I'm starting a Shadowrun campaign in a few weeks and I wanted to know how much do runners get paid for an average run? All of us are new to the game. I've only played a handful of times, and the last was at Gencon 2010. I really love the setting and talking about it has gotten some folks in my regular Pathfinder RPG game wanting to give it a try. Trouble is, there is nowhere close enough to us where we can go to play. So, I've been elected to run a campaign. I'm quite nervous and have a lot of questions, but thought I would start out with this.

How do you decide how much the Johnson offers for a run? I'm sure the price goes up with the amount of danger, but lets just say a standard data swipe. Sneak in, steal the info, sneak out. What should the players earn for that? How about an extraction run? Or a smuggling run across the border? How do you vets set the payout for your runs?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to ask a few other questions here as well if someone does not mind helping a new GM out. Thanks a lot!

5¥ and a gift certificate for a Frozen Drink at participating Stuffer Shacks.

In Shadowrun Missions, the average payout I've seen is between 4000 to 8000 per runner in the team, in a four hour play session. I've seen as low as 2000 and as high as 28000.

I suspect that, since Missions is largely convention based, and many players only get to participate at most a few times a year, that payout is a bit higher that a home game would give.





-k

"I’m authorized to offer you five thousand nuyen—half up front and half on completion."
And that's for a suicide mission.
I decided to give my players 5k nuyen and twice as much in gear each (they get decent SINs, licenses and a commlink) just so they get together. Then the payments are going to vary - from 500 nuyen a pop for a simple courier job to 10k a pop for really complicated stuff.

"99 Bottles" gives at max ~200.000 nY per Runner, the Milk Run part in this adventure gives 1.500 nY per Runner per day, so it really varies from adventure to adventure. Also, Runners who already have Betaware or some initiations under their hood will normally not work for a low salary.

My runners got from net 3.000 to 10.000 nY per Run (gross from 3.000 to 25.000, before the had to pay for new SINs, smugglers, specialized gear etc.), except when i GMed 99 bottles - they managed to receive 130.000 nY. Afterwards, the Mage bought a sports car and a few months of high lifestyle.

Anything under 5k seems like I'm wasting my time, anything over 20k and I start to feel like I'm getting away with something. The figure I like to keep in my head is the Johnson is generally willing to pay somewhere between 10-33% of what the successful run should net him.

Another thing is the money they make is a lot of the time the first clue the runners have. If it's really low, it's a sign that the Johnson doesn't respect them or what they're doing isn't his main focus. If it's really high, it's a sign the Johnson doesn't think they'll be around to collect. It's not a hard and fast rule, but it's something to keep in mind.

And of course, you need to remember that your players are probably savvy characters.

They're not going to want to work for beans, and for good reason. As is quoted in my signature, "Runners are not going to work for less than the group could make stealing a Ford Americar every couple of weeks and having the group troll negotiate the sale to the chop shop."

Another way you can handle this is decide in secret what your Johnson's budget is, have him give the players some vague details, and ask them what they think their fee should be for that. If your players obstinately quote ridiculous figures, remember that the Johnson can walk, too.

In my opinion, it's a matter of how you want to run your campaign; street level, gritty campaigns might have lower pay outs. If they're going to run with the highlife and jet set, pay em big. As long as you aren't chucking out five digit+ payouts willy-nilly it really shouldn't be a problem. There's gear to repair, ammo to buy, new toys to save up for, new fake SINs to purchase, people to bribe, street doc bills, lifestyle, safe houses, etc.. It's not hard to start eating in to your players cash if you really want too.

Danger can be a factor, but also consider who you're doing a run on. $500ea for a quick snatch and grab from some local computer company, sure no big deal. Snatch and grab on a AAA Mega, well you might want to toss a couple of extra zeros on there and tell your players to have a backup character ready. Also consider additional loot that can be fenced, maybe some flunky has a credstick in his pocket, a compromising email from an exec is sitting on a secretary's terminal, etc etc.

I consider the average lifestyle costs that my players take and how much downtime happens between runs. I'll generally make sure at the very least they could afford a medium lifestyle before expenses are considered. Sometimes it's feast or famine, sometimes they just can't afford that high lifestyle they had been paying for the past couple of months. Maybe the run itself won't pay out big, but they make it up in items or pay data. If they do a run for a big corp, offer them a modest payout in nuyen, but perhaps a nice corpscript voucher for gear/upgrades. Toss in a mundane looking item, but if they bother to check it out have it be worth a good deal more.

