Kool Kat
Oct 29 2007, 01:28 PM
I have a little problem that is wrecking havoc in my game world. With no clear chart to go by of what a job should be worth I think I have given my players TOO much money. In just three jobs they have amased over 500000 (Granted half of that was hacking a finanical account and dumping the funds) but that still means on average I have been dishing out 83000 (With 4 players that is 20750 each) a job which I am starting to realize is WAY to much for a job.
I am wondering what kind of guidelines everyone follows when determing how much a job is worth. I dug in to the Paranoid guide on the forums here and saw how he determines payout but I am wondering what others use.
By the novels I have read... Shadowrunners are always POOR even when they get paid because of expenses and a few parties here and there to celebrate the victory. I mean if they keep getting paid so well in my campaign the motivation to be a Runner is going to vanish. They'll just retire with fat wallets. And I don't want to do the jerky thing and yank all their money from them in some lame way.
So what is a job worth? How much to whack someone? How much to steel that jar of Peanut Butter Super Drug from XXX-Labs?
DireRadiant
Oct 29 2007, 01:32 PM
Pay less then the runners want, more then they need.
What do the players/PC want? Pay less then that.
What do they need to survive? Get them that much.
There's far more then money in payouts.
Contacts, goods, services, karma, positive qualities, skills, tutor softs, time off, lifestyles, upgrades, medical services, etc.
deek
Oct 29 2007, 01:39 PM
I don't have a complete system, but what I normally do for the first few runs is take a look at the lifestyle of each player and try to factor in 2-3 runs that will cover their expenses, maybe give a few thousand nuyen more.
My group has been playing for over a year (24 sessions in total) and one guy (that has been there from the start) has saved 40,000 nuyen. I wouldn't call him poor, as he has a decent lifestyle, but he doesn't have the money to drop 100K on some new gear or cyberware.
As I tell all my players, if they are looking for some cyber or other gear, let me know and I can work it into a run. I really don't want to be giving them tons of nuyen, because, as you are starting to see, with that much money, the motivation to continue to run goes away.
A bit off topic, but my campaigns are mainly low nuyen, but high karma, so the players still are getting rewarded a lot, just not with a ton of money. Then, as they start wanting better stuff, they start getting bigger and more dangerous runs.
And I normally start a campaign near the end of the month so they have to pay that monthly lifestyle pretty quick after getting paid...
2,000 - 5,000 nuyen per player per run, starting off, has worked well with me. If they have higher lifestyles, that just means they are going to want to run more often!
Kool Kat
Oct 29 2007, 01:44 PM
In my style of play the Runners NEVER set their price first. Mr. Johnson shows them what he is willing to pay and the Runners can try to negotitate from there and I dish out Loot during gameplay (Medical gear and all that fluff) but what I want is what a job is worth at the point of contact with Mr. Johnson... what is he willing to PAY per job type. What factors in to it? Enemy power? Location? Sensitivity of the job, etc, etc.
Going by the tables given in the Paranoid PDF file the average job is between 15-20k
How much is Wetwork worth? B $ E, Transport, Extraction... BASE Payout.
Blade
Oct 29 2007, 01:50 PM
You can find some guidelines or examples but actually it depends on what you (and your players) want.
Realistically, it'd depend on how many shadowrunners there are, what minimal price they expect to get for risking their lives, how much the corps need them and how much they hope to get by hiring some.
As most of these parameters are up to you, you're free to adjust the prices to your liking.
If you want your runners to be able to get their hands on top gear or to retire, give more, if you want them to be constantly poor, give less. As simple as that.
Also don't forget that payment can be in gear or favors rather than cash, that runners can have unexpected expenses or losses
Keep in mind that the payment will also have an impact on the runner's social situation. If it's low, it means that runners are ready to risk their lives for little money: they are lowlives scums who can't expect (or really don't want) to have any legitimate life (because with their abilities they'd be able to get much more) and if they don't take the job someone else will and they'll end up starving to death the head in the gutter if some street punk don't kill them before.
If it's high it means that they are pro mercenaries, respected and feared. There are only a handful of them in town and they're one of the few SINless who can hope to get out of the miserable life.
