Hi everyone,

I'm preparing a mission that will see the PC take hostages in an extra-territorial corporate building. Some hostages would be corp citizen while others are local citizen. The target corp is MCT, famous for its "no intruders" policy. In my mind, their reaction to such a hostage situation would be quite brutal and saving the hostages life wouldn't be a priority but having non-MCT citizen inside might restrict them a bit for diplomatic reasons.

I was wondering how such a situation would be handled by the local police and the corporate security forces. Who would take charge of the negotiation, who can decide an armed intervention, is it something that's clearly defined or would it require discussions between the corp and the police force?

I've got an idea of how I want things to go to make the adventure interesting (a violent MCT intervention is inevitable, the PC can just hope it gets delayed enough for them to do what they're actually here for), but I'd like to know if there's any argument that could break the concept I have in mind.

If it's in a corp building, then they have complete control and jurisdiction. The local police shouldn't be involved - it happens "outside their country" effectively. I would be expecting MCT to respond with a chopper full of goons and drones, and massive amounts of force. The local corp team would run the show, unless and until someone higher in their chain of command got involved for some reason - unless there's something in their SOP against that.

The non-corp visitors are effectively visiting the country of Mitsuhama - if they get attacked there, then it's completely down to MCT what happens and how it's dealt with. Unless there was someone there who was politically connected, or famous for some reasons (sim-sense star etc), I can't see if even being an issue. Terrorists struck at an MCT building, heroic security forces dealt with the intruders, unfortunately in the crossfire the terrorists (never the heroic troops) casually gunned down the hostages. Very sad, boo hoo. Naughty terrorists. And that's the news, bought to you by ABC media, an MCT subsidiary... now the weather.

I think you would need a reason to provide some blocking or slowing factor to the MCT response team. Maybe independent journalists around the area. Or, as above, a sim-sense star in for a recording deal or something - someone that they just can't have splattered up the wall for PR reasons. Or perhaps, another runner team have hit MCT HQ, and drawn off the response team, who will take longer to arrive. Or SK have set up a hacking attack on their transport, just to dick with them and cause MCT to lose face....

You want to add a twist give a few members of the SRT Shotguns loaded with StickN-Shocks.

This will keep the hostages alive and turn them into dead weight.

Such situation requires a proper assessment, to be explained in two slides:

What does the corporation gets from the ongoing situation?
- loss of productivity from the facility
- loss of productivity from the employees held hostage
- legal liability regarding other hostages due to stress and possible injuries
- loss of image regarding our security capabilities
+ media viewership

How can those effects be mitigated or enhanced?
+ return as much as possible of the facility to a working state
+ count time held hostage as rest periods and breaks for our employees
+ hire temporary or permanent replacements for employees held hostage
+ get settlements with other hostages' relatives
+ blame local security forces for allowing the build-up of the attacking force in the vicinity of our facility, outside the reach of your own security forces
+ successfully neutralize the attacking force
+ feed the corporation-owned media channels with exclusive contents

However, you have also to account for external factors. If the corporation has recently faced public criticism for its lack of cooperation with the local law enforcement agencies, there could be a point in openly coordinating with the police. Or at least feed media channels with contents that show that. But the police force cannot enter the facility without the corporation agreement (outside of the Renraku arcology legal precedent, that is, WMD or equivalent inside the building). If you're confident in the media channels ability to positively spin the situation, the intervention may be delayed to the most favorable time slot (whether you aim for a likely success on prime time, or potential failure later during the night).

My take on Shadowrun setting is that the widespread use of lethal force by corporate security (even though MCT in particular carries it one step further) requires an equally widespread belief among the public that this is the Right Thing to do (individualism comes in hand here: afterall, you avoided being held hostage, but what if the terrorists get out and goes after you or your family?). The worst thing that could happen is the media consultants paid by rival corporations showing up on rival media channels, bragging about how their former units would have had the skills to save everyone.

Thanks everyone for your contributions, looks like I can stick to plan.

Also depends what level of MCT citizens are among the hostages. If it's low level clerks, MCT are probably going to send the standard goons straight in, blunt force style, and accept any civilian casualties. If more highly ranked execs are among the civilians, there'd be more reason for MCT to establish a solid cordon, keep the situation locked down, and wait however long it takes them to get a team of ninjas / shadowrunner level special ops guys in to attempt a Rainbow 6 style rescue.