My group was playing earlier today and we got approached by Johnson to extract a Trid star from the penthouse of a high class hotel in Seattle. Normally this would be a hundred k nuyen job and we would spend days (and possibly weeks or months) laying the ground work for and planning the run (compromising hotel staff, compromising hotel systems, staging events to get the trid star out of the hotel, investigating what kind of security and connections the trid star has, etc.) but the kicker was that the Johnson needed this run done in 27 hours (it was 7 AM when we did the meet and the Johnson needed the star by 10 AM the next day).

Our price jumped from 100,000 nuyen to 4,000,000 nuyen and it could have easily jumped up to around 10,000,000 nuyen. The Johnson got lucky that one of our gear suppliers happened to have a MIG-67 kitted out for high threat insertions (it cost about 1.75 million nuyen) already on hand and in Seattle and we didn't have to pay for a rush delivery (we have the contacts that we could have gotten what we needed delivered inside of 12 hours but the price would have been three to four times more).

Instead of a meticulously planned and choreographed run we blasted to the target at over 180 mph in a stealth mil spec insertion vehicle, dropped out in full assault armor, used a breaching charge on the roof of the hotel, dropped into the penthouse bedroom, slapped a DMSO patch with Slab onto the trid star, loaded her into a high rating UM Body Bag, went back through our hole in the ceiling, and flew off with our mage casting Improved Invisibility and Silence over the MIG once we were out of the immediate area.

Once out of the city we dropped into a secure warehouse, loaded the Trid star into a warded shipping container, put her in a VR prison environment that she couldn't escape from, and dumped demolisher's over all the gear we had used on the run (including the MIG) before leaving to off load the star to the Johnson.

It was pretty much the antithesis of how we normally do runs and from us boarding the MIG to having the Trid Star in the shipping container we under 20 minutes.

----
So I'm curious, how much do you jack up the price if the Johnson wants a run conducted immediately? In 12 hours? In a day? In 2 days?

What is this "planning" that you speak of?

The thing the separates the pros from the wannabes and allows you to survive long enough to think that retiring might actually be a realistic possibility at some point in the future.

I don't spike the price into seven digits, I can tell you that much. It sounds like you're playing in a pretty high-karma game, though, so whatever price hike works for your game, works for your game. Glad y'all are havin' fun.

Indeed. The other way to look at it is that you are asking for 40 game sessions worth of nuyen in one go. Unless the danger is 40 times higher, I don't think I'd do that.
I usually add about 20% bonus for a secondary objective(such as within a particular time frame) with a Negotiation test adding percentage points on top of that. I'm a big fan of Negotiation Tests for adding money to the run.

Most of the price spike came from the increased resource requirements. We have a 7 person party and split profits (payment minus run expenses) 8 ways so after the 2 million in expenses we ended up clearing 250,000 nuyen each.

That's nice but it's not retirement money.

Did you get to keep the MIG?

The danger was honestly greater than 40 times higher. What 'ware did the trid star have? Was she awakened? Was she a free spirit? Was she a dragon? Was she connected to any major organizations (a mega, organized crime, etc.)? What kind of security does she have on hand? How firm is her schedule (what if she was down stairs getting a massage when we conducted our raid?)?

Or normal runs end up being reasonably safe because we go to fairly insane lengths in our pre-run preparations to make them that way. It's our teams strong suit, finding overlooked vulnerabilities in the system (and they are usually overlooked because they are either very obscure or taking advantage of them is very complex), planning every facet of a run down to the second, practicing the run in VR at the most extreme difficulty settings (things like doubling the expected skill level and number of guards, having Crash 3.0 hit during the run, etc.) until we have every flaw or weakness we can find eliminated or covered, and only then conducting the actual run.

That makes our runs themselves surprisingly safe but it also makes them take (usually) days or weeks of planning, prep-work, and practice before we start the run (and some runs have taken months or even years of in game prep work as they require a number of preparatory runs).

Remove that prep-work and we are really operating outside our comfort zone (both OC and IC).

We also only cleared 25 times our normal run payout (our profits average 10K per runner per run, after expenses are taken into account). As for negotiation tests, they don't much help when the party says "This is our price, if you want us to do this run under these conditions then that is what you will pay us.". It's not like the players (me included) particularly wanted to do this run IC, they only accepted in large part as a favor to the fixer who put the Johnson in contact with them (the fixer has a reputation of always being able to get a mission accomplished and we were the only team that he had available within the time limits in the Seattle area with the required skills to stand a chance of success).


Nope. Demolisher's ate it. Too risky. This was way too high profile of a run to take chances like that. Every bit of gear we used during the run was turned to dust and the warehouse we used as a base/transfer point was demolished by a construction firm later that afternoon.

It's best not to take chances.

250k each after expenses? That might not be retirement money (in one go), but it's certainly getting into the realm of "but I can take about two years off after this, for damned sure" rates.

*shrugs* You guys are just operating at a higher tier than I'm used to in most of my own games, is all. I think you'll find that's the case with lots of us, when you start a conversation asking if a four million nuyen payday was too little. It sounds like y'all are having a good time, though, and if your GM's able to give out those kind of paydays and still keep you challenged and engaged, good on him! Sounds like a fun game.

Haha, I wish. It's covering a bit of 'ware I've had my eye on for a while in my case. Most of the rest of the party is doing similar things with it; buying ware or specialty pieces of gear that are normally out of our price range except as expenses on a job.


Probably true.


It is quite fun, but the GM will kill you if you don't play smart. It's very much a Pink Mohawk equals death table.

That's the time when the GM listens to what you're going to do, and comes up with ways to foil it.

That's why I never do it.

This is just my opinion, but since you asked for it:
I think you and I disagree about the definition of dangerous. I mean there should have been 40 times the amount of security on her at minimum. Exponentially more dangerous at maximum. You should have been fighting characters with a 16,000BP build.
Every mission should be dangerous. If you aren't afraid you are going to die on a mission, your GM is doing it wrong. The life of a Shadowrunner is danger and oftentimes there is no amount of prep work that should be able to nullify that danger. Things go wrong in plans as half the published adventures of Shadowrun will demonstrate.
In a story game, danger is drama. In a sandbox game, danger is conflict or obstacle.
Prep work is a good thing. A necessary thing. It eats up most of a gaming session, as well it should. But if your players are confident they can waltz through a game without danger, then it's not much of a game. It can be argued that it's collective story telling, but the game part is no longer there. It's why you don't play video games with cheat codes and why you aren't allowed to look at other player's cards in poker. If you know you are going to win, then the fun is gone. Without the danger of a run, you're just collecting nuyen like any other wage slave.
You should always reward planning and creative thinking to overcome danger, but there should always be variables the players can't know. Or, if they do know them, acceptable risks they should be willing to take.
You should also be constantly taking player's out of their comfort zones. Comfort breeds apathy which breeds boredom. It forces them to think in new ways and come up with creative solutions to hitherto unforeseen problems. You push players and they rise to the occasion and the game becomes more fun.