DireRadiant
Oct 29 2007, 01:57 PM
QUOTE (Kool Kat) |
In my style of play the Runners NEVER set their price first. Mr. Johnson shows them what he is willing to pay and the Runners can try to negotitate from there and I dish out Loot during gameplay (Medical gear and all that fluff) but what I want is what a job is worth at the point of contact with Mr. Johnson... what is he willing to PAY per job type. What factors in to it? Enemy power? Location? Sensitivity of the job, etc, etc.
Going by the tables given in the Paranoid PDF file the average job is between 15-20k How much is Wetwork worth? B $ E, Transport, Extraction... BASE Payout. |
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.
Zak
Oct 29 2007, 02:10 PM
Payments for runs is still one of main issues I personally have with SR. It is damn unrealistic to do highly dangerous work if you could make the same or more by doing other (but not as dangerous) work.
With the skillset of an average runner alternative modes of income are not that big of a problem. If runners can make more money from stealing an average car or hacking a comlink than from a run, then something is wrong.
20k per runner for a run of medium difficulty doesnt really seem much.
One thing players (and GMs) tend to forget is that money is there for more than buying foci, cyberwear and ammunition. Ask yourself and them what they would do to have fun.
500000 is not a big number anyway. A good face could probably make that with a small weapons deal. And that is just the low end once you get into serious crime.
This thread made me giggle again as I remembered a run a char of mine took part in where we had to track a person across the country for a week, foiled an attempted execution and finally traded a nuke with SK. All that for 10k each. Damn, I was so close to strangling the GM, but I guess they would have thrown me out of that convention.
noonesshowmonkey
Oct 29 2007, 02:14 PM
The Shadowrun Missions published on the SR4 site suggest somewhere around ¥5,000 * Team Rating.
DireRadiant's suggestions of "just enough to keep them hungry" is just about on the money (pun pun pun).
There are several posts on the boards already about "how much is too much?" and the like. Try a little bit of search-fu and see if you can find anything. This thread about
Paydata is a good start, maybe?
In my games, I pay out just enough for the players to pay for their lifestyle costs and have a little left over. Often this "little extra" gets sucked up into contact costs, replacement gear, medical costs etc. The player actually responded
very well to being dirt poor, trying to go on mini-runs in between games to make extra cash, squeeze out more money from their contacts and the Johnson. They were not exactly bean counters, however.
Dangerous or not, ¥5,000-¥10,000 for a few days work is a killing (pun pun pun).
- der menkey
"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemingway
Ryu
Oct 29 2007, 02:16 PM
An average of 20k per run/runner is certainly not to much for all campaigns. I´d even say that the "right" amount depends on the frequency of your RPG meetings. After all its the player who needs to feel some form of advancement, not the character.
You also need to consider the amount of karma you dole out. High karma and low money nets you a magic-heavy group.
It trolls!
Oct 29 2007, 02:18 PM
500k¥ ? That's not even enough for that shiny betaware MBW III !
Ask the players if they have any plans for that kind of money and how their characters think about having amassed such a fortune. If you agree that it feels awkward to run around with those funds, because you want to play a street level game, or such a thing, you could work out an adventure about the characters losing it due to theft, blackmail or the IRS or whatever.
Just make sure to talk to the playes as most of them don't react well to just having their goodies taken away at random.
Zak
Oct 29 2007, 02:38 PM
QUOTE (noonesshowmonkey) |
The Shadowrun Missions published on the SR4 site suggest somewhere around ¥5,000 * Team Rating.
|
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)
darthmord
Oct 29 2007, 02:43 PM
Keep in mind that running needs to be more profitable than car theft or knocking over the local Quick-E-Mart /. Stuffer Shack.
Blade
Oct 29 2007, 02:52 PM
Keep in mind that car theft in 2070 might be much more complicated than today...
Besides, I don't know how much a car thief gets for each car he steals, but I'm not sure it's very profitable.
raggedhalo
Oct 29 2007, 03:05 PM
All but one of the PCs in my game are SINless (actually, one of those has a criminal SIN, but still...). While they have skillsets that they could probably use to earn more in the legit world, they can't get employment through normal channels, especially as most of them have riled Aztechnology in the past.
Thus, they take jobs in the 4k-8k per runner field because they're in competition with much bigger fish. Over time, as their skillsets develop and mature and they get more of a rep, they'll earn more. For now, enough to pay lifestyle costs and save for a specific big purchase seems to keep them going (we operate at one job per week).
