If the group still has the resources to strike back then they have something to loose. Your job is to remind them of this. Assuming you're not dealing with the folks who run around with 10,000 rounds for every gun they carry in the back of their mobile armored fortress (and if you are then any further discussion on this matter really is pointless) then the group has finite resources. Cut off their ability to resupply, attack their contacts and if they don't take action to defend them then hang them out to dry.

I don't care how dirty they're willing to fight the Yaks are an established organization who has been in this business since before the PCs were born. They didn't get into that spot by engaging in head on confrontations and open warfare. Hit them in such a manner that there is nothing for the players to strike back at. Have them receive a panicked call from a contact only to find him dead on the doorstep of his shop by the time they arrive. There are any number of ways to put the players on the defensive so they're more worried about protecting what little they have left than trying to strike back.

Alternatively if you're really at the point where the players have decided that it's all over and they're just trying to go down fighting then arrange one final big bang up, kill them all in a suitably dramatic fashion and start over. It's clear that the players have no idea how to get themselves out of that situation and didn't when they got themselves into it. Furthermore if you can't see a way out or aren't inclined to provide them with one then the campaign with those characters at least is pretty much over. The alternative is to roleplay out the long drawn out process of starving them to death as the Yaks make it impossible for them to find work and I don't see that as being fun for anyone involved.

Right now I'd step back and ask where you see the campaign going if the PCs are allowed to live. You may want to have an OOC chat with your players and find out what their expectations are for the campaign before deciding how to proceed. Again if they're not having any fun and you aren't either because you feel the PC's have fucked themselves so royally that you can't see how to continue the game then scrap it and start over.

Just remember in the end this is a game you're running so that both you and the players can have fun. If it's no longer accomplishing that then there really is no point in continuing it.

One alternative that could be interesting is to have the runners flee the area to another country that is Yak free (or as close as you can get). Then force them to start over from square one knowing that some parts of the world are now essentially off limits to them as returning means ending up dead.

@Mr.Black: You have a different interest in this than I do. Your angle seems to be how to beat the PCs. I don't think that's ever a problem. My suggested approach, which was achieve some sort of compromise where the PCs get hit very hard, perhaps losing one or more of their numbers whilst achieving great damage on the Yakuza, is sufficient to both reward the players who are clearly spoiling for a fight and to drive home that this has cost them something so they're not casual about starting these sorts of wars, that was put earlier.

The debate that I see going on now is about what is realistic to happen. I'm firmly in the Anything Could Happen camp. MFB is in what I call the Don't Challenge My Status Quo camp. (Sorry, MFB, but that's how it appears to me). Toturi has, as usual, driven his RV right over everyones' tents and is happily bouncing over unpaved wilderness but no-one stops him because the people he's got in there seem to like his driving.

Anyway, based on a post in another thread, it seems like Bibliophile's players are demanding one mother of a fight and Bibliophile is preparing to give it to them. Rule 1: Have fun.

Oh, by the way. Shadowrun Fourth Edition (core book), pp.48-49:

Bunraku/meat puppets are illegal.

Knasser I see exactly what you're saying and I don't disagree with any of it. My post was more of an example of putting myself in the Yaks place and asking myself if I had those kind of resources how would I deal with a group of runners who were causing me that kind of trouble. I'm afraid I have a bad habit of trying to figure out how I belive something would realistically play out rather than focusing on what would be fun for the group. Stupid I know, elves, trolls, magic <> real yes, yes don't waste your time typing it, I get it. Like I said it's a bad habit. Unfortunately from my perspective when a group of runners go as far as what was described by the originator of this thread the only realistic outcome is a death sentence or fleeing the country and praying the opposition doesn't put too much effort into tracking you down.

Anyway like I said it's just me taking my mind off its leash and seeing where it leads me.

My 2 . It doesn't matter statistically, strategically, or anatomically if any of this can or should be done. However this is handled though it will set precedent for any future runs. If they get away with this, you have a team that considers themselves immortal and they will become even more immoral and psychotic. I'd give them their blaze of glory if thats what they're wanting, but it would be the end. The leader of the team who pushed this over the edge would definatly die, the rest of the team could sell him out to the Yakuza for his own hide.

