Threadomancy is a lovely thing.

That said, my position holds. "No Surrender" is a survival mechanism in Shadowrun.

You can, after all, always invoke the Hand of God or something to get yourself out of a suicidally desperate situation. But once you're in the hands of the 'Star, or Renraku, or Saeder-Krupp, or <insert AA-AAA Megacorp Here>, or Humanis (and you're a meta), or the bug spirits, or a dragon, etcetera...

Then there's no point. You're dead. Character no longer worth playing. A rigger or sammie who gets his or her cyber ripped just became joe average. The machine makes the man as much as the karma does, after all. Worse is what happens to a mage, because any smart mage-imprisoner will force-feed him so many stimmies that he burns his magic rating out, and then what's the point?

Same reason it's not worth playing a character who took more than one or two levels worth of permenant drain in D&D. You're so far behind the curve that your character contributes nothing to the party. A cyberless rigger? No thanks. A burnout mage? What the hell are we gonna do with him? May as well get him a job consulting magical security for Stuffer Shack, unless that is, he had the smarts to realize how helpless he was now, and then blew his brains out with a predator so he could make a new character.

I've made a couple of non-cybered, non-magical human characters in the past just so that I could challenge myself doing the Metal Gear Solid thing. :3

When it's just you, 3 karma dice, and Stealth 6 between success and failure....

...that's when you fidget, use the restroom, and pour yourself more tea before making the roll.

Cyber can be replaced. If you have the right contacts or kill the right people it can be replaced with minimum cost. Magic is more problematic but there are ways of handling a mage that don't requre burning him out.

I was thinking that a prisonbreak game might be fun. Start some or all characters out in prision and have them plan their escape while coordinating with characters outside the prison for escape vehicles, safehouses, and supplies.

Of course, the line between prision and summary execution is a fine one. If the Star catches you on the streets of Seatle and you have a passable SIN that's one thing. If you are caught by a AAA corp in their secret facility that is another thing entirely.

gonna put my 2 cents worth here,

having played no surrender characters and actually still do you learn several things.

1. Animals have minimum to no armor, flechette combat shotgun works wonders
2. Doc Wagon is your friend, dont do any runs against them and have our bracelet at the highest you can afford.
3. Always have some weapon on you. You never know when that random ganger is gonna recognize you and try and grab some notoriety for having offed you.


as for Lone Star we have negotiated with them in the past ranging from "Here here officer, this wasnt the van you were looking for." to "Now, you can walk away richer, or you can fly away, but let me assure you, if you chose to fly away it will be in pieces....very tiny pieces." The last was said by our face as i shifted the grenade launcher toward the lonestar patrol 1 car

2 LPG mini splash grenades followed by white phosforus is not nice

That really depends a lot on the GM, though. In some campaigns, characters who get captured either have a chance to escape or get offered a deal in exchange for their freedom. In other campaigns, getting captured will result in your character either being killed or messed up beyond reasonable recovery. In games where the latter happens, the "no surrender" attitude makes more sense - you don't really have anything to lose, since surrendering doesn't gain you anything.


And if it happens to be the latter, then I agree with Shadowdragon. If your character is maimed (burnout mage or cyber ripped out), then why would a group of professional criminals let him continue to work with them? And if they did, out of loyalty or whatever, then what could such a character contribute to the team? Some sammies could still function as a face, techie, or sniper until they could get some new 'ware, but someone who is normally the group tank or speed sammie will be rendered almost useless. A burnout mage is even more useless. All the "roleplaying" in the world doesn't change the cold, unforgiving dice.

And I'm not ashamed to admit to some metagaming, either. I roleplay, sure, but I also like to see my characters grow and progress, not only roleplaying-wise, but in measurable improvements to their skills and powers. If a character gets messed up too much, it is frustrating - your character creation choices and karma expenditures have been wasted. And I roleplay characters that I have fun roleplaying. I'm not interested in "roleplaying" a crippled character's descent into BTL addiction, or whatever. Wounds and other setbacks are part of the game, but when a character is out-and-out ruined, it's time to make a new one.


I do agree that "Never" is a big word. But in some campaigns, it is an appropriate one. Not every GM will make a character being captured the start of a new direction for the campaign. And even if he is, there are times when the player has no interest it, and might even feel railroaded.

I agree with Critias that the character still has a great deal of value.

