Well remember me asking a few days ago about the estimated prices on Metahumans? Well just now over the week I found out the real reasons why my group of runners has been all gungho about it. They kept it a secret from me until last moment. (rather smart of them to do to keep me from killing off the plan in the begining)


Well anyways here goes.



They combined cash and purchased about 14 male orks for the reasonable price of 14,000 yen each, and 6 female elves at 25,000 yen each. All had randomly rolled stats. Then purchased for each one of them a deticated chipjack and each one some cyberware. Spurs, smartlinks. Guns ammo and armor. The main purchase and most troublesome one was that they purchased rating 10 persona fix chips. Basically total loyalty and a relatively docile personality . Slotted them into thier new pets and now have a relatively cheep and fairly effective gang.

(Orks with smartlinks and spurs and fed steroids daily also then given virtual instructors to learn some weapons. The elves were given instructions on stealth and assassin's weapon training.)


Technically none of this is out of the rules or against the Canon. The face made the proper rolls and aquired everything. The team's medic did all the surgury himself in his shop. The Weapon Specialist instructs them in combat. The stealth adept teaches the art of being a supafly ninja boy.

Now the problem is. They have an army. I'm not the type of GM to just slap it out of thier hands after they put that much work and yen into it, but I do need some advice on how to cope with it.

Plus I thought the overall idea was totally brilliant and would like to go with it a bit.

Steroids do wonders on the heart man. Heart attacks around the house!

Well, errr, damn man, your players are evil. Just let themuse em, wait for them to make a mistake. Smart links and spurs dont save you from all that much.

Where do they live? Maybe some Metahuman Rights Activists get work of it and firebomb the house in responce. Could be a few things that happen if word gets around of what they are doing.

Are there any magic users? Something like this really goes starts to fall into the realm of going toxic.

I don't want to go against the heart of this thread but, it sounds like a really good idea on thier part. Yeah, its immoral but who cares? I think you should let 'em roll w/ it. What do they have in mind? You could go check out the threads on "Do Runners Plan Thier Own Runs".

Think about how many runs are helped by having an army. Not very many. I really think that unless these runners go and become mercs, they're going to be suffering a net financial loss from this.

~J

Yeah, but it RULES. It's all about the personal army of brainwashed psychopaths. And they can start a bunraku parlor if they need help paying the bills.

Wow, they have a gang. Sounds like its time for rival gangs to make things difficult for them. Maybe the organized crime in the area feels thier territory is being threatend. The meta-human rights group was a good idea too. Make it known that there are lots of fish in the pond bigger than they are.

I dunno, this sounds kind of cool. It just forces you to change the game. Now they're sort of like cult leaders, not normal shadowrunners. Change the nature of the challenges to reflect that.

Perhaps an investigator of some kind starts snooping around. It could be a PI hired by relatives to track down one of the slaves, a spook trying to avoid another Waco, or someone gathering info for a gang or crime family that runs the area. Where it goes from there is up to you (maybe the family hires a shadowrunning team to get their Billy Boy back, maybe the feds set themselves up outside asking them to lay off the kool-aid, maybe they buy off or kill the investigator, whatever).

Maybe one of the personafix chips is defective, and the person it was fitted for realizes it quickly. This particular student seems much more gifted than the others, eager to learn and naturally good at the subject of her lessons. If the players have been taking any "liberties" with the female elves, then I vote for one of them. Such a person could become a pretty cool (and deranged) recurring NPC.

If one of these things gets captured by a corp or LS, they'll find the dedicated chipjack and remove the chip. After that they've probably got someone quite willing to talk at length about who just hit their facility.


Oh yeah, and make sure they're paying lifestyle costs for all of these new mouths to feed

If those people had families, I bet they'd be real pissed if they found out what was done to them. They might even pool together enough money to, say, hire a team of Shadowrunners to liberate their kin.

Well, I like the idea... BUT.

But I don't think this army of vat-grown, VR trainer built killers would stand even half a chance against the real opposition Shadowrunners face. Why? No actual experience. They've never shot someone. They've never seen their friends get gunned down by corpsec. Essentially, they're in it because someone they respect and serve told them to. That's fine and dandy, but they're going to be up the creek when it comes down to the wire, because they've got chip learnin' out the wang, but they've never had to improvise.

Not to mention, what happens when the persona fix chips start causing aberrations in behavior? OBsessive-compulsive disorders? The budgeting of the 'masters' time so that they won't be exposed to any 'undesireables' - all for the masters' own good, of course!

In general, I'd probably also rule that the clones don't have a Karma pool. I know karma is supposed to be tied to your aura and mystical energy and all that, but I also regard it in part as your will to live - your zanshin under fire, and ability to pull out all the stops to get the job done. And brainwashed clone doesn't say any of that to me. Though it is really cool to have a gang. <G>

Hey. I like that idea. You could go places with that - especially if one of the clone's chips started malfunctioning, and it started to plot on how to get free.

