Runners are deniable assets, the whole point of running is money and rep. However, if the character starts off with a lot of nuyen because it's left over from character creation then running seems unnecessary. Does the nuyen keft over from character creation, or does it stay with them? Having it disappear would make running necessary.

Starting nuyen is determined by Lifestyle first, then remaining resources are added as dice to a roll to determine your nuyen. And only as much as 12 dice can be added.

Can you elaborate please, maybe an example?

SR4A p88, "Starting Nuyen".

Some (crazy) people have taken the time to work out the best way to abuse this mechanic, but honestly it's not worth the effort.

Check SR4A, p. 88-89;

Roll dice according to the highest lifestyle bought by the PC.

For every 100 unspent at CharGen, add +1 to the result, to a maximum of 3 x the number of dice.

Multiply the result by the Result Multiplier for the appropriate lifestyle.

Yeah, any money-from-BP you had, you don't get to keep that, it's just a (small) bonus on your starting cash.

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Examples:

Joe Schmuck has 100 theoretical left over after CharGen and a Low Lifestyle. He rolls 3d6 +1 and multiplies by 50 to get the total amount of actual money Joe has at the beginning of the campaign. The best he can hope for is 950

Mr. Fancypants has 1200 theoretical left over and a Luxury lifestyle. He rolls 4d6 + 12 and multiplies by 1000. The maximum he can get is 36.000 actual and that's the absolute maximum a PC can start with.

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Yeah, you can manipulate this by leaving money unspent and buying 1 month of Luxury while otherwise living a Low lifestyle. But then no game mechanic is truly proof against attempts to abuse it.

Hi, heh.

Eh, it's generally a good thing to maximize the bonus for leftover money, but buying a higher lifestyle than you'd normally take with a character is obviously cheesy.

Of course, there's the interesting question of how much CharGen money is worth vs. "runtime" money. Can you make serious investments during CharGen that you can cash in during playtime? Interestingly there's no stock options in the equipment listing...

That's why the GM is there to quash abuse attempts, which is what I meant by 'not worth it'. Honestly, it'd be a better rule to just ignore it entirely and say that extra money is lost. Anything else is asking for (very minor, in the big picture) trouble.

who has leftover creation cash? My chars usually start out living under a bridge.

The rules let you start out with some basic walking-around money - you aren't totally destitute, but you're not going to be making any huge purchases, either. You can also get qualities such as day job or trust fund if you want a shadowrunner who does shadowy work part-time, or runs for other reasons than money.

Resources are powerful, because they are used to buy augmentations and techie gear that give you boosts to your abilities that are cheap compared to what you pay for Attributes and skills. You are better off spending it all, not contriving ways to hoard it (beyond getting a lifestyle and possibly saving a bit to increase your starting money).

As an aside: I've never once used those particular rules while GMing, and I've never once had any problems arise because of it. 'Course, we don't use Availability or Rating rules, either, but instead limit initial resources based on your Charisma and Social Skills just so there is some kind of guideline as to what's appropriate, and Restricted Gear removes even that guideline.

The hard limitations for Resources never made any sense to me. Whatever possible logic or reasoning you can come up with for it is completely squashed by the fact that you can max out your initial Resources and have a Street Lifestyle, meaning the "homeless guy on the street" can be running around with top-of-the-line equipment, and that's completely permissible by the rules. But God forbid players be responsible for keeping things sensible for their concepts, including how much starting cash they have. Nope. You can spend 250,000 nuyen during character creation no matter what your circumstance is, but God forbid you start the game with anything over a few thousand. Because, oh no, that's (somehow) grossly overpowered and/or nonsensical in and of itself.

(Oh, and anything a GM can say "no" to during character creation can be said to after character creation, too. Just in case someone wants to try and go down that angle.)

It rarely comes up, but I let players keep starting Resources as cash [or scrip or certified credstick or stocks or whatever] if they want to. If a player wants to start the game with no gear or augmentations or anything, and 350,000 nuyen, that doesn't trouble me a bit. People rarely keep much, and the worst that has happened to me is a couple early runs where players tended more toward solving problems with money rather than violence or social engineering or hacking. But I don't use the hard limits for cash, either, and that's never been a problem for me. These aren't the sorts of ways in which my players tend to be abusive.

