Killing the team is never the problem, if all else fails they can just drop a Thor Shot on the teams head. It's localizing the runner team that is the problem.

Mega-corps, organized crime, and other large public (or semi-public) organizations must, by their nature, be somewhat accessible. They have known places of operation, known members, known businesses, known contacts, etc.

A runner team, by it's very nature, can be nearly utterly inaccessible. They can operate anywhere in the world, they have no known members, they don't have front businesses, their contacts can be dropped, etc.

The runners will always have the initiative. They will attack first. This let's them get in a devastating (and potentially crippling) first strike. When you assassinate the Mafia Don, Consigliere, and top lieutenants, blow up the Mafia's stash houses and weapons stores, give the police incriminating evidence on every street level organization operator, give their enemy organization's helpful information, etc. it becomes very difficult for the OC family to remain intact enough to mount a counter offensive (even if they know who attacked them). Mega-Corps can survive this experience.

So hirer other runner teams, those teams have to find the enemy team and then have to assassinate said runner team.


No, they really don't. There are maybe a million people world wide with skills comparable to a Prime Runner (what the PC's are). Where the corps win is that they have hundreds of millions of people who are almost as good, legal immunity, more money than god, and no restrictions on available gear.


Yep. The Runners will almost certainly loose, that's not in doubt. They can deal with an OC group with a relatively high chance of success and survival, they can certainly do enough damage that the OC group will be destroyed by it's various rivals when it is weakened.

What they can do to a corp is cause enough damage and problems that it is rarely worth getting a runner team that pissed off and motivated. It's why if a corp wants a runner team dead they will make sure that the runner team dies with no warning and in a single sudden strike. Trying and failing to kill a runner team is very bad for the bottom line.

If Ares wants a runner team dead and has localized the team they will go in with hundreds of Firewatch operatives in full assault armor, hundreds of high force spirits, hundreds of high end hackers, military air craft and tanks, and hundreds of drones; and still be willing to drop a Thor Shot if it looks like the runners might win. That's all cheaper than the damage that a single motivated team of prime runners could cause to Ares.

True. Of course, with the Vory, there's a different approach to take: buy your way in. Cook up a a couple hundred thousand nuyen of drugs, and offer them as a contribution to the obschak.

It always pays to know your target, and how to deal with them.





The point isn't "the runners will win".

The point is, "dealing with pissed-off shadowrunners WILL COST MUCH MORE THAN PLAYING NICE WOULD HAVE.

And this is a role playing game.

And yet, somehow the classic trope for Shadowrun, hell, cyberpunk games in general, is that the employer screws the team.

It's a factor of the dystopia. Everyone loses, except the Megacorps. The runners just lose a little slower than everyone else.



-k

Only because the team is often times idiotic when it comes to proper security measures.


Who said that the players would win? In a fight between them and a mega they will, almost certainly, loose. The thing is that they would cost the megacorp a whole lot of nuyen, large numbers of hard to replace assets, public embarrassment, and the perception of strength. Most of the time it's simply not worth the fight.

So most of the time a megacorp won't actively try to get a team of prime runners particularly pissed at them.

It's very much a "kill them all and salt the earth" or "bribe them to deal with our enemies" situation for the mega-corps. Most of the time it's better to bribe them to harm their enemies; i.e. hirer the team to do a run against an enemy. Often times the mega-corp can even end up making a profit on the whole deal.

The one thing they can be assured of is that going to war against a runner team will not be profitable.

It has already been mentioned that intentionally pissing off runners is stupid, and there appears to be some consensus about that (this is dumpshock: having 45% on an issue is a landslide [As there are always at least 3 sides. Even to yes-no questions. If Dumpshock is ever fully united on an issue then the world will tremble!]).

As this is nominally agreed on, I'd just like to point out that employers betraying runners is a good thing in the long run: It kulls the stupid and arrogant from the gene pool, and provides a nice fireworks display for the wage-slaves.

Anyone else got any positive effects from runners getting screwed by their employer? (Negative with enough spin accepted! also, non-specific about WHO the effects are positive for)

Remember that the screw can turn both ways.
Runners are cautious folks, most times, and will ask for half up front. If they think you're going to screw them, they'll just take the half and never come back.

(Works like that in the real world too. My company did work for a client through a fixer company. The end client loved the product, but apparently went out of business and was unable to pay the fixer. The fixer turned around and said, "the client hated it and wants $15,000 back." My boss is half considering giving it to them (and then bumping the price on the next project through them by $15,000) and half considering telling them to fuck off for being lying bastards and never accepting work from them again, and half considering sending a lawyer after them).

