Those generally fall in line with a private investigator, who charges around a hundred nuyen an hour, modified a bit on where he might live. (That's a Seattle price. In New York, double it, in MIddle-of-Nowhere, half it.)

If the runners can make more money by hunting deckers with a sports rifle than by doing a run, you can bet they'll go for that instead. Deckers are badass, sure, but they're not a one-man corp sec detail.

Hunting down deckers one by one, and selling their gear on the black market? Sounds like a good way to ruin your rep, have no fence willing to touch you because the decker community is willing to black ball him, and get the law against you all in one crime. I mean the same thing can be said of ripping the cyber arms off dead street sams. Also sounds like a good way to have the underworld turn its back on you.

"What's that? Players are ignoring my railroading into low paying jobs in favor of making money? Better find a way to stop that"


Seriously, do you have people start blackballing your runners, fixers abandon them, etc, when they do a run? I would guess not, because doing that sort of shit makes the game essentially unplayable.

Actually, we do stuff like this all the time. The runners have contacts that need footwork done that's low risk, low effort, low reward all the time.

Stake out this guy. Sure it might end in a high speed chase if they get spotted, but otherwise it's 500-1000 nuyen for a few hours work. Most of my players are willing to do that for a contact. It's not the main focus of the game, but it helps build the world and kills a little down time.

The first time I gave the group one of these piece of cake runs, it was a simple job of picking up a trailer for a corp contact and driving it from the dock to the facility. Explicit instructions not to look at the cargo and to come heavily armed. They didn't know it, but there was a wendigo in a reinforced metal crate in the trailer. If they had gotten nosy, they could have had problems, but they trusted the contact and made the delivery. 1000 nuyen each for two of them, one days work. My players were like, "What? We weren't ambushed or anything? Were we supposed to open the crate? What were the guns for?" I just explained that the shit doesn't always have to hit the fan and everyone's not always trying to screw you. Usually, but not always. The contact told them to bring guns in case the thing got loose. He didn't want them getting killed. And now he knew he could trust them not to pry, which led to a bigger job later. I also think that it is more of a surprise when things go wrong for the group, if they're not always getting screwed. If you've established this sort of environment, than the occasional low paying job is fine. Just make sure the reward fits the risk.

We also tend for the runners to get compensated in non-monetary means frequently, discounts on 'ware or gear, higher prices when they fenced goods, reduced wait times for gear, contacts, information, etc. They helped out a yakuza made-man to get revenge on an exec that had double-crossed the yakuza on a deal. They got paid sure but for the amount of security and shooting, it was a low ball. But they also got an invite to the boss's son's wedding. They got contacts there that helped them with training and gear down the line. They also got in good with a gang of gun runners. Buying guns at 80% of the listed price and selling them for 40%, with almost no wait could be handy. Add in a location to stow/fix gear outside of there normal residence and helping with rival gangers paid for itself. Stealing medical equipment from a cyber limb fabrication site for use in an illegal clinic doesn't pay great, but when you can opt to get paid in 400% of the cash value in 'ware (with your buddies in the room to make sure they don't slip you a bomb) suddenly that low paying job looks a lot more appealing.

Sure, helping out a contact is obviously a totally different think then an actual run and can be done for cheap.
Personal jobs can be done with little or even no pay at all, but one also has to do some actually paying runs just to keep a roof over ones head.

Just as a note... The British SAS pay scale runs from £24,000 annum to £80,000 depending on factors.
US military officers (top grade) with around a decade or so of experience seem to pull in $4,000-$6,000 per month.
Private Security Specialists (and Mercaneries) operating for US and EU companies in dangerous regions can earn between $400-$1000 a day (again factored) for active service (no benefits).

If we assume that a pay if 3-5,000 nu¥ is for a standard, basic run (corporate and otherwise) of which there may be several a month, that actually fits the comparison model to the three pay grades above. Now if you assume there to be an average of 1/month possibility of something delivering a much bigger chunk of change (say 20-50k nu¥). Now most Runners being professional criminals will also be looking at the other ways of keeping the nuyen flowing. The odd one day milk "run" here and there for a few hundred nuyen. Selling that looted Cyberdeck (when the cash finally comes in a couple of months down the line), looking for pay data or "extras" while in the Ares facility that the Johnson wasn't after. You make your bigger cred from using your initiative and taking the jobs in between the bigger pay days.

True I like to give my baseline as more than 5k for proper Corp runs. But until you've got a name for yourself saying no to jobs (unless they will cost you) is unwise. Just watch Desert Punk.

Double post

Worth noting: Pay for these types of jobs also includes housing, food, and equipment. The last is the big one, since the big reason for complaint about payscales is the sammy needs to upgrade his gear.

Even ignoring that, from a pure gameplay perspective, being told you need to run for literally 3-4 years of IRL play to get a single upgrade simply doesn't fly.

Also, modern day pay grades don't exactly mesh with 2075 economics.

~Umi

When I get to play (WHEN,) my characters require compensation commensurate with their skills and the job.

If you want to pay me 5,000 , then I want something that's not going to be any more dangerous than the work a private investigator gets up to. (This is also why I love to have a fake SIN embellished as a P.I.) Running recon on a guy for a while, doing some legwork on him, maybe a little B&E if the point is to plant bugs to catch him rolling Str + Melee combat with his pork sword against someone he shouldn't be, etcetera. And I'm not going to put out more than 10% of my total pay in bribes or outlay, so if you want someone expensive bribed or something expensive expended, you're going to be ponying up more.

