Shadowrunners Aren't Poor Options

[Zen Shooter01]

There seems to be an impression that shadowrunners are poor - It was expressed recently in the fat shadowrunners thread. It doesn't make any sense for shadowrunners to be poor.

Some GMs play with a point disparity, where the PCs are 400 point characters, and the average NPC has fewer points. Other GMs don't. In either case, your typical shadowrunner has a very valuable skill set that's in high demand in their industry. A rigger right out of character creation can typically drive a tractor trailer at full speed through a blizzard - that kind of skill commands high prices. The typical street samurai can expect to kill gangers at a three or four to one ratio. Your typical face can talk your average person into just about anything. Hackers straight out of character creation have such ability one wonders why they shadowrun at all, why not make a comfortable living shoplifting? And magicians - their powers are so rare and so essential, there's no question of them making a living.

The definition of "a living" varies. It might be a three bedroom condo in Pasadena, or it might be a high rank in an influential street gang. But with their exceptional abilities, the idea that shadowrunners are clipping cupons and eating off the 1 nuyen menu doesn't stand up.

The downside of being a shadowrunner is that it's extremely dangerous, and things like new fake IDs and shadowrunning gear cut deeply into the budget. Also, the reality of being in hiding all your life changes your living conditions. But still, it would only be shadowrunners with drug problems or similar who are stone broke all the time.

[Shiloh]

...it would only be shadowrunners with drug problems or similar who are stone broke all the time.

Mostly I agree with you. One further factor though is that Shadowrunners are going to be a peer group that selects, at least initially, the screwups who can't or won't fit into the niche their skillset would traditionally put them in. There will be more 'runners with poor impulse control who are permanently hocking their gear that they bought, forgetting that they needed to buy food, or gambling/drinking/partying/giving away (relatively) massive fortunes - your average 'Runner is hardly risk-averse.

[coolgrafix]

Starting runners ARE poor. Period. Per character creation. There. =)

[coolgrafix]

Plus... they're scum. At least in the eyes of those who would employ them.

[Blade]

Actually it all comes down to the way the GM considers things.

For example you can consider that there is a huge barrier between the have and the have-not. If you don't have a legit SIN you can't get anything and a fake SIN, even a very good one, never last for long. The only way to get a SIN if your parents are SINless is to be valuable to the corp. The only way to survive and get experienced enough when you're SINless is crime. Problem is, when you get experienced enough to be able to apply for a SIN, you're too burned-out/unstable/individualist/weird to be a good citizen (or to accept to become one). And since you can't get any better offer for your skills than shadowruning, the Johnson can lower the price to something just above what you'd get from normal criminality (this setting implies that you can't easily get money by stealing car or any other criminal activity for one reason (paranoid society with a lot of security devices) or another (organized crime controlling the market). This setting also implies that runners need corps more than corps need them (i.e there are much more runners teams available than runs).

Another way to handle it would be to consider that runners live for the moment. They might be dead tomorrow, and they'll probably be dead in a few years. So when they get paid, they spend all the money in a gigantic party, live in luxury for one month, live in a middle lifestyle for a few weeks, then get back to their squatter lifestyle, see their fridge getting empty and finally decide to call their fixers.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

The only way to get a SIN if your parents are SINless is to be valuable to the corp.

Nope. After the second crash, pretty much everyone wanting a SIN was issued one. That's why the Redmond Barrens are now a real bad place and there is the ACHE.

[Shiloh]

Starting runners ARE poor. Period. Per character creation. There. =)

*Some* starting 'Runners are cash-poor. Others have half a year's middle lifestyle bought and paid for. Most Runners start with a lot of assets. Some of those are easily liquidated, others are a measure of wealth. Yeah, some 'Runners spend hardly any BP on cash and start poor. Others, not so much.

Like was said in the "how much to pay" thread: money supply is one way to get your characters 'Running. There are other reasons.

[Cantankerous]

Runners might have infinite reasons for why they are Runners. I think that very few say "I wanted to be a Shadowrunner when I grew up, so here I am."

Most of these people are in the Shadows out of need (someone in the straight world wants them dead and if they stay in the straight world, they will be too easy to find and eliminate) or their own desires (the Neo_anarchist cause must LIVE!!!) or some combination of the two that makes it impossible for them to be simple folk.

