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Posted by: Zen Shooter01 Jun 3 2008, 02:19 PM

There seems to be an impression that shadowrunners are poor - It was expressed recently in the fat shadowrunners thread. It doesn't make any sense for shadowrunners to be poor.

Some GMs play with a point disparity, where the PCs are 400 point characters, and the average NPC has fewer points. Other GMs don't. In either case, your typical shadowrunner has a very valuable skill set that's in high demand in their industry. A rigger right out of character creation can typically drive a tractor trailer at full speed through a blizzard - that kind of skill commands high prices. The typical street samurai can expect to kill gangers at a three or four to one ratio. Your typical face can talk your average person into just about anything. Hackers straight out of character creation have such ability one wonders why they shadowrun at all, why not make a comfortable living shoplifting? And magicians - their powers are so rare and so essential, there's no question of them making a living.

The definition of "a living" varies. It might be a three bedroom condo in Pasadena, or it might be a high rank in an influential street gang. But with their exceptional abilities, the idea that shadowrunners are clipping cupons and eating off the 1 nuyen menu doesn't stand up.

The downside of being a shadowrunner is that it's extremely dangerous, and things like new fake IDs and shadowrunning gear cut deeply into the budget. Also, the reality of being in hiding all your life changes your living conditions. But still, it would only be shadowrunners with drug problems or similar who are stone broke all the time.

Posted by: Shiloh Jun 3 2008, 02:31 PM

Mostly I agree with you. One further factor though is that Shadowrunners are going to be a peer group that selects, at least initially, the screwups who can't or won't fit into the niche their skillset would traditionally put them in. There will be more 'runners with poor impulse control who are permanently hocking their gear that they bought, forgetting that they needed to buy food, or gambling/drinking/partying/giving away (relatively) massive fortunes - your average 'Runner is hardly risk-averse.

Posted by: coolgrafix Jun 3 2008, 02:49 PM

Starting runners ARE poor. Period. Per character creation. There. =)

Posted by: coolgrafix Jun 3 2008, 02:52 PM

Plus... they're scum. At least in the eyes of those who would employ them.

Posted by: Blade Jun 3 2008, 02:58 PM

Actually it all comes down to the way the GM considers things.

For example you can consider that there is a huge barrier between the have and the have-not. If you don't have a legit SIN you can't get anything and a fake SIN, even a very good one, never last for long. The only way to get a SIN if your parents are SINless is to be valuable to the corp. The only way to survive and get experienced enough when you're SINless is crime. Problem is, when you get experienced enough to be able to apply for a SIN, you're too burned-out/unstable/individualist/weird to be a good citizen (or to accept to become one). And since you can't get any better offer for your skills than shadowruning, the Johnson can lower the price to something just above what you'd get from normal criminality (this setting implies that you can't easily get money by stealing car or any other criminal activity for one reason (paranoid society with a lot of security devices) or another (organized crime controlling the market). This setting also implies that runners need corps more than corps need them (i.e there are much more runners teams available than runs).

Another way to handle it would be to consider that runners live for the moment. They might be dead tomorrow, and they'll probably be dead in a few years. So when they get paid, they spend all the money in a gigantic party, live in luxury for one month, live in a middle lifestyle for a few weeks, then get back to their squatter lifestyle, see their fridge getting empty and finally decide to call their fixers.

Posted by: Rotbart van Dainig Jun 3 2008, 03:11 PM

Nope. After the second crash, pretty much everyone wanting a SIN was issued one. That's why the Redmond Barrens are now a real bad place and there is the ACHE.

Posted by: Shiloh Jun 3 2008, 03:56 PM

*Some* starting 'Runners are cash-poor. Others have half a year's middle lifestyle bought and paid for. Most Runners start with a lot of assets. Some of those are easily liquidated, others are a measure of wealth. Yeah, some 'Runners spend hardly any BP on cash and start poor. Others, not so much.

Like was said in the "how much to pay" thread: money supply is one way to get your characters 'Running. There are other reasons.

Posted by: Cantankerous Jun 3 2008, 04:02 PM

Runners might have infinite reasons for why they are Runners. I think that very few say "I wanted to be a Shadowrunner when I grew up, so here I am."

