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

[Shrike30]

That's not really a joke. If you're having serious issues with the fact that the characters do absolutely anything they can to scrounge up cash, making them not want for cash (and instead, want for more interesting things like being owed a favor by a delta clinic) is a pretty reasonable storytelling way to get around the problem.

Besides, who was it who said "More money, more problems?"

[ascendance]

I guess I play a very different style of campaign from most people. I tend to be rather fast and loose with money. I run a smugglers/mercs type of game, where the characters have their own ship, and move legitimate cargo as well as illegal ones. I have no idea what are reasonable costs for them, and reasonable rewards. So I abstract away most of that part of the game, and give them small profits. It's rather annoying that all of the books on cyberpirates didn't offer anything as useful as operating costs and expenses, and Traveller-style tables on cargos and rewards.

Also, in Shadowrun before 4th Ed (and probably in 4th Ed too) money was a terrible balancing tool, because it you needed to spend exponential amounts of it to improve your character. It gets to the point where in order to upgrade your Wired Reflexes, you might as well retire. Not to mention that it takes months and months and months.

4th Ed doesn't have anything as useful as tables telling you what's a reasonable amount of money to give out in order to maintain a reasonable rate of progression. I have no idea if I'm giving too much or too little money (probably too much).

I'm at the point where I'm ready to say screw this, and move towards a White Wolf style system where people have Resources 1-5.

[Liper]

lol make use of RFID tags lol.

Hey guard XXX that was killed 10min ago shows his pistol moving through the 8th floor...

[Drace]

Or have it that a htr team is coming after the char, and the only way for them to lose the team is to escape, but doing so means they have to drop almost all of their equipment, and scrag the mission, making an enemy out of the johnson, and leaving a trail. After the first time, they wont do it again, and if they do, their char deserves to die. Plain and simple.

[Cain]

[nezumi]

While I do agree it's almost impossible for anyone to get the money together to buy a set of delta wired reflexes, I think giving everyone infinite money is a bit excessive. Money is a limitation for a reason, it adds flavor to the game. Otherwise, why shouldn't they all just be jet pilots who call thor shots down on their enemies? Why shouldn't everyone just be so super-uber that they regularly kill dragons just for kicks? Heck, why do they work at all? It sounds like it stops being a gritty, in the streets sort of game and quickly becomes superheros. That said, if you WANT to play with superheros, that's fine, but I really wouldn't consider it cyberpunk any more and I'd kind of ask why you're playing SR instead of, say, white wolf.

I tend to go with Cain's suggestion, as well as through lowering costs of cyberware. Johnsons offer goods rather than cash in exchange for services, even if said goods are just the physical parts for wired reflexes and you need to find the street doc to install them yourself. You can still get the oft-dreamed off delta wired-3, but it'll take an awful lot of favors, and you had better be playing James Bond level missions. Similarly, the mage can still dream of his level 10 power focus, but he'd better be earning his keep similarly.

[Kagetenshi]

[hyzmarca]

Unlimited resources does not equal unlimited options. There are still a great deal of limitations imposed by circumstances (starting global thermnuclear wars is bad for business) and by character concept (I don't wanna be a cyberzombie), among other things.

Corporate sellout flaw + a level 3 corporate contact, dayjob, and real SIN make a great combination for a certain type of game. Instead of fighting elite Red Samurai you can be an elite Red Samurai. If all the player characters are Red Samurai then you're in business. However, you can't play it fast and loose like a shadowrunner can. At this point you aren't a deniable asset; you're a full-fledged niable asset. You have to keep a low profile when doing things in the shadows and you have to be 100% legit when you can't keep a low profile.

Sure, you can Thor Shot an SK facility instead of going through all the bearucratic red tape to extradite an enemy but if you do the your boss with fire you ... out of a cannon ... at Lowfyr as he swoops in to eat you, your boss, and your whole corporation.

Now, at such a level your games will be more Clancy than Gibson, but there isn't anything worng with that.

There is also karma and skill to consider. A street punk with delta MBW 4 and dermal sheathing is still a street punk when he defaults to attributes on his numerous assualt rifle and launch weapon tests and delta cyber doesn't help you learn metamagics any faster.

[Critias]

It's just that at that point you're no longer playing a "default" Shadowrun game, so it's not like offering it up as a playstyle option is the way to help someone who's asking for advice with a "default" Shadowrun game.

