Grinder
Jul 14 2006, 05:56 PM
But you can play it that way. And what's with ideas like pirates, smugglers, organ leggers?
James McMurray
Jul 14 2006, 06:15 PM
I'm not sure I understand the question. "What's with them" is that they're options for runs. It's quite possible to be pirates, smugglers, or organ leggers and yet not be full time pirates, smugglers, or organ leggers. Perhaps you're usually a burglar but got an opportunity you couldn't pass up and did a couple jobs as a pirate / smuggler.
SuperFly
Jul 14 2006, 06:15 PM
QUOTE (Shrike30) |
In game - the group doesn't do wetwork. The J knows this, he won't call them for those jobs. He might call them if he thinks he can con them into it (or could ask the person who's actually got him listed as a contact to arrange for an accident on-site in exchange for a bonus), but there's no reason for him to call the group in the first place if they won't do the job. |
YES! This is an _excellent_ set up that a very creative GM pulled on one of my more 'upstanding' PC's -- hiring him to retrieve a priceless Stratavarius violin during an exhcnage where it was being sold. The entire goal was actually to have my character assassinate the buyer, which, of course, happened according to the Johnson's plans.
Good payoff, though.
Shadow
Jul 14 2006, 07:27 PM
QUOTE (knasser @ Jul 14 2006, 09:14 AM) |
Odd because I'd say it is a great deal more realistic that characters' work of one type should bleed into another. |
Notice I said "High-pay, high-risk", not "take the guy out back and kill him Hanz". Yes leg breakers probably take the guy out back and put one in his head. You wouldn't hire the same guy to kill an ambassador, the man isn't an assassin, he's a leg breaker.
If I wanted someone dead, and presumably they were important/rich enough to have boddy guards, I wouldn't go down to the docks and hire a couple of enforcers to do it. I would hire a professional assassin, not a professional criminal, but an assassin.
Do you see what I am saying? Being a Shadowrunner doesn't make you an expert in all things criminal. Just becasue you are a Shadowrun team doesn't automatically make you qualified to be assassins. Your Johnson knows this, your fixer knows this, hell the kid down the street knows this. So why would a team who has never done Hits before get hired to do a high profile hit for lots of money?
Wounded Ronin
Jul 14 2006, 07:35 PM
QUOTE (Shadow) |
If I wanted someone dead, and presumably they were important/rich enough to have boddy guards, I wouldn't go down to the docks and hire a couple of enforcers to do it. I would hire a professional assassin, not a professional criminal, but an assassin. |
It depends on how dramatic and bloody you want it to be. Maybe I wouldn't hire "a couple" of enforcers, but I might hire 30. I could have 30 braves firing from the hip and screaming trying to rush the ambassador and maybe one of them would get lucky and tag the ambassador with a few stray rounds. It's a question of the approach you want.
James McMurray
Jul 14 2006, 07:38 PM
You'd hire the enforcers to do it if you couldn't afford professional assassins. There are most likely people in the SR world that do nothing but take on high risk, high pay assassination attempts. Assuming you're good enough and have a good enough fixer you could make a good chunk of change at it.
Shadowrunners however, are usually generalists. They're also not as well paid as the high end professionals (at least not until they become high end professionals themselves). Without tons of street cred they probably won't get hired to kill the president or CEO of a AAA corp. They could easily be hired to kill someone lower, like a mayor or CEO of a mom and pop operation.
Alternatively they may get hired to do a hit that the true professionals would say no to. Many professionals in literature and movies don't take jobs with time limits. High paid professionals might not take the job to off the head of Aztechnology R&D because the backlash isn't worth the price.
They're there to do the jobs that don't pay well enough or aren't safe enough for the big guns.
At least that's my view. YMMV
Shadow
Jul 14 2006, 07:44 PM
QUOTE (James McMurray) |
You'd hire the enforcers to do it if you couldn't afford professional assassins. |
But in this instance the Johnson could hire a true assassin but isn't. That doesn't ssound at all odd to you? He's paying the same amount of money, for people who arn't hitmen.
Wounded Ronin
Jul 14 2006, 07:47 PM
QUOTE (Shadow) |
QUOTE (James McMurray @ Jul 14 2006, 11:38 AM) | You'd hire the enforcers to do it if you couldn't afford professional assassins. |
But in this instance the Johnson could hire a true assassin but isn't. That doesn't ssound at all odd to you? He's paying the same amount of money, for people who arn't hitmen.
|
Aha, but maybe it's not the same amount of money. Maybe Golgo 13 would actually cost head and shoulders more and the entire team was cheaper than hiring him.
hyzmarca
Jul 14 2006, 07:54 PM
QUOTE (James McMurray) |
I'm not sure I understand the question. "What's with them" is that they're options for runs. It's quite possible to be pirates, smugglers, or organ leggers but not full time pirates, smugglers, or organ leggers. |
Huh? A lot of people make a living by pirating full time.
