they don't listenl , give htem the consequences. Maybe the new characters they ahve to write up will be smarter. You know the old saying "those that live by the sword, die by the sword." Havethem go down in a massive gun battle with the cops . I had one group that normally plays pretty well, but they jsut went off once on the STAR. By the next session, two guys were disabled and at a street doc's after taking deadly wounds, one was identified by the cops and going in to hiding, one was never seen again because his ally spirit dragged his dying form away form the fire fight, and one was captured, tried, and given the electric chair. THere are only two characters left. Last time we saw them, thye were wounded, unarmed, and vehicle-less somewhere in Snohomish, with the STAR looking for them.

The next team they made did much better. It's harsh, but , hell, that's Shadowrun.
If we wanted it to be easy we'd play D20.

It's been a comment I've heard about our team's action: we routinely opens indiscriminate autofire in downtown areas in order to cover their escape, and we'll kidnap fifty year old men to get their daughters to play nice with us. The GM wants us to be a more honorable team of heroes, and we're just a gang of cutthroats who'll kill everyone who gets in our way.

Personally, I think one key is to improve players' understanding of the things that they care about. Players tend to be indiscriminate with things like their lifestyles and all the other accoutrements of their lives so long as they keep their guns and car through the drek you throw at them. Spending games detailing their lives might sound boring to some (although if they're serious about "role playing" over combat, they're probably for basic interaction with people) but it also has the benefit of highlighting the stuff we don't want to lose: friends, family, dreams. Everyone shadowruns for the money, but what is that money *for*? And if the character doesn't have any motivations beyond the job, then ask the player to reimagine, or help them discover something.

Admittedly, sometimes it's hard for a group of dudes to run things like romance between character and NPC, but there are other things we can care about. Encourage players to develop their homes more: it really hurts when your kick-ass home in an abandoned movie theatre gets firebombed by the mob as a message about your organlegging syndicate.

When the PCs and the players, are faced with situations where the consequences of their actions end up effecting people they care about, it's sometimes a really hard lesson that they learn from it.

As to the deus ex machina, screwing with the players by hitting them with an ambush because of what they've done is occassionally okay, but rely on it to work perfect, and you'll just end up having to re-examine the miscommunication between you and the group again when it goes wrong.

On the other hand, one could think about how to resolve this situation without ruining their fun, like Fisty said.

Though ratting out a Johnson is something you Do Not DO, and all, and certainly a hijacking on the road was a bit loony.. If you just have sinpers take them out (likely what would happen) the players will rightly feel angry.

"Roll a damage resistance test Vs. 14D."
"Fourteen D?!!?"
"Fourteen D. And your armor dosen't apply."
"... I'm dead."
"Exactly. The rest of you hear and see nothing until the huge armor-piercing round turns your chummer's head into beef stroganof. And, uhh... Roll your own resistance tests, same type of round."

... Yeah. Real fun, that.

Well, fixers are supposed to find jobs that are suited to the team, right? Why not send them on runs where they're told to do something flashy, but are actually meant to fail: the team is only sent to distract security so that another team can take advantage of the chaos, or a corp just wants to test the mettle of their elite security squad. Also, don't be afraid to have them suffer the consequences of their actions.

Oh, and make them read the C.L.U.E Files.

How old are you guys? highschool? If so i think it's great that you, as the GM, want a little more than massive firefights from your players. Our GM at that age was more than happy to let us lay waste to anything that moved and in return try to lay waste to us. College or beyond? Well I wouldn't know what to say to you without sounding like some pompous RPer who's all about the meta-game and street level Blah Blah Blah. I've matured as a player but I'm not a "meta-gamer", so...

If you're not cool with their attitude, maybe find new players? They don't sound like they're ready to "take the game seriously". Or you can suggest they read Blackjack's articles, that change my views on RPing not just Shadowrun but any game.

The real consequences won't be from KE - they'll just pick up a couple of stooges, unless a PC wanders into their "we've got a rocket launcher going cheap" sting.

What'll happen is that their contacts will dry up for a couple of months. Nobody returns their calls. If they ask a fixer for work, he'll say, "And when the insurance agents show up offering 10%, will you be giving me up? You want work? Keep your fucking head down for a month, and we'll talk. So ka?" They'll start to need cash and probably turn to theft. But then they need a fence, and anyone willing to deal with them (gangs and outsiders) will pay crap. A couple months paying lifestyle with theft will make them long for a good job.