The last run I led (Cold Blood, thank you knasser), consisted of the team (only 2 members) deciding the best way to start was dropping grenades via launcher randomly about the compound (before entering). How they thought bombing the compound would prevent automatic High Threat response I don't know. Mage sent in spirits and when one reported a Guardian spirit (where there was originally nothing on astral). The mage still decided to enter the compound. He pushed his luck a long way and was taken. His partner was already heading down the road as soon as the mage told him that the drones were out, and a powerful guardian spirit. I don't forsee any runs begin with how much explosives can I get in this amount of time again any time soon. Notedly the mage I think was tiring of his character I believe, he had practically same character in a different campaign. He was cackling quite madly as he tried (and failed miserably) to cast orgasm on the Shiawase Mage that was watching him on astral.

Moral of story, stupid does, stupid dies. You give them their window out, if they don't take it when they have the chance then there is no holding back. This seems as though it was done just so they could fight the entire Yakuza, thats what they want... Give it to them, but it seems pretty bleak. Maybe they have fun spending alot of time to create a character just to see how long he'll stand up under fire, before having to create another.

If all else fails there's the option of them waking up drenched in sweat or maybe their own filth, mayhaps in a gutter without any memories . . mayhaps in their own beds conviced it was JUST A DREAM . . maybe at one Point there appears a big Cred-stick-Slot before their eyes telling them to spend 50 Nuyen to continue . . or something else entirely . .

Oops.

Oops.

shut up!

Dork.

it shifted when I first put in my proposal as to how it could work

MY position was missed, I am not in Torturi's car/ I have pitched a concrete tent firmly in the lands of "They are so gonna die, but their names will live on forever in street legends if they pull this off"

As I understand the OP, the Yakuza were the ones who started everything when MCT sent them to extract the team technomancer. The GM overplayed his hand with the Yakuza attacks on the team contacts, leaving the players believing they had nothing left to lose. From the quotes the GM posted here and there in this thread, the players are taking this fight personally.

Which means there is no way for the Yakuza to win. Even if the Yakuza manage a TPK, next session the players just make new characters and continue the war. They can keep feeding character sheets to the Yakuza until they choke on them, until the players' thirst for vengence is satisfied, or until the players or GM stop having fun and quit the game to take up golf.

(The first time the team makes five troll ninja suicide bombers might be funny. "Each of you brought 400 kg of Foam Explosive 6?" "Yup, we sneak into their headquarters and press the red, candy-like detonator buttons to generage an 800 DV explosion."

Subsequent times -- less so.)

*Yakuza Power: This is something that really annoyed me as I read the thread. Unless this game is set in Japan, there is no way the Yakuza have the kind of power some posters are talking about. The PC's can easily get resupplied by the Vory, Mafia, or Triads. The PC's are effectively shadowrunning for all three groups for FREE, and they're giving them their money, too! It's a win-win situation.

The important thing is to ask the players what is going to satisfy them. If they want to beat an apology out of them, fine. The Yakuza can restore their reputation easily enough with some random murders of less psychotic people, plus they can claim it was honorable or something. If someone disagrees, see previous sentence for targetting information.

If they want to drive them out of the city, fine. The other gangs and syndicates will fill that vaccuum easily enough. So what if every so often the PC's get Yakuza assassins delivering Valentine's Day "I Hate You" cards to their door, free of charge?

If they want to eliminate the Yakuza world-wide, it's time to hang up your dice and take up golf. Shaking up the local power structure is one thing, but that would just be too implausible to have fun running.

if the players are doing that, then the group has larger problems than the Yaks.


only if the PCs can make contact in a reasonable timeframe (remember, all of their contacts are either dead or in hiding), and only if the Vory/Mafia/Triads are willing to risk their assets for a pack of suicidal crazies. this isn't business as usual--this is very quickly getting personal on both sides. the Yaks have been whacking all of the PCs' contacts; there's every chance that at this point, they're crazy enough to start whacking all of the PCs new friends, no matter what their affiliation. vendettas like that spread like wildfire; pretty soon, every OC syndicate in the city will have sworn blood oaths against each other and it'll be all-out war. using muscle on your competitors to steal a chunk of their business is one thing; expending your resources on pointless killing is another. i can easily see the other syndicates just stepping back and letting the Yaks handle their own business.

