I did not. You assured your own death with your suicide ultimatum. All he has to do is ensure those preprogrammed drones go ahead and follow their programming and you nuke yourself. Did you not pay attention the god damn scenario you setup?

Presumably, we're assigning a Rating (per kilogram) to the drugs, same as with explosives. The Rating would reduce the actual amount necessary to constitute one "dose," thus increasing the profit per-kilogram.

And if that happens, everything I have on them goes broadband.

Their organization will be dead inside of a month, with its members variously locked up or whacked or extracted.

That is rather doubtful. Who is really going to go after it? Lone Star? Give me a break. They'll "look into it" and find that most of the information "were deadends" but there were a "few leads" that did lead to "some arrests". Because the crime syndicate will have greased the palms and along with the bribe toss a few minor fish to Lone Star as sacrificial lambs.

The mega's won't do anything about it. Criminal syndicates are useful to them as long as they stay out of their business. Do you really think the black market can be sustained by shadowrunners alone? It couldn't and not with the quality of gear that runners need to take on some of the more complex missions and hits. It's in their best interest that the black market keeps operating so their deniable assets can keep operating.

Other runners are going to go after the syndicate? Doubtful. Why would they even care? You're the one that decided to go after a syndicate with your own personal reasons. Now they might be inclined to do something if it looked like the syndicate all of a sudden started whacking runners but given that runners are more savvy than the average joe I would doubt they would believe this was unprovoked.

--



The costs aren't relevant and you're talking about BCDR at that point. The capital costs have already been invested. Once they have been invested they do not need to be reinvested to continue operating. That is precisely what makes them capital costs. Whenever you talk about capital costs the thing you look at is how long you anticipate it will take to recuperate the cost. So the syndicate already has the facilities and personnel and since payment is on piece rate there's no difference between the runner and the grunts already working it as long as quota is being met. In fact, the grunts are preferable in this regard because you can lose 1 grunt and lose 33% of your production capacity whereas losing the runner costs you 100% if you employ just him. Given their rather hazardous line of work I wouldn't want to be staking the entirety or significant portions of my production on runners.

So, House Rules then? Since a dose is a spefic rating, you have no actual idea how it was rated prior to it being cut to the level it currently is in the book. At that point it is handwavium... *shrug*

This. Very much this. That threat just put your reputation as a shadowrunner on the line. Some pissant gets away with robbing you of stuff with a street value of maybe a quarter million nuyen, and you let him walk away still breathing ...? Kiss goodbye to that rep of yours (represented by gaining a point or two of notoriety).

Is it dangerous? Yes.

Could it blow up in your face? Yes.

Should you do it anyway? YES ... or else, get out of the biz and go find a respectable job flipping soy-burgers for McHugh's. Because seriously, if you don't have titanium cojones, then shadowrunning is not an appropriate career choice.

So, who exactly would go after them?

The cops?

Remember this is a world where even the law enforcement is privately owned. And can be bought.

Most of the people with the means to do something about the organization either won't care or will find it more profitable to work with them.




-k

Hell, look at Shadowrun Missions Season 4, where you can have one of the contacts (Detective Tosh) "massage" records on situations.

Of course, the smug bastard will want something in return, as well as the nuyen you'll be giving to the "Knight Errant Widows and Orphans Fund".

If the game is using Shadowrun rules, set in the Shadowrun setting, it's a Shadowrun game IMHO. Whether the characters spend their time cooking steaks for Johnsons at the Eye of the Needle, cooking betameth for the Yakuza/Mafia/etc., running merc ops in Amazonia, selling/modding/repairing cars/armor/guns/cyberware, extracting R&D wizkids/technomancers from Renraku enclaves, selling meat to Tanamous, hacking NeoNET super nodes for uber paydata, setting trolls on fire for the glory of Humanis in Puyallup, smuggling Laés out of Cara'Sir, fighting the man in Berlin, pimping elf runaways on a street corner in Tacoma, sculpting couture matrix personas for the rich and clueless in Bellevue, etc ad infinitum... doesn't really matter as long as the players and GM are having fun.

I personally like the Day Job quality for a lot of characters. Kinda helps me flesh out their concept and background and in many cases is actually something they enjoy doing. Helps provide RP hooks during runs and potential ideas for other sessions that aren't really runs at all as well. Having a relatively dependable/steady cash stream to (help) pay the rent lets them be a little more selective in how they handle runs as well.