I honestly don't know how anyone can plan a run without danger. I wouldn't know where to begin.



Ah. The solution to this comes up all the time and is pretty simple. If the players want to walk away, let them walk away. This has to be an option for them, else it's a railroad game and no one likes that. I always have a few adventures prepped for such a situation so I can say "Okay, you pass on this run. A month goes by before you get another call. Everyone pay your monthly expenses." and the new run is offered(which is usually just as dangerous or less dangerous for less money.)
Now this isn't to say that every run scales with the players. that would be equally absurd. The better they get with Karma & gear, the better their reps should be and so higher risk missions for more money should be rolling in. But they shouldn't feel obligated to take them. The lower the Professional Rating of the baddies, the lower the pay and that should be an option. While less risk averse players might be willing to keep fighting gangers for a couple grand a run, but soon players will get bored and want more money, more Karma and more exciting runs.

But 40 times the pay for a run? 40 game sessions worth of gear in one session? Unless that trid star was a Great Dragon guarded by other dragons, I think that scale is a little out of whack.

Again, just my personal opinion. I totally understand that others might disagree.

See this is about the only thing I do have an issue with that to me equals failing the negotiation test. The J walks and your rep takes a hit because your basically breaking the framework. I'm not saying that at some point you don't ever get to say that, but saying it without a roll to back it up is just silly. Negotiations isn't just about getting the extra nuyen out of the client, it's about convincing him you need the extra nuyen and are worth the extra nuyen. Personally 4 million for a smash and grab job is patently silly, you didn't need a stealth mig for the op and the J shouldn't have paid you the kind of money to get one and then burn it and I say that as someone who like to pay his runners well and reward good prep and punish stupidity with death. There was a point when the GM should have thought it over and probably gone "no, she's not really worth that to me" and put on a movie. I mean good on you for playing and having fun and all that, but I guess if my players pulled that on me I'd probably have to have the NPC's balk.

Typically the loose framework I use for jobs as both a GM is this. I generally presume that 10k is about a good base pay for most decently established shadowrunners for a weeks worth of their time. Easy runs can pay less, hard runs should pay more.

Rush Jobs double the price if the whole thing will be wrapped up in a day or so. That's not to say every job that needs to start in the next day gets the multiplier but most of the things that have me going against hard targets? Yea I like my prep.
Unprofessional Johnson Fee: 50% increase and half up front mandatory. A Johnson that behaves in an unprofessional manner towards me at the meet is infinitely more likely to try and screw me, and therefore it is paramount that I get a bigger payout up front. A lesser version of this upcharge generally is place for J's who seem to be green rather then disrespectful. In the former case especially the raise in price or the up front fee can be waived if the J is vetted by a fixer I trust because the fixer knows that if the J welches on the job they'll be on the hook. Just like if I screw up a job I know I owe my fixer.
Travel Fee: If i'm not trying to leave town for some reason I generally charge a 10% surcharge for travel more then a few hours out of my area of operations
Hazardous Enviroment/Danger Fee: If the local environment has a tendency to kill people that costs money to send me there. I sometimes waive this for environments I'm intimately familiar with, because it's nice to go home to visit mom while i'm sent to the back end of Salish territory.
Stupid Complication Fee: If the job has some requirement like no one is harmed, or that I must wear blue during the run it tends to cause a fee, because I hate being micromanaged unless the J feels very important about it. Simply put the fastest way to determine if something is important to someone is to make them pay through the nose for it.

I also tend to increase my fees based on the laws i'm going to have to break. Security/Bodyguard work for a legal entity tends to come cheaper because I have free license to beat up/kill anyone attacking my target. On the other end of the spectrum wetwork tends to cost a lot because you do hard jail time in a no fun sort of prison for that. The kind with a troll cell mate named bubba.

Whatever the market will bear.

I'm gonna go off on a bit of a rant, here, so bear with me. Maybe this isn't your intent. Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Maybe your game just works differently than all the games I've seen, and maybe your social dynamic (and not just the power level of your campaign) is different than mine. But oh well. Rant starting:

Which is, in my opinion, kind of bullshit. Because negotiation tests should matter. You don't get to state your price and be totally inflexible about it, unless the NPCs get to do the same thing (because, realistically, most Mr. Johnson's have a set budget that they can't exceed, right?).

And the problem there is one of...of...well, in-universe greed overtaking the out-of-game social contract. If a GM's taken the time to create an adventure, or spent the money to buy one? It's kind of a dick move, in my opinion, to turn up your nose and refuse to play it because you're not getting offered enough imaginary money. Sure, sure, maybe I'm breaking character or whatever, but when the GM offers me a job -- whether it's a mission in Shadowrun, a quest in D&D, whatever -- I accept that maybe it's a little silly of me, but I say yes. Because sometimes being cool to my friend, the GM, matters more than my imaginary character making a few extra imaginary nuyen or gold pieces.

So sure, I'll make a negotiate test. I'll try to drum up the price as high as I can, in-game. I'll sling a Diplomacy die to try and get the gp needed for my new +1 sword, or I'll toss out a handful of d6's to try and get the nuyen I need for a new Eurocar...but saying "pay me _________ or no adventure?"

Yeah. That? That I don't like. Because it's a form of holding the game hostage, and risking everyone's fun and evening plan. Also? It's a form of bypassing the need for those social skills. While everyone else has to roll a negotiation check, you're just picking a number and telling the GM that your Friday night is out of his hands, and all up to you, and you're not even going to work within the (social) rules of the RPG to say so. He has to pay you your $4,000,000 or the adventure he worked on is scrapped and everyone's stuck playing X-Box, or he has to think up a new adventure, or whatever.

And that makes me frown.

Assuming, of course, that the GM isn't intentionally undercutting what you'll do the job for because he's prepared the session based on the assumption that you won't work for mr dodgy Johnson. My group's actually walked away from a suspect mission where the Johnson's offer was far too good for the mission type, which in turn stopped us walking into a trap. The majority of the plot arc still happened, but we got to feel clever for not delivering ourselves to the waiting hit team. Being unable to turn down a mission, in spite of dodgy-looking Johnsons or suspicious offers that scream trap merely because it'd be 'holding the game hostage and risking everyone's fun and evening plans' feels like railroading to me, which in turn reduces the fun of the game.

