You have to be able to prove it's the corp for it to be a problem. Shadowrunners are not a corps only deniable assets. In almost any situation where a corp has secured hush-hush operations, they are going to have a zero team ready to do whatever needs to be done and then fade away. Don't bank on public visability shielding you from megacorps anyways - they can just run up a huge bill if needed and then write it off. Golden Rule - the corps have the gold so they make the rules.

This is a good point. CorpSec won't generally invade Lone Star turf, but Lone Star's pretty good with response time. If the group flies off into a military base, corporate ecology, or leaves the city, then Lone Star won't chase them there.

In these cases, my rolls would indicate that security's net hits would respond as CorpSec, Lone Star, military, or tribal authorities, as appropriate. Really, it's the players' choice. Wherever they want to go. Unless I decide that Lone Star caught them just before they got there.

That's my point when I say that only the power of plot keeps shadowrunning viable.

I consider this a flawed premise. The only way to make it work in a 'realistic' manner is to have direct assistance from another entity of power (corp, government, etc.). Independent deniable assets will fail.

Plot - or, as some games call it GM's fiat. Shadowrunners succeed because we have to assume that corps are dumber, less prepared, less motivated, and using shoddier equipment than a bunch of independent zeroes.

And countering the counters costs money and adds to difficulty. The corps have the money and manpower - shaowrunners don't. If you get into a battle of economic attrition with a corp, you lose - unless you have the backing of another entity of power.

A simple opposed roll system is a nice way to do it. However, it does demonstrate the 'power of plot' point I was making. If the security got to roll the same way as the shadowrunners, they would always win and find the runners because they have more manpower and more money to throw at the problem than a team of runners ever will. The only exception would be if another corp was actively interfering with its own manpower and resources. Shadowruns don't usually get played out this way because it takes the focus off of the PCs... so the plot kicks in and lets them have a chance they really shouldn't have.

That's true. You're not wrong. It would be stupid for me to deny it.

That being said, the same situation holds true for every game or genre of literature imaginable. The very nature of heroic quests of any kind is that the odds are stacked against the players, but they can succeed where others can't. Think of any action movie you've ever seen and tell me that the odds weren't stacked against them, that that you couldn't have predicted that hero's plan, that the enemy doesn't have far more resources than the hero.

Eventually, at some point, you have to say "this is the way it is" and accept that. Because here's a news flash: the concept that runner's can commit crimes and get away with them is hardly the least realistic point in this setting/game.

The lame IC excuse I use is this: An environment of Shadowruns are an asset the corps that live there. That is, the very presence of this underground uncontrollable random element hinders production for EVERYONE but at seemingly random levels at any given time. Randomness helps the underdog, so unless you have a massive lead over your competitors, the presence of a powerful underground of Shadowrunners will help take down your rivals. The amount of money it would cost you to cause the kind of mayhem, bad publicity, industrial espianage, and general distraction to other corps would be astronomical, but well worth the occasional losses to said attrition, especially if you can use security to hedge your losses. The goal of your security wouldn't be to hinder or stop shadowrunning, just hinder or stop shadowrunners from coming to YOUR facility. Successful or not, security is just too damn expensive for its worth... except as a deterrant to future shadowruns. If your security system stops three shadowrunners in a row, more than likely it did not justify its cost, until you factor in how many potential shadowrunners it stopped who never bothered to come. Hopefully, they went somewhere else. Because you always want them to go somewhere.

The above rationale helped solve this for my campaigns, helped me to stretch my suspesion of disbelief long enough to play, and generally contributes to the "you are all pawns of our master plan" feel of the AAA corps.

"But sir. We had them. Five more minutes and they would have been smears on the concrete. Why did you call my forces back?" "You are expendable, Mr Johnson. They are not. That is all you need to know."

Yes and no. It's part of the nature of the cyberpunk genre that criminals, gangs, poor folks, rebels, and those that are socially marginalized are generally the "good guys" who follow their own honor code, help each other out, stick their neck out for folks, and generally are dissatisfied with the way things are and seek to change them in their own anti-hero way. Governments, corporations, religions, police, and large institutions of power become the "bad guys" and are always evil, in a very literal sense.

Some few are this delusional, but most know that they are no better than the ones that they target, it's just that they don't have the power to act on a larger scale that makes them seem comparable less evil.

These institutions are still made up of people. Some are good, some are bad, but the institution itself is always neither. Your literal sense of evil may be a first person viewpoint held by some within the setting, but it's far to inaccurate and simplistic to be the basis of the game's reality.

