My friend Raven and I were recently driving through West Philadelphia on a Sunday afternoon when she noticed a truck for a repossession service hauling off somebody’s couch. She first commented that it must suck to have your couch dragged off on a Sunday, the day you’re most likely to be lounging around on it reading the paper or watching bad 80s movies on cable. She then followed up with an idea that I personally never in a billion years would have thought of myself: Repo-Men as an alternate campaign concept in Shadowrun.

As far as alternate campaign ideas go, it’s probably the best I’ve heard to date. For those of you who pay their bills on time and have never seen the Emilio Estevez movie, here’s a little info on what a repo-man (or woman) does: Basically, when you don’t make your payments on your car or rented furniture or office equipment or boat or whatever, repo-men are the individuals that sneak into your driveway or acquire a court order to enter your home and take it back.

The Shadowrun world provides for many variations on this theme. Here’s a few:

Software - Ok, so a corporation decides to purchase an extremely expensive graphics software package designed to create complicated matrix constructs. They organize a deal that allows them to take delivery on the software immediately, but pay for it over the course of a year. The corp receives the package, installs it in their system - and then doesn’t pay their bills.

Now, in a situation such as this the runners wouldn’t really be repossessing the software, instead they’d most likely be wiping it off the corporation’s computer. But this isn’t just a straight matrix run: somewhere in a corporate building sits the box containing the chips that the software originally arrived on. In order to complete the job the runners would have to wipe the software off of the company’s computers as well as taking back or destroying the software package itself. They might also have to clean out any illegal copies of the ware as well as bringing back proof that the software has been eradicated.

People - In Shadowrun, people (particularly corporate researchers and developers) are treated merely as a commodity, something to be bought and traded and sold. If corporation A ‘buys’ a scientist off of corporation B, and then doesn’t pay their bills, runners may be hired to snag him or her back , a variation of the classic extraction run - only this time it’s completely legal because no kidnapping was involved.

Magical Goods - Mr. Mage has purchased an extremely powerful focus (or spell tome, etc.), but has skipped out on his payments. The runners gotta get it back.

Cyber/body Ware - Joe Runner has purchased a wired reflexes system and seems to have lost the funding to keep up the payments. This could get messy. Just remember that there’s two (probably more) conditions under which this repossession could take place. If the ware was legal or licensed, and a contract existed, the runners may have all legal rights to get the ware back. However, this doesn’t mean they can just rip it out of the buyer and leave him or her for dead. The individuals hiring the runners might have the necessary legal clearance to get the ware back, but this does not mean that they can kill the buyer in the process. The runners will have to find a way to get the target into a clinic so the ware can be safely removed.

Of course, if the ware wasn’t legal, the runners may be able to use a hunting knife and soldering iron in order to reclaim the goods.

Ideas - A corporation or individual may have purchased the right to use a patented idea, but refused to continue paying royalties. The runners may have to wipe info about the project off a computer, destroy blueprints, and eliminate prototypes using the technology.

Legal Actions - In many instances, the runners may be acting completely within the bounds of legality when they take something back. As long as the transaction was contracted, and involved legal goods, it is likely that the corporation hiring the runners has gone through whatever legal procedure necessary to get warrants and permits allowing them to legally reclaim their goods. It might be a nice change of pace for the runners.

Pre-repossession - Sometimes the runners’ employer may ask that they give the target a subtle (or not so subtle) talking to before they commence with repossession procedures. Most employers would probably like to see the money much more that they want the runners to drop off a bloody mass of extracted wired reflexes.

The repossession concept is broad enough as to not limit the types of archetypes a group contains, yet limited enough to give the GM a solid foundation for building runs. It sure beats riding around as Doc Wagon techs.