Highest Income was about 5.000.000 per Char in SR3 in a mini-Campaign. No Employer, the Chars were doing a favor for an friend and in the course of the job they liberated an hijacked cargo-sub, which wasn't the target of the job, it was a bonus (and their way out of a collapsing underwater-base). The GM had not rememberd that the Team-Rigger was a former Navy-seal-rigger with basic training for handling subs. Against the Odds he succeded and the Team got a "finder fee" from the owner of the sub for returning it. Basic Value of the Sub was something about 400M , so the 20M for the team was acceptable.

There is this assumption that the Johnson gets as much for paying 6 million to the group than if you paid them 600k. That's mostly a wrong assumption.

First off, why would most groups would still do it if they were offered only 600k? Why take the risk of getting people who might not be competent of pulling off the job?

Second, when you talk about such sums of money, you do not need to say that it is a high powered campaign, it should be assumed, it does not even have to be said. It is obvious by virtue of the payscale.

And most would fail, which is why your paying the 1 group you can find who actually has a reasonable chance of success the 6 million.


Because offering them less is potential insulting for the level of danger you're putting them in, and you might if you're lucky get to spend the rest of your life eating through a straw, fondly remembering the days when you could breath without pain, and chew solid food.


Very often depending on what they are.


There might be, but can you contact them on short notice?

Can you reasonably expect them to stay loyal? If they've got the target you want, what's to stop them from selling it to a third party for 60 million and retiring? The third party would still make 540 million, which is is reason enough to do it.






A target worth that much would be protected appropriately. Security return on investment is something like the cost of theft (600million) times the chance of it happening. If runners have a 50% chance of success, it's worth spending 300million on security.

(For a more nuanced analysis of how much to spend on security: link)

Any target worth this much will be protected adequately against the kind of runners "typical" to this kind of target. Only runners above the curve should stand a good chance. And scarcity of supply does drive up the price.

The highest payout I have ever had on a run is only about 10,000. That being said I was promised 500,000 on a run but as with a lot of high paying runs, it turned out the Mr. J wasn't thinking we would survive till payday. Long story short, to get payback we broke into a Urban Brawl game, slaughtered the Mr. J's employer's star players, then handed him Mr. J's head and told him to Frak Off or we would go after him next. The scuffle was enough to put us on Lone Star's black list and the GM had them show up every run afterwards till we retired the characters.

I'm right there too, around 10k. We were once paide 200k a person.....and then the GM railroaded us. We weren't allowed a hacker PC because he didn't want to bog down the game, so we had to hire a hacker, at 200k (after negotiating) per person, to clear our names. Another runner group had set us up for a high profile and sloppy kill. It was complete railroading to get us to part with our money.

Aside from that, I've always had GM's that agree w/ Smoke. However, I post this as food for thought. There are deals and contracts RIGHT NOW, that pay amounts of money like are being talked about. All under the table, and less than legal. Money is cheap. Its power that counts. Not always do the two equate.

So true. The best payouts I have ever given my players was high level contacts. For example, I had my players runa denial op once (a rival corp kidnapped a scientist and the runners where hired to kill the scientist as the corp didn't want his info in the hands of their enemy). The runners were actually able to rescue the scientist instead and it turned out that he was the lead scientific head for the corp. The scientist was so happy that the runners spared his life (and his brain as the enemy corp was going to extract his info forcibly by hacking his brain directly) that he agreed to field test any future weapons with the runners. It also gave the runners access to Deltaware. The payout on that mission was around 200 (because assignations are easy IMHO) but the contact was the real bonus to the players excellent game playing.

IMHO, any Mr. J dealing in high enough pay days is either fool who will soon be parted with their nuyen aka "mark" or the kind of people who don't bat an eye at such sums, so its safe to surmise pissing them off will only get them to put on a display of the kind of currency they actually deal in at that point, whatever fits their definition of power, usually control over the lives and deaths of others through their instruments of power. Sure, some would probably view large payments as actually a transfer of their power and those are probably the Mr. J who would try to backstab to get it back, but for others, paying the Runners is actually a display of their power, they feel they are past the point where the currency of the day has any sway on their lives. In that sense, if the Runners don't value the pay day, the Mr. J may see them as enlightened like them and see them as a threat as their leverage over the little people is no longer there. A fearless runner (team) is either a huge fool or seen as a huge threat to the established power structure and thus those who sit at the apex of it depending on it for their self aggrandizement.

I've never heard of arrogant runners making huge sums of money. If they think highly of themselfs well its probably justified since they are bringing in the nuyen. Also, every time I get more than about 50k on a char I get paranoid that the dm is gona have second thoughts about letting the players off alive after making so much nuyen, and decide to have a raid on a mainhouse or scrap gear on us or something involving a railroad and the nuyen going byby before it can be spent.

For me, it would be less the pay and more 'who's toes you stepped on' earning it. If you think the johnson is going to cross you, you can always follow him around with a ruthenium coated trash can drone with 4 kg of c 12 in it, or have any other number of assassination plans laid out for him, including a contingency fund, and a time locked e-mail broadcasting his face, DNA, address, and all other manner of useful info, with a bank account containing some fun quantity of money in a non-extradition country for the first one with proof the guy is dead.

