I have been lurking a bit, reading up on the various threads and the like. I have a few grievances to air out, some opinions to write down and a few points to make. Read on at your own peril.

Payment on a run
There seems to be great deal of discussion on the boards about what to pay for a run or ways to squeeze more money out of a GM who a player deems is being too stingy. ¥5,000 is just a bit under what the forum goers have decided is a decent payment, risk vvsreward, for a born-to-lose SINless illegal who can't get a job and has to resort to a life of crime to get by.

Lets review that, shall we? SINless - can't get a conventional job regardless of skill set. A corporation may go out of their way to work with the UCAS or whomever to get you setup with a new identity... But do not think it is good business for a corp to hire on tons of felons or SINless on the books. Shadowrunning is Shadowrunning because you are off the books and plausible deniability is it is all about. There are still laws regulating the better business practices of corporations, they just find ways around them. Any investment a corp makes in terms of PR risk, monetary losses or cyberware installed, they expect to recoup these losses. If you were to die in extraterritorial space of another corp, caught red (bloody) handed in the midst of some nefarious deed, I sincerely doubt that the political fallout would be worth the investment they put in (nuyen, favors, law firm billable hours) to get you "legal". This is built into the game and players do not need to think about it much, which is unfortunate. I take it as a sign of talented developers and writers.

Five grand is a godsend. That is a month of a medium lifestyle. That is nearly a cyberlimb replacement. All for what, several days work? Even several weeks work? Truncate that out over a year's worth of running... Nice little salary.

Organ Legging Cash Crop – So You Want to be a (Hero) Businessman

There is an entire thread that has wandered off to discuss the virtues and practices of organlegging. There are some pretty good justifications for why a player does it, can do it, and most importantly can get away with it. Some of it was clever, some not so clever, and most just sort of illogical.

Organlegging is bad business. Its biggest player is Tanamous, feared and loathed. To successfully extract cyberwear without damage would require skills similar to its installation - you go to a doc to get ware taken out and put in, don't you? This would resemble someone with a bigass Medical skill group with specializations in Cybertech. They would have a knowledge skill battery based around Medical Science and Cybertechnology. Something like Medicine 5 (Cybertechnology) and Knowledge - Cybertechnology 5, Knowledge - Cyber-Surgery 5 (or whatever the scientific skill set of studying the medical interface between man and machine would be called). Anyways, what I am getting at is that if a character meets these skills and wishes to rip cyberware out of people for fun and profit...

WELCOME TO LIFE AS AN NPC! Congratulations, you qualify to be a member of Tanamous or become a full on street doc. If you can make so much more money doing something else why even Shadowrun. If money is not the issue, then why degrade yourself by doing it in the first place? If you still will not relent then enjoy getting the hell out of my game. Your character is now attainable as a contact. Roll up someone who is motivated to be shadowrunning and be getting paid the wages given.

As I have reviewed on other posts about gear - in fact, let me quote word for word -

Given that I am an opinionated lot, I imagine this list will likely expand.

- 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

Ironically, after the SIN amnesty programs after the second crash, the majority of the SINless is so by choice.

No one on the forums has the attention span to read a 30 paragraph diatribe. Can you sum it up in one sound bite, so we can all whale on you for being too simplistic?

5K APIECE (~20-25K to the johnson) is hardly worth a run, unless most of the work has been done for you already, and then its hard to turn down an easy paycheck of any amount.

Johnsons dont necessarily have to pay in cash either. I see this all the time IRL. Johnson can pay you in goods counted at market value, but in reality he got them much much cheaper.

Re: opening post

http://youtube.com/watch?v=z5yT3oQYVn4

(just the audience reaction, not the title )

Amen to that.
For the first one (payment), I agree with you but I can understand that some people don't consider it that way. Actually, it depends on a lot of facts that are up to the GM.

For the second one, I won't restrict it to organlegging. For example a PC with a high enchanting skills can spend his life doing orichalcum or focus/fetishes. Actually, most starting characters are good enough to be valuable as company men (mages, faces, hackers), so they need a REALLY good reason to be shadowrunning (and that excludes "he wants to have fun" or "he doesn't like to have a boss", would you become a criminal just because of that?)

For the fourth one (metagaming) I'll add in rule lawyering and prefering to apply the rule rather than the idea behing it.