Cyberpunk is supposed to be high tech and LOW life.

Not necessarily, as I wouldn't exactly call Molly Millions low life. Granted she had some low connections, like The Finn and the Lo-Teks, but she seemed high dollar to me.

Um what? The phrase "High tech and low life" has described cyberpunk for decades. Heck just try typing in google "high tech and low life", just to see what the results are. Low life doesn't necessarily mean poor or on the streets, (criminality is certainly low life as well) but certainly cyberpunk can't preclude such a starting character.

It's not the amount of money I care about, it's the potential (and therefore, fact) of people abusing the silly rule they set up. If you want to start with 35000¥ cash, spend 7BP.

Just cause everyone calls the moon cheese doesn't make it true. I get what you are saying but the main point of a lot of the original cyber punk was, and still is, corporate espionage. Not something I would consider low life. Criminal and low life aren't synonymous to me, though they may be to many. While Case from Neuromancer might be EASILY low life you then start to drift to Mona Lisa Overdrive you have Kumiko which is neither a criminal nor poor, just in a wrong place at a wrong time with the wrong family. The game is what you make it. If you want high tech and low life then you can easily get it. You can just as easily get cutting edge and high end.

"Low life" refers to the fact that you are a criminal and shoot people in the faces for money.

There's a lot of people that consider stealing and murder to be kinda low-life, regardless of who does it or how they live. Funny that.




-k

Again, not all games are like that. I remember seeing on these boards games that are either Lone Star or Doc Wagon teams. But I will give you that damn near all of them are.

usually referred to with the nebulous term post-cyberpunk. Since when is high society considered punk?

I am so glad I don't read cyberpunk fiction. I tried Gibson and that guy could bore me to tears faster than a podcast. At any rate I think Cyberpunk is one of those terms that's grown to include a lot more than it's roots, and I don't think either of you are off base-rather I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. If you feel the need to closely mirror a Gibson novel at your table-have at it. If something else flips your switch-have at it!

Very much so, Post-Cyberpunk is Punks and Hippies getting along.

...

Which reminds me of my family... Go figure.

I guess my post is a little tongue in cheek-but seriously cyberpunk has moved past it's roots. Gibson and others may indeed be the fathers of the genre, but like any good child it's grown and moved on to bigger and more exciting things. I'm kind of spoiled-by the time I even knew who Gibson was and what he'd written others had already picked up the ball and ran with it. I think it's to the Genre's benefit.

When the rich kids spend hundreds of dollars at Hot Topic to look like their outfit cost $2.39 plus tax.

But I do agree with you, Paul. Cyberpunk has grown and expanded, proof positive by the fact there are more defining terms like "post-cyberpunk". The only real reason I used Gibson as an example is because he is "the father", for what it's worth. Honestly, I much rather like Snow Crash. But hey, to each their own.

More proof that dueling needs to be legalized.

Considering that Shadowrun isn't cyberpunk, but merely borrowed from that genre (as well as dozens of others) to create its own, it's really a moot point anyway. Shadowrun is Shadowrun. Having a scuzzy ganger in the group is just as valid as having a well-to-do college professor, a ridiculously rich kid out for a thrill, or a prostitute trying to work her way out from under her pimp's iron grasp. It's up to the player to determine their reasons to be there. Forcing them all to be poor is just silly.

The middle book of the Sprawl Trilogy, which is certainly a founding document of the cyberpunk genre, features Turner, a professional shadowrunner who is certainly not on the poor side.

Are you suggesting Elves are not cyberpunk?

Depends on how they're run/written.

But that's true of anything.

Well they've been subsumed into what we now know as Shaodwrun's version of Cyberpunk. But yeah in the strictest sense Elves, much of Shaodwrun's magic isn't Cyberpunk-as the genre is typically defined.(Oddly enough Shadowrun isn't even listed on that pages list of Games! Bastards!) The good news is a couple of cats ignored the crap out of that when they wrote first edition of the game. Personally I'm a fan of the addition of Fantasy elements like metahumans and magic to the genre! I even like the 4th World!

I suspect that if William Gibson showed up at my table he'd love the Dystopian setting, the feel of my game. But yeah I suspect he'd be a little put off by the fact that some some characters in the game can incinerate the Megacorporate goon squads with a thought! (Or several if the dice don't fall their way...)

Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane would feel at home at my table.

I serve a good meal, and run a good game so who knows?

Gibson does not like the way shadowrun mixes his cyberpunk writings with elves
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun#Influences_and_links

That's what the chains around his chair are for.

Do I need to use [sarcasm] [/sarcasm] next time? I seem to have been too subtle.

Gibson can suck wind. He doesn't and never did own cyberpunk, and certainly not the idea of dystopia.

The default game rules limit starting cash, although you can certainly begin play as someone who is rich - you merely don't have a lot of cash on hand (although someone with a high lifestyle can start out with 4d6 x 500 plus 6,000 Nuyen). You can change that, as well as the rules limiting how much you can spend on Attributes, how much you can spend or resources, or what ratings and Availability you can start out with. The restrictions are mainly for new players, both to keep them from overspending in one area at the expense of another, and to discourage some (but by no means all) kinds of min-maxing.

I prefer Shadowrun's mish-mash of genres to classic cyberpunk, which has not aged well, although it has forever changed and expanded the traditional sci-fi genre.

I swear I'm better in real life! Heh.

I"m still a bit confused as to how the starting nuyen rules can be "abused".

You start with so much that it doesn't matter if you 'Run or not. And that's not really the point of the game.

It's to keep the characters hungry for more, or always looking for the big score that gets them out of the game or set up for the big time 'Runs.

The vicious cycle. Get a job. Get money. Get gear. Get better job. Get better money. Get better gear. Ad infinitum ad nauseum.

Until the job/screw-over happens where you lose all that gear, your squat, your fancy car, your boy/girltoy...

Then set up the Roaring Rampage of Revenge!

The only way it can be abused is by getting around the Availability/Rating rules, and then only by assuming the GM lets you buy whatever you want, especially right after the game begins.

Otherwise it's absolutely a complete and utter non-issue.

It gets really bad when you used the Advanced Lifestyles rules, so I'm going to give that example. You take the minimum Luxury Lifestyle available (for extra cheese give it problems that lower the price even more for the first, or only, month you live there). So you roll 4D6 x a grand. Now you can add 12 to the roll for the price of 1,200. So for saving 1,200 from character creation you can have between 16,000 and 36,000 in your wallet when you hit the streets. If I did the math and everything right. Doing this from memory.

How much starting cash can you start with in 4e? In 3e I'd say you're nuts if you thought you didn't need to run because of starting funds.

People run for many reasons.

Some do it because it's all they know how to do, because the corp they worked for dumped them as expendable, they came back from the desert wars unable to reintegrate as a civilian, because it seems like a good way to piss off mom and dad.

Or because it's the only chance short of joining a gang/syndicate of survival in a Z zone.

Each character has a reason, like all things. If I am the GM and you are playing a sprawl ganger turned runner, I expect your character generation to match that (lots of close combat skills, decent firearm skills, some etiquette and a heavy focus on intimidation over politeness though. Gear that looks reasonable, possibly a low lifestyle. What I don't expect is basic skills, high lifestyle, and enough ware to outfit a fire team)

Up to thirty-six thousand new-ones.

As a one off? I'm reminded of a nerdy quote "At last, we can retire and give up this life of crime. " 36k isn't that much. It puts the runner above street level lifestyle, but its not exactly a life of luxury.

True. It's more for a decade retirement in a coffin hotel.

You can certainly start out with a character who is a simporn actor or rock star, with national fame, a trust fund, and a liesurely 20-hour day job, who lives a high lifestyle and gets 13,500 per month on top of that. So why would such a character run the shadows? That's up to the player. Maybe even that much money doesn't satisfy the character's greed, or vices, or debts from gambling and other self-destructive impulses. Maybe the character is a jaded adrenaline addict, or someone who wants to be authentically "street". Maybe the character is an idealist who wants to strike out at the corporations instead of mere punditry about their depredations.

If you make such a character and can't answer that question, then congrats, your character doesn't run the shadows but just does his thing for a living, now make another character who does have a frickin' reason to be a shadowrunner! I mean, honestly, the whole "start with lots of money so I don't have to run the shadows" is shooting yourself in the foot, considering that running the shadows is kind of, you know, the premise of the game and all.