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rel
I'm looking at running a game. I want to focus on the things that happen between runs. Part of this will be the response of corporations, law enforcement and the like to the shadowrunners.

By this I mean long term responses, not the dramatic chase out of the facility but what happens next week after detective gumshoe has been put on the case.

I am looking for corp responses that do not include knowing who the shadow runners are or where they live. Preferably something with mechanical bite

e.g.

Evidence has been gathered resulting in an item license or a fake SIN deteriorating

A contact has been questioned and spooked or put under surveillance, they won't be available for a while

can anyone suggest similar responses an angry corp would try assuming they cannot simply track the runners down?
Blade
Usually I like to consider that runners are more or less safe as soon as the mission is over.

Since the runners live outside of the system, they're hard to track, which means expensive. Whatever they did, as soon as the mission is over, the corp has nothing to gain by catching whoever did it. And for corps high cost + no return on investment = no go.
Some could argue that the corp might want to catch them to save face or to show that they care. But in that case all they need is to catch somebody. It would be more cost-effective to blame it on an easier target.

For cops, it's mostly the same. If the run only hurt a corp and it's not their job, if something happened in an area under their protection, it's be easier to blame it on some gang and arrest/kill a few orks. The job of the detective isn't to solve the case, it's to close it as soon as possible. That's the metrics on which the service will be judged.

I like this, since it avoids having the players spend too much time caring about being tracked (as long as they don't go overboard).

There are some exceptions, of course, like the runners being partially identified, attracting too much heat, having made some enemies (even in the criminal world, don't forget that for criminal syndicate it's sometimes more efficient to have the police handle the troublemakers than to do it themselves), or if it became personal or a question of honor for someone (usually a MCT suit).
And if for some reason they still have this hot stolen prototype/blueprint/dangerous virus, then they will be tracked.
Wakshaani
In general, corps view Shadowruns as par for the course. It's just a cost of business an dthey don't get *too* bent out of shape about it. Captured 'runners will be given basic interrogations, but assuming that they don't really know anything, are more likely to be coerced into employment than locked up.

This, of course, changes if they score a bloody nose. If you go ahead and, say, extract the divisional heads daughter, or worse, their top decker, they will move Heaven and Earth to find you. Sometimes, you have to make an example of people. Small nibbles aorund the edge? WHatever. The Eight Ball Crew killed 88 researchers? They gotta be brought in and executed.

As always, It Depends ™.
Beta
I think the lockdown of a contact is a good one. And you can make the players sweat, thinking about the loyalty level of the contact and whether they should have been nicer to them lately. Just try to make it a logical consequence – if they used s ewer entrance to get into the building, a street contact that might know about such things, or someone at the planning office might make sensible contacts who are being watched, but their talismonger less so (although it could be if they used a bunch of reagents that they left some trace that forensics was able to narrow down to one of a few talismongers …. )

Another one I’ve thought of (but not used yet) is word gets back to the runners that description of them, in a general sense, is going around. Word that there is money for information about a group of four runners (2 humans, 1 elf, 1 troll) of about these heights, they make their approach in a black van of such-and-such model and year, use these precise weapons, favor those spells, the mage was chanting in latin, the troll tends to yell “ka-BOOM fraggers” on a regular basis, etc. The group can avoid matching this description, but it may mean changing weapons and vehicles, taking new approaches, disguises, etc.
rel
I like the Description thing, that's the sort of thing I'm looking for.

Any ideas on what sorts of mechanical penalties might be levied on a team that doesn't change their style?
Zednark
QUOTE (rel @ Feb 17 2016, 08:30 PM) *
I like the Description thing, that's the sort of thing I'm looking for.

Any ideas on what sorts of mechanical penalties might be levied on a team that doesn't change their style?

Roll for Public awareness. There's rules for that in Run Faster. That way, cops will start to try and arrest them when spotted, etc.

Edit: Saw the SR4 tag. Well, is there any similar stuff in the 4e player's handbook type deal?
rel
Not that I know of.

How about:
A runners description has been circulated. Relevant authorities (e.g. Lone Star contractors) have a chance of recognising the runner for the next month.

Also, does anyone have any ideas on matrix based responses? What kind of mischief can an enemy hacker cause.
sk8bcn
This is how things are perceived by corporations :

"Renraku has planned a run into our Saeder-Krupp facility stealing our new toy. They did this through random shadowrunners ofc. What do we do now?"
"Anything we could learn from the runners?"
"Nothing I can think of, they probably been hired by a Johnson and doesn't even know for whom they worked for."
"Ok, what do we do now for Renraku?"

And runners are already forgotten.

Well unless they made it personnal:

"But there's something else..."
"Yes what?"
"the runners did their best to cause a maximum casualtie and deathes in the facility"
"Mmm, send a team and geek them"



For cops, it's a different matter. They're looking for justice so they have to try to catch runners BUT remember about extraterritoriality: What happens in an extraterritorial zone is outside the cops juridiction. For our SK facility-run, they wouldn't go after the runners.
Kren Cooper
For corps, I would always take it back to "where's the bottom line". Sending a team to geek another team, just because they caused lots of damage incurs expense, and makes no profit.

Instead think - let's hire the messy team, set them up for a job, tell them it's easy, and send them in against a glacier/UV/milspec target. They'll fail, but they'll make lots of noise, lots of mess and cost our opponents lots of money - and we don't have to pay them, so there's no loss for us. Much more worthwhile, from the corp point of view.


As to the original post, I think there are a number of things you can do:
Word on the street - have the runners overhear people discussing their last run - whether that be with admiration or disgust. Make them aware that people are talking about them, maybe even go so far as to have them hear "man, if I ever knew who those guys were, I'd turn them in to the Star in a heartbeat. 10K reward money? I could go on that holiday I always wanted...."

Fixers - have either more jobs appear, or certain jobs dry up as Johnsons get word of the teams exploits and reputation. If the team have a habit of loud, messy, violent jobs - have more and more of that type of job appear, as the people who want a quiet, discreet and subtle team look elsewhere.

News reports - have KSAF or other journalists turn up in the team haunts looking for info / the next big scoop. That should bring all sorts of unwelcome attention down on them and let them know they need to change their ways... after all, if the tabloids can find them, the cops and corps can't be far behind.

