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Cybersnatching

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Lormyr

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« Reply #15 on: <06-06-18/1820:23> »
I personally have never seen it come up in the 4 years I've been part of the campaign. Equipment looting? Constantly. Not ware though.

Our local game days rarely have to worry about the time constraints, but I can see how that would be an issue for other locales/players.
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Marcus

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« Reply #16 on: <06-06-18/1928:51> »
It's true that it's not very common, general a new player may ask about it, I've only seen it attempted once in recent years.
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WarriorBorn83

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« Reply #17 on: <06-07-18/0800:35> »
Informed the players of the general rules against looting and the community consensus against cybersnatching. They accepted it and will not move down that line of play any longer. But I did have to make a ruling for a few characters. There were a few people at the table who had taken points in cybertechnology and medicine, as well as taken street doc contacts for just that purpose that had to redesign a few parts of their characters. I didn't feel right making them keep the characters as they were after finding this information after the fact. I'm just thankful I talked one person out of playing Dexter. (I talked him out of it because he would be stepping on two other character's toes, not because of the cybersnatching thing.)

But just to argue the point, I wouldn't personally consider taking cyber or bio as excessive looting. I would consider taking the room sized nodes that used to have prices listed in 4th ed as excessive. Taking the living bug spirits from the creator and selling them would be excessive. Taking a deed and selling the land on the black market would be excessive. (And stupid, but that is a different point.) But taking the gear and ware off the dead isn't excessive, especially when trying to buy high level gear is so difficult unless you are paying 200%, 300%, or in rare circumstances 400% to buy something at a high availability... looting everything you can just makes sense. (For example, the suprathyroid has a 20 availability at 140K. One character at the table, after reading how gear is purchased had to redesign his character away from the suprathyroid in order to reach is attribute max.)

In my, albeit limited, experience looting guns, gear, and ware doesn't take me more than 15 min. So it really isn't a time crunch. Changing ownership isn't that big of a deal either. For a fresh character, assuming 12 dice on the test, it takes 8 hours a device. Most mods don't take the full week to complete, but lets assume on average it takes 4 days. So for the remaining days of the week, plus the off week most characters take, that is 10 days to change ownership. I'd give them 20 devices from one hacker. And that is only if Missions uses the Ownership rules when fencing loot. I cannot find in the book or FAQ where it says an item needs to have the ownership changed in order to fence it to a fixer or specialist contact. If it does, that puts another limit on fencing ware or guns for that matter. If it isn't required, it really doesn't matter if the ownership has been changed. When players justify their looting with spells like turn to goo or engulf, and skills such as medicine, cybertechnology, and biotechnology, letting them loot ware at (Base cost * 0.3)/5 to 7 I don't really argue it that much.

I accept the ruling against excessive looting to keep everyone on an even footing. I don't agree with it. Most of the arguments against it seem like storytellers taking extra steps to just make it more difficult to advance a character through cash. Selling ware isn't excessive looting to me, nor is it time consuming. And I can't find where the rules state we are supposed to use the Ownership rules for fencing. As far as characters being murder-hobos... Yeah, that is a good description of my gaming group. Most of the runners have some type of mental instability in general. So calling them what they are isn't really an argument to me either. And it really isn't unfair to me either. If other players do not take the steps that the players at my table have taken in order to safely fence ware without being discovered, saying players at my table are not allowed to do so is not fair to my players. If they take the skills, spells, and time to take and fence ware, they should be able to do so since everyone else has the same chance to do so as well. Yes, they are messed up in the head. And yes it is defiling a corpse. But they have yet to take ware off someone who hasn't tried to kill them. So they haven't hit the deep end of depravity yet. But that is my opinion. They have accepted not looting for future mods.

