DocWagon contracts appear to be standard issue for Shadowrunners - a bunch of the sample characters in the core book have them, and even though there's no possible way an ambulance could get to your bleeding gutter punk in the half a minute it takes him to bleed to death under the basic rules, that can be house ruled away. But when you sign up with DocWagon they take a huge amount of information about you, most of it personal, all of it dangerous, including bloody ritual samples!

Even if we assume DocWagon is benign (an AA corp that's looking out for you? Fat chance.) what is your account keyed to? I mean, it can't be keyed to your SIN, because those contracts are annual and Shadowrunners dump fake SINs way more often than that. If they were keyed to your SIN, every fake SIN would cost an extra 5000 unless of course you decide to opt out of the cost-doubling medical contract. But as a non-extraterritorial corp (as far as I know - correct me if I'm wrong) DocWagon still has to worry about those little things called laws, and I'm betting doing business with SINless is frowned upon.

So as a GM, what's the best way for me to explain/handwave this? Does the same stuff apply to CrashCart? Any stuff in the older books I should be aware of?

as i understand, it's basically just DOING BUSINESS . . they might have to answer to the laws, but if their clients don't have a sin then what would the system do against that? there's no sin to which the contract is keyed, so there's nothing for the system to tell Doc Wagon:"you've been naughty" about . . if they go to doc-wagon about why someone with a fake sin has one of their contracts, dog waggong probably just tells them:"when we checked it seemed legit enough!" . . as to why they should do that? how many clients are they going to get if they rat them out whenever their clients actually NEED their assistance?
same would apply to crash cart and bumona i'd think O.o

why would you regularly drop your fake SIN several times per year? most illegal stuff, you can do with no SIN at all.

higher levels of service are probably keyed to your bracelet. as long as DocWagon receives payment for the account in their database that is linked to your bracelet, they'll come rescue whoever's wearing that bracelet whenever the bracelet indicates its wearer is in trouble.

i don't actually remember reading that DocWagon takes ritual samples of its clientel, or otherwise gathers lots of non-medical data. page ref?

For 4th Edition cannon material, the opening chapter of Augmentation is what you want. It has quite a lot of background on medical care in 2070 including armed emergency response teams such as Docwagon. For public and private health care, you need a SIN, unless you're talking a street doc. However, just because a runner may change her SIN frequently, it doesn't mean that she can't have a SIN she keeps for her medical contract. You can juggle as many SINs as you like so long as you can remember what name to answer to on any given phone.

Incidentally, according to that chapter in Augmentation, DocWagon does have extraterritoriality for their clinics and has been known to ignore extradition requests if your contract is platinum or better.

If you have a docwagon contract you are carrying around a very effective and powerful tracking device. Do you really want to do this?

i suppose it depends on the circles your characters run in. i tend to view things the way an average runner would look at them--a guy with no training in intel/counterintel, who came up off the street or maybe out of a corp job where such things were handled by other departments. if you get higher in the game and start getting involved in shadow politics, yeah, it pays to do stuff like dumping your IDs regularly. but the average runner is generally protected by being just another fish in the sea. it doesn't really matter if he goes on runs with a pink mohawk, because there are thousands of guys with pink mohawks just in Seattle alone. likewise, using the same ID for years at a time presents a low risk for most runners, because they're just another gutterpunk using a fake ID in a city of gutterpunks using fake IDs.

Keep in mind its not that hard to stabilize on your own.


Its also quite possible you an trip the bracelet on your own. A rather handy trick if your wounded with out a ride and in a hostile area.
Doc Wagon doesn't answer to any one government they are a wide branching private corporation.

You could even have a special fake sin just for Doc Wagon, then If you've got cash and give a tissue sample your all done. (the tissue sample requirement is mentioned under the doc wagon contracts).
After all the contract is linked to the bracelet not your SIN.

If you've got a doc wagon bracelet they know you must have a contract no matter your identity. The bracelet is linked to your tissue sample. So even if you go through 4 dozen sins between the time you get the contract and the time its actually used what difference does it make.

Doc Wagon's not going to check your SIN after you've already submitted a tissue sample and had
the bracelet snapped on.

It doesn't say that spesificly, but I'm infering it from the fact that it says '...can be activated to call for help and then act as a homing beacon for...' Which seems to indicate that it doesn't act as a beacon untill it needs to act as such.

