To be perfectly honest, there is a very high chance of failure with the 12 dice as opposed to the 20--especially for a Face as the lowest Negotiation I've seen on a published Johnson is 10. Most likely this will result in a tie, and since the Johnson is the defender, a tie means he wins.

I disagree with your indicated chances of Failure. Never forget Situation Modifiers, though. And honestly, I am not having an issue with a Status Quo for Nogotiations. In play, however, I have not seen this issue. Our negotiator often beats the Johnsons (even the ones with 10-12 Base Dice), and his DP is about average for a Face in our game (about 10-12 Dice). What it does do, however, is keep the game more grounded in the fluff.

I do understand the natural inclination to build the DP's as high as they can reasonably go. But reasonable, especially here on Dumpshock, is often so debated as to be useless. I consider 10-12 Dice for Starting Characters, in their fields, to be reasonable. Others think that unless you have a DP of 18+, you have an Unreasonable character. Fortunately for me, the actual fluff of the gameworld supports the lower DP as the expected level of starting play (Look at all Opponents, Contacts, and Template characters to see that that is the case). I also know that not everyone likes those kind of games, because at least some of them WANT to be the best in the world right out of the gate, and others argue that the example characters, contacts and Opposition are designed poorly and should all be scrapped. *shrug*

I look at it as 14 to 15 dice for a starting character (with the Face--and only the Face--going up to 20, as those pools see less use than others).

As to what you said about the chances of failure, well, it's best to take averages for dice into account rather than what you've seen of a lucky individual. On average, that 12 dice pool negotiation competing with the 10 dice pool negotiation will roughly end up tied more often than not. Most people don't want to be in the situation where they're thrilled about a tie (especially when a tie equals a loss).

You're absolutely right.

But, if you're literally the only group that can do a job - either because nobody else is good enough, or no-one else who is good enough is capable of doing it under the restraints you set (24 hour time limit,) or no other group is willing to do it under those restrictions, then you can literally name your own price. Mr. Johnson then has two choices: pay whatever price you command, or do without.

In negotiations, a Tie does not equal a Loss, though. It equals status quo. I was not really basing my observations on lucky rolls, but on actuall rolls over many years of play time (and statistically, 12 dice is better than 10 dice over time). The capriciousness of the dice, even when the DP's are close is interesting to watch. But I like that dynamic, personally. You rarely see it when the PC has 18+ Dice and the NPC has 10-12, because then it IS luck when the the NPC prevails. I often prefer story (the ebb and flow of the protagonist/antagonist circumstances) over forgone coclusion every time. *shrug*

I guess my view that the Face should have the high pools comes from that there is a need to compensate for some of the low payouts I've seen bandied about on this and the other forum. If the base pay is more reasonable, then I suppose the higher pool wouldn't be needed.

As to the other 'archetypes', the 14 to 15 I mentioned before seems to be the "sweet spot" in my experience. Though I also don't see much point in going for more than 2 initiative passes in most cases, whereas one always hears people saying that anyone "good" at combat should have 3. *shrugs*

Indeed. Even if some exceptional combatant has more passes than you, those passes are coming at the expense of other augs or spells, and thanks to the way SR4's initiative works, everyone gets their turn before he gets so much as his second pass. So if you're surrounded by chaff and one really, really tough guy, it's not hard at all to burn down the tough guy before he even gets his second pass in, then you can mulch up the chaff freely.

This wasn't quite the case in the past, where the initiative system worked different, and it wasn't remotely implausible to see the street samurai with Wired Reflexes 3 acting twice before anyone else even got to consider taking an action.

Even with a factor of 2 inp opulation, I'll still end up at somewhere under 1/300th of what Tippy's assigning to the AAA (Trillions in dayly profits). Heck even with a factor 3 in world population and a factor ten in average income (15 Billions and an average of 50K monthly income) I'll end up under a tenth of the numbers he's mentionning. Which in my opinions puts my guesstimate closer to what's plausible.

I didn't say trillions in daily profits.

Annual revenue for an AAA are on the order of 60 trillion nuyen. Daily revenue for an AAA are on the order of 164 billion nuyen. Daily revenue for all the megas combined runs about a trillion nuyen.

You are completely forgetting how few people are actually needed to make anything in the Sixth World. Take various small arms, do you think anyone at any of the AAA's actually make those? No, they use nanoforges that can turn out one ever five minutes. Do you think that they are getting raw materials out of the ground to build those weapons? No, they are dumping all of the trash into a pool of demolisher nanites that break it down into it's base elements and then dumping the elements into a machine that pumps out nanoforge feed stock by the hundreds of tons.