If, on the other hand, you, say, ask me to extract an unwilling extraction target from Renraku for 9,000 I'll laugh right in your fragging face and ask if you've been smoking something, and tell you to stop because there's SINless glaucoma patients and suffering war veterans who need it more. 9,000 apiece wouldn't cut it for a job like that, let alone 9,000 to split between the entire group.

just for the sake of clarification, the prices for shadowruns are on a per-shadowrunner basis these days. so that actually *is* 9,000 apiece, in your case.

that said, it still stands; that's a ridiculously small amount to be offered to break into an extremely secure facility where there is a very good chance you will be shot at. a lot.

I would think that the pay should scale similarly to the Genesis game, crap jobs pay crap pay and take little time. The greater the risk and/or time, the greater the pay. And even if the game design has you playing "experienced" runners, it doesn't mean that much. For one, they start with almost no street cred, which means a good deal for experienced runners.

Also, why can there not be a copious quantity of players around my area?

I suppose as with all RPGs, its a balance. And in general the 'default setting' of rules tends to be off. So you customize it to the interest/wellbeing of your play group. Just because your players (not characters) are getting frustrated with the returns doesn't mean you have to Monty Haul in response. But a GM that doesn't keep the game experience, yknow...enjoyable, to the players is going to have players that go, Screw This, lets play another genre.

We also have to accept that we, as players, likely see things differently than we, as characters, would. As players we see the whole picture, the costs, the tables, etc. As characters, we have to consider that we're in the mindset where 1)we 'know' this is what the market is like 2)we're always on the move, like Sharks, or something. And that skirting in the shadows means less than conventional income.

Why do Shadowrunners stay Shadowrunners, then?

Using this logic, you'd think the primary goal of every runner would be to earn a SIN and get a legitimate job working for a megacorp as soon as possible, so that they can earn that nice "conventional income" which is larger and requires much less danger. You run just enough jobs to prove your value to a corp, then retire into the comparatively cushy lifestyle of getting shot at less and making more money.

You're a deniable mercenary asset. You do things that the corps can't have their own people do. You face greater dangers, need better skills, and require a higher income. You aren't gonna be comfortably off, but you should at least make enough money to buy the gear necessary to keep doing the things you do. "Conventional income" should be less than what you make running, because otherwise, why the feck would you bother running?!?

~Umi

Because... NERPS!

Well, let's see.

Because you hate being told what to do and would rather be poor and free than employed and enslaved?
Because your parents were ground down and destroyed by the corps and you've sworn revenge?
Because you're an Ork and no one will hire you? (those racist bastards!)
Because you're a Neo-Anarchist and want to tear the system down?
Because your drug habit/BTL addiction/etc makes you untrustworthy as a worker?
Because you've spent time in prison and your Criminal SIN has you cut off for gainful work?
Because you're SINless in the firstplace and, as such, a non-citizen?
Because you know that while 99% of all 'runners crash and burn but you're special and it won't happen to you?
Because you *do* have a normal job and do Shadowruns on the side?
Because if you ask for too much, someone else will offer to do the job for half as much and then you won't get anything?

There's a whole big bit from Freakonomics, which also has a TED talk that I'll link to, about drug dealers who risk jail time and their very lives, pulling in less money than if they worked for minimum wage. You have professional wrestlers who risk horrible injuries, including paralyzation and death, in teh ring, driving four hours to perform in front of twenty people for enough money for gas and a cheeseburger if they're lucky, in hopes of one day getting seen by a talent scout and making it to the WWE. All across the nation, you'll find baseball, basketball, and football players risking serious injury on a daily basis, despite the fact that less than 200 players a year turn pro.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UGC2nLnaes

Have a watch. You'd be surprised by what people will do that isn't actually logical.

Even if it's a case of art unintentionally mirroring reality, which I'm not convinced it is, it's bad game design to have a game where you feel like you're scraping for resources at every turn. For a game which is supposed to be about Shadowrunning, making it so that players are incentivised to have their characters do anything but that is counterproductive. If your players feel like they don't have the funds to be effective, and you won't let them earn those funds from doing missions, they will avoid doing missions and attempt to earn the funds elsewhere - see earlier mentions in the thread of Organlegging, et cetera.

Hell, compare to other game systems like D&D, or Earthdawn. There, your ragtag band of adventurers can make some really serious money, more than enough to live comfortably on given the prices of basic goods, gear, and "Lifestyles". But at the same time, they also don't have quite enough to buy all the really cool gear, or the really powerful magical items, or whatever. You can probably start affording some of the minor magical items after the first couple runs, but you also have really expensive and hard to get stuff out there for you to drool over and dream about one day getting your grubby little mitts on.

The thing to note with both systems, however, is that it doesn't take you 61.5 missions to get your hands on a friggen mid level item (Standard Grade Wired Reflexes R3 is not a "high end" item by any reasonable measure). Hell, some of the D&D folks I know could conquer whole empires in that much time.

