Because we're discussiong it right now in Germany :
Does anybody of You Guys know ( or has a plausible explanation) why Corporate SIN is worth those massive 25 Points ?
ImO it makes more sense
to rate them:
National SIN 5
lim Corp SIN 10
Corp SIN 15
and Criminal SIN 20

What Do You think ?

with a SINful Dance
Medicineman

By RAW? It makes no sense whatsoever.

Under certain house rules, it makes a little more sense. Someone told me that in Missions, if you had a SIN, you had to pay taxes. Corp SINs had to pay the highest, and it was auto-deducted from your earnings, no matter what you did. That still doesn't make sense, because any shadowrunner worth a damn would know how to hide money away, but it kinda worked as a restriction.

The notion is that it is worde for you if the corps have your biometric data, compared to the government in general.

since the corps do not work together much though, it is not.

The SIN qualities make no sense? Stop the presses!

What ADVANTAGE does the Corporate SIN give?
Or should the cost simply be -25 making it a flaw instead of an edge?

It is a flaw and you get 25 karma to spend for being corp born. Guess the corp brats do get all the best toys.

Are you guys forgetting that Runners don't trust Corpers and ex-Corpers? If you secretly have a Corporate Sin, almost everyone in the shadows who finds out is going to view you as a traitor who cannot be trusted.

~Umi

No, i get that, but the opening post read to me like you had to PAY the 25 Karma for being an outcast on discovery . .

thats because You don't play 5th Ed
(Or You would've known that its a Neg Qual which gives a whopping 25 Points )

with a whopping Dance
Medicineman

still say they should never have changed from edge/flaw to positive/negative "quality"

that seems like a rather broad characterization of what is undoubtedly a very broad spectrum group.

some runners (who are themselves former corporate employees) may trust other former corporate employees more. there aren't a lot of general statements you can make about shadowrunners, mostly because if they were the kind of people to fit neatly into categories, most of them wouldn't be shadowrunners.

now, you could certainly make that argument for, say, people who are or used to be members of the halloweeners. that's a sub-group that i'd say would feel strongly anti-corporate, and would feel contempt or mistrust for someone with a corporate SIN.

A rather broad characterization of what is undoubtedly a very broad spectrum group? Funny - that could apply to the Infected as well, and yet how many people around here insist that it's universal "Shoot On Sight" when it comes to the Infected? Or even just changelings with Insectoid Features?

Runners, more than anyone else, know how horrible the Corps are. You don't have to be a drekhead Halloweener to distrust the guy who used to work for Aztechnology or Saeder-Krupp. Any runner who trusts someone who worked for Blood Mages or Lofwyr is a moron who deserves to die, neh? Unless you have damn good proof they aren't still secretly working for The Man, you're probably better off just shooting them the moment you find out their past.

After all, the Corps are more than capable of brainwashing people into unwitting sleeper agents, or even just simply blackmailing them into doing their bidding. Why risk getting eaten betrayed as soon as your supposed ally gets hungry squeezed by the corps who have dirt on them?

~Umi

there are vastly more people in aztechnology who have never even seen a blood mage than there are people who work for him. likewise with lofwyr... you're only working for him in a very general sense, in much the same way that a gas station attendant might be considered to be working for the CEO of shell. in a very loose sense, the CEO is their ultimate boss... but practically speaking, you're never going to have any interaction with them.

as to the corps being able to brainwash people... sure. what makes you think someone who didn't work for a corp is immune? you think the corp can't just capture someone and brainwash them?

shadowrunners are frequently paranoid, yes (at least, the ones that live for very long). but a lot of them don't really care about corporations in general (though they may have a beef with one or more specific corporations... someone who lost family in the renraku archology shutdown may deeply resent renraku for playing with fire, especially since those events were closely related to a lot of bad things that have happened since, if you know about the setting, for example).

but if they had a KOS policy towards corporate employees, they wouldn't be able to be shadowrunners.

