Now as i am sure many of you are aware KE has taken over the security contract in the Seattle metroplex. LoneStar is obviously very bitter about it. I'm just curious as to how you would incorporate the KE take over into your Seattle based campaigns and how much it would affect your player's actions.

Honestly, after a short honeymoon where the corp tries to cement thier newfound power I figure that there really wouldn't be much if any difference between the new pigs and the old ones, both are little more than jackbooted thugs and gangers with badges.

The first story in my campaign arc deals with straight up revenge - a lone star top cop/corp exec wants the shadowrunners to track down and find out who killed an undercover cop. The exec is running this off books, since it's personal - the dead cop was the son of someone who saved his life back when he was a rookie himself. But the cop's mutilated corpse turned up immediately AFTER Lone Star turned primary authority over to KE. Lone Star paid the death benefits out to the family, but didn't care about tracking down the murderer. None of which sits well with the former top cop/exec. he's paying big money for the team to bring the perp in alive.

They have?!? How did that come about?!?

We've been running it that KE tends to send more resources at big problems and important areas, and tries to keep a better public face, but they are having trouble securing the streets, Lone Star didn't exactally make things easy on them and it will take several years before they can get patrols out as regularly as they should.

Knight Errant tends to be more altruistic then Lonestar. So you can have quicker response times, less corruption, and the higher quality of investigations going on.

An increased presense and power of Ares can also coincide with the new shift in Seattle.

Well...

"The Guide doesn’t get into it, but Knight Errant’s contract with Seattle is
relatively new. After years of trying to oust the metroplex’s long-standing
security provider, Lone Star Security Services, KE finally succeeded after
Governor Brackhaven’s election and the latest Lone Star fuck-up and scandal
over Tempo. So he brought the Knights in on a promise to “clean up
crime,” and the usual law-and-order promises. That means Knight Errant
is eager to show the metroplex they’re getting things done, so they’re more
willing than usual to make examples (and press releases) out of criminals
in Seattle."
> Hard Exit

Straight from the Seattle 2072 Sourcebook

IMHO give them a few years years of management pressure to maximize profitability and they won't be any better than the Lone Star was.

Alright, i can see that coming. I mean obviously the novelty going to wear off after a while. But what about now? This is a big change we are talking about and it pretty much occurred overnight. There is alot of animosity from the Lone Star group (which still runs the prisons in the metroplex) and KE is still making alot of adjustments. How would you use these weaknesses in your campaign, if you would use them at all?

we've been playing it as KE being more likely to shoot, more likely to overestimate what a 'measured response' would amount to, etc; but having trouble winning hearts and minds and actually securing the streets outside of major corp enclaves/ downtown. Basically alot of the citizens had developed stockholm syndrome with respect to Lone Star, and seeing the KE patrol cars is jarring and unsettling.

I think things balances out. KE is more motivated and putting ressources on the situation, but hey lack the contacts in the criminal underground Lone Star had the time to build up (informants, files - a good deal of data was "accidentally destroyed" or quietly removed before handling the keys of the shop to the new guy).

Presently KE has a manpower problem, as manning an urban area the size of the Metroplex takes a lot of peoples.

My guess is they pulled as much as possible from other areas with Ke security/law enforcement to have at least a core of trained staff they can put in high-visibility areas and on hot investigations, and they rush as many new meat as they can through a crash training course to fill the holes, and will rely on follow-up evaluation and extra training to smooth the rough edges left.

Laid off Lone Star staff is not really helpful here even if it's a rather large pool of available skilled peoples, because KE makes them start from the bottom like the average rookie...

So what does it mean for a runner ? Here are a few quick reflexions :

1) Areas secured by a KE private contracts are likely to have "greener" staff than usual and poorer efficiency. If you can get away before reinforcements or police comes in, it is likely to make things a bit easier. But when the police comes, it will comes in force.

2) Laid off and pissed ex-Lone Star cops can be a source of infos and insight about their former area of operations. Handle with care, but this can be helpful

3) Keep a low profile. If your run does not hit front page, chances are the investigation will quietly sink at the bottom of the priority pile.

