Just wondering how other people handle the star. Especially now in 4th edition where spirits are free, the matrix is everywhere, and if they want to magic searching is pretty darn effective.

I would assume that the response would be fairly stringent, LS has no choice, if someone cacks your own, you got to go after him/her/them with all you've got.

The Star in my present game (we're 3rd edition...time frame presently is mid March, 2053)is a bit other. They DO come down heavier on the loss of one of their own than for ANY corp or private citizen and my players KNOW that they're in deep dutch if they get silly enough to down a cop without no other way around it, but in my game the Star is not omnipresent or omniscient. Chances are that the Runners will slip away... at first.

The problem with my Starry eyed boyos is that they CAN investigate their butts off. They're good at it too... unless they have some reason not to be and THAT is HUGELY unlikely if one of their own gets splashed.

We play a lower "level" grim and gritty game though. If any of you remember the 3rd edition PB system, starting characters are built on 100 points and may not start with any non-specialization higher than 6 and can't spend more than 20 points on resources. There are no metavariants yet, no Otaku and no shape shifters allowed...yet. They will show up in their proper times. The street level game means that we don't need to worry as much about mega response as long as no one gets squirrely and starts pulling off shots at anything that moves.

Yep, killing is reserved for desperate actions. Even lethal combat is avoided when it can be...although often dumb young gangers don't know enough not to get stupid and sometimes organized crime has enough clout to get things turned aside so they play rougher than the average Runner too. In those cases the kid gloves come off and things get very messy.

Yes, life is cheap in the sprawl..especially in the bad areas of it, but it isn't free and the PCs are made to feel it.

The rich areas, A rated and up, even B rated sometimes, almost seem alien to the guys who live in the Loveland district, or who call the Bargain Basement their home. There (the richer districts) it DOES begin to feel like a true cyber punk nightmare with every action scrutinized. My Runners HATE to go anywhere near A or higher zones. They don't fit in and they know it. I play up the divergences allot and the Players eat it up.

By the same token though, the Star really hates to go in to Z zones, hell even E or sometimes even D zones are enough to make them nervous and corporate types and honest middle class citizens avoid those areas like the very plague. The Star will only invade a Z zone in real strength and will be CAREFUL even then. They realize that THEY are out numbered so drastically there that their fire power advantage is somewhat stymied. Riots terrify anyone with a brain and being the reason one gets started is a sure way to end your career with the Star, so....

A well run game is about balance. You can't over do any one area without it upsetting others. You can't make the Corps to Polly Anna-ed or too Mary Jane-ed either. The PCs have to have the feeling that they have a place to retreat from corporate scrutiny to, but that doesn't mean to safety. They aren't the only nasty fish in those ponds. Where the Star avoids the Yaks and the Mob and the Gangs reign supreme and are only pilloried at the greatest of risks. Too, as mentioned, these boys play for keeps and THAT also acts as a nice deterrent.



Isshia

"They've killed Fritz! They've killed Fritz! Those lousy stinking yellow fairies! Those horrible atrocity-filled vermin! Those despicable animal warmongers! They've killed Fritz! Take that! Take this! Take that, you green slime! You black hearted, short, bow-legged..."

You geek a Lone Star cop, and five kinds of Bumblebee Justice is comin' down on your head. Especially in Renton, which is a "Nice, quiet neighbourhood. Nothing like this ever happens *HERE*, you usually only hear about it in the Barrens! Lawless places. They should wall them up and stave 'em all!"

The thing is, however, drek's going to drop soon enough in other areas, and even the Star doesn't have time to go after every Cop Killer. But your heat will be hot for a bit, and you better have contacts you trust who won't go after the reward.

NarcoJet. It does wonders folks. Better to give a Cop a chemical hangover than to ice him.

Depends heavily on where it happened.

For example, if you're in the barrens, that sort of thing happen from time to time. They'll do some followup, see if anybody saw anything and, if they can get an idea, they'll come get you but, odds are, he'll just be a face added to the wall and some combat drugged-up thug Lone Star boy with a baton will take it out on the next dozen Orks he finds. Circle of Strife and all that.

