Got on an elevator to meet a johnson.

Events transpired.

Now there are 3 million dead and the runners are fleeing with bounties on their heads as big as Texas.

Does this involve Chicago?

Everything makes me think Manhattan on this one.

We had decided to play Shadowrun one night and so constructed some quickie characters: a Sammie and a Sniper/Hitman. The third player arrived late and was still putting together his character while the GM set up the evening's job.

The run was a tricky one - a rogue Fuchi Spec-Ops team had broken into a board meeting and was holding a large number of stockholders, execs and family members hostage in the boardroom. They were demanding 50 million nuyen in payment and a helicopter to take them out of Seattle.

The Corp decided that hiring a shadowrun team to free the hostages for one million was much more wallet-friendly. However, since the hostage takers were their own people, Fuchi wanted the whole incident kept quiet.

At this point, the third player finished his character and the other players asked him what he was. The new character introduces himself as "Death" and said he was a death mage, complete with white face paint, scythe, black robes, skeletal figure, anti-charisma and annoying laugh. The Sammie player suggested that the character be converted to a shaman because of the identification with death, but the player shook his head vehemently, countering that "Death shamans have minuses and mages get to call fire elementals." He followed this comment with Incessant High Pitched Giggling (from now on referred to as IHPG).

Stunned speechless by that logic, the players and game continued. They managed to bargain the corpers up and used some of the extra money to hire a freelance rigger with a chopper.

The plan: Have the rigger drop the Sniper on the building across the street and then drop the Sammie on the actual building housing the hostages. The Sniper would take his shot and drop the Spec-Op team leader (a troll) through the glass window of the boardroom. The Death Mage would make his way into the building while the Sammie rappelled down a rope to the boardroom window. Once the sniper had killed the leader the other two PCs would simultaneously enter the room and waste the terrorists while the Sniper provided any assistance necessary.

How this can be classified as 'keeping things quiet' is beyond me…

Regardless, the runners are placed as planned. The Mage was waiting with some lightly armed security personnel outside the boardroom, ready to break in when called. As the two other team members were setting up (the sniper on top of the other building taking aim and the Sammie rappelling down the building) the Mage got bored.

GM: All right, you've got the troll in your sights and you've his head right in the crosshairs. You-

Mage: I'm bored. I'm going to walk around. (the three others turn to stare at the mage player)

GM: (pause) Okay… where are you going?

Mage: Outside.

GM: Okay, you go out on the street.

Mage: Do I see anybody?

GM: Yeah, there are a lot of people walking around. Closest to you is a middle-aged man in a corp uniform with glasses and a briefcase.

Mage: I walk up to him and tap him on the shoulder.

GM: Sure. He turns around, sees you and turns pale.

Mage: COOL! (IHPG) I say to him "I am Death, I will take you!" (IHPG)

The other two players hang their heads.

GM: Okay, he goes even paler and passes out.

Mage: COOLER! I pull out my scythe and begin laughing, pointing to others and saying "I will take you ALL!" (IHPG)

While the Mage is getting his jollies (and attracting a crowd outside the building) the Sammie hooks himself to the side of the building, pulls out a charge of C4, and attached it to the side of the building in order to blow in the boardroom window.

Sammie: Okay, I set the timer for fifteen seconds.

GM: Sure. The numbers read fifteen and begin to count down.

Sniper: What?? Do I still have the radio? Can I talk to him?

GM: Yes

Sniper: "What do you think you're doing?"

Sammie: "Setting a charge, what does it look like?"

Sniper: "This is a hush job, remember?!"

Sammie: "Oh, yeah. I forgot. Ooops." (pause) Ummmm, I grab the explosive and throw it off the building.

Mage (in the background) "I am DEATH!" (IHPG)

Sniper: What?? Why don't you deactivate it-

GM: Too late. You grab the explosive and chuck it away from the building. A few seconds later there is a gigantic explosion beneath you."

Sammie: Oooops.

At this the terrorists in the boardroom panic and shoot a hostage. The sniper takes his shot and blows the troll's head off. The Mage then realizes he was supposed to be doing something and runs back up into the building.

