The players really can't know why Johnson Y is willing to pay 50K to off that little kindergarden girl, and why Johnson X is only going to pay out 5 K to remove one street bum from his sleeping space in that condemned building?

The focus isn't on what the game world is willing to pay, but on what are the PC runners are willing to run for. If the runners aren't motivated, then the game world doesn't matter. No game.

You might in fact find out that the half a million you've paid so far doesn't make the runners not want to run anymore, so you don't really have a problem at all.

I've been in a game where the team had enough nuyen and oppurtunity to buy a main battle tank, and decided it was too impractical. They kept doing runs.

I don't get that. Can someone explain that to me? Except in computer game logic, that isn't going to motivate anyone with the skillset of a shadowrunner.

And since we talk about professionals willing to kill, apprehend people, take on multinational companies and the law enforcement we can rule out that runners are scared by making risky moves. (Some might, but that should be a story in itself)

I mean sure, money is the bane of all RPGs. Always. Basically every game I know tries to keep the players low on money. I don't understand that reasoning. It is demotivating and gets really frustrating if the real money is only made by NPCs. If money is the only motivating factor for a character, it better be a large amount and not 1 million pocket money.

Running for 5k is like grinding reputation in WoW. Tedious, timeconsuming and completly bullshit storywise (except you play some 200 BP punks, but then everyone agreed on being victims anyway)

Money is an advancement mechanic, except its a lot more vague than Karma. I think that's what freaks everybody out about it. Characters can't find a bag of 100 karma on the ground, but if they do find a bag of a million nuyen it can radically change the game.

I've seen GM's put 800k worth of gems in a safe thinking that would be a nice, Christmasy pay out for 6 runners, and then watch as one pc is in the room opening the safe while the other 5 are off distracting sec guards. That was 800k in one pocket, with that character still getting his cut of the 50k for the mission. Or a GM using a piece of gear thinking its cool, and not looking up the price until the run is over and the pcs are trying to fence it (MP lasers, move-by-wires and so on). Sometimes the modules screw the GM, as one did when our group ended up with a Grade 4 Weapon AND Power Focus that we took off some super-duper mystic adept and sold to the Draco Foundation for reasons I can't remember. We got an extra point of karma for that run for the "threat" (as I recall, the superbad got flashbanged and then hit repeatedly by sniper and drone fire, I don't know if he even got an action), and an extra 2.5 million for the duo-focus.

I mean, there's all sorts of things the GM could have done to "fix" that. He could have made the guy with the 2.5 million in gear not a raging wuss, or he could have taken the thing out of the game, or he could have said after we killed him that it was just a normal sword. But that's not the point, the GM decided to run the module as it was written and afterwards he decided not to screw us, and at that point 2.5 million between three characters was really one or two upgrades a piece. (This was the last sam I played in SR2, and after that payout I needed another 3 million or so to get one point of reaction, so it wasn't that big a deal.)

This is all just going the long way round to say that money is as important as you let it be. My first character in SR3 was a sam that was running because he needed 60k for something. I made that in the first three runs (actually, I think I made most of it in the 3rd run, like 40k or something). But I enjoyed playing the character, so I just kept up coming up with reasons for him to need money.

My first SR character was planning on buying a lifetime High lifestyle and retiring. But after I got 800k in jewels out of a safe, I decided to reassess my life goals and decided that a lifetime Luxury lifestyle was what I should be going for. (And 10 million nuyen for a lifetime of luxury was the last thing I bought with that character, four years later.)

Who as a player is going to say, "I really enjoy playing my character, but my character made enough money so that he doesn't have to run this week. I guess I'll stay home and regrout my bathroom."

A player plays to have fun. A character runs for whatever reason the player comes up with. I don't see how that's computer game logic rather than in game logic. In game logic is whatever the players and GM says it is.

Also did you see all those news programs about cops busting people for hiring hitmen out of the newspaper and magazine ads to whack people for only a couple grand? Wetwork for $1000 + $1000 contract terms.

I blame outsourcing.

