Looking at SR4, it seems like the "street level" runners that the rules create get paid about 5000 nuyen/group per run. This got me thinking, what would pay a group of 4 Shadowrunners more then running.

1. Stealing Automobiles. If the runners get 20% of it's value one 25K car a week is worth more then running (and lets face it between your magician casting vehicle mask, your sammy and rigger jacking the car and your hacker to wash the registration, your runners are unlikely to get caught).

2. Working for the Mob, probably pays more then $1500 a week.

3. Breaking into most warehouse, electronics stores backrooms, jewelery stores, ectra, probably results in much more then 25K in goods stolen (especially if the characters also take the forklifts).

4. Talislegging, though just barely unless you find mineral reagents.

5. Enchanting

6. Running a magic/matrix assisted con.

7. Swiping a shipping container down by the docks most likely results in more then 25k worth of goods.

8. Organized piracy, as noted in cyberpirates, results in higher income levels then even most 2nd edition runners.

9. Identity theft.

10. Most forms of smuggling.

Shadowrunning seems a bit high risk when you could just ebay a couple crates of guns you bought with somebody elses SIN.

SR1 wasn't about thieves and criminals...
...It was about people who aren't party of the system, part of the 9-5, part of the mainstream world.

For many of them, it wasn't about stealing - it was about living in the short term, and being paid stupid amounts of money was a rarity, not the apparantly common event it is now...
...Many of the fiction characters didn't have much of a choice in their life, and sure as hell didn't get paid large amounts of money - not even the top rankers in the books, who very often were legit professionals and not criminals.

Racking up 5K in one night is pretty good [hell, I'd like to do something that paid that much in a month]...
...But there were other options - private eye, musician, etc.

Most of those options appear to have been lost, so there's not much for the apparently average special ops/super hacker/super smoothtalker character/etc to do.

Anyone with any sense realises that characters could have a much better life than being a shadowrunner...
..,But few people seem willing to do the things that generate the real money, becase it takes time and effort, and many people would rather just blow holes in things and think that's enough [which isn't for me].

And for them, i wonder why they don;t just do online 1st person shooters - none of that boring "character" stuff needed there, and as many explosions as you can handle.

Yep.

Why does anyone do anything except the best thing that gets them the best money?

I mean, it's not like people take jobs as teachers, law enforcement, military service, civil service and a few other things when the same skills could get them far more money doing something else.

But it's just about the money isn't it? That's all that anything is about? There are absolutely no other things to think about?

Nuyen, Karma, attributes, skills numbers, DV, that's all a ROLE playing game is about. Nothing about feelings, emotions, motivations, character, desire, wishes, dreams personality, cares, likes, passions, and other non monetary things.

But shadowrunning is fun, and may involve one or more of the above things anyway.

1) Leaving aside the fact that it's really hard to clean all the registrations - because they have stealth RFID tags in all the PARTS, too - a 25k car will net the runners about 7500 per car, assuming they have an OK negotiator. Remember fenced goods usually net you less than half of the cost, and 30% is about standard for a hot car.

2) Damn right it pays more than 1500 a week. They also have to WANT you to work for them. And honestly, working for the mob shouldn't be an unreasonable goal for low-rent runners. I mean, seriously... get made, and you're MADE, you know?

3) See the above 30% figure. You also have to get your fence to move that gear, and they sure as hell aren't paying you more than 25-35% of the cost for it.

4) Yeah, true. Though it probably depends on where you live. It's an easier job in Tir Tairngire than Los Angeles.

5) Yes indeed. No argument there.

6) I would count a magic/matrix assisted con as a pro-active shadowrun. You're just not stealing for anyone but yourself.

7) No, it's probably not gonna be more than 25k, especially after fencing. A shipping crate of nutri-soy? Barbie dolls? Fish paste? Plastic forks? No, not really. You'd have to get pretty lucky to beat out 25k. Just know which crate they ship the Eurocar Westwinds in!

Piracy is better paying. And also awesome.

9) True, but it's also more difficult than shadowrunning if you want to stay in the business for any amount of time.