GM: You notice the helicopter is flying away.

Sammie/Sniper: (together) What?!

Mage: "I am DEATH! (IHPG)

GM: You hear over the radio "This is drek! I'm not being paid enough to have Fuchi pissed off at me."

Sammie: I'm leaving. (rolls his athletics)

GM: (winces at the number of ones) The pin you set to hold you on the side of the building is stuck.

Sammie: Crap. Umm… I take out my Ingram smartgun and go full auto on the window, then I'll break through.

GM: (noting the fact that the Sammie's gun has neither sound nor flash suppression). Okay.

After the noise fest, the Sammie breaks clean through the window, with the sniper effectively covering his entrance.

Sniper: I'm shooting the terrorists.

Sammie: I open fire on the terrorists with my Ingram.

Mage: I am DEATH! (IHPG)

GM: (dice rolling) You plug one of them. He's down. The Sammie kills his target. There are three more left. One is holding a hostage.

Mage: "I am DEATH! (IHPG)

Sammie: I'll go full auto on the guys that don't have hostages.

Mage: "I am DEATH! (IHPG)

Sniper: I'll go for the guy with the hostage.

GM: (rolling) You disable one of your targets, the other is dead. The guy with the hostage gets one between the eyes.

Sniper: Okay, I keep scanning the room for any more bad guys.

Sammie: I shoot the guy again to make sure he's dead then I begin to comfort the civilians.

Mage: "I am DEATH! (IHPG, except the giggling is much louder and extended this time)

Sammie: What else is happening?

GM: Well, there's a huge crater at the base of the building. A crowd has gathered because of that and the death mage, and your helicopter is long gone.

Mage: "I am DEATH! (IHPG)

Sammie: (grabs at head). Ah, Crap! This run is screwed! Fuchi's not going to let us live! (looks up with an evil twinkle in his eye). The terrorists did this!

The Sammie laughs maniacally and proceeds to shoot every civilian in the room except for one, which he reasons would be valuable for reward purposes. Then he declares quite lucidly, "No Witnesses." He shoots the last remaining hostage in the head. He is about to go for the death mage (after the mage has said his favourite line for the fortieth time) but the sniper takes him out.

Sniper: Crap. Oh well, I pack up my gun and walk out.

GM: OK, as you go to leave you finally notice the same surveillance camera that is on every single other downtown building.

Sniper: Well, I'm not doing anything suspicious.

GM: You see two figures peek out of the maintenance door. They say "Freeze! Lonestar!"

Sniper: Oh, drek.

The sniper was found in possession of a highly illegal rifle and cyberware enhancements. He is incarcerated and, being SINless, promptly disappears into the organ donation bank. The Sammie's body is taken apart for his 'ware.

The kicker on this whole screw-up was that the Death Mage was the only survivor, as his only response to the Fuchi interrogators was "I am DEATH! (IHPG). They determined he was no threat.

This is a 'Fill in the Blanks' game. Really I just wanted to tell the account of our latest mission. Or rather, the brief we got and where we are now, and I'll let your imagination fill in the gaps.

Cain, that sounds less like Shadowrun and more like Axe Cop.

~Umi

Cain, that sounds less like Shadowrun and more like Axe Cop.

~Umi

There were some prize stories collected by the CLUE files. I personally have a soft spot for The Case Of The Latter Day Shadowrunners, but I figured the IHPG would be the winner.

You should always make sure you know what the rest of your team is doing before you do something yourself.

Especially if what you're doing is shooting someone and someone else is calling Lone Star. Or vice versa.

There were some prize stories collected by the CLUE files. I personally have a soft spot for The Case Of The Latter Day Shadowrunners, but I figured the IHPG would be the winner.

The Body Electric

Gentle Readers:
In my years of service to CLUE, I've read some pretty horrifying cases. Sadly, I've become more than a little jaded - I was sure there wasn't much more out there that could surprise and/or shock me anymore.

I was wrong.

