How much Nuyen can a runner make without running Options

[Mäx]

So, who exactly would go after them?

Everyone who want's piece of their pie, so most likely at least all other syndicates and probably a bunch of bigger gangs too.
And i wouldn't count the police(who ever they are at the moment) out either, as few high publicity busts are quite good for PR.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Everyone who want's piece of their pie, so most likely at least all other syndicates and probably a bunch of bigger gangs too.
And i wouldn't count the police(who ever they are at the moment) out either, as few high publicity busts are quite good for PR.

And don't forget that I postulated that the dossier was mailed to both to Lone Star and Knight-Errant.

And they each know that the other knows.

So, if whomever is currently the cops in Seattle does try to bullshit their way through it with minimal effort and minimal disruption to their partners-in-crime, it will be a massive PR disaster because the other will fucking crucify them for it, publicly airing the fact that their competition was given a whole drug syndicate on a silver platter and did nothing about it.


As lucrative as deals with the syndicate may be on the level of the corrupt guys on the take, the company as a whole would get its ass vigorously jerked over a red-hot cheese-grater, and that would not stand. Heads would roll, quite literally. So yeah, even if they are on the take, their take isn't worth their jobs or their lives, let alone the Seattle contract.

So they'll go in and go in hard.

[Nevermind]

*snip*

How much time did this runnerteam from hell invest into this?

[Halinn]

How much time did this runnerteam from hell invest into this?

Given that the profit calculations pointed towards numbers high enough to keep the whole team living in luxury lifestyles, they can probably spare some weeks of dedicated legwork.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

@StealthSigma: In theory, yeah, they could afford it, but not if they really get anything else like implants, vehicles, weapons and varies other sundries needed to be a decent character--I don't think unaugmented mundane works as well now as it did in Third.

Unfortunately, by the scenarios being offerred on making money, it is the matter of a month or so and you have apparently payed off the facility, and with another month, you have all that gear you could have started out with in the beginning if you had not taken the Lab. Which is ludicrous, if you ask me.

[Emperor Tippy]

Which is ludicrous, if you ask me.

That's the illegal drug trade for you.

A kilo of pure cocaine on the streets of Bogota is less than a hundred dollars. That same kilo immediately south of the Mexican/US border is a thousand dollars. That same kilo immediately north of the Mexican/US border is six thousand dollars. That same kilo on the streets of LA is ten thousand dollars. That same kilo in Sydney Australia is two hundred and forty thousand dollars. Those are wholesale prices and uncut, street price after cutting multiplies all of those figures anywhere from ten to one hundred fold.

Fortunes were made moving cocaine from LA up to Alaska, an eight to ten fold price increase was not rare.

Miami was a city built nearly entirely with drug money, tens of billions of dollars poured in within a decade or so.

With a few thousand dollars worth of ingredients you can turn out a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Meth.

The illegal drug trade is huge money and anyone with access to a supply can, in real life, be rolling in millions (minimum) in very short order.

Shadowrun is no different, except synthetic drugs produced in a lab tend to be a lot more common (and thus bypass most of the transportation issues that plague drugs in real life).

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

That's the illegal drug trade for you.

A kilo of pure cocaine on the streets of Bogota is less than a hundred dollars. That same kilo immediately south of the Mexican/US border is a thousand dollars. That same kilo immediately north of the Mexican/US border is six thousand dollars. That same kilo on the streets of LA is ten thousand dollars. That same kilo in Sydney Australia is two hundred and forty thousand dollars. Those are wholesale prices and uncut, street price after cutting multiplies all of those figures anywhere from ten to one hundred fold.

Fortunes were made moving cocaine from LA up to Alaska, an eight to ten fold price increase was not rare.

Miami was a city built nearly entirely with drug money, tens of billions of dollars poured in within a decade or so.

With a few thousand dollars worth of ingredients you can turn out a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Meth.

The illegal drug trade is huge money and anyone with access to a supply can, in real life, be rolling in millions (minimum) in very short order.

Shadowrun is no different, except synthetic drugs produced in a lab tend to be a lot more common (and thus bypass most of the transportation issues that plague drugs in real life).

Which AGAIN, is not Shadowrun. I do not argue that you can (or cannot) make a lot of money in the drug trrade, but you are not a Shadowrunner at that point, you are a Drug Lord.

