Here is a bit of backstory:

The PC's are on a run in Argentina. 3 of the PCs arrived by plane, and 2 got smuggled in by one PC's mafia contacts. The smugglers that received them in Argentina are only loosely affiliated with the mafia and usually handle only small shipments. The run was in fact a trap for the PCs set by NeoNET (a continuation of the Dawn of the Artifacts series, ie NeoNET wants to get to the PCs to get to the Piri Reis map). The PCs manage to evade the trap, toast some HTR corp sec forces and manage to get out of Buenos Aires alive.

They return to the smugglers and tell them they want out of the coutry ASAP, and fork don't even try to negotiate when the smugglers ask for 6k just to get to Chile. During the trip to the border, NeoNET is getting desperate, and offers a 500k bounty on the PC's, with Trid images of the PC's they caught on camera, and some other random details they managed to pick up. Now the PCs disguised themselves, but its still 5 of them, one of them carrying a sniper and are very desperate to get out of the country. The smugglers learned about the bounty. The PC's are not too paranoid about the smugglers and didnt try to intimidate or make friends with them. While waiting in a safehouse in Mendoza, the smugglers had 2x 8 hours away from the PCs (they told them they were handling things for the border crossing), so they have a window to betray them if they so choose.

Questions:
1) Do the smugglers have enough information to connect the dots?
2) Should the smugglers betray the PCs?

What I am looking for is how to handle the smugglers motivations via dice rolls. Ie what to roll for them to figure out the PCs are wanted, and what to roll to see if they decide to betray them.

Presumably it would be a standard Perception vs Disguise check to figure out it's them, but with a bonus for the coincidences (rifle, number of runners, timing).

To betray a 6k client for 500? If they didn't get all the cred upfront then definately no. If they did then it's still very likely a no, since smugglers who turn clients over to the corps don't stay in business. However, if 500 is a lot of money down there and the appreciation of foreign 'tourists' is particularly low then it's just about conceivable. Personally I'd say it would be more likely for the smugglers to go above and beyond to help them.

The OP said 500 K. Half a million. Personally, I don't think too many small-time criminals would hesitate to betray people who are more or less strangers, for that amount of money.

The questions are, do they recognize them (I would make a perception test for them to connect the dots, with whatever modifiers you feel appropriate), and how much would their survival instincts war with their greed? A group of heavily armed foreigners, who are apparently badass enough to amass a half million bounty on their heads, are not exactly people you mess around with lightly. The amount of money would make their professionalism a non-issue, unless the smugglers are really gung-ho anti-corporate types who hate "the man".

You could totally roll this as an appropriate Knowledge Skill roll, or Perception, or whatever, but honestly it's probably as simple as this: is there media where they are? If yes, then the smugglers know: if the corp is putting 500k on them, you can bet they're willing to pony up to get the message out there.


Oh, yeah. Without hesitation. Unless they're uncommonly principled for some reason, yes. 500k is a huge amount of money in SR4: I'd sell you out for it. Why wouldn't the smugglers? Honor?

I think glyph has nailed it on the head. 500K new yen is a hefty bounty, and with the team being out-of-towners selling them out to Neo-Net might not have too much of a fallout on their rep. On the other hand, selling out a bunch of badasses who have amassed that much bounty is not a step any right-minded smuggler would take lightly.

If the smugglers realize the PCs are the ones with the bounty on their head and think they can get away with it, it's a no-brainer, as long as they trust Neo-Net to deal with the PCs and pay up ...

If I was a smuggler and someone said they had 500k for a group of 5 foreign tourists, I'd be going out of my way to kidnap a UCAS family of four, throw a hobo in to make five, get some paper plates to paste pictures of the runner's faces on and toss in a .22 rifle from the corner store. Then, I'd be calling NeoNet saying 'Yes, I have them, can I get half up front?'

Or, yes, they would betray them for that much money without hesitating.

At least that is how I see it.

Money talks and 500,000 nuyen has an awful lot to say.

This is Player-Centric thinking. Just about any smuggler / crook would sell out their own mother for 500k. They would sell out James Bond. They would sell out The Terminator. They would sell out anyone if they thought they could make that kind of cash. Hell, they can just tell NeoNet where to find them and skip town for a while. Good luck finding a few banditos in the Buenos Aires countryside, you out of town chummers.

