Shiawase is 63% privatly held, Keruba is wholey owned by Renraku which is public, and Ares is 65% privatly held.

Renraku is the only one that is even possible and I will bet my thumb that they've locked stock at 20% or less. Trying to get 50.1% of it would be damn tough, and then you've just bought a megacorp so the whole point is moot.

To answer Fortune's question the player in question is 26. I think I will have to share this info from all of you, thank you to all, to the groups other GM and see what we can come up with.

Lotsa sarcasm 'round these parts...

Fails English(4) roll. What's sarcasm? Is that some kind of new fragrance from Armante?

Not exactly. But it does remind one of the subtle feeling caused by a slap across the face by a large tuna. The smell is largely different. Take a whiff.

Roll Preception. Olfactory bonuses apply.

this idea is utterly ridiculous, from start to finish. tell the player to pick up Corporate Download and read the damn thing. A, AA, and AAA status are awarded and determined by the corporate court--if your corporation is not recognized by the corporate court, you are simply not an A corporation of any level. that's the definition of A/AA/AAA corporations--they're designations that the corporate court created and maintains.

furthermore, AAA status means that his corporation has a seat on the corporate court. again, this fact is inherent in the definition of the term AAA; if you don't have a seat on the corporate court, you're not AAA, because having a seat is what defines AAA status.

None of the facts stop the PC from declaring that he is AAA grade, they just exist as proof that he isn't. Such a rude disrespect of the Corp Court would likely result in brutal squishing of the PC and everyone nearby.

only if the PC actually has any assets worth stealing. otherwise, he's just one more crazy guy on the street with a stinky beard claiming to be Lofwyr.

To make the step from AA to AAA you ether need to have more actual power than some of the AAAs and then ether convince them to let you in the club or catch a rat from a falling AAA that brings a corporate court seat with him.

Personally I would allow a player to have a long term goal of owning a AAA corp.

He would gain an ever increasing version of the day job flaw to represent the work he puts in to it. If he takes to much time for running the shadows one of his execs will displace him, possibly by aiding a hostile takeover while your on a run and cant defend against it. If he doesn’t take the time necessary to run the shadows he will need to make a new PC. One of these to will happen before or soon after the corporation hits A rating.

If you wish you can tell him that this will happen before you start play.

Of cause if your talking retired character then you can let him do whatever you want but remember the chances of success are slim and there are sharks in the water.

As to buying or stealing the founding companies. They would be worth hundreds or billions even if striped of all other assets. The single asset of the guarantied seat on the corporate court and permanent AAA status will send the price that high. What AAA that doesn’t have that would not want it. Especially considering it may come with siting members enough to provide a lock. Although if it looks like that it will be a simple no sale.

It would even be fun to play a double character game. You play the board of a corporation (start play rated C) trying to improve itself and when you need shadow work done you play the corps ghost teem (trained to be ghost’s campaign variant) as the corporations assets grow the ghosts get better equipment. If they don’t have the security rating for a fully fledged ghosts teem then play standard shadow runners (possibly using the character pool idea)

Edward

I say...

Let him do it

Set up some epic retirement run. He said he's basicalyy retiring the character, right? Maybe one of the AAAs has a kooky owner who for reasons unknown at the end of the mega-run names the runner his successor and promptly dissapears.

Congradulate him, have the other runners throw him a party, slap him on the back, have fun.

Then start the new whatever campaign. Obvoisly he will need a new character, good as a time as any to begin a new story arc.

Let em start out fairly well, good runs, nice profits, good times. Get em to let down their guards a bit if that's possible.

Then have a series of misfortunes, engineered by someone that will eventually the runners will come to hate and despise. Stretch this out juust long enough for the players to have forgotten the previous mega-run.

You see where this is going, right?

The rat-bastard behind all their troubles is the previous character.

Be careful what you wish for.




-karma

He's twenty-six? I'm twenty-five and I think it's far and away the stupidest idea I've ever heard of. Tell him to go and read Corporate Download, or do an hour of a corporate law class, or grow up or something.

Low-level corporation, yes (like an E-, specialising in one thing like dry cleaning, with about fifty employees). Minor underworld organisation, maybe (like a brothel, or an illegal matrix program on-line shop). Small-time drug or gun running racket, yes. But for God's sake, a AAA corporation is a monolithic organisation of such immense power as to alter the gravity of the world.

There's stats for Aneki in Brainscan, and they're post-vegatable stats. Your player must have every social skill (including Leadership) at at least ten, before any mods from pheremones or edges. He needs Corporate Law, Corporate Politics, Accounting, Nasty Business Practices and Being a Corporate Bastard at at least eight, probably ten. He needs a sixty or eighty corporate contacts at the very least. He needs an ID that's so water-tight the ID-maker retires after making it because he's made his masterpiece. That's a silly amount of Karma to be spending on an idea that's stupid to begin with, not to mention it being Karma he's not spending on character development.

