Printable Version of Topic

Click here to view this topic in its original format

Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Show Me The Money

Posted by: gh0st.walk3r May 20 2006, 11:10 AM

This is essentially the same question from both sides of the GM screen

GM's - How much would you say that you averagely pay you runners per person for their role in the mission? Do you give them the opportunity to negotiate? Do you give opportunity to make more money on the run (paydata, fencing gear, etc)? What do you give to your characters in terms of payment (NuYen, Stocks & Shares, Equipment, Precious Metals, Information, favours?), whats the most you would consider paying for a mission?

Players - How much do you make for a run? Is it enough? Do you have a means of making money outside of runs? Do you make use of external sources of income? Do you specifically ask for payment in a form other than Nuyen? What is the most money you've ever made in a run?

Phew... thats a lot of questions, enjoy peeps

Posted by: WyldKarde May 20 2006, 02:04 PM

As a player I'd say my GM pays pretty well, but he makes sure the risk level warrants the wage packet. Our single highest paying run so far netted a cool 800k split between the six of us, but that was an out of town job that pit us against the local freedom fightets (lead by a dragon, no less) and some heavy interest from MCT.
Still, we finished the contract early and most of us got the rest of the allotted time as an expenses paid vacation.

Posted by: mfb May 20 2006, 02:13 PM

my main character gets paid... really, really well. then again, he ran the Arc and--street legend says, anyway--took on a secret Ares military base somewhere in the Rockies. he's done a lot of very tough jobs, and done them well; he expects to get paid accordingly. my other characters, i try to keep hungry. they don't get paid nearly as much--just enough to get by.

most of the characters i GM for are pretty comfortable. i try, whenever i can, to screw the hell out of 'em, and make sure the run costs them more than they're getting paid. i feel it gives the game some bite if the characters get hurt, whether it's physically, emotionally, or financially. on tabletop games, i'm slightly less inclined to stick it to 'em, because i control their entire lives anyway. on Shadowland, i don't, so i take that as an excuse to pull out the stops.

Posted by: mmu1 May 20 2006, 05:54 PM

I've got two characters right now, and they both started off at around 10K per run, and the most they got paid was... IIRC, about 50-60K for a run, so far.

They also do jobs fairly frequently (which often results in extra pay, for doing the work on a tight schedule) - one of them made something on the order of 150K in a month (after expenses).

They're both cyber-heavy charcters, so in each case, it's clearly more than enough to live very comfortably, but not nearly enough for any kind of major upgrade of the key cyber for each of them (wired reflexes in one case, skillwires in the other)

Which leaves them hungry enough to still look for bigger and better jobs.

One of the two - a B&E and tech specialist and occasional assassin - could easily make extra money by turning cat burglar, doing legitimate or quasi-legitimate freelance security system work (he's got Electronics and Electronics B/R at 8, a Talented (Electronics) edge, Computers at 7, and five more Security-related knowledge skills in the 6-8 range), or do small-scale computer crime for extra cash (he's a more than competent decker), but he actually values his free time and the chance to decompress after a series of tough jobs more.

The other one's just a very well-rounded street sam - he could definitely get a job somewhere that'd not involve running the shadows (good charisma and people skills, decent technical skills) but doesn't really have any highly specialized skill sets that'd let him make easy money on the side.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin May 22 2006, 12:17 AM

QUOTE (gh0st.walk3r)

As a GM I try to keep payments as low as possible because if you pay the PCs too much they accumulate huge amounts of money and become really powerful as they buy all the broken equipment out of Man and Machine.

One thing I do is always pay per character. That really simplifies things if someone can't make it for a few sessions.

My answer, beyond that, is to pay the PCs as little as is believable. Obviously no one is going to assault a military base for only 500 nuyen, but that dosen't mean you have to go and pay 100,000 for the deed per person either.

One way you could think about it is what the Johnson would want to pay. Let's say that there's a party of 6 characters. The Johnson will end up paying whatever he is promising multiplied by 6. Think for a moment if that price tag is worth it. If the total amount he is paying out is greater than the job is worth it he will simply pay less. For example, let's say the Johnson is hiring a party of 6 to kidnap a talented researcher from a rival company. If he pays each character 10,000 nuyen he'll be paying out a total of 60,000 nuyen to possibly acquire the researcher. Is that worth it? Possibly. That's the way I'd look at it.

Posted by: Vaevictis May 22 2006, 12:47 AM

Our pay is highly variable, dependant on the difficulty of the run. Our characters won't do a run for less than 10,000 per runner as it's simply not worth our time to do so. It makes more sense to spend that time initiating, upgrading 'ware, training, etc.

We've made as much as 150,000 per runner on a run, but those were obnoxiously difficult runs and surving those involved as much luck as skill.

Unfortunately, for my character -- a mage -- nuyen doesn't matter so much. Getting paid 150k for a run is nice, but as far as character advancement, is meaningless when you're lucky to get 4 karma on the run.

Posted by: BnF95 May 22 2006, 03:40 AM

QUOTE (gh0st.walk3r)

As a GM, I tend to scale the pay depending on the Johnson's perceived difficulty of the run.

