 Making money as a Runner |
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 May 18 2006, 03:28 PM
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#26
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Moving Target  Group: Members Posts: 360 Joined: 18-March 02 From: Plymouth UK. Member No.: 2,408  |
oops! :oops: |
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 May 18 2006, 03:35 PM
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#27
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 360 Joined: 18-March 02 From: Plymouth UK. Member No.: 2,408 |
I don't take that into account. However I've mod'ed the custom lifestyle rules from SSG, so they lifestyle costs in my group are, Unpredictable. The pay scale I take is: The flat rate from SR Comp (3rd Ed). multiplied by (Street Cred minus Notioriety) So: Rate x (St' Cred - Noter') = Final Pay. Then I Halve it for negotiation purposes. :smokin: |
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May 18 2006, 03:37 PM
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#28
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 626 Joined: 1-March 04 Member No.: 6,112 |
Or even plus Notioriety, depending on the run.
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May 18 2006, 04:27 PM
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#29
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 360 Joined: 18-March 02 From: Plymouth UK. Member No.: 2,408 |
Possibly.
Though they're more likely to get that sort of run when their notioriety surpasses their street cred. |
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May 18 2006, 05:14 PM
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#30
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Target Group: Members Posts: 10 Joined: 15-April 06 Member No.: 8,468 |
I'm not entirely sure what that means though I'm fairly certain it does not bode well for the bullet proof ork... |
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May 18 2006, 05:21 PM
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#31
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 179 Joined: 8-June 05 From: Montréal, République du Québec Member No.: 7,433 |
I usually play low to mid powered campaigns. Street level, or on the fine line between it and whatever is above it.
In two seperate particularly gritty games, I found myself pulling some solo work to make ends meet: robbing a Stuffer Shack, muggings in a dark alley, even pushing some drugs here and there. I enjoyed it, since I found it realistic in a sense: everyone has their own little 'operation' on the side, I find. |
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May 19 2006, 08:50 AM
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#32
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 208 Joined: 3-May 06 From: On the Run Member No.: 8,521 |
My favorite way to make money as a runner?
Insider Trading via Brokerage X from Loose Alliances. ;) Sure, ya gotta have a good rep and the initial 30,000¥ - but with the paydata you get from doing a successful run and using it to invest in stocks (and other investments too) it via BX more than makes up for that. |
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May 19 2006, 12:53 PM
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#33
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 360 Joined: 18-March 02 From: Plymouth UK. Member No.: 2,408 |
*Whistles* What do you think it means? And for the record you are not bulletproof Mr Saeder Krupp. |
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May 19 2006, 02:15 PM
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#34
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 133 Joined: 8-September 05 Member No.: 7,718 |
So a charicter who starts with the Scorched quality, and thus a Noteriaty of 1 would have to PAY to go on runs untill he had accumulated a point of Street Cred? Then he woudl be ALLOWED to come along, but not get paid untill he had accumulated another point of Street Cred? A NEW charicter with no street cred OR noteriaty would not get paid at all on his first run or two as well. This could be a little rough. Perhaps there is a slightly better way to do this? What if the formula was Rate x ((St. Cred +1) / (Noter'+1)). Examples: Standard starting char: St. Cred and Noter of zero. Makes rate x (1/1) = Std. rate for the run. Scorched dude. St. Cred = 0 Not. = 1. Makes rate x (1/2) = makes half the standard. (Untill he gets 1 pt of street cred, then he is back to normal) Just an idea, but could you do this as an average? Take the average of the team's St. Cred and Noter and use that to figure out the pay? |
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May 19 2006, 03:17 PM
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#35
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,026 Joined: 23-November 05 From: Seattle (Really!) Member No.: 7,996 |
I use a similar system, but don't make characters pay for negative multipliers. Of course I also warn players ahead of character creation that they won't make much if they have really bad reps. Some players like the challenge though. Part of the reason I did this though was that under SR3 rules one of my players always went overboard on Edges & Flaws, and when these returned as qualities in SR4 I had to come up with a way to keep these from getting out of hand again.
