One of our players is under the delusion that he can solo a AAA megacorp (Renraku, specifically) in a few months/years ingame. Obviously, this is so absurd that none of the other players think that he'll make a noticeable impact on the local branch's quarterly expenses, much less bring them down.

However, he's recently been considering the idea of a bioweapon attack on them. He doesn't seem to understand that this will get us killed. and all our contacts. and anyone who knew our contacts. Ect. So what I need is some plausible-seeming strategy that we can funnel him towards instead that will A) take his time and effort without drawing unwanted attention, B) Take a long time to set up, and C) have some minor flaw that we can point out at the last minute to convince him that it won't work, thus forcing him to start from scratch. Dumping the character is not an option for various reasons, so we need to channel his efforts into something harmless. any ideas?

Let him try. Let him get the entire group, and their contacts, and their contacts' families, killed. Then, when he asks, "How could this have happened," you take him by the hand, and gently explain that it happened because he is an idiot with no real grasp of the setting. Hopefully, after that, he will be better-behaved.

Too bad it wasn't S-K he was after. Wonder how he'd react to a little one-on-one time with the Hans Brackhaus.

Otherwise this sounds a little like an Elevator Ride To Hell.

He joins them. Works his way up middle management slowly accumulating power. Playing the upper management political game. Until in a violent take over he ousts the CEO and becomes head of the mega corp and proceeds to make as many bad management decisions as possible to bankrupt the company.

Or he could always just kill the CEO. It wouldn't be easy, but would at least be more doable then stopping an entire faceless mega corp. But what'd be even easier then that, without having to change cities, would be to kill the head of whatever the local branch is. Also, he should probably frame someone else. Nothing like a good ol' scapegoat to keep the heat off him.

Or he could disrupt their supply chains on a small scale. Steal a shipment of sprockets and give it to the local orphanage, or just destroy it. Extraction runs and kidnap a lot of head researchers and sell them off to other corps. Pretty much normal shadowrun stuff...just a bit more well targeted at one corp. That'd probably be your best bet. Slowly they'd lose so much money they'd have to close shop in that city.

It's Renraku. he's an elf. There are no non-humans in Renraku that hold positions higher than junior executive. (Corporate guide, page 139). otherwise it'd be a sound plan.

Let his contacts catch wind of the plan. Then apply the following qualities:

- Bad Rep
- Hung Out to Dry
- Wanted (possibly)

This should get across the idea of how stupid an idea this is. Or just talk to him out of game and explain that no, he CANNOT take down Renraku - they can very, very easily just send someone far more competent than him to take him down. And that the team has absolutely no reason to keep him alive, much less around, if he's going to be that sort of liability.

How about you all grab archetype characters and join in as best as you can. You'll still fail, but you'll be free to fail spectacularly. It's a chance for one night of goofy pink-mohawk totally-over-the-top fun. And afterwards your real characters can always joke about those drekheads who tried to go up against Renraku.

Sounds like he needs to invest in some cosmetic cyberware to get the human looking quality then.

Well, Renraku isn't the biggest of the Megas. It was ... 6th, I think? In the last Corp Guide. (Mind you, Shiawase fell from 3rd to 8th in that book, so, it might not be exactly on-target) ... at any rate, let's say it's somewhere in th 5-7 level. Comparing it to modern nations, it's teh same as fighting France (#5), Brazil (#6) or the United Kingdom (#7) ... does he feel that his plan would destroy any of those nations? If not, then they won't work on a Mega.

What kind of bioweapon is he considering ? About the only thing that could kill enough peoples to significantly harm the Mega would be a nasty genemod disease. Mere toxins simply don't have enough reach to hit more than one site at a time. Unfortunately, there's no Renraku gene - which means anything nasty enough to damage Renraku would damage everyone else. There's a reason why bioweapons are frowned upon : they're horribly indiscriminate and have a knack for flying straight back into the user's face along with massive colleteral damage.

Even disease talored to aime for pure-strain human tailored bug would be major bad news as humans are still the majority. And since most metahuman tend to be 'human genome with some extras', whatever he might cook up is lkely to end up hitting metahumans too.

