Kyoto kid, you have to remember that your dealing with a Shadowrunner here. Someone who legally doesn't exist, and is supposed to be in a league all their own. Screwing with wealthy/important/influential people is the entire point of being a Shadowrunner, although for the most part the characters do so at the (paid) request of someone else, this is not always the case.

If some influential goober like a corperate head, goverment official, or even a member of the UK's new "peerage", could find out who a Shadowrunner was after an incident like this, it would defeat the entire purpose of the concept. Basically the cops aren't going to go knocking on a Shadowrunners door in retaliation for something like this, and even if they did odds are you'd wind up with a *LOT* of dead cops and little else except for the character relocating to a new location.

See, 90% of the time your Shadowrunner is not only invisible, but operating from an area that is more or less lawless. An urban Dystopia where even if the cops or corpsec moved in as an army, they would literally be chopped to pieces by the combined forces of gangs/urban predators/monsters before they even got to the character's doorstep. These gangs and predators receiving their weapons from the corps other than the ones providing the city police contract in order to make the police look bad. Even in areas with govermental policing you've still got corps who want to make the cops/'plex guard look bad in hopes to force a police contract sale and thus are funneling those weapons also.

Even if these guys make it to wherever the character is (probably in a building that looks like hell ourside, but is refurbished inside to match a higher lifestyle) then they have to deal with at least one world class Bad@ss with no real respect for legality. While the police are coming in with their regular assault rifles and handguns, and maybe a mage with a couple of dice in a spell or two, they will be dealing with someone who might know a dozen spells at high dice levels, and has spirits ready, or someone chromed to the teeth and carrying state of the art illegal firepower. Maybe both of these things. A lot of PCs with half a brain pick up a few security drones with defense autosofts just in case of this kind of thing, so you might very well see half a dozen automated heavy weapon turrets cutting loose as well as the runner.... who as often as not might just leave.

The bottom line here is that you can't really target shadowrunners for retaliation which is part of the entire point. Only a handfull of people would even have a remote clue of how to do it, and most of those people aren't the usual gamot of "important" types.

Mr. "I'm upset someone I care about got hit with an Orgasm Spell" is basically up the creek without a paddle. Even if they pass laws preventing such spells and declaring them "rape" (unlikely given how jaded society is at this point) it wouldn't matter to Shadowrunners who care nothing for legality by their very nature. Sure if they are going undercover (yet visible) in some areas they might carry fairly "legal" gear while playing their temporary roles/disguise but otherwise they don't care and such situations represent a fairly rare occurance.

At the very most a slotted off person might learn that they can add their name to the list of victims of [insert street name/alias here] and inquiries do nothing but make him a bigger laughing stock and increase the notoriety/asking price of [insert street name/alias here].

Organized Crime/Corperate CEOS/Politicians, they are all victims waiting to happen. Such is the point of the game.

-

The only way to really target a Shadowrunner for retaliation, and it takes a lot of doing (and luck) is if you can find out which Fixer the guy worked through since the Runner might not even be in the same area as the victim. Then if the victim can set himself up as an anoynymous Mr. Johnson and *IF* the Fixer provides him with the same runner for the job (not knowing who it is), then the guy could conceivably set up a trap.

For some "important guys" like Organized crime bosses putting a general "price" on someone's head can be a way of counter-harassment, though hardly effective in many cases. For other kinds of guys it can be a real issue to do anything since no fixer worth his salt is going to lose an effective resource by turning the person over to an irate victim (not to mention what it would do to the Fixer's rep, along with the fact that the Fixer is arguably just as guilty himself).

Long and rambling (like a lot of what I write), but understand that half the point of the game is a lack of accountability on the part of the PCs. It's also kind of telling that the the game has also been tied to themes of "Anarchy". Consider that some of the first guides for Shadowrunners were entitled "The Neo Anarchist's Guide To North America" and "The Neo Anarchist's Guide To Real Life".


>>>----Therumancer--->

i the situation KK described, i can see it happening--at least, i can see it being one of several possibilities. if the victim's bodyguards and retainers are outraged enough, they might very well want to see the perp tried and convicted for the specific crime they committed. if they're more pragmatic, they'll just want the perp disappeared.

