Hi. I'm thinking about starting up a campaign where all the PCs are police.

Not Lone Star or Knight Errant per se, but something close to it. I think I'll make up my own start-up private police outfit in a moderately big city and go from there. The reason for this is because the campaign might be too easy for PCs if I actually give them the full backing of a complete established police force like the way modern police are, or the power of the privatized Lone Star and Knight Errant. All the PCs would have to do is call for back up and wait for the SWAT teams to arrive. I want combat to at least be a little bit interesting. I also want the PCs to do their own detective work.

So this is why I want to portray a somewhat underpowered, undermanned, underfunded police force. This way, I have an excuse as to why the PCs can't start off with all the best gear and cyberware there is (though it might be easier to acquire later in the campaign), why the PCs would have to get their own gear instead of having it issued to them, and why the PCs have the full authority to conduct raids on their own but shouldn't expect much in the way of NPC backup. Also, the characters don't have to be SINless if they don't want to. Basically, I want to give my PCs a lot of freedom instead of worrying about always having to cover their tracks... within reason.

I'm looking for general advice as to how I should conduct a game like this. Hopefully, some of you have tried something like this before. So anything any of you can offer would be nice.

A few specific questions that spring to mind are:

How much should I pay my players? Should I make it like a salary? Or a bounty for successfully closing cases and arresting wanted suspects? Maybe both?

How much easier should it be to acquire fancy gear, cyberware, and top-end mojo since the characters are working for a "legit" company? I don't want to make it too easy, otherwise most problems will probably be solved with a rocket launcher.

In that regard, should I emphasize the more non-lethal ways of taking down suspects rather than just plugging them full of lead as usual? How much so?

On the other end of the spectrum, should I be a bit more forgiving to players who decide to step out of their bounds? Such as beating information or a confession out of a suspect?

What "free" stuff should I give my players? I was thinking of just a Ares Predator pistol, a basic DocWagon contract, and access to a standard Chrysler-Nissan Patrol-1 police car. Anything more than that will have to come out of the PC's own pockets.

Is this even a good idea at all? Or doomed to failure?

Look at a large rural sherriff's dept. The county in AZ between Phoenix and Flagstaff is bigger than Rhode Island and I'm told has about 4-8 deputies on duty at any given time at night. It's a long wait for backup...

http://www.co.yavapai.az.us/Sheriff.aspx

A typical cop these days has a uniform, car or truck with a computer, a radio, body armor, pistol, some sort of long arm, taser, extendable club (ASP), pepper spray, handcuffs. I can't see them getting less.

Ammo would be free, and upgrading guns and gear isn't going to be common. Police typically either get issued their weapons or get a list. Deciding to carry a personal grenade launcher full of illegal frag grenades tends to get really seriously frowned upon by the chief who has to deal with lawsuits from the errant grenades and fragments.

I enjoy a good police procedural so that leads me to ask, what tv show are you hoping to emulate? Law & Order, The Shield, The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Streets, The Closer, Life, Davinci's Inquest, Hill Street Blues, Barney Miller?

If its The Shield, I'd give the pc's basic gear (vehicle, armor, big gun, little gun), enough salary to cover low lifestyle, and expect them to go outside the law regularly for everything else they need. This is particularly true of a smaller corp who gets the contract for a mid-sized city, where they will probably be more concerned with results than with justice. (Of course, you can say that about all the sec companies.)

If its Law & Order (or Law & Order: SVU or Law & Order: CI), then I'd give them basic gear, enough salary to cover middle lifestyle, and then have the pcs be expected to uphold the law rather than subvert it. (As a point of reference, I typically refer to the L&O family of shows when I want an example of the Paladin's code in D&D.)

Either way, if the characters are detectives (rather than beat cops), they'll be expected to do their own (and occasionally other people's) detective work. A set-up like The Shield's Stirke Team is particularly useful, because in addition to working cases the do things like serve high-risk warrants and raid places. While on most police prodecurals finding out who did it is the big challenge, pc's want and expect some good old-fashioned Combat Turn resolution.

