There's a line between "This is what I think could happen" and "This is what will happen, if you don't agree then you must be stupid!".

That's not what's been debated here. As MFB points out, he's perfectly entitled to run his game however he chooses. It is also, and I agree with him, an artificial distinction between realism and fun. Sometimes the two conflict, but they need not.

The argument has always been about what is realistic, and my point of view all along has been that it is realistic for a team of highly-trained infiltrator killers, with access to everything from nano-paste disguises and magic to explosives and 2070 hackers, to wreak untold harm on a basic criminal syndicate. And that it is not realistic for the Yakuza to be 'getting the word out via every drug dealer in every suburb to start watching for the PCs etc. etc.'

It's two people stalking through a maze . One has more guns than the other but what will matter is who gets to shoot the other one. Further, there are different victory conditions. One has to kill the other and remain intact, the other has merely to kill the other or severely wound him so that the rats that infest that maze will smell the blood and come running.

Let's not turn this into realism vs. fun unless it's acknowledged that MFB is not representing 'realism' for all of us.

kid, you're not even a blakkie. Laughlyn would eat you for breakfast. Doc Funk probably wouldn't deign to reply.


so, you're not telling me how to have fun--you're just telling me how to have fun. it's all so clear now!

Yet you feel the need to point this out. Who's the more foolish?



No, I'm not telling you how to have fun, I'm telling you not to tell other people how they ought to have fun, lest ye be told how to have fun. Or in short, applying the golden rule. Ram not thy opinion down other's throat, lest ye find yourself choking on some opinion in turn.

You're right!

Holy crap people. Have you gone back and forth on this enough yet?

There are multiple perspectives and opinions here, and you know what? None of you are going to change the other's position.

Some feel the Yakuza will walk all over the PC's the moment they find out where they are. -- This is a perfectly valid and reasonable position, whether you agree with it or not.

Some feel the Yakuza are destined to be hurt or destroyed by the PC's because they are highly trained at what they do, and they have the knowledge and resources to make that destruction possible. -- This is ALSO a perfectly valid and reasonable position, whether you agree with it or not.

Others are of the opinion that the PC's are nigh invincible and can take down the Yaks simply because of Script Immunity. -- This is a valid position for some people, whether you agree with it or not/ (I don't)

As a whole, we've given Bibliophile a heap of info, ideas and insights to work with. It'd be nice to hear how everything plays out in the end.

That said, can we just agree to disagree instead of going at each other's throats? ShadowDragon8685, whether you intended it or not, you came off as highly aggressive towards mfb, and it's no wonder he fired back. C'mon guys, let's get back to keepin' drek simple around here, alright?

Well, I should hope so. I got tired of wading through his ceaseless attempts to browbeat other people into accepting his views, and so I returned the favor.

As one of the chief arguers against MFBs position, I'd just like to say I haven't felt that he's been abusive. Yes, he thinks I'm wrong which is hard to fathom, but he's entitled to think that if he wants.

Hey, it's the Internet and no-one ever really dies. Who's going to be big and offer to shake hands?

Peace, please.

-Khadim.

which part of "if your group is having fun, then you're doing everything right" are you unclear on? i don't care how you, or anyone else, plays their game. i do care what you, and everyone else, thinks is realistic, because that's something that--while not wholly objective--can at least be debated with relative objectivity. i won't argue with how you play your game--but i will argue whether or not the way you play is realistic or not. whether you agree or disagree with me, re: the realism of your game, you're free to have fun doing it your way.

edit: hee hee! relative objectivity.

I was being an ass. That was probably assinine of me, so I appologize.

"Congratulations. You have completed the Internet.
Play again?"

i'm being an ass, too. you can tell because my fingers are on the keyboard.

Thank y'all.

For the record, I disagree with mfb's position, but consider it reasonable.

Then again, I consider most PC teams unrealistic. Where, besides RPGs, do people of that degree of lethality band together in teams of 3-6 members, independent of large organizations but sticking together across various missions?

(I'm open to non-rhetorical answers. Curious, even.)

Small independant terrorist groups (or even individual cells), thieves, survivalists, mercenary squads, hunters ...

i've actually never played a character in SR who was a member of a team. the closest i've come was sharing a team karma pool with two other runners who worked with each other only slightly more frequently than with anyone else.