To completely lose your magic you will need some serious damage done to you.
And that would probably have me rip up my sheet or turn into one really vengeful runner. Isn't there some free spirit that can help you regain your magic if you have burned out? There is always hope.

If you are burned out, then you can always get some cyber/bio to enhance yourself a little bit. (cerebral boosters, smartlink, etc). I personally get attached to my characters, if something like that happened to one of them, then I would be really dissappointed, but sometimes life throws you a curveball and takes you in an unexpected direction, which turns out better.

If are part of a shadowrun team, you are a team, it would be hard to just dump out a character. Experience counts for a lot. After all you are trusting your life to another, that creates a bond. Cyberware can always be replaced. There are alot of interesting runs that can happen when PC's are captured. There are many powerful allies and enemies in jail.

Could it be that one of the factors that fuel this debate is the fact that those advocating the "NEVER surrender" approach are the players who, on average, tend to play the type of characters who are *much less likely* to survive getting captured? Let me introduce two runners:

Runner A is the pacifist type, he is a professional who causes minimum collateral damage. He never killed a cop, in fact it is not sure whether he ever killed anyone. He is sensible, willing to negotiate with his captors (fully aware that he is at a disadvantage), the captors know that making him work for them will be better for their bottom line than killing him and selling his organs would be...

Runner B is the psychopath type. He killed a lot of people, simply because it was the simplest way to get the job done. He fights to the death in a hopeless situation just to take some of the opposition down with him. He is *not* willing to compromise, not even if the faction he is dealing with is one it is relatively safe to surrender to...

Which of these two would be more likely to survive a surrender (relatively) unscathed, and therefore more likely to actually surrender?

****

On the issue of the consequences one faces after surrendering:

I guess it depends on the GM you play with. I'd say a sane GM plays in a (relatively) sensible world.

You know, the world where the 'Star *don't* dose every mage the take in with magic-decreasing drugs, not after the the 'Star had to pay 1000000000 in damages to people they drugged and later were unable to prove guilty...
The world where being SINless doesn't mean you have NO rights and can be butchered like an animal - sure, they might rough you up, and simply *being* SINless is a crime, but it does not get you automatic death sentence...
The world where taking all the cyber out of an individual actually *costs* quite a lot of money if you want the individual to stay alive, and you *can't* operate on every chromed guy who ends up in your cell...
The world where getting captured by a corp doesn't mean automatic death, because the corp in qustion is smart enough to realize that killing you makes them no money but making you work for them might actually compensate for the damage you caused - and long-term storage of tissue samples suitable for ritual magic is cheap enough to serve as a sufficient deterrent for most runners (at least for the types willing to surrender and negotiate)...
If the GM is willing to *think* about how to make it through the situation without having to resort to either breaking the rules the world follows or indiscriminately killing anyone who surrenders...

In a world like this you should be able to surrender, at least in some situations, and get away without serious permanent damage to your charsheet.


If the world you play in works differently... Well... It's your game... Heck, I've played in some "tougher" settings too, it can be fun at times...


But if the *majority* of the players in one group want it one way, and one/a few of them *want* to play it the other way... Then it is something you have to work on OOC, because having the game the *whole group* wants to enjoy disrupted by one or two guys sucks.

I certainly agree with mmu1, LS beat cops encountering a runner team that they KNOW is a runner team would probably high-tail it out of there while calling for the SWAT. they're just not equipped to handle that kind of encounter, even with superior numbers on their side the Runners are likely to be better equipped, better trained, and lack the necessity of playing by 'the rules'. The Star has squads specifically trained to handle this kind of shit, your average cop does not want to get anywhere near it (unless they're in it for the glory, in which case they're likely new, and thus will either smarten up or die very quickly).

that also depends on how you view runners. i tend to take the view that the vast majority of NPC runners are far less capable than the average PC runner--in other words, there's a hell of a lot of posers and wannabes out there, and they get hired too. most (NPC) runner teams are something a beat cop would call for backup on, but not something they'd bring in the FRT boys for.

*shrugs* If you're fine with playing alongside someone who doesn't care about his character, just his character sheet, more power to ya. I've had character get serious setbacks before, and kept playing them. I've had characters lose limbs (Awakened characters, mind you), get a cyber replacement, and kept on trucking. Hell, MFB and I went out of our ways, once to make up an excuse to dump our characters halfway across the continent without any of their cool toys, and have to work their way home. "Bruised and Naked in Charlotte, NC," was one of my favorite little RP arcs, ever, to this day. No fancy guns, no fancy armor, none of our usual hot-shit "I'm a pro" gear.

