During the course of the game, our group has got their hands on some nasty bit of paydata (don't ask how, that's some one in a million chance), which costs a 'bit' more than our collective lives. So right now I'm felling myself as probably Johny Mnemonic felt - I have some data which will most certainly kill me, but it's worth a shitload of money. Or probably even f@ckton, even measured by urnbandict standards.
The only question is - what do we do now?

To give some detailes, we got our hands on a novel and quite secret research done by one megacorporation, which would interest at least two (or maybe three) other megacorporations, and as soon as the first mega know that we know what they know, they'll want us killed, then resurrected, then killed again. Then made cyberzombies as a grim reminder to anyone who would be stupid enough to try and repeat our feat.

The safest way would be probably dump the data and pretend it never happened. But the damage is already done (the data _is_ stolen, and corpsec would hardly accept 'we read the data and got os scared that erased it' as a valid defence), so we should probably try to benifit from it at least somehow, at least in a way to ensure our survival.
That's where I'm stuck. I can imagine what happens when the mega knows about the theft (and I'm pretty sure it 'when', not 'if'), but still would appreciate some gruesome details So we have to act quick. But I don't think we can just know on the door of some mega and say 'hi, I'm Joe Nobody, I have some data you would kill for, so, um, if you give me a couple of millions and corp citizenship, it's all yours'. So, again, what can we do and what we probably should do in a situation like this?

Switch to backup SINs and safehouse. Make sure you buy food and entertainment on discarded SINs for some time. Lay low, the lowest you can.
Preferably, change country discretely, go to somewhere the mega you've wronged has less influence.
Rent an anonymized mailbox, it's cheap. See if you have any kind of contacts in the megas that might be interested, if not, ping your fixer or/and other contacts for those.
Send them a teaser from the anonymized mailbox (only connect to it through proverbial seven proxies). If the info is that hot, they will contact you. Send them portions of the file, making sure they pay for each as agreed.
Run up the well, or down under the ocean, or wherever. Do a plastic surgery, change SINs.
Still die to an assassin.
:3

Right now, the bastards are looking for a team that matches the description of whatever was left on their security footage, so your best bet is to kill all your teammates before lying low. Also, that way the eventual murder by kill-team will go quicker, since they'll only have one target and you won't have to worry about a slow, lingering, death.

...err, all depending on how harsh your GM is, of course.

This is why I love Shadowrun. A successful mission, got the treasure.... Now make new characters

This is why I love Shadowrun. A successful mission, got the treasure.... Now make new characters

EDIT: And this is why I love dumpshock. Double post, in case you didn't get it the first time.

The hard part for me is that this is where contacts come into play, or failing that, character backstory that you can turn into contacts with your GM.

You've mentioned none of them and when you talk about knocking on the door of some mega, I'm not sure you have any contacts in either corporations or (as an example) and organization like the Mafia. I don't know how connected your fixers are. If, like Johnny Mnemonic, you simply don't have any contacts, then I believe your next goal is to try to find some.

you better invested these 3 BP at chargen, to have a loyalty 4 not 1 contact

Critias is definitely right.

Also, take advantage of dead man's switches. If you don't report in at a particular time with your password, or at a later time in person, sprites release the data to the news networks and the megacorp can pick up the pieces.

There are organizations in the sixth world that specialize in things like this. For example their is a geosynch satelite that this is pretty much their stock in trade. Now getting in touch with them to fence said data might be an adventure in itself and your responsible for keeping yourself alive in the meantime, but it's likely your best bet for making money off the data while not making yourself a target to any additional parties.

Do they know YOU took it, or do they know SOMEONE took it?

Cos pinning the blame on someone else is always useful.





-k

Your life is more important that the payout. Go to ground, as far away as you can. Time to take a vacation to the Outback. Your fixer can fence it for you (you trust him with your life every time you run).

Just remember that if you go to the outback, stay away from Sydney. Too many mana storms for my liking (the way I've heard, it's a rating 4 background count that produces spell effects at the best of times)

At least with the mana storms it's not personal. You'll always have the same relative chance of buying the farm regardless, and it might be better than what the corp would give you, while making it not as worth the corp's resources.

Good point. But, the Mana Storms surround the city. Within, the corps have just as much power as outside. So, unless you are planning to hide in a hole in the ground, it's stil not much help.

It that the Asgard Data Haven?

This man speaks truth. Especially the part I've bolded.

Alternate plan: Go get a meth-addicted dolphin to hack your brains.