My two nuyen: That Johnson should never have gone to you with that proposal, IC. your groups reputation is built around getting the job done quietly and efficiently, but with loose time constraints. A Johnson rocking up to you and telling you 'get it done within the next 24 hours' probably incurs 'failed to research team' tax... though maybe the blame should go to your fixer for recommending your group for a mission that was obviously outside your normal operational practices and skills. Since he was willing to pay the four million (At least half of which went to one-shot assets which if I'm reading your post right included a full set of new or one-use gear for your entire team), then he'd obviously budgeted for such expenses and it was possible that OOC your GM wanted to force your hand for a more 'Pink Mohawk' style run and give you the chance to use the stealth MIG without have it become a permanent addition to your arsenal.

You really need to have a word with your fixer, though, as this job was really not playing to your group's strengths (of which planning is obviously one).

I would have simply offered 400,000 as a final offer, and if no agreement was reached, then no deal. Plenty of other teams can get people out of hotels.

* makes a bunch of concealed die rolls *

In other news, the trid star jumped from a hotel window at 10 a.m. this morning in an apparent suicide.

Most of the published adventures show frankly terrible planning, if that was the limit of our planning and prep work then we would likely die on every run.


This is somewhat where we disagree. First, the players aren't confident that they can waltz through the game without danger. They know that the world is a highly deadly and dangerous place and that the only way to generally have a decent chance at survival is to plan everything from runs to a trip to the Stuffer Shack to an extreme degree.

We, the players, are rewarded for creative thinking and overcoming obstacles. That's kinda the primary thing we do. The creative thinking and overcoming obstacles just tends to mostly come before the run it's self.


We are constantly faced with new problems. Every run is different with different enemies, different facilities, different weapons, different objectives, etc. If we want to ensure a good chance of success then we spend the time and effort in game to find those differences and either work around them, minimize them, or capitalize on them.


Learn absolutely everything that you can about the run. Do full background checks on everyone involved. Stealthily coop or raid tertiary targets so that the primary run has a higher chance of success. That's where you start, where you end depends on the specific run and how much time and resources you are willing to expend.


The only problem with that is that we just plan our own runs as or more often than we get runs from others. We don't really loose much by refusing to do a run (income wise).



The 40 times is because that Trid Star could have been a Great Dragon. We had no idea what the risks on this run where so we went with the plan least likely to get us killed and charged a far higher price because of the far lower ability to control our risk.

I hope that's hyperbole, because if not, your game seems quite insane.

Exactly. There are limits to what is reasonable (though this campaign sounds more like Saints Row: The Third, completely ridiculous and over the top, so "reasonable" might not apply there as much as in other campaigns ).

In Shadowrun, the runners are the playballs of the Johnsons, not the other way around, usually.

Bye
Thanee

Not necessarily. Planning for a trip to stuffer shack might be as simple as wearing armoured clothing, making sure your Morrissey Elan is loaded, and check that your conveyance has enough fuel to get you there and back. 99% of the time these will prove to be unnecessary, and then there'll be that one time that you're in the store when some thugs decide to rob the place.

Negotiation is not mind control. When the Johnson says "This is what I want done." the players said "This is our price if you want us to do it within the time frame you specified, and the only reason it's so low is because mission critical gear happens to already be available and does not need to be rush ordered.". In the end the players can always walk, as can the Johnson, although the consequences of doing so can (potentially) be extreme.


We (the players) did honestly think the Johnson would balk and basically say that. We would have been happy with that, we didn't particularly want to do this run. It turns out that the Johnson was working for a very powerful crime family and had promised to turn over the Trid star to his bosses by noon the next day. He had hired other runner teams in advance but they had blown the run (which is why she was hiding out in a luxury hotel) and now he was on a very tight time table. So he contacted our fixer (who has a rep of always being able to provide a team that can accomplish the job, whatever it is, wherever it is, whenever it is) and our fixer was in something of a bind; his other high level runner assets were doing other things around the world and we were the only one able to be onsite and accomplish the run within the time allowed so he asked us to talk to the Johnson as a favor to him (normally this kind of run wouldn't be offered to us by our fixer because he knows that we would turn it down flat). If the Johnson turned us down for being too high priced then our fixers rep would stay intact (he provided a team that could do the run, the Johnson just refused to pay) but instead the Johnson accepted our price.


Our team won't meet with a Johnson without a 10K retainer (to cover the security costs of our meeting and our time) and our minimum price for a run is 100K (they are informed of this by our fixer when we are offered for the job) for even the most simple missions (because we will blow 65K of that on expenses and thus only clear 5K a runner).


Thanks.

Our GM would say "Well your fixer doesn't have any more work for you at the moment. What do you want to do?" and then (when we start looking) provide various plot hooks for other runs.

Our GM always has multiple extra runs planned and ready with about all that he needs to change being the paydata and a few names. The players decide to raid Corp XYZ which was in the news for having developed a new piece of SOTA gear, well the GM pulls out Corp run #18, pastes on some names and switches the final target a bit, and then let's us go and do the run. If we decided to hit Corp ZYX instead, well it's still Corp run #18 but the names are different.

It's not like our refusal to do a particular run would stop the gaming session.


Nope. What happens if some 2-bit ganger holds up the Stuffer Shack while you are on site? What happens if the Star stops you for whatever reason? Who is on the extraction team encase things get hot? What is the extraction plan? Has the hacker taken over the Stuffer Shacks nodes yet?

99.9% of the time all of this would be hideously excessive, the other .01% of the time you find yourself in Food Fight or something worse. Proper contingency planning ensures that you walk away from those situations alive, healthy, and without being compromised to the point where you have to burn everything to the ground and start over.


Only if the runners let themselves be the playballs. At the end of the day a runner can always find or create work and it's the Johnson who wants something done for him. There are Johnsons who will only give runs to teams that they have thoroughly under their thumbs but they don't tend to go outside those teams to higher runners because their risks are higher (they have less control over the runners).

Then you would not be working in my game, there such a thing as too paranoid and too much up front costs. Comparable quality runners whould be able to do the job for cheaper and they would get the call. There isn't a wrong way to have fun, but at the same time I don't see many J's paying this for regular jobs. If nothing else then the simple fact that even if he was for a powerful crime family he probably doesn't have 4 million sitting around to blow on this sort of op. Nothing about your plan screamed 4 million. And if you decide to start working on your own accord then you start having whole new sets of problems. You have to do all your own planing and you have to arrange all your own fencing and all your own intel and all the enemies you make are your own not your J's. Now i'm not saying because you work as an independent everyone suddenly knows where you live but I do think the deck is stacked somewhat against independant shadowrunners.

