Hi Shadowlands. I'm a 'run Fixer. When Mr. Johnson (or Ms. Johnson) needs some runners, he calls me up. It's a demanding job, but I usually love it. Ask Me Almost Anything! (will leave out personal details for obvious reasons.)

Yo Man, can you gemme an Ares Thunnerstruck with all the goodies?
How much?

Whats the WORST job/task/thing you've ever had to tell the hired help to do?

I'm primarily a run fixer. 90% of my job is connecting Johnson's to runners.

I can get my hands on some weaponry, but for big stuff and military type gear, you'll have to find yourself a different fixer. I've got a buddy who might be able to point you in the right direction.

The stories that I've heard....

Most Johnson's don't give me much info about what they need done. Oftentimes I get a basic outline of what kind of job it is, I farm out some 'runners, and they work out the details. I've heard back afterward from some of the runners a few times though. Mostly it's just shocking at how casually unscrupulous the Johnson's are, or how willing to double cross and even try to murder the runners. That's partly why I fix now, instead of running.

The worst one that stands out in my mind was from a pretty new Johnson at a big corp. He said that he wanted a team for a hot extraction. I put him in touch with some people that I knew. I got a phone call later from one of them. They'd done some digging and found out that Mr. Johnson was arranging to have his bosses kids kidnapped after getting passed over for a promotion. They didn't take the job, and I passed the info along to a buddy. I never heard from that Johnson again.

Kidnapping metahumans, especially awakened and the like, is pretty common, and research corps like to try to get their hands on children when possible. It's distasteful, and I try to avoid farming out that kind of work.

If you're the go-between who finds Runners for Johnsons, and those Johnsons try to double-cross your Runners, aren't you in deep shit?

After all, if the Runners survive, they may well believe, rightly or wrongly (hopefully wrongly,) that you were complicit in finding the Johnson some "disposable stooges," and come after you. On the other hand, whether or not the Runners survive, if the Johnson does, then the Johnson may view you as a loose end in need of tying-up, which may well involve literally tying you up, but will undoubtedly be unpleasant and fatal for you.

So then, doesn't it behoove you to investigate the Johnsons beforehand, so you can screen out the ones who are likely to try to double-cross you and your Runners, for both your sake and that of your Runners? What steps do you take to ensure you don't hand out a doublecross?

Good question, thanks.

I work both with small teams of 'runners, who tend to operate together; and with individual runners who get teamed up for jobs, based on their skill and availability. And so in most cases the 'runners that I send jobs to are chummers that I know, professionally speaking. Some fixers farm out to anyone and everyone, but I think that's risky for a variety of reasons.

I prefer to work with 'runners that I know are reliable and skilled. It is partly due to this rapport that 'runners do not come after me following a botched or double-crossed job. I take precautions, regardless. On the Johnson side of things, I do make efforts to investigate them. In some cases, I know them, and I know who they work for. We refer to some Johnson's as transparent. I know who they are and who they work for. Usually a large or mid size corp. They're hiring for legit (or semi legit) work. The opaque variety of Johnson goes through great pains to hide his or her identity, and who he or she represents. Depending on their level of sophistication, funding and experience, it can be incredibly difficult to find out who they are and who they represent. I try to be careful about these jobs. It's a red flag.

I don't have any hard statistics, but its these super secretive ones that tend to turn into double-crosses and burns. I've dealt with this personally a handful of times, and learned to be careful dealing with Johnson. Even with a Johnson that I'm familiar with, and have worked with in the past.

1) How do you find the runners you set up with these Johnsons? I'm sure it hurts your reputation to provide runners who just can't get the job done, but there's so few out there these days of genuine skill. Where do you find new talent? Who generally makes the first contact, you or them?

2) You discussed Johnsons who double cross the runners, but have any crossed you out of your cut? Or do you get your pay up front?

1) Referrals and word of mouth, mostly. When my pool of talent gets slim, I might hit up some of my contacts to see if they know any good folks. On occasion, runners will post on Shadowland that they're looking for work, but unless I'm in a real pinch, I don't like to recommend people that I know nothing about.

2) I always insist on getting paid up front by the Johnson. A few fixers tried to turn it around and charge 'runners for lining up jobs, but it didn't work especially well. Maybe some folks still do it. I have a standard set of fees, depending on the size of the team, and factoring in whether the Johnson is looking for top tier talent, or willing to work with relatively fresh runners. I charge them more when they're especially secretive or difficult to work with. I've had jobs go bad, and even had Johnson's people come looking for me. I was a 'runner for almost fifteen years though, so I know how to be careful. I've been doing this almost ten years now - I'm an old man in the shadows. I've learned enough to know to be careful, and a few tricks about how to be careful.