I generally never have trouble with the johnson. Its the DM I'm worried about. For SR I've always had ones that are ok with high powered and ok with large sums of money; all until they start thinking "what will the players spend it on?". Somehow the unknown of what we might do is quite scary.

In the business world, multimillion-dollar deals are made every day, several times a day, in fact. The major players don't bat an eye at that kind of money, the only thing they care about is "is it worth it?" They don't care that this project will cost ten million, only whether or not they're getting ten million (or more) worth of results out of the ten million. If that means hiring the best, then that's what happens. If that means paying the best a lot to keep them happy and working at peak efficiency, then that's what happens. Remember, an employee being payed 6mil is a lot more loyal than the employee doing the same job for 600k. That same employee is also a lot less likely to walk off the job if something more interesting comes along or to take stupid shortcuts... or to betray your interests to another company that is willing to pay them 6mil.

very true.

The company I work at was asked if we could do a "virtual trade show" application for some company. We could...if I learned how to program in Unity3D (I'm told I could pick it up in...you learned it already, good!*). The company that will be paying for it allocated ~5% of their ~83 million dollar budget to have it produced. Basically its equivalent to paying me 4 million dollars to learn Unity3D (even if I don't get all 4 million!**)

*That's what my boss said. He tried several times to get me to admit to having programmed Off-Road Velociraptor Safari.

**Say the company I work at gets all 4 million dollars to produce it. Say that whatever they pay out to me is halved due to the temp agency and taxes. Lets figure they split the money 50% to the owner and my boss (two people) and the other 50% evenly to the other 5 people that work here. That's 2 mil split 5 ways, then cut in half. I'd get $400,000 to learn Unity3D. I've never had that much money as a sum total in my whole life.

And yet, stuff like that does indeed happen from time to time...

Keep the Faith

I just wish I didn't have to learn Unity from web tutorials...and I don't already know Java (which I'm told its based on).

But yeah. If I was going to get paid that kind of money (for the one project) I'd do it.

No Doubt... In a Minute (or whatever the learning interval actually is for Unity)...

Keep the Faith

Supposedly minutes. My boss keeps trying to tell me I should have learned it by now.

As an aside: I've been at work, uh math, 15 hours now.

Stupid project. Stupid snow. Stupid clients. Stupid narrator. Stupid Adobe software.*

*Adobe Media Encoder is used to add cue points to flv files to trigger events in Actionscript. AME does not have a "play through and listen to the file" button. You need your own media player for that (also, the interface just plain sucks, adding a new cue point makes the list window (3 lines tall) jump to the top...regardless of where that new cue point went into the list).

Awesome... sounds like quality software design... *Shakes Head*

Keep the Faith

I didn't say it wasn't, because it is. Narrator came in to re-record some sections and not only did he read only the corrected sentence, but he read the uncorrected version. Then, for every audio file that changed (even by 1 second worth of audio) all the cue points need to be redone by HAND. Not to mention re-ordering sections (causing us to need to rename the audio files to match up with the new order, which causes a disconnect between the source name and the asset name, which causes delays when needing to replace a file...)

Its been hell.

Not too much mroe and I'll goimng to start hal;lucinating.

Sounds like a nightmare...Good Luck

Keep the Faith

'Tis./ I just dropped ranch dressing on the carpet thwoing out some trash. so yeah, cooridnation sin;'t that hot anymore.

Unrelated note: Off-Road Velociraptor Safari is fun game for a few minutes, but it gets old quick. I prefer Minotaur in a China Shop. Good way to vent.

Agreed. The problem with ORVS is that when you get stuck you waste huge amounts of time unsticking yourself, there aren't enough dinos to run over, and trick locations are even scarcer.

There are two elements to "is it worth it?". One is that you should get at least that amount of value from doing it. The second is you can't be able to get it cheaper elsewhere. For a CEO to be able to drive around, that's probably A LOT more valuable than what he is paying his driver. By your logic, he shouldn't care if the driver asked for double the normal salary - do you think that describes reality?

Anyone, and seriously anyone, worth his salt in business will not pay more for a service than he has to.



Patently false. Paying people more than they're willing to work for doesn't motivate them further. In business management it is basic knowledge that salary is a hygiene factor, not a motivator factor.

Right. And it's up to each game's GM to determine what "a service" is worth.

That depends on whether the quality is the same. Is it?




Well, you're trusting your driver with your life. Your enemies will try to bribe, blackmail and intimidate him, and he has to be good enough to get you safely to your destination even when your enemies try to kill you on the road. So I imagine a CEO's driver gets paid a lot more than the driver to a mid-level officer.




The insurance industry begs to differ. Companies pay a lot of money for a little more certainty. If doubling the runner's fee will increase the chance that the run goes down as intended, that might be worth it. If Johnson skimps on the runners, and the run fails, he'll get in trouble with his boss far more than when he's somewhat pricey, but dependable.