If a character of mine has no trouble shooting a security guard in the neck, they will most likely have no problem in removing them from the living with a shot in the head for money.

If someone hires you to do a job, you do it. Morality is a slippery slope and a good one in movies, but not necessarily one which will keep you alive in the world of shadowrun. Morality means you end up having to figure out where that container is going, what is in it, and who will it harm. You end up spending a huge amount of time working around the mission to make sure no one (including puppies or kittens) will be harmed. While if you keep asking questions, you give an impression of either being a pillock, or a policeman or possibly even both.

Now it is of course entirely possible that you are being recruited into some shadowy organisation which needs a few dirtied angels to run its jobs for it in saving the earth. And that for some reason they wish to hire people who do want to go around asking stupid questions from people who would rather run you through than look at you. However, if they really wanted to do that, they should should just go and hire fresh nosed cadets from police school who still know what a moral and what to do with it. Not a bunch of shadowrunners who commonly like nosecandy and underaged prostitutes.

A kid pointing an RPG? (I take you mean Rocket Propelled Granade) Dependes, I would not like to lose my home but property damage is not worth a life unless it makes life impossible for the owner. If the kid is aiming to my family or friends dependes on the options aviable at the moment, if possible I would try to disable him inflicting the least damage possible (by disabling I also mean trying to talk him/her into putting the weapon) and try to understand why was him/her doing it, if impossible I would defend those I care for (what the hell was the kid doing with an RPG anyway?); If the kid is swinging a knife at me I would react in the least letal way possible while protecting myself (if he/she puts me in the condition of killing or be killed than I just responded to an instinctive imperative: Survive!). Killing the homeless because is useless to humanity is twisted, the homeless could be just a decent person who didn't make it in the rat race? Maybe he was fine untill some rich bastard chose to close the implant where he/she worked to transfer it somewhere where workforce is much cheaper, maybe he/she is just someone who chose (and tries) to live his/hers life free from the concerns that most of peoples have, as long as he/she doesn't attack you why should you attack him, if anything you should give him/her a chance to make himself/herself a new life; and speaking of being no use to humanity, are we that much of use either, and the society "elite"?
In SR things are much different than our world (thankfully we're not SR..... yet), when you're starving you become a predator and if you're asked to kill someone it's making the difference betwen killng or dieing (slowly) so low level bloodshed is something rookie 'runners are probably going to face, as they work their way up the food chain the pressure will be lower and morals will play a bigger part but it's still a matter of survival, the corpsec fire usualy doesn't make differences on moral base, nor is less letal because you are playing nice so professionals will probably try to avoid killing for both pratical reasons and morals one, but won't endanger themselves for sparing the life of a security guy who put them in the conditions of having to kill or be killed, sure it's a pity to waste a life but if a life must be wasted let it be his life. Shadowrunners are peoples that live on the fringes both of society and moral scale, they are alienated to some extent and probably 'runners feel the weight of it and try to retain as much of their (meta)humanity as possible, trying to avoid useless collateral damage, trying to not take 'runs that would cause the death of innocent as required part of the 'run (think during the year of the comet the Azzies hiring 'runners to bomb Stuffer Shacks to blame the insurgent as terrorists), trying to live by their own principles despite the world seems to tell them it's insanity doing so. Yes some people will take on wetwork, but I think that most of people will try to avoid killing as much as possible and will kill only if forced to do so (yes there are people that play characters that won't take on wetwork but will kick the front door mowing down any opposition without regrett, but I think they just like a bit of unrealistic senseless mayhem to break free from everyday life boredom), some will go as far to not want to kill at all (the infamous Pacifist negative quality).

I think a bigger issue is the fact that the job of professional assassin is one that doesn't actually exist in the real world. Organizations that commission targeted killings do not hire people from the outside. Instead, the assign their in-house assets, usually on a case-by-case basis.

