[farothel]

You should try to keep the body count low no matter what kind of weapon you use.  If you entered the facility, took what you came for and dissapeared without killing anybody, the corp is just going to write it off (unless it's something really high profile, as mentioned before).

If you run around and kill all the guards, they have to at least appear to care or employee morale is going to take a dive, which is bad for their bottom line.

This is why you always should have a stun option with you.  Stun the guard, give him a shot of laes and you should be good.
Of course, this does not always apply.  Things like insect spirits, toxic shamans, sheddim and the like can be taken out with more lethal options.

[Mirikon]

Runners and people in the Barrens don't go anywhere without armor, ShadowcatX. People in nice, safe corporate enclaves or arcologies, or in their nice, safe office buildings where they are away from all that street-level nonsense? Not so much. So yeah, you can get away with the chainsaw if you're hacking up gangers or mobsters. Even there, you're going to get a rep as a fragging psycho, though, because who the hell uses a chainsaw when a gun or a combat axe are available? People who have some serious issues, like they want to star in an old flatscreen horror vid, that's who.

But when you're doing a corp hit, you're dealing with the sheeple, and the sheeple are NOT used to that kind of thing. Yes, they know it happens, but they don't have to see it, so it isn't real to them. And to the sheeple, a psycho cutting people in half with a chainsaw is a HELLUVALOT scarier than the samurai who cut down a guard with his katana. Yes, the sheeple are freaking out either way, but the chainsaw causes a bigger reaction.

And as Farothel said, doing things that upset the sheeple increases the chance that the corp is going to do Bad Things to you. Those Bad Things include putting your face on the 'trix, and they won't care about your rep, because you did a run against them, and made an everloving mess of it, and now they have to devote resources to clean that shit up, as well as keeping morale up.

"All the time"? You're a bit off. Violence happens in the sprawl all the time, sure. But most of that is in the higher-crime areas, where the poor people and SINless live. Most sheeple don't see actual violence in person unless they live in those areas, or they are mugged coming home from the club. Remember, SR suffers from unreliable narrator. We're seeing things, and playing things, from a runner's perspective. But most of the people in the world aren't runners. They're sheeple, being good corp drones because they don't want to get tossed out of their safe bubbles and be SINless.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

If they are willing to go that far what's to stop them from faking scenes when you don't leave a body count behind?

Verisimilitude - and the facts.  A reporter from a rival corporation would be swift to ferret out the fact that it's a fake, whether from checking out the family of the deceased or interviewing (if they can) the people on duty at the time.  As with any lie, it's best to keep the lie as small as possible - in this case, that it wasn't at this location, but at another one.

What Shadowrunners are willing to work for a corp that burns Shadowrunners on the news media? Shadowrunners aren't the only ones with a rep to worry about.

Every shadowrunner is willing to work with a corporation who bitches about shadowrunners and sets the hounds on them with every run they make for a corporate Mr. Johnson, because as Mirikon specifically says, EVERY corporation does it - 'terrorists', of whatever stripe.  You simply start to develop a different sort of 'runner who is then willing to work for you.

Shadowrunners exist. For that to be true, corps can't burn every Shadowrunner who hits them on the 9 O'Clock news.

Seeing you use 'burn' repeatedly makes me think you don't quite understand what the term means, at least as it regards shadowrunning.  A corporation howling and bemoaning the fact that their facility was attacked and its personnel slaughtered with a horrible weapon isn't 'burning' the shadowrunners.  But if the corporation hired the shadowrunners, paid them, and then threw their street names and faces out to the media and the security corporations (e.g. the cops), that's burning.

Realistically there is probably more mess with an AK than with a monowhip (chainsaw will be messier, of course). Bullets are going to cause bleeding and maybe even spray brain matter / what have you around. A monowhip isn't going to leave a big enough opening for blood to run out unless you buy that it literally cuts them in half in a single strike (unlikely, especially if it doesn't even exceed their overflow).