Remember, to 'win,' the Runners don't have to destroy the organization to piss them off.

Runner Victory Conditions are to damage the organization that pissed you off into going to war, damage them badly enough that they will be picked apart by their peers, and manage to vanish successfully after doing so.


In theory, this is even possible with a AAA mega. Get the kind of dirt on them that results in an Omega Order being issued, broadband it, and do so anonymously. Blowing the lid off of Aztechnology's blood sacrifice scheme in a way that not even the Aztechnology PR machine can bury is a good example.


For criminal orgs, this is significantly easier, depending on the size of the organization. It's definitely possible to do so to the local branch, especially if the remote branches don't like the locals enough to avenge them. Start hitting their sources of money and assassinating their leadership. When the other gangs sense weakness, they'll dogpile them in the criminal equivalent of an Omega Order (which looks very much like an actual Omega Order writ small,) and tear them apart, co-opting any of their stuff that they can use.


You especially don't want to piss in the face of guy who's just told you he can cook up a metric assload of better-than-your-product in a week. If he can do that in a week, he can cook up a few hundred kilos of C12 in a month. At which point, the weather forecast for the parts of the city where you operate your businesses becomes "Rainy with a chance of BOOM."


So really, it's much, much better to just take the damn deal.

On the Runner's side, it's better to make the deal like this through your friendly syndicate. It helps to have an 'in' - as was mentioned, you could probably cold-buy your way into the Vory's good graces by donating a haul of product to the Vory's funds. If you're chummy with the Ancients, call your Ancients contact and tell them you want to make a lot of money by making the Ancients a shitload of money, etcetera.

Were we necessarily talking elite Prime Runners, though?

This suggests another question, however: Presumably, to get to Prime Runner status, a given elite team will have long experience with betrayal, both on the receiving end and the initiating end. Enough to know that adopting the "nuclear" option against a megacorp will result in becoming very dead, even if they manage to obtain a measure of vengeance in the process. I mean, sure, you hurt them, but you're not in a good position to appreciate it if you're a pile of bloody chunks.

Certainly I can see a Prime Runner team attempting to take out the folks most directly responsible for the betrayal, they have a reputation to protect after all.

But being the survivors they must be to get to Prime status, they should also know when to swallow their pride, forget vengeance and get the hell out of dodge. Lay low and stay alive.

Would a Prime Runner team really go to war? I would say not often. Most will have the wisdom to suck it up and move on. It's just biz, really. Only a team with nothing left to live for or backed into a corner is likely to consider it.

Which a good Johnson should know, really. Like a hunter, they should never put their 'runners into a corner like that, even if they intend betrayal. Always leave your quarry thinking they have a way out, even if it's a false hope.




-k

... and it never ends well for that employer. That's the other half of that trope.

I am quite curious as to how you got all those explosives into THEIR stronghold prior to the negotiations. (from your little blurb above)

I think that you vastly inflate the cpabailities of a Few 'runners to take down an organization of criminals (or even the Mega's) with vastly more money than you have, vastly more people, etc. I agree that you can hurt them, and you may even be able to take down a boss or two, but you will lose in the end. Shadowrunners exist at the whim of the bigger fish. If you screw around enough with the bigger fish, they will eventually eat you. When that occurrs is vatly dependant upon how much of a liability that you have become. *shrug*

Been there, done that, in all it glory as you have described, and the characters died horribly, after not all that much time. An Organization will ALWAYS have more people, firepower and money than you will. That is just how it is. Will it weaken the organization? Maybe. Enough to have it collapse? Also a Maybe. But that just means an opportunity for some other ORGANIZATION to come in a snap up the spoils of the war. *shrug*

See, I disagree with this. Your character will just walk outside one day and die. He will not see it coming and there will be no warning whatsoever. Simple as that. No need for hundreds of Firewatch agents or Spirits. After all, that is how you would solve that particular problem, and Ares has people on the payroll just as good as you are. *shrug*

The reason that Corporations hire Shadowrunners in the first place is NOT becasue they do not have people with the skills needed. They hire you because they want the deniability. Simple as that. If they did not want the deniability, they would use their own assets. *shrug*

Disreguard.

Presumably because you're not stupid enough to walk into their stronghold, you invite a few of their representatives to yours.

But it doesn't have to be a wired building. Allow me to demonstrate.


