i madea mistake, now they have a lot of money... Options

[Mystery Mantis]

Ok. long story short....
they had to break into an impound yard/evidence storage. the point was to recover some lost revenue on behalf of the mafia. they were told they would get 10% (which ended up 8% becuase the idiot playing the uncuth orc with cha of 2 wanted to negotiate). well, i made a math error when planning (had like, 20 minutes to plan), and i said 10% was 1.5 mill, spilt 4 ways. Well, they ask how much was in there, and it was 150 mill. well doing quick math, it actually is 15 mill, split 4 ways.
now, some of you are probably going, man that aint nothing. i got 75 billion and i own four mega corps, and 2 small countries. well, i am glad you do, but if you do, than you aren't in the same kind of game. this is a very low street level campaign where the runners are mostly ex gangers or fugitives kind of forced into the shadows. so, i was letting them have a big boost to finally get that peice of gear/cyber/magic/car/appartment that isn't in corrigated brown.
so i guess what i am asking is,
should i jsut let them have it? or should maybe it be a gift of the magi?
i am thinking about letting them shoot themselves over it. (not literally). i mean, trying to run out and grab up new cyber, and the clinic is in it with an enemy, and they wake up with a new visitor, like a traking device buried deep in the cage! now, every where they go, the enemy finds them! and these guys are dense as hell! they would never think of that, they would think "they must be astrally following us!" then tell the mage to go astral, and then when he doesn't find anyhing and is still projecting, the enemy attack! that would be funny...
anyways, thought?

[sidekick]

wow... you gave them 3.75 million each.... that's a large chunk of change.

First off, you could always eat crow. Just mention to the group that you fudged up the math and you meant for them to get less. Either they will understand and say it's cool, or they will bitch and whine and you'll just have to put your foot down.

or

you could be evil and mean and let them keep that money. First off, rumor of a score that big spreads fast. Pretty soon every old contact and "buddy" of the characters' start turning up to see how their new friends who hit it big are doing. What's worse people who aren't so friendly with the characters will start turning up, hopping to get part of the action. Present contacts will also expect better treatment, since they know the character is good for it.

Spending the money will be even tougher. Their fixers and fences are probably not acustomed to traffiking big ticket purchases. Sure your fixer is good for getting you a couple of Ares predators and some good quality armored vests, but don't expect him to be able to get HVARs and Miltech Grade armor. That means the character's will have to move on up. This will be a rough and expensive process. Finding higher level contacts will take up a pretty penny, and proving to these big hitters that you are the real deal will take even more. These new contacts won't be your friends, they aren't street level dealers, they are professionals. Prepare for a whole lot of fish out of water incidents as the character's try to deal with their new contacts (ie, the Ork shows up to the meet with the new fence in his work gear, even though the meet is at a fancy downtown dinner club.... the mage is dealing with the new magic group he bought his way into is suddenly shunned when it is learned that he doesn't have a MIT&T diploma or even attended college level thamaturgical theory classes). And while all this is happening, the character's will begin to be alienated from their street contacts as most street contacts feel that the characters have sold out and lost their roots.

What is even worse is that tossing that level of change around on illegal goods is a great way to get the Star on your back. Sure LS turned the other way when you were buying sub-machine guns and Rating 3 Blackhammer programs, but now that you are purchasing Citymasters and Rating 8 Weapon Foci, they will be a little more then willing to bust you. After all, a high profile bust is just the thing needed to bring up the company stock another point.

Unless they are prepared for it, this money will be more of a problem then a blessing. Most likely, after a couple of over-priced purchases, a series of faux-pas and rep blasting incidents, and a few run ins with various groups interested in the character's and their new found wealth, the group will most likely be out of most of their money and back to where they started... working for a living on the street.

[Daishi]

"The pay is 1.5 million. I had a brain-seizure just before saying the total was 150 million. It was 15 million. Welcome to the world of Retro-GMing."

That's exactly what I would do.

I've made mistakes similar to the that, and I just do a quick retro GM to keep things on track as best I can. It's a little disruptive and unsettling, but I only do it when it's an honest mistake. It's probably smoother over the long run than giving out 15 million and trying to find some way of challenging/screwing them.

Our PCs usually grin widely at the prospective of missions earning 50k a piece, so I'd personally say that 375k per man would be very sweet as it stands.

[toturi]

It depends whether you want to f*uck your players over. If you want to reduce the amount of money they have, you'll probably have to explain it to them that you screwed up.

If you want to them to keep the money, then I suppose you can shape the kind of obstacles they run into by the way they spend their money. If they simply, invest their loot in a good secure ID and stocks and funds, then retire, I think you are obliged to give them that. But if they spend their money like water, making a big wave, then they have to deal with the consequences.

But the bummer is that they spend their money discretely and carefully, buying stuff through dead drops and cutouts or some other method. Reward them for good roleplaying and let them live with the loot.

You f*ucked up, they didn't. Learn from your mistake. Don't make them pay for something you did.

[Arethusa]

My team of four runners did a broad daylight hit on a Renraku scyscraper in downtown Seattle. Six courier/Renraku soldiers dead in six seconds, the package safely secured, three cars disabled, two elementals stopped from materializing, and the entire block covered in smoke and CS gas later, we drove off under cover of smoke and general chaos. And we still had to lay low in the Barrens for a day before heading to Bellevue so I could do a covert insertion of the package with security assistance from our decker. The run was completely clean and no one ever saw us and lived for more than 3 seconds.

We spent about 4k total on munitions and breathing apperati.

We netted 4k a piece.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Arethusa]

It's worth noting that it was my fourth run, first Shadowrun campaign, and second RPG I'd ever played. Though we did all feel like we got ripped off, I didn't really know nearly enough about the Shadowrun world to argue otherwise. Not then, anyway.