So no, I don't buy the argument that Shadowrunners are desperate rats living off scraps and they should be damn grateful for it. That hasn't been the case previously in earlier editions, and it also just doesn't make any damn sense. The corps value Shadowrunners. They see them as more useful than their grunts, and less expensive that their own in-house ultra elite professional black ops squads. They hire Runners wanting them to succeed, and they get what they pay for. If the Runners can't manage to afford the gear that gives them the edge they need to pull through on a tough mission, the Johnson won't get the results he wants. So he can either pay them what they're worth and have the job done reasonably well most of the time, or underpay them and have the job fail twice as often.

~Umi

Wired 3 is a very high-end item by definition. It's as advanced as that technology gets and is beyond what a starting character can have. It's not a Wish spell (To grab some D&D), but it's a Meteor Swarm; you're going to have to wait a long time for that. You can make it fancier with Alpha grade and so on, but the fact is that there's no wired reflexes better than Wired 3. It's the top of the line. Once you have it, you can only go down, not up.


(I'll leave out the D&D economics talk beyond this, however, a sit can spiral wildly out of control.)

And, yes, runners hungry for cash and living off rat burgers has been around since 1st edition. It slowly phased out as 'black trenchcoat' styles got bigger and 'pink mohawk' grew less common, but it's been there since day one. Took a while off in 3rd edition, mind you.

And corps don't value Shadowrunners; they USE Shadowrunners. There's a big difference. If there's a mission that *has* to be done, the corporation calls in Top Men that are outfitted in a million Nuyen's worth of gear each (or more). If a corporate suit wants something done "off the books", he has to dig into his own pocket for it and find 'deniable assets' that the corporation won't notice being used and his pockets are nowhere near as deep as the corp's.

Of course, at this stage, it gets down to worldviews and payscales, and the arguements there go 'round and 'round for days, with heated comments and fireballs and hate just flowing everywhere. Suffice it to say that the pay levels given are the core for the baseline assumptions about the game and are the ones that will be used in Missions, adventures, and so on. This is also the edition of "There's No Wrong Way to Play Shadowrun". If you want your teams to be paid six figures a mission, you're absolutely free to do so. And if you do, no one should say that you're "Doing it wrong" ... it's your game! Have fun with it! Nobody'll be dropping by your house and taking your books. (Critias might drop by and play, however. You never know with him; he's wacky.)

On the plus side, pay levels were actually printed, right in the main book, this time around. Woo hoo!

-- Yes. But being paid after the run, no incentive to be stealthy (actively discouraged, in fact), and low base pay is problematic. I suspect these are just the Missions guidelines ported over?

-- Totally on board with some sort of guidelines being useful for new GMs though!

b/e doesn't require higher skills. Just some one who is willing to do it and crack a few skulls while they are at it.

But why run the shadows even if the typical pay sucks? Maybe they were born there, maybe they hate the corps, or are hippies, maybe they served in the military as an undercover agent in a Knight Errant firewatch team and under UCAS orders got his firewatch team killed blamed himself assaulted his CO ran off with 3 highly encoded data disk that the firewatch team died for and went into hiding. Or maybe they just like freedom.

Or maybe you shouldn't go around asking Shadowrunners about their past

Some of these reasons would only explain why someone would run for six months maximum before dropping out, unless he's really stupid.

Running is being told what to do by fixers, M. Johnson and more experienced teammates. The only difference with a regular job is more day off. Drug habit and BTL addiction makes you equally untrustworthy as a runner. Running is working for the corporation. You may be hurting one, you're helping another. If you find people willing to give you money you on a regular basis to hurt corporations, without making a profit out of it, it's not shadowrunning. It's terrorism.

Competition may be a reason for accepting low pay, either as a runner or a regular employee, but it's not reason for running in the first place. Shadowrun rarely, if ever, mentions unemployment issue. We get to know the percentage of SINless and living below poverty level people for every area, but not unemployment. Most would assume that welfare no longer exist in a cyberpunk setting, and thus unemployment quickly equals homeless and starved. But it still doesn't say how may of them there should be.

There are half a million registered orks in Seattle, and about 300,000 SINless. Since Seattle seems to be a functional city, it suggests shadowrunners are not a quarter of the population. So obviously there are other choices available. Maybe not simple or pleasant, but they nonetheless exist.

Additionally, the economics of 5E make competition very unlikely. To be an effective Shadowrunner you need to either be 'wared, magical, or have a lot of robots/computer parts. Magical people are incredibly rare and it's an established part of the setting that they generally have no issues finding lucrative employment. For mundanes the cost of entry level runner gear is basically equivalent to an entire year's pay for a fairly well-off wageslave, to say nothing of what those kinds of assets would represent to the SINless. The only people who are going to have it are those who had it granted to them by a large organization or stole it. So unless the megacorps are really casual about letting people walk away with a quarter million plus in company assets you simply aren't going to have enough new people entering the profession to create the kind of competition that drastically drives down prices- Shadowrunning is apparently a game for a very rarefied and well-connected elite with prohibitive barriers to entry. And it seems pretty likely that the small number of people exceptional enough to succeed without augmentations and who decided to take up running would also likely get out pretty fast, since by the time they have enough money to invest in augmenting themselves to pursue the 'running "profession" they also have enough to retire to a life of modest squalor.