"No, I'll tell you what. Bob, pull back the curtain over that window. Now, come here, my friend, and take a look out that window. You see that drone up there? Yes you do, the roto-drone with the machine gun? That's my spotter drone. He's in communication with my hitter drones; you can't see them and you're not gonna, no matter how much you try. You'll just have to take my word for it when I tell you they're loaded down with enough Boom to blow you, me, and this entire building, sky-high. Since we're in the heart of Redmond Barrens, I estimate the explosion will inflict about ten million nuyen worth of urban improvement on the area.

"And no, you can tell your hacker not to try. They're not listening to any wireless commands except the command to initiate the strike mission. I can't even call them off myself, they're watching for this meeting to go exactly the way I programmed them to let it go without blowing this building all to hell. If it goes any other way - including the signals from mine or Bob's bio-monitors being disrupted in any way - and that includes jamming, or torture - the strike mission initiates. If we catch the flu - hell, if we just feel particularly threatened - the strike mission initiates.

"Oh, and guess what happens if you jam, or shoot down, my spotter? If you guessed 'the strike mission initiates,' then you win a prize. Here, have five nuyen on me, that's your prize. Oh, and in case you're thinking of following us out of here when we walk out, very much alive and unharmed, they're going to be watching. Guess what happens if you follow us? If you guessed 'The strike mission initiates,' you're right!

"By now, your little pissant hedge-mage has sent up a spirit to try and find my strike drones. Go ahead, call him. His spirit just got fragged on the astral by my astral overwatch. Oh, and all of the drones? They're equipped with FABIII sensors. If those hush puppies go off, you bet your ass the strike mission initiates. So are we, so even if you're thinking about having someone try to mind control us, think again, because if anything particularly magical happens to us, well... You get the idea.

"And in case you were thinking of doublecrossing us, bear in mind that we've done our homework. We've done our legwork. Double crossing us will be very, very expensive, even if you manage to wipe out me, and Bob, and the other guys you don't know about, in one hit. I'm not going to tell you the full details, but I will say that they include full details of your operations - your rosters, the gangs on your payroll - and that includes the ones whom you flipped into working from you but are still taking money from the mafia - your places of business, your mules, your cook-houses, your front operations... They go broadband. Lone Star. Knight Errant. The Mob, the Yaks, the Triads, the Seoulpa Rings, the Ancients, the Spikes, and frigging Humanis Policlub, all of them get all of that information if you doublecross us, here or elsewhere. And of course, the strike mission initiates, though not necessarily here.

"Now, you've insulted us, you've issued threats to us, when we came to you with an offer, a deal, and it was a good one. I am now altering the deal: every man in this building is going to place every weapon and credstick he has on his person into that duffel bag Bob is now emptying of your product, that's our 'time and trouble' bonus.. We're going to sell to you, and for the first eight weeks, you're going to buy at fifty percent of street value, not thirty. And you're going to like it, because I have the kind of shit they can't even get in Viet Nam these days. Alternatively, if you don't want to buy from us, that's fine; cool. We respect your right to choose not to do business with us. Someone else will want to buy our product, that's better than yours. Gotta love the free market there, chummer. But we will be taking your guns and your pocket change for the insult of your threats. Do I make myself clear, chummer?

"Oh, but what's that, you say? What's to stop me from initiating the strike mission on this building after we walk out of here? Well, physically, nothing, I guess. You'll just have to take my word for it that I'm an honorable man and when I strike a bargain, whether it's 'your cash, for me, my dope for you,' or 'hand me all your guns and money and you get to go home alive,' I keep it. Alternatively, you could go with 'it would be stupid of me to blow up my new business partners.' Up to you."


Runners may not be able to stop a gang or a syndicate from killing them, but properly prepared Runners can make them regret it.





You only lose if you persist past the point where you should vanish. You can hit them, take out bosses, and vanish, having gotten your satisfaction and materially damaged them without them being able to strike back. Also, you're assuming that the Runners don't have bigger fish backing them.

Because that is what PC's right out of char generation using the standard build rules are.


I never said that it happened often. It doesn't. But it's always sitting there as an option and it's one of the things that keeps whomever the Runners are dealing with somewhat honest. Are they really willing to frag the face on the expectation that his teammates won't go insane with rage and do everything in their power to bring down whatever entity is responsible? Sure, most of the time the team will let it go with a bit of localized vengeance. But perhaps the team were all brothers and sisters and they take killing one of their own as the gravest possible insult, to be met with the total destruction of the individuals responsible and everyone they represent.



Why in the world would you think that you went into their stronghold? And there is always taking a canister of Ringu in with you.