Most of these people are in the Shadows out of need (someone in the straight world wants them dead and if they stay in the straight world, they will be too easy to find and eliminate) or their own desires (the Neo_anarchist cause must LIVE!!!) or some combination of the two that makes it impossible for them to be simple folk.

My groups are usually poor as church mice, some out of inclination, some out of charity, some out of paranoia. There is only one guy who sticks out of this mold in the present bunch... Captain C-Bucks, but that is only because he got in to Shadowrun over a bastardized version of the game that evolved from D&D and then D20 Modern and thence to the Shadowrun system with the old backdrop and only now finally to the grim and gritty world of Shadowrun as it really stands.

If you see ol' C-Bucks posting on the forums here, ask him about how his Elven Faceman liked having to worry about who was picking up the tab at the Nuk-It Burger where he was discussing the first joint run he was doing with his new group.


Isshia

Posted by: PlatonicPimp Jun 3 2008, 04:03 PM

Are runners poor in the sense that they are broke? No.

Are they lower class? Probably. It's a social thing, not a money thing. There is often a culture of poverty, which is related to but independant of the actual wealth of an individual. This is why most lotto winners blow through their money and wind up in debt for more. The dichotomy between being rich but low class was the source of the humor in "Beverly hillbillies".

Anyway, from a cultural perspective, runners are usually "poor."

Posted by: Eryk the Red Jun 3 2008, 04:09 PM

Shadowrunners are poor if that's the style of game you play. Shadowrunners can just as easily be rich. This setting is not so limited that those two ideas are mutually exclusive.

Posted by: Siege Jun 3 2008, 04:38 PM

Although, given the career choice, runners are more likely to be living paycheck to paycheck.

Not always, but usually.

-Siege

Posted by: Pendaric Jun 3 2008, 05:50 PM

Unfortunatly the SR world economics are built on game balance rather than realistic economic drives. To a degree, each edition has redressed the gap between buying a hightech do dad to living a month at high life style.
This flaw means however that the reality vs the world theme conflicts.
Fixing it and making it fun is part of the charm.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 3 2008, 07:37 PM

Are you serious!? That's nuts!

If I won a large cash payout in the lottery, first I'd change it all into singles, and then I'd roll around in the money in my underwear. After I got tired of doing that I guess I'd set aside half to live on for now, and I'd put the other half in a mutual fund or T Bills or something else that's low risk. I couldn't imagine blowing it all and then once blowing it just randomly deciding to borrow money for no apparent reason.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Jun 3 2008, 08:11 PM

Surely you must be sarcastic. Lottery winners are notorious for spending their money poorly... I'm not sure if they always end up in debt but they certainly don't end up on Forbes Richest Bastards List 20XX.

Or for that matter any person who comes into a lot of money very quickly, musicians being the class that leaps to mind. Granted they've gotten better as I think the record companies have figured out that assigning up and coming talent a financial counselor is probably a good investment.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 3 2008, 10:08 PM

I honestly didn't know that. I mean, I never thought about it, and it hadn't occurred to me.

Posted by: PlatonicPimp Jun 3 2008, 10:28 PM

Yup. what happens to lotto winners is they think "Who-ee, I'm rich!" And they go on spending sprees. At the same time, banks and card companies extend them all kinds of credit. They use those cards on their spending sprees, and then wind up blowing the lotto money repaying those cards, and usually still wind up greatly in debt.

Meanwhile I know people who live quite well on 4000 a year. People who own land outright. It's about how you manage your money.

Also, as noted above, very few smart people win the lotto, because very few smart people PLAY the lotto. If you had the math skills to wisely manage the money, chances are you didn't waste any money on a ticket in the first place.

Conversely, think of how many rich people declare bankruptcy at some point. They rarely stop being "rich" just because they are broke. Trump himself has been bankrupt like 4 times in his life.

So, do shadowrunners have and go through a lot of money? sure. Are they poor? depends on the runner, but most probably are.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Jun 3 2008, 10:58 PM

Oops

Didn't mean to be such a dick about it but yeah: People Who Aren't Used to Big Money+Big Money=People Who Spend It Like It's Cool.

