Often times in my games, characters can make new contacts and earn them as permanent contacts through runs, favors etc. What happens though when the runner kills one of his contacts?

Scenario: A runner gets called by a contact (Corp R&D) who needs help. His 11 year old daughter has been kidnapped and is being held as an insurance policy to make sure that he is a willing extraction. The runners track down the other team that has taken the girl and get her back. When they tell her that everything is okay now and they are taking her home to her father, she breaks down in tears. A brief mind probe later, they find out that daddy has been abusing her for several years.

The runners call the contact and say they were successful. At the meet, instead of handing over the girl, they shoot him in the head. The runners then call mom and hand over the girl.

As it stands, the runners don't have any proof of the abuse and it's just their word versus the dead guy. At the moment, several contacts who have lower loyalty ratings are acting nervous and some of the higher loyalties are asking around to get the big picture.

Thoughts and feedback?

Whew, that's a doozy.


As far as the rules go, you could give each of the characters a point of Notoriety. This might frustrate your players, but if the rest of their contacts have no clue (or simply don't believe) that the characters felt like they were exacting justice on this corporate father then it's probably an appropriate way to handle it.

On the other hand, some people would likely be invigorated to hear about this kind of vigilante justice, so their Loyalty rating might increase.


You probably need to handle it differently for each contact involved.

I think that's just about right. Most of the characters contacts are going to be exceedingly nervous, but there are usually a few... Handle it case by case. If the contact is solid they may well believe the Runners, but even belief is no guarantee that the contact STILL won't be nervous afterward. They too may have things to hide, even if of highly different natures, that they may well get nervous about the Runner taking exception to. So, whether they see what the Runners did as acceptable or not, because of the circumstances, they could STILL be nervous about them.


Isshia

Unless the characters shot their mouths off about what they had done, how would anyone (including their contacts) know about it?

I like the roleplay generated by it but just for the record I think something totally cleanly handled should have zero repercussions. Its a personal pet peeve of mine when GM's handwave that something is discovered. If players cover every angle and get away clean, they should get away clean. I know your situation doesn't leave them clean.

But for the roleplay if there IS a leak the roleplay of 'handling' the other contacts has a lot of potential.

In your case I think you've handled it well. Just give them a shot at stabilizing things since they are the (finger quotes) 'heroes'.

Aside from the connection thing, which I think you handled fine, you could give the players a chance to discover that the abuse was just implanted into the girl's memory so that guy gets geeked by the characters. They'd hate that twist ^^

Mom might talk, daughter might talk, contacts of the R&D guy who might have heard daddy´s side of the story before he was killed might talk, too. Still it´s basically up to the GM to decide, if and when word gets out, even while the PCs are tight-liped. IMHO the Notoriety Rating is a good simple mechanic to reflect stuff like this, even though the rule has some flaws.

I imagine that the Shadow community has to be pretty damned tight for "street cred" to have any value at all period. They sure aren't shooting their mouths off after successful runs, unless they want their sorry butts erased, so I think it can't take much for the Grapevine to pick up rumors and those rumors get listened too. How often have runs been started by someone smearing a Runners rep, or by their rep going through the roof for a successful action, how many scenarios mention the Runners being "nova hot"? Nah, street cred and contact loyalty should be things that change with the wind and tide. if you assume that what they do that is wrong or questionable or unpopular is going to keep hidden, why is it that their triumphs (which a smart Runner does want to ever admit to directly) give them positive rep?


Isshia

Two Bad Rep points for offing a contact and two more for being stupid.

In the shadows, you deal with all sorts of mean people. Why not with abusive fathers? Do you know all your contacts vices? Should you play judge, jury and executioner? And if there, why not with your fixer who's into snuff beetles, or that yakuza soldier who regularily beats and rapes prostitutes into submission as part of his job at the Sunset Flower Bunraku (Touristville, 501 William Gates Boulevard)?

Whatever daddy does to his girl isn't the runners' business, it's as simple as that. Plus, if they would then find some sort of credible proof, they'd have an excellent handle on that contact; no more payment for his service, ever! Just remind him of that little vid of his daughter and the stash of med exam records that just might find it's way from your datachip to his employer, his wife, all his friends and Citizens United For Fair Trials (a popular lynch mob policlub many corpers hold in high regard) ...