Nnnnno.  A monowhip does its damage by slicing through the flesh of the target.  It does this slicing by wrapping around a portion of the target (the 'whip' part), as enabled by the weight at the end that actually lets you a) wield the darn thing and b) know approximately where it is.  The damage isn't done by how strong you are, as with pretty much every other melee weapon (excluding the electrical shock ones); it's because something needle-tip thin (well, a lot thinner, actually) went and divided the cells on this side from the cells on that side, and all the cells that got in the way got cut through.  A bullet goes into you, sure, and maybe it bounces around, or maybe it goes all the way through and there's exit-wound-type-stuff.  And a sword or katana slices into you, deep as can be - but to get to a monowhip's base damage of 12P, you have to have a strength of 9 for a sword, or 7 for a combat axe.  Not only that, but it has an AP of -8 - so even if you're wearing some sort of basic armor, it isn't going to matter.

This is what makes it horrifying; it slices through things, especially people, like nobody's business.  It isn't just that the guard's arm was cut off; it's that it was cut off even though he was wearing armor.

And messy?  Sure, bullet wounds can be messy.  Blade cuts (not thrusts, which are equivalent to a bullet, after all) are all but guaranteed to be far, far more messy, because they do their damage across a much larger portion of the body - and because of that 12P/-8 damage before hits that the monowhip does, there's liable to be far more of the body affected.

That said I have never seen anyone make the "messy kills = unplayable" when a barehanded adept is punching for 14+ damage a hit (ghouls and ghost someone's torso much) or when someone picks a grenade, chooses a fireball spell, or summons a spirit.

We never said 'unplayable'; we said 'messy'.  This has consequences over time.  If the consequences develop so that things become unplayable, them's the breaks.

If a barehanded adept is punching for 14+ damage a hit, he's at the top of his game, but he's still presumably punching against armor - which means that his victim is dying due to crushing trauma, and most of the blood (not all, but most) is going to still remain inside the body - which means it isn't messy.  Sure, if you-as-GM (or his GM, or he as a stylistic thing) is saying he's ripping arms off, or punching all the way through their body and holding their still-beating heart in their hand on the other side, or basically if there is 'going out of the way to be extreme', then yes, that's messy and loud, and people start looking for you.  And when you Chunky Salsa someone with a grenade, that's extremely messy and loud.  So is a fireball spell, and a spirit.

They still don't start at 12P/-8 plus hits.

Also, if it happens "all the time" no one cares, they have seen it all before. Also, remember the setting, no one leaves their home without armor and guns are marketed towards kids. People are no stranger to violence.

You clearly have a very different read on the world than I do.

[firebug]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but he's not the only person to get the impression that you and Mirikon are saying "You can play this way!  If you want to lose and never play again."  Both of you do have very strict ideas of how a runner should handle any give mission--  Or at least, the stereotypical corp run.  A very strict and very punishment-based idea.

Maybe you should try and explain the times when those options are valid choices, and why they are in the game presented as normal choices alongside everything else.  Go for a "yes, in these situations" instead of just "No."  Which mind you, is functionally the same as "yes, but with extreme consequences that will make you regret it".

The game does mention marketing guns towards children and the natural of the basic "armor clothing that looks like any normal clothing" and the majority of the armor in the game looking not just like clothing, but fashionable, classy clothing...  I can understand how someone gets the impression that he did.

[Mirikon]

The thing is, a lot of runs, ESPECIALLY corporate runs, require some degree of discretion. The value of paydata you get from a datasteal, or the value of sabotage you do when screwing up someone's product line, drops exponentially when the corp you hit knows there's a problem. Paydata has the longest shelf life when people don't know it has been accessed, because they don't feel the need to change things as often. Sabotage does the most damage if the defect gets all the way into production and out on the street, forcing recalls and trade-ins and the like. I think we can all agree on this, yes?

Other types of runs, such as extractions, always go much easier when things stay quiet, for all the same reasons that a gang, no matter how large, doesn't pick a fight with the entire US Army.