But that's what keeps people in, just like drug dealing or other criminal activities. They don't want to retire to a life of modest squalor (though for most criminal activities that's not even an option). They want to hit it big and live like kings.

I think of runners being the sort of reckless gambling types that no matter how much money they make, they're going to blow it. Like Robert Redford's character at the start of the sting (for all the people that have been playing since 1st edition, ) or Ziggy from the wire. They make a big score and then go out on the town, buying rounds of drinks, betting big, getting their guns gold plated, etc. and by the end of the week they've got nothing to show for it and can't pay their rent. It's how a lot of people handle getting a lot of money, i.e. stupidly, but since the players are in an abstract world, they don't behave this way, and so they can afford to live comfortably and you get the disconnect. There are ways for runners to be constantly living on the edge financially and getting paid big and affording gear. And some of them are probably more realistic than how people play, but buying a round of drinks for a 100 people at a club, and getting a hand-tailored leather jacket aren't the sort of things that players are going to choose to do because displays of wealth for their characters aren't thrilling for them.

I think that it's also important to note that there should be a shadow economy (i.e. black markets) for a lot of everyday expenses and even some of the gear runners want. I don't think runners pay full price for most of their everyday things. So their money should go a bit further. Things like, food, appliances, ammo, etc. I think pretty much everything up to level 8 availability, is probably available cheap somewhere if you know the right place to look. And even beyond that, with the right connections you can probably get discounts on higher up availability. Whether it's worth it to factor this in and haggle with players or just lump it in with the abstraction of the system, really depends on the table.

There's a low rung shadowrunner community that just doesn't get explored much in games. It's because the priorities for SR have always been set to make characters exceptional. That doesn't mean those low rung shadowrunners don't exist, just that we rarely play them. Thus the street level rules in SR5. Kellan Colt before her talent Awoke is an example of one. Or your characters in the Genesis and SRR video games. Also, a lot of the low rung runners die out quickly. Others don't die out, but never quite make the big time because they only do it part time and have some other form of minor employment.

There's another component that fuels the whole Shadowrunner setup. It's crime, and yes quite dangerous, but there is an advantage to being a shadowrunner over say a burglar or a terrorist. If you just went around doing home invasions in rich person's homes, there'd be a ton more heat involved and motivation to bring you down. The Corps treat runners they catch quite harshly usually, but what they don't usually do is spend enormous amounts of money to shake every tree in the Barrens in order to kill you. (Which they are fully capable of, if properly motivated. They can even lean on the Mafias) Being a shadowrunner doesn't make you immune to being killed or jailed, but it does take some of the steam out of them hunting you down for your crimes. After all, they may want to hire you someday, and there isn't a lot of profit in retribution on paid mercenaries. If you're just some Neo-Anarchist that breaks into corp facilities though, they'll definitlely go a lot further to make an example out of you.

From a fluff standpoint low balling payment makes sense in the grand scheme of things... From a practical standpoint it leads to looting, magicrun and your players considering a career change to carjackers or setting up their own drug lab

Ahh but here is the thing. In the wnorld of Shadowrun, if you have too much cash, and you have not invested in enough security to hold on to that cash, (Which is a phenominal money sink BTW) what's to say some punk isn't going to "liberate" your money from you. Since this is a punk they will go on a spending spree with your loot which will lead you from city to city where by the time you catch up to the little guttersnipe, he or she has spent your loot and if you want his or her hide, the guys he/she just lost a high stakes poker game are going to want to discuss the situaiton. Sounds like a wonderful side adventure to me, and will educate your players to use it or lose it if that is your goal, or is just plain great fun if it isn't. As for motivation, you have to get the kid or everyone in town will know you got took. Your rep will nose dive into the toilet to the point you will be happy to get a gig stealing a Ford Americar.

As a result I don't feel the need to be stingy about money. You are talking about asking someone who is allegedly skilled in the operation you want to risk life and limb on a deniable mission that outside of money really has no benefit to them. Yes, your team is going to want to get paid and get paid well for their efforts. That pay will be invested in hospital time. Maybe it's modding up or healing up. Spells/Foci/Training, The lifestyle that has the flat screen trideo, new vehicles (The old ones needed to be dumped, or at least spray painted and have the bullet holes removed.) New cover identities yada yada Even the worst security goon can get a lucky shot or can see something that will turn a profitable run into something that just barely makes it into the black.

We ask the players to constantly think outside the box, well shame on us if we are not willing to invest at least that much effort into it ourselves. Further, just because they were the heros of the day yesterday, does not mean that they can sit on their laurels when tomorrow comes. There is a movie called the Usual Suspects, a trick I like to take out of that movie is you don't always know whom you irked when you did the last job, or that job a year ago, and it gets expensive trying to find out what you screwed up that was so innocuous at the time, but oh boy. Here it comes with a vengence today, and you are scraping every microyen just to stay ahead of the hit teams on this one. You don't need a Kaiser Soze, just a senior middle manager who is good at logistics to make the player's lives a nightmare.

-LZ

Get a bunch of credsticks, they're already not wireless so no risk from deckers, and keep almost all of your money on them & them in a nice secured pocket someplace so it's difficult to get nicked. Keep a small balance on your commlink for those necessary transactions, and slot a credstick in your 'link from time to time as necessary. If you get hacked for all your money, the robber's not making off with very much because all one can get will be what's on your 'link.