Then you give them a babysitting job. But you'll have to let them pull out the guns to even it out, they play along and you give them some fodder. Have them sitting on a wageslave when the home corp shows up en masse. Missiles, APCs, long range snipers from a stealth helicopter. Make it a fight worth a LMG, armored humvee and a chase through the Rox.

Keep giving them jobs where they have to protect the asset and show what happens when the enemy uses brains and stealth over firepower and flash.

The problem is unless the GM is using the "Me GM, this my game, wat me sez goes" there is no game mechanic to punish the PCs if they go firing off their heavy artillery. And the thing to remember about people who sell heavy stuff is that oftimes they are undesirable themselves. "Don't be naive, Bob. What did you think I bought those LAWs for? Now, do we talk biz?" At best(or worst depending on your POV), I'd add a +6(outcome: disasterous to NPC) mod to the Etiquette TN and that is no big hurdle for a tricked out Social Adept.

Who is going to know that the PCs are the ones that blew X up or that they kill so-and-so? You as the GM knows, but do all the NPCs know as a result? Ask yourself this. Know this: If you close off their contacts, you'd force them to go into business for themselves just like low pay will inevitably do something more profitable with their time. Do you want to play Shadowrun? Or Sim Runners?

Firebombing safehouses as a warning might seem to be a good idea until you realise your PCs all have street lifestyle. Firebomb the dumpster? Ratting out a Johnson is a bad idea unless you can pull it off. If your PCs are good enough to convince other people that it wasn't them that ratted on the Johnson or somehow or another convince people that it was the Johnson that got sloppy, then it wouldn't reflect badly on them.

Remember it might seem that it is a bad idea to do X. But this is a game with game mechanics, with enough dice rolled, you can achieve enough successes for X to be a good idea. So what I am saying is that if the group is good enough, nothing (not even front page massacres) is a bad thing. I had a group shoot their way into a zero-zone, walk out through a SWAT army AND convince their contacts that "those guys" weren't them. It is ALL about the dice, TNs and no. of successes.

Shadowy examples help groups be more "shadowrunny" (which just sounds awful, BTW).

Good examples would be:
M:I 1
-Use of disguise to enter a building
-Use of planning to make a 'plan' (betchya they don't use those either)
-Use of classic building infiltration plot device: Air Ducts

The Italian Job
-PLAN! PLAN! PLAN!
-Use of misdirection (really good one for SR)
-Their are myriad SR-like things that go into their planned heists, too many to list really. It's not a very good movie as movies go, but it is on basic cable and worth your time if you don't mind commercials

Metal Gear Solid
-While terribly cheesy at part, MGS has used every plot device available in the stealth-espionage genre to help players get, get out, and get it on. If at least one person in your group isn't a raving insane MGS fan then maybe you guys should play D&D

Speaking of D&D, you really have to tain people out of using: show up to the dungeon, slay the monsters, loot the bodies as a model for shadowrun. SR is more like: snoop in the matrix, make a plan, pay off a guy to get building schematics, make a back-up plan, case the joint, exploit a hole in their security, get in, do the job, get out.

A good exercise for this might be forcing a run w/o guns (as that leaves most meatheads SOL)

Alternative, if you don't wanna piss on your player's thunder and steal their cheerios, you could just, you know, have extra-plus-sized air vents and air scrubbers, for the trollish population's air needs.

Yeah! And then you could have all the bullets incorporate special technology to throw people hit by them back a dozen feet!

~J

Kage, that is so 1980s.

This is 2006. When we want to throw people a dozen feet, we use pieces of electrically-heated-to-the-point-of-glowing-red rebar and super-strong crossbows. Not only do they have pinpoint accuracy (once you compensate for the fall-at-range), but they also stand a good chance of pinning your target into a wall or other object if it's barrier rating is lower than the damage score.

Small vents are good. They encourage shapechange spells. Plus, if the team mage doesn't have the spell, they can outsource it - and who needs a better excuse to turn the hacker into a real rat for a few hours. Maybe he'll get stuck passing through a ward inside. "Hey, Boss, there's another idiot stuck in the vent." "Damn it, they just pulled the last guy out becasue he was starting to smell."

