I made up a table years ago that was my attempt to deal with the "buyer's market" side of Shadowrun. I imagine this has been covered in a sourcebook somewhere, but its not one I own. I figured on roughly 1 runner for every 10,000 people in the population as a general guide, with "hot" cities (Seattle, Denver, Hong Kong, or Bogota by way of example) having as many as twice that. This was mainly to get the figure of 500 for Seattle, which would make my percentages easier in the next stage. If 500 is too high for your taste, you can make the number whatever you want. I basically used a Runner Population of 250 with a wannabe population of the same. Runners don’t consider the Inferior guys real runners, but people have to start somewhere. The percentages would break down similarly for most major cities, regardless of the pop. (There's probably even more wannabes than that, but all the excess does is keep the number relatively static as they get wiped out.)

With a Total Runner Population of 500, it breaks down like this:

Samurai, 40% (200)
Riggers, 20% (100)
Hackers, 20% (100)
Adepts, 15% (75)
Magic Users, 5% (25)

From there, it went by a general Rating:

Inferior, 50%
Average, 30%
Competent, 15%
Superior, 4%
Ultimate, 1%

So as a guideline, starting at 500:

Street Samurai (200 Total). Inferior: 100, Average: 60, Competent: 30, Superior: 8, Ultimate: 2.
Magic Users (25 Total). Inferior: 12, Average: 8, Competent: 3, Superior: 1, Ultimate: 1 (or less).
Adepts (75 Total): Inferior: 38, Average: 22, competent: 11, Superior: 3, Ultimate: 1 (or less).
Riggers (100 Total). Inferior: 50, Average: 30, Competent: 15, Superior: 4, Ultimate: 1.
Hackers (100 Total). Inferior: 50, Average: 30, Competent: 15, Superior: 4, Ultimate: 1.

As far as ranking goes, Dice Pools in their areas of expertise are a better indicator than BP of overall character power (as I can make thoroughly incompetent runners with any amount of BP) but I'll include both to give a general idea:

Inferior: Stats, skills and spells around 2, Dice Pools of around 4-5. Sams will have maybe a point of Cyberware, Magicians will have only a point or two of magic. They might have a 4 in something, but will most likely be defaulting rather than have the applicable skill. Gear will rarely have above and Avail of 6. (Characters, non-player or otherwise, generated at this level would usually be 200BP.)
Average: Stats, skills, spells of around 3, Dice Pools maxed around 8. Sams might have Wired One, but won't have more than 3 points of Essence filled, Magic stats will cap out around 3. Gear will rarely be higher than Avail 8, though they may have one signature piece that's better. (Characters generated at this level would usually be 300 BP.)
Competent: Stats and etc of around 4, Dice Pools around 10-12. Most gear under Avail 12. (Npcs of this level will either be generated with 400 BP, or be archetypes.)
Superior: Average stats and etc of 5, higher in their field of expertise, Dice Pools in the 15+ range. (These guys are good. 500 BP as a rough guide, with high karma pcs in here as well.)
Ultimate: Prime runners. The only real restrictions on character generation are story restrictions (I'm probably not going to make a guy who is great at everything, simply because Mary Sue's annoy me). These guys are the Michael Jordans of the shadows, the Wayne Gretzkys of runners.

Now, thats how I arrived at how many of who are in the talent pool in Seattle. How you hire them is handled like buying any other piece of (perhaps disposable) gear, as per the table below:

Rating-------Avail--------Cost
Inferior----------3------------1000¥
Average---------6------------5000¥
Competent-----8------------10,000¥
Superior--------12-----------50,000¥
Ultimate--------20+---------100,000¥

And there is a mark-up to represent Sams (who there are more of) are easier to get than Mages, as per:

Samurai: -1 Avail, x1.0 cost
Rigger: x1.0 cost
Hacker: x1.25 cost
Adepts: +3 Avail, x1.5 cost
Magic Users: +5 Avail, x1.75 cost

It looks a little less complicated to me on my scrap of notebook paper since its easier to do a table on paper than in a forum post (at least for me). These aren’t hard numbers, and the pay can scale with job difficulty, but it makes for a handy guideline.