This is true of military forces (which tend to use whatever weapons are most convenient, often making wetwork the domain of guys who sit at consoles pressing buttons), intelligence services (who gives the assignment to whatever agent happens to be in position to complete it), organized crime (which tends to just assign whomever is up for the job), terrorist organizations (which assign people to jobs as needed) and big businesses (which use their own security forces). The big exception to this is police departments, which do employ dedicated assassination squads, when they're inclined to (the LAPD Gun Squad, for example, or any number other death squads) but these aren't people hired for the specific purpose of assassination, they're just normal cops who happen to have been assigned to an assassination unit.

In all of these cases, excepting organized crime and terrorist organizations, the chances of suffering negative consequences are fairly low. If you launch a cruise missile at a specific guy from the safety of a console on a ship, you aren't in much danger of getting caught by his protectors. Military ground forces assigned to targeted killings are a bit more vulnerable, but no more so than they would be otherwise. Both can go home to family at the end of the tour. Spies who are called upon to terminate targets are in more danger, but they generally have the advantage of a diplomatic cover, meaning that the worst thing opposing police forces can do is deport them. And if they're deported, they can just go home to their families. It is a paranoid life, sure, but not necessarily a lonely one. Police, of course, don't have to worry about arresting themselves while disappearing political dissidents and criminals. And big business doesn't usually engage in assassination unless they have powerful paramilitary security forces and a great deal of local political influence.


The freelance assassin's job, I imagine, is fraught with peril. Simply getting hired is an exercise in danger. But only private individuals hire freelancers. And usually, these guys aren't professional killers, they're just dudes who do odd jobs for cash, and just happen to have been offered some cash to kill someone. It isn't something you can make a career out of, just because the work is so little and so difficult to find, and the per-job pay tends to suck.

And by the way, doesn't "wetwork" sound way to much like a messy job in the porn industry? We need a term for it that doesn't bring to mind rythmic schlupping sounds.

big burly troll(m/f) and annoying elf(m/f)?

That's not even close to true... ask WWII bomber crews if they were happy to be killing people (esp people like the Doolittle Raiders)... ask many people who have been in close quarters combat against people who have threatened their way of life about their feelings... many will claim self defense, but there are plenty who have understood they were killing people, and accepted their duty to do so. Most soldiers aim (even without scopes or sniper equipment on their gear). They can see the people they are killing and may have to deal with that for years.

But bomber crews and infantry have a strong disconnect when compared to snipers. For bomber crews the enemy is a series of small, minuscule boxes like toy houses and cars where you know someone is alive down there but you don't really see them. Infantry are surrounded by explosions and gunfire and in the heat of the moment thet're mostly firing "over there!" at motion and muzzle flashes with a group of men so you think you might have killed that guy more often than not but you can't be sure what with your whole squad lighting up the area.

A sniper is looking at his target for a while. He's noting what unit the person in their sights is from. The sniper can see the sweat stains under their armpits and watch their targets eyes glancing around nervously left to right as they wipe the sweat from their brow. The sniper picks that person right there, slows their breathing, adjusts their body position and scope for windage and other variables, breathes in, lets half out slowly, and squeezes the trigger to end the life of an enemy who's name tag they can read with a calculated shot to break morale, disrupt leadership, and generally cause maximum discomfit to the enemy.

Apples and oranges, my friend...

Friend of mine was a sniper. Sniping is very close and personal, you see it all happen from the squeeze of the trigger to the jerk of the body as he stops living. Most snipers who are doing it often stop after their sixth kill. They are also often haunted by their victims. Many do kill themselves.

Personally, I have never killed anyone, but I know I have the capacity for it. Like many things aversion to killing or enjoyment of killing can be trained into we can build from a muscle response to a mental one. It can be a learned response. If shadowrun is as hedonistic as today's society with a breakdown of many of the safeguards of society then murder for sport will be quite common. Being a serial killer or mass murderer gives you not only notoriety, but fame.