If they go to fight and their new archenemy is so strong that rocks fall and everyone dies, they'll feel cheated, and rightly so. To fix his mistake, the GM has to be very careful not to kill the team before they achieve their goal.



Which, one has to admit, could be a sweet frickin' campaign.

Seoulpa Rings? which include in their prime charter goals "Kill the dishonorable Yakuza"

You know, maybe I should tell the story of My bodyguarding guest lecturer, he was about on par with a shadowrunner. His tale of how he took on a Triad is in spirzational.

i don't necessarily agree that just because the players are set on a course of action, that it should work out for them. especially if their chosen course of action is to treat the process of character generation as a chance to pursue their old characters' goals.


i think even the Seoulpa Rings would think twice before dealing with someone that the Yaks have declared war on. the rings don't know these runners from Adam, after all. the Rings have their own schemes and methods for fighting the Yaks; no real need to gamble anything on some bunch of yahoos. besides, are the Seoulpa Rings even around anymore in SR4? i thought i heard something about them getting stomped.

Although I agree that the DM made a mistake, I think it would be an even bigger mistake to allow the characters to suceed simply because they have "I'm a PC" stamped on their forehead, would you let them topple one of the Megas?

The PCs shouldn't succeed simply because they have "PC" stamped on their foreheads (now, if they had "Mac" stamped on their foreheads, it might be a different story). But the Yaks shouldn't succeed because they have "status quo" stamped on their foreheads, either.

Toppling a mega shouldn't be something the characters decide, out of the blue, to do for fun one day, but depending on the power level, it shouldn't be impossible, either. If the characters wanted to make bringing down one of the megas the overall campaign goal, I would probably roll with it. Such a campaign would be very interesting. It certainly wouldn't be easy. The book Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams, illustrates how difficult toppling a mega could be.

In bibliophile's case, I think what he's doing is about right. He's not treating the Yaks as all-knowing and all-powerful people, and he's not abusing GM fiat with them. He's having them take logical steps to locate the PCs, while the PCs are being careful to cover their tracks as they plan their offense. It looks like the PCs will go out in a blaze of glory, doing some massive damage to their foes in the process, and that sounds about right. The most important thing isn't realism, but a resolution that leaves the players satisfied. Not necessarily victorious, but happy enough that they will be able to move on with their next characters.

Although I somewhat agree with your sentiment about the "status quo", I disagree that finding a resolution that leaves the players satisfied is necessary or even a good thing in this case, sometimes bad things happen to bad people, especially in a world that is as broken as the Sixth World is.

i don't think the Yaks should win simply to preserve the status quo, either. i just don't think that a group of runners are going to be badass enough to take the Yaks down, or even damage the Yaks badly enough to matter in the long run.

There are two Seoulpa Rings currently operating in Seatle.

One is a matrix based operation who exist for the sole purpose of making attacks against the Seattle Yakuza, their SOLE purpose. Do you honestly think they would not give informational aid to a set of disposable and expendable weapons like the PCs?

The other is into Organlegging and can acquire arms and cyberpuppies. The PCs can trade Yak bodies for re-equipping. In addition they have safe areas in NAN land beyong the reach of the Yakuza

There is your resupply and shelter. In the NAN the Yakuza cannot operate effectively.
The PCs can trade dead Yakls for buns and bombs,
There is a group that is living Deus ex Machina for the party's war.

Do you honestly think that two groups that exist solely to destroy the Yakuza would not offer aid and succour to those who have the same goal.

OTOH the second ring has a nasty initiation right, so that could be a fun way to see the PCs go through hell to get their goal.

