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AppliedCheese
And I mean, really. They used a bomb. Do you realize how many potential points of information there are for a bomb? Detonators, explosives, workshop to make the thing, bomb maker, bomb placer, fixer, source of money for all of the above, institution which moved money, vehicle used to transport explosives, or hermetic seal container, bomb residue, forensics on shrapnel, detonators, primers. History of any of the above. Witnesses to any of the above. Electronic identification of any of the above. Oh, and factor in most anything ka-boom related usually gets watched somewhat better than your saturday night special...

And that's the 30 second, non professional, top of my head answer.

Also, presumably, somewhere in the process of steamrolling the wiffle-bat soldati, somebody somewhere got a look at their faces.

There are a vast multitude of ways to track down those runners on a $100,000 budget, let alone committing million of nuyen.

A final other point: you may be feeling like righteous badasses for thew forces of good, but not every shadowrunner is. And there's a chance you just killed one of their contacts. And your bringing lots of media and law attention to the shadows. The mafia may not need to kill you at all...
toturi
QUOTE (Dahrken @ Nov 24 2010, 02:30 AM) *
No matter how brutally effective this kind of approach could be in the short term, I don't think that a character experiencing some kind of religious illumination and seeking atonement for his past misdeeds (as exposed by the OP) would feel confortable following such role-models...

OK, he could model himself after the Crusaders then? After all, he is on a personal crusade...
toturi
QUOTE (Saint Sithney @ Nov 24 2010, 03:41 AM) *
Oh, toturi is just being contrary as usual and not really paying attention to the discussion at hand.

My point is that they should not be fighting a war if they want a feel good hero of the streets campaign.
Wars are fought dirty and won by atrocity. If GM wants to go that way, ratcheting up the reciprocity until the PCs "win" by becoming complete monsters, only then realizing that they've just been helping the far less restrained Asian syndicates take over the Seattle underworld, then I suppose that's a good story. Still, I don't think it's what the players want to hear.

Oh, but I am. Just not in the way certain people (perhaps even the OP) wish to read/hear about.
Pollux710
Wow, its amazing how these posts can turn out, this is for sure, so far anyways, my first actually super interesting snow ball post. At Toturi, I would say it is less a personal crusade as it is my friend Cris trying to just feel like a hero, he is in kind of a rough spot and is doing much better turning back to his faith. We have had another session and a contact of theirs has gone missing, so far the hunt is on and they're hungry, and this cleaning up the streets direction has actually put quite a bit more spin on the campaing arc itself, even I am getting a bit more excited.

Thanks to everyone I've incorporated all your feedback and digested most of it, though I'll be honest it is going to take a while, I'll keep posting to let you all know how this turns out!
Pollux710
QUOTE (Saint Sithney @ Nov 22 2010, 11:59 PM) *
Because the GM has run out of ideas concerning the current circumstance and came to Dumpshock looking for ideas as to how to handle a runner team where one of the members has morally hijacked the game's direction to make war on a multi-million nuyen per year criminal enterprise which should reasonably wipe the floor with a bunch of upstart killers?

Point is, he's softballing it. He can either ramp it up with the mob until it's an all out war that precludes any other type of activity besides:

10: hit mob
20: mob hits you back
30: go to 10


This is about giving the game a future. Not telling the players what they want to play.
Dude needs to throw some spice back into it. Give them a target besides the obvious.


Good post, I'll admit, was a bit derailed when they started slash and burning mafia property, things have gotten quite a bit more interesting that local Dons are actually taking notice, and I've done quite a bit more research concerning the Mafia both in 2070 and now.
Pollux710
QUOTE (Ascalaphus @ Nov 23 2010, 06:22 AM) *
There's nothing wrong with playing a Robin Hood style game. There's punk in cyberpunk too.

So some ideas on how to make it look good...

The Top Dog has more stuff

The Mob has a lot of money, weapons, goons, elite killers, cyberware, corrupt politicians and corrupt cops. On paper, they should have the advantage.

Good deeds don't pay well

A lot of things the PCs do won't be paying jobs; saving your neighbour from Mob retaliation doesn't have a paycheck attached to it.

Underdogs get sympathy
Conversely, once the PCs have some success, common people will start thinking well of the PCs. Ordinary people will hide them from the mob, give them food, warn them of Company Men making inquiries and so forth. Folk Heroes get support from the Folk.

