• If my GM was pulling this crap on me I would walk out of the game, and on my way out I would slap him in the face. You're going to single out and punish the decker for [gasp!] attempting to use his skills to illegally profit? Nice try decker! Next time you want extra cash try looting bodies like everybody else.

Here is a proposed fix - please let me know what you think.

• Each system has 0-5 paydata points which range in size from 20Mps to 180Mps - regardless of the security code/value of the system.
• The base value of each point is: :nuyen:100 * (random # between 0.75 and 1.25) * (Security Value) * (Security Code Modifier), where the modifier is as follows:
  
  Blue = 1
  Green = 4
  Orange = 8
  Red = 13

I know this is a little cumbersome to handle at the gaming table, but I'm writing it into a Matrix utility I'm putting together for GMs so it will all be handled automatically for you. What I'm really asking for is feedback on the equation I put together. Final base values for a Blue-5 system are 375 to 625, while a Red-12 system would have files worth 11,700 to 19,500. The average remains around 5,000, but you won't get rich cracking Blue systems, and risking your ass in a Red system has a higher payoff.

Yeah, here's the logic: If you're lazy enough that you're using that rule rather than making your game make sense, you deserve a lame rule. Seriously though, if you're using that rule, you probably don't know enough about the game for it to seem wonky. (You is general there, not "you".)

You're mis-interpreting. It means if you steal program A, but you start farming it out to everybody with a nuyen in their pocket, eventually you'll reach market saturation and the price will decline as availability goes up. Meaning that the last bit of your statement is correct.

I trout-slap any player that tries to use lame mechanical means to make tons of money and upset the game balance, be those means decking into bank accounts, looting bodies, or anything else. All that warning is there for is to let new GMs know that they shouldn't just let the decker amass large amounts of wealth willy-nilly while the rest of the team stays poor, thus ruining the game. Don't take it so personally.

Golden. Sigged.

I agree completely, and we do so in our games (note the reference to emails and design docs in original post). Having a value assigned can help the GM provide flavor & content though neh? The points are a mechanic that I want to hold onto though, for the Locate Paydata operation to function properly.

I really can't understand why GMs dislike PC looting of the dead. Looting by mercenaries is a historical tradition. In medieval times, there were even guys who slunk around battlefields with daggers dispatching the wounded and taking their goodies. It makes no sense that it's okay for a shadowrunner to be mercenary about taking a job but not mercenary when it comes to loot.

i'd bring the Security Code Modifier down, DiGriz. in my experience, a good starting-level hacker can in-and-out any reasonably-rated system (anything up to, say, Security Value 10) without setting off any IC, or at least without setting off any IC he can't hide from long enough to get his job done. it's when the hacker actually has to stick around (overwatch, for instance) that Security Code becomes important. if a decker's hitting a host solely for the paydata, he can rob Orange-10s and Red-10s all day as easily as he'd rob Blue-10 and Green-10, at which point you're back to your original problem.

Personally, I don't think that stealing weapons, ammo, credsticks, armor, and the like off of someone you just geeked is too terribly wrong. I think reselling the cyberware and bioware from a body is questionable.

I'd say somrthing, but you already said it. So, this post is pretty much worthless.

Because in most cases, it's extremely unprofessional and dangerous. Modern battles don't have distinct beginnings and endings, and modern battlefields don't have clearly defined borders. Most runs involve a vastly inferior force. Speed, mobility, and adaptability are you only assets. Stopping to pick up guns to sell slows you down, weighs you down, and diverts you from your objective. Worse, it's potentially an avenue of evidence that can be traced back to you. And all this for a few hundred nuyen? Taking something expensive and easy if the opportunity presents itself is one thing; stopping to loot pistols and vests from dead guards is something that happens in bad videogames.

Exactly. If the PCs loot at an inappropriate time and weigh themselves down with AKs so they can't escape they should suffer logical in game consequences. I don't see why the GM should get upset about it out-of-game anymore than he gets upset if a player makes a stupid move one turn by not allocating dice to spell defense or using his combat pool in a dangerous way.

Exactly. Then trout-slap the player.

And for the record, yes, swiping that guard's MP-5 after downing him on your way out the door when there's no active threat? Cool. Thinking I'm going to let you harvest the skillwires out of every body you drop? Trout-slap.

Precisely.

I can't explain it. I can speculate that the table was invented without widespread playtesting, but I don't know that.

The given rules seem unreasonable to me.

Such is life in a dystopian future . . . and in most Swords & Sorcery Fantasy, too.

If a decker flashes excessive cred in the wrong places, he/she will suffer the consequences from certain other types of predators. Of course, it may be that the decker will geek them when they come.