The following is account came from an eyewitness, namely the player of Tombstone.

The Players:
Calibre - Human weapon specialist
Reaper - Orc Street Sam
Shade7 - Orc Decker
Tombstone - Human Gargoyle Shaman

My group had recently blundered their way through a run that involved trying to stop a maniacal cult. The cult was holed up in a cemetery.

While standing outside the cemetery planning our attack, we caught sight of two people walking along the outside of the fence with submachine guns casually slung across their shoulders.

Well, Calibre sprang into action, putting into motion his 'shoot first and interrogate the corpse' policy, ignoring Tombstone's pondering of whether the people were in fact just security guards.

As it turns out, they were neither cultists nor guards, but members of a magical group/gang known as the Sons of Son. They were holding a midnight funeral for one of their fallen lieutenants and the two patrolling had merely been making sure that no rivals interfered.

So, after the murder of two of their members, the Sons of Son put out a 150,000-nuyen reward on the head of Calibre and 50,000 nuyen on the rest of the team, even though they had nothing to do with the deaths.

Calibre arranged for a new face, and SIN to match, through Reaper's street doc contact. While he was hidden safely away recovering from the surgery, Reaper, Tombstone and Shade7 began searching for a scapegoat who (with a little plastic surgery) could be handed over to the Sons of Son.

Searching the streets of Seattle, Reaper and Shade7 spotted a man who closely matched Calibre's build and appearance.

Please Note: It is five o'clock on a Monday afternoon in downtown Seattle.

Approaching the man, Shade7 exchanges a few words and discovers that the fellow is a male prostitute. Shade7 offers him one thousand nuyen for 'services' and they both get into his car, while Reaper follows them in another vehicle.

GM: OK, you get in the car and begin to drive away. The joyboy looks pretty happy, you offered him a LOT of money. He turns to you with a smile: "So, have you ever had a blowjob while driving?"
Shade7: No. Why don't we wait until we get to my place?"
Joyboy: trails his hand up Shade7's leg. "Trust me, I'm very good. I think you'll like it."
GM: He's unzipping your pants.
Shade7: "Hey, cut it out!" I'm going to push him off me.
GM: He's a fairly big guy, just as big as Calibre. You're not budging him. Besides, you're driving in rush hour and have to keep your attention on the heavy traffic. He reaches his 'objective,' pulls it from your underwear and starts to go down.
Shade7: I'm going to pull out my taser and zap him!
GM: (after a moment of silence) Oooookay.

At this point, the joyboy is administering a passionate, deep-throat blowjob.

The God-knows-how-many-thousands of volts of current goes through the joyboy and, via that wet and beautifully conductive 'connection' through to Shade7 as well.

This knocks them both unconscious with stun damage.

The car crashes.

Reaper pulls up behind his friend's wreck. He runs over, hauls Shade7 and joyboy from the wreckage and dumps them into his own car. Even though the joyboy wasn't buckled in, he is still alive (after almost going through the windshield). Reaper prepares to leave as dozens of eyewitnesses watch in disbelief. One brave and civic-minded citizen draws a light pistol to stop the Orc from leaving the scene of the crash. Reaper responds by pulling out his Ares HV LMG from the back seat of his car and tells the sarariman, in no uncertain terms, to back the frag off.

Reaper gets into the driver's seat and pulls away but is soon stopped by Docwagon, who are responding to Shade7's medical bracelet (platinum contracts - where would we be without them?). He hands over the unconscious body of his partner (scorched and still smoking trouser-snake prominently displayed) and leaves.

Five minutes later a Lone Star patrol car is hot on his tail, responding to emergency calls from the witnesses.

He turns onto a street choked with rush hour traffic, making escape difficult. So, Reaper comes up with the 'brilliant' plan - get up onto the sidewalk! Totally forgetting the poor pedestrians, he jumps the curb and begins mowing down helpless workers returning home after a long day. He kills four before his car can't take anymore and crashes. Again the joyboy isn't buckled in. But this time he isn't so lucky and promptly dies from massive head injuries.

