hi hi

To answer the original question, I think the "In Debt" flaw should be replaced with an edge called "Not in Debt," that a character must buy in order to be not in debt at character generation.

I'm struggling with the tendency towards major looting that my players seem to have. I think I'm going to try the following;

- The pay scale for runs will be significant
- The typical value of loot will be relatively low; except for slow-looting stuff like cyberware, or bulky vehicles and such
- Downtime expenses and fencing expenses will also be significant

All in all, making sure to complete the run, and only looting a few things when a great opportunity presents itself, should keep the tone of the game the way I like it. It should also make running more attractive than stealing cars.

As for the Why Run question: I like the SINless angle. Most runners are technically illegal aliens, to be deported, imprisoned or shot. Legal work is hard to come by. Eventually getting enough money to buy a SIN and retire in luxury should be a runner's dream. But they constantly get dragged back into the shadows by debts to the Mob, people who want "one last favor", old enemies who're not as dead as believed, young runners who want to make a name for themselves by killing the most famous team around, trouble in the neighborhood and only someone outside the law can deal with it, etc.

Instead of increasing the payout, I would suggest the following:

- let them get caught if they try to loot during a run
- If they dabble in organ legging or used cyber-/bioware, have tamanous or the police knock on their doors. Maybe afriendly ghoul hitsquad will wake them up a bit.
- Throw them into prison by the police that arrives while they loot stuff on the open street.
- Use corpsec reinforcements regulary, on a fixed response schedule (just having them magically pop up, whenever they loot is silly. They should be on a relistic response timer)
- have prices drop for their loot because of an excessive supply (thanks to the runners)
- have the "competition" show up. Arms dealers, organ leggers and smugglers are not particularly fond of "unregistered" competition. They might even work together to get rid of the "parvenus".
- Have them aquire the nescessary skills to properly salvage loot in the first place.
- narrow down the time windows during the adventure climax

Just to give a few hints. What you do in your group is your own choice, obviously.

i should point out that if the PCs are looting weapons, gear, corpses, etc, then odds are good that they are selling those things to the organisations that you are claiming would treat them as competition. ie, if a team is organlegging, odds are good they aren't competitors with tamanous; they're employees (albeit not direct employees).

additionally, there are plenty of times when looting is not going to take long. if the hacker has already broken into the system, he may as well copy a few interesting-looking files. if you've already infiltrated into the warehouse with a cargo vehicle that is going to be your getaway, you may as well load some cargo in. if you've already subverted the security network, you may as well record everything and sell information on that corp's defenses. and loot the weapons locker, if any. if you're already extracting a corp employee, you may as well grab anything that is reasonably valuable and light while you're at it.

the only reason not to is because you're being paid to be professional. and if you're getting next to nothing (ie the 1-3k nuyen per run) then you're not getting paid to be professional, in my opinion. the 5k is a little bit low imo (i would argue 5-10k is a more 'average' value; 20k per runner would be a fairly high paying run, but not unheard of... hundreds of thousands is likely to be incredibly rare, probably a once-in-a-lifetime event for most. and probably also Mr Johnson is planning on stabbing you in the back. a lot)

even at the 5-10k rate, i don't see it being enough to dissuade convenient looting, whether or not it makes them look "unprofessional".

that said, i do agree that common sense should be enforced; if someone is grabbing a stack of optical chips that's sitting next to the lab's computer and stuffing it into a wifi-inhibiting bag to be examined for valuable data later, no problem. on the other hand, if someone is taking time out of the run to break open a filing cabinet (or carrying a filing cabinet around) or going through all the security guard's lockers picking locks one at a time to steal their off-duty commlinks, that's another matter. but it doesn't take long to grab one or two things off a guard before security forces show up, either. but since we have no way of knowing which kind of looting your team was involved in, it's hard to make judgements on whether loose restrictions on the convenience of looting is the problem.

also, one thing D2F is actually right about is the relatively low value of most things they'll steal; when you apply all the modifiers to how much a fence is willing to pay for stuff, it winds up being a lot less than you might think unless you're grabbing some pretty decent stuff. that said, if you're only making 1-3k per run, even 300 nuyen becomes a pretty significant increase (especially if you're on the 1k end of that spectrum). if you're earning 7k on a run, then getting an extra 300 becomes a lot less impressive. if, by some chance, you actually are earning 20k on a run, then the 300 becomes even more insignificant, especially if you emphasise that carrying two dozen commlinks and handguns around is going to hinder their mobility (might be worth it for a 10-30% increase in pay, but not worth it for a less than 2% pay increase)

"Employees" working on their own. And who says Tamanous wants that much public attention atm? And how is your average weapons dealer going to sell those registered corpsec weapons? Why would he carry the risk? The list goes on. It is not reasonable to assume, that the established shadow economy welcomes "initiative" when it comes to their livelyhood. Also, supply and demand have an impact on price as well.




Doable, but risky. I would certainly allow it. But both, his employer as well as his victim will not be pleased by his "initiative". It makes for bad business and certainly stains the rep.



Same as above.



Keep in mind, that these action will draw additional enemies unto the runner (and his team). It only sounds feasible until the hit squads start knocking.



Actually, I rate survival instinct higher than the payment...



Based on the available official sources (read: CGL adventures), 5K is about the average per run. 10K is possible, but uncommon (not rare, though)
Also, keep in mind that 5,000¥ is a LOT of money.



The main deterrent should be the obvious risk involved in looting. If you, as a GM are too lenient to let them feel the consequences of their actions, then they are not to blame.



It's always a matter of how valuable the stuff was they took. If the grab a commlink or two or a pair of assault rifles, chances are neither the corp, nor the guards will even bother investigating. If the value becomes feasible (ranging in the several thousand Nuyen category, things change. A corp will most certainly not send a full hit squad after you, just for looting stuff worth fifteen grand. But do it repeatedly, or steal something worth a lot (say, a couple hundred thousand Nuyen) and your group will most likely face an untimely death by speeding .408 caliber bullet.



The volume of the stolen goods as well as the ability to carry them should always be considered by the GM.
Will character grab a valuable, small, private object when they get the chance to? Probably. Does this constitute a problem? Most likely not. I wouldn't even expect any consequences.

Stealing cyberware, high level paydata or valuable prototypes, WILL prompt a response.

Also, if looting becomes too much of a problem, consider biometric safeties for corp weapons, or personalizations (although it quickly becomes implausible when every corpsec runs around with a weapon with a personalized grip).

Consider the runners are doing a job that will pay them 3k. It is a simple infiltration job, grab the package and get out. If along the way, they put their hands on a vehicle (a cara costing 15k, for instance) fencing it would give 4.5k, if it is a 4-men team this would give each 1.1k giving a 30% profit over the initial payment. It is all a matter of economics and risk, if the runners are being paid good enough, they will only loot something if it is extremely expensive OR for personal close reasons. Like Jaid said, if they are being paid 10k already, earning 10% or less of the original payment by looting would be more rare.

That's what I have in mind, yes. I've played in a run where we were paid 10K to extract someone, but ended up hijacking a security helicopter and fencing it for about a million..

Since you don't want the game to be about stealing helicopters instead of extractions, you should treat both sides of the equation. Fencing shouldn't be too easy. And the payment for a typical run should be more than enough to be the lion's share of the profits.

why are they going to have this huge problem with you supplying them? legal weapon dealers won't come after you for selling illegal weapons; that's a different market, and they don't have the resources to do so anyways. illegal weapon dealers (or rather, the fences you sell to) will have ways of dealing with the weapon being registered. ultimately, that weapon is probably going to be purchased by the weapon dealers after being appropriately cleaned (if the PCs don't do it themselves, obviously they can expect less money) as part of the weapon dealer's stock.

also, if supply is higher, then they pay you less for the goods, in addition to (possibly) charging their customers less. if their expenses drop by 200 nuyen and their income drops by 200 nuyen, their net income remains the same. in fact, the percentage increases if that happens, because they invest 200 fewer nuyen to earn the same net income.



if the runners cared about the victim's feelings in the matter, they likely would not be breaking into the victim's facility and committing crimes that are most likely detrimental to the victim's financial well-being (and possibly detrimental in numerous other ways also). if the runners' employer cares, he should put in a no-looting clause, for which he should expect to pay a bit more.



right back at you.



for what? a few hundred nuyen worth of equipment? assuming they can even *find* the team, it probably isn't financially worth it to go after them unless they stole and also still have something expensive. if they weren't going to go after you for stealing their prototype when it was your main mission, they aren't going to go after you for stealing their prototype just because it wasn't your main mission. they're not psychic, you know.



this only applies when looting is going to get you killed. quite often, it does not carry any more risk to break into a corporate facility and loot something (provided some basic precautions are taken, like the wifi-inhibiting bag i mentioned) than it does to break into a corporate facility and commit any other crime there.



