Okay, so in our game, the Deputy Chief Commissioner of Lonestar is hiding something big and we need to get information from him.

You have his LTG, his home Address and he knows who you and your team are (though 3 of the team have facial scupt)

What would you do?

Does your Face (assuming you have one) have points in Intimidation? Do you have a big troll? Does this target have a wife/kids you can threaten? Do you have any dirt on him? Since he knows your team, can you leverage that into an intimidation bonus?

Thought I'd leave the question open to see what crazy responces I'd get but to answer your questions:

Face: Kinsethics & Intimidation
Troll: Yes
Wife & Kids: I sincerely hope so! Was thinking about using them.
Dirt: Lack of mentioning of missing nukes that I brought to his attention and he hasn't investigated (we are to find out why!!!)

But there's still the problem of him being the deputy chief commissioner of Lone Star. He'd probably have a drekload of security at home, probably outsourced to Knight Errant

OK, for the not-so-pink-mohawk answer:

1.) If he does have a family, kidnap them and snap a picture of them bound and at gunpoint. Live feeds work great for this. If you cannot, get a picture of them and edit it so it looks like they're bound and at gunpoint. Show him the pics, have the Face "sweet" talk him while the troll leans on him (literally if need be). Personal pain may help to loosen his lips.

2.) Have the troll hurt himself in a painful looking but non-permanent way. Then have your Face tell the victim something along the lines of "He'll do that to himself. Think what he's willing to do to you."


Totally off the wall bat shit crazy answer:

You'll have to wait for enough caffeine to enter my system

P.S.
How quiet do you need this to be?

Do you want to know why or do you want to force him to investigate? If it is the second, leaking the info to the jackpoint or some other shadow forum could put enough pressure on him. Once it is there, he has to act before it reaches mainstream media.

The guy told us that there were some military convoys hijacked and that a crap load of high-end gear was nicked. We investigated and found out that there "might" have been 4 nukes in said convoy. We have also found out that there is a high probability that they are now in terrorist hands (KKK). To this end, we informed him that there might be nukes about seattle. Since this happened, he has (according to other contacts) not investigated to confirm whether there are or not nukes.

So, we need to find out what he really knows. Something as big as this would not be overlooked. He is getting pressure from somewhere.


As for a drekload of security at home... peh, we can handle it; Knight Errant are a walkover. We can scare them away just by turning up in Hardened Military Armour... Especially considering that his house is either in Everrett (not exactly high security) or Downtown (which is currently involved in a massive gang war with the Halloweeners and Ancients teaming up and taking on everyone and winning... police presence is minimal).

Kidnapping of Wife & Kids, yeah, thats definately a possibility.
Torture of him personally... don't know how tough the bugger is but definately going to give a try.
Threatening him with realsing the information to the media is also very useful.



I like this idea, I'll suggest it to our troll

How to get information out of someone in the Sixth World:
- Magic: Analyse Truth, Mind Probe, social adepts with huge pools
- Tech: Lie detection software, DMSO (acts as a truth serum, lowers willpower to 1)
- Matrix: Search his link, modify his DNI so that it intercepts a lot more thoughts than usual and send them to you, "hack" his brain with some BTL.
There are ways to work around these, but most of the time they are enough and more reliable than torture and faster than conditioning.

Unfortunately we do not have any of that available to us at present. Might be able to get a BTL that can do this on short notice.
Do have a half decent social adept to do the interrogation (with said huge pool!).

I like the suggestions. Will investigate into acquiring the above for future use.

I don't get it here. What is your relation to him? Is he a contact? Your employer? Have you conned him into leaking some info he shouldn't have?

If his hands are tied, maybe going against him is not the best way. He might just help you out if you can convince him that you are willing to do something.

Sorry, its quite a long story so far and in an attempt to be brief I have not be clear.

In essence, The gang war that is going on in downtown is due to large quantities of money made from a Magically Active Drug. The two main gangs have loads of money and have repelled one act of martial law.

While this was going on, several military convoys were hijacked and all personel knocked out and memories erased.. This shipment included 2000 assault rifles, 600,000 APDS ammo, 4 205mm howitzers, and loads of other equipment such as mortars, coms units, hardened heavy military armour etc. These hijackings were done exceptionally quietly and neither the military nor lonestar leaked their dissappearences.

That was until 40 days after when the Deputy Chief Commissioner approached my character in person and told me to spread the word about the military convoy and that if they were returned within 2 weeks, it would prevent a second action of martial law passed by congress with no limitations.
This serves Lonestar as if martial law is declaired, there will be a massive chance for them to lose their contract.