Now, chainsaws and monowhips are NOT tools of discretion. Anyone who says differently is a chiphead. These are nasty, messy weapons. Oh, they most certainly are effective at reducing living beings to piles of parts, but under no circumstance can they be considered subtle or discrete.

Chainsaws are for when you go LOUD. These are the same runs where the street sam breaks out the corpsec or milspec armor if they have it, the troll grabs his Panther XXL, and everyone brings as many grenades as they can carry. If every run you do is loud, you end up getting the suicide squad treatment, getting thrown into insane odds to make as much of a mess as you possibly can. That is certainly a way to play, but it tends to lead to a very short life expectancy.

Monowhips, on the other hand, are for when you want to make a STATEMENT. As with their cousin, the monofilament garrote, they are ideal for wetwork. In fact, they really have no other purpose than wetwork. For a wetwork specialist, it is not a bad choice, honestly, especially since, once you take out your target (which you can do in a single hit if they are surprised), the whip is extremely concealable, allowing you to raise less suspicion as you vacate the area.

The only possible exception I'd make to the STATEMENT rule for monowhips would be for a low STR (1 or 2) character, like a Decker or TM who spends all their time in the 'trix, but needs something for the real world, or for a Pixie that needs a melee weapon, seeing as how their small size and low STR makes it all but impossible for them to effectively use most weapons. Even then, this is a "OH SHIT" weapon, and not a "Gonna use this all day long" weapon.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Every game is different; a monowhip is just a tool, a weapon.

A monowhip that sees constant use goes great in an over-the-top 'Pink Mohawk' game in which there are no real long-term consequences.  These games are essentially episodic, ones in which whatever damage is done by a shadowrunning team is essentially waved off by the corporation as the cost of doing business, we'll just hire those guys to go get the plans for Gizmo X from Corporation Y.  And that's great, that's an incredibly fun way of playing, to shoot up the place, to do that ultracool 'Johnny Mnemonic' kung-fu action stuff where you slice off someone's arm, or in half, or whatever.  Because then you walk away and the extras sweep up after you.

Mirikon and I tend to play in more restrictive games, games in which something distinctive is Distinctive.  As in 'Distinctive Style' - +2 Dice to track them down, -1 Threshold to remember information.  This doesn't apply if you use it only occasionally; that's not the sort of thumbprint that 'Distinctive Style' is, and if someone was hurt or killed with a monowhip six months (or runs) ago, that's an outlier, not a particular favorite method.  If, however, the character makes a point of it ... It's like if someone today eviscerated a guard at every crime they committed.  This doesn't become a simple B&E that maybe went a little wrong, this becomes, well, something horrifying, because it isn't a guy getting stabbed, it's a guy getting flayed - down to the bone.

I dunno.  Maybe it just hits me differently.

[ShadowcatX]

If they are willing to go that far what's to stop them from faking scenes when you don't leave a body count behind?

Verisimilitude - and the facts.  A reporter from a rival corporation would be swift to ferret out the fact that it's a fake, whether from checking out the family of the deceased or interviewing (if they can) the people on duty at the time.  As with any lie, it's best to keep the lie as small as possible - in this case, that it wasn't at this location, but at another one.

So the Corp is willing to lie exactly enough to fuck over a mono-whip or mono-chainsaw wielder, but no more? Ya... You seem fair and unbiased in this discussion already.

It's cute that you think a corp will invite another corp's reporters to a secret base to interview witnesses about a Shadowrun though.

What Shadowrunners are willing to work for a corp that burns Shadowrunners on the news media? Shadowrunners aren't the only ones with a rep to worry about.

Every shadowrunner is willing to work with a corporation who bitches about shadowrunners and sets the hounds on them with every run they make for a corporate Mr. Johnson, because as Mirikon specifically says, EVERY corporation does it - 'terrorists', of whatever stripe.  You simply start to develop a different sort of 'runner who is then willing to work for you.

Shadowrunners exist. For that to be true, corps can't burn every Shadowrunner who hits them on the 9 O'Clock news.

