We've all discussed in the past about how effective Lonestar is but that was usually confined to the runners v mook scenarios.

I was watching Police Story 1 and 2 today and it got me thinking about the law from a different angle: detective work.

In movies like the Police Story series, Hard Boiled, Bullitt, the Lethal Weapon Series, and more others than I could possibly list the cops will spend days if not weeks tracking down the criminals before that final showdown.

My question for you is: Do any of you ever develop Prime Runner detectives to be used as antagonists in your games? Are the cops (or corporate security departments) actively pursuing shadowrunners or are the only cops you ever concern yourself w/ the flat foot mooks found in the antagonist section of the main book?

I personally have decided that I will be developing a detective antagonist to try and bring my Pcs to justice.

Personally, I have never thought about it in those terms; however, consider this most excellent idea YOINKED™.

We aggressively avoided doing things that would lead to the police chasing us. If nobody ever reports a crime the whole crime scene, detective cycle doesn't start. As most of our targets really didn't want the swat and k9 teams to thoroughly search every inch of the complex and have an evidence team crawling up their butt, they typically wouldn't make that call. To assist them in this, we tried really hard not to kill or maim people - since that pretty much has to be reported, plus did the whole mask & Glove/invisible stuff.

An investigation would leak back to them from their contacts. Law enforcement would be the most likely, with organized crime and perhaps fixers further down the list.

Those contacts might not give them the full dossier on the lead investigator.

Smart investigators have written investigative plans on file. They take detailed notes after every witness interview, as well. Even if they use a confidential informant, that info is somewhere within the organization as well. So capping the lead detective may not do as much good as you'd like in stopping the investigation.

Detectives in major police departments usually carry a low caseload as well - no more than a dozen or so at a time. That means that you are automatically a suspect in your detective's murder and the list of suspects is fairly small. Even if you've left no trace evidence the 'Star will start looking.

Finally, the cops hate to be messed with. As a player, I'd be more likely to lie low and pay out large sums of nuyen to have one of my known SINs take an extended holiday outside their jurisdiction - such as in New Zealand. The cops might drop a case that goes cold or gets stale. They'll be out for revenge if the lead investigator gets murdered.

Big time. It makes it personal, gets huge high level attention and the best people assigned. And this isn't the modern kinder and gentler police. They have authority and force and are not afraid to use it.

For example Texas Ranger Captain Frank A. Hamer and FBI agent Melvin Purvis. For example "It was only after the FBI mistakenly gunned down a local resident and two innocent Civilian Conservation Corps workers (as they were about to drive away in a car) that the Dillinger gang were alerted to the presence of the FBI" and "As Major Clawson, the wounded guard lay dying, Lee Simmons, the head of the Texas Department of Corrections, reportedly promised him that every person involved in the breakout would be hunted down and killed. He kept his word except in the case of Henry Methvin, whose life was exchanged in return for betraying Bonnie and Clyde." Not to mention "Dillinger was shot dead by FBI agents, supposedly going for his gun, though some dispute this since Dillinger did not have a gun and was shot three times in the back as he ran. If true, this would be consistent with the story that Purvis ordered Pretty Boy Floyd shot as he lay wounded. The sniper Chester Smith, who shot Floyd claimed in a 1984 interview that he only wounded Pretty Boy and that Melvin Purvis ordered him shot point blank after questioning him about the Kansas City Massacre."

I do have antagonists for my PCs, but usually not the "law". Mafia, Ancients, Halloweeners, Triads and occaisionally a powerful figure that has been affected by one of the runners' jobs. I suppose one time I did have a Detective Murtog and Riggs arrive and a player's door, but it was more in conjunction with a Mafia connection than his own sloppy trail on a run.

I usually use Lone Star or Knight Errant as a time limit to the job, meaning that I keep the pressure on by having any alarm triggered give them a much shorter time before they arrive...but I normally don't have any detectives building a case on the team...but its a good idea if you don't have a bunch of other antagonists, IMO.

In our game set in Occupation Era San Francisco, the initial run placed the runners on scene at a clusterfuck of a fight that wiped out most of two ghoul gangs and a Ares Knight-Errant FireWatch assault team and resulted in the players running off with the goods that the FireWatch team was trying to retrieve. One of the FireWatch team members escaped (with Krieger strain HMHVV and now she's hiding from Ares) and several drones made it out. A Special Investigation Team from Ares is looking into the matter. One of the NPC's on that run secretly worked for Ares, so they have pics of the team from his cybereyes and know a runner bar they have frequented. That NPC was killed by the forces manipulating one of the ghoul gangs (while he had the bulk of the party's money in his account) and the party has drone footage of two Men in Black (part of the Ares Special Investigation Team) entering his doss to get evidence. The footage revealed familiarity with the local law enforcement corp's response time and hostility between the two MIB's. The rigger on that Special Investigation Team set three flyspies on the party's rigger's van when the rigger met someone at the bar again. That compromised the team's best streetdoc/cyber/biodoc contact, blew off an adept/face's hands (for a minute, 'til the medic/mage healed her) and let the team know they were being watched. They got surveillance footage from a passive drone they left at a crash scene of a mage flying down from a chopper to investigate a fight scene they'd fled. They'd left behind their main vehicle (they did firebomb it) and Astral traces of spirits and spells. Their footage caught some tense jurisdictional disputes between the Ares SIT, Lone Eagle (the local law enforcement corp) and the Park Service.
One PC mage has been contacted by the mage on that Ares SIT via spirit and Astral message drop. The mage on the SIT was an old Resistance buddy who is now an unwilling investigator for Ares, compelled by carcerands and ritual samples and their possession of his daughter. He's contacted the PC to get his daughter out and promised to fuck up the investigation in exchange.
The Ares SIT mage's partner is a straight-up Ares man. He wants the party in Ares lockdown for interrogation and wants the package back. They don't have it anymore and the people who do kindly sent Ares footage of the party that showed them clearly in possession of it.

Ares probably wouldn't send them to prison, but would certainly use them as its warbitches until dead. All this while they also deal with the ire of General Saito (whose oldest son they killed two session ago and took his 600 y.o. heirloom katana) and the Emperor (whose favorite niece they crippled and put into a coma at the same time.)

I highly recommend making runners victims of their own success. Builds up a good stable of antagonists and keeps it fun and interesting all around.

Unless you are running a game set in the future of the SR4, the Emperor of Japan is a little too young to have a niece and the last I heard his Imperial family(other than his new wife) were afflicted with a bad case of the deads. But given that this is the 6th world, hey, dead people having children... isn't that strange.

The police as antagonist works, one special police man doesn´t (see knassers posts). I implement that by having the contacts of the PCs tell them that officers are asking around, or by offering money for contact information to the PCs that did not mess up. It also helps to create paranoia if you habitually spell out what evidence the chars left behind on the run.

What you can do is a chief of security that is out for revenge. The runners tend to think that "the corp" is sending strike teams after them, and need to figure out that the whole thing is personal before they can fix it.