You vastly overestimate the intelligence and resiliency of organized criminal entities. Most are held together by the will of a few individuals, kill them and the entire entity will tear it's self apart in a succession fight.


Shadowrunners of the PC's level are the big fish. A team of prime runners is the most deadly and capable group operating in the under world. Criminal gangs exist at the sufferance of the runner teams, not the other way around. If a runner team wants a criminal gang destroyed then it has the ability to carry out that destruction.

There is nothing stopping a runner team from seeding the entire barrens with stealth surveillance assets that are feeding into a stealth LZ-2065 with an anti ship laser on board that is circling 50,000 feet up and 10 kilometers away. Whenever the surveillance assets identify a member of the gang, said individual explodes with no visual or auditory clue as to what caused his death. A mega corp can counter such activities, a criminal gang can't.


Then the characters were either idiots or had bad luck.


None of that is relevant. You have to localize and track the runner team before you can bring those people, that firepower, and that money to bare against them. If the runner team is remotely competent then you won't be able to localize them without the assets of a mega-corporation.


No, you just assassinated the human form drone made to look like me. But let's suppose you managed to assassinate the runner in question. You still have to contend with the rest of his team, which is now out for revenge.

If you want to fight runners then you have to kill the entire team at once, picking them off one by one is doomed to failure.

The mega has also found that all kinds of incriminating and embarrassing information has just appeared all over the matrix and doesn't seem possible to wipe out. Every runner team will find tons of valuable blackmail information and will have it set to go public if they die.


No, they hirer runners because they are deniable, because they are better than all but their best, and because they are cheaper. Every mega has one to two complete teams on par with prime runners. The skill set is not common, having it combined with the mindset and personality need is even less common, having that along with a team that can function together is an order of magnitude rarer.

How effective the runners can be against a megacorporation really depends on metagame factors - how devious the players are, how devious the GM is, and how much GM fiat can happen without the players walking. Personally, I agree with those advocating that the runners, with careful planning, can potentially cripple an enemy organization to the point that the other sharks close in. The book Hardwired, by Walter Jon Williams, was basically this. The biggest problem the runners have is that their ability to fade into the shadows is dependent on a network of people supporting them with fake IDs, gear, etc. and those people can be compromised. On the flip side, those people are often not as vulnerable as they might seem, because they are either affiliated with criminal syndicates themselves, or have lots of connections. Leaning on Bob the fixer to get to his team might get Bob's buddy the Oyabun pissed and Bob's other three shadowrunner teams coming after you.

But this is the kind of thing that can result in bad blood or arguments if everyone is not on board with the game going in that direction. The problem is that both sides are vulnerable to logical tactics that are extremely unfair and difficult to defend against, and which can suck the fun from the game.

There are plenty of actual historical cases that represent both sides of that, though. Small guerrilla organizations *have* won in the past against much larger groups with more people, more firepower, and more money (or at least fought them to a stand-still). But there's also a lot of times that superior firepower meant a quick win.

Hate to break it to ya, Tippy, but starting characters aren't Prime Runners. Using BP, you'd probably need either 600 or 700 points to build a Prime Runner, and using the Karma Generation, probably around 1200 to 1300 points. They're experienced Runners at 400, but that's only having a few runs under their belt so that they're not wet-behind-the-ears newbs to the shadows.

Not according to the core rulebook. Under the rules a 400 BP character a day out of character generation is a prime runner.

Given that a 400 BP character can fairly easily have a 5 or 6 in an attribute and a 6-9 effective in a skill, you're at least fairly close.

Top tier runners probably have a lot *more* skills, but I doubt they're much better at their core skill than a 400 bp.

Back to the topic of the thread. I think the safest get rich quick scheme for a character costs almost no BP.

Step 1. Take the Day Job Quality and Sinner.

Step 2. Work for Ares.

Step 3. Take Damien Knight as a Loyalty 6 Contact.

Step 4. As soon as the game starts ask for a promotion.

Step 5. Enjoy your cushy desk job. How much do you think a high level executive for Ares makes in a month? (100,000 nuyen? 300,000 nuyen? + stock options and an expense account. Argue with your GM about realism and negotiate a reasonable salary) No rolls necessary.

(Step 6. Deny that shadowrunners exist. Step 7. Refuse to talk to the other player's characters because the official corporate line is that they're not real. Step 8. Roll to process files and fill out employee evaluations. Step 9. Learn to size up which employees are likely to survive in the shadows and hold a grudge. Step 10. Fire someone else.)

