Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: Sabato Kuroi on <03-18-15/0644:00>
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So I was reading "The Land of Promise" and the following Jackpoint message draw my attention:
"Renraku has sentenced former CAS Congressional Representative Lance Jennings to death for corporate espionage.
The sentence will be carried out in two days"
Which Megacorps impose death penalties?Which methods are used?I as(s)ume some high profile Renraku employees are allowed to commit seppuku?
Are there penalties like forced labor?
Are there corporate prisons?(Except from LS and KE facilities)
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Which Megacorps impose death penalties?
all of them ?
don't forget SR is a Dystopy ;)
Which methods are used?
all of them ?!!
I as(s)ume some high profile Renraku employees are allowed to commit seppuku?
Why only Renraku ?
You can hoopume that for any Japanocorp .
Are there penalties like forced labor?
Are there corporate prisons?(Except from LS and KE facilities)
Yes, on both questions but its up to You as a GM to say which ones in Your own SR World
with an Individual Dance
Medicineman
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Thanks for your answers!
So depending on the State, it might be better to get caught by national authorities than corporate authorities.
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Thanks for your answers!
So depending on the State, it might be better to get caught by national authorities than corporate authorities.
That is almost always the case. Because of the extraterritoriality the Megas have they can legally do whatever they want to you if they catch you on their extraterritorial property. However, you have to keep in mind more police have been subcontracted out to private security companies, which can mean that a Mega is the police. But at least Lone Star might put on a show of bringing criminal to justice and not just execute you right on the spot, depending on how high profile the crime is and how badly the fallout will affect their PR.
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You have to understand that they are businesses, and bad PR is bad for business. If theY just went around executing everyone left and right for anything less than what would equate to treason, murder, excessive brutality the backlash would cause a measurable ding in their coffers as they attempt to recoup their pr losses. With the proliferation and omnipresence of social media and cameras it`s hard to get away with allot of things without public accountability.
So I would think of it as a dollars and cents game, how much money in damages did the person in question cause to said corp? How easily can the justify their punishment of choice to the public? How much potential value is the person in question to them? Their punishment is really going to vary off these factors. If said person killed a highly salaried member of their corp with skill they think they can use, they`ll more likely make that person dissapear and then work off their debt if they think they can control said person. As one example.
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I would argue, too, that corporations want to maximize profit. Killing people costs money and generates bad PR. Working camps might actually be worth their invested money. Of course horrific working conditions will eventually leak out and generate bad PR, too. So AA(A) corporations might individualize punishments and use every criminal towards their best capabilities. White collar criminals might get brain-washed (psychotropic treatment) and work in their field of expertise. Especially ruthless corporations might also hook people up into the matrix, while their bodies are paralyzed and force-fed. So your mind can work 24/7 (well, almost) for the reminder of your life
But if your mind cannot be put to work, I would assume that at least smaller corporations that have no use for you, will sell or lease you to KE etc. and they will put you to good use. They have the facilities for that, possibly hooking you up, throwing you into the mines somewhere or use you anyway they are pleased. The PR-problem remains in place, though. Too much inhumanity only makes matters worse; detainees start revolting, tight security costs money, prisoners sabotage their work, investigative reporters sneak out trideos etc.
The corporations cannot afford to handle prisoners like the Nazis did their forced labor workers from the USSR etc. People need a perspective, otherwise they stop collaborating. Sure, for a Ukrainian in Nazi-occupied Europe forced labor in a factory was a huge opportunity to stay alive. But only, because the Nazis didn't have to care for their image in the rest of the world. The corporations have to, so if imprisonment is better than life on the street, what will work get you? Work needs to be an incentive. Maybe corporations offer limited SINs after 25 years of hard labor? Why not? You still need to make it, play by the rules, acquire education, play even more by the rules etc. Incentives also generate competition between prisoners, thus breaking them up into fractions. That's good for population managment and helps avoiding sabotage, unrest etc. The Nazis used camp inmates for low level administrative duties. They might think they were on the fast track to survival, but they couldn't be sure.
In the end, corporate prisons have the same problems as public prisons, just more so. There is almost no motivation to cross-fund them. They need to be productive, because they supplement resources. If you're R&D department is in the reds, you can crossfund it and hope the guys eventually come up with something worth the money. If your strip mine costs more than you get from selling the coal, it's hard to justify keeping it open. Unless liquidiating the mine would cost you assets or break contracts somewhere else. But then you should start renegotiating contracts and re-organise your corporate structure.
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Are there penalties like forced labor?
