I'd take that as a capitulation. Because the yaks will not win because the GM has no choice. Because if the GM doesn't, the players have not reason not to pull punches. The players are ready for their PCs to die, but if the GM wants to stay healthy, he won't let the yaks win. So it doesn't really matter whether the PCs die or not, as long as the yaks lose.

No, the yaks are not idiots, just that the PCs are just that much more leet that they strike exactly when the yaks are most vulnerable. They need not wait in a circle, they can sit in a circle watching the latest sex trid, playing mahjong, gathered around the trid watching the unidentified runners killing their friend... The lone mage did put up watcher patrols but the PC mage's Infiltration beat the watcher's Perception checks. And since the PCs have been planning this from before they even killed that first yak, they would know exactly how many yaks are there in the warehouse, they even know that the mage has a premature powerball problem. Everything is going exactly as I have foreseen.

Kind of
MCT policy was such that every time a TM was identified it was shipped off to a lab, the Yaks, being a MCT subsidiary, followed the policy

The irony of this is that the rise of TMs is almost a repeat of the rise of magic, this may cause serious short term losses for MCT and the Yaks but if they can crack the secret it wil bring them big long term gains

I'm finding it entertaining, personally, but more in a "head shaking" kind of way. It's also been educational, because I did ask for advice on how the Yaks would react; I've been getting some very valuable advice on the two extreme positions. What I'm going to do is something more in-between the two extremes, but the perspectives are valuable (for one thing, they tell me that, no matter what path I choose, someone will back me up, which is a big confidence booster for this newbie GM )

So, the perspective I'm going to take is, yes, the Yakuza has people that are far superior to the runners, say upwards of 50 at the 500 BP level and a few--probably less than 10--at the more than 700 BP level. Problem is, to paraphrase a line from Mr. Clancy, such skilled men usually spend their days doing real, money-making activities, not sitting around in their posh apartments waiting for a phone call telling them that there's someone to whack. Using that logic, sending them en mass against the runners will make the Yakuza bottom line suffer. (the real question will be, when does the payout for the bounties paid to an outsider exceed the loss resulting from these highly skilled men not being at work?)

Not to mention that the team leader is ex-special ops... and the player can really climb inside his skull; they've been ghosts for the last three sessions, staying completely off the grid. Certified cred sticks, mask spells, erasing their astral signatures, staying in Z-zones (they're currently holed up at U-Storage, for the moment, anyway); I've been waiting for them to make a mistake that I could use to legitimately track them with, but nada.

Ooh. Can I have some help with that? Because that sort of thing isn't really my area of strength.

Don't be an idiot.

I meant Seattle and you KNOW it.

Given that the only two assassinations during that election occurred because in one case, the candidate's Secret Service detail was co-opted and allowed the candidate to wander off alone to meet a shadowy blackmailer, and the other blew himself up, I'd make it really hard.

Not that it isn't possible. The first run in Super Tuesday involves an attempt on Arthur Vogel's life at a campaign rally, with the whole cinematic ending on the catwalks, blah blah blah.

That's the more likely example?

i, as a GM, would have no problem killing off player characters who did what the OP's players did. the type of players i enjoy gaming with would have no problem with me killing off their characters if said players had their characters act in the manner the OP described. if a given player did have a problem with his character dying pretty much as a direct result of such behavior, then my group would be better off without that player. i wouldn't be a dick about killing the characters, i wouldn't just go "Yaks fall on you from space, you die", i'd have it play out and it'd be a lot of fun. but the PCs would not, in any sense of the word, win.

i prefer to take the fact that it's a game out of the equation, when running (or playing) a game. the PCs don't survive because they're PCs, they survive because they're tough and smart and lucky. or maybe they don't survive. cutting the PCs a lot of slack for the simple reason that they're PCs is a viable choice for a group to make, but it's not the way i prefer to play.

so, yeah. realistically, the Yaks would eat the runners alive.

