Monyez, Is it really all about them? Options

[Nal0n]

In many threads I notice the trend that many people are very "tense" on this topic.

It seems sometime that a lot of people think that a run to steal the "McGuffin", which nets the Johnson's company a few hundred MILLION of Nuyen in revenue, will "destroy the world" if the runners get more than 5k NuYen each.

Why is that the case?
Too much money has never had any influence in the groups I played with.

Are you afraid that they get too much gear? That's what Availability is for. If you do not want them to have it it is simply not available.

Is there another reason? If so: Tell me please, because I just do not understand it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

What can the players do? Get a permanent Luxury Lifestyle? Retire? Get another 10,000 shot for their favorite HMG? So what?

[Mäx]

Who noes, my Sasha wouldn't even get out of her bed for a lousy ass 5k run. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

[Nal0n]

Who noes, my Sasha wouldn't even get out of her bed for a lousy ass 5k run. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

Amen! (Or any other strongly positive outcry that belongs to your favorite system of belief/diety/etc. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) )

I have characters (some of which I play since 2nd Ed), that would not get out of their beds for a lousy ass 50k run, but it is hard to find a GM who accepts that...

[KarmaInferno]

Most runners SAY they're in it for the money, but many have other reasons for being in the shadows, even if they can't admit it to themselves.





-k

[Umidori]

Who noes, my Sasha wouldn't even get out of her bed for a lousy ass 5k run. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/cool.gif)

Well when it costs $400,000 to fire your weapon for twelve seconds, that's entirely reasonable. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

~Umi

[ShadowDragon8685]

I don't get GMs who are stingy with the cash, quite honestly.

Mr. Johnson, assuming he's a professional, knows what's what. He's looking for people to take massive amounts of risk of personal failure to do things that Mr. Johnson can't do officially. Sure, he could hire some absolute nobodies - gangers with ambition or desperate hobos who have some street guns - for an absolute pittance, but then more likely than not the job won't get done period. If he's paying low, it's because he either has low confidence that the 'run is possible or will shake out profitably even if it does get done (like Darius St. Johnson - err, St. George, from On the Run,) or because he's looking to hire absolute noobs. And if someone is looking to hire absolute noobs, that should be a massive red flag that he's setting up a tailchaser or a distraction for something else and he doesn't expect to have to pay you the rest of what he owes you, in which case the smartest thing to do might be to take his down-payment and run.

Honestly, a professional Johnson should be paying you well. Not stupidly well, but quite honestly any one 'run should suffice to pay everybody's rent (or go further if they like shacking up together,) and more than one in a month should be gravy/go towards consumable goods and upgrading things.

It's the unprofessional Johnsons where things get... Interesting. The non-pro might be making promises he can't deliver on, planning to throw himself on your mercy when the job is done, or he might be planning to screw you and run, or he might come up with a way to pay you in kind rather than in coin. I sprung one of those on my players once - they were hired by someone representing himself as a DocWagon Johnson to investigate why the Seattle LTG was delaying calls from DocWagon getting to DocWagon, whilst letting them through to CrashCart immediately, thus resulting in CC getting more of those reciprocal call bonuses. (Where they answer the other company's calls and get there first and get a bonus.) The "DW" Johnson made it clear at the start that this was an off-books operation, saying he couldn't shift much funding because then he'd have to answer questions, and he very pointedly did not want the question of "why are DocWagon calls reaching CrashCart before they reach DocWagon" being answered to the DW higher-ups as "because CrashCart funded a Shadowrun to infext the Seattle LTG with a virus that randomly delays DocWagon calls whilst routing them immediately to CrashCart," for fear of starting a shadow war.

In the end, it turned out that it actually was a CrashCart trauma surgeon who had learned of this by overhearing the local franchise CEO talking about it whilst she was putting in a weekly shift in the trauma ward. His stated reason was true - he wanted to avoid the shadow war - but he had even less means to pay than he claimed to have had. He threw himself on the group's mercy, explaining that he was trying to prevent people - including Shadowrunners like themselves - from dying, bleeding out on the pavement waiting for a DocWagon extraction chopper that doesn't know they need help, and where the less-capable CrashCart extraction teams can't or won't go. He had about a tenth of the agreed-upon sum available.

