I was thinking that there might be some interesting non-standard Day Jobs for shadowrunners.

First, I know a lot of people dislike Day Job and In Debt. With In Debt, I don't have an issue with removing the flaw once it is paid off in nuyen, but I won't allow it to be paid off in part before the game starts. You may also need to spend some game time convincing the loan shark to stop offering you a line of credit, but that's okay. Similarly, I don't think I play with anyone that would try to take Day Job and expect monthly income after quitting or getting fired. I would at least have the character pestered by well-intentioned social workers and work counselors and the like.

Also, I think if I see a character with a part-time day job, in debt, and dependent, I know a fair deal about what motivates the character to run.

So, to the meat of the matter. What Shadowrun-ish side jobs might qualify for the Day Job. Particularly things that would make a character want to keep the quality?

I was thinking that a made man could work construction, maybe as a construction worker or maybe as part of keeping the outfit looking legitimate and licensed. Instead of working on keeping the fronts looking legitimate, a made man could also be involved in a number of other activities of varying degrees of legality. Want to be a mob lawyer, help cook the books, launder money, make deliveries, or sell the protection services?

Another fun one might also be Pimp or Madame (Pimpette?). A mix of day and night job that involves hawking the wars, keeping them clean, and taking care of their llegal issues. You can choose between freelance or syndicated. Plus, I would love to see the character tell his fellow runners that he has to go because he has to help Ruby because she got another rough one.

I'm sure there are more possibilities, but those were a few that I thought of.

Drug cook/kingpin.



Umm... Well, the thing about Day Job is that it's usually a day (or possibly night) job that is just... You know, a regular schmoe 9-5 job where the chances of getting shot at never go above "Auburn at nighttime."


The hard part for the GM, in my experience, is actually making it function as a drawback. Also, speaking from experience here, don't let the players take Day Job to represent entrepreneurship. Day Job is something where you work someone else's timetable, and punch someone else's timeclock, possibly literally.


If they're actually SINless, and not using a fake SIN to have the name they get their paycheck on, then the Day Job trait would probably be something like illegal immigrant labor is today - you work for whomever picks you up on a street corner and get paid in cold hard jing at the end of the day, or you might have a more semiformal arrangement with someone where you do work for him off the books and he pays you, off the books - like being a longshoreman if you're really strong, or a troll, or setting up wards in the barrens on behalf of someone who pays you a salary and arranges for the jobs, if you're a magician, or you might just be a joytoy.

If you have a legitimate SIN, or a good fake, then it's a more normal pay-your-taxes kind of thing; you go to a place of business (or a job site,) do what the boss wants you to do, and go home. You might be part of the skillwired labor force, you might be an independent contractor codeslinger who sets up custom matrix security solutions for people who pay your boss to have someone come by and set them up. You might be a desk clerk at Stuffer Shack, a waittress in a greasy spoon diner, or whatever.



If a player is thinking about taking the Day Job negative quality, though, make sure they have an incentive (a strong one) not to just tell their boss to shove it when the day job starts to interfere with their Running. Chances are the Runners will be making far, far more by doing felonies than they will by punching someone's timeclock, and with that comes the security to do what you've always wanted to do in real life and tell your boss to take his job and shove it. Possibly delivering the message with a marching band, or by filing a gigantic deuce in his desk's physical inbox.

So I'd require them to have some factor in their existences which requires the day job. Perhaps make them start off living with their (legitimate,) parents who demand they hold down an actual job and will immediately assume they've been doing horrible things for their money if they quit their job and continue to pay the rent. (And don't let them get away with quitting their job and faking still having it for very long.) Or maybe require they actually have a normal (corporate) SIN, and if they stop showing up for work and go rogue, not only do they lose their corporate lifestyle, their SIN gets immediately converted to a Criminal SIN because it got flagged as rogue.


Honestly, I think there should be a No-Show Job positive quality where someone is rewarding the character for something done in their past by providing them with a stipend without expecting them to actually do anything. (Maybe the payout for a prior run; in lieu of a big slug of jing up-front, they get a steady income source or something.)

My street sam is a courier 10 hours a week for the Kenran-kai who he is in debt to for ¥7500 (planning to pay off the remaining cash and the karma after our next run GM and circumstances allowing) after they got him a new SIN and smuggled him into Seattle when he had to leave Neo-Tokyo in a hurry.