10) True, but again, more difficult. Lots of contacts are needed, lots of wheels need greasing.

You know what else makes more money?

Being a corporate manager.
Being a rock star.
Being a drug kingpin.
Selling your body for parts if you're a shapeshifter with the type o quality.

But most of these are not options for runners, y'know?

The accepted payrate is $2,500 per Karma awarded + % of monthly living cost (Average Lifestyle of Group / Number of runs a month) + reasonable expenses (or enough loot to cover that) *PER* runner.

So if the average Karma award is 4, the runners do 4 runs a month, and their average lifestyle is High, each of them should net around $12,500 per run after expenses.

Yes! Someone who remembers the days when Shadowrun wasn't just GTA MMLXXIII.
I always thought Shadowrunners were more like Adventurers then criminals.

Leaving aside the runners who aren't in it for the money there's going to be a lot more competition in all of those fields than in running the shadows. What's more there are also probably to be lots of hidden costs in bribes, greasing the right wheels and dealing with the risk that you might be the victim of a hostile take over.

There's also the issue of career progression. Good SR teams are always in demand and although the risks go up so do the rewards whereas most of the jobs you mentioned are either going to be a road to nowhere or see the characters shunted in to management pretty quick.

4% for stolen cars, on average.

$500 for a car? I could steal 1 a week and be set for life!

i think some runners fall into this line of work just like normal people fall into plumbing or waiting tables, that or they want the thrills (the later is definately true for the players behined the characters)

This to me is the best part of playing an RPG over a board game. You get a chance to imagine and do whatever you'd like. I've been part of many groups that like the "Grand Theft Seattle" approach so it worked for us. My current group is more about doing a "professional job" and tying up loose ends which works for them. And don't ask about my AD&D days where we had little direction at all.

For me, SR is a set of rules and that let my groups explore and experience the stories we create. Have fun with it!

Blah blah blah things were better in the old days blah blah blah.

Many runners work for reasons other than money. Of course there are better options out there - the world doesn't operate solely by shadowrunning. Heck, Winterhawk is a retired runner / academic! Everything from revenge to political leanings to need to the thrill of the challenge...

There are many ways to run 4e SR, and the gritty, living moment by moment theme is but one of them. Not one that I want to run, personally; my current campaign ideas involve a Hawai'ian great sea dragon waking up and reclaiming its territory, the personal assassin for an ambitious fashion editor, and various one shots involving small jobs. Each of these are equally shadowrun-esque plots, with pcs brought in for various reasons other than sticking it to The Man.

Punk punk PUNK is just one single layer in a multi-layered game and claiming that SR has devolved into a "shooting people in the face for money" game is doing everyone involved in every edition of SR a great disservice. To act as though suddenly it suddenly has is like listening to people whine that music just isn't the same any more, man.

Y'know, man?

Can you give me a page quote from this. I'm going mainly off the opening fict in the BBB (team does a run for 6K) and the Mr. Johnson section of Companion (paying a team 5k). My point is that the pay in SR4 seems to be stupidly low, even for the lower skill levels found in 4th ed.

For example think of a team with 4 magicians, one adept and one technomancer. A team running to one extreme like that might not be the most rounded, but I don't see them getting bottom of the barrel jobs either.

There is no page reference for that. It is the distilled wisdom of Dumpshock, hashed out over the aleph-one threads that have discussed runner payments in the past. Note said rule of thumb specifically applied to SR4.

Wait. More threads than there are integers?

Its all in how your game gets run. I pay my players more, because I expect them to spend more during the course of the run.
Well, and it avg's out for the runs that don't pay, or end up being a loss.

Well those numbers sounds about right. Problem is there's no supporting evidence for them in 4th ed, and their is supporting evidence for 5000 nuyen/team. At that level running is a (possibly fatal) extreme sport that generates a little nuyen on the side, not a valid career path. 4th ed seems a bit to focused on a street level game (which also makes character creation a royal mess).

A run a week is a little taxing on the body, contacts, gear, etc., isn't it?

