No, not talking about my Mr. Johnson from hell, but, rather, currency from various countries.

Sure, almost everyone uses the , but a lot of countries still use local currency.

It's easiest to deal with all the time, but Runners could easily get paid in UCAS Blueback Dollars in a big Briefcase (Mixed tens and twenties, non-sequential, old), CAS Brownbellies (Same), or whatever.

Heck, some people might even take Quebec Francs.

And, of course, Corporate Script for the company store (Hey, Weapon's World is Ares, those Ares Bucks work just fine there, as long as you have an Ares SIN to go along with them!).

What say you folks?

Or Blue Sun Yuan, eh?

Anyway, Quebeck uses it's Franc, Europe (sans Britain) the Euro, Britain it's pound, the CAS and UCAS their respective dollars, Aztlan the Aztlan PEso (also official Aztech corp script, IIRC), and there surely are other countries I forget here.

Personally, my more professional runners actually prefer diamonds or gold as payments, unmarked. A lot harder to trace than standard currency or checksticks.

My assumption has been that by the time the payment gets passed to the runners its been laundered and exchanged into nuyen. Frankly, anything else it just too much hassle (in and out of game), IMO.

Besides, only a chump or a rookie deals in currency other than nuyen.

For instance...

We had one Mr. Johnson try to pay us in Fuchi corp script one time. I think the GM had intended us to somehow turn the tables on him and get a much bigger payout because it was corp script, but... We were like, "Tell you what, Mr. Fuchi, I mean, Mr. Johnson, why don't we take your cash, your limo, and not put a bullet in your head instead?"

It was meant to be an idle threat to intimidate him into giving us "real money," but the group spokesman (they didn't call them Faces back then) managed to botch his roll (eight 1s). Instead of getting laughed at, the GM decided that they took us seriously and drew guns on us. The meet rapidly devolved into a firefight with the Johnson and his two muscle boys (street sam and bodyguard archetypes, as I recall).

In the end, we got the limo (sold to a chop shop for about 30,000), the script (traded to our fixer at a huge loss for some gear we'd been wanting), and a pocket secretary full of juicy paydata (the cash from that sale went to groups expenses, including hospital bills for the mage, who caught a burst of SMG fire in the gut during the shootout). Oh, and somewhere in there we scored an Attack-8 Program for our woefully undergunned NPC decker.

...also, at least prior to the '64 crash, paying with hard currency (e.g. banknotes) was still the norm for everyday transactions in the UK (London Sourcebook).

I try to pay my Player Characters in gear and services, rather than money [medical treatment, armour, spells, training]..
..But diamonds, Corp stock, drugs/medication are good payments, too.


I imagine that many places, outside Corpzones or 'civilised' area will use paper money, or even bartering, for gear or services, etc [Neuromancer has hard currency already illegal in Tokyo, while one of the SR novels has a Character literally throwing bundles of cash at a gang to leave him alone].


Tho, considering SR was written 20 years ago with the expectation that the ¥ was going to be the dominant global currency..
..Maybe it should be changed to the Chinese currency, the Yuan, as the Chinese look to be the global leader in just a few short years ??

Also, hard currency has the advantage to not be able to vanish quite as easily as anything electronic (including checksticks). Precious metals and gems even moreso.

Medical services? To accept that from your Johnson requires a level of trust none of my PCs have in Mr. J.

...QFT and from past experience.

Our group just started 4th edition and we never played 3rd, so we're still used to the old-fashioned credsticks. That being said, the campaign I'm currently running has featured corp script and certified credsticks so far. I plan on using favors heavily for one arc I'm writing and trade for several other stories. Hadn't really given much thought to other currency so far and don't really see using it except in a purely flavor-based sense becuase I don't want to use time during a session (or even during downtime) running down fixers to get it exchanged for more accessible cash/cred.

I absolutely still have hard currency in my games. UCAS Dollars, Euros, Pounds. Notes and coins, at one point I even had the Tir issue non-electronic currency exclusively in coin form as part of the "we are an ancient culture" image they were trying to promote. I've had runners paid in all sorts of things ranging from Certfied Nuyen, (pretty ordinary) to Corporate Stock, to gear, to local currency, and even once in exotic aquarium fish (weird stuff happens when you do favors for Triad bosses)

According to the findley book, that's canon ... they do print nuyen bills and produce nuyen coins.


