[Seras]

Hi guys !

As a german me and my player group play in the allied german states, so naturally at some point you have deal with S-K.

I can deal with a dragon running a corp...most enemies are smart, strong or magical...Lofwyr is actually all three !!               Fine
Also Lofwyr is not everywhere and his minions are just regular people...

Because he is a genius he can do alone by himself what a human CEO or general would need a staff for....                            Also fine

S-K as a corp is boring but practical...they do not produce fancy tech or magical gimmicks, they do the grunt work
thereby making themselves powerful and influencial...  a power behind the power                                                                Okay

But then they go town with the whole Xanatos gambit thing...

Right now I am seriously thinking about toneing it down, because to me it is getting ridiculous ..

How do you deal with the dragon corp (running for or against it ) ?

Thanks Seras

[Beta]

History has shown that Lofwyr is good -- but neither omniscient nor perfect.  And as you said, S-K is a very large conglomerate, so he is certainly not involved nor watching everything.

But beyond that, let's take an attitude that makes ShadowRuns against SK more reasonable.  Let's say that his feeling is:

• except for a few key things, SK doesn't have to win at everything, just win a higher percentage than other corps do. 
  that the key to winning more than others do is being better at staffing.
  that nobody, not even him, can always predict who will be good in a role (and he has to delegate most of that, and humans are notoriously bad at it), so that the best way to figure out good staffing is to give people the chance to succeed or fail, and react to that quickly (get rid of the failures, or move them, or train them).

THEN, yes, you can make shadowruns against SK.  Just don't expect to get away with the same run twice, and expect the opposition to be even more eager than at most corps to prove themselves competent.

I hope that helps.

[Ixal]

Don't be too intimidated by SK. That is a huge company and many parts are only very loosely aligned with the SK leadership (S-K Prime). Many other companies don't even know they are owned by S-K or their only interaction with them is transfering their profits to their account.
So those parts won't have any special security measures.

You can even exploit Lofwyrs style of leadership. He tends to suddenly appear and micromanage guys in ways which seem completely illogical to metahumans, so companies which experienced this style of leadership might be less inclined to question strange things. So when stopped try to say something along the lines "I have no idea why I am here, they just told me to replace this matrix hookup by today 1pm or they will sue me for twice of what I have earned in my whole life".

As for appearing on Lofwyrs radar, as long as you do not run too often agains S-K, disrupt one of his pet projects (which are hard to spot) or are too good at penetrating high security S-K facilities you are probably beneath his notice.
If you do show up its a coin toss if he will seek revenge or try to exploit your skills, either directly or indirectly, so it is not an automatic death sentence.

[Wenlocke]

As mentioned, Lofwyr may be the ultimate micromanager, but equally part and parcel of what he is is the fact that he simply doesn't think in the same way we do. We talk about inscrutability, but as a dragon, a lot of the logic he uses to deal with things is going to be anywhere from opaque to downright alien.

People think of it as "if you cross S-K, the wyrm will find you and eat you. or bankrupt you, whichever seems more convenient." But really, the responses can run the gamut from that down to "meh, it will encourage the peons to try harder" right the way down to "just as planned."

If it ever crosses his desk at all.

[Ajax]

All the megacorporations, to one degree or another, must necessarily accept a certain degree of lost revenue, scuttled projects, and poached assets as just the cost of doing business. After all, for every shadowrun against your company, you’ve probably ordered one against a rival.

The trick is to play the long game. Mr. Johnson can lose a few million nuyen in Q1 as long as he can make it up in Q2... Keep your department in the black and maintain a figleaf of plausible deniability over your use of “special assets,” and he’ll be okay.

Lowfyr, on the other hand, is playing the very long game. A dragon doesn’t worry about quarterly profits and fiscal years, and a great dragon doesn’t really worry about money. Lowfyr’s using S-K as a means to an end, not an end in itself.

[Mirikon]

All the megacorporations, to one degree or another, must necessarily accept a certain degree of lost revenue, scuttled projects, and poached assets as just the cost of doing business. After all, for every shadowrun against your company, you’ve probably ordered one against a rival.

The trick is to play the long game. Mr. Johnson can lose a few million nuyen in Q1 as long as he can make it up in Q2... Keep your department in the black and maintain a figleaf of plausible deniability over your use of “special assets,” and he’ll be okay.