I just want to point out that I wasn't going to pull a "a sniper shoots you in the head and you die" on them (though as a funny side note, a GM did that to one of the players once, completely forgetting how infeasable it was to deploy a sniper at such short notice and shooting a guy who was mostly disabled just to finish him off, rather than the person who was holding a gun to the hostage's head who had full HP [D20 modern] and knew that he could take the bullet). First of all, that would be rather difficult to pull off, as it would require luring them into a location which is open enough to pull such a thing off, and on top of that it would require multiple snipers that work in unison to blow all their heads off at once... And on top of that, as tough as these guys are, they could survive the shot from a sniper rifle (we are playing under 4E for reference). Also, keep in mind this, they are using non-leathal force. Despite popular belief, traditional SWAT teams are supposed to incure as few deaths as possible, even if it is an armed criminal. With gel rounds to simply knock them out, I fail to see why they wouldn't use them. I'm not about to just gun them all down, what would be the point of that? I see this as a reasonable compromise. The players get arrested for their crime and they get offered an out which leads to other runs where they will hopefully play it more safe.

I see luring them into a simple trap just makes sense. I mean KE knows who their fixer is for goodness sake, and considering how from their dealings they seem to only care about the money, it just makes sense for them to do this. Am I wrong? Someone pointed out that a character can talk their way out of a situation if they are tricked out enough, but that's kinda hard when they are SINless, dealing with the cops, and there is crystal-clear evidence proving that it was them that did it (and that they are VERY armed and VERY dangerous to approach to chat with).

I try not to metagame anything (I say try because we are all human, we can make mistakes, I never do it intentially), but sometimes I feel that I may be blowing things out of proportions, like KE actually having a big incentive to bag these guys. Lonestar has been wanting to take the contract from KE for a long time now, and after this stunt, its a pretty big hit to KE's ego. Like the media usually does, this event is blown way out of proportions, which just adds to the situation.

Is this reaction unreasonable? I feel that it isn't, but I am fallible. I am new to the world and society of Shadowrun, so maybe running military grade firepower around in an armored hummer wouldn't draw very much backlash with the press/public or 'jeapordize' KEs position in Boston (though I feel this wouldn't happen, it doesn't stop STAR from trying or KE from sweating a little).

The PCs were careless, plain and simple. They sold themselves out when they sold out their Johnson. The Johnson told the cops who they were and how to contact them because he had nothing to lose by doing so and figured that he would likely have a pretty good chance of getting off the hook if he turned the runners in. The recording was done by one of the players, and it is obvious from the recordings perspective who it was. There is no metagaming here. The only thing that may be off about this situation is that the Corp looked for shadowrunners to get their own shipment as a sort of insurance (it's win/win for them: If the runners succeed, they keep the package and collect the insurance, if the runners fail then, hey - they are out 2.5k for hiring them to try and the package gets delivered - if there are other runners trying to get the package, they will act as an improvised escort at half the cost).

The Corp found out the information was out there when the players used an information broker (with loyalty 1) to get the paydata on when the shipment was heading out, which he - in turn - sold the information that it was leaked to the Corp for a hefty sum of money (of course leaving out that he was the one who leaked it). That's why the Corp had a Johnson out giving the mission.

Oh, I apologize for the terrible title as well, haha.

Though I would like to note that the idea that KE will just pick up some stooges to take the fall would also work, and I'm wondering if KE would just do that over doing any work even when it's staring them in the face. Like I said, I'm new to this setting, but I do know that corruption and backstabbing are quite common throughout, so the idea that KE would just blow this situation off wouldn't surprise me, which is part of the reason why I'm asking you guys.

Sorry again for the long post. I tend to think of the world as very dynamic; every action has a consequence. As a result, I tend to have a lot of random background 'noise' going on behind the scenes. You have to know the full picture otherwise you will say things like:

Definitely hit them with the hammer. If the hammer doesn't fall because they don't take the job (or whatever other reason). Keep the investigation up until media coverage forces you to grab some convenient scapegoats.

Last night, I caught the movie Layer Cake on Starz (On Demand rocks). If you haven't seen that movie, I highly recommend it. In any case, it put me in the mind of doublecrossing your Johnson.

There are all sorts of things you can do to teach your players a lesson (and many of those things are outnlined above), however, you have to ask yourself if you really want to.

One of the things that might help is playing a lower powered game than the standard. Make characters off 300 bp (SR4) or an with altered priority system (SR3, I think there is one in MJLBB) with strict availability and skill rating restrictions and then go from there. Start them on the street just trying to break into the shadowrunning biz and make the jobs small and their resources even smaller.

Alternatively, you could just do the classic SR thing and start geeking them when realistic opposition to their carnage tracks them down. Surely they left some tracks somewhere (like who put those armor plates on that humvee? I doubt any of them have a vehicle facility, so there's someone out there who knows... and may be getting nervous with the star snooping around).

