The other day I was reading one of the Eve Dallas books by J.D. Robb, and it finally dawned upon me how truely often the protagonist, Lt. Eve Dallas of the NYPSD resorted to using illeagal channels to garner information, even if it wasen't the information used officially.

And I was thinking, "Wow, she really could use some 'deniable assets'."

Then it hit me. That's the perfect Shadowrun campaign. Lone Star can use deniable assets - they need to crack a murder case wide-open, but the murderer's alibi seems tight? They can't get a judge to issue a search warrent?

Sounds like you need some 'anonamous sources' to drop you a 'tip,' dosen't it?


I'd think you can even do your best to keep the Runners in the dark for awhile, to test their loyalty, their willingness to work as much within the law as possible, their tendancy to go crazy, etcetera.

IE, "My client has made an enemy, an enemy he would very much like to see destroyed in every way except physically. My client's enemy has committed many crimes throughout his years, and my client has decided that he wants to use Lone Star to destroy his enemy. Get into my client's enemie's homes and files, find evidence of their wrongdoings, and submit this information anonamous to Lone Star. My client must remain distanced from this operation."

Stuff like that. Of course, working for Lone Star has some pros and cons, too...

Con: Less freedom. You can't be absoloutely fucking insane in breaking the law. Can't knock over Stuffer Shacks when you feel like it.
Pro: You won't ever be hassled for a permit, and you basically have liscence to ignore the traffic regulations
Big Con: You can't take any jobs that involve runs where the security you're going to be facing is Lone Star.
Pro: Lone Star will slip you a little something extra under the table for runs you do where you take out any Knight Errant security.

I've run for the Star before. The negotiations with the Johnson were a bit nervous-making... which was kind of amusing, in retrospect. We'd worked for organized crime syndicates without a second thought, but our first reaction when the cops approached us was, "Can we trust them?" In the end, we decided that we would, but only a little, and, contrary to our usual procedure, sent only the face in to the meet, with the rest of us safely out of sight, in radio contact, and prepared to extract him if it turned out to be a set-up.

The run, at any rate, was to find some evidence and provide an anonymous tipoff on a truly sick fucker that they knew was guilty, but couldn't get the proof to take action against legally. In return, we got a fairly handsome cash payment and a promise to "lose" some evidence about our other activities.

We didn't find the restrictions on methods resulting from working for the Star to be particularly burdensome. We were professionals, and, while not in the least opposed to ventilating skulls in the name of business, neither were we a bunch of psycho killers who ran around doing it unnecessarily. There were other constraints placed on us by the nature of the mission, which were more restrictive than the simple fact that we were working for law enforcement, but those weren't any worse than those placed on us by any number of other runs we'd done.

That sounds like fun.

How'd the run go, anyway? What kind of evidence did you get?

why would you tell the runners that you're lone star? one of the reasons deniable assets are deniable is because they don't know who they're working for.

i don't think working for lone star would be vastly different than working for any other corporation.

I think that a Lone Star campaign has a lot of great potential. In the first place, you have more room for strategy since you can have backup as the police. Let the PCs call in the SWAT team and then for the sake of good gaming let them plan and conduct a raid of the building or whatever.

And after you've been in a couple games where you've gotten your arses thoroughly handed to you by an HRT or SWAT team, there's something eminantly satisfying about hearing the DM say "Rodger, Lone Star on the way!" when you call for backup.

In the campaign that I am in right now our group has been doing a couple jobs for Lone Star, or at least someone from Lone Star.

The first job was to assassinate a person, a really sick and twisted guy. When he died it had to be done in a way that makes sure that there was no way it could be considered an accident. We made two plans for when he was taking a helicopter to a freighter.

Plan A was for the mage to conjure a spirit to get the helicopter into a forced landing, then shooting everyone in it.

Plan B had me on a rooftop at a discreet location where I could see the action in case it failed. At that point I would execute Plan B, firing the SAM missile my contact had found lying around. Of course, I had my getaway vehicle nearby to get the hell out of dodge.

Luckily, Plan A worked. Now we are infiltrating a freighter in international waters to take control of it and get it into UCAS water because it has a ton of evidence they want. When we last left off, through the use of many grenades, I have control of the bridge and the security room. We're now about to see what we can do from the security room to protect the evidence. We've already encountered one turret that was outside of the bridge, so I assume there are more inside that we can use on the crew. Maybe we can gas them all as well.

I've been hired by a LS detective to make a case against a murderer when he was ordered to lay off it.

I also ran a game where the players were hired by a LS officer to retrieve a Fuchi assassin who had killed someone then gone to ground in a Fuchi extra-territorial area. It lasted about five minutes.

(No, they didn't go in guns blazing and die. One of the runners flicked through Corporate Shadowfiles, did a little research and found out that the assassin was part of the Nakatomi faction and the facility was pro-Villiers. One carefully worded phone call later, the assassin was tossed over the wall bound hand and foot. I gave the guy a couple extra karma for that one)