Different strokes and all though.

I don't think this comment from Pax got enough love. If any of my players decided to try and make any money on the side, this is how I would do it as well. Breaking Bad is a great source for GM ideas along this line, from trouble with sourcing raw materials to the troubles with the different tiers of criminal organizations the protagonists come across.

I think the trouble with the OP's question is that, by the book calculations aside, about how the gameworld ecosystem reacts to the players plans. If a PC is designed primarily as a shadow runner (with all the BP sink that entails), any "side" money making skills/equipment they take will be fairly low-barrier to NPCs as well. Syndicates can (and probably do) train up their own chemists - they will be more loyal, easy to control and easier to kill than an upstart runner team. Most talismongers will probably make a lot of the radicals they use themselves, especially the more expensive ones such as gold. Competition among existing chemists/talismongers for markets of high-profit items will be more intense than the lower profit ones, and raw materials may be hard to get (especially for someone trying to break into the market).

If PCs start throwing too much of their starting BP at skills, equipment and contacts for the side business (for instance, the 200K chemistry lab being talked about would take up 4/5 a character's starting max resources), then they are probably no longer shadow runners, and we start going down the road towards Breaking Bad Run or Grand Theft Auto Run or Talismonger Run. If the GM is game it could be fun, unlike TJ and Karma I don't think such campaigns are "not playing Shadow Run" per se, but if the GM is planning a traditional run based game he would be within his rights to tell the player "That's a nice NPC chemist/Chop Shop contact, now design a shadow runner for the game.".

Naturally the PCs could always invest in chemistry lab or whatever as a money-making side business in game (I for one think this sort of initiative should be encouraged rather than slapped down), but any good GM will treat this as a hook for plot ideas rather than a licence to print money on the character sheet.

It depends on the GM and the playstyle, but I would say that any runner who won't meet the mob on their own territory to parley won't be doing business with them. Of course they will need an appropriate contact or a number of palms greased to broker the agreement, but then as long as they are respectful and not too uppity (or give crass ultimatums) they won't be gunned down like dogs either.

Even in cases where the exchange of goods for cash takes place on "neutral" territory, the mob will likely be doing exactly the same things as the runners, as well as sweeping the area for any "installations" the runners may have placed. Most times though, the mob will likely make the "neutral territory" a public place like a restaurant in their neigbourhood, where the runners would find it a lot harder to infiltrate and make their own.

Casing and lacing the meet site is not just something done by PCs, you know? The mob will be taking just as many precautions, and will always try and tilt the playing field to their advantage. The PCs are the ones that want to do biz with the mob not the other way around, and most non-enabler GMs will play organized crime intelligently enough to use this fact to their advantage.

As far as I am aware RAW does not go into details of salary structure in the corporate world, and from the various "my mage could walk into a 200K/year wage mage job" threads I think a lot of dumpshockers would over-estimate the salary their special snowflake characters could make if they went the corporate route.

To me, your point on intangibles such as stress levels is on the money in this case. As I think I previously mentioned, in a dystopian cyberpunk future working for the man does not equate to a cushy 9 to 5 job (there is a reason they are called wage slaves, after all), so the intangibles make direct comparison of financial compensation problematic. For the record, my rule of thumb for salaries is derived from lifestyle costs - menial/low skill jobs would pay around 3,000 nuyen a month, slightly higher skill or experience 7-10,000, management 15K and up, but YMMV.

Your wage mage might get a pretty good salary in corpdom, but even given the leniency corps might give to their ilk they are still probably working long hours (sometimes perhaps being asked to do nightshift as a security mage), possibly engaged in morally abhorrent magical research etc. Your HTRT would-be sammie would also be paid reasonably well (although perhaps not astronomically so, after all there are a lot of ex-soldiers looking for work), but would be on constant stand-by during their long shift. HTRT work may also be dangerous, and some of their missions morally ambiguous to say the least. Skilled hackers (software designers) and riggers (spiders) could also earn a reasonably good wage in their respective fields, and faces could become high-powered corp negotiators and salesmen, the list goes on.

Compare such long working hours and having to follow orders/live the corp enclave straitjacket with the runner's lifestyle. It may be dangerous, but it is definitely exciting and, depending on how often you run, gives you a lot of free time to lounge around and enjoy your money. This means that for a 10K run with 2-3 days planning and legwork, a PC would clear the monthly salary of a middle-manager working 70 to 80 hour weeks. In this context, the lures of running become so much more apparent.