Besides that infrance there is the fact that no runner in their right mind would ever own one otherwise because there would be insurgents that could find you easily and everything, and DocWagon would likely be willing to tip off people for the right sums, and could easily do it under the table so noone would ever figure it out.

This falls under that 'It really needs to be this way or SR quickly stops working.'

I always used it as an IQ test for stupid runners myself....

Ones that want to stay alive.
Ill push any player with the money to get one. DW is a big enough player that what ever hardware they are using IS secure. And they have the balls to send some of their clients (aka a runner team) after anyone who decides they want to break into said hardware.

Kind of pointless to have it presented in the book as something runners have and use (even giving some starting characters contracts) if that is all it is.

I understand that you (kzt) hate handwaving and seem to love having everything in SR make it impossable to play SR, but sometimes you just have to accept that SR isn't perfect.

I'd love to go off on a huge tangent here but I won't.

I'll just point out that the game is in fact a game at the end of the day, and I really doubt that they are going to put something like DocWagon in the game spesificly to try and trick players into buying tracking devices that everyone is going to use to find them.

I know I have a better point to make, but I'm too tired... for another day perhaps.

I never bother with DocWagon™, because inevitably whenever you need them, you are in a location to which they will not respond.

I'll add three things here:

Firstly, I agree with Karaden that the Docwagon bracelet only starts transmitting when activated. The book describes the tag as

As to why people don't steal docwagon bracelets there are a couple things I can imagine stopping this. I might be wrong, but I read the above quoted section of the BBB to be saying only the basic monitor is an actual bracelet with the others being implanted.

Also I seem to recall something about if the band is broken it triggers the bracelet, but even if not then removing the bracelet is comparable to flatlining really since the biomonitor suddenly ceases all feedback. Could present problems with showers but hey.

As to whether it's worth it, that is very much dependent on your game style. If you do a lot of work in the barrens where there is no extra territoriality then it might well be worth it.

Docwagon is not a medical insurance company. It is an ambulance service. It makes money by transporting people who have been injured. If it doesn't transport people, it doesn't make money. The contract obliges them to pick you up and gives you a number of free transports, but after those free transports are used up they start charging you and they still come.

More importantly, Docwagon is a high-threat ambulance service with well-armed and armored personnel who are expected to extract clients from firefights. They make most of their money by extracting people from firefights. And once their clients are extracted they can extract enemy wounded and charge them for the service.

The more violent incidents a client is involved in and the larger the scale of the violence is, the more money Docwagon makes.

Lets say that a group of Shadowrunners get into a shootout with local law enforcement. One of the Shadowrunners is in injured and his Docwagon bracelet goes off. Docwagon comes in and is contractually obliged to suppress the cops using semi-lethal means and extract the runners. So, they shoot the police officers with a combination of regular ammo, gas grenades, and stick-and shock at the police officers. Many of the cops are poisoned, some are shot, and some are knocked out. The Shadowrunners get away in the ambulance. A second Dcowagon ambulance then arives to extract the wounded police officiers. For a single incident, Docwagon gets paid double, possibly more than double depending on the numerical advantage that the police have.

I have to disagree about the "runners aren't profitable clients for Docwagon" idea. Docwagon is not an insurance company, they are an emergency medical transport company.

Sure, Joe Sarariman who pays his premiums every year and doesn't have a bigger medical problem than a heart attack at age 35, he's just pure cash without much needed in customer service.

But Joe Runner on the other hand, maybe he got shot a couple of times last year and needed a med-evac. Mr. Runner gets charged for the ambulance ride, the EMT care while en-route, hospital care, HTR response if he needed it, death compensation if needed, etc... Sure it maybe costs Docwagon to keep the helo fired up and ready to roll, but they pass the costs on to the customer. Runners keep Docwagon in business, and business is good.

