Thought it apropos to start a list of when we all feel a character/group needs to be retired, either to NPC status, the halls of myth and legend, or to the morgue. To get it started, ...

It's time to retire your character when...

1. They're on a first-name basis with a headlining Prime Runner, the head of at least one major corp, or a great dragon.
----a. Especially if you use pet names for each other.
----b. Doubly so if your pet name for Loftwyr or Dunkelzhan is "Boots".
2. Your team has become one of the top 10 world economies.
3. You're specifically mentioned by name or team affiliation in the exemption clause of insurance companies.
4. The GM starts holding memorial services for his plot. (wait, this is when the PLAYER should be retired...)
4. You start to purchase new guns instead of reloading what you already have.
5. Your hacking consists primarily of politely worded agendas sent to GOD operatives.

6. Great Dragons set up your character with their personal wet workers. In a romantic fashion.
a. Specifically to breed the next generation of pawns.
7. Your character personally kicks the Yakuza out of Seattle.
8. Your hacker starts creating AIs.
a. And those are their programing mistakes.

9. They use a small girl as a body shield when threatened by elf posers.
10. They feel outgunned by elf posers wielding TMPs, leave the building, get their Panther Assault Cannons, return and 'finish it'.
11. Go hand to hand with a great dragon. Armless adepts are not so good at wielding combat axes.

12. Your team causes Matrix Crash 3.0.
13. You manage to successfully bring Dunkelzhan back into the land of the living.
14. You accidentally summon the Horrors...and beat them back within the same combat encounter.

15. Your Face plays matchmaker for a Great Dragon.
16. You're asked to be god-parent for Netcat and Slamm-O!'s daughter.
17. Lofwyr commissions you to paint the next BMW Art Car.
19. You go to Burning Man with Hestaby.

20. Your Face/Hacker regularly sets up CEOs and Presidents to take the fall for your team's runs.And is successful.

21. You're Canray

Thanks, just... Thanks.

I can feel the love. Really, I can.

No, wait, that's just heartburn.

It's time to retire your character when...

22. Your team is so worldly and well-traveled that they can fit right in everywhere from a Redneck Run to the Jet Set.
23. OrbitalDK's next post about the next big thing that happened in orbit is largely an after-action report of your run against Zurich Orbital.
24. Thanks to your team's actions, the world is left scrambling to find a new gold standard currency.
25. You decide you don't like Hestaby being declared an outcast from Dragonkind and set about correcting that by virtue of killing off Great Dragons until she's the only creature left on Earth biologically capable of claiming the title.
26. Your team actually makes headway at 25 without being caught.
27. You decide, after 26, to turn down the cabal of Immortal Elves' payment to go for broke and exterminate Dragonkind to bring about an age of Elvish ascension, largely because you didn't want to exterminate Dragonkind, you just wanted to see your favorite living Dragon back on top of the reptile heap.
28. Your team not only successfully runs in Triassic Park without any losses, but decide to go back for another freelancing run on the island to collect animals to sell to wealthy private citizens.
29. Your team has acquired such as reputation for efficiency and reliability that Ares asks to name their new series of laser weapons after your team, and offer you retirement money to do so.
30. You turn them down after field-testing the weapon and determining that it's insufficiently reliable and efficient to grant your name to.
31. Your team acquires control of at least one Corporate Court vote.
32. One or more of your team actually sits upon the Corporate Court.
33. You own sufficient voting stock in a AAA-rated megacorporation to be the swing vote between major factions.
34. You own sufficient voting stock in a AAA-rated Megacorp to be the major voting faction against which your detractors must rally swing votes.
35. You own tyrannical controlling shares in any AAA-rated Megacorp, numerically at the point where holding votes are explicitly a formality.
36. You own sufficient voting stock to swing multiple boardroom votes.
37. The Corporate Court is unwilling or unable to attempt to censure you for the conflict of interest of holding significant voting stock in multiple AAA-rated Megas, largely because you control the court.
38. When Great Dragons and Immortal Elves enter into alliances against you for the purposes of mutual protection.
39. When you decide to make nations the dominant power in the world again, and start making serious inroads to that effect.
40. When you declare Metahumanity to be the dominant species on the planet Earth and demonstrate to any contenders that the primary reason for that claim is the lethal efficiency of your team in enforcing said claim against all who would disagree.

41. When the only people willing to hire on with you is "Pachinko" Mike and Mungo.

What about Seamus?

42: Half of Seattle's property is actually your bolt-holes. The other half is owned by your various identities.

