Retirement, When is enough, really enough? Options

[Mr. Mage]

Uhh...Magic Fingers and/or Animate ftw?

no no, I'm thinking more along the lines of Ally Spirit or Bound free spirit. I want it to be permanent. Not to mention, the professor would probably have more than a few magical boobytraps there for the pranksters magicians...hehe

[noonesshowmonkey]

I rarely have had any characters of mine or my own players ever get close to retirement. The Shadows in fluff (especially 4th ed with its Street emphasis) tend to give you just enough money to get by till next week.

Breaking out of small time into the big time generally requires a lot of luck... And even then, the threats grow asymmetrically to a point where lifespan rapidly approaches zero.

That and underworld life generally doesn't just let you 'retire'. The people you know still know you. The scores you settled are probably still unsettled for somebody and chances are good your ass is still worth some nuyen to somebody. Good luck just walking away.

[Mr. Mage]

The most likely retirement plan for most shadowrunners is a nice cold gutter or in the dumpster as part of next week's trash, with a bullet to the brain or a knife to the back. They probably won't even get a funeral service.

[Cheops]

I've almost always been the GM so I don't have many characters.

1st ever was a decker from New Orleans, White Rabbit. She "retired" when I took over as GM and became a Seraphim for CAT. She probably didn't fare so well coming out of Crash 2.0. She made a brief reappearnce for the Legion portion of Brainscan.

Other character I played for long enough to be popular was Dixie. Former NASCAR driver who tried to make the jump to F1 after putting a VCR 3 in this head. Didn't work out so he moved into smuggling. He ended up retired with his decker buddy Fast Eddie (who survived Brainscan) to a manor in the CAS.

As for players in my campaigns: we've got a ton who decided to not move up the ladder and continue with the "milk runs." We also had one very memorable story arc where they helped their long-time Johnson take over as head of S-K Prime where they all retired based off their rewards for helping. (long story short he got gunned down while they were on a vacation he'd planned for them in the Carib and they nursed him back to health and helped him figure out what was going on)

[Resplendent Fire]

I had a hermetic mage in a third edition game who, essentially, retired. I played the hell out of her and she (and the rest of the group) had enough karma pool to annoy the GM when the game ended. I ran Shadowrun a few times after that and used her as a fixer. It would probably have been wiser for her to move far away and try to leave it all behind.

[Cardul]

I have a Troll Rigger. I played him in 2nd edition. In 3rd Edition(when I started running), he became a background NPC. For 4th Edition, he is living the quiet life in Seattle, having retired. The old school VCR hurts when it rains, sure, but Seattle is his home..it is where his friends died. It is where he scattered bits of stupid Street Sams when he ejected their explosive filled seat for them pulling a gun on him in his own Eurovan. It is where his first wife died. It is where his old Fire House turned Garage and rose garden are. He still has that old Battleship turret outfront with its paired water cannons, and on hot days, he still aims the cannons at the sky and creates an artifical rain for the neigborhood kids. He sold the Eurovan to some kid heading to Australia years ago, but he still keeps a truck or two to work on. Sometimes, young up and comers come to him, and he teaches them how to maintain and tune an engine. Maybe, he might build something for them in his shop. He still sleeps with a shotgun by his bed, and he has all the latest engineering texts.

Why did he retire? Because, in the end..when you look in the shadows, and see only the ghosts of friends and enemies, it is time to step away.

[PirateChef]

I had a group that was looking to retire after one last job: steal a stonewall battle tank. We had a contact that made it know that a certain Japanese corporation was willing to trade a defunct aircraft carrier for one, and we were going to turn it into a sort of floating community and live out the rest of our lives traveling the worlds oceans.

[StealthSigma]

I had a group that was looking to retire after one last job: steal a stonewall battle tank. We had a contact that made it know that a certain Japanese corporation was willing to trade a defunct aircraft carrier for one, and we were going to turn it into a sort of floating community and live out the rest of our lives traveling the worlds oceans.

That seems like a really bad trade on the corporation's part. Even if a CV is defunct, it was probably worth more in scrap than a single main battle tank. You probably picked up a ship that was built and commissioned sometime in the 2020s, possible the 2010s....

[PirateChef]

I don't know if you remember it, but the Stonewall battletank was the heaviest piece of armament in Rigger 3. It had enough armor that the only thing that could even hurt it was another Stonewall, mainly b/c of the giant railgun mounted on it. It took 3 riggers to control, and only CAS (or maybe UCAS, I forget) had the technology to make them. There were something like 15 - 30 in existence. The main reason the corp wanted one was to study it so they could begin producing them on their own.