For example, my players found a set of car keys on one of the NPCs they just took out. The rigger decided to see what it went too. It ended up being a (used) `68 Mercury Comet. Taken at face value, they could fence it for about $2,500 nuyen. The rigger made a few mechanics tests and realized that it had a bunch of upgrades on it that made it worth about $15k if they fenced it. Split five ways, it turned in to a nice little extra chunk of change.

Also, spread things out. If you start paying them big time early on, they may come to expect regular high payouts and get upset about doing "milk runs." At a bare minimum I generally do Street Cred Rating x 500, and let them negotiate up, usually at SC x 50-250 per net hit, up to their SC. This assumes an "easy" job with minimal risk. That being said, I do let my players know that sometimes it rains nuyen from the sky, other times it'll be a strict diet of ramen and stale nutrisoy for a month or two.

Keep them (the players) comfortable, but don't be afraid to put the screws to their budgets every now and again.

I hope that helps.

What are they?

I thought he was talking about a 1968 Mercury Comet.

Which was making me go "Huh?," because a hundred-year-old car still in running condition should be worth millions.

Thanks for all the help folks. I think I'll put my first run at 1000 nuyen each. Its a standard run, quick data grab from a private residence, but the home is located in a gated community guarded by Lonestar agents with a few drones. A bit extra for the added security measures and hopefully enough to convince the characters that the Johnson is willing to pay or a good team of runners. How does that sound to everyone?

Sounds good for "getting their feet wet". If the run goes seriously sideways, but they still succeed, a lil hazard bonus afterwards might not be a bad idea. Of course, if they muck things up, well, getting paid might be the least of their worries.

I would have some swag and/or money at the target site that the runners could make off with, as well. It doesn't have to be big stuff, you would be surprised at the little things that runners (and players) will prize greatly.




-k

Good. Is the data located on a working terminal or some kind of chip, disc or other media that requires physical snatching?

I'd say an average payout for a group playing a 4-hour session and succeeding in whatever the goal was should be between 5,000 and 15,000 nuyen per runner. In the world of shadowrun, there's a pretty wide possibility of payouts, since Megacorps have rather deep pockets.

GM's need to consider what kind of group they're playing for. If you've got a group interested in character-advancement (e.g. players who want to upgrade cyberware and whatnot) you'll want to pay-out enough so they can get an upgrade every couple of sessions.

For a grittier campaign, you'll want to balance-out the amount of cash they get vs. the total expenditures - lifestyle, medical costs, etc. If you're going to a 'barely hanging on' sort of setting, look at everyone's lifestyle choices, and see what they need on a month-to-month basis.

Another good question is how often to they get paying jobs vs. sessions where there isn't a payout.

I think that seems low if it's a secure neighborhood, but it depends on your team. If they're go-gangers or thugs off the street that might be appropriate.

Consider that 1,000 nuyen is roughly 1,000 dollars (roughly in terms of buying power, we can debate actual value some other time). I'm not sure how many players you have, but being paid ~$4,000 to break into a secure neighborhood regularly patrolled by the police seems low for a group of professional criminals, but some high school drop-out gangers that seems reasonable. I feel like there needs to be enough margin that the characters couldn't resort to the relative safety of petty crime or even a day job to make a better living. At that rate they're going to have to do 5 jobs a month, which seems like a lot if the jobs require any legwork.

For a quick "milk-run", 1000 per PC isn't unreasonable, but usually those don't require breaking-and-entering, and especially not in a well-patrolled area.

If you're starting with 400bp characters, I would assume the group had already worked-up through the super-cheap runs and was working on bigger and more lucrative endeavors.

As has been said, the average payout in one's game is a tool for creating the campaign you're going for. If you want hungry runners who scrape by and really feel the unglamorous nature of living in the shadows then the low thousands is what you want. If on the other hand you want top-of-the-line professionals enjoying the really nice gear and being able to afford lots of productive downtime then you need to break into five digits more than once in a blue moon.