I've had games where Mr. Johnson hires the runners to B&E into Aztechnology Pyramid, retrieve an unwilling subject, retrieve some files (different area), and destroy a prototype AVM. I figured (as the Johnson) that this would be a horrendously difficult job, requiring about 6 runners (2 deckers: 1 on the outside silencing alarms in the building, 1 inside retrieving the file; 2 shaman/mage: Azzies tend to go magic high; 1 B&E Specialist; 1 Gun-Bunny: just in case). Now to the Johnson, if the Azzie AVM doesn't go on the market, Ares (for whom Johnson works) gets to corner the AVM market. This is worth a lot of cash ... 500K

sounded reasonable.

The initial offer was for 300K

, which the PCs negotiated up to 420K

. And then the PCs came up with this totally insane idea that was not in anything I had planned. They spent time researching the target, including his liking for "joygirls" which they took advantage off in their planning.

First off, they got another group of PCs (my group is large and tends to break down into 2-3 different games running over at my house as I am the only one who is single and has a house.) which contained a really high-charisma Face to pretend to be a "joygirl". This team got paid 50K to get the subject.

They then copied his retina and fingerprints, put them on their B&E specialist and sent him disguised to look like the subject. No fuss, he went in, planted some explosives on the AVM prototype, copied the file, replaced the original with some crap, walked out.

Easiest 450K my group ever got. But I had thought they would have gone in guns blazing (their normal MO). Goes to show ... plan the run, then watch the PCs turn your plan into mush.

Posted by: Kagetenshi May 22 2006, 03:44 AM

And that right there is the perfect example of why it's best to plan security setups, not countermeasures against the players.

(Note: I'm not saying that what they did shouldn't have worked—I don't know enough about it to say that, and what you've said thus far sounds like it should have had a shot. However, there are a number of security practices that can provide roadblocks to that that wouldn't get thought of if the security is designed around "prevent heavily-armed runner team from blasting their way in" alone.)

~J

Posted by: James McMurray May 22 2006, 03:57 AM

Pay always depends on the run in our group, not on the number of players at the session. We've worked for anything from 10K total between 3 characters and 1,000,000 between 4 characters (I wasn't there for that one, it was before I met these guys).

Posted by: Tiralee May 22 2006, 07:52 AM

Hmm, I tend to pay "high" with my players (most are, if not newbs, inexperienced) and go with Cash-for-karma.

This tends to addict them to the "OMFG, if I fork out 300k, I'll have total L33tness in pistols, SheesYEAH!!" This makes them hungry, hungry, hungry players.
Then you throw in things like contact upkeep, rent, resupply and the costs of keeping your head attached to your hide and they will burn through a 20-50k paycheck (per person, excluding loot) quickly. Very very quickly.
Add to this time spent "away" so you can let the heat die off (I've got a sliding scale somewhere, for decreased TN's for NPC's looking for players versus time spent off) Street-rep cuts both ways, friend.

Loot is another thing though - I quickly dissuaded them from stripping the bodies and selling all they could carry.

Some points with looting, which have saved my ass-
Adding spoiler in case you want to ignore.

[ Spoiler ]

-that's me done.

Tir.

Posted by: SL James May 22 2006, 07:58 AM

QUOTE (mfb)

And then there's the really double super-secret mission that "never happened."

Posted by: James McMurray May 22 2006, 06:17 PM

Isn't that what they all are ideally?

Posted by: mfb May 22 2006, 06:23 PM

this one really never happened. he's going on a second run, right now, to make damn good and sure it never happened. his payment for the second run is the knowledge that no one else knows what he knows.

Posted by: James McMurray May 22 2006, 06:31 PM

Some sort of temporal anomaly, or memory manipulation to make someone think something happened that didn't?

If it isn't giving too much away I'd love the details. It sounjds just off the wall enough to mess with my groups' heads.

Posted by: mfb May 22 2006, 06:44 PM

memory manipulation. the reason that the original job never happened is that everyone involved, except the Johnson, was voluntarily dosed with Laes afterwards. during the fallout, the Johnson was arrested for charges related to the job. my character has the next best thing to a photographic memory. he saw the Johnson on the news and recognized her face, but couldn't remember ever seeing her before. with that evidence, he put together what the job must have been, and realized that if anyone managed to interrogate the Johnson about it, his life would be over. my char doesn't remember anything about the job, but there's no way anyone would be satisfied with that--they'd hunt him down and interrogate him to death, just be sure.

so my character is now sneaking into the Renraku Arcology a week after the Crash 2.0 in order to rescue the Johnson and either kill her or make sure no one else can capture her.

Posted by: SL James May 23 2006, 01:17 AM

The Arcology, full of neat little toys like smaller, faster invisible Medusae.

Posted by: James McMurray May 23 2006, 03:18 AM

Cool. Consider it swiped and shelved for a later date.

Posted by: SL James May 23 2006, 02:58 PM

If you're really interested, most of the game is up on SL for anyone to read. However, a full appreciation of the circumstances requires reading other posts and fiction spread throughout the SR and RL areas (if they're even still up). This has been two years in the making.