Are there corporate prisons?(Except from LS and KE facilities)
Yes, on both questions but its up to You as a GM to say which ones in Your own SR World
with an Individual Dance
Medicineman
Other than KE/LS, there's that Red Wheel Engineering floating prison off the eastern coast of Africa.
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All the corporations have death penalties; whether they do so openly or not is another question. The use of seppuku is going to be primarily in the Japanese corporations, but it might occur in Japanese-centric (or located) subsidiaries as well. As for corporate prisons ... yes. Lots. And the best sort is where the prisoner has a vested interest in working hard to do their assigned job, simply because it means their life and the lives of those around them. Very few straight-out corporate criminals are going to be willing to both suicide and kill a lot of fellow prisoners just to get back at their corporate jailors. And for a hint of how to manage that, think 'Proteus Arkoblock'. :)
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It all comes down to the bottom line (and PR is part of that bottom line):
-if you have done something horrible (like killing all the guards in a facility while extracting one scientist): they will hunt you down and kill you. How public and how messy depends on the corporation I guess. If they catch you on facility they can always shoot you 'resisting arrest', which for shadowrunners will probably be true anyways.
-If you have done something less horrible (for shadowrunners: stolen or attempted to steal a prototype for instance) and they have you alive: they will put you to work somewhere in a prison.
-another option if they need an example: strip you of all your money, SINs and other assets and dump you in the streets for their wage slaves to see what will happen to them if they step out of line.
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You wanna point me to the source where arkobloks were used as prisons?
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You wanna point me to the source where arkobloks were used as prisons?
Page 50 of Hazard Pay has an expose showing Proteus using Arkoblocks as Concentration Camps.
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It all comes down to the bottom line (and PR is part of that bottom line):
Or they have a policy to interrogate you and send you on missions of their own to redeem yourself, as was stated for Novatech in the 2060s.
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It also depends on your contacts I guess.
Embezzlement
Well liked, well known and member of a large family Dwayne Dwayneson is fined, demoted and given an official warning.
Disliked, largely forgotten loner Terry Peakcock is reassigned to a facility in the antartic.
Got the child of a high ranking VIP killed through your incompetence
Well liked, well known and member of a large family Dwayne Dwayneson is fired, stripped of his corporate SIN and tossed out on the streets.
Disliked, largely forgotten loner Terry Peakcock is reassigned to a facility in the antartic and quietly killed or sent to an experimentation facility instead.
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Damn, and up until now all I had read on Proteus AG had them spelled out as some secretive corp on the up and up, I wasnt aware they were so... "public". Must have been some old data, I kinda glazed over allot of HP looking for game info.
Looking at it now I can see how I missed that bit, I hate the water, skipped right passed the deep sea section.
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To be fair, I'm pretty sure that part came after the big blow-up - Proteus and events surrounding it being controlled/driven primarily by the German side of things. It's good stuff.
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Wait. Which big blow up?
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See the Shockwaves PDF (http://old.shadowrun4.com/resources/downloads/fanpro_shadowrun_shockwaves.pdf), a portion of the German book 'Schockwellen'.
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Long story short: Proteus never actually manufactured goods so much as it much more acted like a parasite before 2063. Until then Proteus had a large network of agents, holdings etc. in place that enabled it to funnel funds from various corporations into its own accounts. Proteus was largely owned by Euro-corporations and doing basic research with mostly trans-human goals (making humans capable of sustained live in deep-sea or space environments etc.).
It all came down, when Proteus tried to screw Ares with the same spiel. Ares lost a couple of high-value assets and Thor-hammered an arcology of Proteus in 2063, then demanding a corporate court Omega-order against Proeus. That didn't happen, as SK stepped in and told everybody that Proteus was going to be restructured. The process started and then the Crash 2.0 happened, in which Proteus emerged stronger than ever. In 2070 they're pracically a normal AA-corporation, but with huge marine and aerospace assets, as well as magical and biotech research. They could be a AAA, I guess, if it weren't for their past and their lack in matrix services.
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And no, Aryeonos, 'Die Schockwellenreiter' are 'The Shockwave Riders', a German decker group.
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It was an easy leap to make, no corrolation? Speaking of which are they still around? The decker group.
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No correlation. As well as tie one of Ouro's original aliases - Shockwave - to it. However, yes, the Shockwave Riders are still out there, so far as I'm aware.
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Well, I look forward to reading those files, my phone is too archaic to open them but tues/wednesday I should be able to take a peak.
Back on topic, why invest in the red wheel super prison, and y`know not just kill your target, or something less expensive like unmarked antarctic or TPA sites to hold your prisoners. In a world revolving around cost effectiveness it seems a little extreme. And what would be so special about Hard Exit`s cohort that they`d lock em up there?