Personally, I'd see what direction the players take it. If they want to play it like The Shield, see where that takes them. (There's two things The Shield does well, it shows the shifting loyalities of characters, the way Mackey and Garcia go from being enemies to allies, and it also shows how to ratchet up the tension. The Strike Team never solves a problem without creating a bigger one. Another thing The Shield shows is that even if you're corrupt, it doesn't make the job any easier, although it may make it more profitable.) But if they're not interested in that, you can run it more like a straight-arrow cops-and-robbers style game. Either way, the desire of the players will factor in promiently, if you're trying to run Law & Order and they're trying to play The Shield, everybody is going to end up frustrated. (That's why I think its preferable to run a game with as few preconceived notions as possible, so as a GM you don't get too attached to ideas that the players have no interest in.)

Watch the old (1992) movie Kuffs (starring Christian Slater). You could have a bunch of shadowrunners that go legit and are contracted by a section of the city - likely a E rating one - to be the police force. It might be more along what you want than hooking them up with a bigger police force. as they grow, perhaps other neighborhoods will contract them over the big corps if you want a grassroots movement and a little 'feel-good' in your dystopia.

If you're under 18 or so, go into your local police station and tell them you're interested in being a detective when you grow up, but you want to see what it's really like (as opposed to what's on TV), and ask if you could shadow a detective for a day.

Actually, I used to get a lot of information by just calling a place and telling them that I was in high school and that I was working on a school project.

Payment wise, I might suggest a Low Lifestyle salary, with bounties -ahem- performance bonuses for successfully completed jobs. These bonuses could be contingent upon lack of collateral damage, live capture of criminals, etc, or could scale based on how "lawful" the characters are (it's perfectly In Character for a performance bonus to be higher if you do things the way your bosses want them done).

I think that this:

wasn't there a cyber-suit for lonestar or something like that?

You need to write detailed rules for doughnuts. This includes a taste matrix, a d100 chart for combining various doughnuts with coffee, and dice rolls to see if crumbs get in the uniform or not.

Going by the books (including 3rd and 2nd edition books, since 4th edition hasn't touched on these yet), the salary of the average LS fellow is BELOW a low lifestyle. You can decide if your company is considered higher or lower quality (knight errant almost certainly pays more, Wolverine probably pays a little less), if they do specialized work, etc. These sorts of things increase pay. The exception would be the mage who makes like four times as much and has an alcohol problem.

Your particular pay plan should depend on what the company is trying to promote and how effective it is. A poorly managed company will just pay a flat, low salary with terrible benefits, with favored employees getting paid way too much for brown nosing. A company's whose bread and butter is detective work probably pays sub-low lifestyle, but a nice bonus for each case successfully prosecuted. Some may actually pay based on the character's skills and training. Regardless, overall the bar is set pretty low.

Gear depends again on the size of the company. A small start-up is likely looking at paying close to normal cost, possibly with a 5-10% discount with a 'favored' surgeon who has a more limited selection of surgery and cyber options. Bigger companies like Lone Star (companies that don't own their own biotechnology firms) likely get closer to 60-70% of the standard price, and offer up to alphaware grades. This represents dedicated surgery centers, deals with more companies, and buying cyberware wholesale. Buying non-standard cyber won't be quite as cheap, closer to 80-90% (the surgery costs are reduced, but the cyber has to be bought retail, since it's not part of a group buy). Little or no reduction on magical gear, with the possible exception of elemental summoning stuff. A AAA corp will be able to offer just about everything at wholesale, up to and including betaware (you're not popular enough for delta, so don't ask). Prices for all gear and cyber that company produces are close to 50% what you see in the books. Magic is closer to 75%, since it doesn't benefit from production lines and such.

Medical care is probably free, or close to free, for AAAs, 40-50% of the price for AAs with their own clinics, 80-90% of full price for small business and full price for start-ups. All may offer free cyber or gear with special terms on the contract, like a longer term of service, and free cyber just for signing up (there's really no reason every lone star officer shouldn't have a smartlink, except for that pesky magic stuff).

You should be able to get permits for everything short of full military gear in most cases for free.

Lethality depends on what services the corporation offers. If it's 'secure this box', killing people may be the cheapest method and therefore preferred. If it's 'catch this man and get information from him', plugging him with holes won't help the secret escape to where you can catch it. In general though, lethal force is cheap and effective, and so all else being equal, probably preferred. Lethal force should be avoided if your goal is to take people alive, if there's a risk of hitting something or someone expensive, or if it risks upsetting someone who matters.