Fans - depending on the team and how they handle stuff, having an 8 year old kid who was playing silly buggers on the fire escape and "saw the whole thing" turn up out of the blue with a towel tied around him like a cape and wanting to be part of their gang can be amusing. What do they do - geek the kid for being a kid and not realising what he's gotten in to? Bad karmic juju if they do (at least at my table). Or if they do, how long until mum and dad come looking for little Timmy. Oh, and mum works as a Lone Star dispatcher, and pulls some strings to track his journey across town towards the runners location where people remember a bunch of folk talking to some little kid. Time to call in the FBI on the child abductors!
Koekepan
Let's pretend we work for SpyCorp. We make spy toys for adventurous kids, and use the data we get from those to generate advertising to their parents. This is very profitable, so we make a lot of money.

Unsurprisingly, someone (perhaps a group of outraged parents - really, who knows? Or cares?) pays for a team of runners to make a run on us. We discover the run. Now what?

What are our motivations?

We want to be a hard target. So hard, so nasty, so pitiless that runners will refuse runs against us. We want to be well-defended against runs during the runs as well as known to be remorseless in our vengeance after the fact. Bear in mind that we are not a mom-and-pop, but a corporation easily clearing a few billion a year, we could afford to establish a department of runner misery for this express purpose.

The first thing I would do as an executive responsible for this sort of thing, after a run, is convene a meeting, during which I demand some things from my underlings:

[*] All details, including eyewitness accounts, video and audio recordings, building sensors such as mass, airflow, released heat - the works. All this shall go through gait and pattern analysis for accumulation of all possible forensic data. Since we're not constrained by rules of evidence, I'll have specialists comb the affected area for any remaining evidence (dropped shell casings, blood flecks, torn clothing, footprints) that can be gathered. We want results, not to argue in court.
[*] A profile of consequences. What was taken, duplicated, altered, destroyed, injured, maimed, killed? What did the runners or their employers ostensibly want and what did they do on the way there?
[*] A security review of how the runners got in, which systems they compromised, how they left, and why they got out before the wrath of the corporation turned them into toxic puddles. If they got in and out slick and fast, I want a plan to slow runner progress. If they weren't detected until after the fact, I want an analysis of how that detection could have been improved. If they took advantage of sloppiness on the part of some personnel, I want a plan - not to make personnel less sloppy, but to improve detection and correction. Lessons learned, plans for the future.
[*] Using all of the above I want as detailed a profile as possible of the runners. Everything from gait analysis and blood sample DNA analysis to RFID scans and voice patterning. I want to know who they are, who they want to be, who they love, everything.
[*] I want a plan to unearth the runners, and publically humiliate them. Possibly lethally, but not necessarily.

Fast forward forty-eight hours. I have reports back.

[*] The details are fed to an analytical expert system for automated correlation and analysis. This is a detective tool that halfway exists today, and will be gosh darned sophisticated by 2050. A gumshoe's best friend.
[*] I will have a darned good idea of who wanted this and why, so I can keep an eye on my back.
[*] I will have capex plans for improving corporate security. If those runners come back, things will emphatically not be the same.
[*] Chances are I will have a solid idea of who hit us, or at a bare minimum, identifying features. I could send out FunVans to sell surveillance and candy to kids .... and monitor a huge area for anything resembling my targets.
[*] I will have a plan to make nobody on earth want to associate with my targets, and nobody on earth want to hit us.

What would the consequences look like for the runners?

In the first forty-eight hours, assuming they're substantially unwounded, they might think that they got away free and clear. They might even buy some celebratory frozen soyghurt from a FunVan.

Then the matrix trids start cropping up. "World's least discreet shadowrun." "These thugs broke into a children's toy maker - you won't believe what happens next!" "Seven ways this infiltrator proves she's an amateur (can you spot them all?)" "Eileen mcShootypants, of Apartment 14, 2865 East 15th Court, Tacoma, did you have those three abortions and wreck the dreams of children in a toy maker for medical reasons or because you hate children? We really would like to know."

Yeah. Some runners gonna need new IDs.
rel
QUOTE (Kren Cooper @ Feb 18 2016, 11:38 AM) *
For corps, I would always take it back to "where's the bottom line". Sending a team to geek another team, just because they caused lots of damage incurs expense, and makes no profit.

Instead think - let's hire the messy team, set them up for a job, tell them it's easy, and send them in against a glacier/UV/milspec target. They'll fail, but they'll make lots of noise, lots of mess and cost our opponents lots of money - and we don't have to pay them, so there's no loss for us. Much more worthwhile, from the corp point of view.


This is the first time the hire the runners that robbed us (and johnsons inevitable betrayal) has made any sense to me, well done.

QUOTE (Kren Cooper @ Feb 18 2016, 11:38 AM) *
As to the original post, I think there are a number of things you can do:
Word on the street - have the runners overhear people discussing their last run - whether that be with admiration or disgust. Make them aware that people are talking about them, maybe even go so far as to have them hear "man, if I ever knew who those guys were, I'd turn them in to the Star in a heartbeat. 10K reward money? I could go on that holiday I always wanted...."


Rewards for info / capture, I like it.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 06:01 PM) *
Then the matrix trids start cropping up. "World's least discreet shadowrun." "These thugs broke into a children's toy maker - you won't believe what happens next!" "Seven ways this infiltrator proves she's an amateur (can you spot them all?)"


Bad publicity, that is brilliant. We don't know who they are but we know they are drek at shadowrunning.

Thank you and thank you, keep it coming people smile.gif
Iduno
You also might want to make sure the GM and the players have the same ideas about how the game world should run. If everyone decided to go full professional and one person decided to go nuts (or failed a roll for a negative trait they shouldn't have taken), this is all good advice. If they players are all expecting beer-and-pretzels pink mohawk goodness...

ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (Kren Cooper @ Feb 18 2016, 05:38 AM) *
Instead think - let's hire the messy team, set them up for a job, tell them it's easy, and send them in against a glacier/UV/milspec target. They'll fail, but they'll make lots of noise, lots of mess and cost our opponents lots of money - and we don't have to pay them, so there's no loss for us. Much more worthwhile, from the corp point of view.


This is an insanely stupid thing, for two reasons.
1: If they beat the odds, they're either going to:
1a: Expect to be paid,
1b: Realize it was a set-up, and now you have made things personal with them, which means they're the ones who are going to be looking for payback.
2: Almost all Runners in the 2060s and 2070s won't lift a goddamn finger anymore unless the money is in escrow. Meaning that, in fact, you do lose the money. They do this for exactly this reason: if the money's in escrow, all the Johnson can do is tell the escrow guy to release it or not to release it. He doesn't get it back no matter the circumstances. This encourages Johnsons not to double-cross, because there's no longer that financial incentive (although really, with what the book payouts are, the idea of trying to doublecross a runner team for that shitty money is ludicrous,) and it encourages them not to hire teams for jobs way above their skill level and send them in kamikaze style, since they still lose the money, even if the team fails.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
Let's pretend we work for SpyCorp. We make spy toys for adventurous kids, and use the data we get from those to generate advertising to their parents. This is very profitable, so we make a lot of money.