5k is not a lot of money to the average street sam who wants to upgrade anything. neither is 10k for that matter. and i don't see why 10k would be all that uncommon. additionally, that's a pretty small sample.



what obvious risk? precautionary measures are not excessively difficult to prevent it from being tracked.



so... several thousand nuyen is enough to make the corp hunt the team down? news flash: if the corp is paying the runner team 1,000 each (which you have indicated is the LOW end of your expected range of payouts) then odds are good that the objective of the run is worth a hell of a lot more to the target corp. so what you're saying is that EVERY run the team takes on, they can expect to get hunted down mercilessly and shot by corporate goon squads. now, if you're talking hundreds of thousands worth, maybe. i still rather suspect there are numerous runs that are worth that much anyways, but hey, if it's worth hundreds of thousands, that means you can afford to spend more money on your precautionary measures to avoid getting caught.

also, looting over time is largely irrelevant. unless the runners are dumb enough to hit the same facility half a dozen times leaving obvious signs that it's the same group, not an issue.



it might, depending on how hard the runners make it for the person. remember, stealing high level paydata or valuable prototypes is often the GOAL of many shadowruns. if the corporation won't hunt them down for doing it as the main goal, they also won't hunt them down for doing it on the side. there is, however, the problem of finding a buyer for these things; if the group doesn't have one, it may not be worth their time to loot it.



this is fine for weapons (actually, the biometric safeties is very reasonable; too bad it can likely be hacked, given a bit of downtime, and reset) but still leaves dozens of other things as being lootable. furthermore, while it decreases the value of weapons, it does not reduce it to zero. if the group feels they aren't getting enough money, they will still loot.

And while I would give your players a street cred point for hijacking the chopper, I would also make sure that whomever owned the chopper before would go after you, your girlfriend, your parents, your dog and your old friend from school ...

I have a question about the poll's first question. It's a yes or no question. How can there be an "other?" Is that the option for people who want to answer with a non sequitur? Like, instead of yes or no, I want to answer "up" or "happy birthday!"

It fits my answer (both):

A) In Debt should be available as a 0-BP quality that gives you money and a debt
B) In Debt should also be available as a BP quality that only gives BP, not a debt, but a debt to be repaid in favors (karma). And obviously, time spent on these favors isn't time spent on self-improvement, hence the karma loss.

I am not going to reply step by step on this one. Not because I don't want to address your points, but because it already turned into a massive wall of text, so I think it will be easier to communicate without dozens of quote chunks littering the page.

I would like to address a few things:

1) There is a difference between "looting" the objective of the run and looting for added payout. If you steal the datachip your Jhonson hired you for, the Corp you stole from will not be pissed at you. They know it's part of the business and they know your role in the situation was that of a henchman. They will be mad at your Jhonson and his/her employers.
Now, if you start to grab some extra paydata while you just happen to be in the system, you are breaking one of the unwritten rules of the "game". At this point it becomes personal for the corp. You can read the exact same things in "Mr Jhonson's Black Book", so you don't have to trust my word on it.

2) No one is going to hunt down your team for something worth a few hundred Nuyen. I said that before and it ould be preposterous to assume as much. Then again, we're not talking about a few hundred Nuyen here. If it was about 500 Nuyen more for the Job, we wouldn't even have this argument. The reason we DO have this argument is because some people here seem to think that 10K Nuyen are "peanuts" and that "no one would risk their life for peanuts". I have proven that to be inaccurate.

3) Average payment per run: I don't care what kind of emotional justification you try to pull out of your hat. I don't care whether your players want more money. I don't care whether your players think their character should resort to looting. The mere fact they even consider 5K a run insufficient is proof enough that they have no concept of money. That they have no concept of the financial situation in the Shadowrun Universe.
All you need to do is to ask yourself: How much money do YOU (the player) earn each month right now? Just compare the two numbers...
And if that is not enough info for you, let's have a look at the numbers for Seattle (only listng districts with <70% corporate affiliation):

Everett: 58,500¥ average annual income
Renton: 90,000¥ average annual income
Auburn: 32,000¥ average annual income
Fort Lewis: 30,000¥ average annual income
Redmond: 6,600¥ average annual income
Pyuallup: 6,200¥ average annual income
Council Island: 65,000¥ average annual income

Looking at those numbers, how could you possibly justify a 10K+ payout as "normal"? There will be plenty of capable runners in Redmond and Pyuallup that will do the Job for half the price, if you don't want to take it.

4) Fencing stuff without the proper permissions from the criminal underworld is a surefire way to be put out of business. permanently. Tamanous won't be too thrilled if you start selling organs and "used" bio- and cyberware, even if you sell it to them. The reason is simple: publicity. If your group starts to make Jack the Ripper look bad, then that gets attention. Police forces cannot ignore mass murder. Especially if it start to carry the signs of a serial killer. Tamanous would not be pleased by the additional "attention" they would get as a sideeffect of your group's actions.
Also, fencing hot goods is not only a matter of money. You mentioned weapons dealers. The problem is not so much "cleaning" the guns, it's the baggage they carry with them. The datatrail that then leads to the dealer and the sudden change in health risk assessment to the worse that comes with it.

I like your post, you have interesting and good ideas. Just a few notes..




I like the idea of a "game" with unwritten rules, but they differ from GM to GM and city to city. That said, unwritten rules make sense; real societies often have customs that aren't strictly rational or up to date.



I'm not sure there are plenty of capable runners; 400BP does put people above the norm. Also, 10K+ is likely before expenses; special ammo, weapons, upgrades are all expensive.

Another factor is frequency of jobs; this is again GM-dependent. It suits my group to have new missions start on the actual calendar date +52 years. It generally means that there will be 1-2 months of downtime between missions, which eats into the lifestyle costs. An income of 10K+ per run is required to stay comfortably in a low lifestyle, maybe even a middle lifestyle.

I like it when PCs can afford some vices; like living like kings between missions, funding charities, or indulging in expensive addictions.

There's also an aspect of danger money; the bigger the potential risks of getting caught, and the severity of the consequences, must be paid for. Life-threatening jobs pay a lot better than safe office jobs. The exceptions are non-union unarmed dangerous jobs and upper management.




As for something people here addressed, why not keep the job in-house to cut down on costs? Deniable assets. If it goes wrong, you don't want to get sued in the corporate court. If it goes right, it's still better if it's deniable you had anything to do with it. That extra deniability is worth money.

I'm having trouble finding this in my copy. Got a page?

Don't have it as a pdf, so I'd have to go through the paperback version. I'll post a quote when I am back in germany.

1) it's *never* personal with a corporation. coporations don't get personal. they don't care about revenge, they care about profit. and given the only way they're likely to know you swiped extra data if you were reasonably careful is to find it for sale, and they have no way of knowing if it was even you (remember, you use pseudonyms and work through multiple layers of people for a reason), and the person you sold to has a vested interest in not telling on you, odds are good that they will never find out who did it with any degree of certainty (it could be a leak in their own company after all) and that even if they do, they aren't going to send good money after bad, because it's a corporation. i suppose if you steal from the mafia, that changes things. and again, you haven't resolved to my satisfaction: how the hell do they know it wasn't the objective? does your mr johnson call ahead and let them know he's sending a team to come by and pick up their super-secret prototype and nothing else?