Basically your GM sounds like they are a bit overly permissive to the detriment of the setting. Now as long as they are having fun and you are having fun it's not really a problem, but it creates a game world that is so vastly different from the "norm" it's almost pointless to ask others for their advice. I say that that a guy who takes heat because I like to pay runners well for difficult runs by many peoples standards but I honestly have a hard time envisioning what you are blowing 65k worth of expenses on every op. Unless you are literally dumping every piece of gear and every ID you use every time there is no reason to have that kind of expenses.

Basically I firmly believe that as much as the Johnson-Runner arrangement is annoying especially at the upper tier it offers the highest ROI for time and gear and the greatest likely hood you will actually getting paid and then getting to take the next week or weeks off to actually enjoy your spoils while only have to keep one eye on the door.

I do agree with you that not every run needs to be a nail biter, the universe (and more importantly the GM) shouldn't conspire against you to suddenly put obstacles in the way of a good plan just to make sure you feel properly threatened. Part of being good at something, especially something dangerous, is being able to do it with a degree of safety and familiarity. A 'run should seldome be "another day a the office" but a run to extract a scientist from his family reunion his family shouldn't secretly be one big bug hive just to throw the runners a curve ball (although now I kind of want to run that plot now).

I wanted to touch on this briefly: If your GM is doing this Call them on their actions the universe shouldn't re-write itself to block a good or novel plan. On the other end of the spectrum though it really helps as a GM to have a reasonable expectation of what the players are going to do so they can get their head in ahead of time on how the NPC's would react, because just as Shadowrunners might sometimes be better at their jobs then their players are the same goes for the opposition and the GM.

Hey, sometimes you gotta let your pink mohawk fly free, baby!

Yeah, but you're GM did. My issue isn't with you, the players. Much(You bullied your GM a little here, which isn't cool.) Y'all are just trying to get as much nuyen out of a job as you can, which I can grudgingly accept that all players do. My issue is with the GM. When y'all said "4 million. Take it or leave it." He should have either told you, as the GM, that this was the adventure he was running tonight and this is what you're getting paid for it. He could have then said he put a lot of work into it and to refuse to do the run because you weren't getting enough imaginary money or because it sounds scary is a dick move. If you didn't like it, then someone else can run the game and he'll make up a PC.
Or he could have let you leave it. That's what I would have done. If y'all like to plan your own runs, he should have just let you do that. If y'all have more of a sandbox style, I can dig that.
But if he agreed to that price, then the run should have been 40 times more dangerous(It clearly wasn't.) There had to be a reason he was willing to offer that and not just find another Shadowrun team. You should have had to fight an Air Force of fighter jets, Awakened flying things and ultra violet AIs hackers.
I get that your team is risk averse and so, to you, any X factor needs to be massively compensated for. I get why y'all thought it was 40 times more dangerous. But the Johnson knew the relative level of risk. So did the GM. I don't get why it was worth 40 times more to him. He could have found better runners or far more runners for that price. He certainly could have hired some Tir Ghosts or someone who wouldn't have needed a jet plane.

That's why I consider the price so exorbitant. You asked what we price for runs within a time frame. I think most all runs should have a time frame the way actual work does. Can you imagine your boss coming to you and saying "I need you to do this project. Your deadline is whenever." More than a week is too long. If it's within a very specific time frame, I consider that a secondary objective which is about 20% plus Negotiation net hits.
I also scale my adventures in terms of risk. The higher the Professional rating of the baddies, the higher the pay because better stuff is guarded by better people.
If my players said "40 times our normal pay. Take it or leave it." I would have said "Leave it," given them negs to their rep(and therefore Negotiation die and therefor less money. See why I like Negotiation hits now?) and told them a month goes by, made them pay their monthly lifestyle costs and then run the next adventure I had in my notebook.
If I was in a really foul mood I would have said "Okay" and then given them the adventure with the Professional Rating of the baddies multiplied by 40.
It sounds like that's what most people here would have done, too. What I don't get is why your GM didn't.

Again, just my personal and irrelevant opinion.

That is the worst possible GM:ing style ever, nobody likes railroading.

Also when mr. J needs something pretty hard done in a really fast chelude, it's usually more of a sellers market then buyers, after all there aren't that many shadowrunners, especially not good ones.

But a Multplier of 40 for something that was only worth about a Multiplier of 2-3 is stupid exorbitant. Our GM (The Johnson) would have laughed until he peed himself, spread the word that the team were obviously newbie posers with delusions of professionalism (and therefore providing the team a Negative Rep hit) and found someone else for the job that was willing to take a couple hundred thousand Nuyen (AT MOST) to carry out the mission. With far less in the way of dramatics, to boot. *shrug*

Hell, I got a character (and his team) that would have done it for 100,000 Nuyen, would have completed the job with minimal risk, and been laughing all the way to the Shadow Depository with their easily gotten money (and all with only 10-12 DP's). This does not sound all that difficult of a run.

It's not my particular style, which is why I don't do it, but I understand it. Especially for newer GMs or at Cons or for story games.

There simply aren't that many quality, independent, runner teams. You rarely see entire teams of prime runners with a well rounded skill set. Sure, all the corps have one or two sitting around but those aren't as deniable (and tend to be more expensive).

It's pretty much a fact that a team of PC runners, immediately out of chargen, is a varsity running team in terms of skills and abilities. There are a fair number of more skilled or able individuals in the Sixth World (even in the Shadows) but most aren't in stable teams.


*shrug*
Frankly, in real life this is cheap. If you want a professional assassination done against a high risk target you are looking at a hundred thousand plus. If you want a professional kidnapping against a high value individual you are looking at a hundred thousand plus (often far higher). If you want a professional B&E job to steal secure corporate or government files you are looking at a hundred thousand plus.

Sure, on the street you can get some gang banger to do a hit for a few rocks of crack or kidnap someone for a few thousand bucks or break into a store for a few thousand but none of those are professional jobs.


Doing a stealth run was impossible in the time available. That meant a speed run. Going in from ground level means a hundred levels, of which the top 20 are separated from the rest by meter thick steel and the alarm activation (wired, not wireless, and controlled from an isolated system) would drop meter thick steel plates down over all of the openings and steel shutters would close over all the windows. High force wards with high force spirits of multiple types were also in play. The hotel has a high threat response team permanently suited and on standby onsite.