There's vengeance runs, where either you are out to get revenge, or trying to save yourselves when someone is out for revenge on you. There are also "favor for a friend" runs, where you repay those favors contacts have done you. Both are good ways to balance out things when you feel you paid out to much. Actually, this is one of the arguments for higher run payments, that you can't really afford to use these devices if you pay your PCS too little, because you'll literally having your PCs getting kicked out of their low income apartments for not paying the rent. (Although that does sound like a good set up for a street level game. "You've been kicked out of your apartment, beaten up wherever you attempted to squat, and are now wearing paper clothing and sleeping with 20 other squatters in a tent in a Redmond Barrens squatter camp.")

Low pay is a bit like high danger, it's an acquired taste. I like it when I'm a player, but I'm a minority and I know it, which is why I don't use it as a GM. I do know a GM that is pretty stingy, but there is a lot of bitching about it. He probaly gets away with it since we have so few GMs, as many have burned out. But yeah, if you have players with tastes like man, then hell yeah, high danger and low pay. I can be very fun as you do value your gains more. I think I kind of reach the breaking point of where even I don't like it when I can't even afford to buy bullets or a low lifestyle.

To hold on to wealth you can also do what the mobster Meyer Lanksy supposedly did, and spread the money around to people, either to hold it, or to collect on favors later. Yes some of it may get lost or stolen, but it's far less likely if difused. On the same principle, invest heavily in various safehouses and equipment stashes all over the Sprawl. And of course, invest the cash directly into a part of your body, like an expensive cyberarm, although an especially evil GM may take it, it's unlikely.

I'll come out and say it - lowballing PCs on cash is a dick move, and you're a bad GM if you do it. 'Ware is fucking expensive, and people want to get shinier chrome. Not to mention ammo costs, explosives, dummy 'links, favours, safehouses, SINs, cars, bribes, and so on. Even gangers expect more cash than they could get selling Nitro on street corners, or they'd just go and fucking do that.

What is the actual path of progression those "low rung" runners take in SR5 if they don't have magic though? If they're joining an industry with razor thin margins there is no way they can possibly afford the cost to buy-in to Runner gear. Moreover it's pretty unlikely that they would choose to do so since for the cost of buying a single piece of the gear that categories them as non-"street level" runners work they can support themselves financially for several years. Basically Shadowrunning in 5E only works for mundane characters if it's a pro's game of totally disaffected former corp and military people OR it turns out that this kind of crime does pay a lot. Even if we don't play them, the game needs to have a plausible explanation for how a low rung runner becomes a high tier runner, for character background if nothing else. At the moment it's really hard to see how this happens in SR5 if the pay for runs is low outside of a confluence of two very unlikely events- 1) a low rung "runner" makes a huge score that gives them access to a huge pool of liquid cash or relevant equipment and 2) they decide to use this cash/equipment to augment themselves to enhance their criminal activities rather than paying for years worth of living expenses/bribing their way to legitimacy and starting a business.

The video game are not comparable because the economies work completely differently and are obviously designed around progression during gameplay.


A Shadowrunner is going to be viewed as a burglar and terrorist from the standpoint of anyone in authority. The security forces in the 6th world are more there to keep the public in line than to actually investigate/solve crimes. The only reason home invasions of rich people might attract more attention than breaking into a corp is that the corps are slighlty (slightly) more likely to be rational about the cost/benefit of tracking you down and murdering you vs. just cutting their losses and moving on. They'd be slightly more likely to hunt you down if you're a Neo Anarchist solely because you represent a more consistent continuing cost/threat to them than someone being paid to commit bespoke crimes.

Note though that this also cuts against the logic of having a system in which 'wared runners are primarily doing it for non-economic reasons- it means that instead of a population of professional criminals you have a population of political radicals who are unwilling to play ball in terms of working for a corp consistently and have it in for at least one corp/government. Corps might still be willing to subsidize freelance terrorist cells that are working against their competitors, but that also means corps are going to be more inclined to hunt down runners to almost exactly the same degree you think they're more inclined to hunt down Neo Anarchists, because anyone who runs against a given corp probably represents someone who is ideologically opposed to their interests and will be a continuing source of costs for them.

Make a street level or lower SR5 character and you'll find out the actual path of progression for low rung runners. I'd imagine a low rank street sam would start out with nothing but a smartlink. Then he'd save up piece by piece to get more ware. In a low paying GM's game it'd take him longer. And meanwhile he's contantly risking his life, so what this means is that in a low paying campaign even fewer runners ever reach the point where they are equal to a standard starter character using standard priorities. Also note that you can already do similar with a standard rung character in SR5 because of the lower importance of ware to overall character power and the importance of edge. You can start with high edge and little ware, then save up for delta grade, saving lots of essence and ultimately having a very powerful character. The low rung guy is doing similar, but with vastly lower skills, attributes, etc.



Shadowrunners are indeed viewed as burglars and terrorists by the public at large, including security forces. However, CorpSec are just tools and peons. Their corporate masters know the score because they orchestrate the whole shadow scene. Appearances must be maintained, and so of course they publically call shadowrunners terrorists and the like, and order them shot on site and the like. They will sometimes hunt shadowrunners down that hit them, but it's not the norm. Usually they just tighten up security and move on the next deal. Some politically motivated terrorist though, they'd put major resources into hunting down in order to make an example of them.