If it's in a normal neighborhood, you'll have to duck some cars, maybe a drone, and stay low ... could get hairy, but nothing too bad for a serious runner team. You'll need to do some followup hacking later, make sure that you're not on file.

If it's in an important area, well, you're *boned*. Multiple cars, drones, spirits, Astral Mages on-scene within sixty seconds of teh officer's life signs going flat at HQ, it's BAD. You've kicked over a hornet's nest and they'll be all over you for it.

He stipulated "Renton", which is a AAA-C area. Full of Rich People's Houses and Golf Courses.

A LS employee gets killed.
A press release will detail on how a brutal criminal/shadowrunner/paracritter killed a LS officer, stating they will do everything to find the murderer or that the killer was shot/arrested.
A job vacancy goes online.
An investigation will be started and in case the person responsible is found they will get prosecuted. Maybe some of the victims friends intervene before and make it personal.
Company lawyers investigate the case and depending on their decision an insurance gets paid out to the family of the victim or not.

That is basically how I see LS working in my games.

As for response:

Matrix is the first line, as its fast and easily available. A few drones/cars will be sent out depending on the situation. Magic/spirit support is called in when available and not needed somewhere else.

Wow, score one for lack of unit cohesion. You could make a killing starting a private security firm around the basis "We don't fuck our own", it'd be amazing, people would work for less and longer hours. They'd also stand a decent chance of making it to retirement.

I have a rule.. if the players dont go "Holy shit!" and start to panic when i put in a response team.. im not doing it right..

QFT

No point in even having police if they're going to just drive around like idiots until the runners blow them up. Granted, if you're playing a cinematic campaign that may be appropriate.

Just because life is cheap doesn't mean that the individual in question thinks his life is cheap.

Exactly. That might be the view from Higher Up, but Lower Down, at the Patrolman and Detective level, the BLUE LINE will come into play!

A good example of this is in Shaft (The new one, with Samuel L. Jackson), where John Shaft is beating the snot out of some guy, a cop drives by. A single nod between "Brother Cops", and nothing illegal was seen at all. Just another day on patrol.

Take out a Brother Cop, and even your Loyalty Level 6 Cop Contact isn't going to help you. Best you can hope for is the traditional "Three Steps Toward The Door"...

Hell, let's even go to Cyberpunk, RoboCop! You got a Cop that came back from the dead to book the guy that killed him! "What's the charge?" "He's a cop killer." "Oh."

Yea. I should have included that part.

I mean even beside having a "Blue Line", internal loyalty plays well for recruitment, command, and keeping your cops reasonably inline. Especially in a world with omnipresent information access, where you can think hard and have 200 blogs from former LS patrolmen bitching about how fucking terrible it was to work with all those cocksuckers at LS.

I draw my inspiration for LS from reading a great deal of pulp which basically paints cops as not capable of doing their jobs unless they rough a punk up before he gets to the station. For modern inspiration I turn to "The Shield" and the very dark themes that play well (and entertainingly) there. Cops foster a sense of camaraderie not just because it helps keep them alive but it helps them gloss over the more morally bankrupt situations they have to deal with. Ignoring cries for help because you just got a call for a priority one over in a AAA block? It's alright, your buddy is there to slap you on the back and tell you "Hey man, it's not our job." Using mind probe on a perp even though it's against company policy? It's cool bro, we understand, let's get this guy. etc etc.

I am also against playing LS like shitty rent-a-cops and I associate a "plug and pray" cops as the clearest evidence of such an organizational mentality. That's what bottom rung corps sec is for. I like to keep in mind other megas pay LS to supplement their security and expect them to investigate crimes that go beyond their very small borders. LS hasn't gotten to the position of World Cop by being shitty and cheap, they got there by being brutal and functionally useful.

