First of all I dont know if this has been posted some where else that I just missed because I have heavy "modifiers" for being under so many cold meds but ill throw out there because im not sure what the logical approach to this would be. Any one who is in my group please do not read on!

So I ran a game that took place in Nova Scotia UCAS. The team was hired by a dwarven johnson to take out a CEO of a mega corp that owned a good chunk of the land Nova Scotia sat on ( played with some SR back story of when the time the UCAS was formed and such). Another part of there mission was to obtain both physical and digital copy's of the corps land documents and return back to the Denver free states. So my players mange to do that successfully but I threw out some other offers from opposing factions to pay them top nuyen for the information and return the fakes to the original johnson. That idea kinda backfired as every faction that is fighting for this land for there own personal reasons ended up getting a real copy and one of my players with high connections to Saeder-Krupp sposely gave a copy to the great dragon. ( If I remeber right he wanted the land north of Nova Scotia because it once belonged to the Big D?) So I guess my question is as a gm did I majorly screwed up to the point where the players shouldn't be punished by the Johnsons for being as far as im concerned double crossed. Or is this acutaly a commen thing in peoples games where the johnsons will just have to figure it out on there own?

Any links or advice would be wonderful thank you

It depends how widely known it is that they've sold/given the info to a bunch of other powers. If the Johnson hears about it before they go to settle their business, in the very best case he'd not pay them, and at worst would have some scary folk waiting to kill them.

If he doesn't know, then they might get paid, but their rep would take a hit afterwards for breaking their word.

I was under the impression that Saeder-Krupp was run in a way that if you actively screw with them you'll be lucky to live to regret it.

I suggest loss of the contact at the very least as he or she has proven to be untrustworthy to that contact. If the contact has a high level of trust in that shadowrunner then bring the total value of that next to nil, but that the contact will give him or her a chance to redeem himself.

As for the Johnson I'd make sure to see if he actually got wind of what was going on. If he got wind of it the Johnson may just not pay them or put a hit out on them. If he didn't he'll figure it out eventually. So either way there will be some sort of retribution, even if it is just in credibility lost.

I like situations like this:

The johnson looks up from a hardcopy printout report (printed on actual paper, an obvious show of wealth) and removes his glasses. He recites from it.

"Mr. Jeremas Reynolds, born November twenty-third 2041 to one Doctor Alexandria Reynolds and one Harold Reynolds in Seattle. Charged with six counts of murder and theft over 5000 nY in August 2063, disappeared into the Barrens while Lone Star Seattle attempted apprehension. Wanted in the CAS for smuggling illegal weapons as Barriston Selmey.

Now residing in Denver, under the alias Elias Bleinheim and known on the streets as The Gnat; on Jackpoint as DoktrFrag. Quite an opinionated forumite.

Jeremas Reynolds is known to the First Bank of The Free State of California as Richard Lake, with an accrued balance of four-hundred sixty-two thousand, eight hundred fourty seven dollars, eighty-five cents.

No living relatives, no long-standing friends, no property owned legally under a real name."

Johnson looked up from his papers. "You were quick to give away information we payed you very, very well for. There are no hard feelings, but you will of course understand that we have to recoup our losses somehow: that's why there's a small explosive charge attatched to your spine at the base of your neck, another attatched to each of your kneecaps, and one implanted on your pelvic bone just to the left of your groin. You're going to earn the money we paid you on a new run or I'll detonate each one, in a very painful order; we can't be concerned you'll be uncooperative, can we?"

The johnson motioned for his men to release the straps that held Jeremas to the operating table. Jeremas held his hands up gingerly; each finger had been severed at each joint with bolt cutters, one by one, as "punishment" - then they'd been reattatched by Johnson's private surgeon.

Johnson sat down on a soft-looking leather sofa. "The fingers were because you pissed me off. The kink bombs are to ensure you give me my money's worth of service. As to the matter of the data you released to some of your...contacts." The johnson patted the stack of papers he'd been reading from. "Since you released ours, I've sent copies of all of YOUR information, very painstakingly gathered I assure you, to all interested parties. I've also notified them of where you'll be in 72 hours, once you've completed your next run for us. We'll release you an hour early, to give you a fair chance, of course. Good day, Jeremas."

------------

Either that, or the return of Doctor What.

i've always just assumed that they won't get paid, and depending on the johnson won't get any further work from him, his extended community (ie corporation) and potentially others, as no-one wants to hire shadowrunners that don't do the job.

