OOC #4 this time, 2 hits.

1 hit each time (LINK).

Bye
Thanee

Roll #1 : 2 hits
Roll #2 : 2 hits

First roll: 2 hits


Second roll: 3 hits

First check: 1 hit



Second check: 4 hits

Thanks for all the rolls guys, sorry I've been silent for a couple of days. I got hit with the nasty crud that's going around. Came home from work yesterday at 3pm and slept till 10am this morning, proceeded to call into work and then slept again till about 4.

Being sick sucks.

At least I have time to post. So, lets get this party started. I'm off for the next 2 days, so I'd like to cram a lot into a little time

I haven't posted but I'm following. Apex is a little off, kind of the otherworldly weirdo mage thing, so I haven't seen an opportunity to put my two cents in yet. Just letting you know I'm still tracking.

Believe me I'm trying. Granted I spent most of today holding down the couch since I could barely move Not a good afternoon when I had wanted to post a ton.

Sorry guys.

Thanee


Critias and MisterJuan


Cedric Rolfsson


TheOneRonin

I have some thoughts about some things we should take into consideration with this job. Should I post it here, or leave it for the IC planning session?

From past board stuff I'd suggest planning OOC and then post a IC something that says, "after spending a couple hours planning. . . ." It just seems to go faster.

That could very well be.

Bye
Thanee

That works for me. I'll post my thoughts here, and if vegas wants me to move them to the IC thread, I can do that.

#1: We don't want this guy involving Lone Star or the Feds at all. To ensure that he doesn't, we will need to get some kind of leverage on him...maybe some blackmail material or something he cannot have released as public knowledge.

#2: Safehouse. Once we do the grab, we will need a place to keep Tara that is out of sight. She will need to know that she is going to have to remain COMPLETELY cut off from the outside world. We should make arangements to have this place set up ahead of time.

#3: We should make the grab public. It will make things a little more risky, but her involvement is less likely to be suspected. Also, we might want to consider having a second team do the actual snatch and deliver...just to dilute our trail. The other team could even be convinced it's an actual kidnapping.

I'll post more when I have more time to think about it.

#1 -- I well understand that I might just be inspired by a mystery/thriller novel I just read, but if ever I've had a character who'd think this when "blackmail" comes up, I guess it's Billy. Seduce daddy's wife-to-be, tape it, send him a five second clip with the ransom demand, and hold it over his head. He's a semi-public figure, the marriage is already wrapped in controversy (so extra scandal wouldn't help his image any), and our employer (who hates the bitch) would probably be all for it.

#2 -- Quite true. Tara might've already thought that part out, though, and have some sort of safehouse/target set up for herself. If nothing else, though, we'll of course want to check it out with our more-professional eyes, etc, and naturally remind her of the "no contact" stuff.

#3 -- I agree on the public part, of course. Hit a car while she's in it, all wear masks/gloves, kill her security detail, surprise her (and keep it from looking like she's playing along) by knocking her out in the process (which also adds to our security, if she's KO'ed while we transport her, it's one less thing she knows to tell anyone if this whole gig goes tits up), etc. Not so keen on the second team thing, but mostly for OOC reasons.

I'm not so sure, that #1 is such a good idea. That would make things a lot more complicated and add a lot more variables into the equation, so to say, like how he reacts to his future wife cheating on him.

I would not want a safehouse chosen by Tara. We should find one ourselves (or through our contacts).

Thanee, I understand your reservations about Critias's suggestion for #1, but we really should include SOME element of blackmail for no other reason than to keep this guy from involving the cops. Maybe an affair might not be the best approach, but I'm afraid that if we don't do SOMETHING like that, he will go straight to Lone Star, and then maybe the Feds. Personally, I'm willing to go the extra mile to keep this whole operation as quiet as possible.


I'm with Thanee on not letting Tara pick out the safehouse. The less influence she has over the way this goes down, the more likely it is to go down without a hitch. If she does have one, who know who she's told about.


As for her security detail during the grab, I have mixed feelings about. On one hand, using non-lethal means might reduce the chance of hostile response. However, it might be considered a sign of weakness, and would reduce the possible effectiveness of any threats to kill Tara we might have to deliver later. My suggestion is a compromise...engage her security with non-lethal measures, and if those fail, switch to lethal force. Julio isn't opposed to stun batons and whatnot, but the minute someone starts shooting at him, the gloves come off.