Beyond even that... civic groups in out day and some policlubs in the Shadowrun time line as well as other Security Forces and even some of the megacorps non-security assets can be counted on to help out finding the cop killer. The motives in the Shadowrun future are self interested, but whatever the motives the extra eyes and ears and assets as a whole make for no small increase in the Star's investigative and preventive power. Which of course benefits the policlub/sec force/corp involved in multiple ways from having the Star "owe them one" to good PR to using the situation to settle scores of their own or simply "send a message" to the Runner community.


Isshia

You sir, are my hero. I haven't heard someone quote from Wizards in a long damn time.


As to an on topic response, my GM's dad is a cop. He will lay a hammer down if someone turns an LS beat cop into a red smear. We ended up beating down the player that greased the cop and left him on the precinct doors with a nice shiny bow on his head to get the heat off of us. Yeah it's fraking a member of the team, but he did stupid crap so often the rest of us were annoyed by the player despite repeated attempts to reign him in.

The police in shadowrun have the technology, lack of ethics and the resources to run 1984 + the minority report in one big bundle of repression, but for some reason they don't otherwise the game doesn't work. The entire game is based around that fact that people can go over, shot someone in the face, and then leave and not get caught. For that to work the cops have to have the attention span of a 3 year old dosed up on sugar with ADHD. You need to come up with an 'I believe' button for that more than anything else.

I thought Shadowrunner thrive off I dunno.. Staying in the shadows Shooting cops and getting into highspeed chases should be very hazardous to your continued employment as an "asset" even if you are fulfilling the "disposable" portion of your job description.

I think that hitting the "I Believe!" is better reserved for other situations. Yes if you want to get all "CSI: Sixth World" players would generally be screwed, but I think that you can have LS be a serious hammer without them being mook retards who don't care if they die hideously every other weekend. I think that you lose a lot of flavor if players aren't constantly ducking the Star because they know how bad it is to mix it up with "professionals". I don't think killing a cop should be an instant death sentence unless the cop in question was in a AAA area and 3 days from retirement. I'm not saying that every crime gets hunted down and solved, I'm just saying that an effort is made and dumb crooks get caught and executed on a Horizon pay-per-sim channel.

People should be scared of the "bad guys", that's all I'm saying. Cops with an attention span of a 3 year old aren't very scary.

I've always played that people can come over, shoot people in the face, and leave because they do it quietly and pay the right folks off. They don't get to just do it, they gotta plan.

Ares actually owns the cops right. Shooting any ares employ is the same as shooting a cop.

Also, the cops can arbitarily summon a spirit that is pretty much capable of finding anyone with the same ease they can get a *search warrant*

The cops also have access to world spanning DNA and biometric databases that the players are *all on* Also, the cops can repeatedly spam checks against fake sins for no cost so moving in a 'sin required' area you have 5 minutes before you are detected as being a felon.

The cops have access to high speed world spanning intergrated survelliance networks that the players are being watched by *all the time* that can do real time facial matching across the entire network, no problems.

The cops have access to extreme cheap and powerful sensor networks that can detect gunshots, guns, and illegal cyberware that *cover the entire world*

Cops have access to rapid astral response teams that are *impossible to hide from* and can arrive at *any destination in the world* in less than *five seconds*

The cops have access to fully autonomous agents that can sift through unlimited amounts of data in very short timescales, allowing easy finding and detection of the players.

The cops actually control the *entire world financial system* and are capable of setting loose the agents to very quickly find illegal money changing hands via data analytics. And remember, no bribe that the mafia can actually afford to pay can remove Ares' incentive to shoot all the mafiaosia in the face and take over the same businesses.

Given that the cops can have a SWAT team on the ground (projecting mages +spirits) that are impossible to hide from, move several times faster than the speed of sound, and are extremely dangerous, I'm not sure how the players can survive without an "I belive"

I think Ares only owns Knights Errant but your points still stand.

All I'm saying is that you can have cops with 15 minute attention spans and still keep runners alive long enough to play a couple of games.