[ascendance]

I wasn't really trying to suggest that the players receive unlimited resources. I was simply saying that money is a terrible balancing tool in the default Shadowrun setting, and that making the players worry less about money is a good idea.

Making, for example, characters corporate sellouts doesn't necessarily mean that they have unlimited resources. It just means they don't have to worry about money. Their standard lifestyle, medical care, ammo, and so on gets paid. Their cybernetic upgrades and so on gain additional scrutiny, and they will have to justify them as they are investing corporate resources in themselves.

As for my campaign, I can't really run a cash poor campaign, because it's assumed that the PCs are also working as independent businessmen as a cover for their Shadowrunning business.

[nezumi]

I disagree. Money is only a bad tool when applied to cyber because the costs are so astronomical. In most other cases, assuming it doesn't get bogged down in minor details, it works very well, IMO.

[Cain]

[ascendance]

[nezumi]

No. Street sams still purchase weapons, vehicles, ammunition, contacts, assorted gear, custom armor, medical bills, cyber repairs, so on and so forth. My decker has never had a serious problem with money shortages. I don't use vehicle maintenance rules, but as long as my rigger keeps his delicate toys out of the line of fire, he too hasn't been especially strapped for cash.

The only thing I have never seen purchased in game at full price is cyberware. There's an easy fix for that too. Apply a price drop across the board. It's a lot easier to cut the prices across the board (*.8 for items under $5k, *.7 for $5-50k, etc.) than it is to simply give the PCs bags of hard cash or make them corporate whores. There's also the fact that, as has been said, you can acquire cyber through non-monetary methods, such as payment for a run or pulled out of an enemy.

[Deamon_Knight]

I think my problem was not familarizing myself with the rules for fencing the loot. Since no one really knows the rules and I tried to abstract it a bit and ended up making it too easy to move such items.

So.. Much.. to.. Remember....

[Cain]

You can still abstract it. Really, all you have to do is remind your players about the search time problems, and encumbrance issues. That alone should encourage them to focus only on small, portable, and valueable items instead of everything that's not nailed down.

[Ryu]

I still suggest piling up the loot in front of your preferred fixer and saying "How much?".

Estimate full price, consider quantity+rarity, offer value of about 20% baseline for wanted gear. Things the fixer has no plausible interest in are either not bought at all or bought at an even worse rate. Only high value/high heat items should be fenced individually.

Consequences of looting should sometimes be shown by the effect of lost time (reinforcements show up), encumbrance (calling an athletics-test for endurance while the char is running for the exit), and occasional heat from previous owners or law enforcement (what did that gang DO with twenty assault rifles?).

[DestroyYouAlot]

[Guest_MK Ultra_*]

[Raskolnikov]

I don't know if this has been mentioned as I admit I did not read through the entire thread, but there is an important thing to remember when selling the stripped gear of downed opponents. The important fact is this: that gear used to belong to someone.

Local fixer have a sudden influx of second-hand pistols and SMGs? Were they sold to him by the accountant after a gang battle? Do other gang members have contact with that fence and would they recognise any of the weapons? A fixer generally does not crap on their sources for stolen goods, however they also can't afford to cause problems in the neighborhood in which they do business. The first time the accountant might get away with it and the fixer will deflect the gang's interest, the second or third might get goons on the runner's tail. Additionally, after a point, the fixer is not going to want to be the runner's clearing house for hot goods that cause him no end of troubles.

More dangerously, although you can file down the serials and such, corp-owned goods that make it onto the street will eventually make it back to the corp. If Ares notices a lot of corporate weapons ending up on the black market in sizable lots or Novatech sees the same with hardware, they will want to know where this is coming from. A small trickle of heavy hardware into the streets keeps their runners supplied, a glut on assault rifles, LMGs, illegal matrix tech, cyber, pharma, or any other things fixers are interested in buying is not good for business. Not at all. At that point the price is depressed and gangers, thrillers, thugs, and such gain more and more access to such things, causing more and more trouble on the fringes of decent society. This hurts profits, even for Lonestar (which while seeing increased contract demand would also see a greater mean cost of resolution for enforcemetn encounters).