2) then we're agreed. looting is not going to bring down the wrath of god upon you. so why do you have these wall of text posts about how looting is going to bring the wrath of god down upon the characters, again? i will repeat: the crappier you pay the team, the more incentive they have to loot. selling looted gear for 500 nuyen is a HUGE pay increase on a 1k nuyen run. it is pretty unimpressive on a 5k run. it is quite lackluster in a 10k run. if you don't want the runners to stop to loot 500 nuyen worth of random crap that's going to encumber them, then by simply putting runs into the 5-10k region of payouts, you have solved the problem.

3) that's nice. guess what: i don't have "i need to get an upgrade to my 'ware so that i'm less likely to die" expense. or an "oh crap, i just lost a couple of drones worth 5,000 nuyen each" expense (and 5k nuyen apiece is not a lot to spend on drones, either). or an "i'm going to be in a hospital for the next few weeks because i got shot on the job and i can't use my health insurance because they'll report it to the cops and the job in question was illegal" expense.

4) so let's get this straight: your opinion is that there are multiple types of criminals whose job it is to purchase stolen or otherwise illegally acquired goods (or information, or whatever), but that anyone who sells goods (or information, or whatever) to these people are basically signing their own death sentence? because that's what it sounds like you're saying. also, the nonsense about drawing attention to tamanous with your actions: how do you figure that? i mean, are we assuming the runners walk down the street in broad daylight and knock on the door at a public hospital and start shouting "hey, i'm looking for tamanous so i can sell the organs of this guy i just killed!" or something? because (and apparently this must sound crazy to you) i would have assumed that it involved an unmarked van pulling up to an unmarked building (possibly/probably a shadow clinic) and dropping off the bodies sometime when it's dark, and the locals know better than to pay any attention (and/or are part of the operation). unless you have a habit of driving down the street advertising that you have corpses for sale, i don't see how you'd be particularly drawing attention to them.

I'm going to pipe up on point 2:

Lifestyle costs take a huge chunk of change right out of the pocket. My current character spends 6000/mo. staying alive above and beyond what he's going to need for a run (which, for him, is going to be remarkably little: I don't plan on being shot, I don't use a gun, grenades, or other expendables* at current).

*Infiltration is the game, being seen and shot means I did something wrong. I will however note that even my gunbunnies are cautious and use cover and spend dodge actions: getting shot is bad.

Letting punks steal your goods without retaliation is bad for profit. It invites more punks to try to pull the same stunt on you.



You solved a "problem" that doesn't really exist. Your "problem" is player greed, plain and simple. And your "solution" is simply unrealistic for the SR universe. I Provided you with numbers and official sources and all YOU got was "well, my players are greedy f***s". That's not an argument, that's a character flaw.



Better planning next time and the team has less expenses. I see no reason why a GM should reward player incompetence.



Are strawmen arguments the best you can do? This is really getting tiresome. I was not talking about people being PAID to do that kind of stuff, but about those who it WITHOUT PERMISSION. I don't know how I can make this any clearer for you.

Seriously, if you don't have an actual argument, why are you even still babbling?



You DO realize that an active police investigation force, looking into mass murder and alleged ties to organ legging could POSSIBLY interfere with Tamanous activities, do you? I mean that "wall of ignorance" move is cute for a while, but I think you used the cute factor up and are now nearing annoying.

What police investigation? This is a dystopia we're talking about. Cops beat people up for money, and if it doesn't lead anywhere they beat up some more people because they can.

Hell, the cops in ShadowRun don't "investigate" anything. If they see criminals, they'll pursue and shoot, but they have no real obligation to track them down later. Especially when they're being paid on both sides of the fence: you really going to snoop around one client's secret files so you can catch some street punks for another client? I'm betting the first client wouldn't like that very much.

Lone Star is not a public service. They're a PAID, HIRED, VIGILANTE corporation. And a AAA corp as well, IIRC.

Well, unless it is. For example, if you just ruined the pet project of someone with enough pull to enact revenge. Corporation policy isn't to get personal, but corporations are run by people, and they do wacky things sometimes.




Probably Tamanous has a very specific plan on how to acquire their stuff without going too far. They're good at that; they know what they can and can't do. What they do not want is a) competition, or b) people who are so helpful they make you look bad, or c) people who mess with your elaborate setup.




However, sometimes expensive expendables are necessary; to fight weird critters and big things. To maintain safe houses. To bribe people.





Well, your numbers weren't that convincing; you ignored several reasons why higher payout makes sense (rare levels of skill, danger money, discretion money, long intervals between jobs money, job expenses...)



We don't want to play Accountant: the Budget Approval Process here. When you hire mercenaries to break the law for you, brave cutting edge security, and be discreet about it, you expect it to be expensive.






Well, that's being just a bit over the top and unrealistic about the dystopia. Tamanous prospers because it intimidates the police, but also because it lies low and is very secretive. In all the fluff, no one seems to know who really runs it; most AAA corporations are more transparent about their black projects than Tamanous.

Keeping the masses quiet is best done by at least appearing to be doing a good job. The pretense of actually serving the public is very effective, but it requires visible action against visible enemies of the public. (You can be bribed for ineffective action, but it's gotta be pubic.)



AA actually. And companies need to be seen to do their job to keep their contract; something Seattle 2072 shows..

Your resume does not impress me, also been playing since Shadowrun came out.. big deal...

First... I agree... the In Debt Quality is just fine, no matter what level of play you aspire to...

Second... the average Karma Award for the table I play at is now at 200+ Karma... The Longest surviving character has 280+, while I am at 240 or so as well as the mage... the newest members are at 180 or so... Our average run nets us between 15 and 30,000 Nuyen each (the 800,000 Nuyen run we completed was a VP Corporate Extraction that netted the individuals involved 105,000 Nuyen each, which quickly disappeared... we still sometimes have problems paying our Upkeep from time to time), this run we are currently pursuing (the BIG one) has been going on for almost a year now in game (and out of game), and may still result in all of our deaths, as we are a ways from acquiring all of the equipment that we are going to need to infiltrate the Zero Zone in which the target resides (it is another Extraction), and the chances of us getting out alive are slim to none (known defenses are Ringu and Protective Degradation countermeasures, Ottomo Jarheads, and other things), but still we pursue it... Why? because it is the big payout; it may be another year before we even get close, or like I have said earlier... we all die.. we are not asking for the sky here, and we are not playing in a Delta Grade level game as you so eloquently presume... we have no illusions as to the lethality of what we are going up against, and the amount of money being offerred raises a LOT of red flags, chief among them is whether or not we will even survive the run... but sometimes, you just have to roll the dice and hope for the best... otherwise you are just going to be an average runner barely scraping by, and never attaining your dreams... I know which way I am going to go... how about you?

By the Way, I Never said it was a corp that hired us did I? In fact, it isn't...

As for "average" payouts, Your estimates are ludicrous... they may be what you have come to expect (or give out) at your table (and may even be what is used in some published material over the last 20 years), but once you reach a certain level of reputation, you can beging to start naming your own price (within reason, of course, after all, you have a reputation that says your are a highly competent team), and a run per month netting you the cost of your upkeep expenses and some extra for additional purchases, is not an unheard of minimal price negotiation... if you choose to live in the dumps, that is your choice... some 'runners have higher aspirations than living a low lifestyle... Many others here on Dumpshock have said pretty much the same thing... anything less than 5,000-10,000 per runner per run is lowballing, and if/when you can dmeand (or get payed) more then you take it...

Anyway...

Keep the Faith

Do you even understand what a Dystopian World is D2F?

From your positions over the last few posts you have made, it does not seem that you do... pretty sad, since you claim that you have been playing since '89...

Oh Well...