Bad Guys Fight Dirty

Try to come up with really despicable tactics for the bad guys to use against the PCs. Not just effective tactics; make it mean.The bad guys will try to frame the PCs, to make them look bad. They'll go after friends and family. They'll hit you when you're sitting on the toilet.
It doesn't have to be successful, but it should feel threatening. It should get the players angrier at the Mob. Righteous indignation is the emotion you're shooting for. When they take down the guys responsible, the players will be cheering and howling for blood. Few things are as satisfying to players as finally defeating a hated enemy. Make sure they hate the enemy before they defeat it.

They defeat you first, then you win after all
It's a movie cliche, but the good guys often get defeated by the bad guy first. This illustrates how badass the bad guy is, and it makes eventual victory far sweeter. Don't let them defeat a major NPC the first time they deal with him. It's more satisfying if it's harder.

Heroes are lucky
On paper, the heroes shouldn't stand a chance. The Mob has more stuff, more experience, and fights dirtier. But karma smiles on good guys, and they get a lucky break now and then that allows them to square the odds. This works best if you can link the Lucky Break to something they did in the past. Someone they helped before who suddenly calls them with crucial information for example. That way, it won't feel like the GM is just giving it; they feel the earned it.


Excellent ideas, blends perfectly with my epic campaign arcs post. Thank you!
Saint Sithney
QUOTE (toturi @ Nov 23 2010, 05:51 PM) *
Oh, but I am. Just not in the way certain people (perhaps even the OP) wish to read/hear about.


Yeah, I apologize for taking a bit of a shot at you there. Sorry about that.
But the point I was trying to make was that going to war is depressing.
If the play group is trying to get away from that feel, then it's not a well thought out move.

Your point certainly stands in regards to how someone would have to go about fighting an entrenched criminal organization willing to fight a low war, but that reinforces what I was trying to say more than it weakens it.

My point was just that, if the natural gravity of such a conflict is going to be pulling the actions lower and lower on the morality scale, then the player who started this (the impetus here) probably isn't going to want to continue.
You or I might have a good time thinking up terror tactics which would sew paranoia and fear, destroying the organization's ability to function, but some dude trying to get right won't like where that train leads.
Doc Chase
QUOTE (Cenobite @ Nov 23 2010, 09:00 PM) *
Shadowrun is a game, and games are supposed to be fun.

To use the previous example of saving some hookers, and them later turning up dead, that essentially takes away a player victory and turns it into defeat. How is that fun?


If the team wanted to mow down 40,000 guys without repercussion, they'd go play That Other Game, since now we're talking about fantasy.

When there are rules for making Enemies, rules for bringing down law enforcement, even rules for gaining notoriety for actions done, then the system is begging the GM and the players for repercussions on their actions.

Half the fun is in making a plan where you commit the crime and get away with it. Is it fun if you make a complete cock-up of a run and the GM says "Oh well you detonated a city block, killed 65 civilians and were caught on camera, but there was, uh, some sort of computer error so you're scot free." That is what you're suggesting.

It may not be fun for you, but my players prefer not to have security blankets.
AppliedCheese
Even if you don't go to the crushing extremes that "realistic" shadowrun would probably see happen, there is no reason to make it easy.

Especially morally.

One of the greatest failings of Robin Hoods everywhere is that inevitably have to have the conviction that they are Right and have a Noble Cause. Because if you don't, you realize pretty soon the deck is stacked against you, so why the hell would you bother?

The number one real answer is money and power, while paying middling service to the original ideology, but I'm assuming your friend isn't playing "hell yeah I'm a (INSERT IDEOLOGY HERE) sort of guy: they pay my bills and let me be a big man."

This leads to arrogance and intolerance. Because you know your Right. And that you are Doing Good. Which makes it real easy to get blinded by your convictions. All of a sudden, people who have perfectly legitimate reasons for not wanting you in their neighborhood or lives are Enemies. Or worse yet, they need to See The Light, so what can we do to convince them? In addition, people working in reasonable, non-illegal, self interest who you will find diametrically opposed to you. And at some point, these guys are going to compromise or disrupt your operation, or even strike a decisive blow against you, quite possibly by mistake.

Example A: Neighbor A looks out her window at just the wrong time and sees what is, as far as she can tell, Bad Things. Normally she wouldn't care, but she is just born again, or maybe little johnny is running with a gang and she doesn't want him hurt...who knows. She calls the local version of protection, be that an LEO, Private Security, or the Mafioso who she pays 10% a month to prevent accidents.

