| From: | TopCat <topcat@***.NET> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Runner's Attitudes (content - not flame) |
| Date: | Thu, 3 Jul 1997 15:37:19 -0500 |
placed this message at the bottom of the thread so I hadn't gotten to it
until today.
At 12:24 AM 7/1/97 -0500, Joshua wrote:
>On Mon, 30 Jun 1997 22:06:06 -0500 TopCat <topcat@***.NET> writes:
>>Okay... let's find that point and stretch it out a bit :)
>Happy to oblige. I always enjoy discussing this kind of thing with
>someone else bright enough to not take everything personally and let it
>degenerate into a complete flamefest.... Don't let me down... Yer not
>done yet, the argument (er... discussion) is just getting good.
I have no desire to get into a flamefest, because I enjoy taking apart
rampant flamers too much to do so ;)
>Don't forget, Even the Megas are comprised of individuals... MANY
>individuals whose personal carelessness could be exploited. Persons of
>responsibility who have flaws which might require selective
>miscommunication to avoid their own faults being exposed. For example,
>the mid-level exec who has a taste for joyboys, and is careless enough to
>reveal something which the enterprising youth steals/remembers/videotapes
>for sale to Joe Shadowrunner. Even if the exec finds out about his
>mistake, he may not tell anyone for fear that his own stupidity or even
>his exotic sexual habits may come to light. The potential for
>miscommunication, coverups, etc, is mind-boggling and could explain how a
>team gets in... totally discounting the "inside job" concept. Corps do
>NOT think as a singular entity, as they have far too many individuals who
>could screw up communication, and also see politics, below... (With the
>notable possible exception of the Lofwyr-controlled S-K.... Ya mess with
>Saeder-Krupp in my game, the most ya can hope for is an interesting death
>scene and a nice funeral... see "Threats" for why)
I do not feel that corps think as a singular entity, nor do I feel that
given members of said corp are totally without fault. The sort of executive
who would want something hidden and had any degree of power worth exploiting
would also be the sort of executive who'd want everyone dead who knew about
the evidence. How's he go about it? Shadowrunners, of course. Get the
blackmail evidence back and everything's fine from there on out. The corp
had nothing to do with this, just one executive with a desire, some nuyen,
and some connections.
Also, if the runners decide to ever use their trumpcard, then they're in
trouble. The exec no longer has anything to worry about (the worst has
already happened) and he'll be of a frame of mind that is just south of
stable. What happens from that point on is anyone's guess.
I agree with the degree of security with S-K and would also use Aztechnology
similarly. They're degree of security and tolerance exceeds even those of
other megacorps.
In today's corporate world, if you become a problem, you're gone (management
only, union labor doesn't have to work to get paid here). They simply can't
afford to have incompetence at high levels. Now, this doesn't mean that it
doesn't exist. It means that if you want to keep your job, maybe you decide
not to express your raging anti-meta views. If someone does find out that
you don't like metas, then everyone that knows you, including the metas in
your employ, can come up and say "he's always seemed rather accepting of
them to me" and the situation is dismissed as hateful rumormongering.
Anyone in corporate management has been dealing with backstabbing and
positioning and the art of the deal longer than any shadowrunner could
possibly imagine. Politicking becomes second-nature (first?) after a while
or you find yourself out of the fold and locked into a dead-end nothing
position. They'll know best how to play one person off the other and work
through blinds in the corporate or shadow realms to achieve their desired
end. Example...
You know that one group of runners has been hitting you repeatedly. You
know they're good, because they've gotten away with it so far (not against a
mega they wouldn't, but that's another post...). So you work through a
couple blinds and hire that group to run on you again, something similar to
what they've done before. When they do, you spring a trap and they die the
death that all runners risk. Nobody's the wiser as to how it really went
down, your security appears improved, and everyone's happy.
>Though you have identified your strength in debate by selectively
>addressing only the points made which you can easily defeat with
>semantics, and I do respect that.... (a man after my own heart <smirk>)
Why thank you :) His whole arhgument could be dealt with in such a manner
and I've brought out a good amount of evidence which helped me do so, but
semantics and wit kill a point whereas evidence is always ignored by the
opposition.
>There *are* still valid arguments, the best of which have been left
>unaddressed.
Here we go...
>1) Politics - The matter of inside "scapegoats". Most corps, even the
>leanest, meanest megas are riddled with the All-too-(meta)human weakness
>of company politics. You seem to have completely failed to take this into
>account. Behind the scenes, there is someone (We'll call him Bob) who
>has access to the godlike technology, which for the sake of argument
>we'll assume exists, to track and kill the runners. (Who are likely
>SINless, and don't exist in most databases, likely were bright enough to
>not reveal their faces, leave fingerprints, shell casings, material links
>(Damn, I'm shedding again), etc, etc....)
Don't need tech, need contacts. The streets have their own politics and
they dance to the nuyen macarena. My tech alone would keep them from
getting in, doing the job, and getting out, but as your example continues, I
see that I forgot to plug it in and put the guard's work schedule out for
them... fair enough, on with the next part...
>Bob, due to human error, erroneous timing, an exploited flaw in
>technology or planning, or just plain real bad luck, is in trouble. Some
>runner jerks just busted in, and stole the new whatchamajigger. Yeah,
>that's right, the blue one. <smirk>
And I liked the blue one...
>If he releases the "hounds", then the corporate sharks who want his job,
>or just don't want HIM to have it, might smell blood, and he might spend
>his own energy finding someone else to blame further down the food chain,
>to cover his own butt.
