I'm writing today for support, feedback, and clarification on an issue in my Shadowrun game that has been bothering me of late. In game-time, my group started their careers as Shadowrunners two months ago and so far they've been hired for four fairly short missions: a get-in-get-out robbery, investigation of a kidnapping, a live-animal heist, and helping a group of moving targets get out of Dodge. They've also botched an assassination attempt, but that was retribution rather than biz-as-usual. During the course of these events the 'runners have been in at least half-a-dozen gunfights, and have dropped about a dozen security guards, mob soldiers, and gang-bangers. They've been pursued by the cops twice, and in both cases they've escaped with the use of fancy driving (speed, cornering, knowledge of alleys and side-streets) and a handful of well-placed shots that put police cars and a helicopter out of commission. They've never killed a Lone Stars officer and they've always altered the look and AR tags of the associated vehicles after the escape. They have, however, discharged automatic weapons, grenades, lethal magic, and--most recently--a LAW in relative view of the public (mostly near-Z level neighborhoods or away from urban areas, save for once where a 'runner's middle-lifestyle apartment was blown up by angry cultists).

Are they playing it fairly smart, or are they taking risks they shouldn't get away with?
Am I being too soft on them? Should they be hunted men at this point?
If I need to change my behavior as a GM, what can I do to introduce adjustments in Law Enforcement slowly?

I think fun should be the first priority (yours included). Base decisions on that.
Also, if you do decide to have Lone Star snipers and Mafia hitmen start ambushing the team, at least give them some hints first.
Maybe rumors of a contract on their heads, a fixer telling them to lay low for a while, stuff like that.

Based on what you said, Lone Star, and perhaps other agencies, should already have dossiers on the team - at least methods of operation, if not full identities.
Check out Public Awareness (SR4A 265).

Along the same lines you need to decide whether or not your Sixth World falls into Pink Mohawk or Ice Cold Pro turf.

The thing you need to realize is that everyone has their own idea of how shadowrun (or any game) "should" be played.

If everyone in your group is having fun, run with it.

If someone (including you) isn't having fun, TALK to the players about it.
As long as you're all on the same page changing things shouldn't be a problem.

yea,

it sounds like your group is having fun blowing stuff up, so unless theres a face or infiltrator type thats getting irritated with the game , I'd say you're doing great. Now the other problem I kinda hear in this is that your carefully laid plans are being blown up , literally. It's real tough to keep shadowrunners in line. If, they aren't losing some blood or cred in an adventure, they're gettin off easy. I find fire, electricity, or gas can throw off their game a bit. actually water can too. Have a security spider set off some sprinklers to cut visibility and mess up their electronics. maybe lock the doors and let the water rise while their hacker tries to save them. trust me, they won't use a LAW or grenade in a locked hallway

Or somewhere Orthogonal. The group I run on Saturdays have no mohawks but attempt the impossible, often failing. In that group its important that you try regardless of the risk.

The group I play in on Sundays is awesomely pink mohawk.

BlueMax

I guess it depends on the style you want your campaign to have.

I like to play up the paranoia and constant Big Brother oversight of the Sixth World, so any action the PCs take have consequences. That's not to say they don't get in gunfights, break laws, etc...it's just that they have to be really smart in how they do it.

I've only really had one situations where by carefully laid plans blew up in my face...and I expect that as "No plan survive contact with the enemy" according to Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke. My players decided revenge against a cult leader was more important than any job offers, so after loading up with white phosphorus grenades and armor piercing rounds, they headed up to his Malibu compound to sort him out. I made a point of drawing blood, demonstrating to the players that direct assaults are a poor alternative to subtlety and planning. After their explosive failure captured the attention of local media and made them persons of interest to the KTLA "Rapid Fire News" Sprawl Violence Hot-Line, they got the hint and decided to work on hitting the cult leader in his pocket book and PR image. They're now doing jobs in trade for cash and information on their target's bank accounts, etc.

I think this is something of a "Pink Mohawk" series, at least in certain neighborhoods in the Sprawl. I think based on these suggestions I'm going to have the 'Runners dirty cop contacts inform them that Lone Stars has opened a file on them and identified them in terms of the MO. I'm also thinking of sending them on a few "vacation" missions like the one their currently on in Las Vegas (they're based in Los Angeles). I'm also thinking about making some changes to the old published adventure "Paradise Lost" and maybe a smuggling mission that takes place in South America.

That's actually a really clever compromise -- you can indicate that blowing stuff up has consequences, and the runners can take the logical step of just going something else and continuing to blow stuff up.

Sounds like you've got a good handle on it.