[Emperor Tippy]

Which AGAIN, is not Shadowrun. I do not argue that you can (or cannot) make a lot of money in the drug trrade, but you are not a Shadowrunner at that point, you are a Drug Lord.

I was simply commenting on your assertion that making these kinds of insane ROI's were ludicrous. They aren't, the illegal drug trade is just about the single most profitable industry that exists in real life. It's not unreasonable that it's similarly profitable in the Sixth World.

Does being a Drug Lord automatically preclude one from being a shadowrunner? No. You can have quite fun campaigns with the entire premise that the PC's are trying to set up a drug and crime empire.

Should being a drug dealer be done to the exclusion of everything else when the game isn't focused on that type of campaign? No.

Equipment and money should be decided out of game by the players and GM. With my RL group we treat nuyen mostly as easy come, easy go. You might get several million nuyen worth of equipment for a run, but you will end up loosing most of it by the end of the run and it's just one more expense. About the only thing we really have found (gear wise) to effect game balance is military vehicles and 'ware. In game we have ways to limit access to both of those (military vehicles are not common and draw notice, they are almost always things that are purchased for a single specific use and then destroyed. the hard part with high grade ware is finding someone who can create and implant it. delta grade ware has to be custom made from the ground up for every individual by a team of specialists and the lab equipment needed to create and implant it costs hundreds of millions of nuyen and is incredibly rare, getting access involves cashing in major favors).

Granted, we also usually play with a karma system for character improvement purchases (new 'ware for example). It's essentially exchanging favors and ancillary pay data for the ware, it's not a straight cash transaction and virtually no such transactions take place.

[Sid Nitzerglobin]

Apparently somewhere around a third of the posters on Jackpoint aren't shadowrunners... Who'd a thunk it? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[DnDer]

That's the illegal drug trade for you.

A kilo of pure cocaine on the streets of Bogota is less than a hundred dollars. That same kilo immediately south of the Mexican/US border is a thousand dollars. That same kilo immediately north of the Mexican/US border is six thousand dollars. That same kilo on the streets of LA is ten thousand dollars. That same kilo in Sydney Australia is two hundred and forty thousand dollars. Those are wholesale prices and uncut, street price after cutting multiplies all of those figures anywhere from ten to one hundred fold.

Fortunes were made moving cocaine from LA up to Alaska, an eight to ten fold price increase was not rare.

Miami was a city built nearly entirely with drug money, tens of billions of dollars poured in within a decade or so.

With a few thousand dollars worth of ingredients you can turn out a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Meth.

The illegal drug trade is huge money and anyone with access to a supply can, in real life, be rolling in millions (minimum) in very short order.

Shadowrun is no different, except synthetic drugs produced in a lab tend to be a lot more common (and thus bypass most of the transportation issues that plague drugs in real life).

Many people have referenced BB in this topic. Let's look to that for the example of a lab-synthesized drug startup cartel, which seems to be one of the scenarios here that a lot of people are making and claiming ~millions~ of nuyen on in mere weeks and months.

Now, Walt had Mike and the LPH infrastructure to build his startup on, but there were legacy costs for the infrastructure already in place. After their first solo startup week (a chemist "runner" with his 200k lab) came home with something like 20% of his expected total for those legacy costs. I don't remember the exact number, so I'm going to use round figures here of 100,000. After expenses and hazard pay and distribution, he was left with 20k free and clear. And that's WITH an infrastructure in place.

I can't imagine any runner buying his lab (like Tippy has been advocating) and just churning out any SR synthetic drug and just creating dazzling profit numbers like he's put up on the chalkboard earlier in this topic. It goes back to my point about no one using or understanding real market numbers here.

Let's walk through Walt's steps, here. Walt bought his contact in Jesse, a low-influence, high-loyalty (by nature of blackmail) contact. Let's assume the market is barren and there's no other cartels, LPH, or even a Tuco on the street in competition. Unless the runner chemist is out on the corner selling his product (meaning he's not in his lab cooking his profit-making product), he has to start recruiting and paying. Distribution is your first hurdle. Even the local meth heads want more than just the next hit - and you want more reliability than the local meth heads to distribute your product. After all, no profit if it gets chewed, snorted, injected or otherwise consumed. Let's assume a 2% stock loss for that anyway - lots of major national retail chains are happy with 98% logistical loss prevention rate. So that's 2% of anything you just cooked, up in smoke that you're never going to see again. Cost of doing business.