and i'm certain that the Yaks, being wholly devoted to MCTs interests, obeyed 100%. they also, of course, had 100% foolproof methods of identifying TMs. there's more than enough wiggle room to justify the Yaks having access to TM abilities, which means that no, a single TM couldn't wipe out the Yaks' entire network. if nothing else, the Yaks could have a few TMs on loan the way they're borrowing a cyberzombie.

i certainly wouldn't yell at you if you chose to have the PCs mow down waves and waves of Yak goons. Max Payne and Max Payne 2 are some of my favorite games; the lone hero(es) standing against 'impossible' odds and winning is a time-honored trope. i'm just pointing out how things should go if you choose to run a more realistic game.

Wow, someone on this thread is considering multiple different possible outcomes!

I think it was reasonably clear early on that the GM was open to the outcome of all PCs dying, and that's been affirmed recently when bibliophile posted that he was watching PC actions for mistakes that could help the Yakuza find them. Which also establishes that he's open to the outcome of the PCs playing it skillfully enough that it's non-trivial for the Yaks to find them.

kzt writes on the strong principle that a large organization that can focus its resources all at once for a short time, can usually defeat a much smaller opponent. It works for Wal-Mart. Then again... consider the relative power of England's American colonies, versus the rest of England's domains; if the world works as kzt describes, then there was NO possibility of colonials winning a War of Independence. In the world I live in, it was a longshot, they got help from a rival large power (France), and they happened to succeed.

As for Max Payne... sure, it was great fun to play, but Max Payne has the superpower that if he fails, he gets to retry from the previous save point. Do the PCs have this power? Also, Payne's GM has a very liberal approach to encumbrance and how many weapons a character can carry.

I encourage bibliophile in making some decisions about what resources this clan can access (and not "every yakuza clan worldwide sends all their heavy hitters"), taking the consistent advice that they'll consider this a fight to the death, considering who else is watching and what they'll do (rival OC, the Star, other AAAs, etc.), then playing it out and seeing what happens.

Yes, more likely than my previous example of "Runners fall on Yaks, Yaks die."

The most equivalent Grunt force to any OC force would be the Triads. The closest analgous Grunt force to any megacorp security would either be the corpsec or the Red Sams. The Triads grunts can be beat with any number of competent well made PC groups that I have run games for. The corpsec without the lieutanant can be beat by the PCs with their pinky. The Red Sams suffer from the fatal flaw that the Triads also suffer from - No mage. So unless the GM choose to create a whole platoon of NPC mages, the PCs should kick the yaks collective behinds. Besides, if the PCs think winning is killing more than a certain number of yaks before they go down, they could certainly win. So yeah realistically according to RAW Grunt stats, the PCs will have yak burgers for breakfast.

a) are you seriously telling me that the GM shouldn't stat up realistic opposition simply because the books don't have a stat block for certain character types?

b) that's only true if the GM has the Yaks act like idiots, as i keep saying. yes, in a straight-up fight against reasonable numbers of opponents, the PCs will win over and over again. because the Yaks are not idiots, they're not going to go up against the PCs in a straight-up fight, nor will they fight the PCs in anything resembling reasonable numbers. if the Yaks have enough money and influence to borrow a cyberzombie, they have enough money and influence to--if all else fails--drown the PCs in human wave attacks. it won't come to that, of course, because that would be idiotic, and as i said... the Yaks aren't idiots.

the simple fact is, the PC tactics and attitude you're describing as tricky and unstoppable--the Yaks, and other OC syndicates, deal with those tactics and that attitude every day. they have that attitude and use those tactics themselves. nothing the PCs do is going to catch the Yaks off-guard for very long, if at all, because all the Yaks have to do is figure out what they themselves would do in a similar situation. because the PCs are capable and presumably clever, they'll score a few victories against the Yaks, sure. but ultimately, they're not significantly more clever than the Yaks are, and overall they're certainly not more capable. that means that they're going to die without dealing the Yaks any blows that the Yaks can't recover from fairly quickly.