This is an illusion. The only denaibility that exists is what the corps agree on amongst themselves.

The corps own these people. If the corp wants to do anything with them, that's the way it goes. As far as availability - it's a big world and the megacorps are huge - they can recruit hundreds of zeroes and assign them to teams depending upon need. Permanent costs are an non-issue when compared to supporting tens of thousands of wage slaves.

I see any runners above the level of glorified street trash as needing a patron or else being hunted down like the 'most wanted' criminals they are. I'm not saying that they'll be killed - forced recruiting with loyalty compliance tech/magic is more likely if the runners have any capabilities of value to the corp (and most will).

That's what cortex bombs (and possibly even anchored spells) were made to do! Additionally, none of the runners' equipment really belongs to them - it's corp property and lord knows the corp has some way to keep track of it and get it back. All contacts are handled through corp channels and none of these runners ever get paid in anythig but corp script and are heavily tied into the company store - they try to leave and they have nothing even if they do manage to survive. These things are not going to be optional - they are a required aspect of a corp risking a mission on zeroes.

I paint the world in a very bleak manner, but I feel it's a better representatiuon of what super-power megacorps might allow to happen. As it's set up, the world is a high-school fantasy where the good guys have a chance just because they are the good guys.

OK.

I've tried to take that flawed premise and mke it functional. See my above posts for how I do it.

You're putting the cart before the horse. Corporations don't exist because of shadowrunners - in fact, by the setting shadowrunners exist because corps have a need for theior services. This need is very artificial and forced - that's my problem with it. There is no good reason for having independent shadowrunners operating as they supposedly do within the setting. Company stables make far more sense.

Then every concept has to be reworked to core becasue this yardstick is only 33 inches long.

I like the SR4 mechanics and I beleive I can find something of worth in the game - I just can't accept the silly gameworld assumptions that I uised to love back in high-school when I player SR1&SR2.

The corp may not let you keep even that. If they are smart
(and EVERY corp is), they've got your ware set with kink bombs and whatever else is needed to keep you in line. If you are really set on jumping ship, they'd rather recycle you for parts (cyber and organic) than to just let you go - it's more profitabl;e and less of a security risk.

That is, unless you've got something of value to trade... Oh yeah, everything you own is really theirs already. So much for that option...

Bleak, grim, and despertate is how I see the dystopian future.

I think that one of the big problems that is occuring with shadowrun is that the basic premises and symbology of the game are changing. The process started in SR3 and SR4 has almost completely changed from SR1 and 2.

I keep harping about Neo-Anarchists on this board and bemoaning the fact that you never hear about them anymore. They believed that the free exchange of goods, services, and INFORMATION was what kept markets efficient and equal. They believed that the megacorps had created a monopoly (technically oligopoly) out of the world markets for these things. Thus they promoted the destruction of this "economic order" and the creation of a new one based on perfect competition (or more realistically monopolistic competition for those who understand economics).

The ideals of this group is what helped to create the sub-class of shadowrunners. SINless people who were disenfranchised and excluded from the process. They fought back against the corporations. The fact that they took money and provided aid to one corporation to work against another (the sort of hypocrisy that most terrorist and rebel movements display). This is what created the sense of being good guys, having a "union," that works together, and what created the opportunity for someone to work independently of the corps.

There is also a cultural shit in RL that has created the problem with SR style cyberpunk compared to when it first came out in the 80's. Back then there was the sense of dread about the increasing controls put on society by government and corporations and a need to strike back at them. To keep freedom. Nowadays that sense of having to do something about the controls has largely faded. There is a sense that there is nothing you can do about it so you'd better live with it. The sense of striking back has been completely dissassociated from RL. The Matrix is largely to blame for this. It created the notion that this rigidly controlled and increasingly distopic world wasn't real--that there was a real world beyond it that an individual had to escape to. In essence you can't do anything about your situation in this world--you have to escape it to change your fate. At least that's the cultural leanings in the West anyway.

The corporations, even in SR4, aren't as overpowering and all-knowing as a lot of people portray them on these boards and in the game. I can give you hundreds of financial and political reasons why it is NOT in the best interests of a corporation to attack someone physically or astrally who is not in their corporate territory. It is social and game design reasons for this feeling.

And who do they work for? If they don't work for your corp (you never can tell, can you?) you may just end up with a diferent owner and a lot lower on their totem pole. Better off with the keepers you know.

