How many 'runners make their own jobs? Options

[Siege]

[Crusher Bob]

Yep, this may be the fault of their previous GMs. They see something like '60,000,000,000 reward for Vash the Stampede !? No way I'm going to let my players get their grubby mits on that!

[icharbezol]

My group has been playing for about 5 months now (once a week on Sundays), and I am the GM. The characters started out with no rep at all on the street, but have managed to get a fairly solid relationship with a Johnson that they trust (is that a rarity in most games?). This Johnson drops them the bigger jobs, but they break the bigger jobs into a series of smaller runs of their own planning designed to complete the overall run. So I guess it’s kind of a combination of “GM hands a run” and “players make their own run” so far.

A related question I have to this revolves around the “combat specialist” of the group. She has set up her own little “job” on the side, but I’m really not sure if it qualifies as a Day Job flaw or not. She has begun her own business providing the services of a bodyguard to the well-to-do out on a night on the town.

Her theory behind this was “why would a partier want a big troll in a black suit watching over them in the background when they could have a beautiful Elven girl posing as a regular party girl doing the same thing up close and personal?” She has costumes designed around a theme of what kind of “girl” the customer wants with them for the night.

She is requiring that the customer call to make an appointment two weeks in advance and has been very selective about her customers so far. She is advertised on the Matrix and in a very expensive salon/body clinic (the doc there is a contact she has earned through roleplay; I guess you could say the doc gets advertisement as well, since she has done all of the “combat specialist’s” bodyware work).

So is this more of a runner making her own runs that might be turning into a day job eventually or a day job that isn’t really restrictive enough to be a flaw, you think?

[toturi]

She's her own boss. She can decline clients to go on runs, right? And it is not a fixed job per se, so why not let her run with it without the flaw?

[icharbezol]

[Siege]

There's been a lot of static on the merits of the "day job" flaw.

In my opinion, the flaw is kinda easy to subvert and enforcing it as a penalty takes some doing.

For your combat spec, I'd just rule she makes x nuyen a week/month from gigs.

*If she doesn't work, she doesn't get money.
*If she's routinely unavailable, the jobs will start to float elsewhere.

The obvious drawback happens when a potential run conflicts with her "day" job -- especially if she's on an extended contract with a client (a week or even the weekend, for example). The catch is, the character may end up sitting out an adventure because of the day job or similar massive headaches.

If the character is just doing it for blue book material and background information, I'd just let it go as a creative way of picking up some nuyen a month.

You might even add some RP flavor like a random encounter table --> drink spilled on expensive, rented dress. Infatuated paramour challenges your "date" to a duel. And so on.

-Siege

[icharbezol]

[spotlite]

If you want to keep the downtime and additional roleplay to a minimum (in our game we'd play it all out where possible, but you might not play the same way) you could always, rather than use the flaw, bring in the karma for cash rules to represent it. I.e., she spends karma to represent the jobs she's done and gets cash at a rate determined by the GM. If the player is willing, you could vary the money. Perhaps she starts the next game, having spent 2 good karma, 15 grand richer. That's a good chunk of cash. however, that's what's left after her employer had to pay medical bills and a bonus cos the job went sour, so she's also starting the game shaking off the last of her injuries in the form of a light wound of something. It would add flavour if nothing else. The player would have to be willing to accept such arbitrary behaviour though.

Or you can play out the occasional job and use it to link into work for the team for instance, awarding karma and maybe even cash for it. It all depends on how much detail you want to go into.

I have a player running their own secure escort service (in the form of secure transport and bodyguarding - a professional combat rigger, using much the same philosphy as you, but basing it more on the driver from Strange Days), but who had it set up as part of their character background. Hence she has the day job, but is self employed. Half her contacts are not much more than paid employees - her fixer is in fact a professional agent with some dodgy contacts, so she gets lots of legit work and hears about the odd run now and again. She picked lots of different Mr Johnsons, from various corps, to represent clients she had previously taken to shady meets and had done particularly well with. Its an ideal job.

However, whenever she spends more than a few days exclusivley on a run, her business drops off, as her agent has to say she's unavailable. If this sort of thing happens, she has to spend profits from the shadowrunning to maintain the business (offices, mechanic workshop, etc) over and above her own lifestyle costs. But I do allow the vehicle maintenance on her limo to be absorbed into the business cost rather than general lifestyle, unless it needs specific work or repairs doing.

If she manages to keep the business afloat by purely legit means in a month (or by roleplaying going out and getting legit jobs, leaving her card with potential clients etc), then I give her a few thousand profit. If not, she makes no profit, but because she's already spent money keeping it afloat, she doesn't lose any more. The flaw affects jobs she can take, the money she is able to settle for on a job, who she can and cannot work for so as not to alienate her client base, etc etc rather than financially or in other ways.

That's how we deal with the enterprising self-employed runner anyway. Hope its useful to you.

[Siege]

[BitBasher]

My players will never, ever do their own jobs against the corps unless they have absolutely no other option. The reason for this is that if one corp hires the SR's against another corp then the PC's are tools, the corp knows this, the real instigator is the hiring corp who they can retaliate against.

If there is no hiring corp then the victim corp will eradicate the PC's, as SR's performing these jobs on their own is dangerious and antithetical to the bottom line. The chance of the PC's getting murdered in the future is astronomically higher. The PC's are literally eliminating the mitigating factor that keeps target corps from killing them in the first place.

It's even explicitly stated in the corporate download that the shadow community exists only because the corps allow it to exist. This is a case where they would decide that the SR's have stepped over that line.

Now bank jobs and jobs against non corp entities are far more viable. Although all bank jobs will be corp jobs because all banks will be owned by megas, just like the media is.

[The Jake]