Everyone's having fun, they're occasionally playing sandbox-style and going off the rails but you're rolling with it alright, and it's not like they're just haphazardly blowing shit up for no reason -- they're showing some restraint against Lone Star proper, etc, etc.

Sending them out of town to "lay low" (and work elsewhere) for a few sessions was going to be my suggestion, but you already thought of it so I don't have much to add but keep up the good work. The players are enjoying themselves. It's only natural for a game like this to, sometimes, turn into something of a release valve.

Playing violent criminals in the magically active near future isn't just a way to tell awesome stories and live out moments from Heat and Ronin. Much like those "violent video games" the media loves to hate, sometimes a game like SR is just plain fun escapism -- letting them blow off steam by going after a cultist that irritated them, etc, etc, shows they're staying in character but still having fun with it, and not viewing the game as work where they have to be coldly professional all the time.

Sounds like the shadowrunners are playing in Nuevo Laredo...

So I've decided to further reinforce the point by creating a series of player handouts that are effectively criminal dossiers created by Lone Stars that make their way into the 'runners hands via their dirty cop contacts. I'm making a point in the dossiers of noting that the 'runners knock out most, if not all, high-tech surveillance they encounter, leaving only low-quality grainy camera footage and satellite photos taken mostly by tax-payer subsidized equipment.

"Critias" you're absolutely right that the players are enjoying what they're doing and they're not just blowing up innocents for no reason. Every bullet fired, punch thrown, spell slung, and explosion created is done so for a specific reason. I don't always agree with these reasons, but in doing so I only want to demonstrate that the players aren't playing in a vacuum.

"tsuyoshikentsu" also makes the worthwhile point that convincing the players their creating too many waves in one place and then letting them immediately go to another doesn't really make sense. Perhaps a "test" is necessary before I let the 'runners loose in a foreign country.

I would also agree with "Omenowl" that parts of my LA Sprawl are in a perpetual state of gang warfare, and just like Nuevo Laredo today the police have complicated morals and associations given the number of criminal syndicates throwing their weight around.

Overall, it sounds like your players are being fairly intelligent about their mayhem. If they're near a Z-Zone, they probably aren't going to be wandering by many (working) security cameras. If there's video footage, its probably poor, having been likely been shot on a crappy commlink's crappy built-in camera.

The dossiers are a good idea. Its should, hopefully, give them the idea that they are being watch. (And even if they don't take the hint, its always nice to see a GM go the extra mile.)

Also, feel free to give them Notoriety if they get too crazy.

-paws

Oh I've certainly been giving them Notoriety for their behavior. I've ruled that at least a couple of killings they've perpetrated were unnecessary; one being an anger-killing of a relatively helpless (but irritating) con man, the other being a "potential witness" who pleaded for mercy before being executed. They also sold out one of their clients when she proved to flaky and weird for their liking. Of course the bulk of the group's Notoriety comes from BTL and drug addiction--other Shadowrun teams jokingly called them "Narcotics Anonymous".

It all sounds pretty good to me. Not shooting cops is a big help for not getting stomped on by the Man. Cops, especially in the Sixth World, are mostly guys doing a job, and half of them are crooked. So show them the benefits of playing with kid gloves with the Star, and encourage them to keep in touch with their cop contacts, so that they know when the hammer is gonna drop. You could have them run a necessarily noisy job that garners too much heat, and then offer them the out of the vacation job. It will be instructive, because then they get to see just what is going too far and what to not do to avoid too much official attention.

And I think it's not a bad way to run a game on the whole; keeping your massive gunfights and anti-tank rockets for urban warzones in the Z Zones is really the way to go. It provides the characters a useful field in which to vent their weapons on their enemies with little risk of bringing the police down on them. The Star is unlikely to show up during a street battle in a Z Zone, but sometime later to police the bodies and make a report.

Oh ffS. That's actually the exact opposite of my point.

Okay, let me try this again. Letting them do exactly that is a good idea. They want to blow stuff up, you want them on the run, so let them blow stuff up on the run.

Me and my fellow runners, a group of 3, were in a rescuing a scientist. With my matrix talents i managed to find where was the car used to kidnap the scientist. We entered the building, and meet a adept-dwarf and two minions. We entered battle, and one of my friend feared that we would not win, he took a dead-man trigger, pulled it. when we saw that, me and my other mate, we runned like hell outside the building. We barely escaped the explosion of a kilogram of plastic explosives. The three guard died, the hostage died, and our runner mate too. the explosion also destroyed my motor bike and the car of my mate.

Next time we wont let that player bring explosives in the missions....