No, I have no idea how that could help. It just needed to be said.




-k

Honestly, the right answer really comes down to just how paranoid/realistic/difficult a campaign your GM envisions. I've seen games where the proper response is to set up a Matrix auction for the goods and get rich, while just accepting that you'll then have to lay low for a bit (and go have adventures elsewhere). I've seen games where you'll mercilessly be hunted down and killed if you make a single slip-up while handling this sensitive data. I've seen games where the secret information turns out to be something beneficial to metahumanity, and the GM wants you to turn neo-A and just let FastJack or someone spread it all over the interwebs because information wants to be free. I've seen games where the GM wants to use the pressure of impending corporate retaliation to get you to latch onto another corp for protection (in exchange for the information), turning into company men in the process. And I think we've all seen games where, almost no matter what you do, the eventual response is gonna be an epic firefight that the PCs have a reasonable chance of winning, because action is fun.

*shrugs* Honestly your best bet might just be to talk to your GM, or at least to talk to your fellow players and make a guess where your story might be going based upon previous experiences. Any advice we give you might be counterproductive, and just have you acting like paranoid superspies in an action game, or action movie superjocks in a paranoid spy game, otherwise.

I don't honestly think UPLOAD IT TO EVERYONE is a bad solution, by the way.

If EVERYONE has it than no one has reason to come kill you because

A) You sold it to their competitors and
B) More importantly, they can't be sure you don't have a copy unless they search deep, deep inside your ruptured torso.

It worked for Sly and Falcon in Shadowplay, one of my favorite SR novels, to say nothing of Jonny Mnemonic.

I'd have it sent simultaneously to every interested mega. That way, all of them have a reason to owe you a favor (until they realize you haven't really helped any of them) and none of them have reason to believe you helped their competitors.

Of course, doing this safely and anonymously...is probably going to be a heck of a Shadowrun. I hope you have a good hacker. : )

So...

This was found on another run for a Mr. J, it was a specific target in a Mr. J's contract, or this was a in-house job aka initiated by a PC(s) on the team?

That has some impact on what steps you take next to profit enough to survive a bit longer in the shadows.

Wow, that's some feedback, and I was away for some busy weekend! And thanks to whoever fixed the topic - I noticed the typo too late to correct it.

To answer some questions and to give a bit of background, the whole mess was PC-created, specifically by my insatiable power-hunger. We were solving a nasty set-up which could possibly get us jailed for murder we were paid to do, but did not commit (yeah, I know how it sounds ), and I decided that while we're deep in shit and corporate files, we can just as well take some data with us. It just happened to be big, real big.

For the moment, nobody knows that something was stolen. But I guess in time they will know that someone stole their precious. And then they'll start looking. Luckily, they don't know where to look or whom to look for - we got rid of the subsidiary corp, which was actively looking for us, and it will take some time before the big brother gets back on our track.

We have a bit of corp background, even some Tir background, but I'm not sure if it will be enough and won't prompt the usual action: 'get the data - pay in bullets'.

And I still think that dumping or just freeing the data would be a bad idea. As I said, I'm pretty sure that the corp will know they were robbed. It's a question of when, not if. And right now we have no way to protect ourselves from them. If they will want to kill us, we're dead. That's how it works in my understanding. So selling (or giving away) the info is not only the chance to profit from it, but it's also a way to get some kind of protection. The big corp will want to get revenge even if we just free the information - doing otherwise is bad for business and reputation. 'You can steal from usm but you can't get away with it".
Uploading the data to the Shadows may be a good idea by the way. As I understand, Denver Nexus shelters quite a number of high profile runners. Also there are quite resorceful runners like Kane, who can offer a tad of protection.



You do remember, than Mnemonic was killed in the end? And not just that, he was killed offscreen, in one paragraph of Mary Sue-girl memories. I don't want that fate!



GM reads the thread
And also I'm a bit (well, not a bit, to be honest) responsible for the situation, so I think it would be right if I help work out a solution. And besides I'm just curious what the chances are.
After all, SR isn't a typical cyberpunk, I'm not sure if it's a cyberpunk at all. Take for example shadow community - would it be possible in 'hard' CP for competing parties to sit and chat and trade info and contacts? Shadowrunners would be each others gravest enemies.