Let's buy some contacts, our local meth heads who're going to pick it up in your living room or lab and then leave to sell it off. That's some high-loyalty you're buying there. But because of the nature of the job, that loyalty is going to come at a regular price. It'll be like buying those contacts again. Every month. We'll take another 8% off the top there, for the local guys in the neighborhood - say 6 or 7 of them total.

Word's out and business is booming. Your portable 200k lab just isn't going to cut it anymore. You need to produce volume, and you haven't even paid off your first RV yet. In fact, someone glitched and you had to crush your original lab. Now you need 2 mil easy for a hidden facility, which includes the equipment. So, you now have your local meth heads, the employees at your secret facility who help hide it and all the new equipment. The return on your product is great, sure, but how much are you sinking into operating expenses now versus actual take-home profit?

Because, gee whiz... secret meth lab? Can't have the local meth heads coming to knock on your door for the packages they hand out. Now you have to get middle men. Drivers, and Tucos to distribute in the local neighborhoods to work under the nose of cops. But now your product is on the market and produces enough to be KNOWN by the cops (still assuming no other market competition for your drug) who have to crack down on you for PR reasons, even if they don't give a damn (someone else brought up this point earlier). You either have to grease a LOT of palms, or sacrifice several HUGE batches to give them the token PR victory to let them keep their job. Much like the 2% off the top, this becomes another (if I'm using the word right) sunk cost: unrecoverable investment that serves only to keep your doors open.

Any business, even the synthetic drug business (especially the synthetic drug business because your costs to cover up what you're doing are going to be much, much higher to hide the illegal stuff over, say, a real pharma corp that only has corp and federal safety and research regulation to comply with) is looking at a realistic 16-24 months before you see real, first-dollar profit. Until then, you're riding the red, no matter how much scratch you put in your pocket as your "owner's salary."

. . .

All goes back to the point that the numbers everyone (I don't mean to pick on Tippy, but he's the one throwing out the largest numbers, and saying how easy this is going to be) is quoting are happening in a vacuum. "I made my drug. I sell it for x profit. Look at my spreadsheet based on my dice pool and bought successes." None of the real expenses of starting up your own lab, except for the initial 200k investment, is really being considered here.

If you're going to play the BB game, you need to talk BB numbers. Walt did the math, which is about his only saving grace as he flies down the cliff to his final moral event horizon, but too few others in the topic are.

Also the fact that being a chemist, drug lord, or cartel operator is NOT a "day job" quality. It's a full-time (triple time, as any owner of a startup business will tell you most willingly) occupation. You ~can't~ run, because that ~is~ your run. Granted, it would make a very good string of scenarios (like it has for the last 5 seasons), but you cannot - as Tippy would suggest in his last post - just mark the nuyen off on a sheet and call it easy come easy go, with more to roll around in at your leisure.

In a vacuum, his numbers are accurate. But when you start talking about all the micromanaging (question: if Tippy burns almost all his assets every time he goes on a run... how does he have those SOL cannons and drones when he goes out for a slushee? But that's tangential and borders on trolling, so forget that) factors that go into how you'd manage your micro-cartel, you've stepped out of the rules vacuum and can no longer claim and of these insane numbers people are quoting.

Unless I've totally missed information when reading this topic over the last few days, which, I'll admit, is entirely possible. But I don't think I'm far off the mark when I'm saying buying a chem lab and being a chemist is NOT going to produce anywhere NEAR the profit several people in this topic have claimed it will generate.


...Sorry... That's been building up for a while, and I know most of it was irrational and probably generally incoherent stream-of-consciousness stuff. But someone's on the internet. And they're wrong. It couldn't be helped. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[lorechaser]

...Sorry... That's been building up for a while, and I know most of it was irrational and probably generally incoherent stream-of-consciousness stuff. But someone's on the internet. And they're wrong. It couldn't be helped. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

+1 for the reference.

[Emperor Tippy]

Many people have referenced BB in this topic. Let's look to that for the example of a lab-synthesized drug startup cartel, which seems to be one of the scenarios here that a lot of people are making and claiming ~millions~ of nuyen on in mere weeks and months.

-snip-

That's all great but you are forgetting one critical step. The runners are incredibly dangerous and already have contacts at the highest levels of the criminal underworld, usually at least one of high loyalty.

It's basically the runner going "Hey Bob, it's Mike. I had some free time earlier today so I ran off a few kilos of XYZ. Since we already have a mutually beneficial business relationship I figured that I would give you first refusal on my product. I'm thinking 30% of street price is fair to both of us. Is that acceptable to you?