In the example you gave, they never really get past the "I roll around in a 20 ft tall stack of bills" stage. I've also heard them complain that their friends and family start using them as a bank (as in pulling out loans not investing cash) and so on and so forth. People do beat the odds of course.

On the rich runner/poor runner front I think most runners are poor, mostly because the vast bulk of runners aren't getting those 20k+ a pop jobs. I also think they could be roughly split into "Rank Amateurs" and "Professional Runners". Professional runners are probably smart enough to manage their money, invest, and live within their means. Amateur runners are that guy who was in the UCAS Army for 3 weeks, loves guns, and thinks that qualifies him to run around shooting people for a living. You drop 15k in his lap and he'll be hitting all the highclass "Shadow Bars", picking up vast tabs, and living the good life.

For like a week, than he's back in the gutter with a bad hangover and one of those sentient STDs.

Posted by: shuya Jun 4 2008, 04:29 AM

this is exactly the situation i see most runners in.

i'm college educated and i could be in grad school or pulling down five or six figures a year, easy

instead i became so disillusioned with contemporary society that i joined an anarcho-syndicalist community in rural middle america. i make the equivalent of less than 700 dollars a month, 80% of which i don't even see because it pays for food and housing.

not everybody is poor because they have to be, and it's not at all unrealistic for people to choose to be so, is what i'm trying to say there's more to life than

Posted by: Siege Jun 4 2008, 12:23 PM

Trust me on this one - a college education is not a guarantee of a job.

-Siege

Posted by: bishop186 Jun 4 2008, 12:46 PM

Perhaps not, but with the skills exercised by Shadowrunners, who usually have a professional skill set (that is, post-college with some experience in their belt) or three, should have no problem finding a job. A college education may not be a guarantee but a college education and a few years' worth of experience may be nearly a shoo-in.

Posted by: shuya Jun 4 2008, 01:44 PM

it is when you spent college learning to speak 10 or so languages, a couple of which the US gov't will pay you quite lucratively for knowing (and all you have to give up is your morals!)

Posted by: PlatonicPimp Jun 4 2008, 02:02 PM

Honestly, I got better job offers and more job security right out of college than I did once I had a few years under my belt. My wages have steadily fell from their height right out of college. Each time I get laid off it becomes harder to find work in my feild. In fact, my current job isn't even in my area of study. Trust me, NOTHING makes you a shoo-in.

Posted by: Zen Shooter01 Jun 4 2008, 02:03 PM

How are we defining shadowrunner?

If living in the shadows makes you a shadowrunner, then the guy with the engineering degree who dropped out of straight society for ethical and idealistic reasons and now helps maintain an anarchist syndicate in rural Ohio is a shadowrunner. The paramedic who does off-the-books work is a shadowrunner. But if "shadowrunner" means professional mercenary specializing in breaking and entering, wetwork and kidnapping, then I think the minority are straight world drop-outs. You didn't get Hacking 5 and a 4/4 illegal software dealer contact when you were working as a middle manager at a staffing agency. You didn't get ceramic bones and Karate pool 11 when you were an English teacher.

Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jun 4 2008, 02:03 PM

I've met one good argument for playing lotto from someone who was sort of middle management salary, double income family with 3 kids. His theory was that the cost of his weekly lotto ticket was pretty much less than what he spent on lunch and didn't have a meaningful impact on his bottom line, but if he won it would change his life forever. So he brought a monthly ticket in the 'state' lottery every month. Won a couple of grand but thats about it really.

But thats not a terrible reason, though I don't play the lottery. I also have less money, so its a more significant percentage of my weekly income. But if I was on 200k a year gross, I could see it.

In other news it is totally moronic for shadowrunners to be poor. Particularly the awakened ones. Are you seriously telling me that unless you were totally dysfunctional you couldn't find some major corp to give you a sin, a high lifestyle and a job that doesn't involve being shot at regularly if you have magic 6?

Really?

Given that shadowrunners have to be totally dysfunctional, mundane, or reasonably rich.

