It occurs to me that most shadowrunners, regardless of professional demeanor, are essentially just goons. They rely on luck and a fractured infrastructure to avoid being linked to crimes, and lets face it, most shadowrunners are more akin to spree killers or terrorists than anything else.

What follows is a more or less in depth analysis of the nature of forensic criminology and the average shadowrunner, and where it breaks down.

To begin with, the single greatest advantage your typical shadowrunner has is, beyond being SIN-less, is the extranationality of corporations.  This has a great number of wide ranging effects, so many that we will be forced to deal with them only breifly.  

To begin with, corporations do not share information with other corporations, or the federal government at all. In fact, a Run against a typical corporate facility will go completely unreported, meaning that no crime was commited in the government's eyes.  Even small corps would much rather get retribution against the person hiring the shadowrunners than the runners themselves, leaving the runners largely scot free.

When you add the privatization of the police forces, this becomes a virtual carte blanche, permission to do whatever to whomever for the Shadowrunners. Privatized police forces do not solve crimes, that is not their mandate, they prevent crimes.  One would suggest that the art of Criminology is a lost one in the current era... this is in fact incorrect.  And dangerously so.

In the wake of a shadowrun, corporate investigators will decend upon the scene. They will breifly conduct many of the same steps as their primative counterparts at the old governmental level did. Their primary goals are to retrieve any stolen information or kidnapped VIPs, in other words, damage control.  As a cost saving measure most investigations are closed and filed as soon as possible, but if anolomous data comes to light, perhaps suggesting that the corp was duped, or that an insider participated, the investigation will focus on resolving the analomies for as long as the cost/benefit matrix suggests necessary.  The result of any and all investigations is stored in the corporations propriatary database. In the case of smaller corps, ones that must outsource such investigations, the subcontractor will undoubtedly keep the data as well, for use in cross referencing future investigations.  

Runners tend to erroniously assume that because they have no SIN, there is no database with information on them in it.   This is, perforce, incorrect. By simply existing in the modern world one must belong to dozens, if not hundreds of databases.  The completeness and complexity of such databases is subject to the efforts the runner makes to keep it a secret.



*** Note: This could apply to any cyberpunkish fractured future setting with some effort.  Primarily the second part below.

Now let us look to our shadowrunners and how they protect, or fail to protect themselves.

The Advent of caseless ammunition has been an accidental boon to many shadowrunners. Simply put, shadowrunners tend to be careless in the extreme, but as they leave slightly less information behind, they are accidentally covered.

Let us review the facts: Most shadowrunners spend inordinant amounts of time and money customizing their 'gun' or guns of choice. They tend to stick to their favorite weapon. Each gun leaves distinctive marks on the bullet, and previously the case.  While many shadowrunners make an effort to avoid leaving prints behind at the scene, they take no care in the handling of their ammunition.  Fingerprints can be recovered from spent shell casings with difficulty.  

One thing protecting Shadowrunners, once again, is the propriatary nature of corporate data.  If a shadowrunner uses an Ares gun against an Ares corporate subsidiary, you can bet the ballistics information on that gun is already on file, along with cross references for who the gun was sold to... if that is known. Likely, the shadowrunner bought it illegally, but the weapon had to leave the hands of Ares at some point, and who it was sold to is undoubtedly recorded...likely visually.  More, every run that Ares has been involved in, either as a target or because their ballistics experts have been subcontracted to investigate, that has included that weapon has been crossreferenced as well.  Thus, Ares has a picture of the shadowrunner's activities for as long as they've used that gun.

This can be undone by swapping out weapons after every run, or at a minimum getting a new barrel put in. The former is preferred, obviously. More preferrable is not shooting every time you get a chance, but given the nature of Shadowrunners, this is not likely to occur any time soon.

Let us turn to the often ignored ammunition question. Most ammunition is highly standardized now days, with fewer overall calibers to chose from. To change calibers in a given 'range' is to change gun manufacturer as well, and often not even then.  As many shadowrunners tend to prefer hard to aquire military spec ammo for runs, they tend to either buy large lots once, or small lots when they can get it. Regardless, the ammunition from a single purchase is likely to appear in multiple runs, as the cheap and largely annonymous ball ammo is what is expended during training operations and for day to day use.

Here is the difficulty: Since the early days of the 21st century high end ammo manufacturers have typically included a micro engraving of lot numbers on the slug itself. Originally this was at the behest of the government, but the practice, once started, took on a life of its own.  For extremely durable armor penetrating rounds this is particularly problematic, as a high percentage of the rounds will remain intact.  Explosive and other frangible rounds (not to include flechettes, which are stamped individually, along with placement order within the round itself) are a safer bet, but still not a perfect solution.  Runners tend to be even sloppier with their ammunition purchases than their gun purchases, many even buying their over the counter ammo... over the counter, from authorized vendors.  