To me, that's what role playing's all about. Taking on the role of your character, and playing it the best you can. I don't think most people -- even most hardened criminals -- are going to knowingly and willingly throw their life away at the drop of a hat. If you've got a half dozen guys aiming shotguns at your head, I'm willing to bet your default reflex action isn't gonna be "I go for my gun, who needs a head, anyways!" (unless you have genuine reason to feel like you're that badass). But, hey. That's me, I guess. I try to think like my characters, who are generally willing and able to take risks, but not be actively suicidal for no real reason.

If your character is some crazy guy that's sworn never to surrender, fine, have fun. That can make for some good times, it can cause friction in the party (like them knocking him out and dragging him away), whatever floats your boat. That's still an IC decision, and (especially if backed up by their background or something) one I can respect, I guess.

But, to me, if you've made the OOC decision to never surrender in SR, no matter what, because you're scared your archetype will lose some of what makes him fit that archetype? That's weak.

It makes me think you're more concerned with your gear list than your character. I don't sit down and say "I want to play a cybered character," I sit down and say "This character I want to play, maybe he'll have some cyber." See the difference? One is just like picking a character class from D20, one is making a character and then deciding on their traits.

*shrug* Your mileage may vary.

I've been wondering about this with a certain street samurai in one of the games I run. He follows the old school code of the samurai, including never retreating. I'm very much wondering if he is willing to let his character face certain death to up hold his code. Almost tempted to put it to the test really. I'm not wuite that cruel, but it would be interesting.

'Course he has ran from the Star and back up security on runs, but that was always after they got what they came for. Wonder if that should count?

Personally, I find that my degree of identification with my character is not static. My roleplaying doesn't take place in a vacuum. There are some games where roleplaying is the main concern, and others that focus mainly on the action. In one game, I might spend a lot of time crafting a character's background and motivations. In another game, I might min-max a character to fit a specific role in the team, and give him a few broad personality quirks to make him stand out. There's nothing wrong with the latter, if that's the kind of game it is. The only problem is if someone who wants to play a "big, bad sammie" sits at the table with a group of "bruised and naked" roleplayers.

It's a group thing. You need to find out what kind of game everybody else is playing, then decide whether you want to try to fit in (not completely conform, but at least be on the same page as everybody else), "convert" the heathen infidels to your own obviously superior style of gaming , or just decide that they are too far out from what you enjoy, and find another group.

Alright.. my personal experience? There are things I really don't want to have to deal with in roleplay. If my elf huntsman shaman is being deliberately burned out... then the character is screwed, short of rescue before the last point of magic is gone.

In fact, that applies to my conjurer and magician's way adept as well. Burnouts are all well and good, and can be tremendously fun... but two of the three can't have cyberware at all, and the last has sensitive system. And even with that, I have no interest in playing two cyber characters.. I played one out of curiousity, but I like the awakened more, and the character concepts for the three awakened are not particularly compatable with the cyber-freak.

Completely burning out awakened characters, for me, is typically very much on the same level as killing them. Not always; some of them I'd continue to play. But not many. Mostly, magic is fundamental to the character.. it's part of who, and what they are, as well as who and what they perceive themselves to be.

Now, if you want to screw with my metalhead, go ahead. There are some things that will make him cease to care about life, except for the possibility of it ending before he's hunted down the people responsible, and killed them thouroughly. If he survives, I'll keep playing him. There's not much that can make him unplayable, although there are things that would normally make a character unplayable that would instead kill him.. some of his cyberware he depends on to live, literally instead of figuratively.

Okay, I gotta ask. Aside from ShadowDragon's fatalistic "suicide by cop is a survival method" post -- where are you guys getting the idea that Lone Star regularly (much less "as a matter of routine") purposefully burns mages out when they get locked up?

Seriously?

Yeah! from what i know they have mage mask and a cyber implant that they use to control mages.

The one time my Magician's Way got captured by anyone, he was very nearly burned out in a forced series of scorching duals by the Order of Saint Sylvester... (He's got a really bad rep with them, there's a nasty guy framing him for blood magic on church property..)