Lowfyr, on the other hand, is playing the very long game. A dragon doesn’t worry about quarterly profits and fiscal years, and a great dragon doesn’t really worry about money. Lowfyr’s using S-K as a means to an end, not an end in itself.

This is the key. There is a certain level of pain you are willing to accept as the price of doing business. You can try to mitigate it somewhat, but the only methods for eliminating it are too (pardon the term) draconian to work in the long term, especially for a corporation the size of S-K.

As with most corps, you'll have 'low-hanging fruit' in certain divisions, and picking some of those fruits is fine. You get caught doing it, or you get greedy and start picking so many that it becomes a problem, then you're going to have troubles. The closer you get to upper management or Lofwyr's pet projects, the lower the pain tolerance is going to be, the tighter the security, and so on.

Making a run on an S-K factory to sabotage the first run of some new electronics? That's not going to get you a dragon's personal attention. Hitting the factory's financials so that you siphoned off a few hundred thousand nuyen? That's going to have someone paid to find you. Running directly at the head of S-K North America? You're going to be in deep drek if there are any ties back to you.

However, Lofwyr is also practical. Shadowrunners are tools. Breaking the tool that hurt you may be satisfying, but it is better to get the hand that held the tool. Runners who are professional, and do a 'just business' approach, take on all or most of the megas as the jobs come, and so on aren't likely to get high on the hit list unless they run against a high priority target, or leave a bunch of bodies behind on the next run, or something like that. It is the ones that have an axe to grind that will find themselves in hot water, since they often do things to make themselves bigger targets.

[Ajax]

There’s also a fair degree of “blue on blue” activity in the shadows as rivals within the same corporation set up runs against their own company.

[Mirikon]

There’s also a fair degree of “blue on blue” activity in the shadows as rivals within the same corporation set up runs against their own company.

Sometimes it isn't even a rival, but a directive from higher as part of a larger game.

[Ixal]

Not sure with one, but one book flat out says that a run against a S-K facility is often used by S-K Johnson to test the abilities of runners before they are entrusted with more sensitive matters.

[Ajax]

My assumption is that every A and AA corp is playing chess and that the ‘runners are mere pawns. The AAA’s are playing three-dimensional chess and the A’s and AA’s are the pawns...

Meanwhile, Lowfyr, Dunklezhan, Buttercup, and their peers are all playing Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker.

[Ajax]

Not sure with one, but one book flat out says that a run against a S-K facility is often used by S-K Johnson to test the abilities of runners before they are entrusted with more sensitive matters.

Johnson is probably killing two (or fifteen) birds with one stone in that set-up. Test the ‘runners, sabotage an in-company rival, improve the position of your department, collect some cash on the life insurance policies on the guards, and get your good for nothing brother-in-law’s HVAC company a no bid contract to replace the A/C ducts that the ‘runners just threw a tear gas grenade into...

[Michael Chandra]

Also, if the runners do it neatly, rather than with massive collateral damage, then there's no need for S-K to settle the score. If you run against S-K while being respectful, that often goes a long way.

[Ghost Rigger]

Dragons see metahumans as tools. Lofwyr is the sort of fellow who buys only the best tools and keeps them very well maintained, organizing them so well that his shop is a thing of beauty in and of itself. But he's also a dragon, which probably means he has a clay doll of every SK employee; if they displease him, he'll squash the doll and their cortex bomb will detonate.

[Albert8611]

Since we're on this subject...anyone ever mingle with the idea of making Hans Brackhaus the actual human form of Lofwyr, himself? Seeing as how Dunkelzhan had a human form, why not add an interesting twist to the story by making his top Johnson the actual dragon himself as a way of hiding his true identity? Just a thought.

[Michael Chandra]

Since we're on this subject...anyone ever mingle with the idea of making Hans Brackhaus the actual human form of Lofwyr, himself? Seeing as how Dunkelzhan had a human form, why not add an interesting twist to the story by making his top Johnson the actual dragon himself as a way of hiding his true identity? Just a thought.

Isn't that the whole idea? That you never know when it's the real thing? I mean, he literally was the real thing in Shadowrun Returns.