Now, these numbers are to represent the number of freelance runners in Seattle at any given time, and used as a rough guideline mainly for people who are trying to put together teams on relatively short notice (be they pc's or npc's). These numbers don't cover the corporate black ops teams (who are like runners, but aren't freelancing), or the criminal population. Gangers, other than the select few talented enough to freelance, aren't on the list. These were just numbers I tried to keep in mind as a GM to answer such questions as, "Who can we get here in an hour?", and to provide a rough guideline for SR pay scales (based mostly off lifestyle). If an npc with no prior runner contacts went through a fixer to get someone to hit the pcs, who could he get, how long would he take, and how much would he have to spend. That sort of thing.

This is still based pretty heavily on my SR3 table, with SR4 updates. Seeing’s how Hackers are so much more a part of the system in this edition (at least in the games I play in, as opposed to the SR3 games I played and ran in) I might bump the numbers around—switch out Sams for Hackers. Also, its just a guideline as to general role in an group. Hackers rig and Riggers hack and Samurai can do either, but it’s based around what they’re best known for.

Another thing I always wanted to include was more census figures in my tables. If you look at the economy of illicit specialists, I'm sure it’s always fluctuating as people get killed, step off the bus, or come off the DL. A fixer, or just a dedicated data broker, would probably be keeping track of these numbers, to the extent it was possible. If nothing else, people would have a general sense of how healthy the population was. (Is competition for jobs fierce, are cultural subsets taking over certain rackets, that sort of thing.) But I don't how useful a mechanic would be in this instance, since it seems like something the GM could just handle by fiat.

But, then you could have little fluff details like if things start heating up in the Philippines, you could have a disproportionate number of Filipino runners as the refugees start surreptitiously making their way in. Mainly, it would be a cool way to say:

This is good. The numbers are based on nothing but the waving of hands, but I think having numbers is a useful thing in and of itself. It adds a bit of background realism in knowing that it's hard to find someone at X level of skill or that the PC hacker is now one of the best available in Seattle.

Of course there are spin off issues, such as whether a hacker can be considered to be limited to a geographical range, or what exactly constitutes a Shadowrunner.

I'll have to go away and mull over the numbers. I like the proportions you have of runner types - e.g. Magician to Samurai to Rigger, etc. I would not alter them. However, given the recurrent actions of my last bunch of players, I have to wonder whether the city of Seattle would survive the collateral damage of one hundred Shadowrunning teams active a couple of times a month.

But as I say, having some numbers out there is good in and of itself, and if people want to pick apart the shadow economy, it's easier to do that with a starting point.

The area that I would pick apart is in your definitions of inferior, average, etc. There's big room for debate there which I don't have time for at the moment.

But good work, I'd say.

-K.

I definitely like the general flow of the numbers and proportions, but I think that even more Magicians are necessary (not a ton more, but with some (relatively big) Runner teams having 2-3 Magic Users, it seems a bit odd to have 8-12% of the Shadow Magicians in Seattle on your team), and I think I'd up the Inferior and Average 'Runners a bit (because I'd only count those who survive at least a couple of 'Runs as 'Runners, so I don't want to include those who are so incompetant that they get offed in their first 'Run).

My suggestions on quantifying the above comments:

Magicians: 8%, Adepts 15%, Hackers 20%, Riggers 20%, Cyber-Goons 37%. I know that makes the percentages ugly, and I assure you that I hate that as much as you do, but I also think it makes for slightly more "realistic"

That makes for 40 magicians, the same 75 Adepts, 100 Hackers, and 100 Riggers, and 185 Cyber-Goons.

Oh, and your breakdown of Adepts would be: 75 Total, Inferior: 38, Average: 22, competant: 11, Superior: 3, Ultimate: 1 (or less).

As I mentioned above, I think your "Inferior" and "Average" are too low-powered--in my mind, what you list as "Inferior" would just be Gangers that folks would hire to cause distractions and the like. In my world, at least, I think that I would go with the following:

Inferior: Dice Pools of 6-7 in their primary areas, with Cyber-Goons having "cheap" Cyberware like Dermal Plating, Cyberweapons, Muscle Replacements, and Boosted Reflexes. So they might be down a lot of Essence, but none of it is better than Standard-ware, and there's no Bioware. Magic Users have Magic Ratings of 2-3. Riggers at this level are probably just wheel-men, or have really, really cheap drones. Probably around 250-300 Points in my view.

Average: Dice Pools of 8-9 in their primary fields. Cyber-Goons might have some alpha-ware, but probably not, and might have a point of Bioware, but probably not. Magic Users probably have Magic in the 3-4 range. Riggers might have some nicer drones, and even some with heavy artillery. Probably around 300-350 Points.