That doesn't make any sense. The contract change only impacts the high level admin of the PD. It's roughly akin to LA hiring a new police chief. You might eventually get significant changes but the initial impact is pretty minor. Unless you are at the level above captain you still have a job on Monday, and some of the senior people will likely have a job too. At the street it's the same people doing the same job with different senior managers.

Policy changes would be issued pretty quick, with whatever KE promised they would do. Eventually you are likely to get replacement of ineffectual or corrupt captains, LTs and below, with the criteria determined by the new KE mgmt. Failing to follow the new policies is probably one.

For the front-line people to do something that prevents them from doing their job would be pretty dumb, as it would make them inneffectual. Ineffectual detectives who don't clear cases and have an attitude are an obvious place to cut "waste, fraud and abuse".

You can say that that is not the case, but its meaningless in the face of it actually being what happened. According to Seattle 2072 we now have a ton of out of work Lone Star cops, some of whom have tried to get in at KE, but they are facing all sorts of hazing and being forced to start again as Rookies after 20 year careers being junior to KE officers with only a few years of experience.

Well to be fair, it doesn't make any sense if the corps are actually captilist enities who care about profit above all, but it fits perfectly if you view the corps through a lens of fedual fiefdoms.

i'm guessing you haven't worked much in our current real world corporate culture....believe me, that idea you're dissing makes PERFECT sense to anyone who's come through a corporate buyout and reorganziation.

I'm thinking it'd make a great game to be honest. You can reasonably pull an eclectic (if not excentric) group of individuals together (much like your standard shadowrun group) into a setting that can be as new, as just hired and arrived, to the veteran who has been around awhile, also just hired but not from out of the area.


Also, there is the 'Shadow Riders' mentioned in New Seattle to think about......perfect group to make some LS anti-KE runs. All kinds of hooks in this series of events.

For what it's worth, the KE/Lone Star situation is integral to the back story for most of the players in my shadowrun campaign. The nominal leader is a bitter ex-lone star cop who's contract wasn't picked up by KE. So he went out and rousted up all the criminal/shadowrunners he couldn't catch over the years and started building them into a team. the goal? make money. And if they can make KE look bad, so much the better.

I've also been playing that Ares KE has been leaning on Ares Firewatch for manpower support (internal subcontracts) - which leads to other issues; Firewatch is ultimately an HTR unit, making it do police duty leads to all kinds of fun PR messes.

I wonder if the Dev's incorporated a few ex-Stars into Vice. I mean there had to have been enough dirty cops that they could have formed a minor syndicate of their own.




Edit: Kind of like the Russian Mob (not necessarily the Vor) is now alot of former (read out of work) KGB and military.

With the mess Tempo made I think John Q. SINner wont mind so much.

Personally I'm a bit of an Ares fan boy so I admit some of this will come through that lens but I ultimately see KE as doing a better job then LS especially right at first as the leadership loosens the profit/loss columns a little bit during the initial take over and clean up efforts. After that it's hard to say, on the whole I see KE as a higher class of hired thug with better gear, tactics, and training. The major difference I see in the two's handling is while LS was more about low level violence I see KE line cops being more disciplined and restrained but when the time for heavy response KE would make LS look positively pacifistic.

For what it's worth, I could also see LS knowing what they could let slide and what they really needed to crack down on. KE shows up with a chip on their shoulder and a desire to prove they're better than LS, so they go all out on trouble spots just to show they're better than the 'old boys' were...and get bogged down in a quagmire right quick. LS probably knew which corp territories they could slide by on, and which zones to avoid. KE doesn't have a grip on that yet, and could easily lose a high profile collar because shadowrunners know the drill and KE is still clueless. KE then gets pissy, decides to make an example of the shadowrunners....and LS helps the shadowrunners out, but makes sure the news gets plastered all over the sprawl (and keeps their name out of it).

In fact, there's an interesting campaign idea for you...Lone Star hires a new shadowrunner group to hit up KE protected facilities, but gives the runners insider info, and helps cover the runner team in various ways. All the while, they leak the stories out to the press. the runners start getting a great rep, KE starts getting really ticked off and LS chortles in the background. meanwhile the runner team is clueless of what they just walked into....and what do they do when they realize they're being used by LS as expendable cannon fodder JUST to jack up KE in a public relations war?