Runners should be scared of cops. How much depends on your game but there is a middle ground between "Cops are drooling idiots" and "Cops are the fucking fist of an angry god". Treading that middle ground provides a challenge without making them purely fluff to the overall story.

Cops are also bound by finances and priorities. If you act badly in an area that has lots of money and make it easy to ID you, well, you're in for a world of hurt. You've more or less made it a problem they can't ignore.

If you drag some guy off to the Barrens and feed him to ghouls than call your cop contact and provide him with some agreeable places to look for drug addicts with "cop killer" guns, the cops should find it sufficiently less interesting to pursue you in their investigation.

If cops really want to find you they will, making an effort to not fall in the category of "Public Enemy #1" will go a long way towards keeping you alive. Ideally there are many, dumber, higher profile targets out there for them to chase down and publicly execute.


I'm not entirely sure where you got the bit about controlling the financial system of the world. Isn't that controlled by a bunch of different people with a bunch of different agendas?
Nor am I sure how their astral teams are impossible to hide from. Can't you just find a nice dark hole and hide there? If you're not magically active doesn't that make it kinda hard to pick up your astral sig?

My 4th edition campaign is still fresh as a daisy, but my characters have already had a run-in with the Star and they were damned careful to avoid causing any serious physical harm to them. Granted two of them have the SINner negative quality, so for them it is all that much more important to avoid gaining cop-killer status.



You get massive intertube points for the Wizards referance.

Wizards! That's right, I couldn't remember where that was from.

Anyway, IMG Lone Star is the reason, even when it's the only reason in some cases, why runners should always carry stun weapons. You do not want to be a cop killer.

Actually, just this just reminded me of a good way of showing how cops work.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

No, not the idiot mook cops that forget you ran over one of their own after a few seconds as a spray shop (Which is a good way of showing how *NOT* to run Lone Star!), I'm talking Officer Tenpenny!

"As an officer in charge of putting an end to gang violence, I find myself in a difficult moral position. ... I like the status quo, Carl. I like having all you bastards doing my job for me - blowing each other's guts all over the sidewalk. ... Now, if it's brought to my attention that one tribe gets an unfair advantage over another, that truly troubles me..."

That kind of attitude with the right police connection is exactly what a good Shadowteam needs. Doing exactly what you suggest, Doc.

Just don't let him near the Bong. He hogs it.

I know, what an asshole.
I'm slipping the water into his coffee.

But seriously, I'm just looking for a more complex interplay between characters and the fuzz. It should be a little more interesting than "cops r dumb" and "cops will come out of every orifice and arrest you. And than shoot bees into your eyes."

What I'm going to do with my group is rip off San Andreas.

Lone Star will have the "Shadowriders", a team of Bike Cops that specialize in targeting Shadowrunners. Officially, their job is to STOP Shadowrunning in Seattle cold.

Unofficially, it's to keep it at a... Negotiateable level. Keep the fear up high enough to ensure the next contract is signed with a bigger bonus, but not so high that it goes to Knight Errant.

Felix the Fixer: "Hello Shadowrunners, I'd like you to meet Detec... Er... Mister Johnson."

I've been getting my inspiration for running the Star from The Wire...There are good police and bad, crooked and the not-quite-so-crooked. They're often hobbled by politics and legal issues and sometimes ignore those issues to protect their own. Similar to what CanRay mentioned, my players know that they're going to run into occasional antagonist coppers working a special detail. They'll also be hired by them at some point to help make a case against someone more threatening.

Good writers steal a little, great ones steal a lot

Yup. In my opinion LSes major priority is to keep getting their contract renewed while keeping their costs down.

Shadowrunners are an asset to corps. So long as the runners "play by the rules" the corps(that are "winning") prefir that they're operating. So Lonestar has no big reason to go after them. They waste resources, without increasing the odds of a contract renewal.

Same if runners are mixing it up with othersi n the criminal worlds. Also no biggie. Just make sure the spin doctors let the people know only "bad" people got hurt.

And the same if the runners are doing stuff in low rating neighborhoods.