And you would be wrong.
Realistic should come from reality.
Look at someone like Frank Lucas, who used his family to outplay the Mafia in New York and beat them at their own game.
Look at the police force that took him down. It was a special unit thta did not have the backing of the rest of the police. They were without major connections and with a severely limited budget. They nevertheless took out the largest OC gang in Harlem. When you consider how most fo the cops there were white, that makes it that much harder.
Consider the Melbourne Killings.
Consider Vietnam.
Consider how a bodyguard protects his client from an OC syndicate.
Consider that Bin Laden has yet to be found, and still does damage.
Let me tell you a story.

Scene: Hong Kong
Scenario: Bodyguard team protecting a client.
Problem: client is threatened by local Triad boss.
Response: Head of Bodyguard team tells the client to fly his family out of Hong Kong, then has his team do a night of recon. The next day, he goes into the Boss' favorite cafe and sits down at the table the boss is eating at.
He smiles and says, "I know you understand english, so I wont bother speaking Cantonese. Do you know what a blood eagle is?" When the boss replied in the negative, the Bodyguard continued. "A blood eagle is an old Native American punishment. You place the body of the man face down and you cut into his back on either side of his spine. You then pull his lungs out through his back and turn them into wings. They die very slowly and painfully, unable to effectively breathe. Now i really hope we don't have a problem. Here is what is going to happen, I am going to receive a phone call." At this point one of his people called his cellfone, he was watching the cafe with a sniper rifle at the time. The Bodyguard listened to the call and then spoke to the Boss. "Right ynow your wife is just leaving the house to go shopping, she is wearing," He described what the wife wore. "Your son is at school in gym class, wearing," another description of clothing. "And your 8 year old daughter is in art class outside, wearing," za third description of clothing. "We don't have a problem, do we?" He then stood and left the cafe.
The man who did this was not some supersoldier from the future, he was the guest lecturer for bodyguarding at my Security guard school. This kind of shite is common

Small squad level mercenary operations.
Freelance bodyguarding teams
Security consultant teams.
that is all i can think of

Well, I have to say thank you to everyone for their opinions on the situation

There's also the fact that all of you kept my players amused with the rapidly increasing post count; one of them commented that what they need in their AR displays are counters for:
Body count
Current bounty
Post count on this thread



Anyway, so here's the deal; my campaign has lasted for about six/seven months by this point; it was my first campaign, and I've learned alot from it, both what to do and what not to do. Between those facts and my workload this semester, we're going to be wrapping up the campaign in the next few sessions.

Neat stories, but not terribly on topic. Why? Because "reality" in Shadowrun is a far fucking cry from "reality" in, well, reality. It's a simple fact that the organized crime syndicates in Shadowrun have been presented to us as being altogether nastier, more efficient, more powerful, and more respected than they have in real-life. They are the mobs and mafias of the heyday of mobs and mafias. Just like the gangs we're shown in Shadowrun are the mid-80's nightmares and over the top oversimplifications of what gangs are (and what they might grow into in a dark future), so are the criminal organizations.

Everyday schmucks don't go on successful anti-crime family rampages in Shadowrun, because in Shadowrun the ability to go on a truly successful murderous rampage is dictated by die pools for attacks and soaking damage and what quality of weapons you have and a million other things that aren't, truly, quantifiable in real life. Some schmuck without any real skills at all and a light pistol will not successfully slaughter a room full of chipped-up or magically active Mafia hitmen in Shadowrun's reality, simply because that's the way the dice are very, very, unlikely to fall.

We know that in Shadowrun's reality criminal organizations are full of lethal, trained, augmented, and bloodthirsty professionals. We also know that in Shadowrun's reality criminal organizations are ridiculously wealthy and powerful, running, openly running sometimes, entire sections of major urban centers. We also know that in Shadowrun's reality criminal organizations are the big dogs which the little dogs (street gangs) hurry to obey, and that (as presented to us in canon) even those little dogs are nastier and more influential within their realms than PCs generally are.

