Nope, it says specifically that you can, not that characters can. There's no way for a character to make a legal purchase, just a player.

~J

No, there is nothing that states that you need to be a player. You may be a GM.

Since everyone is being so damn technical, technically a "fence" is a person that buys stolen merchadise or place where stolen merchandise is bought. Buying goods from a fence is not fencing.

The connected edge says that your contact will buy or sell that contraband in the most advantageous way for the character. Contraband is in no way exclusively stolen, merely banned. Your connected contact will let you buy (which isn't fencing) contraband and will buy from you contraband (again, not fencing unless it is stolen). When moving looted goods to contacts for cash, that is by definition fencing. Anything you "loot" IS stolen. Hence, fencing.

"In most cases of legal purchases," K10, companies and stores sell goods.

There is also rules to sell illegally too. NPCs can purchase gear from the characters.

You need not be a PC either, you can be an NPC.

A "character" need not be a PC, it can also be a NPC.

Depending on how fair your GM is. Afterall, if rules "exploits or abuse" by the players/PCs can be mirror imaged by the GM/NPCs. Then shouldn't the opposite be true? A rule that says a character may buy something at a vastly inflated price surely can be used by an NPC to buy something from a PC.

"In most cases... ...do not want bad press" Is the way to read that. Sometimes the companies don't mind bad press.

What page is that on?

~J

Connected Edge ...

One type of goods. Not looted, just goods. Point is valid.

I have always ruled that the edge gives you a contact to go with it.

A strict reading also could say that the contact will always buy, and will sell for the best possible price. Nothing about good buying prices, but you can offload melted snow on them.

~J

Edit, misread the post.

The fencing rules don't say it MUST be a stranger or a street contact. Pently of room for connected contacts. And I already said you could step over the tracking with connected.

Another thing to consider folks. We talk about "Fencing" as having to have a "fence" character. Anyone can buy stolen goods, but a lot of folks are afraid of selling to the wrong people (AKA cops), that's why they unload it on someone they think they can trust (AKA the Fixer or Fence). If you want to do direct sales of contraband, you could do it via Shadowland (AKA the E-Bay of the Underworld). The problem is the same though. Someone might find out what is being exchanged and where. Even if you have a connected contact, doesn't mean they won't spill the beans about the hot tech you're selling them after a few rounds of synthahol at the pub. If I want some bad dudes showing up at the swap, I can justify it any way I want to. I am the GM, and that is Canon.

No, but those are the 2 types of contacts explicitly mentioned, you may house rule to include Connected as one of the other type of contacts.

Either way we're creating rules that are not explicitly stated.

Any charatcer that buys illegal good from runners is a "fence." It's a generic term. They even mention talismonger by name for a fence.

Is it? Then why is there a Fence contact in MJLBB? Talismonger and Fixer are explicitly "fence" for the purposes of that section but nothing says that anyone else is a fence, although they did mention regular street contacts as a guide.

Your connected contact is a regular contact with an unusual ability to deal in a particular product. EG I have a mechanic contact and the connected edge, the mechanic can always provide me with parts for vectored thrust aircraft.

He is a regular contact in that he is somebody I see regularly, not a random acquaintance or a friend of a friend.

To fence is to sell something to a dealer in illegal or stolen items, it doesn’t matter how well you know them or how much of that class of goods they can handle they are (among other things) a fence.

There is no difference in risk if you sell something to a connected lvl2 contact or a non connected lvl2 contact, they will both go to the same lengths to protect your anonymity.

The only affect of the connected edge is that someone you know will deal with you on favourable terms, all the fencing rules still apply, all the risks still apply. The contact is still going to sell it on and maybe to somebody that will recognise it and try to trace you from it.

Also the idea of having an NPC role for availability to see wether or not he can get the gear your holding under his nose is stupid. When somebody says I have it and want to sell it now you can get it immediately, even if the availability is 234/43 years. I would have this go both ways.

Eg
Johnson to PC-> “you may want some APDS ammunition for this job, there security is always well armoured”
PC to fixer-> “you got any APDS you can sell me for this job”
Fixer to PC-> “take a week to get it in”
PC to fixer-> “no good, forget it”
Next month
Fixer to PC-> “I just got some ammunition and there where a couple of boxes left after the order was filled, matches your gun and should penetrate body armour all you want, its designed to do vehicles, but it wont be cheep. You want?”