First problem: every shadowrunner knows how to hide their ID. They have to; the whole point of hiring a shadowrunner is that they're deniable, and they can't be tracked back to the Johnson.

Second problem: many runners are ex-corp types. From the very beginning, there were at least two archetypes like that: Former Company Man, and Former Wage Mae. And other original characters, like Dirk Montgomery, were ex-corp. Historically, it's never been a problem.

Third, the SR5 rules don't actually list any penalty for going corp SIN. These are house rules we're discussing, but by RAW, there's no real difference between a National SIN and the hefty Corp one. Except one gives you five times more points, of course.

To me the true bad side for being corporate born is that they definitely have DNA, and quite likely a preserved Material RITUAL Sample.

That seems like a pretty big downside to me.

There is a hefty price to pay as a Corp SINer. Like the other SINner negatives, you were born in the Corp and all your information is readily available by the Corp should someone have to run a scan on you. You could be considered a high priority extraction target should someone find you. That's going to draw elite HRT like Firewatch or the Red Samurai. It doesn't matter if your character tossed that SIN away. You're forever on the Corps personnel list. And you're not just some wage slave or kid of a wage slave -- you're in the upper echelon. If you leave a couple drops of blood at a scene and some rent-a-cop runs that sample, he could pull up a warrant for your arrest or to contact that specific corp. And even if you're not part of the Corp anymore, if people find out, your team might lose potential jobs or NPC you work with will back-stab you for whatever reason.

Just throwing things out there.

i have a hard time believing corporations are that desperate to recover shadowrunners that were formerly part of their corporation. if the person was suitable for employment by a corporation, they most likely would be (bearing in mind that you really don't want your deniable assets to be perfectly happy to go undeniable at an incredibly inopportune time, for example. nor do you particularly want the person who really hates your guts and is most likely extremely skilled in some area that can cause you massive damage to be constantly hanging around your person)

a much more realistic drawback possibility, imo, is that the person left the corporation because someone powerful in the corporation burned them, and that person may find out they're still alive. and even that is not terribly likely realistically speaking (but at least it's believable).

To me, the best way to salvage the SR5 SINner qualities is to handwave "taxes" as "fees," instead. The IRS isn't involved in any way, it's that you're dedicated a cut of all your illicit shadow profits towards covering your ass, and keeping folks from finding out about you, keeping the corp from calling you legally dead or tracking you down, keeping your two lives, your two identities, from explosively colliding (whether it's greasing palms, paying off a crooked probation officer, or what-have-you).

I think the costs are still weird, and all in all I think SR4 had it pretty close to right...but that word "taxes" being there really, really, bugs me, so I headcannon it away as best I can.

And, remember, you don't HAVE to take the qualities to just have these histories as part of your background. As in many games, the Qualities are there if you want the mechanical representation and the points for it; anyone can have a character that grew up in a corporation (or a country, or have a prison record, or whatever), not having the quality just means they've gotten away clean.

In terms of Shadowrun Missions, it's basically getting 25 free Karma to spend with the knowledge that you need to be cautious around that particular Corp.

For home campaign play, I would assume your GM will ask you for a background as to why you want to take that, or go with the whole amnesia route with that knowledge being unknown to you.

I do have trouble with that, since some shadowrunners in the fiction were raised as corp brats. There are simply too many ex-corp employees to make that sort of thing stick. DNA tracing isn't a big threat, since that cop has to get corp approval to run the check. Unless they have a very good reason to suspect you were employed or born to a given corp, they wouldn't even know who to ask. And then, there'd be the question of rather or not the corp would grant access, which is a "maybe" at best, unless the cop proved that it was in their best interest to do so. So, if they linked you to a run against your original corp, that would work. Of course, if you botched a run enough that they not only pegged that much of your ID, but that you were originally linked to that corp, you're already kinda hosed.