Now that's cool ... mind if I borrow that idea?

It does seem like there'd be some hard currency floating around, given that 2 major crashes have happened. I mean, fool me once, shame on you, and fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me THREE times, and I deserve to have all of my money disappear. Plus, the Tir coin idea is awesome. I can see it having sort of an impact on IE/GD relations, as it becomes vogue for dragons to horde Tir currency for the sake of lounging around on great big piles of gold that are actually easily transferable legal tender (and also if I was a dragon, I'd feel less bad about my claws scratching up some modern currency than I would about defacing ancient 4th world currency, or retrieved Spanish bullion).

Go for it, I probably won't be able to reuse it for a while

OK, all good suggestions and comments!

One of the main Johnsons I'm going to use (The one from Here) is going to have a lot of weird jobs, and even weirder payments.

My first idea... Well, that would be telling!

Which I will when it happens!

Our group regularly takes many forms of payment. Generally, some kind of ¥ value is offered by the Johnson. However, many characters choose to instead require a favor, or some kind of gear. I don't think we've ever been paid in other hard currency.

Once, (actually when working for Winternight, though we didn't know it at the time ) a rigger character of mine asked for better sensors instead of whatever ridiculous amount of payment we were getting. I ended up with rating 9 sensors, and didn't get paid for a few runs, but i was fine by that.

I'm currently working on a Face. And while she does need a decent amount of money to achieve her goals, she will eventually be asking for medical services in the way of getting more cyber installed. And who need to trust a J? My buddy the Tanky the Troll (One of the other PCs) will go to the facility with me. And they can sure try to do something underhanded. But if they do they'll probably lose their hands

So, really it's a matter of watching your back. Make sure whatever payment you get is able to be used. If you don't think you can trust the J, ask for a favor instead of payment and follow him home after the meet. Knowing where he lives ensures they keep up the bargain. Especially if the J has a family. He tries to back down and all it should take is a little threatening. Have the face go to the house just before he gets home pretending to be selling something or impersonating a religious fella' and sit around and talk to the wife until he gets there. He'll get the message.

Uhm... Hard to find things are great to ask as payment. Most things are hard to find because the copr doesnt' like to sell them to gangers.

Wow, the Mormons have gotten militant in Shadowrun, haven't they?

When working in Azania, what is now South Africa, in the past I've had PCs paid in gold Krugerrands. Other times we've been paid British gold Sovreigns, silver Britannias, Chinese silver Pandas minted before the breakup of China or uncut emeralds when working in Colombia. Hell, one time we got paid in antique Sequins by a free spirit with a sense of humour for job in Venice.

Gotten? I thought Militant was their MO (No offense, to any Mormon runners out there (though, they probably think roleplaying is evil anyway )= ))

Well getting your own sovereign city-state within Ute can do that.

No offense taken. It's kind of amusing to see the take on Utah in the 2070's here on Dumpshock

Ah yes, the infamous Brigham Young Transit Line!

Right up there with Steve's Busses!

Same in the AGS.
The German sourcebooks described the Euro (or EC/Ecu, in the older books) as a purely electronic currency while the Deutsche Mark (as color-coded plastic coins) was still used in everyday transactions (especially on the black market).

It's scrip, not script!

Should have thought of this before, but here is a perfect example of Corporate SCRIP (As we've been corrected) that is commonly seen in Canada!

hmm... in my games I've been saying that the corp scrips don't exist... that the corps prefer the use of nuyen which is why its so prevalent. I don't know.... hard currency does have that gritty street feel... I might have to start using some in my games (esp. in the barrens)



P.S. I don't think that the corps would ever give out shares to runners.... runners are deniable assets... those assets get alot less deniable when you start paying them in corp scrips or in shares... plus shares gives you the right to go to sharesholder meetings and to vote... your average corp doesn't really want runners doing that.

Who says it has to be their own Corporate Shares?

Getting 10% of Bubba's Boozehole is still a good deal to a lot of 'Runners, and doesn't connect the Corp in any way, especially when the previous owner was Numbered Corporation AH47772864, and owned by Bubba himself before that, who sold the shares in order to get the operating capital required to restock the spirits when some hoophole Troll threw someone against the bottles behind the bar.

