Wolf1066

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance

Oh, don't be a tease!

 

What does the MedTech do?

Sorry, I may have misconstrued your question when I answered it.

In the case of Jake accidentally pulping the drunk's cranium, the MedTech let it slide (so Jake lived to be killed by Mike's ex-Mafioso with the orbital crystal cyberarms and the impact-triggered forearm spike) - I think he would have happily punched the drunk's nose through the back of his skull, too - especially since the drunk, the wounded woman, the car load of people the drunk had hit, and the accident itself were all based on a real event at which the bloke who was playing the MedTech and I were first on scene.

Where the game digressed from reality was in the actions performed by the players.

IRL, the bloke who was playing the MedTech was not a paramedic but he was a first aider, as am I, so we rendered assistance as best we could and waited for the ambulance to arrive. IRL, we had to render assistance to the stupid drunk who had trashed a car full of young people returning from an office party (the driver of the second car was a designated sober driver) - fortunately none of whom were injured - and had seriously wounded a passenger in his own car - teeth through lip, broken shin-bone protruding through skin of leg. The drunk had suffered only superficial lacerations when he went through the windshield, owing to being so drunk that he flopped like a rag doll, but we had to tend to him and help the Ambos get him into the back of the ambulance - despite wanting to just "accidentally" drop him on the pavement.

I suspect a bit of the player crept into the character, enabling the MedTech to let Jake survive "just this once".

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance

Well, admittedly I'm on second-hand knowledge on this one, so I'm really hoping that this is hyperbole rather than fact, but ...

 

The GM okay'd a character that amounted to Family Guy's Peter Griffin with the power to increase his density, both physical *and* mental in approximate proportion.

 

The dumber he gets, the stronger he gets.

 

So, I'm getting the distinct impression that this GM isn't going to grasp the concept of 'dramatic sense'.

*gibber*

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance

Try this link' date=' I find it explains it best. They didn't want to just play a character with his powers, they wanted to play this character. *Whimper* "Mummy. Make the bad gamer go away!":angst:[/quote']

 

2 words: Power Munchkin.

 

I'd load up all the other characters with things that can neutralise Dante's abilities (I'd bloody invent them if I have to) and can send him to some dimension whence he could never return. Five minutes of Dante-esque game play and any of my regular players would have no hesitation in using said artifacts (actually, could be quite a good "Team-Building Exercise" for the rest of the players...)

 

Of course, dimensional portals are tricky buggers and are likely to gobble up the artifacts along with "Dante" but such is life...

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance

Oh, don't be a tease!

 

What does the MedTech do?

Pretty much what ghost-angel said. It's amazing what even a couple of failed rolls can do.

A couple of spectacularly failed rolls trying to stabilise mortally wounded people and one of our MedTechs (my wife) got a reputation that surpassed Dr Kevorkian (sp?).

After that, her rolls seemed to go to sh*t and the players were terrified they'd get into some action, get badly wounded by their enemies and then get killed by their own MedTech.

"I'll stabilise him."

"For God's sake, NO, we want him alive. I'll do first aid."

"We're under attack!"

"Find hard cover, we can't risk being wounded."

The PCs were even threatening the NPCs with "tell us what we want to know or we'll let our MedTech "heal" you."

This campaign she's playing a Techie and the one of the other players said to another "you sure you trust her to check out the AV?"

Don't worry, the AV didn't crash because she muffed her AV tech roll - t'was a seagull through the inlet nacelle that caused the "Unscheduled Descent" (and the players were praying that their pilot didn't fumble her emergency control roll.)

The MedTech who threatened to kill Jake if he murdered anyone else was previously confronted by a CyberTiger and in a spectacular Critical Success quick-drew, fired from the hip one handed with an assault weapon and obilterated the tiger. That was a high REP moment. He had also proved himself in combat on other occasions.

He didn't have my wife's "Dr Death" reputation but he was better known as a (deliberate) killer than a healer. No small wonder that Chris was fearing for his character's life.

"Don't f*ck with us, even our MedTech can out-shoot you!"

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance

It's a PC' date=' so it's unlikely that there'll be an accidental shooting.[/quote']

There are ways and means. Always ways and means. A "miss" always hits something - it's up to the GM to decide what "somethings" are in range and assign the number values to them all. "3 to 6, you shoot yourself; 7 to 10, the bolt hits a wall and does minor damage; 11 or 12, you hit Bill..."