It also brings the question of what kind of bee got under his bonnet toward Renraku. Is it personnal 'Renraku screwed ME, I'll destroy them', some outrage at how they handle methaumans (gues what, most Japancorps play with the same book - why would he single out Renraku ?) or something else ?

I'd say work from that and see if there's another way to alleviate whatever got him into that sort of mindset.

If all else fail and simly kicking the character out is out of the question, locate someone with acess to brainwriting hardware (don't remember the in-game terminlogy) and edit that obsession out, or at least bring it to osmething more reasonable..

Ask him what his actual goal is. "Destroying a Megacorp" is kinda nebulous.
Sure, he can kill the board of directors but that doesn't destroy it. It hurts their stocks, yes but new directors will get elected and things will continue.

He's considering a genecrafted virus... which I believe he thinks is a 'zombie virus' but which if he'd been paying attention is closer to a vampire virus. yeah, if there was any chance that the virus was actually still viable (His idea for storing his sample was to pack the vials in foam. no refrigeration, then a week of travel. yeah, let's see a logic 3 phys-adept try and replicate the virus from that with no aid from the group biologist!

As for target discrimination... I'm not certain he's familiar with the term. Honestly, if he had a chance to succeed then I'd give Lone Star an anonymous tip off... but for this scheme he doesn't.

His thing with Renraku is a classic: Lost loved one negative quality. Of course, while technically the fight he should be picking is with the Seattle branch of the red samurai he decided to expand his hatred to all of Renraku.

I just can't wait to remind him that his girlfriend is in the building he's trying to biobomb... I think I'll wait until he's just about ready to deploy whatever he cooks up.

Target discrimination is hitting what you want and not hitting what you don't want or are notsupposed to hit. Snipng is discirminate (well, if you take the time to identfy what you're shooting a), drive by shooting isn't. Laser-guided bomb opposed to WWII-syle carpet bombing. Which what he's going after is definitively not as there's zero way for a virus to tell 'oh that person isn't from Renraku, let's look for someone else.'. Once that particular car is out of the bag, it'll claw anything that comes close then run out for more scratchposts...

Also with an average logic, no biology or genecrafting skill and no lab, there's a very high chance that 'patient zero' (the first person to get infected and who will transmit the disease around) will be himself. He doesn't even have a snowball's chance in hell to make a sucessful genemod, even less to get a working biowarfare virus. At best he may cutlure and spread around an existing disease. Once again with a very good chance to infect himself if he's using something contagious.

I have a dim memory of some IRL terrorists trying to make an athrax bomb and managing to infect themselves way before getting anywher close to building their weapon. (note : checked, it seems to be bogus But possible, like a meth cooker blowing himself up with his lab...)

I would suggest that instead he assemble a large pile of data. Blackmail material for 50 or so high ranking executives should work. Then he should collect the security info on lots of their facilities, specifically anywhere that has valuable paydata and the weak points of the system. Further assemble a large group of investors and friends with enough liquid capital to buy out the a big portion of the company at discount prices.

With the blackmail material he can gather more information and force bad decisions and get back doors put into their system. Then he leverages this blackmail to start a downward spiral of PR nightmares. Once he's got enough info and they're really compromised he leaks the info on the matrix of all the security sites, their matrix weak points, where their paydata and valuable assests. It should create a shadowrunner/mega corp feeding frenzy that will seriously devalue their stock and take out a large portion of their ability to respond and seriously damage the company. Once they've taken a big hit, use your investors to buy out a large portion of the company and set up matrix preventions to prevent anyone else from getting in on the purchasing. Reinvent the company as something else, have the people you don't like in the company summarily executed. Profit.

That's a plan that will take several years to put into motion and is not necessarily suicidal like a full frontal assault.

The "zombie virus" already exists, it's called HMHVV (Ghoul).