Most actually goods in the Sixth World don't need any living people involved to produce.

You also have to remember that the Megacorps are exploiting the solar system. They are mining the moon, mining asteroids, setting up Mars colonies, building a space elevator, have dozens of large space stations.

Then you have the entirely new market that is magical goods and services, and providing goods and services to all of the new species.

---
I got the figure for AAA revenue from a 3rd Edition book, I'll flip through them later and see if I can find the page reference and a quote.

I can see that...

Yeah... I think 2 Passes is the Sweet Spot, personally.

Hmm...something else we agree on. The End of the World must be nigh.

That said, yeah, more than 2 initiative passes just takes way too many resources between cost and Essence for my comfort. Best to wait until you can get Delta MBW 3 before getting more than 2, IMO.

Well, 7500*10 million is "only" 75 billion, not 7.5 trillion. And that would be .4% of the debt plus change assuming your numbers are correct on cost and numbers.

Though of course, 10 million a plane is probably a little off*. Consider that just unit cost of a B2 stealth fighter is 1 Billion and when you include all the logistical support, etc. it reaches about 2 Billion. With about 20 of them in the current air force you're looking at 20 Billion to buy. The F14 cost about 40 million each and we've got at least another 100 of those (couldn't find any solid numbers). Another 4 Billion. The F-15 costs about 30 million each and there are around 500 of those. Another 15 Billion. The new F22 is somewhere around 150 million and there's 180 of those on order. Another 27 Billion. The F-16 costs about 15 million each and there are at least 300 of those in service. The KC-135 Stratotanker costs another 40 million and we probably have around 100 of those. Another 4 Billion. The C-17 Globemaster costs about 200 million each and probably about 50 in service. Another 10 Billion. That's a total of 84 Billion for just 1250 planes. Sure the the other 6000 or so probably average cheaper, but we're still looking at somewhere closer to +200 Billion without accounting for the infrastructure, development, and logistical support for all these planes.

Though it is all sort of moot, since ET was likely using Hyperbole in his assertion that the megas could buy the entire U.S. Airforce with a day's revenue. The notion is preposterous. In 2070, most of the planes from today's U.S. Air Force don't even exist anymore and the entire contemporary U.S. Air Force is 0 planes, since it doesn't exist any more either. They would have to go looking through a lot of museums to find it and I'm sure the value will have depreciated such that the planes would be a real bargain price.

*If Wikipedia is to be believed on prices.

The Air Force has 0 F-14's, those are Navy and they aren't active there either since they were replaced by the Super Hornet. And my intent was to point out his math error that made it 100 times different than the numbers he cited, not argue about the cost of airplanes or even to imply they were cheap. They'd have to average all 7500 as a billion each to reach that number. Clearly not happening.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_activ...litary_aircraft

you mentioned dayly profits, not revenues - but the problem I have with your numbers isn't on the production side - replacing peoples with machines and squeezing hard what few are left and sucking dry every natural ressource in sight without concern for how damaging it gets are classical Cyberpunk themes and let your megas get a lot of goodies churning out of the facs. The problem I have is who the hell can buy all that stuff and bring money to the corps - if you assume the AAA are as domanant as you place them, there simply won't be enough of an economy outside of them to generate anything like that sort of profits, since by definition money circulating inside the corp isn't profit.

the only entities with enough money to burn to bring that sort of 'trade balance' would be the other AAA - but as they're all making reams over reams of money, where does that money come from ? Who's forking the nuyens to buy the AAA's mountain of products and services and letting them wallow in cash ans huge profits ?

To make it worse, the amount of security, intellingence and security forces you're assigning to AAA and the frequency and intensity of their use is would make the good old cold-war era USSR proud - that's going to eat money like there's no tomorrow. Particularly considering that most of that surveillance, security and whatnots is likely to be squarely aimed at each others - if they'ere basicaly the only other entities big, organised and rich enough to be threatening, why waste a ton of assets watching the bunch of barely significant ant hills that are the governments and criminals ? If they're wasting that sort of ressources on them, what do they bring to bear against each others ? millions of snoops ? drones everywhere ? thousands of tanks and planes ? fleets of nuclear missiles armed submarines ?

The money comes from the same place money comes from in real life. It represents a certain value of goods. An internal economy does work, since the corp produces everything, and the workers can decide how to use their scrip.