As for Lone Star? Well, my shaman can be out of a mage mask very fast. Very high skill.. elemental manipulation to blow it off her head. Force 3 or so blast manip. Mage masks don't prevent spellcasting, they inhibit it and prevent LOS.

And anyone with an ally spirit? If you don't burn them out they're gone. Or hermetics with elementals on call?

And Critias, I could swear I remember reading something about it. I just can't remember where, so if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But it's not just Lone Star, there are lots of other people who could do it.. (Witness above incident with OSS)

yes, it happens. LS does burn out some mages with a horrible drug regimen. what Critias is asking is why everyone assumes LS does that to all mages they catch.

We're not assuming it happens all of the time. We're just saying in some campaigns, it does happen. And we're talking about the times it happens, because there's no dilemma (whether or not to keep playing the burned-out character) when it doesn't happen.

Considering how difficult it is to keep a mage captive, and how frightened they make people, I don't think burning out mages would be rare. Not common, certainly, even in SR's distopian world, but not rare, either. Shadowrunners, for the most part, don't even officially exist. A corporation can do anything it wants, basically, when it captures a runner. Lone Star has more procedures to follow, but I imagine it's not too hard to make a captured runner "disappear" from the books.

I suspect that "shot while 'resisting arrest'" is far more common than burning out mages. Burned-out mages are witnesses. Dead mages are statistics.

Plus it's also great to use captured runners for things other than incarceration or experimentation...
'We have deal that you can't refuse...'
You don't have to make them totally burned out, just put in the small cortex bomb and voila. Plus, if the runner is totally mercenary and not some total psycho killer, then lone star and the runner might have some biz to work out too. The runner (especially the mage) have skills that are are hard to come by and it would be convenient to use them as they come along.

Considering how dangerous a captive mage is, and considering how relatively complex it would be to burn one out, I have to agree that rationally it would seem that summary execution would be the most common "under the table" treatment of captured mages.

Don't forget taht there are prison facilities that specialize in holding mages . Like Blackstone (I believe that was the name) The place exists in an astral ebb, and has some nasty background count due to it's nature of a prison, making magic very difficult to use. There's good money in locking up dangerous people, and there are corps that run those places. Also, not everyone is comfrotable with jsut out right executing someone, even if they can, and even if it's a criminl. Locking them away some place cold and dark however works just fine for many of them. Just look at all the places in the world today that outlaw or fight against capitol punishment.

I agree in part:

Ultimately, it's not the corp's decision as to what to do about a mage. It's an individual's. And they might have the budget to have somebody locked away in a Mage Prison for eternity, or have a cranial bomb installed. Or they might decide to kill them, because 2 is cheaper than incarceration. I think it depends on who the prisoner is. A dead shadowrunner can't squeal on their friends or be tortured for your amusement after all.

Who runs Blackstone?

Check out SOTA 64, it's all in there IIRC. I don't think it's a AAA that owns it though

MCT owns Blackstone. sota64.93

Revlup owns several automated prisons for mages (amongst others) in Antarctica. twl.63-64

thanks, hate not having my books handy. There's supposed t obe a few research labs in space where mage prisoners are used as well, but I don't remember any specific ones. For the most part though, a mage in any one of those places may be better off dead. But a break out would be an awesome game.

This is a great thread and I'm glad it was brought back up, I've enjoyed reading threw all of it.

That said I find there are a lot of reasons a character could be a 'no surrender' type. It could be the players belief that in Shadowrun the cops are more likely to put a bullet into a sinless killing machine rather then deal with the problem of trying to take them in. It could originate from an OOC attitude that the player doesn't like to 'lose'. Or it could be part of the character's attitude, ie the Street Samurai who really does follow Bushido, especially that 'death before failure' part.

All of these have been mentioned before, what's been touched on but not fully mentioned is when it's an attitude that's come from the GM and now is part of the player's understanding of the game. Some players are just dicks and treat Shadowrun and pen and paper Doom, but so are some GMs. I've played with some GMs where NPCs just come into existance when it's most inconvenient for the player, you can't here them in the next room because they don't actually 'exist' until you go in the room and they need to shoot at you type of thing.