Sure Mike. I'll send Jimmy to the Stuffer Shack on Donaldson St. with the nuyen on a certified cred stick.

That's fine, I'll have the drugs vacuum packed and in a duffel bag. Say an hour from now?

Sure. Pleasure doing business with you as always."

Any of the OC entities are more than capable of absorbing and moving any amount of product that you dump on them and they would do so, even if they had to hold it. Having amicable relations with a runner and keeping him from dealing to the competition is worth holding onto the drugs if necessary.

You have to remember that the runners are already criminals and have major "in's" with the criminal underworld.

Let's take two scenarios. Scenario one, you find a hundred kilos of coke on the street tomorrow and decide to sell it. You know that Happy Town is the local Mob hangout and so you head over there and attempt to do business. No one is willing to touch you, and if someone does take the risk that you aren't an undercover cop then they will drastically underpay you.

Scenario two is the same except that you are friends with a made man in the mob. You pull out your cell phone, ask him to meet to handle a bit of business, and within 24 hours you have exchanged the coke for 30-50% of the wholesale street price with no hassle and everyone involved happy.

What's the difference? You had an in with organized crime.

The runners are far more scenario two than scenario one.

[ShadowDragon8685]

What's the difference? You had an in with organized crime.

The runners are far more scenario two than scenario one.

Agreed. Honestly, the Runners probably won't even be in the scenario of a cold meet with a potentially-hostile syndicate. They already know criminals with distribution chains.

If you have, say, an Ancients LT as a Loyalty 3-4 contact, you call them up and tell them you'd like to meet and talk business. They ask if you want them to bring their usual stuff, you tell them naw, you're in the market to sell this time. So they name a time and a place and you meet them, probably at a biker bar somewhere in Puyallup unless they like you and trust you and you them, in which case, you might meet at your place.


You say "Hey, look, I've got a chemistry shop in... Well, never-ya-mind that part. Point is I was bored so I decided to see if I could whip up some <drug du jour>, and I amazed myself by turning out fifty kilos pure. How does 30% of street value sound to you?"

At which point, your Friendly Local Ancients Lieutenant looks at you, blinks, and says "Wow. Holy shit, really? Let me make a call." Their eyes go glassy for a bit, then they snap back into place. "Yeah, sure. I'll get some boys to ride out with your nuyen to <somewhere neutral and not on the cops' radar.> You want certified cred?"

And you respond "Sounds good. I'll have it vacuum packed in an hour. Pleasure doing business. You want to repeat this if I get some spare time sometime?" And they say "Sure, any time."

[Midas]

@ShadowDragon and Tippy
Yes, having underworld contacts (especially high Loyalty ones) will certainly help. The question about whether you can make a deal, and how much money you could make remains valid, especially given that you are taking this money from someone else's hands.

Let's talk about ShadowDragon's Ancients contact. The gang is already distributing street drugs so they would have no problem with distribution. The problem is they are already buying your product from the Tir mafia, who expect exclusive supply rights at 50% street price. The Tir mafia are no fools, and as well as having a few spies in the Ancients camp, they are looking at how much product the gang is shifting and will notice if the gang start selling significant quanitiies of drugs from another source.

The Ancients and the Tir mafia are tight, and that business relationship ain't gonna end soon. All the same, your contact is a good friend, and he is thinking that difference between 30% and 50% is a nice enough payday to take a bit of a risk, at least for a small amount of product that he expects should pass under the radar. How many doses that contact is willing to risk buying is up to the GM, as is whether the Tir mafia get wind of the trade (in which case your contact gets geeked and deleted from your character sheet). Perhaps, fearful of the Tir mafia, your contact will only do it as a one-off. Perhaps the contact only wants to pay you 20% street price considering he is risking his life in this deal.

I would never discourage players from investing in that 200K chem lab and trying to make some money out of it. To some extent I am sure they would succeed, although it won't be the by-the-book theoretical number crunching method you preach, and as a GM I will make damn sure there will be (hopefully entertaining) complications along the way.

As I stated before an opportunity to make money is no a licence to print money, and I have zero respect for any GM who just handwaves profits onto character sheets from such ventures, because money ceases to have any meaning on their tables.

[Nevermind]

Given that the profit calculations pointed towards numbers high enough to keep the whole team living in luxury lifestyles, they can probably spare some weeks of dedicated legwork.