Example B: The shadowrunners buy up disposable commlinks for their next big hit. Shortly thereafter, the seller sees an ARO proclaiming them terrorists, responsible for that big boom downtown last month, and that there is a hefty reward for information leading to the apprehension of these dangerous individuals. Being assured of his anonymity, the shopkeeper sends the feed from his store cams, and all the correct information for tracking the inventory he just sold them.

Example C: Stray bullets happen. Whether it was from a runner's gun or not, there's a dead kid around their last scene of full auto mayhem. And now there's an obsessed parent. He doesn't care that you were cleaning up the streets. All he knows is that life was doing tolerably well, then some vigilante asshales came in to follow their own oh-so-Noble agenda, and now his kid is dead.

How many times can you turn the other cheek to perfectly moral actions by other people seriously disrupting you? And how quickly does the innocent commcall become "a snitch for the mafia...she knew the risks." Or sacrifices were made for the greater good? Its a very fine line to walk, with chasms on each side.
Whipstitch
If you're going to get caught up in the whole consequences for everything spiel you should try and treat the NPCs the same way and remember that sometimes things might shake out in the runner's favor whether it is "fair" or not. Nobody likes the type of GM that pulls the tired "Every 3rd bystander has a vengeful relative who can throw 8+ dice in automatics" routine just to further reinforce the notion that Shadowrun is something of a crapsack world.* You need to finesse it a bit and make things into complications rather than just something bad that happens to the team. For example, what if the Mafia sees this situation as more of an internal problem (ie; bad management) than an external threat? Personally, I don't think a runner team could hope to take on the Mafia families of North America if they decided to crush them like bugs. But if a capo or underboss of a single family loses the confidence of his peers because of all this? Well, then perhaps I could see the odds getting a bit rosier, particularly if the players can drum up support from a local gang or other competing organization. And who knows? Maybe if they make the right allies, maybe things can get a bit better at least for a little while. Just keep in mind that the "There's always someone higher up on the food chain" maxim can go against the bad guys as well.


*This is a particularly dangerous problem given that it sounds like this group in particular was already getting a li'l sick of feeling like they couldn't make a positive difference. Proving it to them may just make the game that much less interesting to them.
Daishi
QUOTE (Doc Chase @ Nov 24 2010, 09:12 AM) *
If the team wanted to mow down 40,000 guys without repercussion, they'd go play That Other Game, since now we're talking about fantasy.

You object to fantasy in Shadowrun? The first step to character generation in Shadowrun is choosing which Tolkienesque creature you want to be. I'm sure there's somebody out there protesting that his cybernetic fireball-slinging pixie is totally realistic, but honestly, there's an inescapably large element of fantasy in this game. Sometimes it's more fun to run with that side of the equation. I would also say that choosing to not capriciously slaughter people that the players rescue is hardly pressing deep into fantasy territory. Killing or threatening them for a plot hook is another matter. That's just good drama. But "everything you touch turns to ash" makes for a depressing game.

Ascalaphus' suggestions were some of my favourite in this thread because those were about creating drama and pulling out the most flavour from the Robin Hood style instead of beating the players back into the dystopian box. I just wanted to call that post out for kudos.

AppliedCheese, frankly, if a GM pulled any of your latest examples without obvious warning, I would walk away from the game. An LEO response to violence is legitimate and expected, but in proportion to the set-up the GM gives. If the GM describes a nice residential neighbourhood, then a random witness makes sense and the players should plan for that. Describe an abandoned industrial district and the surprise witness is the GM jerking with the players. The stray round cliche should also be dependent on the described setting and the players' actions. Suppressive APDS fire inside an apartment building? Sure, it makes sense. Single aimed shots in a warehouse? The GM is a jerk. The seller recognizing the disposable commlinks is a ridiculous stretch. First, the commlinks have to be tied to the crime in some fashion and the players should be aware of how this could happen so they can act on it if they want. But let's say they get tied. If they bought the commlinks from a convenience store, the clerk wouldn't even know the commcodes to recognize them so forget him calling it in. Given a warrant from the LEOs, the proper MSP could probably trace the sale, but that's why shadowrunners buy from sources who don't keep inventory.
Pollux710
Wow how these convo's can escalate.
Critias
QUOTE (Pollux710 @ Nov 25 2010, 12:09 AM) *
Wow how these convo's can escalate.

