[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

One problem I'm trying to get my head around is the negative quality "Corporate SIN" being worth 25 karma. 

First of all, I assume it describes a character who is still in the employ of a MegaCorp in a trusted position as his day job while he moonlights as a Shadowrunner.  Such a risk might justify the 25 point 'drawback', but still I'm not sure.

However I have 2 characters who are using a runaway background with the quality; they are definitely not still in the employ of their respective corps.

So what does the "Corporate SIN" drawback actually mean in play?  If you look at the 25 pt Addiction or 25pt Allergy you have some severe, even crippling effects.  A 25 point Corp SIN essentially means nothing, unless/until your corp in question finds you again. 

I don't see any way to represent the effect of the drawback except to treat it as "Dead Man Walking".  Eventually Lone Star will get a fingerprint or DNA sample and run it against the SIN registry.  Sure, they may not know you're a 'highborn' Corporate SINner, but they will instead see an APB/Extradiction order for that individual.   It is only a matter of time until the Corp has the local fuzz hand them over, or they have a team kidnap the PC, or the PC learns that his current location has been discovered and he needs to GTFO to a new sprawl.  Or of course there's the possibility of a sniper's bullet out of the blue.  Doesn't matter if the PC is killed or not, all of these inevitable outcomes involve the player making a new PC.

I'm not a fan of feast/famine drawbacks... especially not one worth 25 points.  Doubly so if the entire party is threatened (rather than just the PC with the drawback) when it is triggered.  Triply so if the player knows that so much as being questioned down at the local precint is tantamount to death, and predictably prefers to draw the entire party into fights to the death with the cops rather than ever accepting being handcuffed.

What are the techniques that people use to make the drawback be worth 25 points?  Honestly I’m thinking of just treating them like reskinnned Criminal SINs and make them only worth 10 points.

[Crunch]

Typically for a runaway on a full Corporate SIN I have the characters take Criminal SIN instead. In my games a Corporate SIN represents an active connection with the corp (even if it's as a reitree or dependent).

The drawbacks of a Corporate SIN in my game-

1) If you anger the corp the SIN can be taken away. In game this would require paying off the quality or taking new negatives to compensate.

2) The corporation has extensive records on you including history, habits and biometrics. The corporation is REALLY unlikely to share this information with anyone outside the corporation. Remember that if you have an Evo SIN Lone Star is a rival corporation, EVO's not going to hand over the information to a rival corp without a compelling reason. 

3) Anyone who does research on you has a chance of discovering that you're connected with the corp. The assumption will likely be that you're working for corporate security undercover.

4) Somewhere there's a corporate Security guy whose job is to check up on you for your own good. He has access to those detailed records and can locate your SIN in real time. If he CAN'T find your SIN he'll assume something is wrong and start looking.

5) You either have to pay taxes, or launder your money (which cooincidentally costs exactly the same as taxes). You may have to spend some time maintaining the facade of a corporate life.

[ZeConster]

First of all, I assume it describes a character who is still in the employ of a MegaCorp in a trusted position as his day job while he moonlights as a Shadowrunner.  Such a risk might justify the 25 point 'drawback', but still I'm not sure.

You did read the quality description, right? Because that's not what it says.
According to the book, with a Corporate SIN (or a Corporate Born SIN, to be precise), the character was born a citizen of a megacorp, which unlike a Corporate Limited SIN allows you to rise to the higher echelons, but kicked to the streets due to some sort of scandal. Basically, it's like you've been kicked out of your country, but you're still officially a citizen there, only worse. This gives you a number of complications:

• You're in the Global SIN Registry, which means you can be identified by law enforcement if you leave any biometrics (although they won't know you're a corpie.
• Your former corp still feels it owns you, so you pay 10% income tax to them.
• If people find out, well...

  In the shadows a SIN that had been the key to opportunity is now a deadly liability. Most in the shadows see the Corporate Born as the privileged few, the aristocrats in the armored limousines who look down on them, oppress them, exploit them and deny them their basic rights. If the SINless discover the character’s Corporate Born SIN, reactions will range from deep suspicion to violent hostility; serious injury and death are real possibilities. The character’s loyalty to his corporation is never questioned, which can be an insurmountable liability in a culture that works against the megacorps. Would-be runners have been killed for holding Corporate Born SINs.