I am not sure why you are claiming your product would be "better" than that of the competition, unless you pile test successes into increasing the "quality" at the expense of yield (if this is even possible under the scope of the rules). Either way, there is no reason your highly-skilled NPC chemist can't do this as well, as I mentioned above using the Chemistry skill to cook up drugs is a fairly low-barrier business model.

Although others did, I never mentioned the syndicate pulling the guns on the PCs, and said several times that if the PCs went about things in the right way this would not happen in my game.

I have 2 problems with your legwork assertions. Firstly, the syndicate will always be switching up and changing their routines in order to stay one step ahead of the law (they will have their informants of course, but will still need to take precautions against lone gun investigators), rivals and opportunist thieves, so even if you could collate the info in the first place it probably wouldn't stay valid for long.

Secondly, as for your "I will be doing legwork on legwork against me" assertion, I find it funny that you think they won't be taking exactly the same precautions. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Professional Johnsons will do it for sure (hell, they probably have such "cease and desist" protocols in place for the fake data trail they gave the PCs just to lend it authenticity). Small-time street gangs are probably not sophisticated enough to do such things, but organized crime almost certainly will.

That's why they call it organized!

Unfortunatly, the setting involves the whole 'pawn of corporate and criminal interests' thing as a core element. That's why they're called Shadowrunners, you know.

First of all I’ll try to get a bit back to topic.



And the answer is ‘it depends’.

First of all, are we talking about off time stuff, rolling a bunch of dice (or buy successes), cashing the money, don’t give a further thought? Or is this a possible base for gameplay?
If it’s the first one, do your math, …
Mr Famous cashes as per rules.
Mr Bouncer/Chef/Mechanic/Programmer gets money per hours, depending where he hired and what’s his skill.
Mr Drugcook/Telesmacrafter checks what stuff he crafts and what his payout is per piece. Then you have to check how much time it takes to get hands on the base material, craft the stuff, and fence it. But as it’s the (very) save route, ensuring no heat from cartels/cops or gangers (keep in mind this should be NO adventure hook, only easy peasy off time), cash at end of the month will be less than the numbers in this thread make you hope for, as sure route takes a lot of time . Personal opinion: 1 Crafting Hit: Around 1 K, 2 Crafting Hits: up to 5 K, 3 Crafting Hits around 10K and so on.

Legal Biz: Same as Drugcook , only less fencing, more taxes.


If it’s real part of the game, with plot hooks, Ganger raiding the drug lab, Fence tries to cross the crafter and all the ‘Breaking Bad’ stuff, there can be a lot more net cash, but this can easily become an full time job.
If all are ok with this, play this kind of alternate (non Shadowrun) Story. (yes with SR rules and within SR world setting)

The setting also includes inter-governmental intrigue, drug dealing, pimping, all out warfare, anarchists, treasure hunting, piracy, smuggling, and all kinds of other potentially interesting roleplaying opportunities. Not sure why the PCs should need to spend all (or any) of their RP time doing traditional runs for some outside entity to be considered a Shadowrun game, but JMO.

Those are alternate campaign concepts, yes. Much like there's Space Marines in Dark Heresy's universe, yet you're not 'supposed' to play them except either in the Deathwatch Spin-Off or under Ascension rules.


Because if they don't it is an alternate campaign setting, going by the books. If you're being really obnoxious about the whole "it's in a book so it's true" thing, which is what we do here, right?

Alternate campaigns are, of course, still in the Shadowrun universe. They're just not necessarily a campaign of (standard) Shadowrun, depending on how obnoxious you are there.

I haven't been part of the community long, so I don't know if my opinion counts for anything, but there is one problem I've noticed in these scenarios that I don't feel that anyone has really touched on.

Everything is contingent upon the PC being Jason Bourne at the core, liberally dipped in Michael Westen, drizzled with Xanatos, and topped with a crumbling of James Bond, all with an unlimited operating budget prior to even making the "business proposal."

