Hi there, long time lurker first time poster and all that. Forgive me if this is a stupid question.

My character concept (Former Corporate Johnson/Social Adept) more or less requires a Corporate SIN. But as a relative newcomer to Shadowrun, I'm trying to figure out what exactly makes a Corporate SIN so terrible (-25 points). A National SIN (-5) or a Criminal SIN (-10) seem to carry more drawbacks in a lot of ways, since all the megacorps and governments have access to your biometrics and such if you get arrested. With a Corporate SIN, there's only one megacorp out there that does. It seems like the smart choice would be to just avoid doing runs against that one mega.

Sure, the book says that there's strong, violent prejudice against people who are known to have Corporate SINs, and nobody ever really trusts them, but...

1.) There's strong, violent prejudice against half the character types in the book. So it's not that unique.

2.) What smart runner ever really trusts anybody?

3.) How is anyone on the street ever going to know you have one if you just turn it off and broadcast a high-quality Fake SIN instead? It's not like your biometrics are on file in a readily accessible place.

4.) The biggest downside, really, seems to be that you're a walking extraction target if a random crew figures out who you are and decides you have secrets. But, hell, that seems fairly mild in comparison to other drawbacks that give fewer Karma back. It's not like being a Shadowrunner is that safe of a profession, anyway. And if anything, it's cool plot fuel for when the GM gets bored.

The obvious answer is that it is a really terrible, terrible thing, but I just don't get why yet because I don't really get the setting. So explain it to me. Tell me about all the horrible things that a GM is going to do to me if/when I take Corporate SIN.

---

P.S. While I'm at it, what skills are required/recommended for a former Corporate Mr. Johnson now working as a Face? I was thinking about having him be a former associate counsel for one of the megacorps' internal security divisions, so I was going to max out Law, Corporate Security, Shadowrun Techniques, a second language (not sure which), Con, Etiquette, Negotiation, Perception, Intimidation, and Computer. Adept-wise, I was thinking about Astral Perception, Enhanced Perception, Kinesics, Spell Resistance, and Voice Control. Anything I should be sure to add, whether at high or low levels? Also, which corp would make for a good former employer? And should I consider taking the one-point Essence/Magic hit to get some augmentations like Tailored Pheromones or something combat-oriented?

Thanks!

1: Maybe, but some places are worse than others, and some are better. Having a corporate SIN belonging to Aztechnology is likely to get you killed on sight if you're found out in Denver. In Aztlan, you'll be fine.

3: The average person won't know. A higher level security check, however, can bring up two (or more) profiles for matching biometrics, and you'd better be a damn good actor to remember which name you're supposed to respond to (among other things).

4: Not really a walking extraction target, but you're also not really a deniable asset either. If you're an Ares citizen and you get caught on a run for a Horizon subsidiary you're ass is in a sling two ways to Sunday. Maybe three if you were working against a third megacorporation.

Having a corporate SIN on this level means you weren't some ordinary Wageslave. You were an important part of the corp, & you're not just a part of some piddly corp like an A corp, you were a member of one of the Mega's, that means one of the AAA's like Aztecnologies, or Renraku. You probably had some deep corporate secrets or were privy to conversations that should never leave the confines of a boardroom. That makes you a liability to them, & you NEED to be sorted out, one way or another, the AAA's didn't get big by letting loose ends walk out the door after all.

On a good day, you only have every KE officer or LS dog looking for you, on a bad day, you have the personal armies of the Megacorp you bailed on hunting you, & everyone you've met since you left, down & they are asking questions with Explosive rounds.

I don't understand why the karma is so high for those qualities, either. Sure, they're bad, but a corporate SIN is priced the same as exploding into flames whenever you're exposed to sunlight. It's always possible to justify the price by having the GM be incredibly harsh about it, but that seems to me like an implausible stilting of the game world to justify the karma cost of one or two qualities.

From the descriptions, I would have expected the prices to be more like: 5 karma for a national or corporate limited SIN, 10 karma for a corporate born SIN, 15 karma for a criminal SIN.

Two points:

One,
reread what SpellBinder had to say. Point 4 is quite salient.



