From:	Gawain Emrys Ap Geoffrey <g.l.g.steele@**********.ac.uk>
Subject:	The Shadow Community still lives!!
Date:	Thu, 25 Jan 1996 07:58:45 PST

Okay, here we go... (apologies to anyone who this may
offend)

On Wed, 24 Jan 1996 22:23:15 -0500 Mark L. Neidengard wrote:

RE: Runners Bars
> There aren't _that_ many
> runners out there to make such a concept feasible. If you
> take New York, for example, and consider the ratio of
> runners to populace, there just _aren't_
> that many. Also, if there was something as well
> established as a "runner bar"
> someone might well snitch it to Lone Star (or someone
> else) and all hell would
> break loose.

It is a well established fact that the current day
equivalent to 'runners (who's existance you have
acknowleged) do exist in such places. If the contemporary
crime community is exactly that, then why should the system
have changed by2050?

> Contacts are not about the ability to call on a "large
> number" of other runners in an emergency. Contacts are
> about the people you're personally down with.
> In fact, in a real-world scenario, the runners would
> probably be at odds with each other on an irregular basis.

I'm frequently at odds with other PCs in SR games,
but that doesn't stop me doing favours or helping out my
fellow 'runners. Also, Contacts are your personal "friends",
all of whom have their own, who have their own, and so on.
The man who finds you your new gun or net address is rarely
the man who you asked for it. If any of my established
'runners (most notably Gawain) needed help he has large
selection of (N)PCs to call on, some of whom owe him favours
and some of whom like the idea of his owing them.

> What Shadowrunners are are people who can occasionally be
> contacted (and paid) to do illegal or quasi-illegal
> things. Such people exist in current-day society,
> although perhaps in smaller numbers than posited in
> Shadowrun. You should see the movie Heat for an
> _incredible_ depiction of exactly how that
> works. Shadowrunners can stay around by being
> inconspicuous.

Which is exactly how 'runners bars can also stay
around (see my earlier point). I know people on both sides
of the law and they frequently know who each other are,
proving it is different and sending the kind of firepower
needed to take out a dozen or so 'runners at once isn't
quiet. By the time they arrived the 'runners would be long
gone and the bar relocated to a new place. In all, a waste
of Lone Star's time and resources.

PS: For another example of current day equivalents (real
life) try the novel "The Feather Men" by Ranulph Fiennes, a
true story based around a team of professional assassins and
the private organization out to stop them.

************************************************************
* * *
* GAWAIN EMRYS AP GEOFFREY * "It's a pink rabbit in space, *
* * It can pretty much do what it *
* OBO: Chablis Roleplaying * wants!" *
* Production * - My Mother *
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* "And now they're trying to take my life away,... *
* ...They don't know my name, they don't know my kind." *
* - The Alarm : 68 Guns *
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