And don't forget, many corp employees were "lost" in Crash 2.0. There were what, millions of people who lost their SINs, their jobs, savings, everything? They'd all end up in the shadows. Not all of them would end up as shadowrunners, but there are way too many to track down individually.

The other thing to remember (although the opening paragraphs for each SIN does it poorly) is that what most of us are thinking of when we hear or see Corporate SIN is in fact the 15pt Corporate Limited SIN which handles the Wage Slaves, Low Ranking Security, Enlisted Corporate Military and also encompasses things like Research Scientists/Mages, Corp Deckers and so on (something which requires special security clearance) meaning that people with a Corp Limited SIN can be desirable for extraction by other Corps. It also covers the children of such people most of the time (minor child of a wageslave). The Corp Limit SIN IS shared in the Global SIN registry and would encompass the vast majority of those we would think of Corporate Origin Characters. Its for those recruited from the outside and for those who grow up in the arcologies (on the apartment block levels). Your Corp ties may well make people resent you in the Shadows, maybe they'll even get violent or question your dependability (plus a Corp may be looking for you if you were good enough to be noticed by them).

The Corporate SIN 25pts (or to give it it's full referenced name in it's own section) The Corporate Born SIN is a little different. It makes the character the child of an Executive, A Lead Researcher, A Departmental Head, Special Ops Captain and so forth. You live breathe and eat Corp (okay so do some of the Corp Limiteds) but there is no grind there, no drudge. Mama Corp didn't just provide, it showered you with wealth and benefits but it expected returns too. You Life was evaluated and planned and you had access to all manner of privileged information, you may not have been right at the top but you were one of the elite. Now take a look at the info for the Neg Quality again, It says you were Pushed Out, Forced to leave a life filled with opportunity and luxury and wealth and Real Food etc, Maybe it was your fault, probably it wasn't. Now after all those years of indoctrination, all that Corp given good stuff... what would you do to give it back? Sell out a pack of Street Scum or a team of Shadowrunners when they go to hit Momma Corp? No wonder the Shadows would see you as a liability. It's also worth considering (although as people have said it's not solid RAW but anyone who knows the Sixth World knows it's certainly part of the game Mythos) with the stuff that you know, or possibly know, Momma Corp doesn't want you telling anyone else her secrets (also worth considering if you left in a more voluntary capacity).

Characters with the Corporate Limited SIN experience prejudice and hostility from those in the shadows who are SINless. The SINless believe the corporations deliberately keep them poor and powerless so they can be exploited. The character with the Corporate Limited SIN may find himself being personally blamed for his corporation’s actions—protesting he has no real authority and no connection with the actions in question usually does little good. To the SINless and neo-anarchists the character with the Corporate Limited SIN has sold out and chosen a corrupt and oppressive system over his own people.
...
Most in the shadows see the Corporate Born as the privileged few, the aristocrats in the armored limousines who look down on them, oppress them, exploit them and deny them their basic rights. If the SINless discover the character’s Corporate Born SIN, reactions will range from deep suspicion to violent hostility; serious injury and death are real possibilities. The character’s loyalty to his corporation is never questioned, which can be an insurmountable liability in a culture that works against the megacorps. Would-be runners have been killed for holding Corporate Born SINs.

Yes, everybody suddenly grew fearful of all the ex-corp types in the shadows...

wow. someone actually wrote that for an official shadowrun book? and then someone else actually ok'd it to be published?

well, fair enough then; that provides the context i was missing as to why people think everyone in the shadows automatically hates, fears, and distrusts anyone who has ever had anything to do with the corporations. apparently every single person in the shadows suddenly got the brain worms since the earlier editions.

(on a side note: i get a kick out of people suggesting that being SINless somehow makes you less likely to want the wealth and comfort that a megacorporation can provide, as if people who are born living in poverty have no desire whatsoever for the high life or something. are we seriously pretending that a person who was thrown out of a corporation or who forcibly extracted themself is more likely to go back to their corp than an average person would be likely to go to the corps in the first place?)