(They took it, and then set up an extortionate payment plan wherein he'd be paying them in installments something like 200% of what the originally agreed upon price was worth over the next year. He managed to get them to agree to discount the price of any medical supplies or other such goods he managed to smuggle to them from the amount he owed them, however, regardless of what it was, whether it was a few palmed stim patches or a Savior Medkit that fell out of the back of an ambulance.)

[Slide]

Yeah chummer, your job is dangerous. But do you know who you are? You're nobody. Mr. J isn't gonna be fronting a small fortune to an unknown unproven runner. Get your street cred up kid, then you will be able to pick and chose your jobs. Then you can tell Mr. J to frag off over a tiny 5k, cause you got some one who is paying tipple what he offered you. Its all in the name chummer. Make yours a good one.

[Umidori]

See, I could see 5k being a reasonable rate for starting runners. If you've just got into the scene, yeah, it makes sense you're not making much money as you only get the junk jobs. Meanwhile, all the regular pros are pulling in contracts worth 5 or 10 or 20 times that much, and rightly so.

So, easy solution? Make Street Cred into a multiplier modifier in the pay calculations.

~Umi

[Mäx]

Yeah chummer, your job is dangerous. But do you know who you are? You're nobody. Mr. J isn't gonna be fronting a small fortune to an unknown unproven runner. Get your street cred up kid, then you will be able to pick and chose your jobs. Then you can tell Mr. J to frag off over a tiny 5k, cause you got some one who is paying tipple what he offered you. Its all in the name chummer. Make yours a good one.

Except that really doesn't apply unless it's an actual street level game and barely even then.

[Jaid]

Yeah chummer, your job is dangerous. But do you know who you are? You're nobody. Mr. J isn't gonna be fronting a small fortune to an unknown unproven runner. Get your street cred up kid, then you will be able to pick and chose your jobs. Then you can tell Mr. J to frag off over a tiny 5k, cause you got some one who is paying tipple what he offered you. Its all in the name chummer. Make yours a good one.

when there's a very real probability that one or more people on your team has gear that is valued in the hundreds of thousands of nuyen, and that pretty much every single member of the team has training or special abilities which could be valued at a similar amount, 5k nuyen sounds pretty ridiculous.

i mean, if you're actually playing a street level game, and resources A means you can actually afford a nice car or something like that, sure. heck, in those situations, you're probably counting yourself lucky to bring in 5k per run. but if you're running at the standard level, 5k nuyen per run seems pretty screwy. not sure i'd agree with 50k per run, but i mean, you need to be bringing in enough money to cover your expenses, which can get pretty nasty if you've got something like a rigger in the group, or if you use up a fake SIN, etc.

so quite frankly, if you're going to be paying someone to put a 5,000 nuyen drone into a position where it's very likely to get destroyed, you're going to need to be offering them better money. otherwise, when the time comes that sacrificing a 5k nuyen drone could save the run, they may very well just decide that it's cheaper for them to keep the drone.

never mind if you want them to make an escape carrying a prototype in a 30,000 nuyen van that's likely to take a lot of damage or something like that.

[Tzeentch]

5,000 nuyen should be barely enough to motivate street gang members to do anything risky, but shadowrunners supposedly suck it down because reasons.

If the runs can't cover even Lifestyle cost (p. 95, SR5) just pack it in, your players are going to get tired of that shit pretty quick.

[GiraffeShaman]

Well there's expenses, there's the market value of a character's abilities and equipment, there's reputation. And most of all there is risk of death and fates worse than death. That last one gets overlooked by many GMs. (Until it's the time when the party gets captured, and of course the GM remembers) How much is it worth to seriously break into the facilities of guys that might rip your heart out in a Blood Magic ceremony, or sell you as an overseas sex slave?