Or, I could just tailor my game so that my players and I have a lot of fun on a Saturday night. 50000 , 5000 , let them have the loot. you know, whatever feels right.

I disagree about run payment, disagree about organlegging, agree about loot and meta-gaming and I don't have a strong opinion about starting characters. For those of you keeping score.

Lets see if I can handle this in reasonable fashion.

First: Shadowrun postulates that the runners are more or less experienced career criminals, not just random thugs pulled off the street. You can play random thugs pulled off the street, but that is your choice. Consider the prevelance of former mercenaries, professional ninja, guys with organized criminal ties and the like. These people are used to being criminals, and many of them are used to getting paid well for their services. 5k a month or even every couple of weeks is chump change compared to what they could get paid in a month... say... pimping hookers out, or working as a buttonman for the local oyabun, or running BTL's out of the trunk of their car. There is a lot of ways to make money as a professional (rather than incidental) criminal, even today.

Organlegging: It doesn't take medical skills to five to remove organs if you don't care about the patient surviving. Hell, a sharp knife and a single point of 'anatomy related knowledge skill' is almost excessive. Selling second hand cyberware is a bonus if you are seriously considering organlegging. Primary income comes from the meat itself, both organs to desperate donors who can't get, or can't afford clonal organs, then everything else to the cannibals. As for the tracking of vin numbers, recall that the very best cyberware is probably illegal or damn shady. Stuff that the average shadowrunner doesn't want known he has, who's gonna care that it's hot? That's like worryign that your kilo of Cocaine is 'hot'. Possession is bad enough that no one really cares what other crimes MIGHT be linked to it. THough I agree with your assessement that ripping out most SHadowrun cyberware is a might simplistic. THat sort of thing makes more sence when cyberlimbs and other gross alterations are commonplace. Still, gouging out eyes with a spoon is gonna net you a decent amount of money in second hand cyber for not much work/skill.

If four out of five players want to play 'jet setters' and one guy is a street thug, that isn't necessarily bad. That's good tension, a chance for some harmless interparty roleplaying as the jet setters groan about the thug and the thug insults the non-street jet setters (plus the addition of a different skill set (street) might turn out to be just what the party needs to accomplish the run... provided teh GM is on the ball....)

In short, while I can see where you are coming from, I find your perspective hopelessly short sighted and overly... eh... snobbish. Its a game, its supposed to be fun.

Tongue in cheek, friend. Hyperbole is an accepted form of sarcasm the last I checked.

Runners that can get paid better doing other things should have a good reason to not be doing those other things. Anyone can slave themselves to a task and get paid. Not everyone wants to. 5k a run for a life of freedom, without having to clock in and out, to be able to move around and do what you want... That is heaven to some.

Organlegging is its own can of worms, but I stand by my statements about cyberwear.

Lastly, player diversity does create tension that drives games. The biggest problem with jet setters mixed in with lower level characters is that, as players, people tend to feel inadequate when tossing far less dice at problems. I have had players regularly change characters to suite the needs and setting of the group. These were failures on my part as a GM to make sure that things would work out well. So, it would seem that we are in agreement.

Your fashion was most reasonable and well received.

- 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

I actually had the patience to read your whole post.

Let me see if I have an opinion about some of your points...

I've got to agree with Organ legging being a no no. I have recently started GMing (giving our GM a chance to play) and I have to figure in the monthly costs of living, repair, bribes, and contact upkeep when I throw out a figure for a run. I am considering using the Rules Tweak in Aug about Healing. I have noticed that when the runners get shot/cut/hurt on the run the healing times are well broken. Using the rules tweak to include the die modifiers with damage on healing tests lets me figure in healing costs and downtime for my players. So if use 15% of the cost for hospitalization/medicine in my payouts it keeps the necessity of butchering the opposition down. Plus if reinforcements are incoming due to corporate goons Biomonitor going off, well that is also a perk.

@ TheOneRonin:

Jet setting games and Mr. Clark deserve fatass salaries. Also, I would peronally stat a Mr. Clark type character with a bit more than 400 bp. He can be done at 400, but I'd prefer to have more meat on his bones. Up to interpretation on that.

As far as the interaction between Corps and runners, from what I was reading of your responses, we have remarkably similar views on the reasons why corps don't just hire on runners and instead use them as deniable assets. Glad to know that someone else thinks in a similar fashion.

