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Aztechnology also tries to get away with paying runners in company script a lot, they have to know that doesn't fly with you.
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May 12, 2018 01:09
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I suppose I should add an addendum to my comment about it being far rarer than people let on is that, yes the company you're dealing with is a major factor. Working for the Azzies takes Balls for instance, because they are FAR more likely to be a dick about it then other corps. But even they realize that betraying every (or even most for that matter) outside asset is a bad way to do business.
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May 12, 2018 01:14
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The whole Johnson betrayal thing being interesting or not depends on a whole lot of factors. If it's there just because the GM decided to put it there, then it's gonna suck just like any other thing that pops up without any prior hints. But if there were hints, and it's part of an actual plot, and it fits the setting, and there's something the players could have done to avoid it, then it's a valid thing to throw at the players. It can make it a bit less of a "take job -> do job -> get paid" scenario, and more of a "track down that fucker -> get delicious personal revenge -> set fire to the building -> loot everything of value that's not on fire yet -> fence everything" scenario, which can be fun, assuming that's something your crew would do. I mean there's literally a negative quality called "Vindictive" you can choose which forces your character to add anyone that screws you over to a shitlist/kill list and shoot them on sight the next time you see them if you fail a composure test. It's basically made for this sort of situation.
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May 12, 2018 01:20
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mauman posted:But even they realize that betraying every (or even most for that matter) outside asset is a bad way to do business. Mostly because the runners are the people they're hiring to do the things they can't, and if they don't get them the first time they're going to be assassinated by an extremely motivated professional hit squad who can call in a lot of favors.
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May 12, 2018 02:54
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habeasdorkus posted:Now now, not necessarily a terrorist bombing. I had less problem with blowing up some corp's joint when doing this run, and mainly felt bad that I couldn't cap James in the subway at the end/save the elf. I was also surprised that Dana wasn't a mole keeping tabs on me. I didn't mind killing people. I mean, I was playing a runner. I'm pretty sure "Will kill 4 $$$$!" is on his business card. The problem is that he wasn't informed in advance. A client who doesn't trust you is a client you shouldn't trust.
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May 12, 2018 03:28
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The Johnson's behavior here is more than unethical, it is monumentally unprofessional. A professional should have more standards than to work for a dipshit that intentionally wastes their time and lies to them about their job.
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May 12, 2018 03:33
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Duerr and his organization obviously seem to think they are above petty things like professionalism.
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May 12, 2018 03:37
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His outfit alone says as much.
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May 12, 2018 03:40
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Fighting Trousers posted:Duerr and his organization obviously seem to think they are above petty things like professionalism. Well, the Black Lodge are basically the Illuminati of Shadowrun, with all that entails, so that's honestly to be expected. It's also the meta plot reason I purposefully failed this mission.
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May 12, 2018 03:47
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chiasaur11 posted:I didn't mind killing people. I mean, I was playing a runner. I'm pretty sure "Will kill 4 $$$$!" is on his business card. The problem is that he wasn't informed in advance. Wetwork costs extra. You shouldn't let people get away with not paying the surchage by lying about what the job is.
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May 12, 2018 03:47
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I know the game isn't being particularly subtle about the lodge being utter bastards, but we should still probably avoid talking about them outside of what the game has shown us.
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May 12, 2018 03:48
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GhostStalker posted:Canada doesn't exist anymore, they'd be Mr. Johnsons along with the rest of the UCAS. Well, there's still the Republic of Québec, so I can only assume one might find a Monsieur Tremblay or two there.
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May 12, 2018 06:34
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FrankZP posted:Well, there's still the Republic of Québec, so I can only assume one might find a Monsieur Tremblay or two there. True, Quebec went independent when the UCAS was forming, along with the CAS (because the South had to rise again for whatever reason), but the majority of Canada west of like Ontario and north of like the southern most reaches of Hudson Bay became NAN territory, and the small sliver of Ontario and Atlantic Canada that remained were folded into the UCAS.