Context may also come into play. My characters were offered 80k between the three of them for their last mission, not because the job was that hard but because the city is under an epidemic quarantine so money is in plentiful supply whilst gear and runners are not. Even though they botched it and lost a guy in the process they still managed to net half the sum, but finding things to spend it on will prove trickier than usual.

I have 4 players. They are all just starting out as runners, maybe a few runs under their belt. They are also just getting into the Seattle area and this is their first run in the city. I was thinking they are new to the area and have no good contacts or reputation yet, so the first run would be a "test" run for the Johnson to decide if they are worthy of the bigger runs he has planned. Its part of the story arc I've been working on, but if new runners getting paid less doesn't really fit the setting, I'll adjust as needed. Like I said, we are all new so I'm not really sure on how everything fits together in the world yet. If the above scenario sounds unlikely in the setting, I'd like to change it to fit better with how things work in the shadows. Any suggestions on how to pull this off?

Also, the Johnson was going to put out a call specifically for new runners to the area which is why all the characters meet up in the first session. Does this happen in the setting? Is it reasonable for a Johnson to only want runners who have not been active in the area.

That's pretty reasonable for a first run (this is the "Sneak in, steal the info, sneak out." thing right?). A Mr. Johnson looking for new, untainted talent he can use-and-abuse as he needs to is plausible. New teams without much reputation generally wouldn't be paid as much. Keep the security rather lax for this first run, but certainly set-up some basic challenges for the PC's to overcome (and learn from!).

I might suggest paying them 5,000 each for the info, with an additional 2-3K if they don't set-off any alarms during the run, and no evidence of the datasteal was left behind. Mr. Johnson might have a mole within the target corp that can verify that the run went smooth or not. That should emphasize the stealth nature of the game.

New runners getting less is reasonable. It's what your reputation is for. You should run your world however it works for your game and if it's not working after a few sessions, you can retcon it that the job paid more than you originally said. A try out doesn't seem unreasonable, but most criminals aren't going to take "maybe I'll give you a bigger job" as payment. Especially since it sets the tone that the Johnson can underpay them.

I think my players would be suspicious of a Johnson that only wants runners from out of town. Has she previously screwed over other runners and so is looking in other areas? Does she plan on double crossing them and so wants people without friends to track them down? This would mean some investigation on their part to determine the Johnson's real motivation, which is maybe a good thing. Maybe it's something as simple as a run against a target that has a lot of local connections in the runner scene and the Johnson doesn't know what runners he can trust. But new players might just take this at face value, which is fine too if that's what you want or if you want to make it clear up front that they should be suspicious.

It sounds like the set-up for a good old-fashioned Ares Macrotechnology Doublecross.

So sure, it happens, but your players need to understand that they should be very wary. And just because the first job isn't a doublecross doesn't mean they can let their guard down, either.


As for the pay...

1: Unknowns are probably going to be offered less in general. You might also try low up-front payment and back-ending it. Basically saying "I don't know you and don't know I can trust you, so I'm not going to hand over a fortune only to potentially watch you skip town, but I won't insult you by offering you a comically low figure, either."

2: Not all of the loot has to come from the Johnson! If they complain about the pay too much, have the Johnson mention that there's bound to be other valuables at the target site that they might avail themselves of; perhaps he can offer a bonus objective or two that he's willing to pay extra for. Alternatively, vehicles. They're expensive enough and portable enough that even at a firesale price of 20%, you can make good on it. (Johnson wants the cargo of a big rig? Johnson never specified he wanted the rig itself, too. They deliver the cargo; if he wants the rig, too, he ponies up 36 grand, or else he offloads their cargo and they take it to a fence.)

3: All else fails, let them trade Karma for . Explain it away however is convenient; minor background jobs that go off without hitches, hitting a minor prize on a pay-n-scratch lottery ticket, whatever.

4: Cut them breaks on their lifestyles. They all live together in the Barrens and just hijacked a truck full of food? The gang they pay protection money considers the food worth two month's Security payment, so that aspect of their lifestyle costs gets discounted for the next two months. Or if they live in an apartment building and the building's manager has a daughter who's getting hassle from a schmuck ex-boyfriend, the runner sticks a gun in the schmuck's face and tells him never to go near the daughter again - and hey, that's good for a permanent 10% off your rent!