11. Roll in giant pile of money

Fixed that for you.

Care to share where you think that you got that? I have never seen any indication of such text in the Core Book at all...

pages 284-285. A prime runner can be as little as 320 BP.

Hrm... Now you've got me considering a game where all the players are high-level execs in some Mega who lead double lives - by day (some days,) they put in time at the office and appear to be generally disinterested, wealthy, loyal corporate citizens. At night (and some days), and with the boss's blessing, they run the Shadows.

Nice... Using an NPC Guideline to compare to Characters and then assuming Characters are Prime Runners because of it.
I call BS.

Here is the Initial Quote...



So, per the NPC Definition of a Prime Runner, it is just an NPC with a real character sheet. This is not the same defitinion that we Use for a Character that is the top of his game, has been around a while, and has many, many more Contacts, resources etc. than a Beginning Character.

In other Words, the Prime Runner definition that you are using is not the Same Definition of Prime Runner that many of us use to describe Highly Experienced Characters. *shrug*

Okay, sorry, TJ. Beginning player characters are at a level very similar to and possibly above some prime runners.
PCs can take contacts with their BP as well, you know, and NPC prime runner resources aren't just handwaved if actually built, that has to cost BP as well.

Any runner who would meet a potential enemy on the enemy's own territory, is an idiot and deserves what they have coming to them.

Any group of runners who can'tinfiltrate a pre-selected "neutral territory" site to make a few "extra installations", should get out of the biz before their parents call them home for supper.



Again ... it's not about the runners winning. It's about the runners making sure that anything that hurts them is simply too expensive to be worth it.

...

It's like when I play Crete, in a game of Avalon Hill's Advanced Civilization. In that game, any protracted war is the stupidest thing you can do, because you won't profit, it's functionally impossible to win, and all it will be is a drain on your resources. (Brief conflicts over small, easily-defined objectives are a different matter.)

However, one of the first declarations I make when playing Crete is "Anyone touches these islands here, here, here, and here? Or anyone who comes further south on the Greek mainland than here? Total, unending war. Because if I lose those sites, I've already lost the game - and I'm taking whoever did that WITH me."

Same principle. You make sure the cost of something is higher than the something itself - and suddenly noone is buying.

Again, I know what you're doing here, but the entire point of this thread is that there is a Runner, who wants to stay a Runner, and not go corporate by taking the day job and rolling to process files.

I am slightly mystified at how anathema this seems to be to the majority of Dumpshock. I'm tempted to do some pop psychology, but I can't imagine it would end well.

It seems like the Runners themselves would have a pretty reasonable idea of how much money they're *not* making by choosing their path. For instance, I know approximately what a contract software coder makes. Before I took my current position, I looked at what I would make there, how much stress there would be, and how much I'd enjoy my job, and compared it against those same parameters if I spent six months refamiliarizing myself with whatever the popular coding language at the time was, and then started doing contract work. I wasn't planning to do that, as I wasn't interested in becoming a codeslinger for hire. But it was nice to know what my point of comparison was. This is the same kind of idea.

If your Runner is the "ignorance is bliss" type, that's fine. But some Runners might not be. If your Runner is an "I run for the money" type, then they should know what the money is in context. If they run for other reasons, then this isn't entirely relevant, but *still* provides a point of reference. "I want you to kill Damien Knight, and I'll give you 100k Nuyen." "Wow! That's amazing! 100k for a job that will most certainly result in my death!? Listen, *Bud* if I wanted to take a job that would kill me, I'd deal drugs in Azzie turf for a year. I'd make more, and enjoy my life a lot more besides."

Sorry, that's not Shadowrun. You're friendly with Corps.

(I've tried so hard not to troll, but I had to.)

Under the section on assigning build points, where it talks about adjusting the totals up and down to suit the campaign, it gives examples of 300 BP for a street-level campaign, and 500 BP for high-powered elite operatives.

Build points are a poor indication of power level, though. For 400 BP, you can make the equivalent of a prime runner if you are good enough at character creation, including making your specialty narrow enough that you can be near the top at it, while still functional in other areas. But that same 400 BP can also make far weaker characters - an open build character creation system tends to have a lot of pitfalls - hyper-specialization, over-generalization, and not taking advantage of the relatively cheap boosts that magic and augmentation can give.

The direction that this topic to reminds me of a few of movies...
Commando
Expendables
RED



EDIT: Spelling corrections

I love RED

Prime Runners are defined by who they know and what they're done.

Not by their stats.