 

Chris's second (obnoxious but at least useful) character, Jake, had a habit of killing people to up the Kill Count displayed on his arm and the MedTech was getting seriously fracked off - to the point of saying to Jake "you *#$@ing kill one more person, I'm going to kill you."

 

Later, they're first on scene at an MVA, drunk driver slumped in seat. MedTech is tending to injured passenger in the back of the car, Jake decides to give the drunk the Learn. Opens door, drags out drunk and Chris says, "I hit him in the face but I pull my punch". He rolls a critical failure and I decide that there is no way on Earth he could miss a target being held up by one of his own arms so I say "you fail to pull the punch, roll damage please. Chris gulped, looked really worried and began to roll - and Jake was capable of considerable damage.

 

So, from the MedTech's point of view: He's leaning into the back of the car tending to the injured girl. Out of his peripheral vision he notes the driver's door open and a pair of hairy arms - one marked with a glowing subdermal kill counter - reach in and drag the driver out of the car. There is a sickening SPLAT and then two hairy arms - one marked with a glowing subdermal kill counter - carefully place the nearly headless corpse of the driver back in the seat and the driver's door shuts quietly.

 

Poor Chris, he was sure that Jake was going to be killed by the MedTech.

 

Deliberately killed, rather than the usual way our MedTechs kill other PCs....

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance

That would be it.

In which case, so far as GM Vengeance is concerned, the best (or nastiest) would be to let the player have the character and let the other PCs have their "fun"...

It'd have the life-expectancy of a bleeding lamb in a piranha tank in one of my campaigns. My only hope would be that I'd have enough time to pour a drink, light a cigarette and get seated before the entertainment started.

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance

Oh, it gets better. Got some new information about the game last night ... it was a laser, offered as a loaner from a vigilante/merc type.

 

So, at some point, in this game, Ben '10' Tennison is going to be running around brandishing a laser pistol while he waits for the Omnitrix to recharge (see Bloodstone's Ben 10 writeups, which the GM permitted him to use en toto).

I take it the vigilante/merc type is the character who's just asking to be handed his own head with a side order of "you should have known better" and a heaped helping of "I told you so" for afters?

Edit: I've noticed I've passed the first mile-stone for "Forum Whore" - my post count now exceeds my age...

Re: Character concepts that cry out for GM Vengeance

Gods save me from 15yr olds who want to play EXACT copies of Dante from Devil May Cry.

A quick google and I'm nearly up to speed.

Please explain, for the benefit of those of us who play RPGs rather than computer games, what Dante's vital stats are - aside from some stupid UberHollywood fighting techniques and running up walls?

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

The Phantom Menace showed that's not always the case' date=' when a turret popped out from from the ceiling of a hanger bay and blew up a ship therein.[/quote']

They'd better hope their landing bay is well constructed because blowing up a ship inside it is likely to do almost as much damage as the ship would do by opening fire...

However this tactic makes sense if it's a Mutually Assured Destruction ploy. Because blowing up a ship that you're inside is not good for your own health.

Scotty, give me maximum sheilds and all weapons at my command...

 

Or if you're down to getting MAD: Rig your reactor to go boom, soften 'em up with a few non-energy weapons - torpedoes and the like - then go critical on their hides.

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

Star Wars-style game. The PCs in their small but well-armed vessel are hailed by a much larger imperial warship and ordered to surrender. They meekly allow themselves to be drawn into the warship's docking bay--at which point, the Captain of the PC vessel demands that THEY surrender, pointing out that "All of our guns bear--and none of yours do. Surrender or be destroyed."

 

The GM was left speechless.

Literally hooted with laughter at that. That's priceless! The scary thing is, it'd work quite nicely.

Star Wars would have been a far shorter movie if Han Solo had half the smarts of those PCs...

Re: How to end a dystopia...

Excellent point. After all' date=' it was the [u']scare[/u] of the French Revolution that led to the beginnings of labour laws in Britain and elsewhere. "Right then: we'll ditch the mandatory 60-hour work week, pay you above starvation wages, we'll even let you take an hour for lunch. Just please let's not riot, okay?"

