[GiraffeShaman]

GOD and DG are quite scary in 5th edition. I just noticed that the G-Men get the equivalent of an owner's mark on all devices currently on their grid. (pg. 360) As if being Superhuman Prime Runners wasn't enough.

On the sale of information. Run it like stealing for the thieves guild in fantasy games, as opposed to just doing random thefts. Sure you could go randomly steal, but the thieve's guild knows where the best loot is. Except that in SR, the guild is the Mr. Johnsons. Sure the Johnson and his corp masters are only going to pay you a fraction of what you've gained them. But they know where the best stuff is, be it info or physical objects. Part of your job as GM is to make it more attractive overall to go on shadowruns.

You can pay them something for random data, just don't go overboard. Unless you really want the campaign revolve around random data steals. Which is what happens on the Genesis video game actually, and it's tons of fun as a solo player. Hell, if you have one player, then just do that over and over. I put hundreds of hours into that on the video game. Good times.

[DamienHollow]

He wasn't taking guns... he was taking accounting information, data on unrelated projects, personnel data, communication files of interest, ect. The guy likes to play sneaky rouge like characters with minimal gear... I finally dropped the hammer as it were by having a disgruntled corp Johnson lure him into a trap. Long story short I enjoyed invoking the chunky salsa rule after his own ego lead him into a car with a self-destruct system (he knew it was fishy, he SAID it was fishy, he still climbed in.) After that he started insisting we stop playing and start a Palladium game. I won't touch that system so I used it as my chance to bow out... Now I'm stuck looking for a new group. At least I don;t have to deal with him anymore.

I don't see a problem with that, your ultimately the one who decides what he grabbed, and it's value.  Why not just keep it low?  Otherwise why not just run the clock out on the matrix and have GOD locate him.  Intervene with physical bodies?  After to many times have GOD catch him on camera, after that Lone Star has a picture of his face.  If hes anywhere else bring in back up security after the IC finds him.  Force him to trip alarms in order to feed his greed.  Leading to a potential TPK, one incident probably would of had him backing up a bit and thinking twice.  Otherwise drop him some bread crumbs 1k or something per piece of data. 

Say for instance he got a 1,000,000 cred file.  Doesn't mean the fixers going to dole that out or that the PCs character can even determine that is the value.  If it's fixed items such as cars bikes ect,. that's when you have an issue because that has a fixed value.  The only way he could make any significant money is if you failed to prevent him from doing it by not giving him enough opposition/consequence.

Even when for instance someone above said the would contact another person to come pick up the gear.  This would rarely work.  First off they would have to be in their own country (not a corp, ameri-indian ect).  Even then why are Lone Star not responding or Knight Errand?  There must be a really good reason such as the place they were in was heavily gang territory.   In this case the guys picking up the gear are probably already dead as the gangers respond to the location of where their buddies just died.  If it's corp stuff it's just implausible.  Theres a reason we're all called shadowrunners our lives depend on not being detected and getting in and out as fast as possible.

SR4...

Also, you try telling me that Ares black budget information wouldn't sell for a pretty penny to just about any other AAA?

Great dragons, greater freeform shadow spirits, and Harlyquin... three things I wish would go die in a fire.

[TX_DM]

Dude wants to grab a bunch of crap, okay, sure, grab tons of it. Data? Sure, no problem.

Worth Millions huh?
Yep, and I'm sure they'll just pay you those millions rather than pay a rival shadowrun team 20k to wire the building you live in for demolition.

The problem with having a million dollars isn't having one million dollars, it's the people who KNOW you have one million dollars that will make life rough on you.
As soon as he runs his mouth about hiring runners to protect himself, have them get bought out and put rounds in his skull, or just walk off with the data.

You should also look up the terms Toecutter, Stand-over man and Faraday Cage.

There isn't a form of electronic communication available in this century, or the next dozen, that will get any kind of signal through a faraday cage and all that is, is a lightly electrified cage.

I would use this as a way to bring about an adventure honestly. One where the pc with all the money ends up spending it all to stay alive.

[Silence]

You should also look up the terms Toecutter, Stand-over man and Faraday Cage.