Reaper abandons the car only to be confronted by the two Lone Star patrolmen, who tell him to drop to the ground. Being the raging psychopath that he is, Reaper ignores their orders and proceeds to tear them to pieces with his cybernetic 'Kid Stealth' legs, in full view of a dozen witnesses and the dashboard camera on the patrol cruiser.

Finally, Reaper manages to escape into the sewers. Many difficulties plague him, but he finds a group of street scum that live there (eating rats and garbage) and gives them his credstick with 100,000 nuyen as payment for showing him the way to his doss. Taking the credstick, they guide Reaper through the sewers to his destination. Reaper thanks them, guns them down, and pries the credstick from their dead fingers.

Wounded from his exchange with the cops and finding his picture plastered all over the trid and screamsheets, Reaper decides to call his street doc to arrange for a little plastic surgery of his own. However, after he picks up the phone he remembers - not only is the doc is in hiding with Calibre, but he has no idea where the hideout is!

The session ended there, with the following results:

Calibre: unwrapping his bandages in an unknown location.
Reaper: trying to unsuccessfully heal without medical attention.
Shade7: lying in a hospital ward while a nurse applies burn cream to the withered remains of his penis.
Tombstone: pondering why the HELL he hangs out with these idiots.

And, in the end, it was all for nothing since they managed to get Calibre's decoy killed.

The Body Electric

Gentle Readers:
In my years of service to CLUE, I've read some pretty horrifying cases. Sadly, I've become more than a little jaded - I was sure there wasn't much more out there that could surprise and/or shock me anymore.

I was wrong.

The following is account came from an eyewitness, namely the player of Tombstone.

The Players:
Calibre - Human weapon specialist
Reaper - Orc Street Sam
Shade7 - Orc Decker
Tombstone - Human Gargoyle Shaman

My group had recently blundered their way through a run that involved trying to stop a maniacal cult. The cult was holed up in a cemetery.

While standing outside the cemetery planning our attack, we caught sight of two people walking along the outside of the fence with submachine guns casually slung across their shoulders.

Well, Calibre sprang into action, putting into motion his 'shoot first and interrogate the corpse' policy, ignoring Tombstone's pondering of whether the people were in fact just security guards.

As it turns out, they were neither cultists nor guards, but members of a magical group/gang known as the Sons of Son. They were holding a midnight funeral for one of their fallen lieutenants and the two patrolling had merely been making sure that no rivals interfered.

So, after the murder of two of their members, the Sons of Son put out a 150,000-nuyen reward on the head of Calibre and 50,000 nuyen on the rest of the team, even though they had nothing to do with the deaths.

Calibre arranged for a new face, and SIN to match, through Reaper's street doc contact. While he was hidden safely away recovering from the surgery, Reaper, Tombstone and Shade7 began searching for a scapegoat who (with a little plastic surgery) could be handed over to the Sons of Son.

Searching the streets of Seattle, Reaper and Shade7 spotted a man who closely matched Calibre's build and appearance.

Please Note: It is five o'clock on a Monday afternoon in downtown Seattle.

Approaching the man, Shade7 exchanges a few words and discovers that the fellow is a male prostitute. Shade7 offers him one thousand nuyen for 'services' and they both get into his car, while Reaper follows them in another vehicle.

GM: OK, you get in the car and begin to drive away. The joyboy looks pretty happy, you offered him a LOT of money. He turns to you with a smile: "So, have you ever had a blowjob while driving?"
Shade7: No. Why don't we wait until we get to my place?"
Joyboy: trails his hand up Shade7's leg. "Trust me, I'm very good. I think you'll like it."
GM: He's unzipping your pants.
Shade7: "Hey, cut it out!" I'm going to push him off me.
GM: He's a fairly big guy, just as big as Calibre. You're not budging him. Besides, you're driving in rush hour and have to keep your attention on the heavy traffic. He reaches his 'objective,' pulls it from your underwear and starts to go down.
Shade7: I'm going to pull out my taser and zap him!
GM: (after a moment of silence) Oooookay.