That is the "reality" of Shadowrun. In real life, lots of zany things happen (like everyday schmucks going nuts and murdering a bunch of organized criminal thugs). Heck, in real life I know of at least one case where an untrained granny shot and killed an entry team officer that was serving a warrant on her house (with a wrong address). In Shadowrun, granny would have a pitifully low skill level, face penalties from darkness and then from glare, the Lone Star SWAT samurai would make a badass dodge with his chipped reflexes, and probably would've gone before granny aniways and pasted the bitch without even needing combat pool for it. REAL LIFE IS NOT SHADOWRUN. "REALISM" IN SHADOWRUN REFERS TO THE SHARED REALITY WE ALL ACCEPT BY PAYING GOOD MONEY FOR CANON SOURCEBOOKS.

The game, as presented, is largely about small groups of criminals that slip through the cracks in society for fear of those larger and more terrifying groups that pay them to do jobs for them. The Yakuza is, as presented, one such larger and more terrifying group.

In some games, that may not be the case. PCs might outgrow their status as errand boys and lapdogs, and grow to threaten or intimidate those larger groups. Those games are perfectly fine. If anyone gives a fuck, they can go back and find mfb and I saying that over and goddammed over again. They are just not the same games we play.

yes, and in reality, stories like American Gangster are told precisely because they happen so rarely. if every young black hustler with guts and spirit in the 70s had gone on to run a major crime family, do you think they'd be casting Denzel for that movie? do you think they'd have made a movie at all? no, they wouldn't have, because nobody would have cared. that movie, and movies like it, was made precisely because the events were so extraordinary. same with the dude in Melbourne.

Viet Nam proves my point, thank you very much. a relatively small, elite, well-armed group of fighters invades the turf of an intelligent enemy who has a wide reach and lots of bodies to spend, and what happens? the small, elite group shits its teeth.

and Osama proves what i've been saying about influence this whole time. during the 80s and 90s, maybe even the 70s, the US phased out a lot of its human intelligence operations and began relying mostly on electronic intelligence. instead of infiltrating enemy organizations and learning what they were doing from the inside, the US got this dumbass idea that it could just monitor the whole world via satellite. they lost their influence in the middle eastern black market/terror community, while Osama and company went on to be war heroes because they 'beat' the USSR in Afghanistan. yet again, the US is the small, elite force of asskickers, but they can't beat the big, wealthy, well-connected bad guy because the bad guy is big, wealthy, and well-connected.

good for your bodyguard buddy. i'm happy for him. i'm proud of him. in SR, he would be one of many operators at his level of expertise, and the Yaks would employ lots of guys like him. he wouldn't, in all likelihood, have been able to find the syndicate leader's family, much less put a sniper on them after only a night of recon; nor would he have been able to grab a seat at the leader's table at some cafe. more to the point, he didn't actually have to follow through on that threat. he walked in, made a quiet threat, and walked out. that the syndicate leader believed him is a testament to the bodyguard's personal skills, not his ability to gut a large crime syndicate single-handedly.

Isn't a blood eagle a Viking ritual?

Anyway, the exception almost never proves the rule. That's why it's an exception. Like I said, anything can happen once.

But when it comes to OC, I keep thinking about how Paul Castellano was gunned down during the Christmas rush in the middle of Manhattan and yet no one saw a thing.

In this case, destroying even one of the Seattle Yakuza rings seems to me like, and especially seems as realistic, as Hudson Hawk robbing a priceless artifact from the Vatican with less than a day's (more like a couple hours, at most) planning. Amusing, but completely ludicrous.

Don't leave us in suspense, bibliophile, what happened?



That's absolutely true. Everybody needs to be having fun.

Small elite group? You are referring to the US military as small? and as elite? There were more marines in vietnam than there were VC soldiers.
They had better equipment, they had the money, the international contacts and all the big bombs. they were not the Shadowrunners in the analogy.



Australia, Britain, Japan, etc. These are countries that are part of the 'COalition of the willing' and some of them (notably australia) did not phase out their infiltration operations. ANd you really need to be educated on the relative strengthsd of nations militaries if you think of the US armies as a small elite force.


In the real world he is one of the many operatives at his level of skill, he is not unique. and the point of the story was to remind you that the Yauza in the OP's scenario still have things to lose, things they MUST protect.