Don't forget Bagman, and there's an Italian term I can't remember for the life of me that is similar, and very Sicilian in outlook.

[TX_DM]

Here's the thing, the Toe-cutter is a uniquely australian concept. A criminal that preys on more successful criminals by torturing them.

With the reliance on wireless signal for cyberwear, smartguns, phones, decks and remotes, one Faraday Cage nullifies all of that. No wireless is possible in a Faraday Cage. Also, it will interfere with unshielded electronics to a lesser extent. So some cyberwear may not even function at all.

Now, how do you get the Mr. Sticky-Fingers into the Faraday Cage so he can meet Mr. Toe-cutter? That's where the Stand-over man comes in. Here's a criminal who cons other crooks. He masquerades as Mr Johnson and it's all over but the shouting and who mops up the blood that Mr Sticky-Fingers leaves behind. Cuz Mr. Stick-Fingers can only hold out so long before he gives up the money. The Toe-cutter may even let him live, provided he doesn't waste a lot of time giving up the money.

Just an idea or two. I hope it helps

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Give you a couple notes:

1) The Law of Diminishing Returns.  Not everything you steal has value; you have a maximum amount of stuff you can steal.  The more you steal, the less your fixer is going to pay for each item. 

2) The Law of Inevitable Consequence: The more you steal, the less available to be stolen by other thieves; you and your bank accounts become the target.  The Johnson may require you to not touch anything but what he's paying you to steal - and when you don't keep your grimy paws off the other stuff, well, he's not going to be the only one displeased.

This can be handled purely ICly, but taking the player aside and mentioning the above two rules may ... assist him in understanding.

[Caradoc]

You should also look up the terms Toecutter, Stand-over man and Faraday Cage.

Don't forget Bagman, and there's an Italian term I can't remember for the life of me that is similar, and very Sicilian in outlook.

Is that from the protection money paid - Pizzo? In Sicily it's 'To wet someones beak'.

[Silence]

No, it's an outsider who's brought in to clean house.  Everyone's house.

[Ramid]

I had a very similar problem with a Group new to Shadowrun One of the players always stopped to loot bodies steal stuff lying around etc.

As he did not get any immediate punishment for doing this the rest of the team started doing so as well to the point they would steal
data and everything else they could when hired to do a job.

For 4-5 runs there were no repercussions. But after that the jobs they were being offered started paying less.
At first it was Johnsons unwilling/harder to Negotiate with for bonuses, then smaller base pay for the jobs

Then the jobs they were offered started being less glamorous instead of Hitting a corp lab to steal some valuable
prototype their jobs started to be more go there and rough that guy up they had also started to accumulate Notoriety.

This went on for anothe 4-5 runs until one of the players got annoyed and demanded that his Fixer tell him why he
was only coming up with these kind of shit jobs in the end the Fixer told them.

Sorry guys its your rep people hire you to do a job then all kinds of stuff starts showing up on the market stuff that
is directly connected to the job you were hired to do. I have been trying to offer you up to Johnson's looking for teams
but the only ones willing to hire are looking for thugs and they don't care what else happens during the Operation.

The group got pretty Miffed at this especially the primary sticky fingered one, they decided that they were just going to
do their Own runs set up and plan their own operations which i was fine with .

They soon learned that setting up a run and figuring out were to hit and what to steal was harder than they had tought.
Bribing people buying leads and having to do all kinds of runs just to find what was worth stealing started digging into
their cash reserves.

Things got even worse when they hit a company shipping electronics and stole a truck full of comlinks. Turned out the
corp had a deal with the Yakuza and the Yakz showed up telling the runners they better make Restitution or else.

Finally the group decided to try and rebuild their rep and begged a Johnson they had worked for before to give them a shot.
The Johnson finally gave them a job but told em that if anything that could be connected to the job ended up on the market
They could just forget his comcode.

The group went in did the job flawlessly nothing got stolen and they were back on their way to being a reputable Runner team
couple of runs later they were pulling in decent money rewards and looting was occasional and then usually for their own use.

[Tagz]

I had two fairly effective ways of dealing with this issue.