  So people finding out you're a Corporate Born SINner is pretty much on par with that Extreme Allergy: severely hazardous to your health, and likely to kill you.

So no, there's no warrant out for your arrest, but the character will have some downsides, and will have to be very careful not to let people find out.

[Crunch]

I did. That's why I specified "in my games."

[ZeConster]

I did. That's why I specified "in my games."

I wasn't quoting you. I was explaining to Stainless Steel Devil Rat that his assumption about the rulebook description was wrong.

[Crunch]

Ah sorry.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I did. That's why I specified "in my games."

I wasn't quoting you. I was explaining to Stainless Steel Devil Rat that his assumption about the rulebook description was wrong.

My assumption was perhaps a stretch, but a stretch based on game mechanics.  A 25 point drawback must be equally sucky as every other 25 point drawback, or else the game mechanic is imbalanced.  Making runaways be a 10 point drawback (reskinned Criminal SIN) was only a thought I was having, as I find it preferable not to just arbitrarily remove a character from the campaign to satisfy a drawback, even if it is one they bought for themselves.

So again I'm looking to see if I'm misinterpreting this drawback so I appreciate the feedback.  If it does, as you say, apply to runaways, how then is the corp going to get those taxes?   The runners aren't going to voluntarily pay them.  They're likely using fake SINs anyway for their transactions, as they're trying to hide from said corp.  And it doesn't make sense (from a game balance sense) that the taxes for the 25 point disadvantage are less steep than the 15 point disadvantage, if taxes are actually intended to be a penalty.

I did indeed see those suggestions about contacts friends ceasing to be contacts/friends in the writeup.  But that's all assuming they ever find out in the first place.  Up until that point, the 25 point drawback is just 25 free karma.  And having one's contacts all wiped out after some event where the true ID is known is hardly worth 25 points, when you look at what you suffer through with 25 point allergies or addictions.  The risk of being injured or killed (once) is in no way equal value to Sunlight or WI-FI exposure killing you all the time.

Crunch's ideas about handling moonlighters/dependents/retirees are perfectly sensible for the Corp SIN and more or less what I had in mind... I even like his ideas better than mine    However, if one were to also allow use of this drawback for runaway PCs, how would you apply it in-game to make it worth 25 points?  Roll Xd6 to see how many shadowruns they have before their expiration date? Just dice roll per session to see if the corp finally found them?  Adapt the Overwatch mechanic to physical world actions, and when 'convergence' happens that's when the "Dead Man Walking" effect kicks in?  Would you consider the drawback needing to kick so hard as to imperil the entire party to make up for doing nothing (in-game) up until then?

[Ghoulfodder]

You can add in that your Corp is going to be keeping close tabs on you and may well use its leverage on you to make you take jobs for it. And of course it narrows down your options of work too, because if you run against your parent corp and leave even the barest hint of something that could identify you, they're going to come after you like the Angry Fist of Zeus.

You may now be persona non gratis inside the corp, but they can always rehabilitate you at some point and you're still a valuable asset as a shadowrunner. Stop paying your taxes and I'm sure they wouldn't be above sending a response team out to arrest you and seize your assets rather than letting you run free. Or worse, sell you out to a rival you've hit, just for the lolz. You're 'free' because it's more convenient for you to be out there sort of making your own way than being locked up or dead.

You owe them. They gave you everthing you've ever had and taught you everthing you know. You're ass is theirs.

Along with that there's the bits already mentioned about anyone from a rival corp probably assuming you're on espianage and dangerous if they find out your secret. And everyone outside the Corps hating your over-privileged bones. Won't matter how much you hate the Corp or have been cast aside.

It's the same as most expensive negative qualities. It doesn't have affect you all the time if you're reasonably smart about it. But it makes life awkward and it could crop up and put a serious crimp on your day at an innoportune moment.

[Mirikon]

Well, having any kind of SIN at all is going to give you serious problems if you're not careful. Honestly, I don't really agree with making the various levels of SIN (with the exception of a Criminal SIN). It makes converting some of my old characters to the new edition something of a pain, since 25 karma is all you're allowed in chargen.

