My mage struggled with some substance abuse and as a result of unfortunate timing was not in any condition to defend himself properly. In short he lost his hideout, most of his gear, and wasn't on the best terms with his team.

But he needed the nuyen.

So, being in Hong Kong and all, he pokes around the counterfeit contacts he has and gets himself a job as a sewer. With the "Fashion" spell of course!

The latest cuts and styles all for a tenth of the price! Right now he's starting his own small underground fashion line.


So what has your character had to do just get by without actually having to go on a run?

Wow. You meant something along the lines of tailor when I read that the mage got a job as a series of tubes that moves sewage.

Your version makes much more sense.

My character actually got 2nd place in a celebrity poker tournament, disguised as one of the celebs. I pulled in a pot of 350,000 nuyen and we got half. We are overflowing with nuyen right now. Bet you wish you were me.

The photogenic blond victim channel. . .

I once had a ganger that was so down and out, he had to pretend to be a shadowrunner at Weaponsworld to impress the very unattractive girl behind the counter. He only finally got the discount by taking her out to dinner later. At least he didn't have to sell an organ. Considered it though. It wans't necessarily that bad, just a very low point for the character.specially since it was obviosu that the cashier girl knew he was full of drek too, and was just doing it all for the discount, but went along with it anyway.

When I read that a down and out fellow had to become a sewer I thought that he got involved in trideo productions of people defecating and urinating in his mouth.

That is a little more than I needed to know about how your mind works, WR.

Chris

I was unaware that that had progressed in popularity enough to become cliche. My apologies.

Chris

So everyone else is rolling in the ? No crazy schemes for quick money? No hijinks with magic?

There's a session on sunday night, I'm planning on sabotaging our rivals' shipments, but beyond becoming Hong Kong's fashion que---err king I probably won't earn enough to pay off the cost in drones and ammo.

I have a chop shop contact in most games. When I need I just jack a car and take it to the chop shot.

The one time my character has been hard up for money he hired (paid in drugs) someone to helo him and his team in as they killed the hell out of a rival gang and took over a major drug smuggling warehouse out in the Barrens. So... no real hijinks except we wounded a guy and his friends were dragging him away and I summoned a spirit and he possessed the guy and started beating the hell out of the guys trying to save him, took them a minute to notice the spirit aura so they thought he had just gone crazy because of the wound.

Chris

...actually, Violet (#27, been busy today...) in one of her alter identities runs an electronics "fix-it" service on the side to basically cover her lifestyle expenses. Normal stuff like broken trivids, autotoasters, vacuum drones, standard commlinks, etc...

...of course when she's not absorbed in a Miracle Shooter match. (her one addiction).

I had a character who was actually homeless and he was flat broke w/ a little over a week before the next job. He ended up selling plasma so he could like off of pre-packaged nutrisoy bars until the next job- he'd have sold the car he lived in but then he'd have had no place to keep his guns.

Bot contracts a warding service out through his Talismonger/Part Time Girlfriend Contact. He's also fairly handy with using "Stage Magic" to cheat at cards and once actually got paid (In more ways then one.) to be the entertainment at a birthday party a corp drone was throwing.

I had a character one time who had a fake SIN that claimed she was a security consultant who was an ex-marine (nice way to explain the 'ware)... she was so hared up for money that she actually took a security consulting job from a guy who saw her AR profile in a bar - wound up fixing the holes in a security system she had done a run against the previous week... brought home a good bit of nuyen for that

Another time, she was the middle-man in a scheme hooking up a starving troll gun-smith / artist with some mafiosos - selling them things like gold-plated engraved Ruger Super Warhawks. She kept 10% of the profits.

Also rented out a room in her home to the party face who was also hard up for money.

I had a character that would scrap his opponents for parts. He'd cast Turn to Goo then Levitate the leftover cyberware into ziplock baggies. If he had time, he'd sell the rest to the ghouls. Cannibalism is a booming business in 2070. The nice thing about Shadowrun is that Lonestar and local gangsters often send raw materials right to your front door.

I had a street sam who just lost all of his stuff, the only thing he had left was his cyber and the (rather nice) clothes on this back. He needed a gun very badly, so he walked down a dark alley in a bad neighborhood and killed the muggers with his spurs, picked up some cash, and some weapons.

Pornomancer adept + lonely old ladies who can't take their money with them = Cha-Ching.

The last campaign I played in didn't allow characters to start off with almost any money. I had a punk kid that started with a switchblade and an electronics kit. Took a couple runs to save up for a gun, another run to get some ammo. By run, I mean gaming session, because I was mostly jacking cars and trying not to die in the process. And once, I stole some bottles of hot sauce from an obvious Chipotle analog and sold them for a nuyen. Eventually, I ended up kinda, sorta accidentally running some go-gangers over in the Americar I was boosting, and that kind of dove-tailed into discovering that if I sell body meat to a chop shop, I could scrape up some ammo money after fights. We didn't know any surgeons or anything that could pay us for organs, but we knew some guys down in Puyallup that were ghoul farming, and they paid for our fallen enemies by the pound. Starting dirt poor is awesome, except that we had such a chip on our shoulder about it that we weren't really comfortable going on proper runs until we'd advanced to the point where a typical run posed no danger to us anymore.