Unsurprisingly, someone (perhaps a group of outraged parents - really, who knows? Or cares?) pays for a team of runners to make a run on us. We discover the run. Now what?

What are our motivations?

We want to be a hard target. So hard, so nasty, so pitiless that runners will refuse runs against us. We want to be well-defended against runs during the runs as well as known to be remorseless in our vengeance after the fact. Bear in mind that we are not a mom-and-pop, but a corporation easily clearing a few billion a year, we could afford to establish a department of runner misery for this express purpose.

...

Yeah. Some runners gonna need new IDs.


Yes they will. And you, personally, the SpyCorp executive behind this, are you going to need the following: A pine box and/or an Eclipse Phase style ego backup.

Seriously, you're making this shit personal. They will come after you, and like Liam Neeson, they will find you, and they will kill you. If you're lucky, that's all they are going to do. If you're unlucky, what they're going to do is provide some kind of credible threat of raining down such a world of hurt on SpyCorp that your own employer will turn you over to them and/or simply terminate your contract (ballistically,) themselves, for bringing this kind of trouble down on them. Or they might get creative and brutal in ways you don't like. Your 14-year-old daughter goes missing from her exclusive boarding school, and turns up in a Bunraku parlor in Hong Kong getting spit-roasted, for example. Humanis "finds" evidence that your saintly grandmother actively sheltered trogs during the Night of Rage and now her house burns to the ground. You mysteriously find yourself 25,000 nuyen.gif richer and an "anonymized" email from a competing corp thanking you for your excellent work and the well-done job scapegoating the schmucks you hired and some dumb bitch means the nuyen will keep flowing, and congratulating you on subverting the company IT so none of your managers will ever see your correspondance history with them.

Etc. Etc.

By all means, launch an investigation, tighten security, but do not make the mistake of making it personal. MCT can get away with that because they're a AAA with orbital weapons and nigh-limitless money to burn, you cannot.

Remember, if you make it personal, it's personal both ways. And, while it may be true that a single team off pissed runners isn't going to bring down a corp, a single team of runners who have nothing left to lose can cause you an extraordinary amount of damage before they go down.
Fabe
Another thing to consider about going overboard with death and destruction then I don;t think any one has mentioned is the corp who hired the Runners coming after them. A Corp who got hit by a group of runners who make Kane say "Thats going too far" they might decide to to find out who hired them and take vengeance. If they do find out who hired them the hiring corp might decide to try and make restitution to prevent the retaliation or maybe even a corp war and open negotiations by serving up the offending runners heads on a platter as a peace offering
KCKitsune
QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] All details, including eyewitness accounts, video and audio recordings, building sensors such as mass, airflow, released heat - the works. All this shall go through gait and pattern analysis for accumulation of all possible forensic data. Since we're not constrained by rules of evidence, I'll have specialists comb the affected area for any remaining evidence (dropped shell casings, blood flecks, torn clothing, footprints) that can be gathered. We want results, not to argue in court.


What if the 'Runner team was professional? Hacker covers the Matrix tracks. The Gun bunnies use caseless ammo. The Mage uses a sterilize spell to clean up forensic evidence and astral traces.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] A profile of consequences. What was taken, duplicated, altered, destroyed, injured, maimed, killed? What did the runners or their employers ostensibly want and what did they do on the way there?


What if they took a number of things just to cover up the fact they used your place to launch a cyber attack on another corp?

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] A security review of how the runners got in, which systems they compromised, how they left, and why they got out before the wrath of the corporation turned them into toxic puddles. If they got in and out slick and fast, I want a plan to slow runner progress. If they weren't detected until after the fact, I want an analysis of how that detection could have been improved. If they took advantage of sloppiness on the part of some personnel, I want a plan - not to make personnel less sloppy, but to improve detection and correction. Lessons learned, plans for the future.


If this was so simple to do, then EVERY corp would be doing this.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] Using all of the above I want as detailed a profile as possible of the runners. Everything from gait analysis and blood sample DNA analysis to RFID scans and voice patterning. I want to know who they are, who they want to be, who they love, everything.


If you got this information, then the hacker didn't do his job very well.


QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] I want a plan to unearth the runners, and publically humiliate them. Possibly lethally, but not necessarily.


Unless you got some SERIOUS muscle, then expect a VERY large body count... for YOUR guys.


QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
Fast forward forty-eight hours. I have reports back.

[*] The details are fed to an analytical expert system for automated correlation and analysis. This is a detective tool that halfway exists today, and will be gosh darned sophisticated by 2050. A gumshoe's best friend.


The hacker should have destroyed enough data to make what you do have worthless.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] I will have a darned good idea of who wanted this and why, so I can keep an eye on my back.


Again, who said the 'Runners hit you to hit you? Maybe they used your place to hit another place.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] I will have capex plans for improving corporate security. If those runners come back, things will emphatically not be the same.


This costs a LOT of money. If you're a AAA corp you have the money, otherwise good luck.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] Chances are I will have a solid idea of who hit us, or at a bare minimum, identifying features. I could send out FunVans to sell surveillance and candy to kids .... and monitor a huge area for anything resembling my targets.


This is assuming you know what they look like and "anything resembling my targets" is a LOT of people.

QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 12:01 PM) *
[*] I will have a plan to make nobody on earth want to associate with my targets, and nobody on earth want to hit us.


Who said the punks on the street would give you the time of day? You're corp They could shoot you in the head and cops won't really care.
Koekepan
QUOTE (Fabe @ Feb 19 2016, 06:52 PM) *
Another thing to consider about going overboard with death and destruction then I don;t think any one has mentioned is the corp who hired the Runners coming after them. A Corp who got hit by a group of runners who make Kane say "Thats going too far" they might decide to to find out who hired them and take vengeance. If they do find out who hired them the hiring corp might decide to try and make restitution to prevent the retaliation or maybe even a corp war and open negotiations by serving up the offending runners heads on a platter as a peace offering


This goes double for ShadowDragon's proposal. Runner kidnapping a corp exec's family on business? Is business. On a personal vendetta? Holy cow, the magnitude of the propaganda would make the peak of the last Bush administration's antiterrorist rhetoric look reserved.

"IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING, CALL 1-800-DOOMDEATHDIE!!! Information leading to the arrest, capture, or termination of these subhuman rapist torture slave trading subhuman monster scum baby pornography blowfly larvae feeding on the living morals of humanity will pay in NYtoomanyzeroes."