Your player thinks he's Damien Knight. Have him beaten to a near-death state by a nasty but street-level samurai to show him where he fits on the food chain. Have him arrested and sat in a holding cell with prostitutes, drunkards and addicts who throw up all the time for two days whilst awaiting a Magistrate. He needs to be curbed (figuratively and literally) before things get out of hand.

Fair enough he's retiring, however shadowrunners retire to become fixers, they retire to the bahamas to sit on beaches and occasionally take an easy high-paying job, they retire to open up that gun shop they've always been interested in. They do not retire to "start up" a AAA corporation.

This is so completely absurd your player needs a reality check, urgently.

Again I ask, why is there this prevalence of low optimism/high pessimism? The PCs regularly make enemies of the corps, they kill, they steal. Wanting to run a AAA should be the least of your problems.

Besides unlike what Enigma is saying, AAAs are not monolithic organisations. Heck, there are run by the corp against that corp!

This is so completely possible that a GM who doesn't allow it needs a reality check, urgently.

Wanting to run one? Groovy.
Succeeding? Ha!

That's why there's low optimism/high pessimism. Like someone else mentioned earlier, it's on par with a runner waking up one morning, saying "I am going to be the President of the UCAS" and then expecting it to come about.

Well, you can actually have a good chance of succeeding. If you did run SOTF.

SotF is the one place where I could see the runners getting a shot.

Even then, they could become the head but I doubt they'd last.

~J

Even one billion nuyen is nothing. Art Dankwalther was gifted nearly 7 billion and all he's been able to do since 2057 is buy out and sabotage enough of only one of the smaller AAA's so that they might kinda-sorta-but-probably-not-really declare bankruptcy soon. That's with 14 times as much cash as this guy, and seven years of constant and unyeilding work.

But if you mean "I want to be a CEO of a AAA megacorporations," I think the only dragon capable of seeing that happen -- Lowfyr -- would just laugh his scales off at you.

Well, if you took that 1 billion and Karma-for-cash it, you could have the absurdly high Karma levels necessary to get to become CEO of a AAA yourself.

uh dankwalther got 34 billion

Give him a single A level corp. Thats cake. The court defination of an A, is literaly any company that operates in more then one country. So Pop Smith, who owns 6 trucks and ships freight from the CAS to the UCAS, is an A level corp.

Pop Smith could apply to be an A-level corp. he'd have to actually have facilities in both countries, though, and he wouldn't have any extraterritoriality at all.

I would begin with a no and laugh until I was sick.

Why would a AAA corp owner even begin to consider running the shadows? For all the risk of death, imprisonment or destruction of reputation.

When a pc gets much past a million (in actual money) you've got to think hard and long about why they are still running.

Uh guys in CANON history two people, one of the a shadowrunner have become heads of AAA corps from being private citizens... damien knight and Richard Villiers... a third is theoretically possible.

Look, Kev(as much I appreciate you for having my back on the Humans/Horror thing), you could also say that Bill Gates became the richest man on earth through GM fiat. God (the GM is God after all) decided that geeks should have the most money in the world and it is all some part of a vast cosmic metaplot.

No offense taken. We're cool.

What you said is kinda my point, though you said it in a much nicer way.

(I've been in a foul mood lately--stupid RL!--and, looking back at most of my posts, I guess its been overflowing to the 'Shock. I know its not an excuse, but...well, you get the idea.)

Edited to aviod poultry references.

The idea of a player starting a corp is really cool. The possibilities of roleplaying his corporate assets, and controlling a corps futures are a good on. Hell, he could even use his old Shadowruning buddies to soften up the competition and gain an edge.

The idea that this guys wants to start a AAA corp is ridiculous. It would be like me saying, hey I am leaving America and I want to start my own superpower.

I personally, can not see this happening in a million years.

This entire conversation is making my mind boggle. I'm hardly the most "by the book" Shadowrun GM. I've done special Halloween Runs where I had my characters tangle with Cthulu because I thought it would be a nice one shot change for the creepiest night of the year. I've had a nature spirit manifest as a pink rat named Floyd.

And I would tell any player who came to me with this to go ahead and keep on dreaming. The other Megas would shread this clown before he got his foot in the door.
After all, there's nothing you have that the Corps can't take away from you.

Well, you can also say that about Lucien Cross as you can with Damien Knight.

As a matter of fact, I will. "Lucien Cross had a great dragon."