And back to the selling topic.
Let's asume that selling the data is the only way possible. We have a customer, who would love to have the data.
We have(will) changed our SINs, wiped all the loose ends we can get to, changed our havens and so on. We are as anonymous as we can possibly get and as far from offended party as possible.
What should we do to get our money and not get killed doing it? I know it's pretty much depends on the situation, but what would general precautions be? Relying only on blank mailboxes and clean accounts doesn't seem riht to me. It would be too easy to track us down, and unfortunately we don't have a wiz hacker with us.

Btw, going to Asgard is a great idea. Why haven't I thought of it myself?




D'oh! %)



Editing: typos and some style.

Corps shouldn't care too much about you once the data is out in the open. In fact, they shouldn't care too much about you, period.
Killing you won't help their bottom line one bit. In fact, it'll just hurt it.

Keep sitting on that data though, and killing you is worth as much as keeping the data secret is.

You think revenge is out of the question? Never thought about it that way. And there's always setting an example to all that may think to follow suit.
How is it going to hurt corp to kill offenders? We publish the data, then we are found dead/missing in various parts of the country. Whats the damage to them?

I consider it appropriate, depending on what actually happened , to make "Wanted/Records on file" notes about the characters, especially if the members of the team tends to be static.

From a game perspective:
Getting away with it ends tension.
Outright killing the team ends tension. Besides, your brain and it's contents are worth more than your lives. What did you steal, how much do you know about it, who did you sell it to? etc. You and your ware's memory storage have value.
Causing the team to spend much of it's profits protecting itself is delicious.
Corporations who buy secrets from you are NOT loyal to you.

Yeah, unfortunately it's not 'coded harddrive in the pocket', we already know the information, so we are still valid targets even if we profit from the data.


I think that's the catch. You can make bajillion of money from the deal, but most of it will be spent to protect yourself from retribution.
Still, what are these expenses? I don't really like the idea of, say, hiring a security corp to save our hides, as it kills a lot of fun. And there's also 'you can't trust the corp' motion.

It's all about Return On Investment. If they don't think the results are going to be worth the resources needed, they won't bother.

Some corps will have different ideas of what "worth" is, of course. Lofwyr might be more likely to spend a bit more for the satisfaction, for example.




-k

How much money are we talking about? Enough to buy your own island in the Caribbean and stuff it with drones/awakened critters/amazon bodyguards? It can be fun being the dungeon master for once.

Does it really cost that much to kill someone who pissed you off? There's no ROI for private jets, expensive dinners, and doesn't the corp already have a security force and contacts to do this sort of thing already? Isn't it cheaper to kill them than to increase the defenses in case such actions encourage others? Besides, what's the point of running a multinational if you can't just kill people without the accountants getting all up in your business?

Public Contract: 10,000 per body dead. 20,000 per body alive. See data packet for individual details. The party in question knows why and any individuals in that party who wish to collect on the bounty of their comrades as part of making restitution may contact us when the job is completed. Cheaper than a used helicopter.

A private jet gets you from A to B quite a bit faster and with less hassle than a public airline. A private helicopter enables either A or B to be in a location that might otherwise be inaccessible. A private space shuttle allows you to bring guests and personel to the suborbital resort in style. Luxury dinner buys you good PR, which, as Horizon will tell you, is priceless. Unless you're taking your wife out for dinner, which may well have you sweating as the auditor comes by. The promise of all of these things might help bring the best personel you can find in.

Killing a thief brings no reward whatsoever, unless there's a risk of repeat offending, and that risk is larger than the target of the repeat offense being one of your competitors. In fact, you might just see yourself approached by a Johnson from the company you're running from. You're obviously capable, and they have you sweating as is.

Decent assassins are not cheap.

If a corps finds that the ones they send keep ending up dead, eventually they might reconsider the cost.

Besides, as pointed out, at that point they might figure you're more valuable as an asset rather than a target. If you're THAT good working AGAINST them, you'll be that good working FOR them. A really well done job makes for a great work resume.

"You know what? We were going to kill you as an example. But it turns out there's a job we need done, and I think you'd be perfect for it."





-k

A Renraku 'revenge' action.
Certain damage: ammunition for a Red Sam squad. Wages for the Red Sam squad. The Red Sam Squad not being able to do whatver they normally do.
Potential damage: a fully equipped Red Sam squad. Public outcry as Renraku employees are discovered to commit crimes on foreign soil.

Or alternatively:
Certain damage: wages for a Johnson. Premium for a fixer. Wages for a merc/runner.
Potential damage: having the hitman make off with the paydata himself.

There are other alternatives. However, there's always a cost involved.

It brings pleasure and reputation.