The assumption in the game is that sometimes your run is going to get hosed. When security catches you, they can of course just waste you but where is the fun in that? The idea is if you haven't blown up too much stuff or shot too many people on corp property, an enterprising Johnson might stop and pay you a visit and offer to let you go in exchange for a difficult job. This is totally GM discretion but it fits with how the world runs. Why squander an opportunity?

On the other hand, your own Johnson has hired you and your own team has befriended you on the premise that you are, as far as teh system goes, a nobody. Deniable assets, right? But if you get caught on another corporation's turf, things are not gonna be easy for you. It is not "just biz, chummers" at that point. It is corporate war. If you are a nobody you can go back to being a nobody (or a corpse, depending on how they feel). But if you are an Ares corporate citizen, and you are caught deep in a forbidden part of a Renraku facility...well, there are gonna be more than just a few naughty words.

Even a hint of your presence there, like a missed thumbprint, a bit of DNA from hair or blood, is gonna be bad. Sure, Ares might not have immediate realtime access to the records at their opponent megas, but you can bet they have a process to release partial records to one another. So maybe not this run, maybe not the next, but sometime in the next month or so Renraku is gonna get a match to your DNA and that of a registered citizen of Ares, and then it is only a question of which company is going to hunt you down first...Renraku, to ask you a few questions, or Ares, to seal your mouth forever...

Two,
another way you can look at it is the trouble that you will have to go through to get rid of the SIN. If it is a national SIN it is fairly easy (5 karma or equivalent resources, in fact) to get someone to go in and muck up relevant records enough that you are out of the system. But what if everything about your ass is on file in a dozen redundant and heavily secured hosts scattered throughout the world? That will take much, much more effort to erase. If there comes a time when Joe Shadowrunner doesn't want to have that criminal SIN hanging around his neck no more, he is gonna have a much easier time getting rid of it that Joe Corpboy would.

Your character's lifespan might not be long enough to make either option much of a difference, gameplay wise. But the risks are there. For a group whose main selling point is anonymity, a corporate SINNER is very, very bad goods.

If you want to think about it another way, yes, someone with allergy to sunlight will catch on fire if they go outside on a sunny day. It is equally bad for you to be traced to your corporate SIN. The guy with sunlight allergies only has to keep himself indoors most of the time, or at least only go out at night. A corporate SIN is a loaded gun to your head, only you will not know if your friends, your enemies, or your former employers are going to be the ones pulling the trigger.

I guess the Devs from CGL wanted ....to "steer" the Gameplay into a certain direction by making some of the neg Quals
more expensive or more.... profitable for a Char than others .
Like they did with the Metavariant cost in SR4 .Some of these could'nt be explained neither but its the same kind of.....arbitrary Pointcost

with a voluntary Dance
Medicineman

Doesn't a corporate SIN imply that you STILL work for a megacorp? Meaning that they are constantly keeping tabs on you and that they will forever be ordering you to do runs for them or at the very least, doing your 9-5 (who are we kidding, this is distopia, 6-9).

I'd imagine that if you had somehow severed your connection with the corporation you'd either have no SIN (had it erased) or have a criminal SIN (therefore you were probably framed and fired). If not then what's mentioned above is true. Expect lots of bad guys to be looking to put you in the dirt.

I won't talk about the qualities directly since I'm...well...anyways, I won't talk about the qualities directly, because professionalism won't let me. What I will say, though, is just to remind people that they're by no means mandatory. Even if it fits your background to be a former Company Man, military-trained professional, corporate spider, convict, or whatever, remember that the quality isn't necessary to reflect backstory. If you want to have a clean break from your former employers/place of birth, you can just insist you've had a decker take care of things for you and clean things up/cut those ties, or whatever. The qualities are there for those who WANT to still be entangled in their old life in a number of social, financial, and legal ways. Don't feel forced into taking them just because they fit your backstory.

Corporate SINs suck because of taxes. That said, I don't understand why Corporate Limited (15) carries a 20% tax while the full Corporate (25) carries only 10%.

Because the corporate rules favour the corporate born. One more way to keep them in.

not by RAW
The disadvantage is that if You use it someone might discover that You belong to a corporate and tells it and every Runner hates You (even those that have a corporate SIN too) and that You have to pay taxes.
nobody prevents a Char from getting a fake SIn and using that instead of his Corporate SIN

with a Sinful Dance
Medicineman

Nope, the character is assumed to have long burnt the bridge: "Then something happened. An unforgivably costly mistake, the machinations of a rival, a supervisor in need of a scapegoat—something pushed the character out of the corporation and into the cold and unforgiving shadows."
Not that this convinces anyone he talks to, because former corp types are so rare in the shadows and mostly traitors, therefore everybody is just waiting to torch them..


