Shadowrunners Exist

Yep. That's it chummers. I've seen a bit of drek floating around from some people
who are missing a few monumental points about the setting. So lets clarify some
things about the setting.

The setting, not the lore. Lore? Bah, Catalyst couldn't write a 3 act structure
with editing, let alone resolution or pacing.

The setting is approximately the 2050's through 2080, via 1980.

That last bit is crucial. If you're under 40, you probably don't understand the
cultural 80's in the way that's needed to accurately get Shadowrun. This game was
written when only academics, the military, and rich ubernerds had access to
computers. The average person thinks it's a magic box.

It was written when there was 'a big bad enemy nation' on the horizon that allowed
the populace to be cowed about various dark deeds that were perpetrated by the
governing powers.

Shadowrun was written in the tail of an economic boom, where new products were
coming out each week at insane prices, tech was rich, and capitalism was churning.

Racism and violence were much more prevalent. If you were the wrong colour, you
didn't walk into certain neighbourhoods. Murder and violent crime were much more
common. There were 2,228 murders in NYC in 1980. There were 609 in 2015.

Culturally, the decade was one of backlash and rebellion. Heavy metal and Punk
gained real roots this decade. Rap, Hip Hop and other urban music was spawned.
Movies and TV attempted to portray idealised families, and a gloss was put over the
problems. For godness sake, "stealing plutonium from the Libyans" was a throwaway
gag in a comedy movie.

What does all this mean?

Shadowrunners Exist

Shadowrunners, as we all know are disposable, deniable and desperate misfits who
work as the sticky, red, fleshy grease in the cogs of industry. There are four
major components that lead to their existance.

Image is king. Shadowrun was written before widescale media reporting was
accessible. Newspapers and TV (corporate) were still in charge of what you saw and
heard about the world. This means if it didn't make it into 'mainstream media' with
your name on it, you could get away with murder. And so, you hire some scum without
nametags or formal contracts to just do that for you. Technically it's illegal, but
it can't be used to sue you.

Corporations are powerful, rich, supply driven and unaccountable. They're run by
people who see two things: The bottom line, and places to increase it. Imagine
Steve Castle. You buy a competitor out, sell off the assets, fire the workers, and
make their widget yourself. You put down a mass market campaign that makes people
want something they don't need and can barely afford, and outsource the
manufacturing to a sweatshop. Corporate Ethics isn't a thing. If someone offers to
get you that widget without having to buy out the company, that's profit. What if
you don't have someone who offers? Put up a minor amount of money and find someone
to do it.

Security is about control, not prevention, and not resolution. Knight Errant don't
solve crimes. Do you think there is a trial by a jury of your peers here? Your most
basic freedoms don't exist. Modelled off the way that various government agencies
were a power into and of themselves in the 1980s, you could just get blackbagged
and disappeared. You could be subject to some officer brutality and it would be
covered up. The concept was to make people fearful of power and to conform to the
power. Offshoot of this is that the structure of 'police' is as ruthlessly
corporate as the rest of the world. A criminal has broken into a store and stolen
diamonds. Catching them won't make you money, they fenced the diamonds, and you
can't squeeze scum for their cash.

The security guard is a low page wage slave like you getting high on his iota of
power over the scum. But they're all bullies, and bullies fear being challenged.
Those desperate, dirty scum that were given the payment of a lifetime to go steal
the widget? The scum will knock the guard on his butt, and that guard won't do more
than radio it in. The same guard will only radio in actual problems, as the guard
who cried wolf cost the corporation money and was fired.

Even if all of the above didn't exist, it's simply good business for shadowrunners
to exist. Sure, a singular shadowrunner team might cost corp A money, but corp B
will make more. Corp A is running their own shadowrunners. Corps have to pitch a
fine balance. They need to protect themselves vs shadowrunners, but at the same
time, that can get expensive fast. They also need enough soft targets, weaker
corps, that there's a pool of this deniable talent. Whats more, there's no profit
in hunting down shadowrunners unless you need to send a message.

Think about it. You got broken in, some guards got knocked out, one died. You lost
your lead scientist. You don't really know who was behind it, and that's irrelevant
because the scientist is in the hands of one of your rivals now. Sure, you have
security footage of the criminals, might have a bit of evidence, but what does that
get you? The answer is 'not your scientist back'.

Unless the Shadowrunners are known, proven talent being hunted because they're bad
for business, or being recruited to work on a full time basis, once the job is
over, then generally the powers that be stop noticing you.

In this setting with SINs logged at everwhere from checkpoints to Stuffer Shack,
with constant mefeeds and P2.0 profiles, with cameras all over the place, it's
quite possible to work and live as a deniable mercenary for criminal hire simply by
exploiting the fact that all said and done, there's no profit in hunting you down.

Would Joe Bumblefuck, 5¥ an hour security guard would know how to matrix perceive
for running silent icons? No. Because of Rule Zero: Shadowrunners Exist. If every
security guard in this setting routinely and frequently checked for icons of
illegal, but silent items, then Shadowrunners wouldn't exist. Prevention, not
resolution remember. If you can come down hard and heavy on criminals before they
cost you millions of ¥, you're in the black. Clearly that would shut down
Shadowrunners so hard it violates rule zero.

Joe Bumblefuck does not do routine matrix perceptions. Knight errant does not take
ballistics and camera footage of a shooting by anarchists and find them in the
barrens.

Shadowrunners are punks, upjumped desperate scum with a pistol and a promise. They
are not professionals. They're going up against the powers that be in this world,
and they succeed enough to be worth having. They get away with it because the
profit drive is in prevention, and there is little to be gained in pursuit.

The summary is this:

When you're designing the world, or playing in the world, when you're doing
creating or defining something, step back, do a check: have you ruled out
shadowrunners existing? If so, you've violated rule zero. This isn't something that
drives worldbuilding, it's purely a check once you're done.

When playing, or when GMing, try to think of the cultural 1980s and remember,

Rule Zero: Shadowrunners Exist.