Seeing you use 'burn' repeatedly makes me think you don't quite understand what the term means, at least as it regards shadowrunning.  A corporation howling and bemoaning the fact that their facility was attacked and its personnel slaughtered with a horrible weapon isn't 'burning' the shadowrunners.  But if the corporation hired the shadowrunners, paid them, and then threw their street names and faces out to the media and the security corporations (e.g. the cops), that's burning.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you all are saying. I'm assuming that you are intending to put the runner's name and face on the media. Corps (generally) don't do that. Why? Because if you are good enough to hit us and escape you are good enough for us to hire. Besides, why would they put names / faces out there? No profit in it.

Now they might, and only might, announce that a facility got hit by some kind of criminal. But again, that is an invitation to their stock holders to drop it like it's hot.

Realistically there is probably more mess with an AK than with a monowhip (chainsaw will be messier, of course). Bullets are going to cause bleeding and maybe even spray brain matter / what have you around. A monowhip isn't going to leave a big enough opening for blood to run out unless you buy that it literally cuts them in half in a single strike (unlikely, especially if it doesn't even exceed their overflow).

Nnnnno.  A monowhip does its damage by slicing through the flesh of the target.  It does this slicing by wrapping around a portion of the target (the 'whip' part), as enabled by the weight at the end that actually lets you a) wield the darn thing and b) know approximately where it is.  The damage isn't done by how strong you are, as with pretty much every other melee weapon (excluding the electrical shock ones); it's because something needle-tip thin (well, a lot thinner, actually) went and divided the cells on this side from the cells on that side, and all the cells that got in the way got cut through.  A bullet goes into you, sure, and maybe it bounces around, or maybe it goes all the way through and there's exit-wound-type-stuff.  And a sword or katana slices into you, deep as can be - but to get to a monowhip's base damage of 12P, you have to have a strength of 9 for a sword, or 7 for a combat axe.  Not only that, but it has an AP of -8 - so even if you're wearing some sort of basic armor, it isn't going to matter.

This is what makes it horrifying; it slices through things, especially people, like nobody's business.  It isn't just that the guard's arm was cut off; it's that it was cut off even though he was wearing armor.

And messy?  Sure, bullet wounds can be messy.  Blade cuts (not thrusts, which are equivalent to a bullet, after all) are all but guaranteed to be far, far more messy, because they do their damage across a much larger portion of the body - and because of that 12P/-8 damage before hits that the monowhip does, there's liable to be far more of the body affected.

Let's look at that 12P, -8 for a minute. That is a ridiculous amount of damage, right? Probably enough to one shot people most of the time, right? Right. So people aren't squirting blood everywhere because the whip hit an artery, their heart is stopped already.

But now let's say it didn't one hit kill. The attacker whips them around their torso, slices into major organs and what not, but then they don't die, what happens? The whip isn't around them anymore, and they have a 1 molecule thick cut around their torso and through important parts. Blood can't get out of cuts that small, which is the same reason shots with a small enough needle don't bleed (a fact with which I am intimately familiar).

Your example of a guy who lost his arm? Probably either died from that or took a whip to the face maybe a second later, in which time he likely had time for two heart beats worth of blood spray. Probably significantly less than the guy who ate 3 APDS or explosive rounds and then had to eat another 3 to finish him off.

And a brief mention to your "higher damage means more body is effected" idea. No. Let us say a monowhip is 10 feet long (a nice round number). That means the maximum area of effect is 10 feet of 1 monecule area. That is much less area than a katana or a bullet. And most of the 10 feet of area is going into giving us reach, not actually hitting our opponent.

That said I have never seen anyone make the "messy kills = unplayable" when a barehanded adept is punching for 14+ damage a hit (ghouls and ghost someone's torso much) or when someone picks a grenade, chooses a fireball spell, or summons a spirit.

We never said 'unplayable'; we said 'messy'.  This has consequences over time.  If the consequences develop so that things become unplayable, them's the breaks.

Which is you saying "unplayable" and "bad wrong fun" while denying you are saying it but whatever.