He needs a way to encourage the Corporate Court to call open season on Renraku. Anything direct is a waste of time.

http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Corporate_Court

With serious enough blackmail on the majority of the thirteen board members, he might be able to do this. Problem? The board members change every six months, meetings are held on Zurich Orbital, and I could see the founding seven megas killing their representative before allowing them to be compromised - they get to choose who is put up for election in those seats.

If his shenanigans threaten the group, get him a good psychiatrist. Or feed him to Tamanous and sell his implants. Maybe both, if the psychiatrist can't help.
Personal grudges of this size can and will pull down everything around him.

The only ways to take down Renraku are as follows.

1: Find evidence of their/frame them for doing something so blatant and uncorporate that the CC issues an Omega Order on them and let the blood flow.
2: Found your own corp, claw your way up to AA status, then aim to take Renraku's seat on the CC.

It would probably be much simpler to tell him that his missing girlfriend is alive and can probably be rescued.

easier to give a face to blame, a few executives and middle managers he can pin the blame on directly. assuming he ever tries to do any legwork at all.

seriously, this sort of thing reminds me of 'the stars my destination' by Alfred Bester. the main character starts out with a very basic goal of revenge, but as it is thwarted he turns his vengeance upon individuals rather than against a faceless symbol.

aside from that.... even if he does dedicate his time to acts of terrorism (and he will need to use asymetric warfare here), it will never be enough to really hurt any AAA. long-run, his best bet is to whittle them down enough that another AAA can feed on whats left.

Yeah, the team should probably look at buying some BTLs with some kind of 'Love Renraku' effect and slip it into his morning newspaper download.

To have any chance of success he must do as a very minimum the following:

1) Have personal direct access to magic. Without it they will find you with too much ease.
2) Tell no one, if you expect to succeed.
3) Uncover information or frame them for stuff that won't garner any sympathy from their corporate competitors.
4) Stepford wife their middle management, but never use them until the endgame. Never go after the big fish.
5) Do jobs for Renraku, and do them the right way. Don't screw them, and make sure you don't take a job where they will screw you. Turn jobs donw from time to time.
6) Make friends at Renraku.
7) Make money, lots of it, you will need it.
After years of turning middle management into your future hardwired personal slaves and making tons of money while being good little Shadowrunners, pull the trigger and watch it crumble if you did everything right.

The big problem is keeping your mouth shut and avoiding suspicion. Things he is already failing to do. Start even looking at bio warfare as an option and Renraku will be the least of his troubles. He will be happy if Renraku gets to him first, at least that way he will get his blood all over their hands.

Considering that it's precisely the sort of shenanigans the megacorps try to pull over each others, I don't think his odds for sucess are very good. As soon as he gets reasonably identified as a nuisance of significant magnitude, he'll probably get wiped out. Art Dankwalther style if necessary.

It really depends on several factors. First of all, it would largely depend on his skillset and how skillful he is. World class business skills (Social skills, Knowledge skills, etc) would enable him to map out his campaign with higher probabilities of success. Second, he would need to amass the resources and contacts to execute his plan.

Really, short of spending the next 30 in-game years obsessively building up enough power and influence to feasibly make a dent in Renraku's immense strength, the only viable option is making an insane grab for overwhelming disruptive power in a terrorist act.

Things like finding some way to hijack a Thor just long enough to wipe Renraku's main headquarters off the face of the earth, or even better if you can manage it, a rival company's headquarters and make it look like Renraku was responsible. Bioweapons might be viable, but it'd probably be simpler to go nuclear. Basically the idea would be to cause as much damage and sow as much confusion as possible, all in one fell swoop, because any protracted engagement is going to end badly for you.

Of course, there's always magical terrorism too. Throw your lot in with Twisted Mages and you can get some nasty results. If you're willing to go far enough, you could even sell your soul to a Horror or the like, enticing it to come and have a little Doomsday Party in Renraku HQ.

~Umi

Step 1: Set up and attend a meeting with a Renraku VP.
Step 2: Sell the offending character up the river to the corp for a modest sum (it's more than you have now).
Step 3: Grab popcorn and watch as the corp destroys him, his family and his contacts (leaving those things for the rest of the party intact).