Yeah, welcome to Dumpshock.
Saint Sithney
QUOTE (Whipstitch @ Nov 24 2010, 08:45 PM) *
*This is a particularly dangerous problem given that it sounds like this group in particular was already getting a li'l sick of feeling like they couldn't make a positive difference. Proving it to them may just make the game that much less interesting to them.


Punisher actually dealt with this a good bit during Warren Ellis' run. By making war on the mafia, he killed off the weaker elements and pushed the more extreme members into positions of higher authority. And, of course, Nolan's Dark Knight film dealt with this in a similar manner. Things are going to get much worse before they get better.

Just strange that fighting the man came in the form of starting a personal war with the mafia when there are far less gray-moraled orgs out there to point a good guy gang at..

The stick-up kids I fear wear three-piece suits...
Brainpiercing7.62mm
QUOTE
This leads to arrogance and intolerance. Because you know your Right. And that you are Doing Good. Which makes it real easy to get blinded by your convictions. All of a sudden, people who have perfectly legitimate reasons for not wanting you in their neighborhood or lives are Enemies. Or worse yet, they need to See The Light, so what can we do to convince them? In addition, people working in reasonable, non-illegal, self interest who you will find diametrically opposed to you. And at some point, these guys are going to compromise or disrupt your operation, or even strike a decisive blow against you, quite possibly by mistake.


I really don't expect a guy who is deeply steeped in religion at this time to realize these things. Well... unless you push him.

And THAT could be something worthwhile for the game to explore. As I said before, cheap gratification will run out of steam, or just grow cheaper and cheaper. There has to be a struggle.

However, I have a bit of a feeling the player might just WANT cheap gratification. Hmmm.....
Ascalaphus
What about this for a possible twist in the campaign at some point?

The players are making a serious dent in the Mafia, but the Vory and the Yakuza are seeking to fill in the gap, and they're brutally competing about it with each other. (You said the players had so far avoided pissing off the other major scary Syndicates.)

At this point, the players are contacted by a Mafia boss who tries to convince them that by attacking the Mafia, they're helping even worse criminals taking their place. The Mafia tries to convince the players to take the fight to the Yakuza/Vory instead of the Mafia.

Except there's a complication. Part of the Mafia's power is that people fear the revenge of the Mafia. If someone attacks the Mafia, it'll take gruesome revenge, and that's why people don't try to attack the Mafia. But the PCs did, and the Mafia can't be seen to let them get away with it.

So it's time for shenanigans. Will the PCs "sell out"/ally with the Mafia to fight the "greater evil" of the Vory/Yakuza? If they do, they'll have to fake their own deaths by "Mafia Revenge" and assume new identities. But will the Mafia try to stab them in the back while they're having plastic surgery?

---

One way or the other, the Mafia wants to avoid being seen to lose. Eventually it might try to secretly buy off the PCs while telling everyone else that they (the Mafia) won.

OR they could try to make the PCs look so dangerous, so powerful, that the Mafia doesn't look weak for being beaten by them. I mean, if Lofwyr beat the Mafia, that wouldn't make them look weak.
So the Mafia contracts Horizon to make the PCs look like they're the main pawns of a Great Dragon...

Essentially, you make the PCs look so good, that it makes the players uncomfortable and paranoid.
Glyph
To those who think the PCs would have no chance against the Mafia, I would like to say that I prefer to believe that anything is possible.
Whipstitch
I love Achewood so much.
Saint Sithney
I hope Onstead gets bock on it before too long. The recent level of output has been flaggin hard. frown.gif
KarmaInferno
QUOTE (WyldKnight @ Nov 20 2010, 12:09 AM) *
I have one question to all you people saying really screw over your runners. What if doing that makes them not have fun anymore. When players aren't having fun then the GM has failed his job.

Period.

Dude, this is Shadowrun.

Runners getting screwed over by their Johnsons is practically the default assumption, not the exception. Players expect it.

smile.gif

Possible plot complications:

- Mafia put together a team suspiciously like the Runners. News reports start popping up about horrific crimes committed by the Runners. The cops stop honoring their truce and come gunning.

- A tipoff results in a big takedown of gangers. The problem is, a few of those 'gangers' were undercover cops.

- After hitting some bad guys, the runners find a child in the building, the son or daughter of one of the people they just killed. Hey, look, a free Dependant flaw!

- The Runners encounter a particularly vicious bad guy, but it turns out that the bad guy fills some niche in the neighborhood that prevents something much worse. Like he provides some resource badly needed, or keeps something out.

