Modern Day Dollar to Nuyen Conversion, How much would it be? Options

[Zemiron]

I'm wondering if anyone knows how much a modern day dollar would equal in nuyen. I'm doing some research for my first game session and this information would help me. Thanks for any information you can give me.

[Gelare]

For an almost entirely unresearched, unsupported quick answer, the Nuyen is worth about 3 UCAS dollars, and when you adjust for inflation (assuming a slightly low rate of inflation), that actually works out to one nuyen to the 2007 dollar. That should make calculations easy. Happy birthday.

[Kagetenshi]

The short answer, and the bad news, is that there's no good conversion. Some things (most ammunition, for example) are fantastically expensive if seen as a 1:1 ¥:$US conversion, while others (the diving fins, say, or the binoculars) are an absolute steal at the same ratio.

~J

[ShadowDragon8685]

I think you've misunderstood the question.

That, or I deliberately misunderstand the inquiry in order to deliver the following lines of text.


He asked how much a modern day dollar would be worth in Nuyen. The simple answer is "a lot, or nothing at all, depending on who you're trying to sell it to, and what it's condition is."

Paper money is fragile, and it's been what, half a century or better since the fall of the United States of America? In the going from USA to UCAS, the remnants of the Federal Government probably changed all the money - the CAS probably refused to honor greenbacks except in a narrow exchange time frame, and in the rest of the country, they were simply so much paper.

So, if you can find some really rich old geezer who fondly reminisces about the United States of America, or a collector of money, you could probably sell him a dollar or any number of dollars for a lot of :nuyen: , provided they were in good condition. Mint-condition dollars would be worth the most, half a dollar with the edges singed, not so much.

[Mercer]

Confederate money would probably be a good comparison, although I too think the OP was asking about conversion rates. (We won't know for certain until the OP shows back up and tells us.)

Ammo is highly priced in SR. That's always been the joke in SR, its two nuyen to shoot somebody these days. It makes me think of Chris Rock's old bit about we don't need Gun Control, we need Bullet Control-- if a bullet cost 5000 bucks, there'd be no innocent bystanders. It would almost seem like a game balance concern, except the price isn't really high enough to matter. It was SR3 before I saw anybody every have to change a magazine. Most runners, even merc gun bunnies, aren't firing the thousands of rounds of ammo necessary to make price and issue.

It did sort of matter when it came to special ammo. APDS was 28 :nuyen: a round back in the day, factoring in Street Index. 280 bucks for a 10 round burst was pretty steep, but if you think of the things that required long bursts of APDS to deal with, it was steal.

You could argue that mass production and cheaper synthetic materials make some items-- like diving fins and binoculars-- cheaper than today's counterparts, while the dystopian desire of the powers that be to keep ammunition out of the hands of the general populace makes the cost of bullets higher. But then, grenades still cost about as much as shuriken, so that seems a little odd. (Although I explain that by saying shuriken aren't the chrome danglies they sell next to the skull lighters at the local Gas-n-Go, but rather properly balanced weapons made of high grade materials that actually hurt people. Still, it seems like grenades wouldn't be comparatively priced. Unless you figure the people throwing the shuriken are the phys ads who do more damage than grenades, but I don't think a company is going to make a lot of money thinking that way.)

Or, you could say Wal*Mart 2070 still sells ammo for 10 cents a round, but all ammo is tracked by batch number and all purchases recorded, so every time a runner bought and used that ammo it would burn a fake (or real) SIN. If rounds you purchased show up in Billy Bob the sec guard, someone'll come a-knockin'. The 2 :nuyen: a cartridge regular ammo in the books comes laundered through street dealers, so its untraceable but has an appropriate mark up. (Even though that still makes grenades pretty cheap. Grenades, no problem. Bullets, now that might take some finesse.)

Or you could say they didn't put much thought into back in '88, and no one has bothered to update the ammo prices since then. I'm down with whatever.

[Kagetenshi]

[kzt]

It's totally random.

For example a Javelin AT missile cost $350,000 each, vs 4000 :nuyen:

A 40mm programmable grenade cost $211 vs 45 :nuyen:

An M-67 frag grenade cost $27.64 vs 45 :nuyen:

A M855 rifle round costs about $0.40 vs 2 :nuyen:

A luxury limousine costs $130,000 vs 20,000 :nuyen:

It tends to make you think that the people writing the rules really don't give a damn about making sense or are totally clueless. Take your pick.... :(

[Mercer]

[Blade]

If you want a basis to find the right price for some everyday item that's not in the books, 1:nuyen: = 1$ should be ok.

If you want to find a price for some piece of equipment, game balance will come into play so it'd be better to adjust the price by comparing it to other equipments.

[FrankTrollman]

In Shadowrun, bullets cost an unrealistically large amount. But people also fire an unrealistically low number of them during combat. People have a very low rate of fire and are incredibly accurate with their bullets.

Realistically people would be spending the same money for more bullets and firing more of them. What it comes down to is that characters reload less often than they "should" - meaning that they live in Action Movie worlds where reloading is done only to give the viewer a breather.