I haven't read the rest of this thread; but may I point out (or reiterate) that all those jobs listed are the purveyance of organized crime, such as gangs, the mob/Triads/SonsofTheNeonCrysanthemum. they will not like it when you start doing their scams, on their turf.

I've been running mine on the scale of what is the danger factor. Pay has been 5,000 nuyen for simple body guard work, to 25,000 for a search and rescue. However that is each.

My pay is based on time involved and risk to the runners (from their fixers point of view who sets up the meet). The initial meet is where they negotiate price. Lowest paying run was 1,000 nuyen a day job to investigate an assasination attemp. The group felt they were a little out of their leagu and decided the 20,000 nuyen bonus for "solving the problem" was not worth tangling with a Sons of Sauron hit squad. Oh well...next plot line, though one PC got a contact BTL dealer out of it for a special request he made (a three week BTL binge on Neil the Ork Barbarian for the ganger they interogated).

Since I'm feeling wordy today, I'll list some of the analysis that generated those numbers:

1
The marginal utility of karma and nuyen to advance your character depends on your character type. So, for example, a mage or certain adept builds can basically advance quite far in a karma only rewards game; while mundane characters are basically at the top of their (karma) game out of character creation.
A samurai with 6 million still has the firearms skill of 6 he started the game with; a mage with 6 million karma has a magic rating OVER 9000 . A street sam with 6 million Y has delta-synaptic III (or whatever); a pure mage with 6 million Y has a nice beach house somewhere.
So, there should be a balance between karma and Y rewards that balances the advancement of both mages and mundanes.

2 The costs of living

2a
The fake SIN tax.
Different styles of games require different amounts of disposable equipment. For example, how often do your characters change fake SINs, drop weapons and other equipment, replace damaged armor, etc? Depending on the style of game, there may be none of this, or it may happen every game. Because there is not a default style of play here, the default pay cannot be fixed, but instead must take into account these expenses.

2b
The lifestyle tax.
Just as different games have different levels of expected expenses, different games also have different run frequencies. So a game that generates a run every in game month will 'tax' lifestyle costs less than a game that generates a run only every 3 in-game months.

2c
Since the expected Y rewards listed in part 1 are solely for character advancement (for example, buying new cyberware) the average pay estimates must also include calculations for the cost of living, based on the assumptions of that particular game table.

4
Lastly, what combination of karma and Y seems to equally reward both magical and mundane characters?
The 2,500 Y per karma point is based on the BP conversion:
1 BP = 5,000 Y
1 BP ~~ 2 karma

So payments should look like:
~2,500 Y per point of karma awarded, net deductions for the expenses

If you want to run a street level game, limit BP in character generation and limit both karma and Y rewards. Limiting Y rewards while still handing out the normal amount of karma just leaves mages laughing all the way to the bloody sacrificial altar.

If anything, your actually better in a game slanted more towards money then karma rather then the other way around (from the suggest rate that is). In fact, late game when the Samy has to go to Delta grade to get any better that little $25,000 he gets from a 10 karma run will help him a lot less then then 10 karma will help a magic user. My game started at the $2.5k per Karma but has progressed to closer to $5k per Karma.

It's a goal. But it's hard. There was something like 60-80 made men in the Chicago Outfit in 1997.

Hence why our games turned into average karma (5-10 per mission depending on how many sessions it took,* plus every player gives out "two nods"** each worth 1 karma each to the player they nominate for a named action) + high cash games with the rule that if you donate 5000 to an organization that makes sense for your character you get 1 karma. For a mage that might be MIT&T, a street sam might donate to a martial arts studio, and a toxic spirit shaman would donate to the local land fill.

*So far it's about 3 to 4 karma average per session plus nods.

**The GM has also given nods, though rare. The last one was to me, 4 karma for "ruining my life" (i.e. my legal sin is now a criminal sin, so he gave me a partial refund over what it would take to buy that flaw off--notably I'd taken the flaw, made it an asset, then intentionally ruined my life, that flaw is now an actual flaw, and I can live with that).