On top of that, it assumes a perfect textbook economy that benefits the players solely. Because God knows that there's never, ever going to be a GM out there who says, "Weeeellllll... There's something happening on the streets, and you only make 10% of your usual take, and it doesn't matter how many successes you bought, or how big your DP was. The market just didn't bear your prices. ~shrug~"

Fickle GMs wouldn't be an issue, if this had been a by-the-numbers mechanics discussion. But then we got a long example of "everything the GM just said to me, I say nuh-uh because I out-legwork THEIR legwork," and the whole thing disintegrates into an escalation you don't see except in games of Amber Diceless. Because you go down this path that people like ShadowDragon or Tippy have tried to outline, you eventually end up with a Legwork Gap.

Maybe I'm missing the point altogether, though. It just seems like this whole thing has gone from a thought exercise about mechanics to a one-upsmanship competition, and we're no longer trying to answer the original question?

Well i did just want to say welcome, and don't worry about that, no ones opinion really counts for anything. But yes I think you have some valid points many of these scenarios people have for making money presume no outside factors will affect them. The simple logic is if it WERE that easy everyone else would do it, so there would be no reason to Shadowrun.

I am one of those fickle GM's when my players want to do something clever I generally take them through it and work out with them what new spin they'd bring to the process that literally no one else could have. This applies to people finding ways to "win" at hacking, or "win" at making money.

But honestly at my tables I don't have to put up with stuff at my tables because I actually pay my runners like professional criminals doing important and dangerous things rather then hobo's looking for their next nukit burrito and their next bottle of sterno. If their too busy living it up or healing off the damage from their last run they don't want to frag around with cooking betameth in their bathtubs.

Your opinion counts for just as much as anyone elses. Oh, and welcome to the loony bin!


Well. By the time the PC runner can afford a 200,000¥ Chemistry Facility, really they probably should be that good.


Sure. And some market fluctuations can happen. But of course, the scenarios presume that you're making "whatever sells this week/month/etc".


Um. I think you're reading too much into that. The first scenario presented, painted the runners as hapless, helpless, and subject to being robbed at the whim of whatever patsy or pissant the syndicate bothered sending to meet them. The other scenarios have simply been showign that, with time and effort invested, shadowrunners can be sufficiently capable that trying to step on them for no good reason, is just not profitable, even for the big syndicates.

Because, you know ... by the time you can afford that Chemistry Facility? You're not some street-level n00b scraping just to get by, desperate for (and taking) any jobs thrown your way. You're experienced, capable, and perhaps even wealthy enough to pick and choose who you work for, perhaps even to name your price and make it stick. We're talking about a team that can muster up, say, half a million nuyen of non-shadowrun resources between them, and have decided to (essentially) form their own small criminal organisation.

At that point, they should not be getting blown off by the syndicates. The very fact that the runners have done enough legwork just to know who would be upset by "competition", and instead gone to them first? Should be treated as a nod of respect by that syndicate ... not an opportunity to rob them.

Meanwhile, the runners shuld be smart enough to have some sort of "if you try to screw us it will end badly for you" measure(s) in place. Could be my "we all go boom together" scenario. Could be the "drone artillery strike" scenario. Could be the "we give your enemies a mountain of intel on your ops" scenario. Could be something else entirely. And the runners' reps at that stage of things, should be sufficiently well-established that whichever counter-threat they lay on the table will be immediately credible and believed.

Regardless, no syndicate should be so cosmically stupid as to try and roll the shadowrunners like a couple of wine-soaked bums. Negotiate the hell out of the price, sure. Try a penny-ante robbery, no. And the bigger the syndicate, the less likely stupid stunts like that should be.

A starting PC can afford this.

@StealthSigma: In theory, yeah, they could afford it, but not if they really get anything else like implants, vehicles, weapons and varies other sundries needed to be a decent character--I don't think unaugmented mundane works as well now as it did in Third.

Perhaps I should clarify that, by adding "(and still be a viable character for traditional shadowrunning)" ...?

What counts for me is the validity of your points, not your menbership number. Welcome anyway. And no, it's not you who misses several points here.

Everyone who want's piece of their pie, so most likely at least all other syndicates and probably a bunch of bigger gangs too.
And i wouldn't count the police(who ever they are at the moment) out either, as few high publicity busts are quite good for PR.

And don't forget that I postulated that the dossier was mailed to both to Lone Star and Knight-Errant.

And they each know that the other knows.

So, if whomever is currently the cops in Seattle does try to bullshit their way through it with minimal effort and minimal disruption to their partners-in-crime, it will be a massive PR disaster because the other will fucking crucify them for it, publicly airing the fact that their competition was given a whole drug syndicate on a silver platter and did nothing about it.