To be honest? If paid enough money, any character I make would pull an assassination. I don't play characters who are usually cold-blooded killers, but they're also not afraid to kill. After all, considering how many corps are willing to kill just for stealing data, it makes a bit of sense to make sure your enemies know you're willing to match any lethal force they send your way.

And, honestly, if a kid comes up armed? Pocket knife, they might limp away with a bullet to the leg. Gun? Well, if they're unlucky, it's going to be EX-EX that gets unloaded into their chest. Doesn't matter if they're young; they're still capable of pulling the trigger.

To go off on my own tangent.

I suspect the reason wet work is shunned is because of one of the big things about shadowrun. Offense is often >>>> defense. So long as things are quiet and limited to a little bit of skirmishing, society reigns. However, once that bridge is crossed, things can very quickly spiral into a warzone in which no one wins.

Especially the Johnsons, who want to have their ends accomplished, but at the same time don't want too much attention brought to bear as a rampant murder spree would cause. Similarly stop and think how easy it would be for any half decent sniper to pick off your own characters once identified if assassination is the tool of choice. (unaware plus high cal sniper rifle, when you're not decked out in combat armor... dead char... Or even a basic AR at long range (since range penalties are so laughable), an aimed long narrow burst, w/ called shot for +4DV/-4 dice... against no defense roll can easily have you soaking 16 damage or more).

Most hardcore army/ex-army types I know are wired a little differently. Especially those who have seen front line action.

I know one guy who had over 12 (confirmed) kills and I can tell you for a fact he had no compunction about picking up a .38 and walking outside to shoot someone if he thought they were going to burgle his house. Mind you, this same guy used to wake up with nightmares from time to time from his war experiences but hey...

Some people just live for the action of their jobs and accept killing is often a part of that. I don't see why some people would not become inured/desensitised to it, comfortable with it or, dare I say it - enjoy it.

I have an NPC I'm working on who is a troll mercenary but prefers wetwork for the simplicity of it. I wouldn't say he enjoys wetwork but he's comfortable enough with it that it doesn't bother him. I've tried to base him on these same ex-army types I know.

- J.

You've been to Wal-mart recently haven't you.



I am a sociopath and I approve this post.



BooHoo
Whack 'em all, let emergency services do DNA tests to sort them out. That's my motto.

First off, most infantry who have been there won't tell you that they have X kills because they can't really confirm it because there tends to be 8-11 other blokes all firing up the same general area with rapid-fire weapons and/or explosives. In the case of snipers, it's done as a type of macho competition as they see themselves as big game hunters hunting the most dangerous game on earth. Snipers also will tend to distance themselves from their actions by telling themselves that they are killing this person so they don't kill one of their own compatriots later.

The "hard professional" is much more common in the UK and it's former colonies until you hit the elite units in most other places like the US. They act like it doesn't affect them. They will say that it doesn't affect them. They will talk about killing in the most bland terms without emotion to demonstrate that it doesn't affect them. They will also be just a screwed up with flashbacks, lost sleep from nightmares, and general emotional unavailability as Joe Blow grunt by the killing that they have done. Snipers generally get it worse because they get a really good look at almost everyone they kill.

That sums it up pretty well.

To touch on it a little more I think the early premade adventures may have tried to be 'good' with karma awards which may have given you the impression that the rules looked down on wet work, but it's a game where people break the law for a profession.

Personally my characters usually do not mind killing if they have to on a run, but do not like to take work where the goal is a death. that just seems 'wrong.' but many runners, including the sociaopaths I play with are fine with it.

With respect to the list of all the cool/popular fictional assassins:

Most of the ones I can imagine people wanting to play only kill people who "deserve killing". Bond is probably the most famous example here.

As for those that kill innocent or non-dangerous people, playing a Skynet aligned Terminator is not something most people I know would want to do (outside of a one-shot game).