"I swear that I will, if necessary, tear apart the whole of Redmond brick by brick if that's what it takes. Every metahuman in there gets inspected, released, or arrested. And the ones who don't leave get BOMBED BACK TO THE FOURTH AGE!!!"

"Last night, when I got home from work I hugged my babies and prayed that beings of pure evil like that never take them from me!"

"Anyone who worked with them. Anyone who knew them and didn't speak up. Anyone who remained silent is an accomplice to their atrocities and will be dealt with to the maximum extent of the law. We will insist on jury trials, because there is no jury that will not look in their eyes and send them down a deep, dark hole with a smile."

... no, seriously, that was a truly terrible idea.
Koekepan
QUOTE (KCKitsune @ Feb 19 2016, 08:55 PM) *
What if the 'Runner team was professional? Hacker covers the Matrix tracks. The Gun bunnies use caseless ammo. The Mage uses a sterilize spell to clean up forensic evidence and astral traces.


Then they're obviously ghosts and there isn't much the corp can do except try to improve their setup against the next strike. Moving on...


QUOTE (KCKitsune @ Feb 19 2016, 08:55 PM) *
What if they took a number of things just to cover up the fact they used your place to launch a cyber attack on another corp?


Try to work it out with the other corp and now the team is on both corps's shit lists.

QUOTE (KCKitsune @ Feb 19 2016, 08:55 PM) *
If this was so simple to do, then EVERY corp would be doing this.


Precisely. This is one of my primary contentions. Small corps mightn't have the resources, but any corp clearing a few meganuyen in profit a year can most definitely line up a serious security plan in a world populated with shadowrunners (among other nasty threats) or else face massive problems from shareholders, directors, institutional investors, bankers and others. If every corp is just a soft target waiting to dish out blowjobs and giggle when the shadowrunners blow their wads, then they'll go out of business right quick and be replaced by ones that aren't.
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 19 2016, 06:53 PM) *
This goes double for ShadowDragon's proposal. Runner kidnapping a corp exec's family on business? Is business. On a personal vendetta? Holy cow, the magnitude of the propaganda would make the peak of the last Bush administration's antiterrorist rhetoric look reserved.

...

... no, seriously, that was a truly terrible idea.


You're the one who started the terrible ideas by going after Runners after the job is over and the damage is done.
You started down this path.

Only a relative handful of people in the world can say that they are truly safe from a team of Runners who decide to go all-in and have nothing left to live for. A pissant executive at SmallMidCorp is not one of those people, and the world of hell they rain down on him will serve as an object lesson to all other pissant executives in why Mitsuhama Computer Technologies gets to make things personal but they do not.

Dealing with Shadowruns is a cost of doing business, and making it personal is unprofitable. That's a setting conceit, and you either need to just accept it, just like your problems with cryptography, or you need to find another damn setting to play in.
KCKitsune
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Feb 19 2016, 08:21 PM) *
Only a relative handful of people in the world can say that they are truly safe from a team of Runners who decide to go all-in and have nothing left to live for. A pissant executive at SmallMidCorp is not one of those people, and the world of hell they rain down on him will serve as an object lesson to all other pissant executives in why Mitsuhama Computer Technologies gets to make things personal but they do not.


ShadowDragon, I think that if the 'Runners have nothing to lose, and they're willing to have an Honor-Guard to the Afterlife (Heaven or Hell, either way), that a good enough 'Runner team could take out ANYBODY. Just like Kennedy said, "If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is to give his life for the President's." So if Mitsuhama Computer Tech wants to make it personal enough that they would have to keep looking over their shoulders because they might see one of these 'Runners there with a knife.
Koekepan
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Feb 20 2016, 03:21 AM) *
Dealing with Shadowruns is a cost of doing business, and making it personal is unprofitable. That's a setting conceit, and you either need to just accept it, just like your problems with cryptography, or you need to find another damn setting to play in.


I'm sorry.

I realise now, I've made a terrible mistake, and I have to apologise to the community for my blindness.

ShadowDragon8685 has pointed out - and I have no response to this - that I must simply accept the setting as it is, without demur, or leave.

I suppose, in this day and age, I should be grateful for the wide variety of settings available to me. Perhaps I can find another that will bring the same challenges, the same hopes, the same vision. Perhaps I can still my protests enough that I will not similarly disrupt and confound that community. After all, to be banished from one might be regarded as the fate of the thoughtless. To be banished from more than one? The fate of the flawed.

In particular, the inherent folly of attempting to bring what vision I have, the unforgivable arrogance of pretending that my approach to a scenario might have value compared with that of the community at large is so clearly counter to the benefit of all that the dissension I sow can only be likened to a weed, hardy but hardly desirable.

And who but ShadowDragon8685 had the clear sight and the open throat, the honour of the honest man, the candour of the just? The community owes ShadowDragon8685 a debt of gratitude; none as great though as mine. Therefore, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for lifting the scales from my eyes and showing me the truth eternal. None could lay claim to have done more, and few, if any, as much.

Thank you.
Koekepan
s/dup//g
Sendaz
*chuckles*

Nice bit of wordsmithing there Koekepan. smile.gif I do envy your eloquence, especially compared to my own meager brute force attempts at words.

In all fairness, BOTH sides have some merit in this.

The corps have to be able to provide a credible threat/ response to Runner activity, otherwise you end up like the Warner Bro. Sheepdog and Coyote battling it out til the End of Day Whistle blows and they go off to have a beer together.
And what business can survive those kind of losses if everything not nailed down is lifted on a regular basis?

The Terrorist group Omega Dawn is sort of a response to the Runner threat, because they are trying to use the same tactics against the runners.
QUOTE (10 terrorists pg 16)
> Don’t be so sure of yourself. Omega Dawn is becoming a new
buzzword in shadowrunner circles. Our activities rely on the
fact the authorities of the world normally have too much to do
with too little funding to make more than a half-hearted effort
to get back at us. These guys, they have the funding, they have
the gear, and they have hatred for us burning in their hearts.

All those security guards you killed on the way in and out of
your latest heist? Their friends remember you. And now, they’re
coming for you.
> Pistons


Meanwhile the Runners have to have a reasonable expectation of being able to get away by losing themselves in the background noise of the world otherwise for every job they do they either pick up a shiny new NQ of Enemy or they go straight to jail, do not pass GO and do not collect $200.
The cost of doing biz and all that, though some will make the extra effort to find your people, but this should be rare.

Edit: Dammit, I just can not make this sound right....