Competant: Dice Pools of 10-12, as Mercer noted. These are starting characters. They're good at what they do. 400 Points.

Superior: Dice Pools of 15+, again as Mercer noted. These are the munchkin starting characters or the intelligently-designed high-Karma 'Runners.

Ultimate: The only stat/skill these guys need is Edge, which is set at n+1, where n=The Number of Dice Rolls Necessary. Yes they can be defeated if need be, but that'll be through either insane luck or extremely in-depth and competant planning; not through straight-up dice-fights. This is Fastjack or Hatchetman (before he went off the market). You hear the name of one of these guys--you'll recognize it (if you're a 'Runner yourself).

Every runner team I've played with or Gm for has had at least 50% awakened. Every team of 3-5 had 1-2 mages and 0-2 adepts. So 5% mages seems kind of low...

Yeah, the 25% for magicians was more of a nod to the in-game percentages as they're presented. Roughly 10% of the population is Awakened, but a disproportionately high number of these go into shadow work (as opposed to cover the dayshift at CVS). If it was based on PC's, it would probably be 50% Awakened at minimum. Mages might not be rare in PC groups, but they're supposed to be rare otherwise, it would be difficult for someone to go out and hire 10 Combat Mages for a run.

I think the adepts and mages percentages are backwards. I have some foggy rational for that and it is not meant to reflect what players actually BRING to the table in any way, just what's available.

I'm not going to try and detail my thinking right now. Just that it always struck me that adepts were always more exceptional as PCs and NPC opponents than mages. Every shadowrunning team and streetgang has access to the Wiz, but when you think 'muscle' you look to the guy with the chrome, or the troll, or the troll with chrome. Adepts aren't thought of, not because they are inferior (as optimization geekspeak here can attest) but because Runners don't see them enough to register as anything but exceptional.

I don't think I'd seperate the categories as much as this. I'd just go with Tech guys (including Riggers and Hackers), Magicians (including all spellslingers and summoners), and Muscle (including all Adepts and Samurai).

Cap'n Jack Sparrow. The people on the Legendary list might not even be real, or they might just have a really good publicist, but either way they're separate from the people that actually have to work for a living.

I linked the status to skill level, because that seemed to be the most obvious way, but I think there's a perception issue as well. There are going to be some runners who are perceived to be of a certain status, even if their dice pools aren't in line. Maybe they're lucky, or smart, or new. Trying to get runners of say Superior status doesn't guarantee anyone of a 15 dice pool, but rather a runner that people think is "that good".

As for average stats, in previous editions I was fine with 3, in SR4 I'm fine with 2. Since its supposed to combine with a skill it can be a little lower, and I kind of like the idea that "on average, people are below average". Its sort of the opposite of the Wobegone Effect (or if you look at it that way, people tend to be 2's, but tend to think think they're 4's).

EDIT: Mercer - it's very impolite to summarise what I'm about to post before I've actually done so. Some of us like to put our points in a long and meandering way, you know.

The Wobegone Effect actually makes a fair amount of sense in game terms. The famous example is the study where 80% of people rated themselves as "Above Average" drivers. In a game, if a rating 4 skill is "above average", and 80% of the population has a rating 4 skill in something then they'd all be mechanically above average.

An impression I got from the more recent books:

There are alot of runners in Seattle. I think it was Aftershocks that had one mage get together a group of like 10 Prime Runners to help defend one place that the Corps decided they wanted. Then there are Runners like G. Dog and Lothan, who have "day jobs" but also do higher end runs. This always gets me thinking of those old Martial Arts movies where even the street sweeper is a master of two or three styles of lethal martial arts, and kind of leaves the impression that much of the Seattle Population do runs to some extent or another. Also, let us not forget Hood, who is a CEO, but goes on Runs to keep in contact at the street level and find out what his underlings are doing. Basicly, I do not think you can put Seattle or any other Hot Spot into neat numbers.

That reminds me of Sin City (the movie, not the fake ID superstore). I think its on the higher end of the high/low Fantasy, high/low Chrome division. Ten Prime Runners in one city would be like the Avengers to me. If that works for the game then that's fine, but I tend to run games that are more Black than Chrome, more low fantasy than high. (I mean, as much as these divisions mean anything.) So that's what my numbers are based on. These numbers are probably the High End of Low Chrome.