So we need a neighbour to get thoroughly trashed by p*ssed-off workers and 'runners to scare the local Corps into improving the working conditions?

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

Please tell me I'm not the only one thinking the Irish version of this is Nymph O'mana.

Sorry, you're on your own, there...

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

On the other side' date=' I do have to say that I was pretty surprised when Zornwil had my character's left hand suddenly become sentient and free-willed. It could detach and run around like "Thing" from the Addams family. It became a DNPC. Nowadays, "Lefty" is going to school at Prof. Xavier's New School for Mutants.[/quote']

I think you might have possibly supplied me with some nasty ideas for what to do if one of the characters buys a cyber-arm with modular removable hands...

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

As they stepped out on the road with bows at the ready' date=' I did the first thing that came to my head and walked up to one of them acting as if I knew him. This totally threw the GM and so he decided that the bandits were equally thrown and allow us to gain an upper hand:D[/quote']

 

Stylish!

Re: How to end a dystopia...

Well the best way to get past a dystopia is to have people rise up to overthrow it...and _fail_ doing just enough damage to scare a large chunk of the powerful. That inspires them to make compromises and reforms before something worse happens. If they dig in their heels and stand fast then you have a Russian or French revolution. If they get used to giving up ground then a social order evolves which will be less brutal.

I can well imagine that "giving up ground" would not be an option for some and they would dig in their heels anyway, meaning that they would have to be permanently removed - and thus begins the descent into Russian or French Revolution for the others would dig in their heels...

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

I pulled a self-destruct ploy on a Champs GM many years back. Didn't actually do it' date=' but only because the GM knew I really would, and had the villain acquiesce.[/quote']

My villain acquiesced quite nicely, I thought. Still didn't stop "Boris" from laminating them both on the walls, though. s'funny, could've sworn the game was "surrender or I'll blow us both up" not "surrender and I'll blow us both up."

 

Trying to remember the bit from the same campaign when the game was interrupted for ten minutes because I was laughing too hard to continue GMing. Probably wouldn't be as funny if I quoted it here, though.

Re: Curve-balls and left-field stuff

The biggest surprise I can recall as a GM was when all the PCs in my pulp game decided they didn't want to go adventuring. Not one of my prouder moments...

Ouch. That's gotta smart.

Closest we came to that was when our GM in a Traveller game wanted us to go to a planet where there were some creatures that were going to cause us problems in the long term. He gave us (an interstellar trader) the planet list and said, "you could go here [2-jump trip, agricultural planet], it looks interesting" and was surprised when one of the crew consulted the list and said "F*** that, if we head to [1-jump trip, high tech level planet] we can load up with cheap tech and jump to [1-jump trip, lower tech level planet crying out for tech] and make a massive profit" - the GM couldn't convince us that there was any benefit in going to the planet he wanted us to go to so we missed out on a whole mess of problems (and made a huge profit). With that crew, "interesting" was not nearly as interesting as "lucrative".

Of course, the logical GM fix (*roll* "You have misjumped and you are now approaching this planet; you will need to stop and refuel to get home" *cue problematic creatures*) hadn't occured to him so his plan was well and truly thwarted. He told us later what he had planned for the party and we just laughed.

The other week I put a proposition to the characters in my Cyberpunk game (accept overseas contract) and they took it then one of the players said "I wonder what he'd do if the whole party said "Nah, not interested in that, we're not going"." Another player said "something really nasty is likely to happen to the party here..."

I love perceptive gamers!

Forgive me if this has been covered already but I did a search and couldn't find anything close:

It is the function of the GM to keep the players on the hop, but occasionally the boot is on the other foot and the player comes out with something that is so left-field that all the GM can do is blink.

What are some of the surprises you've inflicted upon GMs or have had players inflict on you?

By way of example, I'll share a few:

One was a girl I knew playing in a Cthulu game who stymied the GM by having her character, wearing a long black evening dress, stand up on a table in the middle of the cafeteria of Miskatonic University in the 1930s and sing "Love Me Tender". She's a great singer so she didn't tell the GM, she demonstrated.

