Corruption

Hi,

Renectly I was thinking about corruption and about its pervasiveness. In the western world if you are white, middle or upper class you rarely see any of the daily dealings on with corruption.

I was thinking specifically about Shadowrun as balkanized states, which are the perfect environment for corruption to grow into multibillion nuyen businesses. There seems to be a large number of mercenaries on the streets and crumbling government institutions which sit uncomfortably alongside vast private empires.

The olligarchs of the Shadowrun world: Nadja Daviar, Damien Knight, and Lowfyr - to name a few; have immense power. There is nothing they cannot do. They can and have subordinated government institutions so that they can continue with their private enterprises.

What I am wondering about is how often does corruption come up in games of Shadowrun. Have Shadowrunners ever had to worry about falling victim to a carjacking, or perhaps run afoul of a warlord? What do you do when the local Russian crimeboss of Seattle (who happens to live in a nice compound in Bahrain) discovers who is the ant that has been bothering him and decides to crush him so one unfortunate day he walks into a night club and does not walk out again. The crime boss does this with one phone call and the ant is promptly squished and forgotten.

The big problem with the real big criminal business is that it often takes at least a half an hour to explain the finer points of economics to our proverbial knluckle dragging, kill it till it stops moving Shadowrunners. In short they understand he is a "bad man", but what exactly does shipping cigarettes from Rotterdam to Odessa to around the world have to do with "criminal empire" or for that matter about converting heating oil to gasoline.

Or that this "bad man" is the hand puppet on the tail end of a very large criminal dragon, which will burn you before eating you.

Being an independent runner helps: work for any J, don't play favorites, don't do consecutive jobs - it's just biz. 'Course, those are hard rules when you get in the nitty gritty. But, staying a pawn is what keeps you from getting crushed everyday. You're just a middle man. That works with corps to a degree better than the syndicates, who tend to take things personal...

On what they know about the Vory and their operations depends on his Knowledge Skills and contacts, his background, and maybe his ability to do a deep Matrix search. One of the great things about 2070 technology is the ability to look at someone, capture the image and bast it through the databases to come up with a name, an alias and some background information (assuming you have a hacker or technomancer). So before you blow the warehouse up, you scan around, run the names on the crates, etc, find out who you're hitting - with the hopes of later avoiding them. Same way you try to get a feel for your Johnson during negotiations, feel out who he works for by the idioms and mannerisms. Not that avoiding people you piss off always works.

Runners can use corruption to their advantage, too. It's systemic in the Sixth World, from the top to the bottom, so when you walk into that nightclub, the bruisers who come to beat out your employer from you might be looking to make a deal - they just don't know it yet. (Charisma 11 anyone?) Corruption in the SIN system is what allows them to have fake IDs. Etc.

Runners running afoul of gangs and organized crime usually make for great gaming, but the GM just has to work hard to play the 'bad guys' with brains, while giving the players options. Runners going up against the "powers that be" generally go one way or the other. Either Payback or CharGen.

We just label our ways in more palatable names and pretend they are ok - we have "trading favours", we have paybacks, we have "scratching each others backs", we have miappropriation of funds, we have "old school tie".
But corruption is what "bad" people have, and that makes them think it is ok.

Shadowrunners deal with corruption on a daily basis. "Deniable asset" is a euphemism for "tool of corruption", to put it lightly.

The afore mentioned knuckledragger generally goes and fucks something up or steals something for money, because that expenditure likely guarantees more money. If you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette, shadowrunners break eggs one handed behind their backs. The Jamie Olivers of a corrupt world.

"Insider trading" is "corruption". If you run a datasteal, and it turns out that the Johnson is stealing that data from his own company, then you're a tool of corruption. If some-one is inbetween you and an obscene pile of cash, you reach into your own pile of cash and you hire a runner to destroy that person. Corrupt? Bingo.

I'm sure you get the idea, but there's another element of corruption in shadowrunning. Shadowrunners themselves are corrupt. They live off the grid, "in the shadows", perhaps for the freedom and adventure, perhaps even to strike back at the monolithic corporations for some injustice inflicted. They killed your parents, framed you for something, anally probed you and left you on the streets. So you want to hurt them. Luckily for mr. Shadowrunner, there just happens to be ubiquitous guys in suits in backrooms willing to pay you to do just that.

But that is where the sick, corrupt irony lies. You're corrupting your own ideal for a certified credstick. Can you imagine what it would be like for a shadowrunner if they actually some-how managed to crash the whole system they hate? It would be like breaking your arm punching out Cthulhu. If shadowruns actually made any real long term impact on the corps, then they wouldn't have a job and they'd be beetlehead squatters drooling all over themselves and occasionally rising to chow down on some devil rat, rare.

Even more corrupt is the fact that the corporations know this. If corporations particularly cared about shadowrunners impacting on their business, they wouldn't just create zero zones and fill them with monofilament wires at knee level and three headed dogs with a belly full of ANFO and a wire in their head that stimulates sexual pleasure when they tear a face off, they'd just hunt down and kill the shadowrunners. They'd bloody well stop filling them full of cyberware and giving them guns that punch through a plascrete wall, the security troll and the car behind said troll. But they don't because shadowrunners are cogs in a very complex system of corruption.