Keep the Faith

alright, let's address a few points: they aren't punks. odds are good, they are at least as skilled as some of your best teams (unless you're a AAA, and even then they're probably better than the vast majority of your teams). if you send anything less then your best covert ops teams after them, your goons will probably die. and either way, you just wasted even more money, because now your expensive team has to be transported to the location, spend some money and resources finding the team, and then they're risking losing one of their own team (which is not a readily replaceable commodity) to even have a chance to kill the runners (who may get lucky and at least some of them escape). oh, and did i mention that all those big guns can't be used, because unless the runners are stupid enough to be living in your corporate property (and even then only if you have extraterratoriality, which many corps don't), you have no legal authority to send out an army of goons to kill the troops. then, after risking a major PR disaster and the lives of some of your most elite special forces, what do you get from it? did it gain you any money? where's the profit? you think people are going leave you alone just because you killed one group? bullcrap. MCT has that kind of policy, and they still have runs against them. punishing people for getting caught means that they have motivation not to get caught, not that they have motivation to not run against you. also, when you go to hire people, you find out that there's no competent talent out there because some dumbass (go look in a mirror) just blew a few hundred grand murdering everyone competent. now you have to hire talent from out of town, and you have to be more involved or pay more because they're in unfamiliar territory. and then, next week, they'll be taking a run against you anyways, and you'll have to kill them too. what a brilliant plan.

and players being greedy isn't a problem. maybe you hadn't noticed, but these are shadowrunners, AKA people who will shoot you right in the face for money. greedy is not out of character for them. even the ones with 'altruistic' motives need resources to accomplish their goals. if they swipe an extra 500 nuyen worth of loot, that's an extra 500 nuyen towards whatever they want to do. and again, if they're earning 1-3k per run (or even 5k per run) 500 nuyen is a pretty significant increase.

and it's not about player incompetence. one bad roll is all it takes to lose those drones. it might not even be that player's fault; if the street sam triggers an alarm while jumping the fence, and you have to sacrifice two combat drones to cover your escape, that's not player incompetence, especially if they had done the legwork and just got bad information from a contact. there's all kinds of ways bad luck can cost you that kind of gear. or do you just have them tell you what they do, and then they either succeed flawlessly or die based on your personal opinion of what happens when you GM?

and, i'm going to try this again: read this slowly, and maybe you'll get the point this time: what does a fence do if NOT buying stolen goods from criminals? if nobody is allowed to sell stuff to these fences, then who the hell are they buying from? does Santa Claus show up once a year on december 25 to deliver a year's worth of stolen goods or something? if fences exist and are buying stolen goods from criminals, then why the hell is it that if the players (who are playing characters who are criminals) want to sell something to a fence (who, remember, exists in the shadows for the purpose of buying and selling stolen goods ) they are suddenly going to get murdered by a syndicate? do the syndicates have a special "player character sense" that triggers whenever they try to fence some loot?

and finally, who said mass murder? what was that you said about straw man arguments a little earlier? might wanna try taking your own advice. if the runners are bringing hundreds of corpses (or really, more than 1-2 per run) then you have bigger problems than the players wanting to loot. but if they're grabbing a corpse, when the opportunity arises (which is likely not every run) and selling it, then unless they're being a complete dumbass about it and announcing to the world that they're organlegging, it is unlikely anyone will find out. particularly if they choose their targets carefully, and even more particularly if they go out to the Z-zones to do so (which is where the police do not go, and therefore are going to have a hard time investigating)

Maybe you should also sheck what it says about payment in page 21.
As it says that pay should be scaled to difficulty of the job, so if its a "street level" campaing and most dangerous think runners face are gangers and overweight security guards they probaply shouldn't earn 10-20k . But if its what most here consider standart camppaing with the more dangerous corp sec opposition the pay scale should fit the game style, otherwise runner wont be able to afford hospital bills and ammo, let alone get ugrades.

*accidental double post*

I can kill ANY runner team for less than 50K in expenses. No army required. No goons required. And no losses, either. I would need a max of 3 corporate employees:

Option 1: Have a sniper kill them. A thrat you are not aware of is a threat that gets you killed. A .408 caliber bullet from a mile away will kill even your hardiest Troll before he even heard the shot.

Option 2: Bombs. Be them car bombs or rigged doors, explosives can (and will) kill a runner team quite efficiently. Just have a clean-up team ready.

Option 3: My favorite: A C-D Dalations drone with a Mitsubishi Yakusoku MRL, loaded with 8 Inferno Missiles, tagging the team from a mile above, while they are soundly asleep... Good night, sweet prince.

All of the above and especially option 3 send the proper message to any would-be punk trying to pull the same stunt (as far as the corp is concerned, you ARE punks at this point, since you acted unprofessinally)



Actually, most shadowrunners will not resort to lethal force unless absolutely nescesary. It's bad for your rep and you depend on your rep for your livelyhood.



If there was no contingency plan other than sacrificing the drones, then it is their own fault for losing them. Of course things can and WILL go wrong during a run. But since we all know that beforehand, it's common sense to factor that into the preparations. "Hope for the best, prepare for the worst" is not just a special forces motto during planning.



And I will try to tell YOU again where the problem comes in, so maybe, just maybe you try reading this time instead of literary interpretation:

The problem does not arise when you occasionaly fence stolen good, but when you become a "regular pipeline" for stolen goods. Espcially stolen goods with baggage. If you can't grasp that concept, I'm at a loss.



Since that comment refers to the Tamanous connection and as such to "used" cyberware and bioware, it IS mass murder. Even with a pattern (they always cut out the 'ware). Of course I wasn't talking about mass murder in regards to fencing paydata or stolen weapons/vehicles, then again, you'd know that if you had actualy bothered READING what I wrote.



Then you're just moving it from mass murder to serial killer. Not much of a change there as far as police reaction is concerned. They HAVE to investigate that, otherwise they risk losing their contract (see above).



So, I list you offical numbers and your counter-argument is what it should NOT be?

We've read long topics about this in the past; while there are various reasons, it turns out most PC runners use a lot of it.



Hope for the best, budget for the worst. Not factoring replacement costs into your rates would be.. unprofessional.



All this talk about keeping wages low because corps want to have it on the cheap kind of ignores some economic logic;

- Prices arise based on what buyers can afford and what it costs to produce something. If those two areas overlap, market forces will result in a price based on quantitative supply and demand. If it's too expensive to Run, expect professional crews to disappear. If runner wages are too high, only AAA corps can afford them (which is, to AAA minds, not even necessarily bad).
- The cheapest provider is rarely the best-quality provider. Professional Johnsons know this, and are wary of cheap wannabes from Puyallup. The "cost" in of a failed run, in terms of lost opportunity and warning to the target, as well as judicial reprisal, justify hiring professionals.

Number 1 rules for every corporation (including LS and KE): Image is everything!
It does not matter how much police work they actually do, as long as it LOOKS like they are keeping the peace. Serial Killers and mass murder are bad news. They make the people feel insecure. Which can impact the re-election of their government representatives. When the government representatives learn tat their re-election is endangered by the inactivity of their security contractor, they will hand out the policing license to one of the shitload of competitors.
Since neither KE, LS or ES would like that to happen, they are forced to become active in such matters or risk losing their (rather lucrative) contract.




1) The "several reasons" I "ignored" are personal in nature and of no concern to the employer.
2) I provided you with official numbers (from official CGL ressources) as well as with real-life saaries for a special forces lieutenant, on duty in an active combat zone. You "don't find those convincing"? So far, I have provided facts, whereas my "oponents" provided emotional justifications. And you truly wonder why I dismiss them?
3) If 5K¥ a run don't get you through the month with only 2 runs, have 4 runs a month. It would still make more sense within the realm of the SR universe than simply handing out unreasonable payment.




As have a whole truckload of others. It was never meant to impress, merely to illustrate. If you read carefully, you will find that I didn't use it as the basis for an argument, either.



You may negotiate, but no corp NEEDS you. They can always just grab a similarily competent team for less money and they will. And then there are also in-house assets.