At this point, the joyboy is administering a passionate, deep-throat blowjob.

The God-knows-how-many-thousands of volts of current goes through the joyboy and, via that wet and beautifully conductive 'connection' through to Shade7 as well.

This knocks them both unconscious with stun damage.

The car crashes.

Reaper pulls up behind his friend's wreck. He runs over, hauls Shade7 and joyboy from the wreckage and dumps them into his own car. Even though the joyboy wasn't buckled in, he is still alive (after almost going through the windshield). Reaper prepares to leave as dozens of eyewitnesses watch in disbelief. One brave and civic-minded citizen draws a light pistol to stop the Orc from leaving the scene of the crash. Reaper responds by pulling out his Ares HV LMG from the back seat of his car and tells the sarariman, in no uncertain terms, to back the frag off.

Reaper gets into the driver's seat and pulls away but is soon stopped by Docwagon, who are responding to Shade7's medical bracelet (platinum contracts - where would we be without them?). He hands over the unconscious body of his partner (scorched and still smoking trouser-snake prominently displayed) and leaves.

Five minutes later a Lone Star patrol car is hot on his tail, responding to emergency calls from the witnesses.

He turns onto a street choked with rush hour traffic, making escape difficult. So, Reaper comes up with the 'brilliant' plan - get up onto the sidewalk! Totally forgetting the poor pedestrians, he jumps the curb and begins mowing down helpless workers returning home after a long day. He kills four before his car can't take anymore and crashes. Again the joyboy isn't buckled in. But this time he isn't so lucky and promptly dies from massive head injuries.

Reaper abandons the car only to be confronted by the two Lone Star patrolmen, who tell him to drop to the ground. Being the raging psychopath that he is, Reaper ignores their orders and proceeds to tear them to pieces with his cybernetic 'Kid Stealth' legs, in full view of a dozen witnesses and the dashboard camera on the patrol cruiser.

Finally, Reaper manages to escape into the sewers. Many difficulties plague him, but he finds a group of street scum that live there (eating rats and garbage) and gives them his credstick with 100,000 nuyen as payment for showing him the way to his doss. Taking the credstick, they guide Reaper through the sewers to his destination. Reaper thanks them, guns them down, and pries the credstick from their dead fingers.

Wounded from his exchange with the cops and finding his picture plastered all over the trid and screamsheets, Reaper decides to call his street doc to arrange for a little plastic surgery of his own. However, after he picks up the phone he remembers - not only is the doc is in hiding with Calibre, but he has no idea where the hideout is!

The session ended there, with the following results:

Calibre: unwrapping his bandages in an unknown location.
Reaper: trying to unsuccessfully heal without medical attention.
Shade7: lying in a hospital ward while a nurse applies burn cream to the withered remains of his penis.
Tombstone: pondering why the HELL he hangs out with these idiots.

And, in the end, it was all for nothing since they managed to get Calibre's decoy killed.

to cut to the short of it, with all related media under consideration, how bad a run can go is "Alien monstrosities flood into the world, annihilating everything that lives, and destroy all future possibility of life inhabiting the earth, while electronic entities realize that the final measures used to combat the horrors and themselves will lead to a slow, inevitable loss of energy that will starve themselves. The lack of life will quickly warp the mana, trapping the horrors in their own death pit, gradually being erased from existence through mana starvation."

That's not how bad a run can go, that's how bad a run can go if the GM is a jerk who wants to wank some shitdark all over the setting.

It should never get that bad. Even if the Runners fuck up royal, there are much more powerful people than them who are probably planning to do something about it.

Yeah, I'm not really seeing why anyone would leave those kind of consequences in the hands of a small group of mercs. Particularly 1 small group of mercs, since there are undoubtedly more factions interested in the world continuing to exist who have better resources to throw at this en mass.

We (sort of) finished this 'run last night. 2 characters dead, 2 character arrested. Me alone staying in a swanky hotel with spa and full room service. It sounds like I sold them out but I really didn't, and my situation is more tentative than it seems.