If there are RP reasons in the background of a character to justify things then they are justified. No arguments from me there. An ex-CIA/SF/DEVGRU/Spetsnaz type is going to be a stone cold MFer with a MBA in BA (Massive Bad Ass in Bad Assery).

But as far as payment goes, the way that SR is setup in the fluff and by the book, it tends towards a street level game. And ¥5,000 is a lot of money. Period. Its not adequate compensation for someone with expensive tastes, a resume as tall as the Eiffel Tower or other such qualifications, but its a helluva lot of raw cash to just hand someone. I'd love 5 grand.

But yeah, the game is about what you want to play. Happy gamers are the best kind of gamers.

- 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

Why not just do both. Organleg and shadowrun. I like to mix things up a little bit when I shadowrun. We just so happen to have a street doc in our group and he has all the resources, knowhow, and people necessary to rip someone up, nice and proper. He spent a lot of his BP towards this, but his character is one of the more interesting ones in our group. While on a run, we will help ourselves to as much paydata and stolen property as opportunity allows us. Organlegging, grand theft auto, magical goods manufacturing, and any other endeavor does not have to be completely divorced from shadowrunning. There is not any reason someone would not want to shadowrun just for the adventure or exhilaration. Maybe this person shadowruns because it keeps them well trained and sharpened, or they have not thought of the prospects a full-time organlegging, theft, manufacturing, etc. Maybe shadowrunning is their full-time position because it is all they have ever done and known. All that other stuff is opportunism or hobbies.

Ok first point 5,000 is chump change in the world of Shadowrun. Not all runners are living in the back of their Bulldog van, eating out of the trash bin at Stuffer Shack.

Before you can pull a fee out of your arse, you need as the GM to assess the money needs of the runners. If every one in the party is at least at medium lifestyle or higher 5k a run is hand to mouth, with a tendency for down spiral if costs exceed income, like in medical care or wear and tear on gear, ammo etc.

All of my player's characters would scoff at such an offer. Are they Government trained Agents, no not all of them, but they know their worth, they have good idea of what operating costs are too.

Where was the poll on what forum goers have decided on about payments?

As long as the shadowrunners stay to shadowrunning, things are easy. When they get into organlegging/cyberware fencing, parts of the underworld will take a keen interest. You might watch the old Movie "The Thief" with James Caan, it has a very good point of view on this.

It also depends upon whether or not your Game world is a stage for the players, meaning things stop when the players are not on stage. Or the world continues even when the players are not on stage. In my gaming world it is the latter.

It has been pointed out in many threads here, their are many issues with the rules and fluff in SR4. So to parrot out that those are the standards/setup, you need to go and read some of those threads.

In my mind if your players are supplementing their incomes by being organleggers/cyberware fencing, then their may be a issue with the payments they are receiving.

