I've played a good number of games under different GMs and normally we get paid say $5k-$20k. I started reading through some prescripted runs I'm running and I noticed the first one, First Run, pays $20k per person plus a big favor from Novatech (a VERY big favor), Dragon Hunt which is a basic PI style job (in theory) pays $50+k, plus medical costs!! Glancing through several other runs, I'm seeing runners get $5k+ regularly as a bonus alone. Have my previous GMs been stingy with me all these years? Or is FASA just being generous with my money?

To make it worth my players' time, I normally have to keep the runs above 100k or else they just turn it down. We have 4-6 players in our group, so you figure that's a minimum of 25k each... eh.

There's always a balance between gameplay and realism. On the one hand, most jobs just wouldn't pay that much for a group (though a solo runner could rake in a fair amount), but on the other, it's no fun if it takes you a decade to save up for your next deck or piece of Beta-grade cyberware.

~J

I usaully pay between 5 and 10K per run, with about 2 runs per month game time. throwing in the occasional Big one every 6-8 runs

I dunno, I've got quite a few SR game modules that have 100k+ paychecks as the reward for the run. Doesn't seem too outlandish to me.

I think I should have specified per person per run : ) Otherwise we're going to have a lot of big numbers out there. I'm running a ten person group, so that IS a lot of money.

I've always figured hiring runners is like hiring a band. You don't pay each musician in a band and you could care less if they're a four-piece band or they bring in another 5 guys to play random instruments. You just have a set amount of money you're going to pay them and they get to divide it up between the members as they see fit.

Likewise, a Johnson isn't going to care if one shadowrunner or twelve pull off the job, as long as it gets done to his satisfaction and such. Similarly, he's got a certain amount of money he's going to pay, as a lump sum, regardless of the size of the team.

I figure jobs should be able to range in price quite a bit. Although, if the job only pays 5000 then it shouldn't take more than a day to do and shouldn't involve anything too terribly complex, like border crossings, smuggling, etc.

A 100,000 job should be quite a bit more complex, or just that much more important. If you're being overpaid something is obviously up and there should defnately be other interested parties that are going to want to know what you're up to.

Both of the jobs could be simple wet-work or smash-and-grab or extractions, but obviously the 100,000 job is going to be the more difficult and the one with the most long term consequences.

That being said, most of the runs our group does range from about 25k to 100k, with the rare few being even more lucrative than that. Unforutnately from a player standpoint once you're out of the 'low-level' street game taking jobs that don't pay much and runs that are just not usually worth the time. Economics are involved here. The usual Shadowrunner has expenses that have to be met. Gear, transportation, wear and tear, time, etc. Those things factor in and you don't want to take a job that's going to cost you more in the long run unless it's going to boost your rep or some other intangible that you feel makes up for the difference.

wow, that got long...

There is an advantage to saying that a job is payed by headcount. You can save money if someone dies.

Johnson view: Call a meeting, offer half of (allocated resources/# of runners) each. Let them negotiate up a little. Do not offer health benefits or life insurance. If more people show up asking for money, split the result of above math by the new number of runners. If less show up, then you got the job done under budget and should get a raise.

Here is a side question, does any one else have players who at times negotiate seperate payments? I.e. the "Mage" feels like he is worth more therefore if the group at large is offered 5k a piece he'd drive a 7.5K bargain.

Also does anyone offer incentives to take good as payment? In the past I have had players take up to 125% the value of the payment in negotiable goods. (Which has ranged from in one case weapons, to another in which they were paid in water.)