Finally, the SR core books don't describe karma in the same terms as pretty much every module and the SR3 companion do. You get karma for doing things that teach you things, obviously, but you mainly get karma as a "universal reward" for doing the "right thing" when the option presents itself. Doing very bad things tends to not get you as much karma or gets you karma penalties in extreem cases. There is also notoriety to consider.

If they keep selling out their Johnson's who would hire them? The high paying jobs should start to dry up. Would you hire someone who is likely to double cross you?

Why would a fixer even consider you for a job after that? Their livelihood is on the line as well.

Yeah, I would have to say that even if the KE is a fumbling giant and never catches the runners. The word would spread that they sold out their johnson. Their contacts should dissapear. No jobs, no friends. Who wants to be a friend of a guy who only cares about the bottom line? You can even make it blatently obvious when they call "Sorry, I don't deal with sell outs" "I'd help but I'm afraid you'd give me out to the competition"

Thank you all for your advice, it has helped me out tremendously.

I figure that KE may just try to set them up, but if they reject the mission then they will just find some scapegoats. The only hole in this is that they don't have the hummer, and if it shows up again there could be some problems, but they could always make some excuse about how they caught the criminals but the hummer was never found.

After that, you're pretty much right, no one would want to hire sell outs. The funny thing was this happened with the first module that I ran for them. I forget what it was called, but essentially once they acquired the disk they needed, someone approached them with a much higher offer than the Johnson for the information and they accepted it, which led to the same result. I told them the results of their consequences (which they agreed that they should have thought that through a bit more) and decided to start fresh. Sure, it pays well to double-cross people. It has to otherwise no one would ever consider it, but in the biz they are in, it's kinda a bad idea.

Also, thanks a ton for all the movie suggestions, I'll have to check them out.

I've always had a problem with how most players will whine if the team just gets sniped out.

It seems to me that the only logical alternative for when they really humiliate a corporation is to send a few platoons of crack soldiers after them complete with artillery and magical and spirit support. Furthermore, bring advanced riflemen who don't "automatically" shoot the PCs first thing but have them keep delayed actions so that if the PCs appear at certain promienent vantage points they get shot at. That goes over better with the players.

The big problem with that is that it's a lot of dice rolls. But unfortunately how else do you simulate the effect of the PCs being crushed by overwhelming force?

One way to move them away from the 'kill everything' routine is to give them terms of mission success that specify no killing. If they kill, they fail, so they have to avoid violence. However, with the doublecrossing problem you will have to have terms of personal success (as opposed to mission success) that are tied to politics and contacts.

Instead of having these characters be just Shadowrunners have then make orginized crime figures. Their goal would be to increase the size of their criminal emipire and their success would require a great deal of politiking an dbribery. Doing crazy things, killing the wrong people, and betrying the wrong people would have dire political consequences that would make it impossible for them to do business and ruin their orginization.

If they still want to be ultra-violent and reckless, and some people are going to hit me over the head for this suggestion, put them in charge of a megacorp and let them truely understand the power they are going against. As heads of a megacorp make sure that their actions have dire political consequences for themselves and their orginization. Then, once they understand how poerful their opposition really is, let them play a regular game again.


Also, you may consider implimenting a variation of the Inverse Ninja Rule to curb bloodshed.
Have all of your canon fodder characters start with stats and skills of 1 across the board. However, for every one of your ninjas that they kill the others gain 1 point in every skill, 1 point in ever stat, and 1 power, spell, metamagic, 'ware, or piece of equipment.
If you throw enough generic clone cannon fodder characters at the team and they insist on using lethal force they will eventually be faacing a single near-invincible foe due to the inverse ninja rule.

Preferably you don't, because the only one having fun there is the DM who decided to get his jollies by pulling out all the stops and crushing the PCs like ants.

And frankly if you do that too much, you'll have a jolly good time managing a team of NPC runners to run against your NPC corporations, because no players will play with you again.


Still, selling out your J is something you only do when he's double-crossed you first. Though I think I might see the problem - you offered them only 5000 for the job from the second Mr. J? Did the first Mr. J give them a more reasonable number? Because it sounds to me like they may be so strapped for cash that they're willing to act like greedy newbies because they're desperate.