DireRadiant
Oct 29 2007, 03:11 PM
PCs, and players are usually motivated to play SR4 for far more different and varied reasons then only the nuyen they can generate. Quite a few aren't interested in nuyen at all.
And speaking for myself, I often find when I can quite easily having characters quite capable of stealing cars for a living, yet for some reason not wanting to do that.
Strangely enough this makes me wonder if not everyone is the same or motivated for the same reasons?
raggedhalo
Oct 29 2007, 03:14 PM
I guess the simplest explanation of that is that the game is called
Shadowrun for a reason...
It trolls!
Oct 29 2007, 03:17 PM
I'm sure most car thieves are actually organized in a bigger group, that scans for profitable brands, steals those, chops them up in a garage and sells of the parts. In 2070 most of those parts would have a unique RFID and if you try to just sell a part of a stolen car to a licensed workshop, they'd run the part's ID through a database and find out, it's hot.
That'd leave selling it off at the black market at severely reduced cost, because it could still be traced as soon as someone who put your stolen goods under his hood is randomly checked on by a highway patrol.
Deleting RFIDs on the parts results in untraceable but still suspicious parts. The government would've probably ruled such parts as illegal on the streets (do the USA have something like our German TÜV ?).
Ok so we fake the RFIDs, which means unless we hack into the manufacturer's database and insert our data there too, we might end up with duplicate IDs resulting in a misidentification or with confusing numbers...
Oh god, maybe I'm just overlooking something.
deek
Oct 29 2007, 03:21 PM
5K * Team Rating seems reasonable to me. The way I portray it to my players is that these smaller runs are all building reputation and contacts. At some point, they are going to hit the sweet run that is either really easy or pays huge...
I don't seem to have any motivation issues.
While I understand why you want to know what is realistic for Job A or Job B, I think you would better serve your players by just working with them. 500K in my campaign, is huge, but in someone else's may be no big deal.
From my perspective, money is used for training, lifestyle and replenishing consumable gear. For the rest of the runner's needs, be it vehicles, software, weapons or ware, that is all part of payment for a job or the objective of the job itself, so big payoffs really doesn't have to be measured in nuyen.
Blade
Oct 29 2007, 03:25 PM
Even just the act of stealing a car might not be that easy.
In 2070 police is everywhere in rich neighborhoods (where there are cars that are profitable to steal). Don't expect to be able to get a car out of the neighbothood without being checked by a drone, filmed by a camera... And that's after you bypassed all the protections on the car itself (which isn't as easy as picking a lock and connecting two wires).
Even if you're able to do that, you'll need to share the profit with the syndicate that controls the car racket in the area (if you don't want to visit the bottom of the sea with concrete shoes, that is).
Mercer
Oct 29 2007, 03:35 PM
QUOTE (Zak) |
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. |
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.)
Zak
Oct 29 2007, 03:56 PM
So, basically computer game logic instead of game world logic?
"We as players are motivated because the game is fun, not because it actually makes sense what our chars are doing."
FrankTrollman
Oct 29 2007, 04:14 PM
Crime has really wily disparate rewards in rela life. People really do shoot each other over half a kilogram of cocaine, all the time. That's just $15,000.00 in Miami - assuming you found a buyer and didn't just stuff it up your nose a gram and a half at a time. On the other hand, people really do take out genuine hits for $5m. Seriously, not even kidding.
Depending upon where you are in the criminal food chain, your profit margins can expect to be anywhere from say 10 grand on a drug deal gone wrong where you left bloody handprints all over some Jamaican dude all the way up to getting upwards of 700 thousand to pilot a boat from an island to the mainland and hand off a few trunks. Shadowrunners realistically pull down anywhere for 5k to ten million for the group on each run. A lucrative mercenary contract is not measured in little 100 nuyen bills with Adam Smith's face on them - it's measured in bank accounts with seven consecutive numbers before the period.
And that's fine. Players enjoy being bottom feeder scum. They enjoy being jet setting assassins. And so long as you keep the right feel for the ecological niche the players are in, it's fine.