Would I keep the payout at 5-10K¥ for a 200 Karma team? No, I wouldn't. Would I provide riskier runs for such a group? Hell yeah. Risk vs. Reward.
I already listed runs with a higher payout (much higher sometimes), even from officially published sources.
But this thread is about the "In Debt" quality and a to whether it is balanced, so naturally the perspective we are looking at here are fresh teams, not table groups that have a 2+ year history. Go back to the beginning of this argument and you will realize that my entire reasoning is in defense of this quality.
Your (plural) attempt to refute me in that regard was based on "but my players want more moneyyyyyyy!" so far and little else. I, on the other hand, have provided official numbers out of SR products. I have provided real-life numbers for an equivalent salary. I have provided plausible reasoning as to why looting is not in the best interest of the runner team as well as an economic reason for corps not to go beyond the estimated average.

And the rebutals to that? "Waaaahhhhh, but I want more moneyyyy! I spen d so much, I need moreeeee!" Quite frankly, this is getting ridiculous.
Will Prime Runners work for 5K a head? Probably not. Will prime runners get tasked with delivery jobs, mid-sec extractions or mid-sec bodyguard jobs? Certainly not.

Higher risk, higher payout. At the same time, Corps also DO have their in-house staff. hell, the Red Samurai are even LISTED in the 4thED core rulebook. So the higher profile jobs need to be evaluated on the basis of their need for deniability and as to whether that deniability is worth the extra cost.
Is it reasonable to offer 25K a head for a prime runner team with 400+ karma develoment on their backs? Sure. Is such a team relevant to the discussion about the "In Debt" quality? Certainly not.

If a fresh runner team has expenses beyond the 10K range per month, either their GM does not know what he's doing or they (or both). In either case that still bears no impact on the quality in question. Or has everyone forgotten what the TOPIC of this thread actually is?





I do, but your view on it seems heavily twisted. A Dystopia is an anti-Utopia. In Shadowrun it takes the form of extreme social and economic darwinism. The average joe, however, is happy. He is happy because he lives under the illusion of a "brave new world". He lives in what he perceives as security, with clean streets and houses, a safe job, daycare for his family... He is HAPPY. And the corps and the governemnt in SR do what they can to maintain that illusion, because it keep the "plebs" content, malleable, easy to influence.

The originalSyndicate Wars intro provides a great mood theme for this kind of setting.



And whose fault would that be?





You don't decide your budget. Your employer does. If you plan with more than he is willing to offer, you will not be pleaed with the outcome.




1: Only the ones with bad budgeting disappear. The one wasting too muc ressources on their jobs. Thos with insufficient planning or bad planning. The successful ones not only shine with mission success rates but with endurance as well, financial as well as physical. There is a reason a lot of ex-runners end up as fixers. You need to business savvy to endure the shadows.
Also, you completely ignore the job availability. Most shadowrunners don't run the shadows because they like the payout. They do it because they have no other options. They have no other jobs to turn to.

2: That's where reputation comes in. And that's why fresh teams won't get the high payout missions. And that's why being professional is so important and looting so detrimental.

Salaries in parts of Seattle are a nice perspective, but as for CGL estimates of how much a run pays.. those numbers come across as rather arbitrarily chosen. Treating them as gospel that requires no justification won't convince me.




Either jobs are plentiful, and you can choose to do more of them, or they're rare and you have to loot to get by. Which one is it?



a) Keeping elite operatives around is expensive; corps likely don't have enough on hand to to all their work, especially if multiple jobs happen to be at the same time in the year.

b) Deniable assets; you can't afford in-house assets to be captured on another corporation's territory.



Could you cut down on the ad-hominem?



You make it sound like you expect a run to go smooth all the time, with no hospital bills, safe house bills, drone repair/replacement bills and no ammo bills. None of these make you stronger; they're cost of business. You have include the mean cost of these into your price for a run, hoping you don't get a run of bad luck.

Running is high-risk business; things can go sour and expensive real fast, even for people who make no mistakes. Bad luck, someone in the wrong place at the wrong time can cause massively expensive problems. That means you want to add a Luck Insurance item to the bill.

A Johnson who only hires runners that don't take this in account, isn't hiring professionals; he's hiring hopefuls.







Like I argue above, you underestimate the price of running. Runners who work for sub-necessary wages aren't there to stay.



If you want professionals, you have to pay them like professionals. If desperadoes are good enough, that's cheaper. But expect looting.

Nothing will convince you. What I did was to look at the world and what payment would be reasonable. For various reasonans and I have presented them all in length. But to list a few:

-A runner getting paid 500,000¥ a run will no longer have to work. Ever. (yes that number is absurd but some people here have thrown around numbers as large as several million nuyen for a run)
- Most Runners in SR lore live a low to medium lifestyle. If runs would pay an average of 10K per run, two runs a month, that situation would be absurd.
- Competition is plentiful in the Shadows (particularly in Seattle). That allows the Jhonson to chose which team to hire.
- A Ranking officer in one of the single most dangerous legal jobs the entire world of SR has to offer earns a YEARLY salary of approximately 40,000-50,000¥. (34,800.-€ equivalent). So far the argumentation has been that getting paid almost TRIPLE that amount is somehow inadequate for pretty much the same job in a less hostile environment.




a) Correct. Otherwise you might find yourself in a lack of jobs.
b) Deniability is your only true asset as a SR team. In gear as well as in Training you will most likely be inferior to Corporate Black Ops teams. How much that deniability is WORTH is what you get paid (at most). Of course that heavily depends on several factors, but for your average run, it's not going to be astronomical.




It's not ad-hominem. The entire attempted rebuttals so far have been purely subjective and emotional. Not a single one of the was based on a ratinal fact other than "otherwise my players won't like it" or "my players have too much expenses". Neither of which is a valid argument in this context as they are their own fault.
I used creative license to put them into analogies (which is what you may have perceived as an ad-hominem) but since I didn't use these analogies as a rebuttal, it can by definition not be an ad-hominem fallacy. For it to be one, there would need to be valid arguments for me to counter in the first place.




No run was a proper run until your Jhonson screwed you at least twice. Of course no run will go smooth. That's why, in your contingency planning, you need to factor that in. If you get shot up that bad on a regular basis (especially with the new armor rules in SR4), you're doing it wrong. If you need to waste ressources and ammo that much, you're doing it wrong. You cannot expect the economy to pay you more, to compensate for your own faults...



That is correct. And every once in a whie, shit will hit the fan and despite even the best planning you will face a net loss. Shit happens. The trick to minimize these situations down to a net gain as opposed to a net loss, over the course of your career. Those are the kind of teams Jhonsons hire for their higher profile work.



Runners who spend more than the economy is willing to carry, neither.




You need to earn that title, before you can cash in on it.


On a more personal sidenote: If I was playing a Rigger and the Sam would recommend to sacrifice my 25K¥ drone to get away safely, I would tell him exactly this:

"Sorry Chummer, but that Drone is worth more than your life."

Don't exaggerate or turn arguments I never used against me. Most people are arguing that 5K is low, while 20K is a lot.



Your "twice a month" is a big assumption that you use to justify your figures. If you get a run only every other month, then your figures make no sense.

Since the time between runs is purely arbitrary up to the GM, the pay scale is rather difficult to determine. I'd say that breaks between runs make sense though; time to lay low, let heat die down, heal up, repair stuff, train, research possible targets, establish new safe houses and SINs, practice escape routes, wait for hard-to-get gear etc.

Finally, previously nearly all runners were SINless, and without a SIN, living a superior lifestyle was problematic. They've rather glossed over the whole SINless thing in SR4 though.



What is the maximum corp budget for a job? As long as it's cheaper than the legal alternative. So a prototype worth 500K is worth hiring people for as long as they cost less than 500K. Expecting it to cost only 50K is surreal; if that happens regularly, then Rival Corp Inc. is doing a bad job on their security, and will likely go out of business soon. Because a 900% return on investment is pretty special.

Certainly, corporations try to get their shadow work done on the cheap, but if it can be done for 50K, you better hire people for 100K to make sure Corp C doesn't get there first.