I would say that it is worth keeping in mind that those senior level corp people that Moirdryd was talking about are almost politicians as much as they are businessmen, in terms of how we deal with things now. Position in corps is the premiere way of attaining power in the world, so a lot of ambitious people are fighting their way to the top, which means that every weakness can and will be used against you.

Like your kid/ex-protégé/etc, the mass-murdering professional criminal (i.e. typical shadowrunner). Of course whoever had relationships with you wants you out of the shadows, and depending on their personality either being rehabilitated or silenced. Of course their competitors want you, to use you against those you had a relationship with. Even if you hate those you left behind and would be happy to see them brought down, that doesn’t change the fact that you don’t want to kidnapped from your bed some night and used in that process (and if you don’t hate those you left behind, it is even worse).

Even worse, those powerful people probably have background efforts going on to find you. There may not be a lot of resources put into it, but the odds are high that Dr. Thingamajig who you worked for hasn’t forgotten about you and is worried about what you are going to do, so has your identity on a watch list of some kind, and may even hire people to look for you at times. Meanwhile Dr. Thingamajig’s competitors will wonder what the story is that his pet security mage (or whatever) suddenly dropped out of site….is he/she doing a black op they should know about? Or is there some dirty laundry that needs to be dug up and aired out when it would do the maximum damage to Dr. Thingamajig? Either way worth having a pocket decker spend a bit of time scanning for information, potentially even worth taking more active measures.

Not for just any Book but for the Big Basic Book !!
OtoH its a nice Clichee that SINless vs Corps Idea (reminds me a bit of Land of the Dead)
If it wouldn't mess up the rest of the Shadowrun History I could accept it, but not after 4 Editions of different Shadowrun Backgrount.
Its kind of a Retcon ImO


There is an official Canon of Anarchist Berlin, where the Gouvernment offered free SINs and a Comlink to the Anarchist Part in Berlin but only a Fraction of the SINless took the offer.
( Its German Canon of SR3 and 4A )So Yes, some of the SINless don't want that normal, SINfull Life
It makes not much sense to me either,Jaid, but it happens

JahtaHey
Medicineman

allow me to restate (with emphasis this time): the average person.

neo-anarchists are not the average person. i'm totally okay with specifically neo-anarchists or others with similar beliefs not liking corp expats. i'm okay with specific people having a specific dislike for anything having to do with a specific corp, provided they have a reason for it (for example, if you lost several loved ones to Deus, you may very well blame renraku for their deaths, considering the AI Deus was based on before renraku got their hands on her did not seem to have any difficulties in not killing thousands or millions of people, whereas Deus definitely struggled with that).

The way they have it, with the corporate born SIN as a combination of a dark secret, a bad reputation if anyone finds out, and any plot hooks the GM feels like milking it for, then it is worth 25 points. If you find the flavor text stupid beyond words and think that ex-corporate types, even upper-echelon ones, wouldn't be that discriminated against, you might want to lower how much Karma they get for it. Or you could shrug and just leave it. Every edition has positive and negative qualities that are either bargains, or far too much of a hindrance, and SR5 is no exception.

Really? Sorry I missed that, my BS detector must have come on automatically in response.

Seriously, that's it? That's not really a mechanical penalty, or even a good useful roleplaying one. Every single shadowrunner has to be good at concealing their identity, it's part of why they can be shadowrunners in the first place. So the have to hide their identity, so what? Same is true for every single shadowrunner, their anonymity is what makes them hire-able.

Not to mention, it's funny how they tried to kill the neo-anarchist, stick-it-to-the-man vibe, then bring it up here as justification. We haven't had a English language Neo-Anarchist book since, what, first edition? Maybe early second? As the developers moved to black trenchcoat, heist style games, neo-anrachism was swept under the rug along with a lot of pink mohawk concepts.

i would argue that feral cities, while not a neo-anarchist book per se, definitely had a neo-anarchist themed chapter. so if that counts, the last time neo-anarchists were a thing wasn't really *that* long ago.