And yeah, on second thought it is probably a better idea to do the grab ourselves rather than use another team. If for nothing else than the metagame reason that it will be a fun fight.

Also, some other considerations.


#4: Electronic/Astral tracking. We have got to make entirely sure that we don't get followed when we grab Tara. Wards, watchers, cleansing, signal scramblers, full body searches, the whole deal. Ideally, the safehouse should be pre-warded, and we should have some means of scanning her for electronic bugs/jamming them in the getaway vehicle.

#5: "OH SHIT! plan" This is probably the most important part of our plan. What do we do if:

The grab goes wrong...
Tara changes her mind about the ransom halfway through the op...
Our safehouse is found and we have to evac or fight our way out...
Mr. Kobayashi decides not to pay the ransom...
-or-
(The Big One) Mr. Kobayashi or his people hit the streets looking for shadow talent to recover his daughter. (win/win, anyone?)

I can't think of any other blackmail situation that ends up with Billy getting laid, though.

Hey people, sorry for the silence this week.... pretty damn busy one.

Anyways, I'm with TheOneRonin on pretty much everything he said. We're going to need to get not only a very powerfull signal jammer going, but we might as well require a cyberware scanner. Nothing would be more of a pain in the ass then finding a implanted tracking device... which would require surgery to take out.

I also agree that we should be ready to use violence, but not as a first option. We'll be committing kidnapping, which is a federal crime. Keeping the "other infractions" to a minimum might help us avoid even more heat.

Like Thanee said; this might bring unwanted complication to the job. It would, indeed, be a very good since we would be able to apply pressure on two points (we have some dirt on him, and his daughter), but we might simply not have the time to plan something like that. Keep in mind we have to move BEFORE three weeks. Which makes me think that grabbing the girl on the day of the wedding might be an interesting thing I mean.... we couldn't do more public then that... but doing so would probably ensure the involvement of the UCAS FBI.

We also need multiple safehouses, and the girl must NEVER now where she is. She might be in on it, but the way I see it, the minute we take her, we should consider this as a "legit" kidnapping. She can very well turn on us at anytime. The girl is driven by money: if she feels like she hasn't gotten enough out of the deal, she might rat us out. And that, she has to understand now: she will not like it, she will probably not be treated well, and it will be a profoundly traumatizing experience.

As TheOneRonin pointed out, we also need clear o.p. for as many "Oh Shit" senarios as possible. They don't need to be elaborate, but we should still have some... like just having numerous safehouses.

Intimidation roll on Kiko
(incase she decides not to cooperate. I gave Jiro a +2 for probably being a lot stronger than her, taller, and just meaner looking )
Rolls: 3 hits


Jiro will discreetly pull her to the bar, order two drinks, and simply observe the room for afar, keeping watch more over the whole room, than over the meet itself.


Perception Roll
Modifiers: actively looking for anyone paying too much attention to the team (+3), interfering souds/sight... I mean, we are in a club... (-2), partial light (using low light enhancement, 0)
Rolls: 5 hits
Well, that probably was my best SR4 rolls ever.

MJ: Kiko won't resist, she's almost happy for the distraction, however your menacing physical form doesn't hurt either.

I'm letting you all kinda run with this OOC planning for a while as you hash out specifics. If everyone is ok with it once you've finalized, or mostly finalized what you want to do (Muahha haha haha ha) we can just kind of time slip over to the day of the kidnapping, unless any of you have any side jobs that you want to have take place inbetween or if you have items to obtain, contacts to visit, etc. Up to you all.

I'll toss up another IC Post shortly.

Something also to consider, Kiko may be at your best guess about 19, putting Tara considerable younger, 16 if she's a day.

Kinda figured you all had her pegged for a lot older, so I might as well clear that up now

Not exactly like the 30 year old still sponging off mom and dad now eh?

Well, I'm going to need to get the safe house warded. We'll need to pick up a RFID tag eraser and scanner, although I think I have one of those. We'll need to get the scanner that picks up the security tags.

I think we should pick up a couple of seperate safe houses, the primary being someplace in a "dead" zone for signal which would help prevent electronic tracking. It would also help screw up any electronic foot prints we'd be leaving.