Lastly for those characters that were unrepentant killers like Bourne was before he "broke", the interesting character is really the one who wants out of that old life.

In the end, it's not real-life assassins that are cool, it's fictional assassins (almost always operating under some kind of code "no women, no kids" to quote Leon) that are cool.

The negative connotations to wetwork are not based on killing, they are based on killing anyone (even if they "don't deserve it"), just for a payday

I think we're missing an important item in all of this discussion of wetwork: Who's the usual target for it?

Despite how often corporate types may want each other dead, let's be realistic: The people who are most often the victims of wetwork are the shadowrunners themselves. Someone who willingly does wetwork for a price is someone who is likely to be killing fellow runners, oftentimes not knowing all those other runners may have done wrong is be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So a lot of the disdain towards it is, in part, probably at least survival instinct; you're not going to like the person who you know is likely to be paid to kill you next week.

If it's wetwork, you really don't question if the person desewrves it. You're starting to make lines too easy to cross when you say 'deserve' or not.

Since someone brought up James Bond, if you read the books, the 00 section are the assassins. They are the special toruble shooters but one of the books, I think it's Thunderball, specfically says they are the men in the Secret Service whose duties can include assassination. That having been said in the main office, they are the glamorous ones who the girls giggle over , Casion Royal, but the other side is in the field. in A View To a Kill Bond goes to Berlin spesifically to kill someone and you see how the people in the Berlin station treat him as someone almost unclear.
In For Your eyes Only he is sent via Canada to kill a man in upstate New York. You see 'M' actually questioning if its a justified kill because it would avenge a personal friend of his.

But Bond is a professional who sometimes considers resigning, like Deckart at the start of the movie Bladerunner, a professional who grows sick in the soul.

A better idea of a professional assassin is Robert Parker's "Hawk" from the Spenser serries of books, and played perfectly on the 80's TV series by Avery Brooks.

my current SR group only take lives in self defense. and only take payment for killing if it could hurt a megacorp ( can't remember what corps atm) else they despite paid killing.

though in my first game one of the players were an ex assasin now stealth specced runner.

IMO the opinions towards wetwork vary alot from each person, but I think the book is meaning that players should not want to go this way since it will just be dice rolls and bringing in a freshly sawn off head and get paid for it. simply I think the book wants more of a shadowrun then just killing:)

just gave my answer to the topic. hope I was not too much off topic

I have normally gone with a highly professional sammy character. Not the crazy haired, leather and spike wearing freak... but the well spoken man in the suit. Rarely carry big guns, normally just a pistol or two and a stungun. Very little Cyber, all of it legal. Lots of Bio, even if it is illegal. Hey, bio is much much harder to detect.

I think it also boils down to a certain extent on peoples self images of themselves. Very few people consider themselves to be the bad guys or 'evil', from the scummiest drug dealer to the most depraved repressive dictator they've got their own excuses and self justifications - "It's the only way I have to make money for my family", "If I don't someone else will", "That's the game", "This country needs a strong leader to stop it falling back into anarchy", "I'm only acting in this manner to stop those dirty commies overthrowing the government and making things even worse", 'We're only using these methods to stop the counter-revolutionaries from rolling back the glorious revolution" etc.

Runners are career criminals. Sure they might lie, cheat, steal, burgle, smuggle contraband goods, burn buildings down, not pay their taxes, shoot people 'in self defence' when carrying out these acts and any number of other deeds... but at least they can point at the people that do wet work and say "Well I might do that at least I'm not as bad as those guys" and still feel a bit morally superior. It's hypocritical as hell but that's human nature, wanting to be able to say that you're superior to person X or group Y. Just like the "Well I only kill people like security guards in self defence" mindset which is a load of rubbish since if they hadn't been breaking into that facility to steal shit then they wouldn't have had to shoot Joe Six-pack who was only doing his job but it makes them feel better/rationalise it easier and lie to themselves.