Heck, you can even mix it up. Did you catch Burn Notice? That's a great example of a world-class jet setting shadowrunner who for plot reasons is forced to take low-end shady mcshady shadowruns from friends-of-friends for rent money. Alternately, have you seen the last season of Angel? That's a good example of street level shadowrunners who got quickly thrown into the ring where extinction-level threats are handled and millions of dollars are tossed around in suit cases.
-Frank
Mercer
Oct 29 2007, 04:16 PM
QUOTE (Zak) |
So, basically computer game logic instead of game world logic?
"We as players are motivated because the game is fun, not because it actually makes sense what our chars are doing." |
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.
Blade
Oct 29 2007, 04:36 PM
That just depends on how much the player is able to suspend his disbelief. It depends on the player and the topic.
Buster
Oct 29 2007, 04:43 PM
QUOTE (FrankTrollman) |
Crime has really wily disparate rewards in rela life. People really do shoot each other over half a kilogram of cocaine, all the time. That's just $15,000.00 in Miami - assuming you found a buyer and didn't just stuff it up your nose a gram and a half at a time. On the other hand, people really do take out genuine hits for $5m. Seriously, not even kidding. |
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.
Hank
Oct 29 2007, 05:04 PM
QUOTE (Kool Kat) |
In just three jobs they have amased over 500000... |
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.
DireRadiant
Oct 29 2007, 05:04 PM
QUOTE (Zak) |
So, basically computer game logic instead of game world logic?
"We as players are motivated because the game is fun, not because it actually makes sense what our chars are doing." |
How does computer game virtual nuyen differ from SR4 RPG virtual nuyen?
Zak
Oct 29 2007, 05:31 PM
The main difference is that in a computer game I do have to live with whatever the program gives me. In computer games you just do whatever is the main purpose of the game.
There usually is no such things as roleplaying. Or downtime. You jump from action to action with only a small video in between.
For me, SR (or any other pen&paper) 'downtime' is an important part of the game experience. And for that I try to build a somewhat believable game world. Proper payment is a part of that.
Penta
Oct 29 2007, 05:56 PM
One way to hold down the money flow:
Enforce costs. Remember, the prices in the book for cyber/bio/gene/nanoware are for the parts only. They don't include surgery costs, recovery costs, followup, maintenance, so on and so forth.
Lifestyle costs are...just to keep your lifestyle going. Got a SIN, real or fake? Better be paying -taxes- on that SIN (and remember, you are liable, as form 1040 states it so innocuously, for taxes due on "all sources of income, wherever derived". Yes, the 10k bribe (or money for a contract killing, or illegal gambling winnings, etc) still has to be reported, somehow, on your tax return.). Remember, the IRS knows where you live. If you report 0 income yet are living in a place which costs money, they're going to ask how you manage to do that.
Now, granted, much of this we usually ignore or fold into things like lifestyle. But if money accumulation is a problem, you could bring out such things.
deek
Oct 29 2007, 06:04 PM
The OP is looking for a chart or guide...the issue, I think all of us are bringing up, is there obviously isn't one.
Frank gave us a good observation...a run can payout about anything, 1,000 to 1,000,000+. One wetwork job could be 5K/runner, while another one could be 5M/runner...it all depends on the GM, the objectives and the players...
Mercer
Oct 29 2007, 06:15 PM
Money accumulation is generally more of a thematic problem than a mechanical one. Characters rarely have enough money to "wreck the game", and even if they do, its usually not that hard a fix. (Either take money away, let them use it, or start over with new characters.) But cyberpunk tends to lend itself to characters who are just barely scraping by, who are hungry, and so there is a feeling that we should maintain that even if it's not really necessary.
Having a bunch of money doesn't wreck the game, but it can change it. Characters can afford better gear, so they'll be able to tackle more challenging (and higher paying) runs, but they'll also be a target for other people who like cool gear. The characters can invest in themselves and start forming semi-legitmate businesses. They can build their batcave. Once characters don't have to run for money, they can run for whatever reason they want. They can start funding their own runs, picking their own targets, and defending their own interests. All those fixers who are ex-runners had to start somewhere.
Orient
Oct 29 2007, 06:22 PM
You can also control how much liquid assets the characters gain by giving them specific stuff instead of cash. Or even putting it out there as a possibility - maybe a particular Johnson can pay 5k, or can give the runners some portion of that 5k in (for example) guns & ammo at half-cost. So the players can take 5k cash, 10k worth of toys, or something in between.