Docwagon is on the right side of the law 95% of the time, I imagine, rescuing clients from gangers, terrorists, and shadowrunners. The 5% of the time they aren't on the right side of the law, or are in the middle of a legally-neutral conflict such as a war, they would be protected by international and inter-corporate treaties concerning combat medics, such as the Geneva Conventions (which do permit medics to use weapons in self-defense and defense of their charges). Firing upon Docwagon EMTs as they attempt to save the life of their client would probably be a violation of international law, permitting the medics to respond in kind. And in a conflict like that, it is impossible to determine whom shot at whom first in the heat of combat so it is a wash for all involved. And, besides, any criminal can walk into a store and buy a police uniform; it is impossible for Docwagon EMTs to verify that they are really police in a reasonable amount of time. Furthermore, I do imagine that many police officers have Docwagon contracts themselves, which would make going after Docwagon very unpopular. On the other hand, if the police were involved they'd usually drop the runners off at a local hospital, unless they had high-end contracts. Thus, the police have little reason to shoot at Docwagon.

As for high-security facilities, I'd think that trespassing laws would keep them out. I imagine that Docwagon and other EMT services have agreements which allow them onto extraterritorial property for the purpose of rescuing clients, thus allowing them to swoop in during mall massacres. But, I don't think that such agreements would extend to top secret facilities, thus the runners would actually have to get the wounded outside so that Docwagon could pick them up, but once out Docwagon will use violence to protect them.

Then again, you can treat it like the SR genesis game, where the protagnist automatically gets rescued by Docwagon no matter where he is, wether it be the top floor of a corporate facility or fighting a free spirit in a cave in the middle of nowhere.

And he was always perfectly fine after he woke back up at Seattle General. Loss of magic was no threat

<editted for going dyslexic for a moment>

I think the basic costs of the HTR rescue are seperate from the healing costs. You pay 5 grand for the basic service, and for that DocWagon agrees to come get you when you're wounded and take you to the hospital. That's it. How you pay for medical treatment at the hospital is between you and the hospital. DocWagon may very well have a provision that if you're too much of a risk, they won't cover you anymore (or maybe they'll just take your money and then not try very hard to get you). As was pointed out in NAGtRL, if you're getting dropped that many times in one year, you might have bigger problems than which ambulance service you're using.

If DocWagon gets a helo shot down, I imagine their insurance covers that. As to who insures DocWagon, who cares? At no point in running the game do I have to design an economically viable plan for high-risk ambulance service into urban warzones. Obviously, I think the DocWagon crew will have some leeway in determining if a particular extraction is too risky. If you've got a Basic contract and the helo gets shot at with a anti-vehicle missile, they'll probably just pull out and go to the next guy. (I mean, they aren't going to be saving anybody if they get shot down and killed.) If you have a higher rated contract, like Gold or Platinum, then yeah, they're going to risk a bit more to get you, but then that just creates an incentive for people to buy those higher rated contracts.

DocWagon is technically prepaid anyway. You have to pay them for the Basic contract before they'll even crank the ambulance up. And even if it wasn't, shadowrunners regularly engage in burglarly, kidnapping, theft, assault and homicide, so it seems like a little insurance fraud would not be outside the realm of possibility (even if it was by far the most difficult to pull off). A better question might be how having a DocWagon contract complicates the Fake IDs most runners will be using, because it seems like if its tied to any sort of ID at all, getting that ID burned could invalidate that contract, or getting wounded and evac'd in the course of some illegal activities could likewise burn the ID you're using.

Getting the ID burned is the least of your issues.

The people who shot you know you activated a docwagon braclet, they can read the data transmitted (the wonder of useless encryption) and they know the number of the docwagon vehicle that hauled you away. Hence, 20 minutes later they show up at the hospital to resume the previous discussion that you skipped out on. If it's the Yaks they probably can't just casually stroll in, but if it's the cops they will just handcuff you to the bed and wait. However, you are still in a better situation than you would be if you were lying dead in the gutter.

(We had a prisoner who was handcuffed to a bed somehow get the bed out of the hospital and was pushing it down the street with his bare ass hanging out the gown. He didn't get too far after security was called by someone noting this odd scene... Did I mention that the university police station is across the street?)

And DocWagon runs "DocWagon Acute Care Clinics", AKA hospitals, which is where the DocWagon medics normally take you. That's how they offer the discounts on hospital care, because you're in a DocWagon hospital. This is also implied on page 10 of augmentation and has been clearly stated previously in other discussions about DocWagon in earlier books. So it's typically their money on the line the whole way.

Yes, but DocWagon has lots more oversight than does the Mafia in how it collects debts. And you just can't get enough money (based on SR prices) to pay for that much, and the impact to reputation is likely to greatly outweigh the financial benefit. As a matter of fact, if I was crash cart I'd try really hard to push that line....