But the specific number of runners you use is really a preference thing. In some of the early supplements, it was implied the number of shadow people was much higher, with bars and restaurants that catered almost exclusively to runners. Even if the majority of them were wannabes, you'd still be talking about thousands of runners in Seattle alone. I don't think any particular number is the "right" one for SR, as long as the GM is consistent. (Consistency is a bigger boon to verisimilitude than almost anything; a game can be over-the-top as long as its consistently over-the-top.)

You have to figure that alot of these 'shadowrunner' bars and clubs will have normal people as patrons due to either not knowing any better, wanting the thrill of maybe being near a real shadowrunner or wanting to pose as one to impress a girl/guy.
I highly doubt they run on shadowrunners alone.

/derail

I've always felt Jet setting should be a more commonly used GM tool when runner teams start to get too big for their britches. "Optimized" Seattleites are suddenly a lot less scary when things go wrong on job in Amazonia and only one of them has the Survival skill and the Mage didn't realize he'd be practically blinded by all the flora and fauna lighting the Astral up like a christmas tree.

You know, that is so incredibly true.
Been there, done that, been laughed at for it.

Side question: what percentage of the Seattle population, are characters played by Kyoto Kid?
If he has a strong opinion about who the next mayor should be, and his PCs vote accordingly, can he swing the election?

More seriously, a GM might well come up with thumbnail sketches of, say, the top 20 NPCs in the campaign area, and drop hints over time until the PCs recognize the names even of the ones they haven't crossed paths with. Then, when one of those NPCs gets executed by Aztech or MCT when a run fails, it'll mean more; while if those NPCs get hired by Saeder-Krupp to steal the McGuffin, and the PCs get hired by Ares to steal the McGuffin, the PCs will know that their success is likely to result in Saeder-Krupp becoming upset with the unsuccessful NPCs. Which could have side effects if the PC buys foci and binding materials from their Loyalty 2 talismonger contact, but the NPC also has that talismonger as a Loyalty 5 contact. (One outcome: duplicate the McGuffin, trade it to Saeder-Krupp for the release of the talismonger's boyfriend, talismonger expresses gratitude with free foci.)

I've used Contact Webs for other games, and its helpful particularly when you have a lot of factions and individuals moving in different directions. Vampire probably got me started on that. Its odd I've never thought to do it in SR, considering how much Contacts are a part of the game, but here we are. Part of the reason is until I really started putting numbers down on paper, the Shadows were basically a big amorphous blob that anything could come wandering out of.

Yeah, but Mercer's not really talking about the PC's perceptions of the NPC's power levels, but their actual power levels.

*shrugs*
Reality is HIGHLY subjective based on Perception . . you might see a tall, blonde girl and think amazone, i might see the same girl and think valkyrie . . if you don't percieve them as being masked magicians, they are not magicians to you but simple mundane people i'd say O.o

Ok, let me out it another way then. Mercer is referring more to the NPC's out-of-game statistics than their in-game personas.

Merver? Man, that's an unfortunate typo. ("Merver" to me sounds like the name of a guy who's a chromosome short and working the night shift at the Stuckey's down by the highway. But that's here nor there.)

A GM can justify anything after the fact. But if the GM starts using a lot of initiates after a pc picks up Masking, it really just nerfs Masking and at least part of the player's decision to take Masking was that initiates are rare, and so the power will occasionally work. (Does that sentence make any sense at all? I've read it five times and I'm still not sure. I think this "Merver" thing has become a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

I find having some rough numbers sketched out beforehand makes the game more consistent. When I am pulling things out of my ass as a GM, I have a framework to work with so I don't end up out in the tall corn. Consistency is for me a big part of the verisimilitude. If I have an idea of who the big names in Seattle are, I can mention them here and there. They don't just show up in the first run where they're important. It gives a campaign that lived in feel. Little touches like that can go a long way in selling an idea to the players.

The number of runners that feels right is a matter of perception.

A working running community requires a large and qualified infrastructure. Gear, hideouts, even some protection by not being the only chromed monster in town come to mind. So Seattle should hold the runners for most surrounding towns and larger parts of the NAN. Once a certain infrastructure is present, the size of the running community would steadily increase until demand is met.

Demand would be pretty large. Consider our world and professional criminals for hire. There would be several hundred execs in any mayor town with ideas how a run could improve their career. Add to that the victims of crimes who want revenge, which certainly do not decrease in number from the first part.

There also needs to be a definition of runner. Mercers numbers seem (to me) to focus on "pure" runners. The number of part timers would induce a significant change. There would be many more muscle and matrix runners. This is due to a high number of script kiddies on one side and gangs/syndicate members/mercs/criminal security consultants on the other.