I KNOW I can build a new PC better than many of the Street Legends and Prime Runners in the books. That doesn't make the PC a Prime Runner. He hasn't earned that title yet.




-k

Head of Security: Sir, good news! We've found the perp who raided our Tacoma facility 2 weeks ago.

Damien Knight: Great! Get the thor shot ready, let's fry this young upstart where he stands! Who is the sumbitch?

Head of Security: He's a shadowrunner, sir.

Damien Knight: A ... shadowrunner. (Knees quake) ... OK, cancel that thor shot. If I geek him, he'll have me ousted as president at my next board meeting. Send our smoothest negotiator out to offer him a briefcase with 10 million nuyen to just leave us alone.

This is a massive change in position for you. First you tell us that if your runners ain't using persona-fix chips to change their gait they will be squashed like bugs if one mistake leads the corps to them, now you say that the megas should be running scared of prime runners (which you define as 400BP characters). Seems like your runners went to all those silly precautions for nothing. Which is it?

You want to do business with this syndicate, not the other way around. Why would they come to you (and even if they did, why would they not do proper astral and drone survillance first)?

Your suicide bomber post was laughable, but your crass "negotiating" style in the above post shows really takes the biscuit. You show no sincerity, and the extract quoted makes you a liability. Anyone who claims to know that much about their operations should be geeked with extreme prejudice and no matter what the cost. Like right now.

If a potential drug manufacturer (espicially a runner one) has the right contact, they should be able to arrange for the PCs to visit the syndicate. As long as the PCs are courteous they should get out alive and well, although whether they get the business or not is another question.

As for all the money that can be made from such business, I am not so sure. The syndicate may well be manufacturing their own product (certainly the more profitable drugs at least), so said PC would probably have to make do with manufacturing a lower profit item at least at first. They would also have to fulfill their production quota, which might get in the way of their running.

More like
Damien Knight: A shadowrunner? Interesting. Ok, cancel that thor shot. Pass the information along to intelligence and human resources, I want to know everything that their is to know about this runner.

2 days later:
Head of Security: Sir, here is the data on that runner. He was born John Happy at 1:29 AM 2032, fortunately for us his family lived in an Ares owned apartment complex. Here is the complete background on everyone that he ever interacted with as far as we can tell. Happy then enlisted in the UCAS military where his aptitude tests showed him to be exceptional in all areas, genius intellect, near peak physical abilities, and a psych profile nearly perfectly aligned for spec ops work. The UCAS military sent him to their Ghost program. While undergoing Ghost training he awakened, showing supernatural physical abilities and being classified as an Adept. Happy spent the next four years in Ghost training before graduating as one of the best assassins and infiltration experts the Ghost training has ever turned out. Over the next 13 years he performed admirable, eventually becoming one of the UCAS's best assassins and special operators under the codename Shingami. This is where things get spotty sir, Crash 2.0 hit and alot of data was lost. Immediately after the Crash, the hard copy data storage facility for Ghost records was destroyed by an unknown operator, the Ghost ritual sample vault was destroyed, again by an unknown operator, and Happy's bosses all died under suspicious circumstances. If we didn't make it a point to have the UCAS special operations commands thoroughly penetrated we wouldn't have this information sir, I'm fairly confident that this is probably one of the only remaining copies of Happy's UCAS file and past.

After breaking his ties with the UCAS Happy appears to have gone mercenary under a host of false identities and titles. Contract killer for the Vory, Mafia, triads, and Yakuza as four different people. Corporate spy for numerous unrated and A-rated corps. Here is his current address, our hackers have taken over every matrix linked asset in a 5 square mile area and are tracking him in real time, our mages have established symbolic ritual links to him, we have five stealth LZ-2065's with Mercury Anti-shipping lasers providing over-watch from 10 kilometers away. Smaller spy drones are being directed in as we speak and I've put Firewatch on notice.

Damien Knight: Good, you've done very good. Killing this Happy won't bring my facility back, but getting him working for us could be quite profitable. I'll have one of HR's best negotiators briefed on the situation and what they can offer this Happy. As always though, if it looks like his isn't going to work for us or is going to escape our watch; the air assets are ordered to vaporize him.


Both.

Runners are valuable assets, each one is worth potentially billions of nuyen (that being the value at the corporate level of a lot of your runs). Dead they aren't making the mega any money and aren't useful to the mega, co-opted they are making the mega quite a bit of money and are being useful.