The DocWagon hospital may give you a discount, but you might still have to pay in advance (particularly if you're a SINless flight risk they picked up after a gunfight in the Barrens). Or the balance might be deducted from your DocWagon contract; you pay five grand for the year and anything you stiff them on comes out of that instead of being billed. If you owe them money they might still come and pick you up next time you get your ass shot off, but you might not want them to. Hey there, I'm Dr. Dave. Basically, you have massive internal bleeding and will probably die in agony in the next hour or two from firing bright red streams of blood out of your mouth, ass and possibly ears. We can patch you up no problem, all we need is a credstick and authorization number and we're good to go.

The people that come in as a trauma alert case are typically not going to be discussing anything with anyone until maybe they are leaving the Post Anesthesia Care Unit.

And from a mechanics point of view, in SR you are not in any danger of dying until you are unconscious, which kind of limits the conversation you can have...

Well, with the DocWagon contract, you're only paying for the stabilization. When (or if) you wake up with 9 boxes (or 12, or 8, whatever conscious is for you) then they can ask if you want to be treated further there, taken to another facility, or released on your own recognizance. Further treatment is prepaid (unless you have a stellar credit rating, even if its fake), and I'm going to assume that malpractice law is firmly on the side of the corporation. (What's the point of being a dystopian corporate state if you can't have the bloodsucking lawyers on your side? Hey, that just gave me an idea for a HMHVV lawyer.)

For my next trick, I require an area jammer and someone with at least a gold contract...

Our characters tend to get medical care from street docs and body shops. The DW contracts were rarely ever called upon, which has much to do with the binary nature of damage kzt mentions.

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Why should DW care about your SIN? The SINless deserve medical care too! DW is not benign (members of its workforce may be), so you need to pay somehow. If you can do that, on what basis should treatment be denied to you, and profit be lost to DW?

After the second worldwide crash, data protection laws should be what political campaigns are based on. One integrated SIN database needs one virus overlooked. Software should be heterogenous, the database un-integrated. Near-perfect encryption is almost a must for electronic cash.

Lets assume for a second that data exchange in SR is strictly controlled, and that for small amounts of data, encryption is near-perfect. As in codes outdate faster than they can be used.

Payments could be secure, while corps could not apply the same methods to other data transfers because of data volume. Unless the GM decides otherwise.

SIN checking could be removed from the game without further issues. Joe Citizen will have all his data interconnected because it is DESIREABLE. The LA angle from Corporate Enclaves seems to cover a life embracing the matrix. You as a runner could always start a new matrix life by creating a new personal matrix adress and ditching the other. SINs should matter for voting, for social security, and for law enforcement. Areas that require your comlink to be active would demand this because your comlink allows for your movement to be traced. A SIN check would be very cursory, image match + criminal record. Running integrity checks is the responsibility of the SIN database management, beating them is what you pay for when you buy the SIN.

I hereby propose that a SIN is checked periodically, say once per month. If it makes that check, it works like a real one until the next check. Runners will need enough new SINs because the old ones get tagged with arrest warrants.

You kind of switched topics there half way Ryu, SINs really arn't up at issue here.

There is a bit about if DocWagon contracts are linked to SINs or not, but that is about it.

As to that I'd like to point out that they take a DNA sample, and you wear a special bracelet, I don't see where your SIN comes into play at all. I'm sure several Joe Execs and such have contracts paid for by their corp if they are high up enough, and they in turn may subsidise the rest of the family. I'm also fairly certain they don't care where their money is coming from, so long as they get it. So basicly every year or whatever a transfer of 5,000 comes in from someone for account 1237519234918234987 so for another year they will continue to come to the aid of the guy whos tissue sample they have filed under account 1237519234918234987 and who is supposidly still wearing their bracelet.

Would make a nice christmas gift no?

It makes sense from an anonymity angle for DW contracts to not link to SINs, both as a privacy issue and as a potential money-making one. (As pointed out above, why exclude the quasi-legal people whose nuyen spends just as good as anyone else’s?) But you would have to have some personal, medical information on there because if you're diabetic or allergic to painkillers, the EMT's treating you would need to know that. Since the bracelet is the weak link, it probably just stores the DW Account Number, and all the medical information is kept in the DW database (which while not impossible to hack-- because nothing need be impossible-- is probably pretty difficult. I imagine their computer security is a big selling point of DW over competitors. The Name You Trust and so on.)