This meant that we had to go in through the roof (that being the only way to get into the penthouse in the time we had), that meant we needed air transport to and from the site. That is not remotely cheap (and it's where about half of our price went).


We already do all our own planning, we already do all our own fencing, we already arrange all our own intel, and we are going to have the exact same enemies (no one knows whether a Johnson hired us or we were operating independently).

The easiest way to get yourself screwed by a J is to let him be, in any way, involved in your planning. Letting him provide items or fence items is insane (the items are certainly traceable in one way or another, the easiest being to take a ritual sample and fencing means showing the J what you lifted). Using J provided intel as anything but the absolute most basic of information (which you should check the validity of anyways) is one of the easiest ways to get yourself burned. It's worse than hearsay (because the J has reasons of his own to tweak the intel he provides). As for enemies, there is no discernible difference between a run we do for ourselves and one we do for a J.


Only if the runners are fools. Never trust a Johnson. Never let anyone outside your team know anymore than they absolutely have to about a run.


R6 Fake ID 6,000 Nuyen (with 7 runners that is 42,000 nuyen on it's own).
Then you have a vehicle, a safe house, burner com links, clothes, nanopaste disguises, etc. This is the bare minimum.

Our average expense report for a run is well over a hundred thousand nuyen but we do destroy virtually every bit of gear that could have been compromised during a run.


We don't find the arrangement annoying. The Johnson contacts our fixer, our fixer passes him onto us if the mission is one we are suited for, the Johnson tells us what result he wants and what he is willing to pay, we either accept, decline, or request time to conduct a feasibility study (which might have it's own cost, although only expenses and the cost is rolled into the mission fee if we decide to accept). If we are willing to do the run we say what our price is, with expenses up front (generally around half the cost of the mission). The Johnson either agrees and gives us the money or disagrees and we leave. If the Johnson agrees to hirer us then we provide a method for him to contact us (canceling the run, for example) in an emergency and for us to contact him (notifying him that we have completed the run, for example) before leaving. Most of the time we don't contact or see the Johnson again until we have completed the run and it's time for him to pay up.

This pleases both sides. A professional Johnson does not want to know run details, he simply wants the job done for a price he considers acceptable. And for corp Johnson's that is a very high amount (most corp runs have a payoff in the high 7 figures, many can hit the billions of nuyen, so paying a few hundred thousand or even a few million nuyen for a successful run is cheap).


Yep.

That's the worst kind of GMing.


That's not a better method of GMing. The GM's job is to run the world he creates it and then changes it to react to the characters actions. If the Trid star was a Great Dragon before the run started then that's fine, if we had taken the job at a low price and been screwed when we tried to kidnap a Great Dragon; well that's our fault for being idiots. By the same token, if we did a run charging for and expecting a great dragon and in reality it's a regular human; well the GM shouldn't just turn that human into a great dragon just to make the run challenging.


In the time scale he had we were the only option. He tried to cheap out and hirer worse runners before, they failed. So he contacted our high end international fixer who has a rep for being able to get anything accomplished discretely and who's primary clientele are the movers and shakers of the sixth world. Needless to say, if you have to worry about price then you aren't his client base. You contact him when you either need something accomplished that everyone says is impossible or when you need guaranteed success on something simpler.

So he hired us and got someone extracted from what is only a step below a Z-Zone in under 24 hours.


Your Johnson isn't your boss. He is your customer. You are essentially a consultant or contractor. He says "this is what I need done and when I need it done by", you say "this is what I will charge you to accomplish that", he says yes or no. The shorter the time frame the higher the price.

And frankly, a week is way to short a time period for most runs. There is no reason that a corp or large organization should generally not know that they are going to need runners until a week before the run needs to go down. Months is far more common, especially when you are talking dragon controlled organizations (and that is 2-3 corps and 2-3 nations).


Good, Fast, or Cheap; pick two. The rep that would take the hit is our fixers, because the Johnson didn't actually know who we were, and even then our fixer wouldn't take a rep hit ('I gave him what he wanted, he wasn't willing to pay the price.').

As for lifestyle costs, we consistently keep enough for a few months of costs available and getting the money for that is easy. Just go and knock over a drug dealer, blackmail a public figure, raid a middle end corp, or simply hack lifestyle.

As a runner team you are doing it wrong if you need Johnson supplied runs to make ends meet. There are simply way too many ways to maintain even a high lifestyle with minimal risk in all levels of play. If you can survive Z-Zone runs then you can find someway to make ends meet.



Your team is willing to take on nearly Z-Zone security for 100,000 nuyen with 24 hours notice? And you seriously claim that it would be easy?

Luxury Hotel Penthouses are NOT Z-Zones (NOR are they a Zero Zone, or even close, really). The fact that you think they are is very entertaining.
Would the hotel have been a nut to crack? Possibly, yes. (But it did not sound like it in your description at all)
Does it require more than 100,000 Nuyen in recompense? Maybe, maybe not. (Quick Turnaround time deserves a bit more money)
Does it require 4 Million in Payout, a fully tricked out Mig67 LAV, New Kits for 7 runners and demolition nanites to erase all the evidence afterwards? Absolutely not. Your price is overkill. As I said, the team I am currently in would likely have taken that job for 100,000 Nuyen. Maybe a little more. If we had gone over 200,000 Nuyen, the Johnson would have laughed in our face and gone to someone else. Shadowrunners are indeed a dime a dozen. Prime runner Shadowrunners are more rare, to be sure, but to ask for 4 Million Nuyen, crazy levels of equipment, etc, and expect that that is the norm is laughable indeed.

We took a run for our prime runners in Hong Kong. It was over a year in setup, agaisnt a Zero Zone (which is VASTLY different from a Z-Zone by the way), had about a dozen set up runs prior, was ludicrously deadly, and we were still not going to throw out a price and give the Johnson an Ultimatium. We took his offer and negotiated from there (It was a fair starting Price Quote, to be sure). That is what the Negotiation skills are for, after all. In no way would a Johnson at our table be held hostage like you did in your run above.

As other have stated above, though. As Long as you are having fun, you are doing okay. But what you are running at your table is is no way typical of the Shadows...

No, that is the worst kind of GMing.

What do you call on site high threat response teams with hundreds of thousands of nuyen worth of 'ware? Multiple hard wired computer networks controlled from a bunker buried several floors underground, a mage site fiber optic network covering every part of the hotel except the actual rooms, multiple high force spirits, multiple high force wards, duel key security systems that require two individuals to bypass (one of which is in New York), and what is essentially a solid steel vault?