We will also get PAID 15-20% of the value of the equipment if it is returned.

After I started spreading the word, I discovered from a military contact that the 205mm howizters are usually shipped with 1 nuke each. Upon reporting this to the DC Commissioner, he sounded surprised and said he would look into it.

Only two days have passed and our fixers front man has now been killed due to the investigations he was doing on our behalf. We now know that a terrorist group which was formerly the KKK are the prime suspects for doing this. All very odd considering it has nothing to do with the gang war as far as we know. Our fixer has told us that the DC Commissioner has not investigate or mentioned the nukes to a sole. We are to find out why.

Asking directly and politely will indeed be our first port of call. If he is stubborn, then its time for kidnap (or perhaps we will kidnap, then ask directly and politely and with no expected responce, show the evidence).


To answer your questions more directly, he leaked the information to us to save Lonestar their contract. He is aware we are trying to help as 15-20% of the above goods is some seriously good pay!

However... he is not helping himself.

Hmm, or you could just tape bricks of C12 to him and waggle the detonator in front of his face on a vid screen. For this plan, you would obviously want to negotiate remotely.

To quote Order of the Stick:
"As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero."

If I read this correctly your fixer wants the characters to find out? Why would he necessarily know of any and all current Lone Star investigations? Especially since only two days have passed.

This may depend on individual gaming style, but I wouldn't jump to any conclusions yet. If there are really nukes involved, the commissioner may be under pressure from any appropriate three-letter agency (DIA, NSA and so on). Who will also take offence at some freelance criminals interfering with matters of national security.

And kidnapping family and/or torturing him might possibly reduce his willingness to pay those 15-20% on recovered goods. I'd ponder very carefully whether satisfying the curiosity of a fixer is worth that.

What is your GM's general style? I'd try to find an NPC mage with Analyze Truth and such before going with the (very) polite approach.

Let's face it:

Insanely high expected pay + opportunity to save the world = no matter what you do, you will end up working for free

Consider that we are pretty much prime runners in our own right. Our fixer is extremely well contected. If the Deputy Chief Commissioner is willing to come into a Triad bar and meet directly with me (with little protection I'll add) and ask us to find it, I think its safe to say they have exhausted all other avenues of investigation available to them.

It is true that there maybe other governmental agencies involved and we have contacts in the FBI so if we discover little from our first questioning of him, we may ask them what they know and return to the DC Commissioner for further questioning.

Our fixer is far more valuable to us than the DC Commissioner or the 15-20%.

The general GM style is brutal, realistic yet reasonable and very open to new ideas and concepts. We play in a campaign setting where timelines and events are predetermined and our actions can only effect certain outcomes depending on how much we investigate and get involved. There have been many times in which I've seen our GM look a bit miffed when we ignore certain plot lines or fail to follow up leads and him simply skip past huge wads of notes because we havent bothered involving ourselves. This often makes later encounters harder as we don't have enough information beforehand. We have been playing the same characters on and off (with breaks for D&D, Exalted etc) for the past 8 or so years. We have dealt with all manner of scenarios and never failed once any particular jobs (though there are different levels of success of course!).

Our GM's storylines are complex and often have several plot lines from current and previous campaigns immerging constantly throughout play.

The main reason I am actually asking for advice here is because in all our time running, we have NEVER taken on Lonestar directly. We have always aimed to injure or knockout persuing officers should a chase begin. This as for the most part kept them off our backs during runs. I know we have to be careful.

On one side of the coin I see the DC Commissioner as partly dispenseable, on the other hand, I don't fancy kicking over a hornets nest. Obviously I will be discussing this all with the party.

P.S. Saving the city for free has happened before so this certainly wouldn't be a precedent.
We have recently finished a campaign which I belive was a mixture of the tempo campaign & the ghost cartels sourcebook. We put an end to the tempo trade and ended up getting paid next to nothing for what entailed a good 3-4 months of in game work. But money itself it not the only thing we look for in rewards. We ended up with many new contacts globally as well as having the chance to get involved in some very interesting Earthdawn stuff (reimergence of the Red Ziggorate into the city of LA after a massive increase in mana forced the Kaern to reappear on the surface of the city killing (accidentally) many thousands of people but bringing with it the population of a previous age).

Once you make a personal enemy of someone very senior in a security service, particularly by committing a crime against their family, your remaining lifetime drops by several orders of magnitude.

And if you think that you can scare of a KE team by showing up in fancy gear note that it's hard to outrun the spirits and combat aircraft that get called for.