If your players never surrender ask yourself how often do your NPCs? If all NPCs are treated as fight to the death psychos why shouldn't the players have the same attitude? I played with a GM who would have NPCs fight on no matter how much damage had been done to them or even if they'd just seen our team wipe out 30 of their buddies in a few seconds. If the NPCs never back down, surrender, and always have infinite and increasingly more dangerous back up to call on just like in a video game why not play yoru character in the same way? If that's the type of game you think you're playing go for it.

That said there can be more practical concerns. I was running a game where the PCs didn't surrender because of how quickly combat goes, they thought they were OK but by the time the realized they were utterly hosed half the team was already dead as was the first round of opposition but the surviving players didn't think they'd have much chance of survival having not only wasted a crapload of security guys but having gotten the CEO's daughter killed in the firefight.

hot teenaged mages with no powers!

It is pretty simple for corps to incarcerate mages safely for a long time, just stick a datajack in their head, and override their sense of reality. I would think that alot of this would be done with violent criminals as well, kind of a demolition man idea where they are programmed in their sleep .. or whatever.

A corp could also use some paranormal animals to start sucking away their essence to reduce a mage's magic rating. There are probably some spirits out there that could siphon off the rest of the mages magic, (entry level horrors, even)

Yeah, but the problem is...

While those characters may make for a good story, they don't make for a good runner, and they don't make for a fun experiance to play.

"Initiative. Okay, Neo goes first, Neo always goes first. Don't bother rolling Neo, I just have the average of your init dice. Nobody can beat it. Then we have Spectre, our PhysAd. Then Silver Bullet, our mage - oh wait, that's right. Lone Star burnt you down to Magic rating 1. You can't use boost your init that high. Nevermind. Then Skate. Then the bad guys. Then Snake, right."

*Much rolling happens. Snake's player plays craps with himself and his notebook. Bad guys are all dead after Skate's turn.*

"Right. Good fight. Now, you've just pissed them off, and set off alarms in doing so - Skate, did you really have to use a frag grenade? Let's see... Oooh goodie, here come the paranamals backed up with drones. You all have the INT to realize those drones are packing MMGs, and might want to run. How fast can you move again? Right..."

And so Snake gets run down and tackled by Hellhounds, mauled horribly, and captured. Again.


Once you've lost what makes your character function mathematically, no amount of roleplaying can compensate for the fact that you'd probably be better off with a new character. A burnt-out mage might get cybered and start down the path of the Sammie or the decker or the rigger, but that's going to cost a whole lot of Karma and Nuyen he probably dosen't have. His contacts in the magery field are going to be secondary at best. When you don't have the powah, having three Talismongers and a Mage as level three buddies only goes so far. It dosen't make up for the fact that you can no longer use any of the stuff they might be willing to sell or give you, and it dosen't make up for the fact that these are not sammie/decker/rigger suppliers. Your Talismonger will not be able to supply you with an MPCP 9 cyberdeck, and your mage won't be able to get you a full set of MBW and an SGL with a very illeagal complimentary assault rifle. Your stats probably aren't set up for gunnery or decking/rigging, either, so you're going to be at a MAJOR karma hole disadvantage actually trying to become proficient up to the level of a starting character in your newly forced field of occupation.

About all you do have is all your mage skills, now filling the role of background/knowledges. It's nice to be able to know the Force ( of the Great Form elemental you're up against, so you know just how fragged you are, but woulden't it be better to be able to, I dunno, do something OTHER than shooting useless lead at it, with a bazillion less dice than the sammie can.

Which is why you can make a big quest out of trying to, say, initiate to get that power back.

I would have to say that no surrender play styles is more of a group or single player attitude then it ever is a character. Most of my friends play with the no surrender policy This causes a quick game and an even faster conclusion to the story "your all dead" However this never really allows for people to develop in depth bonds with NPCs or each other.

With the mage, at least Ronin, you can do his astral questing and initiating on the side, out of the real game, as it were. Meet later in the week, one on one, or possibly with a few others, to do his thing, while between runs.

The decker has no such luxuy. ^_^

OK so we can agrue forever if a burnt out mage is worth playing or not, but regardless of that would the character think that surrender was a good idea anymore after what happened last time? Even if such a character turned into one of the best burn outs turned street sam wouldn't he still sit at the bar and think about how he'd been better off fighting to his last when he had the Power? I'd seriously argue where most characters having gone threw that hell would think that a 1% chance at survival would be perferable to surrender anymore.