I gotta agree with the last few posts: this shows some amazing creativity (aside from the fact that female elves are necessarily super-stealthy ninjas--stereotype much?), hustle and teamwork. If you want to monkeywrench it, just look at it this way: if NPCs were doing this, it'd be the setup for a perfect run.

Someone, somewhere could easily hire some runners (rated, say Equal and Professional) to investigate these kidnappings.

Personally I think it was a great idea on the part of your group, and I wouldn't really screw them over about it unless it seriously was a problem.

If you really feel that you musty screw them over about it somehow: Who programmed the Personafix chips? Did they think to confirm all of the chips themselves? If you can: Have one of the slaves only have apparent loyalty to the group, or make it a kind of dual-personafix chip and have the character start sending-out information about the runners their other masters (works best with one of the stealth types).

Yeah... I find myself agreeing with the "this is a reasonably good, creative idea, and such things should be encouraged" croud. It's been a while since I've had a group that was sufficiently dedicated as to plot about the game with each other in their spare time, so you should consider yourself lucky.

Thanks for the idea, my players are going on a run like this now. To liberate slaves, not acquire them. I hope...

am i the only one taht thinks that this is some gayass shit? i missed the thread on buying people but i am realatively sure it is illegal in seattle (and most other places) so who are you buying them from? how are you avoiding the legal problems ? (fed. raids) i assume part of the answer to this would be hiding in the barrens, well wont the locals think that you are a bunch of weird hoodoos or somesuch and flush you out?

I don't think many people in the barrens [i]aren't[i] a bunch of weird hoodoos.

This is really interesting to read. It does seem that your group really thought this through.

My origional post was in the opinion that you saw this as a problem. Bad reading on my part sorry.

Hell, let em roll with it.

Is that really any spell? Do I need to go get a permit for treat, or oxygenate or stuff like that?

Yup.

Dedicated chipjacks might be a good idea for BTL chips, autoinjectors and biomonitors with radio activation.

Knowledge links could be useful for things like: cooking, secretary and cleaning for useful urban camoflauge.

-Siege

Although it's kinda tough to prove how powerful a spell a wiz knows until/unless magical witnesses provide testimony to the fact.

-Siege

And especially hard if the Awakened witness doesn't even believe in "Force" ratings. One of my shaman characters laughs at what he calls "that mathmatical hermit nonsense."

Any time you cast a spell, it leaves an astral signiature. This astral signiature can be read and, with enough successes, the force of the spell can be determined from it. If the spell or its use is determined to be illegal, you can be astrally tracked and identified. If you're not careful (or if you dont have time to erase the astral sig and cant easily hide behind a ward) this can be a rather serious problem... one that tends to be ignored or forgotten, in my experience.

Lone Star doesnt care whether you *believe* in force ratings, just as they dont care whether you *believe* that murder is wrong.

I think he was talking more about the witnesses. Mr Shaman (especially when his bank account is now swollen by a 'mathematical' amount) might have trouble on the stand saying whether Mr Runner's spell was above force 2, after all he dosen't even believe that there is a mystical energy the controls his destiny...

they bought... metahumans? from where?

I don't know, it sounds like this group has big plans. Let them do what they want, just enforce all the rules and such. Eventually, no matter what word is going to leak on the streets about what they're doing and they'll either be visited by a corp strike team or the subject of a joint Lone Star/FBI task force, slavery being a major no-no in the UCAS. At this point, the game has become how far do they take this and do they know when to cut and run...

A story...

One of my otaku character got *real* powerful ( too powerful for anyone's sake, in fact ) and had quite a lot of people - weaker otakus mostly - almost religiously obeying her. My DM let that character have them, but he did make her life quite a chore ! Of course, the ( matrix-based, in my case ) firepower and increased-income ( in my case, through btl deals ) possibilities were huge. But then, as time went by, she got the interest of waayyy too many ruthless power-monger.

It started with the Yaks ( with whom I chose to deal with ), then other otakus and deckers. One of 'her' pet-otaku was the child of some high-level exec of a med-sized computer-based company. Needless to say, daddy was highly interested.

Soon, she needed to orchestrate runs to keep everyone happy and to keep on increasing ( and securing ! ) her power. She almost got killed so many times I forgot. I found out she needed a mainframe ( I stole UCAS online's - the local equivalent of AOL ! ), then another, then she was afraid to get geeked because she had them... She got Pax and Dodger's attention when I started getting really serious with somekind of an Expert-System program ( previously Seader-krupp's )- that was what the mainframes were for.