Who has DocWagon contracts? I imagine at some level, its a status thing. Executives get them not so much because they think they're going to be shot at a lot, but because its like a mark of importance. Much like the business cards in American Psycho, executives probably flash their Super-Platinum wristbands (with the optional Rolex chronometer, good to a depth of 240m) as a way of saying I'm so valuable to the company, they've prepaid for all my resuscitations for the year.

On another level, its the people that feel like they have a realistic chance of getting shot at. While this would include almost anyone living in Seattle (or Hong Kong, or Atlanta, or Des Moines, wherever the game is set), the majority of them aren't going to have the discretionary income to buy even a Basic Contract. This is especially true of the people who live in the poorer areas of town; basically the worse the neighborhood you live in, the less likely you can afford a DW contract (and the more likely you'll need it). Anyone with a high risk job, whether the risk was from violence or not, would probably want a contract. In the world the runners inhabit, we're talking about the runners and the sec guards.

I could see most reputable security companies (the ones that don't exist by undercutting the competition and passing the savings on to their personnel in the form of inferior gear and no support) providing Basic contracts to most if not all of their employees. They probably get some sort of package deal. If one sec guard is going to get dropped, others might, and its probably easier to pick everybody up at one time. DW might have a sort of "roving hospital" for big clients like this, like a semi-trailer that can do on-site triage and transport multiple people to area hospitals, or a Citymaster that has six or so beds in it. This might be a More Basic Than Basic Contract, essentially a "get stabilized by on-site personnel, and we'll get to you when we get to you" type of thing.

That's what DocWagon Crisis Response Teams do. More or less.

I'd expect that you also end up with DocWagon having the EMS contract with the city in places.

Although I have to wonder how much that cuts into their business. If DocWagon will come pick up anyone that can dial 911, what is the motivation to purchase the Basic Contract?

Every time DocWagon picks someone up, they probably do lose a little money on that contract. I would have to imagine that their profits come from the contracts they sell to people who don't get horribly wounded, since its not like those people get any money back (although maybe they get a free upgrade or something after 10 uneventful years). We here at DocWagon know that sometimes circumstances get the better of anyone, yakuza thugs try to kidnap your girlfriend or some ganger gets all up in your Kool-Aid. We know that even our customers that are More Than Metahuman are Only Metahuman, and that's why we offer Gunfight Forgiveness.

EMS wouldn't include shooting their way to rescue you. They'd wait for the cops like real EMS does.

I think from a corporate liability standpoint, its better to not link to SINs. Let's say the unthinkable happens, DW gets hacked, and everybody in Seattle has their medical history broadcast on 3v. If its linked to SINs, everybody will then know Joe Blow has had 18 cases of awakened draconic syphilis last year. If its linked to a anonymous patient number, all you know is patient 12365934950 likes to have sex with slutty dragons (or whatever).

From a runner perspective, if its keyed to a Fake SIN (particularly one you bought for that purpose, and use for nothing else, the Rating 1 disposable that was essentially a 1k tack on to the DW contract), people aren't going to be able to hack DW to find out about you, they'd still have to go through the bracelet to find out what ID your account is tied to. For Joe Legal, if someone hacked DW, it'd be keyed to his real SIN and you could just look that up. Even if a SIN is required for the purchase (as it is for any legal purpose) there still seems to be an incentive to keep account and medical information separate, and either way it wouldn't matter to the runners (since their account infor is going to be faked anyway).

On DW not checking SINs:
Assumption 1: DW is willing to serve criminal customers because those have money and interest in high-level contracts.

Assumption 2: Not asking for a SIN on an expensive contract is suspicious. Unfortunately, many criminals only have a fake SIN to give to DW.

Conclusion: Checking SINs costs DW money, as it would certainly be illegal to accept fake SINs. Even if the money is quite real.

On DW keying SINs to their contracts:
Medical services is (IMO) one of the areas where a SIN makes sense. A unique number identifying exactly you, that can be send within seconds to all known medical providers, requesting time-critical medical information, even if the contract expired years ago. The whole concept of the matrix has to assume that corps consider matrix use safe. So liability for hacked databases happens if you didn´t invest into security, not if the tech is woefully inadequate even at the highest level.