-Frank

[kzt]

Unless they are really spiffy deadly weapons, like anti-vehicle missiles. Which cost peanuts compared to what they really cost.

[Kagetenshi]

[kzt]

In SR people hit at least 10 times more than they really do in actual combat. Plus weapons in SR are overrated as to average effectiveness and speed of effect (and underrated from another POV, but I digress), so you don't have a cop needing to shoot a guy 11 times before he goes down.

[Kagetenshi]

There is an argument to be made that Shadowrun Heavy Pistols represent heavier firepower than is commonly used today—an argument partly backed up by the fact that the archetypal Heavy Pistol, the Ares Predator, is IIRC styled after the Desert Eagle and is in any case one hefty piece of hand-cannon.

Not that that destroys your point, it merely lessens the magnitude.

~J

[Kalvan]

I thinkl it's called Smartlinks, Targetting Skillsofts, Improved Combat Technique (Firearms), and/or Spent Edge.

[kzt]

If you say so. That's why grandma with a colt America, no pistol skill and agil 1 can't EVER drop someone with one shot, right? For that mater, she can't do it with a Remington roomsweeper. Because being shot in the head by an old lady with a shotgun does a lot less damage than being shot in the head by a hard core skilled thug, right?

[Mercer]

Well, even at its grittiest, a game still has to be somewhat... (I don't want to say playable, since anything is playable in theory, so I'll just say) fun. It's like Vonnegut said about writing. Don't write realistic stories. Real life boring, its anti-climatic. People hate reality. Thats why they turn to fiction.

That said, if we come up with a mechanic that makes an untrained user dangerous with a pistol that doesn't break when the Saint of Killers pulls his six-gun, I'd implement it in a second. Because I'm all about the grit.

[Snow_Fox]

The problem is we don't have any conversion scale. In 1942 it was $0.30 to the Yen. today its about 112 Yen to $1. I thought in Harlequin they said it was about $5 to :nuyen: 1

[Blade]

Yes the rate from 2070 dollars to 2070 nuyens is $5 to :nuyen: 1.
But modern-day dollar to 2070 nuyen conversion is closer to 1 to 1.

Actually you can say $1 today is worth $5= :nuyen: 1 in Shadowrun.

[Kalvan]

[Kagetenshi]

That's assuming she did in fact obtain Edge. You don't just gain it, like Karma Pool, you have to "consciously" purchase it, and not spend that karma on other attributes or skills. It's not at all unreasonable that Granny might have the same amount of Edge she came out of the womb with, or less if she'd burned some earlier in life.

~J

[kzt]

But my point is that people actually get killed by totally inferior opponents all the time. With SR it's like koblods and 10th level fighters in DnD. "I laugh at your pitiful 12 gauge shotgun pointed at my head." That's the area where SR breaks the other way.

"Bullets work on veteran cops too. They also work on weight lifters, martial arts experts, department marksmen, Narco Investigators, S.W.A.T. jocks, and others who consider themselves immortal."

[Mercer]

Well, if you rolled for everybody in the SR world, you'd probably get enough botches (almost said crit glitches there) to rack up some serious accidental injuries.

Which is not to say that you don't have a valid point, kzt, because you do. Guns aren't that scary in the game without skill backing them up. You have to massage so much of the game to make them barely usuable; a shotgun blast from an unskilled opponent can be serious to most PCs if they're not wearing armor and if you catch them by surprise. (Which is never and never and begs the question of how the incompetent 0 dice shooter managed to get the drop on a shadowrunner.) At a base 10S, most PCs (barring karma, but that's what karma is for) will take wound, although if they're burly is likely to only be a scratch.

But there's a lot of things that will never happen in the game. A character's light wound won't get infected and kill them. People won't develop lymphosarcoma. There's all sorts of situations the mechanics don't support, and not all of them involve vehicles.

[Wolfgang]

Sorry about the long rambling post, I just found myself really intrigued by this problem.

[ShadowDragon8685]

kzt, Mercer, I don't know about you guys...

My grandma was a terror to behold with a double-barreled break-action in her hands. She had two, and kept 'em loaded next to her bed.

I never saw her have to use them For Real, but my older uncles all said they'd seen her take out four foxes fixing on her chicken coop in the middle of a field at nighttime with four shots from two shotguns.

So, if we're talking "down-home country grandma", I woulden't say it's at all unreasonable to give her Firearms 2 or 3, with a specialization 4, 5, or even 6 with shotguns. She may not have wired reflexes or anything, but you bet your ass she has the skill pool at least to go a round or two.

And frankly, in the Sixth World I'd say it's entirely likely that someone who's lived into the good ole golden years and hasen't been in a sheltered corporate enclave the whole time has some Edge backing up their survival.


Now, if you're talking citified grandma who's never fired the piece she's trying to use to protect herself, she'd better hope some good samaritan Shadowrunner comes along to bail her ass out. That, or hope she's chipping a skillsoft. (Old folks can use 'ware too, y'know. :) )