| From: | Marc A Renouf <jormung@*****.umich.edu> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: The Dangers of Legwork... |
| Date: | Wed, 25 Sep 1996 13:47:19 -0400 (EDT) |
> > While we're on the subject, do you ever have players who do all the
> > legwork, but ask the absolutely wrong people for inforamtion?
>
> Yes... It's often a matter of asking almost all the contacts they have,
> instead of picking the ones who could conceivably know something about
> the situation. Something high-tech's been stolen from a corp facility, so
> they ask a gang boss, that sort of thing...
There's one real quick way to put an end to this. Next time the
players are on a run, have the opposition be just plain intense. When
(if) the players survive and try to find out why the corp was waiting for
them, just have a contact/prisoner/corp official say, "Well, word was all
over the street that someone was checking this
(person/facility/project/whatever) out, so we figured a run was coming
sometime soon."
Remember that contacts are contacts because they may have
information. They may not be loyal to you (probably not) and they sure
as hell talk to other people besides you ("Yeah, officer, these guys
we're in here just the other day, and they seemed *real* interested in
when that prisoner was going to be transferred. What do they look like?
Well, lemme think...).
Just knowing that somebody's looking into your business can tip
you off to an impending run, and the more people you go asking questions
of, the more likely it is that your curiosity will get back to the
concerned parties. If the target gets enough info of their own, they may
stage a pre-emptive strike (this is especially true of the bigger
megacorps).
Asking everybody and his brother about the target of your run is
almost as stupid as telling everybody and his brother that you're going
on a run against said target in the first place.
But hey, this is just my take on contacts. I'll stop now before
I go into an utter tirade about how legwork, contacts, and networking
should be handled...
Marc