Then there was the first Drow Elf I ever played. A female. As a first level character, the only magic I had was Darkness, Fairy lights and Fairy fire. We were in some village full of yokels and the dwarf in our party was accused of murder and arrested. They came for the rest of us - myself and a male Drow. He cast his only spell in the room in the inn - Darkness - and hid under the bed under the cover of the pool of darkness he had cast. I did the same in my room and the yokel who was trying to capture us starts freaking out because we're magic users and they are simple folk who fear magic users. I cast fairy lights out the window and most of the village chases after them because they thought we'd escaped but the yokel outside the door isn't convinced and only pretends to leave, he jumps out at me when I exit the room. I was physically outclassed - puny Drow vs huge human yokel - so I cast fairy fire on him, giving him that lovely green glow, and yelled "I curse you!"

The GM just sat there stunned, she had never expected to see fairy fire - normally a way of marking an object you want to follow - used as an offensive "weapon".

I was grinning quite evilly as I asked her what the yokel was doing since the GM, an intelligent woman, was flabbergasted and the yokel was supposed to have a room-temperature IQ...

Eventually she had to concede that he was running around in circles screaming "I'm cursed, I'm cursed" and the other Drow and I legged it.

And, saving the best for last, there was a character called Boris in one of my cyberpunk games played by THE player/GM from Hell. He's one of the two most fiendish gamesmasters I've ever played under but at that moment he was roaming around my universe.

The team is being hassled by the mafia so Boris decides he's had a gutsful and packs his cyberarm full of C6 ('coz C4 just don't cut it, baby) and heads for the Corporate Plaza that is controlled by the local Don and barges in. Aha! "Alarms go off everywhere" says I, "Corporate guard rushes up with a gun."

"Dead-man switch," says he, holding up a clenched fist. So I figure the guard elects not to shoot but keeps him covered, calls for backup and keeps an eye on him Meanwhile, the plaza is rapidly being evacuated as people realise the danger.

"Do I see the Don?" "Yep, he's beating it outta here." So Boris races after the Don, catches him and wraps his C6-packed arm around the mafioso's neck.

A conversation ensues of the "leave my mates alone" variety and the Don doesn't want to die so he cuts a deal - he'll call off the goons and leave the team alone etc. "Anything else?" "Just this," says Boris, holding up his clenched hand, "1, 2, 3, 4, 5" - he counts off on his fingers, finishing with an open hand...

"Boom!"

I was just flabbergasted. I'd been operating on the premise that the player would want his character to come out of it alive once he had successfully negotiated a truce, I thought I had acheived the understanding that would have him and the Don living to see another day and suddenly I'm having to calculate what sort of damage a large quantity of C6 would do to a mostly glass plaza...

Later that same player used his replacement character to murder most of the rest of the party but at least he warned me before he did that.

Re: How to end a dystopia...

Seriously' date=' wouldn't a post-cyberpunk dystopia collapse be a great spin on the usual post-A settings?[/quote']

 

Rogue borgs roaming the desolate wastes looking for scrap metal and functioning cyberware - too bad if the cyberware is implanted in you...

 

With the Corps gone, anyone with cyberware is going to fall into the categories of hunter and hunted. Anyone with cybernetics skill is going to be in high demand - worth kidnapping, worth going to war for.

 

It would be a good spin, certainly a change from "The last atomic war ravaged the land and..." What if it were rapacious Corps with strip mines and green-house-gas-producing factories that ravaged the Earth and created the "Apocalypse" - the rendering of the Earth barely habitable. The Corps are then destroyed - in part by the fact they've "eaten themselves out of house and home" (there's nothing left to take) and in part by the angry hordes of street scum, Edgerunners and just plain decent every-day folk who were sick and tired of having to live in the mean streets and survive on SFA while the corporate moguls live in luxury - and the Anarchy of the lawless blasted landscapes and decaying cities is born.

 

Ripe for Luddite cults, cybernetic road warriors, Nomad gangs, crazies, struggling farmers and all the other various denizens of the Post Apocalypse.

Re: How to end a dystopia...

See' date=' this is one of my problems with the metaverse timeline: 4-color Champions stories and dystopian cyberpunk stories just do not exist in the same universes. Each genre makes radically different fundamental assumptions about human nature and the power of the individual. I don’t see such basic “universal†laws changing just because “the magic goes away.†Maybe that’s just me. [/quote']

 

I've been giving some thought to this.