To call it a flawed premise is to miss the very basic and most fundamental point. It cannot be flawed it is the only premise. This is the fundamental core around which the game exists.

It is not putting the cart before the horse to say the corporate universe exists because of shadowrunners if you are talking in a meta-game mode. The simple fact is in order for Ares, Aztechnology, CATCo, Evo, S-K, and the whole lot of them there first has to be shadowrunners. This is because first a group of players sits around a table and generates the runners then the GM creates the world for them.

[Don LaFontaine voice]
In a world where the criminal underground exists to stick it to the corps [ . . . ]
[/Don LaFontaine voice]

So now, we bring it back to why is it possible to be a shaddowrunner when corporations have access to magical resources and can in theory use them to destroy all those pain in the arse runners?

Well, there are lots of reasons. There are reasons that have not been listed here. There are reasons that don’t incur any cost to the runners or require any action on their part whatsoever. There are evasive maneuvers available to the runners that do require action but not cost. There are evasive actions available to the runners that require both action and cost.

It is not a cost war, nuyen siege, between the runners and the corp. It’s a cost war between the corps. The existence of a mage that can do one thing, does not mean that it can be utilized or scaled in such a way as to make it the perfect security. I’ve presented you with some of those reasons, and you’re response is that the central premise is flawed and it is to be thrown out in favor of corporate sponsership and no independent runners.

That’s fine if you want to play a game of Corporate Patronage that’s up to you. But to say that the game is a fraud because you’re unable to suspend disbelief that’s up to you. You’re not going to sell it to many of us however. Personally I’ve worked for a range from small regional corporations, large national corporations, to government bureaucracies. I know exactly how a simple premise that should in theory be executable and simple fails on the human level, and I feel you’re failing to apply that lesson to this case, and probably to others as well.

That's a matter of perspective. I would counter that the corps are not as ignorant, unmotivated, and incompetent as a lot of people portray them on these boards and in the game.

I'm sure I can counter them.

I suspect it is mostly the latter, specifically metagame rationales. Thus, it falls back into the "success by plot alone" argument that I began with.

If your basic premise can only be supported with meta-game reasons then I consider it flawed. I prefer a stronger sense of 'realism' within the world that can stand on its own assumptions. The current 'independent operator' style of the SR world fails this test.

I agree. And that's why I don't believe that the corps would want the risk of randomness that independents represent. Randomness costs you money, and that's an expense the corps should never willingly accept when having their own operatives is a better answer.

Independents are terrorists - they exist outside the rules and are not answerable to anyone. The only thing you have to rely on is their rep... and that's just not going to be good enough.

Hopefully, sometime next week, I'll want to start exploring rules about running different "Campaign Modes", such as working for the corps. Since I don't plan to actually use it soon though, it's a lower priority than my current "Mission Maker" project which I plan to start using in February.

The point of a basic premise is that it requires no support. It is and all else flows from it. If you say that it is flawed because of X then the problem is you’re putting the cart before the horse. The fact of the matter is X is flawed because it does not support the basic premise.

You in fact have a very idealistic view of how the world should be and how people should act, and it is counter to the sixth world, possibly even the real world.

For example a corporation is not a hive mind entity. There are a variety of wills, desires, and agendas competing for control of the corporation. If there was a Central Mage Institute of Astral Kickassedness within a corporation then the power struggle to control it would probably destroy the corporation because it will have the most influence over the corporation compared to all other sections.

Now you may have some idealistic hive mind corporate concept that negates this. You may ask, how can they become so powerful without a Central Mage Institute of Astral Kickassedness? The CMIAK is obviously the route to ultimate world domination. And the simple answer is that the CMIAK does not work.

Why does CMIAK fail? Well that’s what this thread was started to find out. A variety of reasons have been proposed, you have to your satisfaction ruled every one of them out. But I hardly feel you’ve proved your case.

Actually the randomness of shadowrunners shouldn't be a cost for the corporations. Just as with all other sorts of risk there are ways to diversify that risk or mitigate it. And shadowrunners are a part of that.

If ABC and XYZ are in competition over a certain project and they both know that the other has and is willing to use deniable assets then both of them can structure the riskiness of terrorist activity into the project financing. Based on estimates of how big a black ops budget that XYZ has, ABC works into its model what quality of runners XYZ will hire and then rates them against ABC's planned project security. Figure out what the standard deviation of successful terrorist action is and that lets you figure out the probability of XYZ's run succeeding against ABC. As a result ABC goes and finds some insurance or other bank that is willing to insure the project against the risk of terrorist activity and suddenly they are insured against the lost revenues. Or they just buy derivative financial instruments in order to ensure an alternative way of making the revenues if the project fails. XYZ does the same. If the project still has positive NPV then they go ahead with the project.