James McMurray
Jul 14 2006, 08:03 PM
Shadow: What WR said.
hyzmarca: I wasn't saying it's impossible to be a full time pirate, I was saying you could be a pirate but didn't have to be a full time one. Hopefully the edit makes it clearer.
Shadow
Jul 14 2006, 09:38 PM
You know if you guys don't get what I am saying you can say "I don't get what you are saying." Johnsons do not hire ametures for a professional job, period. This team is not made up of hitters, therefore they shouldn't be hired to do hits. Thats it. I respect you think other wise but that is not the way it works.
stevebugge
Jul 14 2006, 10:04 PM
QUOTE (Shadow) |
You know if you guys don't get what I am saying you can say "I don't get what you are saying." Johnsons do not hire ametures for a professional job, period. This team is not made up of hitters, therefore they shouldn't be hired to do hits. Thats it. I respect you think other wise but that is not the way it works. |
I think that depends a lot on who the Johnson actually is. If the Johnson is Lofwyrs personal trouble shooter with a multimillion nuyen budget that statement is absolutely true. If the Johnson is a mid-level manager for a C rated corp trying to off his boss over a slight he's more likely to go with whatever he can get for the 12K nuyen he was able to scrape together. Which Johnson you get is probably dependent a lot on the kind of game you're running.
knasser
Jul 14 2006, 10:25 PM
QUOTE (stevebugge) |
QUOTE (Shadow @ Jul 14 2006, 01:38 PM) | You know if you guys don't get what I am saying you can say "I don't get what you are saying." Johnsons do not hire ametures for a professional job, period. This team is not made up of hitters, therefore they shouldn't be hired to do hits. Thats it. I respect you think other wise but that is not the way it works. |
I think that depends a lot on who the Johnson actually is. If the Johnson is Lofwyrs personal trouble shooter with a multimillion nuyen budget that statement is absolutely true. If the Johnson is a mid-level manager for a C rated corp trying to off his boss over a slight he's more likely to go with whatever he can get for the 12K nuyen he was able to scrape together. Which Johnson you get is probably dependent a lot on the kind of game you're running.
|
Agreed. And don't assume that the Johnson is omniscient, either. The shadows are murky and full of lies and misperceptions. People often act bigger than they are. Just because someone bigs himself up as a skilled assassin doesn't mean he is.
The nature of wetwork is that advertising is high risk. Really high risk. These things get passed along by word of mouth amongst trusted people. You have to listen to gossip and sleaze your way through the right social groups to find someone you could hire to kill for you.
Who are the real life assassins? They're not self-employed free lancers. If employed by a government, then they are part of the military or, I suppose concievably someone in the police force. Intelligence agencies will have their own people. Not officially for assassination, definitely not, but the odd person who has the skills and that their manager knows is capable of such a thing. If they're not government, then you're looking at crime. Big organised crime has people that they know or know of. And often it's worth it for safety to bring someone in from a different area from a different branch. E.g. "Sergei... it's me. You had someone who could do a special job for me?" In this case though, it's still not dedicated, freelance assassins. And that leaves small crime and the odd private "please get rid of my neighbour" job. And that's where we get back to the non-specialist unpleasanter. You find him in the pub and he'll take your money whether its knocking someone off or burning down their house.
The elite professional assassin is pretty much close to a fiction. Now change this a little for Shadowrun, but keep in mind how the real world functions.
sorcel
Jul 14 2006, 10:47 PM
QUOTE (knasser) |
Odd because I'd say it is a great deal more realistic that characters' work of one type should bleed into another. I politely query whether action movies are the best guides to this. In my experience (not knowing hitmen as far as I'm aware, but having known some pretty rough people), I think it extremely likely that anyone who did wetwork would also take work in robbery, assault or plain old destruction. It all depends on the purse and the skill set, but the scenario of a professional hitman sitting around at home waiting for the phone to ring is unlikely. There's plenty more to be doing. |
Well put, although I think the issue could also be framed as one of degree. It's no stretch for a hitman to undertake B&E, extortion, arson, or most any other crime one can imagine, because the nature of his primary avocation is far worse. He kills people for a living. But the converse is not necessarily true: a professional second-story man might foreseeably balk at wetwork, inasmuch as contract murder is harder to justify than mere stealing... by conventional moral systems, at any rate.
-S
James McMurray
Jul 15 2006, 05:05 AM
Shadow, if you disagree with what we're saying you can just say you disagree. I respect you think otherwise, but that's just notthe way it works.
All that aside, everyone who knows an ultra-professional hitman, raise their hands. Anyone who knows a great deal about how ultra-professional hitmen can be contacted and how they perform their duties, raise their hands. Now, anyone who raised their hands because of a movi, book, or other piece of entertainment put your hands back down.