You're right, Kremlin.

Half a million Americans with better weapons, training, and logistics killed 3 million Vietnamese, and yet still couldn't beat an enemy with better familiarity with the environment and better intelligence.

Way to support your argument.

Actually the Vietnam war proves Kremlin's point on both sides of the conflict. When either side had the smaller but better trained elite force, that force forced a larger, better equipped, supposedly better informed force to run in circles looking for them(even when intel was leaking like a burst water main from the other side).

From my point of view, it is evident that the runners should be able to inflict some damage to the Yakuza and that the Yakuza has to allocate some resources to apply pressure on the runners in the first place. How much resources and how much damage can be caused is up to the dice gods and in the hands of the GM. I have already stated that with baseline canon, unadulaterated with even RAW NPCs, the RAW PCs should be able to hurt the yakuza very badly. Yes, I am aware that "nobody" plays like this, but it serves as a basis for comparison.

Half a million Americans supported by the South Vietnamese killed 3 million Vietnamese, on both sides of the conflict, and yet still couldn't beat an enemy with better familiarity with the environment and better intelligence.

Way to support your argument.


The game as presented is largely about small groups of criminals that slip through the cracks in society despite those larger groups that pay them to do jobs for them. The Yakuza is only one such larger group. The runners are the more capable group, otherwise, the Yakuza won't be using them in the first place.

In some games, that may not be the case. PCs might be errand boys and lapdogs, and bend over everytime those larger groups look at them dirty. Those games are perfectly fine. They are just not the same games you play.

that isn't even close to being true. depending on who you believe, the NVA at its height consisted of between 300k to 600k soldiers. that doesn't count the large number of South Vietnamese effectives who were forced to fight for the NVA. by contrast, the total number of US troops topped out at less than 540k.


the US wasn't the scrappy underdog, but they were fighting a large, smart, aggressive force that had a huge advantage in intel and control of the population. according to you, the runners have a nigh-infinite supply of drones and explosives. international contacts? the NVA had the USSR and China; the US wasn't even allowed to enter Cambodia. the US did exactly what you're talking about the PCs doing: they walked in thinking they were hot shit because they had the hardware and the training, and the NVA tore them apart by concealing their assets and playing dirty. no, it's not a perfect analogy, but it's hardly the showcase for your argument that you're trying to make it out to be.


you're only counting regulars. the US basically has to keep its guns trained on the entire population of anyplace they walk into, because anybody they see might be a terrarist--or might have been coerced into working with them. same situation the PCs face, except the US forces aren't nearly as badly outnumbered by their potential enemies. again, not a perfect analogy--but i'm not the one that brought it up.


i've never denied that. what i've denied is that the PCs will be able to easily and/or consistently find these high-value targets, and that they'll be able to easily and/or consistently destroy enough of those targets to matter before sustaining crippling losses themselves.

I'd like to see more an analysis of likely PC plans of attack vs what the Yakuza are probably able to toss in to stop it, and less innane and frankly bizzaro argument over whether or not it's legal for the Yaks to have at least on dude with a logic higher than three on their team.

On the note of Payback: Porter survived the movie partly because the other guys (the 'syndicate' or Yaks in our equation) never really tried to kill him the moment he showed his face... that did happen at the end, and he mostly lost but for plot induced stupidity (you know, not leaving a guy watching the car with him in the trunk... mob bosses going personally in a single group to check out his doss... that they had already planted a bomb in...) rather than sending a flunky while they still had him tied up and tortured.

Hardly total war.

Consider the more recent move: War, where only the actions of a double agent even allow the triads and yaks to really start fighting! Jet Li has to point the Traids at the Yaks every time. That's another syndicate, whats a group of PC's gonna know that a Traid operation isn't?

Hopefully someone else has posted since my last but:

Consider the stated idea of attacking the Oyabun's house. Sounds like a plan, and a good climactic 'go for the kill shot' sort of move.

Now we have to consider the Oyabun: Is he paranoid? Is he Arrogant? How seriously is he taking this 'war' thing?

If he's arrogant and considers the PC's a nuisance, then sure, his home is a good target. If he is paranoid or considers them a threat, he might not even be there.