Beating a suspect is fully acceptable, as long as the suspect isn't anyone who matters. Getting the wrong person put in prison for a crime is also fully acceptable, as long as it helps the bottom line. I would half expect your players to beat up the locals for protection money if they're guarding a C area or lower. This is a good sign, they're playing the part properly.

What free gear? Depends on what kind of a corp it is. What you listed is fine for someone just there to do the rounds (plus stun baton, hand cuffs, flashlight, armored jacket or security armor, etc.) If they're detectives, they'll need some electronics gear. If one guy is a dedicated rigger, he'll need a VCR-1. Many of them can expect datajacks. If they're riot police, shields, bigger armor, bigger guns and dermal plating is reasonable. If they're HTR teams... It's a long list of stuff there. Depends also on how rich the corp is. A small business won't offer them much.

Also note, you probably won't want to use the standard chargen rules. If these guys can make more in a day running the shadows than they do being a cop, they probably will.

Keep in mind though, the Lone Star package represents a sizeable investment and LS is a pretty hefty corporate entity.

A minimalist package would represent something like (disclaimer: I don't have a book in front of me):

Smartlink
Lowlight retinal mod
Flare comp
datajack
chipjack
boosted reflexes 1

Mind you, this subject has been debated at length on other threads and your own mileage may vary.

You could offer $25,000 worth of cyber enhancements to officers as an incentive package and let the players pick and choose from a list of "authorized" implants.

Where the game will be set will also influence character choices - deputies outside the city will have an entirely different sets of needs/wants than, say, big city cops.

And it's entirely possible that rural areas won't have corps running law enforcement - if memory serves, some places like Atlanta still field their own LE agencies.

-Siege

Also worth noting - drugs. Drugs are cheap and effective. I imagine many security companies, especially smaller ones, rely heavily on them.

Well you have the players become a hostile take over force for a Security Company in a small metropolitian area. You know start some small syndicate rings to show the city leaders how ineffectual there own public force is and how much better it would be to sign with your Security Force.

Earlier this year I heard a report on the Blackwater mercenary (although they don't like that term) company that said their main competition were the "two guys and a laptop" companies, basically people with no real organization who would bid on jobs and then staff up if they got a contract. I could see something similar, a small security company that wins the contract to be the municipal police force for a mid-sized city and then puts together an organization very quickly to do the job. The pcs would be the "elite" unit, the Strike Team basically, who are brought in to put a few high profile cases in the win column. I think it would be interesting to know:

1) Who had the security contract in this town before the new company got it, and why they lost it, and--

2) Who in the town was instrumental in getting this new company hired? (Are there organized crime or other shady political elements that are expecting this new company to "play ball"?)

In regards to 1, its possible the old contract ran out and the old company wanted too much money, or there may have been a high profile scandal-- incompetence, corruption, organlegging SINless squatters. Maybe something like the LAPD or more recently the Atlanta PD, where a pattern of false warrants and arrests are revealed so that every arrest and conviction in the past several years suddenly becomes suspect, which could lead to various convicted felons being exonerated and released (even ones that were actually guilty of those or other crimes). This could lead to an influx of ex-cons back into the town, as cases are reopened.

If the old security company (Lone Star or another one) is still around, are they angry about their dismissal now that they're just another private sec force? Particularly if they were corrupt, and were essentially working for or with underworld criminal elements, they may be looking to set the new company up for failure so they can regain their contract. Likewise, those criminal elements will be looking to start relationship with the new police force, particularly if they were the ones instrumental in getting them hired. (If its a big mob town, for example, and the mafia backs the mayor who hires the sec company, there may be bad noise from city hall if the pc's start breaking up mob rackets in town.)

Where were you planning on setting this? If you go in a Shield-inspired direction, California Free State would be an interesting choice. There's a lot of anarchy on the west coast, and just about any town could break with their security provider. This would be particularly interesting if the surrounding cities were still with Lone Star, and the pc's town was essentially surrounded by hostile elements who would love nothing more than to be called in to restore the peace once they pc's fail (and may even be instigating riots and the like to force such an occurance).

