[X] My Assistant

[Blade]

Awakened are rare, but not that rare.
Keep in mind that there are about 1 doctor per 1000 inhabitant in the world. (Closer to 2/1000 in "developed countries") and you'll still find doctors who lose their licenses for one reason or another and can't get any legitimate work in their field, so I guess it could be the same with mages.

[Juca Bala]

Well, they are rich, well, at least the ones that come to be well know or, at least, the ones that survive the firsts months. Shadowrunning is risky business and is all about being extremelly professional in some fields (yes, 6 in firearms IS an expert). At least in my game world, shadowrunning is for the better ones out there. Yes, there are a multitude of guys that think that they are shadowrunners, the bad news is: They don't. They are just thugs with guns and thus are paid accordly. The characters in my game are very well paid to do things that require finesse, planning, resources (magical or whatnot), mad skill levels and, of course, involve a crappyload of danger.

[IQ Zero]

In our games before, most runners were running in the red or borderline close to it. However, there are some exceptions to the rule. There were these 3 players that had their characters invest most of their monies in stocks, sometimes using their "insider" knowledge (gained on runs) to buy or sell through their stockbroker.

These started in 1st Ed and they had all decided to be SINners. That campaign arc ran from 2050 to 2060 (1st Ed - 3rd Ed), by the end of it, all three had good income from their stocks, which they used to diversify, the stocks were in the name of a company that they created that just owned stocks.

Later on, they retired and became NPCs, that we used for continuity until now. They are the current fixers to the PCs of my games.

[DocTaotsu]

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

-Siege

Bah! The military will always be there to employ your Creative Basket Weaving degree as an officer (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Okay that's not entirely true but still...

[Cthulhudreams]

Awakened are rare, but not that rare.
Keep in mind that there are about 1 doctor per 1000 inhabitant in the world. (Closer to 2/1000 in "developed countries") and you'll still find doctors who lose their licenses for one reason or another and can't get any legitimate work in their field, so I guess it could be the same with mages.

Actually its higher than that in the developed world. It's higher than that in the US and Canada for cripes sake.

But anyway, the reason why doctors loose thiner licenses and cannot get another job is usually because they've violated their position of trust, and thats critical to the doctoring thing.

It is a lot less important for a mage doing warding for lone star. You just audit compliance (not hard) to remove the trust issue, and you're done. Who cares if the guy is completely bonkers in his spare time. If he has high magic and delivers on the job.

But really are you saying that all your mages are so nuts that they couldn't hold down a real job? If so, then fine, but surely that annoys the rest of the team when they never do anything they say and never show up on time.

[DocTaotsu]

Given how uncomfortable magic makes non-magical types I'd think that a guy being bonkers would be an excellent reason for him to be denied credentially as an "accredited" magical user and be either drugged out of his mind in a psych ward or used for exciting "therapy" development in a corporate research facility.

I'm not sure how auditing will remove the trust issue. The ward is a creation of the mage and therefore he can bust through it whenever right? Without leaving behind a signature or setting off any alarms? You want to give a crazy person that kind of access? Wouldn't it be better to hire non-crazy people so you have worry about that less? We're uncomfortable giving crazy people guns and hiring them to the police, I think society will be very uncomfortable hiring people who can... kill people with their mind.

Also Australia's ratio of General Practioners to population is 1.1:1000. Granted, give their drop bear problem, I don't know if they qualify as a "developed nation". I can't find the statistics for the US right now. *Ducks for cover*

[PlatonicPimp]

It's not "all mages are too crazy for work", It's "The number of mages with personalities the corporation find unacceptable is higher than the average for the population, even considering how far a corp will bend over to hire a mage." There's a world of difference there.

[Blade]

Besides I'm not saying that mages can't hold a job, I'm saying that corps don't need mages badly enough to accept anything to get one. I think that most corps are always on the lookout of Awakened talents, but not in desperate need of them as it's often pictured.

[Siege]

Bah! The military will always be there to employ your Creative Basket Weaving degree as an officer (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Okay that's not entirely true but still...

You know, I'd laugh if that wasn't so very true...

-Siege

[Cthulhudreams]

So how many important facilities and corp offices in your game are protected by sec mages, and what is their casualty rate?

[Siege]

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.

Yes and no. My folks used to tell me about a glut of physics grads on the market in the 70's - too much supply and demand dwindles.

For runners, it boils down to three basic elements: Skill + Willingness + Opportunity.

Sure, you have the skills and the willingness to use those skills, but now the trick is making the connection with the right person who is willing to pay you for the skills and willingness.

This is really no different from anyone else in the job market - whether you're a chef or a ninja assassin. Although a better analogy might be pro basketball - plenty of kids want to be pro ballers (willingness). They spend hours playing (developing skills). Now, how the hell do you get on a team?

-Siege

[IQ Zero]

Out of curiosity, while some shadowrunners are born poor, if one were to look at the various stories, its easy to see that some come from corp families and couldn't stand being constricted anymore. Others were hung out to dry. Still more were former mercs who found it better to sell their skills in the open market than to be corporate sheep.

If a runner gets (in SR4) about 5-10K per run, then go figure what the average corp sheep gets. Other than job security that is ... CorpSec guys probably earn about 5-10K a month, plus board and lodgings. So a good runner can maybe score 3 or 4 runs a month, call it 25K per month.

Of course, the wannabee's will probably end up on the slab.

[wind_in_the_ston...]

How many of these disenfranchised people with magic ability are trying to get rich? Many of them live lives that are whatever passes for normal to them, until the money runs out. Then they find work which pays the bills for another month. These are shadowrunners, and they're not living middle lifestyles.

[JonathanC]

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.