If a barehanded adept is punching for 14+ damage a hit, he's at the top of his game, but he's still presumably punching against armor - which means that his victim is dying due to crushing trauma, and most of the blood (not all, but most) is going to still remain inside the body - which means it isn't messy.  Sure, if you-as-GM (or his GM, or he as a stylistic thing) is saying he's ripping arms off, or punching all the way through their body and holding their still-beating heart in their hand on the other side, or basically if there is 'going out of the way to be extreme', then yes, that's messy and loud, and people start looking for you.  And when you Chunky Salsa someone with a grenade, that's extremely messy and loud.  So is a fireball spell, and a spirit.

They still don't start at 12P/-8 plus hits.

At this point it seems like you are in "fuck that player he chose a high damage option" rather than "his option is messier". If you want to do that, that's up to you, but be honest about it.

Also, if it happens "all the time" no one cares, they have seen it all before. Also, remember the setting, no one leaves their home without armor and guns are marketed towards kids. People are no stranger to violence.

You clearly have a very different read on the world than I do.

For which I believe I am thankful. Different style of GMing as well.

[ShadowcatX]

Every game is different; a monowhip is just a tool, a weapon.

A monowhip that sees constant use goes great in an over-the-top 'Pink Mohawk' game in which there are no real long-term consequences.  These games are essentially episodic, ones in which whatever damage is done by a shadowrunning team is essentially waved off by the corporation as the cost of doing business, we'll just hire those guys to go get the plans for Gizmo X from Corporation Y.  And that's great, that's an incredibly fun way of playing, to shoot up the place, to do that ultracool 'Johnny Mnemonic' kung-fu action stuff where you slice off someone's arm, or in half, or whatever.  Because then you walk away and the extras sweep up after you.

Mirikon and I tend to play in more restrictive games, games in which something distinctive is Distinctive.  As in 'Distinctive Style' - +2 Dice to track them down, -1 Threshold to remember information.  This doesn't apply if you use it only occasionally; that's not the sort of thumbprint that 'Distinctive Style' is, and if someone was hurt or killed with a monowhip six months (or runs) ago, that's an outlier, not a particular favorite method.  If, however, the character makes a point of it ... It's like if someone today eviscerated a guard at every crime they committed.  This doesn't become a simple B&E that maybe went a little wrong, this becomes, well, something horrifying, because it isn't a guy getting stabbed, it's a guy getting flayed - down to the bone.

I dunno.  Maybe it just hits me differently.

Let's seize your real world example, someone is leaving a trail of bodies behind them, do you think cops are like "well, he used a gun instead of a hatchet, so that's fine"? No, because dead is dead and there are plenty of serial killers who left the corpses nice and neat who are still in prison.

Beyond that, you are acting like there is one person in the whole of Seattle who has a monowhip. That is ridiculous, remember corps are mass producing them and despite their forbidden nature, they are not that difficult to lay hands on.

Do you treat every forbidden item as though it gave distinctive style or just the one you dislike?

[firebug]

Guys, this thread is on its way to being locked if you're not careful.  This is pretty far from what the original post wanted to discuss and has devolved into a personal argument. 

[Marcus]

It's not worth the time Wyrm.
Forget about it.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

Well, despite his selective reading, misquoting, not understanding that not only does the heart not stop immediately but that blood doesn't just sit inside a sliced-open body, ShadowcatX does raise some valid questions.  Are the only forbidden items that a GM raises a fuss about the one(s) that make a big mess, like the monowhip?  Quick scan through the core book gear, and my guesses for why they're Forbidden:
Ares Light Fire 75 Light Pistol (6F for high accuracy and integral silencer)
Ares Viper Slivergun Heavy Pistol (8F for flechette damage and integral silencer)
FN P93 Predator SMG (11F for restriction to the Corporate Court goon squad)
Ares Alpha Assault Rifle (11F for higher damage, built-in grenade launcher, and lots of ammo)
Yamaha Raiden Assault Rifle (11F for higher damage, built-in sound suppressor, and godawful amounts of ammo)
Ares Desert Strike Sniper Rifle (10F for being a sniper rifle)
Cavalier Arms Crockett EBR Sniper Rifle (12F for being a sniper rifle and a wanna-be assault rifle)
Ranger Arms SM-5 Sniper Rifle (14F for being a sniper rifle that you can take apart and hide in your briefcase)
Enfield AS-7 Shotgun (12F for being a 20-round-drum burst-fire shotgun damage machine)
Ingram Valiant, Stoner-Ares M202, and RPK HMG (12F, 12F, and 16F for being bloody machine guns, come on)
All Launchers / Cannons (for being tools of major chaos, mayhem, death, and destruction)
Silencer/Suppressors (9F for being attachments you put on guns in order to murder people quietly)
Smart Firing Platform (12F for being remote murder machines)

