Our runners got offered a job through a friend of a friend last session. Ol' Ivan simply refused it outright. Here was the deal. Smuggle a certain person from Seattle to an undisclosed locale in the Baja Peninsula where said person was going to collect some various telesma and smuggle them back to Seattle. A difficult job, but not impossible but here's the kicker. He's only willing to go as high as 18,000 per person for the trip for a total of 72,000 for the job. The other players think its a good deal. I don't.

First of all, Ivan's share would barely cover the use of his helo given about thirty hours of flying requested with an operating cost of about 1000 per hour. Already we're operating in the red (IRL a Bell 206 goes for about $800/hour, a 212 can go for about $1800. I'm also counting on various enroute expenses due to the covert nature of the task.) Not to mention various forged documents and such we'll have to aquire. Nevermind any possible expenditures and (like ammo!) bribes that might be required. I won't even begin to talk about what some decent intel will cost us.

Secondly, ITS INTO FRAGGIN' AZATLAN! Do they know what they're getting into? Even though Ivan's helo has some goodies and we'll have a mage and a shaman on board. We're talking blood magic and the most trigger happy military in North America! Maybe for 7 million. Or am I out of line here?

"DONT DO IT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!"

says Ruben the street sam and his 6 man team from byond the grave.

first off i need more guys like you in my group, okay i need a guy like you in my group.

good way to think of the run, planning ahead, thinking ahead, estimating prices is a very smart thing.

dont take it. UNLESS, your gm is really nice and leniant, but that gets old fast if the gm is to nice.

anyway, what once was the gulf o mexico, is now littered with a really good sr team of 6 on a similar mission..... the gm was still being niceand we did everything well.

still, should have never taken the job. ends up if i had lived i would have been in the hole about 2k.

thats where gung ho gets you, in debt and dead.

Yup, that's at the very minimum a 6 figure job, possibly 7. You did the right thing. But don't forget to explain your point of vue to your GM. It may have been on purpose that you weren't paid enough, but if it wasn't it'll help him adjust his mission design in the future.

Not to mention, my crew has the habit of pooling the money, paying for legitimate expenses incurred and then splitting the remainder.

Which means operating costs for a vehicle, damages and ammo would be paid for prior to splitting the money.

And frigging Atzlan? Atzlan? Although, to be fair, odds are you won't run headlong into Blood Magic. Insofar as I know, it's existence isn't common knowledge in the SR world and there aren't Blood Mages on perimeter patrol.

But the whole trigger-happy thing is very true -- barring a guaranteed access point in the perimeter that won't get you blown out of the sky.

-Siege

And is it just me, or does the set-up of the whole thing seem slightly funny? Why hire a bunch of out-of-towners to do the job?

Best way I could see it would be to hire a Panzer crew to transport the person down to Pueblo on one of their normal runs and take them back later. Once there, you hire some locals that know the area and are specialists at moving things across the Aztlan border. And just hire some physical security for the trip to Baja down there as well. Just seems a little odd to me. :/

You could justify it a couple of ways:

The easiest is to say the Johnson doesn't have connections in the area and would rather deal with a Fixer or a crew he(?) trusts.

-Siege

This sound liek a job for your face; just negotiate for the Johnson to cover "expenses". That way you got the trip to and back covered, along with the necessary paperwork to get you across the borders. If your face is good enough then have him try for medical expenses as well.

oh and unless you got a guy with a math SPU dont bother tryin to add ammo expendaures on that list.

why not? you count out how much ammo you started with, and then you count how much you've got when you come back. QED.

What? You mean you don't turn in itemised expense invoices, down to the last bullet and grenade, to your Johnson for reimbursement?

HA... and here I thought I was the only one brash enough to try that =p

Well if the team negotiator is good enough to get reimbursement for 'reasonable operating expenses' into the deal, why not? I mean, when the rigger is working out how much petrol and running costs per mile by how far they travelled is and putting that on the list...

I don't like itemized expenses as they reveal too much about the teams means and methods. A blanket fee (profit + expected expenses) is much simpler to compute. If the team gets it done on the cheap, more money to them.

However, it's hard to justify "expected expenses" without an itemized list.

Especially to a suit.

The Johnson to me seems a little green as it were, more money than brains as he wants to come personally to collect the telesma. So in the deal we'll be smuggling the material on the way back. Since he's along it might allow for some contract "renegotiation" enroute. Essentially the trip will require some nasty border crossings the PCC to Aztlan one being the worst. As a side profit Ivan was contemplating his own op taking a load of guns down. (He has quite a collection) As for ammo expenditures I was worried more about the more expensive kind like that ATGM to take out that Azzie SPAAA. The bad news is that the Johnson seems to have something over on our shaman - they are both part of the same initiate group or something. The whole deal reeks of magical problems, thats why I was suspecting running into that sort of trouble, by accident or design.

Actually, having a Johnson tag along can be a nasty complication but, on the bright side, you can always ask him if he approves the emergency ammo expenditures necessary to haul his backside out of the frying pan.

-Siege

From an IC perspective, refusing the run is prefectly rational. What you might want to do is discuss the run with the GM in an OOC context, though. The GM may really want the run to happen and have other compensation for the mission on tap which you couldn't ICly know about or have a very critical storyline about to branch off from the run. Ask him for his suggested work arounds (sometimes, characters just get a "feeling" about a run that makes 'em take it for less than they normally would). Alternatively, it depends on the GM. If he tends to go easy on you, you could just take it and hope he isn't picking this run to change his colors.

If he regularly drills the PCs, though, run like there is a great form blood spirit chasing you. Because there will be.

And smoke grenades -- wizards can't zap what they can't see.

-Siege