Even the illegal ammo likely is on the street with the full knowledge of the corporation in question, released to trusted 'fixers' with the understanding that this generates high profit margin sales to this greedy, money rich market.  The fixer is likely to record lot number and serial number sales and sell such data to forensic databases himself, both for profit and to increase the flow of jobs from such sources.  

Aside from the typical forensics evidence left by runners, fingerprints, hair, blood, the single biggest destroyer of Runner anonymity, however, is electronics trails, a subject long enough to warrent it's own discussion.

Runners, far moreso than most individuals, carry a huge amount of electronic's equipment with them when 'on the job'. Ironically, they would be better served in most cases carrying 'less'.  From the perspective of the average criminologist, they advent of the wireless world has brought to light a state of affairs that has already existed for them for nearly 70 years or more.

You see, every time an electronic device sends out a signal, deliberately or not, it may be picked up and noted by another device in the area. Those signals, even the random noise, are distinctive and can be easily recovered by an expert who knows how to look for them.  In the past your night vision goggles might broadcast a negligable signal measurable in inches, but if you peered to close to a security keypad consol, an expert might discerne the exact freqency and on the off chance your goggles were inspected they could be positively linked to the scene of the crime.  This sounds fantastic, and cases like that were understandably rare and equally fantastic when they occured.  Flash forward to the modern era.

Everything communicates and recieves data all the time. By far the worst offender is the ubiquitous 'comm' or 'pocket secretary' of yore. These things continuously send and receive data, even when in secure modes, and each one they send is electronically signed. Not merely with a distinctive frequency but an actual registered 'code' signifying their net address. Runners, blithely, assume that in secure modes their comms are not detectable, and from the end user perspective this is true.  However, from a Systems Admin, a security checkpoint, and most importantly a forensic criminologists perspective nothing could be further from the truth.

Here is how it works.  A runner has anywhere from 5 to 20 odd items linked into a private network. At his most secure these items only communicate to each other, from the gun telling him how many bullets are left, to his night vision goggles feeding to the virtual HUD.  However, many runners also communicate with each other, expanding that network out.  The devices commonly used don't broadcast very far, so they piggyback their signals over existing relays using the open channels available using default encryption protocols.

But let us stick to our most secure fellow who only talks to himself. Each device is sending a signal to the central node, which in turn sends signals back out to the items in question. Each one of those signals can, and will be noticed by existing devices in the vicinity. If the users PAN is set to private or 'invisible' modes, the existing devices are simply instructed to follow existing protocol and ignore the PAN in question.  Ignore, not 'do not perceive' the difference is a huge one.  Anyone understanding the basic protocols, that is with sufficient end user priviledges, can easily overide those protocols and tap into the PAN.  Often we think of the hacker doing this, but the true threat is from 'authorized superusers'... corporate security perhaps.  Runners going against a manufacturer of such devices are most at threat for being 'hacked'... but may never realize that it wasn't a hack at all.

Regardless, each electronic device the runner passes will record the interaction, from the printer on the desk, to the coffee machine in the kitchen, to the snack machine in the hallway. Most forensic criminologists have a better grasp of how the run went down than the participants, just from the data trails they leave behind.  It is worse if the Runner is particularly foolish and leaves his RFID tags in place.... and many newer, less paraniod runners do just that.   By following the data trails, the criminologist can even tell if two runners have swapped gear, such as NVG's between runs.

Given that many runner 'functions' require this level of equipment, what are the countermeasures? The simplest, and most ignored, is to simply use anonymous, disposable units  and discard them between runs.  Less useful, but more practiced, is having the runner's hacker freinds peform various voodoo activities to the CPU of the PAN, changing it's 'net address' after a run.  This is a milksop, as the address of the central unit is only a tiny, if easy to watch, peice of the overall data trail.  Variations in frequency, signal strength and even 'fist'... that is the protocols set by the user as a default, all make for unique, distinctive trails, and all can be tracked.  


This series overview of criminology will not discuss magic, as even scientifically trained mages have a hard time formatting their 'evidence' into means understandable by mundanes.   Beyond the 'say so' of having seen a mage's distinct signature before, mage criminology is still in it's infancy.

Next we review how this gets put together...

I'm just gonna start laughing and you're going to have to trust me that I deserve it.