Dead assassins don't collect on the bounty or the escrow account.

And sure, hire the team. And if they succeed, then kill the team. As the Dancer said in an old issue of Grimjack "It's always best if your enemies work for you. If they succeed you can always kill them later."

If your gaming style goes towards corps forgiving shadowrunners, and even hiring them, go for it. It's your table. Personally, my preference is otherwise. You can justify it either way. In fact it's easiest to justify it many ways since not all NPCs behave the same.

Empirical evidence seems to indicate that they give up after the loss of the 3rd squad

To individuals. You are assigning emotive motivations to something that has no emotion.

Megacorporate machines care nothing for the former, and frankly gain nothing significant from the latter.

It's all about scale. When you have millions of employees and trillions of nuyen to juggle, taking revenge on a handful of runners just isn't that important, and frankly most of your rival corps won't give a crap about it. You gain neither profit nor any real reputation from it.

If you are at a point where merely killing people that stole from you enhances your reputation, you are not a megacorp. You are probably small time. Megacorps are far beyond that level and tend to think much, much bigger.




A good assassin is an asset that may take years and considerable resourcess to cultivate. You don't just expend them carelessly.

Heck, that team of runners you were after might be your next set of long-term wetwork assets. If they're that good it'd be a shame to waste them.


-k

Personally, I'm assigning emotions to whatever person now has to handle the theft. Given the value of the item stolen, it seems reasonable that the fact that it's stolen will cross the desk of someone with money, power, and emotion.

If that seems unreasonable to you, that's your table.

This doesn't mean the person will kill them. This means I believe there's a realm of possible actions such a person might take and while one of those possibilities may be to ignore it and another possibility may be to track them down and hire them, I'm also extremely open the the possibility that simply killing them is worthwhile.


I don't need a good assassin. I just need some specific SINless killed. Sure they have special skills and are well armed, but personally, I don't really care how many amateurs die trying. Dead amateurs are free.

And if any of them want the job of wetwork asset, they're free to collect on the bounty on the rest the the team's heads.

Eh. "There's no profit in revenge" is an old Shadowrun megacorporate trope.

And truly inescapable doom makes for poor gameplay, unless you're playing Cthulhu or Paranoia. In real life, many independent black ops people end up with short and brutish lives. There comes a point in a game, however, where you have to ask, "is this actually enjoyable?"

I tend to not enjoy such bleak endings, either as GM or as a player.



-k

Let us assume this megacorp is into the 'revenge as deterrent' thing, you wouldn't have stolen the data to begin with, would you?

Let's face it. Runners are greedy bastards who think they won't get caught or don't bother to think about the consequences until afterwards, like all criminals. If deterrence worked, our prisons would be empty.

The corps are going to spend enough nuyen on deterence to discourage the rational, when it is cost effective. They're not going to blow millions on some worldwide manhunt to make an example to people who are going to risk it regardless. They're probably more concerned about keeping inventory managers and accountants from pilfering.

Can someone show me in this thread the "inescapable doom" and "millions on an international manhunt" that people are arguing against?

If it isn't an option for a handful of runners with lots of money to disappear, then that's sort of in the cards, isn't it?

That's pretty much the concept we've been operating under. If you want to survive, make it unprofitable for the corp to hunt you. But there's always a liine to cross - after some ammount of damage, it _becomes_ personal.
Still, what are the options here? How can we make ourselves 'untouchables' to the corp?



We will surely make millions out of it. We can quite easily make tens of millions. We probably can make hundreds, but it will take some serioud negotiation jutsu.
We are speaking about a breakthrough technology here. It's too raw for the market yet, but with dome investment and further research, it could be the new black in some ten years.


Just a small comment on the possible retribution from the corp. If they don't come for us, that's good. We're free and sound and all stuff. But if it comes, we want to be ready. So let's shift a bit from 'do they come at all?' to 'what to do when they come?' or 'what to do so they don't come?' side of the argument

If dealing with a rival megacorp watch out that they don't get any data on you as well.

Johnson: "Well thank you for delivering this precious data. Here is the 20 mil we agreed on. Excellent. Oh just one more thing. Your biometrics and location are on its way to the megacorp you stole the date from. For a one time limited offer, I can interrupt that process. The price you ask? A trifle; only 20 mil nuyen."

Well, that certainly justifies "millions on an international manhunt" by, well, everyone.

I just want to understand why the campaign is currently in this place. You have something that is worth at least 10's of millions to someone who can take you alive and suck the knowledge out of your cells and ware and you will be unable to effectively defend yourself against such a threat until AFTER you sell the product.