If you don't take all of those precautions then the mega will find you, at which point it will either co-opt you if possible and kill you if it isn't possible. Killing you will be done with no notice, overwhelming force, and with the trail prelaid to lead back to an enemy mega so that any retaliation is still profitable for the mega. There ends your dreams of being a free agent and independent, you are now under the close supervision and direction of a megacorporation and won't be leaving it's grip alive short of death or crash 3.0

Yes they would. Because they don't control you. That is the key part. Everything about the drug trade is tightly controlling the supply.

Those that control the major supply won't cut a deal with you because you are a more expensive supplier and would only serve to give them more stock or the same stock at a higher cost than they already produce/want. The minor players won't play with you because if they suddenly start to produce more than they have previously, the bigger player is going to come in and smack them around. In turn, if you went to the major player first they will know you and will probably link you to the smaller players if they decide to do business with you. There are plenty of reasons why you wouldn't be able to do business and very few reasons why you would.

Everything is all about the money, and no one has given any reasons why a drug syndicate should do business with a drug-making runner aside from it's more expensive to try to whack them, which is not a reason to do a business only a reason not to conclude the business on bad terms, or because the runners can make it so there must be a buyer for it, which fails in the most basic economic sense. I've provided plenty of reasons why the various people the runners would deal with would not do business with them.

--



Given the cost of making a triple AAA all-star MOAB(adasses) sniper (not sharpshooter since they have differing skillsets) is so low (compared to other options to geek the players)... It's pretty safe to say it can be done quietly.

--



And you assume they're stupid enough to come to yours? Please. That already strains credibility. They wouldn't invite you to their stronghold either. They would invite you to a "neutral" ground of their choosing to do the business. Of course it would be a neutral ground that is actually advantageous to them for some reason and a reason that they don't necessarily care if you know that it's not neutral.



So here's 2 people already getting paid by your little drug operation. You're also risking to blow yourself and whatever pissant they sent to deal with you. A pissant who has probably been ordered to kill you which means that if he fails he might just get killed himself. So the way the pissant is looking at it, either he can let you live and go into hiding hoping the syndicate won't find and kill him or he can follow orders and kill you (thus stopping the supply) and run the risk that your buddies aren't as dumb as you (by willing take part in a suicide option) are making yourself sound.



So here's your 3rd person taking part in the deal.

You're already splitting your profits three ways (you [hacker since you programmed your drones, shitty face as well], a mage, and Bob who I assume is some sammy) as well as needing to convince the other members of your team that dealing drugs and getting cozy with the criminal syndicates is a good idea. That involves convincing them that this is all worth taking a gamble on the suicide option that you've setup for yourself. Additionally, with your crass and bullying style of negotiation it is possible that the syndicate will do business with you just to give them the legwork opportunity to whack you.

--



I've bolded the relevant part. It's an organization that survives not individuals. A team of runners is not an organization. An organization would be more on par with all the runners in Seattle. If a team of runners picks a fight with a larger organization will the runners of Seattle join in? Probably not. There's no profit in it.

--



My runner's history has him coming out of the government after a conspiracy scandal got him "fired". With his skill set, he could have easily gotten work at one of the AAA's but other factors, blackmail on his part and kidnapping on part of the conspiracy, made going to work for a AAA extremely risky for his family. If someone is a runner it's probably because they cannot get employed elsewhere for some reason (typically because they're SINless), because some other factor is making legitimate work impossible, or because running is more lucrative than other options.

Isn't part of the deal having them control you? If it was an issue of control, you wouldn't be coming to them in the first place.

Control means control of the supply and control of the players in the game. The first is the really the important part since controlling the supply allows them to upmark the drugs by around I'd estimate 300-500% of cost once you factor in transportation and everything you're likely looking at around 20-30% of street cost.

Controlling the supply means controlling the manufacturing of it. Due to the fact this is an illegal good it's not like they can stockpile the drugs and dole them out over time like the diamond and oil cartels in our real world do so if they expand the capacity to manufacture the drugs there needs to be the demand to consume them or their risk goes up because they have these illegal substances lying around. So your runner comes in to the big player (which is the safest one to deal with). What are they going to do? They probably don't need to expand their manufacturing capacity which means they have no reason to pay you more than what they pay for their other manufacturers since they will still manufacture X units and if you want to be paid more than those guys are being paid they have no reason to hire you since all your doing is just increasing the cost for manufacturing X units. About the only thing that makes sense to hire you is to hire you to not produce drugs which is still an increase in their costs and what guarantee do they have that you aren't using the capacity to produce drugs for someone else?

It's not just about you working for them.

They're not going to feel comfortable unless they know they have some sort of solid hold over you.