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May 12, 2018 06:51
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The "Bosses and Betrayers" section of 5th Edition's Run Faster book is written from the first person of a professional Mr. Johnson. It's really great. I'd just go ahead and post the whole thing here if I wasn't worried about spoilers.Run Faster, page 199 posted:Final thing to look for in your initial meet: Will Mr.Johnson try to kill you at the end? Ah, this is an unpleasant one. You need to be real careful here. Mr. Johnson might try to liquidate you if having any sort of witness is an issue. This typically happens with politicians or extremists. Unlike the payment thing, if your Johnson is good, there aren’t always a ton of warning signs for this. Your biggest defense is checking on Mr. Johnson’s back-ground—past jobs, that sort of thing. Johnsons who kill their teams are typically recidivists and they earn black marks from savvy teams fast enough. You can believe me or not, but I have never liquidated a team after the job. That kind of stuff earns you serious bad rep in the community. Veteran teams can get over a Johnson not paying some green numbnuts, but killing any team, even green newbs, is taboo. So, check your Johnson’s rep in the shadows. paragon1 fucked around with this message at 07:25 on May 12, 2018 |
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May 12, 2018 07:18
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Here's an in-universe dump from a Mr. Johnson from run faster (fake edit: gently caress, Beaten) Hi. My name is Mister Johnson. Nice to meet you. I’ve said this to at least a hundred shadowrunner teams in my career so far. Some of those shadowrunners got a fair shake from me. Fair wages for fair work. Some of those shadowrunners teams never saw a dime of the money I promised them because I sent them totheir deaths. Johnsons, fixers, and shadowrunners. What a merry family we all are. Sometimes it’s worth taking a breath while you’re reloading. Pop your smartgun over the wall and take a look around. Refocus. If you’re reading this, you’ve done at least a job or two. Most likely you’re a seasoned veteran. So you have, by definition, dealt with a Johnson and almost certainly a fixer. These two categoriesare indispensable to your life as a runner, and they deserve a closer look. Mr. Johnson is anyone who hires you to do a job. If I hired you right now to go buy me a soykaf across the street, I’d be your Mr. Johnson. That’s it. That’s the definition of Mr. Johnson. Not too complex at the surface, right? But in this little concept lie all the hopes and aspirations and fears of shadowrunners. Fact is, in the vast majority of cases you are doing something illegal for Mr. Johnson. Sometimes it’s a little illegal, or at least a little grey area. Sometimes you’re doing something horribly illegal. And it is due to this little fact that a Johnson is so much more than just the person hiring you. By hiring you to do something illegal, Mr. Johnson is just as guiltyof the crime. He becomes a criminal. He exposes himself to repercussions. To protect himself from the law, he must slink through the moist cracks between the rocks and come live with the creepy crawling things of the night, just like you. And because Johnsons are humans, they react to this situation. The social covenants we call laws no longer apply. Mr. Johnson breaks the law, so he can no longer be protected by it. The Johnson is thus now entirely responsible for his own safety. This is where all your troubles come from. Because no matter what, it’s personal. I know I have said it—”Nothing personal, chummer.” But that isn’t really true. To some degree or another, it’s almost always personal. Mr. Johnson risks his freedom and, more immediately, his life every time he dips in and deals with shadowrunners. That means he’s going to seek to protect himself, and this is going to dictate his reactions to the engagement. Johnsons are to a degree stereotypical. It’s true. You can say it, doesn’t make you prejudiced. Depending on the Johnson’s background, you can expect certain things from him. We’re going to get back to that later. Basically, here's how it goes. Let's say Mr J hires you to retrieve the prototype of a new format for hot-sim chips. Minor league stuff, as this kinda thing goes. If it's quiet, the Johnson's liability is limited. The only thing he really needs to worry about is that the other corp figures out who ordered it, and puts him on a watch list (either to track, or to recruit.. a good Johnson is worth his weight in Nuyen). Usually, you don't target other Johnsons for elimination.. too much risk that it will be tracked back to you and then you become fair game. But, let's say you had to cack three guards and blow up some corp property to make your getaway. That Johnson is now on the hook for TRIPLE MURDER (because he hired you, he'd be legally liable for your actions), as well as the corp damage. And also, loud