You also have to factor in how many runs are done in a month. It's good to keep track of everything by the month, mainly because it's a good way to remember it for your long term calculations for campaign wealth.

Now on the flip side, why worry about wealth at all? I heard 50,000. Why not 100,000, after all don't you want your players to have luxury lifestyles? The reason not to has to do with high end equipment. Wealth can act like a sweetener to campaigns (Completely separate of if it's a good storyline or not, wealth sweetens the bad and good alike), but it has to be somewhat managed and trickled out or it gets boring quick. It's called Monty Haul, where the GM acts like a game show host handing out prizes. I like to give out pretty high payments, but I also aim for my players to always be saving for something. In fact I ask them what they are saving for at any particular time.

Going completely nuts on wealth and just letting it flow out like a firehose is great for short term campaigns, however. In fact, if a game appears to be about to end, you may as well.

[Ricochet]

When I have players who "won't get out of bed for less than..." x, I go find find new players with runners who will play the style of game I want to run. There are always other players and runners out there. I'm pretty sure Mr. Johnson feels the same.

[quentra]

When I have players who "won't get out of bed for less than..." x, I go find find new players with runners who will play the style of game I want to run. There are always other players and runners out there. I'm pretty sure Mr. Johnson feels the same.

Obviously, if you're playing street level gangers, then that sort of attitude is stupid. But it's also insulting to say that just because players think their characters have a rep/deserve to be paid commensurate with their skills, you drop them. Obviously gangers and starting runners don't have the leverage to turn down low-paying jobs all that often, but I'm pretty sure Dodger can name his price. Not everyone likes street-level games. (I don't, that shit is boring.)

[CanRay]

My group tries to be mercenary.

Tries being the operative word. I once threw a domestic issue at them that had nothing at all to do with their 'run. The things they did to that guy are horrible and I won't post them here.

[FuelDrop]

If a run is going to pay well then the players are less likely to look for cash on the side.
Case in point: Our group's first ever run was 4 grand between us. We'd never played before so had no idea what was good money and what wasn't (GM was an old hand though), so we took the job. We ended up having to take on most of two gangs plus multiple prime runner teams. However, because it quickly became apparent that one grand a piece wasn't even going to cover ammo, we quickly decided that this run was now all about how much we could loot. burst fire became called shots to the head so that organs were intact for resale. every chromed opponent we took down was dragged back to the street doc to be dissembled. Vehicles were hijacked. Custom guns were pilfered. hostages were ransomed.
we each came out of the run with about 75 grand from our massive loot-orgy. The GM wised up and started paying us more for our runs, and looting dropped to whatever we could carry (He's still a bit stingy).

[Wakshaani]

Re: Risking your life.

Lone Star and Knight Errant cops make around 22,000 a year, while soldiers make 19,000 (But their living costs are handled different from living on base.)

On the one hand, the PCs are probably better than KE officers or military footsoldiers, but on the other hand, there are gangers who'll go shiv a guy for twenty Nuyen. Finding the right balance isn't easy.

[Umidori]

Lone Star and Knight Errant cops don't really risk their lives the way Shadowrunners do. The vast majority of their work is procedural, doing paperwork, filing reports, that sort of thing. Even the beat cop on the street every day doesn't face the sort of dangers a single Shadowrun brings.

Now, the guys on the HTR team? Yeah, they've got a good basis of comparison for danger. But they also get paid a lot better than the rent-a-cops.

~Umi

[Ricochet]

I think I've decided GM's need to kill more of these runners more often. That would actually make the combat pay for the others make more sense. This has told me that most shadowrunners (and their players) are lacking in economics skills.

[ShadowDragon8685]

5,000 nuyen should be barely enough to motivate street gang members to do anything risky, but shadowrunners supposedly suck it down because reasons.

If the runs can't cover even Lifestyle cost (p. 95, SR5) just pack it in, your players are going to get tired of that shit pretty quick.

Even street level gangers have a grasp on what their time is worth and what their skills are.