As lucrative as deals with the syndicate may be on the level of the corrupt guys on the take, the company as a whole would get its ass vigorously jerked over a red-hot cheese-grater, and that would not stand. Heads would roll, quite literally. So yeah, even if they are on the take, their take isn't worth their jobs or their lives, let alone the Seattle contract.

So they'll go in and go in hard.

How much time did this runnerteam from hell invest into this?

Given that the profit calculations pointed towards numbers high enough to keep the whole team living in luxury lifestyles, they can probably spare some weeks of dedicated legwork.

Unfortunately, by the scenarios being offerred on making money, it is the matter of a month or so and you have apparently payed off the facility, and with another month, you have all that gear you could have started out with in the beginning if you had not taken the Lab. Which is ludicrous, if you ask me.

That's the illegal drug trade for you.

A kilo of pure cocaine on the streets of Bogota is less than a hundred dollars. That same kilo immediately south of the Mexican/US border is a thousand dollars. That same kilo immediately north of the Mexican/US border is six thousand dollars. That same kilo on the streets of LA is ten thousand dollars. That same kilo in Sydney Australia is two hundred and forty thousand dollars. Those are wholesale prices and uncut, street price after cutting multiplies all of those figures anywhere from ten to one hundred fold.

Fortunes were made moving cocaine from LA up to Alaska, an eight to ten fold price increase was not rare.

Miami was a city built nearly entirely with drug money, tens of billions of dollars poured in within a decade or so.

With a few thousand dollars worth of ingredients you can turn out a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Meth.

The illegal drug trade is huge money and anyone with access to a supply can, in real life, be rolling in millions (minimum) in very short order.

Shadowrun is no different, except synthetic drugs produced in a lab tend to be a lot more common (and thus bypass most of the transportation issues that plague drugs in real life).

Which AGAIN, is not Shadowrun. I do not argue that you can (or cannot) make a lot of money in the drug trrade, but you are not a Shadowrunner at that point, you are a Drug Lord.

I was simply commenting on your assertion that making these kinds of insane ROI's were ludicrous. They aren't, the illegal drug trade is just about the single most profitable industry that exists in real life. It's not unreasonable that it's similarly profitable in the Sixth World.

Does being a Drug Lord automatically preclude one from being a shadowrunner? No. You can have quite fun campaigns with the entire premise that the PC's are trying to set up a drug and crime empire.

Should being a drug dealer be done to the exclusion of everything else when the game isn't focused on that type of campaign? No.

Equipment and money should be decided out of game by the players and GM. With my RL group we treat nuyen mostly as easy come, easy go. You might get several million nuyen worth of equipment for a run, but you will end up loosing most of it by the end of the run and it's just one more expense. About the only thing we really have found (gear wise) to effect game balance is military vehicles and 'ware. In game we have ways to limit access to both of those (military vehicles are not common and draw notice, they are almost always things that are purchased for a single specific use and then destroyed. the hard part with high grade ware is finding someone who can create and implant it. delta grade ware has to be custom made from the ground up for every individual by a team of specialists and the lab equipment needed to create and implant it costs hundreds of millions of nuyen and is incredibly rare, getting access involves cashing in major favors).

Granted, we also usually play with a karma system for character improvement purchases (new 'ware for example). It's essentially exchanging favors and ancillary pay data for the ware, it's not a straight cash transaction and virtually no such transactions take place.

Apparently somewhere around a third of the posters on Jackpoint aren't shadowrunners... Who'd a thunk it?

Many people have referenced BB in this topic. Let's look to that for the example of a lab-synthesized drug startup cartel, which seems to be one of the scenarios here that a lot of people are making and claiming ~millions~ of nuyen on in mere weeks and months.

Now, Walt had Mike and the LPH infrastructure to build his startup on, but there were legacy costs for the infrastructure already in place. After their first solo startup week (a chemist "runner" with his 200k lab) came home with something like 20% of his expected total for those legacy costs. I don't remember the exact number, so I'm going to use round figures here of 100,000. After expenses and hazard pay and distribution, he was left with 20k free and clear. And that's WITH an infrastructure in place.

I can't imagine any runner buying his lab (like Tippy has been advocating) and just churning out any SR synthetic drug and just creating dazzling profit numbers like he's put up on the chalkboard earlier in this topic. It goes back to my point about no one using or understanding real market numbers here.