Now the PC has a one of opportunity to by 2 boxes of AV ammunition with no need to roll availability. His current run probably is against poorly armoured gangers with motorbikes but if he has the spare cash he can slip them under the matrass until he needs them.

Any individual type of good will be very unlikely to come up but any fixer that also works as a fence will on occasion get strange stuff threw he might offer to the party “because they showed an interest in something similar”, eg you wanted casual rounds so your offered a Aries squirt, you wanted rounds for a gyro jet pistol so your offered the cigarette rockets in SOTA 64

Edward

Anyone that is buying "undocumented goods" would be considered a fence, especially if they were to re-sell the items in question. I agree with you that a "Fence" is a contact whose primary occupation is to buy and sell stolen goods, but a street doc could just as easily be a "Fence" for stolen medical supplies. Technically, the rules for acquiring goods are the same no matter where you get them, the rules would apply as well to whom you sell stuff to. In SR3 they describe the Fixer as the middle man who arranges such transactions. You could always have a contact to cut out the middle man, but that doesn't make the Etiquette rolls any easier to obtain something. In the end, you have to still find a "fence". Looking at the explanation of Fencing the Loot in SR3, the way it is worded, you could "skip" all of the Finding a Fence stuff if you use the appropriate contact anyway. Selling to your Fixer, your Talismonger, etc. The finding a fence rules only apply if you don't readily know someone willing to buy the goods. There are "canon" rules for wrong parties to hear about it if you are looking for a fence. But if you already have one, it doesn't even have to be "connected" to avoid that unpleasantness. But like I posted before, there are a lot of justifications for info to fall in the wrong hands, and if bad people show up, then they better learn to deal.

When it comes to Raiding the corpses I at least let my players get Ammo Reloads and Fresh peices of armor, usually by that time thier armor is degrading real bad.

We're not morbid enough to take cyber/bio ware off the dead yet.

What get's me in a bind is when they have the oppurtunity to raid a Magic User and want to know what magical items ( houserule, In my game I do allow magical items from DnD, which are not SR1 canon) I'll usually give them something with a small ammount of "charges". If it get's to be a real bad habit of thiers I'm going to start giving them "cursed" items.

Loot?

Naw, my PnP group are too classy to actually "loot" stuff.

Rather, we were posing as the assistants and body guards of a *really* important scientist (who went along because we had his daughter). He were to be left absolutely alone during the 16hr chopping session he had to make with an otakus brain wth only his "trusted assistants" allowed to see him. Naturally, we used the cyberterminal provided to us to check out if there were any interesting cyberdecks or expensive spares we could claim were "broken" in the lab and had the corp we were infiltrating DELIVER the goods to us, still in their cardboard boxes.

Included in the "loot" were 2 100k cyberdecks a cutting laser worth 80k and more exotic chemicals than could be considered healthy for you. Just a shame they weren't going to CZ the victim afterwards, ro we might've been able to snatch a few unbound foci too.

I have no problem with people looting. Just keep in mind, they're on the run. Usually lugging around 20-60lbs of stolen goods isn't a great plan for escape. If they pulled off their run so well that they aren't legging it out at top speed, they deserve a few perks. And if the J can't or won't pay normal rates, he'll often offer looting rights and hints to help make the job nicer (heck, look at 'First Run!' Or don't. They do have you meeting Villiers.)

I would let them loot ammo, but generally if they buy more than 50-100 rounds, I stop keeping track anyhow. I don't play to count dollars and cents. Anything small and easily grabbable, and any neato weapons I expect to disappear.

As for ritual tracking... Would that work if you disassembled whatever it is and hid it around the city? I mean say they stole a car. Would ritual tracking find the passenger side door? The engine block? The set of wheels? I don't know, I'd generally either lead them to the single largest piece, whatever piece their ritual tracking physical part is from, or say they don't find it (since an engine is not a car, nor is a frame).

In one game I'm running, a PC bought a whole cyberware clinic. I'm mildly concerned about him trying to drag bodies out and getting cyber for free, but considering how rarely PCs upgrade their cyber, and how unusual anything above alpha is, I'm not too worried yet.