But Knight and Villiers are ruthless corporate bastards who spent years developing those skills and working on the backs of others (uh, need I remind anyone that there were two other major players in Fuchi before it imploded who let him join their club?) and have had decades to entrench themselves. The closest example is Cross only because he wasn't basically handed the keys to a AAA the way those two relatively were, and even then it took him decades of work, a friendly protectionist government, a GD's legacy, a corporate war, and political machinations of unheard of daring to get them one non-permanent seat on the Corp Court.

Whoo. Guess he can rest easy now.

That's why you need to start them young. Maybe at 5, when they start to walk and talk. Start them as an Otaku, 16 years to the first Fading test.

16 years to learn the ways of the Matrix. How many runners you know lasted 16 years? Assuming he lasts that long, at 21, he's going to have GD-like Intelligence, Ownage levels of Computer, and bucket loads of Karma(assuming he's human, incidentally, using that Karma against Fading, makes him just that much more powerful). Heck, he's his own AI. Did we forget that Mental Attributes are all increased by 2? Ah, he's a charming little bugger to boot. Most likely, he's going to have his own Tribe too. And let's say, he ran SOTF at the ripe old age of 7. A billion nuyen at seven. I have 1 that says even Mssr Knight, Cross and Villiers couldn't do that.

Starting from there. With 1 billion per 2 years... that gives us 8 billion at 21. That's good starting capital.

Er, everyone got the fact that this would be a "retiring the character" thing the player was asking for, right?

Not a "I wanna actively play the CEO of a AAA company thing"?


-karma

and? just because a character is retiring doesn't make it any more plausible. i could care less about the powergaming aspects. it's the idea itself that i find dumb.

You mean more plausible than european fantasy races spontaneously appearing in the americas due to a magic cycle based on a mayan calender?



It'd require one hell of a story build up to make it believable, but yeah, this is what imaginations are for.


-karma

the inclusion of fantasy elements only makes it more important that the non-fantasy elements be believable, because the fantasy elements already stretch one's suspension of disbelief. in other words, no, the european fantasy etc etc doesn't make random runners becoming AAA CEOs more plausible.

there's imagination, and then there's self-aggrandizing. there are far, far too many obstacles to overcome for this to be believable in the least.

I see no reason to give a retiring player an AAA Corporation as a gift. That's kind of like saying "Well, since your 5th-level thief is retiring, sure, you can say that he becomes a demi-god." Personally, I am suspicious of all of this detail for what a retired character is going to be doing. It kind of sounds like he wants to use it as an excuse to start out new PCs who have powerful corporate connections and cool, custom-designed gear from "his" company.

I would nip it in the bud. If the character is retiring, tell him "Okay, you've let me know what his goals are. Now he's an NPC, and you might meet him, and he might be the head of an AAA Corporation, or he might be nowhere near that goal. But either way, he is an NPC. You do not get to start out a new character who has any of these battle suits and other doo-dads, and you do not get to start out with this guy as your boss who gives you a big salary and lets you design mecha for him."

Ignoring for a moment the potential abuses of having a former pc running a AAA corporation, the bigger question to my mind is why. As in: Why should your retired character cause more work for the Gm? Why make significant changes to the corporate structure of the game world? Why, oh lord, Why? So a retired character can have some paperwork backing up a needlessly detailed version of "Happily Ever After"?

When you retire a character, you stop playing him. When you stop playing him, generally, he ceases to be a pain in the ass to the GM. I would hate to see the day when retiring a character causes a GM more headaches.

Hahahaha. Logged in after a long time and see great post.
I beat Capitalism on 3rd time, but on all medium settings. I guess that qualify me for measly A level corp

Many replies, and I'll try to add to them. As for shadowcorp - not viable in large quantities, and fierce competition there which will just blow up a building where you usually reside.

As for A corp that you got from your parents/bud, it will not get you anywhere unless you already have a reputation in business. Else while you apply about getting reigns, people already in power will turn out machinations that will prevent you from getting control or getting control over sold corporation, or just bancrupted company.

And yes, work in large company prevents you from doing shadowruns totally. Why you should run and risk life if you have stash of moeny and anything else. So if he wants to achieve it with retired char, it will take years of gaming time and probably real time too.

There's a difference between a Johnson and Damien Knight.

I hope, I didn´t miss it ... Corporate Download states, the the Big10 together controls/owns directly 25% of the world finance (indirectly more) and 50% of the world resources. Combined with the numbers from SoNA and similar books regarding the corp employment rate (I think these are AAA-employment rates) wich means, that every Megacorp has several millions employes in each major industry nation ... well it will be a long, long, loooooooooooong way up to AAA-Status.

SYL