Ok. Whoever is left, please tell us how it works, but first give me the guy's number so I can check your sources.
eidolon
Jul 15 2006, 05:27 PM
QUOTE (Shadow @ Jul 14 2006, 04:38 PM) |
You know if you guys don't get what I am saying you can say "I don't get what you are saying." Johnsons do not hire ametures for a professional job, in my games, period. This team is not made up of hitters, therefore they shouldn't be hired to do hits. Thats it. I respect you think other wise but that is not the way it works in my games. |
There. I fixed it so that it makes sense and doesn't leave you looking like a jackass.
I should start charging.
beginedit:
Kidding around aside, it seems that you run a fairly limited game. Well, maybe limited isn't the right word. "Standard" maybe. Meh, semantics. On to my point.
From reading this post alone, one can infer (and I am) that all Johnsons in your games are "Professional Johnsons" that Know Everything About the Team and have oodles of Resources and Experience in Hiring Shadowrunners. Based on that inference, I am also assuming that shadowrunners in your game should be capitalized and have a trademark symbol behind it. (In other words, shadowrunners in your game fit a narrow mold of Professional Criminal working in the Shadows tm tm tm tm.)
That's definitely one way, and a very valid way, of running Shadowrun. Just know that the reason your above post looks so silly is because it's hardly the only way.
Dawnshadow
Jul 15 2006, 08:39 PM
I think there is something to be said for that train of thought, even in a non-standard style of game...
If you've got a team that's kinda heavy on the collateral damage side of things... as in.. total destruction of everything surrounding the vague area that the target might be... and you're offering them a B&E job that is supposed to be QUIET, you may want to stop and rethink what you're doing. It's a little silly to expect a team that's idea of subtle is a six-pack of Ares Alphas with WP minigrenades to lift the crown jewel of someone's collection, and place a fake in it's place, without leaving any evidence that anything at all has happened.
The job should fit the reputation of the people it's being offered to.
Butterblume
Jul 15 2006, 09:07 PM
QUOTE (Dawnshadow) |
If you've got a team that's kinda heavy on the collateral damage side of things... as in.. total destruction of everything surrounding the vague area that the target might be... and you're offering them a B&E job that is supposed to be QUIET, you may want to stop and rethink what you're doing. |
How true
.
I find it very helpfull when the character background contains a sentence or two what the char would or would not do ("He won't do wetwork, but he will kill in selfdefense" or "He will help in wetwork, as long as he don't have to pull the trigger, unless it's children. And he won't rob squatters.")
Vaevictis
Jul 15 2006, 09:30 PM
QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
Giving a reward for not killing, though, seems absurd to me—either it's important enough to make a primary condition (or at least a penalizing condition) or it isn't important enough to spend money on. |
FWIW, from the Johnson's balance sheet's point of view, the whole reward/penalty semantic makes no difference. Once you take the emotional connotations out of it, penalty and reward are the same thing.
Personally, if I was a Johnson, I would pretty much always add "no fatalities" as a contract bonus, and negotiate the base+bonus into the amount I want to pay. If they don't kill anyone, well, I didn't pay any more than I wanted to anyway. If they do, hey, bonus, I get to keep the difference. It's just a matter of framing it so the runners feel better about getting paid less
Glyph
Jul 15 2006, 09:31 PM
Personally, I think it is more realistic for shadowrunners to occasionally get approached for jobs that don't fall under their areas of expertise. Granted, this shouldn't happen if they are getting the job through a fixer intermediary, who knows the team's capabilities, limitations, and scruples. But Johnsons who have only heard vague rumors about the runners (Saigon Bob's team? Yeah, heard they're real hardcases) might try to hire them for things that they won't do, or that are out of line with their specialties. And not all potential Johnsons are corporate sharks. They can be small business owners looking to intimidate a rival, embezzling mid-level managers who want a break-in to cover their theft, and so on. Some of them may not know all that much about how much runners expect to be paid, or how hiring them works.
In most cases, the runners can simply refuse such jobs. Be sure to let the players know, though, that the runners can refuse jobs IC. Otherwise, they might accept a job that the characters normally wouldn't, because they will assume that they will mess up your game if they don't.
James McMurray
Jul 15 2006, 09:45 PM
QUOTE (Dawnshadow) |
The job should fit the reputation of the people it's being offered to. |
This is true, but I think a GM should sometimes toss in a run that goes against their normal grain. Perhaps the Johnson needed someone now and the fixer's other alternatives were already running. Forcing a group to think out of their box once in a while can make from some great games.
eidolon
Jul 16 2006, 03:04 AM
"Runs" don't always come from a Johnson, either. Contacts, acquaintances, friends of a friend, and the characters themselves have all given the group jobs in my games. (Yes, characters have paid the others to do a job.)
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