Ahh, the infamous CYA memo. Any corper without the capacity to shift blame
quickly if not imediately deserves an ignoble demise, especially someone in
management (I'd wonder how he got there without that particualr skill) ;)
> Or, Alternatively, maybe the sharks DO smell
>blood, and use their own resources to make Bob impotent until it is too
>late, and the runners have gotten away with it, and Bob just sort of
>vanishes when the bosses find out.
If Bob sits around and takes it, then he'll get eaten alive by the political
sharks. If Bob gets starts things in motion immediately to get the
situation resolved, people and resources can be swept up and on the move
before anyone knows that it was Bob who screwed up. After all, the guy
seemed in charge when he went up to the VP for an emergency conference
following the situation. Now there's a corp-wide hush order on that
break-in. A couple weeks later, some runnres turn up dead on the beach.
> There are 101 other company politics
>reasons, conspiracies and other stuff which is beyond the runners
>control, which to me, adds to both the paranoia and the overall
>intelligence level of the game, taking it beyond "BLAM!" "Plugged me
>another Shadowrunner," style games, to a complex web of intrigue,
>doublecrosses and unlikely temporary allies which seems to better sum up
>the overall flavor of the game as we know it.
Agreed and wholeheartedly so, but remember that the corporate/political
world mastered the doublecross millenia ago. Pitting this degree of skill
against a runner-team would result in some bad days and sleeples nights for
said team.
Allies are often interesting to me. While Paul accuses me of using one big
happy corporate world, I do not. Corps compete with each other for market
share, it's what they do. Often, however, they do work together. If one
corp wants something that another corp has they rarely will attempt to steal
it, but will try to lease the technologies or purchase rights to use them
indefinitely. One corp gets cash for something they've already developed
and they can point out that even their competitors use their products. The
other corp gets a technology much cheaper than if they'd taken the time to
develop it themselves. Happens nearly every day.
If that situation involves identical research, then it becomes interesting
as the corps really can't be allies for this (too much market share at
stake). What happens then? You try to hire the best and brightest for your
project while they try to hire the best and brightest for theirs. While the
projects are ongoing you attempt to figure out (through industrial
espionage, which could be much simpler and cheaper than shadowrunners...why
hire runners when you've got moles who work there?) how far your opposition
is in his project compared to you. When you come to a situation where your
moles and informers can't get the info you want and the need to know what
they have exceeds a certain level, then you hire runners.
If you hire runners to steal a tech that's already out there and then modify
it a bit and put it out as your own, you end up facing the Corporate Court
with a difficult situation to explain. Hence, research and personnel will
be the focus of most, if not all, runs.
>2) "The way the game was designed to be played" -- Now THAT's egotism. In
>many FASA-published modules (best examples are the ones with the Aztech
>Assassin from Mercurial, his name slips the mind) Inter-corporate games,
>good luck, or even less potentially compelling reasons allow the runners
>to break in, get out, and even *gasp* get away from the Big Boys and
>their hired guns, and it is often explained by politics.
As I've mentioned before, I consider the published modules just that side of
useless. I've never used them and I doubt that I ever will. Failure in one
of those can only come from truly pitiful die-rolling as every opportunity
is there for the runners to get the job done and get out alive, well, rich,
and karma-laden. There is no challenge there, no thinking. If you bumble,
there's another opportunity. If you can't decide what to do, someone tells you.
Recently, with their multi-module books, I've been more impressed. Why?
They can't lay out a huge safety net for the runners in the span of a
ten-page storyline with pictures.
>If you're citing game design as the correct way for the Corps to be run,
>you're as far off the mark as someone who makes the megas too easy.
Am I? The game itself sets the megacorps up as small market-driven nations.
No, they aren't as big as the UCAS or Japan, but they are huge in resources
and minimal in social unrest. You don't see the mailroom rebelling against
accounting and throwing rocks at them from down the hall. Anyway, these
megacorps essentially rule any consumer-based society (which includes most
of the world). They tell consumers what to buy and who to buy it from.
Such power as this cannot be discounted. Imagine Microsoft as it is now.
They all but rule the OS market and are a multi-billion dollar company.
They'd just be one division of a megacorp. Microsoft, whether some people
like it or not, can create unofficial standards just by putting the word
"Microsoft" on any given product. Megacorps can do that with products
ranging from computer hardware to industrial tools to medical and military
equipment to toys and every product in between (yes, every). They also
provide the nuyen which make the shadows worth living in for an
infinitessimal percentage of the population.
So they are the towering gods of society in 205X. They have connections
ranging frm the lowest street scum to the highest political offices in
nations such as the UCAS. They have their big corporate thumbs in every pie
around, whether that pie belongs to the CAS military or Joe Shadowrunner.
They like it that way and nobody has the strength to change it.
>FASA's made a point that though it may be as hard as fraggin' hell to
>prove it, NO ONE is untouchable, mainly because the runner groups have no
>Corp bosses to placate, no Corporate Court to worry about, less media
>attention, a smaller consumer base to hide dirty deeds from, less large
>scale competition, and fewer people to hide if things go wrong.
Ah, but they do have corp bosses to placate otherwise they wouldn't have
anyone to hire them for runs. Unless they work for someone else, in which
case they have to keep them happy. Or if they work on someone's turf, they
have to keep them happy. Also have to keep all the shadowpeople that know
you happy or you could be sold out. All it takes is one disgruntled
runner-wannabe and your cover could be blown bigtime.
--
Bob Ooton
topcat@***.net