Of course, that's pretty dependent on what each Johnson has access to. Being able to get a couple tons of soy-crab for dirt cheap might be realistic, in some cases, but...
noonesshowmonkey
Oct 29 2007, 06:25 PM
There are two sources for a chart, of sorts.
******
Shadowrun Missions as published by FanPro on their website.
The suggested range is ¥5,000 * Team Rating.
This system scales with the advancement and gear costs given in the SR4 core book.
System's Guide to ParanoiaUsing his methods of determining a run's worth generally results in a payday of ~¥50,000 +/- for a starting group. This is entirely dependent on variables.
These values are for straight cash or goods in kind.
******
If you wanted a chart, this about as close as you can get without a lot of argument. Even then, clearly, people dissent and disagree. I would look well on Frank's post earlier about maintaining continuity between your character's goals/skills and the game world. If the players are well dressed killers commanding a massive bounty for highly dangerous work then six figures on up makes sense. Should the game be a street level campaign of grit and random violence you can start by just letting players loot street drugs.
Generally if money is that big of a problem, there is something seriously wrong with the game's continuity. There are likely some big time contradictions going on in terms of character motivation (if they have any to speak of), risk vs. reward, aesthetic of the underworld etc.
- der menkey
"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter."
~ Ernest Hemingway
HappyDaze
Oct 29 2007, 06:31 PM
QUOTE |
Even just the act of stealing a car might not be that easy. In 2070 police is everywhere in rich neighborhoods (where there are cars that are profitable to steal). Don't expect to be able to get a car out of the neighbothood without being checked by a drone, filmed by a camera... And that's after you bypassed all the protections on the car itself (which isn't as easy as picking a lock and connecting two wires). |
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.
deek
Oct 29 2007, 06:45 PM
QUOTE (HappyDaze) |
QUOTE | Even just the act of stealing a car might not be that easy. In 2070 police is everywhere in rich neighborhoods (where there are cars that are profitable to steal). Don't expect to be able to get a car out of the neighbothood without being checked by a drone, filmed by a camera... And that's after you bypassed all the protections on the car itself (which isn't as easy as picking a lock and connecting two wires). |
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.
Spike
Oct 29 2007, 06:50 PM
20k a runner per run is not much money at all, really. Realistically, how many runs do they get to do in the average, say, month? Probably not more than one if things are going well. Less than one if things go badly. I know, I know, a properly configured team that does everything by the book can heal up 10 boxes of physical damage inside of an IP. But when you can't, when your mage get's geeked and the medkit can't get pulled out until long after that magic hour is up, you've got potentially weeks of time holed up healing... never mind losing the heat from a run gone south. 20k isn't much once you take out expenses.
Realistically? Runners should ditch any gun fired in the course of the run, any commlink, maybe even buy newer software every so often. I know, the game doesn't posit an advance CSI team tracking you, but the basic precautions should be second nature. You shoot a gun it goes into the Sound, no questions. Then there is the money spent leading up to the run, greasing palms, smoozing contacts, setting up a 'training' run (fiberboards nailed together in a quarry to simulate the site? Still costs money...). Professionals charge big, but they should spend big to get there too.
And what about upgrades? Just about every runner needs to look ahead to getting 'better'. Think about this: 90% of all startign characters will have 250,000 Nuyen in gear to start with, and its 'not enough' for them to be top of the line, not by a country mile. How many runs at 20k a pop are they going to have to make to 'beat' that starting total? Never mind that now they need to pay those surgery costs, the cost of finding that good gear, of paying to keep their vital data from gettting out of the clinic to the highest bidder.
Now, even if you aren't going full bore on expenses, letting players walk around with all their nuyen like it was candy and not money, 20K still doesn't get 'em far. How much is a good power focus these days?
lunchbox311
Oct 29 2007, 07:54 PM
I usually run a higher payout campaign. I find that risk vs. reward should be balanced.
I try to use the fluff in the book as a guideline, remember rating 5 and 6 skills are considered masters of their trade. You throw someone who can perform at that level, well they will get noticed; go above that and holy crap!
The novels are another area that perpetuates the poor cyberpunk junkie. I swear all the main characters of those books suffer from the poverty flaw
How many hackers now a days will get busted for some crime (read: run got hosed) go to jail and walk out with a six figure salary?!