Let's walk through Walt's steps, here. Walt bought his contact in Jesse, a low-influence, high-loyalty (by nature of blackmail) contact. Let's assume the market is barren and there's no other cartels, LPH, or even a Tuco on the street in competition. Unless the runner chemist is out on the corner selling his product (meaning he's not in his lab cooking his profit-making product), he has to start recruiting and paying. Distribution is your first hurdle. Even the local meth heads want more than just the next hit - and you want more reliability than the local meth heads to distribute your product. After all, no profit if it gets chewed, snorted, injected or otherwise consumed. Let's assume a 2% stock loss for that anyway - lots of major national retail chains are happy with 98% logistical loss prevention rate. So that's 2% of anything you just cooked, up in smoke that you're never going to see again. Cost of doing business.

Let's buy some contacts, our local meth heads who're going to pick it up in your living room or lab and then leave to sell it off. That's some high-loyalty you're buying there. But because of the nature of the job, that loyalty is going to come at a regular price. It'll be like buying those contacts again. Every month. We'll take another 8% off the top there, for the local guys in the neighborhood - say 6 or 7 of them total.

Word's out and business is booming. Your portable 200k lab just isn't going to cut it anymore. You need to produce volume, and you haven't even paid off your first RV yet. In fact, someone glitched and you had to crush your original lab. Now you need 2 mil easy for a hidden facility, which includes the equipment. So, you now have your local meth heads, the employees at your secret facility who help hide it and all the new equipment. The return on your product is great, sure, but how much are you sinking into operating expenses now versus actual take-home profit?

Because, gee whiz... secret meth lab? Can't have the local meth heads coming to knock on your door for the packages they hand out. Now you have to get middle men. Drivers, and Tucos to distribute in the local neighborhoods to work under the nose of cops. But now your product is on the market and produces enough to be KNOWN by the cops (still assuming no other market competition for your drug) who have to crack down on you for PR reasons, even if they don't give a damn (someone else brought up this point earlier). You either have to grease a LOT of palms, or sacrifice several HUGE batches to give them the token PR victory to let them keep their job. Much like the 2% off the top, this becomes another (if I'm using the word right) sunk cost: unrecoverable investment that serves only to keep your doors open.

Any business, even the synthetic drug business (especially the synthetic drug business because your costs to cover up what you're doing are going to be much, much higher to hide the illegal stuff over, say, a real pharma corp that only has corp and federal safety and research regulation to comply with) is looking at a realistic 16-24 months before you see real, first-dollar profit. Until then, you're riding the red, no matter how much scratch you put in your pocket as your "owner's salary."

. . .

All goes back to the point that the numbers everyone (I don't mean to pick on Tippy, but he's the one throwing out the largest numbers, and saying how easy this is going to be) is quoting are happening in a vacuum. "I made my drug. I sell it for x profit. Look at my spreadsheet based on my dice pool and bought successes." None of the real expenses of starting up your own lab, except for the initial 200k investment, is really being considered here.

If you're going to play the BB game, you need to talk BB numbers. Walt did the math, which is about his only saving grace as he flies down the cliff to his final moral event horizon, but too few others in the topic are.

Also the fact that being a chemist, drug lord, or cartel operator is NOT a "day job" quality. It's a full-time (triple time, as any owner of a startup business will tell you most willingly) occupation. You ~can't~ run, because that ~is~ your run. Granted, it would make a very good string of scenarios (like it has for the last 5 seasons), but you cannot - as Tippy would suggest in his last post - just mark the nuyen off on a sheet and call it easy come easy go, with more to roll around in at your leisure.

In a vacuum, his numbers are accurate. But when you start talking about all the micromanaging (question: if Tippy burns almost all his assets every time he goes on a run... how does he have those SOL cannons and drones when he goes out for a slushee? But that's tangential and borders on trolling, so forget that) factors that go into how you'd manage your micro-cartel, you've stepped out of the rules vacuum and can no longer claim and of these insane numbers people are quoting.

Unless I've totally missed information when reading this topic over the last few days, which, I'll admit, is entirely possible. But I don't think I'm far off the mark when I'm saying buying a chem lab and being a chemist is NOT going to produce anywhere NEAR the profit several people in this topic have claimed it will generate.