I wish they would update the rules for criminal organisations for SR4. Right now, the old rules seem to assume that the runners will be targeting only the markets of the syndicates and not the syndicates themselves.

okay. let's assume that the PCs magically know how to contact one or both Rings. hurray, they have a reasonably steady trickle of resupply. it's still five against thousands, PCs lose.

Given the necessity of the Rings to be insular after being nearly annihilated by the Yakuza, I think they would be hesitant to take blind calls from people saying they would like the Rings' assistance. On one hand, the Yakuza are not above anything to infiltrate and destroy the rings (and what better set-up than to meet with runners claiming to want to destroy the Yakuza). On the other, I'm not exactly sure what the Rings can actually accomplish. They are mostly recruits from Korea, so there is a definite lack of street-level information-gathering ability, which is already combined with said paranoia.

The two remaining Rings consist of one that is mostly a bunch of slavers and organleggers with ties to Tsimshian. People who aren't exactly on everyone's list of favorites in the Barrens for the "kidnapping and selling bodies whole or in parts" part, as well as being notorious about selling pharmaceuticals of dubious if not outright placebo quality. For the PCs, teaming up with them would be more harmful in trying to form an alliance, and they don't actually receive any benefit.

The other ring is a bunch of hackers, which is useful for fake IDs (the rings were the tops, IIRC, in the Underworld book) and money laundering, but because they are constantly attacking the Yakuza's Matrix assets, the Yakuza would know what the runners are after. They go after protected and important information about the Yaks all day every day, and the Yakuza (which is not a weak syndicate in the Matrix) would already know what targets the Ring would sell info on by virtue of a) what gets hacked, and b) what's generally important, and c) whatever disinformation the Yakuza plants online to distract or set up the Rings and their clients. I mean, look at them. The Seoulpa Rings have been fighting the Yakuza in Seattle to the death for twenty+ years, and all they've gotten is mostly dead while the Yakuza got more powerful.

By all means let the PCs hook up with the Seoulpa Rings. I'm sure it will work out just peachy.

How many thousands? How big is the population of the local city? Unless that city is acknowledged to be the stronghold of the local yakuza clan, what percentage of the city's population is yakuza?

The PCs should eventually die. Whether they lose, is variable.

Resupplying shouldn't be that hard in Seattle. There's a ton of smuggling going through there, in the Ork Underground, through the other syndicates, etc., as other people have pointed out. This isn't a Gibson novel, the Yakuza are not gods. They're a syndicate like anyone else; powerful enough to wipe out regular schlubs. Geared-out shadowrunners with nothing to lose? Not so much. They'll get them eventually, but it'll hurt.

even if you accept that the PCs can disappear with ease in areas where the Yakuza don't have a strong grip (i contend that they can disappear, but that it won't necessarily be easy or permanent), they have to enter Yak territory to strike. i don't believe that the Yakuza are foolish or disconnected enough to simply let the PCs waltz into their territory, or (especially) to waltz out once the PCs have struck. as soon as the first gun goes off, there are going to be Yak-loyal people trying to find out what's going on, and reporting it up the Yak chain of command. within minutes, there are going to be Yak hackers watching through the cameras, Yak drones buzzing past, Yak spirits ghosting around, and so on. even before the PCs strike, there are going to be people armed with descriptions of the PCs, keeping an eye out for them. yes, there are methods the PCs can use to mitigate this stuff, but none of it is completely foolproof. the PCs have to get lucky every time; the Yaks only have to get lucky once.

Nothing is more important than satisfying your players.

The problem is that there are people who are in some way tied to the yaks (or wish to be tied to the yaks) all over the place, and they don't wear signs. Exactly who does a given smuggler get her stuff from? What does her boyfriend work for? Who does the guy who begs down the street from her get a weekly payment (and a commlink) from in exchange for current information?

nothing is more important that satisfying the group. the group includes the GM. if the GM isn't having fun, he's not going to keep GMing.

as i've said before, if the group is dead set on going Max Payne on the Yaks, go for it and have fun. if i were GMing, though, i would place a fairly strong focus on what i feel are realistic consequences and outcomes. if my players disagreed, i find it likely that it'd have come up long before anything like this particular scenario came to pass.

