So we all know that in the dark future of 2070 large gangs basically rule large sections of the Sprawl. These guys have armor, weapons, insane berserks the whole she-bang. Now the real question is, how much would it take to completely and utterly exterminate one of these bad boys from the face of the planet? Take the Halloweeners, since they seem to be harder to get rid of than roach spirits. How much do you have to throw at them before they simply cease to be?

Well it depends, it seems to me that most of your average members would disperse to the four winds if a single massive strike or series of strikes were able to take out the leaders/Lts. You'd also have to have detailed knowledge of where the safehouses were and have enough firepower to make everything very one-sided to crush the ganger's morale as well.

Of course, for the real freak gangs in the Sixth World I'm not so sure that you can really squash them, even if you hunted down and killed every last member, a few months or years later a new batch of freaks will take up the mantle to ride on the legacy of their elders and the entire sick cycle starts all over again.




So for the worse of the worse you'd not only have to kill the entire gang, but also somehow force everyone else to forget that they ever existed, think about what the adults tried to pull off in "Freddy vs Jason".

Some of them would be more difficult to take out than the others. The only way you're going to get rid of The Spiders permanently is if you destroy Spider, which is very nearly impossible. Not even Twitch armed with a plot-device could do it.

The Spikes would fall apart without Lord Torgo, and taking him out is far easier than killing a Totem, but it is by no means easy.

Good point on how big is a gang before it is a large gang. However in Seattle at least the Halloweeners, and the Ancients seem to be the biggest. The halloweeners simply due to insanity, and the Ancients because they have a continuity of leadershp, and milspec weapons. Though thinking about it I suppose the Ancients would most like be the easier gang to get rid of. They don't quite have the same 'we are all a crazy meme from hell' thing that the Halloweeners do.

they do have backing from tir taingire though, which makes things a little tricky. crazy man with a baseball bit is scary, but not as scary as less crazy man with an ares alpha, if you ask me

You have to kill the leadership, yes, but also fill the power vacuum created by the destruction of the gang. People WILL join gangs. If you dont want a particular gang to reincarnate, you gotta make sure people have an alternative gang to join. Ideally you would make sure all those youths have activities like sports and education to worry about instead of gangs, but this is Shadowrun.

So.. killing every member of the gang, easy!

Killing the gang, not so easy!

Depends on how much time you have and your resources. I once was in a mostly solo campaign hunting a gang. The gang had killed my Shaman's talislegger/mentor when they couldn't pay the protection money. So the Shaman went after them using lots of stealth, spirit power and working at night, and coordinating with rival gangs.

One tactic was to be on the rooftops using spirits for concealment and movement, mostly between buildings. One of the other gangs would start a fight with the target gang, and the Shaman would use a silenced rifle to pick off a few more bad guys than would have been the case otherwise. He used guns as much as possible to prevent the gang from figuring out a mage was around for as long as possible.

Another tactic was to catch a small group and use magic (can't think of the spell) to make himself look like woman to get them off guard. Get them in the alley where a spirit uses Confusion on them. Out comes the Slivergun at point blank range while they're staring at the spirit. Couple of quick shots, starting with those who don't seem affected and its over. Use another spirit to sink the bodies into the ground and they are just gone.

After a while the gang got really paranoid and developed a power struggle. My Shaman helped that along by killing the number 2 man, the toughest of the leiutenants and the others started fighting amongst themselves.

Pretty soon the gang was so weak and divided that the other gangs, who had been picking at the edges already, swooped in and finished them off.

Lots of legwork and astral prowling for gathering intel in that campaign, and dealing with the other gangs was no easy matter either.

I think a lot of coordination of other smaller gangs followed by a well researched quick strike on the leadership and the obvious replacements for the leadership would force most of the gang away, after which the defectors would join the small gangs making several medium gangs instead of a bunch of small ones and one big one. Better situation? I guess thats based on your own perception.

PS - Halloweeners are much more name than force now. They just don't pack a ton of power anymore, the ancients would wipe the floor with them and have just about no losses.

Somehow I doubt that, simply because the reason they are so weakened is because of the Ancients. If it really wasn't a big thing to tap that final nail in the coffin I'm sure they would.

Most gangs are more like associations of small, local gangs than a single large entity. For example, the Crips are actually about 200 different small gangs that wear the same colors and all call themselves "Crips."

So I guess the first question is: "why would you want to kill the whole gang off?" because I'll bet that the answer to that question probably wouldn't entail killing everyone in, say, the Halloweeners but maybe the 18th Street Halloweeners which consist of maybe 30 individuals.

No you cannot be the Punisher!

Seriously though, you can kill what is commonly known as the Yakuza, Mafia, Seoulpa Rings, Triad by killing the majority of their members and ALL their leadership. However, that leaves one HUGE power vacuum and everyone is going to be trying to fill it.

I have a character currently who is waging a very low level guerilla campaign against the Yakuza in Puyallup. havent really had much time to develope that plot, but that is the character's goal. Luckily he's got 400 years.

...Provided that it's even possible, trying to truly "wipe out" a gang should probably be a helluva lot more trouble than it's worth, unless your GM is rather kind. Gangs can and do bring a sense of (however misguided) community to entire neighborhoods in real life, and I see no reason why that situation would get any better in a dystopia. They really can become community institutions. Taking out some leadership and keeping a gang from becoming a powerful entity with a true agenda is quite possible, but killing the name is another thing entirely. Gangs should be considered to have grassroots resources that'd be tough for any runner to deal with. Quite simply, in a lot of cases, it's going to be tough to tell where gangs end and normal area residents begin, unless you're dealing with one of the really flashy and distinctive groups like the Halloweeners. For example, let's say you want to take out the Chulos. What are you going to do, just cack every shady, poor Latino you can find in Puyallup? And what if the gangers learn to lay low for a li'l while and blend in with their community? After all, there is no guarantee that a neighborhood will trust some shadowrunner any more than they'd trust the gangers who more or less live with them.

I don't know have the wrong gang piss off a corp or a nat goverment and i'm sure you can wipem out, spend 2 or 3 years maybe upto 5 or so for the realy big groups. track and watch and send in the spys and what not, after you have safe houses and paterns and the groups over all plans down for the basic's you go to town with a tomahawk so to speak. in am ore ethical sence I'd say take out the leaders and those directly below as well as have a major crack down on the low end guys, that why you can scare those that slip out more if they think every ones the target instead of the big boys, And we are dealing with gangs so theirs a mentality so i would say also make sure those that get away know you'v burned their main hide outs to the ground and go along those lines, when a group pops up of the same name hit them hard and fast so that others know if the tags and the jackets start showing up its not going to be some beat cop thats going to come knocking when that call of loud music comes in

ofcourse you can go all out for the true fear of god mode, and do the above alone with removing close famly members of the gangers or at least the leaders and the middle level guys, wifes kids brothers, dog,cat, nabor if they look shifty. But thats just me... with some of these groups you realy do need to go all out scorched earth on them. and in the end it might not even work compleatly, though at the very least you'v made it very clear that no matter how big they get, Group A is top dog int eh yard

or do what the mafia does and try and get them to work for you.

either or.