So my current shadowrun character is planning a few freelance runs to earn a bit of pocket change and I was wondering if the community had any interesting ideas. Keep in mind I'm planning for relatively low risk jobs that can be done with just the one person plus a decker.

Any suggestions?

Knock over convenience stores and diners?

~J

Theft is usually good. Have them cultivate a contact or two down at the doc, that way they'll have access to shipping manifests, and with the right bribes to the right people, they might be able to simple drive away with a high value shipment.

Just do the same as you would for a regular run, just tailor it for 1-2 PCs. Same sort of runs would work -- datasteal, physical theft, extraction, bodyguard, intimidation, distraction, delivery...you just have to scale the challenges and adjust the rewards.

The Abstruse One

The way I see it, the main difference between a freelance run and a regular run is that at the end of a freelance run, you still have to find someone to buy what you took. This means that you'll probably want to take something a bit easier to fence than a prototype or other relativly unique item. What you're looking for is a crate of high-end electronics or something similarly easy to move. Or, better yet, something that you yourself can use, like a crate of weapons. Your local fixer is a good source of money for those newly liberated objects. If you talk to him ahead of time, it's kinda like he's your johnson, except he probably won't screw you, and might actually get a discount.

I would suggest staying away from kidnapping, as it involves alot of legwork and animosity without actually promising a reward. Unless, of course, the 'victim' is in on it.

First maybe peruse
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...opic=17719&st=0

And see what you think of the arguments there.

Anyway you could do some theft, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say you could have thought of that on your own.

Other options.

Conning people, preferably so they don't know they've been conned. Off the top of my head they could steal a tow truck after hours and go tow some illegally parked cars...to a chop shop. Have the decker register them all to the towing agency and maybe even leave some of them there. Let them sort out the errors.

Or if you have a little more time they could set up as their own mini private eye agency and do some low threat but interesting stuff.

If they're willing to drop some karma maybe the could start a band. Not a run par se, but fun. And shadowbeat even had rules for it . (little out of date).

They could try fixing some gambling.

That's no longer true. With organlegging a kidnapper has a near-guaranteed floor on his or her income.

~J

I'm already looking at theft - my character has already picked up some medium end decks for little risk. I also have a few other plans in motion - acquiring source code for various programs and possibly going for some artwork, though the latter is more then likely to be a team job.

A not so PC way to make cash is to take down other runners. If you pan your contacts they may be able to hip your runners to what else is going down on the streets. Put the pieces together and you'll have a picture of what some other runner crew has going on. Step in, take their mission, and either sell the cargo back to them, the Johnson, or the company who they were jacking it from.

It'll hurt your rep among runners (maybe) but It will do wonders for getting you work from the people who hired the original team ('cause your crew is obviously better) and the corp the other crew stole from (if you return it).

I'm not sure how good of an idea it is but what comes to mind is hack and slash.

If you were playing a medieval fantasy game such as Ultima 6 or Betrayal at Krondor it would be considered good form to forget all about your quest and the storyline and instead patrol the wilderness back and forth and kill monsters in order to loot their stuff and sell it and also to level up.

In a sense, I think the same tactic could work for Shadowrun. You could raid corporate installations for the express purpose of killing a few security guards and taking their rifles for resale. I think that the key would be to hit different corporations each time so as not to make any of them prioritize taking you down and by the same token to avoid raiding gangs from your local area.

Random violence is always the kind that is hardest to defend against. It's one thing if the corporation in question knows that they have got something on hand which is being targeted by another corporation or even if their ear to the ground heard about an upcoming run being planned on their facility. It's quite another if for no discernable reason an elite team blitzes a minor facility with nothing of importance and never comes back to that same spot again.

As long as your fixer wants to be able to sell military grade weapons in the shadows I'm pretty sure that he would want to buy the assault rifles and grenades that you've come up with.

Of course, knowing how SR table dynamics usually work, probably if a team decided to do this without the blessing of a Johnson the GM would accuse the team of being "unprofessional" and make Lone Star drones materialize and kill the team. Whereas if some dude in a suit told them to do it for a few thousand nuyen then it would be a-okay.