Not enough to cover the scars on your soul.

Why on earth would a fixer or fence be sticking up a McHughes?

~J

Trying to make new contacts?

Maybe the runners sold the gun directly and not to a fixer.

Only if you got the fence's contact info from someone in exchange for some % of the sale and then you dont give them that...
It's expected that you wont go through just one person, but if you encroach on another guys territory, like say, drugs...

They'd have to be really stupid to do that. IIRC isn't McHughs the fast food place that always has at least 3 guards minimum in security armor and submachineguns at every single location?

Strangely enough, you're actually not the first person to bring this up in a discussion on reselling "loot". Actually, you're not the tenth person to bring this up, either. Nor the twentieth...

In my experience, it tends to be a lot more complicated than that, and how wise it is depends entirely on:

1. How selective you are about what you grab and sell later, and thus the risk / reward ratio.

2. How much you're getting paid for the runs - actual "professional crminal" rates, or the pittance SR sourcebooks recommend.

3. How professional and competent your contacts / fixers are.

Not to mention the fact that shadowrunning - as it is often portrayed in the game fiction - doesn't actually make economic sense anyway, so many runners are doing it for other reasons than making a living as a professional criminal.

Yep, the game economics don't make much sense. I've played in games where the car the team rigger stole for the run could be resold for as much as the PCs were being paid.

You just killed them and you're going to be scarred about selling the body?

Why?

Just think of it as recycling.

As I've said many times - Smart looting get you money, dumb looting gets you dead.

You're ignoring quite a few things with this example.

For starters, the murder of the guard took place in another country. (That's how extraterratoriality works.) Lone Star doesn't know about it and the Megacorp sure ain't telling them, either. Lone Star doesn't even know the gun is stolen goods and they sure can't prove it.

If the idiot who gets the pistol survives his attempt to knock over the McHughs, Lone Star doesn't have much to work on. He may not have the slightest idea who sold him the gun. Some ork out of the back of a van is not much to go on. Even a street name isn't much, either.

Alternatively, you could have sold the gun to a fixer who sold it to idiot-boy. Presuming your fixer is competent, either idiot boy doesn't know who he is and where he lives, or the fixer has a completely respectable cover. (Or both) Either way, a competent fixer is paying the proper amount of graft to make sure Lone Star doesn't hassle him.

And if you were competent, the fixer doesn't know your real name or where you live, either. An ork with the streetname of Shadow isn't much to go on.

And that's before we figure the would-be robber, the fixer, and you are SINless and this hard to trace.

Look at it from the Star's POV. If the muffler's dragging either there's something wrong with your car or you've got a trunk full of something heavy. And even if you've overloaded your vehicle, the odds of it being something illegal are rather small.

Lone Star doesn't care if there's something wrong with your car. Nor do they care if you've got 800 pounds of catfood in the trunk. Both of those are far more likely than you having a trunk full of stiffs.

And any stop they make will take time (which they may not have) and probably require paperwork (which they hate). They aren't going to stop you unless you're already doing something obviously illegal.

This is dumb looting as it's bad for your car, though. At least invest in a van if you're going to transport this many bodies at once.

Doesn't the standard runner risk quite a bit for a little extra money every time they go on a run?

Let me note that most real world criminals are amateurs and they're all greedy. Neither of those automatically means stupid.

With very few exceptions, usually at the astronomical power scale with ridiculous, Mission: Impossible-style sub-second tolerances, there's no amount of money you can pay a runner that will make it not worthwhile to grab some stuff on the side to sell. It just makes sense to do it.

~J

I know; money on the side is always good. I was commenting on the runners who could make more money by stealing cars than by running. The following player is only one example, I´ve even experienced stupid GMs who tried to do the same.

Once your runs pay decently, the amout of looting will not be as significant to the runners and it will be executed more carefully. If looting is all that makes the red zero on your balance sheet go away, you´ll play a mage AND loot what you can.

It seems clear that I play the 'star as very different from alot of you. At least in my games they are competent professionals with every intention of preventing, and investigating crimes, with some corrupt members, but the majority not. While an ork in the back of a van isn't much to go on, in RL law enforcement works with this, and less, and some times they can build a case. In real life criminals rat each other out, especially when they are looking at long sentences. To think that your fixer isn't going to flip if he's looking at 30 year in a corp run prison, is unrealistic to me.

And if he's a competent fixer, he's probably one of a notable handful. To think that the 'star wouldn't have intelligence on which fixers work in what areas, fencing what items, to what kind of people, is silly.

Now you're right, there is the jurisdictional question. IF you had done your job on the corporate territory, and left, leaving as little evidence as possible, you'd be right. The corp would probably swallow the loss, and try to strike back at the corp they think sponsored it.

But when you cross an international border, with a trunk filled with stolen, and likely illegal regardless, firearms, which are now hitting the streets of the 'stars jurisdiction, it would be silly to think that they wouldn't be interested in stopping it.

I'm not saying you slam the PCs because they sell some firearms once or twice. But if its every run, with 6-12 firearms, especially large illegal ones, through the same fence, the results should start to show up on the streets, and the 'Star should notice. The same if they steal a car to use on a run, and then dump it, its just another bunch of goofball gangers joyriding. But when they are stealing, and than fencing cars repeatedly, over and over again, they're not joyriders, they're an auto-theft ring, and the 'star should pay attention.

In addition when the PCs plan the run, they are usually being professional, planning every contingency. But when it comes to grabbing the loot and fencing it, its usually an after thought. and that's where people start making mistakes. And I personally, in my games, think the 'star should be ready to act on those mistakes.

I can agree to that. I was responding to the way the posts were going in my understanding, which was Pcs who did it constantly and without aforethought.