- People start emulating the actions of the Runners. Some start ending up dead.

- One of the Runner's parents show up. What? It works for all the TV shows.



-k
Whipstitch
Not always. Gotta remember that not everyone is steeped in the "The J is screwing you" culture of earlier editions published adventures or spend time on dumpshock where that kind of background fluff is a known entity even if you were never a particularly active SR1-3 player (like me, for instance). Most of the players I've had have been college students who were pretty new to Shadowrun and rather expected to be getting work from Johnson or Fixer contacts they took at decent Loyalty ratings. I've played games at cons with people who are probably a year or two older than 1st edition, tops. Shadowrun just isn't the face of tabletop gaming in the same way that D&D is, so you need to be a li'l careful when it comes to guessing what people think they're getting into.
Cenobite
QUOTE (Doc Chase @ Nov 24 2010, 12:12 PM) *
Half the fun is in making a plan where you commit the crime and get away with it. Is it fun if you make a complete cock-up of a run and the GM says "Oh well you detonated a city block, killed 65 civilians and were caught on camera, but there was, uh, some sort of computer error so you're scot free." That is what you're suggesting.

I have absolutely no idea how you came to that conclusion.
Faelan
QUOTE (Doc Chase @ Nov 24 2010, 11:12 AM) *
If the team wanted to mow down 40,000 guys without repercussion, they'd go play That Other Game, since now we're talking about fantasy.


This is an erroneous statement, if the players are hired anonymously and perform a "standard" shadow op, with the side effect of 40,000 people dying in a cloud of deadly gas released as a decoy for what they were doing and the angles are similarly covered as for the rest of the operation, why would it be fantasy? It is ridiculously easy to kill mass quantities of people without resorting to common weapons, a train car carrying chlorine for instance, or setting off gas tanks at a local storage facility could easily result in thousands of deaths and even more casualties, and both could easily be done as to be untraceable.

QUOTE
When there are rules for making Enemies, rules for bringing down law enforcement, even rules for gaining notoriety for actions done, then the system is begging the GM and the players for repercussions on their actions.


Sure there should be repercussions if they screw up, if they don't screw up and you mess with them, then it is just massive cheese.

QUOTE
Half the fun is in making a plan where you commit the crime and get away with it. Is it fun if you make a complete cock-up of a run and the GM says "Oh well you detonated a city block, killed 65 civilians and were caught on camera, but there was, uh, some sort of computer error so you're scot free." That is what you're suggesting.

It may not be fun for you, but my players prefer not to have security blankets.


I don't know how you got this from his post. What is your hacker doing? What should he be doing? Oh that's right screwing with every bit of video capture technology as you enter the facility, in fact he might even be sitting in safety doing this while doing a containment jamming session around the facility, and if the shit hits the fan he is a jamming fool. If they capture you on video by definition you screwed up, bring on the pain. Blowing up a city block, and killing 65 civilians does not necessarily result in you suffering repercussions, screwing up does, and screwing up does not mean blowing shit up it means getting caught. If that video is somehow eliminated, and your hacker messes up the response system, he is doing his job. There is nothing wrong with saying we got hacked and the bad guys (the runners) got away.
Manunancy
In my opinion, making a lot of noise - that includes things like bombing a whole building - means that you'd better have a thorough cleanup. And past a certain noise level, even an utter and complete lack of material evidences might not be enough to save your butt if the law gets a lead.

Even if said lead won't hold water in front of a tribunal, if there's enough pressure, they won't be above snatching some guys the rumormill points fingers at, thent pump them full of drug serums to check wether the rumor was right or not. Especially if the rumor on the street is that whoever did it is planning some repeat performances. Screw due process and get some results. Especially if whoever is pointed as a possible suspect is a SINless.

Though he probably wont be quietly disappeared, as the law has to display some results to appease the opinion, something that a very public trial will provide.

In the present case, if there's a string of violent crimes targeted at mafia interests and the PCs show up repeatedly in the aftermath, that's going to make them stand out as possible sources of informations if not outright suspects.
kzt
No, they won't be disappeared. They will be killed resisting arrest.
WyldKnight
QUOTE (KarmaInferno @ Nov 27 2010, 06:27 AM) *
Dude, this is Shadowrun.