We'll need to have our commlinks turned off, or have the signal scrambled beyond the ability of the hackers her dad is likely to hire to find out who commited this crime.

I'd suggest we simply strip the child down entirely, as in stark naked. . (*slap* DOWN BILLY, HANDS OFF!), and dump the clothes someplace far away from us. We should pick up food and clothing for everyone.

Also, how do we work the exchange? I wouldn't trust any kind electronic funds transfer. Anyone have any ideas? Once we've kidnapped the girl I'll summon some watchers to keep track of any astral occurances but it might also help to go to an area with a high background count. Like Hell's Kitchen, or something.

Julio attempts to "Intimidate" Tara.

CHA(2) + Intimidate (4) = 6 dice



3 hits total

Good ideas, everyone. I know the blackmail thing isn't looking good, but we should either REALLY develop some sort of plan to prevent him from getting the cops involved, or ask for a LOT more money. The Feds will most likely get involved in a kidnapping case, and they are extremelly good at catching people like us. Julio's probably got some blackmail and kidnapping experience, so he is gonna really try to discourage us from letting the cops get involved. Anything we can do to keep the old man from going to the cops will actually make this job LESS complicated rather than more complicated.

Maybe we can even fabricate something like putting together a trid clip of Tara doing drugs or having sex with a Gajin Troll or something like that. Stuff he would REALLY not want to get out.

Also, an electronic credit transfer is easy enough to secure. If the cops aren't involved, all we need is for Scarlett to set up a bunch of dummy accounts, break the deposit up into really odd chunks (like $18,945.17 nuyen), and shuffle it around about 6000 times before having it go to some criminal syndicate for laundering. We might have to pay them a little out of our profit, but it helps protect us. If the cops are involved, then we have to be DAMN sure we quadruple the amount of moving around we have to do so the funds remain untracable.

Oh, and unless the economy in SR4 has changed drastically from SR3, 250k is WAY low for a high-profile kidnapping like this. The ransome should be at least quadruple that.

Now, if the GM wants to keep it around that quantity for metagame purposes, I'm cool. But otherwise, she is WAY lowballing this thing (which is what I expect for a 16 year old). Someone who sits on the EVO east coast board probably makes about $250k a month. I'll bet he gets real suspicious if we hit him with such a low number.

Plus at a 50-50 split, a 1 million nuyen ransome nets us each 100k. That's a nice fat profit, espeically considering we will probably have to drop out of site for at least 6 months after this whole deal is over.

Another way to have the ransom be that high, without spoiling us with too much money (as if that would work ), is to have the laundering process cut down the amount drastically, like to 30% or so. Not too unreasonable, I guess.

Bye
Thanee

I like to think Billy could get us a decent price on the syndicate-laundering shtick, given his background and connections.

He might also be able to help out with the blackmail thing -- find out about some tattoo or something on girly-girl, fake the same markings (birthmark, childhood scar, tattoo, whatever) on some fresh-off-the-Hong-Kong-boat hooker the Triad's brought over, make a nice movie with a pony, and send him a preview of the film along with the ransom demand. I mean, generally speaking, "Triads" and "vice" go hand-in-hand -- it's kind of their thing. We should be able to work that to our advantage, somehow.

And, yeah. The exchange itself is the tricky part. It pretty much always is, IRC as well as in-game. I'm not up on Matrix rules enough to say for sure, but it certainly seems to me an electronic transfer of some sort would be safer than any sort of physical meet could possibly be -- especially since (unless I'm misunderstanding the girl's intent) we're not handing her over, when all's said and done.

What I would offer is have the money on certified credsticks and first the money is delivered and then the girl is released somewhere. No exchange.

Bye
Thanee

I'd like to point out that 250K is a LOT in SR4, remember the 1 million nuyen cyberdeck is dead, long live the 3000 nuyen commlink. Still, 250K is the price of a Eurocar Westwind.

Is it just me or did our IC kidnapping victim just walk away without agreeing to a kidnapping? I'm a little confused by the IC thread.

Yeah, it looks like she did to me, too.

Of course, that doesn't mean we can't surprise her next Tuesday, or something, if Vegas hasn't got anything else in mind for our poor intrepid little band.