Also, I don't farm warm bodies. I'd mentioned earlier that some fixers will send jobs to just anyone. Some Johnsons are happy with 'warm bodies', meaning 'some bloke who can carry a gun'. Honestly, THOSE are the jobs that I most worry about, because it feels like the Johnson may just be looking for someone to do unannounced Red Team intrusion testing. So I don't send runners that I don't know or have a good referral for. And I don't take jobs from Johnsons who don't seem to care about who I'm sending.

Bear in mind that its in my best interest that my 'runners stay healthy. Even though the Johnson is the one that pays me, I think of the runners as my clients. If I screw them over, then I've got nothing to sell.

So, runners, be wary of fixers who'll put just anyone on a team. Are they working for you, or for the Johnson?

As a "personnel manager," what sort of gauge do you use to determine if a particular asset is "too hot" or "too noticible" for any given job?

This is pretty tough, and of course goes a little beyond "the right tool for the job". A hot extraction will call for a different team than a quiet and subtle guard job. I try to keep tabs on how jobs go - I watch Shadowlands posts and news, as well as mainstream media. Some runners shoot me a note post-job and let me know how things went. Not only am I interested in how the job went, I like to get an idea of how the runners did. I've had good talent go to shit, either through drugs, BTLs, booze, old wounds, or botched cyberware installations. Or the flip side, if a young and fresh runner seems smart and skilled. I know a few people in various parts of the security industry, and so if someone ends up with their mugshot posted in every Knight Errant briefing room, I usually get a heads up, and can give them a rest.

It's not always a perfect match. What I do is much more art than science.

Greetings Mister.Fixer@Dumpshock.com,

My name is Absalom and my father died a week ago in South Africa and has left a grand fortune of 1,304,976,551 ZAR (163.63 million NuYen).
I cannot claim the entire sum myself because of his noble status, and the government will take the fortune for itself soon.
After doing some contless hours of research and due to your excellent credit rating, I found you here and would ask for your help.

You only need to wire 5,000 NuYen via Western Union to my escrow, Jarvis Johnson, as proof that your intentions are good.
He'll then have the government send you the entire fortune and then you wire my share (88.63 million NuYen) after keeping your own.

Also, any help you can give me with the Government of my country to ease the passage would be appreciated !

I look forward to hearing from you
Absalom (Prince)

Beautiful.

Mister Fixer, sir, a question for you, as a long-time veteran of the Shadows.
Two questions.

Suppose that hypothetically, a small business owner with a business in a place like Loveland without any significant ties to the cartels (IE: pays their protection money, but isn't actually being used or overseen or owned by the mobs,) gets on the wrong side of some Runners, for whatever reason. Maybe the Runners took exception to their business practices being especially unethical, maybe their normal business practices, while not all that unethical, wound up inadvertently enabling some other party to do something much more heinous, or maybe the Runners just saw an easy mark.

In short, the Runners decide to squeeze them for some dough; their hacker encrypts the small bisuness's node with some rather strong encryption that would take another hacker to undo. Someone you could hire on the cheap would take days to do it, while someone who'd want a lot of nuyen for the job could do it in a few hours. The Runners in question then offer the small business owner a simple deal: pay unto the Runners the entire expected profit from the most recent thing they did, to the tune of 2,000 to receive the encryption key and thus be able to restore operations as usual. Money to be dropped at a specified time (soon) at a specified place (in Puyallup) by a courier or you're on your own.

In your cost-benefit analysis, would that be a good deal or not? After all, time is money, and taking a small setback on one small piece of criminality is a small price to pay in exchange for being able to resume operations without incident, is it not?

So, would you advise the small business owner to (A) Pay the nuyen and probably get the encryption key needed to unlock all of his matrix systems, with the small risk that the blackmailing party will not pay? (B) Ignore the blackmailing party, who has made it quite clear that the choice is on you to pay or not, and hire a Matrix specialist to bludgeon the encryption open, © ignore the blackmailing party, format and install your systems from scratch, and then spend a few days reinstalling everything and fine-tuning your systems back to the way they were whilst restoring most functionality within an hour or two, or (D) hire a courier to deliver a package to the drop location at the specified time and place, only instead of containing nuyen, it contains a gas bomb with a nerve toxin.