Posted by: PlatonicPimp Jun 4 2008, 02:09 PM

Awakened, however, have the greatest chance to BE dysfunctional, from a corp perspective. Those with mentor spirits especially frequently have personal agendas that go against corporate interests. I doubt Bear is going to be OK with it when they find out their corp employs halberstam. Praerie dog isn't going to handle it so well when their job requires travel away from their community. Dragonslayer is right out-the corp fits the "abstract" definition of dragon too well. Even mentor-free awakened tend to be... eccentric. Now, the HR department does bend over backwards to accomodate mages, because the corps need them, but there are many things that they simply cannot work with. Not to mention that most corp facilities have a background count of 1 from sheer mundanity.

Posted by: Blade Jun 4 2008, 02:21 PM

Awakened are rare, but not that rare.
Keep in mind that there are about 1 doctor per 1000 inhabitant in the world. (Closer to 2/1000 in "developed countries") and you'll still find doctors who lose their licenses for one reason or another and can't get any legitimate work in their field, so I guess it could be the same with mages.

Posted by: Juca Bala Jun 4 2008, 04:10 PM

Well, they are rich, well, at least the ones that come to be well know or, at least, the ones that survive the firsts months. Shadowrunning is risky business and is all about being extremelly professional in some fields (yes, 6 in firearms IS an expert). At least in my game world, shadowrunning is for the better ones out there. Yes, there are a multitude of guys that think that they are shadowrunners, the bad news is: They don't. They are just thugs with guns and thus are paid accordly. The characters in my game are very well paid to do things that require finesse, planning, resources (magical or whatnot), mad skill levels and, of course, involve a crappyload of danger.

Posted by: IQ Zero Jun 4 2008, 04:14 PM

In our games before, most runners were running in the red or borderline close to it. However, there are some exceptions to the rule. There were these 3 players that had their characters invest most of their monies in stocks, sometimes using their "insider" knowledge (gained on runs) to buy or sell through their stockbroker.

These started in 1st Ed and they had all decided to be SINners. That campaign arc ran from 2050 to 2060 (1st Ed - 3rd Ed), by the end of it, all three had good income from their stocks, which they used to diversify, the stocks were in the name of a company that they created that just owned stocks.

Later on, they retired and became NPCs, that we used for continuity until now. They are the current fixers to the PCs of my games.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Jun 4 2008, 11:42 PM

Bah! The military will always be there to employ your Creative Basket Weaving degree as an officer

Okay that's not entirely true but still...

Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jun 5 2008, 12:12 AM

Actually its higher than that in the developed world. It's higher than that in the US and Canada for cripes sake.

But anyway, the reason why doctors loose thiner licenses and cannot get another job is usually because they've violated their position of trust, and thats critical to the doctoring thing.

It is a lot less important for a mage doing warding for lone star. You just audit compliance (not hard) to remove the trust issue, and you're done. Who cares if the guy is completely bonkers in his spare time. If he has high magic and delivers on the job.

But really are you saying that all your mages are so nuts that they couldn't hold down a real job? If so, then fine, but surely that annoys the rest of the team when they never do anything they say and never show up on time.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Jun 5 2008, 02:28 AM

Given how uncomfortable magic makes non-magical types I'd think that a guy being bonkers would be an excellent reason for him to be denied credentially as an "accredited" magical user and be either drugged out of his mind in a psych ward or used for exciting "therapy" development in a corporate research facility.

I'm not sure how auditing will remove the trust issue. The ward is a creation of the mage and therefore he can bust through it whenever right? Without leaving behind a signature or setting off any alarms? You want to give a crazy person that kind of access? Wouldn't it be better to hire non-crazy people so you have worry about that less? We're uncomfortable giving crazy people guns and hiring them to the police, I think society will be very uncomfortable hiring people who can... kill people with their mind.

Also Australia's ratio of General Practioners to population is 1.1:1000. Granted, give their drop bear problem, I don't know if they qualify as a "developed nation". I can't find the statistics for the US right now. *Ducks for cover*

Posted by: PlatonicPimp Jun 5 2008, 03:23 AM

It's not "all mages are too crazy for work", It's "The number of mages with personalities the corporation find unacceptable is higher than the average for the population, even considering how far a corp will bend over to hire a mage." There's a world of difference there.