Mungo forgets he's lactose intolerant and gets real ice cream.

This one isn't, strictly speaking, Shadowrun, but Eclipse Phase.

Still, it has a job going completely sideways.

The Job:
The group have been assigned to recover a missing Firewall asset, a Sentinel by the name of Violet Perdido, whose last known location was in her normal base of operations, Elysium. After some investigation and some properly paranoid gun-jumping, they have determined that she has been captured by the Shui Fong, the most powerful criminal organization, and only Triad, in town.

They determine that their best lead for locating her is that she had to pass through the Jade Dragon Inn, the Triad's breadbasket. The Jade Dragon is a ten-story hotel, containing (among a host of other criminal enterprises, including a black market point-of-sale and warehouse,) a Black Kettle* on the top floor. They know this because they recovered her body, but it had a 15-year-old Triad soldier in it.

The group considers getting close to one of the black kettle technicians by hijacking one of the prostitutes in a pleasure pod and using her body to get close to the technician (who get steep discounts on the whores and other services as compensation for being restricted to the building, so they can't be just black-bagged and interrogated by people like my PCs,) but reject that as the only one willing to fork a copy into a pleasure pod is an AGI with nonexistant experience in operating a humanoid body and very minimal experience in (simulated) sex.

They instead hatch the following plan: They'll recruit a bunch of shit-kickers who are of a mind to attack those who hold people in slavery (Indentured servitude, generally seen by its detractors as the same thing,) load them up in a big old mining site pickup truck with a gun mounted to it on a robot arm, crash through the front of the hotel, and have them launch a nakedly aggressive raid on the black market. While their goon squad are drawing the Triad's attention, they group would hit the black kettle, and liberate the slaves.

Their Proxy (Mr. Johnson) does not like this plan, but he wants Violet Perdido back and un-interrogated badly enough to give them only three instructions:

• Don't get into a gun-fight on the streets of Chinatown.
• Don't make the news.
• Don't set Chinatown on fire.

*Black Kettle: Martian term for a criminal body-bank, a place where egoes can be sleeved into a morph, or unsleeved from one, without going through regulated, official, legal channels.

Where we are now:
The plan goes very amiss on the very first roll, when the only PC with any Pilot (Groundcraft) whatsoever, who was chipping a skillsoft to do so, insists on taking the wheel from the NPC who was driving, and promptly rolls a critical botch. She spends moxie to downgrade it from a critical failure to a regular failure.

I rule that, instead of crashing into a passing police riot response vehicle full of armed riot cops who were on their way to an exercise, she "merely" T-Bones a big old panel van right in front of the hotel, smashing it against the front of the building and blocking the doors. Her recruited goon squad, a bunch of Scum from the Scum Swarm she recently departed, who have been unimaginatively dubbed Seal Team Scum, thinking fast, leap off the truck, free-running up the side of the stricken panel van. They shoot the glass window over the doors out, and lead with grenades: five frag and an incendiary. Right into the lobby of an occupied hotel.

Turns out that the kind of help you can recruit to launch a nakedly aggressive raid on a heavily-defended criminal enterprise for the promise of loot and reputation aren't exactly the most subtle or disciplined type of help to recruit. Thanks to some quick thinking on my players' part and complete domination of the building's security systems from long before the word "go," they do manage to complete all their objectives: Recovering Violet Perdido, Liberating all the slaves, and grabbing some phat lewt. But they also managed to tick every box on their "do not do this" list, too. They started a gunfight on the streets of Chinatown when the AGI (in control of the truck) rammed the panel van away from the doors so she could walk fire across the lobby, preventing the triads who were upstairs from flanking Seal Team Scum as they had a running firefight through the laundromat and black market in the basement. They lit Chinatown on fire because one member of Seal Team Scum, known as FUCKHEAD (emphasis on FUCK! and HEAD!,) proceeded to not only light the lobby on fire, but then torched the bar, and after a quick run through the black market basement, was called to torch the black kettle to hide all evidence of what the group did: a task he took to enthusiastically with a grenade launcher full of incendiaries and a portable hydrazine flamethrower. And of course, they made the news very dramatically because of their botched entry and the gunfire on the streets of Chinatown, resulting in everybody with a camera (literally everyone,) recording what they were doing and posting it to social media.