WMS

While enjoying a delicious Chipotle Veggie Burrito at lunch, I got to thinking. i'm one of noonesshowmonkey's players, so it's usually me he's butting heads with, especially on run-payouts. I completely understand his opinion on run payouts and how they figure into his game world, but at the same time he would quickly point out that my characters seem to try and squeeze every last dime out of the Johnson in terms of payment. He has sarcastically suggested slipping ¥35,000 under my door each month to satiate me so that we don't bicker and argue over money all the time. I believe he's of the opinion that no matter what he offers, in my mind it "will never be enough". And perhaps that's the case, but I attempted to think of it logically. Let's say you get ¥5,000 a run. And I don't think it's unreasonable to say that 2 runs in a month is average, if not a little high. Maintaining a low-lifestyle (this is what I've come to! Living in squaller!) is 2 grand, and it would probably be a good month if your medical and incidental expenses ran 3 (I'I'mrobably being kind here, but I'll get to my point in a minute). So the first run is to "pay the billz", the second run is pure profit. The problem is, ¥5,000 doesn't buy you a whole lot in terms of upgrades. I won't get into the various hoops and rigamarole I go through to get new gear or cyber, but suffice to say that he doesn't make it easy. ¥60,000 a year is certainly a fantastic living, but your average joe wage-slave is looking to buy a new honda, not move-by-wire. Here's where it gets tricky. *If* we ran on a regular basis, say twice a month (again, probably generous given the availability of all the players in our group), that means I could afford Wired 2 in 6 months real-time. I've never said I was a patient man, but in terms of game-advancement, that seems ludicrous. Knowing all this, I have taken various measures in the past to try and counter-act the inherent stinginess of my GM.
1) Ready to go out of the box
One of the issues I have with SR4 is that you can't keep your money from chargen into the actual game like in SR3. What this means is, if you don't spend it, it's gone, and you've got to wait til your 5 grand from S.S. comes each month (or in the case of Shadowrun in the form of payment for getting shot at for a living) to slowly yet surely accumulate wealth. Therefore, every single upgrade I could want and can afford given the limitations of chargen, I get, because I resolve myself that that's as good as it's going to get in terms of gear.
1b) Availability only goes up to 12
Sure, there are items listed in the book higher than that. And *really* cool items in the supplemental books (Move-by-wire is the new hotness). But those aren't for me. As I stated before, our games unfortunately don't get to run a long time, so even if I did have the patience to wait 10 months real-time to get move-by-wire, the odds of us getting together twice a month for that length of time are near nil, given previous history.
2) Magic!
I play a lot of adepts. Not because I particularly enjoy them more than sammis; In SR3 they were pretty much interchangeable (There's a lot more gear now, so I imagine you could do more with a sammi, but adepts have their own benefits as well). I chose to play adepts for two main reasons. First, the world he runs is extremely security sensitive, so that any restricted or forbidden cyberware you might have is going to make it a bitch even to get to a meet in a decent restaurant. Second, while I am incapable of realistically upgrading with cyberware, Magic's timeline is shorter. All I need is enough karma to get a new power point, and I get new stuff! Huzzah! 2-3 sessions and I actually get something *new*, as opposed to 6+ (using the Wired 2 example again).

So, I guess to sum up, the reasons I disagree with the amount of money given for runs has less to do with what I inherently think the runs are worth ("No way a hitman would kill someone for 10 grand!", etc) and a hell of a lot more to do with advancing my character and improving his powers in a fashion that's on a reasonable timeline.


As an aside: I suffer from "Chronic New Character Syndrome". I know many other people suffer as well. I have struggled with this disease for as long as I can remember, and I think I may have figured out why I've had trouble treating it in the past. While improving skills is nice and good, new cyber or magic is what makes you feel like your character is getting more badass; shooting a pistol slightly better isn't as impressive as hurling fireballs or moving faster than a ferret on speed. However, since we only meet twice a month (if we're lucky), our games have fallen apart rather quickly (I think the average is usually 3 sessions, but I could be wrong). Therefore, why would I want to play the same guy again? I've already played him. He's not going anywhere, or going to get noticeably better. I will fully admit that I am the type of gamer to spew "trite platitudes", as noonesshowmonkey has mentioned in the past.

In summation: Despite all my pissing and moaning, surprisingly he continues to run games, which I think should qualify him for Sainthood (as long as he can reel in another 2 miracles). And despite your thick sarcasm implicit in the statement, I'll accept a certified credstick for the 35 large. Just slip it in the mail slot.

**EDIT** On the subject of organlegging- normally I don't condone it, but when I ran a game another friend of ours played a Ork (Dr. Grizz B. Jacoby); who while chasing down an accident victim with a mono-chainsaw yelled, "It's ok! I'm a Doctor!", I became endeared to the concept.

On the 5,000 nuyen job, I do agree that is a nice sum of money to hand out. Granted, in my games, many of the jobs are, start to finish, accomplished in 3-4 hours at night. While it could be an extraction or just a quick steal, that is a decent sum of money to wave in front of a player, even a 3M nuyen CIA trained BA. 5,000 from a trusted contact that says break into XYZ, get prototype A and deliver it to Mr. Q by 3AM...I mean, every time a runner goes out on a job, there is the potential to come home in a body bag.

So does that mean the 3M cybered runner is less likely to take the job then a street punk? Hell, if I was the CIA BA, that would sound like easy money to me, for something that I could easily handle and maybe accomplish in an hour. To the street punk, a lot more work, but that 5K means a lot more, right?

I personally don't factor in "death risk" to the pay. Its more like how long will the run take and what kind of adverse after-effects are the players in for. If its not a lot of heat after the run, and only a few hours, with little legwork, then 5K is a nice price for many runs.

But again, it depends on the campaign feel you are trying to get. My group is running at least weekly, if not more. During the days they are training up skills, looking to offload gear, buying upgrades, etc. At night, 2-3 times every week or so, they are running a small job that is adequately paying the bills...and 5K a run hasn't been scoffed at yet!

