Sometimes Johnson might want to conceal how much he knows, that's true. In which case he's still best served by giving them some leads, and pretending that's all Johnson knows.

Since this is information the runners need to do the job, Johnson wants them to find out the information. Either they'll find out, or they'll fail the job - and we're assuming Johnson wants the job to succeed.

All too often though, it's described like Johnson is keeping stuff secret just for the heck of it. He knows more, and the players know it, and they know they need that information. So he's just being obstructionist* and generally not looking like he's dealing with the runners in good faith.

And when you get the feeling Johnson isn't dealing with you in good faith, you should back off, because he's going to do his best not to pay you...


* Because some scenario writers and GMs seem to think that there's some sort of moral reason that the PCs need to do legwork themselves. But this isn't school; it's about the end result, not the homework.

There's only been...one run I ever regretted taking. And one that we did take that should have paid more.

In reverse order those were:

Stealing an oil tanker (in Puget Sound) and driving it out into international waters for a measly $30,000 (for the party of 6). We did it for the notoriety¹ ("we stole a god damned oil tanker!")

Kidnapping a guy from an archology who never left the "these floors are not accessible to the public" and delivering him to a target location in Seattle (we were in Miami trying to get a "free ride" back home") without ever causing him to freak out and without injuring him. We spent half of the total cash prize to a cabal of mages to implant a ritual suggestion that he should "go try on hats down in the mall." Oh, and then after we had him back at the safe house, we got hit by spec ops (hilarious point: they hit the room with thermal smoke and used ultrasound in an attempt to blind us. No one was adversely effected, due to all having ultrasound).

That said, I'd really like to run a series of missions that push the boundaries of what the players are willing to agree to, where every step is missing some crucial piece of information and the punishment for refusing is perceived to be greater than the horror of agreeing. The crucial bits are filled in some time later and reveal what, exactly, the players did agree on and find themselves in the untenable position of having crossed a significant moral boundary without realizing it and having done it willingly.

Problem is, I can't write it, and the man whom I know who could, is unreachable.

¹Dictionary definition.

Our Primary Shadowrun GM is pretty good at running such scenarios. Had a few of them in our time.

Jim though...
Jim would bring them to a whole new level of horror.

Jim's created a Paranoia mission that can handle as many as 256 troubleshooters, ran a Scion game from Hero to God in 11 weeks, and run amazing one-shot SR games drunk.

RE: Johnson's and information

Often times my J's will tell the character's as much informationa s their comfortable with and then say "There is other information out there, I leave that up to your own devices as I have touched this matter all I can afford to" or some variation on that theme. Johnson's interests, and if necissary identity are protected players know there is other information to be gleened.

Often this works best with J's the players have worked with a few times as by then they'll at least suspect who their working for, and understand why that entity might need to limit their connections on the matter.

In fairness, you only need 8 players to do that in an average evening of Paranoia...

I meant 256 concurrent troubleshooters. I.e. 256 players.

There seems to be an undercurrent of Johnson's being omniscient in some posts.

It simply may be that the target uses (or is having used on them) the same "cover your tracks" techniques the shadowrunners often use themselves. Is the target someone's Evil Twin? (or perhaps the Good Twin) (RC 104). Is the target Erased? (SR4A 90). Digital Doppelganger? Is it a case of Mistaken Identity? The other guy in Spammed? Was he just the poor fool some other runner pretended to be with a forged access_ID for a Mission? Is he using the same stolen Access_ID to buy porn and drugs that someone else is using to commit murder?

Does Mr. Johnson have the right target? Does he have so much conflicting information that he doesn't want to give it to the runners because he knows much of it is garbage?

----------------
Week one Mission: 12 years ago, someone stole my little girl on her first day of school. I've spent my life looking for her. I've found her. I need you to bring her back to me.

Week two Mission (from another fixer): Last week, someone kidnapped my teenage daughter. We've received no ransom, no news. We don't know who or why. She can't be dead. She just can't be. We need you to find her and bring her back to us. Bring back my daughter. Please. Kill them all if you need to. Just bring her back.