....

if you happen to be talking about one specific area in one specific city, that is.

Nah. I can think of three full sourcebooks that were not just written from a neo-anarchist perspective, but were named after them. Neo-anarchism was the dominant shadow philosophy for a long time. Now, it barely gets a mention in one chapter.

Luckily there's (at least) one Freelancer (Sir Doom) who's still a Neo-Anarchist in his Heart and tries to add a bit of Anarchism (Raben Aas , the German Artist, too ) if he gets free reign

with an anarchistic Dance
Medicineman

There's more than one that tries to inject it, when we can.

And this page of replies is exactly why I think most all of us choose to implement the Corp will be looking for you, info on database etc aspect of the SIN Neg Quality.

What Do you say in English ?
Godspeed to You ?

HougH!
Medicineman

Well, the mechanical disadvantage (taxes) isn't any better...the SIN qualities are just a mess.


Concealing one's identity does necessarily mean saying nothing bout the past. The corp/military types in established canon don't seem to mind much...

Corporate citizenship isn't contagious and doesn't literally destroy your soul.

Unless you work for the Azzies.

Well, in canon, even though a ton of famous shadowrunners are open about their corp/military past, they're not usually forthcoming with a lot of details. For example, even though it might not be a secret that Neon Samurai used to work for Ares, exactly what he did for them isn't widely known, nor is why he has such a hatred of the MP Laser series. So, even if you know someone has a corporate past, that doesn't mean you know enough to track them.

Really, saying you used to work for a Big 12 mega doesn't say much. They employ the majority of the world's population, and they hire and fire people every day. It's a bit like saying you used to work for McDonalds, that covers millions of people. To figure out exactly why they left the megas is much harder.

But anyway, the point is that shadowrunners must be deniable in order to be employed. If they can be plausibly tracked back to a Johnson or corp, then they can't work in the shadows. If that's now the case, then the Corp SIN is useless, since it's a trap option which will result in an unplayable character. That was part of my problem with 4.5, and I won't be happy to see it come back.

As of 5th, you can't even mention it any longer...

Which still isn't much of a drawback. Part of being in the shadows is that you don't reveal your past, because you don't want to make it easy to track you.

See, the Corp SIN is only a penalty if people know you have it. However, most shadowrunners have fake SINs anyway, so it's not like they go around broadcasting it. There's really no way of telling that someone was born corp, short of them flat-out telling you. Every shadowrunner has to hide their past-- they're career criminals, after all, they don't want to be connected to their previous activities.

Which again is why so many of us use the Corp SIN (Limited or Born) as a negative from the direction of eing indentifiable to the right data searches and also with corps coming looking for you, which is part of thecanon history for such characters.

I believe that for most of those archetypes, the key word is former. They are no longer employed by that company. They have erased their connection to that ID, and are now a deniable asset.

Here is my understanding: A 25 point flaw means that a Corporate SIN is as serious a disadvantage as being blind in a way that cybereyes cannot fix. It should be as bad as a crippling disadvantage that comes into play in almost every single scene.

So I do not believe we should be just talking about a mere inconvenience like tax here.

Here's an example of just how bad it could get:

If a character has the Corp SIN flaw, then they have not had the SIN deactivated or somehow disconnected form themselves. It is active, connected to both them and the company, and the company books say that the character still works for them. Even a cursory background check on the character will quickly reveal this (it's what the SIN system is built to do, after all.). So don't expect to keep your Corp SIN a secret past your first meeting with a fixer or a Mr Johnson.

For argument's sake, let us assume the other runners in the team do not just turn the SINner in for some sort of bounty, or just kill them (because corp).

Even if the character suffers no violence from their peers, they will struggle to get runner work because they fail at the first, most basic hurdle: They are not a deniable asset.