If you get some random street gangers with aspirations of Shadowrunner hood and tell them to break into Ares, it won't matter if you're paying them 50,000 nuyen up-front. Okay, it will, but only because they'll then use 45,000 nuyen of that to hire actual Shadowrunners to get the job done whilst pocketing 5K and anything else they think to embellish the job on the real 'runners to retrieve. But even if you're paying them 50K, but at a usual up-front rate, they'll tell you to frag off.

They are not capable of doing the job, and trying it will just get them killed. Even if you have a job which is theoretically within a street gang's means - annihilating another gang - they're going to tell you to frag off if you offer them a grand total of 5,000 nuyen to do so. Because you're telling them to go to war, where they will lose people. Maybe if you offered them 50K for the gang's coffers and 2K per man up-front for each member of the gang to arm himself or see to his family before he marches off to war, that might work. But depending on the size of the gang, you may well be looking at spending 100K or more nuyen.

And when it comes down to the people desperate enough to take 20 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) to stick a shiv in a guy's ribs, just how much use is that guy going to be sneaking into an Renraku off-books lab full of Lone Star hired goons to extract an unwilling extraction target, hmmmm? If he's very, very, very lucky, Mr. Shiv might take down one guy before he gets super-murdered.

If you want the job done, that means you're going to have to hire someone with the skills and equipment to make it happen. Those people have a firm grasp on the economics of the danger they undertake, and they should be telling you to go frag yourself if you're not offering enough to replace semi-expendible assets that are likely to be expended in an operation such as the one you propose, let alone for them to turn a profit.

[Umidori]

Hell, in SRR you're offered 100K to track down a guy's killer. Of course, it's never just that simple...

But all told? You don't really risk a whole lot for that hundred grand. Most of what you do is technically footwork and piecing together a puzzle. Sure, there's combat involved, but a lof of it is avoidable and it's not like you're breaking into a corporate research lab or some other immediately impressive task.

~Umi

[Critias]

I think some GMs knee-jerk to keeping cash low because it's one of two ways for characters to advance. The lower-powered/weaker/more predictable they keep their players, the more comfortable they feel challenging them, the better they know what to expect from them, and the easier it is to dangle other, smaller, treats in front of them as rewards. If you're handing out +3 Whatchamacallits to everyone, suddenly no one wants to work for a +1 Whatchamacallit any more, right? To entice them, from that point, you've got to start offering +4 Whatchamacallits, and the problem (inasmuch as they believe it's a problem) escalates.

Personally, I think that all too often it's the game that suffers, and the fun factor. The feel of the thing. If GMs are too stingy, it seldom meaningfully cuts into the core competencies of characters, and instead they'll still scrape together the nuyen they need for the new Shiney Gizmo 3000 they want to be better at their job -- they'll just have it while sleeping in a van down by the river. They won't role-play out weekend gambling binges, novacoke and joygirls, or taking their Contacts out for a night on the town. They won't buy fancy new color schemes for their cars, or chromed finishes for their guns, or cosmetic upgrades for 'ware.

They'll put all their money into function, and save none for form. And I think the game suffers to some extent, as a result.

In many ways, the same can be said of karma, or even starting build points, in my opinion. Folks won't keep their little flavorful skills like Artisan or Performance, you'll see them keeping their Pistols or Hacking high and sacrificing secondary or tertiary abilities, the more you clamp down on chargen.

I'm, personally, a big fan of players having enough elbow room to really stretch out a little bit. More > Less. Period. The trick there, though, is then keeping things balanced, because some players will keep that "screw it, I'm staying focused!" min/maxing type of mindset, even when given room to stretch their legs.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Hell, in SRR you're offered 100K to track down a guy's killer.

Of course, it's never just that simple, but all told? You don't really risk a whole lot for that hundred grand. Most of what you do is technically footwork and piecing together a puzzle. Sure, there's combat involved from time to time, but a lof of it is avoidalbe and it's not like you're breaking into a corporate research lab or some other immediately impressive task.

~Umi

You haven't got very far into SRR, have you, Umidori?