I'm of that opinion - against an AAA a runner team can score some victories but they can't win teh war and take the corp down. They're simply too big for that. Runners goingst against an AAA (and even an AA) corp are the esuivalent of a guy with a machete taking on a whole jungle. Sure he can hack his way into it, but by the time he's on the other side, the track is already grown over...

I did that one. The PCs figured out that there was a history of girls who looked like her disappearing and never being seen again every few years and did in the Johnson. Before he could reach the button to set off the HE in the briefcase full of cash he gave them.

Honestly, I'm somewhat puzzled by that viewpoint. AFAIK runs like "steal the prototype/research data" or "extract scientist" have always been described as standard business practices of inter-AAA competition in the SR books, to the point that in most cases the corps wouldn't even bother to pursue runners for them after a certain time since they'd only lead to an anonymous, deniable Johnson anyway. Also since AAAs are so big (at least ten times as big as today's largest corporations IIRC) the average run would be barely noticeable on their balance sheet

If you as a runner think you can take down an AAA (or an AA) all by yourself, you're of course severely mistaken. But just doing runs against AAAs is merely providing a common extralegal business service. Your pay will probably be written off under "external consultants" on the company budget.

For me "winning" isn't about taking down AAA corps. It's about making money off their business rivalries.

Some of this stuff interests me because it comes in the three flavors I see Shadowrun usually taking:

You have your street or personal level: Here's where gangs pay you to take out other gangs, people want their lost daughter recovered things of that nature. What usually defines this sort of work is resources and therefore time. Most individuals in the sixth world don't have the money required to pay a team of Shadowrunners for an extended engagement. These are the jobs that are relatively straight forward. Go here, do X, follow any necessary cleanup. Boom done. The J's will typically be emotionally invested and that can cause problems. Smart or at least connected ones will get someone else to handle the arrangements, like a fixer, but because of their emotional involvement they'll usually be waiting in the wings. Then you have cases where for a variety of reasons the J sees no need to bother with distance, gangs hire people like this for example as do those who are hiring Shadowrunners for legal work, no matter how thin that skin of legality is. These J's simply do not have the resources for full and complete legwork, everything they know they know first hand, and usually they will tell you it, but they might be wrong.

At the next level up and somewhat overlapping is the corporate/organizational level. These are jobs hired through professional "Deniable Assetts Specialists" or other designated Shadow faces to have shadowrunners do the organizations work while keeping their hands clean. The pay will almost always be better but the jobs will usually be a order of magnitude more complicated. Because your J is investing so much money in the mission he's likely invested a considerable amount of money and effort in making sure he's got the angles covered. The only info he won't give you is info that he feels could somehow hurt him or his organization which can actually be a pretty broad description.

The final level is world shaking stuff: This is like the corpoate level but usually involves major antagonists of the sixth world. Sometimes the money is pretty good on these ops (or at least the swag you pry out of the dead horrors lair is) but a lot of times you go on these because of your own characters investment, even if that investment is what the ghoul apocalypse will do to your property value and ability to walk down to the bar for a beer without getting eaten.

On levels 1 J's are definitely not all knowing and will share a lot of what they do have. On level 2 they usually know a lot more but share a lot less. Level 3 can be anyone's guess.

EKBT81's impressions run the same as mine, runners who refuse to run against any AAA's are going to have a very hard time finding any meaningful work. On the other hand most of the AAA's don't take things personal, there are some big exceptions MCT has pretty much put the word out that if you penetrate one of their zero zones they will spare no expense and time to kill you. Aztechnology can run the same way although there's been indications in the fluff that this has actually startedf to affect their bottom line because their having a hard time finding teams to work for them and are having to clean up their Shadow image. SK seems to run similar depending on who'se writing them although some of that can likely be written off as Lofwyr's mood that week.