All of this increases the cost of doing business but it isn't expensive because ABC corp can anticipate the losses. It is only unanticipate losses that are really a loss to the corporation. But if they did their work properly then these shouldn't occur.

P.S. I'm having a good chuckle thinking about a derivatives market based solely on the activities of shadowrunning teams. "Hey, this is Mark over at Goldman Sachs. I've got a forwards contract on $10 million dollars worth of damage done to Ares Corporation by shadowrunners in June 2070. I'm looking to sell it and acquire a forward contract on Aztechnology for the same amount in July 2070. Is that something that Zurich Orbital would be interested in?"

That's so freakin' cool!!! I can so see that!!!

The rest of the post, however, doesn't really work for me. For one thing, I don't see major corps as calling out insurance claims. Ever. Major corps are self-insured. Or rather, they own the insurance companies. And they also take the role that government takes today in regards to economic intervention, so guarantees and the like are funded by the major corp.

Ummm...if you like the idea of my post-script and can see it happening then what is so hard to swallow about the rest of the post.

In modern days it is possible to insure against acts of terrorism such as kidnapping for ransom. In fact, in many parts of the world it is very common.

Also, just because a corp owns its own bank doesn't mean that the one entity gets a freebie from the bank. It still has to actually purchase the insurance and the bank is still liable for payment in the event of damages. The only time where the management of either one would be willing to mess up his own bottom line MIGHT be in the case of a zaibatsu where there is only 1 company and it is owned by the family. So this only applies to Shiawase.

Kereitsu's are similar to holding companies or conglomerations except that kereitsu's specifically look to vertically intergrate their functions. This would be Renraku and MCT. Ares is also very similar to a kereitsu except that it isn't Japanese. Holding companies and groups tend to seek diversification through horizontal intergration--spreading their functions across many different industries. S-K, Aztechnology, and Evo are examples of this. Horizon is a jumped up consulting firm but can be seen as a vertically integrated media conglomerate. I can't remember who the other two megas are anymore.

If General Motors Financial agrees to insure Colt's manufacturing project then it works exactly like a standard insurance transaction conducted between two different corporations. The fact that they are both owned by Ares doesn't matter. If Colt receives covered damages and GM can't pay because it is in default then Colt would go to the Corporate Court or else Ares Holding Company and seek damages there depending on how Ares' Corporate Governance is outlined. This is similar to RL where Colt would go to the US government authorities and seek payment of the damages through them. If GM has filed a Chapter 11 either for restructuring or bankruptcy then Colt gets added to the list of claimants on GM's assets. Depending on the assets and Colt's position on the list it may recover 100% of the damages.

Just out of curiosity cetiah, what sort of financial background do you have that makes you such an expert on this stuff?

Wow...I completely forgot about this. That's what makes runners work. The corps need them. It's right in their charter!

You can't bring the runners on as actual assets because there is a more concrete link between you and them. Instead you keep a Johnson at arms' length and if any runners get traced to him you "remove" the liability. That way you can tell the courts that he wasn't acting on your behalf and that he was just some lone nut.

This also acts to restrain corporate pursuit of runners and why they don't astrally know everything about every intrusion. If a particular corp comes down to heavy on the "runner community" they stop working for that corp. Also, there is no reason to risk personnel in an astral battle with fleeing runners because if you can amass evidence through investigation instead you can take the case before the court and get renumeration through those means.

There we go. The answer to the question of "how can runners evade detection of an astral track without resorting to plot needs?" Now we just have to find a way for them to actually do that in order to evade cops or overzealous security managers.

The corporate court is the corps. That means they can make their own rules. As a whole, they would be opposed to independent operatives. As long as it's a West Virginia Prom (family fucking family) then they can cover it up just fine amonst themselves.

Of course you can. They're still deniable assets. Any link can be covered up when no one bothers to look - because you're all in the gmae together.

You missed the part where ALL corps come down heavy on independents and don't generally hire them at all. The corps as a whole would be very happy if all independents were wiped out and there was a 'gentleman's game' of shadow ops.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. It all depends upon what you have to gain. Possibly the appeal of eliminating the competition's zero ops team is finacial reward enough.

Not really. You've dodged the issue by relying upon a meta-game construct that shouldn't be operating the way it does within the world.