Lormyr

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« Reply #18 on: <06-07-18/0827:47> »
Availability tests are not so bad in Missions. As a campaign rule, every full 10 points of street cred you have lowers the availability rating of all gear by 1. Additionally, a good face party member can also make availability tests for his/her party. Rather than throw a ton of extra money at acquiring a good piece of gear, it is usually better to just have some patience and go for it when a good face with a decent street cred is available.

As far as changing ownership, you don't need to do that to fence gear.
"TL:DR 6e's reduction of meaningful choices is akin to forcing everyone to wear training wheels. Now it's just becomes a bunch of toddlers riding around on tricycles they can't fall off of." - Adzling

Michael Chandra

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« Reply #19 on: <06-07-18/0829:30> »
There is a big difference between 'I am selling ware' and 'I am selling ware taken from fresh corpses'. The second is supposed to come with significant risks and consequences. Which cannot be played out in a Missions timeslot. Not to mention it's indeed not fair to other players, when your players get the chance to score significant amounts of extra nuyen. Sure, it can be justified, but a fact is that other tables won't allow this, to keep people roughly equal. If your players join another table with significantly more loot but the same Missions played, then they have an unfair advantage. The only solution for that would be to stop trying to be official Missions characters, with the caveat that anyone who plays at your table isn't allowed to use that character at conventions.
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Seras

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« Reply #20 on: <06-16-18/1816:30> »
Cybersnatching is not as effective as you might think.

1.
First of all, prisons do a full body exam and then remove all your ware for safety reasons....then they turn around and sell it to reduce costs and maybe make a profit

Yes, this includes the illegal stuff they find.

2.
In Chrome flesh it is mentioned, that people can give they're old ware up as paiment to reduce costs. It's just like giving your old car to the shop, you get a precentage when buying a new one.

As a result most people do not buy the ware they want, they start cheap and then upgrade over the years.


So the used cyber/bio market is alive and well, there is no need to go to "BODYSNATCHERS Inc. "

Also as gamemaster you can simply add no looting to Mr. Johnsons employment conditions. " Go in, do X,Y,Z, then leave. Do not do anything else or I wont pay you ". If they betray him, send a kill team or a gang on there butt to drive that message home....
« Last Edit: <06-16-18/1819:45> by Seras »
I apologise for my posts beeing weird to read, I am fluent in english, but almost never write in english anymore :-(

Lormyr

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« Reply #21 on: <06-16-18/1850:38> »
The Mission lines stance on looting is very clear, and that stance is "avoid high value looting". Unfortunately, this translate to Gamemaster discretion, because if we polled the next 10 responses as to what constitutes as "high value looting" we would certainly get several different answers.

Michael's concern for table balance is valid, and I agree. However, the reality of the situation is that without a hard no or maximum fencing take per run rule, imbalance is going to exist.
"TL:DR 6e's reduction of meaningful choices is akin to forcing everyone to wear training wheels. Now it's just becomes a bunch of toddlers riding around on tricycles they can't fall off of." - Adzling

Slamm-O!

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« Reply #22 on: <06-17-18/0204:41> »
Contact: The Butcher - Tamanous Cyberdoc

Active Skill: Medicine / Cyertechnology

or

Knowledge Skill: Medicine (Organlegging)

Get a Faraday Bag to toss cyber / body part

And you should be all good in SRMs. 
Mess with the best.  Die like the rest !

Marcus

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« Reply #23 on: <06-17-18/0435:36> »
Contact: The Butcher - Tamanous Cyberdoc

Active Skill: Medicine / Cyertechnology

or

Knowledge Skill: Medicine (Organlegging)

Get a Faraday Bag to toss cyber / body part

And you should be all good in SRMs.

You're notoriety is rising Slamm-O!
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Streetsam_Crunch

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« Reply #24 on: <06-26-18/0205:33> »
Based on your last response, I'm presuming you're asking on behalf of a group you're running for?

Personally, I'd allow it, but because SRM is a time-intensive game, I wouldn't consider it 'high value looting'. I'd play it as a way to get a few extra nuyen and some notoriety.