Both views can and do work for different tables, but my own take of SR tends to fall somewhere between the two examples Koekepan and Shadowdragon8685 present.
Because on one hand if you have a setting so heavily Mirrorshade a single mistake effectively becomes a 'game over' for the team.
And now some people love that feeling if a bullet gets fired, they must have done something wrong or enjoy having a master plan beautifully executed.
Which is cool, but damn it can be hard pulling that off because Murphy is a bitch and few battle plans survive contact with the enemy.

Meanwhile the other hand presents us a world where anarchists are actual powers in play, because anyone can kill anybody anytime and literally are waving two fingers at The Man.
And admittedly we as Runners do tend to lean that way sometimes, not necessarily in the killing part, but actually taking matters into our own hands to settle things and effect change or just payback in general.
On one level it's more believable & awesome if CEOs/Dragons/Other can be taken out, but then we come around again to the question, how do these heads of corps/nations/etc keep going when the game can just become SniperRun, and why hasn't it already happened?
Or for that matter how does any big business operate while being constantly ransacked by Runners and other corps?

Sort of like my same argument about asking how the F Clockwork is still around, especially after some of the stuff in Dark Resonance.
Answer being, he is part of the setting and you don't get to blow his head off because reasons.
But that's for another thread.


So what is the final answer? There isn't one that can fit every table or satisfy every player, though one will use a bit of both worlds to spice up their game.
Because here in DS and other forums we have the opportunity to share with one another ideas and concepts, bouncing them off one another.
This lets us tweak and fine tune our games and settings.
And yeah we will butt heads from time to time, even scream a bit at each other, but ultimately we should come away from this with more than what we came in with.
Koekepan
QUOTE (Sendaz @ Feb 20 2016, 10:28 AM) *
*chuckles*

Nice bit of wordsmithing there Koekepan. smile.gif I do envy your eloquence, especially compared to my own meager brute force attempts at words.


You flatter this old farm boy.

QUOTE (Sendaz @ Feb 20 2016, 10:28 AM) *
In all fairness, BOTH sides have some merit in this.

The corps have to be able to provide a credible threat/ response to Runner activity, otherwise you end up like the Warner Bro. Sheepdog and Coyote battling it out til the End of Day Whistle blows and they go off to have a beer together.
And what business can survive those kind of losses if everything not nailed down is lifted on a regular basis?

The Terrorist group Omega Dawn is sort of a response to the Runner threat, because they are trying to use the same tactics against the runners.


Meanwhile the Runners have to have a reasonable expectation of being able to get away by losing themselves in the background noise of the world otherwise for every job they do they either pick up a shiny new NQ of Enemy or they go straight to jail, do not pass GO and do not collect $200.
The cost of doing biz and all that, though some will make the extra effort to find your people, but this should be rare.


Actually, I completely agree with you. Somehow my position was understood to be a lot more extreme than it is; presumably by way of contrast with the previous statements. After all, just because a corporation would like to embarass, inconvenience, and generally dissuade runners doesn't mean it will succeed. On the other hand, there's no reason to believe that a security executive with a fatter budget than runners could dream of having would always end up coming second either - all the more so if the runners are sloppy. As I said in my response to KCKitsune, if the runners are that unidentifiable, then the corp can simply try to shore up their defences and hope there isn't a next time.

A corollary is that small companies are always more vulnerable (because of a disproportionately smaller security budget) but as a general rule less attractive (because they have less that isn't nailed down). Part of the risk profile of any targeted group is what sort of backing they have, which leads to an understanding of whether this tiny company is really a front for an Ares/Renraku research joint venture, and while it might be pathetic by itself, some very important people will be very upset if they come to learn that you had a hand in its downfall. Conversely a successful run on the janitorial division of quite a large company is likely to result in a few sighs and mumbles.

My table leans heavily to the black trenchcoat and mirrorshades view. Noir, where second chances usually are trojan horses. On the other hand, it doesn't make every run a suicide run. It means that they are professionals who intend to live another day, and act according.
Renard
As was already pointed out, the situation depends o a lot on the table you're playing at. In my little personal world, the Cons avoid going after the Shadowrunners unless they geeked half of the CorpSecs and made their way through the facility by nuking through every wall. A bit excessive for an example, but I think you get the gist. Of course they do improve security and they do collect and store evidence just in case they come across those guys again and get into a position where they can make those dregs an offer they cant refuse.

Of course nixing a high-profile team that has developed a reputation as competent is always a good boost to a corp's 'Dont fuck with us' rep, but all in all, Runners are basically a dime a dozen. 90 % of the time ,killing and hunting them is like swatting the wasps in your living room. Why bother with the little buggers if you can just get the nest on your veranda removed ? Runners are a symptom. The corporate Johnsons are what you are after, as they are among the easiest key to who hit you and why (although if there is little cover-up, the hit itself may be a reasonable hint to that too).
Koekepan
QUOTE (Renard @ Feb 20 2016, 10:39 PM) *
As was already pointed out, the situation depends o a lot on the table you're playing at. In my little personal world, the Cons avoid going after the Shadowrunners unless they geeked half of the CorpSecs and made their way through the facility by nuking through every wall. A bit excessive for an example, but I think you get the gist. Of course they do improve security and they do collect and store evidence just in case they come across those guys again and get into a position where they can make those dregs an offer they cant refuse.


Certainly a good point, and this is something I sort of addressed elsewhere, where I spoke about runner havens, how they might come about and what their nature is - and most importantly, how they persist.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=41391

In essence, the runners can run and keep their heads down, as long as there are havens they can reach - and while this does not make them untouchable it does improve their prospects a lot.
sk8bcn
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Feb 19 2016, 11:05 AM) *
This is an insanely stupid thing, for two reasons.
1: If they beat the odds, they're either going to:
1a: Expect to be paid,
1b: Realize it was a set-up, and now you have made things personal with them, which means they're the ones who are going to be looking for payback.
2: Almost all Runners in the 2060s and 2070s won't lift a goddamn finger anymore unless the money is in escrow. Meaning that, in fact, you do lose the money. They do this for exactly this reason: if the money's in escrow, all the Johnson can do is tell the escrow guy to release it or not to release it. He doesn't get it back no matter the circumstances. This encourages Johnsons not to double-cross, because there's no longer that financial incentive (although really, with what the book payouts are, the idea of trying to doublecross a runner team for that shitty money is ludicrous,) and it encourages them not to hire teams for jobs way above their skill level and send them in kamikaze style, since they still lose the money, even if the team fails.