Even with characters that will take wet work jobs there are still degrees of this and shades of grey. You've got the full spectrum from the people that will happily slaughter entire families with a meat cleaver and throw little Timmy into a wood chipper on the way out if that's what they're paid for no questions asked to the ones that will only kill people with blood on their hands (literally or through something like corporate manslaughter) no matter who they are all the way to the classic Leon "No women, no children" hitters at the other end of the scale. More often than not in fiction you'll have either the ex-assassin or the assassin with certain standards since it allows them to still be cool and an anti-hero whilst also being slightly more sympathetic than the "Just give me the money and I'll shoot whoever you want in the face" kind. Looking through hyzmarca's list about half of those people either had certain scruples or were shown to the audience only killing 'bad' guys.

There may also be the mess value. I mean, let's face it, most of these wetwork jobs are not likely going to be the type where you're reaching out and touching someone with a sniper rifle. They have their own in-house snipers for that kind of thing in a lot of cases. Most of these jobs are probably going to be messy, brutal, and sometimes involve performing acts on a living person that you usually would only see in a horror movie.

Honestly, how many people, even in the megacorps, do you think honestly keep in-house psychopaths who aren't cyberzombies? They're most likely going to contract that out, in part since it makes monetary sense not to keep people that sadistic around your ordinary employees and possibly lose a few to 'accidents' because of it. Most likely, the kind of job the typical runner is likely to get for wetwork is probably going to be the kind where they kidnap some poor schmuck and then literally torture him to death. Then they return to the Johnson, get paid, and get left in an unsuspecting society while the Johnson returns to the security of a corp building and a LOT of armed guards. And no matter how you look at it, it's probably not going to be pleasant to watch.

Correct. That's the difference between confirmed kills and unconfirmed kills, and why I specifically said the former.

Just an FYI, some guys do talk a bit about it if you ask them. Particular when they're in the 60s, too old and too grumpy to give a shit if you believe them or not.



I was just talking about guys I knew who were ex-military who had seen front line combat, not snipers. I don't know any snipers specifically. Closest thing I know of are good marksmen who didn't have to kill anyone.

The reason I know about the nightmares is because I used to live with this guy and I used to hear him in his sleep and I asked his family about it.

- J.

If I walked up to your friend and said "Here's [x amount]$, go and kill that guy over there", would he do it?

Point the First: One of my most favorite SR characters ever was a sniper adept whose upbringing was basically so cruel that he had very little (if any) conscience left. He actually preferred wetwork because it meant only one bullet; other runs tended to burn through ammo thanks to the inordinately large guard forces that particular GM liked to throw at us. Was he a murdering psychopath? Nope. He simply had no compunction against killing so long as there was a point behind it.

Point the Second: I am a soldier. I'm not a sniper, I'm not in special operations (what you'll sometimes hear called "the small army" or being an "operator"); Hell, I'm not even a grunt. I'm an Intelligence guy, which means that even after two Iraq tours, I have never fired my weapon in anger. But I have been ready to kill. I'm had mortars and rockets dropped on my head, an IED hit the HMMWV less than fifty feet in front of mine, and I got to pull guard on freshly captured insurgents on numerous occassions. There's something about having your life put in danger that simply makes your average person angry. When you're angry, your normal emotions and rationalities are dumbed down because of the fight-or-flight response; I'm sure I'm not the only one who has told a friend or family member something mean and nasty during an argument because you were pissed at the person. Same effect, different scenario: your "I don't have to kill anyone, I'm just driving" mindset becomes "You dirty motherfucker, you just killed my friend and burned down a humvee! You're dead, bitch!" (although, as an aside, we never did catch that particularly bastard so far as we know). My point here is that everyone is capable of killing, even if they don't think they are. All it takes is strong emotions -- anger, revenge, protecting someone or something you love, etc; everyone has a trigger that will make them cross that line.