There's nothing even someone with Cybertechnology and surgery skills are going to rip something really valuable out of someone without an inordinate amount of time (move by wire, for example)... at least not at a value to the calendar that would be a real net gain. So you take a week or two to remove someone's entire nervous system that's been replaced by cyberware to ensure that nothing is any more damaged than it already is. Sure there may be some aftermarket value on some of the ripped parts, but you're not going to get anywhere near what it's worth, because it is second-hand cyberware at best, and you'd have to find someone willing to buy it and pass it off to some schmuck willing to get second hand 'ware implanted. You take the noteriety hit for sure because you're dealing with people that are willing to do this (and word gets around in the shadows about stuff like this- because that guy *could* have been your teammate...)

Fates forbid they glitch on any given roll...

That's just for the numbers side of things. Time to remove anything of real value properly without damaging it more, low payout, and notoriety to boot. I'd also RP the whole thing out in a way to make them feel smarmy for doing it, and the people worth buying it sleazy enough that they need to take a shower when they're done selling it.

Or, as has been done in one of my games, drop them off at a place like Nightengale's body bank, take the couple hundred nuyen if they're *really* cybered up (double digits for regular folks) and call it a win. Bringing in more than one or two at a time would still get questions asked, though (since there are rewards for serial killers and the like from the police)

I share a lot of the folks here's views. It's just not viable due to time and dickering over price- IF you can find folks stupid or unscrupulous enough to purchase and install second hand 'ware. The rules specifically don't want 'big ticket' wins that aren't built into the scenarios (to keep everyone on a fairly even keel, since you take these characters to other games at con and such) and for what you get paid to be runners, scavenging is scraping the 'bottom of the barrel' cost wise and reputation wise. Gutter rats and really desperate ganger types do that kind of thing. Runners are more or less specialists in their fields. Sure they're "disposable assets" in many employer's minds, but if they feel that way about themselves... well they probably will be little more than that, sooner or later.

So if your group insists on it. Let them. As long as it pays little for a lot of work, makes them look bad, and/or even amateurish in many runner circles.

That's my 2 nuyen anyway (and those nuyen are for free, you can keep those cybereyes you got there...).

Crunch~
« Last Edit: <06-26-18/0207:12> by Streetsam_Crunch »

Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #25 on: <06-26-18/1113:46> »
Tangental question, but potentially very relevant to how to handle looting (including cyberware):

What happens at the 4 hour mark at your SRM table?  Is the mission over (mid-combat pass if necessary), and if it wasn't successfully finished it's therefore a failed mission?  Are you typically able to push that 4 hour mark until the "mission is done"?

Looting is pretty well self-policing in the former case.  If you're struggling to finish the mission on time you're not going to worry much about collecting lewts you know you won't have time to run through fencing after the mission's been successful.
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

Jayde Moon

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« Reply #26 on: <06-26-18/1332:30> »
The four hour time limit is a convention factor.  If you slot yourself 5 hours or 6 or whatever... go for it.

It is incumbent on the GM to ensure that the Mission fits and to mitigate.

I end up having 3-3 1/2 hours because by the time I get out of work, changed and to my Firebase, it's going to be 6:30pm.  the store closes at 10.  They are great about not kicking us out right at 10, but we're not pushing it to 10:30.

So I have to watch the clock and keep things moving.  Sometimes it works out as I deftly maneuver the team where I need them and sometimes I just say, "In the interests of time, we..."

If we're in the final fight and I'm in the last 10 minutes, I look at how the battle is going and if it's obvious that, barring a string of glitches, the team is going to win, I do a once around the table to let the guys narrate some awesome actions.  If it looks like the team is going to lose, I say something like, "It looks dire... what do you do to turn this around..."

If they come up with a good story, we go with it.  If they don't, then they are pretty much agreeing with me that they are hosed, they cut their loses and it's a botched run.
That's just like... your opinion, man.