Either way the team should have some very real problems. They ain't Yak insiders, and lacked good Yak contacts. How are they going to find it? Ditto the boss's office/place of business. Consider, say, Eastern Promises... you might not even know the guy you are talking to IS the boss, unless you are 'in the know'.

Now: Shadowrunners are, in a sense, criminals and thus can be 'in the know', unlike the average housewife, say. But some of that will depend on their contacts, some will be part of their 'native culture'... what crime syndicate ran the neighborhoods they grew up with might be a better way of putting it.

I'm guessing these guys got little to no ties to the Yak prior to this.


Since I'm on a movie kick, Things to do in Denver when You're Dead is a great example flick, only the PC"s are all like the crazy dude holed up ready to fight his way out. The bad guys send a bad ass assasin after the team. So what if he dies, another one will be in town the very next day.


But back to the Oyabun assault for the moment. This guy lives, most likely, in the AAA zones, the rich and well protected neighborhoods. Just getting to his house to assault it is gonna be problematic, never mind the recon. His best and most loyal men will be on hand to defend the place, never mind the MCT rentacops (since MCT does back him...) and then the Lonestar HRT teams that are certain to show up within minutes of a dustup in their most valuable customer's area. I'm not sayin' hes impossible to get to, only that it should be either an epic dustup or the most awesome infiltration ever pulled to do it quiet. And no matter what the action will NEVER start at the property line... it starts at the entrace to the entire neighborhood.

Forget drone suicide attacks. Not only is the building hardened against those sorts of anonymous attacks but even then you'll just blow up a room or two, and we're talking mansion/fortress here. Sure, a bulldog bomb will work... against the front half anyway, but you'll miss the target in all probability, even if you can get the bomb close enough. Carbombs have been a fact of life for more than 100 years at this point. Dronebombs are probably pushing 15-20...

Given the damage done by the PC's, however? He ain't home. Oh.. it'll LOOK like he's home, they may even think they got him! He's in Japan, or Tahiti, enjoying the vacation and the knowledge that he's untouchable. The Wireless world makes it ever easier to run things remotely. Heck, he may even let the shadows think he bought it in the assault, running things as a kaiser soze for a while and looking indestructable when he finally shows back up.

There should be no doubt that the Oyabun or the higher ups will survive, even if you are going by RAW stats or even stricter still by canon stats only.

Remember all non-Grunts NPCs will have individual Edge. Burn 1 point of Edge and survive.

Isn't the NPC survival rule 'Burn all Edge to survive'?

I kind of agree that the Yakuza, as presented in Shadowrun, are above most PCs in power level and effectiveness. But where the realism argument breaks down, for me, is where it meets the GMs responsibility to throw balanced threats at the players. If the players want to mess around with the big players on their own initiative, by all means drop the hammer down. But in this case, the Yaks were presented as their enemies, and in a manner that left the PCs with little choice other than to respond the way they did. So the GM is obligated to make it a fun fight where the PCs won't feel completely useless. I'm not saying they should "win" - and all they really want is to do a lot of damage as they go out in a blaze of glory, really. But the GM should be thinking less in terms of "How can the Yaks crush the runners?" and more in terms of "What kind of big, slam-bang finale should I have?"

To use a similar example - Harlequin is way, way more powerful than just about any group of PCs. But if you introduce Harlequin by having him beat up the hacker's mom, steal the beer from the street sam's fridge, and generally be an asshat, then you kind of need to set things up so that the PCs have a way of fighting back. Otherwise, you're just being a bully. And the arguments for how "realistic" it would be for Harlequin to completely own the PCs are a moot point.

They updated the FAQ and errata already? I had remembered Synner using the "Burn 1 Edge" rule instead of the "Burn all Edge" rule, hence my post.

I don't think anyone would be debating the issue if it was just 'runs against the Yaks' senario. Just like no one debates that Ares or MCT is a good target for runners to hit in the course of a job.

The problem was when the Runners made it personal in a way that leaves no practical ability for either side to cut their losses and write off the damage done as the cost of doing business. The Runner's tossed down the gauntlet in a way that forces the Yaks to either go all out to kill them as messily and publicly as possible or suffer a terrible indignity ON TOP of losing one of their most valued assets on the street, their reputation.