So we switched the question from "How much Nuyen can a runner make when they aren't running?" to "How much Nuyen can a full geared badass, Jason Bourne is a newb compared to us, Runner Team grind if they decide to work as drug lords full time."

Completely other thing, have a fun with this alternate setting.

And btw to check your math:

Drug math, with -1 per successive roll in an extended test.

Extended test (16, 1 hour) to make 50 doses with a chemistry facility.
First example is that we're cooking up Psyche (200 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per dose). With skill 14, buying hits, with the -1 per successive "roll" rule, we finish a batch in 7 hours, and hand that off to our fence at 30%. We get 3000 nuyen for 7 hours work, and it cost 1000 in materials, for a profit of 2000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) per day, or 60k each month (you can cook up more each day, but then there's no time to enjoy your wealth left). With 19 dice, we can finish the same batch in 4 hours, so we'll make two batches each day and end up with 120k nuyen each month.

So we have a team, 1 Drugster, doing the drugs, 1 Face, doing the Sale and getting the raw material, 2-4 Streetsams or Rigger for on 24/7 Site Security, 1-2 Mages for Astral security, 1-2 Hacker/Technomancers for Matrix defense.
This makes 6 Teammembers to be fed by your drug production, earning 10-20K each a Month, maybe a bit more for a good Face.
For this, these bad boys with skills near god work 7 days a week, 12 month a year, no vacation.
Thats not even near a luxury life style, looks more like more skilled wages slaves. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Nevermind]

Agreed. Honestly, the Runners probably won't even be in the scenario of a cold meet with a potentially-hostile syndicate. They already know criminals with distribution chains.

If you have, say, an Ancients LT as a Loyalty 3-4 contact, you call them up and tell them you'd like to meet and talk business. They ask if you want them to bring their usual stuff, you tell them naw, you're in the market to sell this time. So they name a time and a place and you meet them, probably at a biker bar somewhere in Puyallup unless they like you and trust you and you them, in which case, you might meet at your place.


You say "Hey, look, I've got a chemistry shop in... Well, never-ya-mind that part. Point is I was bored so I decided to see if I could whip up some <drug du jour>, and I amazed myself by turning out fifty kilos pure. How does 30% of street value sound to you?"

At which point, your Friendly Local Ancients Lieutenant looks at you, blinks, and says "Wow. Holy shit, really? Let me make a call." Their eyes go glassy for a bit, then they snap back into place. "Yeah, sure. I'll get some boys to ride out with your nuyen to <somewhere neutral and not on the cops' radar.> You want certified cred?"

And you respond "Sounds good. I'll have it vacuum packed in an hour. Pleasure doing business. You want to repeat this if I get some spare time sometime?" And they say "Sure, any time."

This made me lol.

If in your special small SR-Universe, each Gang LT has 120K cash in his pocket, and can do this deal without boss gives his ok, fine for you, but i think a lot people here run their game not in that fashion.

[lorechaser]

So we switched the question from "How much Nuyen can a runner make when they aren't running?" to "How much Nuyen can a full geared badass, Jason Bourne is a newb compared to us, Runner Team grind if they decide to work as drug lords full time."

Completely other thing, have a fun with this alternate setting.

Starting runners tend to have 14 dice minimum in their prime skills. Reasonably tweaked runners will be in the 16-20 range. 25+ on a starting runner is not uncommon That *is* Jason Bourne territory. That's one of the sub debates over on the speed run thread. Sure the sample PCs don't, and I'm coming to feel the PCs shouldn't, but bpgen guides you to people that are stunningly good at a few things off the bat. Log 5 + Skill 5 + a 2 bp specialization + gear is 14 dice. That's where I start building. Then there's magic/ware on top of it.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

You say "Hey, look, I've got a chemistry shop in... Well, never-ya-mind that part. Point is I was bored so I decided to see if I could whip up some <drug du jour>, and I amazed myself by turning out fifty kilos pure. How does 30% of street value sound to you?"

Disconnect... Fifty DOSES is not the same as 50 KILOS... Just Sayin'

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Starting runners tend to have 14 dice minimum in their prime skills. Reasonably tweaked runners will be in the 16-20 range. 25+ on a starting runner is not uncommon That *is* Jason Bourne territory. That's one of the sub debates over on the speed run thread. Sure the sample PCs don't, and I'm coming to feel the PCs shouldn't, but bpgen guides you to people that are stunningly good at a few things off the bat. Log 5 + Skill 5 + a 2 bp specialization + gear is 14 dice. That's where I start building. Then there's magic/ware on top of it.