In my own opinion the meet is the most dangerous portion of the business deal for Mr. Johnson. Its the time he has the most to lose with the least to gain. I generally set my (average) Johnsons up like this:

Mr. J. is an expendable assett-he knows that if he is captured or comprimised he'll be written off as a loss and terminated if at all possible. Johnson's generally have a three man security detail-a Physad and a team leader (Usually some sort of Merc style archetype) and a driver who can be a rigger. Mr. Johnson in my games carries a few basic items-a roll of quarters, a signal locator, a pair of sunglasses, a pack of gum/box of certs, and a pocket secratary. Mr. J knows his people are in the crowd somewhere or watching-a lot of Johnsons make records of the runners for future reference: pictures, holos whatever is possible. (Its not always possible just so we know.)

I haven't had anyone jack up a Johnosn in game for a long time-my players believe their characters are professionals, and a true professional doesn't go around roughing up the furniture. (And thats generally what Mr. J's are a useful piece of the background to sit on, but not something worth bothering over.)

Now obviously this doesn't cover everything or every type pf Johnson, so there are exceptions, variances and etc.

I was kinda gettin used to 10-20 k until the current GM offered 250k each. And that was before I noticed lots of research files in the lab. A serum that can reverse UGE? How much is that gonna be worth? (in the end, no idea; the IC was better than I was)

I'm definitely going to be negotiating for more than my teammates, what with having drones around and all.

~J

I can see free lance runners or runners just starting out as being paid on a contract basis. But I also see experienced runners being paid by the hour like an accountant or a lawyer.

Different Johnsons and different corps have different ways to dealing with runners. Sometimes if the runners get their jobs through a fixer, i can see how the fixer will allocate only a certain number of runners from his stable to handle contract jobs, or put more guys if it is a per head job.

Heh. Some of the older published adventures had some sweet potential payouts.

Biggest one I've seen so far is in the Mercurial adventure. You could potentially gross over 2 million at the end of that run. (Subject to fencing stuff afterwards)

A decker could find a nice 750k fund ready for transfer in one of the nodes in the building Mercurial was being held in. And in one of the physical rooms was an enemy decker with a Fairlight excalibur.

The funny thing was the run itself was only going to pay 5k+ per runner to start. But after all the betrayals and double crosses in the adventure, looting and pillaging help make up for the headache

Wha..? I played the Mercurial adventure and only got about 80k from it all. Grr... Damn my GM (who later became my wife)... An Excalibur though... (though I was the only one to get more than 5k, so maybe I did find some of the extras)

Oddly enough, I found a decker in that adventure could potentially end up with WAY more loot than the rest of the team. There were some big funds available in various matrix nodes, even assuming you gave back the 180k you were paid by the weasel manager to steal from the goodguy, you could get 120k from the weasel, 750k from the guys holding Mercurial, and another good chunk of change from raiding that chiba cyberfacilities files.

Plus the fairlight.


And...it occurs to me that maybe I should have put *SPOILERS* in this, but...frankly, the adventure was from 1989!

It is odd, Mercurial was the first ever campaign I played. Firewall, the character, was made for that campaign and I had very little idea of quite what I was doing as I rolled him up in the middle of a freezing cold field.

I could kick myself in hindsight, I was running overwatch and never bothered to explore. The team was running through without searching and I was too busy with I/O and slaves to look properly.

Payment usually works out to 20k to 100k per member. With a lump-sum offered by the Johnson. One job every two-three months is common, and with the overhead of being a shadowrunner, that's not too bad, I think. One the things I've always kept in mind was the stolen car metric. If my character used his skills to make more money stealing cars over the same time period as the run, would he bother taking the run?

If at all possible, I usually try to pick up the various fallen weapons and portable gear. WHile it may not be useful for me to try and fence all of the stuff, they make wonderful bribes to gangers and others. Sometimes you get to pick up gear you didn't have in the first place.

Taking foci off fallen mages is nice. Have you seen the cost those things go for?

Oh yeah

You get a lot for them, but unless you can break the bond to the mage right away you're walking around with a tracking device - a ritual link can go both ways, and they still have the mage's body.

So death doesn't break the bond? Do you have a page reference?

~J

...bringing us to reason #2 for turning down 250k runs, they are quite obviously suicide operations.