My groups are usually poor as church mice, some out of inclination, some out of charity, some out of paranoia. There is only one guy who sticks out of this mold in the present bunch... Captain C-Bucks, but that is only because he got in to Shadowrun over a bastardized version of the game that evolved from D&D and then D20 Modern and thence to the Shadowrun system with the old backdrop and only now finally to the grim and gritty world of Shadowrun as it really stands.

If you see ol' C-Bucks posting on the forums here, ask him about how his Elven Faceman liked having to worry about who was picking up the tab at the Nuk-It Burger where he was discussing the first joint run he was doing with his new group. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)


Isshia

[PlatonicPimp]

Are runners poor in the sense that they are broke? No.

Are they lower class? Probably. It's a social thing, not a money thing. There is often a culture of poverty, which is related to but independant of the actual wealth of an individual. This is why most lotto winners blow through their money and wind up in debt for more. The dichotomy between being rich but low class was the source of the humor in "Beverly hillbillies".

Anyway, from a cultural perspective, runners are usually "poor."

[Eryk the Red]

Shadowrunners are poor if that's the style of game you play. Shadowrunners can just as easily be rich. This setting is not so limited that those two ideas are mutually exclusive.

[Siege]

Although, given the career choice, runners are more likely to be living paycheck to paycheck.

Not always, but usually.

-Siege

[Pendaric]

Unfortunatly the SR world economics are built on game balance rather than realistic economic drives. To a degree, each edition has redressed the gap between buying a hightech do dad to living a month at high life style.
This flaw means however that the reality vs the world theme conflicts.
Fixing it and making it fun is part of the charm.

[Wounded Ronin]

This is why most lotto winners blow through their money and wind up in debt for more.

Are you serious!? That's nuts!

If I won a large cash payout in the lottery, first I'd change it all into singles, and then I'd roll around in the money in my underwear. After I got tired of doing that I guess I'd set aside half to live on for now, and I'd put the other half in a mutual fund or T Bills or something else that's low risk. I couldn't imagine blowing it all and then once blowing it just randomly deciding to borrow money for no apparent reason.

[DocTaotsu]

Surely you must be sarcastic. Lottery winners are notorious for spending their money poorly... I'm not sure if they always end up in debt but they certainly don't end up on Forbes Richest Bastards List 20XX.

Or for that matter any person who comes into a lot of money very quickly, musicians being the class that leaps to mind. Granted they've gotten better as I think the record companies have figured out that assigning up and coming talent a financial counselor is probably a good investment.

[Wounded Ronin]

Surely you must be sarcastic. Lottery winners are notorious for spending their money poorly... I'm not sure if they always end up in debt but they certainly don't end up on Forbes Richest Bastards List 20XX.

Or for that matter any person who comes into a lot of money very quickly, musicians being the class that leaps to mind. Granted they've gotten better as I think the record companies have figured out that assigning up and coming talent a financial counselor is probably a good investment.

I honestly didn't know that. I mean, I never thought about it, and it hadn't occurred to me.

[PlatonicPimp]

Yup. what happens to lotto winners is they think "Who-ee, I'm rich!" And they go on spending sprees. At the same time, banks and card companies extend them all kinds of credit. They use those cards on their spending sprees, and then wind up blowing the lotto money repaying those cards, and usually still wind up greatly in debt.

Meanwhile I know people who live quite well on 4000 a year. People who own land outright. It's about how you manage your money.

Also, as noted above, very few smart people win the lotto, because very few smart people PLAY the lotto. If you had the math skills to wisely manage the money, chances are you didn't waste any money on a ticket in the first place.

Conversely, think of how many rich people declare bankruptcy at some point. They rarely stop being "rich" just because they are broke. Trump himself has been bankrupt like 4 times in his life.

So, do shadowrunners have and go through a lot of money? sure. Are they poor? depends on the runner, but most probably are.

[DocTaotsu]

I honestly didn't know that. I mean, I never thought about it, and it hadn't occurred to me.

Oops (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Didn't mean to be such a dick about it but yeah: People Who Aren't Used to Big Money+Big Money=People Who Spend It Like It's Cool.

In the example you gave, they never really get past the "I roll around in a 20 ft tall stack of bills" stage. I've also heard them complain that their friends and family start using them as a bank (as in pulling out loans not investing cash) and so on and so forth. People do beat the odds of course.

On the rich runner/poor runner front I think most runners are poor, mostly because the vast bulk of runners aren't getting those 20k+ a pop jobs. I also think they could be roughly split into "Rank Amateurs" and "Professional Runners". Professional runners are probably smart enough to manage their money, invest, and live within their means. Amateur runners are that guy who was in the UCAS Army for 3 weeks, loves guns, and thinks that qualifies him to run around shooting people for a living. You drop 15k in his lap and he'll be hitting all the highclass "Shadow Bars", picking up vast tabs, and living the good life.