Maybe you should remind your players of one of the great principles of gaming:
Spend your money before the GM spends it for you.
Example: Last game, I lost 100k in drones during our run. (That's the last time I go rambo on Knight Errant.) Fry a commlink or two, hold some good contacts hostage, blow up a vehicle or two, and things will come back into balance.

Or start selling karma.

How does computer game virtual nuyen differ from SR4 RPG virtual nuyen?

If you can't handle stealing a car then you don't have any business taking real runs. If your world artifically makes stealing cars silly-hard, then remember to apply that to everything else the runners try to do too. That should kill the suspension of disbelief that runners have any chance of exisiting pretty quickly...

A runner needs to be making a few hundred thousand nuyen in a year, and that's with just one or - at the high end - two runs per year. Making a run every week is not realistic. Legwork should be mearured in days or weeks, not in hours, and laying low for weeks or even months after a run is a good idea even if you don't need healing time. Downtime is a GOOD thing for so many reasons - just make sure the payoffs are high enough to allow it.

Eh...if that is what your players want, then I agree. In our group, the players like to do a bunch of smaller runs, like 4-5 a month. Granted, they are not staying in the same place all year long, so they don't have a "base of operations" per se.

And maybe they like it, because I (the GM) like that type of game...just a different style I suppose. I just think, doing only 1 or 2 runs a year, which seem to be higher profile, is too dangerous for most, and ages everyone too quickly.

Hey, I know someone who made GOOD money selling a warehouse full of 70s disco albums to Eastern Europe. It was only marginally more money to ship them then it was to throw them in a landfill, and the warehouse rent was cheap with the condition that they get rid of the pallets full of the damn records.

Frank is still probably listening to them every night. . .

So it was YOU!!!

Yeah. Eastern Europe listens to a lot of Disco. I don't even know what to do about it or how to make them stop.

-Frank

I'm willing to bet that many 2070 Select Sound Filters will come with factory settings that allow customers to live in an entirely disco-free world.

Well... one can only hope...

Yes, it's certainly a different style. I also tend to see a great deal of runner turnover (deaths and retirement) and the downtime is not entirely uneventuful - those short houl loose ends type things tend to get taken care of in extra session between runs.

Higher profile is certainly true, but the danger is no different than what most teams go for. The difference is in playstyle - think more Rainbow Six and less Halo. There's still a lot of danger, the grittiness factor is just ramped up.

As for aging, how many games truly last more than twelve runs (roughly eight years of game time)? Each of those runs takes us 3-5 session and we play twice a month. That's two years of RL playing time for a typical campaign and there's no reason a character can't keep on 'running for 20 years of they like (that would be about 5 years of RL time at the pace I set). This allows time for training, healing, surgery (including cosmetic for EVERYONE), as well as developmemt of contacts (something that really should take a considerable amount of time) and getting hard-to-find gear. All of these things feel really forced and artificial if the timespan between runs is less than that between episodes of 24.

Sometimes if players won't leave the nest, you have to kick them out. I find one way to get characters scrambling is to set up a blanket of security and then yank it away. Imagine what will happen in one of Kool Kat's old enemies takes him out (or Kool Kat has to let everyone believe that) and the runners suddenly find themselves on their own.

That is the number one thing GM always seem to lowball on.

Both in up front money and in expenses.

The runners are mercs. They supply the meat and skills.

Mr Johnson supplies the cred and the target.

And he also covers anything else the runners bring to the table for Mr. Johnson run. He also has to offer enough credit to cover the potential risk of what is going to be used or lost during the run. It might be a drek hot comm unit, medical expenses, replacement cyber, magical supplies, equipment, or even time spend either recovering or laying low. And he better not cheap out or he will be throwing cred down a hole.

If a rigger is ponying up 100K of custom drones and vehicles for a run, he is not going to roll out a single one unless the run covers his potential losses. For a hot run where there is a 50% chance he might lose 50% of his gear, then his fee for the run will need to include 25K worth of "Coverage". That might be an expense account for lost gear, or 25K worth of equipment he can keep at the end of the run, or a special deal on some milgrade stuff, or a straight 25K of cred.

And runners are going to want all that up front because it doesn't matter if the run is successful or not, they need to cover the repairs and replacements.