@Therumancer:

...well said and I agree with a good part to a point. But there are times when a runner's past behaviour (& you would have to know more about the PC in question, some of the things she did and the way she dealt with people in general, including contacts) catches up with them. Also, occasionally the Crime Boss/CEO/Politician does happen to win (I've had PCs caught in scenarios like that before).

For one, the runner did make one big (and fairly stupid) mistake on her part by giving the NPC her name (not using an alias) and where she lived. Second, the initial exchange in the cafe was also recorded on one of the NPC's bodyguard's commlink which would be SOP for anyone assigned to protect a VIP. Finally, there were the other witnesses.

The whole Star busting down the door scenario was a somewhat tongue in cheek "what if" scenario in response to previous posts that dealt with the possible legal implication of rape by spell. As I remember phrasing it: "Would have been real fun if..." Didn't think it would go this far.

@mfb: Thanks.

In retrospect, had the Noblewoman really desired to exact revenge on the mage, she would have done so in a much more covert and rather devious manner. This would include, but not be limited to, hiring runners on retainer (which she has done in the past) and using her own connections (which are fairly extensive) to basically make life for the offending PC downright miserable. Making the PC "disappear" is not an option she would consider unless she was convinced the mage presented a continual threat to her daughter's safety. Fortunately for the PC, as things played out at the time, the noble had other matters to deal with. So yeah, in this case, the runner won, at least for the time being.

In the scenario as it was originally set up, there were already other parties who had an interest on making a move against the PC for quite different (and very Shadowrun based) reasons. Will there be repercussions for the mage down the road? hard to say. Depends on what the other runners decide for their bums are in the fire too just by their association with her.

Of course, when it comes to magical sexual assault, metaplanar abduction rape is by far the worst. Anyone, even a mundane, could bind a Free Spirit with Astral Gateway and have it use its power to send him and his chosen victim to the metaplanes together, where he can spend years raping her repeatedly and torturing her in the most vile ways, while less than a second passes in the real world leaving no trace that anything ever happened at all.

Metaplanar abduction rape feeds both the 80s Chuck Norris is using secret tunnels under daycare centers to rape your kids hysteria and the more recent speed rape hysteria, in which perpetrators rape you so quickly that you can't see or feel it happening.


An underaged sex sting might be a good opportunity to pull out every cliche in the book and have most of the people who come to the house by an insane murderer or evil monster of some sort, rather than just a desperate middle aged guy.

Well aside from my rants:

Another spin might be to set it up so the kids are the sex offenders. I did this once in a weird Mish-Mash Palladium game. They have these nasty demon things called "Terlin" that diguise themselves as beautiful children. I came up with the idea that they were running a prostitution/blackmail ring. Most of the adult/thug types were the servants or magically bound demons (like Succubi)... Terlin are Magic Users.

The PCs fell for it once where they crashed major vice den, and then sent all the "poor, innocent, victoms" home after defeating the baddies and figuring a couple of Succubi (which are normally homicidal in Palladium which should have been a clue) were the ring leaders. They figured it out later though.

At any rate, I figure there are few things that would be more disturbing than getting paralyzed and raped by a demon in the form of a 12 year old who video tapes it and then blackmails you (although this wasn't the gist of the original adventure).

With the moral standards (or lack thereof) in SR though I'm not too sure how well the idea would translate. Besides I don't think there are any monsters that quite fit the description.

... and "Hero And The Terror" was an awful movie.


>>>----Therumancer--->

With all due respect, it sounds as much to me like you're personally outraged at what the Shadowrunners do as that there's really a good reason for them to be suffering consequences that are unusual for Shadowrunners.

~J

...no, just that the character in question has stepped on a few too many toes, including those of her comrades, spirits, and contacts. Anyone who does that as routinely as she has is eventually going to have consequences to deal with.

<edit>
It isn't any different than hacking off an organised crime boss or corp CEO

Actually, the rest of the runners have decided to distance themselves from her and not because of any perceived threat, but because of the character's overly caustic and belligerent nature.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/05/01/u...y.ap/index.html

someone got to her!

...appears so.