I have a player who's char concept is a street level arms dealer who's got in trouble with the mob. Owing them a lot of money from a deal gone bad, he's turned to running for some quick cash.

That, in and of itself, I have no problem with. What I'm endeavouring to do is cover myself incase he decides he wants to make the odd deal between runs. As far as I can tell, per the rules, he's going to be buying at streetprice and selling at 30% of base price. Now, that's buying from and selling to a fixer, which obvously isn't what I'm looking for.

After thinking about it, I've come up with 2 options. Actually playing out encounters where the group scores a large volume of cheap weapons (AKs and the like) at cheap enough prices to make fencing worth while and some sort of "Criminal Day Job" quality to represent a ongoing small scale deals.

Is there anything in the rules I'm missing, or alternatively, does anyone have any better ideas?

I haven't read Vice in any detail, but aren't there some guidelines in there for criminal enterprise such as this? Otherwise I think a criminal Day Job quality is the way to go unless you have the table time and interest to track individual transactions.

It's an interesting idea for a PC by the way. I kinda like it.

He should have black market pipe line
He should have a couple of contacts that give him access to cheap weapons.

I'm paraphrasing someone else here, but basically "you don't play Shadowrun to be an accountant". The reference was that the realm of being a dealer/fixer with any chance of profitability is a full time job intended for NPCs.

That being said...
As a PC, the purchase at street & sell at (base) 30% is if you do it on your own.
If you do go through a fixer, you need to pay an additional percentage on purchase (5% x Connection?) and take off a similar percentage from your profits when you sell.

As an example: After scoring from his last run, Jorge talks to his fixer to purchase a Rating 5 Maglock Passkey. The fixer's Connection Rating is 3 (the minimum to be a fixer) and his standard fee is 15% (Connection Rating * 5%). The fixer offers to find it for 11,500¥ (Base 10,000¥ + fixer's fee of 15%). After a couple weeks, Jorge is the proud owner of his new toy.
Unfortunately, only a week later, Jorge finds himself in serious debt to some serious players. Going back to his fixer, he asks him to fence his Maglock Passkey on the market. Since it is still practically new, his fixer says he thinks he can get a good street price for it of 3000¥ (10,000¥ * 30%) minus his fee of 15% or 450¥. Two days later with 2550¥ in hand, a depressed Jorge makes a trip to pay back his debt.

IMO, the better option might be to have a character with the Day Job flaw that represents their time commitment and their income from being a dealer. You would have all the roleplaying opportunities for your having your line of work, a bit of income, and no need to kill your GM with accounting.

I'd just tie runs into his arms dealing. I assume he has appropriate contacts like supply sgt. at Fort whatever in Seattle. Have him call about some items "lost" in inventory and make the run getting them out of a certain area of intercept the shipment etc. Then assume the pay is decent for the run, whatever is appropriate for your campaign level because he has a supply pipeline and has a buyer set up.

And does noone else think that that is a horrible rule? I'd positively kick every GM who enforced it.

Seeing as it's their game and not yours, I'm assuming by 'positively kick' you mean 'leave the table in a huff'.

The problem here is that the character in the OP is the fixer and is trying to make money buying and selling to the same guy.

That only work in one game that I know of,* and only because charisma bonuses were cheap and reputation was easily earned.

If the character is the one doing the fencing then the prices are (obviously) reversed.

*Cue forgotten title.

No, my players and I think it makes total sense. Y'ever pawned anything? Y'ever sold anything to Ca$h for Gold?

It's never "the GM's" game, it's the group's game.

Well, two fixers.
It's an interesting enough hook, but I know I'm having problems visualizing the player getting enough product to make arms dealing worth his while.

Criminal Day Job would be a bit better way to go around it, though if you wanted to have him flesh out a bunch of contacts of people he peddles to...

Doublepost strikes again.

Cash for Gold is hilarious. It's trivial to turn it into a scam.

"Nope. Never got your gold. Must've gotten lost in the mail."

Better yet, work for the post office. "Hey look Jim! A Cash for Gold envelope! I wonder what's in it, feels pretty heavy."

I don't as a GM, as the base price of the item is just that, a base value. The fixer/merchant who buys and sells stuff is trying to make a profit, and sure won't pay base value. FIxer has to eat too you know. Also the fact that runners are crooks, and the items are likely hot, can further devalue the items price.

About the only time I'd see runners making a profit in a DIY crime, is when they get the stuff for almost nothing (like the bribe to the Ft Worth supply Sgt). Then smuggle it south and sell it in the Hahn Free Market in LA or some other locale directly to a buyer. Which is fine for a DIY crime campaign. But for your average runner pawning off scavenged guns from corpsec, it is not worth the time or effort.