now, look, i'm not denying the possibility of a one-in-a-million shot. it's entirely possible that the PCs will roll 20s on every exploding die and 6s on every non-exploding die, and will kill so many Yaks and survive such incredible odds that the Yaks capitulate. read through the Medal of Honor citations a few times; a small group of determined, capable, lucky people can accomplish a lot with very little.

but as i said before, it's also entirely possible that if you fall out of an airplane without a parachute, you'll survive without any major injuries. that, however, is hardly the most likely result.

a) Are you seriously asking me that question? If so, then the answer is yes.

b) You are then assuming that the runners are idiots because the runners will only engage on their terms, so much so that the yaks might as well be idiots. BTW, if since even a Yakuza wakagashira has only Logic 3, I doubt the rest of the yaks are going to be very smart.

c) Well, if one of the presumably higher ranking/inner circle guys they have has only Logic 3... Significantly smarter might be only be Logic 5 which is quite easy for a Logic based mage to get. Which means that they can deal a blow that, taking into consideration the highly lethal environment the yakuza deals in, the yakuza are unlikely to survive.

Also, it is entirely possible for a PC to survive falling out of an airplane without a parachute at least once. That is a very likely result.

Not really. Even if everyone else isn't simple fodder(which I take to mean Professional Rating 0 Grunts), if the GM works with the canon Equal runners(BP400, some even slightly more), most player created characters will kill those runners without breaking a sweat - which is why we have the "Can we do better?" thread and those sample PCs in that thread will still own the canon sample runners and they aren't even optimised to the extent of the PCs yet. By that we can see that the runners are not just simply facing a force equal to themselves but a force that should be far weaker than themselves, even if they are more numerous.

Even if there is a bounty, then the opposing runners will have to run against other opposing runners who also want the bounty and have to do so before the original gang cause so much damage to the yakuza that the previously bounty hunting runners might as well just go into the yak killing business for themselves. And that is likely to happen by the time the opposing runners start their legwork.

Are you sugesting that it is realistic to make the Yakuza individually more skilled than Triads? or Mafia?

Neither are the players. It will likely come down to a game of cat and mouse.

No, absolutely no. If they used these tactics every day there would be no Yakuza. Why? because these tactics are purely destructive. You cannot build an empire with the tactics i suggest. You can only destroy one. It is not profitable, it is not empire building, it is merely tearing down the stuff others have built.

What do the PCs have to deal with? The Yaks, and anyone they hire.
What do the Yaks have to deal with. The PCs, the Mafia, The Triads, The Seoulpa rings. Lone Star, Corpsec in many places. Outraged community members (rarely) Ork and Elf and Troll and Dwarf gangs, Other gangs that hate the Yaks. suppliers, snitches, and other general overheads of doing business.

Not all of the Yakuza Gumi can be devoted to wiping otu the PCs. If it is, they have already won, even though they die. The Yaks will be totally vulnerable to their enemies.

See above, the odds get better when you realize that part

I said equal runners. Not weaker. Not grunts, not starting chars, not suboptimal runners. Equal. As in "take your team as an example". People that have the same skills, gear, experience and tactics as the PCs. Unless the runners are the best of the best, without equal, then such teams exist, and can be hired - for the same money the runners usually got hired.

And if there are only weaker teams to be hired, then the runners are the best of the world, and no NPC even comes close. In which case of course the whole scenario plays out differently.

Start their legwork? They get a headstart thanks to the Yakuza's information, and will get updates as well.

Maybe you should ask yourself: If the runner team was hired to track down such an NPC team for the Yakuza, and given the support mentioned, would they stand no chance? Would it be that unlikely for them to succeed?

And I said canon and mine are canon. Yours are not. Equal canon NPCs. As in take the sample PCs in the book.

If a PC runner team was hired against an Equal canon sample PC runner team, yes. But the difference is player created PC against canon sample PC.