You know, this MIGHT even be the best way to do it. At this point, Tara believes the kidnapping is a lost cause. If we do the grab, she will be completely surprised, and it will seem extremely authentic.

Or we might look like a bunch of assholes when we go to grab her and fall on another team she hired for the same thing....

Yeah, but then we can kill them and take their stuff, and kidnap the hot 16 year old. In fact, let's do that for sure, now. And someone bring a camera, so when we jump out and murder everyone around her, we can be all "surprise!" and someone can get a snapshot of her face.

Ho, ho, ho, man. We'll all sit back and look at that later, and laugh, and laugh.

Okay, you seriously need to seek professional help.

A LOT of professional help.

Vegas, tell me if you want me to roll again for Jiro's attempt to intimidate Kiko in staying put.

Here's yet another intimidation roll, this time with edge, to have Tara go sit back at the table. Jiro will use just enough pressure to cause some pain, but not leave a mark. I also added a +1 to the dice pool because... well... Jiro is once again probably bigger/stronger/larger than a 16 year old japanese school girl

Rolls: 6 hits
Exploding 6s, rerolls:: 0 hits

So, this is my little OOC snippet about the pay for the job.

We "should" get paid about 25k per head. That seems very fair to me considering that usual extraction go between 5 to 10k for "entry level team" like the one we have. Let's say, for a second, that daddy doesn't pay, which I doubt, we still get 75k to distribute amongst ourselves. Fair enough for little work.

She said her dad took an insurance policy for 250k. Good. So when we ask, we ask for more. We can always "negotiate down" to 250k if worst comes to worst. We are, in a way, pretty much guaranted 25k each if we take the job.

Also, we have to take in account that the grab itself is a very easy thing. We'll have ALL the intel. Every single little bit.

The only hard part is keeping her "safe" for some time.

Anyways, I think we should take it

I'd like to thank Mister Juan and Ciritias for (in excellent Shadowrunner fashion) saving the run, AND the game. You guys are just too awesome.


As for the payoff, I'm not so concerned that $25k per person is low...that's actually more than I pay my group when I'm GMing. But the nature of the job, IMHO is what demands a larger payoff.

Sure, runners break all kinds of laws when they do most runs. But most of those runs are done on extra-territorial corporate property. The bigger corps usually don't want to have the cops involved, especially since they can put whatever spin they want on what happened when some runners broke in and shot the place up. It is in their best interest to keep things quiet, which benefits the runners.

Also, the actual run tends to be a very short-duration affair. Many times it's over before everyone even knows it's happening. That contributes to the team's anonymity.

But a kidnapping? There are sooooo many things stacked against us here.

1st: Since the kidnappee is behind the setup, who knows who she's told about it. That could cause some serious complications on down the road.

2nd: We will be telling Tara's old man that we have his daughter, and that we want money. At that point, he has most of the cards. Anything he can do that buys him time makes it less and less likely we will succeed. And besides tara herself, we have no real leverage to keep him from stalling.

3rd: If we have no blackmail plan, he will get the cops involved. The Feds have whole departments devoted to handling kidnappings. These guys have the money, the manpower, and the resources of a megacorps, and will throw them all behind finding us. To me, that's just as bad as letting Ares know you are keeping their prototype weapon system in your garage, and you dare them to come and get it.

4th: $25k is about enough money to pay a middle class standard of living for about 5 months. IF we pull this job off, we will probably need to lay low at LEAST this long. And we might have to be prepared to not even touch that money until then.

5th: I don't think an extraction job is remotely comparable to this. With an extraction, you are just grabbing a target, and delivering it to a johnson. There's plenty of risk, and the target's employer will likely be looking for him/her up until the runners hand the target off to the johnson. THIS is a whole different ballgame, folks. Yes, we will be "extracting" the target. But not only will we be giving the target back to her "employer" without getting caught/geeked, but we are making the "employee" bankroll the whole operation. How much would you charge if a Johnson wanted you to extract an Ares Exec, then extort Ares for his safe return? Shit...I'd charge enough to retire on, but that's just me.

5th: $250k ransom...and that's the exact amount in the insurance policy? That would sound very fishy to me, and might cause trouble. Then again, we could use that to our advantage. Maybe say that if the old man gets the feds involved, we will make sure he gets investigated by planting clues that make it look like HE is behind the whole thing for the insurance money.