And you must add in some other factors:

you have to spend into this ressources:

Find who were the runners, and how to contact them if they are not hiding while the heat is up.
Use a Johnson to contact them.
Use a johnson to make the trap credible (the trap must not be discovered in the first round of legwork that runners will do).
Make sure you don't make yourself enemies for nothing ("go and destroy that SK-facility!" uh-ho, Lofwyr's angry now... We should have shot them instead of this)

I would only say that it makes an intesresting answer from a corp IF things went personal.
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (KCKitsune @ Feb 20 2016, 12:01 AM) *
ShadowDragon, I think that if the 'Runners have nothing to lose, and they're willing to have an Honor-Guard to the Afterlife (Heaven or Hell, either way), that a good enough 'Runner team could take out ANYBODY. Just like Kennedy said, "If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is to give his life for the President's." So if Mitsuhama Computer Tech wants to make it personal enough that they would have to keep looking over their shoulders because they might see one of these 'Runners there with a knife.


Depends on the "who," really. I'm pretty sure the Great Dragon Lofwyr is more or less safe from a Runner group who's decided to take him to Valhalla with them. Probably so are Damien Knight, Vogel, and anybody else whose contingency plants include the phrase "escape pod" and "orbit".

But yeah, CEO Schmuckatelli of B or Less Corp? His ass is grass, because he made it personal.

You make business personal, and it will come back to bite you in the ass, no ifs, ands, or butts. This goes for both sides of the equation. Both sides should try to avoid lethal force if at all possible, since a Runner team looking for payback can be apocalyptically deadly, and you never know when Security Guard Schmuckatelli's death is going to set his older brother, who loved his never-good-enough-but-he-wanted-to-be-just-like-me-that's-why-he-went-into-security-and-attacked-those-runners younger brother, on the path for revenge. And the older brother is an ex-Navy SEAL who takes a leave of absence from his Ares Firewatch job to call up some old friends and look to see if they want to help him get payback for the kid who always mailed them pot brownies when they were stuck in the fuckbarrel.



QUOTE (sk8bcn @ Feb 22 2016, 12:20 PM) *
And you must add in some other factors:

you have to spend into this ressources:

Find who were the runners, and how to contact them if they are not hiding while the heat is up.
Use a Johnson to contact them.
Use a johnson to make the trap credible (the trap must not be discovered in the first round of legwork that runners will do).
Make sure you don't make yourself enemies for nothing ("go and destroy that SK-facility!" uh-ho, Lofwyr's angry now... We should have shot them instead of this)

I would only say that it makes an interesting answer from a corp IF things went personal.


Honestly, if Runners pissed you off badly enough to want to set them up to the point of making a fake Run?

Just hit them at the meeting. Like, name a nightclub, the Runners come to meet, everything looks good, the place is packed and jiving. They sit down at the table. Suddenly, every fragger on the dance floor either up and leaves, or pulls a gun. Mr. Johnson, the guy at the table as it turned out, was just some random hobo you abducted, cleaned up, and have been mind-puppeting so you don't care about him, and you open the festivities by detonating the fragmentary explosives that were built into the table. Your crowd finishes the rest.
Renard
QUOTE (ShadowDragon8685 @ Feb 23 2016, 09:32 AM) *
Honestly, if Runners pissed you off badly enough to want to set them up to the point of making a fake Run?

Just hit them at the meeting. Like, name a nightclub, the Runners come to meet, everything looks good, the place is packed and jiving. They sit down at the table. Suddenly, every fragger on the dance floor either up and leaves, or pulls a gun. Mr. Johnson, the guy at the table as it turned out, was just some random hobo you abducted, cleaned up, and have been mind-puppeting so you don't care about him, and you open the festivities by detonating the fragmentary explosives that were built into the table. Your crowd finishes the rest.


Can work, sure, but it sends word out to the street'. Sure, A shadowrun ain't my little pony, everyone involved knows that, but shooting them up during a meeting destroys the illusion that meetings are on 'neutral ground' and violate the pretense of 'goodwill and no dirty tricks' that tends to hang around those meetings. Surer, Runners are prepared and will assume Johnson might want to set them up, but confronting them with the most direct reminder why they were right will still hurt like an incoming sack of bricks. People are going to avoid that spot for a while, avoid the fixer who 'didn't do his legwork' for a while and the patrons of a place where a bunch of people were shot up will avoid hosting meetings for a while. And runners will be extra-cautious with their johnsons for the next weeks, which can be good for you, but doesn't have to be.

Hence why its easier to swat two flies with one clap. Give them a job against the competition, get the stuff you wanted, pretend to pay them, geek the slots where nobody cares and no police or corpsec turns up. Or bug the guys and get them one by one when they feel safe.
sk8bcn
QUOTE (Renard @ Feb 23 2016, 09:49 AM) *
Hence why its easier to swat two flies with one clap. Give them a job against the competition, get the stuff you wanted, pretend to pay them, geek the slots where nobody cares and no police or corpsec turns up. Or bug the guys and get them one by one when they feel safe.


It's even easier to do nothing. They just got paid for a job and all corps needs runners for shadow operations.


Do all shadowrunners try to geek every corp security guard around? Nope, because they don't care, those guys just paid to guard the place. Nothing personnal.


Renard
Doing nothing would be far easier, but we're talking a situation where the corp has decided to take it personally and is hence itching to do something.
Sengir
QUOTE (Koekepan @ Feb 18 2016, 06:01 PM) *
Yeah. Some runners gonna need new IDs.

If you want to have it realistic, just a new name and adress is not going to come close to being enough wink.gif
BangBangTequila
QUOTE (Sengir @ Feb 24 2016, 08:35 PM) *
If you want to have it realistic, just a new name and address is not going to come close to being enough wink.gif

A SIN is not a new name and address. It is a brand new history of your life. You went to a new school, you were romantically entangled with new people, you had a social media spat with some other weirdos, you subscribed to different service providers and watched different pay-per-views. That's why fake SINs are so damned expensive, they create at least passable histories of the entirety of your new, artificial life. A fake SIN means it is an extended opposed test between your ability to urban "sneak" or if you live mostly as a hermit then Sleaze to ensure that you don't accidentally reveal yourself to the group looking, with positive dp modifiers for things like wearing a wide brimmed hat if you're outside, changing your habits, and avoiding all your favourite things. They would take a penalty to searching based on how wide their search area is, how indistinct their latest description of you is, and any other gaps in knowledge they have.

It is really, really hard to find people who don't want to be found and are willing to burn their past to hide it. The fact that the corp usually wouldn't know who the runner really is to begin with doesn't help. It would almost inevitably come down to how much the corporation is willing to pay the people who know the runner, but don't want to help the corps hunt down runners. Snitches get stitches and so on.
Voran
There are multiple levels of response, as one might expect, when people (metahumans, whatnot) get involved. It can depend on the scale of 'incident' in this case. You can imagine there will be some very personal reactions, especially from ground-level personnel that experienced the runner's actions. This can be benign (dude, that was so robin hood, that was fucking awesome!) to not so much (you killed my father, prepare to die). If your runner actions have a larger impact beyond the direct encounter (immediate personnel, security, etc) and say, cause the facility to be shut down and people lose their jobs, you get a new layer of response possibilities, even if the runners didn't even come across those individuals.