Not unlike, say, assasinating the families of the CEO and board of directors of a major mega-corp. They COULD let it go, but they won't. They will turn every asset at their disposal, even risking losing it all, for revenge/to get their face back.

Runners vs Yakuza in an average run? Sure, fair and balanced and the players don't feel useless.

Runners vs Entire Yakuza Gumi in a fight to the bitter end? Runners should feel the pressure in ways that make the PLAYERS cry for mercy... in a fun way hopefully.

How a GM handles that is entirely a matter of personal taste and ability.

Heck, if I was GMing that, I'd actually be 'unlazy' enough to work out the logistics of it all, how many Yakuza of each teir were available, what sort of money the Yak had on hand for operation, what the other OC groups would be doing in the meantime (probably little....actually), I'd make sure to have my own solid shadow census and a good idea how many jumps each relevant NPC had to reach Yak ties (six degrees of Seperation with Shitozumi-sama?), thus their likelihood of accidentally or purposefully diming out the runners. Hell, I'd even work out just how much pressure the relevant Gumi could put on independents if necessary.

Standard rules of thumb: if its in the Shadows of the relevant area, the Yak will eventually have contacts there (ork Underground included, there is money to be made there). If the Yaks want to hit an NPC, no matter how hard, unless the PC's intervene that contact/ally/loved one is going down... either dead or buried deep enough to weather the storm, and thus out of touch. Obviously, if a contact is Vory/Mafia/AAA Corp or some such there needs to be consideration taken, but even then...

See, if the Yak DON"T do these things, they die. Period. The runners hurt them badly. Letting it pass unavenged is simply not acceptable. Because if they don't seriously fuck the runners up, then the next guy who thinks he's bad is gonna take a chunk, then their bag men run with the money instead of handing it over, the protection rackets stop running smoothly when the shop keepers think they can fight back. Then the other sharks start taking over businesses wholesale...

Its not like the Gumi can just cash in their chips and retire to the beach somewhere. The Runners might... but thats another topic.

i'm not sure that's wholly true. i agree that striking back was pretty much the only good choice, but i'm not sure that the targets the runners chose (an entire clan, apparently), nor the method they chose (making it as personal and public as possible) was the only choice.

If I was absolutely sure, I would have said so, and not asked a legitimate question.

On the strategic defensive you you can't ever really defeat an opponent who chooses to not give up. By 72 the internal stability of the country was pretty much assured. It took a while to get a successful strategy, but it eventually succeeded once the right guy with the right strategy was put in place. That's why the NVA changed to large scale conventional warfare instead of guerrilla warfare, and why the attack that overran South Vietnam involved more tanks than the Nazi's used to invade Russia. And why the same scale attack, when the US choose to actually fight and provide things like ammunition to the RVN forces, was the so called Easter Offensive and was decisively defeated.

We are beginning the final session of this campaign tomorrow, so, depending on how quickly my players move, either this week or next shall be our last session. I shall, of course, keep you all updated (although I'm thinking of starting another topic, so as not to derail the current derail )

Naw, now that this thread is almost five pages long it's due for another derailing.

But is it possible to derail from the derail? I mean, mfb, toturi and the others will probably just completely ignore my post, as it has nothing to do with their debate as it is at present, and thus my update will get buried underneath their intractability.

One never knows where the road untaken would have led.

(Yeah, for some reason I'm feeling extra silly today.)

nonsense! i'd never pass up an opportunity to tell someone else that they're running their game wrong!

Bah.

I'll have a recap up later today; ATM, I have to head across town because the people at FedEx can't find their rears with both hands and a map.

what happened to the update

Alright, sorry for the delay, this has been the week from hell (and all of the profs swear that they actually don't all get together and plot out their exams so they all fall within the same week. we don't believe them.)

Anyway, last week, after decaping the yakuza soldier, burning the body and freezing the head (it's in the cooler, underneath the beer), the TM notices that someone has managed to ping the man's commlink to report its location. They peel on out of there, debating what to do next. The Yaks get to the abandoned playground all of ten minutes later, and, noticing the fresh bloodstains on the ground and the crushed commlink, call in a psychomentry expert.