These guys have very little (if anything) to lose and, if they help smuggle the runners out, their ass is in the ringer as accomplices. NeoNet might skip killing them just because of the hassle.

Also, its SHADOWRUN. Betrayal is part of the game.

This. Why is this even a thread? Every SR GM would jump on any opportunity to backstab PCs who were not paranoid and made no effort to be super diligent in covering their tracks!

How else do you expect them to learn?

- J.

The thing that amazes me as a player and as a GM is that he's asking the hivemind here if those smugglers would betray their cargo for 500K.

They'd betray them for 5K, if they could set it up like it wasn't their fault and if they could get out clean.

Round-about way: "Sorry señor "Smith" - someone's pissed the <insert OPFOR> bad. We're going to have to head back to port/landingstrip/deserted clearing and keep low for a while, or we'd be intercepted and questioned. Not to worry though, they boys have a camp-out kit for situations like this."
Direct: [they don't come back, but a security team of troll ninja wizards does]
Bastard: "Ok, we've got to go now señor turístico! A big caza has distracted the borderguards and we've only a small window of opportunity! Wait, where's he packing that? [Angry driver/guide stops the car to berate a member of his crew, leaving behind a neurostun grenade and a wide-open door for the local security mage/shamen to stunball into]
Abrupt: [While arguing their plight with you, ask them to roll versus dizzy/sleepy. Have them wake up, groggy, chained to metal chairs in a swampy bunker or basement with splitting headaches and a no-expression suit explaining the benefits of telling them everything they know or watching as the various drugs/nano/cranial bombs go off in random order.]

If they burn enough edge, maybe the plane that they're going to be transported in has mechanical issues and they have to go by road instead, whereby an accident may occur, giving them a fighting chance to escape...

...Or maybe they're taken captive by Humanform Insect Spirits, ambushing a convoy for new recruits and info on the <big shiny>, which means they'd have to work together with the security team until either one could backstab the other, while on the run from the Bugs.

Seriously - make the blood and the howls of the players flow

-Tir.

Ah! Right, right, that makes more sense.
So yeah, big ol' thumbs up from Mr. Sell-out, no question.

It depends on the quality of the smugglers and their connections. The half million is going to over come any 6k paid. "Sorry Seniorita, I will refund your money."

But how connected are everyone? Would the mob contacts frown on the smuggler route being betrayed? "Paco i will be very upset if my friends do not return safely."

Is there a pride in what the smugglers do? "I took your money, I shook your hand. That means you have my word, MY word." That could be a chance to develop a good NPC contact who had just been a stage blank before.

Either way if the smugglers don't turn the runners over, the runners will owe someone BIG time.

I think it would be fair to let them choose to burn edge or something to notice that they are going to get ambushed/trapped or whatever.
Question is : why are they trying to get out of the country when they are hunted by a triple A?

There nowhere to hide when you are really in their crosshair, safest thing would be a "paying" street doc to reshape the whole group and killing him afterwards.

On the other hand ... they just have to stay out of Neonet territory, afaik NeoNet has bought Minuteman Security do they have the contract for the Argentinic Police? If not then they shouldnt really have a problem staying under the radar unless Neonet pays an insame amount of money to get their hand on them.
On the other Hand, another corp could get interested in hiring/aquiring the runners to make them piss of NeoNet even more.

I dont understand the problem here, can you enlighten me?

Everyone tells. Especially if they think they can get something from it. Maybe the PC's are serious potential threats but most people figure they can get away with it, rarely do they think they'll get caught. They'd burn the PC's in a way that they thought would both protect them from the PC's knowing it was them, and got them the best deal possible.

Yeah, there are several of these considerations that could make the smugglers not take the money, like honor, fear [of the runners, of their connections], a desire to screw the corp, or even greed.* Ultimately, you're going to have to choose not what we would do, but what the smugglers would do, and these considerations come to bear on that. A lot of people will give the advice that it's SR, and so betrayal must occur, but I don't think that's necessarily a desirable path to take.

*"Hombres? We just heard something on the radio you should probably listen to. But first let me ask: do you have more than half a million nuyen?"