The first was an early on run.  The job was to break into a minor facility and make minor changes to personnel data and obtain security codes.  The personnel data was on hard copy as it hadn't been added to the server yet, and the codes were on the building's node.  Involving hacker and team, yay.

Anyhow, run goes nice and smooth, they evade the relatively lax patrol, get the data, drop off the modified file into the personnel file cabnet to be added to the trix.  Well, the place was a manufacturing plant and one of the players had the idea, "Hey, since this is basicly a small factory, they have to have a small nurse's station or something like that.  Med supplies and drugs would sell easily.

So, I let him find it and sure enough, some painkillers, slap patches, medkits, a few of the less illegal mind enhancers that seemed appropriate, all inside a simple glass paneled cabinet.  Locked.  So the player decides to put some of his clothes against the glass to muffle the noise and break the glass.  Works fine.  He gets stuffs his pockets and meets up with the others and they vacate.

At the meeting the Johnson is all smiles while they sit at the table in the back room of the bar.
'The codes?"
"Right here." The face passes the datachip.
"So how did the run go?"
"No problems whatsoever."
"Oh good, because when I saw this, I got worried."  The Johnson turns on the vidscreen behind him and a news story about a break-in at their facility was on the news.  The story said that it looked like it was junkies and nothing else was taken.
"Hey, no big deal, they have no idea this was a run.  They said junkies."
"No big deal... NO BIG DEAL!?"  the Johnson get a furious look in his face.  "Standard procedure after a break in is to CHANGE ALL THE CODES YOU IMBECILES!  THIS IS AS USELESS TO ME NOW AS YOU ARE!!" And with that he snaps the datachip in his fingers.  "I'll give you one more chance to get the codes and save your reputation and paycheck, at a reduction.  But it has to be done tonight, and it has to be done right this time."

So the runners found themselves doing the same run again.  Only this time for less pay and with the guards on full alert because they just got chewed out by their bosses for negligence.


The second thing I do to keep this in check is I always ask who or how they intend to sell the info.  If they don't have options in who to sell to, the contact typically will figure it out and cut the deal way in their favor.  "Don't like my price, fine.  Who else you going to sell data that hot to?  And in a week that paydata will be worth half what it is now, time is money when it's data.  So go ahead, find someone else if you don't like my offer."

I once had them try to auction paydata on the matrix.  Oh, it seemed to go real well at first.  They provided credible evidence they had the real thing and everything.  Course, as soon as the bids hit that magic number, the one where it costs just as much to hire other runners, the bidding suddenly stopped.  Then the jamming and the bullets started soon after.

And for the really minor stuff I don't care much.  Every now and then I'll throw in a commlink that has advanced modifications to make it self-destruct or shock the person who tries to use it without the right access or something, but I'll usually just let them have the standard 30% fenced gear amount.  It usually doesn't seem too worth it when they realize they get less then a third of it's value.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

I had two fairly effective ways of dealing with this issue...

*clip*  BUT -- nice dealing.  On a side note about the following, though ...

I once had them try to auction paydata on the matrix.  Oh, it seemed to go real well at first.  They provided credible evidence they had the real thing and everything.  Course, as soon as the bids hit that magic number, the one where it costs just as much to hire other runners, the bidding suddenly stopped.  Then the jamming and the bullets started soon after.

Runners, remember that these services are exactly what the data haven of Asgard does - high-profile high-value data auctions, third party blind transfer, etc.  Yeah, maybe they take a quarter, or a half, or three-quarters of the payday - but 33% of 750,000 is still twenty-five times the usual (read: Missions) payday of 10k ...

[Reaver]

I had two fairly effective ways of dealing with this issue...

*clip*  BUT -- nice dealing.  On a side note about the following, though ...

I once had them try to auction paydata on the matrix.  Oh, it seemed to go real well at first.  They provided credible evidence they had the real thing and everything.  Course, as soon as the bids hit that magic number, the one where it costs just as much to hire other runners, the bidding suddenly stopped.  Then the jamming and the bullets started soon after.

Runners, remember that these services are exactly what the data haven of Asgard does - high-profile high-value data auctions, third party blind transfer, etc.  Yeah, maybe they take a quarter, or a half, or three-quarters of the payday - but 33% of 750,000 is still twenty-five times the usual (read: Missions) payday of 10k ...