...this sounds pretty close to SOP for my group...
*facepalm*

Turns out that the kind of help you can recruit to launch a nakedly aggressive raid on a heavily-defended criminal enterprise for the promise of loot and reputation aren't exactly the most subtle or disciplined type of help to recruit. Thanks to some quick thinking on my players' part and complete domination of the building's security systems from long before the word "go," they do manage to complete all their objectives: Recovering Violet Perdido, Liberating all the slaves, and grabbing some phat lewt. But they also managed to tick every box on their "do not do this" list, too. They started a gunfight on the streets of Chinatown when the AGI (in control of the truck) rammed the panel van away from the doors so she could walk fire across the lobby, preventing the triads who were upstairs from flanking Seal Team Scum as they had a running firefight through the laundromat and black market in the basement. They lit Chinatown on fire because one member of Seal Team Scum, known as FUCKHEAD (emphasis on FUCK! and HEAD!,) proceeded to not only light the lobby on fire, but then torched the bar, and after a quick run through the black market basement, was called to torch the black kettle to hide all evidence of what the group did: a task he took to enthusiastically with a grenade launcher full of incendiaries and a portable hydrazine flamethrower. And of course, they made the news very dramatically because of their botched entry and the gunfire on the streets of Chinatown, resulting in everybody with a camera (literally everyone,) recording what they were doing and posting it to social media.

Actually I'd tick only the "Make the news" box. Technically SEAL TEAM SCUM got into a firefight and set Chinatown on fire. If none of the PCs were actually identified and made the news, then uncheck the "Make the news" box.

okay, i have a couple... mostly the same group (one guy moved away, others joined), different characters.

one time, we had a troll sniper. he liked to find a good spot before a meet, and he once picked the same spot as the OTHER sniper, who was not ready for troll melee. One run, they had a simple job to go into downtown Seattle, a biotech office on a high floor. they get the goods and a few extras as well. they go to the meet.. and a sniper shoots the Johnson in the head. now a vital point- they had worked with him before, and NEVER done any research into who he worked for really. they grab his commlink, and are doing a frantic getaway as a helicopter starts to follow them. the Johnson's commlink clams he works for Aztechnology... so they call those guys for help. they get an assault-chopper escort right into the 'safety' of the pyramid.

inside the pyramid, they sell all the Ares goodies (including a magically active symbiote bioware implant larva), as well as the Suitcase- which is just like the one from that first episode of firefly, with girl sleeping inside (she was a technomancer). they then went on to pay aztec for the privilege of getting some implant (oh hey, cortex bombs!). later on they found and removed the cortex bombs, and helped the plot-important girl escape. and no, the Johnson didn't work fro aztec, it was his fake cover commlink (his work model was an implant). these players had a bad habit of running away from PLOT as fast as they could manage, selling it at the first opportunity to the lowest bidder.

Another time... the rigger (an alcoholic) FUBARed the run very hard. it was to get a package from a warehouse- security had offline wired CCTV, and the rigger was- in company outfit, in a company van (rented with large deposit from contact), and he had put on makeup 'to defeat facial recognition software' with a botched disguise roll. the Decker had it set up, so that all he had to do was drive up, wait, and drive off. the team was around the block for backup. so... he offers a drink from his hip flask to the guard on duty (red flag!). The Decker gets the package to the van, and I mercifully let them drive off before local security gets organized to deal with the HR problem. A security team follows the van, mostly to observe his driving, as things fall apart quickly now that the Decker failed to erase certain data from cameras. There was a shootout with a fire elemental in a mall parking deck, and they stole a truck to getaway with the goods since the van (with LARGE deposit) was disabled under fire.