So make something up. Arrange a parent, or other valuable person, somebody or something that they think is near and dear to your heart that they can threaten so they feel they have the upper hand.




-k

Hiring a skilled chemist could also very well be cheaper than the two-three worse ones he can replace by being that much more efficient. Suppose that Mr. Average chemist (3 logic, 4 skill [veteran level], +2 spec] can make one batch in 8 hours (buying hits, and no pool degrading (he would not be able to finish a batch if it did, even at 3 dice:1 hit)). You come along with skill 20 (Logic 5+Cerebral Booster 2+Skill 5 [expert level]+Spec 2+Encephalon 1+PuSHeD 1+Neocortical nanoware 3+reference material 1), and roll out drugs twice as fast, and of a higher quality (which has no game effect, but might have some roleplaying bonus). If we assume instead that two chemists being compared roll all the time, and somehow manage to roll completely average, Mr. Average gets a batch finished in 6 hours, while you can do the same in three. He might have an aversion to working 12 hours each day 'round the year, but you can easily handle 9 hours with your sleep regulator, making you three times as efficient.

That only makes sense if the manufacturer is being paid as part of a wage (paid based on hours worked) or salary (paid x amount on a "contract") rather than piece rate (paid by what you produce). So far this topic has been discussed in a piece rate manner. With piece rate, a person who is 3x productive can replace 3 employees but there will be no difference in payroll costs.

If nothing else, it lessens the cost needed for labs. Since you need a 200k facility to get the non-simple drugs made (the ones all the math have been assuming), only needing one of those rather than 3 is a fair amount of saved nuyen. But I was, for that example, assuming a pay rate not based entirely on produce.

The capital costs aren't relevant since it has been discussed as the runner creating his own lab and not the syndicate.

Yes we have. That was the point early one: we can make better stuff than yours, which you can either (a) sell for more per weight, or (b) cut to produce much more weight without losing potency compared to the stuff you have now, or © sell less of for the same price.





"Neutral" ground works. If they think it's neutral, well, so can we. We an also hire a lower-level team to go around and carefully incapacitate the guys they have laying in wait or something.




Splitting the profits with my entire team is 100% all right by me. And if the guy is a pissant, he can always go for option 3: Flip on the guys who sent him to his death and come work for me. You're also neglecting the probability that if they sent a disposable pissant, he's not gonna be able to kill me no matter what. They were probably expecting some high school chemistry teacher, they got Runners.






If we're at this stage, we're already past the part where we decide to try selling to the syndicate, and again, I have no problem what-so-ever splitting the profits with my team.


Also, you're neglecting to mention that my "crass and bullying style of negotiation" is after they've already responded to a very good deal with a gun pointed in my face and an attempt to rob me. In the Shadows, there are three appropriate ways to respond to a threat like that: (a) immediate capitulation, (b) immediate violence, and © immediate demonstration of the overwhelming superiority of your position which the other guy has failed to grasp.

(a) is out of the question, I'm not letting some punk-ass drug dealers stick a gun in my face, rob me of 50,000+ nuyen worth of product and be happy for my life. My street cred would take a nose-dive.
(b) is not preferable, since I still want money, and I'd rather initiate a war with them if it can be at all avoided.
© then is the preferred outcome. It's nothing more than business; turning the usual paradigm for the drug syndicate on its head, admittedly, but they've been on the giving end of such an "I don't think you grasp how much we have you by the balls here" treatment to know what the proper responses are. They don't have a © option since we've just exercised it, and in doing so, we've outlined that the repercussions of exercising (b) will be very, very unprofitable for them at best, literally and figuratively fatal at worst.

And if I catch them doing legwork on me (and I will, because I'll be doing legwork on legwork efforts against me,) I'll put together a dossier on their least profitable enterprise and email it to Lone Star, Knight Errant, the Mafia, Yaks, Triads, Seoupla Rings, Ancients, Spikes, and Humanis Policlub, as well as CCing the syndicate themselves, and in the body of the CC (but not the others) I'll write "I hope you didn't think I was bluffing. Stop digging into me, or I'm going to assume you're getting too close and go with the nuclear option. There will be no further warnings. Do we understand one another?"

The costs are relevant for the organization, if the comparison is between employing a number of house chemists, or buying the drugs a runner could cook up. Costs are even more relevant if their own labs get raided by Knight Errant or the like once in a while, as a new lab is expensive.

And yet, how are you defining Better Stuff in a game that does not have that particular distinction? Boggles the mind it does.