So it's been brought up that my character is finally getting into the major leagues, and making significant amounts of . As a result, I'm beginning to draw up his plans for "getting out" He's a troll wolf shaman from the Redmond Barrens who wants to help raise the barrens out of the slum it's become, at least a little. He's going to begin the operation of a free clinic (He already possesses the medicine skill and all the health spells) with an armored ambulance service on the side. He wants to use a heavily armored and modded GAZ with a valkyrie module for the ambulance service, and his current contacts can get him what he needs to set up a medical facility. He has good relations with a few barrens gangs, a decent contact with one gang leader, and a reputation as someone not to be fragged with (he held off three Red Samurai in the barrens once)

Ultimately, he's going to buy a permanent middle life style, (half a mil) permanent low lifestyle for 10 people (patients or staff, comes out to 400,000 ) and the medical facility for a total of 1.1 mil and then some more for odds and ends.
Currently he has 300,000 .

There are two questions for this thread: First, any advice on how to accomplish what I need, without raising the cost much more (more cost = more runs = more likelihood of dying before getting it done)

Second, what are your character's plans for getting out of the game?

Cremation.

A bullet-ridden body surrounded by dead enemies stacked like cordwood, and on the 6 O'Clock News!

well, you could always do that cheesy enchanting to make money thing... the one where you make obscene amounts of money by making orichalchum. gotta get the right connections for that, of course, but if you're a shaman, it's doable =S

Yeah, if you're able to get HAND MINED Gold, Silver, Copper, and Mercury!

That tends to make Orichalchum less of a profit system than you'd think.

actually, it's not really all that hard to find. availability 4 for raw, 6 for refined, 8 for radical. fairly expensive to start up, but fortunately he has starting capital of 300k already.

I had one of my character's got of the game by buying a nice little bar that he now runs. He deals with a lot of shadowy clientele there and it makes him a great NPC for games. I personally try to use him as a contact for a lot of my newer characters...

"What do you mean "get out"?
I'm not even "in"...
I'm doing this for fun...
And maybe a little to support my Bliss habit...
And a little to pay rent...
Oh what the fuck do you know anyway?"

All of my characters who have ever had retirement plans have died trying to reach them (in SR anyway),
all of my characters who have retired did so because they got the luckiest break they're ever gonna get and they grabbed it and didn't let go...
Moral of the story: Lady Luck hates people who plan things...

I've only recenlty been thinking of this for my technomancer, but I'm thinking of sitting up a simsense arcade. Someplace people can come, jack in, and play the games with a full simdeck, instead of on their little commlink.

I don't know if this would be an actual retirement or not, because I'm also thinking of setting up a couple modules that are more geared for hacking, with agents to help hide trails, and such. For runners to pay under the table for.

Also I think it would be interesting to start saving up nuyen and materials, and work on building the 10 response, 10 system, UV node. This would be his hobby project.

But until he gets the sprite or AI or whatever is sharing his skull with him out, retirement is a long ways off. Our last run ended with an extensive haul nearly 4 million per person... I'm giving the majority of my share to our doc character so he can build his shadow doc wagon clinic. Keeps me playable (I've finally got enough karma that the technomancer is growing, plus Unwired just came out!), as well as gives me a nice contact for when I need to get pulled out of someplace, or need some down time to heal.

A few problems with this plan:
1: He doesn't have the enchanting skill, and plans to put the kharma in other skills, like biotech
2: becoming an orichalchum factory isn't really what he wants to do with the twenty odd years he has left
3: the orichalchum factory idea only works if you can count on no significant problems for a lunar month, and the contact network needed to make it profitable sometimes requires getting out of town.

Another thing I was wondering: Would it be possible to equip any bike with a Valkyrie module? I know it works by the rules but does it make any kind of sense? Maybe a scorpion would be big enough for one.

This was under Third Edition but the one character that had really planned for it had it down to pretty much the last cent, as soon as she crossed that threshold she was retiring. I forget how much it was exactly but it ended up clocking in at something like four and a half to five million nuyen. For that she got some phenotypic alteration genetech treatment to change her fingerprints, hair colour, new eyeballs with new retinas and colour, a new face, vocal chords so a new voice, Leonization treatment so that was back to being aged about 25, DNA masking, a permanent high lifestyle in Hawaii, her previous SINs all erased and a rating 10 fake SIN under her new details to cap it off. She pretty much just disapeared.

At the other end of the scale I had one ex-ganger character that had to claw her way out of the Redmond Barrens so when she came into a million and a bit nuyen she retired with an iron-clad fake SIN, permanent middle lifestyle and the 2060s version of a Toyota Tundra in a nice quiet little neighbourhood - which was quite literally more than she could have ever of dreamed of.

Get out? Easy. Just stop running.

My characters all live high lifestyles, & have an easy source of funds outside of running should they ever decide to quite. They all run the shadows because they want to - reasons vary. Whatever 'retirement' they eventually decide on is almost guaranteed to be within reach once they decide they want to quit.

You just need to buy a rating 4 agent and a rating 4 spoof program, and you can hack yourself a month long stay in intensive care every month by buying hits. Weirdly enough.

Logically it follows you could buy 30 agents, and 30 rating 4 spoof programs, then use them to spoof yourself 30 hospital beds worth of goodies and employ some doctors and stuff. That would be a bit weird though.

Many of our older PCs that have been retired have turned into NPCs of various levels within our game world. It let's us drag them out and continue their stories at times when nostalgia hits us.

My characters often end up getting out of the game and getting into a new game, the organlegging business, not as a mover, but as an item.

Then there is the one character who became a military advisor for a small third world country. A new girl every week, french wine in his cellar, and a large compound with foreign mercenaries as bodyguards. He is an important cog in making sure that the third world country remains poor and that the large mineral wealth keeps the first world countries rich. Business as usual.

"As soon as I can get out of the streets and live the Squatter's Life! Yeah, Baby! Warm Nutrisoy every DAY!"