*Cough*

I'd ask your players what they'd prefer.

1.) A 'Day-job' quality would be simple to implement, but rather boring. Roll some dice, get some cash.

2.) Simulating realistic black-market buying and selling as a side-project to Shadowrunning COULD be interesting for some types of players, but it would take a good bit of work on the GMs part, and eat-up a good amount of table-time. You'd need other fences and fixers contacting you with offers and requests, and need to do the math on whether the deal was profitable. Inventory, meetups, negotiations, all that stuff you'd need to play-out.

3.) Integrate the arms-dealing with your campaign. Fixer XYZ wants to buy a few dozen of assault rifles to sell to a local gang expanding its turf, and your contact at Ares knows that there's a semi-truck with a couple crates of Ares Alphas heading into town tomorrow. Hijack time!

Of course, there's a wealth of adventure-hooks built-into owing the Mob money, and running guns. I'd love for my players being brave enough to go for something like this.

Remember that "Street Value" varies from place to place. Gun Runners make money by buying firearms that are cheap in price for various reasons (Oversupplied area, desperate seller, hot guns), move them, and then sell them where they're rarer and worth more on the street. This can sometimes take a few steps, too, with each step taking a bit of profit along the way (Or working the deal out in trade.).

A good example is Sgt. Solovich in Kraplakistan being in debt to the Russian Mob, and pays them off with a few crates of "Excess" AK-97s from the armory where she works.

The Russian Mob sells them to a Muslim Terrorist group that moves them through the Middle East for a bit, use a crate in a training camp, and then gets them nabbed by Israeli Customs when trying to move them into a few cells there.

Captain Goldberg is blackmailed by some Gun Runners into marking the weapons as "Destroyed", and has them moved onto a freighter bound for Seattle.

In Seattle, the Gun Runners sell the most of the crates to Weapons Fixers for a bit of a profit, who, in turn, sell them piecemeal to gangers and Shadowrunners.

The weapons, later used in crimes and having a history attached to them, are then sold back to the same or different fixers, who sell them in turn to Smugglers that get them over to the Cascade Orks, who move them all around North America, and points unknown.

Later on, the final crate is found in a London U-Store-It for no reason whatsoever and has the Bobbies scratching their heads wondering why the hell it's there next to some next-to-worthless old damaged paintings of 14th century Lords.

Oh, sure, hot goods, time for a MODIFIER. And his profit is already in the 30%, what's the additional fee for? Certainly for buying (and organising) goods you could put in a fee, but for selling? That example story alone would get me to shoot the damn fixer.



That's your prerogative. I think it should be a definite possibility to make money on scavenging. Not a lot, but a certain amount. Of course, when you're raking in 10K or more for the run, then selling a few guns for a few hundred makes no sense, but if you're making, let's say, 2k per run (with expenses already deducted), then selling the guns is a pretty big thing. In a low-paying campaign I would most definitely make a point of selling scavenged stuff. And when I actually have a buyer (not a fixer), then I'd damn well expect him to pay full price, because I never get stuff cheaper, either.

It also depends on how you clean the scavenged stuff. Have you removed all tags? Swapped hot parts? If you do make that effort, then it should pay off.

All in all, buying and selling rules should be optimised for speed, and they don't have to make strict sense, but they shouldn't cripple a game option, either. Of course actually making stuff like gunrunning worthwhile in SR would take some work, on both the side of the player and the GM.

My point is: When a player wants to sell guns to other BUYERS, then the fixer rules and fixed prices shouldn't be used. Even ad-libbing supply and demand in such a situation is better than using fixed prices.

And yet, I'm sure ShadowBiz would have some fans.

Edit: Also, yeah, pawn shops are a good example of a fence, only for the pawn shop, they're legal, so cut you a better deal than a fence that often deals with illegal stuff.

I remember spending many hours moving loads of grain and metal bars from planet to planet in Wing Commander Privateer, and having a bunch of fun doing it.

Economic simulations can be a ton of fun, for the right players. That's why I'd ask what the other players want to do. You could do a whole campaign based around buying and selling, with occasional 'complications' to play-through as well.

It's certainly not for everyone though.

I'd sign up for it.

To summarize the above posts: ask your PCs what they want to do. If the want to be involved in arms dealing and want a campaign centered around that, expand it and flesh it out. If they don't, then criminal day job 40/5000 should be adequate. Occasionally, you can tap that backstory into your campaign arc if you want.