One may get the impression that Shadowrunners are doomed.  This is not, philosophically, a bad impression. The instituition, as it exists, is past its prime. It was only a temporary analomy in the flow of society.

But it is not going to be criminology which brings them down.  No, the weaknesses of the current social structure that permits shadowrunners also protects them.  Ares doesn't want to kill the runners who stole their latest prototype, in fact they will undoubtedly seek to hire them in the near future.

So, why then sould shadowrunners worry? Why should we discuss the state of modern criminology at all? Because it isn't useless. To begin with, it is often assumed that the Government is helpless in all of this, a tiger without teeth.  While this is a fair assessment as far as corporations are concerned, the average citizen on the streets very much feels that the government has power over their lives, and while Lone Star and other 'privatized' police forces are far and away the norm, the county sheriffs still exist and still work for the government... and they still like to solve crimes from time to time. the Federal government still has some police and intelligence agencies, and while they cannot do much about the rampant forces of the corporations themselves, the independent agents they use are fair game. Cracking down upon the Shadowrunners doesn't solve the problem, but it does keep it under control.

Then there are the private citizens. Shadowrunners often commit senseless acts of violence in the course of the average run. While the Corp may not care about the lives of it's security guards or secretaries, their families will. Private investigators are alive and well, and are hired by everyone from little suzy homemakers, to CEO Ares when the need comes. Many have standing contracts allowing them to tap various 'secure' databases, particularly the criminology ones.   In fact, such private contractors are hired by corporations often because they have access to databases the corporations do not.

Its is a commonly understood facet of Shadowrunning that at some point your fixer or Johnson will betray you.  This is vastly misunderstood. In some cases, indeed the Fixer or Johnson will, in fact, betray you.  More likely, however, some misdeed from the runner's own past, revealed by some investigation, leads to the current betrayal.  The Fixer is paid by Little Suzy Homemaker to get revenge for the death of her husband, the Johnson steps into the deal only to get a Red flag on his Virtuality display telling him the Comm used by the runner is the same one that was used in a run that cost him his last promotion... or perhaps cost the Corp some serious face and they want to make a statement out of the offending runners because they can't get to who hired them (or perhaps, on that run the Runner's were freelancing it, looking for some paydata to sell on the open market).  

How can a runner protect himself?  Not Running is a big one.  Not running independently is another. Do the job you were hired for, hide behind the employer's umbrella... that is a big one.

But failing those, spend a good chunk of your doss on new gear. Don't buy third party, buy fifth, or better yet steal it.  Dispose of it properly after buy selling it to gangers, who will certainly muddy the data trail quite a bit.

As a team, make sure no one carries their personal comm with them on a run. You know, the one that has everyone's address and names in it? Comm's get lost, rarely. People get shot and left behind, commonly.  You can't always strip the body down, or even get to it if the run's gone bad.  One chump with the wrong info on him can ruin every runner in the team for life, corps may turn a blind eye to the runners on the job, but if you hand them your entire life on a platter, they won't turn it down.  

Of course, never forget the basics of forensics either. Hair and saliva and blood all leave unmistakeable evidence behind, the sort that you can't just sell to the local gangers to be rid of.  Most runners have a distintive style and flair they use on ops, one not too far removed from the gangers they are often mistaken for.  This is a tragic error in judgement. While total sanitation of the crime scene is not always possible, the runners should take care to avoid leaving too much evidence behind. A stray hair or two might belong to a legitimate employee or visitor, full face on camera, bare arms scrapping the walls and chewing on security guards during the melee? Not so easy to miss.

Quote from: Ancient HistoryI'm just gonna start laughing and you're going to have to trust me that I deserve it.

This entire thing is a exercise in futility. I've played the game, and I KNOW no one ever concerns themselves with any of it.

it's just to fun to pass up, however.




And yes, I know you deserve it.

While the exact role of magic in the criminology profession is one that is still quite primative, at least some notes should be made.

Mages, on runner teams, are invaluable for cleaning up crime scenes and avoiding some of the grossest faux pas of running, leaving faces on camera, for example. There are a variety of simple, common spells that are excellent, if often overlooked in these capacities.

However, all use of magic on a run has one small risk.  Every spell cast leaves a distinctive residue in the astral plane that a trained mage can use to identify the caster.  This is time sensitive, of course, and many have had better luck using paracritters with tracking abilities to follow the astral scent rather than attempt criminalological investigations.

The investigative mage can, with difficulty, peice together the abstracts of the spell formula. While this cannot be plugged into a database, exactly, if the spell is commercially available then the exact spell used can be identified, and from there purchases of it can be tracked.  If the spell is not, then it is unique enough to be useful.  Moreever, if the mage is lucky enough to see a a spellcaster cast the same spell, they can identify the individual's astral signature, the one that all spell casters imprint on every spell they cast.

