"Note that this is not an objective, but merely something that will attract the attention of the corporation. CORP affiliates will not be informed of this secondary objective, but will still be eligible for this reward."

I've been seeing this come up more and more in missions. As a character why would I risk letting me affiliate know I'm about to go on a job for them to tell me "Ummm just go with and we'll talk later." This takes a horrible game of "Whats in the box?" and adds a blindfold handcuffs while searching for the box.

My character is willing to dance to an affiliates tune, but atleast hum me a few bar so I can know to tap dance or waltz.

We've covered this a few times but it's this. There's nothing the corproation has a hand in that mission but still things that might get their attention. The bit about existing affiliates getting a reward is only so their not screwed. It's not what's in the box, there is no box that week.

No, there is a box, if there weren't I wouldn't get anything.

There's no mission though: you aren't informed in these cases, b/c there's nothing that a corpman could think of regarding the mission; however, if you happen to do "X", then he'll think it's pretty cool and reward you. If the GM is telling the players the objective, that's the problem. There is no objective for that mission from that corp.

If there's no objective, there shouldnt be a reward.

So, if at work I do something that my boss didn't take the time to tell me to do-- even if he thinks it warrants some reward, I shouldn't get one? This doesn't make sense. It also allows an unaffiliated person a decent chance to attract attention.

In shadowrun, that makes perfect sense.
And if affiliatons had loyalty and attention stats, I could see the attention stat going up by one with better side goals and rewards being offered in the future. But as it is, giving a reward for being uber seems unusual.

I was thinking I need to track affiliation and corp rewards more closely. The more a shadowrunner uses corp provided gear the more the corps know.

Is your argument contingent on the PC informing the corp affiliation of their activity? I wouldn't necessarily assume this. It's possible for the affiliation to be aware of the mission without the PC informing them. In fact, i think this better fits the tone of the affiliations. I think it's fitting if the near omniscience and resources of the affiliations are demonstrated to the PC, yet they get to go on the missions anyway. Dystopia in action.

My issue with affiliations is when the sabotage the success of the mission. I had one at gen con where they melted the drone we were looking for and cost the entire team 2 karma and 25k so that they could meet their reward. I noticed it happen and the GM called the game before the entire table offed the offending player. Makes the whole game less fun if I have to CSI my own team mates not to get screwed.

You mean if there's no MISSION there shouldn't be a reward, a statement with which I entirely disagree.



First off, I don't know why they'd call the game. PvP and PK happens sometimes.

How often are the optional bonus objectives in a "Zero Sum" relationship with completing the main adventure?

I would say more than 50% of the time. Usually, the NeoA's will set you up to do something anti-corporate, and the corps, of course, want you to do the opposite. Or, like in a Mission that I ran at Dragon*Con, there is a 'obtain a substance, but don't let anyone else get it' competition for some thing that was not freely available, but easy to obtain. And I won't bring up what the NeoA's wanted you to do.

OTOH, it does bring some reality in. Random shadow runner groups would contain individuals with very diverse (and perhaps conflicting) goals.

I run a LARP of which those kinds of conflicting goals are absolutely the bread-and-butter of the gameplay but I am not sure how well it would work within the context of a runner TEAM, team being the key word.

YOu have to be careful with those kinds of conflicts, and use them sparingly. YOu generally want to avoid too much interparty conflict. Espeically as Affiliation Goals and rewards are supposed to be side jobs. They shouldn't have a big impact on the main adventure... Unless of course that's the point, and it's the big season finale adventure and you're going all out

Bull

I just don't want to have spirits following my team mates around so my Force 6 spirits can kill them if they do something counter to my interests. Starts to get into "If I mana ball my whole team and we get paid 30k total for 5 k each would it be in my best interest to off my team? and collect the reward?" No I would never work in town again by the second time I was the sole survivor. But in missions no one knows who you are from tourny to tourny so bad behavior is in fact encouraged. Just hoping that the new missions don't pit the players against each other or I will have to run area control thoughts to make sure I don't get screwed by my crew. Sounds extreme but I don't want to make sure that the guys getting paid for steal object X are secretly trying to blow X up. At least don't penalize the team karma award for not completing the mission because you told one person to blow the mission if we all did what we were supposed to do.