Shadow Market - your criminal economy in action!, Tired of waiting for Mr. J to tell you the score? Options

[Saint Sithney]

I'll preface this by saying that, I really like players to take their own initiative in all situations. Feeding them jobs doesn't allow them the freedom of participating in a living world. Something I've cooked up towards this end is the idea of the Shadow-market. The idea is to create a gray market of bounties and wagers to use as a standing payment system for criminal activities. Corp A wants some experimental tech from Corp B, so they post a request (using a 3rd party, natch,) for an item which fits the general specifications. I.E. "We need a means of chemical synthesis for this following molecule. We will pay $X. Reference the work of Dr. Braun of AG Chemie for related compounds." So, there we've got a payment waiting for an extraction target or some paydata, and it avoids legal problems through the standard "plausible deniability" defense. And, then there's the deadpool assassination market. People offer "prizes" for "guessing" the date of a specific person's death. All pseudo-legal and anonymous.

So, Player A and Player C couldn't make it this week. The Plot arc is on hold and the remaining players don't have the sauce to pull some heavy lifting by their lonesome. You also can't burn a lot of in-game time here because it's gonna be bad to have the other players come back to weeks of dead time. Meanwhile, it's sort of unrealistic to say that a contact just so happens to have the perfect job waiting for them (not to mention that puts a stress on the GM to come up with a tailored job on the fly.) So, what does a bored runner do on a Saturday night to drum up some extra cash. Why not hit the Darknets and look for some standing bounties? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)