The sorts of information available from spell residue include tradition, force, type, elemental signatures (if not readily available from physical evidence)... and more.  Spell casters on a Run should attempt to limit their obvious castings on site (attack spells), and possibly stick to a single offensive spell for the entire run, limiting the evidence they leave at that site.  Spirits and elementals are each unique, but leave less evidence linked to the caster, though the summoning site is still very unique... at least to astral sensitives.

This is by far one of the cooler things I've read this month.  Kudos, Spike.

Quote from: BrantaiThis is by far one of the cooler things I've read this month.  Kudos, Spike.

Thank you.  

Since you are relatively new (by your postcount anyway) I should admit that my hobby here seems to be long, somewhat interesting studies of various things in games.  Check out my racial studies if you want to see a fantasy sort of thing. (for which I humbly accept a 'pimp myself point'... granted by yours truely... )

Dammit Spike, stop ruining our fun with your reality and logic!! :mad:
 

You've got some damn good ideas there, though you'd have to have a really hardcore group of cyberpunkers to want to play a game with that degree of reality. The CP2020 Official Ethos of "Screw over your players, repeatedly and forecefully." would make it a game for masochists.
 
I can't speak with authority on Shadowrun as I'm not a player, but with Cyberpunk 2020, most of the game was penned before the advent of modern tech like cellphones or the internet and very early in the days of computers, so much of the tech illustrated was hypothetical at the time - and with hypothetical stuff it's a rare author who thinks of the little stuff like how crime detection works on it. (Mike Pondsmith does not strike me as a man who thinks too hard about the little things, or the big things for that matter - I fairly ruthlessly deconstructed his CPv3 Datakrash concept a few months back without raising a sweat).
 
This makes a good game concept, actually. Corporate CSI teams, who not only have to investigate and deduce the crime, but have to do it while fighting corporate politics as well

Do you know what this reminds me of? The David Mack comic, Kabuki.  Particularly "Metamorphosis" where the heroine has to remove every trace of her existence to facilitate her escape from her corporate employers

If you play any cyberpunk game, it's worth a read

Eh. This is mildly popular on Dumpshock now (thank's Jong...) but I can't post over there for some reason.


Keep hope alive, free Orky McBride!

I remember having similar discussions with our gaming group in relation to evidence trails. It came about because I had a street sam character who just had the basics of everything. He'd turn up in off the street bought gear (armour, guns, ammo) as he needed it and relied on the group for other equipment. He only ever used low-rating stuff and dumped it immediately after use. He lived seperate to the others and didn't go in with their hard-military gear.

Subseuently they never knew exactly who he was or where he lived.

I hypothesised that the corps would have excellent evidence tracking capabilities, and while they may not have directly shared information they could access third party professionals for their services. Such as requesting a possible ballistics match with other organisations. I think there would be a lot of informal information sharing.

I think this would contribute to the idea that you either make your money quickly and get out quickly, in the Shadowrun business, or you have a very short life expectancy. The other way to treat it is as a job interview, which is still high risk.

The aspect i always wanted to play on, was having runs against this evidence. The characters copy the info (as insurance or simply because that's what they do - our players tended to anyway) and research it. They find out that through informal databases the corps pretty much can track all runner activity. Why aren't they stopping it? Further investigation reveals that they use the Shadowrunner myth to keep society destablised and use it as a weapon against the old insitutions of Government.

Then the plyaers became agents of some form of change. If they are anarchistic, they can aim for a complete society breakdown. If they are a little altruistic they can side with the Government and try and get power back to the people - sparking some big corp wars -, or they can use the info to get into a position of power within a corp and become one of the ruling elite.

I like the idea of the evidence bootstrapping a campaign into a higher power level.

Cheers

Actually, that's pretty awesome stuff if the GM goes for it.  The way I see it is naturally the Corps have no real interest in revenge or justice, not without a profit margin.  But information is always valuable. More to the point, the Corps NEED shadowrunners under the current system to project their interests in ways they can not.

Now for a fun idea, the Runners get hired to do a run on a corp database by a 'lesser power'... say a local mafia/yak group. Little do they know that this group is trying to find out who killed one of their guys, and the database is a criminal/forensic record that they've been denied access too... and the evidence happens to point right to the players... with no one the wiser until the data is delivered.

Brilliant Sir

Thanks

QM

P.S.: Shouldn't your Avatar's tushy be red by now?