My current group isn't so poor, but my character's about to get a day job anyway. He's a city shaman, and up until now I figured the "city shaman" thing to do (it's a tradition we made up) would be to ride public transit, but now I want to get a cab and drive fares all over the city during the day.

Well, the gun was pretty expensive because I didn't have all the conveniences most runners have (a fake SIN, a fixer). The ammo was just hard to get because I was trying to keep on top of other overhead stuff (food, rent, etc.). And jacking cars and body parts doesn't get you that much when the car takes a clip and a half of small arms fire on the way to the chop shop and your "other" chop shop pays by the pound because they're not organleggers, they're slop-chefs.

...shoot, can't get much grittier that that. As long as the GM keeps the threats just a notch or two above the PCs to offer a challenge but not overwhelm them, sounds like a pretty cool campaign.

Any mage can learn Heal, and presumably get full-time work in an emergency room; heck, if I ran an ER, I'd even help a mage get a fake SIN so I could hire them. Alternatively, find a street doc and do Heal on people who just came out of augmentation surgery; most people with the nuyen for an augmentation probably can spare a thousand to shave a day off the recovery time. If you have Detect Lie, perhaps the local cash-advance office or loanshark would pay for you to sit in on their interviews (cast it until you get max hits then sustain it all day). And if you can conjure air spirits, then perhaps a pilot will pay you to have one use Movement on his airplane; if you can conjure water spirits and live near a seaport, same for ship captains. Lotsa no-questions-asked wagemage options besides security (which presumably involves a serious SIN check).

Is there an equivalent gig for technomancers? Creating a sprite to use Diagnostics or Stabilize for your local chop-shop or fix-it business? Hacking the sales-counter terminal at Stuffer Shack so you can get a meal without it actually debiting your credstick?

The Adept powers look mostly useful for winning fights and chases, and not much else... besides using Kinesics for short con (eg shell game), anything I'm missing?

I wonder if some muggers get MAD or cyberware scanners if they've heard of muggers getting jacked by "q-ship" sammies. (A q-ship in WWI looked like an unarmed freighter, nice easy target for U-boats, but actually was armed about like a destroyer and would unmask its guns once the U-boat surfaced.)

Unless the UCAS changed the laws, it is very hard for a Mage to get approval to magically heal people, of course some countries/corps are more lax on the issue.

The craziest thing I ever did for money.... Let's see... While my companion was casting heal on me, I got someone to steal his survival knife out of his back pocket. 2 right there

I'm a bad GM. I try to subtly discourage some of my PCs' recent get-rich-quick schemes. Not because I don't like the idea of them having these ideas, but because I can't think of anything interesting to do with these schemes, but I wouldn't just want to gloss over the job and give them a buttload of money. It's also because there's big plot events happening, and I don't want to distract from them. I think the higher pay on recent runs is also keeping them happy. (So easily they are manipulated. Mwahahaha!)

Things that my characters have done for money.
-Bartending at an absolutely crap bar (as a Scottish Dwarf, jokes abound)
-Pit Fighting (as a Troll Psyad)
-Teaching Karate to Gangers
-Knocked a Guard out and sold his clothes, and running up his limits. (randomly)

Things that I have contemplated having them do
-Teach Community College (3e Sam had 2 phd's worthy of understanding in Chemistry and Physics)
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Legally it makes as much sense as requiring a license for any other type of alternative medicine (herbalists, accupuncturists, chiropractors, etc.).

In most serious situations in controlled settings (read: hospitals) you'd want to use magical healing as a last resort anyway. Once you heal someone with magic, that's it. No First Aid or anything for that set of wounds. The opposite isn't true however; once the doctor's have done all they can, that licensed Bear shaman can come in and throw a Heal down to finish it up.

Just because the damage system for Shadowrun revolves around more cinematic combat doesn't mean the "roleplaying" aspect of the world is any different. Yes, there aren't any real differences in types of damages and you can recover from any kind of wound in a matter of days or hours by the rules. But for the most part, that only applies to shadowrunners. The world still has debilitating wounds and diseases and people who end up crippled for life.

No matter what people's answer is, I still quote Bob Sagat: "You think that's bad? Have you ever sucked dick for coke? I have."

As long as it wasn't Pepsi.

In the early 90s, the Coca Cola corporation advertised under the slogan, "Can't beat the feeling" for a reason. Ironically, it's the same reason why in the 50s, anti-coke ads appeared with the slogan, "Can't beat the habit."

Nah. As long as he's relaxing, a person can heal from even the most grievous wounds in about two weeks time (or a single month if he was only stablized within an inch of his life)... and usually quicker than that. Even someone with Body 2 can get a guaranteed hit on his healing test every day.

It's pretty goofy, really. But, again, that's what happens in a more cinematic and abstract system.

Yeah, I was mostly just thinking of this as a good thing to know. I mean, I guess I KNEW it before, I'd just never realized. One less thing I have to worry about popping up out of left field from now on, I guess.