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May 22 2006, 07:26 AM
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#36
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 208 Joined: 3-May 06 From: On the Run Member No.: 8,521 |
I was reading through my old and tattered copy of Corporate Shadowfiles and just noticed that they mention getting paid in Stock (Bearer Bonds & Registered Bonds) instead of nuyen.
Any of you GMs ever have your runners request payment in that medium? Or do they just want the nuyen? |
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May 22 2006, 07:43 AM
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#37
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,598 Joined: 15-March 03 From: Hong Kong Member No.: 4,253 |
Think of it this way:
If the bonds are easliy convertible to :nuyen: , then to save a bunch of headaches, the GM and players might as well think of them as :nuyen: . If the bonds can't be easily converted to :nuyen: , then the characters probably won't want to be paid like that. Not to mention, most SR players aren't interested in the details of their characters' money laundering schemes, etc. So they just want to know how much they have available to spend on guns and cyberware. |
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May 22 2006, 07:52 AM
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#38
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 208 Joined: 3-May 06 From: On the Run Member No.: 8,521 |
True...
But depending on the player (and if they're interested or not) you could have a nice ready made plot line that their own actions gave you to use and abuse. :vegm: I imagine it would be easier to implement in a PbEM or PbP games than it would be to do in a regular face to face or IRC game, mainly due to the slow and descriptive nature of the former. |
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May 22 2006, 08:05 AM
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#39
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Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,598 Joined: 15-March 03 From: Hong Kong Member No.: 4,253 |
Well, you also need some amount of player knowledge (or a lot of spoon feeding by the GM) to add any more depth to the game. Just having the PCs go to 'that money laundering guy' who takes 10% (or whatever) dosen't add anything to the game.
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May 22 2006, 03:10 PM
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#40
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,026 Joined: 23-November 05 From: Seattle (Really!) Member No.: 7,996 |
I frequently allow the option, sometimes even have the Johnson add it as a negotiating wrinkle "You want 25% more for the job, fine but it will be paid in Ares Corp Scrip, you can use it at the company store in Detroit" |
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May 22 2006, 05:38 PM
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#41
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 208 Joined: 3-May 06 From: On the Run Member No.: 8,521 |
I disagree. Just have the player take Finance or Corporate Finance as a Knowledge Skill. Looking further into the Corporate Shadowfiles SB, it even has rules for determining quarterly profit and loss for a corp based on the number of runs the players have done against the corp for that quarter. Sorta elegant I think.
Corp Script and Corp Stock are two different things aren't they? Corp Script is what the corp uses to pay its employees with - usuable at the company run stores. Script has no voting rights. Stocks pay out divended every quarter (according to Corporate Shadowfiles) and some stock has voting rights. To use the example in the book - A Evo (Yamatsu) Johnson pays the runners 10,000:nuyen: in Evo stock to do a run against Ares. If the run goes well the price of the Evo stock goes up. So instead of 10,000:nuyen: they now have 20,000:nuyen: - if they decide to sell it. And if they can't offload it for some reason (GM Fiat :vegm: ) it'll make them think twice about hitting Evo anytime soon. Plus, Bearer Bonds are even more anonymous than getting paid in Cert Credsticks. Bearer Bonds are physical assets - I can't imagine the actual stock certificates being put online. Records of who owns them yes, but the actual cert? Hell no. With Cert Credsticks, you can still trace the funds from the Johnsons end. There is a record of the funds being deposited on to the credstick at some bank. With Bearer Bonds, the Johnson just pulls them out of a safe and into a briefcase. Much more secure for the Johnson. |
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May 22 2006, 05:44 PM
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#42
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,026 Joined: 23-November 05 From: Seattle (Really!) Member No.: 7,996 |
You are correct that stock and scrip are different animals. While Scrip is basically a limited use cash equivalent, and therefore fairly easy to introduce, investment instruments are a bit more complicated, and hence those I tend to avoid, mostly because my players just aren't very interested in investing and that translates to their characters not being interested either.
