WeaverMount,
Referring back to your original post, I do understand where you are coming from. I run a game and I try to keep my campaign world as dangerous, gritty and 'realistic' as possible. That being said, I dislike insta-gibbing and anything that feels like GM fiat. So I often felt like I was cheating and protecting the PCs from the dangers of the world by not sending snipers after them when it would make in game sense.

In the end, this is how I've dealt with it.

1) Seasoned shadowrunners know what to do to survive, even if the players don't. So I'll give them tips on what to do. I'll even assume they do some these things, if it makes sense for the character. For example, I have a very paranoid dwarf demolitions expert in my game. In a world of pervasive surveillance, he always keeps his head down to avoid getting his face caught on camera (like Gene Hackman in "Enemy of the State"). In a world of flying assassin drones, he stays out of open areas to avoid being spotted (like Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil: Apocalypse).

2) I give the players a warning when someone is coming after them. Either they know they pissed someone off ("That Yak kobun is really angry at you guys after what you pulled in the last run...") or their contacts tip them off ("Someone was here the other night, asking questions about you..." or "Someone's running data searches on you on Jackpoint...")

3) Sometimes, people just want to hurt the runners, not kill them. An angry Yakuza kobun might be satisfied with embarrassing the runner.

4) I'll often give them a way out. For the aforementioned Yak, I might suggest they go talk to the Oyabun and come to an agreement. Or maybe they talk to the Triads to get protection.

5) Sometimes I'll ask out of the blue, "Would you like to spend a point of Edge?" They have learned to say yes. When they do so, the sniper round hits an innocent bystander instead of them. Or an NPC accidentally drinks from the poisoned glass instead. Consider it a warning shot of sorts.

6) If they hide out for long enough, I will turn down the heat. Sure today, that Mobster wants them dead. A year from now, he's calmed down and might be satisfied with just kicking their asses.

Hope that helps,

JKL

Thanks that's a crisp summation of what I got from the thread. I like the edge bit too. I'll need to play with that and see how it goes.


@Spike
>curse you for making me use this gawdawful term 'social contract' of the situation.
Not sure what exactly this means, but if it mean you will abide by the group norm of not calling people names and reading before posting, that would be awesome. You gave me some cool stuff on this thread, and I hope next time we can talk without the vitriol, rampant miss conception.

Don't feed the troll. They just get bigger.

As far as taking runners out, it'd be a lot better on the deniable corporate bottom line if the runners were kidnapped, and cranial bombed. Then, they can be coerced to work for less (or free) for the corp, while in the meantime being able to be terminated at a moments notice (provided they're in range and such) should they fail or try to double-cross the corp. Throw some stealth RFID tags in with the bomb, just for tracking purposes, and the corp can detonate them should they happen to spy the runners heading to any known docs who might be willing to remove the bomb.

My suggestion in lieu of Insta-gibbing.
Send a Message.
Sure CEO A wants you all dead, he just wants you dead slowly, slowly and painfully.

A sample scenario could go like this:
Character 1 (the one who was unlucky enough to leave behind the ritual sample) is involved in some deeply personal affair, lets say he is busy having sex with his favorite partner. All of a sudden the door is kicked in and a group of armed paramilitary, lets say.. Orks, bursts in. Really play up their masculinity and brutality. They've got the armor, guns, scars and tats that let you know that they would be entirely unpleasant to encounter in infinitely better circumstances. There presence screams that they work for one of the powers that be, someone you really don't want to piss off, and who you have pissed off. One of the first things that happens: the character's partner is capped. Its a head shot, brains go everywhere, covering the PC in the goopy mess that was his lovers intellect just a second ago. The PC is then forcibly manhandled/slapped around, hooded and chloroformed... he passes out.

He comes to consciousness in a 20x30 room with glaringly sterile metal walls that appear to have frequently seen the application of industrial solvents. The illumination is provided by harsh, bright white lighting that exacerbates the headache that is already starting to form. There are no shadows. And the smell. The room smells of those solvents, barely concealing the stench of fear and the rancid odor of bodily fluids and blood. There are industrial style gratings around the edges of the room which could allow a significant amount of liquid to flow through. The character is restrained to an equally antiseptic chair made of perpetually cold metal. It digs uncomfortably into his back and shoulders. In front of the PC there is a table made of the same metal as the rest of the objects in the room, however the solvents have had less effect on it and several disconcerting stains remain. Across that table sits a man in a suit of vaguely corporate cut. He has the most unfeeling metal eyes. Soon he begins to speak.

You can probably guess where this is going to go from here. (Torture, and not the sissy version practiced by those with consciences or only sadism as a motive.)

Anyhow, the torture session lasts days (the "interrogator" isn't even interested in getting any responses), during which time the other PCs can stumble upon the body of character 1's partner or otherwise infer what happened to him and act to track him down or write him off as gone (or whatever the hell they actually decide to do...). The point here is they can spring their comrade if they work fast enough. This would involve quite a bit of legwork to find the location at which PC 1 is being held. Opposition at the site would include whatever CEO A has assigned, and the interrogator, who is a Wraith shadow spirit (who feeds off of pain) in the employ of the powers that be. In fact the cell and surrounding area are rating 2+ domain aspected toward the spirit. If the comrade is succesfully rescued he still has most certainly lost Karma to the spirit interrogator's drain power and has probably gained a significant number of negative qualities. If the characters don't act to free their comrade, his badly mutilated corpse is left where they will find it, and a "highlights" reel from the torture is posted on shadownet, probably with a caption or something indicating that certain entities should not be messed with.

I believe that this should hopefully send a message regarding the potential risks and lethality of the gameworld to your players. I hope it was helpful or inspirational.

Now, I should get some sleep.

Awesome picture painting narse!

Spike/Weaver: you both seem to agree that instagibbing PCs with automatic grenade fire is a bad idea. So what, exactly, is it you're arguing about?

Personally, both as a GM and as a player, I've noticed that most players don't tend to question a GM's decisions too much when said decisions result in their characters living rather than dying. So, odds are that your players won't start wondering WHY nobody has wasted their character over that blood they spilt five runs ago by sending a Drone of Doom after them.

As long as the runners keep to the status quo - not plastering their faces and fingerprints all over the place, not causing massive structural damage to corporate facilities, not killing people by the truckload - then people coming after them for revenge should be a rare thing. And if it happens, start slowly, then escalate. I mean, why would someone risk a perfectly good 20K drone - that he'll have to answer for if it gets smashed - when 10K will buy him a run against his target?

If the character or player makes a mistake he should be punished for it. Maybe the first mistake only wounds the character, the second one will surely kill. If the GM wusses out then I will find another game. I am playing Cyberpunk 2020 where life is cut with combat drugs and gunpowder before joining the Tet offensive on the streets. Not about punks with toy guns who leave My Little Pony heads in their sisters' beds.

You read me?

But see, this is SR4, postcyberpunk. Its not all about the shades, trenchcoats, chrome and nova. Runners are usually the heroes of this world, at least the way I play them. Lighter shade of grey is still grey, after all. That's not to say I play gyrojet tranq shooting runners, but they do exist, and they do succeed (sort of.)

So yeah, I might just leave a My Little Pony head. Fitted with a remote detonator (or freeze foam, you know, if you don't wanna actually kill people.)

How does post-cyberpunk differ according to the definition understood from technothriller? I mean we could as well be playing Millenium's End with magic?

Mmmm.... Millenium's End.

-Chrysalis