If a decker never flashes cred anywhere in any amount, well, they're often viewed as shut-ins.

If a decker buys new expensive systems A, B, C, D, and E from fixers V and W, smuggler X, fence Y, and black market rep Z, all on Tuesday, and then does it all over again on each of the following three weeks, news will start to accumulate that systems are being vacuumed up off the streets.

Buying everything through one supplier can be just as bad, as that one person will know everything about your illegal buying habits.

Being ultra-paranoid about who buying is done from, when, and just how much you pay in largish tips beyond the purchase price to keep people's mouth's shut can reduce this problem.

Eventually it will be clear who is doing it. Someone is going to wonder where all that nuyen is coming from. Exactly what happens as a result depends on who finds out and what they want. Perhaps the decker is attacked in the middle of the night, perhaps the decker is blackmailed into working as a deniable asset for milk, cookies, and expenses. Who knows?

This is the stuff of life for runners.

People who have money become the targets of those who don't. This is a fact of life today that would be triply true in Shadowrun.

However, if such attempts fail spectacularly, then others might think twice about trying it themselves.

A smart decker might even orchestrate a fake attempt, defeat it, and let the news circulate that it isn't a good idea.

If players brings down problems upon themselves, and then get upset at the consequences, that's not the GM's fault.

Now, if a player were to cover their tracks at all stages, never leaving evidence behind, never exposing themselves at any stage (yeah, right, kind of difficult to do in 2050+), and problems still showed up . . . guess what? It's Shadowrun. Crazy stuff happens and GMs may know where a player messed up when the player thought otherwise. One random twelve year-old running the Matrix happens to catch a flash of a runner exiting a corp site, and posts this "cool find" to his Matrix site; who knows who got a hold of that and put two and two together?

It's effectively impossible to distinguish this from actual GM retaliation.

In any event, as far as I know, it's generally regarded as the GM's purview to inflict problems on players, and this isn't the My Little Pony RPG.

Getting the whole story after the game from your friend (I'm assuming you're gaming with your friend) could be an alternative strategy.

Well, I would view it along the lines of the fictional game world attempting to work out its laws, criminal justice system, and criminal acitivy; and the GM attempting to run a realistic world.

If players are doing illegal things in the game world, then the people who make it their job to stop illegal things from happening, as well as those who like to pursue their own illegal activities, will try and take their opportunities where they can.

My apologies, but this is a little too complex for me to use, even though it does appear to represent as much detail as accurately as possible.

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I just have to comment that finding any paydata in Blue systems in any game I ran would be extremely unlikely, regardless of the rules in mat.49-51.

The following is closer to my view:

Yes, I do think that as the risk goes up, the size of the data packet increases (the best data is often either extensive technical details or massive amounts of records).

* I almost want to say that TNs for finding paydata on Green systems are increased by at least +2.

Not always...but often. And as far as "getting paid what they're worth" goes, in a realistic game, a new team pulling down milk runs isn't going to make what a decades-experienced assassin is making. But players used to being the assassin, or ones with ridiculous expectations can quickly kill a game with the nonsensical "let's stand in an alley after gunning down this corp Johnson and discuss what we can get for his cyber eyes" scenario.

As per the usual, you have to look at the specific game situation to have any idea how to handle it, or to have a sense of how well a GM is handling things. Discussing it just "in theory" only leads to a bunch of arguments, as everyone's idea of "the correct way" is different.

Street crime is one thing, repeatedly mugging one character to the point where muggers are on a first name basis is Munchkin GM Bullshit.

No, it's not too hard to tell the difference. Was there a 12 year old witness who saw you once? Or is there a 12 year old witness(or something similar) every goddamned time?

It's also the GM's responsibility to be fair. Unreasonably punishing any character for taking the initiative and trying to make some extra money (remember - this is what shadowrunners do: Crime for Money) is bad GMing. I would leave...

Why bother? The GM can come up with any damned thing he wants and pretend it's backstory. The bottom line is that it's Metagaming, and while it's cheap on the part of a player, it's inexcusable on the part of a GM.

Absolutely! But the GM handing those NPCs the opportunities on a silver platter and justifying it later as backstory is Munchkin Metagaming GM Bullsh.... Oh fuck it.

I guess this is just another of those playstyle issues that come up around here. I'm glad you enjoy the game, but I wouldn't put up with those types of shenanigans and I'm glad I don't have to.

Is that what we were talking about? I seem to recall starting this thread for the express purpose of discussing shitty GMing (specifically the shitty GMing encouraged in the Matrix sourcebook regarding the mugging of deckers who attempt to make some extra money) and I continued to post to that topic. In the future, I will try to refrain from steering a hijacked thread back towards the original topic.