runs like this give negative PR for the corp. After all, if you hear a story "Unknown intruders kill four at Wuxing shipyard, before escaping", that's probably going to chill any desire you have to use Wuxing shipping, won't it? So, it's not nice and neat and quiet, that means there are loose ends to be tied up. That means YOU are the loose end to be tied up. That's why usually loud/noisy Johnson ops are to be avoided unless you have a good rep with your Johnson (and a hidey hole just in case). Basically, you're about to make a big splash in that world, and if you get caught and sing, they know right where to go to ask pointed questions. Pointed with a dikoted monosword level questioning. Johnson's aren't serial villains, they don't usually just betray teams and have them taken out so they can keep the money. Usually, it's either payback for something gone wrong, or to limit the Johnson's personal liability. Johnsons who kill their teams too often don't have a long shelf life. Sooner or later, one of those resourceful runner teams are going to find their way out of the death trap you put them in, and shadowrunners (read: people you've hired because they're skilled in sabotage, mayhem and destruction) tend to take betrayal.. personally. edit: While some of the new shadowrun fiction levels are.. variable, I found this to be a good story about a Mr J finding himself on the other side of the shadows. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/133828/Shadowrun-Nothing-Personal-Enhanced-Fiction SirFozzie fucked around with this message at 08:02 on May 12, 2018 |
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May 12, 2018 08:00
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GhostStalker posted:Ditto. Having a Johnson screw you over once in a while makes for a carefully cultivated paranoia. Having it happen all the time seems unfun and really doesn't make sense if a corp wants to keep hiring runners, since it'll filter through the runner networks that after taking a job for so and so corp, the team always winds up dead or screwed over. I’ve always figured that betrayal is usually the difference between a Professional Mr. Johnson and an amateur one. Every serious corporate office has at least one person on the staff with a title and an office and a vague job description and no obvious responsibilities whose job, to strip out all the legal double speak, is making problems go away. That person is a professional Mr. Johnson. He’ll hire runners and under normal circumstances treat them very well. Good shadowrunners are valuable after all, and finding new ones usually isn’t worth the cost unless the current ones do something very expensive indeed. After all, if word gets out that Ares hired a team for a run and tried to pay them with a bullet to the back of the head, every runner in the area is going to look very hard at any job that might come from them. If it gets out that the local office has a habit of doing it then the well is going to dry up very quickly, and it could be years before experienced runners in that city are taking jobs from them. Amateur Mr. Johnson’s, on the other hand, are usually some idiot trying to climb the ladder and not understanding what the long term consequences of trying to kill people who consider staying alive against horrible odds to be a standard job skill. Any middle manager with a bit of luck could embezzle enough to hire a team through a friend of a friend of the guy he plays poker with on Friday nights to steal what he needs to complete his project or off the guy ahead of him for a promotion. And why bother paying them when you can wrap up loose ends instead?
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May 12, 2018 09:27
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Tehan posted:According to the German wiki, in Australia, Johnsons are called 'Macquarie'. It's not a common name for people here, but it's a ludicrously common name for everything else. It's a neat little touch. I'm loving all these detail informations. Thanks for writing all that up. That goes for everyone in the discussion.
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May 12, 2018 11:27
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How does a spirit acquire enough material wealth to own the majority stake in an AAA megacorp, anyway?
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May 12, 2018 11:37
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Anticheese posted:How does a spirit acquire enough material wealth to own the majority stake in an AAA megacorp, anyway? "Creating Wealth" is literally a power that Free Spirits have.
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May 12, 2018 12:11
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labour is the only source of value  :marxsay:Seriously though what's the upshot of that? There must be a roaring trade in bumping off spirits who create money out of thin air to prevent them destabilising the world economy.