Ammo: APDS (12F), Assault Cannon (12F), Explosive (9F), Hollow Points (4F): for being especially designed to put you in the murderhobo slot
Fragmentation and HE Grenades (for being grenades that go boom and hurt people lots)
All Rockets and Missiles (for being tools of chaos, mayhem, etc.)
Foam and Plastic Explosives (for being tools of etc.)

Jammers, area and directional (Double or Triple Rating F for preventing the government from spying on you)
Fake SINs and Licenses (Triple Rating F for pretending to be someone other than who you actually are)
Cellular Glove Molder (12F for pretending etc.)
Keycard Copier (8F for pretending etc.)
Maglock Passkey (Triple Rating F for pretending etc.)
Sequencer (Triple Rating F for pretending etc.)
Stealth Rope and its Catalyst Stick (8F for being a sneaky git)

All Cortex Bombs (for blowing yourself up before interrogation)
Voice Modulator (Triple Rating F for pretending etc.)
Retinal Duplication (16F for pretending etc.)
Cyberarm Gyromount (12F because you might use it to fire automatic weapons)
Implant Grenade Launcher (20F because grenades, dude)
Hand Blade, Razors, and Spurs (8F-12F because hidden cutty things)

Adrenaline Pump (Rating x6 F because combat hog)
Damage Compensators (Rating x3 F because combat hog again)
Pain Editor (18F because combat hog a third time)

Standard and Heavy Vehicular Weapon Mounts (8F and 14F because you might mount a weapon on a vehicle)
Ares Venture and GMC Banshee (because they're basically smuggling or combat vehicles)
In my game a number of these (like the light/heavy pistol and the silencer/suppressor) are only going to be 'nailed to the wall if we find you with it', in part because you probably won't know that the weapon that gave the gunshot to the victim had a sound suppressor on it, or that you can't tell just by looking at a guy that he's a juicer with pain-go-away things inside him, or that they used a particular cool gadget to get through security.  In a lot of other instances, though - autofire weapons, high explosives, bullets that go through cars, that sort of thing - you damn betcha there's going to be an issue raised, whether right away (with autofire chattering and explosions going off in the street) or eventually (because they discovered that though the guy had armor on, it didn't do him no good, you APDS-using sod) - because just like the guy with the monofilament whip, they're a clear and blatant threat to the public at large, and a messy one - slice apart the guy behind him with the whip, or miss the target and kill the innocent guy hiding behind his desk with APDS, or blowing up gobs of vehicles, or whatever.

In a non-episodic non-Pink-Mohawk game, every option you select has consequences, ones that build up over time.  How you handle them is what makes for a good player, a good GM, and a good game.

[Shinobi Killfist]

The setting answers are great in that if it fits your style and is how you view the universe working hey great. It's not episodic pink Mohawk in itself to not have corps go after you like that. It's perfectly legit for corps to ignore a body count as they'd just see you as people to hire for the right type of job. If that's your world run it that way. If your corps are tracking you down over your mistakes that's also great. So use those ideas to influence the mono whip dudes actions

As brought up range in a great way to deal with it. Except you have player x and you are trying to remove his focus from the game so it shouldn't be used too often, let the melee people punchasize things imo. But range it's great for adding challenge here and there. .