Yeah, I prefer not to run against AAAs or specific facilities with really ugly reps but that's hardly the same thing as saying that AAA targets are a deal breaker if there's no good alternative jobs available. After all, it's frankly a li'l naive to think that you can truly avoid AAA entanglements long term since by definition their business interests extend well beyond the buildings that happen to have a AAA logo on the shingle. The big picture is simply something that no individual player can see entirely, so I tend to just accept that there are always risks and worry more about whether the job seems to be something we can even pull off rather than what I think what a massive, faceless corp will do about it if we succeed. So, really, if I pass up a AAA target it's probably because I had some specific incentive not to, such as with kzt's group and the cushy Ares contact or because I feel like can bet on the bigger dog in the fight like with Daer Mune's group.

... noob question... whats a milk run?

Any Bruce Lee movie.

Guy walks down to the corner store to get milk and suddenly... NINJAS!

Honestly, "Milk Runs" are simple jobs, even in common terminology. Usually IRL, they're no problem.

In Shadowrun, they're the ones that screw you the most. Low pay, supposed to be low threat, but if something goes wrong, you're usually spending more to get out of the trouble than you're making.

This should clear things up.

One of these days I think I'll have to center a run around a genetically engineered cow.

My group didn't refuse that run.

'Course, they were the cause of the 'run in the first place, and it was a connection that was going batdrek insane over the situation...

This is a metagame issue. If the job offered really is the game the GM has prepared... the PCs should never decline it! It's the game he prepared!! It doesn't matter about roleplaying in this scenario - do you want to play SR tonight or not? And btw, if you refused, you'll piss the GM off big time! He spent hours putting this scenario together, after all.

If the GM builds in a refusal as part of a plot well then fair enough. But in that case the GM has to be ready for PCs accepting the deal too... stranger things have happened

A good GM should be ready for any response. If my players refuse a run, I usually havea smaller play available. Won't pay as much, usually "easier", although it may fall outside their normal expertises. And I offer the other job to the NPC Runner teams I have floating around, and extrapolate how well they do. Sometimes, the PCs will hear about the results on the news.

Bollocks to that.

The roleplaying is a huge part of the game, and if I'm roleplaying, and there is no way in living heck my character would take that job, then I won't take that job. Any GM worthy of the title will take things like that into account when planning his game. If he can't do that, then I probably don't want to be playing his game anyway.

If the roleplaying wasn't an important part of the game I'd be playing DMZ. Or chess.

***

The only exception would be a missions game, in which the GM and the players meet cold, and so everyone is aware that the game won't be tailored to the players. However, in such a case, its up to the players to make sure their character personalities are such that they can accept most jobs without having to break character.

I disagree. If a GM makes a job that's totally unacceptable to a character, for example morally ("go kill everyone in the orphanage"), because it sounds unreasonably dangerous ("go break into Aztechnology HQ"), it's just not paying enough ("You want us to overthrow a government for 5K each?") or aids the enemy ("our all-troll party is going to do a job for Humanis?"), it's the right thing to turn it down.

Of course, it's annoying when that happens. It's a classic RPG problem: how to bait your adventure in such a way that the PCs would want to engage it. But there's also a classic solution:

1) The GM needs to know about the PCs. Players should tell the GM what motivates the PCs, what they want. Also, what they're against; moral limits, things they hate. Basically, if you use the 20 Questions from Runners' Companion, this should work out fine, and the GM can avoid mishaps.

2) The GM should put some wiggle room in. Johnson should be willing to negotiate some parts of the job - payment of course, but perhaps also deadlines, what kind of casualties are acceptable and so forth, just to alleviate some PC objections. (Money tends to do a good job of smoothing over objections; "I know what I'm asking you to do is morally wrong, but think of all the good you could do with the money I'm offering you!")

Didn't someone do that? A cow engineered to secret novacoke, if I remember correctly, and so when they nabbed it, it was tripping balls on its own milk and due to an implanted comlink shouted "I'M BEING STOLEN."