Runners getting screwed over by their Johnsons is practically the default assumption, not the exception. Players expect it.

smile.gif

Possible plot complications:

- Mafia put together a team suspiciously like the Runners. News reports start popping up about horrific crimes committed by the Runners. The cops stop honoring their truce and come gunning.

- A tipoff results in a big takedown of gangers. The problem is, a few of those 'gangers' were undercover cops.

- After hitting some bad guys, the runners find a child in the building, the son or daughter of one of the people they just killed. Hey, look, a free Dependant flaw!

- The Runners encounter a particularly vicious bad guy, but it turns out that the bad guy fills some niche in the neighborhood that prevents something much worse. Like he provides some resource badly needed, or keeps something out.

- People start emulating the actions of the Runners. Some start ending up dead.

- One of the Runner's parents show up. What? It works for all the TV shows.



-k


Certain tables, certain styles and our style is not such a crap sack world. In fact if it was I can say none of us would be playing SR because it wouldn't be fun anymore. I don't play this is be a paranoid bastard (I already have to be that on a day to day basis) I play it with my buddies to have fun. Anyways for all the flak DnD (especially 4E) seems to get it has one thing SR doesn't and that's a comfortable entry. When your first game ends with you being screwed and all your hard work being pointless a lot of players can get turned off.
Glyph
Yeah, some people seem to like a dystopian noir style of game where everything the characters do is pointless, and they can never win (other than the occasional Pyrrhic victory).

Others like a game of action-movie violence and interacting with colorful characters, more Fifth Element than Sin City, where all of the distopia is just there as a gritty backdrop for their characters, all John Woo-style with their black trenchcoats flapping in the wind.

I like games with some degree of logical consequences, but not to the point where I have to plan out everything my runner does as meticulously as if I were a real criminal. And since the players aren't real criminals, the GM can almost always find something they forgot if he wants to screw them over.

Honestly, this is what makes Shadowrun such a hard game to run, sometimes. There is a really thin line between running a world with some dystopian elements, and flat out GM dickery.
Jizmack
The best GM, regardless of game type but especially in Shadowrun, should always challenge the players in a manner that brings their characters close to death, and yet the characters logically and realistically survive – learning from their mistakes and becoming wiser to the dangers of their character’s world.
A GM should never kill a character to teach the player a lesson of the pearls of a Shadowrun world.
Doc Chase
QUOTE (Daishi @ Nov 25 2010, 05:05 AM) *
You object to fantasy in Shadowrun? The first step to character generation in Shadowrun is choosing which Tolkienesque creature you want to be. I'm sure there's somebody out there protesting that his cybernetic fireball-slinging pixie is totally realistic, but honestly, there's an inescapably large element of fantasy in this game. Sometimes it's more fun to run with that side of the equation. I would also say that choosing to not capriciously slaughter people that the players rescue is hardly pressing deep into fantasy territory. Killing or threatening them for a plot hook is another matter. That's just good drama. But "everything you touch turns to ash" makes for a depressing game.


I object to you not posting in the Caracas thread. nyahnyah.gif WHERE DID YOU GO

Folks seem to think I bring the heavy end of the hammer down every time the group does something. This is not so. As I said, the fun is planning the crime and getting away with it.

Will there be a time when 'getting away with it' involves copious amounts of high explosives and 'creative rennovation of nouveau architecture'?

Naturally. I'm not a complete asshole, only around 85% or so.

I prefer moderation in my games and my responses. If the players can bring the heat down on the Mob, more power to them. That's certainly one way of getting them out of the way. Sometimes hitting a certain facility with a firebomb will work wonders, as the investigators find this orphanage the news says the runners bombed has copious amounts of materials to make drugs in it.

I enjoy destruction. I enjoy destruction with purpose more. I enjoy carefully planned destruction the best. The OP suggests that it wasn't carefully planned - what amounts to hooligans throwing Molotovs into speakeasies. That kind of street war brings down the bad heat on all sides, and deseerves a proportionate response. If they want to hood it, phoning in a tip and planting some evidence in plain sight is going to go a bit farther than levelling the building. If the team can maximize the pain they bring to the mob while minimizing the risk to themselves, then a lot of the suggestions in this thread (including my own) will be less necessary.
AppliedCheese
@ OP

While responding to daishi, I came across another very valid way to complicate issues for a team that you can't stop kinetically, or don't feel should be stopped kinetically. I actually feel pretty stupid for not sending this up earlier.