I think the OP is asking for solutions that don't involve killing that character. Having him committed to a mental asylum, rewriting his brain or hooking him up on BTLs that let him enact his revenge more or less is it.

Because that guy's a suicidal maniac who's gonna take the entire group down with him and needs to be neutralized - some way or other.

@FuelDrop: BTW have you asked the player what he thinks how long a criminal in the real world would survive if he started telling his buddies he wants to destroy France or the UK with bio weapons?

Or Monsanto or Microsoft or Apple???

Agreed. I said not necessarily suicidal, but still very likely so. It's the difference between a one in a million chance and a one in a billion chance of survival, because people with way more resources than you are also playing the corporate war game and one slip up means you get annihilated.

Remind him of the tale of Art Dankwalther - who was an immensely wealthy man who, as far as anyone can prove, didn't do anything extraordinarily illegal - he was just openly using his money as a weapon against the corp who screwed him.

And he was good, too. Dodged a dozen attempts on his life through more conventional means and taunted them about it. The CC looked like jackasses.

The entire Corporate Court voted an Omega Order on him. They murdered a few thousand innocent people and destroyed a city block of an entire UCAS city just to kill him, and they said "Yeah, we did it. That guy was getting to be trouble to the corporate way of life. What's that, UCAS? You're not happy about the collateral damage? TOO FUCKING BAD!"


That is the kind of people he's dealing with. Remind him of that, and suggest to him that now would be a good time to retcon the scope of his anger.

I didn't remember where the actual location of Dankwalther when he was killed, or the mention of any collateral casualties. Which book is that in?

System Failure, IIRC.

You mean how he would react to a little "dinner for one"...
Would leave the good Hans Brackhaus with a deeply philosophical question:
Ketchup or Salsa?


Anyhow, I think somebody has already hinted at it, but Megacorps are just to big to be taken down in one straight plot. Sure, you can hurt them a little, and a little etc. untill an other corp might take their place. But "THE PLOT" does not exist without alienating big parts of the planet against you...
So unless you are some half godly beeing... (Be it a great dragon or the force 73 spirit of chuck norris) It does not look good for you...

@SpellBinder

Well, it depends. If Monsanto is hit by bioweapons, they would probably get the blamed for it themselves...
Apple or Microsoft, thats less likely.. Unless you call it something like Virus 8 or iSick.

Another session, and it's become apparent that 'death by failing to take the hint' is likely to be this character's only ending. I mean, no-one likes arbitrary character killing but we gave this guy every reasonable chance to scale down his ambitions, or walk away... or even simply play it smart! But no, he's decided to start using his disposable commlink to search for info on Renraku, the Seattle water system, and propagating bioweapons.

We have now officially never met or heard of this guy before.

The GM is going to give him one last chance, which we reasonably expect him to completely ignore, then the gloves come off and we curb-stomp him so hard that people on the other side of the planet suddenly find a bump. Fortunately most of the group are actively trying to avoid getting entangled in this whole mess, so his actions are going to affect no-one but him.

Well, then, maybe you should create some throw away characters and go crazy pink mohawk and play along.

Or if you really want to save his life. Mind rape spells, or put some trodes on hime and start brainwashing with psychotropic programs. You can see the rules for brainwashing in Unwired. Or if you don't have the time to brainwash him and looking for a more mundane way to do it, knock him out and have a kink bomb installed. Nothing says guarantee co operation like losing your frontal lobe if you don't play with the team.

Has a AAA megacorp ever truly been destroyed? The only one I can think of is Fuchi, and that took a huge scandal to provoke the rest of the corporate to shut them down.(EDIT: Or not. Took a closer look at Fuchi's entry on the wiki; it's not a corporate take down, there's more to it than that.) To be able to take down Renraku, buddy-boy would almost certainly need the assistance of another AAA to set that in motion, and even then he would be almost guaranteed to be killed before he ever saw any part of the fallout.

