[Zilfer]

Blackmail is easy if you are a Yakuza, Mafioso, or other 'made man'. You have the weight of a syndicate behind you, afterall.

For runners, however, there are a couple ways to go about getting blackmail material:

1) Surveillance/Legwork. Find out what your target's vices are. Then find a way to get the incriminating photos.

2) Hacking. Dive their system to find the pictures of 'Spring Break 2068', or whatever embarrassing info that you can.

3) Fake it. Get a hacker or forger to create evidence of wrongdoing. Suddenly your target's name is on the title to the bunraku parlor, these pictures of them involved with kiddie porn 'appear', etc.

4) Family. Threatening them in abstract is amateurish. Show up at the kid's daycare, convince the people that you were sent there to take the kid home because the target had a business engagement. Don't harm the kid. Get him an ice cream as you drop him off. Contact the target with your 'requests'. The point is to show how easily you can "reach out and touch someone".

That sounds horrible.... xD

Anyways in the kid example how do you know where the kid goes to school anyways? Did you contact someone who looked up their public profile? Or do you need a lonestar contact for that? I guess you could just shadow them all day for a day and then see when they go home they ahve a kid and then shadow the kid who's less likely to call the cops. xD

[Mirikon]

Legwork. Once you've decided that blackmail is the way to go, do your legwork. Find out everything you can about the target. Not everyone will react the same to the same angle of attack. The straight shooter who will bear up under a smear campaign saying he was involved with child porn may fold in order to protect his kid. The political shark may start writing speeches about how losing his kid only proves that he is one of the 'people', but will do what it takes to keep the trid of him engaging in some 'fun' with an ork escort from making it to his Humanis buddies.

[Lethe]

Hehe, Mirikon got it right with that nice example.

If you want to roll some dice, just use intimidation. The available social modifiers cover most possibilities. The kid-napping should give a big bonus.

[CitizenJoe]

It is also fairly important that you don't level any actionable threats.  Make your requests, and then present pictures.  Let the mark fill in the details.  If he presents the pics to the cops, there is nothing actionable in the picture... you just took his kid home from school with some ice cream. 

Don't provide pics of him doing something unscrupulous or embarrassing, provide pictures of him immediately before that.  Let him then assume you have the rest of the pictures.

[Mirikon]

Joe is correct. For the most part, you want to be subtle, so the target can't go to the cops, and get you on extortion charges.

However, there are times when being a bit more... blatant can go a long way. If, for example, they turn you down for the 'favor' you asked of them, and you get into their place, kill their favorite pet, put the head under the covers of their bed while they are sleeping in it, and get out without waking them or setting off any alarms, then that makes one HELL of an impression.

Another great trick is to call their private line while they are walking out of their building towards their car. You ask them for the favor, and they refuse. As you are telling them how disappointed you are in that decision, their car blows up while they are safely out of the blast radius. You ask whether they are OK, and if anything's the matter, and play it from there.

[ArkangelWinter]

And if you've got Lonestar or Knight Errant contacts, pull whatever you have to to make them the investigating officer for any crime you do actually commit.

"Looks like our victim was transporting C4 under the hood of his car when the sparkplugs set it off. Stupid people just amaze me sometimes, huh? Reports gonna say...explosion caused by careless handling of demolitions supplies."

[CanRay]

Want to make a report disappear cheap?

Clerks.

Underpaid, overworked, unappreciated.  And in control of all those computer files that are so easily mislabeled or misfiled or just deleted as being "obsolete" after the case is closed...