 

I tend to go by the "anything's possible in the human spectrum" - both your 4-colour heroes and your cyberpunks have "goodies" and "baddies" - not everyone in the dystopic world of cyberpunk is scum (well, not in my universes, anyway) as it has evolved from our here and now just as the Heroes are in a alternate "here and now" where some people have fantastic powers.

 

In my cyberpunk campaign there is an NPC character of my own devising - "The Spectre", an unlicensed vigilante hunted by the law and feared by the criminals, whose "super powers" come from the cyberware he has (in his case, a full body conversion). He views himself as a hero and has a (skewed) moral code and rocks around the place trashing some of the nastier specimens of humanity. He is an altruist with a serious Galahad Complex - one extreme of the spectrum. The "super villains" are drug lords, heavily cybered rapists, murderers etc at the other end of the spectrum. (The Spectre does not often go up against the Corps themselves unless he has evidence of serious wrong-doing)

 

I think that whatever your rationale for having heroes (and the villains they must fight) human nature is still the same - infinitely variable with kind and public-spirited people mixed up with greedy, corrupt people. I see no reason a world containing 4-colour heroes and their associated villains should not contain the greedy corrupt corporations that would make the Cyberpunk dystopia (see the "Spiderman 2099" comics from Marvel) likewise I see no reason a Cyberpunk dystopia should not have someone who is public-spirited enough to risk his/herself to "Protect The People" - not all the cops are on the take, not everyone is motivated by money and in the Dark Future dystopia the "good" people are still there and not all of them are hiding in the corner whimpering "please don't hurt me."

 

As you were, no intention to hijack the thread from how to wipe out a dystopia. Nothing to see here, move along...

Re: How to end a dystopia...

Most cyberpunk I've come across is a mixture of both. The corps have their areas where their production facilities are and their workers live' date=' and they maintain security with an iron fist, ostensibly to keep out the anarchic gangsters destroying the rest of the city. So which works here?[/quote']

 

Aliens invade and enslave the entire Earth (and all orbital facilities) Corps and rabble alike, applying laws all humans must obey irrespective of "position"?

 

Within a Corp, I don't see the workers rebelling against the dictatorial Board of Directors etc as their own accommodation, food and money comes from that corp. If they fail, they'd face (at the very least) dismissal which would put them out into the anarchy of the streets struggling to survive, if they succeed they'd have to run the Corp in pretty much the way it was in order to compete (and assuming their crap conditions were a matter of fiscal expediency, they wouldn't be able to afford to improve the workers' lot) or they'd wind up out of business and out in the streets struggling to survive...

Re: How to end a dystopia...

My pet peeve with most “Dystopia’s End†stories is the ease with which the totalitarian regime is finally toppled. The Heroes blow up a few buildings' date=' air a couple of Truth broadcasts, and [i']Voila![/i] the dictatorship topples. If totalitarian regimes were really that fragile, the breed would’ve gone extinct long ago. That’s not to say that individuals can’t effect change – far from it. (Especially in heroic fiction/RPGs!) But the way it’s typically handled is far too cheap and easy. It going to take more than one scandal.

There, as in the here and now, the "Golden Rule" applies: "Those with the gold make the rules." The rich powerful person/company has the resources to make the scandal - and anyone making too much noise about it - "vanish".

I fully agree. Any dystopia's end is going to take major work and the period immediately afterwards is going to be unstable and fraught with danger. A couple of "Truth broadcasts" and demolished buildings and "peace reigns before tea time" does not cut it.

It's hard to see how a Cyberpunk dystopia could do anything but degenerate further into anarchy of the realistic sort (as opposed to the "humans are basically nice and will all get along fine without rules" sort) without some one exerting a universal order to bring Corps, Netrunners Street Trash and Edgerunners alike into line. Sure, you can topple the power-base of a few Corps, but all of them? So maybe you target the biggest and most corrupt. What then happens in the streets? Especially when all those Edgerunners lose the very Corps that manufacture their cyberware? It'd become more like the Post Apocalyptic dystopias where people are warring over scrap metal and functioning cyberware because the manufacturers would be gone or the smaller Corps that were scarcely able to compete with the giants would rise up to fill the demand and in so doing probably become just as corrupt as the giants were.