Oi, this thread is crazy.


Look, it's up to the DM in question. If he goes the "PCS MUST DIEEEEEEEEE!@!!!!!1!1!111!!!!!oneonetyeleventy!!" route, then the PCs die. If they consistantly dice their way out of his traps, then he can just say that MCT deploys orbital weapons on them until they run out of Edge to spend on Hand of God, and then fire another orbital weapon at them to finish them off.


And frankly, he'd never DM for them again. The players should 'win'. They may or may not keep their characters' lives, but they should win. The DM escalated this situation, not the players - he started it with having all their dosses hit and all their contacts whacked at once. He should (and appears to have) man up to the fact that he created a situation where the players have nothing to lose, and let them win.

What does it cost him? Really? He gets to run the kind of high-powered, shoot-everything campaign that we all dream about. The runners kill the Oyabun, the Gumi's head winds up on top of the Space Needle's needle, Yak interests get blown to shit, their accounts all get hashed, MCT interests in Seattle gets shredded, and the players eventually die in a huge blaze of glory, leaving their names forever emblazoned in the Shadows as the heroes who proved to the syndicates and even the Megas that you really, really shoulden't just go randomly fucking with Prime Runners and making them desperate men with nothing to lose.

Or hell, why not let them live! The Yaks in Seattle get shredded so bad that all of a sudden flights to Tokyo are filled with tatooed men and their families, and the other organizations move in to eat up the Yak interests. The Shadowrunners get new names and faces, maybe in a new city, and their old names and faces are remembered forever as heroes who went missing in action.

Tell me MFB, do you apply this logic to the Megacorps? THe AAAs? the AAs? the As? if so how long do your PC runner teams last?

as an aside I just had a highly amusing thought for an ending for this campaign. Set it up so the PCs mostly die during the situation, then the lone surviving PC that takes out the Gumi in question ends up unconcious as a side result

when he wakes up Lofwyr is there, beside his hospital bed, telling the PC that his new name is Hans Brackhaus.

Then about 4-5 runs into your next campaign, have the Party meet with a Mr J called Hans Brackhaus

That would actually be funny. If the Runners draw so much attention and perform so well that a Great Dragon shows up and rescues them from certain doom in a personal intervention, to make them his/her new pawns.

Ryumo would be pissed... But hey, they're GDs. Each other's existance offends them by nature.

i apply this logic to everything and everyone. my PC runner teams last as long as they are smart and lucky--mainly smart. if they're smart, they don't pull stupid stunts like engaging in do-or-die vendettas. if someone hurts them and they absolutely have to do something about it, they keep it quiet. revenge--real revenge, not face-saving; i feel confident that in this situation, the PCs are after more than regaining lost rep--isn't about being loud, it's about getting revenge. if i were playing a PC who found himself in the situation presented, my PC wouldn't go in guns blazing--he'd disappear. he'd move to another city, take on a new name, build a new rep. and then, years later, when the oyabun who caused my PC all this trouble has completely forgotten the entire incident, that oyabun would, himself, disappear. he'd die a very slow, messy death someplace quiet, and nobody would ever know what happened to him.

and then, if my PC still missed Seattle, maybe he'd move back.

the reason PCs survive taking on megas, OC syndicates, dragons, and all manner of powerful, long-reaching threats, is that they do so anonymously, for the most part. even if you run around wearing a pink mohawk, the targets you hit know that squashing you won't solve their problems. you're just the one of many tools that the targets' enemies are using; expending resources to track down and kill every single tool offers no advantage. obviously, that doesn't hold true 100% of the time, but it's generally true. if a runner were foolish enough to start going after a mega on his own initiative, and was public about what he was doing and why, he'd find himself dead in short order.

the PCs in this situation were at a disadvantage--the GM decided that the Yaks knew enough about them to find and kidnap their buddy, the TM. that's not outside the realm of reason by a long shot, but it's a pretty crappy hand to get dealt. so the PCs lost their best defense--the enemy already knew who they were.

mfb, you seem to have a hard time distinguishing between "realistic" and "fun".