It's good to see some posts reflecting a generally possitive outlook on PC mayhem! I think out off all the characters I've played my favorite was a psycotic arsonist, nothing better than blowin the dreck out a strong wall of oposition. IMO send em to the next city and let loose your pack of frienzied forces of abnormal nature

If they keep changing their looks/vehicles, etc. and don't have registered SINs, I don't see why they couldn't get away. But it is likely that there is a dossier on them, as mentioned before. Also, as everyone else has stated, its all about fun, for you and for them. So if blowing stuff up makes them happy, but they kep throwing a wrench into your best laid plans, well then throw one back into theirs! Even something as simple as "Hey guys, that LAW you used was a dud, sorry." will probably mess them up in one way or another.

As for general destruction, well, think about what happens when you let loose a Force 12 Fire Spirit in a closed off and pressurized room with alot of plastics, electronics and flammable parts. I single-handedly (or at least my spirit did) brought down a 40 story Corporate Building because of that scenario. It was fun...

You know that's a really good point. These guys are buying their equipment from a dishonorably discharged Tir Ghost Commando living in a bunker in the middle of what used to be Joshua Tree National Park. The weapons they're buying are "previously loved" and not kept in the most temperate or clean environment. Still though, I'd hate to do that if there wasn't a glitch involved on the players' end.

I suppose one of my real problems is I watch too much "True Crime" TV, which pictures modern cops, modern criminals, and mostly small-scale circumstances. Considering there's probably not enough detectives in the LA Sprawl to assign each one to a corpse that turns up after a typical night of gunplay, I've set up the dossiers so they identify two detectives, one from Lone Stars "Identification Section" and one from the "Department of Surveillance", working the case based on the collective reports of two patrol cops, one surveillance officer, and two CSI's. So after two months of missions, the 'Runners have the equivalent of a pair of detectives assigned to their case--which is like the first step in a criminal investigation today.

Hmm... I will have to add this to the Combat tactics for Hackers

What kind of weaklings are you playing with? ^^

Agree with a previous post. Some players enjoy the Run and Gun campaign, where others are more comfortable with a "gunfire means we did something wrong" philosophy.
Seen and heard of groups doing various things over the years: Drive-by grenading of a building with team member inside; (on one adventure) Stealing a Police Car, Trying to stop a runaway car with a motorcycle, Trying to stop a lo-jacked rigger- controlled police car with Ball Lightning, Hi-jacking their Doc-Wagon for medical supplies: (Different one) Good infiltration team decided to scale up the side of a tall building, at night, in pouring rain, break in through the roof, use the elevator and shaft to get to the basement, and even after the GM had been constantly telling us how our clothing was becoming more and more soaked through to the point of adding encumbrance while we were outside 2 PCs complained that it wasn't fair that we left a obvious water trail behind us. The real kicker was our skills were high enough that if anyone had done homework on the mission other than me, we could have walked in the front door before it even started raining, and only had to deal with the obstacles in the basement instead of, building security, a building without power, an external Corp Strike Force, and the loss of the escape vehicle because any parking registration (window tag) was missing.

So where some people may prefer different styles of play some are just better suited for different games.
Cover is your friend. Find it, use it, be aware of what might be lurking behind it.

After a mission with a jump in Notoriety you could have Lone Star just come around asking questions. They shouldn't susect the PCs at first, they are just looking for information, seeing how people react, trying to compile a list of suspects. Possibly set up a steak-out, to catch an unrelated criminal. Play it up as though the Lone Star has more info than they do on the PCs. Play up the area's crime rate. Police showing up in the nieghborhood to on domestic violence calls. In a low crime zone suspicious activity would be reported more, vehicle with bullet holes draw attention. Openly carring guns gets noticed everywhere.

Living in an area that police tend to avoid has problems of its own. Vandalism, gangs with big guns, huge crime rates, poor and desperate squatters wanting to find anyplace warmer than outdoors, toxic spirits. No one shoudl prefer to live in a Z-Zone.

The trouble with building up Notoriety is that at some point your nieghbor may decide to turn you in for a reward.

I hate the notoriety rules with a passion. Your first two reasons for giving notoriety while rules correct in a Dystopean future I think so what? Killing a witness and a annoying ocn man would barely get you notoriety in the modern world in the life is cheap world of SR it should get you jack and squat unless it was caught on the Trid. Selling out a client I can see giving notoriety and excessive BTL and drug use could as well, but I think it would have to be enough that it interferes with there work.


On a side note notoriety should sometimes be a benefit but by the rules I do not think it ever is

It aids in Intimidation, If I remember Correctly (i.e. you don't subtract it like you would otherwise, but Add it instead to your Streeet Cred when testing)... Of course, if your Street Cred has already been capped by Charisma, then it may indeed have no use...

It's useful for getting rid of any street cred that goes above your charisma.

There is that...