What to do about that accountant player, I can't mug him EVERY week! Options

[Deamon_Knight]

So, I've got a player who in RL is an accountant. When he games, no matter what the system, he invariably strips every corpse for every object of any value, and then tries to sell every captured firearm or personal article through his fixer. (In a similar D&D situation, we were attacked by Goblins who fired crossbows then ran. As we were about to chase after them (They were the primary target), this player decides we need to halt, at 1000 each those crossbows couldn't be passed up! We have gone from Shadowrun to commodity trader of the seattle shadows. I'm really trying to get away from this aspect of the game. Even paying 20% for any loot he has still been planning to pay for his lifestyle this way.

I know he likes this kinda thing, but I'm looking for a good way to de-emphasize it. Any suggestions?

[September]

Tell him he's flooding the market, then set him to inside trading and running on companies he's short-sold.

[Ancient History]

Have the cops pick him up trying to dispose of "evidence."

[hyzmarca]

Enforce emcumberance rules, remind him that his pants pockets aren't bags of holding, remember that looting takes time, and have a HTRT show up if they tarry too long. One can pick up a pistol or scoop out an eyeball and shove it into a pocket quickly and easily. Serious looting takes time very large truck.

[Grinder]

How do the othter chars/ players react to that? In my group he would be forced by them to stop his constant looting and do something more useful ;)

[Frag-o Delux]

[Ancient History]

[Lagomorph]

One quick way to rid him of this would be to use ritual sorcery on the item he sold of to track back to him. Or the cops picking him up. It sounds like he doesn't realize that those items can get traced back to him specifically.

[Kagetenshi]

[Solstice]

[mfb]

one option would be to make sure there's rarely enough time to grab all the goods. a decent-size firefight in anywhere but the most dangerous parts of the Barrens is going to attract at least an LS drone flyby and/or astral recon. enforce the encumberance rules, maybe even assess penalties similar to excessive armor for trying to carrying around three looted ARs, seven pistols, fifteen magazines for each, etcetera.

also, remember he only gets 30% of the street value, base, for fencing the loot.

[khazad]

To be a bit more stern about it, if it annoys you that much - and especially if it annoys the other players - take him aside and tell him point blank: "Look, this isn't cool. You're disturbing game play, you're annoying the other players, you're distracting from the atmosphere and the fun of the game. Either stop doing it and relax into the Role of your CHARACTER (is his character an accountant too??) and have some fun playing the game, or maybe we need to figure something else out."

I'm all for going through corpses if there's time - you never know when you might find a credstick, a servicable backup piece, some ammo, or some other useful trinket. But there's gotta be a point where you grab the quick/easy stuff and get out of dodge instead of spending the whole game dealing with what's on the bodies.

Hell, if it gets too bad, make sure all of the corpses are killed in gunfights and/or by nasty damage spells. "Sorry, nothing there - it was all destroyed by the gunfire and fireball"

-Dwarf

[ChuckRozool]

Pk, here's my idea

You make each location on the body equal an action. (eg - shirt pockets, armored jacket (inside), armored jacket (outside)... )

So then what you do is roll a die, what ever the result is equals the amount of actions he has before someone shows up. As far as what kind of die you use, that's up to you. oh, and obviously you don't tell him how many actions he has.

so there's my idea, it's a little rough around the edges but it's something to at least work with, maybe even refine and add to.

edit: just thought of something else... Eventually, however unlikely, someone will recognize a piece of equipment...

"Hey, where'd you get that <insert item here>, my partner had one just like that before he/she was killed. I swear i'll find the bastards that killed him/her..."

[nezumi]

You let him make 20% on his loot???

I will assume that this guy:
a) Lacks the storage space to hid 40 AKs for any significant amount of time, and so is anxious to dump these within say a week or two
b) Does not know a gun reseller, an armor distributor, an electronics salesman, a talismonger, etc. etc. and is selling all this stuff through the generic fixer
c) Does not have a negotiation/intelligence in the 6-8 range
d) Does not have the skills to eliminate traces that this is a hot item, nor to fix it up to relatively new condition

Assuming these are all true, you pay him 20%???