If you want to be realistic, the wage depends on 3 factors.

The lower limit depends on the runners' willingness to work: is there any other way for them to get money ("I can get 20k without getting out of my house!"), or is there a price under which all runners will consider it's not worth risking their lives?

The higher limit depends on how much the corp is willing to pay for the run for it to be profitable. Most of the time the risk of a shadowrunning operation is quite low (if the operation fails, the corp doesn't pay much and don't get any trouble) so theoretically corps could use shadowrunners even for a low margin, but I think that culturally they'll only use shadowrunning when they really need it.

Between these limits, the price will depend on the demand and supply of shadowrunners (with enough skills for the operation). If there are a lot of runners, the pay will go down, if there aren't, prices will go up.

Well, that'd be true in a competitive market. Let's see if shadowrunning is:
* There aren't monopolies (on both sides), there could be an oligopoly on the corps' side (corps can mutually agree on the price to pay runners so that runners can't expect better payment from another corp) but I doubt it, I don't think there's any shadowrunner union either.
* There's a difference between runners (magicians versus mundanes for example), but for the sake of simplicty, we'll consider that there are enough skilled runners so it doesn't matter that much.
* Corps aren't aware of the entire runner population, but I guess they can get enough data about it.
* There isn't really anything that'd prevent a new skilled runner from starting his career.
* Runners can move around freely (and most of them will go towards Runner Havens where there are more job opportunities).

So I guess we can say that shadowrunning is a competitive market. So it all comes down to the 3 factors I've given which depends on the GM (I don't recall any official figures about these).
So if you want to give low payment just state that runners can't hope to find any other job with a higher income (ie they can't go legit) and there aren't that many shadowruns going on compared to the running crowd.
If you want to give high payments, you can either consider that runners can hope to have a high paid legit (or not) job so they'll only accept running if they're paid enough or consider that there aren't many skilled runners compared to what corps need so if corps don't pay much the runners will only work for their competitors.

@ DrZaius

Et tu, Brute?


Get to TR2 and start watching the cash come rolling in. It wouldn't take long if you could stick with a character... (ZING!)

This was a triumph.
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS

- 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

PS. I don't mind your back stabbing ways!

PPS. JUDAS ISCARIOT!

Well felt motivated to respond so here you go:

Payment on a run

While it is possible to play a bottom rung knuckle dragging thug (who would look on five grand as a god send) I know no player that would want to. Most players I have known over the last twenty-five years want to play the exceptional character, some one who stands out or has been touched by destiny or some such thing. Now taking that into consideration, what the previously mentioned bottom runger of the underworld would accept is not what such characters would. Yes they maybe and probably are Sinless but they are also more skilled than such an individual even at chargen. So using the argument put forth further up such individuals would expect better pay for their superior skills.

Organ Legging Cash Crop – So You Want to be a (Hero) Businessman

This one is kinda interesting. I have had several players throughout different games turn bodies over to Organ Leggers for many different reasons. The primary one though has usually been cleanup followed by extra money. Let’s face it most characters are not pillars of virtue. They do forcible extractions, theft of every stripe and wet work either intentional or as a by product of a run. Turning a dead body over to a contact for harvesting is really not beyond the pale for such an environment. Would I as a GM run a game centered on Organ Legging? No but neither would I stop players from doing it as a character act on the side.

Phat Lewt – Too Much Gear Given in Game

Again this really comes down to what the players want. I am not advocating giving them free hand outs but if they are looking for something other than a street level gang banger adventure not allowing them to acquire “Phat Lewt� on occasion will cause the game to end when players get frustrated and stop playing. Personally I do not understand this latest drive by some individuals to keep shadowrun to a low level power setting. Who wants to “escape� reality to play a loser ork gang banger with no hopes of ever escaping the streets or making a true impact on the world?

Meta-Gaming as a Matter of Course

Well in this I do some what agree with the original poster. Players do have a tendency to break the “fifth wall� so to speak. Taking actions that really don’t fit into the excepted world of the game. However I do not view characters amassing large amounts of loot or influence as such. Characters doing this is a result of them doing their jobs well which requires me as the GM to come up with more challenging opponents. Reality is that characters should not stay stagnant. Again if I as a gm remove the players ability to grow their characters I will soon not have a game.