Considering how dedicated he is the downfall of Renraku, I see this characters story have a very sudden end to it. Renraku's catering bill is larger than the characters net-worth, including that of all his soon-to-be-former contacts and their contacts. They can absorb the hit of losing tens of thousands of corporate assets (by which I mean employees). If anything, a sudden outbreak of, say, Ebola-Plus is only going to serve to make martyrs out of Renraku. If you really want to warn him off his current track, tell him that.

'Course, I wouldn't mind watching the shit-storm that will ensue from his antics. It's a shame I can't watch it. It sounds like it'll be a popcorn munching session.

Depending on how it turns out and what known relations your characters have with the loon, there's an entagnlement you might want : snatching and delivering him if he gets a bounty on his head.

Did someone point to him that by his choice of tactics he's going inflict the same sort of grief that he reproach Renraku to have inflicted to him on a whole slew of peoples, many of them don't even have any kind of direct relation with Renraku beyond the 'my cousin's girls sweeps floors in some offices in the Renraku offices'. Odds are he's far enough beyondthe bend that he won't care, but I'd think it's an argument that might get through.

What makes you think the spirit of Chuck Norris is only Force 73?

We did mention that, along with the fact that his girlfriend is likely to be in the building he's bio bombing. Didn't seem to get through. Unfortunately there is no bounty on him right now so collecting it may be difficult.

Monsanto etc do not have armies, police, and large highly skilled teams of commandos. Also, France or the UK are not the right model. They have a less direct way of dealing with these issues then a SR Mega does.

Consider instead what happens if you talking about your serious plan to destroy China, Israel or Russia with bioweapons while living in India or Bulgaria. How long would it take before you suffered an unfortunate fatal accident or simply mysteriously disappeared?

A very long time. More likely they would dismiss you as a crackpot, just like the 10999 others before you.

Yes, but you're absolutely going on a watch-list. And when you start taking steps to enact your grand scheme, suddenly your number in the "Who gets to be disappeared today" lottery comes up. You're taken away and tortured to see who might have been working with you. Everybody you know, all of your friends, contacts, and family members are taken away and tortured on the off-chance they were working with you, and if they were, who else was working with you. Then all of their close family and friends are taken away and tortured, just to set an example. Those people probably wouldn't know you from Nixon, but they still get to be tortured to death because they unluckily happen to have a Kevin Bacon Number relative to you of 2, with close immediate ties to the person who's #1.

Things may be getting better from the dark pits of the cyberpunk dystopian 50s, but the megacorps still assassinate whole families of people related to someone who cross them. That's not hyperbole or inference, mind you, it's stated outright in Gun Heaven 2 that Saeder-Krupp exterminated a guy's whole family because he tried to knock over a shipment of their new Deathdealer ammo.

I mentioned those corporations because they're big and quite well known. Also, Monsanto has been rumored to hire out 'deniable assets' in the past. And all three are quite well funded enough, though maybe not malicious enough (except maybe Monsanto), to bury a potential lone antagonist like this player's character deep in some obscure swamp on another continent, never to be heard from again if they believe they are well threatened enough by such a plot.

I have a question, is the player missing more than a few marbles, or are they just intent on being the center of attention?

He used to play D&... sorry, I mean the other game, and I don't think he ever really got out of the 'Go in and kill stuff for fat loots' mindset. In that game killing a dragon or even a god was tough, yes, but it was theoretically doable. He simply hasn't made the mental transition to shadowrun yet.

It is the same in shadowrun. Killing a great dragon or even a megacorp is very tough but theorectically doable.

Yes, but not through grinding up your level and gear until you're able to just brute-force them to death (Unless you're an immortal elf possibly). He's still thinking that brute force, rather than cunning, is his best solution.

And yes, I count a bioweapon attack as brute force.

One thing that crossed my mind : you mentioned a biologist in the party. Maybe you could quietly swap whatver he's planning to use with something harmless and easily recognizable, let him try his crap. Best case, he gets nailed by the security, ending the problem as he doesn't strike me as the sort who let himeslef be caught alive (which is a good point form the other player's point of view, a dead elf won't rat them...). If he manages to pull it off, there won't be too much damage and maybe his GF's catching the thing along with hedalines on the oddball cold, gastro or whatever epidimic striking out of the blue all over the place from the Renraku building might get the point through his delusions (it sounds like it's more serious than a mere thick skull...).