To add insult to injury, word from Bull is that this was fully intended and justified by a magical database. Which does not get used to track down people, correlate IDs, or anything else easily possible with such data, it only gets used for taxation. Because fuck you, that's why http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index....21691#msg221691

Never mess with the tax office . They are badass.

Interestingly, the Corporate Limited SIN doesn't have the same implication. I think there is one reference to no longer working for the Corp, and it's an "Even If" statement. Just weird.

Because if you have a NUMBER you're part of the MACHINE, you're being tracked by the MAN, man. You got a collar 'round your neck you just can't shake off.

Hey omae, I wrote a song about it. I'll be playing down at Dante's. Check it out.

You're a born, bred and life'd Corper with the 25pter. You also had (or are assumed to have had) major connections and access to Family Only type information or secrets. This is, in the world of the Shadows, an Albatross around the neck. The Megas are typically despised by the SINless and you didn't Just work for them (thats why the stigma is less at the lower cost, because Runners work for them) you are one of THEM, you know, the People you hate that make your life harder by their actions, inactions or greed. With that flaw you're playing one of Them.

Now, it gets better... Sure you can run a fake SIN in the DataBase. You can hide your identity. But when the SIN you're pinging fails or fluffs, well, your Real SIN is likely to be flagged (true, this is the universal truth of the Flaw) but for the national or minor (Wageslave) Corp SiN that's only likely to get local Security involved (if on a Run maybe launch a minor shadow war) and get you interrogated (or indeed just shot). It also means law enforcement can trace other things you have done and places been (once they start sifting through SIN registry records). But when the BIG one flags, early results are much the same but some Corps may want to interrogate more, worse though is that it's likely that Momma Corp will Ping that a certain SIN has been logged at location X for purpose Y. They will come looking.

I think the reason some folk would feel that a Corp SINner is untrustworthy is to them you have a way out, though that is not really true.

Most of the rest are SINless so have no option other than what they can claw for themselves.

Others have burnt their bridges and can't go back.

To the general SINless, it's like a Rich Kid slumming in the Barrens. Yeah it's a hoot for the kiddie daring to rub shoulders with the real baddies, but end of the night they hop back in the limo and off to their vaunted estates. And while they mock them as wageslaves and worse, a part of them also envies the fact they have a steady roof over the head and 3 square a day even if they hate the rest of the ratrace that goes with it.

Granted, most of the ones with the Corp SINs probably can not go back for a variety of reasons, like burnt by the Corp or backstabbing by a department rival, but to the rest it has to look like your slumming and they have to wonder when you will just be whisked away by that chariot back to the promised land even though in truth you can't, unless of course you somehow buy your way back into the Corp good graces. Which probably means everyone thinks you might sell them out to do just that.

And then gave them the finger, like so many did before. The Ex-corp [insert profession] has been an established archetype since 1st Edition rules or the Secrets of Power novels, and now they suddenly get run over by the rape train ruleswise and fluffwise turned into outcasts slightly above ghouls. Because why exactly?


Nope, a "reverse lookup" of [biometrics]->[any matching SIN] or [SIN]->[any other SIN with the same biometrics] does not exist. I'd guess this is a meta decision, if one burnt SIN burned every current and future SIN with the same biometrics, the only way for runners to exist would be swapping bodies like in Eclipse Phase. Say they only store hashes in the SIN DB (cryptography gets ignored all the time, why not once more?), or maybe the powers that be simply do not WANT it to be possible for their own ends...
Now, if SINs cannot be connected to each other, even by biometrics, doing it with less uniquely identifying features like monetary transfers obviously would be even more than absolutely impossible. Except for taxes.

It does not mean you ARE still working for the corp but you could be. Maybe you are not because you were a bad boy, maybe you still work for them. If you are dealing with a group of street criminals or even A level runners, the fact you were a part of that world and still could be is the social problem. It was something they do not want and the taint lingers.