Posted by: Blade Jun 5 2008, 08:41 AM

Besides I'm not saying that mages can't hold a job, I'm saying that corps don't need mages badly enough to accept anything to get one. I think that most corps are always on the lookout of Awakened talents, but not in desperate need of them as it's often pictured.

Posted by: Siege Jun 5 2008, 09:43 AM

You know, I'd laugh if that wasn't so very true...

-Siege

Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jun 5 2008, 09:43 AM

So how many important facilities and corp offices in your game are protected by sec mages, and what is their casualty rate?

Posted by: Siege Jun 5 2008, 09:51 AM

Yes and no. My folks used to tell me about a glut of physics grads on the market in the 70's - too much supply and demand dwindles.

For runners, it boils down to three basic elements: Skill + Willingness + Opportunity.

Sure, you have the skills and the willingness to use those skills, but now the trick is making the connection with the right person who is willing to pay you for the skills and willingness.

This is really no different from anyone else in the job market - whether you're a chef or a ninja assassin. Although a better analogy might be pro basketball - plenty of kids want to be pro ballers (willingness). They spend hours playing (developing skills). Now, how the hell do you get on a team?

-Siege

Posted by: IQ Zero Jun 5 2008, 11:01 AM

Out of curiosity, while some shadowrunners are born poor, if one were to look at the various stories, its easy to see that some come from corp families and couldn't stand being constricted anymore. Others were hung out to dry. Still more were former mercs who found it better to sell their skills in the open market than to be corporate sheep.

If a runner gets (in SR4) about 5-10K per run, then go figure what the average corp sheep gets. Other than job security that is ... CorpSec guys probably earn about 5-10K a month, plus board and lodgings. So a good runner can maybe score 3 or 4 runs a month, call it 25K per month.

Of course, the wannabee's will probably end up on the slab.

Posted by: wind_in_the_stones Jun 7 2008, 05:47 AM

How many of these disenfranchised people with magic ability are trying to get rich? Many of them live lives that are whatever passes for normal to them, until the money runs out. Then they find work which pays the bills for another month. These are shadowrunners, and they're not living middle lifestyles.

Posted by: JonathanC Jun 7 2008, 06:45 AM

...in a good, functioning economy with a healthy middle class. Which doesn't even come close to describing Shadowrun in 2070. If Shadowrun was a game about the world we live in, or even the world we're likely to live in when it's 2070, then you'd be right. But they diverged from our world, and skills are only valuable if they're rare.

It used to be that having a college degree meant you pulled down a manager's salary. Nowadays, if you don't have a college degree, your ass can't even get a job in the freaking mailroom. I know people with Master's degrees who are unemployed, and who even when they *were* employed, were, at best, about middle class. Some people prefer to play as though their Shadowrunners are, at the start of the game, on top of the world. And that's alright for them. But the 2070 described in the book is essentially a world in which North America has become a collection of third-world countries, where you have the ridiculously rich, and everyone else who's either starving in the streets, on a wageslave treadmill, or risking their lives and dodging bullets for 5-10k a job, plus whatever else they can grab.

Add in the fact that most shadowrunners are people born outside of the system (no SINs), or people who opted out for some reason, and you can begin to see how the pay scale could be low enough to keep them "poor". If I'm going to spend real money on operatives, I can just hire well-trained, certified mercs, not some random assholes that I met through a friend of a friend of a friend who hangs out in dive bars in Seattle.

Posted by: Muspellsheimr Jun 7 2008, 07:11 AM

I would just like to say that I can guarantee not all Shadowrunners are poor. In my current game, my character has 400k in military-grade equipment, and thanks to Type-O, over 6mil worth of bioware, and 200k ready to be spent. One of the other characters has a permanent luxury lifestyle, and runs because he feels like it.

Of course, this is a slightly higher-powered game than usual (hacker had an additional 100 unrestricted Build Points, troll martial artist has 12 points of auto-soak armor...)

Posted by: JonathanC Jun 7 2008, 07:23 AM

Nobody is saying that runners *stay* poor. But if you weren't poor, why the hell would you start taking temp positions as an assassin/kidnapper/thief in a world where a freaking schoolgirl is likely packing a holdout pistol with AP bullets? You're either poor, or nuts, or both.