Starting Characters

This one I agree whole heartedly with the original poster. Knowing your players up front and what they desire is a basic.

My impression of what I have been reading thus far (in multiple threads) is that there are those that run 1-2 times a year (spanning several sessions) and getting high payouts (50K and above, per runner) and those that are running multiple times a month for lower payouts (25K and below, per runner).

Honestly, I think in both cases, these runs are taking multiple sessions and I would venture to say, if you took a yearly forecast of income, they are in the same range, +/- 10%.

Granted, the runs I do are frequent, require little legwork, little expense and low pay. But, runners, in a year, can do a TON of these. While, on the flip side, a high payout would require days to weeks of legwork and more expense.

I think those that are thinking 5K a run is too low, aren't looking at what a 5K run really is and are probably not used to running as frequently as these campaigns do. Personally, I started my group out this way to keep everything short and sweet, until everyone was accustomed to the rules and got a feel for the game. I'm actually working to move the campaign into bigger runs, where there is a lot more legwork, planning and therefore, payout.

I would agree though, that if players are generally looting everything they see, there is an imbalance in the nuyen rewards. These guys in my "5K run" campaign, turned down an extra 2,500 nuyen for some side work on their current run...so they can't be hurting that bad, right?

So how do you reply to the players wish of ingame advancement?

Also something to note... A lot of what a "run should pay" varies not only by team level and ability but by the actual contents of the run itself.
Compare these two examples.

In #1, Joe Corporate wants to hire the runners to get some secret data out of Corp Subsidiary Facility X. It doesn't really matter when they do it as long as it's within 2 weeks. The runners know that Corp Facility X is a low-rung subsidiary and does good work, but isn't exactly S-K Prime, and the guards are probably mid-level ops with handguns and a drone or two. Likewise, they know that the response from the parent company will be low, because despite the secret nature of the data, the facility is low-priority.

In #2, Joe Corporate wants to hire the runners to get into an Ares Aerospace test site and sabotage the new suborbital UAV Ares has been developing. Owing to the launch date, the runners have to do this within 48 hours. The runners know that Ares Aerospace is guarded by, well, Ares personnel. Given that this is a test launch and it's fairly important, they know the guards will be in top form and packing some serious defenses. They also know that the corporate response to this will be fairly heavy, as such a launch would be high-profile.

5000 for #1 is okay, because:
-It's low-profile, for a run.
-It's not time-sensitive.
-The runners won't neccessarily get shot at, and if they do, the opposition is fairly ordinary.
-They don't have to worry as much about covering their ass, since the money spent on tracking data theft from a small subsidiary will be lower than a lot of other jobs.
-And fundamentally, they don't need to exert as much skull sweat, invest in as much specialized gear/plans, or worry as much as other jobs. It beats trying to jack an expensive car from a A-AAA zone and chop it, because it's probably on par or less difficult than dealing with rich guys prone to bitch at the cops to get their car back.

For #2, the job is worth WAY more than 5000 per person, because:
-The job is high profile in the extreme.
-The job is very time-sensitive, which leads me to my next point...
-...the Johnson is already up shit creek by having organized a meet with the team. Even if the team in question isn't quite up to the job in terms of skill level, the job is very time-sensitive, so Mr. Johnson can't afford to waste any more time getting another team together. So the ball is in the runners' court when it comes to dictating payment. They get to say, "48 hours, huh? Well, if you want the job done, you're gonna have to up the ante, big boy,"
-The corporate response will be quite high, since a failed launch could theoretically set back their product rollout by a number of months, or cut their funding from potential buyers. The runners will really have to watch their butts.
-The danger level is quite high - the runners can expect to be shot at quite a bit and with very large guns, unless they are very careful.
-Fundamentally, this job is more dangerous and more of a hassle than jacking a Eurocar from an A-AAA zone. It's not worth the time and worry investment from the runners unless the job pays better than easier/less dangerous pursuits.