It's the basis of cyberpunk really, a big 'ol speculative satire of capitalism. In Gibson's Count Zero, one paragraph stuck was indelibly emblazoned on me:

"And for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human"

Which I think really needs to go with this one on the "human race" being the most unfair race there is:
"...A lot of the runners don't even get decent sneakers or clean drinking water. Some people are born with a massive head start, every possible help along the way and still the referees seem to be on their side. It's not surprising some people have given up competing altogether and gone to sit in the grandstand, eat junk food and shout abuse.."

Throw enough money at the problem and it goes away. To me, that's the very definition of corruption. If you GM any of the published modules you will find that one of the default Get Out of Trouble play is to bribe your way into the guards/cops good graces.

From what I've gleaned from the sourcebooks over the years there are very few white knights left in the Sixth World. Because power has become so decentralized, anyone with any kind of influence or authority has some kind of self-serving agenda.

As far as game play goes, it isn't important that your "knuckle-dragger" shadowrunner understand the finer points of economic principles such as supply and demand or that poverty usually generates crime due to desperation. However, as a game master who needs to keep the big picture in mind when telling her story, you should always keep these things in the back of your mind.

Which reminds me, look up Ancient History's Zero Sum Gain. So many layers of corruption.

And then there's the privatized security such as Lone Star and Knight Errant. When the law is actually kept by a profit based organization what does that tell you about how likely corruption is?

I just noticed that this post had gone mostly unanswered, so I figured I'd simply get some attention to it again.

This is just all so bloody true most people in the western world do not believe it, and it's not only limited to "who knows who" and cameraderie either, in many cases it's simple bribery that paves the way; like not too many years ago when a certain Auzzie megalomaniac managed to change media ownership laws in the US, UK and Australia simply so that he could own more and controll the stream of information more that he already did. A lot of this was done with good ole' cash.

Well when you get rich enough from criminal enterprise you move on to legal business, or you can go into politics and corrupt entire institutions or shape them into whatever you wish. It's called being an oligarch.

First, your racism offends me. I will move past that though on the assumption it was not intentional.
Second, unless America does not count as the western world its wrong. Running a business here, something that often falls on the middle and uppper classes, is all about dealing with corruption. The most common form of corruption is uneven enforcement of law. If you have paid your dues, political contributions or one sided business arrangements, you get the light side. If you have not , you get a full examination on every aspect.
I won't even go into the wonderful world of getting permits.



Corruption will exist as long as we do. It happens at every turn and it happens in the stories in which I play and those which I run.

I don't understand the question or desire. What I see is some attack on "knuckle dragging" Shadowrunners and their finer points of economics. I don't find the game a good place to debate economic models, socioeconomic policy or politics. If your table wants to engage in these topics fantastic. There is no ground to belittle those who chose to concentrate on other activities.

"Know thine enemy" doesn't necessarily involve economic models, but it's not bad policy. As in, curiosity might kill the cat, but knowing whose house your hitting doesn't hurt the cat burglar. Knowing who your mark knows and how they do business is good business, even for knuckle draggers.

Especially when you consider that the western model of "democracy" means we vote in officials that can completely contravene the "promises" they make during the election, and the people have little power except at those times.

Then consider that there are no such restrictions on lobby groups.

There is a line between corruption and breaking a campaign promise. One sends you to jail, one means you don't get re-elected.

Upon reflection there is the legal definition of corruption, such as when a person in legal authority accepts illegal payment for services (ie bribery), and then there's everyday corruption, such as when principles are ignored for the sake of greed or expediency.

I'm not familiar with Aussie politics but here in the United States the Obama administration has been attempting to root out corruption in the Executive Branch by denying cabinet posts to politicians with ties to lobby groups. Unfortunately, the overall impression I've had is that it hasn't been going well. It has been very difficult to find experienced people without those ties. In my home state of Indiana, a law was recently passed prohibiting our local congressional members from joining lobby groups for five years after leaving office. I don't know how effective it has been.

I've mentioned this book a couple of times already in DS, and some might think I am on the payroll of the publisher, but I was deeply moved by the book, and am floundering at the moment, contemplating how I will respond to it.

If you want to get a good look at how corruption (under other names Synner667) has worked at the highest political and corporate levels for the last few decades (and how we have been complicit in the creation of oligarchs Chrysalis), check out The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Link here.

An amazing and disturbing read. I'm pissed off, and I've been witness to world events all my life and immersed in cyberpunk mythology for years. you would think I would be inured and jaded by now.

And there are very good ideas for shaping Shadowrun campaigns in it, too.

@Chrysalis, BlueMax

One thing I've noticed in a lot of race/class/gender discrimination conflicts revolving around group A saying that group B does have to deal with some flavor of oppression often have to do with the system operating differently on different people. Most business owning impoverished white males will never do unpaid sex work for cops so they may continue to work there corner. So it's easy to say that they "Don't have to deal with that", but as you point most business owners do have to deal with permits and inspections and face choices that are not that different from a justice perspective. I understand your reaction to the OP. I find it is often helpful to take those kinds of comments to mean "You don't have to put with the specific operations of oppression that another group does"; which is often true. Then I choice whether or not I feel like doing education.

Corruption takes many forms. Cash for favors is simply the easiest to identify because of the direct material transaction.

You forgot my favorite: Campaign contribution.