What would you do? The networks with external access never connect to the wired networks which handle all internal security. Those internal networks have multiple high level spiders patrolling them constantly and largely need to be hacked independently of one another. You aren't (under the SR4 rules) pulling off a hack of the computer systems without a lot of planning and prep work, it's simply not happening in under a day.

Magical security is first rate, again you aren't bypassing it without far more information than you can gather in a few hours.

Physical security can be beaten but you have to manage the entire run in under 5 or so minutes. From the front entrance to the penthouse is a hundred floors. And within 5 or so minutes the entire area will be locked down. Then you have the fact that most every guest in the hotel has their own bodyguards with them.

Security was sufficient that you weren't ghosting it in under a day. That means an overt infiltration and grab. That means do it fast and keep moving or end up dead. The best way to do that is to breach the roof (dropping right into the Penthouse and bypassing virtually all of the physical security) and being gone before security can begin to respond.

The weakness in the hotels security was that it presupposed that attacks would start at ground level.


No, it's really not. A high lifestyle is 10K nuyen per month. If your teams hacker can't hack that lifestyle consistently (and quite frankly can't just set an agent on the problem) then he is incredibly poorly built for a prime runner with a matrix manipulation role.

If your team face can't con a total of 10K nuyen out of the populace per month then he is incredibly poorly built for a prime runner with the face role.

If your team mage can't produce a total of 10K nuyen worth of refined regents per month then he is incredibly poorly built for a prime runner with the magical support role.

If you team infiltrator can't steal a total of 10K nuyen worth of loot per month then he is incredibly poorly built for a prime runner with the infiltration role.

If your team street sam can't get a total of 10K nuyen per month from assaults, body guard work, etc. then he is incredibly poorly built for a prime runner with the combat role.

Making rent should never be of particular concern to a prime runner (and that is the PC's level). There are simply way too many ways to pull in 10K per month with very minimal risk. Hell, have a Chemistry Soft and a Chemistry Facility and you can turn out well over 10K nuyen worth of drugs and explosives in a month.

If you need Johnson provided or high risk runs to pull in 10K a month then your GM is either deliberately screwing you to prevent you from making nuyen with minimal risk or you are being an idiot.

Not in any serious way. Although I've known a fair number of runners who seemed to feel that way - either that, or "the more things you have planned, the more things can't go according to plan."

Or, my all time favorite quote about this: "Let's not calcify the plan."

Well, if "go in through the roof" was a valid strategy for bypassing all this I'd call them incompetent.

Hotels aren't expected to need milspec anti-air systems.

And there was security on the roof, the roof its self simply wasn't sufficiently armored to resist our breaching charges.

There was also the fact that we were in and out fast enough that even a sub two minute response time wouldn't be fast enough to engage us.

Sounds like you're all set. No risk to live a high lifestyle. Come to think of it, no reason to do any runs at all.
Next session, just insist on 100 million nuyen(clearly your GM won't say no) then buy a permanent Luxury Lifestyle. Now you've won Shadowrun. Apparently, it's just that easy.

Nor do they require 4m in compensation to infiltrate. IMHO you seem like you're trying to have it both ways. You deserve the money because it was a super duper hugely secure building but the roof wasn't secure because it was just a hotel.

I would think there would be a roof helipad or something sturdy enough to withstand the landing of helicopters or in 2072 even VTOL's as well as some breaching charges. Even if you got through that some maintenance rooms with equipment. For instance look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_floor all the tallest buildings in the world have the top floor, sometimes the top several, housing equipment and such.

I'm not saying the run was done poorly or the level of compensation is bad or anything. I've been given delta grade move by wire 3, etc as compensations for runs and I've HALO jumped onto the roof of an Aztec building during a powerful magic ritual. There are many ways to do Shadowrun and Military style runs and getting paid millions and millions is certainly one way to do it that can be incredibly fun. Just recognize it for what it is, it's no more challenging to do that than it is to break up a Humanis Policlub rally with baseball bats for 250Y which I've also done.

All of which you can pull off with minimal expense and time invested. You did not need the MIG, for example (save you 2 Million Nuyen right there), or a whole new kit for everyone involved (what you have is likely more than sufficient, and would have saved you additional monetary outlays). I, too, would have gone through the roof. As you say, no Milspec Anti-Air defenses involved. Simple and easy and doable for about 15k, at the most, assuming you have an air asset or two (also easily bought for under 20K apiece if you don't already have such equipment). A team of 5 or less can pull that off. Why? Because, as you already so eloquently pointed out, the response times are not good enough.

Your overplanning is entirely wasted, and generally not really all that necessary. Hell, we have a Prime runner in our group that could have just walked into the Hotel, and gotten his own Penthouse suite right next door, on a whim, so... *shrug* There was absolutely no need to go in as hard as you chose to go in. That was a choice that YOU and your team made, and was not really necessary, from everything that you have said about the target. I think that your overplanning brings it own issues with it. Issues that would likely never actually be present if you did not go to such extremes. KISS is a rule to live by in the Shadows for a reason.

Anyways, like I said, it sounds like you are having fun, so.... Enjoy.

How could you know so much about the security of a place you did not have time to research? Did you know for a fact that this was the security layout, or was the mere possibility that this was the case enough to scare your team into using military aircraft that you insisted upon destroying after one use? I've never been in a group that needed to blow up all their vehicles after every run.

To be entirely fair vehicles used in runs by my group also tend to have a short and eventful life... It's just that WE don't generally get the chance to destroy them.

Tippy, you might get less flak on your posts if you prefaced this by explaining what sort of world/game you play in.

This is still the 400 BP +1500 Karma game where everyone in the group has 1,000,000+ worth of gear, with 8 runners, and your team owns a mega corp? Where you're all essentially superman in your own specialty? And it's in a world where killing hundreds or thousands of people on a regular run isn't unusual and hundreds of thousands of equipment are acquired and disposed of on a regular basis? (Most people would call that pink mohawk, but you don't seem to like the term, so however you want to say it.)

It's pointless to ask most people for their opinions of this game, because generally most people play with 1/10th that karma, have between 1/6-1/4 that amount of gear, half as many runners, and don't have access to and don't just carelessly dispose of that much equipment. None of the answers you're going to get apply to your game. Why don't you just start a thread where you describe your awesome antics (there are lots of game play threads)?

No one runs for money, at least not if the player has bothered to really think about their character.