Worst of all is the ease with which the SIN lets you be identified if you leave the slightest evidence behind on a run. (Again, precisely what the entire SIN system is built to do.) Any DNA, fingerprints, or even a visual ID if you do not adequately disguise yourself (possibly even a voice recording) will link straight back to your corporate identity.

The moment that happens, the assumption will be that you were on that run on your corporate employer's orders. At this point your listed employer is very much going to want to have a word with you in order to clear their name before it impacts their stocks and negotiations. The quickest, simplest and most decisive way to do this is to make a rather messy example of you. And at the 25 point level, the corp will definitely have a ritual sample and will be able to find you.

And while they're at it, they'll probably bring in (or take out) anyone you've been working with as well. Just to avoid being accused of making a token gesture.

So once your Corp SIN becomes public knowledge (about two minutes after your first meet with a fixer or Mr Johnson) other runners may refuse to work with you, fixers may start avoiding you, and Mr Johnson may either refuse to hire you or (if they work for the same corp) have you dragged in to explain. Or even worse they might use you to set your corp up to take the fall for the run (refer back to 'messy example' above).

So the character is going to be living a life worse than Vincent Freeman from the movie Gattaca, constantly taking extreme care to prevent their true identity from being discovered not only while on the run, but whenever they are out in public, or even on the phone. Even a longtime teammate seeing their real face for even a second could be all it wold take to end their career as a runner, and possibly their life.

That's just an example of how nasty the flaw can get if the GM plays hardball, but there's only so much softer you can go before letting a player take the flaw is giving them free points. There's only so much room to back off from the extreme case above without falling significantly below the inconvenience level that should come from a 25 point flaw.

oh goody. i'm so glad you're encouraging GMs to treat the script as permission to randomly murder the entire team because reasons.

that sounds like a great idea. i foresee no problems with that stance ever. that sounds like a perfectly reasonable interpretation for what a flaw should be in this game: a guaranteed way to get the entire team killed arbitrarily 5 minutes into the first run just because someone chose it. clearly a brilliant solution.

That's not necessarily true. If that were the case, no one could have more than one Fake SIN at a time, because every one has to be connected to you somehow. And since shadowrunners not only function with multiple fake SIN's, but sometimes have criminal ones as well, they have to be able to dodge these sort of checks as a prerequisite for working in the shadows.


And there's the other problem with it. If I actually enforce it that way, the character has no future in the shadows. Which means the *player* is left out, building a new character while either everyone else waits impatiently, or starts the game without them. While I accept a fair amount of screwing with the characters, screwing with the player is off-limits to me. So, it either runs from free points, to a useless character, with no middle ground.

If someone wanted to play a character with an easy-to-break background, you could do it with Distinctive Style. And, if I had a say in it, I'd certainly recommend swapping the two over, or rewriting the corp SIN rules so to add onto the Distinctive Style penalty. Honestly, I'd just ban that SIN level from my games, rather than leave a trap option like that.

Getting chased by an angry mob with torches and pitchforks the second you reveal that at some point you used to grow up in an exec family sounds like a pretty serious drawback...

@Lurker: Well, that's the version preferred over at CGL's echo chamber. Problem with that, the description of the "Corp Born" quality does not sound like you are still a loyal worker by day, and it also turns the SINner quality into a very convoluted way of acquiring a fake SIN. You ought not to have a SIN, but by paying some shadowy element you still have one? That's exactly what a fake SIN is, only that it does not require regular payments and doesn't get you strung up because people think the guy with the MCT SIN is responsible for everything which ever happened in their Z-zones...

Which is highly unbelievable as well, but the truth is that if any shadowrunner is linked conclusively to their past runs, they'd have a SWAT team at their doorstep. That's why every shadowrunner has to conceal their identity, they are career criminals. So, it's reveal your history = get street contacts mad at you, versus reveal your history = get street contacts mad + get cops mad + get former corp targets mad at you. It's not really that much worse.

As opposed to being chased by angry gangers with flamethrowers and monowhips when just going down the street for some soymilk?