Thanks for all the tips everyone.

This is the "get in, steal data, get out" run. The data is on a computer that is not connected to the matrix, which is why they need a team to get into the house for the swipe.

He wants new runners because the target of the swipe is actually a Prime Runner who made a name for himself in New York over the last decade. He sold out and went to work as a high level security advisor for Lonestar a few years ago. Now his job is to upgrade security and use his experience to try and counter the usual tactics of runners. Even though he is out of the "buisness", his reputation makes him well known to the runners in the area and he has more than a few contacts in the shadows of Seattle. I have a few ideas of how I'm going to use him in the campaign, but I'm waiting to see how the players do and what choices they make before I set his role for good. Thanks again everyone.

It's funny how that somewhat hardened criminals with solid abilities constantly risk injury and death for what I make a month.

It's always been a weird spot with Shadowrun, so when I was GMing I tried to make the 'jobs' more about character motivations, not purely monetary reasons. Or you just gloss over it and carry on

But then in the 2070s you would be a wage slave - comfortable and taken care of, but controlled to the point of being borderline farmed. Those living in the shadows, by and large, either don't want that life or can't get it and if the Shadowrunners are making a modest wage the others are making even less.

A good baseline is to look at the average lifestyle cost of the player characters - they should ideally have the potential to make a bit more than that each month in-game - which can be one run, or many smaller runs depending on how you want the campaign. Substituting cash payment for gear (weapons, ammo, cyber, foci) can work quite well also.

Try to keep them hungry, though.

That's a solid point.

Yeah, but they don't have a steady pay rate. Sure they rock the big money, but what happens when times are lean?

When the heat's on and there's no work, what do Shadowrunners do? Smart ones have contingency plans or other marketable skills (Combat Medics can work at a Black Clinic, Riggers can wrench at Shadow Garages, Street Samis and Muscle can work as Bouncers, Faces can con rich people into letting them live with them, Hackers/TMs can spoof a lifestyle, etc.).

Exactly so. For me, if the players really invest in the game and I manage to capture their imaginations the downtime stuff can be as interesting as the runs.

I think in the past our games have paid about $10,000 per runner, sometimes more. Just depends on your group and how often you play. You a decent amount of cash to buy upgrades. Also PCs will find ways to make money on the side - stolen cars, stripping cyber from dead opponents, hacking bank accounts of passers by... If you offer them more up front you can minimise this kind of sidetrek cash grabs!

Yeah, from time to time my players have gone on near-ridiculous looting sprees, taking even used Ares Predators from corp sec and fencing them off for 100:nuyen: each...this on jobs that paid upward of 10K per runner...

One PC even learned medicine and cybertechnology during the game so he could cut out cyber from bodies himself, eliminating the middle man.

Seems reasonable. They're fairly portable, and you never know when having a spare gun in your backpack will come in handy.



I can't imagine this one being cost effective. You'd need like, a facility to do that, wouldn't you? 100K is a really big investment - you'd need to cut a lot of 'ware out of stiffs just to break even. Exactly how many cybered bodies were your group generating?

A shop should be enough (because you can operate someone with a valikyrie module) - also notice, a med. facility costs 200.000nY, and a med. shop 10.000nY

Yeah, he was using a medical shop - since he didn't really care much about the original owners he only needed to focus on removing the cyberware in working condition. I'm not sure how many bodies he butchered for 'ware before he died, but I'm guessing 25 or so.

Ahhh. I didn't know they arbitrarily spiked the price on medical shops/facilities.

Anyway, you make a fair point about not needing the owner except as some meat you can toss at Tanamous for some extra .

One thing to limit cyberware-butchering is to give the opposition Beta- or Deltaware. These grades are custom fitted for the physiology and immune system of the target, and other people using them should suffer severe allergic reactions, therefore used betaware is worth less than used standard-grade ware. Kinda like my glasses are worth ~500$ to me, but most other people will not pay even 20$ for it.

Can you come up with relevant rules sections that say that used beta and delta CYBERware sells for less?
I can see the common sense argument for bioware, but the higher grade cyberware should simply be more biocompatile in general.

For example with your glasses: Especially with the expensive glasses the price difference is frequently in the frame, rather than the optical parts, translating in a higher selling value.

