none of those ideas really work in their entirety for the campaign because of how they've set it up, but pieces of them can be used. They do have a few copies of it. They are selling to a wide range of customers, after vetting (i.e. if I start bumping them all off its going to get very suspicious), and I prefer not to take the 'I am God' line, at least not with two GMs in the player base, since they'll only start pulling that shit on me in retaliation intheir games if I do.

BUT, they only now have a R4 black hammer because I missed that part of the rules. That helps. They were always going to have a few of the deals fall through - hey, you can't guarantee everything in the shadows, no matter how carefully you do your hoemwork. They ARE going to spark an investigation by at least two agencies, I'm thinking govmint and some organised crime. Triads do a good line in nasty software, right?

that should hopefully make them think twice for next year's programming effort, but knowing my players, they'll just make their plans more convoluted...

Thanks for the suggestions all. I'm gonna keep checking back since its been so helpful!

How are the other GMs handling similar problems in their games?

What kind of game are they wanting you to run? When this has happened in my group, it was usually a symptom, not the actual problem, especially when there are GMs as players that realize how things can get unbalanced. From personal experience, one time the group was not getting paid nearly enough for the amount of risk we were taking and the skills that we had. So it was in amswer to the easier ways to make money. Another time, the group was not really playing criminals, but were taking jobs to help contacts so were virtually self funded. So it was a need to cover expenses.

What is going to motivate their characters to keep running the shadows? Maybe you should just tell them the plan works perfectly and they won and can now retire those characters.

Ya know, there is nothing that forces you to let them make that money. Just because it's listed at 1.2 mill dosn't mean anybody is willing to pay that? If I'm looking for BH, would I trust some hackers I knew, or a organization that has a rep to maintain. The manufaturer can't set the price, so if nobody's willing to pay them 1.2 mil, then they will have to come down. You could have the highest offer be from Hacker House, which turns around and sells it for 1.2mil. Also, the price could be from rarity. The price would drop every time they sell a copy. You could even intruduce competition. Some other hackers are creating complex progs for sale, and are undercutting your guys. If they though of this, betcha many other programmers have as well.

I can't remember though. How long does it take to write and compile BH 8?

Edit: Fixed some grammer. Don't want the nazis after me.

A long time.

Though not as long as it could, since anyone who can try will have Computers (Programming) 18 to throw at it.

~J

like I say, they only have black hammer 4, so the money they would have made has been cut in half. And as they're selling them one at a time, over the course of a year, you can bet that by halfway through the SOTA on that kind of utility will have moved forward. Something programmed in april is hardly going to be news in Autumn the same year, is it?

I can limit them. This time. Repeated action like this will of course garner attention and I might send some consequences their way after they've sold the first couple.

They aren't looking for ways to break the game especially, they just want to acquire some serious, serious nuyen for various projects that to be honest, I'm not up to running for them, mainly because I don't want to play 'shadowrun: the trading system'. If they get their plans operational, I may well move for a campaign end and a new start with fresh characters. But not until I've finished Year of the Comet and done Survival of the Fittest on them, which could well be a couple of years real-time even if its only a few months game-time. Up until some recent extended downtime with this crew (they took six months off to do crazy things like program a high rating validate and mid level blackhammer for sale) so far this campaign has averaged one month per year of gameplay. But our sessions are only about three hours long, which doesn't help. So there's lots of life left, especially as they set their financial plans to come to fruition over months rather than instantly like most shadowrunners. In this case, if they sold all of them without mishap, they stood to make around 10 mill - selling them cheap - in about six months time. Which means lots of opportunity for upsets, and it could also mean another years or so of real-time at current rates! Lots of time.

Lots of ideas on the thread to deal with it though, for which I'm grateful. Hope I haven't hijacked the original poster too much. Cheers guys n gals.

More than half. Remember that the nuyen multiplier for the cost increases at several breakpoints, and 6 is a pretty major one (rating 4-6 programs sell for size*200, 7-9 for size*500). Not only that, but size goes up by rating squared. As if that weren't enough, the street index is also different.

Let's do the numbers:

Rating 8 Black Hammer base full price: 20*64*500=640,000, adjusted for street price ¥1,280,000.

Rating 4 Black Hammer base full price: 20*16*200=64,000, adjusted for street price ¥96,000.

That's a difference, I'd say.

If they use Track instead:

Rating 8 Track base full price: 8*64*500=256,000, adjusted for street price 512,000.

~J

Thanks for that. I hadn't worked it out precisely yet. Poor players. snigger.

Edit - aw, I hate me. Now I'm being all fair minded. I can't decide if their characters know enough to have been aware of the black hammer difficuly problem, and therefore to have not bothered, and programmed something else instead? It wasn't their first programming attempt, they're highly skilled, and they were deliberately out to make lots of money. They spent a couple of weeks just researching for the program plan. So should I allow them to have tried something else instead? I wouldn't point out their best option, but I wonder whether or not its just cruel to force the reduction to a rating 4 program on them rather than letting them go for a different, but higher rating one.

i think that even if the PLAYERS didnt realize/know that you could only program a blackhammer equal to half the skill, that the CHARACTERS would've known it was beyond them, so i would give them the option (without the monetary differences, maybe) and make them choose, quickly.

How much do they know about Black Hammer?

My advice is to pick an amount of "wasted time" (say about six months) and then divide it by the successes on the program plan. The better they planned, the sooner they'll realize they're out of their depth. Decrease wasted time for sample code from a real Black Hammer ("What the hell? I can't even read this!") or stories from others who have tried.

I'm not sure I'd agree with letting them downgrade, though maybe keeping 10%-30% of the progress to try a lower-rating version in the future would be fair.

~J

I would let the players go ahead, thinking they had created the rating 8 program instead of a rating 4. Hopefully they never find out and sell it to someone. Shortly after the incoming funds get spent, let the purchaser get in touch with them, demanding their money back. Let them figure out why it turned out rating 4 instead of 8. Hopefully they will have some irate people looking for them to get the rating 8 program they were promised along with the ones that already payed and received their copy.

It might result in them needing to steal some rating 8 programs, the hunted flaw, deeply in debt (unable to play the kind of game you do not want to GM), and needing to do shadowruns. Be kind of funny if the first they hear about the dissatisfied customer is the bullet wizzing past their ear.

I disagree. I could see one point of rating, but I can't imagine that big a difference without the characters knowing about it.

~J

Besides, if you really want money, get a decent decker with a detection factor of 6 or 8, and have them dredge through green or yellow hosts for paydata. In an hour, one could easily have 10k in paydata and not have even had a single point in the security tally. (No security tally = they wern't detected = nobody will come looking for him if he sells it right).

So spend 2 hours on the matrix each week and just roll in the dough.

10 thousand? Pocket change to these people. It can cost that to fill their T-bird if they catch the illegal fuel market on the wrong day. To get anything like the sort of money they normally pull in they'd have to do it all day every day, which leads to all kinds of trouble with law enforcement and the corps banding together to catch these electron-raiders.

Agree with Kagetenshi - I think they would've noticed if they thought they'd made a R8 but it was a R4. They're both deckers after all, equipped with analyse utilities and their own orange mainframe.I quite like the 'wasted time' idea too.


Thanks guys n gals