I gotta move to a better neighbourhood.

Again, it's not about revealing your history. It's about the extremely abstract statement "I was issued a corp SIN at some point in my life", which is supposedly enough to trigger reactions ranging "from deep suspicion to violent hostility; serious injury and death are real possibilities". So in your example, simply stating "yeah, back then I ran against a corp once" would be enough to brand you a grass and send the SWAT kicking down your door...

@Sendaz: I'm sure those guys have a much better reason to chase you

Yeah, somehow I can't see how that's worse than "I once worked for Tanamous, selling organs people weren't quite done with." Or being an ex-gang member in the part of town controlled by your rivals. Or a crime family, or any of the other major origins for shadowrunners. And it's still a trap option, because you can't be a shadowrunner if everyone can link you to a particular corp.

What is it with the 4.5 era and unrelenting hatred? First technomancers suffer from mass prejudice out of nowhere. Then, Brackhaven becomes mayor of Seattle. Now a corp past slaps an instant death sentence on your head. Geez, have the ever heard of moderation?

But, as a fix: I'd remove that option, and instead give the character that many levels of Distinctive Style, representing how public their background is. How about that for a hosue rule?

Or, I shall add again, you play it with the Corp probably looking for you, wanting you found etc and none of that being good. Certainly bad with the 15pt Neg Quality with the whole "you're not as invisible as you'd like to be" possibility that could flag and connect you with certain things, a lot worse at the 25pt level with again a SIN confirmation but odds are the Corp you're from REALLY want to find you.

So, you're an ex-Ares brat. Daddy was an Exec of a subsidiary entity, but then he gets wiped in a "board room backstabbing" and his rival manages to implicate you in an extraction attempt. Boom, you're gone and you get out before KE show up to "collect you for internal enquiries". You're now in the Shadows, you dump as much Nuyen into Certified Cred before the accounts freeze over abd they start looking for your SIN transactions. You make some mistakes, have a few close calls, get some chrome, connect with a Fixer, join a Team. Ares is still looking but your SIN never gets used, never broadcasts, you're a shadow, a ghost in the system now. New job comes up, it's a run against Ares, not the main branch and not your old 'family' subsidiary, but still against Ares and close enough to 'home' that they've probably got access to the same data base your biometrics are on. Do you risk it? If you do what precautions do you take so that you don't get ID'd? Is that much more than usual? How do you explain the extra level of paranoia? If you don't risk the run how do you tell the team you're out? Can you afford the down time? What about your Rep? Or what if there's a shot at hitting ack those that hurt you? One of those responsible for your fall into darkness will be present at the target?

For me at least the Corp SIN neg qualities are all about the story in Exactly what form they take and how that could influence the character in the game. I ignore the "tax" thing (which is weird) unless it actually makes sense in some way, of which there are not many. I play it as a background which may very well come looking for you with consequences and yes, it may well get the group killed if they're not expecting it. Welcome to the Shadows of the Sixth World (or any Cyberpunk setting for that matter) chummer. Like the saying goes "What you don't know can get you killed". It's just like taking Dark Secret in a whole bunch of games, the points it gives for character creation may not offset the threat it presents in play. But it tends to generate some interesting and fun RP along with a very real threat of targeted abduction and/or death.

Having a Corp Sin basically means that the corp knows everything about you from the time before you went running. DNA, fingerprints, retina scans (if you still have your eyes), medical history spending habits, likes and dislikes and so on. Governments only track data used to find and tax you, but corps are interested in everything.

Can you change all the things the Corp knows about you? Yes, but it will be hard. You have to become a completely different person with completely different habits than before. And you need a lot of cyber and gene treatments for the DNA.
Will the corp instantly know everything about you? Of course not, but once they realize that they are looking for a former employee they can tighten the net very fast with all the information they have about your habits. Just look what people can do today with metadata and imagine what corps can do in 60 years in a dystopian setting.