I have dealt with runners stealing cars because they could not scrape by with the crappy payouts for the SR missions. It is very sad when your runners lose their professional edge (what they were hired for) and start looting everything in sight just to pay rent because they were told to break into a high tech facility to steal a multimillion
prototype for 5000:nuyen: a pop.
Each game will have its own flow and power level. My players like the bigger flashier merc style more than the poor gutterpunk with something to prove. Honestly I think many do.
While I find it fun to play the up and comer, eventually they want to be something more. And if they are getting 50K a month, so what? It is 100K a month for a life of luxury so why not aspire to that? Upgrades are scary expensive and I also think many GM's forget book prices are for legit purchasing (whether it be civilian, law enforcement, or military... if you are legally able to have it then that is market cost)... something shadowrunners rarely get to do, I find all said and done most items are a good 20%-50% more expensive, and that is if you are willing to wait a month.
Don't screw your runners. If I have a quarter million
of enhancements in me at all times that make me a wiz person, I expect to get paid one way or another. Worst case, I will sell out to the evil corp (barring my views for said corp) and live the good life.
That is my 2
worth. YMMV
kzt
Oct 29 2007, 08:20 PM
QUOTE (Orient @ Oct 29 2007, 11:22 AM) |
Of course, that's pretty dependent on what each Johnson has access to. Being able to get a couple tons of soy-crab for dirt cheap might be realistic, in some cases, but... |
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. . .
FrankTrollman
Oct 29 2007, 08:27 PM
QUOTE (kzt) |
QUOTE (Orient @ Oct 29 2007, 11:22 AM) | Of course, that's pretty dependent on what each Johnson has access to. Being able to get a couple tons of soy-crab for dirt cheap might be realistic, in some cases, but... |
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
Orient
Oct 29 2007, 08:35 PM
QUOTE (FrankTrollman) |
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...
Alphastream
Oct 29 2007, 08:51 PM
Kool Kat,
Once you figure out the price that would work well for a run (I like a bit above the SR Missions level), you will still have to figure out what to do with the cash they have.
One technique that could pay off (pun not intended) is to provide them some investment opportunity. Perhaps a contact has a foundation on the rise that will make big Nuyen, or maybe a Johnson they like contacts them and has something they can join at a cost.
Depending on how your campaign is faring, it could be simply a way to lock up the funds for a bit, and dole them back out slowly (or have them lost and then the adventures ensue to recover, only to find they are largely gone - space it over time, because otherwise players can get a bit testy. Make it fun, fun, fun, not GM fiat).
Another option, more pleasing but more work, can be to provide them some true opportunity for growth. An adventure could provide some rare tech or magic. Their fixer can't move it, but he knows how these things work. What they need is to take it to the next level. He can get them a research team, a front as a legitimate company, etc. It will take time, and he can be their partner. Essentially, they have the opportunity to become a fledgling corp with real promise. Introduce some major players to them, like some famous corps VP to make the promise feel real. Then, the money is locked up but you still have fun with the new campaign concept. They get to kidnap expertise, steal tech, protect against gangers and racketeers, etc.
Just some ideas.
HappyDaze
Oct 29 2007, 09:40 PM
QUOTE |
And maybe they like it, because I (the GM) like that type of game...just a different style I suppose. |
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.
QUOTE |
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. |
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.
Kool Kat
Oct 30 2007, 01:01 PM
Thanks for the insight into your different play styles. I guess they are not so wealthy as of yet. They still don't have their own place nor have they broken out on their own. In my campaign setting they work for my NPC that goes by the name I use here, Kool Kat. In my Shadowrun world he is a big time Fixer/Ex-Runner who helps out wet behind the ears Shadowrunner teams, taking a percentage off the top of each mission that he manages to round up for the players. Eventually I am sure the players will fly from Kool Kat's nest to form their own unit and build their own hideout and the like. I need to figure out what their longer term goals are and cater the payouts to that to make them work for it in a satisfying way that makes them feel like they are achieving something.
Generally my missions run between 20k-50k for a 4 man team, so between 5k-12.5k per man. That is base pay and does not include phat loots or bonuses paid for completing secondary and tertiary objectives. They generally do two runs a month. So I guess I am doing okay. I've been rather stingy on karma though
But that's because they haven't really impressed me enough on a run to be rewarded the bonus Karma.