But boost a regular citizens car? That's a black mark. Kill somebody? Especially a regular citizen? That's and even biger mark that might even get in the news.


@Cthulhudreams Lone Star is its own corp. Ares owns one of their competitors, Knight Errant. The star does not have any cameras outside their jurisdiction, nor do they have any in the low rated areas.

They have pathetic access to financial records thanks to offshore banks.

For SINless characters Star likely has little or no biometric data. They are not going out and fingerprinting everyone in the barrens.

Also everything costs. Everybackground check requires interfacing with a number of system, and requires their own resources. As does face matching, not that your players should have the same face when on the job in the first place.

And mages are expensive. I don't know that LS actually has a mage swat. Though I suppose they could assemble one. Even so using bound spirits consumes resources. The runners will have had to have earned them.

Finally in SR4 it takes more effort to avoid the star but it's not that hard especially if they don't consier you a high threat to civilians(or them)

Something from earlier. I just realized that I only addressed half the question.

For me Lone Star is first and foremost a corp...and only the police as a PART of that.

Let's say you are living in a C zone in Auburn and your girl friend gets murdered one night in her home. The Star will definitely investigate this crime. They'll do a competent, if perhaps routine job of it and after a time, assign x number of man hours to it and then, solved or unsolved it will get filed.

You however want justice (at the least), so you pay a little extra for more assignable man hours, greater access for YOUR investigators to the Lone Star resources that DO exist but that they just can't use for everyone because they have only so much time total to assign to any case. Yep, you pay a bit extra and a better coroner does the autopsy. A bit more here and they assign some Matrix assistance that they wouldn't have or maybe even, for a really sizable fee, some magical assistance.

And so forth.

Mind you, this is NOT corruption. This is a business and and it acts like a business. That is all.

***...and then he looks at the post just ahead of him and sees that someone else already said that. Errrr, oopps.***



Isshia

Desk Sergeant: "Before you go any further, pal, I gotta tell ya it's cash up front. A thousand bucks a day for a full investigation, another thou' if the assailant is caught. Do you understand?"
Harry Canyon: "Yeah. Hey, here's a dollar. Thanks for nothin'."
Desk Sergeant: "Think you can do better?... Punk."
- Heavy Metal

Well they aren't that obvious about it. I'm sure they'd say they're "doing all they can" in regards to an investigation. Of course LS also advertises their contract work, and, you know, there isn't anything keeping you from hiring some of them and then having them help on the case.....


My guess is they assure you they're giving the case their utmost attention and then sit you down near the pamphlets with rates.


Oh and don't forget LS hires their own Shadow elements (I seem to recal they actually had a group or so on retainer). Having someo criminal getting them bad press that they can't touch due to legal reasons really isn't acceptable.

Also sometimes you need some probably cause, like gunshots being fired in front of a building...

All of the Above.

Having one single universal LS response is soooooo real....

Wasn't indiciating Lone Star was that bad or obvert. Just giving it as an example of Police in Cyberpunk, which that skit in Heavy Metal certainly was!

Now, if we were in New York, and talking about NYPD, Inc.

Along with all the suggestions listed above to add serious consequences for the runner who killed a LS cop, there are still many things that LS could do to try to acquire information leading to the capture of the perps. Realistically (and my personal favorite), if LS suspected that it was a shadowrunner, they would be putting the pressure on the runner community to produce information on those that killed their guy, if not the individuals themselves. Raids on hide outs, a heavier LS presence at your standard runner hangouts, undercover stings, etc. The runners may think they got away from LS, but in the end, it might not be the cops they have to worry about. It may just be their fellow shadowrunners, who their stupidity has just made their work that much harder.

So, in essence (Essence cost 0.1), don't kill cops, m'kay, it would be bad. for. business.

And we can't have things being bad for business, now, can we?