Then you sort of go up from there. As others have noted, at some level, Corps and the like accept Runners as business as usual, but that acceptance also is a balancing act of how much fallout comes with it.

On the OOC/Player level, how easy things can get back to them unless you're handing out idiot-balls to the responders is a factor. In you're doing a kick-in-the-door style of pink mohawks and midtown firefights, the character shields of the PCs might be strong enough to allow them to be...well...obvious. More 'realistic' games lend to "for the love of god, please try to cover your features". then the more hardcore stuff, "Yknow how CSI the tv series is bullshit but they still can solve crimes with minimal actual evidence? Yeah, that's your opposition in this game"
mielikki
Coming back to the original question, i.e. how to use corp response in game - I agree that corps usually won't bother too much if things are not blown out of proportion (pun intended).

If the "industry standard" were "take it personally and do it the CSI style", then the logical outcome would be very a very low number of active shadowrunners - in (civilized parts of) real world, you generally don't get that far when wielding an assault rifle on public premises after all. But the basic assumption of the game is that there are runners and corps use them regularly - all corps, so it must work somehow in the favour of both corps AND runners.

But if for some reason in an individual case a corp decides to actually take it personally... that's when it gets interesting, and it's certainly an angle a GM can explore (and a great way to get players step out of their comfort zone in case they are hard to motivate).

One of the best runs we did was based exactly on that - a new security officer of an AA corp realized that a certain PC might have been involved in two different attacks on the corp, and wanting to prove that she was a competent CSO, she had ordered the execution of said PC. Of course, with both her and her chief Johnson being new in town, somebody didn't do their legwork properly and the fixer that the Johnson approached with the contract was actually the team's face. The look on the players' faces when I handed them the info sheet (the target was unknown till after the contract was accepted) was priceless. As was their resulting paranoia (which corp was actually behind it and why? was this really a ill-done job or a set-up?). And, needless to say, it did not end well for the corp - anyway at least for the security director and all her confidants.

It was fun once, a similar scenario (similar in there being a corp response directed at the PCs after a run) is usually done by either me or my co-GM every other year of gameplay, but if the game were done too CSI style, the players would become overly cautious and the game would drag too much (as every plan would be discarded due to risk of becoming overly exposed).
sk8bcn
Basically, I would say this too: Most of the time, succeeding the run and getting paid turns out to conclude a scenario.

I would include a corp response if and only if :

> it was planned ahead in the flow of the scenario
> the run was kind of a failure so that escaping/beating the response becomes the climax and conclusion of the game.


IMO, it however has to be planned ahead either by:

> ok... a trap run
> or a high grade exec that took it personnal and turns out as the Ennemy that has to be beaten
> or the elemination squad that will be the ennemy.

Sengir
QUOTE (BangBangTequila @ Feb 26 2016, 02:14 AM) *
A SIN is not a new name and address. It is a brand new history of your life.

A high-rated one, at least. But unless the person also changes their complete lifestyle, breaks off all social contacts, burns all their gear, and of course gets everything from fingerprints to genetics redone, data analysis on the scale possible in SR would realistically still pick them out.

Basically, if you assume realistic surveillance, runners would be dead in the water.
Tymeaus Jalynsfein
QUOTE (Sengir @ Mar 2 2016, 08:19 AM) *
A high-rated one, at least. But unless the person also changes their complete lifestyle, breaks off all social contacts, burns all their gear, and of course gets everything from fingerprints to genetics redone, data analysis on the scale possible in SR would realistically still pick them out.

Basically, if you assume realistic surveillance, runners would be dead in the water.


Which is why you must assume that that is not business as usual, most of the time. Only when it really matters will the Corps and Cops actually go to those lengths.
Iduno
QUOTE (Sengir @ Mar 2 2016, 10:19 AM) *
Basically, if you assume realistic surveillance, runners would be dead in the water.


Only if you consider well-funded surveillance and people being willing to cooperate in the name of law instead of profit. Realistic surveillance involves humans and money.

When you consider that KE is owned by Ares, so the rest of the big 10 wouldn't mind them doing poorly. If KE has, for example, a requirement to hit 90% arrest rate for crimes, this hit against one of Ares' competitors might be one that accidentally slips through the cracks. Worse, hitting 100% arrest rate means there are fewer criminals next fiscal quarter to justify your budget. Everyone is competing with everyone else, security needs to justify budgets, and having a few careful runners around so you can hire them next is always useful. And going full-on CSI requires a lot of money that would be better embezzled/spent on someone's pet project.

There are also sometimes benefits to cooperation, and sometimes the runners are too careless to get away clean. And nobody wants to hire runners who will get caught. Take out the bad runners like you're pruning a plant; you don't want to destroy a tool you want to use, but you want to keep the bad bits out. Also, the runners who killed your friend or humiliated you? Frag them up good, if you have the resources.

I'd also like to see a run set up by a CSO against his own facility to justify a higher budget. No killing, except one person (that the CSO wanted gone anyway, but office politics...). Here are some helpful hints about weak points in the security (that the CSO has been trying to get fixed, but can't afford to). The problem comes in with explaining how they can afford runners, but need a bigger budget. Stealing from the company? Money left in the black ops budget that needs to be spent or the bean-counters will take it away next time? Double-cross so the CSO also looks good by catching the bad runners? Actually having enough money, but wanting more because the CSO is greedy?

I may have been reading about depressing/hilarious consequences of the way budgets work, and of considering security (especially IT) a group that spends money without producing profit. Add in plenty of spite directed towards your competitors, both within and outside of the corporation, and you've got plenty of justification for runners if they are at least moderately careful/good/lucky.
Blade
QUOTE (Iduno @ Mar 31 2016, 07:44 PM) *
I may have been reading about depressing/hilarious consequences of the way budgets work, and of considering security (especially IT) a group that spends money without producing profit. Add in plenty of spite directed towards your competitors, both within and outside of the corporation, and you've got plenty of justification for runners if they are at least moderately careful/good/lucky.


I had this idea of a run that ends (or does it?) with a Johnson who's either hiding or just completely desperate and explains to the runners that the line of budget for their operation was cut so he cannot pay them. It's in the list with the run where the Johnson is only available during business hours, and the run where the meet is in a place that's having a huge event so the bouncer won't let you in just because "I'm meeting a guy inside, his name is Johnson, you can check!".
ShadowDragon8685
Typically, professional Johnson jobs will involve an escrow service - the money will need to be deposited with the escrow service before the group will even take the Run.