You can also have your fixer call you with three potential jobs lined up, then the GM reuses parts of the adventures that weren't run (same layouts or security two runs down the line).

This can be directly translated into the deal with teh J: If the runners walk away, then the offer wasn't good enough. Either the GM compromises and increases pay/makes things more attractive, or he doesn't, and everyone has to deal with the consequences. If he is then pissed, then he just sucks as a GM.

We refused to get involved with Seattle Mafia politics involving the O'Malleys and Finnigans.

We didn't get involved in the events of [i][Emergence/i].

We didn't take up offers on several runs involing Dunkelzahn's will.

As much as several of us wanted to do it, we ultimately didn't do or take any part in a plot against Kenneth Brackhaven's life.

In our group everyone has two characters. This allows one character to have some downtime (injury, surgery, etc) and the player can still play with their other character. It also allows for more realistic job accepting/declining. If one of your characters has high morals and wont kidnap a child for a mission, they can turn down the job and the player can pull out their other character.

With that in mind, we routinely have characters turn down jobs because either it is not paying enough, or it goes against the characters moral code (be it helping a drug dealer, murdering or otherwise harassing the innocent, or working for a corp they dont trust.)

One other time the GM had an Indian Johnson (that guy can do a fantastic Indian accent) which annoyed one of the players and made him feel like the Johnson did not know what he was doing (thats really a bit racist now that I think about it, but I guess that player really is a bit racist) and was a very paranoid player anyway. When the mission involved riding in a sub into an underwater base (which the GM had painstakingly mapped out in detail) he flat out turned down the job, saying he always needed a way to retreat from a run, and he cant swim out if they are that deep.

I spent 30 minutes trying to convince him to take the job, but he never took it. We ended up playing Borderlands on PS3 and forcing that player to make another less paranoid character for the next time something like that came up.

His next character was a Pimp who loved fried chicken (brought it to the meets and offered it to Mr. Johnson) and would do ANYthing for money. Wow, yeeeaah.. that guy was super racist now that I think about it.

Ah, but my point is, have your players create backup characters so they dont violate their characters beliefs just for a chance to play.

Playing another game, I had a GM who offered us some pretty ugly job, like kidnapping a kid. We refused it and he the guy said, "Great. I really didn't think I was dealing with people who would take that kind of a job, but I needed to know before I hired someone to stop the people who I know are going to kidnap..."

It worked really well, he was prepared to handle whichever side you wanted to play.

Nice.
Way to turn the "Accept Quest [y/n]" into an "Accept Quest [y/y]" option.
Sure, the details changed, but there's no way that the players could have known prior to selecting their option what the dialog tree was going to say.

(That is, if they'd accepted, he'd have given them a job anyway)

I always love those kinds of tricks.

Back in 3rd edition a johnson offered us a total of 100 000 nuyen to whack Maurice Bigio.

I said, "No way!" The rest of the group silently but unanimously agreed.

The GM was very surprised and none of us understood why he was so surprised. 100K for a team of 4. 25000 nuyen each. Kill the head mafia man of Seattle. Suuuure that won't come back to bite us in the ass...

Once the other three dropped out, I would have seriously considered that offer.

Whether you succeeded or not, it could be a crowning moment of awesome, depending how far the character gets.

Don't forget that the old "sniper on the roof with a good gun and a camera on the rifle" can also get the job done from a distance with not many people knowing who made the shot

I'm surprised there aren't more hits using stealth drones with anti-vehicle missles. It works for the USAF today, and drones are cheap and available in the 6th world.

Just to clarify my earlier post - I am assuming the GM is offering a worthy job, one which bascially fits the PCs. If not, well, yes, GM could be in trouble - but what GM is going to offer a job they suspect the PCs won't take (putting aside the scenario where you are supposed to reject it, and the GM has another "real job" prepared)

This is another example of Lost Tech from before the Crash of 2029.

That's pretty clever, they could be each other's contacts too, maybe even sharing gear. "I don't have a rocket launcher, but my alt- I mean my friend does."