If the Megacorp movers and shakers really wanted shadowrunners gone they'd simply stop paying them and watch the market dry up. The whole concept of SR revolves around the fact that they don't stop paying out.

.

It's the "save up piece by piece" part that takes "longer" where that breaks down. Saving up 11k for Wired 1 in SR with low paying jobs where you could stash a few hundred here and a few thousand there was plausible, and the 32k for Wired 2 could be done with some saving and a few reasonably large scores that you made by leveraging your cheaper 'ware. Wired 1 costs 39k in SR5 and Wired 2 costs 149k. How long do you think it's going to take to afford that on a "street level" income? Given living expenses, running expenses, medical care, etc? Upgrades in SR4 can reasonably be done "piece by piece" with the income you get at "street level" being enough for an upgrade ever few runs, and then those upgrades can boost you up into "real runner" tier pay which let you afford real upgrades that stay pretty reasonable vs. living expenses and other major purchases you might make. SR5 has you acquire upgrades "piece by piece" by hoarding money like a miser for a few years at a stretch solely so you can get futher into an extremely dangerous profession that apparently shouldn't pay well. Seriously, how much do you think runners are making after expenses per run in a "low income" or "street level" game? Because you should take that number and really look at what buying 'ware "piece by piece" looks like from that perspective in terms of both time and financial opportunity cost.



That would require the megacorps to work in concert as a cartel to eliminate Shadowrunners, which they're not going to do. And again, how are the corps differentiating between politically motivated terrorists who are acting against them for primarily non-monetary reasons, and politically motivated Shadowrunners who are acting against them for primarily non-monetary reasons?

It's the "save up piece by piece" part that takes "longer" where that breaks down. Saving up 11k for Wired 1 in SR with low paying jobs where you could stash a few hundred here and a few thousand there was plausible, and the 32k for Wired 2 could be done with some saving and a few reasonably large scores that you made by leveraging your cheaper 'ware. Wired 1 costs 39k in SR5 and Wired 2 costs 149k. How long do you think it's going to take to afford that on a "street level" income? Given living expenses, running expenses, medical care, etc? Upgrades in SR4 can reasonably be done "piece by piece" with the income you get at "street level" being enough for an upgrade ever few runs, and then those upgrades can boost you up into "real runner" tier pay which let you afford real upgrades that stay pretty reasonable vs. living expenses and other major purchases you might make. SR5 has you acquire upgrades "piece by piece" by hoarding money like a miser for a few years at a stretch solely so you can get futher into an extremely dangerous profession that apparently shouldn't pay well. Seriously, how much do you think runners are making after expenses per run in a "low income" or "street level" game? Because you should take that number and really look at what buying 'ware "piece by piece" looks like from that perspective in terms of both time and financial opportunity cost.

Not going to argue with you about this. I'm actually a higher paying GM, so obviously I don't think it's the best thing for most players or campaigns. (The vast majority of players want decent advancement)




Correct. The corps have many sources in the shadows, it's a priority of theirs. Of course if there is no trace at all, it doesn't matter who did it. They can't hunt them without finding out. But if say they find Argent and the Wrecking Crew hit them through their sources. They know it's a crew that has worked for corporations, both for and against them. It's a whole different ballgame than if they find some Neo As hit them.

Fair enough.


Right, I'm just making the argument that that logic works a lot better if a large number of shadowrunners are reasonably motivated by mercenary motives. If running is something a competent and forward thinking career criminal can plausibly get into as a means of making a living, then that makes runners predictable- they're people who may have ulterior motives but ultimately most of them are in it for the paycheck. Corps like predictable. If runners are primarily a cadre of bored adrenaline junkies who are only doing it because it either lets them mount private crusades against certain corps/organizations/people or they're too untrustworthy/unreliable to hold down a corp job then that makes them more dangerous and unpredictable. Corps don't like unpredictable (or predictable bad news for them). Having an economic rationale for people becoming shadowrunners that does not rely on each and every runner needing a non-monetary ulterior motive (beyond being SINless) helps make the continued existence of the shadowrunning "industry" much more plausible.

How many Shadowrunners are there in the world? The economics are different if there are only a few thousand period than if there are hundreds in every major city.

What constitutes a "Shadowrunner"? It's different if you only get the title by being a singularly talented and dangerous individual, recognized by a community of same, than if any street trash can call themselves one.

Depends on how broadly or loosely you want to define Shadowrunner.



Ask three people, get four answers.

There are many ways to handle money.
Some have problems: you can't say that runners run for the money, that they can't make more than 100 nuyens for a night of running and that they can make 5000 nuyens by stealing a car (if you say that runners can't steal cars, then you'll have to explain how they can steal highly secure prototypes but not ordinary cars).

But there are also more than one valid solution. And the one you choose will have a big impact on the setting and tone of the game.

Compare these examples:

1. "A runner is someone who won't work for a corp. It can be because he wants to be free, or because no corps would accept a freak like him, or it can be any other reason. The point is: a runner can't have a legitimate work. But the Shadows have their own corps: criminal syndicates, gangs... If there's money to be made, they'll be on it. Want to steal stuff (cars, jewels, focuses, decks and stuff like that) and sell them? There's probably a gang whose job it is. No fence will accept to do business outside of the gang, unless you're ready to lower the price a lot. Sure, you're a runner and you can probably take on a dozen gangers at the same time. But unless you're ready to get your own gang, you won't last long in the buisiness world.