Keep these things in mind. People come looking for suppliers of black market goods. Also keep supply in mind. If he's already offloaded 50 hear pistols to the Redmond market this winter, the fixers probably aren't looking to buy 20 more.

[Kagetenshi]

Fences deal stolen goods for a living. Fixers deal in stolen information for a living, which is generally even worse. This isn't something they'll be unprepared to deal with.

~J

[Raskolnikov]

There's a difference between selling the guns out of a police cruiser or lifting a crate of assault rifles and constantly flooding the street market with material. Not everything you sell is going to cause problems, but the more you sell, the more likely it gets.

Fences buy things that are stolen and then move them. Usually, they don't move them in the same market. Fixers deal in infomation, contacts, and runner equipment, they have been the catch-all illegal runner Wal-mart since first edition. While they can't get you anything at any time, they have the stuff you can't pick up yourself, with enough notice.

Fixers don't get this gear from people coming to them to sell. If a fixer acts as fence and buys something, it most likely gets sent to another fixer and maybe changes hands a couple of times before it hits the street again. This is safer for all involved. You don't have people interested in where something came from leaning too hard on the fixer because he just got it from some other fixer who got it from someone selling shit off a truck in from Chicago. In most circumstances, it makes it harder to track back the sale, if you're selling to fences in the network.

It becomes dangerous on a local level if you're selling to people not in the network or trying to break in. These are the local fences that buy and then turn around and act as fixers in the same market. If the accountant has already flooded the professional fixers he has contacts with and they don't want any more 10mm sidearms, the accountant may still be able to sell to this guy. Interested parties may come looking for the seller however.

It becomes dangerous on a corporate level if you flood the market with too much of one corp's equipment at once. Fixers will keep the stuff moving around and it trickles into the market as it moves between neighborhoods and cities, but if you put too much in as a constant supply, people want to know who's supplying. This is why fences in a decent network will stop buying from the accountant after awhile, let the supply chain cool down. Also, fixers don't like the prices to be suppressed too much. You can charge three times as much for an assault rifle to a gang that ran into some money if the assault rifle is twice as rare on the streets.

If the accountant convinces the fences to keep buying and puts too many of a hot item on the market at once, corps might be able to connect the gear hitting the streets to a recent run the accountant was in, just because with so much volume, it's not trickling out. It might be trickling in Redmond, but the same stuff is being sold in Renton, Tacoma, one shows up in New York, etc.

They might not do anything the first time. Or the second time. But a dossier out there is growing on the accountant. It's only a matter of time before an operative contacts him with a big list of damage he's caused the company and tales about how it would totally be worth their while at this point to have him killed (but hey, you can work it off, we have this opperation we need a team for...).

[Kagetenshi]

Honestly? I think the whole concept that a single team can be "flooding the market" by doing anything other than raiding a Weapons World and selling the entire contents at once is bullshit. Think about how many transactions we're talking about here. At the level where the market is floodable, the goods are so valuable that it can be worth it to a fence to buy and just sit on the goods until the time is right (high-end laser weapons, monowhips, etc.).

~J

[Raskolnikov]

The original poster described a character that stripped every sellable article from opposition or encounters. Through the course of a game this could easily be multiple vehicles, dozens of firearms, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, trunkfulls of consumer electronics, and everything else from BTLs to decent wine the suit had in his apartment.

While a fixer may be willing to sit on or disperse a dozen monowhips over the course of a year (because he doesn't often run into them), what's he going to do with 10 pistols every month? The cheap illegal sidearm market is only so big. There's a huge volume of illicit firearms, but not enough demand that the fence can keep moving that kind of material.

Bodies are even more troublesome simply because there -is- the market to absorb a constant supply. If you're providing corpse after corpse to the chop shop (there's a lot of money in a street sam) then the likelyhood some interested party re: who this second hand ware used to be, will come looking after awhile.

"Oh great," says the chop shop. "Another Westwind. I know people love them, but I could make six from the spare parts I've got right now. You should be paying -me- to take it off your hands."

"Nine milimeter? I can get one of those these days for five nuyen down the street. That's street retail, you understand. If I'm making money, I can offer you a point five per."

"What the fuck am I going to do with 20 kilos of trout?"

"Hey, I know it's worth a lot retail, but thanks to guys like you, these rounds are all over the street. I'll give ya 20 nu for the entire case."

[Moon-Hawk]