WARNING: This spoiler spoils the whole fucking plot! No joke!

[ Spoiler ]

You start out just doing some hard-boiled detective work.
Stuff happens.
This leads to you busting into and smashing up a Yakuza BTL den.
More Stuff happens.
This leads to you breaking into an insane asylum run by a literal madman who's been masquerading as a doctor and doing atrocious things to his 'patients'. Oh, and both the patients and the 'staff' are armed and ready to supermurder your ass. This leads to the realization that while the madman running the asylum and cutting up his patients for money has been doing it to his patients for, well, for money, he hasn't been killing randomly because he's a serial killer, but because he's been paid to reclaim specific body parts.
More Stuff Happens.
This leads (after an horrifically difficult three-way battle between you and two underequipped Runners, a bunch of Ghouls, and some security shooter types,) to you breaking into the Universal Motherfucking Brotherhood, finding a teenaged girl held hostage and breaking her out, under fire from Bug Spirits who cannot be killed, only temporarily inconvenienced.
This leads (after more stuff, which may well include a side-mission into a Renraku bunker-offsite-lab to raise money,) to you breaking into a AA-rated Megacorp's corporate offices to steal something actually capable of killing said Bug spirits.
This leads directly into you staying the night at said corporate offices, a really dumb idea if ever I heard one, after shooting the place up but finding what you wanted secured behind a door you weren't able to open, to get the stuff... And actually pulling it off, but getting grabbed on your escape.
This leads to you being hijacked away to speak with James Telestrian III and a bunch of his other cohorts-in-fighting-the-bugs, including the Great Dragon Lofwyr (in Hans Brackhaus form, but come on; we know it's him, even if our characters don't,) and Har'lea'quinn, the Last Knight of the Crying Spire and a few other guys.
After this, it's concluded that you're going to have to go back in, and Harlequin is coming with you to battle these things. (Pity that Lofwyr didn't, but I think they were afraid of old-timey Shadowrun players suffering fatal nerdgasms if they stormed the Universal Brotherhood at the lead of a team consisting of Harlequin and the Great Dragon Lofwyr. Plus, they probably would've had to have broken the engine very badly to represent his stats.)
And after all this is done, whether you've attained street justice for the chummer who hired you posthumously to get the guy who put him in the dirt, whether you've let the person who ordered his hit get eaten by Bug Spirit Soldiers, or whether you splatter the bugs and take her away to be locked in a cage by the UCAS... Guess what?
You expected a dead Shadowrunner who was a drunk and a lout to have a 100,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) insurance policy? HAH! He thanks you for dealing with his killer and expresses his regret that he lied to get you to do the job, combined with his relief that he's already dead and you can't kill him for lying to you, and suggests that if you really desperately need the money, you poke at his family history as they have money and someone might shake loose some nuyen out of gratitude for the person who avenged him, or just to make you go away and stop digging up their family's black sheep. Unfortunately, you've just arrested/murdered the last living vestiges of his family who aren't so powerful that it would be simpler for them to just make you vanish than to pay you.

Now, you can, if you play your cards right, get that 100,000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) but not for avenging your pal, for the asault on the UB and telling James Telestrian III that you just want to paid in cold hard jing and walk away from all this mess.

WARNING: This spoiler spoils the whole fucking plot! No joke!

Frankly, you're been massively underpaid for everything you do in that game... But there's not a whole lot to spend the jaja on, anyway.

[CanRay]

My group complained more about how hard it was to get things through the Availability Rules and a general lack of respect that people showed them.

'Course, they were just remembering the jerk Johnsons and the one cop that always screwed them.

[binarywraith]

Honestly? I am that GM that pays his runners lowball rates.

Why? Because if they want more money, they need to invest in Contacts, social skills, and networking. I'm not going to make it a gimmie if you haven't bothered to learn to negotiate beyond 'I break you.', anf frankly there's no reason in hell most Johnsons would bother rolling out red-carpet rates for the better part of the work they want done unless it's for a team they know they can trust.