Okay, here's the thing.

I'm planning to run Ping Time as a precursor to running On the Run. Ping Time is short enough it should take only a night of play over OpenRPG, it has a pretty hefty pay-out, too. (35,000 ).

This is, I feel, a reasonable pay-out for a mission undertaken on such short notice and with such high risk of injury or death; the players have to battle a white-water river, and then immideately after that do battle with a couple of kidnappers, one of whom is a mage who can throw a 12d fireball. Also, if they screw up, they'll be looking at monowire or electrified monowire, and an encounter with the Salish military or Aztechnology security. Also, they're running against the clock.

I'm trying to decide how much Karma this should be worth. I think an overall of 10 karma, plus extra for good roleplaying, as a "First successful run" bonus to make up for the lack of length of the Run (lengthy runs being more likely to pay out better over a longer peroid of time, due to the fact that players will (rightly, IMO) expect some pay-out at the end of each seshi), as well as to let them expand some.


The question is, what should I do about On the Run. I'm thinking of running it after I do Ping Time, but it's payout is a pathetic 10K. That's barely enough to get a Shadowrunner to take a daytrip milk-run, in my opinion, since just by going out in public the average 'runner commits several felonies. That'll barely pay the rent money.

So I was thinking of upping the "default" payout 20K, and either having Mr. Johnson double the money if they get him the disk safe and sound (thus retroactively having matched JetBlack's offer), or else pay them off some other way. I'd say equipment, but since it dosen't seem likely he has access to equipment Shadowrunners want... I'm kind of at a loss there.

Well, it is a pre-prepared adventure, which Aaron says is balanced for new characters...

I like my players to enjoy playing the game, though. They'd look at a reward of 100 apiece and if they didn't tell me to take a nice big piss off, they'd all switch to mages so they could advance with Karma.

[edit]And, I have a very The Matrix inspired world-view of Shadowrun.

The teacher teaches the pupil who teaches the student.


I just like to view my Shadowrun through the $3,500 glasses of Neo.

10 karma also sounds like an awful lot. My usual award is 5-6, depedning on difficulty, opposition, and roleplay.

[edit]I also don't reccomend On The Run, especially for new players.

My first impression of this run is that it is on rails, way too much room for things to go wrong. A first adventure should offer much more tolerance for failure or off the wall approaches.

What if the party tires to magically locate the guy via, say, hairs from his hairbrush? What if they attempt to locate the kidnapper's through more conventional investigation? What if they come up with some way of getting to the site other than the white water rafting? How did the kidnappers get to the island? It would be very hard to handle a raft with two people plus the unconscious body of the kid.

If you want to reduce the payout amount, you can have the fixer owe them a favour instead. After all, they could have just turned the mission down flat.

As a general rule, a Shadowrunner should Net more money from a run than he could have obtained by stealing a and fencing car per day during the (in game) time it took to prepare for the complete the run, including the pre- and post- meetings, healing, surgeries, and foraging for equipment.

Karma rewards should also compare favorably to to barrens-street-escort grinding.

A good social adept, I'd imagine, could get between 1,250 and 3,000 per vehicle if they are in good shape, with 2,000 being the mode. He could get more for direct sales, rather than fencing, but these add to the overhead.

This is in SR4 prices, which are rather low compared to previous editions.

Chop shops aren't going to pay top dollar for a vehicle, but the individual parts are far more valuable than the sticker price so they can afford to pay reasonably well.

Without a face, I'd say 500-1500 with 1000 being the mode.

This gives us 60,000 a month for the face, 30,000 a month for a character with normal social skills, and 15,000 a month for the CHA 1 Uncouth troll.

35,000 is reasonable for a run, though on the low end once you factor in equipment costs and potential hospitalization. But, this assumes that they'll only be doing one run a month.

On the run should pay out 15k-20k depending on how they end the run.

Specifics behind spoilers:


I think 10 karma is great to start out with. I made the mistake of giving my runners ~30 karma on the first run. that was waaay too much. I wasn't keeping very close track though, ah well.

Hmmmm...

Between the Blue Milk Run (aka Ping Time) and On the Run, they could wind up with ~50K, depending on how they play their cards.

Ping Time nets them 35K, 37K if they're greedy. I'm thinking of upping the reward of On the Run, because 10-15K - hell, even 20K - won't even pay for rent, let alone potential hospitalizations.

I also try to discourage the common criminal activities in games that I run.

The problem is that a 400 point character in SR can be the king of petty crooks in no time flat.

I think hyzmarca is right about the value of runs v. the value of crime but there is one other important element to be considered. Especially for new runners. Other Criminals. The gang mbr provide in SR4 may only be PR1 but if you throw enough of them at the runners than even if they kill all the gangers and take all their gear they're still going to end up spending more on the street doc to patch them up than they will have made off the scratch they took from the gangers.

Other criminals who operate in the area where the runners are committing their crimes are going to notice and they're going to want their cuts and in a world like Shadowrun this can go all the way up to the top and have major criminal syndicates and law enforcement groups after them just because they wanted to boost some cars for extra scratch.