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May 22 2006, 06:09 PM
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#43
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
That should be every GM's Holy Grail with or without bonds. :) The players are always doing things with consequences. Making those consequences real and entertaining brings a whole new depth to the game. |
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May 22 2006, 07:52 PM
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#44
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 475 Joined: 13-March 06 From: dusty Mexican borderlands Member No.: 8,372 |
Sometimes, the runners don't really have a choice. If you choke their finances like I usually do, they need the cash. If the bonds are mature, they can cash them in right away. If not, well, this is where it gets hairy: Bonds typically need a set period before they can be cashed (matured). This can be anywhere from, say, a year, to a hundred years. They earn interest on the original principal (purchasing price) at set intervals (usually a year), and at a certain interest rate, depending on the estimated stability of the company. To break it down, Riot Jim's Hooligan Accessories, Inc. (A C- or D-class corp, also known as junk or high-yield bonds) might have six-month bonds at 12%, because they're a new or a failing company or some other risky investments in need of immediate cash flow. Ares (a AAA mega), however, offers a wide range of one year to 100-year bonds, at a 5-7% interest rate (compounded per interval), because everyone knows Ares will be around for awhile. If they merge into another corp, like Yamatetsu or Novatech did, the bonds are still valid, and still honored. You make less money, but you know you'll get paid. There are other factors that can affect bond interest rates from year to year over the course of a long-term (multi-year) bond, but that's definitely getting into "too complex for a freaking RPG" territory. I've been known to use bonds for my PCs, but it's a rare thing. I typically reserve it for moderately wealthy, well-established runner groups, as a tool for assisting them retire, if the player wants to. Now we get to stocks. If I were a runner, and a J offered me stock in Riot Jim's, I'd walk. But, if I were forward-thinking and the J offered me Mega or even A or AA-class stock, I'd probably accept it and eat ramen for another week or two. These are blue-chip stocks, and almost guaranteed to climb, no matter what. Blowing up an R&D facility for NeoNET doesn't necessarily impact their stock negatively. The investor might never even know about it. Even if they do, a few pull out, but most big-money investors (and we're talking big, big money) keep their money in, knowing any mega can recuperate the loss and still make money, as well as draw more investors, increasing the stock. And over time, everyone with money invests in the Big Boys. It's a sure thing. And the fact that everyone with money invests in it makes it a sure thing. Investor types are the long-term, no-risk types. That's what diversifying your portfolio is all about. A solid foundation of low-yield, low-risk bonds, maybe half your total investment. Then a graded investment of mid-to-high-yield "junk" bonds with ascending risk. Then stocks, the riskiest investment, starting with blue chip, and peaking with a few 0.30Y per share companies you expect to do well. Corp scrip gets into a whole other situation, again. At best, the runners can hope to offload the scrip to a fence at 50-70% of it's original value, maybe. If the percentages are good, I'd take it, and offload it with a fence. It's cheaper for the J to pay the runners in commodities they already have cheap access to, such as corp scrip, bonds, stocks, etc. But the runners have to examine those payments, like they would any other. For the record, I pay my runners in certified cred, gear, and favors, for the most party. I almost never use other means unless it's an NPC characteristic. But hey, you may enjoy having some knowledge of the subject to spring on your unsuspecting players. |
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May 22 2006, 08:21 PM
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#45
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 208 Joined: 3-May 06 From: On the Run Member No.: 8,521 |
That's why I picked up my worn copy of Corporate Shadowfiles at the used bookstore over the weekend - just to toss my players a curve once in a while. Say a Johnson pays them in Stock Certificates for a Class A corp. A couple of runs later (if they haven't sold them) another runner team from a different Mega is gunning for the runners since they've found out the runners have (or did have) the stock. What are the runners going to do? Try and maintain control of the stock, try and ditch it, sell it to someone else, or just go underground until this latest corporate takeover is complete? Much more fun than the 'standard' double-cross by their Johnson. :D |
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May 22 2006, 08:27 PM
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#46
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 133 Joined: 8-September 05 Member No.: 7,718 |