43: You're on at least good terms with more free spirits than Ghostwalker.
44: You can negotiate with insect spirits and convince them to return to their native metaplane without a fight.

45. Your character has been made Canon.

46: You arm-wrestle with great dragons... and win.

so i should stop being Stahlseele then i guess . .

47. You have your own trideo show.
48. Your P2.0 Centrality Rating is 0. And you are not Gary Cline.
49. When you go on a run, you just dial a few numbers and ask the people to hand over whatever you are supposed to get, because you know they will rather do it instead of having you come over.
50. All the Megacorps begin using purely legal and morally sound business practices, in order to prevent themselves from becoming the target of a shadowrun involving you.
51. You had to turn your character sheet around, in order to write down the last digit of your total Karma count, because it did not fit on the front side anymore.
52. You cannot spend your good Karma anymore, since there is nothing left to learn (too bad, you didn't choose one of the Awakened Qualities).
53. The prospect of getting deltaware installed doesn't excite you one bit.

Bye
Thanee

54. When you're given a run to acquire something preposterously large and symbolic (like a fountain,) are given a huge amount of money to perform the impossible, then calmly run some numbers and work out that it's cheaper and easier to simply purchase the desired object outright and aboveboard from its present owners and turn it over to Mr. Johnson for a massive mark-up than it is to steal it.
55. When you perform 54 and Mr. Johnson doesn't even think of shortchanging you for fear of the retaliation you wrought upon the last Johnson who betrayed you, which was both terrible, innovative, and resulted in Ares Macrotechnology being forced to issue a public apology for his actions and settle a massive suit in the Corporate Court that they're going to be feeling until the 2090s.
56. When you decide to pacify Puyallup Barrens and both Spikes and Ancients would prefer to sit down together at the negotiating table with you to hammer out the terms under which they may continue to exist in the district rather than face your wrath.
57. When, thanks largely to your diplomatic efforts, Tarislar and Carbonado become recognized as districts in their own right, with elected representation in the Metroplex governance process.
58. When your diplomatic efforts result in the birth of the first twenty-first century Superpower to rival the Megacorps by uniting what was divided.
59. When Aztechnology cleans up their act because you have sufficient blackmail material on them to basically call an Omega Order and a draconic jihad on them at any time you wished.
60. When you get offered a permanent, lifetime seat on the Corporate Court as an impartial grand magistrate.
61. When you have to turn down dinner invitations from Senators and Congressmen because it's your regular poker night with Damian Knight.

62. When "Drop trou, waggle my tackle at it, then wing it from there." is your SOP for dealing with Dragons.
62a. And it has worked.

63. Dragons 'postpone' all current operations for a physical meeting to discuss the fallout from your last run. and they don't try to kill each other.

64. When the fallout being discussed is both literal and radioactive.

65. When Kane starts calling you out for being outrageous and over-the-top.
66. You start topping Kane for being wanted.

67. When you successfully frame other Prime Runners for your runs to the point that even they're not sure whether or not they did it.
68. When you successfully frame Megacorporations for your large-scale Runs to the point that they have to choose between claiming credit and looking guilty, or denying involvement and looking incompetent.
69. When you successfully frame the G.O.D. for your datasteals.
70. When you successfully manipulate the G.O.D. into straight-up unwittingly doing your datasteals for you.
71. When the no longer have to manipulate the G.O.D. into doing your datasteals for you, because they'll voluntarily do them in order to limit the collateral damage to the Matrix at large.
72. When you pull off a Run so awesome that other Runners try to claim credit for your deeds.
73. When you're so well-known for doing insane things and succeeding that other Runners try to frame you for their deeds so people would even believe it was possible.
74. When you've got so many jobs coming in that you actually have to subcontract Runs...
75. And your subcontractors have names like NetCat and Hard Exit.
76. When you've made such good business subcontracting that you wake up one morning and realize that your job description is more accurately "Fixer" than "Runner."
77. When your character decides that that state of affairs does not suit them, and goes ahead and gets Leonized and a full genetic re-workup so they can start over as a new Runner in a new city.
78. When you try to hire Kat'o Nine Tails to compose a song about your exploits, only to find out that she's already in the middle of one.
79. When that song is a cover of Motörhead's We are the Road Crew entitled We are the Right Crew.
80. When you get into a legal tussle with the party who has the rights to Motörhead's discography over the cover, which you settle by negotiating with the record label to sign over the rights to the entire discography to you for 1 and a promise that you won't initiate a retaliatory Run against them for getting lawyers involved.

Worked for Bull.