There will only be likely be weaker NPCs because in order to have Equal or better, the GM has to invoke Prime Runner rules and in order to invoke Prime Runner rules, then it is back down to GM vs Players and Players(plural) usually outnumber GM(singular).

I'm confused here. Synner has pretty clearly stated that the Prime Runner rules are to be considered in effect for all except 'grunt' NPCs.

Also, I was under the impression that 'equal', as defined in Shadowrun in relation to NPCs, was actually try to duplicate the approximate level of the characters, typically through the addition of Karma to one of the Archetypes. Can you explain your position better in regards to this particular aspect of the discussion?

I will do so.

Are we agreed that if the NPCs and PCs were created with 400BPs, then they are in fact by the letter of the rule Equal? Are we also agreed that the sample PCs in the book are 400 BP(with errata to those that are not)? Are the sample PCs not canon then? So Prime Runner rules is in effect, except that I used the canon sample PCs due to they being created Equal, unless the PCs are not created with 400 BPs.

In other words - in your campaign, PCs are the best of the best, and no NPC comes close to them. Of course, in such a campaign, the runners might very likely beat the Yakuza.

But what if this was not the case, if the NPC prime runners for hire were as powerful, skilled and sly as the PCs, would the PCs still be very likely to best the Yakuza?

No, we are not agreed. Equal for me means just that - equal. Roughly the same number of skill points, roughly the same number of money/BP/karma spent as the current runners, and - most importantly - with the same amount of optimisation.

Basically, clone your team, change sexes and races and some gear/skills. That's equal.

And are you going to clone yourself, so each of your NPCs has the same degree of attention and control as the PCs do? Because otherwise, you're facing having to control multiple characters simultaneously, while your players only have to worry about one; the degree of focus--or lack of time-sharing out one's brain, either way you look at it--is a tactical advantage.

Oh, but you don't need quite the same amount of attention and control - you can (and probably did) observe what works well and what does not work well by watching your players' past actions/plans/tactics, and copy/adapt that.

Now add the greater ressources (Information, gear) of the GM/NPCs, and it should balance out, and then comes the numerical advantage through more runners.

That's equal, but not canon Equal. Equal means only that, Equal. And I believe I was answering Fortune and not you, Fuchs.

For me, there's a difference between Equal and equal. There is also a difference between canon Equal and RAW Equal. I believe that I have addressed the equal PC issue in my answer to Fuch's post.

Bibliophile:

Actually I am approaching the scenario as a hypothetical. But essentially you are correct. I am not really discussing your game per se anymore.

I do not know, there are too many variables. Real equal runners would then require real players behind them. Then it is not PCs vs NPCs, but PVP.

In a world where the PCs are not best of the best, they have a very good chance to gravely hurt an organisation that can hire many times their number if that organisation can still do so after being so hurt because said equally dangerous runners won't be able to stop the initial runners from gravely hurting the organisation in the first place. They can stop the runners after the fact, but to me, that is objective of the runners already has been achieved(and hence the runners win). In fact because the initial group demonstrated the organisation's inability to deal with them, then the secondary band/s can also capitalise on the organisation's necessity, which in turn is not good for the organisation and further aids the first group's objective.

Assumptions based on RAW/canon(depending on your defination of RAW/canon) stats.

Other runners will tell the Yakuza: These guys are willing to die to hurt you, we want more pay. If you cannot meet our price, you can hire some other more suicidally inclined beggers. And almost every other runner will do the same. The initial hit to the yaks coupled with the need to pay for the other runners will hurt the yakuza far in proportion to what the yakuza can do to them, especially if dying really isn't the issue.

If the runners do not hurt them seriously, why hire equally skilled runners in the first place? Do your local yak hire equally powerful runners to kill you everytime you pull a run that hurts the yaks? These runners must pose a serious threat in order for the yaks to respond seriously.

By canon, yakuza do not have the muscle in that class - Traid(Yakuza equivalent), corpsec or Red Samurai (MCT equivalent).