...in a good, functioning economy with a healthy middle class. Which doesn't even come close to describing Shadowrun in 2070. If Shadowrun was a game about the world we live in, or even the world we're likely to live in when it's 2070, then you'd be right. But they diverged from our world, and skills are only valuable if they're rare.

It used to be that having a college degree meant you pulled down a manager's salary. Nowadays, if you don't have a college degree, your ass can't even get a job in the freaking mailroom. I know people with Master's degrees who are unemployed, and who even when they *were* employed, were, at best, about middle class. Some people prefer to play as though their Shadowrunners are, at the start of the game, on top of the world. And that's alright for them. But the 2070 described in the book is essentially a world in which North America has become a collection of third-world countries, where you have the ridiculously rich, and everyone else who's either starving in the streets, on a wageslave treadmill, or risking their lives and dodging bullets for 5-10k a job, plus whatever else they can grab.

Add in the fact that most shadowrunners are people born outside of the system (no SINs), or people who opted out for some reason, and you can begin to see how the pay scale could be low enough to keep them "poor". If I'm going to spend real money on operatives, I can just hire well-trained, certified mercs, not some random assholes that I met through a friend of a friend of a friend who hangs out in dive bars in Seattle.

[Muspellsheimr]

I would just like to say that I can guarantee not all Shadowrunners are poor. In my current game, my character has 400k in military-grade equipment, and thanks to Type-O, over 6mil worth of bioware, and 200k ready to be spent. One of the other characters has a permanent luxury lifestyle, and runs because he feels like it.

Of course, this is a slightly higher-powered game than usual (hacker had an additional 100 unrestricted Build Points, troll martial artist has 12 points of auto-soak armor...)

[JonathanC]

Nobody is saying that runners *stay* poor. But if you weren't poor, why the hell would you start taking temp positions as an assassin/kidnapper/thief in a world where a freaking schoolgirl is likely packing a holdout pistol with AP bullets? You're either poor, or nuts, or both.

But yeah, assuming you survive long enough to get through a few jobs, you ought to have a decent nest egg, unless you're retarded or have a serious drug problem (novacoke is a helluva drug?).

[Cthulhudreams]

...in a good, functioning economy with a healthy middle class. Which doesn't even come close to describing Shadowrun in 2070. If Shadowrun was a game about the world we live in, or even the world we're likely to live in when it's 2070, then you'd be right. But they diverged from our world, and skills are only valuable if they're rare.

It used to be that having a college degree meant you pulled down a manager's salary. Nowadays, if you don't have a college degree, your ass can't even get a job in the freaking mailroom. I know people with Master's degrees who are unemployed, and who even when they *were* employed, were, at best, about middle class.

Yeah, but the problem is a bachelors is 3 in a skill and a masters is 4. Shadowrunners start with 6 in an active skill, 4 in many others and knowledge skills in the 4-6 range. They can seriously be one of the top 1% of negiotators in the world at char gen, and thats something people will play the big money for.

[Cang]

With a thought on history, i picture shadowrunners to be like pirates. Some of them, like Capt. Morgan, become rich and retire while others just spend through their money as fast as they an because they are A) outlaws B) people want to kill them C) for there job and safety always have to be on the move. Coupled with the fact that many runners come to be because their involvement in crime and thrill seeking makes them terrible money managers. Like it was said before if you think you are going to die soon, you like each day the most you can and don't really worry about tomorrow. Of course many players try to play their characters as safe as possible even if the character themselves would not.

[Blade]

With a thought on history, i picture shadowrunners to be like pirates.

I've never thought of that, but it totally fits. I'd also like to add that a lot of pirates were proto-anarchists and lived in small lawless communities out of government's reach...

... And after all they had proto-cyberware! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[CanRay]

And drugs!

Well, rum.

...

WHY IS THE RUM GONE AGAIN?

[NativeRigger]

Don't forget the dillatantes.

In skydiving we see more than a few trust fund babies who do it because the risk is the one thing that thier essentially unlimited money can't cover. They are not suicidal, it's just a way to break out of the monotony of their "fortunate" birth. It's a way of adding contrast to their lives.

-NR

[Zak]

Wasn't there this one rich guy in Prime Runners, who paid teams to take him on runs? Can't remember the name.

[CanRay]

I remember hearing about a Football Playing Troll that played at being a 'Runner as well, right?

[Pendaric]

The general theme is to pay just enough to keep your shadowrunners hungry for more work. However there comes a point where a team will make a profit. Despite the high running costs they need to pay towards keeping their edge so they dont die.
Eventually there will come a point where one of three things will happen. They will die. They will retire. They will realise that being a runner has changed them and now is a part of who they are.
Deckers have to deck. Sammies have to scrap etc to paraphrase Neuromancer.

[Siege]

Add in the fact that most shadowrunners are people born outside of the system (no SINs), or people who opted out for some reason, and you can begin to see how the pay scale could be low enough to keep them "poor". If I'm going to spend real money on operatives, I can just hire well-trained, certified mercs, not some random assholes that I met through a friend of a friend of a friend who hangs out in dive bars in Seattle.

True, but hiring professional merc teams is expensive and raises the level of risk for all involved. Certified mercs are legal and will charge accordingly based on the nature of mission. As such, they may not be willing to risk a criminal act that, if caught, would cost them more than the potential paycheck.

Whereas mega-corps have departments dedicated to maintaining rosters of disposable talent - match the talent to the job, calculate chance of success based on prior job performance and dependability and send out one of your disposable asset managers to arrange the deal.

And really, the "typical" runner is hungry enough not to quibble on the same points a professional merc might. (For the same reasons security contractors hire third-world citizens with military experience versus, say, Americans for American military contracts in the Middle East.)

-Siege