It was six months ago.

[Reaver]

"The mafia would like to thank you for your diligent efforts at returning our lost property.

We will of course be paying you as agreed, in installments of 60,000¥ per year into an account of your choosing. Thank you for your time."

Of course, the mafia guy tells them this with a nice large bunch of goons to back him up and a sniper or two in various positions in case the runners get stupid. :D

After all, the mafia is in the business of making money... not loosing it. By paying the runners annually, it allows them to invest a big chunk that could have been paid out. It also discourages those runners from doing runs against the mafia. How can you get your next yearly installment in the Mafia in that area just got wiped out?

[Arethusa]

It's not a bad idea, but— say what you will about the mafia of the 2060s— they are at least professional. And professionals don't make deals like that after the fact. Everything has to be on the table from the beginning.

[Reaver]

[Jpwoo]

I blame your players. None of them double checked your math? Or the Mafia Guys math? I know that most of my characters would say something when the paycheck was off by an order of magnitude. I mean greasing the expense accounts is one thing....

[toturi]

[Arethusa]

That's a bit heavy handed. In all seriousness, it's one thing to be prepared, but dead man switches on cash and snipers escalate the situation unnecessarily, and professionals just don't do that. Still, I agree that the runners should be prepared to handle such a situation from a position of strength, though that becomes more an issue of roleplaying than world mechanics.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[toturi]

[Tanka]

[spotlite]

I have kinda the same problem, except one of my groups has earned the damn money. I haven't screwed up, they're just good!

But this has its own problems. They do have more money that I consider sensible. I'm about to start taking them down a peg or two by targetting their stuff (not for blowing up or anything cheesy like that, but for stealing so they have a chance of getting it back). I was going to start pulling the contacts problems outlined by various people above, and having word get round about how loaded they are, that kind of thing.

I was also toying with another idea. i'd appreciate opinions on whether its reasonable and realistic:

I was going to have the team decker followed by another team. When he's alone, they're going to try to nab him, and force the information from him about where they keep their cash, bank account numbers etc etc. If he won't give it willingly they're going to just knock him out and mind probe him. All of this will be resistable and avoidable by the player if he makes the right rolls (spotting his tail and the ambush, spell resistances and so on), but it will probably be very hard for him as the team will be very good. All the usual stealth rolls and so on that a player group would have they will also have, so the chances of him spotting them are very slim. Spells probably won't be high force, but will have a good skill and foci behind them, and so on.

If this was your character, would you consider this an unreasonable approach? The decker is the obvious choice because he's the least physically impressive or distinct among the group, not because he's a wussy decker. He actually has a set of spurs and plenty of combat cyber, so that's something in his favour that the bad guys don't necessarily know about. Anyway, if the bad guys succeed, they move on to stage two - try take the player's cred (not too hard if they have all the codes and so on from the decker) and geek them if they get in the way (which might prove a bit tougher!).

Don't mean to hijack the thread or anything, I'm more thinking that if people think this is an OK approach, its one more solution for Mystery Mantis to think about.

[toturi]

Pretty good solution, spotlite, but if you are going to apply the contacts/wrong party solution, I would suggest you allow the PCs to minimise the effects first. Only if they fail, do they get target by another team.

And if another team starts to target them, let your PCs have a chance of learning about it - the reverse of contacts/wrong party solution working in their favor.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[spotlite]

EDIT: replying to Toturi's comment to me! END EDIT

oh, naturally the players might have a chance of hearing about it. I'll make a secret charisma test for the movers and shakers to see which of the contacts might have conceivably heard about it and if they're willing to volunteer the info without the team asking. But if the team - normally ultra paranoid and careful - don't think on their own initiative to minimise the effects, I'm not going to suggest it. They ARE very careful. They don't brag, they try not to give any details away about who they are or where they're based (they're smugglers), that kind of thing. But they've dealt with several organised crime groups regularly, as well as the occasional free spirit or power mongering group (like the Atlantean Foundation). With those kind of deals going down, SOMEone is going to have heard about it. So in this particular case, I see no reason why people hearing about them isn't possible already.

But as a general rule - yes, of course you should give the players chance to do something about it if its appropriate to their overall situation. But is the way I intend to go about capturing the decker acceptable?

[toturi]

[Austere Emancipa...]

If there is absolutely no trust whatsoever between the 2 parties, then counter-snipers at least are professional, but like I said, those are probably not an option in the situation being discussed. A dead-man switch might convey more a sense of madness than professionalism:
MW: "Come on... You don't trust me?"
PC: "Hell no, and I like the idea of blowing shit up."

[toturi]

[BitBasher]

I disagree, I think A dead man switch represents a willingness to stalemate. It represents the "you cant kill me without losing also" mentality, and can be a very valuable bargaining tool. You dont come to a meet with a dead man switch and an intent to use it, it's just another type of insurance, as it only goes off if you're already toast.

[Austere Emancipa...]

If you do not trust your Johnson at all, you better not be a Shadowrunner. If you don't trust him at all, you'll have a lot of trouble trying to make a deal... You'll have to be given everything beforehand, or have Johnsons home rigged with C-12. It's pretty hard to convinve Johnson's to give you jobs under those terms. And after you've threatened to torture every Johnson you've had to death repeatedly, you might see a bit of a fall in job offers.

[Edit]Of course, if the jobs you get are more of the "Kill these 17 civilians and burn their homes" types, that's fine. Or if you are trying to build a rep as a bunch of something-paths who will do whatever it takes to get things done, except refrain from blowing shit up. Depends on what kind of PR you want, and what kind of jobs you specialize in, I guess.[/Edit]

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Jan 7 2004, 05:35 PM