Also, who says that 'Runners can't just turn around, clean the some more, and then buy shares themselves? Frankly, the RoI on the Megas is pretty decent, it is a good investment, and great for Real SINners.

Well in some cases the deniability part might be more a matter of form than content, meaning that the corp is OK with everyone knowing they did it, as long as they can't technically prove it. Corp scrip doesn't interfere significantly with that. Or you could just pay the runners in a different corporations scrip than the one that hires it.

I do like corp scrip, myself, and use it as payment every once in a while. I also use certified creds a lot, since many people believe they're untracable (any certified credstick has a serial, though, and any transactions made from it mention that serial, leaving as nice a money trail as using the 2070s RFID'd paper money would), and on high stakes runs, payment is usually done via gems/metals or telesma, or occasioanlly favors owed on the big/epic level. Having a major corp's Veep owe you one (and you having dirt on him if he doesn't act when you call the favour in) *is* worth something, too.

Yes, but giving them shares is a direct connection.... and Shadow Wars don't need to prove anything in courts or use evidence......

(My comments were more about share than corp scrip.)

My statement still stands about paying in Shares for another Corporation.

Don't forget, Corporations aren't just the big boys. Any business can be a "Corporation".

The "Rat On A Stick" stand in Touristville is a Corporation, owned by two Shareholders, Mr. and Mrs. Ratt (Fake SIN Level 5) who sell "Real Ork Cuisine" to the idiots that go Sprawling.

Really, if you had a bunch of SINners as 'Runners, they might want to found their own Corporation in order to launder their nefarous gains, and pay taxes appropriately.

One person I know about back home, pot grower and dealer, has his own personal accountant, and pays all his illegal income tax every year.

Tax evasion is a Federal Offence, after all. Noone wants to be the next Capone.

Dude, you should do an NPC collection sometime.


See ... that's something I really dislike about this "all runners are SINless" mentality. That's just not true. Most runners are SINners. Actually, most decent runners are several law abiding people! Because decent fake sins cost pretty much a dime a dozen, it's phenomenally stupid not to buy yourself a rating 6+ SIN right after upgrading your primary tactical link to all-6 and icing it (~20K) and getting yourself some ten Burners, if only so you can walk about n the ncie areas without standing out too much. Also, ince areas often have nice places where you can buy really nice things. Like cars and such that aren't hot and still have the previous owner's bloodstains on the driver's seat. Or food.

So, yes, a team of successful runners should fairly soon start to set up a money laundring network - or at least, have their fixer handle this, if they trust the man enough.

But really. Who trusts anyone in this line of work?


Really? Thought Canada subscribed to the US's HOLY CRUSADE ON DRUGS! policy ... interesting. Maybe the UCAS would also be less concerned about pot growers then ...

Oh crap, I hope not. That would be so embarrassing! But here in the US, Canada at least has a reputation for being a LOT more level-headed about that sort of thing. I don't know if there's any truth behind it. But it should be noted that our crusade has gotten less zealous since Terrorism was invented in 2001 by Osama Bin Laden. Our rhetoric may have stayed the same, or even ramped up a bit, but the truth is, we're devoting less resources to the War On Drugs now that Terrorism is the buzz word of the decade. For a while, Papa Government was trying to tell us that if you bought pot, you were Supporting The Terrorists, but it was just a little to easy for people to realize "hey, wait--so what if I buy gas for my SUV?", so now they don't use that line much anymore. The trend now is more about non-profits running ads trying to prevent drug use. I think most studies show that those sorts of ads are ineffective, but it's less offensive than the massive amount of manpower and money we were throwing at just trying to militarily defeat drugs (we're still throwing a TON, but not quite as much as before).

Well, with the pentagon having a money flow that dwarfs most governments ...

Good to know though, since a character I regularily GM for is a pot farmer, on the side. Also heavy smoker (and regular deepweed user). Botched a run once by having smoked deepweed and running about in the Bayou, attracting all sorts of astral Nasties. Fun. Well, the Drake who used a force 6 manaball (2 rerolls) for shooting down a Ghede fly wasn't really much help either, to be fair.