That also answers the "inescapable doom" question as well.

I hope your GM has a plan. I'm boggled.

'Why' is a pretty easy question to answer. We have a rule that if players want something and can make said something happen, it should happen. We managed to break into a well-guarded databank (that wasn't all too easy, I might add), and the 'reward' was due - hot data which probably will kill us
The whole situation is totally PC-created and we are having a lot of fun with it.

I don't want to relt on the GM in this one (or any one at all), there may be a 'master' plan, but right now I want to have a plan of our own. After all, it's always better if players do something rather than sit and wait for the GM to do something to them (it's subjective opinion, of course)

So, just to be clear. You managed to obtain information that could pay off in the Tens of Millions. I assume that you are planning to sell it off and retire afterwards? Or do your characters not run for money? Not that you can't spend that Tens of millions on stuff (That is a Lot of Deltaware Cyber/Bio and Ammunition) and continue to run, of course. Just curious.

That's a tricky question. I certainly want to keep running. Investing in future runs may be a good idea. And we certainly have more to run than plain money. Weel, at least me - I should speak for myself only, I guess. But considering the situation, retirement may be an option. Still, I think it won't be an option. Probably we'll move out of 'street level' (which pretty much already happened) to some other, upper level, whatever it is called

Deterrence does work, just not on everyone. If I'm Joe Wageslave, I'm not going to risk my life for something like this (although I may risk my job and even some prison time). It's just basic math. Shadowrunners already DO risk everything, but they're the fringe case.

There's also the PR question. If Awesomecorp is raided and that becomes public knowledge, their stocks dip (sometimes significantly). That costs money. If they can make a QUICk clean-up, that reduces that dip. $100,000 to 'get them before this data becomes public (even if it's been sold) and $10,000 to get them within four months after' is not unreasonable. You're paying for investor confidence. Getting someone who looks like them is also acceptable, as long as no one realizes the difference (then it's double egg on your face). After around four months it's forgotten, and bringing them in doesn't do anything.

Ok, you need to sell it, hmm... How about by proxy and/or patsy? If you can afford it, I say your team needs to change their identities ASAP, just disappear, then work through anonymized (have no connection to your old identities) intermediaries until one of them nets survivable transaction negotiated. Oh and since this pay data is sounding thoroughly top secret, I think you should take a snippet of it and publicly release it, again through unwitting proxy, just to wet their appetite, they can't want to pay millions upon millions for something they have no idea exists.

Once you encounter a buyer willing to do a variable mobile, off-line dead drop of the pay, pass along the goods by the same means.

Sure, you don't gain any reputation, if anything you lose all your old reputation and your new contacts have possibly no loyalty to you (yet) as you start fresh again on the shadow scene but you get to rebuild that with considerable discretionary funds.

*gets out a few brochures that look like ancient X-Men comics* May I suggest various shell companies that just happen to buy shares/stock/invest in the buyer who bought the new tech you just sold and/or perhaps investing in a Shadow Skool to increase your long term security with the only thing worth a damn in the shadows, a teammate you can rely on to have your back when the drek hits the HVAC...

So, you suggest hard chips and no matrix exchange? I'm torn between these variants. Meatspace offers more control - after all, if the man hands me the credstick, I have said credstick, no 'lost transactions', but this way it becomes way more dangerous as we have to be there in person. Matrix exchange leaves a lot of trails, but we can probably bury them... or not.

And I would certainly prefer that we don't get any reputation on this one. The less people know, the better.

Definitely meat space with magic overwatch if your team has that specialty, a place and time of your choosing, with back ups, where you just make a hide and roost with sniper rifles and remote cameras watching the approaches, that you have suitably bottlenecked, and all this is just to watch if they kill or capture your proxy. What that proxy is depends on the best your team has to offer, if you have someone who has ridiculous Charisma, a bad ass Face, the proxy can be a unwitting meta-human who is just a one way messenger with no magical connection. If you team has great engineering, the proxy can be a drone specifically made for the situation and so on... The details are really up to your team according to their strengths.

Note I made a very specific set of parameters for the exchange in my other post ... shit, I gotta go. Peace.

Hm... What about open sea?
Say, somewhere in the neutral (or not neutral to limit possible action) waters onboard a ship (rented specifically for the purpose?), meeting at specific coordinates (which would be corrected just before the meeting to avoid ambush and set-up).