The corporate court owns the world banking system and Ares is one of the largest shareholders of the court. I suppose theoretically you could run your own bank without reference to corporate regulation, but thats easy to deal with. The court just refuses to deal with banks that refuse to co-operate, by refusing their currency, refusing their certified credit and refusing electronic transactions. Then offshore banking works, just that you cannot actually ever spend the money, because no-one who works legitimately *can* deal with you. (Incidentally, thats the system we are using today and it's pretty effective and folding up banks).

Rapid response is a basic service. The corps will probably care less about investigations as thats an expensive waste of money.

As for the 'paying for investigation stuff' Megacorps are multi trillion dollar enterprises with global footprints. They are going to have global contracts at massive discounts from list rates and KE/LS is going to queue up to service them. And it's extremely cheap to have a couple of mages on 'standby' in a rolling hot centre system based out of low cost countries like mexico and china. Pull mages out of the slum, pay them reasonable well, they'll love you. Great. So KS or LS will have a response team within seconds at a corp facility irrespective of location.

Astral teams are impossible to hide from due to the rapid response time. Sure if you can dig an underground bunker and cover it with earth and then get back from crime site and sit there, but thats not whats going to happen.

Whats going to happen is that an alarm is going to go off as you exit the building, an astral response team with 3 force 6 spirits appear, the astral response team are going to see the people running out of the building, and are going to tell the spirits to kill them if they are not wearing a <corporation> uniform, while flying after you without materializing.

There is no easy ways to shake off the mages if you are mundane. An astrally projecting team might be able fight them off, but without that capibility you are in extreme trouble. And they can keep summoning spirits to materialize and spork you in the face. They will only summon force 3 spirits (which the drain is quite manageable for), but it will become progressively more and more difficult to fight them off - eventually your time will run out. And hey, if you do make it to your astral bunker, the mages can just then report where you are hiding.

I don't think Lone Star ever arrests cops killers. They mostly get "shot resisting arrest" and rarely they get away. We are talking Melvin Purvis and Frank Hamer style manunts and captures. Complete with the occasional 30s style oops that doesn't really bother anyone. "It was only after the FBI mistakenly gunned down a local resident and two innocent Civilian Conservation Corps workers (as they were about to drive away in a car)...."

I always looked at escalating response when dealing with LS. The problem is if they can't handle the heat, or decide to have a crappy response to situations guess what? Their contract gets canceled, and the neighborhood goes over to Lone Eagle (even if it costs 10% more it's probably worth it.) Most likely if an officer gets dusted they will try and track the perps down and try to outnumber then 3 or 4 to 1 as a ratio. They will first try and subdue them, but if they think there is any cause to fire they will not hesitate to do so. If that fails they will send in the Swat and a few drones to probably try and pin the runners (depending on how hard the party brings the hammer.) Mobs of people with guns sure to help in crushing someones dodge pool to nothing. If the party causes enough damage Lone Star will probably be given orders to let them rabbit to save a bigger public incident. If the party just wastes the entire swat team, the drones, and many of the officers trying to seal off the area, then at that point when LS brings in the special forces the team is pretty much toast.

Sorry SR teams might be deniable assets, but guess what? Deniable assets are totally expendable, which is why a Johnson hires them as deniable assets. SR teams don't get special treatment because someone hires them under the table. In fact a SR team has it rough, since they have no one but themselves to rely on. A Johnson will probably try to screw you if it means that he can get the data, pin it all on the team, and keep the money. Not always, but it happens... but I mean look at the first story in the SR4 BBB for gods sakes (a Johnson literally tries to kill the whole team.)

Now if the party manages to get outside of the contracted area (depending on how much people pay) they may or may not go after the party. LS will not enter LE territory, and probably try to pass the buck. If LE decides not to go after the team then it's not Lone Stars fault its Lone Eagles. If the party holes themselves in a stuffer shack (or at least runs through one) Lone Star will have to obtain permission from the branches district manager to enter the establishment, which might take some time. These things can buy the party time, or possibly shake off a pursuit.

I just feel if there is too much at stake for a corp they are not just going to whistle non-chaulantly and walk away from the kind of incident.