As an example think of how people responded when they found out the last pope had been a part of the Hitler youth. He was required to join and deserted from the army and was good friends with JP2 who was famous for his opposition to the Nazi so we can say he was clean but people still looked at Benedict and said "remember what he did before..."

So you walk in with your Aztechnology SIN and tell them you left the company, but anyone who has been in the biz long enough will still look at you and wonder if you last name is Johnson.

Correction: How people outside Germany and Austria reacted to headlines about Ratzinger having been in the HJ. Over here, the reaction was basically "what else did you expect, stupid?", because (neraly) everybody has ancestry who were in the HJ, NSDAP, or served as a soldier. And given the number of ex-corp types in the shadows (again, since First Edition and the first novels), I'd somehow expect the general attitude to be akin to that

OT: Originally I wrote "everybody knows somebody" instead of "everybody has ancestry". Then I realized I'm getting old...

The excorp types with That kind of SIN since first edition? Six, I think, which is 0.0003% of the runners in Seattle, and that's including Argent (who's a national SIN) and in all but or case that past has come back to be them. Big time.

Also, when your Fake SIN fails (and burns) I think it's totally reasonable that your Real SIN will flag in the system, it IS a disadvantage after all and that's Part of the disadvantage, plus the reason the Fake SIN fails is a lack of DataMatch, which for most Runners comes back as a blank in the info chain, for a SINner though that isn't a blank anomaly it's data that Does match to the biometric query, retinal scans or even image logs.

Again, it does what the GM and a certain amount of logical reasoning allows. Now the reason that the other FAKE ids don't burn is because the Real SIN will be the only bounce back in the immediate info chain. Of course once someone has your biometric, retinal or image log data they CAN search the Matrix to find your fake SINs, IDs, licences and so forth.

For the 25 one, the premise appears that you were such highly vetted that you start off with a disturbing amount of personalized data being stored. Until you scrub it, that means there's a shared database with pretty much all your secrets. I'd say its not just biometrics, but psych profiles and the like. So they'd know your preferences, sex habits, food habits, what types of people you'd be inclined to hang out with etc. What do you like to do when stressed, what are your vices, what type of social engineering works best against you, etc.

I like this take on it. A lot.

Now to pick a corp... I don't want to do Aztechnology (too evil), Horizon (too fluffy), or Ares (too stereotypical). NeoNET, maybe? How about Evo or Wuxing?

NeoNET are cool. Whenever we steal a helicopter, we do so from NeoNET.

A few big names off the top off my head:
- Dirk Montgomery
- Twist
- Talon
- Thor Waldez
- Mercury and the rest of the Draco Foundation
- Sticks
- Rigger-X (I think he was described as ex-MCT in Street Legends)

Remember that the corps control far more than just normal business areas. Ex-military character? Probably served in some corp army (or army corp). Higher education? Corp scholarship or corp university right away

My big thing with the 25 point one is that you aren't from the shadows. You are from a corp enclave somewhere, you know their rules, not the rules of the streets. There will be a HUGE learning curve before you get the corp stink off you and just start to fit in.

Edit- You aren't one of the SINless you are prey. Listen to the song "Common People" by Pulp or the William Shatner version.

I have to admit, I don't really see the big deal about having a corporate SIN...atleast not as its defined in the rulebook. I can see a newly outed Corporate having trouble adjusting to life on the street (see Twist, the kid from Just Compensation, etc), as well as having a hard time with contacts (everyone he knew in the corporate life is pretty dead to him, and how likely is he to really know a fixer?).

The 10% as explained is just silly. I'd personally give the player two options. They can ignore the 10%, but the lack of activity on the SIN and the lack of income would have the SIN deactivated as if it were linked to a dead person (see Bandit from Who Hunts the Hunter). Or if you had a Day Job you could pay the 10% out of that, and ignore it for any illegally gained money.

Or you could pay the 10%. This would come out of the runs you do, and would be fluffed as having to launder money, pay a few deckers, etc to make the SIN look like it was upkept and still viable, so the corp wouldn't deactivate it. There wouldn't be much of a data trail, but it would be enough for you to keep the SIN active, incase you ever needed it (or wanted to go back).

The idea of 10% coming out of everything for no reason is sort of silly. I can understand why they wanted to do that, but the fluff reason is just silly.