Bottom line: If you live a life of crime and/or espionage, you might not want to act like a vigilante superhero, because, well, you aren't.

Just because your PCs run the streets, that doesn't mean they're obligated to act like amoral monsters. Even thieves have a code and child abusers/killers have a rough time in prison. Ignoring abuse, even when it can't be tangibly proven, is wrong.

I agree with Captain K. While it's a tricky one, I'd say one point of Notoriety for, technically, hacking off Mr. Johnson and/or failing the run. Loyalty ratings can be handled with other contacts depending on their moral standards.

Then the shadows aren't for the likes of you - or you'll have to off pretty much all yakuza grunts, mob soldiers, and the likes, making for a short life as a runner. Not to mention that your street doc might be into organ legging ...

And they didn't just kill a Johnson, they killed a contact who called in a favour because they didn't like him. That's a disaster for your rep in the shadows community, at least in campaigns I run, where things aren't ereally clean. YMMV, as always.

Personally, if I were the GM in that scenario, I'd make the girl a latent Technomancer or budding decker with a samurai code of ethics who creates a fictitious wealthy online persona and uses it to assemble a revenge-squad made up of reasonably powerful prime runners to kill the PCs. He may have been abusive, but he was her father, and honor demands that she prosecute a blood-feud against the PCs.


Bad Rep should be the least of their worries.

If you're wondering where the PCs went wrong, in my opinion, it is simple. Killing people is rarely a good solution to a problem, particularly a family dispute. Ideally, one wants to safely reuinte the family, with an emphasis on safe. If you have to remove the kid from the father's custody to prevent abuse, then so be it. But just killing him ain't going to help any more than that, and produces its own emotional peril for a kid who is torn between love and a desire not to be hurt, who could easily blame herself from the death of her parent. And, really, after the PCs brain-raped her to obtain the information, isn't that just the pot shooting the kettle black?

Supervised visitation and a good therapist would be the best solution in the Fifth World, but in the Sixth World it is so much easier to end abuse. Since you have a magician with mental manipulation spells, he probably has Influence. Influence is a permanent spell. So long as nothing happens to make him think that his actions, or inactions, might be wrong he will remain under the effects of the suggestion. A simple "don't abuse your daughter" suggestion could easily last for months or even years, unless he hangs out with people who tell him that he should abuse his daughter.
But magic isn't perfect in this regard. Technology is much more reliable. For the low-low cost of a dedicated chipjack and a Don't Abuse Your Daughter Personafix from the fine folks at the Do It Yourself Mail Order Court Ordered Mental Therapy Company and you have no worries at all, unless someone should perform major surgery on him to remove it. Linking it to a cortex bomb helps prevent this.
At the very least, they could have confronted him about it and worked out some sort of arrangement instead of killing him.

You see, this way the girl gets a non-abusive loving father instead of a cold maggoty corpse to hug. As it is, I imagine that she'll be more than a bit miffed about the brain-rape and the murder of one of her parents, even though she is probably glad that the abuse has ended.

Of course, she could always end up in an even more abusive situation instead, because of the PCs actions.

And, yes, Noteriety makes sense

My view (and if shadowrunning were a realistic occupation) is that if a runner doesn't live by some sort of standard of decency, even a flexible one where innocents may become collateral damage, his lifespan is going to be that much shorter. All I know about crime is what I see on television and in the movies and what little of it I see in my day-to-day life. But even the gang-bangers on The Wire or the thugs on The Sopranos or the hitmen in any of dozens of good and horrible movies had lines that weren't crossed. Abusing kids was one of those lines and they usually took the law into their own hands with those who crossed it. Either because of some weird sense of morality or simply because certain patterns of behavior are bad for business or may draw the attention of law-enforcement.

It's screwy to say, yes, I'll deal drugs to kids but I won't let you fiddle one. But a smart criminal always has a line that won't be stepped over. When he does step over that line he becomes a complete sociopath, which makes him unpredictable. Which makes him "bad for business" and he can count the seconds remaining in his life on his fingers and toes.

But I agree, YMMV.

Your first statement explains your later idea of 'some weird sense of morality' - it's a TV thing that tries to make the bad guys sem more palatable to the viewers at home. I've worked corrections, and while some criminals do get persecuted by others, that's more because prisoners tend to break into cliques faster than anything. Outside of such confinement, such 'rules' don't really apply to many criminals.