Yup. The assumption people make that the cars are worth BIG BUCKS is crazy. The real money in auto theft is in the chop shop or in the resale after the title has been fixed. And I doubt the guy owning the chop shot gets 20%, as he wants to quickly unload the parts to someone who sells it to mechanics.

Selling retitled cars might get good money, but you'd have to be running a "legit" used car business to do that.

If you pay your street tax you can work. If you fail to pay up they tend to get irate.

Or you just use your awesome runner skillz to generate 90% casualties in one glorious night of Max Payne like carnage. Then you go on to do... whatever you want.

So, how about PCs who do organized crime work most of the time, or theft or piracy or whatever, and then sometimes they do something that's a bit more unusual or interesting, and the latter is the part you actually play out.

I don't see any rules in SR4 *requiring* that shadowrunners do nothing else between runs.

Or a body shop. Some custom body shops are willing or involved in stealing parts to sell as new to increase there profit. They get busted all the time. Even then though, the guy usually doing the actual theft is likely making peanuts in comparison.

When deciding how much a run is worth, for me it comes down to how easy it is to find talent and the importance of the run for Mr. J. On the street level in Seattle for instance runners are a dime a dozen and low level runs will provide less then someplace where the talent pool is thin. A team with high demand talents or more capable then average will likely get the higher paying jobs and rep will be part of that. The 5000 'milk run' in SR4 seems to reflect a team with a alright rep and capability doing a job that's almost below them in Seattle which has a lot of competition according to Runner Havens. If you had the same job in a plex like the MSP which isn't known for more than smuggling, the pay would likely go up because of the lack of needed talent.

This is completely up to the GM and the way he sees Shadowrun's world and the place of the Shadowrunners. It's up to the GM to decide how much runners are paid, how much they can get from stealing cars, how easy it is to steal cars, how many runs a month runners can do, how easily they can have a "legitimate" business and all...

Here is how I roll:
* Most Runners don't choose to run. They can't live outside the shadows for various reasons, so their only way to survive is crime.
* "Basic" crime is harder to pull off than today: stealing a guy's commlink won't let you use it without some hacking and with all security technology it's more difficult to pull off other typical illegal jobs. Another big difference is that since you're SINless, you can theoretically get the same punishment for trying to steal an apple and for killing someone.
* Crime is also a controlled business. You don't steal cars on your own to sell them to your fixer: it's the business of gangs or mafias, and they don't like it if you try to steal it from them.
* There are quite a lot of SINlesses, and since they can't really find any other way to live decently, crime doesn't have to pay too much to be interesting for them.
* According to this, only the top of the Shadows will actually get rich. And getting paid 2000 nuyens for a run is still better than to get paid 500 a month for stealing cars for a gang.
* According to this runners won't be asking for ludicrous prices.
* There are more runners than there are jobs around. Because of this, Johnson can turn down runners asking for too much, except when they need a specific team or a very good team or when the run is so dangerous that no one will accept until the pay is very high... And that's when runners can hope to get rich.

sigh;



If 'basic' crime is so difficult as to give the team problems, then they have no chance at all of carrying off a shadowrun, which is considerably more difficult. If they can't steal cars to sell them for parts, they have no hope of stealing them for getaway vehicles. If they have no hope of beating a gang or OC crew in combat, they have no hope of beating a considerably better equipped, trained, and coordinated corpsec team.


The combination of skills, intestinal fortitude, and the ability to assemble and work in the team required to pull of a job that could be called a shadowrun is not going to come easy or cheap. No one is objecting to some gang members getting 500Y to rough some guy up; what they are objecting to is being paid 500Y to break into a highly secure facility patrolled by armed guards, armed drones, hell hounds, and/or spirits; protected by black IC, etc for 500Y.
If the team is skilled enough to do that kind of job for other people they are certainly skilled enough to do that kind of job for themselves.
Ignoring, for the moment, the fact that SR uses electronic money, you could ask yourself, "Can this crew rob a bank and get away with it?" Then, if the job is as difficult as robbing a bank, then the job better pay as well as robbing a bank; otherwise they crew will just rob banks for themselves, rather than take the job.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner. The stupid low pay for most runs when you look at the skill of the runners has always bugged the hell out of me.