[StealthSigma]

I don't know if you remember it, but the Stonewall battletank was the heaviest piece of armament in Rigger 3. It had enough armor that the only thing that could even hurt it was another Stonewall, mainly b/c of the giant railgun mounted on it. It took 3 riggers to control, and only CAS (or maybe UCAS, I forget) had the technology to make them. There were something like 15 - 30 in existence. The main reason the corp wanted one was to study it so they could begin producing them on their own.

I'm just dubious, from a reverse engineering perspective of that ability. For something so rare, you aren't going to tear it apart in any way that would render it unusable. The corp could probably build a tank that is just as armored and armed as the Stonewall, but it wouldn't be as compact, and would require a massive drive system, which means a larger production facility, more resources, and thus a higher cost. The trick to reducing those costs is reducing the weight and size of the armor for the tank. The heavier the armor, the larger the drive system. The biggest barrier to matching a stonewall was likely two factors, armor construction and reducing the power supply size/weight for the railgun. Depending on how the power supply is setup, bank of batteries versus one battery versus drawing it from a source like a small nuclear reactor, it may have been easier to nick a couple batteries for the corp to analyze. Likewise with the armor, it would have also been easier to steal a bit of it that just came off its production process. A huge friggin tank is a lot harder to hide away than a battery and bit of armor. Plus you are much more free to cut, scrap or do whatever you want to the component parts instead of risking the ability to use the full product. Of course, stealing a tank is a much bigger finale than stealing a bit of armor and a couple batteries.

[PirateChef]

I think that the fluff involved stated somewhere that the big deal for the Stonewall was the gun it used, which had some tech that no one else had access to, and that the only reason the tank itself was so protected was to have a way to move the gun around and still survive if you had to shoot something close to you. If I remember correctly the rail gun did area effect damage, mainly caused by the particles of whatever you fired / hit flying in every direction fast enough to cause damage on a massive scale.

The benefit to stealing the tank, versus just a piece of it, is that since the production facility is just as guarded as the tanks themselves, at least when you steal the tank you have a heavily armored flying vehicle to escape in.

That and we wanted take it through at least one taco stand drivethru before we delivered it to the final buyers.

[cREbralFIX]

That and we wanted take it through at least one taco stand drivethru before we delivered it to the final buyers.

Now THAT is a worthy feat!  Think of the rep the characters would gain for doing that.

[Neraph]

I have a Troll Rigger. I played him in 2nd edition. In 3rd Edition(when I started running), he became a background NPC. For 4th Edition, he is living the quiet life in Seattle, having retired. The old school VCR hurts when it rains, sure, but Seattle is his home..it is where his friends died. It is where he scattered bits of stupid Street Sams when he ejected their explosive filled seat for them pulling a gun on him in his own Eurovan. It is where his first wife died. It is where his old Fire House turned Garage and rose garden are. He still has that old Battleship turret outfront with its paired water cannons, and on hot days, he still aims the cannons at the sky and creates an artifical rain for the neigborhood kids. He sold the Eurovan to some kid heading to Australia years ago, but he still keeps a truck or two to work on. Sometimes, young up and comers come to him, and he teaches them how to maintain and tune an engine. Maybe, he might build something for them in his shop. He still sleeps with a shotgun by his bed, and he has all the latest engineering texts.

Why did he retire? Because, in the end..when you look in the shadows, and see only the ghosts of friends and enemies, it is time to step away.

Epic.

[MJBurrage]

For my characters:

• Vanguard, a stealthy cybered elf, I first played circa 1990. He retired to a quiet life with his npc-decker girlfriend after earning enough karma that the game systems were becoming seriously strained.
• Rick, a physad ork with a lot of contacts, I first played circa 1996. He "retired" to life as a fixer, he operates out of a club he owns with a former teammate.
• Bulwark, a bodyguard/rigger, I first played circa 1997. He went legit and started his own small high-security limo company.

The rest of my characters are either taking a dirt-nap, or were not played long enough for it to matter.

[the_real_elwood]

I never played any one campaign long enough to retire a character, but I don't really think my characters would ever be the type to actually retire. Maybe it's a bit cliche of an archetype, but I always enjoy playing the live hard, die young type of street sams. If they were going to retire at all, it'd have to be after becoming obscenely wealthy, and being able to retire toa nice little island in the carib. Or if the rest of their team bit it and he was the only one left, I think he'd retire. But barring those conditions, I think my characters would all have kept running the shadows, as it's what they enjoy doing anyways.

[Neraph]

I had a male fomori physad named Annwyn Breohnen back in the early 2000s, and played him off and on for the better part of 3 years. I had a lot of fun with him, and made a lot of impressions. He started a contract security company and trained the officers himself. I retired him when I found out Annwyn was a girl's name.

[Snow_Fox]

we had a couple of hcaracters retire to a 'high' lifestyle with (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) 1 million.
One went into sim's, usually it's just comfort.

[SamVDW]

As a player, I say you quit the character when it stops being fun.