Yeah, that was my first thought--especially since it sounds like they shot him in front of the daughter during the hand-off. That's gonna' leave some scars.

I wouldn't be quite so harsh though, partly it depends on what kind/how severe of an abuse we're talking about. If he was molesting her, a lot of people are going to have a different view than if he just smacked her around once in a while. It also depends on the nature of their contacts and the circles they move in. Some runners really are the hooding type, and most have some kind of a line the don't like to cross. It makes sense that they would associate with people who more or less share their moral outlook, grey as it may be. On the other hand, if they're normally the sociopathic type and their contacts are equally shady, there's gonna' be some big repercussions from their little foray into righteousness.

As for word of the abuse getting out and mitigating the story of them killing a contact, if word of one can get around, it's reasonable to assume the other half of the story is making the rounds too--along with a few dozen variants. Maybe one person heard the kid shot her father with a gun she nabbed when the runner's weren't looking. Bad points for carelessness, but not as bad as geeking a Johnson rather than completing a job.

I'd say require some social skill tests to put their contacts at ease or convince them of the runner's side of the story. (Or a made up version, if they think that'll fly better.) Determine what answer would best pacify the particular NPC, and judge the effects accordingly. (So if their story would make a contact less trusting of them, they'll lose loyalty if they succeed.)

What could be fun is if they glitch one of the rolls and a contact becomes reassured because they think things went down differently than they really did. (ie: "I get it, the wife was paying you to get her kid back and wack the husband all along, and you made up this child abuse story to cover yourselves. You're my kind of scumbag, omae.")

Hermit, I think you have a point as the game is not intended for those who have high morals, but I agree with Wes when it comes to criminals even having a code for their gang, group, what have you. I just don't understand if someone doesn't see something a particular way that overgeneralizations are made "well the shadows aren't meant for the likes of you" is going over the line and why we cannot enjoy the blogs posted here to learn from each other instead of hitting someone in the proverbial gut by saying someone should not even play the game they enjoy just because they don't see something your way.

You get a lot of professional hitmen, cigar chomping international drug runners, or suave casino con artists in your county lockup? Because if you do, I'm moving to where you live.

Nope. It was central Florida. We had a lot of domestic violence types, a fair amount of 'violent street offenders' (mainly in the 18-25 y/o range of 'youthful offenders' - I hated working that pop) and a lot of nonviolent criminals (check fraud, auto theft, etc.). If any of them were professional hitmen, they were professional enough to not reveal that fact.

So it would be safe to say comparing real life wife-beaters, 'hoods, joy-riders and other loser criminals to glamorous fictional ones, be they on a television show or in a role-playing game, is an apples to oranges comparison.

Contacts could make a Judge Intentions check, and then react accordingly. The team can also make an Etiquette test. It's really a RP issue for how the Gm wants the NPC to react. Either way, Notoriety should go up. Contacts will react as they will.

That depends - the contact in question is one of those 'loser criminals' when child abuse is taken into account. If you're going to mix your apples and oranges, you can still compare them on things they have in common.

If Shadowrun was a game that attempted to realistically capture the 21st century criminal zeitgeist I would agree. But applying real sociological issues to a fictional world based on the tropes of action, adventure, crime, science-fiction and fantasy movies and literature makes for a slippery slope.

Your mileage may vary.

It'd be more up to the runners to take out said contact without the girl or the mom or anybody else involved knowing what happened. Or set it up so the guys that kidnapped the girl look like the ones at fault, and then you return the girl to her mom since it's too late for the dad. Your runners look like heroes of the day, or something.

Such as the downside to the "I shoot them in the face" philosophy? If you're not going to deal with such things then you're leaving out a lot of the roleplaying potential. In a game where murder is commonly acceptable behavior for most everyone (PC and NPC), moral highground is often below sea level.

I'm not saying anything should be left out. But holding Shadowrun through the lens of "this is the way the real world works" isn't always feasible. The morality of murder in fiction/gaming and the morality (and consequences) of murder in real-life are two different beasts. I've never met a gamer who was interested in role-playing what real guilt, regret and depression are like for fun except in the romanticized emo-Vampire sense.