"realistic" has no place for Shadowrunners, it has no place for go-gangers that literally own the Interstate highways because the Star is afraid to challenge them, it has no place most of the premises the setting is built upon.

Why is it so hard for you to accept that maybe, just maybe, what these players are doing is the kind of thing that Prime Runners are made of, the kind of thing that FastJacks and Captains Chaos and Slamm-Os and all the others did to get themselves famous. Why is it so hard to accept that sometimes, the little man can take on the big organization in a fight and win?

Do you have some pathological need to piss on other's parade? Are you not happy unless you know that every single Shadowrun player out there is miserable, because his characters get stomped upon any time the DM wants them to be stomped, or any time they decide to take some initiative?

I have a better idea for you. Why don't you look up the rules for some kind of mercenary wargame, because you seem to be intent on DMing a game wherein the PCs take jobs they're handed, exist as cogs in the machine, and get shattered if they take their own agenda, or get pissed and decide that instead of rolling over easy, they're going to die hard, and take a lot of people down with them?

[quote name='ShadowDragon8685' date='Feb 5 2008, 12:27 AM' post='629950']
Oi, this thread is crazy.


Yes.

Put it another way: a PC with AGL 5 and Automatics (Assault Rifle) 4 fires a smartlinked machine pistol at a Yakuza thug with REA 4. Does the PC hit? We can argue yes or no; my position is that the PC has 11 dice vs. the Yakuza's 4, and is likely but not certain to hit. If the PC attacks a tank the same way, then my position is that the PC will fail to harm the tank. I read mfb's position as that the current group of PCs vs. the Yakuza is like firing a handgun at a tank: absolutely no chance of inflicting serious damage.

Can the PCs kill every single one of the hundreds (or more?) Yaks in Seattle? No. But they don't have to. I gather that taking down the oyabun would be a victory, even if some other oyabun took his place and received the loyalty of the many, many surviving yaks.

Another and perhaps more relevant victory condition: this started when the yaks attacked a technomancer who was more or less under the protection of the PCs. If they can get her to safety, they win, even if it costs their lives.

Another note - it is important to satisfy the *players*. That does not have to be the same thing as PC success. I've happily played games in which my PC failed, or died, or both, and in the process, a good story was told.

i'm not sure what you want from me. i already said that if you want to play the kind of game where the PCs can take on a Yakuza gumi and win, i won't stop you or even think poorly of you. if your group is having fun, then you're doing everything right.

the people i prefer to play with have the most fun when the game satisfies their sense of realism. we find it more realistic for the Yaks to eat the runners for lunch, if the runners are dumb enough to go to war. in a game where the PCs could take on an OC syndicate and expect to 'win', however you define winning, most of us would have a lot less fun.

i'm not telling anybody what type of game they should run. at worst, i'm telling people what they should think is realistic. arguing over what constitutes realism is a time-honored tradition on this forum and just about every other forum on and off the Internet; i hardly think i'm stepping on anyone's toes by doing that, and if i am, i hardly think i'm the only one.

so let me turn that around on you. why don't you get off my nuts, and stop telling me what i think should be fun?

Yeah, I'm sure the problem is that mfb is just confused, here, when it comes to fun versus realism, and the issue couldn't possibly be that to some of us realism (inasmuch as the setting itself allows for it) is fun.

Believe it or not, not all of us play Shadowrun to be super awesome Jedi, James Bond, and/or comic book superheroes all rolled into one.

I'm not busying your nuts because you hold a differing opinion on what should be fun. (Though if your nuts feel busted that way, I'll call it a side benny.)

I'm busting your nuts because you're arguing long and hard that the Yaks should eat the players for breakfast. Frankly that's assinine. GMHammerings should be reserved for cases where the players inexplicably do something retarded - in this case, the GM escalated the situation to the point of "men with nothing to lose". So he hsould be willing to let them shoot their way free.

Well, to be fair, the first post in this thread WAS along the lines of "What would happen?"

MFB is simply defending his opinion of 'what would happen.'