OK, not to quibble, but what time-frame are we talking about here? Ever looked at the original twelve stocks that made up the Dow Jones Industrial Average as described in 1896? Guess how many of those are still part of the expanded 30 stocks that make up the DJIA in 2006, 110 years later? ONE! General Electric. Those stocks were the Blueist of the Blue Chips, yet most have either disolved, gone bust, or been folded into new companies what grew much larger then they did. After crashing in 1929, the market finaly bottomed out in 1932. It took untill 1954 before the market had recovered to pre-crash levels. If you were bought stock in early October of 1929 you would have had to hold onto it for 25 years before it was worth what you paid for it, and that does not even take inflation into account. In 1954 your money would only have bought about 64% of what it bought in 1929. To cite a more modern example, look at IBM; long considered one of the best deals going. (They don't call it "Big Blue" for nothing) In the last five years IBM's stock has fallen from $120/share to about $80/share. At one point it even briefly fell below $60/share. (a 50% loss in value in just over a year) It recovered back to it's present level, where it has mostly stabilized, but how would you feel if your bank account suddenly was half the size it used to be. Stocks are not banks boys and girls. The size of the company does not matter, they can go up, and they CAN go down. (Note here, I have resisted useing Enron as an example. That was caused by fraud and corruption, two things that would NEVER happen in the Shadowrun world.) Students of the stock market (and other markets too) use the term "beta" to describe the volitility of a particular stock as compared to the market as a whole. Large stocks typicly have lower "beta" values then smaller companies, but beta is a statistical measure based on HISTORICAL data. As the prospectus says: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." - The Chromed M.B.A. (My graduation was Saturday) :spin: |
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May 22 2006, 08:37 PM
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#47
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 475 Joined: 13-March 06 From: dusty Mexican borderlands Member No.: 8,372 |
You're absolutely right. But, as I stated in the quote you mentioned, I'd eat ramen for a week or two. With the assumed next action of cashing in. However, in the event of a reasonably well-off runner looking for investments, a megacorp is a different animal than IBM or a similar modern corp. A megacorp has their hands in everything, from textiles to technology. Even a catastrophic failure in their public speciality will probably mean only a temporary (few years) drop, at maybe 10-15% presentation value. Stocks are volitile, from an investment perspective - I agreed with you in my OP, while describing portfolio diversity. But it's certainly more stable than a C or D class stock in the same example. A runner considering retirement would most likely grab it and extract Dr. Whoever like they're done a dozen times before. Congratulations on graduation, by the way. |
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May 22 2006, 09:12 PM
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#48
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Mr. Johnson Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 3,148 Joined: 27-February 06 From: UCAS Member No.: 8,314 |
When I was working in a cube farm, we were allowed to convert up to 50% of our wages into shares of the company. This was particularly keen because they'd give us 150% of the value in shares as we were paying in. There was a six-month period where the stock was held in trust; we couldn't sell it for at least six months. I ate ramen for six months, then got around a 30% pay hike by selling shares as they came available (the share value kept rising as we went). So yeah, I can see getting paid in stock.
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May 22 2006, 09:20 PM
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#49
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Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,026 Joined: 23-November 05 From: Seattle (Really!) Member No.: 7,996 |
The biggest danger with Blue Chip stocks is the illusion of safety, my boss about two years ago was telling all of us we should buy Ford because it was a good deal at $17 (or somewhere around there) fortunately I didn't do it, because my own research showed that Ford still had some very serious problems to overcome and management that didn't seem to be up to the task. Of course at the time I mentioned this to my boss and he countered with the argument that Ford has always been a good company and they have been around nearly 100 years. Fast Forward to today when Ford is trading below $7 and still sporting negative earnings per share. In SR Megas do die, though not often, but collapse of Cross is an example, and from some of what was in System Failure, it's likely that Renraku might have taken a dive for a while. Just remember that line where it says "Past performance is not a guarantee of future results" really does mean what it says.
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 May 22 2006, 09:32 PM
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#50
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jacked in Group: Admin Posts: 9,358 Joined: 26-February 02 Member No.: 463 |
We usually have 'day jobs', which fit our fake identities, and those cover the lifestyle expenses.
Bye Thanee |
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