But yeah, assuming you survive long enough to get through a few jobs, you ought to have a decent nest egg, unless you're retarded or have a serious drug problem (novacoke is a helluva drug?).

Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jun 7 2008, 02:36 PM

Yeah, but the problem is a bachelors is 3 in a skill and a masters is 4. Shadowrunners start with 6 in an active skill, 4 in many others and knowledge skills in the 4-6 range. They can seriously be one of the top 1% of negiotators in the world at char gen, and thats something people will play the big money for.

Posted by: Cang Jun 7 2008, 03:09 PM

With a thought on history, i picture shadowrunners to be like pirates. Some of them, like Capt. Morgan, become rich and retire while others just spend through their money as fast as they an because they are A) outlaws B) people want to kill them C) for there job and safety always have to be on the move. Coupled with the fact that many runners come to be because their involvement in crime and thrill seeking makes them terrible money managers. Like it was said before if you think you are going to die soon, you like each day the most you can and don't really worry about tomorrow. Of course many players try to play their characters as safe as possible even if the character themselves would not.

Posted by: Blade Jun 7 2008, 03:51 PM

I've never thought of that, but it totally fits. I'd also like to add that a lot of pirates were proto-anarchists and lived in small lawless communities out of government's reach...

... And after all they had proto-cyberware!

Posted by: CanRay Jun 7 2008, 03:57 PM

And drugs!

Well, rum.

...

WHY IS THE RUM GONE AGAIN?

Posted by: NativeRigger Jun 7 2008, 04:19 PM

Don't forget the dillatantes.

In skydiving we see more than a few trust fund babies who do it because the risk is the one thing that thier essentially unlimited money can't cover. They are not suicidal, it's just a way to break out of the monotony of their "fortunate" birth. It's a way of adding contrast to their lives.

-NR

Posted by: Zak Jun 7 2008, 04:21 PM

Wasn't there this one rich guy in Prime Runners, who paid teams to take him on runs? Can't remember the name.

Posted by: CanRay Jun 7 2008, 04:23 PM

I remember hearing about a Football Playing Troll that played at being a 'Runner as well, right?

Posted by: Pendaric Jun 7 2008, 04:52 PM

The general theme is to pay just enough to keep your shadowrunners hungry for more work. However there comes a point where a team will make a profit. Despite the high running costs they need to pay towards keeping their edge so they dont die.
Eventually there will come a point where one of three things will happen. They will die. They will retire. They will realise that being a runner has changed them and now is a part of who they are.
Deckers have to deck. Sammies have to scrap etc to paraphrase Neuromancer.

Posted by: Siege Jun 7 2008, 08:35 PM

True, but hiring professional merc teams is expensive and raises the level of risk for all involved. Certified mercs are legal and will charge accordingly based on the nature of mission. As such, they may not be willing to risk a criminal act that, if caught, would cost them more than the potential paycheck.

Whereas mega-corps have departments dedicated to maintaining rosters of disposable talent - match the talent to the job, calculate chance of success based on prior job performance and dependability and send out one of your disposable asset managers to arrange the deal.

And really, the "typical" runner is hungry enough not to quibble on the same points a professional merc might. (For the same reasons security contractors hire third-world citizens with military experience versus, say, Americans for American military contracts in the Middle East.)

-Siege

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 8 2008, 05:15 AM

A friend told me that apparently lots of people of that description actually go to Alaska to see if they can "make it" in the "wilderness", to the point that the locals expect them to show up in general.

Apparently one of them was excruciatingly dumb and died of exposure in the process, and his family released a book about it and tried to pass him off as some kind of hero when he was really just someone completely divorced from all grasp of practical reality.

Posted by: Sir_Psycho Jun 8 2008, 12:21 PM

Shadowrunners are poor not because of how much they are paid, but because we compulsively spend the majority of our net profits of runs on purchasing toys and favours to help us in our next run. Because of our obsession with getting that new set of wires, or that new power focus, or that prototype resonse chip, to give us the edge next time we step into the shadows, not to mention things like surgery, fake SINs, repairs etc. we actually end up with a fairly meagre amount of money to make rent, get fed, and have a little to shoot up our nostrils.