81 You manage to successfully build a war-mech; both manually and remotely piloted ones.
a Which you not only use for yourself, but you make a lucrative business by mass-producing them and selling them.
b Which also causes Ares to go out of business (and somehow be FAR more damaging to them then a defective rifle, figuratively and literally!!!)

82. You make your GM commit suicide and thus have no game to play in.

83. You make your gaming group commit suicide and thus have no one to play with.

84. You make the company who owns the IP voluntarily sell it to you for a song and thus your character is now the one god above all others.

85. when a beer company cast you for their "Most Interesting Man In The World" commercial

Actually, that's started to become a running trope of my group's quotes.

"I don't always Shadowrun, but when I do, it's SoyKaff."

86. Your character becomes the subject of a Matrix meme. (Actual Advice Mungo, anyone?)

87. When your character can't be bothered to get up from his comfy chair and sends his ally spirit to do the run for him.*



-k

*- actual Missions occurance

Mungo iz happiez wit' da Pubic Awarenezz.

"You mean public awareness, right?"

Nop.

"I suggest people not image search 'Mungo' for some time to come. Possibly never."

88. When you have so many large-scale assets that any time you are hired for a run, you will later find out that you have been hired by one of your own employees, accepted a run against one or your own companies, or both.

There's a story behind that. Share?



Reminds me of the Ask Ancient History thread. You should make an Ask Mungo thread.



Being hired by your own employees sounds like a great way to launder money. Being hired to run against your own companies, though... Well, that could be awkward. If you check to see if you own that company, turn the Run down, and then show up to foil the other team when they come, sooner or later people are going to start working out that you're connected to those companies. On the other hand, if you take the run and just do nothing or fake a failure, your rep will suffer.

For best results, I suggest completing the Run, but doing so in a way which will minimize harm and disruption to your own operations.

It is quite useful actually. You can now take measures to screw over the Johnson who screws you over. You will know which exec is hiring runners for a run that is for the good of your company and hiring runners for a run for his own ends and using the company as a cover. And you can withhold funding, I assume, as the boss, you'd be the one who approves the budget.

And you don't have to actually show up to foil the other team. You can let the other team succeed but now you know for whom and what they have done.

yup, your company just hires you to steal the flow diagnostics from the arcology sewer system, and the poop-2-pee ratios for the last two decades.

anyways back on track

89. DocWagon just pay you to stay home, due to the amount of Delta ware and prototypes you are packing, they can't afford your maintenance costs

90. When the fixer calls your secretary to ask for an appointment.

Bye
Thanee

"Hey, yeah, thanks for the suggestion, we'll have our Johnson call your Johnson and work something out!"

91. ... other players either loathe or expect your character to perform in a "predictable" and "winning" way.

I was playing Old Man Jones, a 250-ish karma optimized mage. At a table with mostly newbie players. I did not want to overwhem the new folks with Jones's massive dice pools, so he stayed behind on the safari bus sipping drinks with the Johnson while his "personal assistant" ally spirit went with the group to do the run.

The other players had fun, I got to get a feel for the spirit's capabilities (it was fairly new), Old Man Jones got to have his nap, everyone won. Except the poor blokes the team murdered horribly to earn their paychecks.



-k

92. When your team magician makes a breakthrough in new magical theory that revolutionizes the wizarding world.
93. When one of your dependents is hired to do a run and begins making their own mythical status.
94. When your group runs into another group during a run and the other group recognizes your character "by appearance alone" and declares "thought you retired, ya know, for being a Prime and all." (Happened other night actually, beware infamy).
95. Someone in the group decides that Hestaby needs money and tries to offer her a position as team Mage ... And is only stopped because the rest of group,doesn't want to tap their getaway fund or kids college funds.

96. Hestaby decides that out of all the ways she could make money, offering her services to your team, voluntarily, on a straight cut-of-the-loot basis, is the best and most satisfying way she can earn.

97. You're tired of playing that character.

98. You can complete a run you were not prepared for before the Johnson finishes talking.

82: Thor shots "tickles"

I know someone who had that happen to them.

99. You're getting too old for this shit.
100. You have to purchase more dice just to roll for your character.
101. The GM's smiling.
102. You start "boasting" before a run to the Johnson. Trying to bet them extra money that you can complete the run while nude or do it without any weapons, drones, or magic.

Well... that will take a while.

Bye
Thanee

103: Your Troll StreetSam opens the watergate rift, accidentally.
103a: His only response is "ooops"
104: He closes it again by blinking three times

That's pretty similar to mine.

Clearly, then, blimps + concealed weapons = Goodness.