Unwired page 99, Hacking Life.
Hacking a High Lifestyle has a threshold of 48 with an extended test (1 day interval) of Hacking+Spoof. Get a rating 6 Agent with a rating 6 Spoof program and it rolls 12 dice on the test. That allows you it to buy 3 hits per day. Or hack a High Lifestyle every 16 days. You can sell a hacked lifestyle for half the value of the lifestyle for a month. That's 5,000 nuyen per Agent per month. Those programs cost 21K nuyen, that is made back in under 5 months of 1 hacked high lifestyle per month.

Hacking a luxury lifestyle has a threshold of 100. To buy enough hits over 30 days to manage that requires that you pick up 4 more dice (which isn't particularly difficult).

When you hacker is running is he making less than 50K per month? If so then he isn't running for money, because he can hack a luxury lifestyle from the safety of his own base and sell it for 50K per month.

Doing that and having an agent hacking him a high lifestyle would give him an income (with minimal expenses) of 600,000 nuyen per year. Is your hacker or technomancer making less than that? If so then he isn't running primarily for money (or he is running to make hundreds of millions/billions).

Does your mage make less than 900,000 nuyen per month? If he has 6 Enchanting and 6 Magic then it means that he isn't running for money. He can buy 90 hits on the test to refine raw gold regents into radical gold regents, which means 90 radical regents and a profit of 10K per radical regent. That would be 10.8 million nuyen per year that your mage would need to make running for running to be the profitable choice. Hell, does you mage have 2 Magic and 2 Enchanting? That is enough to buy 1 hit per day, or turn a 300,000 nuyen per month profit.

"Winning" Shadowrun does not involved getting a permanent luxury lifestyle, it involves getting a permanent seat on the Corporate Court. At the level the PC's are at they are manifestly not running for money, or they are the biggest idiots around. Making more money than what penny ante running pays is simply too easy in SR for it to be a real concern at the level the PC's operate at by virtue of their skills and 'ware.

Hell, even in real life it's not particularly difficult to get a lot of money if you are willing to commit crimes and kill people.

You run for power, you run for prestige, you run for information, you run for the challenge, you run for revenge, you run for excitement, you run for a ton of possible reasons; but you aren't running to make the rent payments.

This isn't to say that there aren't plenty of people in the shadows who are "running" for the rent. There are, but they aren't 400 BP characters with multiple doctorate level skills, a quarter million in 'ware stuffed in their bodies, an army of drones, an arsenal larger than that of some gangs, high end magical abilities, etc. If they are lucky then they are 250 BP characters with a single professional level skill with a specialty (perhaps a skill group for the overachievers), some commercial low rating corp 'ware, a single drone, and an Ares Predator.

One group can survive hitting A or better rated corporate targets, the other has a problem if they are faced with a few Lone Star officers.


We did research both before and after the run was done. Finding out what the security layout was like wasn't particularly difficult (and we already knew a good chunk of it from previous surveillance ops), and even figuring out how to bypass the security wasn't that much of a challenge. It simply wasn't feasible to bypass security in the 24 hours that we had.

As I said, if we had a week or longer to do the run then it would have cost a hundred K. If we had 72 hours to do the run then it would have slashed the price by at least half because it would have provided us with time to get around a good chunk of the security. We didn't have that time so we basically had to go for a straight smash and grab, and to do that with a good chance of survival means milspec gear and tactics (and that means a ton of nuyen).


We knew a fair amount about the hotels security layout, we didn't know much of anything about the trid stars personal security. That uncertainty is what upped our risk factors by so much (does she have a half dozen high level adept bodyguards around her at all times? is she a great dragon?).

As for destroying the gear, there are far too many ways to trace gear. Did a camera capture a picture of our MIG? Almost certainly. Does our MIG have any potentially identifying marks? Almost certainly. If we used it again then it might end up showing up as the same MIG (and thus the same or a related organization doing the run). Did someone get an RFID tracking tag onto one of us or the MIG? Possibly.

Gear used on a run is a potential liability. Dispose of it as tracelessly as possible and get new gear next time.

The Sixth World is a world of massive supercomputers, AI, high level and expert systems. Entire corporations are dedicated to sifting the massive amounts of information available in the world to find the gems. A single loose thread or lead can be backtraced to unwind an entire conspiracy. Even if you control your exposure, you can't always control the exposure of others. If you want to stay safe and secure in the Sixth World you either need a truly mind-boggling amount of power or absolute anonymity and since the first is beyond any Shadowrunner you should strive for the second.

So erase everything you can when you complete a run. You want absolutely no possibility to exist of you being linked to that run. You want all of the data as flawed and corrupted as possible.

Most of the time you are wasting good gear and nuyen, the gear hasn't been and can't/won't be traced, being known for that wicked job will usually only lead to more work, etc. But most of the time is not good enough, because you will be burned eventually and it will almost certainly cost you your life when you are burned.

Everyone has a story of when they got caught because they blabbed a few too many words to the wrong people, kept that really shiny gun for just one more mission, grabbed that amazing ride from the ganger you just offed, etc and ended up burned hard because of it.

Shadowrunning is risky enough even when you do everything to the best of your abilities and go to extreme measures to reduce the risks, not taking steps like these raising the level of Shadowrunning from highly risky to suicidal. Pure numbers say that you will die on a run, bad luck will eventually screw you. The more you plan, the more paranoid you are, the more measures you take to reduce that risk, the more runs you will accomplish before you roll snake eyes and wind up dead. The objective is to push the number of runs you can survive to a level greater than the number you need to undertake to accomplish the goal that got you into running in the first place.


We play in a world where a single mistake is death, where the corps and other organizations use every trick in the book and do not remotely play fair, where paranoia is not just a necessary survival trait but a lifestyle (you do grow your own food inside your own hermetically sealed and concealed greenhouse right?), and where the players are (from the start) one of the most skilled independent running teams on the planet. Individuals might be more skilled, megacorps and governments might have black ops teams as or more skilled, but the Shadows are not filled with teams of well rounded prime runners.

It's a game where the world is not remotely fair and the only way to survive is to stack the deck as far in your favor as possible and hope that you stacked it enough. We have gone on runs (same table, different characters and different campaign) where the players ended up sniped from 20 kilometers away by a Mercury Ship Laser on a stealth-ed LZ-2065 that our leg work and preparations missed because it wasn't supposed to be there (it ended up diverted from another corp facility because of a protest at the other corp facility, we didn't investigate corp procedures and schedules enough to realize that the diversion would occur).