It is illegal. Not as badly or aggressively pursued as the US does, but it is illegal.

His accountant has to be creative in describing where the money comes from, and where it goes, is all.

What it means is, if the cops nail him on possession with intent to traffic, then they also can't nail him for Tax Evasion, which would boost the charge higher, is all.

And, who knows, maybe he's a patriot that believes in paying his taxes for schools, road repair, and the rest of the country's infrastructure. Got me, I don't know the guy personally, just know about him and his accountant.

Well, noone's to say every dealer and ddrugs producer has to be some sort of psychopath who skins pippies for fun and ears baby kitttens (alive).

Yeah. A good number are Hippies.

"The only thing I ever shot was Acid!" - The Truth

I have it on good authority that in The Netherlands, the tax system and the judicial system are separate, a drug dealer I know from Amsterdam is able to deduct his gun purchase from taxes because he needs it for his job, he pays taxes on the money he makes as a dealer, all that jazz...
On the one hand it seems a fucked up system, but on the other hand, it seems very cool "No, I can't sell you 5 grams of coke as that would push me in a higher tax bracket..."

I thought the whole point of Certified Credsticks was that there *is* no audit trail. Elsewise they're utterly, utterly useless in the Shadows. You might as well open a Bank Account and have your cred paid in there...

Okay, so there's a bit of hyperbole there, but really, in order to be useful, Certified credsticks (CC) with a ser# would be used as currency in themselves, worth however much is on them, and only very rarely touching anywhere that records the ser#. Certified credsticks themselves would also have to not retain any record of transactions, thus the first thing you do with a certified credstick (CCA) is transfer its funds to *your* secret certified credstick (CCB), meaning the cash that might have been recorded as having been loaded onto CCA just vanishes, only to magically reappear back in the banking system when you plug your *public* CC (CCP) in to your burnable commlink to pull off some ready cash that doesn't look suspicious. Having gone:

Bank Account A
CCA
CCB
CCP
CommlinkP
StufferShack
Bank Account S

There is no link whatsoever between Bank Account A and Bank Account S. And if any of the CC links are compromised, there's no way of tracing it to any of the others.

There's a suspicious amount of cash on Commlink P and no good explanation as to where it came from, so the IRS might want to audit Joe Publicface, but since that Commlink got burned along with the ID after a couple of weeks' innocuous use and was false or stolen in the first place, this isn't going to trouble the sleep of Shadow the Runner one iota.

Commlinks and IDs are a serious cost in this new Matrix 2.0 world if you want to stay out of the light.

Certified Credisticks, and each individual itself has a serial number on it. It's how the Banks know that the is good, and not "Pixie Gold".

What does this mean?

Well, it means that Bank #Blah has issued CredStick#Blahblahblah with Serial #Insanelylongblahs on it, to person with account #Blahblah.

That's. It.

I can think of a dozen ways to get around "Oh, that was given to Shadowrunners" aside from the far too simple, "Someone picked my sleve and stole it!". Including my favourite game, "Shift the Cred Through The Sticks!"

Exaclty. You'd be surprised at how many runners keep the CCs Johnson hands them, do NOT transfer to their own sticks, and THEN use their (Johnson-tagged) CCs to buy something at the local stuffer shack vending machine. Which is even sweeter if they just did a 'good' job in working against the Azzies, who own Stuffershack.

Of course, few GMs really enforce this because players tend to bitch about that if that happens.

Personally, I do think CCs, if used wisely (as you detailed above), are great. They're basically flexible-value coins. However, just like bank notes, they have a serial, and WILL tell that serial to any device they're used on.

If you don't want to be too paranoid, or want to be paranoid enough to not have your cash hanging around on a commlink, where some Technomancer might snatch it (after all, Technos are evil and totally rule the Matrix), you could just transfer the funds from CCA to CCs B, C and D, and use them to pay for your groceries, or hide them in a sock under your mattress, or whatever.

Just like you have to launder real cash, you have to launder . Real money, you do it by moving it through real hands. , which is virtual funds, you do by moving through virtual hands.

And those bums on the street, they need CredSticks as well, in order to beg for spare change! When you're done with your Johnson Special, just toss it to them. Or, better yet, wipe it down in a DNA Destroyer, and toss it in the trash, some bum will find it then.