Not to mention a reputation for not doing your job. Which is deadly to the career, which causes death due to lack of funds.

"Hello, welcome to McHugh's, would you like Fries with that?"

Now wait. Did they sell origionals to everybody telling each group they were the only ones getting an origional?

If that's the case they players are in deep drek. Because all of those J's wants their money back. And the only thing worse for a J's reputation than screwing over some runners is having some runners screw him and not have some assasins coming for them

Because in the former it's just hard to find runners to work with you. In the latter the runners you do get are more likely to try something.

Now if they told everybody else that they were diseminating origionals to a lot of people and it was a matter of whether any single one wanted in or not that's not quite as bad. The origional J will be trying to ruin their rep and taken them down. But it's just one guy.

In that case they'd probably find that nobody is willing to offer them money up front. Or very little. And the jobs would be ones where it's hard to screw the employer over. Probably lower pay as well. Also none of the other Js they sold stuff to would be all that likely to hire them. This because it's a similar situation to "Why would a I want to marry a woman who cheats on her husband (even if it is with me) "

Sorry but doing something that foolish would not have a Johnson go "well I just won't pay you then." He put the team on a critical run that he thought he could trust them with. If the Johnson got rammed that hard anyone with any form of money would be putting hits out on the party, or just request a meet, snag them with three shadowrunning teams and slowly suck the life out of them for months. If a Johnson didn't do this then everyone would know that he lets people just walk all over them (and would be fish bait.)

I mean if a Johnson tried to kill a team would the SR team let him go with a slap on the wrist? "Oh hey Mr. Johnson you tried to kill us and take this pay data that was worth 1,000 times what you had paid us to do the run. Well you should double our fee or we walk!" Would someone do this? Really? Then why think the Johnson would let them off w/o trying to put some serious hurt on the party. In fact I think everyone who paid top dollar would want the ass of the shadowrunners that screwed them.

Anyone ever seen the movie "Smokin' Aces?" Somewhat of a lame movie, but the premise still applies.

Well they were paid by every one and I would have to go over my notes on my laptop at home but if I remember right they gave a copy to all the parties. I don't remember off hand who got the real ones and who didn't but I didn't even expect the great dragon to end up with a copy. Im pretty sure he ended up with a real copy of it due to wanting PEI because of the big D had it at one point or something like that. But any ways its not just a matter of breaking a Johnson agreement for a job but puts a hurt on all the factions who were gunning for this information and the assassination of this person because pretty much with every one having a copy of the information no one has the upper hand. So I was curious on what everyone thought since I will openly admit I like to screw with my players by eather offering them money for information even though it may screw with there contacts so ill come up with something but keep the ideas coming I like what you all have so far.

Let me see if I understand right.

Original job was to return the data.
Multiple offers of "give us the data, and send fakes to the original."
Everyone gets the real data.

If that's the case, the original job was fully completed, so they did not breach a contract. However, their method of fulfilling the contract would add some footnotes to keep in mind for future potential employment. Any furthur jobs will not involve valuable copyable data. Also, all the factions that gave side-offers with the "lie to your employer" condition will now see that their contracts were not properly fulfilled and may just take the next steal by force.

For more fun, the runners may be able to split efforts a bit and convince all the side-factions that they are willing to fully defect on the next job, but that they will need help to properly get rid of the unwilling rest of the group. If the trick works, then you can have a multi-factioned war over the runners who will then try to sneak away from the crossfire. If it fails, then you can run a few rescue missions.

I hated that guy...don't even remember what he was from, just that he annoyed the hell out of me

The Harlequin Adventure.

I'm going to have to modify it for 4th Edition, just because it's so good!

Not to mention I get to use Doctor What against my group.

Nobody got what they wanted considering what they payed him for, you probably ended up giving a great dragon some information that he probably paid for. Everyone now has useless information that they just payed money for.... so they should probably be fine. Make them roll up new characters with the excuse of "Yeah your just dead." I mean call me foolish, but when a great dragon wants you dead YOU ARE DEAD. Do you have a huge army at your disposal? No? Oh then kill the force 20-40 spirit he sends at you for waisting his time.... oh wait you can't.

Uh, yeah, don't do that, that's no fun for anyone

Truth is, the characters are too small for a great dragon to throw all of its resources at some insignificant runners. Make their lives a living hell for a while, until the decision is made that they're not worth the money/manpower to hunt them down and that they've learned their lesson.

Well for one thing it discourages that kind of behavior. The other thing is for a dragon in the high double digits of magic putting forth a force 30 spirit might not be overkill for them.

