Sometimes you need a functional way to handle heat that isn't plot intensive, doesn't handwave the issue, and doesn't result in players becoming detail obsessed to the point where it becomes one long game of "how technical can i get about forensics in every location I ever visit." Hence I decided to develop a system.
Heat/LE interest/whatever usually gets dealt with one of three ways.
1) It's a plot point. Which can be cool and the source of many a great session, but sometimes you want to be able to assume that our friendly skilled shadowrunner can do basic ass covering, especially when it's not terribly dramatic.
2) It gets handwaved/ignored after a few dramatic scenes. Which keeps things moving, for sure, but sometimes it just kind of feels like you're escapades are in a vacuum of pick up runs.
3) The GM says "in MY campaign, evidence and rep matters", which either becomes "KE falls, everyone dies" or "Well Mr/Ms GM, MY character always painstakingly handlifts every finger print from every glass he touches, which aren't many, because his life between runs consists of sitting in a bolt hole while cleaning his gun/deck/drone/grimoir."
I was searching for a middle ground, preferably one that was somewhat fair to both players and GM. So this is what I came up with, a system to represent generic law (or other) interest and avoiding it. I call them Heat and Suppression.
First off, there are three components to Heat:
Who did I run against? 0-6 Dice. 0 being the mom and pop store next door, and 6 being a weapons research division at Ares. You may add more if its something truly absurd, but at that point it's probably a plot issue.
What did I do to them? 0-6 Dice. 0 being they don't know it happened, or maybe I cursed out the security guards, 1 being something that looks like juvenile delinquency, and 6 being something that kicked them right in the profit makers. Things like shooting the president or commandeering Thor shots probably fall into "yeah, you should RP the consequences on this one."
How did I behave on the run? -6 to + 6 Dice. Ranging from "I was an unseen Ninja in the system, even the security camera logs got masterfully re-edited" to " I blew off the front door, shot the stunned guards in the head, smashed the secretary's face off the wall until she gave me a password, snatched the macguffin and exited in a chase scene"
You now have a pile of up to 18 dice. Before you get to rolling, reduce that pile for Suppression
Whats my basic professional level as a runner? Subtract up to 6 dice. Presumably if you are playing a globe trotting team of runners who get called in for desert wars prototype theft, you can say "yeah, probably a six", whereas "Runner? they just gave this gun and told me I had to save my kids!" is probably a zero. Even a ganger knows somewhere to cool off in the barrens. [/b]
Who do I know who will help this? Subtract up to 3 dice. You'll want to RP calling in the big favors, but it's safe to assume that if the runner has the right contacts, heads ups happen, reports get filed a little late, there's some ambiguity in orders, or maybe some other perp is really who you want to be chasing today. The little favors bit by bit that the right contacts just kind of do.
Suppression payments You may pay for up to 3 dice. The idea being that living in super secret bunkers and getting secret soy pizza delivery costs money and time. So does the raw opportunity cost of erasing your gride guide records every time you drive, never taking a drink you don't wipe the rim for, etc. Or if your players have some ridiculous argument as to why it doesn't, maintaining all those pretty contacts at loyalty 4 does, especially if you can't show your face right now. These payments represent the cost of doing business while operating under that that paranoia. For the cost of 1 Karma AND a nuyen fee TBD by the GM, an extra die can be taken away from the heat rating.
It's not meant to replace big things like getting a new ID, or a new face, hiding out in a bolthole for a month, or so forth, but it allows you to let player's be as much of a no-life paranoid jackass as they want without having to listen to fifteen minutes of absurdity of forensics every time they buy a beef jerky. In the absence of these payments, it assumed that the shadowrunner is exercising due diligence for their relative skill level.
Great, now take way the suppression score from the heat pool and roll the dice. Using the standard SR success definitions, the number of hits shows how much the powers that be found out about the runners. Maybe they pressed the right guy in the right bar, maybe Willem Dafoe did the boondock saints inspired detective thing, maybe just the raw processing power of a big corp and a lot of cameras came up roses this time. That's GM stuff.
At the GM's discretion, this system can be completely or partially transparent, or completely under the hood with just a vague mention that living unlivably paranoid lifestyles can be done, just at a cost.