Posted by: Faelan Jun 8 2008, 01:05 PM

Most of my campaigns eventually bring the players into contact with some pretty important people, so inevitably they are somewhat higher powered in the end. Starting off in the streets making next to nothing my players rapidly become salvage masters, and when they have the opportunity they definitely secure the operational area so they can secure the trash. So the days of being poor don't last really long, however the cash crunch continues for a very long time. They inevitably wind up being asset rich, cash poor. You know here is Safehouse 2 with a full replacement set of gear, ammo, drones, the whole nine yards in case our primary is compromised, needless to say they like to go several deep. Then you have the occasional out of town jobs, well if its a major city you might as well make sure everything you could need is available. So by the end of a campaign they usually have multiple residences/caches spread across multiple cities, and countries a ton of spells, cyberware, bioware, and gene modifications, and next to no cash compared to their overall worth. So I would say Runners are always relatively cash poor.

Posted by: Bashfull Jun 8 2008, 01:15 PM

Yeah, but lawyers aren't poor.

Posted by: CanRay Jun 8 2008, 01:23 PM

http://fromtheshadowsrpg.blogspot.com/2007/11/advertisement-underbridge-and.html.

Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jun 8 2008, 03:59 PM

People have the same resentment/disdain for professional service firm staff in other fields, like consulting. Its quite funny.

Posted by: JonathanC Jun 9 2008, 04:45 AM

More than what, though? A Shadowrunner? That's just a relative value...yes, they'll charge more than 'Runners, but their existence means that there's a ceiling on runner salaries, since at some point it becomes more cost efficient to tell the runners asking for 20k to go eff themselves, and use your own guys or some mercs.

That's my point exactly. Runners are hungry. The idea that a group of five well-trained dirtbags can basically write their own checks is ridiculous. The whole game is predicated on the idea that your Pistols 6, cybered-out gunbunny, despite being very awesome, is a small fish in a very big pond. Cyberpunk in general tends to feature highly competent characters who live in an alarming mix of ridiculous tech and soul crushing poverty. If a Shadowrunner wants to make "real" money, it's time for them to "grow up" and take a corp job. When you're out on the street, you're competing against every other dirtbag out there. Yes, it's quite possible that a bunch of glorified ex-gangers will bork up a complicated jobs, but considering how many Shadowruns are just feints for other black ops, or outright setups, or reasonably straightforward (on paper, at least) smash 'n grabs/kidnappings...the cheapies are probably enough for quite a few jobs. So you've got a bunch of guys who work cheap and have a rep they've artificially pumped up with low-paying milk runs...lots of them die, but by the process of elimination, that's still going to be quite a few guys...versus the "elite" 'Runners who think they're too good to work for less than what Red Samurai are paid, thus have far fewer jobs to their name, and are working jobs that are more complex and more likely to go haywire.

So as a Johnson, you've got a choice: uppity guys with a short resume, possibly from out of town because they're ducking heat from their last op, or some cheap local talent with a lengthy record (of fairly simplistic stuff, but still...)

I'm not saying that it's impossible to justify Runners making a mint on every run; but it does begin to strain credibility...after all, why wouldn't they just retire? I *am* saying that there are a ton of reasons why Shadowrunners who work regularly might just be scraping by instead of ballin' out of control.

Posted by: Adarael Jun 9 2008, 05:22 AM

Proposituon 1: Shadowrunners are not poor.
Fact 1: Shadowrunners demand payment commensurate with a high-risk occupation, payments that are high enough that base-level runners can cover their montly living expenses by only working several days a month.
Fact 2: Shadowrunners are almost universally 'outside the system' and would have difficulty getting 'straight' jobs.
Fact 2-A: The longer one is a Shadowrunner, the more likely one will run afoul of some brand of authority and aquire a criminal SIN, due simply to repeatedly breaking the law.
Fact 3: Those without SINs and/or Criminal SINs have difficulty holding decent jobs, as per game canon.

Ergo, Shadowrunners are not poor. If they stop running, they will become poor. QED.