The mission given to them by the first J (J1) was to intercept a shipment that was heading out. They were given no idea as to when it was heading out, other than sometime next week. J1 offered them a 5k down payment (which the party face managed to get upped to 7.5k) with no obligation to fulfill the contract (as he realized he was asking a very difficult task without very many specifics), but the payoff was 10k extra for whatever was in the truck plus extra based off of what they found.

In order to find out the exact date/time they got in touch with an information broker to find out for them, which I mentioned the specifics of that earlier.

J2 came in offering 2.5k for the run and extra based off of the cargo.

Once the mission was completed J1 offered them 30k to keep the deal a secret, however once again the face managed to get the price upped to 50k (So that's a total payout of 67.5K). The Johnson knew exactly how important the object they delivered was, but he was remaining coy with them. One of the players decided that 'keep this under wraps' didn't include selling a recording of the meeting to J2. He even told the rest of the runners, who didn't seem to care, and he sold the recording for 5k. I was *shocked* when he took the money without haggling for more.

I honestly don't think that this was because they considered themselves poor. I think the player (who was a mage) was just looking for funds for his Force 1 spirit genocide and to buy a slave...

The 5k was definatly worth selling out an employer who gives out that kind of .

Bah, edited because I didn't like how it turned out at all

For the record, Wikipedia agrees with me onthe definition, for whatever that's worth (if anything).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming_%2...laying_games%29

For me the biggest problem is handling all the dice rolls when it comes to the PCs calling down a military-type situation on them. Realistically, if a corporation is able to find where the PCs are and they want to kill them they'll surround the place, have all kinds of magic, have lots of infantry, have artillery support, etc etc etc. That's swell, and all, but you need to be the frigging master of, like, 3 sourcebooks (the rigger book, MiTS, and the Cannon Companion and possibly also Man and Machine) just to know the rules for all of that. You then need to be making initiative rolls for something like 50-100 entities, and every time a PC shoots at a grunt you have to seperately keep track of that grunt's combat pool.

On principle and philosophically I'd like to let the dice fall where they may and if one or two PCs somehow manage to survive and slip away between the cracks that's cool. But I feel like the PCs are unfairly shielded by the weight of the "engine"; it becomes very hard for the GM to throw 50-100 entities at the PCs at once just because of the sheer weight of the system.

(I once threw 100 entities at the PCs and forced them to retreat from some place, but honestly, I felt like the mental effort damn near killed me.)

Note that that's not metagaming; that's realism, at least I think it is. In Iraq if the Marines encounter three snipers at a minaret they don't charge in tiny groups of five so that they can be neatly picked off. They have artillery support, overwhelming suppressive fire, and overwhelming numbers that they bring to bear. Why should the corporate military not come in full force with all the toys when it's absolutely vital that they hammer a small team of shadowrunners?

they should not be able to escape the police. Ever watch "cops' or "World's most amzing police videos" the polcie have numbers and organization, they can cover each other, just stay on the runners until they run out of gas, as the cops get low fresh ones take up the chase. if the runners think they're ahead, have they thrown off the helo gun ships and dornes doing a long distance trace. the corp mage following them in the astral? notice that radiactive tracker attacked to their bumper?

"Team alpha, this is spy, targets have parked and left their vehical"

The team has a tirckedo ut truck? Groovy, watch the Lone Star Banshee come in on them. don't want ot shot up the car? Get a city master "Ramming speed"
ok guys you're pretty much trapped in the wreckage.

want to aovid that sort of general massacre? Are they always together, always armed to the teeth? of course not. They get picked up at a bar, maybe a joy girl slips them something in a drink or even slots a BTL into them in an embrace.
"Easiest 500 I ever made sugar"

put a price on their head. Remember as nasty as they are they are not the paex predators. there are others far more leathal than they are.

Ok , your going out to the car, Fred could you roll 8 dice please?
My body ?
yep, please roll,
4,4,3,3,6,4,2,1
Great, thanks. fred's head explodes. a momment later you hear the sound of a barrett snipe rifle. fred is dead.

Tomorrow you go out to your car....

Because it impacts the bottom line?

For a fight that big I'd never use compat pools for any NPC except the big guys. Give the rest either nothing at all or a threat rating a la SR2. Yeah, threat ratings have their problems, butt hey also have their uses.

The situation you're describing is not quite like finding some snipers set up in a ready position. You're finding a group of people hanging out eating pizza and playing video games (or whatever your runners do when they're together but not on a run). In a lot of the game I've played you'd actually end up with several different fights going on at once when the corp hits the runners one at a time as they find them, or all at once as a concerted cleanup effort. But that's just because the runners in my games don't usually hang out in a group when they're not working.