The only business that you can't be done by gangs or mafias is Shadowrunning. Because that's a job where you need a professional, and someone independent. But that doesn't mean it will be better payed. See, the Johnson know that you don't have many other options. You'll still be better paid than the average wage-slave or shadow-slave, but don't expect to be paid what you're really worth. Unless maybe you're one of the top five. That's the cost for being one of the few free men."

2. "A runner is a professional mercenary. Any corp would gladly pay premium to permanently hire one. Some also like to make money on the side by looting stuff, but when you're correctly paid, you don't need to. Some runners will only ever do a few jobs before being able to retire. Others will spend all their pay in a few months of luxury, before getting back to work."

3. "When you're a runner, you could probably be doing something else with your life. You could be well-paid in a corp, you could make a decent living working for some criminal syndicate or in a less dangerous freelance job. But when you need cash and you need it fast, Shadowrunning is the way to go. Some are doing it in hopes of being able to retire quickly, others do it because they need to pay off a debt as soon as possible, and others do it because they have their own goals, and they need more 'ware, more power or more gear to reach them."

4. "Sure, runners can get nicely paid, but you've got to remember this: only one in ten runner survive the first year. This means that when you start in the business, you'll have a lot of competition, and a lot of doubt on your ability to succeed. You'll have many other runners eager to prove their worth, and ready to accept any work for any price. It will take one or even two years before you'll be able to really get paid what you're worth. Stealing stuff on and off the job to improve your income? You can do that, but it adds some risks. It's part of the reason why so few runners survive long enough, so be careful with that, omae."

All these are perfectly valid. They explain why runners will run the shadows and why they get paid what they get paid. But they all imply a completely different tone for the game. Some players will prefer one, other will prefer another. Real problems start when two players come to the same table with different expectations, or when two writers write in the same book with only their own vision in mind.

All of it boils down to "You wanted to be Augmented? SCREW YOU! Thirteen ways, SCREW YOU!"

Which leads to MagicRun. Which is not good for the game that bills itself as cyberpunk-fantasy.

Not if you get the karma payout in line with the nuyen payout (or if you give augmented chars a way to get implants without having to pull the price in nuyens)

True and it also needs to be said that these solutions need not be mutually exclusive.

A gang leader or is high up enough that the leader is willing to look the other way who runs the shadows, perhaps it is a source of pride and honor to have someone like that leading the gang or working with the gang (if your second is a runner and he is willing to work for you, it raises your own value).

The runner has some other jobs that provide him with income like mercenary work, but he is also shadowrunning - some of the canon mercs run the shadows.

It doesn't need to be any economic calculation based on the proportion of Shadowrunners per capita etc.

the Johnson pays you his fee + bonus for paydata etc. and you get to keep what you find to sell to your contacts.

so 5,000 + expenses tuerns into

25,000 for the job with the sale of that experimental weapon spec you managed to download before the psycho street sam finished up rigging the place with C-12
you sold it to dave, who is totally legit and wouldn't sell you out to the corps "my word is my bond, Chummer!"

they get to build contacts and spend Karma in Etiquette rather than automatics.

so it's a total surprise when the next run, you have all the shiny new gear you bought in the shiny new GMC Bulldog, which incidentally gets BLOWN THE HELL UP.. by someone toting experimental weapons!

TL;DR - Pay the PC's in plot hooks that have a nuyen value, the game feeds itself.

***EDIT***

not everything needs to be a plot hook though, it just needs to satisfy the potential to be, thus adding in some paranoia to the players, who might then go to extra length to securely dispose of the goods for a lower price,

THUS : making it a function of their own emotions Rather than YOU being a DICK !

And at 5000 nuyen per run we're looking at 1 karma per 3 runs to be a comparable level of progression.


Does anyone actually want to play a game where their characters improve that slowly?

Nope... Of course, our table gets about 2 Karma per session (and then the final Karma payout on Runs at the end of the run). We get decent money though.

may as well just remove all progression entirely at that point. it's more cruel to taunt them with that progression rate than it would be to just tell them that their character can never improve in any way.

I'd love to see calculations on what kind of time commitment you'd need to actually make meaningful progression at those rates.

For the sake of experiment, let's assume Shadowrun is all about Initiative, and let's compare Wired Reflexes and Improved Reflexes.

Wired Reflexes 1 = 39,000¥
Wired Reflexes 2 = 149,000¥
Wired Reflexes 3 = 217,000¥

Improved Reflexes 1 = 1.5 PP
Improved Reflexes 2 = 2.5 PP
Improved Reflexes 3 = 3.5 PP

I assume the street samurai has enough Essence remaining to take basic grade, and the adept already maxed out its Magic attribute to 6, and thus needs to initiative to rise his Magic attribute to get a new power or new level of power.