[BetaCAV]

Effectively, it means the corporation views you as it's property. As in, "if you find this person, return them to us (or else we will send some combination of lawyers and guns to retrieve them)" property. Buying goods (of any kind, even a bowl of TVP), or providing you a roof to sleep under is on the order of "aiding and abetting", and letting you hitch a ride anywhere is analagous to being an accessory after the fact. It's not just a perception that "you're with that corp", that you'll have to face, but you'll also have to avoid leaving a trail of corp investigations and hits against people that didn't know to cross the street to avoid you the first time, and those who are willing to rat you out to avoid a second time (or for nuyen, let's be real). The cost of either one is going on your record, and the people spending it don't really care, as long as they're not you.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Effectively, it means the corporation views you as it's property. As in, "if you find this person, return them to us (or else we will send some combination of lawyers and guns to retrieve them)" property. Buying goods (of any kind, even a bowl of TVP), or providing you a roof to sleep under is on the order of "aiding and abetting", and letting you hitch a ride anywhere is analagous to being an accessory after the fact. It's not just a perception that "you're with that corp", that you'll have to face, but you'll also have to avoid leaving a trail of corp investigations and hits against people that didn't know to cross the street to avoid you the first time, and those who are willing to rat you out to avoid a second time (or for nuyen, let's be real). The cost of either one is going on your record, and the people spending it don't really care, as long as they're not you.

I agree completely with what you're saying.  Since afterall, we're talking about a 25 point negative quality, not a positive one.

But this goes back to my conundrum if runaways are allowed to use it.  Runners are already paranoid about not falling into the hands of the authorities.  What limitations or drawbacks are being imposed in every day play for being *more* paranoid of being caught... that balances fairly up until that time that contacts shun the PC and/or the Corp finally nabs him?  It doesn't do to have a player with a 25 point allergy or addiction dealing with the effects (or dealing with trying to avoid the effects) when the player with the 25 point Corp SIN disadvantage is just doing what runners already always do by covering his tracks.

Basically, a Corp SIN runaway PC is exactly the same thing as a PC without any disadvantage at all, only with 25 more karma.  All the way up until they are 'found out' or summarily executed/removed from the campaign to satisfy the quality.  That's not only unfair with regards to players with 25 points of drawbacks elsewhere, but unfun for everyone involved.

[Michael Chandra]

They have to go way beyond that. A normal runner only has to stick to being too costly a target to persue and not worth the effort. A corp-kid has the problem that any trace that leads to them WILL get them in a lot of trouble, not to mention that if their secret leaks they die. A normal runner doesn't have to fear his colleagues to the level of utter paranoia. Against a corp-kid, people go the extra mile.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

They have to go way beyond that. A normal runner only has to stick to being too costly a target to persue and not worth the effort. A corp-kid has the problem that any trace that leads to them WILL get them in a lot of trouble, not to mention that if their secret leaks they die. A normal runner doesn't have to fear his colleagues to the level of utter paranoia. Against a corp-kid, people go the extra mile.

I agree with the sentiment but think ultimately the logic doesn't work.

A player who's PC is being ruthlessly hunted by a global power being hyper paranoid and careful isn't just paying for the 25 point drawback, he's making the entire team suffer.   Making them suffer by making planning sessions become overly long, necessitating special contingencies to address his special situation, being incentivized to turn every lost fight into a TPK rather than a 'just give up, we'll post bail later' salvage situation.  Negative qualities are only supposed to harm the PC with it, not the whole party.

The more I think about this, the more I think Crunch has it exactly right.

[Michael Chandra]

If you don't like the impact it will have on the rest of the group, there's 2 possible solutions really.

1: The player decides it's a bad idea and changes qualities.
2: The GM forbids it due to being too complicated to run with.

Honestly, I can only imagine allowing it when someone already has 5 or 10 points in negative qualities, so they take it not just for points but for flavor as well.

[Mirikon]

What I want to know is why did they feel the need to overcomplicate something that was simple and worked fairly well in the last edition? In the last edition, you had two levels, one for a national or corporate SIN, and one for a Criminal SIN. Simple, easy, and didn't cause as many problems as what you see here. The more in depth parts of the new qualities would be handled by other qualities, mixed and matched to fit, or by lifestyle, or just plain roleplaying. I don't quite see the need for this.