...Sorry... That's been building up for a while, and I know most of it was irrational and probably generally incoherent stream-of-consciousness stuff. But someone's on the internet. And they're wrong. It couldn't be helped.

+1 for the reference.

That's all great but you are forgetting one critical step. The runners are incredibly dangerous and already have contacts at the highest levels of the criminal underworld, usually at least one of high loyalty.

It's basically the runner going "Hey Bob, it's Mike. I had some free time earlier today so I ran off a few kilos of XYZ. Since we already have a mutually beneficial business relationship I figured that I would give you first refusal on my product. I'm thinking 30% of street price is fair to both of us. Is that acceptable to you?

Sure Mike. I'll send Jimmy to the Stuffer Shack on Donaldson St. with the nuyen on a certified cred stick.

That's fine, I'll have the drugs vacuum packed and in a duffel bag. Say an hour from now?

Sure. Pleasure doing business with you as always."

Any of the OC entities are more than capable of absorbing and moving any amount of product that you dump on them and they would do so, even if they had to hold it. Having amicable relations with a runner and keeping him from dealing to the competition is worth holding onto the drugs if necessary.

You have to remember that the runners are already criminals and have major "in's" with the criminal underworld.

Let's take two scenarios. Scenario one, you find a hundred kilos of coke on the street tomorrow and decide to sell it. You know that Happy Town is the local Mob hangout and so you head over there and attempt to do business. No one is willing to touch you, and if someone does take the risk that you aren't an undercover cop then they will drastically underpay you.

Scenario two is the same except that you are friends with a made man in the mob. You pull out your cell phone, ask him to meet to handle a bit of business, and within 24 hours you have exchanged the coke for 30-50% of the wholesale street price with no hassle and everyone involved happy.

What's the difference? You had an in with organized crime.

The runners are far more scenario two than scenario one.

Agreed. Honestly, the Runners probably won't even be in the scenario of a cold meet with a potentially-hostile syndicate. They already know criminals with distribution chains.

If you have, say, an Ancients LT as a Loyalty 3-4 contact, you call them up and tell them you'd like to meet and talk business. They ask if you want them to bring their usual stuff, you tell them naw, you're in the market to sell this time. So they name a time and a place and you meet them, probably at a biker bar somewhere in Puyallup unless they like you and trust you and you them, in which case, you might meet at your place.


You say "Hey, look, I've got a chemistry shop in... Well, never-ya-mind that part. Point is I was bored so I decided to see if I could whip up some <drug du jour>, and I amazed myself by turning out fifty kilos pure. How does 30% of street value sound to you?"

At which point, your Friendly Local Ancients Lieutenant looks at you, blinks, and says "Wow. Holy shit, really? Let me make a call." Their eyes go glassy for a bit, then they snap back into place. "Yeah, sure. I'll get some boys to ride out with your nuyen to <somewhere neutral and not on the cops' radar.> You want certified cred?"

And you respond "Sounds good. I'll have it vacuum packed in an hour. Pleasure doing business. You want to repeat this if I get some spare time sometime?" And they say "Sure, any time."

@ShadowDragon and Tippy
Yes, having underworld contacts (especially high Loyalty ones) will certainly help. The question about whether you can make a deal, and how much money you could make remains valid, especially given that you are taking this money from someone else's hands.

Let's talk about ShadowDragon's Ancients contact. The gang is already distributing street drugs so they would have no problem with distribution. The problem is they are already buying your product from the Tir mafia, who expect exclusive supply rights at 50% street price. The Tir mafia are no fools, and as well as having a few spies in the Ancients camp, they are looking at how much product the gang is shifting and will notice if the gang start selling significant quanitiies of drugs from another source.

The Ancients and the Tir mafia are tight, and that business relationship ain't gonna end soon. All the same, your contact is a good friend, and he is thinking that difference between 30% and 50% is a nice enough payday to take a bit of a risk, at least for a small amount of product that he expects should pass under the radar. How many doses that contact is willing to risk buying is up to the GM, as is whether the Tir mafia get wind of the trade (in which case your contact gets geeked and deleted from your character sheet). Perhaps, fearful of the Tir mafia, your contact will only do it as a one-off. Perhaps the contact only wants to pay you 20% street price considering he is risking his life in this deal.

I would never discourage players from investing in that 200K chem lab and trying to make some money out of it. To some extent I am sure they would succeed, although it won't be the by-the-book theoretical number crunching method you preach, and as a GM I will make damn sure there will be (hopefully entertaining) complications along the way.