I should be the last course. to show how things can go against them, badly. since they have ignored the consiquenses of their actions, this would bring it home to them.

You could also do a ritual sorcery to have someone go to the police and sign a full confession.

Before the PC gets barretted does he get to make a perception test to see the sniper? That's a potential problem.

The other problem is how the players would crrryyy and moooaan.

Toturi, the players in my game have no leg to stand on. They have no street cred at all. They are new to Shadowrunning, and honestly they should be glad that they got such a high paying mission, but perhaps they don't realize that getting over 50K as a starter mission is a lot of money. They should have at least realized that 50K+ > 5k, and I tried to make it clear to the player who was speaking with the other Johnson that he was clearly much more innexperianced with the whole Shadowrunning business (I actually said that this was apparent to the player during the first meeting).

What they should also realize is that betrayal works both ways. By turning in the first Johnson, they were basically begging their Johnson to sell them out in turn. They didn't even do it subtly, as I said before, the recording is obviously done by one of the runners who was in the room, and in fact the Johnson could tell who it was because he noticed that the mage was looking around like he actually noticed the world around him, unlike before where he just kind of stood in the corner and didn't take interest in the conversation. He didn't think anything of it at the time because he just figured that the mage took interest in what was in the package.

Also, as a comment to using forensics against the PCs, unless they actually have some sort of knowledge of something like how a rocket launcher works, they would have no idea how to figure out how to mask the signature. Simply having the skill to fire the weapon would suffice for me to say that they would at least know about the marker.

Also keep in mind that this is not going to be a military stand off. The PCs will be sent to steal something, and as soon as they get into the room to retrieve the package, a flashbang and smoke gernade will be tossed into the room and the SWAT will use a sweeping entry pattern with thermographic imaging to take down the runners. In addition to this the squad leader will put a focused jam on the room to block their technomancer and any alternative means they could use to dispel the confusion. If all goes as they plan, they should have the runners incapacitated within a few combat rounds. Of course I will be sure to allow them intuition checks to see if they 'get a bad feeling about this' bonus to their suprise round check.

I'm not going to cheat in any way. I refuse to under any circumstances. I will do everything by the book to the best of my abilities in this matter, and to top it all off, if they turn down the trap, they may even get out of it scott free, but they will be registered criminals after this, and that does mean something in a world where information is power.

Really to finish it off, Toturi, it sounds like you are trying to convince me to allow the players to cheese out of the situation by rolling some dice. Short of direct mind control, I don't feel that it is possible to talk the entire KE police force into believing that you didn't commit the crime when they have absolutly, positivly, no evidence whats so ever that they didn't do it, and in-fact two of them have criminal SINs. What happens when they somehow get uber hits to convince them all that they didn't do it? Do you have God himself come down and tell them to let them go?

Also, I find that often times social skills (in all the games I play) are given a lot more leeway with doing impossible stunts because you can't 'defign' the rules for social interaction. Can you shoot the Moon with a handgun? No, but apparently you can convince someone (with no magic at all) that they are actually on the Moon right now being probed by government agents as part of a project to cross-breed aliens with humans and that you are there to save them from the system because the player got, like, 20 hits... Riiiiight. Going through some rediculous process of adding up penalties is pointless, because no matter how high you set it, no matter how improbable it seems, it can happen, and once you admit that, you might as well let the gun-slinger shoot the Moon because a rift in the space-time continuem just happens to appear right where the bullet was headed and warped it to the Moon for him because he rolled a lot of dice.

Ah, sorry for the rant. I do understand that the opposite is true as well, where when the player offers something plausable but the GM just flat out turns it down without rolling dice. I don't think thats fair at all, and I wholeheartedly agree that talking should be an option, but I feel that it is circumstantial, and that just because you roll well doesn't entitle you to circumvent reality entirely.

What I am saying is that just because you think that shooting your way in and double crossing your Johnson is a bad thing, it does not mean that rules-mechanics-wise, it really is.

What I am saying is that if the dice say that they go scot-free, then perhaps you should let them go scot free. If they rolled uber-dice, then they should walk away. Just because the player rolled well doesn't mean that the GM should circumvent it (game mechanic reality) to suit his(GM perception) reality.

In fact, I always remind myself that my vision of reality isn't going to be the same as the players and the only constant in all this is the reality of the game mechanics.