PR. Information. The stuff John Q reads when he logs into AR Yahoo-CN-MSN News! as his homepage with news filtered by "Local" and "Not chick stuff". Guess who controls it? Unless the team has a very specific skillset or set of contacts, probably not them. Oh, sure, there will be data havens proclaiming the good fight, and probably even bloggers who support your guys, maybe an oddball reporter...but the corporate news machine, the one that most people bother checking before going to their LoveCupidSeattle account, or logging in to Miracle Shooter? The mafia is going to have much stronger ties with them than you do. And lets admit it, for 90% of America circa 2010, pre-crapsackia, if it isn't on Homepage news, the News Site You Like top 10 stories, or an awesome youtube video you just have to see...you never know it happened.

And whoever gets the right slant printed in the right place, mostest, wins. See Chechnya and the Rhodesian Bush War for where this effect worked globally...and hope your runners learn from them.

So, if they steamrolled a drug den? Great. You know it. the mafia knows it. Probably certain elements of the KE know it. The other millions living in the seattle area sure don't. And reporters, especially corporate, deadline pushing, need to update our blurb to stay ahead of the competitors right-freakin-now reporters will spew back anything their told with an editorial bias on it. And once one reporter starts reporting a way, his version of the story tends to build momentum with others.

So now, in the minds of the rest of the bay area, it wasn't a noble strike against crime and inequity. It was goddamned loonies terrorizing innocent people for (at best) some crazed vigilante notion, (at worst) because they're just people who want to see the world burn, or anything in between.

Let them hear common people talking about what sickoes would bomb a place like that. Let them see the public editorial pieces calling for decisive action against these perverse lovers of death who want to harm our children. And let them see the blogs calling them heroes. Let other resistance groups (jihadists, greenwar, luddites, whoever..both sane and insane) start congratulating them in public matrix-casts, talking about how these guys are helping take the fight towards the man.

Let there be the 10,000 hit blog where someone says his cousin on the forces says the place was a drug den...and let them see the three million view newscast where the runners (or the party KE is now pledged to catch) declaimed as terrorists.

If you want to up the ball, throw in some atrocities. Some "genuine security footage" showing your runners make a man beg for his life before executing him or whatnot.

And, because this is not a dystopia, point out it is possible to win the PR war. But you'd better be damn good. Every time something happens, your runners better have the message ready to broadcast, their reporters linedup, their leaks in place. The golden thirty minutes before the mafia version of the story starts flooding the trix.


@ Daishi

I'm presuming those are in reasonable settings for said to occur. The point was more that there is a living breathing world out there that is humanly nice, and humanly moral, and is going to get in the way of even the noblest vigilante. Obviously if the sniper fired one round, the capo went down, and you got out of dodge, there's no stray round. Similarly no one is calling it in in the abandoned industrial park.

As a side note, the commlink wasn't the point, it was that shopkeeper X, selling you Y, realizes your faces match the latest KE "keep your city safe" campaign, not that he MSP tracked you. I.E. Anyone can be an informant if they don't know your NOT the terrorist the mafia planted stories say you are.

Hell, legitimate cops may think your a true terrorist, and they're just trying to do their best to serve and protect. How many of them will you kill in your quest to be noble?
Daishi
QUOTE (Doc Chase @ Nov 29 2010, 07:58 AM) *
I object to you not posting in the Caracas thread. nyahnyah.gif WHERE DID YOU GO

Folks seem to think I bring the heavy end of the hammer down every time the group does something. This is not so. As I said, the fun is planning the crime and getting away with it.

Will there be a time when 'getting away with it' involves copious amounts of high explosives and 'creative rennovation of nouveau architecture'?

Naturally. I'm not a complete asshole, only around 85% or so.

Heh. Fair enough.

I think we have a different assumptions about the nature of the actions in the OP. That they arranged a blackout prior to the events suggests to me a fair bit of deliberate preparation. If the players made a solid plan and executed it well, then I think it would be very poor form for the GM to manufacture direct blowback on the characters, or even worse, to deliberately spoil the players' victory (as would be the case in the dead hooker example). As long as they deliberately avoid collateral damage, even the occasional explosion in downtown Seattle should get something of a pass if the group is wanting to play in an action movie style or at least have elements of that style. Planted evidence and tips has its place (and should be in the team's repertoire), but sometimes you just gotta let that cybernetic pixie fling his fireballs, ya know? Upping the challenge and the stakes makes for a good story and I'm all in favour of it, but when the players are tired of the bleakness that Shadowrun can have it should be done in a fashion that ensures a sense of forward progress.