Nope, we got wiped out in that game three weeks ago. Part of the team took 2 rounds to long to kill a guard and it threw the timing of the whole run off at a critical moment (we knew the risk but got screwed on the roll, even with edge). And we were so close to ;( , if we had completed that run then Aztechnology would have lost it's Corporate Court seat and our mega would probably have been able to gain it.

This game has the same end goal (although the GM and a player switched this time) but we are pretty much back at square one. We haven't even got our Seattle information network fully set up yet.


Because I actually want answers. I wanted to know how much other people jack the price up by when they are on short time tables. I've received some responses.

Every trick in the book except guard the roof?

It's cool if you want to play that way but please realize that your GM is handing you millions and scenarios where success is readily available. They just happened to have a stealth fighter sitting in the warehouse, the target had a roof far below the rest of the building, a Johnson with more money than brains, etc. The adventure might have been fun but please don't pretend the money was because your group is superior players to all us dolts doing data steals for 10k because we value the RP of the system and don't treat it as some math formula for hacking lifestyles via running an agent on a server.

And how are you any better for attacking him and saying he's "having fun wrong" just because it isn't the exact same way you do? Glasses houses. Stones.

The roof was guarded, it simply did not have military grade anti-air systems (getting a permit for those is a bitch) and the roof wasn't armored to the point where it could hold off high end military grade breaching charges. There were guards on the roof, automated turrets, wards, and various other defenses.

Those defenses simply weren't enough to stand up to a special ops military style assault by a team of prime runners with assault armor and a military grade high threat insertion vehicle. The guards found that their armor wasn't rated to survive anti-vehicle laser weapons, the turrets found that they weren't rated to survive multiple similtaneous Heimdall strikes, the wards found that they don't do a whole lot when magic isn't trying to breach them, etc.


Yes, our 6/6 fixer happened to be able to get his hands on a mil spec insertion vehicle in Seattle (that city that happens to have major presences by virtually every megacorp, and three separate nations that don't really like each other). Yes, our target happened to be in the penthouse of the hotel instead of on one of the middle floors. Yes, the run was set up so that we had a chance of success if we thought of it. No, the Johnson needed the run to happen if he wanted to be alive in 28 hours and could get his hands on the money that the runners demanded.


IC the money was because the mission was riskier than normal. OOC the money was because we really don't care overly much about money at these levels. It's nice, it get's us new gear and opens up new opportunities, but it doesn't alter the game much at all.

And the RP of the system is that prime runners (what you are under the rules) are high end, elite, operatives doing things most people consider flat out impossible. The RP of the system is that the world is covered in sensors of all kinds and broadcasting sources (you did remember to wipe the RFID tags inside that stuffer shack cola you drank yesterday before you drank it, right? Because if not anyone within range of you can figure out where and when you bought that cola), that the world is a very deadly place where life is cheap and everyone cheats, where power is all that matters, where you survive in the rarefied heights of the corps by planning better than everyone else and being more paranoid than the next guy.

If you are doing a run for 10K nuyen then one of the following is true: 1) you aren't a prime runner/don't have the skills of a prime runner, 2) you are slumming it, 3) you are doing the run for a reason besides money IC, 4) you are an idiot IC.

----
The kid in the barrens worships Shadowrunners and wants to be one because he see's that they have the best gear, can throw out a thousand nuyen gun at the drop of a hat, can burn a "bullet proof" SIN like it's nothing, can tank anti-tank rounds and throw cars. This is the kind of person who runs for money when he hears about the runner pulling down 10K, 100K, 1000K for a single nights work.

What he never realizes is that the runner needs the best gear to survive the day, that a thousand nuyen won't even cover the cost of the bullets in the runners gun, that a SIN "bullet proof" enough to get you set up as a legitimate SINer still won't stand up to high end corp scrutiny, regularly get's shot at with anti-tank rounds, and needs to be that strong if he wants to be able to even tickle his enemies when he punches them. The runner might pull down a hundred K nuyen for what the ganger sees as easy work but the ganger never realizes that 70% of that hundred K went into consumables to ensure that the runner remains off the corp's and cops radar.

Playing street level games where you start as essentially a street rat and work to claw your way out of the barrens can be (and is) great fun, but if you are doing that don't start with 400 BP characters (try 200 BP and no more than 1 BP on gear).

This is the type of arrogance I refer to. Assuming your style is what is "right" and all others are because people are idiots. Grats on you for enjoying your style of play but some of us read the intro fictions and such in the books and run games with that style instead of pouring over the game mechanics looking for loopholes to profit from.

I mean I think you can find far more instance of SR fiction where people are doing 10k runs than you can stealth fighter insertions for 4 million.

I never said that you were idiots, I said that your characters are idiots if they need to do runs for 10K to make enough money to avoid going homeless at the end of the month. And they are, with the skills that you do have (pretty much regardless of how you built your character), getting 10K a month with far less risk than shadowrunning is *easy*.

We, as the players, might not have any interest in playing that kind of style (it's why we don't play as wage slaves either, it get's boring) but IC the character always knows that it's a possibility and running needs to offer more than that possibility for him to remain running (that more can be plenty of things besides nuyen).


The rules are the mechanics of the world. What they make possible shapes how the world is. And if you read most of the fluff you find that SR is a very deadly world where paranoia is the name of the game. The fluff in Spy Games (for example) makes mention of a guy that died because he forgot to wipe the RFID in his boxers before he went on a run. One tag in his boxers and he was dead.


Sure you can, and a whole lot of the SR fiction is really stupid. I can't think of a published mission to date that is actually in line (difficulty and security wise) with what both the fluff and rules either outright state or imply is possible and even common.

The Megacorps have quarterly revenues larger than the real life USA's annual GDP. The rounding error on their profit streams is more than enough to buy an entire division of SOTA military forces. That 10 million nuyen fighter jet that you look at and think is impossibly out of reach? Any of the megacorps could buy a thousand of them with the profits they made tomorrow and still have three quarters of their daily profits unused.

So what kind of security budget do you think an Ares SOTA R&D campus has? I'll give you a hint, it starts in the billions of nuyen. The problem the mega's run into isn't that they can't afford the best security money can buy, it's that the security can only be so good and depends on scarce resources.

Every building can't have a high force ward not because Ares can't afford to pay for a high force ward for every structure that they own but because their aren't enough mages in the world to put up that many high force wards. Every node can't have a high end spider not because Ares can't afford to pay for them but because there aren't enough high end spiders in the world to do so.

Skills are the scarce resources in the corp world, not nuyen.