That said, less-than-professional Johnsons sometimes get some leeway. I once ran a Run where the Johnson was a doc from CrashCart who was impersonating a DocWagon professional Johnson, and the group didn't demand an escrow service be used. He sent them on a run to figure out how CrashCart had tampered with the Seattle telecommunications grid so that competitors' emergency calls were being delayed reaching the competitors so they'd reach CrashCart first and CC could swoop in and save the client, thus getting to bill their competitors a pile as well as making themselves look really good in the process - except for all those calls where DocWagon didn't get the call until it was too late and CrashCart didn't have any assets that could actually make the rescue, thus resulting in dead clients with DocWagon contracts.

He said he was from DW, but he was actually CC, and calling the Run against his own corp, for two reasons:
1: Some doctors actually take an oath to "do no harm" seriously, and don't addend "to corp citizens" to it.
2: If DocWagon actually did find out, he feared it would create a huge, explosive corp shadow war between the two of them, with Runners being hired to do things like track down Platinum members, injure them, then ambush the HTR extraction team the other company sent.


The kicker: He didn't really have any kind of budget to provide his promised rewards. He'd promised them 100K for the job and a year's Gold contract. What he was actually able to produce was 15K of his own money and he could tamper with the records so it would look like they had a year's gold contract with CrashCart, but it would likely be discovered to be fraudulent and terminated after one use.

My players were less than thrilled, but decided that having a damn good doc owe them a lot of favors was more valuable than a dead doc executed to enforce their street rep. So they took the 15K and the tampered records, made it clear that if they needed a doc's services he was on-call, and explained to him that he could pay off the rest of the cash he owed them in hard nuyen or by making medical supplies fall out of the back of an ambulance for them.

It turned out to be a good deal for them. He was so bad at negotiating they were counting the supplies at half street value for how much of his debt any given medical stuff he provided repaid the debt.
Renard
I think it depends a lot on how people get the jobs. I once read that by the time the actual run starts, the fixer already has 85 % of their money, hence their dependence on the run actually being successful isn't astronomically high. Of course what the J could do is pay the fixers feeas and scrape together his last nuyen to make it look like there is a decent amount of pay up front, but generally, I see the fixer as the first line of defense, a low level escrow service, if you like.
Sonus
It really boils down to whether or not the individual in charge of the corp's response is making it personal. If someone in the 6th world really desperately wants to find you, then the odds are good that they will unless you tale equally extreme measures to avoid them.

However going by the idea that "shadowrunner are a part of business", most corps are probably aware that even if they seek out and destroy every runner that comes after them, there will still be three more teams ready to get hired for the next run. So really, it doesn't give them any sort of benefit 99% of the time, it isn't like they get anything out of geeking you.

Even MCT's "zero-zone" policy has somewhat backfired since runners no longer bother being nice since they know it won't make a difference.
ShadowDragon8685
QUOTE (Sonus @ Apr 5 2016, 11:39 AM) *
Even MCT's "zero-zone" policy has somewhat backfired since runners no longer bother being nice since they know it won't make a difference.


Yeah, pretty much. Runners, at least the ones who want to stay alive, typically pursue a policy of leaving as small a body-count as they possibly can, not blowing unnecessary holes in the walls, etc.

With MCT's "Zero Zone" response, though, there's no reason for them not to figuratively (or, in some player characters' cases, literally) nuking the place on the way out.
Ingeloak
i would say corporate retribution depends on a couple of factors. what was taken? who was killed/how much property damage? how much muscle does the corporation have in the way of resources? how much will retribution cost the corporation?

to use the SpyCorp example above: wow, that's a lot of after-action from a toy company. i'd expect that kind of hate from Ares or MCT after you swipe their newest cash-cow prototype. an alternate form of retribution might be blackmail. rather than slag the runners' careers on the trids, have a quiet message appear on their commlinks, maybe with a bit of video from the run showing a few faces or signature moves to show the corp knows it was them. follow that up with a request to meet, or a "now you owe us one..."

as some others have posted, shadowrunners are par for the course. its kind of like a jewelry store. the choicest items are back in the vault, trotted out for the really rich customers. the less risky items are on display just in case the place gets robbed.

the really lucrative paydata and prototype stuff is hidden in corporate blacksites that only a few people know about; perhaps not even on the Matrix hosts.

personally, in most of my past games the runners were in the clear once the run was finished, unless i had plans to have it come back around later. if every single corp tracked down and fragged every group that hit them, shadowrunners would be either extinct or REALLY good. no shown faces, form-fitting suits to keep forensic evidence from being left behind, a crack decker to crash the host or wipe camera footage, etc.
DarkSoldier84
In my experience, a mark of a runner team's professionalism is their restraint. You only kill who you're being paid to kill and you only destroy what you're being paid to destroy. The less collateral damage you incur, the less likely the victim is to retaliate and the less likely your operation will hit the news.
Renard
Which is a nice plan, but if you're chased by corpsec, some collateral damage to the infrastructure can often help to delay or hinder the pursuers. Same with people. Split-second descisions, especially the bad ones, or uninformed descision in the heat of the moment are nothing even the best runner is immune to, so while it is a good plan to keep collaterals down (personal as well as material), its not always practical. Especially when the heat comes down in a successful corpsec that manages to split the party, people might weigh escape vs capture and if theres only two or three people standing between them and the way out, I wouldn't blame the runners for icing them.

After all, runners are still career-criminals and despite some influences that propagate 'runners-light', morals only go so far when one's own ass is involved. How far are runners willing to go to survive / uphold their moral code and what happens if the two things directly collide ? THis is one of the questions that keeps Shadowrun interesting for me.
Sunday_Gamer
As has been said before it really depends on the game you are running but as a general rules unless you make it personal the corporations don't care about Shadowrunners, they are merely tools, the threat is whoever hired them.

If runners hit one of you facilities and stole something, they don't have the item anymore.
If they kidnapped someone, they don't have that person and have no clue who does.
If they killed some folks, they were hired to do so and have no interest in killing any more of your folks or of getting into a long drawn out war.

Shadowrunners are expendable deniable assets.

So you hunted down those runners who stole that thing from you and killed them all, awesome! How much did THAT cost? Did you recover the stolen items? No? Will killing them have ANY impact on whether or not we'll be hit by other runners at another date? Nope, runners are a dime a dozen, you kill 6, they hire 12 more...

It's just not cost effective to go after runners which means it has to be personal if a corp is gunna hunt your butt down.
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