There's a big difference between those 15 000 SINless magicians and all the SINless guys who are big and black.

Magical talent is in very high demand since there is a lot of very profitable legitimate work for magicians. Not everyone is going to be a magical researcher or security mage. If one has a Magic of 2 and can cast Fashion, Makeover, Orgasm or Heal, that's a lot of potential earnings, without anyone trying to shoot you back. It's a ticket out of the Barrens for these guys. If you're SINless and magically active, you could probably just walk into an Evo office and say "Hi, I'm SINless but I can cast spells. I'd like a job and a SIN." And after a background check and screening, they'll give you a job in a Evolution body shop doing Healthy Glow spells on rich people.

Now the corps are going to miss a lot of these guys. But when word gets around the neighborhood that little Jimmy can cast Trid Phantasm, I'd bet that the criminal syndicate (especially Triads) would take a keen interest. They'd either try to recruit young Jimmy or maybe they would just pass the info a long to a corp headhunter.

So I do agree, there's going to be a ton of SINless magically active people. But this pool is going to be greatly cannibalized by corporate and syndicate recruiting, leaving a much smaller shadowrunning pool. A SINless magician has tons of options. A SINless guy who is just big and black, not so much.

Respectfully,

-JKL

But that's just it. How the hell does little Jimmy pass a backgrond check? Granted, if he can cast one of a long list of industrial and utility spells they won't even care and hire him anyway, but for your average SINless magician, passinga background check is an impossibilty. Because, you know, they're SINless. And anyone freelancing for criminal syndicates is a Shadowrunner, so they should be counted in the numbers.

To paraphrase Biafra, Wall Street and Crack Dealer Avenue are the last roads left to the American Dream. Only one road leads to the Barrens, and little kids want to be major criminals when they grow up. Only in the Shadowrun world, 1% of people are born with the keys to the fucking rocket car and can go down either road until they crash into something.

The Barrens puts forth literally thousands of magic using people who commit crime and want to hit it big in the word or crime. Some of these people rise through the ranks of crimnal syndicates and some stay freelancers the whole time, but in either case they are taking Shadow jobs for shadow money and shadow running to make it work.

When it comes to moderately to very skilled freelance criminals, the vast majority are magicians. Becuase that's the section of the population which can literally be born with those talents. The oddities are the people who have mundane training, equipment, and cybernetics which stands the equal of even moderate magical prowess. A freelance Street Samurai is a seriously rare dude. There are maybe hundreds of them in the entire sprawl and all of them were created by Corps or Governments and most of them still work for those entities and aren't freelancing. If you have Wired Reflexes and a monofilament sword, you're part of a seriously rare breed. There are maybe a couple dozen people in the entire Sprawl who can do what you do.

Bt if you're a mage? Get in line. There are literally thousands of people who want your job. Even if have a Magic of 5 puts you in the 90th percentile, that still means that there are four thousand people in the Seattle Sprawl who can match you at spell slinging. Sure, most of them have real jobs, but you're nothing like an oddity in the world of crime.

-Frank

People overestimate how many member there are in organized crime. IIRC, there were 50-70 made men who made up the Chicago "Outfit" in the 90s. They had connections everywhere, but those 50-70 guys WERE the mafia in Chicago and the 5 counties around it. Everyone else involved with the Outfit was a wannabe or an associate at best. And they were from a few hundreds to a thousand.

Of course, SR also has no idea how large a street gang is either. . . .

The other thing to realize is that corporations are really conservative in who they hire. If you want an example of this, try putting down a felony arrest on your next job application. People who live in the barrens, like people who live in the ghetto, tend to end up involved in criminal activity and end up with arrest records or drug addictions even if they don't end up dead. Would you hire a graduate from MITT or some gang banger with talent who has a chip on his shoulder the size of a boulder and considers a street gang his family?

A good example of the LA gang life, which can be easily extended to the Barrens, is L.A. Gangs: Nine Miles and Spreading.

From what I heard, there aren't many people in the mafia itself, but there are a lot of people working, most of them unknowingly, for them.

Of course, therein lies the problem. While there may only be 20 core "mafia" people or whatever, the fact that there are hundreds if not thousands of people working with/for/under them is what makes them an issue.

No professional criminal (and the few hundreds to a thousand are all one man crime waves - crime is what they do every day) has anything other then professional respect for the law.