Again, before I knew it, guess what, she was stuck in the arcology, with Pax having insisted to have her around... and I know for sure that she has Seader-krupp agents coming for her, along with Eran's ( It seems like I caught his attention too ).

The point : let them have their little power-trip : what comes up must come down. If you play your part well, they'll end up either making mistakes or getting noticed by people that :
1) will see them as a threat ( for their own power... )
2) will want to manipulate them to their own ends ( in my character's case, just about everyone... )
3 ) betrayal happens so often ! ( even between three friends... if you get what I mean )
4 ) two words : Murphy's law.

I'd like to see this run - a bit of ingenuity never hurt anybody. Let them have fun (and you enjoy as well), but ultimately you and they know there's gonna be a big fall-out which will cascade into a whole new set of runs re-establishing themselves and their reputations.

To answer the questions on where they Purchased the Metahumans they got them from the SiNless masses. Processessed by Tanamous. So anyone who would of cared couldn't do much about it.

The Personafix Chips were purchased by the Face using a level 2 Contact in the Benraku Parlor industry. So had access to good quality personafix of anytype even custom design. Very little chance of being faulty. (I am considering this as a good plot hook down the line if they abuse thier people)


A few things I did to them is give each of thier new 'employees' a very strong personality of thier own. They take things too litterally.

So far they've only just done a few small things with thier new army. They've secured and cleaned up about 2 city blocks worth of the NYC area. And started using thier goons to patrol and protect the people around and keep gangers away.

Funniest moment so far has been.

The runners head into the meet. They bring 2 of thier goons (one drives and another gunman incase) and give them explicit instructions to defend the car while they're away. The team heads in and starts the meet. They hear a gunshot outside, the sammy runs out to check what happened. He finds Goon B shot in the hand, and Goon A standing there with his gun pointed at Goon B shouting 'Step Away from the car' Apparently while the team was away, a bird crapped on the car. Goon B wiped the crap off with his hand. Goon A thought goon B was damaging the paint so shot his hand.

Took the mage a few seconds to patch it up. The goons were given much more detailed instructions the second time around.



So far they haven't done much with thier army. They have a warehouse HQ that is patrolled and kept up to spec by them. I'll keep everyone posted.

I'm going to join the others in applauding your players for being clever. Now, what they did isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you do need to alter your game a bit, to continue to provide a challenge.

Remember that the stealth of your party is the lowest stealth skill. Even with female elves, there's no guarantee that they're learning accurately or well. These goons are also not creative, and won't be using smart tactics. All they've done is provide themselves with a few rent-a-goon backups, that's all. That's not game-breaking in and of itself, any more than, say, hiring a gang to do attack someone for you.

If they do start abusing their new toys, just start enforcing the breakdown from continuous exposure to BTL.

In the same vain as the "taking commands to seriously," my voodoo shaman had a zombie as a body guard. One of the players started mouthing of to me and I told my "bodyguard" to shot his ass. Well seconds later said offender had a bullet in his ass. Not what I intended, but I got my point across to the player. And learned that I will have to be very carfull about commands next time. It was a moment when I wasn't thinking clearly and I didn't want the PC dead he justed pissed me off, and the GM took mercy on him and had the zombie shoot him in the ass instead of the chest and killing him.

I'd like to cast my vote in favor of the general sentiment of the thread. It's a really clever idea, and if that's the way the PCs want the campaign to go, go with it. Don't make it easy, but don't kill their fun just because it wasn't your campaing idea.
On one or two occasions, when my players have done something similar (I'm using a VERY weak definition of the word similar) I've had to stop play, right there and say, "Wow, that's quite an idea. I think we need to stop now while I think about how to handle it. No no, I'm not mad at you guys, i think this is cool, but I'm not going to touch it until I've had some time to plan."

Wow, what a cool idea.

At first sight, the idea of buying a handful of slaves and wiring them up to be bodyguards, despite being completely and utterly whack, seems quite original. I for one never even thought of that in all those years, and I imagine your players must have put some real effort into the plot. But, before I go and congratulate them, I would like to know some things:

- What kind of scale do your usual runs have? Large scale, like "nuke that R&D facility" or rather low key, as in "fetch the gizmo quietly"?
- How much ressources do your players have? I mean, a runner that can afford to chip in with such a huge project (slaves, cyberware + surgery, housing, food, etc) might just as well buy a one-way ticket to early retirement at the cote d'azur, non?
- Most importantly, how do the characters justify their actions? Do they have no problem with brutally enslaving and brainwashing so many people? One could say that this kind of treatment is worse than death; it would be interesting to hear the characters' take on this. And how did their contacts react?

But still, the idea was kind of creative...