Likewise some of the fluffy disadvantages from the book are silly as well. "You're hated because you have a corporate SIN and it got out." "Well. based on the fluff from previous novels and what not, sure, people are going to think I'm a newb, and dislike me for being a corporate (See Piper from Fade to Black for a pretty good example of this) But not everyone is, and as long as I don't kill everyone, I should eventually fit in. And really. How is anyone going to find out? If they do, why don't I just tell them its a fake corporate SIN, and that you'd totally hook up the rest of the gang with one, but the decker doing them died the week before to Black IC."

Think the flaw is meant to be more of a fish out of water, you dont know how things work on the outside since they lived such sheltered lives etc

And that is a fair point. Everything you have read and watched has been sanitized/redacted/biased by the Corp and makes for a bit of culture shock.

The tax part is interesting when you think about it. You are supposedly burned by your Corp, yet you are still paying taxes which implies you still can access some level of corp benefits , even if it's just claiming corp membership.

What the flaw is meant to be is quite obvious in RAW, and it's not just some social awkwardness. What a more sane version might say is another question

In terms of the flaw, it gives you 25 more points to play with. You can use some of those points to mitigate some of the stuff, I mean its totally logical for a corp type to have etiquette:streetwise or the like if they were an asset for the mega that worked with 'the street'. The 25 point corper doesn't need to be fish out of water, its just that their information is extensive and readily available to their corp.

Now I imagine something like what happens when you fall out of favor or 'betray' something like Scientology. They'll screw with you, they'll discredit you, they'll sue you, they'll pursue you. They've probably been handling your money, your lifestyle, your connections, etc. Now take that, and make it 100x more intense and possible with the resources of a AAA mega.

You may want to look into who got Capone. If the money can be traced to you as income (and it would, you'd just be laundering it first), you bet your ass the corp tax collectors would be on you for it.

There is, though, a decided lack of mechanical impact given the value of the quality.

Sure, if they can trace it to you, then you can get hammered to it. I don't really have a problem with that. If the player decides to ignore the 10%, then I expect that they're keeping the SIN completely dark. No using it to buy movie tickets, not renting property on it, its just inactive and will eventually get flagged as such.

But the idea that I can do a run using a completely fake SIN (or no SIN) and get paid in certified credit or to the fake SIN, keep it on the fake SIN (or launder it to yet another fake SIN), and it STILL gets tracked back to a corporate SIN which I haven't used in a year, and the only commlink that had the ID on it has been rendered into scrap metal?

And when that fake SIN gets burned, do you lose all the money associated to it? The rule is written (based on Bull's commentary, at least) from the perspective of "damn, that'd way too much paperwork to make people do".

Bringing him up another 52349587234 times won't make the comparison any more fitting. If you desperately need a Mafia analogy, how about this one:
Johnny Torrio, Capone's predecessor, was born in Italy and therefore had an Italian citizenship (in SR terms, a national SIN). After he emigrated to the US, did he still pay taxes to Italy?


...you have a SERIOUS problem. If I know every transaction you made, digitally or not, I'm able to determine every single person you made business with. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive (free cookie if who know who I'm paraphrasing here ). Why do you think runners get paid in certified cred and not just give Mr Johnson their bank info?

Ironically Torrio also got picked up for tax evasion years later on by the US government, they caught him while he was getting his Passport picked up from the post office.

It is especially ironic as he had warned the mob boys years before to get their taxes straight or this kind of thing would happen.

But yeah, the whole Tax thing is sort of weird for the quality, given how it makes you out to be pariah with the parent corp, so what benefits are there in paying?

Beyond being chased by the Infernal Revenue Service branch of the Corp if you don't of course.

I believe that the US IRS has a tick box on your tax return for criminal income so that criminals cannot claim that there was no section appropriate for their income... or something. It's been a while since I heard it, and it could just be an urban legend.

Heh, not quite that bad yet.

However in Minnesota they instituted a 'grass' tax for marijuana at one point where you could go in to pay your tax on the maryjane you had, even though this was still illegal to possess.

The best part was the tax office could NOT share those files with the police so the cops could not know who was carrying, but if you did get busted without the tax that was just another charge they could stick to you.

Weird eh?