For like a week, than he's back in the gutter with a bad hangover and one of those sentient STDs.

[shuya]

Most of these people are in the Shadows out of need (someone in the straight world wants them dead and if they stay in the straight world, they will be too easy to find and eliminate) or their own desires (the Neo_anarchist cause must LIVE!!!) or some combination of the two that makes it impossible for them to be simple folk.

this is exactly the situation i see most runners in.

i'm college educated and i could be in grad school or pulling down five or six figures a year, easy

instead i became so disillusioned with contemporary society that i joined an anarcho-syndicalist community in rural middle america. i make the equivalent of less than 700 dollars a month, 80% of which i don't even see because it pays for food and housing.

not everybody is poor because they have to be, and it's not at all unrealistic for people to choose to be so, is what i'm trying to say (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) there's more to life than (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif)

[Siege]

Trust me on this one - a college education is not a guarantee of a job.

-Siege

[bishop186]

Trust me on this one - a college education is not a guarantee of a job.

Perhaps not, but with the skills exercised by Shadowrunners, who usually have a professional skill set (that is, post-college with some experience in their belt) or three, should have no problem finding a job. A college education may not be a guarantee but a college education and a few years' worth of experience may be nearly a shoo-in.

[shuya]

Trust me on this one - a college education is not a guarantee of a job.

-Siege

it is when you spent college learning to speak 10 or so languages, a couple of which the US gov't will pay you quite lucratively for knowing (and all you have to give up is your morals!)

[PlatonicPimp]

Perhaps not, but with the skills exercised by Shadowrunners, who usually have a professional skill set (that is, post-college with some experience in their belt) or three, should have no problem finding a job. A college education may not be a guarantee but a college education and a few years' worth of experience may be nearly a shoo-in.

Honestly, I got better job offers and more job security right out of college than I did once I had a few years under my belt. My wages have steadily fell from their height right out of college. Each time I get laid off it becomes harder to find work in my feild. In fact, my current job isn't even in my area of study. Trust me, NOTHING makes you a shoo-in.

[Zen Shooter01]

How are we defining shadowrunner?

If living in the shadows makes you a shadowrunner, then the guy with the engineering degree who dropped out of straight society for ethical and idealistic reasons and now helps maintain an anarchist syndicate in rural Ohio is a shadowrunner. The paramedic who does off-the-books work is a shadowrunner. But if "shadowrunner" means professional mercenary specializing in breaking and entering, wetwork and kidnapping, then I think the minority are straight world drop-outs. You didn't get Hacking 5 and a 4/4 illegal software dealer contact when you were working as a middle manager at a staffing agency. You didn't get ceramic bones and Karate pool 11 when you were an English teacher.

[Cthulhudreams]

I've met one good argument for playing lotto from someone who was sort of middle management salary, double income family with 3 kids. His theory was that the cost of his weekly lotto ticket was pretty much less than what he spent on lunch and didn't have a meaningful impact on his bottom line, but if he won it would change his life forever. So he brought a monthly ticket in the 'state' lottery every month. Won a couple of grand but thats about it really.

But thats not a terrible reason, though I don't play the lottery. I also have less money, so its a more significant percentage of my weekly income. But if I was on 200k a year gross, I could see it.

In other news it is totally moronic for shadowrunners to be poor. Particularly the awakened ones. Are you seriously telling me that unless you were totally dysfunctional you couldn't find some major corp to give you a sin, a high lifestyle and a job that doesn't involve being shot at regularly if you have magic 6?

Really?

Given that shadowrunners have to be totally dysfunctional, mundane, or reasonably rich.

[PlatonicPimp]

Awakened, however, have the greatest chance to BE dysfunctional, from a corp perspective. Those with mentor spirits especially frequently have personal agendas that go against corporate interests. I doubt Bear is going to be OK with it when they find out their corp employs halberstam. Praerie dog isn't going to handle it so well when their job requires travel away from their community. Dragonslayer is right out-the corp fits the "abstract" definition of dragon too well. Even mentor-free awakened tend to be... eccentric. Now, the HR department does bend over backwards to accomodate mages, because the corps need them, but there are many things that they simply cannot work with. Not to mention that most corp facilities have a background count of 1 from sheer mundanity.