So what is deniability worth? Well, the CC can dish out pretty harsh penalties. After all, these were intended to prevent open warfare (which is what using in-house assets and getting caught amounts to.) The penalties are meant to intimidate even AAA corporations. It's certainly worth the rather meager fees of shadowrunners.




You expect perfect result runners, since they can't afford mistakes in your estimation. And then you turn around and say there's a hundred others who will do the job.

Part of the expense can be in making sure the job goes right. The price of failure is high; you generally can't retry an extraction, and they'll always be on their guard next time.




And the only way to keep your career a net profit, is to make profit on standard runs, as well as save up for bad luck insurance; which means a run will have to pay above subsistence levels.




Professional runners need to invest in making a good name for themselves, yes. But if you invest without any returns, you're not a good businessman. If Johnson doesn't want looting, he'll have to pay for that. This is not charity.



Gosh, and you call that professional? I'd say that a good, loyal street sam is worth a lot more than a 25K drone.

I would too. I mean, he's probably got a good 150K worth of cyberware in him. Even dead he's worth more than the drone.

Not to mention that the drone has a Reaction of 3, Agility of 3, and "Firearms" of 3 (upgrading those numbers gets expensive fast) making its dicepool to hitting stuff 6 and dodging of 3. Even my "I can't believe I spent 60 points to be a drake" was better than that (14 and 4 (7 w/ dodge), respectively).

Last reply before I head out to the party.



You was in plural, but I agree, I didn not communicate that very well. My apologies.




How many times do I have to explain that external arguments (read: what the players and gamemasters want) have no impact on the reasonability and rationality of a statement related to the continuity of the SR universe?

For the character, Running is his Job. His income. His livelyhood. If he needs money, he tries to get a job. If he doesn't get enough jobs to pay his rent, that's life. It's called unemployment.
Tell me something: if you went to a temp agency and told them I hve monthly expenses of 2,000 USD but I can only work once every 2 months, so you'd have to pay me 4,000 USD each time I work, what do you think their reaction would be towards that business proposal?

Just because your GM decides that you only get a job every 2 months does not qualify as an argument that it shouldl pay more. You should rather talk to your GM to be more reasonable and offer jobs more often than every other month. Your gaming group doesn't have to stay in sync with real time commitments. Actually, it never does. Or are you actually waiting for nightfall, before you continue with your infiltration rolls? Often times, during a single gaming sessions, multiple days wil pass. That's nothing to worry about. But it's a perfect excemple of why you cannot use real-life time restrictions as a bearing as to how often the runners get a job.

Last but not least in that regard, you STILL cannot get a lifestyle above squatter without a SIN. Does that keep runnners from getting a fake SIN? Hell no. Nothing changed in that regard in any of the editions. Only now, there is an actual ruling for it.





If a corp pays you 500K for an item worth 500,000 then they just made a net loss. That's retarded and I am pretty sure you can agre with that. The copr still has expenses. The Jhonson needs to get paid. Often times the corp provides initial intel, which also costs ressources (read: money). Then there may be additional gear required to complete the mission which has to be paid as well.
And last but not least, the corp also aims to get a profit out of it and since SR IS a dystopia, they will make sure that the lion's share will be theirs, not the team's.
Of course it is impossible to throw out general numbers here, but if the target is worth 500,000¥ it is pretty likely the corp won't pay you more than let's say 50,000¥ for the job, so they can get enough profit out of it.

Now, if the target was worth several million Nuyen to the corp, the payout could be nicer. But usually such targets are better secured and the Jhonson will most likely not use a Team with a low to no rep for such a mission. Remember, we are still talking about the "In Debt" Quality here.



No, you make sure your own intel department gets better funding, so the target ends up on your radar first.



The likelihood for the CC to hand out punishment depends heavily on the potential financial loss involved. Which directly reflects in your payment, so the CC reaction is hardly a reasonable argument here, while we are still talking about runs below the 100K payout threshold. Now as to whether the other Corp will react is a completely different matter of course.




And that's exactly the Jhonson's argument. More importantly it is the (in-the-know-)shareholder argument.



And that reflects positively on your reputation, which will allow you to gain access to higher profile missions. Look at it as an investment, if you will.





The 5-10K¥ I used (5K regular, up to 10K) per run are FAR above subsistence. If you spend more than that per month, you need to rethink your startegies. Now, will it make you a rich MoFo al decked out in deltaware? Certainly not.




Wrong. It's not the Jhonson's job to get you to be professionals. It's yours to be some.




Since it's IC chat, you don't need to take it literal and since a 25K Drone is about the average annual gross income of your corporate wageslave, it IS worth more than the lives of some. Especially, if the Rigger's future income depends on it (even only partially). The Sam should understand that since he wouldn't consider throwing his cyberarm to the wolves, either. Neither would the Decker throw away his Commlink.

That little IC talk should illustrate to you that Runners won't sacrifice their livelyhood to get our of a situation. They use whatever else they have as ressources to get out of there.

That all said: I'm off to the party. Happy New Year!

Ninja Edit: It is neither my intention nor my right to tel you how you should pay your runners as a GM. If your group has fun blowing shit up or in general add new toys on a regular basis, more power to them. If the campaigns you design as a GM require a higher payout to remain financially feasible for the team, increase the payout. If you think 2M¥ for a run sounds reasounable to you, go for it.

My entire argument is about what is "reasonable" or "realistic" in regards to the SR universe. If that coincides wit how you want to play, awesome. If not, still great; you'll just have to change the payouts.

You can NOT, however argue that "In Debt" is too cheap, or overpowred, if you use your own overinflated payouts as a basis against a quality that is clearly balanced against a 5-10K payout. That is my entrie argument and I am at a loss why we are still arguing.

Except your only one here talking about Deltaware, with the less then 5k per noone can ever affort even to ugrade anytingh to alphaware.

Ands its funny when you talk about emotional arguments, when i parapharesed what the jonsons black book has to say about payments and it supports my side of this argument a whole lot more then your side.
So are you saying that only valid book quotes are ones used by you or can the rest of us quote the books too.

I gave a list of possible IC reasons not to run every other week. Also, the value given in canon that you quote is just as arbitrary as the time between runs. ([#Missions per Month] * [Mission Payoff - Expenses]) = Lifestyle is what you have to make just to stay even. Anything above that is actual character advancement. If you're not getting paid that, you're not being paid enough to stay in a job.



Well, if your skills are as amazing as a typical PC, they'd welcome you with open arms. Remember that skill ratings of 4 are way above average for professionals!



Could you point me to those rules? Sounds interesting, I hadn't found those yet.




Those numbers are unbelievable. Corporations want sure profits, not high-stakes gambling. Many things can go wrong if you're too greedy;
- Competitor Corp hires a better team for 100K and steals the prototype; possibly killing the protagonist team if necessary.
- C-Corp bribes the protagonist team for 300K, and essentially gets 200K profits without a hassle
- Target Corporation has security that makes it hard enough that 50K won't be enough to recoup expenses, and the protagonists know it; they'll turn down the job. (And you can often buy security that costs less to install than to defeat. For a high-value prototype, they certainly will.)



CC punishments were designed by corporations to frighten corporations; the CC is likely to most effective judicial institution. If you get fined, they will make sure the fine will be far more than the profits to be realized from illegal actions that can be tied to you. These aren't politicians you can easily bribe.





I thought we were arguing setting logic, not partisan logic here? sure, Mr. Johnson will argue for a lower fee, and runners for even higher. But with intelligent and able negotiators, you expect actual prices to reflect realistic business practices from both sides, not only the corporations.




Investment is only worth it if the returns are good enough. If the corporations always pay too little, only stupid people take jobs.

I can appreciate treating unproven runners like this, but anyone with 400BP of assets per person is a step above that. They know what they're worth, and will only "invest" in underpaying missions if the follow-up is really worth it.





If he doesn't want to pay for it, he doesn't get it. That's being a professional businessman.