@Glasses: My frame costs ~70$, the glass itself was ~470$. Hard contact lenses for me cost ~1600$ (but my health insurance pays 1300$ of this)

Get Turn to Goo spell. Remove cyberware in moments. Profit.






-k

Well, i'm glad none of my players took turn to goo - but i would just ban it if one tried to take it.

Goo has an Armor rating of Body+net hits and takes damage normally, so unless you rule that the cyberware somehow miraculously 'pops out' of the goo you still have to separate the goo and the cyber (sorting through the pile of intertwined goo/clothing/gear in the process) using violence.

These are your glasses. Other glasses might be something like 3000$ for the frame and the same 500$ for the glasses.
Those are the 'expensive' ones, yours are just regular glasses custom fitted to you. I.e. the listed value for your glasses would be 70$+standard glasse prices
and there's a customization cost for you because you took the 'extremely short sighted' quality at chargen .



EDIT: Ok, disregard whatever i wrote here, i found a better argument myself to support your position:



I'm still unsure about the value of said 'expensive components', though. Even with extensive retailoring required, given the exorbitant cost there should still be SOME profit in salvaging beta/deltaware and thus reintroduce them into the production process as mostly raw material. If that profit is higeher or lower than selling standard grade street stuff is probably subject to GM's opinions (and your potential fencing pipelines).


P.S. I'm not really over my first gut reaction of 'Fixing street level problems by bringing up corp level cybered opposition?'

I usually make clear very early in my games that used cyberware isn't a very worthwhile endeavor. For one, having the powergamers try to harvest all the fallen foes tends to eat-up too much time, and it makes it risky to throw cybered opposition at the PC's.

It certainly possible to extract something specific for a plot purpose, e.g. pull an implanted commlink out of a Mr. Johnson's skull so you can get at the data or similar, but in general, "Just say NO to cyberware harvesting".

One of my group's most interesting runs was based on their downtime hijinks.

They had to steal a cow, you see, and...

Please, for the love of god, tell us this story!

OK, the group decided that investing in short sell on companies before they did Shadowruns was a good way to make money... But then they thought, "Why wait for a job?", bought up shares in one of the ArgiCorps in Seattle, and started trashing the stock prices of the other ones.

One went bankrupt, which was a Mafia Front. So the Capo Contact of one of the members calls up, freaking out, and demands they steal a cow, immediately, "I'll owe you! Gotta go, too much to do!"

So, they get the cow by magically lifting it over the fence while everyone and their dog are wiping out computer memory and shredding paper, and get it into the Commercial Van.

Bad news is:

One: It's the Tony Montana of cows, and is high on Novacoke.

Two: It's got a stealth RFID tag that immediately transmits I'M BEING STOLEN above the van. While they're driving on the highway. And the cow keeps kicking the van, shoving it side-to-side.

This was before my group even bought an RFID Tag Eraser, and was the FOURTH time I nailed them with a simple ARO tag.

I have to use that cow sometime...

Oh wow, that must have been fun. You'd think they'd have wound up lining the van with AR-blocking wallpaper after that.

Why was the cow high on Novacoke? Was it a specific cow that had been targeted by the mob, one genetically modified to produce Novacoke milk, and thus always high?

Did it introduce them to its little friend?

So where's the chicken?

Clinging upside down between the cow's udder and her leg. Waiting. Just waiting. Waiting for the cow to give the signal to attack.

Waiting for the bovine to attack the 'runners with its mighty cock.

They weren't smart enough to think about electronics emission control. 'Course, neither am I... As much as should be.

It was a specific cow, and it was a biofactory cow that's designed to eat the ingredients for Novacoke, and have it come out in it's milk. (The Mafia was planning on investing in some milk bars, and attracting some Droogs. ). They never solved the problem of it always being high on it's own supply. But they did get one politician who never could eat just one hamburger.

They eventually bought a knock-off, stolen signal blocker at the Crime Mall, ran it to the cow, and jammed a whole city block. Then paid a hacker contact 1,000¥ to read the instructions (Which were extra at the mall) to them. They literally threw the money into his black bank account before he could say word one.

"Adjust the rheostat all the way to the black dot, and activate the electrical current flow to the device's system." "WHAT???" "Move the dial all the way to the left and turn it on."