But if you assume a nanoforge / drones / underpaid wagesalves production structure, even the corp's 'internal' market will suck as it will involve very little peoples - drones don't buy stuff, minimum wage chipped-in disposable slobs on burger-flipper wages not much more. About the only somewhat reliable market would the moneyed elite's thirst for luxuries and gadgets, but it's limited by the small pool of buyers - once you'e got ten fancy villas spread around the globe, a pair of corporate jets and a 200+ feet yacht, there's not much you can spend you money on.

You're likely to end up with huge 'valuable' inventories of finished goods there's no solvable cutomers to buy, nice new housing units about nobody has the cash to rent or buy and so on. Stuff nobody can affor to buy that you tag a nearly meaningless price on and call 'profits' in your balance sheets.

God, I miss those days. I didn't even *read* the magic system back then, because nothing magic could do surpassed "You can kill two people before they get to act" for me.

But then some stupid GM would let the NPCS! (SHOCK!) do the same thing, which was TOTALLY UNFAIR!

Yeah...initiative needs to go back to that.

I do 4,1,3,2 as the initiative order (those with four IP act first, those with one IP act second, those with 3 IP act third, those with 2 IP act fourth).

Yeah, to massively grow the corporate revenues by that much means you either have to have much a wealthier population in general (which flies in the face of cyberpunk tropes), or a MUCH bigger population.

Neither exists in Shadowrun, at least not to the degree that would support the corp revenues being bandied about.



-k

I understand from Tippy's posts that apparently his team were the only guys who could do the job at that short notice, and I understand the Johnson was apparently one of the super rich (so he could afford to raise 4 mill at very short notice). What I don't understand is:

1) Why an apparently super wealthy guy (with all the security and connections that entails) would be a dead man if he didn't deliver said star to the mob. If he was doing a lot of business with them I could see him offering to get the superstar for them, but I can't see such a powerful person putting his life on the line over the deal, or their requiring it. It just does not compute for the wealth and power status he should have.

2) (More importantly) Why there is noone else with the required skillset who could get the job done for much less. If you offered half a mill for 24 hours work, I imagine you could find 2 or 3 prime runner groups across the continent willing to jump on a chartered plane arranged by the Johnson and get the job done for that sort of payday.

Exactly. The corps need a consumer market for their goods, and those consumers need money to buy the goods.

My understanding of a dystopian megacorp is not one of a huge workforce getting paid to sit around with their feet on the desk while the nanoforge pops out all the goodies the corp needs. YMMV, but in my gameworld being a wage slave is a horrible way of living, working all the hours available (not the cushy 9 to 5's that most dumpshockers seemingly assume) and being constantly shitscared that if you fall behind your peers you may be fired and thrown out of the nice safe corp enclave you and your family live in.

Indeed... Seems like My understanding is similar to yours.

Spitballing: 1 He had recently screwed up, and this was his last chance to prove himself.
2 they didn't want a random team that would come from anywhere for a big payout. They wanted a known good, trustworthy team with a history from this guy. You don't just put out a message on CL to get a runner for a job like that.

Maybe it was different, but I can easily see in game reasons.

The fairly extreme lengths that Tippy's team go to also protect their Johnson and by extension his employer. That's probably also worth a bit extra when Mr. J looks at how much of the authorized amount he feels like offering.

Thirded.

I have a friend who went to work in Japan, and reported back to me an experience just like this, even though he's a talented engineer. He spent 14 and 16 hours days just to keep even with his coworkers who were doing the same to keep even with him. He worked himself, literally, to sickness as he developed a stomach disorder that almost hospitalized him.

Imagine that "work ethic" spreading globally, and little choice except to comply because they're the only game in town to work for.

The heavy Japanese influences on cyberpunk in general, are probably there for just this reason. They were a feared economic force at one point, and this is the behind-the-curtain of why, I'm guessing.

On point (2) I will say that the Connection 6 global fixer in question would be able to put the Johnson in contact with other prime runner assets from nearby cities if the runners asked the J for too much ... even if his Loyalty 6 might mean he would prefer the J to use the runners in question, biz is biz.

(The question of why/how the GM OKayed a fixer with connection and loyalty of 6 is another matter, but I am sure Tippy has a plausible explanation.)

... but point taken. I shall cease and desist.

The question's rather why nobody has yet thought about taking that Fixer out. A bunch of starter character NPCs should easily be able to handle this with a Tippyverse seven-digit expense account, after all. GM seems to be a right old softie.

The majority of campaigns I have played in, and I have played in quite a few since 1st edition, have limited Loyalty or it's equivalent to about 3-4, barring special circumstances.

Missions limits it to 4, I think.

There's just not that much trust in the Shadows.



-k