I speak of Kraplakistan often, I am glad this fine country is getting the recognition it deserves.



I have to say the money rewards offered in most published adventures in 4e makes people want to scavenge for spare cash quite a bit in my experience. Especially cash oriented types like sams or riggers. It is like low level D&D where people are tallying how many short swords they found off the kobolds.

Which is lame and just sad.

Oh, baby, yeah! I used to suck at any of the fake 3d space games, but Privateer 2 was the shits.

I could see this being quite fun, if you play it like Del-Boy the arms dealer. You wander round spending most of your time doing actual runs, but you let it be known to your contacts that if they come into a crate of weapons they need moved, you'll take them off their hands for cheap.

Say, a contact comes into possession of a crate of slightly defective pistols that he can't sell to his normal customers cause they're crap, so you buy the whole crate for a coupla hundred nuyen, then sell em on at 50 bucks a pop to the local go gangers as use-then-dump weapons to keep the heat off them.

Your buddy at Weapons World is getting a gun he can't sell over the table for a client. In order to get hold of them he has to buy a box of them. Sells the client the one he wants, but can't hold on to the rest cause he'll lose his licence if he's caught with them so he sells them onto you to avoid being caught holding the baby. You then sell em on to whoever.

I can see it being quite fun just doing this arms dealing as a kind of sideline to accumulate cash, favours and contacts. It would end up being quite time intensive though, particularly if you did it strictly by the contacts rules. If you used more free form contacts, it could be awesome.

I've been thinking a bit more about the Privateer analogy: I mean what did that game do? It randomized the buying and selling prices according to certain offsets (IIRC). And then you sometimes got hints that things were extra cheap at one place, or extra expensive at another. And that was it. That was enough to make trading fun.

So for a highly mobile runner team you just need to create a few spots that sell stuff, and a few spots that need stuff, and do smuggling runs in between the two. If you smuggle the wrong stuff... the drug cartels will go after you .

Watch Lord of War, that’s how black market wepons guys have to operate. You need a contact that can give you guns for a good price, and customers who want the guns.

The base 30% rule in the book assumes your selling to somebody that is only buying it to sell to somebody else. If your selling to somebody that actually has use for the item you get full value (modified by your sailsmanship).

If a PC wants to make mony as an arms dealer he needs several things.

A tolerant GM, its bloody annoying when PCs do this kind of thing, half my own contacts get thrown out because they have too much side income.
A contact that can sell them weapons cheep. Military supply sergeant, Aries arms warehouse inspector.
Contacts who want weapons to use, rather than as an investment, gangers for small numbers, Yucatan rebles will by lots.
A means of getting weapons from one place to another.

In SR 3 their is a edge ‘conections’ that gives you a single contact that will by or sell (or both for more points) a single type of goods at favorable rates, you probably need this for both your source and market. I would let a player take it once to cover all your sourses, and again for all your customers, just take them as contacts.

Of cause if somebody had that he would not be a shadow runner while a run to smuggle guns would be fun a campaign of them would suck.

A small time arms dealer who’s supplies had dried up might keep his customer base contacts and try to collect weapons on a run to sell.

Reminds me of Traveller. They had mechanics for trading stuff, you'd add your charisma (to get a better deal on both ends).

One player put together a php program to do everything automatically (that is, figure out what to buy and sell based on the locations) and then the players made it obsolete by having a high enough charisma to get the 25% buy, 400% sell rates (which, notably, is a lot of charisma).

I've watched Lord of War, it's rather larger scale than either myself or the player are thinking.

Based on a discussion with my player yesterday, it sounds like his character is going to have lost his source before play starts, which will simplify things. If the team wants to collect every predator and ak-97 they find, he can sell those and anything exotic they can take to a fixer, otherwise they'll have to beg/borrow/steal the odd shipment to sell.

He IS playing a troll, so I can just see him counting the nuyen to himself as the corpsec guys weapons go in his handy duffel bag.

Now for the fun part, serial numbers and RFID tags. Got to erase those. Adjusting the barrel rifling would also be an idea (I wouldn't be surprised if there was a major traffic in just black market gun parts, either.). A Drone Autolathe should also be pretty cheap to pick up legally through a front with Nano-Factories coming out. (If you're playing earlier than that, steal one in shipment and assemble it yourself.).

Then you could even get illegal street weapons with a history and turn them into something with no history and worth much more on the street.

AND you can convince your Eco-Terrorist Shaman that you're recycling and thus helping to save the planet! The assistance in depopulating the overpopulated planet doesn't hurt much either, I bet.