Who said anything about IC?

I don't get how you consider looting unprofessional, and think it's good business practice to alienate an elite hypertech killing machine worth FAR more money than that. Particularly if you depend on him to guard your back.

I'd just remind him he owes me his life, and charge the drone to the mission expenses. Drones are metal to be replaced; people who might kill you in your sleep or stab you in the back are to be kept happy.

I really wouldn't want a reputation for abandoning teammates. That'd be really bad for business.





There you've done it again. I argued that 5K is rather low, while 20K is high. And you turn it into 2 million!

You keep saying this a lot... But let me rebut with a few concepts that appear to have slipped your mind...

1. That 500,000 nuyen can disappear in a blink of the eye when you factor in Cyberware/Bioware upgrades/repairs, additional vcehicles or Drones, etc... Your equipment costs in Shadowrun are a factor that you are apparently not taking into account... especially when a single drone can cost you well over a Hundred Thousand Nuyen (depending upon your needs)..

2. Maybe, and Maybe not... a good number of 'Runners might live Low-Medium Lifestyles (I would say that not all Canon Characters live that way, your are making assumptions)... but then there are the ones that DON'T live such lifestyles... your arbitrary limiter that everyone wants to stay there is ludicrous...

3. Yes... Competition is Brutal... but then there are other factors that come into play here... Professionalism, Results, and exactly what the needs are for an actual run... yes... New 'Runners may be dong relatively easy things... but when the Corp needs a Professional Team for a Denaible run against their competitors that requires PROFESSIONALS and not wannabe's, they are going to eliminate a good number of teams from their prospective lists right off the bat, so the competition may only come down to a couple of teams or so... At least in a lot of circumstances (and when there are only a few options it becomes a 'Runners market, not a Johnson's Market)... Teams do specialize, and you would not hire a hacker team for a public lesson that requires a lot of collatoral damage, just like you would not hire a Demolition oriented team for a finesses run against the Zero-Zone Research Mainframe for Mitsuhama... Missions require the appropriate tool, and the Corporations are very good at choosing the right tool for the job...

4. The Military pays on a graded and fairly low-end scale; I know, I spent a lot of years in the Marine Corps... That Lieutnenant of the Special Forces that you are so proud of touting as your baseline for existence in the Shadows gets payed Squat compared to Independent Contractors... The military does not care if you are only getting 40-50,000 A year, as they are throwing in other benefits that you are not adding in to the equation... All Medical Expenses, and Room and Board being a very big example of such expenses... Remember... Military Personnel do not have any say in their payscale... At All... Independent Contractors do... and Independent Contractors do not generate the perpetual overhead that a standing military does...



Anyways... AS I said earlier... which you may have missed... The In-Dedt Quality that this thread centers around works just as it is... in a lot of ways... and I see no real reason to change it for something else... The debate continues, however, because you insist that "average" payouts for runs are way to low for verisimilitude in a lot of ways... iIF you restrict your estimates to newly created characters and extend to about the first 30-50 Karma awards, then I think that a lot of individuals here would agree, but it seems like your arguments tend towards extending that payout to even more experienced teams... and this is what a lot of people have a problem with...

Yes, as a New Shadowrunner, you will not get those runs that payout in the tens of Thousands of Nuyen per character per run... but you cannot deny that once you have attained that Professional reputation (where ever that nebulous line will be at individual tables), these runs become more common for those seasoned professionals, by your own statements, which direcly contrevenes previous statements made by you earlier in this thread...

Anyways...

Keep the Faith

100K for a drone? Does that count software costs? 'Cause those are one-time; once I buy a Heavy Weapons 4 autosoft, I don't expect to have to buy another. At most, I'll pay upkeep to keep up with degradation (if those rules are in play).

just another thing to add in... the red samurai are not a replacement for a team of 400 BP shadowrunners. they aren't even close. the red samurai don't even HAVE half the skills they would need for shadowrunning, let alone have them at expert levels. we do in fact have stats for the red samura, as D2F is so fond of pointing out... and they are not 400 BP shadowrunners or even close.

it is important to recognise that a 400 BP shadowrunner is not some idiot noob. they are highly skilled professionals, more akin to veteran professional athletes than a high school athlete.

I wil stop arguing as this is pointless. You're not reading what I write (since I doubt that you are unable to understand it), so why should I bother. You want me to believe that you cannot distinguish betwwen individual IC motivations and global IG plausibility? Don't make me laugh.

Bottom line is: Do whatever you want. That's always been the bottom line. As this thread is about the "In Debt" quality I see no reason to continue. If you use overblown numbers, then you cannot complain about the balance of "In Debt". It's that simple. As it is, and given the INTENDED monetary rewards (as evidenced by the official adventure payouts), the Quality if perfectly balanced.




Sure:






You still don't get that I was not only addressing you there? Even after I TOLD you so in my original apology? If you want to pout, go ahead. See if I care.



Then I guess we are misunderstanding each other, as I even mentioned that particular aspect in my last post, before I went to my new year's party. This thread is about the quality and therefore relevant only in regards to a karma range belowe which the quality could normally be paid off. Why would I even argue about 200+ Karma teams? Why would anyone?

At the same time, those teams will not run your average fetch and deliver runs anymore, tiehr. They will be participating in high risk engagements, Those naturally pay better. Those are also, naturally a lot less common. Not for the invidiual player group, but for th egame world in general.

Your average Joe Runner WILL get only about 5K a run. To argue against that with runners that are far beyond joe average Runner would be ridiculous. Furthermore it would be completely contrary to the context of this thread.
Last but not least, the target of such high profile runs would have a gross worth of well in the millions anyway, so a payout around the 20K-50K per runner is financially feasible for the Corp. It would not be, if the target of the runs was only worth a couple hundred thousand Nuyen, which has been my entire argument since post 1.




You may want to reconsider that statement.

Red Samurai Grunt: ~437 BP

Red samurai Lieutenat: ~555 BP

And I dare you to name me the skills they are missing.

This is what I meant by ad hominem attacks. Don't try to argue by passing out insults.




I argue the global rules of "professionalism"; if you're only defending an incidental IC viewpoint, the argument is pointless.



I'm only pointing out that you're twisting people's arguments, then insulting them for not agreeing with you.

I understand your arguments without any problems; I disagree, because they're not convincing to me.

Where was the insult? Seriously, where was it? I even stated that I DON'T think that you don't understand what I am saying and here you are, disproving my assumption...





You may want to argue, but since you believe looting during the job is not unprofessional, you are simply not qualified.





No, you are pointing out that you are obviously unable to properly read a wirtten statement. It's really that simple. And you will undoubtedly point your finger after reading this, trumpeting your See, you did it again" speech, but quite frankly, I am beyond annoyed with your continous insinuations at this point. So pardon me for not being all nice and civil, but I am fed up with your bullshit. If you have an argument to make, make it. If you are just getting all pissy about sentences YOU took the wrong way, you might as well not bother typing.

That said: I honestly don't care whether you are "convinced". I don't give a rat's ass about convincing you. I have been providing arguments. I have been providing specific numbers to me more precise. I cited official payouts from official adventures. I cited real life salalires of the highest trained military professionals we have on this planet and what they earn while on ducty in an active warzone (the single most dangerous job we have).
And all the counter arguments have been "I can't afford my gear with that much", "My expenses are higher than that" and arguments that amount to the lyric equivalent of "I have no fucking clue about even the most basics economics, but I disagree nevertheless". And no I am not just talkking about your (singular) arguments here, but ALL of them.

If any one of your would actually cite even a SINGLE number to your favor, I'd be delighted. But no, the best you (plural) could come up with so far, was to cite the Jhonson's back book to mention that runs should reward the players properly (no number mentioned, no further definition of what properly would be and no frame of reference, either; in other words: nothing other than: pick whatever you want).

But don't even bother. You're (plural) not going to provide an actual argument based on IG plausibility. I know that and you (singular) know that and everyone else here knows that. And since it has no impact on the quality in question, I don't care either, at this point. Do as you please.