I find it beyond ironic that the DC of LS uses Knight Errant, his chief competitor, for his own personal security.

Yes very true, hence the reason I am hesitant and asking advice!



Heh heh, STILL not worried about spirits or combat aircraft.



As you can gather, it is the social ramifications that I am concerned about most, not the amount of firepower KE have. If we need to take out any KE, it will be quick and quiet.

Heh heh heh heh heh, for some reason I completely overlooked that fact. Doh! Yeah, there wont be any KE will there... Looks like it comes down to knocking out a whole loads of LS then.

Seems to me that's all the blackmail you'd ever need.

That would just be too easy... It's never gonna happen

It's up to you to make it happen:

Player: "I guess there are KE guards everywhere around his house, right?"
oblivious GM: "Of course."
Player: "Perfect."

There's the rub right there. He's the boss of KE, right? And yet he 'knows' there are nukes in his home town and he's not doing anything about it. See a disconnect here?

Either he's a sociopath, knows where the nukes are and is waiting for the right time to expose them (maybe even allowing one to go off). Or someone much bigger and nastier has something over him. (there might be other things as well...)

This means threats are unlikey to work too well... So, I'd forget the c4, attacks or kidnapping. Book a meeting, and then effectivly 'blackmail' him - either tell us where the nukes are, or we go public which means you and KE go down the tubes... And just to sweaten the deal, here is some evidence (doctored even) of the connection.

This could also be used as insurance with LS. Think the LS bosses will let nukes stay floating around the city? You might not be able to bribe his LS security, but if their bosses call them and mention he's threatening their children with nukes? 'Why, certainly Mr Runner, please step right in. Let us know when you're done, we want a word with him as well....'

Edit: Pfft - exchange LS with KE and everything makes sense. I failed my Read OP roll...

wait, so this guy approached you to enlist your aid in finding the stolen goods, including the nukes, and now you're planning on torturing him to see if he's hiding any information that may help you find the nukes? maybe i'm misunderstanding your situation but that sounds kinda funky to me.

Generally speaking, the more powerful/connected an NPC is, the worse idea it is to use direct aggressive ways of drilling them for information and the like.

Blackmail is always the best way... and if you can't find any, then make some up (ie, create a plausible set of evidence to suggest that he's thinking of jumping ship to KE or another security firm). Alternately, with a little bit of digging for the blackmail, you might also happen upon a problem this individual is having that the team could either help or make worse in exchange for cooperation.

eh, i don't like blackmail, especially not against powerful people. it just creates a new enemy and encourages them to take all means necessary to eliminate you, since whatever incriminating evidence you may have will still be in your possession after they give you what you want. for someone as connected as a lone star deputy chief commissioner, it's usually better to just use direct tactics to get what you want, then kill them and dispose of the body. a corpse can't come after you, a guy pissed off because you blackmailed him can.

I love how easily I made everyone think he used KE for security. Critical success on my Con roll, I think. Yay, Edge point for me!

Wow. Everyone just goes for the hammer. What is wrong with the honey? "Deputy Bob, we have hit a neobrick wall in our investigations. Is there anything else you can tell us? I feel you are holding back some info. How can we help you with this severe situation if you won't help us? Please, sit down, let's share some of this pre-Crash scotch and talk..."

I can only hope that after 8 years of playing you or a party member have more than a 2 in Con or Charisma. Spend an Edge point and roll that phat die pool....

And yes, Edge point to Xahn!

A corpse can't, true. The friends of the corpse can - and powerful people have a lot of friends.
So: Blackmail means one new powerful enemy.
Not blackmail (death) means one or more new powerful enemy(s).

Not to mention what do you do when said powerful person doesn't tell you what you want to know.

I'd assumed this had been tried. Goes to show just how out of practice I am. As the old street saying goes: when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of "u" and "umption".

when you murder someone, the general idea is to try your darndest to make sure no one knows it was you.

We have yet to try ANY approach. We shall see what happens on Sunday when we play.
Our characters can be very persuasive, one in particular. Intimidation is not really all that required as I believe the DC Commissioner is well aware of what we are capable of. The direct polite and organised approach as mentioned before will indeed be the first method. If nothing is revealed it will the be time for further action. We have a lead to following regarding the whereabouts of an affiliated group to the KKK terrorists which might know something about the nukes. After following this up, we will search some shadowfiles (I think our decker has access to a few servers) for some black on the DC Commissioner. I suspect this will be futile but its worth a look.