As I stated before an opportunity to make money is no a licence to print money, and I have zero respect for any GM who just handwaves profits onto character sheets from such ventures, because money ceases to have any meaning on their tables.

So we switched the question from "How much Nuyen can a runner make when they aren't running?" to "How much Nuyen can a full geared badass, Jason Bourne is a newb compared to us, Runner Team grind if they decide to work as drug lords full time."

Completely other thing, have a fun with this alternate setting.

And btw to check your math:


So we have a team, 1 Drugster, doing the drugs, 1 Face, doing the Sale and getting the raw material, 2-4 Streetsams or Rigger for on 24/7 Site Security, 1-2 Mages for Astral security, 1-2 Hacker/Technomancers for Matrix defense.
This makes 6 Teammembers to be fed by your drug production, earning 10-20K each a Month, maybe a bit more for a good Face.
For this, these bad boys with skills near god work 7 days a week, 12 month a year, no vacation.
Thats not even near a luxury life style, looks more like more skilled wages slaves.

This made me lol.

If in your special small SR-Universe, each Gang LT has 120K cash in his pocket, and can do this deal without boss gives his ok, fine for you, but i think a lot people here run their game not in that fashion.

Starting runners tend to have 14 dice minimum in their prime skills. Reasonably tweaked runners will be in the 16-20 range. 25+ on a starting runner is not uncommon That *is* Jason Bourne territory. That's one of the sub debates over on the speed run thread. Sure the sample PCs don't, and I'm coming to feel the PCs shouldn't, but bpgen guides you to people that are stunningly good at a few things off the bat. Log 5 + Skill 5 + a 2 bp specialization + gear is 14 dice. That's where I start building. Then there's magic/ware on top of it.

Disconnect... Fifty DOSES is not the same as 50 KILOS... Just Sayin'

8-12 At our table... Not 14 Minimum. Just sayin'...
16-20 is never an option at Start, and 25+ is so laughable I almost shot milk through my nose....

You did't got my point. But maybe i was not that clear.

There are a bunch of people who claim a runner can easily make a fortune, not running, i.e. ShadowDragon8685, Halinn, Emperor Tippy.

But now it seems, we dont speak about somebody having an skill-level like a runner, 1 Person, any kind of Runner Backround.
Now we talk about a full runner team, perfect mix, each and everyone a master in his craft, all drilled to be better than Mossad/MI6, trusting each other with Loyality 6, all ready to be 24/7 12 Month a year drug lord.

Its no longer Shadowrun, its Druglord in the Sixth World, but its fine if everybody likes it to play this way.

But its not valid for the 0815 Runner. Not at 99% of the Gaming Tables if seen in the past 15+Years of SR.

So the answer is: Yes a badass team from Hell can rise to a new drug cartel, maybe they get shot , but they CAN do it.

Did you completely miss the part where that contact made a call before accepting the deal.

Sure. But it is trivial for a starting runner to get that skill set.

My B&E adept ended up with 12 in heavy pistols as an after thought. I already had agi 7 for my main focus. I looked at it and said "oh, hey. 1 point in firearms group, specialization in heavy pistols, and a smart gun gives me 12 dice. That's like 13 karma, why not?" As a side effect, he also has 10 dice in all the other firearms (smartgun links are pretty cheap).

A runner with 6 logic can drop a couple points in to the skill, get a spec, and have 10 dice null sheen. They might already have the skill to make poisons anyway.

The idea is not that you make a team of drug runners. The idea is that, on the average runner team, you have most of the pieces you need to be a drug runner, or a reagent producer (which seems far more lucrative and safe to me) or what have you. Any group of runners will, I suspect, have a skillset that can migrate to making cash off those skills without running.

In 2070, who carries cash?

Triple post ftw!

What about selling certified cred sticks? You make a secure drop, people comm you nuyen, and you drop cred sticks at a neutral location? How hard is that for a Hacker who already has logic 5, computer 5, and the relevant programs? Is it any worse than what he already does to set up meets and buy illegal software?

"I JUST WON THE SEATTLE METROPLEX LOTTO!!! $1,000,000!!!" "1,000,000¥? SWEET!!!" "No... UCAS Dollars. Not Nuyen." "Oh, well... Um... Still, yay!"