"So you want me to steal a prototype that Ares spent 237 million developing, and you want to pay me 10,000?"

I doubt that's car theft.

That sounds like a run.

They spent 237 mil to do R&D, you're being paid 200 thou to steal it, it's street value is 10 grand (your fixer doesn't know a damn thing about it other than what he can get selling it, about 30k).

Once again, everything is up to the GM. That's just my take on it.
Then, my point was not about runners, it was about crime in general. I just consider that the average SINless can't steal money as easily as a current day pickpocket who steals wallets. I consider that the average SINless will have more trouble stealing a car than the current day's average guy. I'm not saying however that it's impossible or more difficult than Shadowrunning.



As you said yourself you're ignoring the fact that SR uses electronic money. And that's something important: it means that the runners can't get money directly for themselves, they'll always need to convert something else in money, which will nearly always mean having someone else to do it for them.
Let's take another example and speak about diamonds in a vault somewhere. Sure, runners can do it for themselves... They'll just need to find someone to fence the diamonds for them. And there's no saying how much this guy will offer them. If the whole diamond fencing business is dominated by one guy, he'll pay the runner the lowest price they'll agree to give the diamonds for or refuse to buy them (and wait until the runners are desperately in need for money). If it's highly competitive, the runners will be able to get a lot from those diamonds.
Of course, they can also try to fence the diamonds themselves but that's a whole different job from shadowrunning...

The pay for the runs in Ghost Cartels is considerably higher than this. In fact, there is a run where (if the runners decide to be particularly unscrupulous) they can make an extra 100k on a single run. My runners are currently making 15k-25k each, per run (so the Mr. J is paying approx. 100k per run), per month.

It states that Shadowrunner's are the cream of the crop of criminals. Therefore they should be paid accordingly. A Mr. Johnson can not realistically go out and hire an entire TEAM of extremely focused and professional shadowrunners for chump change. If he wanted to pay someone 5000 to do something, it would have to be something one of them could do in about 10 minutes. I have always been baffled by the low pay on some of this source material.

My take is simple, for each job type, set a base price, per team member. Multiply that by a number, similar to a threshold for the difficulty and then add in a set money figure based on karma awarded. This would all be dependent on your characters and their level of skill. I will give an example for first run type beginning characters, as minimized as possible for ease of demonstration. Assuming an average of 4 runners per team.

Job
Courier: 100 B&E: 1000 Matrix: 2000 Wetwork: 5000

Difficulty:
1 Easy
2 Medium
3 Hard
4 Deadly

Karma awarded:
2,500 per 1

So the team above, on a B&E at the local office supply store(Medium difficulty for a new team) would make 1000 per team member, multiplied by 2 for medium difficulty plus 5000 for 2 karma each, for a total of (4*1000+5000=) 9000 for the run. Not bad, they would each clear 2250 Y. Not bad for one nights work.

EDIT: Not to mention any extra Y from stolen goods, bodies, paydata, ect and any Mr. J incentives. Of course having a good Face will up your money as well, plus maybe some Rep modifier?

Five hundred dollars a car doesn't seem that bad. Steal one car a week, kick back twenty percent of whatever you make to the local gang or organised crime group and that still leaves you with 20,800 nuyen a year to live on. That's only 3,200 nuyen less than you need for a low lifestyle so eight weeks out of fifty-two you steal an extra car and you're set. Low lifestyle might not be great but it's better than squatting or living on the streets.

Hell, steal two cars a week and give the mob a 50% cut. That is still $26k a year.

I've always been a bit bothered by the "per teammate" pricing. I understand it from a metagame perspective, but it doesn't really make sense - the Johnson is trying to get a job done, and he doesn't care that you have a team of 7 people when it's clearly something 3 of them can get done.

Parts + Labor.

