Renegotiating Payment After the Job? Options

[Earlydawn]

One of the big SR themes for me, and one that I think is often overlooked, is the notion that everything is a very delicate state of balance. Everyone knows that they're vulnerable to the other guys screwing them over, but folks ought to be really hesitant to do it because of the long term impact of that kind of behavior.

Absolutely.

[ArkonC]

It is also important to remember that it isn't important what really happened, what is important is what other people think happened, if you screw over the J and make it look like he was trying to screw you over, not only will you get more cash, you'll also get a rep as not-to-be-fucked-with...
Of course, the other thing is more likely, J screwing you over and making it look like you're the bad guy...

[Siege]

Nothing ever goes as planned and no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

Depending on the Johnson, he might be just a rank-and-file corporate broker or he might have a not-so-small staff at his beck and call.

The first one, you could probably make dance to your tune. The second one will use your fillings for his new belt buckle. Now, can you tell one from the other?

Can you outsmart one guy? Maybe. Can you outsmart his handlers? Possibly. Eventually one of those maybes will come back to bite you in the arse.

At the end of the day, a player can only be as slick as the GM will let him be.

-Siege

[masterofm]

For one thing the way I see a Johnson paying a team is in black funds. These funds actually cost a lot more money then what he is actually paying you for the fact that it takes multiple resources, money laundering, and probably even time lost to cover up the fact that they are sending you 20 or 100k. Is it three times the amount that they are actually paying you or five times? All of this money though in the end is basically liquid cash that you can spend anywhere you want w/o people raising an eyebrow.

If you renegotiate does the Johnson have 1mill of black funds to just give the party? If he says "Um... ok give me some time to get the funds" then he might end up giving you "stolen" corp script, or something like that. Needless to say whatever you do for renegotiating he will not just have millions or even a hundred thousand at his disposal to just hand over to the party. He might be able to give you the entire black funds that he was given for this run, but after that.... man you should be looking for the hurt. Personally I like the fact that he will put some sort of trace on the money and just expect that the minute you spend that money the cops will be all over you. Then after they arrest or kill the party then at least he gets most of the money back and has the satisfaction of having LS hand you over to the corp where you are either his slaves now or he will just kill you as slowly as he can to set an example to all the other Shadow runners that trying to screw over the Johnson will not be tolerated. At the same time if you cause a fuss against LS then it would be even more justified for the corporation to send a special hit team after you

Seattle times - AAA corp assists in bringing down dangerous criminals *Picture shown of a small child who was shot in the crossfire a pool of blood surrounding her*

"Oh we were just doing a public service as these dangerous criminals were obviously a step above the contracted security for southern Seattle." Says Johnson Mic J. after what could only be described as a brutal killing of 6 LS officers and 8 SWAT members. "They were obviously malicious vile scum and so we acted to save the lives of dozens of Lone Star officers and anyone who could have been caught in the crossfire. We lament the loss of these officers, and send out our heartfelt condolences the the wives and husbands now widowed by this... travesty. Thankfully we were able to save little Synthia by extracting her to an emergency medical facility where she was given expert care and we managed to save her life." Johnson Mic J. said teary eyed in the press release yesterday. "I'm just thankful we were able to save the life of this brave little girl, who I stayed with all of last night to make sure she would pull through. This just serves as an example that these kind of brutal violent killers need to be taken off the street so another massacre like this one can be averted in the future."

Johnson Mic J. then goes on to state how recently these murders were traced back to the robbing and brutal killing of the high ranking corp executive philanthropist Edward G. Terrance. Two weeks ago these people stole millions of (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) in corp script, and killed Edward G. Terrance in what can only be described as "sickening." Lone Star was only able to discover that these were the same perps from before, after they retrieved the corpses from the AAA corp just hours later after the incident.... [continued on A5.]


*ehem* BOOYAH!

[nezumi]

While a smaller corp, an individual or a government agency might have to rely on black funds, I don't think any A corp or bigger would feel so constrained (or have any problems laundering the money themselves at little or no cost). I mean, when your corporation owns manufacturing facilities around the world, millions of employees, the banks, churches, gambling dens, hundreds of subsidiaries, puppet corporations and, of course, the government auditers themselves, it's not like making a few million 'disappear' is especially difficult (at least no more difficult than say, taking stolen data to put your product out on the street first without it being clear you stole it).

[masterofm]

Yes but can they just pull it out of their ass on the spot? The Johnson was probably only given a certain amount of money, and yes there does take labor and man hours to cover up the fact that this kind of money went missing. It takes time to do these kind of things. The Johnson does not have millions and millions of (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) around at his disposal to blow on something like this.

[SprainOgre]

((Whole lot of awesome "screw over" towards uppity players...))

...Seattle times - AAA corp assists in bringing down dangerous criminals *Picture shown of a small child who was shot in the crossfire a pool of blood surrounding her*

"Oh we were just doing a public service as these dangerous criminals were obviously a step above the contracted security for southern Seattle." Says Johnson Mic J. after what could only be described as a brutal killing of 6 LS officers and 8 SWAT members. "They were obviously malicious vile scum and so we acted to save the lives of dozens of Lone Star officers and anyone who could have been caught in the crossfire. We lament the loss of these officers, and send out our heartfelt condolences the the wives and husbands now widowed by this... travesty. Thankfully we were able to save little Synthia by extracting her to an emergency medical facility where she was given expert care and we managed to save her life." Johnson Mic J. said teary eyed in the press release yesterday. "I'm just thankful we were able to save the life of this brave little girl, who I stayed with all of last night to make sure she would pull through. This just serves as an example that these kind of brutal violent killers need to be taken off the street so another massacre like this one can be averted in the future."...