High levels of evasion like from combat sense can make for a dynamic fight with a melee character. Get a box with 20+ dice on defending and a melee character might have a challenge for a few passes.

[Mirikon]

Shinobi, you're misreading things. We're not talking about the corp that hired you hunting you if you leave piles of mangled bodies behind. We're talking about the corp you HIT. Not only is there a morale issue that they have to take care of, to make their sheeple feel safe so they are nice and productive, but you also have a LOT of expenses when you have to replaced a bunch of guards who got cut up into little pieces. First, there are death benefits for the next of kin. Then, you have the cost of replacing all weapons, armor, and ware the guard had (much of which can't even be salvaged due to being cut into pieces. Then you have the costs to either vet, hire, train, and equip a new security force, or to vet and hire outside contractors who can't be fully trusted since they are outsiders to the corp. That's before you get to any collateral damage to the facility and the noncombatants (techs, scientists, executives, secretaries, etc.).

It isn't a moral thing why corps hunt you down when you leave trails of bodies in their facilities. It comes down to two things: Money and Reputation.

[Ghost Rigger]

Now, chainsaws and monowhips are NOT tools of discretion. Anyone who says differently is a chiphead. These are nasty, messy weapons. Oh, they most certainly are effective at reducing living beings to piles of parts, but under no circumstance can they be considered subtle or discrete.

Question: If a shadowrunner kills a Joe Nobody with a chainsaw or a monowhip and nobody is around to care, is he still getting himself into trouble?

Not every run is a datasteal against an AAA corp or something else that requires the utmost discretion and subtlety. In fact, between the official modules I've read and the modules my GM has made, I'm under the impression that such runs are a distinct minority. The fact of the matter is that there are scenarios where there aren't any significant consequences for going loud or "making statements", even in games where there usually significant consequences for doing so. And I'm not just talking about your "assault cannon and grenades" scenario where going loud was your only option to begin with, I'm talking about any scenario where nobody who can make your life hell gets pissed off at you enough for them to actually do something. Note that this bolded statement can be broken into five components, conveniently arranged in order of decreasing likelihood you'll get away with this if that's all you got going for you:

• Nobody
• Who can make your life hell
• Gets pissed off
• At you
• Enough for them to actually do something

Are these scenarios common? That's up to your GM. But acting like they can't happen when I've gone through a few of them just makes me want to roll my eyes.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Shinobi, you're misreading things. We're not talking about the corp that hired you hunting you if you leave piles of mangled bodies behind. We're talking about the corp you HIT. Not only is there a morale issue that they have to take care of, to make their sheeple feel safe so they are nice and productive, but you also have a LOT of expenses when you have to replaced a bunch of guards who got cut up into little pieces. First, there are death benefits for the next of kin. Then, you have the cost of replacing all weapons, armor, and ware the guard had (much of which can't even be salvaged due to being cut into pieces. Then you have the costs to either vet, hire, train, and equip a new security force, or to vet and hire outside contractors who can't be fully trusted since they are outsiders to the corp. That's before you get to any collateral damage to the facility and the noncombatants (techs, scientists, executives, secretaries, etc.).

It isn't a moral thing why corps hunt you down when you leave trails of bodies in their facilities. It comes down to two things: Money and Reputation.

I wasn't clear. I was saying it's perfectly legit SR world view to say. The corp you hit just hires you for a run of their own. Instead of vengeance, corp rep, morale they say. Damn they were good, we could use them. In a dystopian future setting there is no one right way to say corps react. Morale they spin a story though many innocent workers died we killed the runners on site and that's assuming that word gets out that it was overly bloody. Most likely the official story would be different. Reputation? They probably want to keep it quiet not keeping the story active investigating the runners and tracking them down. Bottom line? There are plenty more runners where the PCs came from what does hunting down group x solve? It's just a waste of resources. Basically any reason you come up for why they'd go and track them down there is just as good of a reason why they wouldn't. And both would be setting appropriate as the norm.