In the end it's all how you want to run your game, and how the players want to play I guess. In our game a stunt like that would get us killed five minutes after the dragon found out we boned him. If you want to allow your runners to do this then go ahead, but know that they will expect they can get away with messing with a dragon the next time it comes up (at least allowing them to live.)

Hmm I think I was being unclear about the dragon part of this whole thing. One of the players had a connection to Saeder-Krupp he secretly worked for them and desided to try to cash in and sell the information to them. This caught the attention of Lofwyr since part of the land involved Prince Edward Island (just off Nova Scotia)land that Dunkelzahn once owned? I figured a gm call was needed for this and well I dont like to punish the players ever for some thing the GM didnt think of or planed out. So its not necessarily Sader-Krupp that would be punishing them it would be the original johnson who hired this group to get the information and give it back. Things just went a little off when every one desided to take the side offers and give the information to all the Johnsons.

I dont know if that clears anything up im sorry if its confusing any one but I do appreciate the input

Unless I am really missing something, Goldsnout got a copy without asking for it, and there was no other mention of a dragon in the summaries here. This means they annoyed a bunch of human groups by not giving exclusive ownership of the data to any of them. This also means there is no evidence (yet given) that even a runtling drake wants them dead, much less a great dragon.

[edit: yeah, that one above this post. What it said.]

All I'm saying is killing PCs by GM fiat is a bad idea... Throwing insurmountable challenges against the PCs in an effort to simply kill the group is a sure way of ticking off the players in your group and is kind of cheesy. Runners pull boneheaded moves sometimes, its all in the game, right? Let them be boneheaded, it shouldn't end the game altogether so much as hurt them in the short term (probably even hurt them a lot). Harrying them with multiple challenges for a while would discourage such behavior, as would being hung out to dry by a contact or two. Anyway, just my $.02

Everyone at our table has at least 1 backup character. If a GM wants to kill us he can (but only if he has a good reason.) It's always down to the way the GM wants to play it. Me I would probably kill the team. Its harsh, but thats the way we play it.

@ below - yes they all think they are the only ones who have it... until everyone tries to use the information and realizes how useless it is.

So everyone involved thinks they are the only ones in possession of the real deal - except Big L.

Where's the problem?

Your players were clever - reward them.

Clever yes, I figured in game time each side figured out that they had the same copies or think so. I would have a hard time after this discovery thinking each factions Johnson is going to shurg and go oh well. I dont pull the GM auto kill card I prefer to screw with the players personally so I think ill give this more thought before doing anything I wasn't going to do. before. Next step post some news about the "war" erupting in Nova Scoita then ill go from there. Thank you all you have been a great help even with me being unclear on a few things.

Why did they figure out? It's not like they would bragg about it.

No but when they all show up to Stake there claim on the land and all find they have claims on the same chunk of land well I cant imagine that would end very pretty or better yet raise flags in the minds of the UCAS or even the corp court I would imagine.

I doubt a land grab would get corp court attention by itself. What information did everyone get? Replicas of the deed would only be useful for pointing out who owns the land. I can't think of any copyable document that gives ownership to the holder, as opposed to recognizing ownership by a specific individual.

Wouldn't the next step be a contest between the parties about who can get the actual deed(s) to the land first?

And I quote from the very first post he made.

"So I ran a game that took place in Nova Scotia UCAS. The team was hired by a dwarven johnson to take out a CEO of a mega corp that owned a good chunk of the land Nova Scotia sat on ( played with some SR back story of when the time the UCAS was formed and such). Another part of there mission was to obtain both physical and digital copy's of the corps land documents and return back to the Denver free states."

So if the party just shafted every single Johnson what would you do, is basically what he is asking.

Honestly you gave some small part of who was involved in this land grab, but how many AAA corps were involved or AA corps or nothing Johnsons who want an entire island? At the end of the day probably after the complete snafu of everyone presenting multiple real (and false deeds) with their names on them, wouldn't the island just go back to the mega corp of the killed CEO in question? Also I would think it brings the whole issue out of the shadows and makes the run completely useless at the same time.

How much did some people pay for this information? 100k? 1mill? You were not all that specific on how much money the team got, and was the Johnson actually dumb enough to tell them to get the deeds and what exactly they were for? Wouldn't he have just said, "Kill this dude, and retrieve this package and/or datafile?" How much did he pay the team? Was it like 5k a runner? How risky was the whole run? There are quite a few more questions I feel could be answered to help flesh out what just happened.