If none took any initiative boost at chargen, the costs are the following :

Level 0 to level 1 : 39,000¥ or 104 karma (375¥ per karma)
Level 0 to level 2 : 149,000¥ or 168 karma (886¥ per karma)
Level 0 to level 3 : 217,000¥ or 245 karma (885¥ per karma)

The nuyen per karma ratio is the tipping point at which a campaign will favor one or another. The cyberware clearly is cheaper in this case, but you'd notice this scenario has an Adept with already 6 PP, and get an additional 0.5 PP to spend on other powers, while the street samurai has 2 to 5 point of Essence readily available.

If we look at progression cost instead (that is, assuming the Adept already spent some of his 6 PP on Improved Reflexes), things are less cut-and-fried :

Level 1 to 2 : 110,000¥ or 48 karma (2,291¥ per karma)
Level 2 to 3 : 68,000¥ or 48 karma (1,416¥ per karma)
Level 1 to 3 : 178,000¥ or 104 karma (1,711¥ per karma)

Considering heart stays at normal body temperature, SR5 rewards for a mission are 3,000 to 33,000¥ and 4 to 7 karma. I'm assuming the character obviously survived and fulfilled some objectives in order to get paid, and considered the highest dice pool would be between 6 and 20 dice. The ratio would then be between 750 and 4,717¥ per karma.

Upgrading from level 1 to 2 would require between 4 and 37 runs for the street samurai, and 7 to 12 runs for the adept. Upgrading from level 2 to level 3 would require 2-23 runs for the sam and 7-12 for the adept if it's the first initiation, 15-26 runs if it's the second one.

If the street samurai can find Wired Reflexes 3 (Availability 20), chances are the adept can find a Force 6 Qi Focus (availability 18), which would allow him to upgrade either from level 1 to level 2, or level 2 to level 3, for 24,000¥ and 12 karma. You can compare it to other solution by substracting the money cost both have to pay :

Level 1 to 2 : 86,000¥ or 12 karma (7,166¥ per karma)
Level 2 to 3 : 44,000¥ or 12 karma (3,666¥ per karma)

If the street samurai is anything like short on Essence (he's probably going to be), he'll need to switch either to higher cyberware grades or Synaptic Booster. With grade, you can apply the cost modifier to nuyen all concerned value. With Synaptic Booster, it is:

Level 0 to level 1 : 96,000¥ or 104 karma (923¥ per karma)
Level 0 to level 2 : 192,000¥ or 168 karma (1,142¥ per karma)
Level 1 to level 2 : 96,000¥ or 48 karma (2,000¥ per karma)
Level 0 to level 3 : 288,000¥ or 245 karma (1,175¥ per karma)
Level 1 to level 3 : 192,000¥ or 104 karma (1,846¥ per karma)
Level 2 to level 3 : 96,000¥ or 48 karma (2,000¥ per karma)

The cost is much higher if the street samurai took gear at chargen he has to remove ; he's then paying from level 0, while the adept always increases his power from its existing level.

Not sure that was really useful... Way too many variables.

Thank you for the numbers. If I were GMing, my goal would be to set a vibe where the runners feel they're chasing the bleeding edge to stay at it, with foes nipping at their heels with slightly-worse abilities, and the occasional 'dragon'/lieutenant that operates above their rating so they can kinda drool over wanting to achieve his level. On the other hand if you make the runner (players) feel like they're always chasing 'being adequate' or 'catchup with the threats the GM is tossing at us' it may lead to extra frustration.

If we look at the numbers too, under 'normal' rewards this lends to the idea of many many many runs needed, which = more game sessions. depending on your players, if they've run 10+ sessions and don't feel their character has really earned enough to improve during that period (10 weeks? 20 weeks? Half a year? etc) sustaining interest in gaming itself may be problematic. Its like...well a TV show, how many episodes do you get a season? And how you manage those episodes determines whether you get renewed or not. You running a 10 ep season? a 13ish one? 22? Regardless with whatever time you DO have, its necessary to make it engaging to everyone involved, or they'll just move on.

Alternately you can look at it in terms of "How much money (per runner) do I want them to earn at the end of this 'actual year of playtime' or '6 months of weekend play?' or whatever other period standard you want. Then distribute that accordingly across sessions. if you stick to an idea like say, "They get X-thousand nuyen a shadowrun" and "A shadowrun takes 2 game sessions." and "We have 15-20 sessions a year" that means you're saying "I envision the char having a gross nuyen influx of X-thousand Nuyen *7 to 10, per actual physical real life year'

"So, Mr. Johnson, you said you'd pay more for paydata and some items we found that weren't bolted down, neh? How much you willing to give for a shipping container full of joybois and -grrls?"

Ok, some quick math. This uses the rules from the 5th edition book.

1: main opposition has 12 dice in all runs.
2: Runners are always outnumbered 3:1
3: Runners always complete all objectives.
4: Runners always complete runs in record time.

This means that runners get paid 15,000 per run and earn 6 karma per run.

Let us work on the theory that the runners are angling for increasing initiative. We are assuming that when upgrading your wired reflexes you sell your old rating for 100% of its purchase value.

Wired reflexes:
rating 1: 3 runs.
rating 2: 10 runs.
rating 3: 15 runs.

Our adept is gaining power points solely by initiating.

Improved reflexes 1: 5 runs.
Improved reflexes 2: 8 runs.
Improved reflexes 3: 12 runs.

Magic is superior for this, but not by much.

EDIT: this doesn't factor in costs and lifestyle, nor charity or feel good runs.