But adding to the sniper/grunt/bomber analogy, how's this to muddy the water? As an Intel guy, it's my job to pick the targets. I'm the one who says, "Go here. This is Terrorist X. He'll be there from this time to this time, he travels with X number of guards, and he always goes armed. As usual, alive is better than dead." I'm not doing any sort of trigger-pulling. If I'm lucky, I get to watch the raid real-time on a UAV video feed; if not, I can always listen to the tactical chatter on the platoon radio net. If Terrorist X resists, he'll probably die from multiple gunshot wounds. If you think about, aren't I even MORE responsible than the grunt who rolled out there in a humvee or MRAP -- I'm the one who directed the one operation, after all. I'm the one who said, "Dead or alive, either is good."

Discuss.

Wow man I'm so happy to not being in your position.
For the responsability part of the thing I think that wars are dirty things, they don't break just for the actions of a single person nor are resolved in the same manner; responsabilities vary from being the ones who chose to start them (usualy the ones that do don't fight them, they just profict from them), to not trying to prevent it, to being sent in front line and having to harm other people lives in order to keep your own. Morals are a subjective and often quite elastic matter so defining responsabilities is often an infinite loop of "I was forced by [insert responsible/reason] into doing it", at best we can we can tell that those that proficted from war are moraly responsible for proficting of other people misfortunes (and maybe call them vultures or jackals) but unless you can prove that they played an active role into setting the war off you can't do anything about them (even though they are probably the greatest responsibles); for sure we can tell who the victimes are, the civilians whos lives are devastated by war.

P.S.
With this post I'm not trying to imply that you are hipocrit or anything, I think you entered in the army for much different reasons than "I want to fight a war" and you found yourself having to abide to the agreedment taken with the State or suffer the consequences, I think that you are just trying to cope with the reality of life (if there are responsibles for the Iraq war, they are the one that chose to start the war, conducting it in a disastrous way, for reasons that have nothing to do with security).

Current soldier with three tours in Iraq.

The nightmares... Check. Severe family problems... Check. Seeing nothing wrong with plugging a hostile... Check.

I actually have trouble in really crowded areas like malls and sporting events, along with completely quitting drinking. My non-military friends have actually noticed lots of changes in me. For one thing, I don't like standing around in the open, or with people behind me. I'm always watching everyone's hands in my area. Whenever we go to a restraint now, they actually pick a table near a wall without me having to tell them to.

Also, most of us won't talk about what really happen unless we are with others who went through something like we did. Not just snipers get confirmed kills ether. Any gunner on a vehicle will end up with several pretty damn fast.

P.S.
I'm a brain, working with the sneaky sneak guys.

Thanks for making my point for me, sir. A "hostile" is easy. It's you (or someone else) or them. Hell, they even sometimes give you medals for doing it particularly well.

Wetwork is whacking anyone if the price is right, however.
Grandma Gerty hasn't paid her protection in a month. Here's ten grand. Make it messy.
This random teenage boy at the wrong place at the wrong time saw one of my guys during a robbery. Here's ten grand. Make him dead, Deader, DEADEST.
Micky the Mouse is horning in on my corner Nova Coke business. Here's ten grand. Whack that little bitch.

Apples and oranges, my friend...

I have to point out that ten grand is excessive for those jobs. No special skills are necessary. It's $500, $1000 tops.

$500 gets you a gun. If you want the shooter behind it, it is going to cost more.

That 10k is incentive. If you want cheap go use some novacoked up kid with a chip on his shoulder. Now he is most likely going to be messy and he's going to being his novecoked girlfriend with, steal grandma's purse and drugs and then he's going to go and brag about his little deed to all his friends. Now, which one will it be. Expensive but anonymous or the feds breathing up your ass.

Depends on the gun, lady. A good SIG-Sauer pistol runs you between $700-$1200 (I own three of them), but you can get Tokarev or CZ knockoffs for about $200-$500. Anything with long range and kick is definitely 1k or more -- especially if you want it to be semi-auto instead of bolt action. The DS Arms FAL I'm looking at is $1300 and that's without most of the bells and whistles.