To me there's a difference between RAW characters and canon characters. Canon characters are those in the books, RAW characters simply means that they are follow the rules as written(RAW).

What you are describing is RAW runners, not canon(at least not to me).

we're not discussing canon, we're discussing RAW. we have to be, because this entire scenario is non-canon. therefore, the GM is not limited to using canon statblocks.

first, the runners are not going to be doing all of the engaging. the Yaks are going to be actively hunting the runners, and are going to be able to track them fairly easily because of the high level of pressure they can put on the population the runners live and operate in. secondly, the runners can't engage "on their terms" if they're running around attacking the Yaks on the Yaks' home turf without doing more than cursory scouting. hitting your enemy when the situation is most advantageous to you and least advantageous to them is not something that just happens. it requires time and planning, and time is one of many things that the runners are short on.

to define my terms, "significantly more clever" means a large enough gap to significantly make up for the gap in direct combat effectiveness. 2 points is not enough to make up for hundred-to-one odds. moreover, running a successful asymetric warfare campaign--which is essentially what OC is--generally requires a lot of lateral thinking. whatever attributes one decides helps with lateral thinking--thinking outside the box, coming at problems from a different angle--the higher-level Yaks are going to have fairly high numbers in those attributes.

This is true. This is so true as to be one of the defining points of this problem. Why?
The more the Yakuza threaten the runners, the less the runners have to lose by doing the 'forbidden'. Scoff if you like, but in my experience this is what happens to players of a cyberpunk RPG if they are pushed to the limit: all the unspoken rules go out the window. The PCs start blowing gas mains under Yakuza strongholds and say screw it to collateral damage. They put missiles into Yakuza-owned busiensses. They're less than concerned about using HMGs in broad daylight, because the 'star doesn't send guys to bomb your family in the dead of night, which is scarier for them anyway. They offer to hit Yakuza targets and annihilate/assassinate them for free, if only the Mafia and Triads tell them where they are. With nothing to lose, runners won't balk at being noisy or messy. They're dead already, and they know it.

That's why the intelligent tactic for the Yakuza isn't to engage them in a war of destruction and violence: generally, runners are better-equipped, better-informed, and better practiced at destruction, violence, and mayhem than the Yakuza, and the Yakuza have far more to lose, because they have all the money. The Yakuza understand business, though. They understand connections.

That's why a smart Yakuza boss would make a show of extracting 'vengeance', and call off the hits early. Maybe he'd send some fuckups he wanted to punish - if they die, no biggie. After the runners think they're safe, he puts an ear on their street docs, fixers, friends - all though a couple of layers of deception. He finds out where the runners live, hang out, do business. Then you have a couple of options:

1) He tips the Star or corps off to them. One or many of these entities MUST want the runners dead, right?
2) He hires them for a suicide mission. A setup from the get-go, where he tells the target AND the star all about the hit, and where to go get those bad, evil terrorist runners.
3) Maybe he's a sadistic bastard, and really gets the fixer and street doc's number...and he implants them with something when they're under the knife. Or mixes some serious carcerands with their latest batch of whatever drug they shoot up. And then he gives 'em a ring, and gloats as they expire.
And just to be sure? He keeps some hired runners in the eaves, in case the drugs or implant don't work. He ain't no Bond villain.

Just some ideas.

1) We can use canon. While the scenario may be non-canon, the game world can be populated with canon NPCs.

2) The problem is that the runners are the ones making the first strike. Afterall, the escalation is the execution of the captured yakuza - who should have been mindraped to hell for all the information he can give.

3) 2 dice is about 60+% chance of getting 1 more hit. Given the game mechanics of opposed skill checks, it is all or nothing. To define what I think is "significantly more clever" means 1 more success in order to achieve relative superiority, even though direct combat effectiveness may seem insurmountable.

