A little story:

It began as a simple run. The characters were new, so I decided to give them an easy one: A simple kidnapping. The location was a nightclub, large and lightly patrolled. The target was the MC of an small trid awards ceremony. In order to add some spice, and to introduce the new characters to a more aggressive form of gamemastering, I introduced into the scenario a group of runners who were far better trained and equipped than the PCs and who had the same target. I won't go into the details but, by the time it was over, the NPCs had the target, and the PCs had one of the NPC team's members.

Ok, it wasn't quite over. The PCs knew their Johnson wasn't going to give them drek for kidnapping a low level mage when what he really wanted was Mr. Kepler, a high level trideo producer. To save time, I had the NPCs contact the PCs and arrange a trade.

Perhaps I should go into some detail regarding the NPC team. First of all, they were good. Real good. Dimples is a female elf street sam, brutal and intelligent. Cheetah is a female human cheetah shapechanger, quick and deadly. Liver is a grade A decker. And Diocese, the captured mage, well....of all the people they could have snagged. Diocese was new to the group and hadn't yet built a very strong connection with them. She does too many drugs and is always a little bit out of it, in sharp contrast to the rest of the group's efficient nature. They were thinking of ditching her anyway, which didn't help the PCs position at all.

Now for a little info on the PC group. Ok, well, it wasn't quite a group. It was two people, a sammy and an ex-bodyguard, both of whom had rolled into town the night before and, out of sheer luck, managed to hook up with this run. They knew nobody, lived in a small, crappy apartment, and were terribly under experienced.

Back to the NPC's group. They'd been running for years and had a complex web of connections and safehouses. They took the kidnapping run because they were bored, a simple ten grand payment being a drop in the bucket as far as finances were concerned. They were fully prepared to simply hand Mr.Kepler over to the PCs, but wanted to make them sweat a little bit first.

The meet took place at a shadowrunner club known, simply, as The Underground. While one PC guarded the captured NPC outside in a van, the other entered through an upper class club, traversed several back hallways, numerous staircases, and a half dozen bouncers to whom he had to drop Dimples' name in order to get past. I made it very apparent that Dimples and her group were very well known here. This became more obvious when the PC finally got to the Underground and spotted Dimples and her group seated at the best table in the club, with numerous other runners eyeing the PC's actions to make sure he didn't try anything. Thus began the negotiations.

Dimples asked for the return of her group member as well as ten grand, an amount of money which would have made the run profitless to the PC. The PC refused the offer. Dimples stated that this was the only offer she was going to provide. The PC still refused.

Please allow me clarify a few points. Number one: this was the NPC's first run in a new city. If he, and his "group", succeeded then more runs would follow. If they failed, they would probably have to locate a new Johnson. Number two: the PCs are NOBODIES. They have no power in their new town. They have no reputation. In short, if they simply vanished off the face of the earth nobody would really care. Number three: The PC involved in the negotiations had, to his discredit, written up a character who didn't believe in negotiation, never yielded, and never knuckled under. To continue:

The negotiations lasted, in game and real time, for two hours, during which time the PC refused to budge when Dimples A: Threatened to have her decker forward the surveillance footage of the kidnapping, with Dimples and her group edited out of course, to the police. B: Explained to PC runner that, even if he made no money, completing a run would build his reputation. C: Informed the PC that she had the power to squash him like a bug. It ended with the PC breaking off negotiations and leaving the club.

Actually it ended when one of Dimple's buddies blew a six inch hole through the PC's chest as he walked out the front door.

This was the first time I outright executed a PC. But I can't say I feel the least bit bad about it. Why? Picture this: Two people enter a gun fight, one armed with a Panther assault cannon and wearing military armor and the other armed with a Streetline and wearing only boxer shorts. What the PC did was the equivalent of taking his Streetline and ordering the Panther wielder to drop his weapon. The Panther person would have blown him away simply for being an idiot, which is exactly what Dimples did.

I'm sure at least a few readers are thinking, "Well, if the PC was faster and stronger then he could have survived." All I have to say to that is: Wake the fuck up. There will ALWAYS be somebody faster and better then a PC. The GM should see to that. As a PC develops the number of people better than him lessens, but never quite goes away. Too many gamemasters allow PCs to waltz around with a high and mighty attitude, living out the lives of flawed characters who's attitudes and actions are going to eventually get them killed. This is really messed up. If anything's going to kill a PC it should be a situation which pushed their skills to the limit and, unfortunately, over the edge. A character should never die because they're a screw up. And that's exactly what the PC in my example was: A screw up. He was in no position to do what he did and he paid the ultimate price for his actions. Dimples was trying to be nice, she was trying to teach him a lesson, a lesson on the value of knowing when to give in to a superior force. The PC insulted her by being such a moron and presented himself as a disgrace to the shadowrunning profession. Ego played into it too, but ego COULD play into it because, let's face it, she had the right to have one. She'd been running for years, having built herself up from absolutely nothing into a respected professional. Why should she have to put up with crap from some idiotic newbie? Sure, she could have let him slide but his unwillingness to change would have eventually put him in a grave anyway. By having Dimples waste the PC I simply saved time.

So what, exactly, am I trying to say? Simple. A runner has to know when to yield and know when to stand strong. They have to juggle the pluses and minuses of everything so, even though setbacks may arise, the runner always comes out in the end. They then move forward, slowly at first, but more rapidly as time passes until, eventually, they reach the point that they have a good rep, some nice friends, and their own table at a nifty nightclub. Only then can they tell everybody to go to hell. But, by this time, they would have earned the privilege.