QUOTE (AppliedCheese @ Nov 29 2010, 04:08 PM) *
I'm presuming those are in reasonable settings for said to occur. The point was more that there is a living breathing world out there that is humanly nice, and humanly moral, and is going to get in the way of even the noblest vigilante. Obviously if the sniper fired one round, the capo went down, and you got out of dodge, there's no stray round. Similarly no one is calling it in in the abandoned industrial park.

Fair enough, but all these examples are still things that should only come up as a response to egregious player actions once the GM has established the setting. It's rather capricious to premeditate responses like this.
Dahrken
The tricky part is when the player set themselves at an impossible task, self-Sisyphus like.

Eradicating drug abuse and organized crime in Seattle is one of those, as the underlying factors (poverty, lack of education, no jobs, poor health, and the few helping institutions are underfunded, understaffed and overloaded...) are simply beyond the ability of a runner group to solve. Most peoples don't start shooting drugs/BTL just because the nasty dealer forced them to do so at gunpoint (booh, bad drug dealer) but as an escape from a bleak life.

Reducing BTL offer is more likely to backfire into high prices, more petty crime (theft, break-ins, muggings) and addict switching to cheaper, more damaging products as the resale price goes up than to save the day.

Sure, they can score a few hits here and there, but if you look at it in the long run it is globally pointless unless they limit themselves to a relatively small area where they can effectively make a difference.
CanadianWolverine
A bunch of Shadowrunner's getting drugs legalized and mostly out of the hands of the black market, arguably mostly criminals, wouldn't that be something...

Say, while the Hooders are at it, could they spring 2072's Marc Emery? smile.gif
Doc Chase
QUOTE (Daishi @ Dec 1 2010, 04:27 AM) *
I think we have a different assumptions about the nature of the actions in the OP. That they arranged a blackout prior to the events suggests to me a fair bit of deliberate preparation. If the players made a solid plan and executed it well, then I think it would be very poor form for the GM to manufacture direct blowback on the characters, or even worse, to deliberately spoil the players' victory (as would be the case in the dead hooker example). As long as they deliberately avoid collateral damage, even the occasional explosion in downtown Seattle should get something of a pass if the group is wanting to play in an action movie style or at least have elements of that style. Planted evidence and tips has its place (and should be in the team's repertoire), but sometimes you just gotta let that cybernetic pixie fling his fireballs, ya know? Upping the challenge and the stakes makes for a good story and I'm all in favour of it, but when the players are tired of the bleakness that Shadowrun can have it should be done in a fashion that ensures a sense of forward progress.


I'm always of the mind that if a bomb goes off in a 'popular' place, then heaven and earth will be moved to find out who put it there - and the more popular the place, the more likely that you got spotted.

Conversely, if this place isn't 'popular', but important to your enemy, I suspect he will ask himself two questions:

Who is stupid enough to attack me directly?
Who hates me enough to be this stupid?

Now, this could be a wonderful time for the runners to play some misdirection. Get fingers pointing at other organizations. Do the Eleventh Commandment thing (though lucky breaks go both ways). Let them waste time and resources, and see if they have any Horatios who are able to put the pieces together. Maybe they'll call a summit to discuss the issue so the rengo and the triads can absolve themselves of any responsibility. Make it more challenging not to get caught and the chaotic fallout can be a wonderful backdrop until the dice come up snake-eyes and either the team gets found out or they may get some splashback from collateral damage.

In the end, everyone gets caught. Three can keep a secret only if two are dead. nyahnyah.gif
jaellot
QUOTE (Glyph @ Nov 28 2010, 04:33 PM) *
Honestly, this is what makes Shadowrun such a hard game to run, sometimes. There is a really thin line between running a world with some dystopian elements, and flat out GM dickery.


That needs to be a dictionary entry- GM Dickery.
Daishi
QUOTE (Doc Chase @ Dec 1 2010, 08:10 AM) *
In the end, everyone gets caught.

Maybe it works for you, but I think that's a depressing approach in a game based around playing professional criminals.
Dahrken
something you could do for a momentary change of pace from the "fighting crime" gig is to confront the characters with the negative consequences of a run from their "just professionnals" earlier period (someting bad they cannot deny they played an important part into) and see what they do about the issue (apoogize, try repair, or maybe just ignore it because their holy crusade is more important).
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