Killing the Johnson doesn't help build a good rep, simple. The characters are Shadowrunners, not Robin Hood. Probably the Johnson that hired you paid for more than one wetwork. Your fixer probably does work with Gangs who sell drugs to children (and worse), etc. It would be nice to find a honest and law-abiding Johnson out there, but there isn't one - if there were, he wouldn't hire you Most of the people you work with and for are probably criminals. So imho it simply comes to the point, that shooting your Johnson will damage your reputation. It will perhaps make you feel better, because you have successfully convinced yourself that you are not a bloody criminal, but Robin Hood, but a) it's a lie and b) nobody cares, because you simply didn't do your job. Your job isn't to judge your Johnson, otherwise no runner would do any jobs anymore...

Of course, the question is, how fast the news would spread. Perhaps the runners can hope that nobody notices it, but that's not very likely, unless all involved people are loyality 6 contacts And from an Out-Of-Character viewpoint, this may make an interesting twist (even if it's probably just another "The players acted before they really thought it through"-scene *g*)

While that might be true, the original post is actually about killing a Contact, not a Johnson.

A contact who acted as a Johnson, in the "giving the team a job" sense. Still, it sounds like he probably didn't have any other teams on the line when this happened. A bigger question might be what his position in his company was and how the corp and/or his wife reacts to his death. If she didn't have a job (or didn't make as much) the runners may have just sent her and the kid straight into the streets by killing the breadwinner of the family.

The same could easily apply to beating children - it could be seen as perfectly OK in the world of SR. Especially among orks - they have plenty of children and they're tough enough to take it.

Not good business really, but drek happens in the shadows thats sometimes hard to explain.

However, my sammy"Kilo", hunts ceepees for fun and profit,so he might have a different take on offing the fragger.

That's worse, actually. The Johnson is just business, but a contact is presumable your friend.

Not if your Connection<4.

I think you mean Loyalty.

If the PC's manage to put an immensely positive spin on it, you might even subtract notoriety (showing forcefully that there are lines the team won't cross), but you should probably subtract street cred either way. Killing a contact is bad business, even if he deserved it (and even if other contacts agree).

Yeah, that's the thing. Even if this guy deserves it, it's going to make other people uneasy around the PCs, because everyone in the shadow community, from the lowly beat cop who accepts bribes to the Mob boss who arranges hits, "deserves it" to some extent. Now that the PCs have made it clear that they're willing to geek an employer because they felt he crossed some kind of uncrossable line, anybody who knows about this event is going to be worried. What's to say the PCs won't someday decide that any of them have crossed an uncrossable line?

In game terms, Notoriety is the perfect method for reflecting this.

There's usually a fine line drawn between adults doing mean things to other adults and adults who do things to children. The latter group pretty much has an open season stamp on its head (read: shoot 'em). I couldn't really nail a group in a bad way for that if they pulled it off right.

While it is true that people would likely not have batted many collective eyelids if the runners had offed some random child molester in their downtime, the fact that they were working for him at the time changes everything. The world does not make moral judgements - the runners may have been justified in their actions, they may not, but regardless they will have to deal with the repercussions of their actions. It's one of the things that sets SR apart from high fantasy like D&D - culpability.

Contacts they know will get nervous, Johnsons will be leery of hiring them, in case the team digs up dirt on them and decides to take matters into their own hands. And there's also the fact that, rather than any of the countless non-violent solutions the team could have used, they opted for 'shoot him in the face. In front of his daughter.' That's the sort of action that comes back to haunt you, regardless of if it was the right thing to do.

It might be time for an OOC chat about tone of the story. Some on Dumpshock will tell you, on this thread as in others, that Shadowrun is only for those who play totally gritty stories. Others, such as myself, will point out the abundance of fluff, including the story at the start of the SR4 core book, about Shadowrunners who also have some kind of code of ethics. So... what kinda story do your players want, and is that a match for what you want to run?

I'm with Hyzmarca about other options besides a) hand her back to an abusive father and b) shoot him dead in front of her.

Even someone who buys the abuse story and believes that killing the father was the right choice, rather than therapy, personafix, mental manipulation, or whatever, might think the PCs were darn sloppy to kill *anyone* in front of *any* surviving witness.

Cf. Firefly and "The Train Job". Malcolm Reynolds got to keep his mostly-white hat, but there were long-term consequences after he decided to abort the job.