If there is still nothing, and our fixer gets back to us with little, then it will be time for pulling teeth and disposing of the body.

DBSubashi has it right. Why are you asking him these questions? What do you hope to gain out of it? The whole truth behind missing nukes?

That's the really unsatisfying part about torturing someone in his position. He's going to have been trained to resist interrogation. In the technological world of Shadowrun, is it that he won't tell you something or that he literally can't tell you something? In the end, no matter what torture you apply, you may be left unsatisfied. Did he tell all that he knows? Was he truthful when he told you things? Did he mix any lies in with what he said? How do you verify whatever he does tell you and if it turns out to be incorrect, how are you going to get the correct information?

So, forget about torture. Forget about kidnapping his family. Do what DBSubashi said. Sit down and talk with him. Find out what he wants and get it for him. Bargain, cajole, offer, work.

Agreed, torture has failed more than it has worked in the past. I suppose it all depends on what else we find out from other sources.

Still might end up torturing SOMEONE, just probably not the DC Commissioner.

Even the gangers we will ask are a bit fanatic. I fought 3 in melee and gave them 3 chances to surrender while parrying them off and they kept on coming. I proceeded to kill two and knockout the third for questioning later. Unfortunately he had some sort of preventative measure which killed him while unconscious (perhaps an unknown drug, we are not sure).

Lots of dead ends generally. This investigation is far from easy.

Which I'll now spend on starting the following rumour: Did you hear? Gary Cline and Damien Knight are totally gay for each other!

I like the kidnapping/torture/intimidation thing.

8 years is way too long to be playing the same characters. Maybe if you go ahead and screw yourselves for all time, your GM will let you roll up some new ones.

Yeah on an off dont forget.

I'm afraid Ill just have to agree to disagree though. Having a character that has been through several campaigns, has a deep and rich background and has been rewarded with excellent storylines, fun memories and 1100 karma... I'd like to keep playing as the challenge is to still stay alive.

We almost had a death this week... was very touch and go.

Anyway, back to the case in hand.

Unfortunately we took a little too long to find the DC Commissioner and he has since turned up dead. Dawg gawn it! Fortunately, we have found the assassin though. We also know who paid the assassin... the DC Commissioner's wife... who... happens to be a toxic shaman & particle physisist were chasing (but never found) in a previous campaign (probably about 6 years go RL). They were some hard notes to find ill tell you...!


Thanks for all the suggestions and funniness on this one. I think I'll leave this thread alone now.

Myst

I would have loved to see you try to kidnapp his family, definitely not prepared to be dealing with toxic shaman and spirit and not classic housewives with kids.

"Please Madam, follow us and be quiet or the big bad troll will go hungry on your children"
"You mean the big puddle of green and radioactive goos that use to be the big bad troll behind you ?"

Yes hillarious it would not have been... but lots of fun for sure!

So where did your money go? Just wondering whether I get to say "I told you so" or not

It no longer exists. We still managed to find some of the missing military shipment though so our leads are on track and we are still able to find whats going down.

We are turning into unpaid heroes here. The only option is forcing some funds out of the FBI as they are now our port of call (oh its nice to have friends in highish places). There is all sorts of other crazy stuff going down atm.

Basically, there is something linking Tempo, the Nuke and the release of a horror all together at the same time..

Not good, but makes for an interesting game...


Go on... say it....

Time for a Great Ghost Dance ?

Why would that help?

"Basically, there is something linking Tempo, the Nuke and the release of a horror all together at the same time.."

If you refer to "Choose your own path" it would solve 2 of the 3 troubles at once

Cryptic. We are just gonna try n find em all n kill em all. Normally works.

In the Novel "Choose your own path", to resolve a problem with Nuclear Weapon stockade and the totem Spider (+/- horror), the shadowrunner organise another Great Ghost Dance... talk about a RPG to swat a dinosaur....

Cool!

Don't happen to have an ISBN number for that? Google is being particularly useless...

All I can see is "Choose your enemies carefully" & "Find your own truth".......

Twas "Find your own truth" ... Title tend to vary depending on the language. But it is the last tome of the trilogy and you really really need to read the second ("Choose your ennemies") before (the first one isn't as much required).

Interestingly, you can be interested in "2XS" for your tempo problem

Interrogation does not mean hostility or torture. In fact, usually the best methods make the subject believe you're on their side and want to help them. Don't go in guns blazing against a top level Lone Star official... if he's RPed reasonably, this guy has been through a lot and is unlikely to go for something like that. Make him be on your side.

JaronK