I've been playing since first edition and I've noticed a real reduction in the size of payments in published adventures since that time.

A lot of the early adventures had runners ending up with between 50 and 100 K nuyen for a run, while the shadowrun companion suggested a scale for cash to karma which (apart from it being a very stupid idea to allow karma to be bought for cash) would have had me giving out 30+ karma pretty often...

I tend to accept the higher payment scale as both desirable and realistic. A key part of improving characters in shadowrun is letting them buy the cool stuff they couldn't afford (or get hold of) at char gen. If you've got them clearing 2 k a month after lifestyle costs that aspect of the game pretty much disappears until you specifically decide you're going to give them a run which lets them get their alpha wired 2... I've never had a problem with players ending up too comfortably off, even with largish payoffs there's plenty to spend it on, and you can introduce more realistic expenses in the course of a run.

As for realism, corporations will be willing to pay a great deal for shadowruns which will influence revenues to the tune of millions, tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of nuyen, and even smallish runs will typically have impacts on this scale - you need to cut the pay when runners are working for private citizens, but that's not a huge problem.

From the runner's end, pay scales in the 10K nuyen range per month are simply unrealistic - you're talking about guys with a million dollars worth of gear, magical ability found in one person in 10,000 and/or world calss skills in a variety of areas. Instead of risking their lives running the shadows most ordinary runners could be earning massive amounts of money using their skills in other sectors. Adopting low pay scales many teams could make more stealing cars. And I just hate it when a team feels it has to stop and steal the pistol of every downed security guard because fencing random gear could doubling their pay for the mission...

I think each group has to find their own happy medium-if million dollar runs don't unbalance your group, then I see no problem with it. If ten thousand nuyen is a god send, well as long as you're having fun, who cares?

I agree completely with lacemaker on this one. In the game I GM, I use a fairly generous pay scale, and in exchange my runners no longer drag bodies and equipment to a Bulldog Step-Van they bought for the purpose.

PC1: Hey, Dave, can I somehow filter out these Boosted Reflexes from this guy and sell them?
ME: That's awful.
PC1: Yeah...but can I do it?
ME: How 'bout I up your pay per run and we don't do this every time?
PC1: Sounds fair.
PC2: Umm...then can we sell the van back at full price?
ME: I really hate you guys sometimes.
PC2: Yeah...but can we?

GMs - Pay your runners well, because you'll regret it when they cheerfully announce they have a new van, and suddenly rival the Yakuza in organlegging and
"used" cyberware sales.

Yeah, I would be inclined to agree with that, but maybe not everyone is intrested in replaying Reservoir Dogs each game. (Their loss I say, but it is their game too.) It always becomes a choice of whats fun and what isn't-and sometimes people forget the GM needs to have fun too.

You're right, brains DO only get you so far and luck DOES run out. That's why the pay scale has to be worth the risk.

There are, of course, other factors. e.g.:

How new to the streets the runners are
What they've gotta do
How much they can charm outta Mr. J
Various expenses (like the Bulldog Stepvan for... acquisitions. But i digress.)
The resistance they're going to meet
Accomplishments above and beyond the call of duty

Bottom line, every run is going to pay a little different.

Aren't there something like 200 of them in Seattle? Meaning that any given J has a certain amount of choice, but it's hardly an open market...

~J

That definitely WOULD explain why you see all the same names popping up in the books.

As far as buyer's and seller's market... Again, it depends on the job. A group might have every skill needed for a particular run and be seemingly tailor-made to handle it. In this case, a little negotiation might be warranted.

If it's just a thug run, anybody could do that.

Hell, you could just go to gangers for that and be done for the price of some assault rifles and maybe a BTL or three.

~J

Precisely.

And have the said gangers would run right into the security detail and get torn up.

I believe that there is only a very small pool of runners in any place. If I remember my Canon correctly at the very best 1 percent of any local population and I think that includes wannabes.