To end an Anarchy dystopia you need to enforce a regime, to end a Dictatorship dystopia you need to topple a regime.

Re: How to end a dystopia...

Well the trick is waiting until it's ready to fall. Usually that's when the old guard who first established it are well in their grave' date=' and the successing regime has lost cohesion and the financial viability to keep their troops paid. But the typical Cyberpunk RPG dystopia is not a totalitarian regime in the first place. It is, if anything anarchic but not the nice "we all just get along together and reasonably work out our issues" kind of anarchy. The companies themselves maintain a nigh-totalitarian hold on their actual property but they let the world outside their property go to heck.[/quote']

I'd agree with that. It is not a dictatorship of the Mao Tse Tung/Josef Stalin type where the troops are loyal to a central body. It's a bunch of often-competing businesses who only agree with each other when it comes to lobbying for mutually beneficial legislation (i.e. they'll work together to get a bill that allows them to sack a person on basis of any trumped up excuse because that's in their own best interests) but Duchess Industries is not going to send out their troops to help Arasaka (to mix universes a trifle...) because frankly, it's not their problem.

 

The fall of a Cyberpunk dystopia would be different to that of a Dictatorship dystopia.

Re: How to end a dystopia...

Dystopias and dictatorships always fall - many that were have already fallen; all those that currently are, will fall. Sooner or later the people at or near "the bottom" decide they've had enough abd the result is often bloody revolution - not always, but often.

I have ideas that the cyberpunk world I set my campaigns in will eventually fall to blood and fire - netrunners, edgerunners and street scum alike will rise up and bring the megacorps to their knees, expect to see guys in Armani suits kicking on the end of a rope flung over the nearest street lamp. Corporate security may or may not be effective ("how much did you say we were paying our guards?") and electronic security isn't worth a cup of cold snot if your mainframe's been breached and the "rabble" now controls all your doors.

"Agent of Chaos" by Norman Spinrad is an excellent story of the fall of a dystopic regime and promotes the idea of "Social Entropy" as the reason - the more Draconian the regime, the more energy is required to maintain it. Eventually, the system gets to the point that The Powers That Be can no longer afford to maintain control - because it is a "closed system" with no more "energy" (money, manpower, resources) coming in from "outside".

Opening up new avenues (interstallar travel, asteroid mining) may well serve to extend the dystopia as TPTB (corps, Supreme Lord and Dictator, whoever) will have a new source of "energy" to bolster the flagging resouces "at home" or it may cripple it by suddenly increasing the area over which the requisite level of control must be applied ("WTF! It costs how much to send troops to Io?")

I also try to factor in Niven's Law (f*s=k or "the product of freedom and security is a constant") - improve either to the detriment of the other. OK, the "constant" varies from regime to regime but for any given regime, if you increase people's security, you're going to take away their freedoms (like the "Patriot Act") if you increase their freedom you'll make them "free to be mugged, raped and murdered on the street-corner of their choice", an entirely different sort of dystopia.

When the dystopia falls, what takes its place? Is it any better than what was before? Are the people any more free or have they merely changed masters? Were the French truly any better under the "Glorious Republic" and "Madame la Guillotine" than they were under the King and "les Aristos"? Were the Russians truly any worse off under the hereditary Czar than they were under the self-appointed Czars that replaced him?

So the down-trodden (or at least, those who perceive themselves to be down-trodden) will rise up to smite [those they believe to be] their oppressors, "streets will run red" etc and there will be a power vaccuum and a period of confusion while everyone gets sorted out and there will be a new regime - which may or may not be more benevolent than the previous. In the interim, there will probably be a lot of bloodshed in the wake of the revolution - competing factions, general lawlessness etc.

Re: Cyberpunk / Dystopian Adventure Formulas

A heavy part of any dystopian world is that any adventure can' date=' and almost inevitably does, have at least one layer of frame-up/double-cross on top of it. I can recall playing a Shadowrun adventure that had three levels that we the PCs figured out, and I had suspicions of at least one more.[/quote']

"False flags" are a good one - the "goodies" turn out to be "baddies" and vice versa because the hirers lied to the group - one I did which was apparently a simple "Industrial Espionage" matter ("stop these #$@$s spying on us") was really the Mafia being "spied on" the Feds...

 

Great thread, BTW.