My con-girl is an investigative journalist w/ a robin hood complex (a by-product of being brought up by Rinelle ke’Tesrae activists). So far it's wound up working sort of symbiotically w/ her running, she's used her journalism as a pretense for intel gathering and some of the harder to trace info she gathers to lead her to stories.

Workin' the dayshift at Cap'n Beef.

Tha tsounds like a variation on the 'trust fund' quality - on the plus side it's not directly linked to you and can possibly follow though changes of SIN, on the minus side, yo uaren't the one deciding , so the point cost should be the same (ar at least very close)

I've actually thought about making a hacker who works as a Data Analyst but also in his offtime at work (yeah I know he's supposed to be working but he's fast) he works on VR games based on the runs he does & tries to market it (changing names & such naturally)

Edit: I'd consider also making him a full time programmer, as even a freelance Game designer has to work on the timeline given to him by the publisher he's contracting with.

Heiress.

Seriously.

One of my favorite SR concepts I've ever ran with was in a game where Global Fame was a 15-point Quality. (And I still like to think it is.) I'll caveat this with a warning that this character basically hits every single stereotypical Quality pet peeve besides Amnesia, but she was a 15-point Global Fame, 20-point Trust Fund baby with a 15-point Day Job (on top of a 5-point SIN) and 15 points of Distinctive Style because I'm pretty sure you'd remember if Paris frakking Hilton robbed you. The Day Job represented how celebrities who aren't famous for anything but being a celebrity actually make their money: appearance fees, endorsements, and "being seen" to maintain the image.

Why would someone like this ever run, you ask? Because that Day Job is good for $50,000 a month and the Trust Fund gives a High lifestyle and $1,000 more. But this girl wanted to live life in the lap of luxury, and that lifestyle starts at $125,000. So shadowrunning it was!

That is awesome.

Our best example of a sinless worker would be our mage, who's day job is working as a male prostitute.

For some of the metatypes
-Heavy lifting at day job construction sites
-Bouncer
-Negative Area Influence [Put troll gangers in rented house in rich neighbourhood - lower prices, buy houses]
-Mob Enforcer
-Courier
-Gang Eliminator...
-Mob Remover...

Mages
-Hairdresser [Healthy Glow / 'fix' spell for hair]
-Mage Nurse [Diagnose / Detox / Enabler (to allow for smaller doses of anasthetics) / Heal, Stabilize etc]
-Construction [Shape Earth/Concrete I-Beams, move rocks/mountains instead of blasting]
-Sex Assistant [Orgasm/Orgy at a party a few times and you are golden]
-Party Assistant [Detox / Intoxication]
-Animal Rescue [Calm Animal / Calm Pack / Control Animal]
-Enviromental [Hazmat cleaning (Clean Element)]
-Voluntary Fire Fighter [Shape Fire / Elemental Wall (water) / Water Cannon]
-Food Improvement for Aid programs [Preserve Food for X4 times the normal time]
-Clothier [The Fashion spell never goes out of style]
-Part Time Librarian [Catalog spell]

Hackers
-Security Hacker
-Part Time Programmer
-Redditor (pay is bad)
-Indie game developer
-Spoofing lifestyle (12 hour work for those 5K in a middle lifestyle ya know)

I wrote up a character with a part time day job of a courier. Used color-changing bike armor enhanced by AR (mod from Attitude) for 1) insta-changing after breaking LOS with a pursuer and 2) be a billboard for the courier company when on the job.

The con girl for some reason makes me think of various subscription/donation driven online sites as a day job... like Day Job (Web Comic). I don't think that will work as well, since you can respond to "you're running behind on tomorrow's comic and should this meet out and work on the strip" with "I write up a post about my sick grandmother and offer up one of these filler artworks then go to the meet."

Also, I thought there was an AR software where actors jump in to control a virtual person. If so, you could have a day job as such, but I don't know what cyber would be required, maybe none.

Along similar lines, you could also work as a simstar, either for a legitimate outfit or for a BTL production group.

This is my next character.

