Shadow Market - your criminal economy in action!, Tired of waiting for Mr. J to tell you the score? Options

[Saint Sithney]

I'll preface this by saying that, I really like players to take their own initiative in all situations. Feeding them jobs doesn't allow them the freedom of participating in a living world. Something I've cooked up towards this end is the idea of the Shadow-market. The idea is to create a gray market of bounties and wagers to use as a standing payment system for criminal activities. Corp A wants some experimental tech from Corp B, so they post a request (using a 3rd party, natch,) for an item which fits the general specifications. I.E. "We need a means of chemical synthesis for this following molecule. We will pay $X. Reference the work of Dr. Braun of AG Chemie for related compounds." So, there we've got a payment waiting for an extraction target or some paydata, and it avoids legal problems through the standard "plausible deniability" defense. And, then there's the deadpool assassination market. People offer "prizes" for "guessing" the date of a specific person's death. All pseudo-legal and anonymous.

So, Player A and Player C couldn't make it this week. The Plot arc is on hold and the remaining players don't have the sauce to pull some heavy lifting by their lonesome. You also can't burn a lot of in-game time here because it's gonna be bad to have the other players come back to weeks of dead time. Meanwhile, it's sort of unrealistic to say that a contact just so happens to have the perfect job waiting for them (not to mention that puts a stress on the GM to come up with a tailored job on the fly.) So, what does a bored runner do on a Saturday night to drum up some extra cash. Why not hit the Darknets and look for some standing bounties? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cyber.gif)

[Drats]

I introduced my players to ShadowSea for just this reason. Two of them haven't seemed to glom on yet because they tend to ignore The Matrix, but the hacker hit the ground running. 95% of his personal sidequests have been taken from anonymous smalltime job postings culled when he had a weekend to spare, and it's made life soooo very easy.

[ClemulusRex]

I certainly like the idea of characters being proactive in finding their own jobs. I don't know about having active bounties by corporations up on shadowboards and the like. It would sort of ruin the element of surprise that most runs depend on if say, "Corp A wants Chemical X" and word gets back to "Corp B" who happens to be synthesizing "Chemical X" (and word WILL get back to them if this is posted in any kind of forum--no matter how shadowy.) "Corp B" will subsequently beef up security and/or move the development site.

The "deadpool" idea is nice. Maybe some street level 'Hooding runs for more altruistic runners. ("Gangers raped my girl/killed my cat/put Fizz-Whiz in my shower head and I've only got (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) 46.32--please somebody make 'em pay!") Might not pay much (if at all) in cold hard nuyen, but might give the players new contacts and the like.

If your players are really motivated and you're feeling quick on your feet with some improv, let them sniff around their contacts and see what happens. If you try to put the ball in their court and/or play off of some of their Qualities, some players might actually discover that their characters have their own agendas that they want to pursue. Especially if it's just one or two of your players, you might even just try to do some "behind the scenes" or downtime roleplaying stuff if you think people would be into that. "It's Saturday night and you're flush from the last run, whadda ya wanna do?" and just go from there. It could be a chance to do just general "maintenance" on their contacts, build new contacts, or just find some kind of unexpected trouble or adventure to get into.

[nemafow]

I like this idea, perfect way to introduce my team into actually running (as they arent running as of yet)

[Karoline]

I set up a system like this for 'the other game'. Basically the idea in that was that the various characters could be part of a particular 'guild' of sorts, like the bounty hunter guild for example. Around major cities (Sharn, was done in Eberron) fliers would be posted standard wanted poster style, but people from the bounty hunter guild would be able to leave and read special marks on the fliers that other's couldn't see. They could be bonus tidbits of information, real latest sightings, other hunter groups looking to add a couple members or a member or two looking for a group, so on and so on. There was also a similar setup for an assassin's and thief's guild and artificer (Requests to make particular items) and so on.

Anyway, it worked out very well, as instead of having to plan out an entire adventure and railroad the PCs onto it, I just provided a list of bounties/targets/joints/whatever so that they could pick the type of thing they wanted to do, and the difficulty level. The easier ones tended to be 'bad guy hangs out in location X, go there, kill him, get cash' and the harder ones would involve the bad guy having a proper hideout.

So, sounds like a great idea to do this sort of thing in SR too. There should after all be several Js around, and several jobs open at any given time. One thing I've not liked about 'negotiations' in SR is that the character's answer is always yes, because the players know they don't really have a choice.

[nemafow]

One thing I've not liked about 'negotiations' in SR is that the character's answer is always yes, because the players know they don't really have a choice.

I agree, give them the illusion of choice by having several pre-made jobs written up, although you can potentially use bits and pieces from all of the other jobs to fit in the one that they are doing.

[Saint Sithney]

I certainly like the idea of characters being proactive in finding their own jobs. I don't know about having active bounties by corporations up on shadowboards and the like. It would sort of ruin the element of surprise that most runs depend on if say, "Corp A wants Chemical X" and word gets back to "Corp B" who happens to be synthesizing "Chemical X" (and word WILL get back to them if this is posted in any kind of forum--no matter how shadowy.) "Corp B" will subsequently beef up security and/or move the development site.

The thing is, this is actually sort of in practice today. Not so much the stealing, but, they will offer standing awards to independent chemists who can create specific molecules they are interested in. This idea is just an extension of that laced with innuendo. "Do you have great robotics ideas? Are you going to be the next Dr. Haronishi of Renraku? Contact us for your opportunity! Pay starts at 80,000¥." These kinds of standing threats and such are already known. That's why corps keep their security up and their information close to the chest.

The real fun with this kind of set up is that you can run into Smokin' Aces type situations where a heavy new marker drops and multiple crews of differing styles and levels of professionalism all clamber over each other to cash in.

[ClemulusRex]

The thing is, this is actually sort of in practice today. Not so much the stealing, but, they will offer standing awards to independent chemists who can create specific molecules they are interested in. This idea is just an extension of that laced with innuendo. "Do you have great robotics ideas? Are you going to be the next Dr. Haronishi of Renraku? Contact us for your opportunity! Pay starts at 80,000¥." These kinds of standing threats and such are already known. That's why corps keep their security up and their information close to the chest.

The real fun with this kind of set up is that you can run into Smokin' Aces type situations where a heavy new marker drops and multiple crews of differing styles and levels of professionalism all clamber over each other to cash in.

Got it. I guess I didn't read it closely enough. Yeah, I can dig it.

And +1 (or I guess it would be +2, now) to Karoline's practice of keeping several jobs open so PC's can tell Johnson (or cloaked figure in the shadowy tavern corner) of the week "no thanks" and not have it ruin the session.