Yes... For the characters that I play with multiple SIN's, if one gets burned, all things associated with it go away. This includes the money (not much) that I keep associated with that SIN. And yes, it is indeed more paperwork, but it is imminently satisfying, at least to me.

I actually do it that way too. It kinda threw me off when people said they did it another way.

Presumably yes?

Admittedly, I'm looking at this from a point of view that isn't necessarily Mission-specific. I can understand in missions if they want to keep it as simple as possible, its just that Bull and Missions have the unfortunate luck to publish clarifications and errata for Missions long before anything gets done on the "Main" side of things. So people see what Bull's posting and assume its going to apply to non-missions play as well (or atleast influence their GMs one way or another).

But if you're going to be using your Corporate SIN (CSIN) as a money dump to keep it safe incase your fake SINs get burned, then yes, I'd expect you to be paying the taxes on it since you're actively using the CSIN and there's no getting around it. If you've got stuff thrown on a fake SIN and it gets burned, I'd expect the things on the fake SIN to go away as well (barring a panicked call to a decker/fixer/retirement broker to try to save as much as possible).

Of course, it all depends on what level of detail your GM goes into with when it comes to handling SINs, fake or otherwise.

Why are the SINs "layered" quality? To me it indicates that the rules regarding them were unfinished when the book went to print.

The taxman, the police, and everyone else wants their cut.

Hmm... a lot of these character concepts shouldn't have corporate SIN... they should have 'records on file' (to borrow the SR4 negative quality). They're ex-corp... the corp knows who they are and unless something special happened has their records on file. But they'd lose the corp SIN when they left the corp.


The reason it should be a huge problem for shadowrunners has been brought up... shadowrunners are deniable assets... exactly what is Ares going to think when you're working for S-K and visiting your local Azzie pyramid and leave something tracing it back to them on the scene! It should be a huge problem... and that is the element that needs played up.


For normal SINs... I disagree... the tax element is pretty stupid. Certified cred is for all intensive purposes as good as cash. The certified credstick is a bearer bond tied to a 'black' account... not registered to anyone in name. If I hand the 20k black credstick from John to Suzy... Suzy is now the owner of the 'bearer bond' and the cash in it. The IRS has no idea she's gotten paid at all. No electronic transfer of funds has occured. A credstick (cash) was simply handed from one person to another.

Again the point is I have a credstick with a pre-paid cash balance on it. Handing the credstick to others doesn't move the money it only moves the key to the money. But what can I say in this day and age... many people don't realize that bearer bonds were the norm for a long time (most securities today are 'registered' securities not 'bearer' ones... if someone stole your bearer bond certificates you were in trouble... as that was commercial paper and almost as bad as having cash stolen).



The problem is that now you need to track 'normal' payments and non-normal payments. Plus of course fake sins if you're running income through them. By that notion... EVERYONE should be paying taxes on their fake id's as well! If the normal SIN is getting socked with tax why isn't money going into a fake one?

I'd have to say this is one of Bull's worse ideas. The quality should come back in other ways.

I always assumed that part of your SIN's lifestyle costs included a fake income (via your friend the money launderer) and taxes on said income.

... And this is why money laundering is a thing.



Then it sounds like it makes for a great house rule, but I would argue it would be terrible as a general rule. I imagine you can see the reasons why I'd consider that to be the case?





How's about this: If the character is no longer using their corp-SIN at all, it has withered and died and they no longer qualify for the quality by the time the game starts. Otherwise, it's a question of whether or not you really want to get into tracking what money and assets are associated to what SIN, which isn't gonna be practical for everyone. If you don't, assume all money is taxed, but if you do more power to you. The point of the rhetorical question was largely to try to get across the idea that many tables wouldn't even be tracking that kind of thing, and forcing that bookkeeping into the system could cause issues at some tables.

1.) It's not and never has been in SR
2.) Shadowrunning is a cash-in-hand job yet the corps are still trace anything you earn and tax it. How exactly are you going to launder money under such an omniscient monitoring?

@...Falcon....er...

Nope, the corp SIN in SR is supposed to be for ex-Corp peope. You were cast out, yet still pay your taxes.

Most definitely... That level of detail is not for everyone. Besides, I really have issues with the 5th Edition version of SINner. I think it was ill thought out, personally. But what else is new, right?

Which is pretty stupid if you have been thrown out...