YOUR HEARTS AND MINDS WILL BE MINE!!!

Two things.

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I thought you were speculating about possibilities for the way the Shadowrun milieu should operate as based on the RAW in the paydata section, but it appears to me that you are speaking from personal experience about being dumped on in this manner over, and over, and over, and over again.

Yeah, I'll say that there is a difference in that case.

However, Shadowrun is one game where I don't expect to succeed all the time.

I expect to be pursued and hunted.

I once ran a character (years ago) that wore a filter mask/mirror shade combo to meets and runs (but not to non-"work" situations). He wore a bodysuit (including hood) to make sure he didn't leave behind DNA evidence). His boots and shoes were subtly constructed add one centimeter to his height. He wore a belt with padding to alter the look of his weight.

Contacts thought he was weird and the GM ran most of my Etiquette tests at TNs of 6 or 8 as a result.

But he never was traced as a result of leaving the ordinary effluvia of the body behind, or by having visual scanners match his biometrics with that of anything recorded while on a run. (He had bobbytrapped safehouses scattered in the Redmond barrens and his tiny apartment had an armored door, window, and escape hatches under the bed and in the bathroom.)

OTOH, I just ran a street mage who hardly cared about any of that. I and another mage in the party had gone Astral and sailed out over the Pacific (SF metro-area campaign) to see an unusal vortex of mana. It was sufficiently unusual that there were no less than twenty-odd other astral forms present observing it. This other mage with me, stupidly, announced in front of all the others that he was personally reponsible for the creation of the vortex. Several of the observes departed immediately. I would have too, but I didn't want to abandon my so-called companion. By the time we could get back to our bad-neighborhood apartment complex in Oakland, two new highly unusual people, both magicians, were trying to move in. I moved out immediately and had my level 2 fixer contact find me a small room in an out of the way basement.

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Well, IMO the only way a GM could metagame is if they gave GM-only information to an NPC when there was no way that information could come into the NPCs hands.

Given that there are vastly more NPCs than PCs, then in an extended campaign it is likely that there are more NPCs (legal and criminal) hunting the PCs than there are PCs. Especially if the PCs are successful.

If you are 100% certain that the GM is giving out information to NPCs when those NPCs couldn't have come into it, then by all means, I feel you would be the injured party.

Did the GM boast about sticking it to you after the game? Is is gut instinct? Is there no way the NPCs who came after you so many times couldn't have gotten the information in-game through their own diligent investigation? What if another NPC was feeding them all the same information on how to locate and exploit you in order to take you down? (A classic cyberpunk-style gambit.)

Why the double standard?

Actually no. I'm just really pissed off about that kind of thing being put forth as canon by the sourcebook.

...now that you have made me think about it though, I am a little pissed at my GM for doing similar things. My current Char is an Infiltrator/Face who regularly changes his height/build, hair length/color, eye color, voice, clothes, accent, etc. And the ONE TIME it really mattered to remain anonymous my GM pulled someone from my backstory (who had also changed their appearance, as well as having become awakened) and they spotted me and recognized my astral signature. We also have a Merc in the group who's primary talent is soaking damage, and the GM has been dropping hints lately like "[Player X] thinks his Body and Armor are so kick ass, he'll learn soon enough." Maybe my resentment at that has been brewing for a while and it has finally spewed forth all over you, my fellow Dumpshockers. I'll have to spend some time thinking about that, and if it's the case, I apologize.

Because of the difference in power and resources they can bring to bear, GMs should hold themselves to a higher standard.

With greater power comes greater responsibility - Stan Lee (paraphrased by The Rat)

I can't speak for your GM, but are you sure this is the one time it mattered, or could it just feel that way because it's the one time your defenses fell through?

Nah, everyone has the moral responsibility to do what's right. There should be just one standard that everyone holds themselves to. The entire group is responsible for the fun level of the game. In many ways the players have more responsibility, simply because they don't have that great power to fall back on.

If a GM screws something up (like metagaming when he shouldn't have) it's easy for him to fix because he has an entire multiverse at his disposal. If a player screws something up (like metagaming when he shouldn't have) his ability to make it right is much smaller because he has to act within the bounds of a single character.

Well sure, if you want to paraphrase it in a way that changes it's meaning to suit your needs.

500 billion points to Arethusa for that post.

Thanks TSSR for proving my point though.

What?

I have yet to run across any GM who is able to do this even near-perfectly in regard to any game.

I admit you have to cut the GM some slack, though from personal experience, I can tell you that isn't so easy to do if you feel the GM is blind to the situation in the first place and is not even considering cutting slack in the other direction.