Shadowrunning is even more a asymetric warfare campaign than OC, which mean it require even more lateral thinking than OC and unless the PCs are inexperienced runners(unlikely given the basic premise of SR is that you play experienced runners) they'd have more experience and better in lateral thinking. Afterall the runners routinely run afoul of the megacorps as a matter of business, OC do not generally take on megas(excepting perhaps the local security corp) as business. And given that said yakuza clan has MCT backing, the yaks would be more conventional warfare than asymetric.

Not really. In basic shadowrun, to have more information, you need more dice pool for the relevant information skill check. You can buy that large dice pool but that could require acquiring the services of whoever has that dice pool.

Not necessarily true. In basic Shadowrun, to have more information you need a higher dice pool in the relevant areas, or more Contacts. I am willing to bet that any Oyuban worth his place will have access to more people in more areas than the PCs.

you can, but it is not necessary to. nowhere in the books does it say that the listed NPCs are the only NPCs in the world; nowhere in the books does it say that only the listed NPCs can be members of any given organization. the GM is not only perfectly within his rights to stat up new NPCs to fill voids that the canon NPCs can't, he is expected to.

yes, the first strike has already occurred. that means that the Yaks are now aware of the situation and are able to act accordingly. because they are clever and networked and have a large amount of influence, they will quickly be able to take much of the initiative away from the PCs. heck, the PCs don't have the initiative to begin with--the whole reason they're going on the offensive now is that the Yaks have been attacking the PCs. they PCs are, at this point, trying to gain the initiative.

there's no skill or attribute roll for coming up with a good strategy. getting hits isn't the issue, the issue is how the NPCs should be acting (eg, what strategies they should be coming up with), in accordance with their listed attributes.

untrue. runners are not, as a general rule, in direct competition with anyone. runners are freelancers; all they really need to worry about is performing in their chosen field (hacking, rigging, mageing, samuraiing). OC syndicates must run an unending campaign against multiple enemies. that requires a lot more of the kind of thinking that runners would need to take on an OC than most runners are going to have.

1) But in order to do that, he needs to invoke Prime Runner rules and that doesn't really mean anything when the GM can already drop a spacecow on the runners anyway.

2) From what I read, first strike has not occured yet. The escalation may have occured but until the yakuza receives such information, they are as yet unaware of the escalation. And so relative superiority still lies with the runners.

3) Indeed. And if the NPCs have lower equivalent Attributes than they should have inferior strategies and in order to formulate such already inferior strategies in the first place, the NPCs are based on inferior information due to their lower dice pool. Which makes the strategies even more inferior.

4) Untrue. Runners, as a general rule, are in direct competition with everyone and that includes other runners. They are in an unending campaign against conventionally superior foes all the time, very much more so than OC. Therefore it would take more of the kind of thinking that the runners should have that the yakuza do not.

that's not true in any sense. nothing says the GM can't stat up his own mooks. nor is it true that if the GM is going to create prime runners, he must make them unstoppable monsters. he could, gasp horror, create reasonably powerful NPCs that fill the niche he requires. defeating the PCs, in this case, doesn't require absurdly powerful NPCs. it wouldn't require prime runners at all, actually, though using some prime runners would make more sense.

the first strike, as i read it, was when the Yaks tried to acquire the runners' NPC technomancer. everything since then has been simple escalation, mostly on the part of the Yaks.

if situational modifiers give you 50 extra dice, you don't need to be an Olympic marksman to get a bullseye. the Yaks have lots of money, lots of influence, and lots of experience. that stacks the odds in their favor enough that even an inferior strategy will serve to dominate most PC groups.

no, runners tend to be in indirect competition. that is to say, if runner A gets a job, he's not necessarily taking that job away from runner B. runners don't need to spend their days sabotaging other runners. every chiphead who buys their chips from a Mafia dealer, on the other hand, is one more chiphead who isn't generating profit for the Yakuza. the Yakuza are in direct competition with the Mafia, the Triads, the Seoulpa rings (if they still exist), and other entities.