My players can expect 20% return on an object if they're LUCKY. Generally it comes closer to 5-8%, all told.

On top of that, where is he storing this? Generally, corp guards carry SMGs or something like, plus an armor jacket. Being generous, I'd assume you could carry an armor jacket and 3 SMGs before you start getting weighted down (this is on top of the gear he's actually using for the run). SO unless he has a drone slaved to follow along and just carry his trash, he'd better be pretty gosh-darn selective about what he's hauling or he can expect quickness/CP penalties (just like layering armor).

Final question, how does he have the time to do this? Sure, it doesn't take five minutes to strip a person of MOST of his valuables (I'm assuming we're willing to leave the boxers behind). Let's assume one minute to strip a guard of his armor, ammunition, weapons, and empty his pockets. This still leaves all the cyber, which is the really valuable part. Plus, for ten guards, that means ten minutes of dead time.

Let me reiterate this. You have just killed two guards. If they has any sort of biomonitor on them, that should mean the facility is aware that a guards are dead. You are going to stand over the bodies for two minutes grabbing $500 worth of stuff? Feel free, buddy. I had someone who wasted half an hour grabbing gear and even cyber. Guess what was waiting when he left that room? The only reason he isn't a blood smear is it's his first run.

Assuming that the group somehow managed to get themselves in a position that they could loot say $10k worth of stuff (which adds up to $500-$1,000 when they sell it) without concerns about security coming after them. If they want to waste the time doing it, what's the problem? It's only $1,000. Maybe $5,00 or even $10,000 net at worst. Won't the rest of the group want their share? If each group member got $2,000, that won't break MY game. I really don't care. If the group is covering for this guy and he gets to keep all the profits, well then that's the group's fault for being stupid and not sharing what they all worked for.

(As an aside, if he is stealing cyberware, remember that cyberware is rarely completely modular. You stole a datajack? Too bad you forgot the pricey wiring inside the brain and the sub processor. Smartlink? Haha, yeah, right. Without a hefty amount of biotech skill, the proper tools and a fair bit of time, stolen cyberware will be worth around... nothing. Seriously, the book price for something like the datajack includes the initial hardware, but even more importantly, the surgery costs, the costs of those nanites and the valuable minerals they leave in your brain, so on and so forth. Cybereyes are the same. Cyberlimbs even moreso. If you just hack an arm off or scoop an eye out, my fixer would probably pay in the area of 1-.5% of the book price unless the guy is a trained surgeon and knew how to take his time. Actually, a fixer probably wouldn't even buy it. What's he going to do with broken cyber?)

[Deamon_Knight]

To clarify, I'm just starting GMing and the guys haven't collected a warehouse full of AK-98 and Ares Predators. However, I know this players habits, I'm trying to nip this in the bud. He is playing a face, so the he does have a solid shot a negotiations. The, Running the Shadows section did suggest 20% for loot, I just don't want to spend gametime every week negotiating the sale of guns, armor and boots, so I'm looking for a way around it. Much as I enjoy it, I simply can't have gangers mugging him every week!

[nezumi]

That's a 20% before everything else (like the fixer's negotiation). For most characters, that brings it down to about 10%. And of course, that is assuming the weapon is still more or less like new. If the weapon has been damaged or is hot, the price will logically fall. As an aside, because of how negotiation works, might I recommend that the initial offer always be on the order of 5% anyway. Otherwise, if the fixer gets more successes than the PC, you'll end up with the fixer offering 20% on the initial bid, then 15% after negotiations. I have as of yet to see RL negotiations go so badly that you end up losing MORE after the initial bid. So make the first price a maximum possible profit for the fixer and let the PC negotiate him to something reasonable.