But yeah, if you pay the novacoked-up kid to do the job, you'd better go through one Hell of a slick Johnson and make sure he gets his ass to another country after the contract is made. Preferrably a non-extradition country. Like Switzerland or Algeria (I'd suggest Switzerland).

Of course. You just go into your local gun store, hand them your ID, submit to a background check, and let them make a record of the sale. Because, certainly, that is the perfect way to procure a murder weapon.

Nah, the shooter is going to buy a weapon from "some dude" on the street for $50. The gun is hot. Stolen, certainly, probably used in a robbery or two, and has probably changed hands several times, which makes it fairly useful for obfuscating the facts of the case. It's probably a large-caliber magnum revolver, but it could be anything, really. It's not exactly something you can afford to be picky about.

Now, sans witnesses who actually know the perp, stranger homicide is nearly impossible to solve. As long as the novacoked-up kid doesn't get stupid and confess, the likelihood of the police even suspecting him of the crime lies somewhere between slim and none.

And if he does, then what? Unless he knows you personally he won't be able to identify you. The DA can't exactly indict "this dude" and even if he could it wouldn't hurt you. And in the unlikely event that the shooter does correctly identify you, he's still an incredibly unreliable witness made even less reliable by a sweetheart plea deal which sees him serving very little time for a cold-blooded murder. The chances of a successful indictment are low and the chances of a successful prosecution are even lower. Most likely, the worst the DA would do is gt a warrant for your financial records, in which case the small amount of payment is a boon. If you have the dough to spare, then $500 is easy to write off as walkin'-around money. A withdrawal of that amount might be suspicious when combined with the shooter's testimony, but it isn't evidence, not really. On the other hand, a withdrawal of $10,000 is already suspicious on its face. And it is something that the banks have to report to the government. Combined with the shooter's testimony, well its just damning unless you already have a much better explanation for it lined up.

And besides, "Gangland style execution" is much more likely to get attention than "robbery gone bad" is.

Killing a dude isn't rocket science. You walk up to him, shoot him a couple of times, grab his wallet - keep the cash and dump the rest - and keep moving at a brisk walk until you are well away from the scene. Then either toss the gun in the nearest large body of water or sell it to some dude for $50.



Organized crime won't do that, though. Organized crime will just have Vinnie do it and not pay him anything extra, because he's already either a salaried employee or a co-owner who gets a percentage and killing people is considered part of his duties.

Bad choice. Switzerland does extradite foreign criminals, as long as they committed a crime that is a felony in Switzerland too - we won't extradite someone to Iran because he drank alcohol, or is a homosexual.

How do you know Crysalis is a lady?
The profile states "Gender not Set".

You haven't been paying much attention, have you? Crysalis has consistently presented a feminine persona in threads where gender actually mattered.

File off the serial number and dump the gun in a storm drain. If you're worried about pre-recorded ballistics, stage a robbery of your own home a few weeks prior and list the gun as one of the items stolen. It's not that hard.

And then they use acid to burn away the filings and show the serial number from the slightly more dense material underneath the stamping. Doh?

Or the Robbery/Homicide guys wonder why your house isn't trashed and only the gun was stolen because you forgot about your expensive home entertainment system and other goodies that should have gone out as well. Damn it!

Less Hollywood, my friends. Real people try to stage stuff like this with a lot more forethought than this thread and get caught at it all the frickin' time because they almost always forget some random rinky-dink thing that nails them to the wall.

I think one of the reasons that people don't like wetwork is because no one ever brings there own mop and bucket.. so some poor slub has to go and clean up after wards every time.

*sigh* you shoot him in his car when he is coming to or from work. Two shots one centre mass, second to the head. You turn around and walk away.

You take the gun apart and drop the parts in different bins around the city.