So, the PCs are driving around Seattle, debating what to do next and what to do with their recording of the leader insulting and decaping the Yak--the vid having been sanitized of most of the major identification details, like the image of their van--when the TMs, who have been monitoring the news- and shadow-feeds, both swear loudly. The prices on their heads have just jumped from 10k dead apiece to 60k dead, 75k alive, with the leader's price being 75k dead, 150k alive. Now kinda going, "Meh. Okay." they spam the vid to every news outlet, blog and trideo hosting site on the matrix.

The bounties jump up another 20-30k apiece five minutes later.


And I'll post more when I get back from my errands later this afternoon. I just looked at the clock and realized what time it is.

Alright, continuing on...

The team now has several points and objectives they need to accomplish at this point:

They need to retrieve the explosives that are stored at U-Storage (thank you, Shadowrun Supp)

They need to gather their allies.

They need to sow some chaos as a cover for their activities.

They need to have an escape plan.

They need to start kicking ass.



Allies are taken care of when, about ten minutes after the video goes live on the Matrix, their semi-psychotic Yakuza-killing contact, Hawk, gives them a call, eyes practically popping out of his head in shock--and not a small amount of envy. Reaper (the team leader) invites him along for the party; Hawk's entire purpose in life has been harming Yakuza in retribution for the slaughter of his old team; Reaper makes the point that he'll never have an opportunity like this ever again. He agrees and gives them an address for his primary safehouse/armory.

On their way to meet up with Hawk, they start making calls.

First on the list are a pair of shadowrunning buddies of theirs, Galen, an elven Dragonslayer shaman, and Sneak, a.k.a. Big Jimmy, a pyromanical and demomanical (is that even a word?) dwarf that is all of 3' 8" tall. They both agree to help, Galen when he is told their target and Sneak when they mention the two metric tons of rating 5 explosives they have.

Then they start calling up their Ork Underground contacts; tonight is the night for Ork solidarity. Get the Ork gangers out, if anyone has a score to settle with the Yakuza, tonight is the night.

Next, they call up Slamm-O! and Netcat; they ask Slamm-O! to do what he does best and drum up some chaos. Slamm-O!, who is on very good terms with the team at this point, and having been asked to do something that he enjoys very much, starts putting out the call to his chummers. Netcat, they ask for help... and don't get any further before she hangs up on them.

Will continue later; phone's ringing.

They are calling their only contacts,.while on the move? On the move they have to be using their commlinks, not hacking into some 3rd party. If one assumes that a large, powerful criminal organization might have contacts with the people who actually run the networks that switch the calls and look up call patterns, this seems rather severely unwise. This ignores that commlinks can be traced in real time to an actual physical location. . . .

Er... I'd always assumed that "calling" was the same as "using the matrix" since "phones" are now commlinks.

Maybe I'm just wild and crazy in assuming the two devices are now one, and operate entirely overt he matrix. And I may also be wild and crazy for assuming without confirmation that shadowrunners always hack in and stealth their presence on the matrix to avoid tripping th inevitable 'user does not have a SIN' alarm.

In order for you to receive a call what has to happen? The network that is supposed to deliver the call needs to know how to get to you. This means it has to know what the actual path is to deliver it to the wireless device that your comlink is connected to.

In order to keep a call as you drive, as you constantly change the path of you data, what is needed? The network has to know how to get the data to new location, which means exactly what device will be the one that has physical connectivity to you and which one is about to lose connectivity.

When you get a call on a comlink, do you know who is calling? Is it like getting a call before caller ID, where the only way was to answer the the phone and see who was at the other end? Or does it somehow tell the comlink of the person you are calling that this is an important call that you should answer instead of yet another automated spambot trying to sell them something? Given that SR encryption is trivial to break, who else knows about that call and how would you keep them from knowing about it?

It's a dystopia where big brother is, as they point out on page 39, watching you. And when the heavy hitters are breaking out the artillery acting like it's just like all the runs when everyone in the world didn't have a wanted poster with you named and "wanted dead or alive" is unwise.

The GM evidently says it is ok. Big Brother does whatever the GM tells it to do.