Yes, but players are more geeedy then Megacorps.

You say "secure, safe, reliable, untraceable"

Players hear: "<white noise> 25-33% of MY MONEY <white noise> $30-50k lost of MY MONEY <white noise>"

Let's face it, if the players were playing "smart" they wouldn't be in nearly as many player created messes as they get into :p

[TX_DM]

I had two fairly effective ways of dealing with this issue...

*clip*  BUT -- nice dealing.  On a side note about the following, though ...

I once had them try to auction paydata on the matrix.  Oh, it seemed to go real well at first.  They provided credible evidence they had the real thing and everything.  Course, as soon as the bids hit that magic number, the one where it costs just as much to hire other runners, the bidding suddenly stopped.  Then the jamming and the bullets started soon after.

Runners, remember that these services are exactly what the data haven of Asgard does - high-profile high-value data auctions, third party blind transfer, etc.  Yeah, maybe they take a quarter, or a half, or three-quarters of the payday - but 33% of 750,000 is still twenty-five times the usual (read: Missions) payday of 10k ...

Yes, but players are more geeedy then Megacorps.


Let's face it, if the players were playing "smart" they wouldn't be in nearly as many player created messes as they get into :p

Absolutely.

Shadowrunning by its' very nature is a crime. Why would you be so stupid as to draw more, unneeded attention to it?

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Players hear: "<white noise> 25-33% of MY MONEY <white noise> $30-50k lost of MY MONEY <white noise>"

Let's face it, if the players were playing "smart" they wouldn't be in nearly as many player created messes as they get into :p

Your players, maybe.  Clearly you've never had me at the table. 

On an amusing-anecdotal side note, though, at DragonCon a couple years ago, I played with three hosers who figured that since it was "ShadowRUN, you know??" making noise was the way to go - right down there in a bar in the Ork Underground, with LOTS OF BACKUP HANDY.  Since they'd turned down (or off, I don't recall) their commlinks, the 'quiet half' of the party couldn't come to their rescue, and to move the plot (and game) forward, the GM basically had to let them scrape out a 'barely won with hostages to get me out of the OU'.  If I and the other three people I'd been playing alongside all day hadn't been 'okay, obviously idiots, but do we really want to crash their party at a Con and make our good GM shut them down by putting all three of them down??' we would have KO'd them, turned them over to the Underground, apologized to the bartender/owner, gotten the information (with a healthy bribe probably amounting to 50% of their payday) and completed the run without them.

... morons.  The difference between SHADOWrunners and shadowRUNNERS right there. 

[Reaver]

Players hear: "<white noise> 25-33% of MY MONEY <white noise> $30-50k lost of MY MONEY <white noise>"

Let's face it, if the players were playing "smart" they wouldn't be in nearly as many player created messes as they get into :p

Your players, maybe.  Clearly you've never had me at the table. 

On an amusing-anecdotal side note, though, at DragonCon a couple years ago, I played with three hosers who figured that since it was "ShadowRUN, you know??" making noise was the way to go - right down there in a bar in the Ork Underground, with LOTS OF BACKUP HANDY.  Since they'd turned down (or off, I don't recall) their commlinks, the 'quiet half' of the party couldn't come to their rescue, and to move the plot (and game) forward, the GM basically had to let them scrape out a 'barely won with hostages to get me out of the OU'.  If I and the other three people I'd been playing alongside all day hadn't been 'okay, obviously idiots, but do we really want to crash their party at a Con and make our good GM shut them down by putting all three of them down??' we would have KO'd them, turned them over to the Underground, apologized to the bartender/owner, gotten the information (with a healthy bribe probably amounting to 50% of their payday) and completed the run without them.

... morons.  The difference between SHADOWrunners and shadowRUNNERS right there. 

I think the biggest issue is overcoming the D&D mindset...

In D&D, you go to the dungeon, kill things, loot everything not nailed down (or even that stuff if a player bought a pry bar!) go back to town, rest, repeat.

In SR, EVERYWHERE is the dungeon, there is no town to go to to rest and sell in safety....