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May 12, 2018 12:19
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Tehan posted:Johnson With regards to Ares, what if you take a run from one of their rivals against something that isn't obviously Ares or one of its subsidiaries? Could you say 'whoops, we didn't know, our bad', or would you have to be Damien Knight's buttboy for a week to save your rear end from further fuckery? Also, how common is the knowledge that Hans Brackhaus is Lofwyr? Because I've been playing this really good module for Dragonfall called The Antumbra Saga, and while it's been really good so far, there is one point where your random runner seems to just know that Hans is a dragon.
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May 12, 2018 12:52
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kaosdrachen posted:"Creating Wealth" is literally a power that Free Spirits have. Please tell me that magic has moved on with the times and will summon a pile of anonymised credsticks. 
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May 12, 2018 13:20
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"Mr Johnson screws over the team" is the Shadowrun equivalent of a crappy GM trying to force the party paladin to fall with bullshit "moral dilemmas", i.e. it's one of the game's biggest and most obvious points for abusive GMing but isn't part of the setting per se. It just became so infamously associated with Shadowrun that the game started introducing loyalty mechanics and canon writeups to give the players some reassurance and counter the perception that "the best solution to every published adventure is to shoot the Johnson right at the start". This particular game has given us a lovely Johnson, and a believably in-character one. It is now down to the game's writers to recognise that, compensate the player, and provide a suitable route for us to insert his own sunglasses three feet up his smug overclenched rectum. I will be disappointed if the next mission is not written to account for this; the game so far has given the player a pleasing aura of professionalism and respect, and I do hope the game continues in this vein.
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May 12, 2018 15:53
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communism bitch posted:labour is the only source of value Anticheese posted:Please tell me that magic has moved on with the times and will summon a pile of anonymised credsticks. According to her write up in one of the Shadowrun sourcebooks, a shaman Shadowtalker described Buttercup's wealth power as manifesting by creating expensive alchemical reagents, gems, and precious metals out of thin air. Then she fences them through friendly connections to get the actual nuyen she needs. And she only generates enough as to buy the exact amount of shares she needed to get on the board of EVO and then maintain a controlling interest in it.
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May 12, 2018 18:42
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It helps that the world economy is huge and that power is rare.
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May 12, 2018 19:01
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Loxbourne posted:This particular game has given us a lovely Johnson, and a believably in-character one. It is now down to the game's writers to recognise that, compensate the player, and provide a suitable route for us to insert his own sunglasses three feet up his smug overclenched rectum. I will be disappointed if the next mission is not written to account for this; the game so far has given the player a pleasing aura of professionalism and respect, and I do hope the game continues in this vein. I'll not say anything regarding the particulars of this run on account of spoilers. But just like Monika at Harfeld, we didn't run this one by our fixer, and look how that turned out.
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May 12, 2018 20:08
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CommissarMega posted:With regards to Ares, what if you take a run from one of their rivals against something that isn't obviously Ares or one of its subsidiaries? Could you say 'whoops, we didn't know, our bad', or would you have to be Damien Knight's buttboy for a week to save your rear end from further fuckery? If it doesn't have the Ares brand on it they're probably trying to keep it quiet, so a reasonable Johnson won't be miffed with you for not knowing their secrets. It's just the cost of doing business - if you do something off-the-books, you have to be prepared for the possibility that a competitor will sniff it out and send runners against it. CommissarMega posted:Also, how common is the knowledge that Hans Brackhaus is Lofwyr? Because I've been playing this really good module for Dragonfall called The Antumbra Saga, and while it's been really good so far, there is one point where your random runner seems to just know that Hans is a dragon. There are many Brackhauses, and only one of them is a Great Dragon. But you should treat all of them as if they are, just in case.
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May 12, 2018 21:35
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This isn't a spoiler in any sense of the term as I know nothing about this game, but my intuition tells me that this detestable twat is going to turn out to be some dragon's left testicle in human form, or some such nonsense that keeps the team from giving him a high colonic with a mixture made of his own smug.
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May 13, 2018 01:20
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...is this mission new to Director's Cut? I don't remember it from my one playthrough... ALSO: I vote on giving the smug bastard a shotgun enema and pulling the trigger.