By that point there may be a bounty on whoever did the deed, so you can now cash on his head. Maybe send some documentation on the bioagent substitution nd whatever intellingence he acquired on his target to justify 'we were his pals so we didn't rat him, but we took step to minimize the damage'. Thouhg you're still technically accomplices to th fact and that leads to problems.

Asfar as money goes, in my opinion your safest bet would be to wait until he's almost ready and has compiled a good ntelligence file along with his bioweapon, then you nail him, go through a fixer to inform Renraku there's a threat against them (It's beter if you primed the piump first by spreading convincing rumors they're in someone's a error attack coming their way)and that they can get all about for a modest fee. Then you send them the idiot, his biowepons and all his files (properly scrubbed of what you don't want to be known) with a nice ribbon on the package and an maybe a nice letter on the 'we waited to be sure the guy was serious about it and worth a reward line'. Logically, Renraku wil give a reward.

A safer option would be to figure someone trying to win favor with Renraku and sell him the aforementionned package. Odds are a fixer or the like won't have Renraku level pockets but will be safer to deal with. You get some cash, he gets a good mark with Renraku, everyone's happy (well, one won't be hapy, but as he'll probably be dead, his opinion doesn't matter). His GF might be pissed, though once she know he planned a biowarfare attack likely to put her amongst the collateral damage, she's likely to mellow a bit.

Oh and what exactly does she do for Renraku ? If she's got links with Renraku it's odd that he doesn't include her into his pet hate. Or his he lying through his teeth and remorelessy using her as information source and possible delivery system ? (infect her without her knowledge with the bioagent and let her spread it around the Renraku office. And her whole neighborhood, but he doesn't strike me as the kind who would care...)

Tell him, out of character, that what he's trying to do is pick a fight with a rank 100 deity as a level 3 commoner.

in all honesty, let him try it .. and when he hasn't thought through / controlled everystep of the plan.
have it blow up in his face

i.e.

1) getting hands on bioweapon sample
a) Synthesizing the sample into weapons grade ?

2) not getting on the naughty list, immediately, for having it
2a) currently every sample of anything bio-engineered is controlled and recorded, in 60 years that level of paranoia will be immense

3) transporting and securing said bioweapon, how ?
3a) keeping it a secret that he has it from EVERYONE in the world !

4) mishandling the container and effectively suiciding downtown,
5) (if he gets past 4) getting it past security in the lobby or via the post office, every scanner and chem sniffer on the planet should be going off

and for every point above and beyond, there is somewhere the other players can be profiting, by informing other corps of the plot and selling information about the impending shock to the stock market.

They don't need to be involved, to be involved .. but for the GM it is a nightmare trying to effetively run 2 groups of activities untill he implodes and takes a city block with him.

If he actually has a bioweapon, he is one glitch (or even a failed test) away from infecting the whole team if they are anywhere near him. It would be totally reasonable for the whole team to go as far away as possible and not give him a forwarding address.

Other actions I would consider totally reasonable after leaving the fool to his own devices:
-Calling KE or the Star and tell them the guy has a bioweapon. See how many combat rounds he lasts against a Firewatch team in hermetically sealed combat armour with spirit support.
-Telling the Yakuza the guy has a bioweapon, although depending whether the Yaks in question are loyal to Mitsuhama, this actually might be a better delivery method for the weapon.
-Posting to Jackpoint/ShadowSEA/Shadowland/The Nexus with everything you know about the guy and the weapon. Some-one will view this as a problem. If it is a HMHVV strain, I can see either Hannibelle or Martin De Vries taking it upon themselves to kill/eat him. Those two even have stats ready to go.
-Send him a care package with a "best of luck, chummer" note. The package is filled with White Phosphorous.
-A rotordrone with a belt fed MGL-12 grenade launcher tasked to pay him a visit.
-A sniper set up a few blocks from his safe-house, either hire on or do-it-yourself for the personal touch.