8-12 At our table... Not 14 Minimum. Just sayin'... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
16-20 is never an option at Start, and 25+ is so laughable I almost shot milk through my nose....

[Nevermind]

Starting runners tend to have 14 dice minimum in their prime skills. Reasonably tweaked runners will be in the 16-20 range. 25+ on a starting runner is not uncommon That *is* Jason Bourne territory. That's one of the sub debates over on the speed run thread. Sure the sample PCs don't, and I'm coming to feel the PCs shouldn't, but bpgen guides you to people that are stunningly good at a few things off the bat. Log 5 + Skill 5 + a 2 bp specialization + gear is 14 dice. That's where I start building. Then there's magic/ware on top of it.

You did't got my point. But maybe i was not that clear.

There are a bunch of people who claim a runner can easily make a fortune, not running, i.e. ShadowDragon8685, Halinn, Emperor Tippy.

But now it seems, we dont speak about somebody having an skill-level like a runner, 1 Person, any kind of Runner Backround.
Now we talk about a full runner team, perfect mix, each and everyone a master in his craft, all drilled to be better than Mossad/MI6, trusting each other with Loyality 6, all ready to be 24/7 12 Month a year drug lord.

Its no longer Shadowrun, its Druglord in the Sixth World, but its fine if everybody likes it to play this way.

But its not valid for the 0815 Runner. Not at 99% of the Gaming Tables if seen in the past 15+Years of SR.

So the answer is: Yes a badass team from Hell can rise to a new drug cartel, maybe they get shot , but they CAN do it.

[Mäx]

This made me lol.

If in your special small SR-Universe, each Gang LT has 120K cash in his pocket, and can do this deal without boss gives his ok, fine for you, but i think a lot people here run their game not in that fashion.

Did you completely miss the part where that contact made a call before accepting the deal.

[lorechaser]

You did't got my point. But maybe i was not that clear.

There are a bunch of people who claim a runner can easily make a fortune, not running, i.e. ShadowDragon8685, Halinn, Emperor Tippy.

But now it seems, we dont speak about somebody having an skill-level like a runner, 1 Person, any kind of Runner Backround.
Now we talk about a full runner team, perfect mix, each and everyone a master in his craft, all drilled to be better than Mossad/MI6, trusting each other with Loyality 6, all ready to be 24/7 12 Month a year drug lord.

Its no longer Shadowrun, its Druglord in the Sixth World, but its fine if everybody likes it to play this way.

But its not valid for the 0815 Runner. Not at 99% of the Gaming Tables if seen in the past 15+Years of SR.

So the answer is: Yes a badass team from Hell can rise to a new drug cartel, maybe they get shot , but they CAN do it.

Sure. But it is trivial for a starting runner to get that skill set.

My B&E adept ended up with 12 in heavy pistols as an after thought. I already had agi 7 for my main focus. I looked at it and said "oh, hey. 1 point in firearms group, specialization in heavy pistols, and a smart gun gives me 12 dice. That's like 13 karma, why not?" As a side effect, he also has 10 dice in all the other firearms (smartgun links are pretty cheap).

A runner with 6 logic can drop a couple points in to the skill, get a spec, and have 10 dice null sheen. They might already have the skill to make poisons anyway.

The idea is not that you make a team of drug runners. The idea is that, on the average runner team, you have most of the pieces you need to be a drug runner, or a reagent producer (which seems far more lucrative and safe to me) or what have you. Any group of runners will, I suspect, have a skillset that can migrate to making cash off those skills without running.

[lorechaser]

Did you completely miss the part where that contact made a call before accepting the deal.

In 2070, who carries cash?

[lorechaser]

Triple post ftw!

What about selling certified cred sticks? You make a secure drop, people comm you nuyen, and you drop cred sticks at a neutral location? How hard is that for a Hacker who already has logic 5, computer 5, and the relevant programs? Is it any worse than what he already does to set up meets and buy illegal software?

[CanRay]

In 2070, who carries cash?

"I JUST WON THE SEATTLE METROPLEX LOTTO!!! $1,000,000!!!" "1,000,000¥? SWEET!!!" "No... UCAS Dollars. Not Nuyen." "Oh, well... Um... Still, yay!"