I think this is all about managing expectations. In my old group, we once created a runner team that would have scoffed at an offer of 5k each unless it was indeed a single night's work with minimal potential repercussions and from a contact we trusted or else contained a potential windfall in Der Menkey's least favorite thing: loot. Then again, our team often didn't work for what amounted to IC months at a time and we roleplayed as a group that had been around the block in another city and saw themselves as prime runners in the making. Everyone took 50 bps worth of resources and at least 20 points worth of contacts, so between the 5 of us and some planning we had 1.25 million worth of assets, extensive contacts and a tricked out Nightsky limo right from the word go. They were -not- true rookies nor did they possess much common sense or even particularly strong survival instincts; we eventually went down in a novacoke fueled blaze of glory that would have done Wounded Ronin's '80s theme and the Pink Mohawk crowd proud. Our team was many things, but one thing is for sure: the most plausible thing about that team was that they didn't last that long and I'm not about to sit here and pretend otherwise.

So, on the one hand, I am a little offended by Der Menkey's constant bleating about how stupid such silly runs are (since I do indeed enjoy silly runs), but on the other hand, I know exactly what he means when he says how goony people sound when they claim that their ridiculous settings are in any way plausible when looked at from a grittier perspective.

@Adarael - yesssss. Reason!

@Whipstitch:

Theres a lot more ink online of my scoffing at and pissing on retarded runs, crappy ideas and overblown munchkining.

There is very little press about what I actually enjoy in a game. Frankly, the few times I get to play (instead of being press-ganged into GMing), whatever is run is what I play. I nearly always have a good time.

I am not about to try and tell people how to run their games.

This is not really directed at you: But I also am not built to sift through the detritus of half-formed arguments, maligned justifications, complete fabrications and other such nonsense without calling a spade a spade.

All the same, if the game maintains CONSISTENCY and CONTINUITY, things are generally going swimmingly.

In fact, a great deal of what this post was about was based off of the standards set forth in the core SR4 book and the published SR missions. What the original product producers decided on and what I actually run/enjoy are likely not be the same thing. You can consider a great deal of this post to be a combination of devils advocacy and hardcore rant-fest.

- 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

Now aside from one old dead homeless guy, that killed himself on their doorstep. My group has never really gotten into the bodies for money business. However I think the ability to successfully organ leg most likely depends on situation. If you are in a hellish Z-Zone, then its going to be easier than on a run into secured facility. Also it seems that a good organ legger would wish to know if the subject has a Doc Wagon contract, before the heavily armed medical staff arrives. Secondly I also would consider that successful organleggers go in intending to organleg are going to go for non-lethal measures. Mostly since that will ensure less damage to the subject.
So really I would think that cash for corpses if not a complete slap dash affair at or during a run that is most likely very premeditated. Your runner before knows that if he gets in a fight, and his opponent goes down he is going to toss his tazered body into trunk, and take him to a cyberdoc. He will know what cyberdoc, he will know how to restrain him. He will most likely have a cyberscanner, and a way to check for a Doc Wagon etc contract. Also he will leave the subject alive for processing. Also remember thefts happen in real life, and are not solved. The same type of issues in theft will occur in organlegging. Sure criminals can leave evidence, but if you are careful evidence can be minimized. Also most runners wish to have small evidence trails anyways, and should be taking precautions. So in the end organlegging becomes another risk benefit for a runner. Aside from moral squeamishness.

Two things for Dr. Zaius. One, I can't get the "Dr. Zaius/Dr. Zaius" song from the Simpsons out of my head. Two, the "Its okay, I'm a DOCTOR!" thing was hilarious.

Those are the main things I wanted to say. On a lighter note, I agree with you more-or-less about run payment. Characters should be getting enough stuff (whether in run payments or loot) so that they can develop. Stuff is an advancement mechanic, much like karma. It doesn't have to be cash, it can be gear and loot, but if the character never changes it does start to feel stagnant.

For some players anyway. I never much cared. I just try to enjoy the session I'm in. Plus, you inevitably get to a point where you need three million nuyen so you can beta your reaction enhancers so you fit in a beta'd encephalon for one more point of reaction. Diminishing returns, I guess is what I'm going for.

I've always subscribed to the idea that if a team wants to get 3 million nuyen for some betaware, that they'd have better luck just planning a run to get the goods. Whether that is organizing the job themselves or using contacts to find a way to do it, I'm much more open, as a GM, to having them go that route.

Plus, I honestly feel that, if planned right and done patiently, almost any run can be completed with a minimal amount of violence. It seems the group of players I have believe that too, so most combat in game is due to a mistake, bad timing or occasionally, a really bad die roll.

These guys are criminals, so nuyen doesn't normally have to be exchanged to get the goods...