The only time I ever had a PC loot anything during a run was a deck sitting in a warehouse office. The guy wasn't a decker, but the run wasn't paying much and he wanted to try decking later in his life. I rolled randomly and he got a stripped down Kraftwerk.

if there's time, my char picks up any decent weapons that are lying around. he's got a pretty decent collection; it's nice, having spares.

It is also nice having a throw away that is implicated in crimes you have not commited. Especially if they know who committed them.

For crying out loud, some people are making a constitutional mess out of a simple story element.

Just decide, as a GM, whether or not someone is likely or not to try to track down the PCs. Either because of the loot or because of what they've done. If no one would bother, make a negociation roll and then let it go.

If you figure someone would try to track the PC, then you can make a decision to have the third party show up. That's right, you're the GM, you can do that. If you want it to be random (because it's not central to the campaign), just make a sensible roll against a sensible TN. For example, the intelligence rating of the corp VS a TN based on the precautions taken by the players.

Also, I don't know about you, but my fence NPCs (or connected contacts, whatever) are not operating in a vaccuum. Who are they going to sell the loot too and who finance them?

'cause if the fence is connected to the Yakuza and you are fencing hot Mitsuhama goods, the situation just begs to turn into a mess for the greater enjoyment of the GM.

EDIT : I have a feeling someone will answer : 'It's not canon'. Well, canon says that the GM has to challenge the PCs so AFAIC carefree looters deserve to discover why looting is not considered a safe profession amongst sensible folks.

---

As for looting or not looting ; usually not looting. In fact, my players usually get rid of some equipment after the run if they feel it could 'cause them trouble.

Another important thing to remember is the amount of heat you'll generate by grabbing everything that isn't nailed down. (Unless you've bene hired to blow the place skywards afterwards or somesuch).

Generally, your target is quicker to forget your trespassing if a) You don't kill his people and b) don't grab his stuff.

Heck, my character (admittedly a mundane) in a pnp campaign has gone to great lengths before to ensure any and all foci found their way back to the organization that hired whatever mage I had to disable in the heat of battle. It's just not worth it having Joe Megacorp blaming you for the loss of a 3-million nuyen power focus.

My PCs'll typically steal anything that isn't nailed down, and if they can pry it up, it's not nailed down. They exercise some restraint here, but it's a matter of practicality rather than being "above" looting. Getting out in one piece is priority one. Getting paid is priority two. Getting the job done is priority three. Walking off with anything that looks expensive is a distant fourth place.

We've gotten pretty ambitious in what we've stolen, given the time and means, though. Our best score was a luxury executive helicopter, which we grabbed by the simple expedient of using it as an escape vehicle. That freed up some room in our main vehicle for a bunch of expensive drones that we'd grabbed, and a few more extractees than the original plan had called for.

We grabbed an armored tilitrotor once, too, but we had to give that to our employer. We were working the security side of the fence on that run, and had plenty of time after the shooting stopped to pick up all the good stuff... we even spent some time playing drone rodeo (which seems to be an ongoing theme... in the previous run, the one where we stole the executive chopper, our face rode one of our rigger's VTA drones five stories up the outside of a building). We'd snuffed the enemy rigger, and he left a couple of rotodrone gunships hanging around with no one controlling them and no orders, so, since our own rigger was absent and couldn't hop on their net and bring them in the easy way, rather than letting them hover there until they crashed or something, we roped them, winched them down, and shut them down manually (using all due caution to make sure we didn't get shot if they reacted poorly to this treatment).

Another group stole a pretty sizable passenger hovercraft once, which we later used for a mobile base of operations. We were doing a lot of smuggling and stuff through the Great Lakes, so it came in really handy. We were pretty sure no one was going to come looking for it, because the original owners had it illegally to begin with, and had all become very rapidly dead shortly after getting on our bad side.

If it looks significantly more expensive than what the job is paying, you've got your priorities in the wrong place.

~J

I, for one, could care less what the rules say, or even want rules for this part of the game. I'll decide what they have available to acquire, who they can sell it to, and what it's worth to the purchasers.

Rules are good and all, but jeesh....it's like people want a Roll Playing Game instead of a Role Playing Game.