If the job only requires three perps, then the Johnson should hire a team of three. Runners are like plumbers, seven guys show up and each work an hour out of the five they stand around, but you still pay for 35 hours of work.

I was going to say it's more like Philadelphia unions: moving a single table from one side of the room before an event (say...a free Rock Band tournament) and then back again after requires 4 union workers paid for 1 hour of work each (like, $12/hour), twice (once before, and once after), despite the fact that the table weighs 15 pounds and I could move it myself to where it's needed in 10 seconds.

It costs my local gaming group far too much money to do half the events we want to.

And the one time the school removed all the chairs, tables, and couches from the Commuter's Lounge...oh my god the fit the union threw when bright young students went "I want a place to sit, in front of the TV. Oh look! A chair over there in the other room. I could move that!" By noon two dozen chairs had been moved without authorization. We got quite a mouthful from the woman who's "in charge" of the Lounge, we gave her a mouthful back ("You take the chairs, for any reason, and don't give us someplace to sit, we WILL move some ourselves, screw the union"). Was almost as bad as the time the Bursar's Office sent a woman down to gauge reactions to "what if we gathered all the important Bursars in one place and allowed people to ask questions about the way we work?" Short answer: "We'd kill them." And then spent 3 hours telling this woman tuition/financial aid horror stories.

So, for a Johnson to need 3 guys, but gets 7 he basically has two choices: Don't hire them, or pay them more.

The Johnson's not (usually) going to care how many runners are needed for the job. As far as he's concerned he's hiring some specialists to carry out a job. How maby people are needed is not really his concern. If the team's face tells him that it needs seven and there's no obvious reason to disbelieve them then the J will cough up for seven. Sure he might haggle to try and get the overall price down but arguing about manpower requirements is too much micromanagement for most clients. Afterall they want the job done and they want it done soon.

Face to Johnson: It's a Union rule. I'm sorry, I'd like to cut you a break but if word got out I could lose my license. I've complained about the policy, myself. Plenty of us have. Supposedly, they're going to have a union-wide referendum on repealing that requirement, but until then there's nothing I can do.

Two Street Sams meet in the middle of a run and pull guns on each other.

Street Sam 1: I'm sorry, I can't shoot you now. My Comlink is telling me that it's time for my union-mandated break.
Street Sam 2: You with the Shadowrunners Union?
Street Sam 1: Yeah.
Street Sam 2: Me too.
Street Sam 1: Got your union card on you?
Street Sam 2: Yeah, you?
Street Sam 1: Yeah. So what you here for?
Street Sam 2: Stealing prototypes.
Street Sam 1: Me too.
Street Sam 2: You don't think we're here to steal the same prototypes do you?
Street Sam 1: Maybe. What you you trying to steal?
Street Sam 2: The mytrospectoamphimer.
Street Sam 1: Me too.
Street Sam 2: Well, this is a problem.
Street Sam 1: I'm dialing the Union Rep right now.
Street Sam 1 to Union Rep on comlink: Yeah, I'm here in the middle of a high security Aztechnology facility and there's a guy here from the Seatle 502 here to steal the same mytrospectoamphimer that I'm here to steal. Yeah. Yeah. You do that.
Street Sam 1: He says that he's going to straighten this out and we should just sit tight while he talks to our Johnsons.
Street Sam 2: You know, there are probably heavily armed guards on their way here right now.
Street Sam 1: That's alright. You do know about the new per-corpse billing rule for dead opposition?
Street Sam 2: That passed?
Street Sam 1: Yeah, they had the vote on it Tuesday.
Street Sam 2: Sweet.

Just call it ShadowUnion 4! SU4 for short.

I think part of the pay per head pricing is for game balance. Also it seems to me that the set-up described does not assume a set team, but individual talent that was assembled by the fixer based on Mr. J.'s needs. If it's a team, the fixer is going to generally set them up with runs that fit there team and Johnson's needs. The system works great if a player can't show up, or a PC died in the previous run, ext.

Awesome with a side of win sauce.

It's just a hunch, but I'm picking up some serious anti-union vibes here.