Posted by: JonathanC Jun 9 2008, 05:57 AM

Well, you've definitely got a good argument as to why Shadowrunners don't retire more often. But if you're working multiple runs per month to make ends meet and stay ahead of the curve (and thus alive)...I wouldn't call that being financially solvent. At best, the guys you're talking about are living paycheck to paycheck. They could easily be eating soy noodles a couple of nights a week.

Posted by: Zak Jun 9 2008, 11:24 AM

Cutting your long post down for clarity.

First, we should establish that alot of runners are just some punks. If your group wants to play those, fine. Then skilllevels can be as high as you want, if you keep at the unprofessional punk they won't get proper payment.
But, if you move into a professional mindset, which some groups enjoy (you don't, that is fine) you will have to look at the perspective. A professional team with proper contacts will be able to pull off their own runs by doing B&E, dealing drugs, being assassins, whatever creative endevours to earn money in an illegal way. Sure, it is not easy (noone sane is claiming that!), but that is the challenge.

A million in cash (or credsticks) is not enough to retire once you tasted the good life and made some enemies. 10 millions? Maybe.
And as someone pointed out earlier, the game is expensive. To stay in business you have to make large investments. You won't be able to do that with 5k/month.

So the question is: Do you want to play punks who are in a downward spiral or a professional team doing high risk jobs? It is up to you really. Shadowrun can work for both approaches and most groups will be somewhere in between.

In one game (still SR3) I GM atm, my players are burning 1million+ each a year on just staying in business. My other group is shooting Devilrats to survive. It all comes down to what you and your players enjoy. But please do not try to tell me that the game world does not have a place for highly paid runners.

Posted by: Siege Jun 9 2008, 05:22 PM

I'm not arguing that high-end runners wouldn't live on soykaf noodles one or two nights a week - hell, when you live on commission and contract work, you suffer the ups and downs of the market.

But it's also been pointed out that money may not be the sole motivator behind their running.

I wanted to address the feasibility of hiring local streetpunk talent versus "SEALTeamSix, Inc."

-Siege

Posted by: PlatonicPimp Jun 9 2008, 09:13 PM

Point one: seal team six is probably busy.

Posted by: JonathanC Jun 10 2008, 06:29 AM

It was never my intent to tell anyone how to play their own game. And yes, if the runners are in business for themselves, smuggling, dealing drugs, or whatever...well, they're paying their own salary at that point. But as you point out, playing the game on that level is expensive, so we're basically talking about the difference between running a treadmill in a cheap apartment, and running a treadmill in a penthouse suite. Either way, the amount the characters are actually taking home isn't going to be that much, since it gets invested right back into shadowrunning.

I suppose the most realistic approach would be an ebb and flow, where you have periods of high-paying, fast-paced jobs that almost kill you at every turn, and slower periods where you're desperate for cash and take lower paying jobs just to make your car payments. These jobs, of course, also almost kill you.

Posted by: Siege Jun 10 2008, 12:18 PM

Point Two: Note I specified "SEALTeamSix, Inc." - as in a licensed, probably high-speed, high-priced merc company.

-Siege

Posted by: Cthulhudreams Jun 10 2008, 12:30 PM

I figure there is minimal crossover between what Combat Inc does and what shadowrunners do. Combat Inc is a licensed organisation that does above board stuff. You hire them, they have a whole bunch of above board equipment that they bring to the table in an above board way. Their tanks, helicopters, comm vehicles and equipment has co branded sponsoring organisation and combat inc logos, they drop combat inc propaganda leaflets, when captured they say they are with combat inc representing Ares and expect real treatment as POWs (at least as far as that goes in china). They don't do much (any?) illegal shit, because if they did someone might find out about it, and ask to have their license to own main battle tanks taken away from them. And seeing as concealing a battalion of armoured infantry under your shirt isn't really practicable, that would sink Combat Inc.

Shadowrunners don't have any of the same protection, have no affiliation or branding, but unlike combat INC you can hire them to do something that is actually illegal. Due to the different market niches they don't really interact with each other. Combat Inc is like consultants - you bring them in to do a specific mission, often integrated with your team. Shadowrunners are like auditors - you want them as far as possible away from your guys so they look like they are independent.