I'd talk with the players, and then decide what the daughter tells to whom, and what the mother tells to whom, and decide on at least one NPC who will act on that information, whether out to punish the runners, or to hire them for more wetwork ("the target is a chronic drunk driver, you don't mind killing drunk drivers, right?"), or to hire them to take a job for Corp X then betray Corp X to Corp Y (since they're known to turn on an employer).

Yep. Thanks for the catch.

Smart Runners, if they have a moral problem with this, tape a confession/statement from the little girl, forward said confession/statement to Mama, or if the little girl says she knows, to child protective services, and either turns the little girl over to her or to child protective services and threatens the father with wide exposure, via media and by publishing said confession/statement on the corporate database if daddy doesn't come through with the originally agreed upon payment for the Run (and an agreement to stay the hell away from his daughter)...as the little girl has been rescued, doubly so.

Even in 2070+ child abuse of your own children will be unacceptable in either society at large, or the confines of the corporation (because of it's public image if nothing else) or both. Even the accusation, when backed up by a tearful statement by the victim, will be DAMNING! It doesn't need to stand up in court. It just needs to be enough to scare this asshole off of his daughter.


Isshia

I am not sure that a tape is enough, not with 2070s digital image manipulation possibilities, and the ease said man could chip his daughter and release "her real statement in response to this slander". I think there would need to be some actual proof, like a statement witnessed by an official or at least a lawyer, to have any serious impact.

The closest OOC RAW game mechanic that can be used in this matter, IMO, is Gaining Notoriety: Betrayal and Insulting or otherwise pissing off a Johnson p258 SR4.

This incident can help serve the PCs. Increase their Notoriety and then burn Street Cred, this way Public Awareness is reduced. If they do not choose to do so, apply Notoriety and Street Cred rules per RAW.

I doubt it. People being people, whether something like this was true or not (and it could be set up otherwise, say with a tame city official and a registered Mage doing Detection spells on the girl) it could likely badly hurt, if not ruin, a persons career. Especially if the Corp daddy works for is one of the more "image conscious" and daddy isn't VERY high on the corporate ladder. Just the rumor of it could be damaging, without the girls statement; but with a tearful statement to go with it, maybe backed up with physical evidence (medical report) that the child is no longer a virgin...

As I said, it wouldn't even have to be true.



Isshia

That's a pretty sweeping generalization considering the changes seen in the Sixth World. There are likely to be some areas and some groups that are not so inclined.

I doubt it. There has never been a society so callous as to inculcate the abuse of their own children. Society itself is built upon the premise of protecting the pregnant women and the children from danger. That is the purpose it came about to promulgate. When a whole society (who gives a happy shite what sub culture x does, there are always tiny minority groups where anything goes, but they also rarely have any power other than that of provoking disgust) devolves to the point that it no longer serves the purpose that society exists for in the first place, it'll fall the next week.

The Sixth World IS sick, and corrupt and hellish...in a tiny but very, visible minority. Consider canon Shadowrun. Even in the Barrens of Seattle there are boundaries, according to the published scenarios, that when stepped over, they draw Lone Star down in force. And in those they include simple serial murder, gang wars violent enough to scare the people outside of the E- zones and copious and blatant enough simsense dealing, just to name three from official scenario backgrounds. There IS a certain amount of sense in Shadowrun. It is cyberpunk, not splatterpunk. There has to be a MUCH larger backdrop of normality to set the "undesirable elements" off to make them undesirable.


Isshia

Sparta?

I think this shows once again that you shouldn't just consider street cred and notoriety as numbers but should attach a meaning to them as well.

This wasn't abuse, first, but their ideal of how to make the perfect warrior, something the culture as a whole aspired to. There will never be a culture that aspires to the sexual abuse of it's own children.

Isshia

There are some, and they won't call it sexual abuse, merely 'love', they promote to create the perfect couplings, and it's something their particular culture as a whole embraces.

Name one. Even Athens at it's most sybaritic, Rome at it's most decadent, the early Chinese Dynasties where the girl to raise the yang on old men was barely pubescent, none of these, nor Egypt at it's darkest, nor among any of the African Tribes who practiced first menarche couplings with the Village Elders, was the sexual abuse of CHILDREN (young adolescents were not viewed as children among these societies and since the average life span was barely mid forties amongst the more advanced ones, they may not have been wrong to so view things) ever, EVER seen as acceptable.


Isshia