For that kind of money how long would it take to start asking questions? Even if they don't collect the 500k they can still make the PC's lives a little more dangerous.

"Hey guess who just called?"
"Hmmm?"
"Those jack ass smugglers we sell XYZ to."
"Yeah, so?"
"Guess who they found?...."

This might be a good time to add some characterization to the smugglers. I.e. smuggler #1 wants to sell the PC's out, whereas smuggler #2 is paranoid of NeoNet and assumes the smuggler-team would be killed-off instead of paying-out 500K. 500K is a hell of a lot of cash, and might trip some peoples' BS-detectors.

You could throw-together a fine little sequence where the smugglers come back to the safehouse, and argue about what they're going to do, or maybe smuggler #1 tries to betray his crew and collect all the cash himself. Perhaps the PC's might even conspire with the smugglers to put-together a stand-in group: swap-clothes, gear, commlinks - that sorta thing.

That said, 500K is going to make SOMETHING happen. It is simply too big to ignore.

Yeah, I've been thinking about it, and the big question for me is whether the smugglers could trust Neo-Net to pay them. Half a mill is a lot of money, but if their info source is not "legitimate" Neo-Net might well double-cross rather than pay a bunch of criminal SINless smugglers.

Either way, as a GM it is only fair if you give the PCs a chance (or three) to escape. I like Captain pantsless's idea, although would they really be so careless as to discuss this in earshot of the PCs? Of course, if one of them has cyberears ...

Another possibility is that the smugglers get an up-front advance from Neo-Net and the night before the exchange start partying hard, which might arrouse the PCs suspicion, especially if one of the smugglers starts bragging about how much this bottle of tequilla cost him, or how much he paid for an hour of bliss with that joy-girl.

Also/alternatively you could make a secret Judge Intentions on behalf of the PCs just before the exchange, particularly if one of the smugglers is nervous about it the PCs should have a fair chance to pick up on it (They smuggle people over the border all the time. Why is the young guy so jumpy?).

Plan out the exchange, Neo-Net's strike team and cook up a few ways the PCs might fight their way out of the double-cross. Give them a fighting chance!

If i would be a SINless grunt, having the chance to sell some strangers for 500k bucks and i wouldn´t be sure to be double-crossed by a megacorp, i would tell the corp where the targets are for a little lower margin. Makes the risk lower of being killed by either the team or the corp-swat. Take the pidgeon in the hand instead of the chicken on the roof....or something like that. ^^

Thank you all for your insight. As I we were playing this out last week I was sure the smugglers would betray the PCs, but over the last week I started having second thoughts.

I already played the scene out for the PCs where the smugglers disappeared for a bit. They hacked one smugglers 'link to see if he made any calls to NeoNET (he didn't), but other then that were not too worried. They also all failed their judge Intentions rolls. So far they get to walk into a trap.

Since the last time there was a shootout in Buenos Aires, NeoNET decided to keep things more of a low profile now. In a deal with the smugglers (who are taking the PCs to Chile on foot over the Andes), NeoNET will stage a ambush in one remote valley. NeoNET will have a shadow following the smugglers and the PC's.

I was thinking of giving them the following chances to detect the ambush:

- as they come into the valley, they can make a Survival + Intuition (2) test to determine something is wrong
- spending time with the smugglers will give them a additional Judge Intentions (3) test to see that they are nervous
- a Intuition (4) test will give them a hunch that something is wrong
- doing a hidden node search at any time in the mountains will reveal a shadow on their tail, the treshold is lowered to 3 since there is a lack of wireless traffic in the area
- a perception + intuition (5) will also reveal the shadow on their tail

Sounds fair. I wouldn´t freak out if the GM would handle it this way. Bad rolls are part of the game, if they get geeked anyway, it is simply business as usual. Ambushes, traps and double-crossing Johnsons are so common, if you are not prepared for it, you lost your right to live.

Actually, the NeoNET team has orders to capture, not kill. So I'm not too afraid to toss a lot of forces at the PCs. If they get captured, the PCs will probably get fitted with cranium bombs and the like.

Cranium bombs attached to a specific word i hope. Something like "shit".....they will not even leave the facility. ^^