Beyond that, as I said, enforce reasonable limitations on how much you can carry and how long it takes to get it. The real money is in cyber, and cyber is hard to steal. Unlike D&D, you can expect organized resistance to hit a looting party in short order, which means looting is a very dangerous proposition. If, beyond all that, your player manages to loot, don't stress out too much. From what I've seen, most runs pay between $10-30K per person and, assuming no cyber, generally equipment will only haul in about $100-$5k. Not a huge bonus there. Plus the J can always specify that looting rights are part of the contract or specify no looting is allowed.

I have a number of characters who enjoy looting. Generally the 'problem' is keeping them alive when they dilly dally too long. You only have to worry if he gets his hands on a full and undamaged cyberzombie or a vehicle. Never mind, you can expect rating 10 bugs on either of those... It really hasn't come up too much for me. 20% of most OTS equipment is still pennies on the dollar.

[DigitalSoul]

Well, it could be worse. He could have found a way to transport the whole body quickly to negotiate and 'take inventory' with the local Tanamous chopper doc before giving his fixer a visit.

If the Australian Vietemese gangs (Target: Awaken Lands) can do it, why not you?

[CountZero]

I might suggest taking the player aside and explaining a certain amount of the "facts of life" in the Shadows, especially if this is a first-time player. Explain that you're trying to help him role-play and suggest that Shadowrunners tend to travel light. However, if he wants to loot, suggest some alternative means of looting (i.e. if the PCs are hitting some go-gangers they might have a stash of mundane/awakened drugs or BTLs, if they're hitting a corp operation, there might be some other useful paydata which could be taken and fenced) and give him those opportunities to do so. Also, if he's hogging all the income from selling the loot, you also might want to subtly suggest that that's poor runner ettiquette. He's happy because he gets to steal loot, and you (and the players) are happy because he he's confining his theft to more valuable merch, and he's sharing the income with the rest of the party.

That's always been the best option in my experience (as a player) - finding a way to work with the problem player before flatly shooting them down.

Thoughts?

[Critias]

Also, never forget that guns have histories and leave fingerprints. His fixer might scoop up his newfound weaponry the first few times, but when he gets burned for some corp (or the Star) tracing a cop-killing gun or something back to him, his patience with the looting character might dry up a little bit.

[mintcar]

Just de-emphesize it. Give every player the chance to have one gig on the side, like doing black market boxing fights or selling stolen goods. His would be selling stolen goods. Say that this will pay for their upkeep and nothing more. If they want more they have to pay for it with Karma. Now you have a perfect excuse for allowing the money for karma rule, and you no longer have to worry about the player's antics in-game.

Everything nezumi said is great advise. And also good reasons why this kind of thing propably won't net much more money than breaking into poorly protected homes on your spare time.

[Ryu]

Do allow the looting. Runs are not like D&D-dungeon crawls, theres always backup for the good guys. Time is important.

Have the fixer suggest a wholesale price (5000 ¥ to take that "garbage" of you), and suggest sharing the earnings - to the other players. Tell him from the beginning that some items might fetch an extremly high price, but that those will very likely be traced.

(Less of an issue with SR4, where most prices are actually sane compared to SR3s cyberdecks and foci)

[zephir]

Good idea, I guess I'll have to make an accountant character ...
/joking

Another possible solution: give your game a higher monetary volatility
IMG characters gain money fast and lose it fast. I allow them to short-sell stock and to sell magical equipment, even people if they want to.
On the other hand, if they fuck up, they get blackmailed, kidnapped, infected with illnesses costly to cure, absolutely need that piece of specialized equipment, have to pay a rescue band to get that level three contact out of amazonia, their stocks fall etc.
If characters decide that they'd rather spend their money before the world takes it, they won't have it when they need it.

[Kagetenshi]

[toturi]

SR - where you leave your sanity at the door.

[Ryu]

I said: "Less of an issue... compared to..."

Learn something new each day, todays lecture: "Be happy with what you have" :P