I made the mistake of reading this at ome of my runner's apartments. He was wearing this evil grin when he finished. Thankfully I don't believe Tom Collins has any use for 10 mindless slaves when he has frinds in the mafia, and the ancients.

and the Yaks
and about a half a dozen of the big 10
not to mention the number of freelancers that I know.

Quix will forewarn anyone else who will listen, the most dangerous thing for a PC to have is information. Anyone who has or can get info. on just about anything is a danger to everyone else. Of course, I have to walk the line of knowing enough to be effective and knowing too much and thus being a liability to important people. Not easy to do, and good as I am, I have stumbled once or twice (as evidenced by having Cross' Seraphim pay me a late night visit once).

Wow, completely lost track of this topic. Just recently saw it linked in a more recent thread.

Ok to Answer questions and a more recent rundown of how things have been going.

The scale of runs used to vary greatly. They take charity work for the little guy every once in a while so they didn't feel like total assholes.

Sometimes they work both sides of the fence on the Yak/Mob Thing. They never take a job that affects the other side.
They've pushed out one of the smaller triads and took over their business of BTLs and drug pushing, and cyberware retrieval.

The doctor keeps himself busy with a self imposed Dayjob of being a back alley doctor. No questions asked but it costs double. Also fences and deals in used cyber. He also likes having 'hired' help scrub the floor tiles after a messy job.

Now they're doing some political work. They've assassinated the Govenor's wife and pinned it on him, and are hired to dig up dirt on political candidates and expose them to make their employer look like the best thing. (Which means laws will change)

As for resources they're pulling it in from every where fairly consistantly. It's a very bad idea to play with pot smoking business majors.



As for how they justify.

The weapon specalist Sam usually gives people the ultimatium with the barrel of his gun to their head. "Work for me or have my ugly face be the last thing you ever see" So he's a bit on the psycho side, but a controlled psycho. He likes the whole power trip and having sparring partners available all the time.

The Mage/face does worse to his elementals, so using people isn't something he cares about. After all there are mind control spells. Plus he thinks it's better for them to live and work for them, than die as their organs are sold off on the black markets. Plus he finds it to be good business, and an interesting excersise of his leadership skills.

Rigger/decker likes having extra hands to help with his cars. And machines and computers are better than people, so he doesn't care. (One of the orks used to be a very skilled mechanic before he got snatched)

the Brick sam troll is completely in the dark(int 2). He just thinks they're a bunch of gangers with a very regimented life. He doesn't care, but he did try to get jiggy with one of the elfs... He walked with a limp for a few days afterwards

The Stealth adept is really into having his own little band of ninja girls. He's a Ninja Pimp as he calls himself. He took it hard when one of his diciples was captured.

Their contacts wouldn't like it. There have only been rumors floating around that the new gang is a bunch of Beetleheads, and the runners are their leaders. But because no one can really prove anything the contacts havent found out.


As for the state of the gang....

8 brainjacked orks remain alive. 6 died in various incidents, one practice accident, 2 to a grenade fumble during a merc run. One started to resist the Personafix and started to act on his own. The sam shot him. and 2 more fell in a gang fire fight.

4 elfs ninja girls remain alive. 1 died in a car accident. Totally botched a driving test. The other was captured while trying to sneak into a target's house. She then bit on her cyanide capsule and offed herself.


3 Trolls and 2 humans and 4 orks actively and willingly joined the group. Displaced gangers looking for a new crew. They have no idea that the others are brainjacked. These guys joined up for the ware, spurs and smartlinks are relatively rare on the street. And this group always seems to have top notch stuff.


They haven't abused anything so far. They use their gang to secure their base and turf, to chase away other criminal elements. They sometimes use them on merc style runs or bodyguarding. The elfs have proved to moderately useful in stealthy situations.

In fact they're begining to get a good rep for keeping part of the city safe and rumbling with other gangs. So this image of a strong group is attracting followers.
I roll the Face's leadership once a month TN 6 to see if the group gets willing followers

There has been one private investigator coming around so far. The Face charmed the pants off of her. Literally. Face has a new level 1 contact, and npc girlfriend of the hour. (she's slowly realising that the goons don't act quite right and take everything literally every time. That should prove interesting if/when she starts to find out what really happened.)


The whole scale of the game has moved a bit away from down on the street running to building a little empire. They're micromanaging things here and there. They still do runs of my making and some of their own, now they just have backup and a semi dependable group to create distractions. They have a monthly budget they earn from protection and dealing. Supplimented by the Doctor's work, and the Rigger doing custom work for various people, and of course running the shadows.

I still think its fun. They still think its fun. So all and all everything worked out. They're gradually losing their brain jacked followers and getting volunteers that have more free will and initative to do things on their own without explicit instructions.