Pixie Mage
Physical Software backup delivery service
Pixie flies across town invisible with a small chip containing sensitive data in a pocket and dressed in a ruthenium suit.
Pixie is almost impossible to see.

My own current Shadowrun Character, an Orc Rigger, works Security at a Storage Facility. Our GM decided it was an On the Call sort of Job so if the Alarm ever goes off at the facility he has to get his ass over there quickly to handle it. I also tend to Leave my largest Combat Drone there from time to time. My GM has already told me this job is going to bite me in the ass mid Run at some point.

my next character:

Goblin
Dayjob: Firefighter. Immunity to fire, you know.

additional quality: Local Fame
He's the city's new poster boy for the "Integrate the Outcast" program.

This is pretty much the concept for her: A once a week byline at a midsize "underground" newzine (10hrs/week, still haven't nailed down a good candidate for the specific site from existing fluff, I'd love some suggestions).

Not entirely freelance but relatively flexible as long as she doesn't get seriously injured/incapacitated for an extended period of time.

I tied 30k debt, day job and dependent all together for a mage I played by giving him an apprentice. The apprentice is the son of a Mafia Capo, and the capo wanted him taught by some one who would teach him practical street applications for his talents, and wouldn't charge him a lot. So, Klaus showed up to pay the vig, and Vinnie made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Klaus has the kid 20 hours a week or so, including dragging him along on jobs, and that pays the debt. This will go on 'til Vinnie thinks it's done, then the debt will be forgiven.

My face works as an illegal and legal goods courier by day.

I once considered making a character who's day job was an infotainment pundent, ala John Stewart. They'd get all sorts of inside information that they shouldn't have while on the run. All that juicy pay data.

Well, I'm running a female mage in a game at the moment. She's got a 10-year old dependent girl she's picked up on the streets a few years ago, and she's supplementing her running income by working as a stripper/poledancer/lapdancer/prostitute in a combination of clubs and street walking. A girl's gotta eat you know. And just for the record, yes. She does in fact have both the Orgasm and Agony spells to assist in her work...

Day Job: Freelance RPG Writer/Artist.

I disagree, slightly. What should matter is the schedule. Let's say you work as, say ... an independent tax preparer. Well great, you don't have a boss ... but you do need to keep to your posted office hours, or you lose business (read: "you don't get a paycheck this week/month/whatever").

Or, think of this: the typical "my rigger's day job is driving taxis". Either way, it's a flexible-schedule job (seriously, even IRL, it's not a punch-clock sort of job, you show up when you want to, you go home when you want to).

If you're employed by someone else to drive their abs? Yes, on the one hand, the schedule is a little less flexible (you may not have a specific time to show up, but if you're supposed to drive "on friday and sunday evenings", then you need to actually be there during those timeframes). The thing is, you drive THEIR cabs; so if there's a robbery, or the car gets shot up ... hey, as long as you don't wind up bleeding, what do you care?

OTOH, if you're an independant, you only have to work when you feel like it .... BUT, now it's your car(s) on the line. Some go-gang shoots up your cab, and you get left paying the bill (or putting in the hours to repair them yourself).

IMO, either one is suitable for "day job"; it's the GMs job to then make sure that the hindrance is commensurate with the benefit. (And honestly, the fact that the character probably dropped 20 to 40 grand to own a cab or two, IMO, is already a step in the direction of "earning those extra BP").






Gnomes could also find work as "tunnel rats", hauling cable or pipe and such through tunnels and pipes just that wee bit too small for other metatypes. Heck, anywhere "fit in someplace really small" would be an asset. Tunnelling, for example - working up near the bore head of a tunnelling rig, being half the size of a human would be an asset, I should think.


Erecting, monitoring, and maintaining Wards for some podunk magical security outfit.


Also "piece work" - other runners pay you to run data searches; or, you spend those hours finding exploits/weaknesses in various "interesting nodes", and sell them to other hackers/technos. Having ShadowSEA as a virtual/group contact would really help make that sort of thing doable, IMO.

Day jobs have to meet at least a minimum of income potential.

in the communist 2070s, every 20hour/week job nets you 2500 . No matter what you do.

Just Awesome...

How does that dietary requirement work out for you? Keep it hidden from populace and things are okay?

It does give me the idea of making a ghoul mediator named Justice.