6th: $125k...is that REALLY enough to disappear on? For someone with ZERO underworld connections, and no real street savy...do you think she can do it? We might want to convince her that half a mill is a much better sum.

7th: This might be me metagaming a little too much (or maybe I watch too many movies), but really...even today $250k seems VERY low for a high-profile kidnapping. We aren't extorting some corporate middle manager...we are kidnapping the daughter of a guy who sits on the BOARD OF DIRECTORS of the East Coast division of EVO...one of the BIG 10...triple A MEGACORP.

Let me give you some perspective. My wife works for a company called The Shaw Group (I used to work there too, that's how we met). This is a fortune 500 Engineering and Pipe Fabrication company that is HQed here in Louisiana. It has over 20k employees world wide, and it a very big player. The CEO of the company...his annual salary is $1,890,000 (over $900/hour). That doesn't count the dividends he gets from his company stock, divedends from the rest of his portfolio, profit sharing, and probably tons of kickbacks from under the table stuff he does. And he is just the CEO...he has to answer to the board of directors, who probably all make more money than him. And this company MIGHT qualify for single A status in the SR world. This Kobayashi fuck probablys blows $250k on weekend trips to the bahamas. I don't think a million nuyen is anything close to outrageous. Hell, we can agree to the $250k ransome, and then just put $1 mill in the actual ransome note. Tara gets her $125k, and we split up $750k. $150k is plenty enough for Julio to take 6months off and spend that time in the Carib League, resort hopping.

Well, and that's the problem. Realistic risk vs. reward, given the security and whatnot of the 2050s+, this sort of job's just not terribly feasible, really.

I mean, shit, Man on Fire? Sure. But that's fucking Mexico, life's cheap, the cops suck a dick, and everyone knows it happens all the time anyways. Kidnap some Anglo chick and dump her in the cargo hold of a Triad or Yak boat that's gonna ship her ass off to Chiba or Hong Kong or something? That's doable, because the contact is limited (much like a SR extraction, you grab, you deliver, and that's that), and because it's just some random chick you picked up at a bar or something (so no one'll miss her 'till her ass is halfway across the Pacific anyways, all her friends or whatnot knew she ran out to get picked up last night, etc).

But this sort of thing's just hairy. It's a big name family, and a big money family. Lots can go wrong. As such, it requires a big fat paycheck -- but the problem there is one of game balance. I mean, shit. A reasonable payment for a job this scary? I could see some characters retiring from a payment like that, depending on their backstory and stuff.

So we're kinda walkin' a tightrope, here. We don't want to toss realism (both in terms of threat, and of Shadowrunner response to that threat, and in terms of a halfway-decent payment for that threat) out the window, y'know?

We can do it, though. Go Team Venture!

*laughs*

You guys seem to think I don't have plans for you all either way if you accept this job or not

Foolish mortals
*insert evil laughter here*

If you think the deal stinks, regardless of whether Tara was rude or not (keep in mind she's a 16 year old corp kid and HARDLY a shadowrunner, she may be smart, but not street wise. Big difference) don't take it.

There are other things afoot.

I have such a bad feeling about where this is going....

Perception roll (for that thing I told you about)
Rolls: 2 hits

MisterJuan

Good enough. From where you are on the "dance floor" you can spot two that are close to you. One on the wall just behind the bar, and another about 2m down the wall from the entrance on the right, the opposite direction from the bar.

*rubs her manipulative hands together*

So, where would you all like to go from here. You're meal ticket just walked away from your "negotiations" and yet you still have a lot of intel to do leg work on if you want to proceed outside the terms she was proposing...

Ball's in your court y'all. What's next

Anyone besides Scarlet gonna do anything at the bar or....

Do we move on?

Billy's still considering calling the bitch's daddy, and letting him know she's about to be a royal pain in his ass. But, well, no one else seems interested in that idea (or in saying no to that idea), so...I dunno.

I actually havn't seen that idea yet (must have missed it?).

Scarlet would say no to that, though. Better just leave the kid and her daddy alone now.

Bye
Thanee

He wasn't bluffing, entirely, when he threatened the girl with it. I mentioned it in there, and now that she's gone, he's just idly spinning his commlink around, considering. Sorry if I was unclear.