((Whole lot more awesome "screw over" towards uppity players...))

Brilliant....

Also, I need to invest some time and (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) in a stockbroker contact...

[nezumi]

Yes but can they just pull it out of their ass on the spot? The Johnson was probably only given a certain amount of money, and yes there does take labor and man hours to cover up the fact that this kind of money went missing. It takes time to do these kind of things. The Johnson does not have millions and millions of (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) around at his disposal to blow on something like this.

Who precisely are they hiding all this from?

(Of course, you're right that this money isn't all at the Johnson's disposal. He almost certainly has a set amount of money, not much higher than what he's already promised, and he can't go over that. The more he saves, the bigger a Christmas bonus he gets. The Johnson's cut of this cool $10M is probably less than the runners'.)

[masterofm]

Who precisely are they hiding all this from?

The public? I mean a AAA corp could probably just make 5 mill vanish w/o question, but there are a lot of variables to consider in the whole thing I guess. In the end it just seems like a bad idea.

If a Johnson doesn't have the funds at his disposal he has to go to his boss and basically say
"Sir they are squeezing us for more money.... 5 mill (or insert how much more money the party wants)..."
*pause audible screaming in his ear*
"I don't know, but somehow they must have cracked the encryption and found out what was on the chip.... Yes sir... Yes sir... I don't know.... Well what can we do?.... Yes I am aware that this is a big problem... Ok.... Ok. I'm on it."

At this point you might have put the Johnson waaaaay over his budget, and probably took the entire situation out of his hands and into his superiors... so what are they going to do? Probably bone the party right back by giving the party marked corp script is my train of thought. That way the corp will end up getting back the majority of it's money back and killing the runners who disobeyed Rule no. 1 - never look inside the package - "Transporter"


@ SprainOgre - *bows* Thank you very much! It pays to be a smarmy bastard in these situations though. Maybe you get less money, but then again there is also a lot less -people want you dead- risk.

[Method]

I don't know. Saying the corps care about public opinion is based on the assumption that people make conscientious choices in how they spend their money. In a nice healthy capitalist economy "every dollar is a vote" and the consumer empowers himself through conscientious spending. Only problem is that people don't tend to think that way and don't really care enough to put forth the effort. Look at all the grass roots activists that try to organize boycotts of major corporations now-a-days and have exactly zero impact on those companies in the long run. Disney, for example, is a popular target. Its just really hard to piss people off enough to actually motivate them to do anything about it. Plus it seems like a lot of a corp's market base is a "captive audience"- corporate employees or citizens of corporate puppet governments.

I guess you could argue that the megacorporate world of SR is a lot more competitive, since every corp makes their own version of just about every consumer product available. Maybe what they are really afraid of is giving their competitors a PR advantage. But I just don't see consumer activism playing a huge role, what with all the apathy, misery, etc.

[nezumi]

The public? I mean a AAA corp could probably just make 5 mill vanish w/o question, but there are a lot of variables to consider in the whole thing I guess. In the end it just seems like a bad idea.

Why would any corporation want to report their account books to the public anyway? The public has no idea how much Ares makes or what they spend it on.

[Cantankerous]

Put yourselves in Mr. Johnson's shoes instead of leaning on Runner sympathies.

Sure, they have the cash, but Mr. J is NOT about to get promoted when his job runs over budget by a few million. THAT is the type of thing that ends up with Mr. J sleeping with the fishies himself. Better you than him.

A Johnson in this straight will hire another Runner team, pay them 1/20th of the "bonus" the thieves want and have them butchered for their terminity. Yep, he's still going over budget, but not by anything more than a sizable fraction of what the thieves demanded and a lesson has been taught and a message sent to the Runner community that might help keep them from getting greedy in the future.

Isshia

[SprainOgre]

Why would any corporation want to report their account books to the public anyway? The public has no idea how much Ares makes or what they spend it on.

Unless Ares is publicly traded. In which case, their books are upon to scrutiny by investors if nothing else...

[masterofm]

Ok even if its not public the Johnson does not want to suddenly pay 100 time more then what he was paying the party. If corporations want to make money paying runners tons and tons of (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) on all of their black ops, because the runners did something they were not supposed to do in the first place, is just not how a corp makes the highest profit. I mean why not say that the team needs to grab a prototype weapon they are payed 10k + 1k for expenses a person initially and 20k each after the job is done. The team ends up blowing up the prototype weapon, and scrubbing the entire mission (as they can now never retrieve the weapon... period.) Would the team go back to the Johnson empty handed asking for the rest of the money? Both of these moves just seem like a bad idea to me... You know like the kind of idea that gets you killed. At best your rep is shot to hell and no one will want to work with you ever again, in the middle of the road your dead, and at worst they put a bomb in your head and make you their slave.