The thing about the Strike Team is that they weren't really corrupt at all.

Sure, they skimmed from confiscated drugs monies. That's the rule. Finder's keepers. Every child knows that. If they took illegal drugs and illegal monies off the streets then they damned sure deserve a cut of it. The only reason they don't get it is because the corrupt government is absurdly greedy. They're unwilling to give percentage commissions to police officers who make seizures because they want to keep all of the loot for themselves. There is nothing corrupt about taking what is rightfully yours from the hands of people who would steal it from you.

Sure, they killed Terry Crowley. He was a spy. The punishment for espionage is death. He got to die a hero, his reputation intact, which is better than the Rosenburgs got.

Sure, they protected drug dealers. They protectedgood drug dealers. They protected the drug dealers who played nice and followed the rules. The highest law in the land, the law of economics, says that you can't get rid of the drug trade. It says that all efforts to do so are ultimately futile and doomed to failure. The only way to stop the violence on the streets and keep things safe is to protect those drug dealers who do play by the rules. To indiscriminately arrest drug dealers is utter foolishness. It opens the door for someone worse to come and fill in the vacuum.

When the Strike Team worked, they make the most dangerous fictional district in LA as safe as it could be and they did so be playing by the laws of common sense and basic human decency. They started failing simply because of the effort that they had to make to hide their good high-quality police work from the by-the-book asshats who don't care about right and wrong. When that happened, they could no longer do their jobs. If their superiors had supported their tactics, then things would have turned out much better.

Ultimately, the Strike Team was the least corrupt of all. But, they cared too much and got screwed by an innately corrupt system which strives to normalize its corruption.

Something to add to the flavour: quota-based bonuses. You want to get bullets next week? Meet your arrest quotas this week. Bonus cash based on crimes past the quota, but only if ALL quotas are met. Haven't caught enough traffic violations? Sorry, you don't get this month's 500 bonus for busting that armed robbery. So you ignore a couple of calls as you lie in wait to trap speeders.

Lone Star aren't cops; finding out how police departments nowadays do things is only going to get you so far. The above is neat flavour for a game where you're TRYING to do a good job, but the way the whole system works is self-defeating. But just maybe you can make a difference. Maybe.

Most cops don't exactly have a high bullet usage quotient. So they wouldn't notice...

The people who are the victims of the armed robberies (aka the businessmen) are going to be kind of pissed when, not being stupid, they figure this out. (They own all the donut shops, coffee houses and bars - of course they will hear cops bitching) And pissing off the mayor's contributors tends to be a really good way to assure a pissed off mayor. And the police chief typically serves at the pleasure of the mayor.

So don't push the wacky stuff too hard, as it blows suspension of disbelief.

I just saw a report on how much pressure local police forces have to make their quotas, because federal funding is based on them. But-- and this is a big old Snuffaluffagus sized but-- I don't see traffic stops making a terribly exciting basis for a game. Real cops might not fire a round in years, but pcs expect some carnage. It makes sense to make them a front-line hard charging unit, working cases, breaking down doors, all that good stuff. (The Strike Team is still a great model for this, since they both get high-profile cass dumped on them, and are still expected to be an aggressive unit who goes out there builds cases up on their own.)

I haven't seen The Wire (because I don't have HBO and because I have to choose my obsessions carefully), but I was talking to a friend of mine about it and it sounds like it'd fit in well here.

They might be exciting, but it would be kind of boring to go through the 20 or so uneventful stops to lull the players to sleep before the big shootout, followed by the next 200 or so uneventful...

Traffic stops tend to make smart cops kind of nervous. You really just don't know who is in that car, what they just did or what they are afraid you might notice....

It does occur to me that, with a lot of corporate youths with more money than sense, pulling over speeders could honestly be an adventure just in itself. Just remember, don't leave them with any bruises or its your head!

Magic, I am sure, has redefined the notion of wacky for 2060.

With all the new toys out there, I don't think there is such a thing as boring for anyone charged with enforcing laws, regulations and other details.

Example: the urban cannibal thing is a pretty rare phenomenon, so we hope, today. With packs of ghouls running about, finding half-eaten corpses is probably less unusual then it once was.

-Siege

A useful site:

http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-cops.html