So the kicker- i ask the rigger 'where did you park your regular van, with all the drone?' he says his apartment. which is linked to his fake SIN. i asked him are you sure? he said yes. so your sure? okay then...lonestar is at your apartment. and then he got upset and started packing up his things to leave, because he was so attached to his van and drones (that cost SO MUCH of his starting money). He was ragequitting because of a problem that he himself had caused, and because of mere physical goods at that.

A Rigger without his drones and his van is pretty much about as useful as a street banger in the game of Shadowrun. And I don't even mean the "super-competent banger who's on the cusp of graduating to the big leagues," I mean an ordinary banger who gets recruited as cannon fodder. Riggers losing all of their shit at one go would be like if you had the street samurai sedated and all of his cyber ripped out, then let loose with Lone Star hunting for him, or if you had an asshole cybersurgeon implant secondhand basic cyber-radios in a magician until his Essence was 0.5, and then let him loose.

So, no. I'm not going to call the player the asshole on this one. First off, you blew a minor role-playing offer of a drink into a run-scrubber, and then you tell him that he's completely fucking boned: Lone Star are after him and have his real face, his contact is after him (or at least no longer speaking with him,) because he got the rented van totaled, and the entirety of his efficacy in the team (he is a rigger: Drones and vehicles are what he does,) have been confiscated, leaving him massively underpowered and, at best, a Load on the team; and at worst, the other members of the team would actively hand him over to those who hunt him to get the heat off themselves, or put him in a ditch so he can't reveal any information about them when he inevitably gets picked up.

All because he gave a guy a drink, roleplaying his character's flaw (alcoholism) and a sense of beneficence well, and because you didn't remind them that they could test a botched disguise roll made from the safety of their own hideouts. For that, you escalated the situation to a point where he's being hunted by the Star, has lost the entirety of his equipment , which some archtypes (such as rigger, which he was) are utterly reliant upon to participate in the game, and you then belittle him as "ragequitting" over something "he started" and over "physical goods at that," which are physical goods he 100% requires to do the things he's supposed to do.

I'm sensing some CLUEfiles-isms here: you're slamming the PC stupidly hard over something exceedingly minor that you just leapt at a chance to nail him with full-on "CONSEQUENCES!" for, and then act smug like it's all his fault when his character gets so completely hosed that he gets upset and decides there's no point in continuing to play.

You can treat that as an unrecoverable setback, or as an opportunity. I prefer the latter. You can ALWAYS recover from a setback, it just might take a while.
And yes, I have been in that situation. My Cyberlogician lost tons of specialized drones, several vehicles, and 90% of the ware in the character's body when he was captured and tried for Industrial Espionage. Took me several Months to Escape and reconfigure my biometrics a bit, but in the end, he was one of my most experienced and enjoyable characters. Shame about the Girlfriend, though.

The way I see it, if at any time circumstances in the game would put your character below the threshold of a chargen character, it's time to scrub that character and start a new one.

Especially if he's lost that friggin' much. That's no longer a viable PC, that's a guy who's floating along soaking up Karma and nuyen and not contributing.

One way to look at it I guess...

Me, I like the challenge. And losing "that friggin' much" is a character defining moment (It definitely was for me, losing almost 1,000,000 Nuyen in Augmentations (Almost all Betaware), Gear and Equipment). I like to see where my characters go when something like that happens. Maybe it ends with them dead. Maybe they rise above the situation, resulting in a rather cool storyline. In my case, the character was at base, even with no gear, still better than a starting character; which will always be the case in my opinion, at least for me, since I never define a character by what they have (since you can always get more), but by what they are. Probably a benefit of not Hyper-specializing.

so the kicker- i ask the rigger 'where did you park your regular van, with all the drone?' he says his apartment. which is linked to his fake SIN. i asked him are you sure? he said yes. so your sure? okay then...lonestar is at your apartment. and then he got upset and started packing up his things to leave, because he was so attached to his van and drones (that cost SO MUCH of his starting money). he was ragequitting because of a problem that he himself had caused, and because of mere physical goods at that.

Just because you hired/recruited/manipulated someone into doing something you were told not to do doesn't mean you don't bear any responsibility for it.