Also in boning the first Johnson he can give very good detail on the people who kacked the CEO of said mega corp (and man oh man does that raise all kinds of heat on any single run they do from then on.)

Yeah, it does rather depend on what the paydata was. If it was "X marks the spot", there's a chance the competitors to get at 'the spot' won't know that their data was sold to their competitors. Depends how likely it is that the data could have been obtained another way. Maybe "our heroes" weren't quite stealthy enough and got followed, if that would be enough. Depends *how* clever your players have been on how long it takes one or more of the parties to find out they've been shafted, if they ever do.

You know, it's funny because in the run I'm wrapping up, I put my players in exactly this place - the Johnson was stealing from his own corp (Ares) and selling to two other corps. When the party basically dropped the worthless Johnson they picked up right where he left off - except they also dropped one of the two corps he was selling to and picked up a new one instead (since they realized corp B was actually a subsidiary of Ares, and the reason the Johnson almost got whacked in the first place).

I'm actually rather pleased with them. Ares blames the Johnson who turned rogue, Corp. A is happy with their buy, Corp B. got revealed as the mole and is reporting back to Ares that this team is trustworthy and reliable, unwilling to double deal, Corp C. got data knowing it had been sold already and promised to keep it quite (because of close personal contacts), the Johnson is getting screwed royally and happy for it. Very well done on their part.

Yeah I think that there is a lot of information that still needs to be adressed here.

What exactly was the paydata? Did it just describe the boundaries of the land, or was it the actual deed which could then in theory be used to forge a transfer to the recipient? If each Johnson thinks they are getting the deed to the land they'll be quite upset. If each Johnson thinks they are just getting a description of the land, and not even paying for exclusive rights to it, then they'll be less upset.

How much did the assorted Johnsons pay the team and how has the mass distribution of the data affected the value of the data? If they were paid 100,000 a piece by each Johnson and the data is now useless, then may God have mercy on their souls. If they were only paid 2k to be split by the team by each Johnson and the data is still just as valuable as the Johnsons believed, then again the Johnsons won't be upset.

Frankly it all comes down to how badly did the Johnsons get screwed. No Johnson is going to be pleased at getting screwed and there will of course be repercussions if they were screwed. If the screwing was minor, it could just be a loss in rep to the team. If the screwing was major, then its quite likely that the Johnsons will attempt to eliminate the team.

A group I was in one time did more or less a Triple Cross. We obtained the data we were supposed to and our Hacker managed to figure out what it was and determined that it was worth a lot more than what we were getting paid for it. Then we received a call from a second Johnson offering us more money for the data. Our face eventually negotiated even more money from the second Johnson and we agreed to the deal. After the exchange the second Johnson got involved in a firefight just after leaving the meet, so we decided to clean up and took out all the survivors, retrieved the data and the delivered it back to the first Johnson who then paid us what we had agreed on. Our GM didn't know whether to laugh or cry. In the end though, as far as we could tell, nobody knew that we had crossed either of the Johnsons so everyone was happy. (again as far as we know)

Had we just delivered it to the second Johnson though, we likely would have been in notably more drek for having crossed the first Johnson.

Well after giving it some thought I realized this mission wasnt very realistic on the type of data they gathered but the group ended up having fun so its not so bad.

The documents were the land deeds to Nova Scotia even though yes I do realize that NS does belong to the UCAS technically. I covered that with the back story that when then UCAS was being formed that the land was given to the current late CEO's father to run. I made up my own cooperation since I found very little on NS in the shadowrun world. Miller Industries controlled most of NS and also provided there own security force as well so I guess best example of the whole set up is Midgar City from FF7 in a way. ( Sorry for the reference to all the fokes that despise the FF series lol)

The orginal Johnson payed them 40K half up front and half upon returning with the land documents and eather killing or causing the CEO's reputation to be ruined or some way that she would resign her position.( Of course my players ended up gaking her after a very interesting plan). The other factions pretty much offered the other half of there payment along with little small perks that were set up to each players interest or would at least interest them. I even offered a special hmm "bonus" to one of the more trigger happy players and was surprised he didn't take it since he likes killing or at least maiming things.

It looks like Gold snout got the orginals of both paper and electronic copy while the others just got copys so it looks like every one has copy's of the same thing. Though I think they missed something when they made there deal with a dragon..Goldsnout wasn't after Nova Scoita its self..only PEI because the big D had it before if I remember my history correctly. But that may be my fault on that.

Hmm thats about it really...