Weaver95 I'm a rancher but make my money via indepent contracts and yeah I've been through some buyouts and other bullshit. Guess what, thus far everytime production has only gone down when a corp has decided to go "company only".

I've seen our corporate masters do some very amazingly stupid and short sighted things. Believe me, one or two idiots higher up the food chain are all it takes for a corp to go do something stupid. Egos also play a big part of it all as well - i've seen entire departments kept alive because ONE guy was sentimental about a given office, or because he wanted to still feel like he was in charge of a large group of people. Other managers/vice presidents go on internal 'kingdom building' sprees, collecting departments under their corporate org charts just to make themselves look great for their bosses...never mind the fact that the accounting department has NO biz being listed in the medical parts manufacturing department.

I guess my point is that you shouldn't lose sight of the power of human stupidity. Greed, arrogance either for that matter. even with all the advanced tech in the SR universe, there's still plenty of places for (meta)humans to be screw up. KE doing something stupid like allowing hazing former Lone Star employees, for example - that's a very human sort of thing to do, even despite the fact that it makes no sense for KE to do it.

True, and it seems to me like the companies are getting worse about being idiots as time wears on, it didn't used to be this bad in the old days, at least in my experience.

In a lot of ways, shadowrun has been prophetic - the game backstory is predicated on the idea that megacorps are above the law (or merely obey a code that's beyond the concerns of everyone else). well, if you've been paying any attention to the financial news lately its pretty clear that corporations pretty much ARE 'above the law' these days. Everything from government regulation to intentionally putting virus programs into customer computers - they break whatever mundane laws they want in an amoral and relentless pursuit of profit.

well now i'm depressed. I think I need some coffee.

One thing more to keep in mind; KE is not like Lone Star, they are part and parcel of the bigger Ares machine. Working with LS was one thing, all they did was law enforcement, but letting another mega have (better) access to all sorts of things folks might not want let out.

I'm incorporating the Lone Star/Knight Errant switch into the background of my current story. Keep in mind that much of the following is my own invention and not precisely canon.

The Council of the Ork Underground and Lone Star had a "gentleman's agreement." The Star would discretely step in, using ork officers, if a crime was committed in the Underground that was way out of the local militia's league. In exchange the Council would make an effort to keep really nasty stuff, like WMDs, from being smuggled through the Underground. When Knight-Errant took over, they made it clear that they have no jurisdiction in the Underground and will not be assisting the Council in any way. Rumor says that the Metroplex Governor is ordering KE to deprive the Underground of any assistance.

Anyway, the story is that there is a very nasty serial killer (magical threat) on the loose in the Underground and Knight Errant won't help. The team is brought in by one of their Contacts, an Ork who was formerly a Lone Star homicide detective but is now a KE beat cop. She(the cop) lives in the Ork Underground.

So, the LS/KE thing doesn't have much to do with the main plot, but it's integral to the larger context of the job.

I suppose it may mean that if you run against Ares, you'll have the police all over you. Run for Ares, and KE "won't make it in time" to do anything significant. This might annoy the other corps if done too blatantly, but it will happen.

It's the best opportunity to settle some personal scores with ex-LS - and to get some files lost.

When is this book out dammit?!?!

- J.

That would be today/yesterday

I don't know when the hardcover came out, but i've had the PDF for a while now.

A whole lot of this. Ares basically got handed the keys to the Metroplex. They're likely to use runners to try and take advantage of the situation, making sure not to show up to any alarms until the last possible moment according to the terms of their contract, allowing agents they've hired to somehow slip through their dragnets, and so on. Meanwhile, other corps are going to try and make sure that the new paramilitaries look as bad as possible. Maybe they'll hire runners to sabotage KE gear so that, when KE tries to show up late, they end up too late and break their contracts.

From a different, non-corporate political perspective, Brackhaven likely decided to contract with KE specifically because they would show up fresh in this situation like an occupying military force. That way when the inevitable race riots erupt over Brackhaven's policies, we'll find protesters being gunned down en masse, and gov. KB all "Well golly, folks! I never ordered the use of such force!"