Once upon a time, I let my characters, when they had the urge, take over and run a country. See, I figure that all my campaigns eventually arrive at the point where the runners pretty much determine what they want to do, and I side-track 'em with a run every now and then for a change of pace and to interest them in other things.

So, I once had a group that took over and ran their own country. The little German barony in Harlequin, actually. They had fun, I let 'em invite all the royal bigwigs from Pomoyra, Britain, Wales, and Tir Tairngire...not every came, obviously, but enough to cause a few tense moments. Eventually, They all died trying to hold onto their little chunk of the Earth, but it was fun while it lasted.

So: anybody else's group ever take over a country?

Uh, no.

Nope. My guys worry enough about the Evil GM blowing up their new vehicle/base of operations! I think they'd be more than a little paranoid if I offered them a country.

"Here. Take it. YOu can rule it together."
"What's the catch?"
"No catch. You can rule it."
"It's filled with bug spirits or something, right?"
"NOpe. Just a normal little country."
"Terrorists? Vampires? Al Quaida? Plagues? Dumpshockers?"
"No.....no catch. YOu can rule it."
"Forget it. You won't catch us that easily!"

Not really take over for ourselves, but we did help someone else do it. Let me dig up the ShadowRN post I did about it,

Kind of, but not how you mean.

See, my current PC started life as a mage and stock broker. First run he ever went on was basically 'Do not get shot and killed by CATCo for something you could not control.' He's a legal citizen, bought a permit for his handgun (he lived underneath some turf disputed by the Spikes and the 405 Hellhounds) and lived a quiet little life not unlike Max Cohen's from the movie 'Pi'.

Of course, life being unpredictable how it is, he found himself on the wrong side of CATCo's gun after that affair and decided to take his work underground. Two years and about 260 karma later, he exits the underground (since his SIN didn't list him as 'dead', he hadn't broken any laws and gotten caught for it) and joins a CalFree based corporation to market his new, bleeding edge magical innovation - the fuelless magical lighter. Seriously. No, I'm not kidding. He comes up with a plan to use this corporation in conjunction with his massive stock market skill (he's currently bumping 10 dice for stock market stuff, more if he wants to manipulate specific areas, such as 'firmware manufacturers') to make enough money to fund what shadowrunning he feels he *has* to do for free. This is the result of premature encounters with people like Harlequin, finding out about Cyberzombies being a conduit for horror-eruption, etc, and his own rather less-than-sane mind.

Nine to ten months later, he's going strong! Another year and he should have this corporation under wraps, hopefully attached to someone he feels is slightly *more* trustworthy than the rest of the corporate ensemble (Ares, because of his background)... But no. CatCo hasn't forgotten him, and strongarms him into giving up all his intellectual property, dumping all his stocks, and going into hiding again. He was close to having what he wanted - being on the board of directors of a small corporation he could reasonably sell, thereby having corporate extraterritoriality whenever he went to work.

What'd he get? About 5.1 million nuyen, most of which is going back into the stock market, 1.something million of which is going to a new house for his entire team (sans 1 or 2, because they might keep their old places) and their vehicle facility, and... a secretary.

Yes, his secretary opted to go underground too, because she'd seen a bit too much and it tweaked her.

Am I sad I don't have a corporation? Not really, cuz the ride was a blast.

Two of my players (longest running two, used to be a mage/face, and a face/specops) currently run their own separate islands in the Pacific, where they manufacture their own drugs and armaments. Yeah, they're rival drug lords hunted down by elite international anti terrorist spec ops. The rest of the players they hire to sabotage and destroy each other or even recruit as one of their own.

Its very nice, since they're basically the one's who are making their plots, leaving me just some background and atmospheric details to worry about.

Not in Shadowrun. I find it difficult to run nation-ruling games in SR without World of Darkness-style "backgrounds" like Influence, Allies, Contacts, Wealth, etc. that quantify your degree of control over various institutions.

I've seen kingdom building in DnD, but that suffers from the vagueness of SR.

In high-powered Vampire games, I've seen groups of vampires become behind the scenes rulers of nations, or at least major influences.

That's true. Fortunately, both players are also students in Diplomatic Affairs, and learn all sorts of international policies and stuff on a regular basis. They use what they know in real life and use it in my game. Again, another big plus for me. Makes my GM life easier.

It also encourages them to study more, i guess, coz most of my runs with the two of them end in a debate of international regulations and what their characters can and cannot do and shit. Its just fun to listen, on my part.

Vi had a fairly inexperience GM once.

He had our entire team flown to Colombia, where a local drugdealer was going to take over the nation with an army of mercenaries. Our job was to waste him. The capitol was surrounded and we headed into the jungle to his private base in a mountain somewhere. When we arrived at the base, a group of aliens has invaded it and killed everybody inside. The first thing, we did, was to locate all his dope and hide it elsewhere for later sale. Then we called all the mercenaries back and gave all the attack-helicopters and the tanks to the goverment in return for diplomatic immunity. We installed ourselves in the base and used it as base of operations.

So we didn't really take over Colombia...but we could have. We would have run it down in less then a year.


Adhoc

Our game was a ganger game, set in the Z-zone. Once we got a bit of sauce in our boots, we tried to expand our turf and membership outside the Z-zone.

We found that balancing all the factors involved with doubling our gang membership was enough.

Running a country? Whew, you could only do that if your populace was NOT originally criminal.

Not so much a country, but I played in a game where we were all "ex"-shadowrunners who had taken major positions in our own corporation. Frankly, I didn't find it terrifically interesting. That was mostly because, when most of the other party members are magically active, and most of what you're really gaining from runs when you've got your own corp is just karma, then non-magical types have no real sense of accomplishment.

Oh, sure, you've got lots of karma. And theoretically you can ask the corp to back your major new cyber-implantation so that you're actually combat-worthy when compared to the rest of the massively quick physads and shamans with incredibly high Reaction and Initiative. But you're not earning it with your own efforts -- so it always felt to me very much like a Monty Haul campaign.

"Oh, you want wired 3? Did you want that in beta- or delta-grade? Oh no, no charge..."

Massive cop-out, and overall pretty boring. Because if you DON'T go for the heavy implantation (and you don't like playing mages/physads because the entire group is already full of them), then you'll never actually get to take any real action.

A corp was bad enough. A country? No thanks. I avoid most of White Wolf for just that reason -- running mostly mundane things behind your screen of power and influence is completely uninteresting to me. I want hands-on stuff where it feels like my character actually makes some semblance of a difference on a personal level.