I don't reward players for Metagaming... -_- One of my players has a real problem Metagaming and it drives me nuts but that is the problem with a Grand Champion Level certified RPGA Dungeon Master being a player...x.x They nickle and dime everything to death and forget to play their character but that's a whole other issue.
Mercer
Oct 30 2007, 01:49 PM
QUOTE (Kool Kat) |
In my campaign setting they work for my NPC that goes by the name I use here, Kool Kat. In my Shadowrun world he is a big time Fixer/Ex-Runner who helps out wet behind the ears Shadowrunner teams, taking a percentage off the top of each mission that he manages to round up for the players. Eventually I am sure the players will fly from Kool Kat's nest to form their own unit and build their own hideout and the like. |
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.
Clyde
Oct 30 2007, 02:35 PM
When I first started SR4 I tried the 1-2k per runner pay scale. They started looting bodies. Phrases like "get his boots!" caused me to up things.
Our groups typically do 10k - 25 k depending on the job.
TheOneRonin
Oct 30 2007, 02:35 PM
There are a couple of things I do in my games that help regulate the Runner's income.
1st: The big jobs COST money to pull off. Everyone here has seen Ocean's 11, right? Look at the investment the team had to make to pull off that job. The cost included several vehicles (a SWAT van too), uniforms, materials to build a mockup of the vault, etc. It's just like it works in the real world...you have to spend money to make money. Do that, and the profit margin on that $500k job starts to shrink significantly.
2nd: Interval is important. Just because your players want to get together every Sunday evening to game doesn't mean the actual runs are a week apart. A $20k payoff per runner only stretches so far when you only pull off a few jobs per calendar year. What I had to do with my group is feel out how they wanted their characters to do business. In general, if $20k/runner was their minimum for a job, they would only get work about once a quarter or so. If they wanted more work, they would have to take some budget jobs.
Kool Kat
Oct 30 2007, 03:18 PM
None of my players' characters are what I would consider street quality. They are pro's and started out that way from CharGen and their Background stories.
The team leader is NAN Republic Navaho Shaman new to the Shadows that goes by the runner name 'Big Chief' Given to him by other teammates that could not pronounce his Indian name worth a crap. He used to head up Border Security in his sector but quit his job to look for his sister that disappeared in Seattle while leading a protest rally against Patterson Pharmacueticals (One of my reoccurring bad guy corps.)
Benjamin Johnson Kennedy aka Solid is an Orc turned pro 'Driver' He is the team's getaway man and is quite adept at piloting land, sea and air based vehicles. Quick on the stick even without Rigging it up. He has a nice collection of automobiles at his disposal.
Snowwhite is an elf Ex-Corporate assassin that finally found an opportunity to escape from Shiawase's servitude in Japan to the states. She's now wanted by them for the chaos, death and destruction she caused during her escape. (Her personally story arc is next... oh... so much fun to be had with this one)
Bringing the firepower to the table is the Gun Adept, Ashley Webber aka Tex from the CAS. An expert in all firearms and exceedingly evil with a sniper rifle, he used to be a member of the Texas Rangers (Not the baseball team!) until he had a little accident that cost him his badge.
Rounding up the team is China Xang-Pu aka Batgirl in the Matrix. She is the team's Hacker (Technomancer actually but she has not come out of the digital closet yet). She was from a well to do family that she left behind to make her own way. She's used her powers to be a naughty girl and live the lifestyle she does. She's very good at code cracking and money moving.
So since the team is not really down in the dirt I guess my job payouts are okay.
Mercer
Oct 30 2007, 03:22 PM
There are street level games and there are jet-setting campaigns. For my money, I like them both.
cndblank
Nov 2 2007, 02:45 AM
QUOTE (TheOneRonin) |
1st: The big jobs COST money to pull off. Everyone here has seen Ocean's 11, right? Look at the investment the team had to make to pull off that job. The cost included several vehicles (a SWAT van too), uniforms, materials to build a mockup of the vault, etc. It's just like it works in the real world...you have to spend money to make money. Do that, and the profit margin on that $500k job starts to shrink significantly.
|
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.