Right here:



You're declaring the argument made as false because the other person isn't understanding your argument correctly.

Because your opponent is (implied) stupid, his argument must be false.

The moment you say anything about the person its an ad hominem attack. It doesn't have to be a direct insult.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Example: "Tom says the umpire made the correct call, but this can't be true, because Tom is the father of the boy who was "safe" on second base."

hmmm... my bad. i was looking at the old red samurai presented in the non-anniversary edition, which are substantially weaker, to put it mildly. that said, they still have no magic (which is a major disadvantage if they want to break into pretty much anything tougher than a stuffer shack), substandard hacking ability, and lack the ability to lie convincingly. they also have no vehicle skills, though riggers are not especially necessary (top-notch hackers, on the other hand, are pretty much essential, and not present in the red samurai skill set). also, they cannot afford to get caught, which means that planning and executing a run with only a few days notice is not likely to happen. if the runners get caught, you've only lost your up-front payment. if your red samurai or equivalent get caught, you're pretty much screwed, because even if they don't get caught in a lie, and even if you did manage to tie up every loose end when you erased them from official existence (another advantage to shadowrunners; they come pre-erased, with no expenses), you just flushed hundreds of thousands of nuyen worth of training and equipment down the drain. they're going to want to spend weeks gathering information and planning in order to get the absolute best success chance possible (because failure cannot be allowed; it is disastrous for the team, and for their mother corp. the corp may be willing to risk the team - although the description of them in SR4A clearly indicates that they are too valuable to be used as deniable assets - but they aren't going to risk massive financial penalties or complete destruction of their entire corporation).

also, the fact that the average shadowrunner is pretty close to where superelite corporate security teams are at is telling. the average 400 BP runner is not some random schmuck off the street. they are a highly skilled, competent individual. and they probably also don't waste BP on skill sets that are likely to be unneeded (like the entire firearms skill group and the close combat skill group)

and you still haven't addressed the point that a military organisation may only pay a certain amount of cash to their employees, even the most skilled ones, but they have huge expenses beyond that, including benefits, training the soldier, housing the soldier, full healthcare, disability and life insurance, and so forth. the soldier may only get a tiny portion of the cost involved in training and maintaining the special forces types, but a heck of a lot more is *spent* on them. the corporations will keep on their payrolls only as many as they need all the time, possibly even a little bit less, and that is likely to mean only the ones needed for HTR teams and security (since shadowrunning needs are likely not consistent... you may not need any for a month, and the next month you may need 1 team each day, with a few days where you need more than one team, and anywhere between or even beyond that).

plus the fact that while you probably don't want the shadowrunner team to get caught that you sent (ie you prefer that they succeed because that earns you money), you still don't have to worry much if they do fail and get caught. you can just cut your ties with them and leave them hung out to dry, and none of your own employees are going to be upset about it. if you have to do that with one of your own teams that runs into a problem, well, that's just a bit bad for morale, i should think. that's bad for corporate loyalty. and you can't afford to have these teams be disloyal to you.

also, while a shadowrunner can probably be assassinated cheaply, it is much less likely that it will be discreet, which is far more important; if it makes headlines, and gets tied back to you, you're screwed. and you still haven't explained how the corporation gets any money back for this, or how they find the runners (apparently with no time or money required, based on your responses), or how they even know whether the runners took something as part of their objective or not; once again, if corporation A is hiring runners to break into corporation B to steal prototype C, it is just a teensy bit improbable for corporation A to send corporation B a list of things the runners were hired to steal, don't you think?

finally, you seem to be assuming i'm advocating the runners driving around town shooting random people, fencing everything they own, and selling their corpses to organleggers (based on the fact that you're assuming the runners are going to become a major supplier of both in addition to being mass murderers, this is the only way i can imagine you're reading it). i'm not sure where you pulled that from, since i never said anything of the sort. i've simply pointed out that if the opportunity presents itself, looting looks more financially attractive the less you pay the team to perform the run. if they're getting paid 1,000 nuyen, then swiping some discs that may be worth 1,000 nuyen on top of that (split 5 ways = 200 nuyen apiece, for example) starts looking pretty attractive, and the team is more likely to look for chances to do so and come prepared to do so (carrying wifi-inhibiting bags, for example). if they're making 5-10k per run on average, an additional 200 nuyen becomes less appealing; their "worth the bother" threshold will increase, and less stuff gets looted. the fact that it has the added advantage of preventing gear advancement from becoming completely stagnant is nothing more than a pleasant (and i suspect in most cases desirable) side effect.

plus, this still leaves the fact that the quality still makes no sense as written; why would you have to pay off the debt in karma as well as nuyen? it makes much more sense to either keep it as a 0 point quality, or change it to something like "wasteful lifestyle", and have it add a flat X nuyen per month to lifestyle costs (which would also fit in much better with it being a quality, since that is actually something inherent to the character). or, for that matter, including both as options (the 0 point in debt quality, and the variable BP wasteful lifestyle quality)

Well, the "looting level" is interesting to consider when you try to determine your ideal payscale. If the profits from looting regularly come close to the payoff for completing the mission, it isn't profitable to 'run anymore, robbing and mugging are really more attractive at that point. Even with grumpy fences and competitors, your opposition probably isn't as dangerous as important corporate facilities.

I wish that SR4 had gone more in depth on estimating this. It's important enough that it should have been in the core book, really. Because when the danger of a run increases, that's often because the opposition has better gear => lootable gear is also better.

When I look through Seattle 2072, I get the impression that some of those syndicates really aren't as tough as a slightly advanced team.. They're specialized in their crime forms, but they aren't as good with magic or hacking. The Yakuza is described as being so traditional that they have little magical firepower and hacking.. mostly the same with the Mafia. (That is SO 1980s!) A typical 400BP team of 4-5 runners would be a real threat to them.



I think most people agree on that.. the whole balance issue is the other thread anyway. But basically we have the following three Qualities:

- In Debt ( ) for 0BP; you can take on a debt to get money at character creation, but the borrowed money lowers the amount of money you can get from spending BP on equipment.
- Wateful Lifestyle (BP): you have bad spending habits that increase your lifestyle costs by a certain %.
- In Debt (BP) Something allowed you to gain extra training, taught you secrets, did you favors allowing you to get something special at character creation, whatever. The debt can be to a spirit, wizard mentor, AI, government, corporation, syndicate or something else. Failing to pay back will result in something bad happening. They can hurt you somehow (this is inherent to the Quality. If they can't, you have to buy it off or change it to another Negative Quality or another "creditor".) Repayment can be in the form of small or big "favors" that cost you Karma, or by direct Karma drain in the case of free spirits with such a power etc. what kind of repayment and interest schedule? Gosh, I dunno...

The bolded part would really make this not so usefull, IMO in-debt is mostly for those character that just need more money then is otherwise availebul at chargen.

Agreed, otherwise you just take the BP in Resources and ignore the Quality...

Keep the Faith

I suppose it depends heavily on the GM.. but I think it might be unbalancing to allow that much more money. If you have 400K , you can make really scary characters.

400k ?
chargen = 50bp max @ 5k/1bp = 250k
In-Debt = 30bp max @ 5k/5bp = 30k
total = 280k

I would not divorce them, and that is why I would allow it as is, and voted other. Just as in all of the fluff, a Shadowrunner that owes, can be induced to pay it back in far more esoteric methods than cash.

I would require the debt to be from an organization powerful that the character can't just ignore them and mop the floor with whoever can be sent to collect it. That way, they have to do what ever the person requires of them, a whole run may just pay off the interest, after all, if the team helps, the loaner is not forcing them or asking them to, the individual character is being tasked, if they have to expend more resources to succeed well, thats their problem (from the loaners view).

Though divorcing them into separate qualities works as well, I think it adds unneeded complication for most games. The only time I see it really mattering is at conventions and such, which are not a big worry of mine.

Don't forget born rich which can net you an additional 10 bp for +50,000 Nuyen...

Keep the Faith