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May 13, 2018 01:30
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CommissarMega posted:With regards to Ares, what if you take a run from one of their rivals against something that isn't obviously Ares or one of its subsidiaries? Could you say 'whoops, we didn't know, our bad', or would you have to be Damien Knight's buttboy for a week to save your rear end from further fuckery? Unless it's something that's so sensitive Ares wants you dead just for being near it, probably the worst case is that Ares will use it as leverage in their favor the next time they want to use you. This assumes you allow yourself to be identified by Ares running against their poo poo.
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May 13, 2018 01:43
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Siegkrow posted:...is this mission new to Director's Cut? I don't remember it from my one playthrough... This mission is added for Director's Cut, yeah.
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May 13, 2018 03:56
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CommissarMega posted:Also, how common is the knowledge that Hans Brackhaus is Lofwyr? Because I've been playing this really good module for Dragonfall called The Antumbra Saga, and while it's been really good so far, there is one point where your random runner seems to just know that Hans is a dragon. Yeah as others said, Hans Brackhaus is simply a synomyn that someone of Saeder-Krupp is acting with Lowyr permission and that it's serious poo poo. They cultivated this exact situation over the years so if someone is using the name Hans Brackhaus and it isn't Lowyr himself then you still better keep your eyes peeled because you just entered really dangerous territory. On the other hand the Mod Trilogy of Part 1 - 3 of The Antumbra Saga, The Caldecott Caper and CalFree in Chains is really good especially the last two that were made for Hong Kong. The Antumbra Saga is the weakest in my opinion mostly due to age but still pretty good. You are in for a treat.
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May 13, 2018 09:39
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The only "lodge" I know about is the one from Feng Shui, and I somehow doubt these guys are them. That is unless FS and Shadowrun were produced by the same company.
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May 14, 2018 00:11
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Josef bugman posted:The only "lodge" I know about is the one from Feng Shui, and I somehow doubt these guys are them. That is unless FS and Shadowrun were produced by the same company. God, I'd love to see Shadowrunners take on the Chicken Illuminati.
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May 14, 2018 00:18
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Night10194 posted:God, I'd love to see Shadowrunners take on the Chicken Illuminati. Shadowrun does feature animals-that-have-turned-into-people.
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May 14, 2018 00:22
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The Lone Badger posted:Shadowrun does feature animals-that-have-turned-into-people. It must suck to be a chicken shape shifter.
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May 14, 2018 01:29
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In a different LP were-turkeys killed a god...
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May 14, 2018 02:12
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Murgos posted:In a different LP were-turkeys killed a god... I forgot about that. The Dominions series shameless steals from Earthdawn (among other tabletops), which takes place one magic cycle back from Shadowrun, so the two are kinda, sorta connected.
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May 14, 2018 02:24
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Josef bugman posted:The only "lodge" I know about is the one from Feng Shui, and I somehow doubt these guys are them. That is unless FS and Shadowrun were produced by the same company. The Black Lodge is literally the Shadowrun Illuminati, and has been around for hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of years. They have about ten thousand members, all of whom are Initiated (powered up) mages of some kind, and one of the requirements of advancing up their organizational tiers is increasing their magical power even more. They do have associate members who aren't mages or aren't initiated, but they don't get to move up the ranks, and they never take elves -- absolutely no exceptions. The Black Lodge despises the Immortal Elves, and everyone even tangentially related to them. The Black Lodge has their own Initiation rituals, usually involving discarding your old identity and taking on a new one. They're very good at disguising themselves and their powers. However, even ten thousand magicians working together won't get you world domination in the Sixth World -- they're nowhere near as powerful as the megacorps.
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May 14, 2018 02:30
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Yeah, Dominions has a pile of stuff in it that just came straight from Earthdawn/Shadowrun. I can say for sure that both Horrors and how they work as well as the entire nation of Agartha are straight Earthdawn. Turkeys can be deadly as gently caress in a magical world.
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May 14, 2018 02:53
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