I, personally, rule there's a provision in transfering cred between sticks without any extra equipment.

I describe each CredStick as having an LED Display that shows the current amount on it, a thumbwheel so you can select the amount you wish to transfer (Push down to lock in, push again to reset to display mode), and a metal tip on the opposite ends.

You "Touch Sticks", and the cash is transfered. The s serial numbers are transfered, actually, with a record that it came from CredStick A and went to CredStick B. Now, even with cheap memory, there's only so much of that that can be recorded, so you do that with a lot of cheap CredSticks you got from a variety of sources. Just make sure the transfers are uneven amounts, like real purchases, debt payments, loans to chummers, ect., and it makes tracking them a nightmare.

Just like passing around money with serial numbers that have been marked.

Great, you found one of the bills when they were deposited by an 80-year old Grandmother in Detroit. Too bad it was Ransom money paid to some crooks in Orlando a year and a half ago.

Note: That's a personal house rule I have about the Cred Transfering. If there's rules that say differently, I don't have 'em, or know about 'em, and, well, frankly, this makes sense to me. Please direct all, "But but but" comments to the closest brick wall unless you want to give me a free book that corrects me.

I suppose you could get problems that way. but in most cases the Ares Johnson who gave them the credstick won't share the number with the Azzies the run was agaisnt, because well - that would be really stupid.

You get cured of this habit very quickly the first time a Johnson slips you a C-4 dummy stick mixed in with the case of low credsticks he pays you with.

Actually, if you REALLY want to lunder real money really clean, you have to take it out of the system. Like, have all your drug money shipped to Africa, invested in blood diamonds, and those sold in Dubai, for other, inconspicuous Dollar notes noone can ever trace to those you spent in some african shithole where noone bothers to register what serials are on the bills. You can also abuse islamic banking, but supposedly, they charge more, at least to non-muslims (but the SR Malaysian Independent Bank seems to live off just that kind of business).

Your 'spred the money' is viable unless someone REALLY wants to get at you, though, and t will not require you to spend some 20% of that sum on the various chains of money laundering services.

There're no rules against this that I know of, bei they 3rd or 4th edition. Unwired might touch on this though.

Yeah, Hermit, and how many Shadowrun groups will have those kinds of Contacts?

That's the pervailance of Organized Crime, and really high powered Fixers (Same difference, really.).

So, you use those black banks that do that for you, pay the 15%, and hope they don't disappear with all your Cred in a Police Raid/Rival Gang Attack/Boss needs a new mansion.

Many established runners have some higher-level fixer (Influence 4+) as a contact, who should be ble to pull that off.

Good point. Or a dedicated launderer contact rather than a generalist Fixer.

Hey, wait -- so what if I pay income tax?

Topic-wise, though, terrorists are a subset of shadowrunners, n'est-ce pas?

Well, you better believe that's what Lone Star is going to tell you!

Way to get your contacts murdered ... call me an asshole (I am) but seriously who's GM didn't go hey, look traceable money which is only possible to spend within the system set up by the people you slaughtered and robbed the employee's of.

the best way to look at corp scrip is if you have a store loyalty card, you get the free stuff coupons through the mail? points you can spend in store to purchase items? Corp scrip.

Its like THE most traceable thing ever, they issue it therefore its got a unique ID (for fraud prevention) and by happy coincidence it also means you can withdraw 100 bucks of Fuchi scrip and hand it to GoonA, make a note of who you gave bills 57732 - 57832 (sequential for ease) and then wait for your system to register them, hey look its a profile on the purchasing habits of GoonA.

but assume GoonA kills your man instead of doing the job, Bills 57732 - 37832 wash up a week, month or year later in the only place they can be redeemed (your business) personally the second one of those now marked as stolen bills was handed over I'd have gun turrets popping out of the cash register and the person handing them over in your holding cells before you can spit.

you can then at your leisure torture bargain and otherwise cajole the poor mook that you caught spending your stolen money tokens until he tells you where he received it, then its just upstream till you get back to GoonA, at which point you get a pair of pliers and a blowtorch and go medeieval on his ass.

With some heavy Jet hittin' orks?