No offense received at all. Just interested since you didn't just sort of gloss over everything.

That $40 loss isn't really a loss. It is a transfer from one party to another. Insurance companies, and all banks for that matter, make money by taking other people's money (insurance premiums or savings deposits) and reinvesting an amount that doesn't violate an holding rules (which stipulate the minimum amount of money needed by a bank to cover it's daily cash withdrawal requirements--usually self-imposed in the US but formerly goverment mandated). They make money through the spread.

For insurance companies this is the difference between the discounted present value of their investments minus the PV of any damages they have to pay out. If the insurance company thinks that the insurance is too risky (i.e. a research facility with nothing but a deadbolt for security in Redmond) then the PV is negative and they don't off insurance on it. If it is positive they have decided the chances of having to pay damages are less than the money they can make by reinvesting your premiums.

For banks their spread is the difference between what their investments earn and what they pay the savings account in interest (usually 10-11% versus 0-1%).

You are correct. Not everyone insures everything. But large corporations have all sorts of financial instruments besides insurance that can have the same effect. Forward contracts markets (the one I joked about) help to do this. Basically accepting slightly lower revenues in the future in order to guarantee a specific amount of revenue in the future. They do this to protect against exchange rates, inflation, interest rates, weather, all sorts of things. In SR I can feasibly see them using insurance and forward contracts to insure against runners.

Insurance companies also usually have something called a deductible which is a specified amount of damage that they are not responsible for. For instance if your car is insured but has a $1000 deductible then you are responsible to the $1000 and anything beyond that is covered by the insurance (to state it briefly).

The damages paid out by the insurance company come out of their revenues, yes, but it doesn't mean that the money is lost. Overall, the economy has lost nothing. The insurance company may or may not have made an accounting loss, and the insured company has lost nothing. Basically Ares has moved $40 of value from GM Financial to Colt.

The way that the corps have been portrayed in Corporate Download and in Shadows of Europe the main part of the corporation--SK Prime, Ares HQ, whatever--isn't the actual insurance company or bank. It is a subsidiary. Subsidiaries function like independent companies except for certain legal ties to the parent company. Likewise, management of the subsidiary is valued based on its performance and given bonuses accordingly. In economics you assume that everyone works in their own financial best interests unless forced otherwise (in this case according to the contractual liabilities owed by GM Financial and Colt to Ares) so you can assume that GM Financial and Colt are looking after themselves first, and Ares as a trickle-down effect.

Company C trying to find that balance is what microeconomics, finance, and corporate strategy is all about!

Because it's a false assumption. Nations of today use soldiers more than merc. Corps of tomorrow have their own zero ops tems rather than freelancers. You don't have to pay them that well since theire won't be a freelance market to compete with. Keep them happy with Middle Lifestyle and you should be set. Besides, the coprs have ways of controlling them - this isn't meant to be a fair situation. The life of a shadowrunner is the life of a (pampered) slave gladiator.

I think that HappyDaze has basically just created his own version of how things work in his world and seems unwilling to suspend his disbelief in that world view.

As far as astral tracking goes there is the added problem that it seems as if most security is contracted out in SR. At least in the first 6 SR missions I didn't see any in-house security for the corporations--they were all third party contracts. Same goes with such entities as Knights Errant, Wolverine, etc. They wouldn't be in business if all corps had their own security forces at all sites.

So often times the astral security isn't even part of the target corp. In that case the astral pursuers have the added question of: is it worthwhile for us to risk our people in lieu of losing the contract?

Whoever it was that started this post, if you are still reading, then this is something else you should keep in mind as GM. What Knight Errant's policy is for astrally protecting a Renraku facility for example. The answer to that question will help you determine how hard to pursue the PCs.

FYI I believe official cannon is Ares was born in part out of GM. So in fact Ares is GM Financial.

I believe HappyDaze is operating under the largest set of false assumptions. I'm not sure that he can quite get his head around the concept of a corp not being that organized, quick to act, and unified in its desires.

Today right now modern equivalents of mega corporations are using independantly operating assets who are breaking laws for them. If you don't think it's happening go do a lexis-nexis news search for the past year for Hewlet Packard. HP Chairman Patricia Dunn bought a shadowrun or a series of shadowruns against her own board! I'm sorry HD, but you're just on the wrong side of this one.

Check out a story about Patricia Dunn here.

EDIT: Oops, put in CEO's name for Chairman's. Sorry Carly.