And, on a completely unrelated question,

Suppose you have a Run group which is desperately searching for a little girl whom they were tricked into extracting from legitimate Bad News, but by a third party who has other, completely separate but wholly Bad Intentions for them instead of their legitimate uncle, whom the third party legitimately straight-up murdered and took his identity. Suppose that in the course of this investigation, your leads run mostly dry, but you do manage to track the vehicle the third party used whilst in Seattle, learning that it has been sold as a 'wreck' to a skeevy junkyard operation which has no problem with taking the 'wreck' and driving it to a container ship bound for Hong Kong to be presumably either destroyed or sold by another skeevy outfit, with a listed expected profit of 2,000 all-told. Suppose that the Runners, with their leads dry and frustrated and also possibly desirous of some more cash, decide to punish the skeevy chop-shop by encrypting literally everything in their offices, from the security systems to the payroll to their business ledgers to their login details, using strong encryption that would take even a fantastic hacker about six hours to break through.

Suppose your Runners then decide to offer the skeevy chop-shop an alternative to hiring a hacker and spending six or more hours unencrypting the system by offering to sell them the encryption pass-key; all the owner has to do is have a certified credstick containing 2,000 delivered to a drop point you can easily monitor without it being remotely easy for anyone to pick out who's monitoring it, and you will send him the encryption key. This is a one-time offer that expires when the deadline for delivery passes, and it's up to the chop shop's owner whether he wants to pay the money or spend his time, as his penance for the wrongdoings he has been a part of.

Suppose that instead of delivering money or a hearty frag you, the owner of the chop shop instead delivers a gas bomb containing goddamned Ymir. The pick-up man survives thanks to the simple precaution of taking a gas filter and wearing armor with a chemical seal, but he's in a bad way for a few hours.

And also, suppose that two of the members of this Runner team are Free Spirits of Fire who are capable of dematerializing and returning to this chop-shop junkyard at a moment's notice.

Do you advise your Runners to let this attack on them go, to contact the owner of the bisuness again and demand a much higher sum of money in exchange for not being immediately torched, or to simply have the spirits warp to the business and torch the building and any cars which are whole and ready to be sold into ash and then never contact the owner again.

Well, I'm not sure that I am in any way qualified to answer either of these, but I'll certainly give it a shot.

Runners put small businesses out of operation all the time. Then again, so do megacorporations. I've worked with all different types of runners. Some that I didn't trust not to steal my gear and murder me in my sleep. Others that would go out of their way to save a life or to minimize destruction to property.

To the business owner in your first example, I would suggest that he or she not pay the ransom. Doing so is akin to hanging a banner that says "Easy money here." It makes his or her business an ATM machine for unscrupulous runners or criminals.

To the incredibly specific second example, my suggestion to the runners would be to let the attack go, though I'd be surprised if my advice were followed. The runners orchestrated an attack of the electronic variety against the chop-shop owner, and he retaliated. Its's 1 for 1. If they retaliate, then it is just further escalation. They seem less like shadowrunners at that point, and more like well armed criminals.

Johnson's love to try to get leverage to pull some extortion on fixers and runners alike, so I have little sympathy or tolerance toward it.

You are aware that Shadowrunners are well-armed criminals, right? Just... You know, checking.

I thought you might mention that. It depends on your perspective. Sure, by its very nature, shadowrunning is considered to be criminal. Trespass, Murder, Assault, Property Damage, Theft, Illegal weapons and cyber, and so forth. But most runners that I know are a breed apart from the thugs and gangsters that you run into out on the streets. While greed might be a common thread between Shadowrunners and common criminals, you could say the same about a corporate lawyer. He's doing what he does because he wants to get money. Is he willing to knife an old woman on the street and then split with her comlink and purse? How greedy is he? How greedy are the 'runners that you work with?

Robin Hood was a criminal too.

Most I know of are greedy enough to put the squeeze on some sleezebag who has enabled someone who's kidnapped a child, but wouldn't otherwise knife someone who had done nothing to deserve it. Also, vengeful enough to seek incendiary retribution for an unprovoked physical assault on their persons.

Most runners I know of are proactive enough not to GET to that point. It's hard to get screwed over when you're hired to legitimately by the target to perform the service that your Johnson wanted you to do against them (albeit with a little "Fun City-Accounting" of inventory moved *cough cough*).