The .22 pistol is often snubnosed and does not make a sound which readily noticeable as a gunshot. Behind the ear and slightly up and he will be dead.

You can approach him in a bar, behave a bit drunk, stumble and spill his drink. Apologize and buy him a new one and slip him a cyanide pill. Walk out before he dies of what could be cardiac arrest. Alternatively, get him drunk and stab him in the kidneys with a stilletto in an alleyway. Alternatively, spike his drink with a date rape drug and drown him in his bathtub or dump him in the river.

Areas of weakness are habits and vices.

If you want loud: Pipebomb with RDX, the detonator assembly from a grenade, and magnets, pop it into the wheel housing. Arming is with a piece of string from the pin to a nail, which is secured to the tyre. Takes 5 seconds to place and arm.

Claymore mine on the ceiling triggered by infrared sensors on the side of the door. Alternatively same mine in the fridge, but with a mechanical detonator instead of an electric.

Movies are the worse place to get ideas.

My personal favorite claymore mine assassination idea is to swap their car's airbag for the mine...

It depends. Sometimes the mob will keep it "in the family" and sometimes they'll sub-contract. Usually to a street level gang kid in the local city.

What's with all this shootey stuff for whacking the random civilian? All you'd really have to do is hit them on the head with a hammer or something. Then all the gun logistics are irrelevant.

Or just use a defective airbag. Airbags have a lot of punch and have killed before. I really doubt anyone is going to start investigating the corp for defective airbags. Like any corp has every put out such things.

"Did you get the serial numbers off that anvil?"
"They were filed off, but we used acid to burn away the filings. It seems this very anvil was reported stolen from one Mr. Smith, and a background check suggests that he knew the victim personally"
"We have him now!"

That's why you melt the part with the serial numbers, put in /new/ serial numbers, and then file those off.

Sounds simple. Then you drop the anvil.

All this "do this, then that, and then do that and you are home free" talk is applying player knowledge to an in-game problem. The real question should be: Do you have the dice pool to do it? Persumably Armorer + Logic (no Armorer? Oh dear... )

The high payment buys the weapon, the dice pool to use the weapon to ensure best results and if necessary, the dice pool to ensure discretion.

If you're going to be an assassin, you better have some skills in altering your weaponry. Keeps you out of trouble.

If I can just drop my 2 cents. The reason why wetwork sucks is because you generally do not know anything about who you are killing, how powerful they are, and generally it can land you into trouble. Most Johnson's just drop a job in your lap without a team to have a lot of time to find out how the mission is situated. Killing someone is always risky in a world where someone can bust out some crazy insane something or other. Magic, or it's actually a dragon, or some crazy cyberzombie, or maybe you are just ridding the world of the last good person on earth.

Assassination can create extra problems in a world that is already filled with enough of them. I still think there are quite a few runners who will take wetwork, just most will probably prefer safer jobs... like knocking over AAA corp instillations.

?.?

A.) No, I'm not an expert on how to avoid getting caught committing a crime because I'm not a criminal. Mental note: filing serial numbers doesn't work.

B.) I am never going to Finland. Or in any way intentionally getting Chrysalis angry.

Range and reliability issues, probably. No one wants to chase a screaming wounded victim up and down several flights of stairs while repeatedly swinging a hammer. It doesn't take much skill to beat someone to death, but there are more variables, and it isn't as easy as shooting someone to death.

I always figured it'd be easy to screw with their car (sugar in the gas, loosen the tire's air valve, or some such thing) then just strangle them on the side of the road with a wire or extension cord. After which, you get on a plane and go back to your home several thousand miles in any random direction. Then again, if you walked up and offered me ten grand to murder someone, I'd kill them. And, I highly doubt I'd even think about it ever again. I did mention before that I'm a sociopath right? Murder or eating a ham sandwich would likely elicit roughly the same emotional reaction from me, excepting the adrenaline rush of course. But hey, that's just me.